They fell into a routine over the next few days in the mirror world. In the morning, they’d walk outside and harvest what vegetables and fruit they could manage. During the day, they’d use the light from the windows to scour through the cabin, searching for food and for clues. In the afternoons, they’d cook up whatever meal struck their fancy with what they had and spend time pouring over Eve’s books. To their surprise, in the bedrooms, they found additional journals, written by other kidnappees, verifying Eve’s story. From what evidence Anna and Elle could gather, it seemed a group of 5 or so had lived in that same cabin for years before their journals mysteriously stopped a few months ago.

In front of each other, Anna and Elle expressed hope that the group had managed to return to the real world. In their hearts, both were afraid it wasn’t true.

By the end of the first week, the two had fallen into a false sense of security, settling into their new life in the mirrored world.

Their first hiccup came a week and a day after Elle’s arrival. She woke with a headache and a stuffy nose. At first, she tried to play it off, telling Anna it was her allergies finally acting up. By lunch, however, it was evident to both of them that wasn’t the case. Anna pressed a cool hand against Elle’s head and shuffled her off to bed, worried.

The rest of that day, and the next, were hazy in Elle’s head. She remembered Anna telling her, “I heading out to get you some medicine, do you understand?”

Elle had groaned in return and drifted back into sleep.

Still feverish, she wasn’t sure what woke her the next time. She shot out of bed, panting, sick with fright. Elle listened carefully, her heartbeat slowing as she watched the sunlight drift in through the open window.

A sudden crack of tree branches nearly made her jump out of her skin. At first, she calmed herself, thinking it was Anna. As the footsteps continued, getting closer to the cabin, however, a great sense of unease stole over her. She crept silently out the window, landing in the mint that grew underneath. The mint pierced through her stuffed nose, sending drainage down her face. She dared not sniffle and suppressed a cough as she slid around the edge of the cabin, stretching her neck and straining her eyes for a glimpse of the stranger. A man knocked on the cabin door, and Elle held her breath as he waited for a response. She watched as he pressed an ear up against the door, listening for footsteps. When he heard nothing, he moved to the windows, peering inside.

No reflection stared back, and Elle thought her heart might never start again.

“It’s clean…” the man muttered, looking from the inside to the weed-covered outdoors.

Those two simple words were enough to restart Elle’s heart, which switched to beat so fast she worried it might burst.

He raked his fingers on the outside of the windows, leaving deep, inhuman groves with his fingers. Perhaps sensing her gaze, his head jerked, and Elle ducked behind the tree, muffling her breath and willing her pounding heart to return to its stopped state.

“Elle?” her classmate called. “I heard you went missing–we’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

Elle didn’t answer; she hardly even breathed.

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The unlocked door creaked open. “Elle?” Her mother called. “Honey!”

“Anna!” A young man called. “Are you there?”

Items clattered to the ground, and Elle racked her brain, thinking of anything and everything that might indicate they lived there. Steeling herself, she’d peeked back around the tree, only to nearly make eye contact with it as it stalked back out the door.

“Elle?” It questioned, heading her way.

Elle squeezed her eyes shut, held her breath against the coughs that threatened to wreck her body and prayed.

The footsteps got closer and closer, till the creature stopped and turned around. “When they return,” it promised itself, stalking back toward the house.

Elle’s stomach flipped.

She’d racked her brain. Still within ear and eyeshot of the monster, she crawled forward on her hands and knees, placing her hands and feet as carefully as possible. When she’d felt she was far that it couldn’t reach her, even if it heard her, she leaped to her feet, breathing through her mouth as she sprinted off to search for a path she vaguely recalled from Eve’s diary, without looking back.

She ran around a bend in the trail and smacked right into Anna, who tumbled to the ground, spilling the bag of medicine across the forest floor. “Elle?” Anna asked, “Are you okay?”

Elle stumbled back, coughing and suddenly wondering if she’d outpaced the creature after all.

“Tell me something only you’d know!”

Anna’s hang hung between them, tense with worry. “Elle?”

“Now!”

“You nearly chopped your finger off last week when you were dicing the tomatoes for dinner,” Anna said calmly. Her demeanor shattered, and she asked fearfully, “Did you see it?”

Elle nearly burst into tears. “I was out back, and it found the cabin. It was looking for us.”

She’d already lost one home, and she didn’t want to lose the only place she’d felt safe in this messed-up world.

“It’s okay.” Anna soothed. “We’ll find somewhere else until it leaves. Then, we can go back home, okay?”

“Okay,” Elle answered.

She knew she’d never feel safe again.

They’d spent the weekend camping in the trees, unable to sleep. Every snapped branch was a wild animal, or monster, ready to eat them, and every rustle of the leaves was its voice, whispering, “I’ll find you.” A few days later, they’d returned to their home together in the early morning, watching through the night for any sign of movement.

With no sign of the creature, they unknowingly echoed its footsteps as they strode through the door, searching the house. Once they’d confirmed that it had truly left, they locked the doors and coped in their own ways.

Their first evening back, over tea in the kitchen, Elle begged, “I don’t want to die alone. Please don’t leave me again.”

Anna stiffened, then said, “I won’t, I promise.” Ashamed, she admitted, “I don’t want to either.”

That evening, and from then on, they stopped their foolish pretending. They spent the nights back to back, eyes flying open at every sound. The days they spent jumping out of their skin, as they knew daylight wouldn’t keep the true monster away.