Tim walked through the halls of his old home. He still remembered the night when his sister had died in this very house. He didn't look into the office area, as there were too many memories. That room of the house seemed to be cursed, first his dad had died and then his sister, both in that very room. Tim climbed the staircase that lead up to the bedrooms. He felt like someone, or something, was following him as he pushed open the door to his childhood room. He gave the room a good look, no one had changed a thing, and he turned to go out. Out of nowhere, Kaylie appeared in front of him and Tim jumped backwards with a yelp. Her eyes were shining mirror white, just like the night of her death when he glimpsed her with their parents in the window, him being driven off in a cop car.

"No! No, no!" Tim screamed as he thrashed under the covers of his bed. He felt the mattress beneath him, and the covers balled in his hands and it was enough to bring him back to reality. Tim jolted upright and looked around his green apartment room trying to orient himself. He wasn't in his old house or the mental hospital; he was in his new apartment. The mirror's terror was a long time behind him and he had just been released. Tim sighed and took deep breaths to slow his thumping heart. He should have been used to the nightmares by now.

He looked at the clock on the nightstand; it read 5:00 am. His new job started in four hours, but Tim decided to go on and get up. Getting ready didn't take him long, he just shuffled around in his small suitcase until he found a clean pair of clothes. He ate breakfast at the small café area the apartment complex offered, and then went back up to room.

Tim thought about the dream he had. He couldn't bear to think about Kaylie anymore, so he pushed his mind to something else. What if I can still keep my promise to her? Tim thought for the hundredth time. You don't even know if the house is still there, or where the mirror is. Another side of his mind countered. Either way, even if I could find the mirror, I wouldn't be able to survive it alone. I could barely tell reality from delusion last time. The mirror was good at tricks like that. I have a chance at a new life now; I should let go of what happened.

Tim sunk his head into his hands, the back and forth in his mind was giving him a headache. Tim looked again at the clock – 8:30 am. He was surprised that the time had flown by that quickly and he knew he'd need time to walk to work. There was no good in putting off starting the day, so he walked outside and started towards Bardy's.

When he arrived, Bob was at his stand again.

"You're early," Bob observed, looking at the big clock that hung over the entrance.

"Early bird gets the worm," Tim said.

"You'll be starting in storage," Bob said. "It's right by the interviewing room."

"Alright, sir. Would you like me to get started now? Or wait until my shift starts?" Tim asked, wanting to get everything right on his first day.

"You can get started now. Have a good first day," Bob said, eyes already on the next customer that was walking through the glass double doors.

Tim walked back through the store again, but this time entered the storage unit.

"Hey, look! A new worker!" a short, fat guy said.

"Be nice to him, Patrick," a taller, skinny one said. "Hey, I'm Luke," the tall one said as he walked up to shake Tim's hand. "Welcome to the team."

"Thanks, where can I start?" Tim asked.

"You can help out with my area of the department, categorizing," Luke said as he walked to a nearby shelf and got Tim a clipboard. Tim took the clipboard and followed Luke to a back section of the unit.

"So, what did they put you in here for?" Luke asked. "Bob puts everyone with a criminal record in here. Take Patrick, for example, he got caught stealing. I used to steal cars, myself."

Tim thought about how best to answer this; he didn't want to make a bad first impression or only be known as his proposed crimes.

"I was accused of murder," Tim finally answered, deciding to be honest about it. After all, he hadn't even committed the murder he was accused of… the mirror had.

"Oh, wow, that's hard stuff. Who did you kill?" Luke asked as he counted different boxes.

"My sister."

"You said you were accused, but did you do it?" Luke asked, looking Tim straight in the eye.

"No! Of course not! I'd never kill anyone," Tim exclaimed. He was done with the conversation and made an excuse to go to the other side of the area and categorize boxes by himself.

"What's your name, anyway?" Patrick asked as he walked up to Tim.

"Tim Russel," Tim responded with a sigh. He didn't want to talk anymore, but he didn't want to be rude, either. Patrick's eyes lit up with excitement and Tim gave him a confused look.

"Guys! We got Tim Russel working with us! The Tim Russel!" Patrick shouted across the room. Lots of workers including Luke and Patrick crowded around Tim, each asking questions. Tim couldn't tell one voice from the next, and soon all the different voices sounded like the mirror's whispering.

