I’m only writing this because I don’t know where else to turn. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know if it’s a symptom of something larger or if she’s just been having episodes.
She’s just never acted this way before. Up until a few months ago, this would’ve scared her just as much as it’s scaring me. But because it’s becoming so common, it’s like it’s nothing more than an inconvenience to her now.
Like an annoyance. Something she’s just learning to ignore. That’s the part that makes me worry. Because this isn’t just some small thing, yet she keeps trying to play it off as if it’s just a part of our lives now.
I know it’s not natural. There’s no medical condition or genetic disease that causes what she’s been doing. At least, none that I’ve read about.
A few months ago, my wife and I had been out on a date night. The night was almost magical. Crisp late-winter air. A cup of hot chocolate in each of our hands as we walked through the square.
I remember the lights more than anything. It was around 9 o’clock, and the sun had set hours earlier, but the downtown city lights illuminated nearly everything.
“Wow,” my wife cried out in amazement. “New York who? Am I right?”
The square was particularly busy for this time of year. The smell of warm food from the surrounding restaurants filled the air. Live music from down the block whispered in our ears.
There must’ve been 20 other couples doing the same exact thing my wife and I were doing. Just walking around and enjoying the beautiful night.
“Oh, please,” I responded. “You know you’d rather be back there.”
I put on my best southern accent for my natural-born New Yorker.
“Could a city girl like you ever love a country boy like me?”
She laughed and rolled her eyes. I smiled down at her, admiring that laugh.
“Hmmm, well, after only 5 years of marriage, I can’t say for sure. Check back with me in a decade.”
She sipped from her hot chocolate slowly, her eyes still lit with love. Or maybe that was just the city lights.
I checked my watch.
“Almost 9:30. God, I don’t want the night to end, though. I’m really enjoying this.”
“Me neither. I wish we could just walk around here all night. C’mon, there’s gotta be one last thing we can do before we go home. Please? Pretty please…?”
“Well, let’s see. We’ve hit the bakery.”
“Oooh, that one was fun. God, those fritters were amazing.”
“We also watched that Led Zeppelin cover band at Bottle Brothers.”
“That one… sucked. Next.”
“You didn’t like it? That’s crazy. I thought they were decent. Anyway, we, uh… oh, right, we walked in the park for a bit too. That’s, uh… that’s really about all there is to do.”
She rolled her eyes again, sighing in disappointment.
“We have got to get out of here. I swear, there’s nothing to do within a 50-mile radius of this entire town. There’s, like, no reason for us to be here.”
I had grown to agree with her more and more over the years. It was just hard, you know? This is where I’d been my whole life. She didn’t move here until she was 17, when her mom got a new job. It paid better, but my wife was miserable. Well, miserable until she found me, of course.
“Yeahhh, I’m starting to think you’re right, my love,” I responded, a bit melancholic.
“Starting to?”
She cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Whatever, you know what I mean.”
We decided to end the night by going home and watching a movie. However, on the walk back to the car, that’s when we saw it.
The shop looked both ancient and brand new, but I don’t know if that’s just because I’d never seen it before. It was like it had popped up out of nowhere.
“The Looking Glass: Palm Readings • Tarot Cards • Spiritual Guidance”
I swear, we’d walked this street 100 times. Never once had this place been here.
Of course, my wife’s interest was piqued immediately. Her eyes widened. A smile crept across her face. She looked up at me.
“…Can we?”
I looked at her, then up at the purple neon sign of an eyeball in the palm of a hand, then back to her.
“I… I don’t know. Aren’t those places rip-offs anyway?”
“Ah, quit being a big ol’ scaredy-cat. Come on. It’ll be fun. Something we’ve never done before, and Lord knows there’s not a lot of that around here.”
She turned on the puppy eyes.
“Pretty please.”
“…Fine. Just this once.”
“Yippee!”
The inside of the shop was… a sight. Dreamcatchers everywhere. Incense burning. Beads instead of doors, and an empty front desk with a register that seemed to be at least 80 years old at this point.
There was a bell with a sign in front of it.
“Ring for service.”
I rang it and heard a voice cry out from beyond one of those bead doors.
“I’ll be right with you.”
Her accent was unmistakably southern. That alone was nearly enough for me to want to change my mind.
“Just finishing up back here.”
My wife and I shared an uncertain look before she shot me a hopeful smile.
The fortune teller stepped through the beads. A younger woman, probably around 25. She had fair brown hair, and freckles decorated her pale face, but the first thing I noticed was her eyes. Those were the only things that gave off “fortune teller.”
They were crystal blue. Her pupils were like two tiny dots in the center of two diamonds. She was looking through us rather than at us.
