BORNEO my collection of short stories

Part 2: Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall

With an ear-splitting crash, the huge mirror fell violently from the wall and shattered into a million pieces on the wooden floor. The screams of the children were still echoing in the room, bouncing from the overturned chair to the bed. Tenants in the other rooms heard it and fear griped their chests. One neighbour knew what had happened because this was not the first time. When Stella came home, all she saw was the chaos of the room like it had been hit by a hurricane.

Bone tired after a long day at work, the woman had staggered up the stairs of the big wooden house, thinking of her two young children. It saddened her strong heart that she had had to leave them by themselves in that tiny room. Stella knew she had no choice. A single mother with children to support, she had to work long hours, with nobody to babysit the young brother and sister. So she had to lock the door to keep them safe; but this also stopped them from escaping from the room in case of danger.

During the 70s the town of Kuching was starting to grow very fast. There were more job opportunities which meant that people from the surrounding small towns were coming to live and work here. People with large old houses would put up partition to make more rooms to rent out to these migrant workers. Usually these were very old wooden houses, many of which have a rich history and stories of fire that killed whole families, ghosts that walk the halls or turn on water taps.

Stella's room was small, with a tiny window. There was only enough space for a bed which she shared with the two young children. The boy of 5 and the girl going on 7. She had a dressing table lean against the wall, and there above it, hung an old mirror. It did not belong to her, but was there when they moved in.

It was a dark night. The children were playing in the room, and they were locked inside, as usual. Stella would only come home after mid-night. The girl sat at the dressing table, brushing her long hair with her mother's brush. She was tired of chasing her brother around the room. The boy was getting bored with chasing and running too so he picked up his ball to play with it.

The big wooden house was quiet except for a few groaning sounds that the floor boards made when the night temperature started to cool down. The three gigantic old stairways had gone to sleep, with nobody climbing them. All was quiet, lonely, and dim. These old places did not have a pleasant smell either.

The poor families who rented the rooms here had to put up with sharing the kitchen and bathrooms. Usually they went downstairs to the ground floor to cook, and either eat there at the large table or brought the food up to their rooms.

The communal bathrooms and toilets were always dirty, sometimes with slime covering the walls and floor, making them dangerously slippery. There was nothing much these people could do. Most of them had to work very long hours, so when they got home they were too tired to clean.

The previous occupants who stayed in the room that Stella occupied, were a married couple with a young child. Stella had heard stories from the others that the young boy died, but she was never sure how. It had to do with some ghost, not that she really believed in ghosts.

When she moved into the room, she was actually glad there was already a bed, a dressing table, a chair and a huge mirror on the wall. It meant she didn't have to buy any furniture, not that she could afford to.

They had been staying there for nearly six months now, and the two young children were getting used to being alone in the room when their mother was working. Neighbours were too busy with their own things to offer to babysit the two children.

At first Stella was worried about them, but she decided the best thing was to lock the door so they could not wander off. She even left a small bucket in the room for them to use should they need the toilet.

Suddenly the light bulb in the room started flickering. It made the room feel eerie and gave it a sense of malignance. The girl who had been looking at herself in the old mirror for a good twenty minutes, put down the hair brush, casting her eyes down at the dressing table for just a second. Immediately that her eyes were away from the mirror, a dark spectre metamorphosed, reaching its ugly claw out from inside the mirror, to grab the girl. The sudden movement caused both the girl and her brother to look at the mirror. What they saw almost frightened them to death.

The dark figure appeared to be female, with long black hair, but they could not make out her face. There was a hissing sound coming from her, and a terrible smell overcame the children. It was a nightmare, only they were wide awake and there was no escape from the locked room.

The girl screamed, so loudly that the people in the next room woke up. The boy, on the other hand, was so scared that he threw the ball at the dark shape coming out from the mirror. Luckily for them, the ball knocked the mirror off the wall. It crashed violently to the floor and small pieces of glass flew across the room. The dark spectre had disappeared.

Stella knew something was wrong before she even opened the door. It was too quiet, the neighbours were not moving about, not talking or even snoring. Her hand trembling with nerves, she fumbled for the key to unlock the bedroom door. Stepping inside, she immediately noticed the broken mirror on the floor, the overturned chair, and the total mess. The children were nowhere to be seen.

'Children, where are you?' she called in desperation, thinking the worst had happened to them. Stella kept calling and screaming until she collapsed among the broken glass.

She woke up the next morning with the nightmare still alive. Stella looked round the room, saw her children and started crying. They were alive. The neighbours had heard to mirror crashing, and the children screaming. Unable to open the bedroom door, they had climbed in from the window.

Later that day, Stella swept up the pieces of broken glass as if she were gathering the shattered pieces of her life together. Thank God, the children were safe. Her kind neighbours sat with them while she told them the secret of the mirror, and what had befallen the previous tenants.

In Sarawak, Borneo, there are many superstitions, and some of them concerning the mirror. It is believed that the mirror can capture a person's soul. Older people would avoid looking into the mirror at night. Others say that if you break a mirror, you release the ghost that lived inside it.

No, the previous couple and their son were not as lucky. Sadly the boy was gone now, taken by the spirit that lived in that old mirror. Likewise the parents had left the boy alone in the room at night while they went to work.

The experience had frightened Stella so much, she started looking for another place to live. But no matter where they go, the memories of that night will always be with them, there was no running away from the spirit of the mirror.