Chapter 6

Mel returns to the room where she hid from Toby, finding it quickly this time. She climbs on the bed again, where she’d left the sheets messy and unchanged. She remembers its weight, its firmness under their bodies. She looks at the picture on the wall, and its reflection in the mirror. The incident is hazy. She remembers remembering it moreso than she remembers it happening, but being here sparks the sensation. Her heart thumps. She’s still certain there’s a logical explanation.

She climbs off the bed to examine the mirror itself. It seems ordinary. Just a heavy reflective glass mounted to the wall. She even peeks into the tiny space between the wall and the mirror, not knowing what she’s looking for, but finds nothing.

“Just our imagination,” Mel says out loud to herself. She’s rational and thoughtful. She’s too smart to believe in bullshit like ghosts and spells.

Rolling her eyes at her own gullibility, she leaves the room and meanders down the hallway. The mirrors may not be magic, but they’re certainly prevalent and ominous enough to make her conscious of herself. Being here is strange. Whether there’s magic here or not, Toby’s recent behavior defies explanation. Even her own does. It’s difficult to treat such a change as simply the product of being on spring break. She can see and hear each footstep, reflected in image and echo, so it’s impossible to ignore her darkest thoughts.

She finds herself in the main hallway again, underneath the queen, and she breathes in slowly. Watching that painting has given her incomprehensible feelings. She’s been enamored of art before, but not like this. She’s never felt the sensation of an image entering and inhabiting her. For all her love of art, she’s never felt in community with a drawn figure before. As if the queen is alive. Which, if Toby is right, perhaps she is. Wait. Hadn’t she thought the painting had changed last night? That her arm was in a different place?

She clutches her chest. She knows nothing here is magic. It can’t be. But also, it can’t not be. Everything points in that direction. Three times, someone has seen something in the mirror. One of those times is recorded, and the other two are from different people. That alone makes it hard to deny. But it can’t be real.

She tries to think logically. Is there a connection between all the incidents? She goes over them. One when she was on top of Toby. One when she was horny and waiting for him. And one when he was in the gym. He came back from there still hard. There’s a common denominator. These visions, real or not, keep showing up around sex. Whatever that proves. At least it’s something to start with.

Terrified as she is, she looks at the queen for confirmation. The eyes smile back knowingly. Mel squints and looks away. Is she just imagining it, or is she somehow actually communicating with this image? “OK, I’m either insane or onto something,” she says to herself. Only one way to find out.