A blue car made its way across the green fields, between the hedges and over the humpback bridges. In the car sat a small family, Father made a crude joke and Son laughed, Mother glared at father, but could not keep the loving, tolerant expression off her face for long.

Father grinned at his wife and rolled down the windows of the car, sending her carefully brushed hair into a messy bush of unruly strands. Mother laughed, and punched him in the arm. They all laughed. Except Daughter. Daughter had her headphones in and was drowning them out with loud music.

Father accelerated up a bridge, making the three of them giggle as gravity seemed to forget they all existed for a second. Then he quickly pulled into a drive and sped down it, the car skidding to a neat stop as he braked hard in front of their house.

Father turned the car key and took a step out, he stretched his arms behind his head. Son got out and took the car keys from him, running up to the door of the house. He fiddled with the various keys, taking the largest one and slipping it into the lock.

The door opened smoothly and Son ran in and up the stairs. He reached his room and looked in, seeing his hamster running on its wheel. He grabbed the hamster and slipped across the hall into his sister's room, tucking the hamster under the sheets as a surprise.

He looked out of the window, spying on his family. Mother had gone to check on the chickens, Father was unloading the luggage, and Sister was still sitting in the back, obliviously listening to her loud music and scrolling through her phone.

He rubbed his hand with anticipation at his sister's reaction, then went downstairs to the kitchen to seek a snack. Father had finished unloading the luggage and sneakily reached through the still open window, taking Daughters phone. She glared and shouted at Father in outrage, but he just smiled and ran into the house, to hide the phone.

Mother had finished checking on the chickens and walked back to the house. She saw her daughter getting out of the car. Mother planted a peck on daughters angry cheek, and followed father into the house.

Daughter angrily stomped up the stairs of the front porch and marched into the house with an irritable expression. She saw her brother munching on a biscuit and glared at him, pinching him as she passed, taking out her anger on the younger one. Her brother yelped in pain, but adopted a wolfish grin behind her back as she climbed the stairs.

It did not take long for Daughter to scream.

Son burst into laughter and went to collect his hamster.

Father and Mother didn’t hear the scream as they were on the other side of the house, they had locked their bedroom door and were kissing on the bed, nothing short of the smoke alarm could

disturb them. Son managed to retrieve his shaken hamster without many kicks and likewise retreated to his room.

Daughter angrily stewed as the rest of her family retreated to their own devices. Her face had a permanent scowl carved into it. She hated holidays, they were the worst, she preferred term time when she could escape all of them and live in her boarding school, without going home for terms at a time.

She kicked her bed frame. Without her phone there was nothing to do. She wished she could get to it so that she could see Boyfriend’s response to that funny picture she had sent him. Sadly she had no idea where her phone was, and she didn’t go to bed normally for at least several hours.

She glanced out the window, seeing the moon that had swapped with the sun not that long ago.

Angrily she stomped downstairs, trying to make as much noise as possible.

No one yelled at her, they were too used to her permanent moody attitude.

Daughter looked around, bored. She didn’t want to snack because she was on a diet and wanted to look good in a bikini, she didn’t want to watch TV because it was lame and unrealistic. She came to a mirror in the hallway and turned, looking into her own glaring eyes. Her scowl was almost permanent, only when she was around her boyfriend could she smile, any other time her face contorted automatically into a scowl. Sure she could change it, but the moment she was distracted, the scowl came back.

Her mother had told her the wind had changed when she was little, and now the angry expression was permanent. She hated that old wives tale as much as her mother loved it. Daughter eyed the door, maybe she should go for a walk. There was nothing else to do after all, her family wouldn’t notice her absence and exercise made her happier.

Unable to come up with anything better to do she went and found her boots, bashing the dirt off them together in the hallway to annoy her mother. Then she slipped them on, and pushed the unlocked door open, quietly slipping out. She didn’t need a coat, it was never cold enough this time of year, day or night.

They never locked their front door or their car, no one ever came out to this house in the middle of nowhere. The drive was sufficiently unobvious that people just assumed it was a dirt track leading to a field, so no visitors ever appeared unarranged.

