u/sojournerpluviophile

Original Post

The situation has gotten considerably worse. If you don't know what I'm talking about, my last post will explain.

There's been a few more "snail trails" appearing in any room with a mirror, leading from the edges of the glass onto the walls or doors. It's become increasingly more difficult to clean it all up. The new theory among our parents is slime mold. (The reality of water damage is still fresh in their minds.) On Sunday, my sister Alaina saw it in the downstairs bathroom and now refuses to shower or brush her teeth there. I don't like how some of the streaks seem to radiate out of the same point. I don't like how you think you see a flash of movement in the corner of your vision, and then wheel around to find more slime.

A horrible dread weighs on the three of us now: myself, my brother Jake, and our cousin Andrew. We have all kept our mouths shut about the ritual. Andrew's former energy has been muted, and I find myself wishing that he was back to his normal self, however obnoxious it was. He says he sees things. The walls of a dim room might be covered with shadowy handprints, then he blinks and they're gone. I stared into his eyes when he said that. They were blank and expressionless. He's not been sleeping well.

Last night I woke up before my alarm, and found Jake pacing circles in the living room. He went back to bed when I asked him what he was doing, but he was so hesitant about it.

It's been almost a full week since the incident. I wasn't initially concerned, but now a cold tightness has settled in my middle, like a hand reaching through me to mess with my guts. I can't relax. There are eyes boring into me, never mind that I'm alone now.

I'm writing again because minutes ago, I walked past the open door of the boys' room. They had just returned from a walk to the park, and I saw the football they abandoned in the hallway. Andrew was just standing there, eyes locked with his reflection's. I greeted him and he didn't respond. It wasn't that he simply wasn't listening; he didn't react when I asked again, snapped my fingers, shook him. He didn't even blink. Ran back from the kitchen with a glass of water, ready to splash it on him, but stopped when I see he's moving again and looking at me like I've lost my mind.

We're going to cover that mirror. The mirror with its exploratory, little streaks of putrescence left by God-knows-what. Duct-tape a piece of cardboard over that thing. It's sent too many shadowy disturbances flying over the ceiling, creeping across the walls of Jake's room, the way sunlight does through a window when a car drives by. Same for the mirror in the downstairs bathroom, though doing that upstairs would raise a lot of questions.

If you can think of anything better, please tell us.

I would appreciate your advice, as some things have happened that I can no longer brush off as a coincidence. If this is the case, my family and possibly myself may be in danger.

For context, I live in the northern United States and have for almost two years. I have a number of younger siblings, including a brother who is caught up in this mess. He is early middle school age.

Recently, my mother's brother's family (they live a few hours away) reached out to us for assistance. They own an old house with a basement that seems to flood semiannually. My uncle's DIY fixes weren't cutting it, and eventually the property damage just didn't warrant waiting any longer. They called in some people to take a look at it, and to their chagrin, there was extensive water damage and patches of black mold on the warped drywall. Since black mold can be genuinely dangerous, they had to evacuate until the problem could be dealt with. On the bright side, all the symptoms they assumed were severe hay fever have disappeared.

Anyways, they all decided to take advantage of the situation and spend some time with family. My uncle has a remote job and can set up just about anywhere with Wi-Fi, and my aunt's freelance graphic design work lets her do the same. They have a son who's about a month older than my brother, and a three-year-old daughter. The older cousin, who we'll call Andrew, figured out a distance learning arrangement with his school. I suppose that sort of thing is possible in a post-COVID world, but I think he's wishing he stayed at a friend's house back in his own town right about now. My grandparents live a few blocks away from us. It made sense then for my aunt and uncle to stay in a spare bedroom in their house with the toddler.

It did take some negotiation, given Andrew's track record of mischief and attitude, but my brother (let's call him Jake) and Andrew somehow convinced their respective parents to let him stay at our house.

