NameTheShortHorrorStoryFilter

September 28, 2006 5:21 AM

NameTheShortHorrorStoryFilter: Guy's reflection tries to come out of the mirror and kill him

OK, so this is a short story I remember reading (and being pretty freaked out by) in my reading-stuff-meant-for-people-much-older-than-me phase. A guy has to spend the night at a friends house. Odd things start happening with the mirrors in the house - there's a dog in the room with him; he sees its reflection get killed but the dog itself is fine. Eventually he works out that there's some kind of malevolent presence in the 'world' on the other side of all the mirrors in the house, and that his own reflection is going to come through one of the mirrors and make life very unpleasant for him. To stop this, he has to run round the house breaking all the mirrors. I think the story ends with him looking at the final mirror; he can't get to it before his reflection escapes, however, he can throw the candelabra at it and hopefully smash it... but this leaves him in total darkness.

Anyone care to take a guess at the author or title? I'm sure that, as an adult, it wouldn't be as scary as I remember, but I'd like to revisit it all the same.

posted by primer_dimer to writing & language (3 comments total)

That sounds vaguely familiar. It seems to me that it might have come from one of Stephen King's collections of short stories, but I couldn't swear to it.
posted by EarBucket at 7:32 AM on September 28, 2006

I remember a story very much like this in a Gerald Durrell collection. It was presented as a book-in-a-book (e.g., I found this old manuscript, here's what it said). I read this probably around age 15 and was truly frightened by it.

Gerald Durrell's wikipedia page mentions a "gothic horror" story called The Entrance, and this page about "The Entrance" seems to confirm the contents.
posted by cps at 7:36 AM on September 28, 2006 [1 favorite]

That sounds like the one; I'll track it down and see if it's as I remember.
posted by primer_dimer at 8:28 AM on September 28, 2006