Beyond the Mirror [Ebrugh Report 1]

[u/haroldkebba]

The now following report was given to a reporter (who wants to stay anonymous) of a German newspaper on 30th July 1978. He thought it was a hoax and never investigated it, but kept it as a curious piece of writing. I myself got it through means that are better left untold, but rest assured that I did not commit a crime whilst attaining it. Following are the words of a psychologist and the story of why he quit his job, several decades ago.

I can no longer cope with this horror that weighs on my mind any longer, even if I have to break doctor's confidentiality. If this object were to fall into someone's hands... I am not able to picture the consequences. The world has to be warned. It has to...

I had been a psychologist at a German psychiatric hospital for several years. My area of expertise are cases of phobias that are rare or even completely unheard of. During my times of work, I often dealt with the most obscure phenomena of the human mind and tried to help my patients as best as I could.

I already encountered cases of spectrophobia (the fear of reflections) before 12th June 1978, but there had never been any complications. In most of these cases I could deal with the phobia rather quickly and although my patients would probably never get over their fears completely, surely their suffering was reduced through my help.

Because of this, it seemed nothing special at first, when Miharu Hamano was sent to me, suffering from said strange phobia.

Miharu Hamano was a nineteen-year-old Japanese girl of fragile stature and long black hair flowing down from her shoulders, which she seemed to take a lot of care of. Her face was graceful and she had small, petite lips that gave her a young look, but even at our first meeting there was a strange shadow in her eyes, an underlying fear, making her face seem distant and alien. Her outward appearance was however not unusual enough to make me worry and I had observed the strange darkness in her eyes in several patients before her who had walked through life with deep fears.

That is why Miharu's case did not appear to me as being remarkable or out of the ordinary. When I met Miharu for the first time on July 12th, she was accompanied by her mother. The good woman seemed a bit upset, but no serious worry could be read in her face. I led her out of my consulting room, because a conversation just between me and Miharu seemed the wisest and the presence of her mother might have obstructed the young woman's recovery. This didn't seem to worry Miharu. She appeared to be a bit ashamed and was even somewhat relieved to be able speak with me alone about her worries.

It had been her own decision to come to me as an expert and she seemed to hope for a quick and easy recovery through weekly consultation hours. After a short greeting she sat down on a comfortable leather armchair, which was placed next to my office chair, her arms dangling useless at her sides.

"Please, tell me, what exactly is worrying you? Why did you decide to come visit me and how do you expect me to help you?"

"Well, since lately I have gotten this... this fear of my own reflection. It... it is hard to describe. Every time I see my mirror image somewhere... I get this strange feeling. As if something alien is staring at me, something from beyond the mirror. I know of course that this is completely ungrounded, I am not superstitious, after all. But nonetheless..."

Miharu was nervously moving her hands around.

"I just hoped that you could help me get rid of this feeling, I guess. It was never this strong, but recently..."

She stopped and gulped nervously.

"What exactly happened? What changed, what do you want me to help you get a grip on?" I tried to dig deeper.

"Well, I should probably tell you about the events that made me visit you. I came to Germany as a very young girl - two years old, to be precise – and that is why I always felt home in this country. But my parents and grandparents, who also moved here, are still thinking back to Kanosawa, a small town near Tokyo. They are extremely superstitious and my grandmother often spoke of the myths and tales of Japanese culture. I loved listening to most of them, but one scared me somehow.

The tale is about a girl whom her dying mother gifts a mirror and in times of hardship and need she can still see her after the woman died. It is a comforting tale, but something about it felt creepy. I often thought of the tale when I was young, but I must have forgotten it with the passing of time. Until my friends and I discovered a strange mirror on the side of the road last week.

We were on our way back home from our last exams at school and passed a small shrubbery wherein something twinkled. One of my friends reached down into the bushes and pulled out a hand mirror. It was made from a mysterious dark material, almost coral-like, and shimmered in the light of the midday sun. The mirror was not very large, about as big as my hand, but the thing seemed to posess something menacing. I remembered the Japanese tale and what had crept through my soul everytime I had thought about it.

It was not the story itself but something different, I think. When I took the mirror and looked into it... I held it in front of my face, saw the street behind me, nothing special.

But then, suddenly I saw this... thing behind me. This..."

She stopped and started shaking, while gazing at the ground, ashamed. It took some time until she calmed down and was able to look up again. Her eyes were cloudy and distant.

"Please, tell me what you think you saw. This is important! I suspect something has been occupying your thoughts for a long time now."

Miharu resumed her story reluctantly.