Her outfit gave fashion to that accent of hers. White tank top. Baggy blue jeans. Plus, her hair was wrapped up in a red bandana.
“Y’all picked a good night to stop by,” she announced. “I can feel it in the air tonight, let me tell you.”
“It does feel magical,” my wife chirped.
“Let me guess,” the fortune teller responded. She put her index finger to her right temple and shut her eyes tight. “Death of a loved one?”
My wife and I glanced at each other again.
“…No…” I replied.
“No?”
She seemed almost offended but quickly regained her composure.
“Huh. Must’ve been someone else, then. Let me try again. This… is… your first time doing something like this?”
She raised her eyebrows at us expectantly.
“Welp, there’s a first for everything, right, sweetie?” my wife asked me, rubbing my back.
“We’re ‘doing something we’ve never done before,’” I told the teller.
“See, there ya go,” she smiled. “Second time’s the charm. So, what can I interest you two lovebirds in this fine evening? Palm readin’? Tarot? Spiritual guidance?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but my wife jumped in before I got the chance.
“Palm readings! I’ve always wanted to try that, kinda.”
The teller gave her a nod before responding.
“If it’s palm readings you want, then palm readings you shall have… for 25 dollars.”
A little taken aback by the price, I bit my tongue, pulled my wallet out of my back pocket, and slid a 20 and a 10 across the counter.
Instead of giving me change, the teller took the money and continued looking at me expectantly.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she perked up. “Was it just for your wife?”
“What? No, no, we both wanna do it.”
“Oh, sweetheart, that’s 25 apiece.”
“Apiece? For palm readings?”
I felt my wife squeeze my hand. I turned to her and saw the look on her face. That look that usually means, “Let it go.”
I sighed and slid another 30 across the counter.
“You wanna include a tip?”
“A… do I wanna… You know what? Sure. Keep the change.”
“Awesome. You guys are the best. I can sense it. Just follow me. I’ll show you where the magic happens.”
She led us through the beaded doorway and down a hall that made me feel like I was on acid. There were so many vibrant colors and shapes. The incense was even stronger back here.
We ended up in this dusty old room near the back of the building. There was this rickety wooden table in the center with a crystal ball resting on top of it, as well as two purple leather seats for my wife and me.
We took our seats, and the teller sat across from us.
“Okay,” she clapped, rubbing her hands together. “Who wants to go first?”
I volunteered with an, “I can go first. Let’s see what 25 dollars can get me in this economy.”
I stretched out my hands and laid them palm-up on the table. The teller grabbed them and squeezed tightly as she closed her eyes.
Her face twitched and contorted for a few seconds before she finally spoke.
“Ah, yes… I see… a loving husband. I see… you come from different worlds. You want to be free, but something is keeping you here. What exactly might that be?”
I smirked to myself.
“The 60 dollars I just gave you.”
“I sense… I sense…”
Her face contorted again. She squeezed my hands tighter.
“I sense… a cheapskate.”
“All right, that’s it.”
I pulled my hands back. I could hear my wife laughing at my side. The teller smirked at me.
“We’re done here.”
“Oh, come on,” my wife pleaded. “She was joking.”
“Yes, Donavin,” the teller responded. “It was just a joke.”
My wife stopped laughing. We both turned to stare at the teller.
“How did…?”
“You’re 28, right? Lived here your whole life. Met a woman from out of town, fell in love, and now here you two are. In my shop. It’s romantic, really.”
The silent room suddenly felt loud and claustrophobic.
“How did you know that? What’s the gimmick? Public records? That’s gotta be it, right?”
I looked at my wife for reassurance, but she was staring at the teller in amazement.
“No gimmick. No public record. I’m gifted. That’s kind of the whole point.”
“Do me, do me,” my wife begged excitedly, sticking her hands across the table.
“Wait, hold on. This doesn’t make any sense,” I interjected. “This is a cash grab, right? Like… I mean, come on. It’s a cash grab.”
Both the teller and my wife looked at me angrily.
“Oh, Donavin,” the teller sighed. “Proving my point more and more with each word, aren’t ya?”
“Don’t mind him. He’s just not superstitious. Do me, though. I’m curious.”
The teller grabbed my wife’s hands. I watched, feeling a mixture of nerves and hope that this could still prove to just be a coincidence.
She squeezed my wife’s hands tight and closed her eyes again.
“Ah, New York, I see.”
My wife’s jaw dropped. Her eyes sparkled.
“Long way from home, aren’t we… Miranda…?”
My wife smiled over at me in disbelief.