Daughter jumped over the creaky porch step and set off at a brisk walk, she would take the path down from behind the chicken coops all the way down to the quarry and from there follow the river to the glade.

The glade was a place she had discovered as a child. No one knew about it, not even her brother. She went there sometimes to hit trees with sticks and listen to loud music without being disturbed. Once or twice she had even fallen asleep there, staying the whole night on a soft bed of moss.

Daughter soon reached the quarry, scrambling down a sleep slope of shingles and over some abandoned machinery to reach the fast flowing river. A little partially rotten rope bridge allowed her to cross the water. Then it was a matter of skirting the edge of the water on that narrow path.

It had been easier to traverse when she was younger.

Daughter managed to follow the river for a mile or two, almost falling into the cold looking water once or twice in spots where the water had eroded the soft clay that made up the river banks. Soon she reached the landmark she knew so well, a forked tree with a gnarled rough patch of bark that looked like a person's face.

Her brother would think it was awesome, which is why she had never told him about it. A short scramble through the brush, which was more overgrown and resistant than she remembered, and she managed to break through to the glade.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The world seemed to darken as she entered what had been a delightful valley. It was the first time she had visited it at night. She had of course slept here before, but she had never woken up in the night those times.

The glade at night made her shiver. Twisted trees that looked like people stood at the edges of the glade, surrounding the dark maw-like pond like a depraved cult gathered around a bloody altar.

It was similar to what she remembered, but it all felt wrong.

She realized she had zoned out, staring in shock at the twisted vista of a centerpiece of her childhood. It didn’t feel as hospitable as it once had.

However, to a girl that loved horror movies and metal bands, this was a thrilling place. So instead of taking a step back, she took one forward, and another. Soon she reached the pond and knelt on the green moss, staring into the mirrored black surface of the pond.

The water seemed to ripple for a moment and then her reflection appeared. She saw that she wasn’t scowling anymore. Her expression seemed to have adopted the same elated grin that her brother often wore.

She widened her smile at the reflection and waved at it.

The reflection remained still.

It did not copy her wave.

Suddenly, and very creepily, the reflection rolled its eyes at her and waved. Exactly how she had done.

Shocked agape the girl stared at its surface. Was she dreaming or hallucinating?

The reflection copied her expression a few seconds later.

Daughter stared at the pond, a hunger in her eyes demanding she know how what she just had witnessed was possible.

She waved again and counted until its response, it seemed to have a delay of around ten seconds.

Slightly disturbed, she reached out to the surface of the pond and touched it, the ripples disturbed the reflection and it seemed to wobble out before the pond became still again. Daughter waved at the reflection, surprised when it suddenly waved with her, instead of delayed. Why had it changed? She was certain that the weird delayed reflection was not a dream.

Frowning, she poked the reflection again, trying to get it to return to how it was. The reflection wobbled away and after the pond stilled it waved at her. Confused, she waved back, but it did not react.

It mouthed something at her, it almost looked like her reflection was warning her, she couldn’t read lips though so she asked it what it meant out loud.

Then she froze as it dawned on her, the reflection was delayed at the start, then it matched her. Was it possible that the reflection was now ahead of her?

The reflection looked up, it looked like something just out of view had caught its attention. Unable to stop herself she looked up.

Nothing was there. Only the moon light shining through the dark canopy of the rustling leaves above.

She looked back down.

The reflection had gone.

Daughter shivered, her mind racing. Why had it left? Had something disturbed it? She didn’t feel like she wanted to move, so why had it? She leaned forward, trying to get a different view on the pond, to see if it was still somewhere in the glade.

Suddenly she slipped, falling forward into the maw that was the pond, the water swallowing her. Water gave way to air as she seemed to fall into the pond and out the other side, onto the bank. Soaking wet she looked around, scared. It had felt like she had somehow jumped into the reflection of the world, but that didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense. Scared and confused, she backed away from the pond and ran back tearing through the bush and bracken as she made her way back to the river.

The river felt slightly wrong, it was rushing too fast and the bank she had walked along to get to the glade was overgrown. She reassured herself. It must just be the darkness.

She tore her way along the path, breaking through bush and branch for what felt like a mile to reach where the bridge was.

