“I know you’re watching me,” I whisper as I gaze deeply into the mirror, desperately hoping to see something other than my own reflection and the room behind me. After a moment of intense study, I turn away, frustrated. It had been over a week since I’d seen her staring back at me.

Don’t ask me who “she” is because I don’t know. I’d spent far too many hours sitting in front of that mirror since it happened with not even the briefest second glimpse to reward me. I was beginning to think I had imagined it.

And to be fair, a hallucination of my overactive imagination was a very real possibility. I had been in the study for hours that evening, poring over ancient Greek texts, translating and retranslating passages. Homer, Aeschylus, Herodotus… my mind was swirling with thoughts, ideas, possibilities. After feverishly working on my thesis all day, I was starting to feel the weight of my exhaustion settling on me more and more heavily. I had hit a roadblock in the texts that I wasn’t sure how to tackle. I grabbed the nearest notebook and carelessly slung it across the room in frustration.

“Ow!” I said, sucking air in through my teeth and watching as a red line of blood began welling up on my index finger. “A paper cut? Seriously?” I muttered under my breath. A quick survey of the chaos around me indicated that there was nothing nearby to help. So I did what anyone would do and I stuck my finger in my mouth as the blood began to pool.

I sat there for a moment and looked at myself in the mirror on the wall in front of me. It was a huge old mirror, one of my dads most treasured and favorite things in the house, and I too had come to love it since I had moved in. It was enormous, hanging just above the floor molding and reaching nearly up to the ceiling. It had a gorgeous gold frame that was scuffed and worn with age. And the glass was scratched and spotted, particularly in the corners and around the rounded top.

The reflection I saw in the huge, old mirror was a little unsettling, but nothing new for this time in my life. The study was a mess, books and notebooks strewn across the floor and piled up all around. Loose sheets of paper with printed articles or scribbled translations and random thoughts littered the floor and desk behind me. There were half a dozen empty cups of water in random places and three different sweaters balled up on the floor. This room is the very picture of a Greek and Latin language Classics student working on their thesis.

My cat Peggy was laying on a pile of papers on the desk, gazing down at me in a decidedly uninterested way. And there I sat in the middle of it all, dark hair piled up in a messy bun, baggy sweatshirt with an ice cream stain from gods know when on the front, oversized tortoise shell glasses sliding slightly down my nose, and currently sucking on my finger like a child.

“What a mess you are,” I think to myself as I check my pulsing index finger, which seems to have stopped bleeding. The paper cut was only a brief distraction because my eyes drift to the difficult passage I had just been working on and I drop my shoulders with a resigned sigh. I take my glasses off and squeeze the bridge of my nose, secretly hoping the pressure might squeeze some new answer into my mind. It’s then, when I toss my head back in surrender to the gods, that I notice it: movement in the mirror in front of me.

It was very blurry, but it had looked too big and too dark to be Peggy so I quickly put my glasses back on. And there it was, just on the edge of the mirror, hiding behind the fiddle leaf tree, clothes blending a bit with the dark curtains, but otherwise clear as day: a woman was staring back at me. My head immediately spun to the right where she would be standing, but there was nothing there, just the tree and the curtains. And, of course, when I turned back to the mirror, she was gone.

And so I’ve come back to the mirror every day since for varying amounts of time. It was longer at first, just after it happened, and has gradually tapered off as the week went on and as I spent more and more fruitless hours waiting and watching. You’d think I would be nervous or apprehensive, maybe even a little scared to possibly have a ghost living in my house, wouldn’t you? Nope, not me. I was just… I don’t know, curious?

I grew up in this house so I definitely feel like I would have known if it was haunted. My mom died when I was four from a very aggressive brain tumor. My dad raised me. He was a professor, published author, and absolutely the best story teller. I grew up hearing the most fantastic tales of far away places and never before seen creatures woven in complex, beautiful detail by my father. And he never shied away from the topic of death in his stories. Having dealt with it at such a young age, I suppose he didn’t feel he needed to. He would have had a hell of a story to tell about a ghost living in the mirror in his study and I definitely would have already heard it.

It doesn’t hurt that I am also currently researching the subject of ghosts and how they are presented in Ancient Greek texts. So yeah, I’m definitely curious about what I saw. The question that keeps eating away at me is why that day? Why did she show up that day and no other? I’m pacing the floor of the study pondering this question, my thesis all but forgotten in the piles of books and papers around me.

What was it about that day that was different? What was it that summoned her? I’d been in that room hundreds of times: alone, with friends, with my dad. I’d been in there at all times of day and night, all different seasons and weather. I’ve fallen asleep in there, I’ve gotten completely hammered in there, I’ve turned on music and sung at the top of my lungs in there, I’ve broken down and sobbed uncontrollably in there.

I don’t realize it, but I’m picking at my cuticles as I pace the floor. I go through phases with these anxious ticks, but this one is fairly new. “I wish I could go back to twirling my hair,” I think to myself as I finally become aware of what I’m doing. I stuff my hands in my pockets and stare into the mirror. “What am I missing?” I wonder out loud.

Peggy, my all white Angora cat, winds herself through my legs as I stand there. I walk to the desk and flop into the chair. Peggy jumps up, settling in front of me and I begin scratching behind her ear absentmindedly. My thoughts are still swirling over the mysterious arrival and sudden departure of the supposed ghost. A quick sharp pain shoots down my ring finger and I realize I’ve started picking at my cuticles again. I’ve gone too far and now it’s starting to bleed. “Great,” I say to myself as I scan the room for the box of tissues.

I get up and do a quick sweep of the room, but don’t see it. Back behind my desk, I move a few piles of books, lift up a few papers, and still find nothing. Staring into the mirror, I watch my reflection as I stick the bleeding finger in my mouth. I’m looking at my mouth, turned down a bit from both the weight of my finger and my disappointment, when I see it. She’s back. She’s faint and behind the fiddle leaf tree again, but only just. My finger falls from my mouth and she’s gone. Again.

“Ugh, why do you keep leaving?” I shout at the mirror. My finger is throbbing and I can see more blood is pooling around the nail so I stick it back in my mouth. And there she is again, still off to the right and still rather faint, but less hidden by the tree this time. That’s when it hits me. It’s like in the Odyssey, when in the underworld Anticlea has to drink blood to recognize Odysseus and speak to him. Maybe it’s like that only it’s me. I’m the one that needs to recognize, I’m the one that needs to see. And that’s the only thing that lets me do it. The blood.

She’s standing directly in front of me in the mirror now, still faint but I can she’s clearly smiling. “That’s it, isn’t it?” I ask with difficulty trying to keep my finger in my mouth. **She inclines her head as if to signal me and then she’s gone again. I take my finger out of my mouth and notice that it has stopped bleeding. **

****

**“I’m going to need more blood.”**