Focus was extremely hard to come by for the rest of that day. Passing from period to period, my only thoughts were on that red eye. By sixth period I had already resigned it to my imagination, being way to emotional to see straight in the first place. Mercifully Jack didn’t acknowledge me at all in history class, using his obnoxiousness to get the attention of the girl who sat behind him. Tuning out the teacher again, I scratched rough images of the eye into my notebook, each one worse than the last as my hands were shaky at best. Circles were impossible to draw, and by the third attempt, I gave up on getting one perfectly round. Occasionally I looked up at the teacher, feigning attention and checking in to where he was in the textbook I had already read through last week. “Jack, sit down!” The teacher scolded. I slammed my notebook shut at his sudden loud order, fearing I’d be yelled at for not paying attention. I looked over at Jack who was sliding down into his desk dejected while the girl behind him giggled. A few uncomfortably silent moments later, the teacher resumed the lesson.

Lunch wasn’t a horrible time for me, the food at least a simple distraction from my million and one thoughts. I slid silently onto the end of the table full of stoners and goth kids, they occasionally talked to me about video games, but otherwise left me alone. It was the closest thing I had to a friend group, enough where I knew their names, and some of their hobbies, but never interacted with them outside of these walls. One of the older guys, Ben I think his name was, had been going on about the newest first person shooter game that everyone was playing when I heard it. A silent whisper at first, prickly and cold like the long vines that wrapped around the oak tree in his back yard. “Umbraculum…. harken to me…” The blood drained from my face as the cheeseburger I was trying to eat fell onto the platter in front of me. My eyes scanned around as the rest of my body was rigid, unable to move. None of the other kids at the table reacted to the voice. My eyes came to rest on the mirror up in the corner of the cafeteria. That same red eye was staring back at me. “Yesss….Child of Shadow…I see you as well…” The voice was still a whisper, but something in my gut was screaming danger. This couldn’t be real, I had to be hallucinating again. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping it would pass. The chattering of the cafeteria seemed to melt away, and the voice now boomed in my head, “You’ve kept us waiting Child…your cries have reached our ears. The whisper curled around me, a chill winding up my spine, tightening my throat. “Your cries have reached our ears…” It felt like a spell, binding me to my seat, unable to scream, unable to flee. My heart thundered in my chest, drowning out the cafeteria’s noise, leaving only the echo of that voice. “Stop it,” I whispered, though I couldn’t tell if I was addressing the voice or my racing thoughts. I squinted and peeked on eye open. The mirror’s surface shimmered, the red eye growing larger, as if it were pulling me in. The reflection distorted, the surrounding cafeteria flickering like a faulty TV screen. “You will obey Child of Shadow!” The whisper had shifted to a forceful demand, its words causing the lights of the cafeteria to dim. There was no doubt now, this voice dripped with sinister intent, and I wanted no part of it. I curled inward, my legs wrapping around the legs of the chair I was in. And yet I could feel something pulling me forward, the chair beginning to screech as it drug across the floor.

Stars filled my eyes as something hard collided with the back of my head. The world suddenly came back into focus, and I was sitting at the lunch table, the dull chatter of people talking came roaring into my ears again. I turned to see what hit me, across the room was Jack, arm forward like a quarterback and I instantly knew what hit me. A football was spinning on the ground behind me. “My baaaad Maaaaason!” He hollered fake apologetic. “Not inside Jack!” One of the teachers scolded as they picked up the football, not acknowledging the fact it had used me as a springboard just seconds earlier. One part of me was embarrassed as all the kids were now looking my way, but that was drowned out by relief, the eye was gone, and the voice with it. I shivered as I turned back to my lunch, this day was getting weirder by the minute, and hallucination or not, something was really wrong here.

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my racing heart, but the cafeteria chatter felt foreign, like I was listening through water. The remnants of the voice lingered, wrapping around my thoughts, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the eye was still watching, even though the mirror was now just the normal reflection of the room. I couldn’t help but picture the various faces of the kids looking at me. They were a mixture of laughter and sympathy, regardless just the feeling of them all on me sent another pang of anxiety through my chest. Trying to focus on the rest of my lunch was a daunting task, each bite drier than the last as my appetite was gone.

The rest of the school day passed without incident, though my hesitation and avoidance of all mirrors was apparent to me as I gave each a wide berth as I passed in the hallway and bathrooms. Any low sounding whispers had me on edge, the word Umbraculum seared into my thoughts. By the time I stepped off the bus, I felt utterly spent, like I had just run a marathon and taken an exam at the same time. My mother said something incoherent as I passed her on the way to my bedroom. Tossing my backpack on the floor, I leaped face first onto my bed.