"ENOUGH!" Tim yelled. The voices ceased, now all eyes were on him. "Let me get this straight, you all know about me?"

"Of course we do," Patrick explained. "Your story was all over the news ten years ago. How'd it happen anyway? You made the call to 911, before you killed your sister."

"I didn't kill her. The mirror did. Aren't we supposed to be working?" Tim said, knowing he still sounded insane. Much to his surprise, everyone seemed very comfortable with what he had said.

"Why are you all acting so chill about this? Everyone thinks I'm crazy whenever I say that the mirror killed Kaylie," Tim observed.

"We've been around paranormal occurrences too. You think the mirror's the only evil thing around this town? It's not. Sure, it's probably the worst, but it's not the only one," a teenager said.

Then an idea came over Tim. What if this is your team? If you could get inside the house and find the mirror, maybe with their help you could finally destroy it. You could keep Kaylie's promise.

"Wait," Tim called as everyone started walking back to their stations. "Do any of you know if I still own the house?"

"You still own it," Luke stated. "No one else has touched it, or even gone near it since that night. Look, on our lunch break, let's all meet somewhere. We can talk our experiences over, and maybe we can help Tim here out," Luke suggested to his work buddies. "Until then, we should all get back to work."

Everyone nodded and scattered to their different sections of the storage room.

"What's your experience with a paranormal object?" Tim asked Luke, who was working nearby.

"Oh, I don't. None of us do," he laughed. "It's just something we say to new recruits. I'll still meet up with you for lunch, if you'd like," Luke said. "Patrick probably will too. He likes to tease new workers, but he's a nice guy. All the other guys – I'm betting they won't show."

Tim sighed; he had hoped to meet someone with shared experience. Maybe talking things over with someone new would help. He was used to talking with different therapists, but they knew all the details already and most had formed their own opinions before Tim even opened his mouth.

"Sure, why not. If you're both okay to hear things that are going to sound crazy!" Tim said slowly.

"Sounds great, we'll see you at lunch," Luke said and went back to his work.

When lunch finally arrived, Tim found himself eager to tell his story to his co-workers.

"Where do I even start?" Tim asked once they had all sat down at a small table in the break room. The other workers in the storage unit had all decided to sit at a bigger table, leaving Luke, Patrick, and Tim alone as Luke suspected.

"How about the beginning," Luke suggested. Tim took a deep breath before he started; this was going to be a long, difficult story to digest.

"Well, it all began when my family first moved into our new house. Dad got this really old mirror and hung it in his office. After he got the mirror, we noticed changes in both him and our mother. Kaylie, my sister, saw a woman in Dad's office one day while we were playing outside. Dad would lock himself in his office for hours; he never came out for meals. Kaylie and I were often woke up by Mom and Dad fighting – she thought he was having an affair.

"One day Dad went golfing with one of his client's and was gone for the whole day. Our dog, Mason, was acting strange, so mom locked him in Dad's office. When Dad got home later that night, he went to let Mason out of his office, but Mason wasn't in there. We never saw our dog again," Tim paused to see his co-workers' response. They were hanging on his every word.

"One day, I saw a woman on the stairs… the exact one Kaylie had said she'd seen in Dad's office," Tim continued. "The woman went back into Dad's office after she saw me. Later that night, Dad didn't show up for dinner, as usual, but Mom was acting strange now. She had given Kaylie and I burnt toast to eat. She asked Kaylie to tell her about the woman in Dad's office… Kaylie said that she hadn't seen the woman. I knew she had, but I didn't understand why she was lying because of the affair idea… so I told Mom that I had seen the woman, but that she had been on the stairs. Then I told her that I thought she lived in Dad's office, which was the wrong thing to say. Mom told Kaylie and I to go upstairs and play. We did as we were told, because Mom looked really scary. It wasn't long after Kaylie and I had gone upstairs that we heard Mom throwing things around and scream.

"We ran down the steps and into Dad's office where she was. Dad wasn't there, though. She was whimpering and turned around slowly to face us, then she grabbed my neck and started strangling me. Luckily, she tripped over the phone in Dad's office that she had thrown on the floor, and it gave Kaylie and me a chance to run up the stairs and back into our room. Mom was right behind us, though, and we barely got inside and shut the door in time.