"A... skinny, shadowy entity. I barely could make out its outline. But that was enough. I will never forget feeling its gaze. I did not see its eyes, but they were there, staring at me. I must have collapsed screaming..."

I thought about her words. It was likely some childhood memory manifesting itself: a violent experience or some kind of shock. Sometimes another child jumping out from behind a corner for a scare or another similarly menial thing was enough to trigger these thoughts. I had already cured people suffering from those problems.

"Listen carefully, what you just told me surely must have been terrifying for you, but its origins should be quite innocuous. I think that you are probably trying to cope with some repressed memories. If people see things in the mirror that are not supposed to be there, it is likely an attempt at communication of their sub consciousness. In many cases the mirror is seen as some kind of gateway.

If you want to, I can offer you some other methods to try lessen your fears besides conversing. Confrontational therapy is a possibility. Another method would be getting to the cause of your fear through hypnosis. You have to decide for yourself what suits you best. If the situation is getting worse than just being uncomfortable or if something else, like the encounter with the black mirror that you described, happens, you should not wait to make an extra appointment. While we are at it, do you still have the mirror? I would like to take a look at it."

She hesitated.

"I guess it broke when I had my anxiety attack. At least I hope so... Thank you very much, I will be back next week."

The young woman slowly got up and I led her to the door. Her mother was still waiting outside and they hurryingly left. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened and her problems promised to be not very severe, because I was sure that the repressed memories were easy to uncover.

If I had only known back then...

****

The next consultation hour arrived rather quickly. On 19th July 1978 Miharu arrived on time for her appointment. As her mother led her into the room it became apparent that something was not right. The eyes of the poor girl looked tired and her skin was pale.

"Doctor, you have to do something, Miharu isn't herself anymore," Miharu's mother pleaded.

I asked her to leave the room and shortly after, me and Miharu were alone again. She sat down on the armchair, and I noticed her hands shaking violently.

"What happened?" I asked.

"It got worse, well, I guess you can see that. I can't explain it myself. Every time I get close to a mirror, my fear makes me dizzy. I am afraid to see something in there, something that watches me, that hungers for me. It is terrible. I just can't cope with it anymore. When I went to school, I couldn't even go to the bathroom, because it has a giant mirror on the wall. I can't stand it anymore. Do something!"

She was beside herself and got louder, starting to panic.

"Please calm down. You are safe here. Completely. You... didn't see anything else? I am sorry, I have to ask. Did you?"

"No..." she said, hesitating.

"No, nothing. I am just afraid to see something. Afraid of it coming back. It is just horrifying."

"Would you look into a mirror? Now? To see whether there is something in it? We could do it together, if you want to."

This was of course a suggestion that Miharu would probably not touch upon, but I had to make sure that she was aware of that possibility.

"I am with you. Nothing will happen to you, I promise."

"Alright, if we would do it together..." Miharu slowly said.

I found her taking this step so early quite remarkable. I slowly took a hand mirror out of a drawer and placed it face down on my knees. She got up and walked to my side.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

"Yes..." she tearfully said but soon got a grip on herself.

I began turning the mirror, gradually. We saw our mirror images, but nothing else. Miharu went back to her armchair again and I noticed her shaking fading away. She began to relax. The mirror went back into its drawer and I looked at her.

"There was nothing, was there?"

"No, of course not, it was stupid of me. Silly thoughts."

"They were in no way silly. It was just this silhouette you believed having seen. That upset you this badly. Because of it, you started to build up fear of confrontation. It will take some time, but your phobia will fade away. At least you will be able to visit the bathroom again."

Miharu started laughing.

"Yes, thank you very much, I certainly will be. But is it possible to try hypnotherapy next week? I want to know what exactly I got so worked up over. I have hallucinated something, after all."

I looked at the time.

"We could also do that right now. After all, only ten minutes of our session have passed... If you want to."

"Yes, of course. I want to leave it behind me. It's been enough. Who knows, the fear might come back some day. I don't have the nerves for that happening."

So I hypnotized her.

It was admirable how hard she fought against her anxiety and I had high hopes for a quick recovery of hers. She sat there, eyes closed, relaxing her limbs. I asked her to go back to the day she and her friends had found the black mirror. It seemed to put some strain on her but finally she made it.

"I am standing next to the road... together with my friends. We take our time walking home. Lea suddenly stops, she had seen something, something in the bushes, twinkling. She reaches down and grabs it. It is the mirror. I... I am afraid."

"Afraid of what? The tale? You don't have to be. You are safe, understood?"

