6 Alexandra | View

When she looked back at the mirror, the girl was closer. She was mouthing words. Eliza leaned in, heart hammering. The girl’s lips formed a single, desperate sentence: “He didn’t leave. He went in.”

Eliza’s blood turned to ice. The house plans she’d found in the county archives flashed through her mind. There was no attic. The roof was a flat, decorative cap. Yet the footsteps grew louder, coming down… down… toward the locked room door.

But it was the framed photograph above the fireplace that drew Eliza in: Lydia, beaming, her arm around a man with a kind face and a military posture. Her great-uncle, Arthur. The one who had died six months before Lydia vanished. The one whose bedroom—a locked room at the end of the upstairs hall—Eliza had never been allowed to enter.

Her aunt, Lydia, had vanished from this very porch. No note. No struggle. Just a dropped watering can and a single, patent leather shoe. 6 alexandra view

Inside, the air was thick with dust and the ghost of lavender polish. She ran a finger over the mahogany banister. Everything was preserved—a time capsule from 1985. Lydia’s knitting needles still impaled a half-finished scarf. The Radio Times on the coffee table advertised a Miss Marple adaptation.

The lock was rusted, but a firm shoulder broke the jamb. The room was empty. No furniture, no clothes, no mementos. Just a single, incongruous object: a large, antique mirror facing the far wall. Its silver was intact, and in the dim light, Eliza saw her own reflection—and something else.

The rain over the Derbyshire moors had a way of making the ordinary feel ominous. It fell in steady, silver sheets, blurring the lone figure standing at the gate of “6 Alexandra View.” When she looked back at the mirror, the girl was closer

He whispered through the glass: “She’s waiting for you, Lizzie. We’ve kept a place warm.”

As the footsteps arrived at the door, the last thing Eliza saw was her reflection splitting in two: one version screaming, the other smiling, holding the door open for Arthur.

The mirror began to ripple, its surface turning from glass to liquid mercury. And through it, Eliza saw a narrow hallway lit by gaslight—a hallway that did not belong to 6 Alexandra View. At the end of it stood Arthur, not dead, not kind, his military posture rigid. He was holding a second patent leather shoe. The girl’s lips formed a single, desperate sentence:

Eliza spun around. Nothing.

Eliza pushed the creaking gate open. The key was still under the third frog statue, just as her mother had described. The lock turned with a reluctant clunk .