"Kaylie and I held the door shut while Mom was banging on the other side. Dad must've gotten home by then, because the banging stopped, and we heard Dad trying to talk sense into Mom. We heard her thrash a few times, and then go silent. Kaylie cracked open the door, and we saw Mom laying on the floor, unconscious. Dad told us to go back in our room and we did. He went downstairs and got something and drug it back into his room. Then he drug mom into the room.

"The next day, Dad brought us into his office and told us that Mom was sick. He didn't say what she was sick with, or if she would get better; he just told us to stay out of their room. Dad told us that we could play videogames in his office, and that's when I knew something was up. He never let us play in his office. I didn't like his office; it was creepy to me. Then I was watching TV later that day, and the tv turned off by itself. I thought it was strange, but Kaylie walked in, and I told her I was hungry. Since there wasn't any food left in the fridge, we went to find Dad.

"Dad was sitting on his desk, staring into the mirror," Tim kept talking. Luke and Patrick were listening intently, completely still. "Kaylie walked in and told him that we needed food and a doctor for Mom. He told her it was "on his list." Kaylie stormed out and up the stairs toward Mom's room. I told her that Dad said not to bother mom, but she said she didn't care. She opened the door and walked inside, only to scream and run out a minute later. She wouldn't tell me what she had seen, but I knew it was bad.

"Dad confronted us, and said we were grounded – that we couldn't step a foot outside the house. Then Dad locked himself in his office again and Kaylie ran outside to get out neighbor. I was watching from the steps when she returned. Dad came out and made up this story and sent the neighbor away. Dad gave us a scary look and went back into his office. Kaylie climbed the stairs to stand by me and said we were going to have to get really, really brave.

"Then that night, I looked into Dad's office; I saw him look into the mirror and take out a gun. I ran back up the stairs and back into the room where Kaylie and I had been hiding. Kaylie told me that we had to get out, and that when she opened the door, we had to run. She opened it, and we sprinted for the steps, but Mom appeared in front of us. Kaylie whacked her with the golf club she was holding and I jumped over Mom's body and ran down the steps.

"I ran down the stairs and hid behind our kitchen counter. Kaylie came to find me, and I tried to tell her that Mom was behind her again, but Mom grabbed Kaylie and started to strangle her. Kaylie was hitting her arms, trying to get her to stop, and I was crying silently… I couldn't do anything but watch. Just when it seemed that Kaylie was going to be straggled to death, Mom just stopped. She held Kaylie's terrified face in her hands, and a gunshot rang out. Dad had shot Mom.

"Kaylie and I knew it was the mirror that was driving our parents insane, so we ran into Dad's office and tried to break the mirror with his golf clubs. We hit the wall with every swing – we could not hit the mirror no matter how hard we tried. Dad came back into the office and held the gun up to Kaylie's head. Something snapped inside of me; I yelled and smacked the gun out of Dad's hand with my golf club. Dad didn't seem to care that his gun had been lost, though, he instead started strangling Kaylie.

"I grabbed the gun, aimed it at Dad's head, and ordered him to let Kaylie go. Surprisingly, he did. Dad kneeled down in front of me and wrapped his hand around my hand, like both of us were holding the gun. He told me to run and then forced my finger to pull the trigger, killing himself. Dad collapsed against the mirror, and the impact cracked the bottom right corner," Tim took a deep breath. It was hard to remember that night in such detail, but for some reason he felt he owed it to these guys. No one had believed him in so long.

"Before the police arrived, Kaylie kneeled next to me and told me that when we were big and strong, we had to destroy the mirror, once and for all. I was taken to a mental hospital, and Kaylie fell into the foster system. I didn't see her again until ten years had passed," Tim took a shaky breath and looked at his co-workers. This was the most difficult part of the story. They looked back at him with wide eyes.

"Is that the whole story?" Luke asked.

"No. But do you really want to hear the rest?" Tim asked.

"Yes. I want to know what happens," Patrick said, his mouth stuffed full of sandwich. Tim took a deep breath. All the wounds from that night were still fresh in his mind, and Tim wasn't sure he could get through it all.