Finally, she turned a familiar bend in the river, only to find that the bridge was gone. Had there been some freak flash flood while she had been in the glade?

She made her way further up the river until she found a place where the river flowed slower. She was already wet, so swimming across the river shouldn't be too bad.

The flow of the river tugged at her and she let it take her, swimming diagonally across the water to reach the other side. Then she scrambled up the bank, still dripping to reach… The quarry was gone.

Where there had once been a massive chunk carved out of the landscape in ages past formed by decades of mining the chalk, there was now just a field. An overgrown field filled with ferns and bracken.

Daughter ran through the field in her panic, feeling her skin tear off around her ankles where the thorns dug in. She ignored the pain in her hurry to reach the house. She ran up through the woods, where she knew the path had been, until she reached where her house had been.

Nothing was here. There was a clearing in the forest, just grass with a few fallen leaves littered around. The house wasn’t here, the chicken coops were gone, even the car was gone.

Almost giving herself a false hope she ran out of the clearing to where she knew the road had been...

Her hopes were denied.

She panicked. She knew this was the right place because all the familiar bumps and trees and hills she had grown up around were present, just nothing artificial. It was like she was in a world that man had never touched.

Then she remembered the feeling she had had when she had fallen into the pond. Was it possible that she had somehow fallen through the reflection into a completely different world. Excited, she made her way back to the glade, through the wood, over the field, across the river, along the bank and through the bush.

The clearing was as she remembered it. However it didn’t feel quite so creepy anymore. Like something that had made it that way had gone.

Excited, she ran over to the pond and looked down into it, ignoring the protests of her bleeding shins as she kneeled down.

Her reflection was gone.

That didn’t matter too much, she just had to lean forward… and bonk. Her forehead hit the surface of the water and bounced off, she sprawled forward onto the pond clutching for her head.

Somehow she lay on top of the water.

Through the pain she reached down and felt it. It was smooth like glass.

It was like a barrier stopped her from crossing through it again.

Daughter curled up into a ball, scared. What had happened to her? Why was she trapped like this? Tears ran down her cheek as she desperately wished just to be in her bed again. She

would give anything for that wish to be true, she would even buy her brother more hamsters.

A cold feeling approached. A presence was here. Something was watching her. Shaken, she sat up and looked around.

There was no wind, the moon was hidden by the trees. No one seemed to be here.

Then she remembered the pond and looked down.

Her reflection stood on the other side, looking down on her with a mocking gaze.

She tried to reach out and touch it but the surface of the water blocked her.

She bashed on the water, her fists not making a noise. Yelling to be let out of whatever prison her reflection had trapped her in. Then the reflection smirked and spoke in a hissing voice. “Thank You Human, for freeing me from my eternal prison”

The reflection seemed to ripple and warp, until she was left looking at a grey skinned creature, unnaturally tall, and faceless except for a hideous maw that split the blank oval of its skull like a

scar, filled with shiny dark fangs.

“Many Aeons ago witches sealed me in this pond, scared of my power they vowed I never shall return to the mortal plane… But you let me out. As a foolish child you desecrated the magic circle that sealed me and weakened the trees that suppressed me. And now at last, after years of patiently waiting, I managed to trick you into swapping places with me. Don’t worry, you will not die… Ever.

Have fun watching your body wither until it reaches a state you can barely call alive, nothing you try can kill yourself in this prison. Maybe once you distil long enough you will become like me, and trick another curious human into swapping places with you. As for me, I think I will take your place, I will become you and your family will love me

more than they ever loved you. Goodnight Sweet Fool!”

Then Daughter watched the Imposter turn to leave, watched it transform back into her and step through the bush.

Then everything was silent.

In the days after that Daughter found she no longer needed sustenance, nor sleep. Her body seemed to persist, no matter what her mind did, and she could not break the surface of the

pond, no matter how hard she tried.

Once her mind had given up she tried to hang herself, and found her body slowly repaired itself to the minimum required level to keep herself alive. No matter what she tried she could not die.

As for her family, they found their daughter had changed for the better, becoming someone they

could love again.

No one knew she had gone.