The Halloween Visitor
The darkened room is lit only the light escaping from the grinning slit mouth of the pumpkin. It casts Angela’s face into a shimmering ghoulish green. Her blood pumping in her chest, she draws her black gloved hand across the glassy surface of the shadows of the oval mirror and waits for him to come.
Her pulse race. Her heartbeats hammer in her ears. She holds her breath in anticipation. The year had stretched and dragged since his last visit last Hallowe’en.
Outside there is a whoosh of fireworks that set the sky ablaze with colour.
Her eyes scan the dark recesses of her childhood bedroom beyond; seeking him in the shadows cast by the crack in the oval mirror. She furrows her brows.
Tonight she will ask him why he only comes to her at Hallowe’en.
In the jagged edged crack that snakes across the mirror an image begins to take shape of a sad face with a turned down mouth, and hazel eyes uncannily like the shape and colour of her own eyes.
In the kitchen below, the revellers pile in.The smell of pumpkin wine and the aroma of nutmeg and cinnamon spiked apple pie drift up the stairs and under the gap in the bedroom door.
Hallowe’en celebrations have begun. Soon she will hear her father’s impatient shout of, “Angelina, “it’s your turn to strike the match and set the bonfire alight, my darling daughter.”
The face in the mirror is fully formed now. A sliver of excitement trickled down her spine. He’s here! He is real? She was so afraid he might only existed in her imaginings?
He stares back at her from the mirror. Their eyes lock. She feels the magnetic pull of his unwavering gaze drawing her in.
His lips move forming silent words to her unspoken question. Who are you? Why do you only come to me at Hallowe’en?
‘I am your twin’.
His answer startles her. She feels her eyes widen. The pupils growing round.
Her twin!
As he holds her gaze, strange long ago remembering awakens in her mind. The beating of two hearts together as one rhythmic pattern. Him and her in a deep warm void, the warm sensation of his nearness and the feel of the clasp of his fingers in hers.
Shock reverberates through her. He is the other half of her.
He is her dead twin.
His gaze draws her closer still.
Why do you only come at Halloween? The question hammers in her brain.
It is the day they tore me from you – separated us so you could live.
His sense of silent abandonment fills her with agitation for him. She moves still closer to the mirror so their faces press together.
He has come back for her. Like her he is incomplete.
“This Hallowe’en we will be joined again,” she cries out. Her breathless promise blurring her twin’s reflection
This Halloween she will not hear her father call her name. Someone else will torch the bonfire.
The jagged shard of the mirrored glass rips her throat from left to right
Dripping blood she reaches out for him – her twin brother – on the other side of the shattered mirror
And finds, too late, he is, after all, just a Hallowe’en figment of her imagination
Gemma Hill Oct ’25
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 