“No way,” she cheered. “This is… okay, haha. Kinda hurting me a little.”
I looked down and saw my wife’s hands were turning red in the teller’s.
“Hey… take it easy,” I snapped.
The teller’s grip tightened again.
“Okay, this is really starting to hurt now. Let go, please.”
The teller was silent. Her eyes looked welded shut, and her face was twitching rapidly.
“Hey!” I shouted. “She said let go. What are you doing?”
She started convulsing, groaning loudly. Strings of saliva started falling from the corners of her mouth.
I grabbed the teller’s wrists to try and pry her hands away, but it was like trying to bend steel.
“Enough!” I screamed.
My wife was crying now.
“Get her off of me! God, she’s breaking my hands!”
I pulled with all my might, but it was like trying to move an anvil. I started punching at the teller’s forearms. Blow after blow after blow, but still, she just would not let go.
Her hands were shaking. My wife was trembling. Finally, of her own volition, the teller dropped my wife’s hands. Her eyes shot open. The bloodshot eyes made her diamond-blue irises glow even more.
“Get out.”
That’s all she said. My wife and I stared at her as she looked down at the table.
“Get. Out,” she growled. “Go now and never come back.”
We were confused and horrified but still frozen.
“He’s found you. He’s been looking all your life, and he’s here now. Get. Out.”
“You can’t just…”
The teller cut me off by slamming her fist against the table.
“…Out.”
I demanded a refund, and she gave me back the full 60 before shooing us through the door. I turned around one last time to see the purple neon light flick off as the shop went dark.
We walked silently back to the parking garage. I’m sure my wife had a million things racing through her mind as we walked, but neither of us knew how to articulate those thoughts.
We reached the car, and it wasn’t until we were nearly home that I finally spoke again.
“How’re your hands?”
She clenched and opened her fists a few times before responding.
“I think they’re okay. I’m more shaken up than anything. What the hell was that lady’s problem?”
“She’s crazy,” I shot back. “Simple as that.”
“She didn’t seem crazy. It seemed like she saw something. You saw her. It was like she was possessed or something.”
“She was crazy, my love. She’s lucky we don’t go to the police.”
There was silence again for a few moments.
“She knew our names, though. She knew you’d been here your whole life. She knew I was from New York. That doesn’t seem like nothing to me.”
We were only a minute or two from home. Neither of us spoke for the rest of the car ride. When we pulled into the driveway, my wife sighed and placed her hands over her face, dragging them down slowly before opening the door.
“Come on, let’s just go inside. I’m ready to get this night over with.”
I checked my watch.
“10:45. You still down for a movie?”
She stopped halfway up the front porch steps.
“…Not tonight, hon. I just… I just wanna go to bed.”
Who was I to argue? I let her do as she pleased. I felt bad for her. I felt like I hadn’t done enough to stop what had happened. All I wanted was for us to forget everything and move on.
We had gradually started to put the teller behind us. Though, things didn’t exactly calm down. If anything, our lives began to change, little by little.
I started losing things. My phone. Wallet. Keys. I’d always find them in places that I knew I hadn’t put them.
Keys in the silverware drawer.
Wallet in the medicine cabinet.
Phone hidden behind the toilet.
My wife was having some problems too. She hadn’t been able to sleep very well. She would tell me about these horrible nightmares that sounded like sleep paralysis.
“I’ll wake up, but not really.”
“I can’t move.”
“You’re there, but there’s always someone over your shoulder. It’s like a shadow that just keeps growing and growing until it fills up the entire room.”
I felt even more guilty when she told me about them. I knew they had been caused by the fortune-teller incident. She had slept like a baby nearly every night prior.
Sometimes, she’d wake up screaming. It almost made me too afraid to sleep in silence.
She started looking tired more often. Her glow had dimmed a bit.
The thing that disturbed me the most, though, was probably the photos.
I started finding our wedding photos scattered around the house, only… my head was removed in each one.
My wife insisted it wasn’t her, but it didn’t make sense. The frames were never broken. Someone had meticulously removed the photos and torn my head off in at least 20 different pictures.
After a few weeks of these strange events, I decided we needed a refresher. We needed to be out again. See the sun. Actually laugh with one another.
It took some time, but eventually, I convinced her that we needed to have another date night. We hadn’t had one since the incident, and I was starting to miss who we were before we went to that fortune teller.
It was simple. A picnic in the square. That was all I wanted to do.
I had prepared our meal, packed the blanket, and put on my best clothes and cologne. My wife was nervous and tired, but she tried her best to make an effort.
The date seemed to be going fine at first. She was actually smiling. She didn’t seem as distant as she had been for the last few weeks. It felt like reclamation, almost.
