Rusty_Candy
She had no reflection. He had every reason not to be believed.
When Marsh arrives in the fog-bound valley town of Virenholm, he's carrying everything he couldn't leave behind - a difficult year, a history of not being believed, and a talent for noticing things he wishes he hadn't.
His neighbour Annie is warm, perceptive, and exactly what he needs. She arrives at the right moments. She says the right things. She knows his history before he tells her.
She has no mirrors in her flat.
In the oval mirror in Marsh's bathroom, something is wrong. His reflection moves a half-second late. It raises the wrong hand. It mouths words he can't hear. And as the fog deepens and the canal holds still water, Marsh begins to understand that the most frightening thing in his flat is not the reflection - it's the person downstairs who is very carefully building the case that he's losing his mind.
Drawing on Slavic Zerkalo mythology and South Asian Chaya tradition, The Hollow Twin is a folk horror novel about gaslighting, the self you can't perform away, and what it means to trust what you see - even when everyone tells you not to.
For everyone who was told they were the crazy one.