Leave No Mirror in the Sickroom

SOME DOORS ARE OPENED WITH KEYS. OTHERS ARE UNLOCKED BY REFLECTION.When palliative care nurse Evelyn Morrow arrives at Oakhaven-a crumbling Victorian estate perched on the storm-lashed North Atlantic cliffs-she expects the quiet routine of end-stage care. Still paralyzed by grief after the catastrophic car wreck that took her young daughter, Georgia May, Evelyn uses clinical detachment as a shield against the world. But Oakhaven is no ordinary hospice. It is an architectural cage built around an absolute mandate: Leave no mirror in the sickroom.Inside Oakhaven, light is treated like an airborne contagion. Windowpanes are smeared with horn-grease to deaden the view; iron nails and brass hinges are corroded with acid into a powdery, light-absorbing gray; and wash water is stirred constantly with wooden paddles to prevent even a droplet from settling into a reflective plane. But nothing prepares Evelyn for her patient. Theodore Walsh, the dying patriarch of a ruined maritime dynasty, is kept in a state of agonizing biological preservation. His eyelids have been surgically excised to the orbital bone so his bloodshot eyes can never shut, and his fingertips have been systematically flayed-mutilated so he can never buff wood into a sheen.As brutal coastal squalls batter the manor, Evelyn's professional detachment shatters. Beneath the sickroom floorboards, she begins to hear a wet, pediatric wheeze-the exact acoustic signature of Georgia May's punctured lung in the wreckage. Prying loose the foundation slates, Evelyn uncovers a hidden mosaic of antique silver mirror backings, vibrating with her dead child's agony. The truth behind the estate is sickening: fifty years ago, Theodore did not lose his family at sea; he ritually surrendered them to an entity dwelling behind the glass. The pulse-less caretakers attending him are reanimated husks, prolonging his sleepless torment so the entity cannot collect his soul until the debt is paid.Worst of all, Evelyn realizes the snare has closed around her. She was never hired for her medical expertise. Her raw, bleeding bereavement was the precise acoustic tuning fork engineered to lure the entity across the threshold. When a catastrophic gale tears off the roof and floods the sickroom with dark, tranquil rainwater, the floor transforms into a room-spanning obsidian mirror-and staring up from the black depths is the living soul of the daughter she thought she buried.Dripping with somatic terror, clinical precision, and suffocating gothic dread, Leave No Mirror in the Sickroom is a harrowing psychological nightmare. Perfect for readers of Paul Tremblay and Shirley Jackson, this hypnotic novel will ensure you never trust your reflection again.