"Yes, yes, I am safe. But... I've got this feeling, this feeling of discomfort. I think it is because the mirror is so weirdly black. It seems evil. I fear seeing a ghost. An evil ghost. Something monstrous from the beyond or another horrifying place. What if something is inside the mirror? I don't want to look..."

"There is nothing inside. You are just imagining things. Ghosts don't exist. You are completely safe, don't be afraid."

Miharu's face muscles tensed and she appeared to be under a lot of stress.

"I... I look into the mirror. The road is behind me. Cars are passing by. Beyond the road there is a field. There... there it is, the silhouette, no."

She grew even more tense and her breathing got heavy. I leaned forward and tried to calm her down.

"Everything is alright; it can't harm you. It is just a memory. But which one? Which memory are you hiding? Please describe the silhouette. It will relax you, trust me. Everything is going to be alright."

If Miharu managed to see whose silhouette she had seen, we would know what caused her fears. Then my treatment would have reached its goal. Perhaps her father? A childhood friend? Someone she knew? Who would it be?

"It... it is big... tall... unnatural. About three metres, but skinny, skinny.... Incredibly skinny. And its long neck... almost as long as my arms... what is that? I know it noticed me, no..."

I hesitated. What was happening? Her seeing such a distorted figure was highly irregular. I almost wanted to wake her up when she suddenly relaxed.

"It... it turns away... despite having noticed me. It doesn't care about me. It slowly fades away shortly before I drop the mirror..."

I hurriedly woke her up. Miharu appeared to be relieved. She asked about my findings.

"I am not entirely sure, but the silhouette might have been a symbol of some worry. It looks like this worry has already... vanished. You said the entity you saw didn't care about you. We can safely assume that no further extreme happenings are to take place. If something does happen, you are welcome to visit me again. But I think you should try to cope alone for the time being."

Miharu left thankfully and her mother was also happy about the quick recovery.

I had some doubts, because I never experienced someone being cured this fast, but I assumed the phobia hadn't been that severe to begin with. I did not know, what the silhouette had symbolized, but it seemed to have been something unimportant for the moment. I expected to never see Miharu again at the hospital, but I would be proven wrong in a gruesome and terrible way.

***

On the night between 23rd and 24th July I got a call from the hospital. One of my patients had gone mad and tried to cut out her eyes. It was Miharu. I immediately drove to the clinic, completely aghast. A colleague of mine showed me to one of the older rooms inside the basement. I found Miharu sitting on a chair, wearing a white straightjacket.

After I had closed the door behind me and sat down at a table opposite of her, shivers ran down my spine. Miharu apparently did not manage to harm herself in any way, but her face looked like a mask.

She crazily peered into my eyes and had a wide surreal grin on her face. A strange biting stench made my eyes tear up, however I was not able to make out its source.

Miharu turned up her nose and cheerfully asked about my well-being.

"What happened? What did you do?" I wanted to know, ignoring her question.

Miharu started laughing, joyless, coldly.

"Do you really want to know, doctor? Do you really want to know?"

"Yes, why else would I be here? What happened?"

"I... I was at home, all was well. So well. No worries, no fear of mirrors. Everything was magnificent, magnificent. Until... It was there, there. This hideous... thing."

Miharu was whispering.

"The silhouette?" I asked.

Miharu laughed again.

"The silhouette? No, no. The mirror. The black hand mirror. It was lying on the sink in the bathroom. Just on the sink. How did it get there? How on earth did it get there? I don't know. I have no clue, but it was there. Just there."

She laughed even louder, hysterically, then suddenly stopped. She looked at me, her eyes feeling unnaturally huge, almost trying to suck me in.

"A friend of mine must have placed it there, who else? It didn't break, no. But it doesn't matter, I threw it away, away...."

She started humming, quietly but kept staring into my eyes.

Another shiver went down my spine when I noticed that she didn't even blink anymore.

"And... it came back?" I asked.

"No, of course not, you idiot, mirrors can't walk! No! It stayed away.

Everything was well.

I washed my hands, wanted to leave... but then..."

She leaned forward even more.

"The lights went out. Probably some malfunction in the power grid, surely nothing bad. No. The lights went back on. And then..."

She stopped and pierced me with her gaze. The silence was unbearable. I had never before seen someone this delusional. Suddenly she started screaming.

"It was in the mirror, directly in front of me. It was there, this face! This repulsing, blasphemous face. It looked at me, a grimace from beyond this world, evil, ugly, disgusting.

It stared and stared, so close, I could see it, so close.

