I SAW HER IN THE MIRROR

Chapter 9

I had always thought Sami was strange. She never talked to her own family, let alone others. She never cared to dress properly. She always had those plaid, worn out, old and torn clothes on. All in blue. Never even once, had I seen her wearing any of the new different colored clothes our parents brought. They tried their best to make her open up a little, but she always chose to be quiet.

One could say that she just might be extremely introverted and really loved blue color or just didn't care enough about her dressing. I tried to convince myself with the same argument, to justify her actions. But I could never rationalize what I saw in her phone. And from that moment, I should've known that there was something eldritch about her. I know I should've done something, but I didn't.

I could've done something.

But I didn't.

She was always extremely secretive about her phone. When Sam was 3 years old, he was once playing with her phone, which made her go hysterical. She started shouting at him and even hit him. Just for her phone! So that night I went into her room, to see what was there in her phone that she was so cautious about. What I saw made my mind go haywire.

It had all the things that shouldn't ever be in a ten year olds' phone. There were notes written in some sort of weird, unrecognizable script, with very vivid illustrations of what seemed like the 'evil spirit'. It all seemed a little too creepy, a little too much to be the truth. I wanted to tell our parents about it. But whenever I tried, even if the thought crossed my mind, I felt as if she was watching me, threatening me. Innumerable, sleepless nights passed. My fear grew with each night, always forcing me to watch for something vicious to appear out of the corners draped in dark nothingness.

When I couldn't live with it anymore, I decided to tell my parents about it, making sure she was asleep. They couldn't dismiss what their eldest child said, but that didn't mean they completely believed me. After very hard and consistent persuasion when they finally checked her phone, all of the things that I saw were nowhere to be found! My heart stopped at that very second.
But my parents scolded me for blaming my sister for such things. Guilt took over me and I convinced myself that I was only imagining things. From that night on, I decided to deliberately ignore all of her peculiar acts. Sometimes... even her existence. After all, her acts never seemed to hurt anyone.
Almost never.

It became even stranger, when I linked her behaviour with the fact that she always refused to go to the church. And once when mom forcefully took her, it seemed that she was afraid. Her temperature increased furiously, she started shaking violently and collapsed during the drive. We took her home and she never went to the church ever again.

But all of her creepy activities continued. When she was not using her mobile, she was reading some book that was of course written in the same foreign language, that she managed to hide very well from our parents. One thing that made shivers run down my body was the fact that she never bothered to hide anything from me after I found out about her phone. I wanted to do something, anything about it, but I decided to ignore it, thinking that this might be just a phase. I just had no option, I felt helpless. I felt like the crazy one here. But when I come to think about it, all of her behaviour from early childhood made a lot of sense now.

She was the one behind it all! She had to be. I don't know how or why or what she was doing, but if I was true, then...

"SAAMMMIII" I shouted weakly with as much energy as I could gather. I had very little time left, and if I wanted to live, I had to use it till the very end.

I shouted once more. I gasped in surprise, when the crashing sound became more violent and amplified. She was reacting to it! Another thud at the door! I tried calling her once again. She banged the door once again and I fell down on the floor from the ceiling. I landed hard on my stomach. The sharp jolt of pain in my ribs was overpowered by the relief that she was reacting to her name. I was sure a few calls would do the work.

I called her once again, "SAMI! I am going to open the door. Leave mom's body and set free Dad and Sam. I know you have them. Leave them and I'll open the door."

She responded with another loud screech, and probably that of a glass shattering. Everything went silent after that. The void was filled with palpable silence.

Now was the time. I gulped with difficulty. I stood up and gathered what little was left of my energy and for the last time I screamed,

"SAAMMIIII" and in a single swift movement, pulled the door open.