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“Did you hear what I said, Mason?” My mother chimed in, she was standing in my doorway, hands on her hips. I shook my head, burrowing back into the pillow. “I said I’m making dinner; you need to get a shower.” Dread hit me like a ton of bricks, the revival. I groaned audibly, the only thing I could do to voice my displeasure and desire not to go to another service. “None of that,” She weakly scolded, “Your father is finishing up, when he’s done, its your turn.” I’d rather deal with the eye again than go was the first thing I could think of. I couldn’t tell mom about that, at best she wouldn’t believe me, at worst she’d think it was the devil and I would have a bunch of old guys laying hands on me and praying like I needed to be exorcised. Instead, I mumbled ‘kay just to get her to go away. As her footsteps gradually grew silent, I flipped onto my back, staring up at the ceiling. What do you want? I asked allowed, the eye and the voice still fresh in my mind. Child of Shadow he called me, but why. The opening of the bathroom door and my father’s footsteps as he heavily passed from the bathroom to his bedroom shook away the questions. I ducked under the bathroom mirror when I finally worked up the energy to go take a shower, glimpsing nothing but the steam coating its surface. The water was hot and brought relief to both my mind and body, washing away one of the worst days I had survived in a while. Dinner was silent, as usual. Mason pushed his food around the plate, waiting for someone to ask him how his day went. But his father was already thumbing through his well-worn prayer book, lips moving silently, and his mother was scrubbing an already clean dish. The words he wanted to say stuck in his throat, twisting into something tight and heavy. They never asked. And he never told them. Nothing ever seemed important enough to warrant me starting a conversation, and too often I had seen my father go off on his own view of the world. I had a hard day too, son or something of the like. I flicked a pea with annoyance, watching it fly through the air and land with a satisfying bounce on the dining room floor. No one noticed. Jessica was looking down at her phone, my father at his book, and my mother at her dish. One by one we finished the meal, prompting my father to corral us to the car. The drive there was as silent as dinner as I gazed out the window to the countryside. Luckily it was already dark or the reflection of the window would’ve terrified me.

Into another painfully uncomfortable pew I went, cursed to sit rigidly still until the service ended. The church was eerily similar to our usual, with the same type of wooden pulpit center facing row upon row of wooden benches. The only difference was the green felt cushioning and carpet instead of the normal red. The crowd was a lot larger than our Sunday service, with varying ages. The chatter was way louder, my ears ringing as I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, just another dull roar of people speaking together in unison. By the time we got to hymnals, I was nodding off with boredom. The preacher was already mid sermon when I came too, a sharp elbow in my side, mother glaring down at me as I wiped drool from my cheek. Without eye contact I stood up and slid past her and father, whispering bathroom to their inquisitory looks. I walked past the pews and glances, closing the door behind me to the single stall bathroom. Locking the door, I leaned over the sink, sleep still creeping from the corners of my eyes. Running the cold water over my face refreshing, driving back the tiredness that boredom brought. I looked up briefly and froze as I looked back down at the running water. In the center of the bathroom mirror, were two red eyes with silver flakes. A silent scream of terror ripped through my body.

I couldn’t look away. The red eyes stared back, their silver flecks spinning like leaves caught in a storm. My heart hammered, each beat crashing through the silence, so loud I half-expected someone outside to hear it. My hand gripped the edge of the sink, knuckles white, every muscle frozen.

Then, the eyes shifted—no longer just watching. Below them, a dark shape began to form, an ink-black mass that grew denser, spreading like spilled oil across the mirror’s surface. My limbs felt cemented in place as it shifted and hardened, twisting into the shape of a hand, encased in a gauntlet of blackened steel that seemed to expand, looming larger by the second.

Cracks started to splinter across the glass as the hand pressed forward. Each crack inched closer, radiating outwards, until the mirror exploded toward me. I threw my arms up, shielding my face as shards scattered and sliced my skin, sending sharp, fiery pain across my arms.

An unbreakable force closed around my wrist, cold and relentless. I yanked back in a frenzy, but it only bit deeper, like iron cuffs. “You will come now, Child of Shadow.” The voice thundered through my mind, and with one savage pull, it yanked me forward.

With a silent scream that seemed to twist into nothingness, I felt the world pull away, my vision slipping into darkness as I lost consciousness.