Black Mirror

My friend's grandfather once died. He was a very important member of their family, so the mourning and wailing for him was terrifying. His mother fainted many times, and his father stopped talking altogether. My friend was surprised—he'd never particularly liked his grandfather (or rather, he'd simply seen him very rarely, so there was nothing to mourn), and he was shocked by his parents' behavior. The coffin was at his grandmother's, and my grandfather was buried there in her village. But even in their Moscow apartment, my parents covered the mirrors with cloth and told their son to do the same. As I've already said, he found this strange and absurd: well, an old man died, that happens, it happens, it's normal for old people, so why wallow in grief like that? Naturally, he still didn't cover the mirror in his apartment.

A week passed after the funeral. On the eighth day, the mirror in my friend's room suddenly turned completely black—as if someone had painted over it. To say he was shocked would be an understatement. He was terrified, but he didn't tell his parents. He stayed with me all day, saying he'd stuffed the mirror in a desk drawer and locked it. I personally didn't really believe it, since he was already dead drunk when he came to me—he'd managed to get completely drunk from fear in just two hours. He slept at my place until evening, then woke up and spent about an hour and a half reading online about mirrors, ghosts of the dead, and other such things. Then he went home.

I met him the next day. He told me he hadn't slept all night—he'd sat with the lights on, reading a book to distract himself. He hadn't even touched the locked desk drawer. Around midnight, the lights went out for a couple of minutes. Then the same thing happened every half hour until about four in the morning. While it was dark, he heard footsteps, but he reassured himself that they were most likely his neighbors, who had also noticed the lack of light and were fussing about (though, remember, it was the middle of the night, and everyone else was probably asleep). His cell phone rang twice during this time. Both times, the caller ID was unavailable. When he picked up, the other end hung up. Toward morning, he fell asleep and dreamed of his grandfather in some kind of military overcoat. His eyes were invisible—as if covered by some kind of veil. The grandfather waved at him from afar and disappeared into the fog.

His friend woke up only at noon. As he approached his desk, he noticed with horror that the lock on the drawer was open. He opened the drawer and took out the mirror—and it looked normal again, just like before. However, his friend didn't want to use it anymore, so he threw it away and bought another.