What Lies Within

A Name Scratched into Glass

It started with steam.

The bathroom mirror fogged as it always did after a hot bath, a milky veil that made me feel safer—like even if Clara was waiting in there, I couldn’t see her. I lingered in the warmth, towel clutched around me, steam wrapping me in a softness the house never gave freely.

I wiped the mirror lazily with the side of my hand, carving a crescent of clarity. That’s when I saw it.

Four letters, faint at first, then sharper as the condensation thinned.

CLARA.

My skin went cold, my wet hair dripping down my spine like icy fingers.

I stepped closer, heart hammering, and touched the letters. Not moisture. Not fog. Grooves. Scratched into the glass itself.

The towel slipped, pooling at my feet, and I didn’t care. I pressed my fingertip into the C, and the sound it made—soft, gritty—was the sound of truth I didn’t want. This wasn’t a message written for me in breath. This was a name carved to last.

I stumbled back, clutching the sink. My reflection looked pale and sickly, eyes wide, mouth trembling. For a terrible second I thought she would move before I did, finish some expression I hadn’t started. But she stayed still.

I pulled on my clothes with clumsy hands, avoiding the mirror, avoiding my own face. My skin felt wrong, as if it remembered her more than it remembered me.

The hallway was worse.

The long gilt mirror leaned against the wall, the shawl I had pressed so carefully back over it now slipped an inch. A sliver of silver peeked through. I knew I should fix it, but my feet carried me closer instead.

I bent, against every instinct, against the ringing in my ears, and peered into the c***k.

ANNA.

My name. Etched thin, shallow but unmistakable, right at the center.

My knees went weak. The letters wavered as though the glass itself was breathing.

I touched the groove of the first A. The mirror was soft under my finger. Pliable. It yielded, just a hair, like the flesh of a cheek.

And then I heard it.

A whisper, slipping through the silver like smoke through a keyhole.

Come closer.

My whole body went rigid. I staggered back, hitting the wall so hard the portraits rattled. Their eyes seemed brighter, their mouths more knowing. My mother’s gray eyes stared down at me from her frame, sharp and stern even through the sheet that covered her.

I whispered “No” into my hands. Not to the house. Not to Clara. To myself.

But my feet moved anyway.

I reached for the shawl, intending to rip it off and throw it over again. But the mirror was already ahead of me. In the reflection, my hand reached for the fabric before I moved. And the reflection’s mouth curved, just slightly, in a smile I didn’t make.

I froze. My lungs burned.

Then, from the parlor, the rocking chair creaked. Once. Twice. Two more times than it should.

I ran.

Down the stairs, into the kitchen, gasping like a child who’s sprinted too far. I gripped the counter, grounding myself with the edge of wood under my fingers. The kitchen window blurred with my reflection. Just a hint of me, just a ghost of glass.

But in that blur, another figure stood behind me. Pale. Hair dark. Dress white. She leaned close, as if about to whisper into my ear.

I whirled. Nothing.

The spoon I’d left on the table reflected her more clearly than it reflected me. A white shape, impossibly small in the curve of silver. When I picked it up, it was gone.

I backed away until the counter caught me. I pressed my spine into it, refusing to look at the window again. My throat burned with the kind of terror that has nowhere to go.

And then, with the softest scratch, I heard it. Not in my ear. Not in the room. In the glass.

Anna.

The kitchen window fogged at the edges though the air was cold. Letters formed again, this time not etched but drawn in condensation that shouldn’t have been there.

I clenched my fists until my nails cut crescents into my palms. “Stop,” I whispered, shaking.

The name smeared itself into nothing.

But the grooves in the bathroom mirror. The scratch in the hall. The way glass had given under my finger.

Those weren’t smudges. They were permanent.

I thought of my mother’s letter: Do not say her name into the rooms. Names hang from beams. Names travel through pipes.

I hadn’t said it. But Clara had.

And now she knew mine.