There's quite a physical difference between the two: Andrew is tall for his age, with blond, wavy hair piled on his head, and watery green eyes, while Jake is short, slight, dark haired and freckled. Not to mention nearsighted like me and Dad.

Andrew sleeps on an air-mattress in the room that Jake and our five-year old brother share. During most of the day, he's on Google Classroom meetings, or completing pre-algebra worksheets. The rest of the time, when Jake's home from school, they play Minecraft on the Nintendo Switch and watch Andrew's goofy CapCut edits of him trying to look cool.

Another thing about Andrew: he has really interesting hands- syndactyly in fact. His middle finger and ring finger are fused on each hand, even the nails. I don't think that gene, if it's genetic, made its way to our family. When my younger siblings were born, I checked their fingers and toes. Nothing extraordinary there. Andrew handles it well, though, and it doesn't seem to impact his ambitions as a basketball player or drummer.

Two days ago, on Wednesday, I picked up an extra shift at the pizza place where I work. At this time, Andrew had been at our house since Sunday. I came home at about 9 p.m. weary and carrying a pizza I had bought with my half-off employee discount. I had forgotten to charge my phone, and it had died right after I texted my parents that I was coming home. The boys were there, but no one else, and most of the lights were off. This is how the following conversations went, at least in essence, if I can't recall every word that was said.

"Where is everyone?", I asked.

"Alaina had a choir concert, don't you remember?" Jake called from the living room, over the sound of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Alaina is one of my sisters. I didn't remember because she only wrote her drama rehearsals down on the calendar for some reason and not her choir events.

"I brought pizza. You and Andrew should get over here if you want some."

They shut off the Switch as I cut the pizza, and we all sat on the end of our long, rectangular table. The air was filled with the warm, delicious aroma of fresh bread and basil. We said grace. After a while, Andrew started flipping through his phone.

"Hey, Jake." He held it up towards my brother, showing a video from TikTok or something. I sat up and leaned across the table to get a better look.

In the video, there was a guy about my age standing in front of a bathroom mirror. The cameraman zoomed in.

"Tonight we are going to try the mirror challenge." announced the influencer. "You may also have heard it called the Shadow Game. Apparently, if you do exactly what I'm about to do, you might be haunted by the shadow
creatures."

Wow. Just when I was about to make some snarky "kids these days" remark, I realize that this sort of thing was passed around by word of mouth when I was in elementary school. Like rumors about saying "Bloody Mary" a few times in front of a mirror, or summoning Momo. I didn't like his voice, though. He obviously adopted the strange cadences and emphases typical of a social media personality, complete with the end of every sentence pitched up like a question.

He turned toward the mirror and recited a short rhyme or poem. He also made a series of hand gestures. I'm not writing down what the words were or even the movements. I think the "ritual" isn't complete without them and will not risk anyone else trying this. Thanks for understanding. However, one line began "Through thirteen dawns and thirteen sunsets..."

The lights in the bathroom flickered. The guy in the video screamed. His tone had changed and he was doing a great job of acting panicked.

"Did you see that?", he gasped. The cameraman must have been startled by the guy's reaction, because the frame slipped and shook and was brought back up close to the speaker's face.

"There was a man- right there in the mirror! He didn't have a face or anything... Gawd that's creepy! He's just all shadows." The guy had such a wild, petrified look, you could see him visibly shivering. The short video ended and looped to the beginning.

Give the man an Oscar, I thought. It had made quite an impression on Jake.

"This was his last video and it's three weeks old now. I don't know if he posted on a different account. I think whatever he saw in the mirror got him." Andrew looked over at Jake as he said this gauging his reaction. I saw through his cheap attempt to scare my brother.

"You know his friend just flipped the lights on and off a bunch.", I prodded.

Jake studied his cousin's expression carefully.

"Are you sure you're telling the truth?", he asked tentatively.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Didn't you just see that?" Jake's gaze must have been burning Andrew, as he tried to figure out if his idol was making his gullibility the butt of a joke.

"Fine. Prove it. Go try it yourself."

