CONGREGATION

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?

SURPRISE

I work for a property-securing company. We send contractors to vacant homes to change the locks and do winterizations. The other day, one of my contractors was doing an initial secure and routine inspection on a home. He’d been in the house for about an hour and headed to the basement for the required photo. It was very dark down there but he trusted his camera flash to get a decent picture.

He stayed on the stairs and took a photo before entering the basement to check for trip hazards or giant spiders. When he looked at his camera, this is what he saw.

He left after that.

SLOW AND STEADY

TORTURE

An aged human skeleton encased in an iron cage was found at Hempstead, L.I. It is believed to be an early pirate torture device. The criminal would be bound in the metal cage and hung from a scaffold until they died of starvation.

SPECIFICITY

REQUEST

Normally you sleep soundly, but the thunderstorm raging outside is stirring you from your sleep. You begin to doze, then another crash jolts you awake. The cycle lasts most of the night. So you lay there, eyes open and outward, looking at your room stretching out before you in oblong shadows. Your eyes move from nameless object, to object, until you reach your mirror, sitting adjacent to you across the room.

Suddenly a flash of lightning, and the mirror flickers in illumination. For a scant second the mirror reveals to you dozens of faces, silhouettes within its frame, mouths open and eyes blackened. They stare out at you, their black pupils fixed upon your face.

Then it is done. Are you sure of what you have seen? Unsettled, you don't sleep for the rest of the evening. The next morning you remove the mirror from your wall and toss it in the trash. It didn't matter if the vision you had seen was of truth or falsehood, you wanted to be rid of that mirror. In fact, you scrap every mirror in your house.

Weeks pass and the event of that night falls into passive memory. You are spending the day at a friend's house and it's time to use the bathroom. While you are in there the faucet starts to run without you prompting it. Taken aback by this, you do not yet act, trying to reason with your paranoia in your mind. The water starts to steam and a skin of moisture covers the mirror up above. You're watching intently as words form: "Please return the mirrors. We miss watching you sleep at night."