The Antique Mirror That Showed the Room a Second Too Late

I found the mirror at an estate sale, a tall old thing in a dark carved frame, spotted with age, beautiful in a heavy sad way. It was cheap, far too cheap for what it was, and the woman running the sale seemed relieved when I took it, which I noticed and ignored, the way you do when you want a thing.

I hung it in my hallway. Almost at once I noticed something wrong with it that I kept explaining away. Movement in the mirror lagged. Not much, just a hair, a fraction of a second. I would raise my hand and the reflection would raise its hand a beat late, or I would walk past and my reflection would follow a heartbeat behind, as if the glass were showing the room a second after it actually happened. In certain light you would not catch it. In the quiet of the hall at night, you would.

I told myself it was an illusion, tired eyes, the wavy old glass. And then one night I stopped in front of it to turn off the hall light, looked at myself, and turned to go, and my reflection did not turn. I walked two steps down the hall and glanced back and it was still standing there, facing where I had been, my own reflection, not following me, watching the empty spot where I had stood, a full second, two seconds, before it slowly turned its head to look down the hall at the real me.