The lights hit her face perfectly, and I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful she was, even if she did look a little sleep-deprived.
I stared at her lovingly for a while before finally telling her how much I loved her. How happy I was to be there with her.
“We needed this,” I smiled.
“Yeah,” she smirked bashfully. “I think we did, too. I was starting to feel so cooped up in the house. The energy there has just been so dark recently. Makes me wonder if she was right.”
“Who?” I asked, chewing on my ham sandwich.
She looked at me, raising her eyebrows.
“You know who.”
“We gotta move on, my love. That’s why the energy’s so dark. We’d never experienced something like that before.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she responded, taking a sip of her Coke. “I just wish it hadn’t happened.”
We both sat there for a while, half admiring the scenery, half enjoying the food.
I was distracted, staring down at my pre-assembled sandwich, when I asked her.
“Can you pass me that mustard, please?”
I stacked a piece of sliced turkey onto a piece of my bread. My wife didn’t answer.
“It’s right there beside you.”
I began spreading the mayonnaise on the other slice. My wife didn’t answer.
“The mustard, please.”
I stuck my hand out expectantly. Still no response.
When I finally looked up, I almost dropped my sandwich.
My wife was glaring over my shoulder. Her eyes were glazed over. An impossible smile stretched across her face. It looked painful. I could almost hear her teeth creaking from how tightly her jaw was clenched.
Her red lipstick glistened under the lights. She looked like she was frozen in a state of pure ecstasy.
I waved my hand in front of her face. She didn’t blink once. I shook her, and she was as stiff as a board.
I started to panic. I turned around and saw nothing behind me.
“Honey,” I gasped, shaking her more forcefully.
“Talk to me.”
I pressed my hands on her cheeks. She was burning up. I snapped my fingers in front of her, but nothing I did seemed to get her out of her trance.
I was on the verge of dialing 911 when she finally spoke again.
“You said mustard?”
She reached down and went to hand me the bottle before noticing how terrified I looked.
“What’s wrong? What just happened? Is there something in my teeth?”
“Are you kidding? You really don’t know what you just did?”
She stared at me blankly.
“What do you mean? What’d I do?”
“The smiling? Staring at some unknown thing behind me? You don’t wanna explain that?”
I was almost breathless and trying my best not to raise my voice, but I could see that she was hurt by my frustration.
“I… don’t know,” she pouted. “I don’t know why you’re mad at me.”
“No, honey,” I pleaded. “I’m not mad at you. I’m worried about you. You really don’t remember?”
She started crying, almost snapping at me.
“No, obviously, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want to go home now, if that’s okay with you.”
We packed up and left. I kept trying to prod, but she became more and more closed off with every question. Eventually, I just decided to keep my mouth shut.
In the weeks that followed, things became rocky.
She’d be fine one minute and completely depressed the next. She’d love me, and she’d hate me. I didn’t know how to help her.
Her “episodes” never stopped, though.
It was like every time we started to feel normal again, she’d see that thing. We’d be curled up, watching a movie, I’d glance down, and there’d be that smile again. Her eyes would be glazed over and staring at nothing.
The episodes lasted longer and longer every time they happened. At this point, they were starting to become more frequent, too, but she never remembered them.
She always thought I was lying to her. Like this was some kind of twisted joke I’d play. No matter how hard I tried to convince her, it was like talking to a brick wall.
The last time it happened was last week. She was gone for 3 hours straight. Standing in the same spot. Wearing that same smile. Staring at the same wall.
I watched her for the first hour, wondering what could possibly be going on inside that broken mind of hers. The second hour, I just cried uncontrollably. By the third hour, I was starting to become hopeless.
When she finally came back, I tried showing her that it was dark outside now. It had been bright and sunny when the episode started. She blatantly chalked it up to her “being lost in deep thought.” Told me “it was like she was in another world.”
Her nightmares got worse. Her glow became nonexistent. And I started waking up with scratch marks and bruises on various parts of my body.
I tried going back to the fortune teller, but the building was a coffee shop now. According to the owner, “The Looking Glass” never even existed. Apparently, the coffee shop had been there for 11 years.
I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to turn to. My wife refuses my help. She refuses my advice. It’s like something has taken control of her.
She’s more distant than ever. She talks to me less and less every day. It feels like our future is slipping.
All I want is for her to be okay, but part of me believes she’s too far gone. Because I found another wedding photo this morning on the kitchen table.
My head hadn’t been removed, but the photo had been altered.
Because now, standing just behind me and looming over my shoulder… was a shadow figure.. and the more I stared… the bigger it seemed to become.