"And what if I disappear, too!?"

"I dare you."

Andrew got up from the table, a hint of red on his face.  

Jake's bedroom has a full-length mirror hung on the outside of the closet door. We all went down the hall. Jake and I leaned on the doorway, watching. Andrew stood up straight in front of the mirror and began reciting the chant. He mimicked perfectly the motions that the guy in the video had performed. Honestly it made me think of an octopus, the way he flailed around. He snapped each syllable with the crisp precision of a staple gun. As he finished, the lights flickered rapidly. The air seemed to become dense and vibrate with static the way it does before a storm. My face started to ache for some reason. Suddenly he gave a horrified squeak. (Which I thought was pretty funny at the time, considering it was a major departure from his usual facade.) He got the heck out of that room and, I kid you not, tried to stuff himself into the gap behind the couch in the living room. Jake and I hauled him out. He could barely talk, he was trembling so much.

"I s-saw him! I saw him! He was standing right behind me in the mirror!"

"You're faking it. I didn't see a thing!", accused Jake. But Andrew's face was drained of color, and he was more jumpy than Alaina when she sees a spider. He couldn't bring himself to say much more. We tried to comfort him and say that he probably just saw Jake watching him from the doorway, but he just stayed quiet for the rest of the night.

Early, on Thursday morning he woke up the house with his screaming. It sounded like he had had an intense episode of sleep paralysis. He told us he found himself awake, in the dark, and unable to move. There was someone standing in the corner, whispering. He said that had never happened to him before. I'm guessing he got himself worked up over what he thought he saw in the mirror. There's no way he or Jake are going to tell my parents what they were doing. Considering the diplomatic effort it took to have him stay at our house, the last thing he would want to do would be to give Mom the impression that he was teaching her son witchcraft or something. I’d catch heat for this too, considering I passively watched it happen, so I won’t snitch on them. 

I mentioned earlier that Jake and Andrew share a room with my other little brother. Today, when I got home from school, Mom didn't call a greeting down the stairs when she heard me open the door like she usually does. I found her sitting on the floor of the boys' room with the preschooler. They had a sponge and a small tray of soapy water and were wiping something off the closet door. 

"Hello. Do you have any idea what this stuff is?", she asked. I had no clue. There were a couple streaks of a slick, clear goo leading from the edge of the mirror onto the painted wood of the door. 

"We’ve discovered a nest of very large snails, looks like." That's the best thing I could compare it to: trails of snail slime.

Mom's theory is that the five-year old got into Jake's bottle of hair gel. In my mind, it makes no sense, and I think Mom knows that too, especially since the bottle sat untouched on the dresser, completely out of reach. It doesn't smell like hair gel either. It smells wet, rotten, and organic, almost like a lake. I went down to my room and dropped my backpack in a corner. In the downstairs bathroom, I stopped and stared at the mirror. There were thick streaks of the same foul mucus on the wall, on the mirror, even dripping from the light switch. For a split second, the air itself seemed to gel and quiver, and I felt a throbbing pressure in my skull. I usually only get that right before a storm. This was the point when I decided to start typing everything up. Alaina's going to be home soon from her drama rehearsal. She'll freak out when she sees the bathroom, unless I can bring myself to clean it up. I showed Mom, and she called Andrew and Jake to explain themselves. They deny any responsibility for the mess. 

Personally, I wonder if it was connected to the shadow figure Andrew tried to summon. If it is, I am asking anyone who knows anything about this to come forward with information. If you see a trend on social media resembling the one Andrew encountered, please do not attempt to replicate the words or actions from the video. To be safe, you might just want to avoid that particular challenge. I have a really bad feeling about this. Jake actually said he thought he saw something moving around in the dark last night. The three of us have been a little on edge recently, and it's starting to get to him. I’ll try to ask Andrew about exactly what he saw standing behind him in the mirror.  Please let us know if you have any idea what's going on. I'll be back here if it gets worse. Thanks.