"Ten years after that horrible day, I was released from the mental hospital on my 21st birthday. I barely recognized Kaylie when I walked out of the hospital. It wasn't like we could really visit each other. But it was so nice to see her again, after all those years. She took me to a restaurant to eat and told me that she had found the mirror. It had appeared in an auction where her fiancée worked, and she planned to take it back to our old house to study it. She wanted to prove that the mirror was responsible for all the deaths it had caused, not the people who had been convicted of them. At that time, I had convinced myself that what we saw that night wasn't real, that it was all something we had made up, so we didn't have to accept the fact that our father murdered our mother.

"Kaylie had set up cameras around the room where the mirror was, laid out plants, and had even set alarms to remind us to eat and drink. In all the previous deaths the mirror had caused, people were driven insane, and they wouldn't eat or drink. She had also tied a anchor to the ceiling that was tied to a manual kitchen timer, and it would go off every thirty minutes if one of us didn't reset it. She called it the kill switch, as it would come down and shatter the mirror if it went off.

"Kaylie had done so much research on this mirror, she was sure nothing could go wrong. As the night drug on, the plants started dying and the electricity went out, all signs that the mirror was using its supernatural powers. We both started seeing things; we couldn't tell the mirrors tricks from reality. Kaylie's fiancé Michael came to see us that night, to check in. I don't know what Kaylie saw instead of him, but she screamed and stabbed him in the neck with a broken plant pot piece. She was sure she hadn't done it, until she took out her phone to view it from the camera's recording everything. Cameras only recorded reality, not the delusions we saw so we used it to fact check everything. She really did kill her fiancée.

"I drug her outside and called 911; we needed help at the house, and I hoped it would get there in time. Then we saw us lining up in front of the mirror, directly in front of the kill-switch's blade – which would be suicide. I told Kaylie that it was just another one of the mirror's tricks, and that if we went back inside then we would be killed - we were safe out on the lawn.

"Things happened very quickly after that. Suddenlywe were back inside the house, locked in the bathroom. I knew that the kill switch hadn't gone off and killed us, because if it had, we wouldn't be hiding in the bathroom. I told Kaylie that we needed to get to the mirror, to shatter it. As we raced down the stairs, I don't know what happened to her, but I found myself in the office, surrounded by the spirits the mirror had captured over the years. I was screaming, it had nearly driven me insane at that point. The spirits' mouths opened, and instead of the screaming I expected to come out of it, the sound was one of Kaylie's alarms going off. The one that reminded us to reset the timer on the kill switch.

"I got up and ran to the kill switch; I knew if I could activate it that I could keep our promise and shatter the mirror. When I turned the handle on the timer to activate the switch, I didn't hear the mirror shatter, though. I heard it hit something. I looked around… the spirits were gone and Kaylie was pinned to the mirror by the big blade meant to shatter it. She died there. I hadn't seen her there when I activated the kill switch. The mirror made me kill her by tricking me, just like it had made my mom strangle us, and Dad kill her and himself," Tim said, nearly in tears to relive the unbelievable trauma of it all. His coworkers eyes were huge.

Luke cleared his throat and glanced at Patrick. "That's a very tragic story," he said. "And you're sure the mirror did all this? Tear your family apart until it was only you left?"

"I'm sure. I'd like to destroy it, but I'm not going back to that house alone," Tim said, watching for Luke and Patrick's reactions.

"Woah… you mean, you want us to help you destroy that thing?!" Patrick exclaimed. "If it's capable of what you say it is, maybe it's best to just leave it be! You already survived twice – why tempt fate?"

"I need to destroy it. For my sister, it was a promise I made her, and I'm not going to break it now," Tim said stubbornly.

"Are you sure this mirror did all of that?" Luke asked, still skeptical.

"Yes. If what you said is right about no one touching the house, the mirror should still be in it, waiting for us," Tim said, now filled with confidence that he was going to keep his promise. "I'm going back to the house tonight. I could really use your help; I don't think I can break this thing on my own."

"Ok, I'm in. This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened in my life. If I ever made a promise as a kid, and remembered it my whole life, I'd want to keep it too," Patrick nodded. "I can't believe I know the Tim Russel and I'm going to help him fight his demons!"

"If he's in, I'm in," Luke said. "When do we start?"

Tim grinned, "6:00pm; meet me at 2705 Hawfor. I'll be there already, just knock on the door."