With my acquired tools, I descend. I have come to the basement to call my name into the darkness and see what answers.

The old wooden chair that I place in the center of the room stinks faintly of fungus. The darkness is unbreakable beyond my little candle, and I hold up the mirror to my side so I can see it only obliquely. Do not look directly into the mirror. Terrible things will happen if you do.

Sitting in the dark with strange stirrings in a mirror that can be glimpsed only at a maddening angle, from the corner of your eye, is nearly unbearable. I wonder if I ought to ask the house to show me something, but the house does not listen to me as it listens to my mother, who calls up her happy memories whenever she pleases.

Abruptly I notice a change in the basement’s odor. The smell of decay has intensified. Rotten swamp water, a vaguely fishy, vegetal smell. Where there wasn’t before, there is now a presence beyond the tepid glow of the candle that flickers double in the mirror.

“Are you here?” I whisper. “Julian?”

From the corner of my eye, I detect movement in the glass, too subtle and too dark to make out. My eyelids peel themselves back and I stare determinedly ahead, trying not to look directly into the glass, not to break whatever connection I might be forging with the house or whatever else lives in it, for we are not alone here, not with all of time unspooling around us, and all the other creatures who have lived here or will live here creeping through the dark.

The other creatures, indeed, who are whispering now all around me.

My voice feels too loud, even though I speak with the merest breath. “Julian? Is it you?” I steady my voice. “I want to talk to you, Julian. Come out, now. Let’s just talk. Can you tell me … what did you do to the girls you put down here? Why did you hurt them?”

Still no clear answer but for the indistinct vocalizations that I hear from the walls, or perhaps from the mirror, susurrations of history, haunting us here.

I am waiting to see him creep out of the shadows, into the shivering candlelight. I hope he doesn’t have a knife.

Instead I see vague movement in the mirror, and I feel, like a whisper of the swamp, warm muddy breath on the back of my neck. A low throaty sound begins chattering beside me, and I see now that there is a face in the mirror, although I cannot make out any of the features at this angle, only the shape of it, the impression of eyes and a mouth. It takes all my willpower not to turn my head.

“Hello?” A pit of dread opens in my gut. As awful as it is to think of speaking with Julian, I am unnerved by the possibility that I’ve opened a doorway to something else entirely. “Who am I speaking to?”