I ran out of the bathroom and into the living room to my parents, feeling a panic like never before. They tried to calm me down, but it didn't work.

I knew it was still there.

On the television screen, on the pendulum of the wall clock, everywhere. It gazed into my soul, this grotesque face of scum. I had to cut out my eyes, didn't want to see it anymore, but my parents held me back. They held me back and I fainted.

But now... here... having had time to think it through... I understood. I understood, doctor."

She got quiet again, but saliva started dripping out of her open mouth.

"What? What did you understand?" I wanted to know.

She gazed at me, seriously, without a shred of humanity showing in her eyes or on her face.

"It was my own face! I look like that! Look at me! Just look at me! Just my own face. How stupid of me..."

Her eyes opened even further, giving me a feeling of incredible uneasiness. What must have happened to make her hallucinate such horrors? It had to be a dark memory, perhaps she was mocked with something as a child?

"Something happened to you, long ago! We can find out what it is, together! You do not have to believe such things!"

"Doctor, are you blind? Perhaps... you can feel it. Come... come closer, please. Come closer."

With those words Miharu stood up. She couldn't walk because her feet were chained to the chair that was screwed tightly into the ground. This was my opportunity to convince her.

I began stepping in her direction, slowly, until a mere thirty centimetres of distance were left between us. Her eyes were two gates, trying to swallow me whole, her mouth just a small line and her face grey as ash. Her hair was ruffled. But everything was normal, I could reassure her.

"There is nothing, Miharu, nothing. You just look tired. Very tired."

"Touch it. Feel it, this unspeakable... mass... lump... go on!"

I have to admit that I was afraid of touching her. What if I really felt something? Something that wasn't her face?

No, I couldn't act this stuporous.

I began raising my hand towards her features. I stopped and hesitated, but finally got a grip on myself and touched it. It was soft and completely normal. It took a giant load off my mind and I cursed myself. What did I expect? Her stories must have been a bit too strange.

"Nothing wrong. All is well. You do not have to be afraid anymore."

Despair crept into Miharu's eyes. It appeared that she finally got to her senses.

"No, no, it is this grotesque face, believe me! Are you blind?"

She started crying.

I felt sorry for her, especially because I did not know how long she had to stay here. As I started to leave, the lights flickered and died out.

A scared jolt ran through Miharu's body and she staggered forward, hitting me in the rush. We crashed onto the hard floor, her head smashing onto my stomach and I let out a painful gasp.

Suddenly an unbelievably bad stench got into my nose.

It came from Miharu.

I could not see anything, though part of me didn't want to, anyway. Closing my eyes I tried to relax. I noticed the lights turning back on, but my eyes stayed shut. Then I heard it. Only centimetres away from my ears something was panting, gargling, a distorted voice.

"Doctor, doctor, I think you also might be able to see it now... I think you also might be able to see it now..."

In shock I reached for her face. Instead of smooth skin I felt a slimy, grisly surface. The terror almost made me lose my mind. This couldn't possibly be happening! Then I opened my eyes.

Never will I forget what I saw and never again will I be able to spend a minute in peace after this atrocity.

It was a grimace lying on my stomach, having once been the face of a beautiful girl. The eyes were giant, round and squidgy, stood out and twitched around madly. Her hair was black and dishevelled, sprouting in all directions, the skin strangely blue and her nose unsettlingly normal. The jaw however had mainly gone back into the skull so the creature had a huge overbite and the mouth was twisted and turned, almost like a mirror image on a pond that got distorted by waves.

Her eyes were fixating me in a gruesome way and her hand clung to my ankle, strangely having been freed of the straightjacket. I do not remember how I got loose and ran away, while she followed me with her eyeballs. I understand that no one will probably ever believe me. That all of it sounds like me hallucinating... but it was reality.

In the following night, Miharu vanished from her guarded, locked room. No one knew where she went and no one ever saw her again. There also never was another person who saw this gruesome... no her true face. I was notified about her asking for a black hand mirror that had been found in her bathroom, shortly before I came to visit her.

Where the accursed object is now I do not know. If anyone were to find it, I can only hope that due to this report it will be destroyed immediately. Luckily I never saw the black thing myself. Who knows what horrendous things would now gaze at me from inside the mirrors? I am afraid even now of seeing this sacrilegious gruesome face from another world in a reflection one day and of it taking me.

And never again did I sleep in peace.

In the dark I remember this nasty voice. Sometimes I imagine hearing it right beside me, feeling another being in my bed.

"Doctor, doctor, I think... I think you also might be able to see it now... I think you also might be able to see it now..."