The Mirror of Third Street

The Mirror of Third Street

The shop, Hidden Histories, was located on a street that didn’t appear on digital maps. Detective Silas Vance only found it because he was chasing a ghost—or at least, a man who had vanished into a brick wall.

Inside, the air was thick with the scent of cedar and old pennies. At the back stood a mirror framed in tarnished silver, its surface rippling like water. Silas didn't see his reflection. Instead, he saw the shop as it was fifty years ago: bright, bustling, and filled with people in wool coats and fedoras.

"It doesn’t show what is," a voice rasped. An old man emerged from the shadows of a grandfather clock. "It shows what was left behind."

Silas pointed his flashlight at the glass. "I'm looking for a man named Miller. He ran in here two minutes ago."

The shopkeeper gestured to the mirror. Silas looked closer. In the reflection, he saw Miller. But Miller wasn't in the shop; he was standing in the middle of a field that had been paved over to build this very block in 1924. Miller was pounding on the glass from the other side, his face contorted in a silent scream.

"The mirror is a hungry thing," the old man whispered. "It doesn't just reflect the past; it pulls the present into it to feed the memories."

Silas realized with a chill that his own feet were beginning to feel cold—not from a draft, but because they were turning into the grey, static-filled substance of the reflection. He reached for his handcuffs, but his hand passed right through his belt. He was becoming a memory.

With a burst of adrenaline, Silas grabbed a heavy brass bust of Hermes from a nearby shelf and hurled it. The mirror didn't just shatter; it screamed. Shards of glass flew like shrapnel, and for a split second, the shop was flooded with the sounds of a thousand eras—jazz music, horse hooves, and modern sirens—all playing at once.

When the dust settled, the mirror was gone. Miller lay unconscious on the floor, dressed in his modern suit but smelling of fresh hay. Silas looked at his hands; they were solid. But when he looked in the window of his police cruiser outside, his reflection was wearing a hat from 1920. He hadn't escaped entirely; a piece of him was still back there, tucked away in a year he never lived.