Mirror-Breaker

Chapter 1

"As a matter of fact, she did. I've told the police already. They know all I know, and so do you."
The librarian, a stern-looking lady approaching retirement age, glared at Sarah from beyond her desk. Her big, horn-rimmed glasses covered about three quarters of her mousy face, and a plastic card clipped to her shirt read 'Christine'. Her eyes narrowed inquisitively. "I assume they're the ones who sent you here?"

"No, actually", Sarah lied, after a moment of hesitation, sensing a certain diffidence towards local law enforcement and outright hostility to meddling outsiders - a category to which she undeniably belonged, being a journalist from the big city. "The sweet old lady at the bakery, the one in the main square. Next to the church. She -"

"Emma Peterson?"

"Uhm, yeah, that's right! She -"

"She told you that the missing girl was last seen here. Oh well, oh well."
The librarian slowly shook her head in resignation. Sarah had, in fact, visited Emma's Bakery in the main square and exchanged a few words with the owner just an hour earlier, so her gamble couldn't be called an outright lie. Though it was the police who had informed Sarah that the missing woman was last seen at the old library, Mrs Peterson had indeed said some words that could have potentially been interpreted as hinting at the fact that the library was, maybe, a place of interest. A little white lie for the greater good was part of any self-respecting investigative journalist's repertoire.

The librarian continued. "And you're from the Sunday Standard? They sent you all the way here for this?"

"Well, ma'am, Miss Evans is the third person to go missing from the Hexhdale area in the last two months. It's been covered in most national newspapers, and -"

Christine stood up from her desk and walked out of her little reception area, motioning for Sarah to follow her as she headed towards the library proper. "Oh, hikers and hunters, they always get lost."

"But none of them were tourists, were they? In fact, they all had ties to -"

"Shh! I know, I know, dear. Here, have a seat." Christine invited Sarah to sit at one of the library's table, beyond the first bookshelf - to minimize the chance of being overheard by random passersby, she suspected. Hexhdale's library wasn't big by any means but its brick-and-mortar building and tightly packed shelves, in conjunction with the fact that its ceiling lights were still old school light-bulbs rather than white neon, gave it a somewhat solemn atmosphere. 'Spooky', 'ominous', 'sinister' would have been less charitable but not entirely inaccurate adjectives to describe Sarah's first impression, though that was probably the fault of the thunderstorm that had been raging outside all day rather than the library itself.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you much", the librarian continued, "that is, about that poor girl." She paused, expectantly.

"I'm sorry for putting you through this again, ma'am. Honestly I don't even know what I expected to find here, it's just that - well, it was raining, and Mrs... Mrs Peterson mentioned it could be important, so I was like, well, why not go study a bit?", Sarah lied again, with her trademark earnest smile. Another white lie - of course she'd want to check out the last spot where the latest victim had been seen. But it was true that she had found zero leads anywhere else, and it was true that it had been pouring since that morning.

"It always rains in Hexhdale, dear. Especially in September. There's snow in winter, that's when the rich folk come to ski; and we get hikers around July, when the weather gets nicer, and -"

"...and that's when they go missing?", Sarah asked, immediately cringing at her own words before they had even left her mouth. She wasn't even sure of what her question was supposed to mean. Half-joking in poor taste, half-steering the conversation back on topic, perhaps. Thunder crashed not too far away. Those just felt like words that someone should say while in an old library during a storm.