The Woman Staring Back at Me
short story
The house on the hill had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Although it was from a distance, I could see the dim light glowing from my bedroom, which was also my kitchen and living room. I had only been in the little studio apartment above the bookstore for a month, having landed in the town by fate.
Black Hills was a sleepy, historic little town with no more than 3,000 residents nestled in the mountains of central West Virginia. There was one main street that ran through it, brought to life with whimsical storefronts housing various businesses including a market, a café, and a bookstore. Besides a school and a town hall, the outlying streets were mainly residential, lined with Victorian-era houses so quaint they looked like dollhouses. And on top of a steep hill, peeking over the trees at the town below, was the cabin.
On the outside looking in, Black Hills felt like a perfect place. Residents walked their kids to school, caught up with neighbors they passed by on the street, and proudly worked away in their shops and businesses.
But for me, it wasn’t long before I realized that these charms masqueraded a strangeness—something almost preternatural. It was as if the veil that separates the physical and the spiritual world, astral planes, and parallel realities had been worn through in this specific place in the space-time continuum. This town held secrets that were thought to have been buried and forgotten long ago. And they were—until I arrived.
first day in black hills
It was the beginning of fall, and a symphony of orange, yellow, and red leaves camouflaged the steep, rocky formations underneath. The air was pure. The distant smell of burning firewood and damp, decaying leaves penetrated my nose and lungs with a refreshing chill. There is no sweeter smell than a fall morning in the mountains.
I stopped at the local café for coffee and an early lunch when, just as I was leaving, a job posting on the community board caught my eye.
HIRING
Full-Time Store Associate
Anna May’s Books
Contact Anna May at 681-555-5500
I was in no rush to go anywhere. In fact, I had left the Northeast without a destination in mind. I had no job, no home, and nothing left for me where I came from. In a way, I was like a ghost, not belonging anywhere…not missed by anyone. I don’t know what I was expecting to find when I left. I quickly called the number and was greeted by a terse, yet polite voice on the other end:
“Anna May’s Books, how can I help?”
“Hi, my name is Cora…Cora Brooks. I’m calling about the—”. Before I could finish, Anna May answered.
“The Store Associate position? Yes, it’s still vacant. Are you a convicted felon? We’ve had an issue with this in the area and I do conduct background checks.”
“No, no criminal record unless you count parking tickets” I half-laughed in response, a little caught off guard.
“Can you count money?”
“Yes. And I love books and have a passion for writing”.
“Can you come in for an in-person interview at the store this afternoon at 3pm?”
“Absolutely! Yes, thank you! I will be there!” I answered.
The bell over the door announced my entry as I walked into the bookstore. It was small, but somehow seemed to fit every book ever written in the English language into its frame. Books filled every inch of the walls on shelves from floor to ceiling. Some books were piled on coffee tables. A few were placed in topsy-turvy stacks next to two cozy armchairs by an ancient-looking fireplace catty-corner to a huge front bay window. Through the glass, I saw a few people stroll by here and there.
I had never seen Anna May before, but as she shuffled around the corner, I instantly knew who she was. Anna May must have been in her late 60’s. She was a tiny thing—barely 5 feet tall in heels—yet she had the grit of a Melville sailor and a bold, eccentric style that Iris Apfel would envy. She kept her blonde hair piled in a poofy bun on top of her head. Her thick, black-rimmed bifocals camouflaged her deep green eyes and drew attention away from her pinkish-orange lipstick.
Before I could hold out my hand and introduce myself to her, she stopped dead in her tracks, and the little color underneath the rouge on her face drained out.
“You must be…Cora,” said Anna May, clutching her chest with her heavily jeweled hand.
“I am! So nice to meet you!” I replied, extending my hand, feeling as if I had somehow startled the woman half to death. I knew I probably looked a little rough around the edges from months of little sleep, poor nutrition, and the excessive drinking. But, did I really look that rough?
“Nice to meet you, as well. Please come sit down. Would you like a cup of tea while we chat?” She quickly shook my hand and put on a kettle near the back.
“Yes, thank you.” I replied.
Anna May sat down in the armchair across from mine and said nothing. Shadows from the fire danced in the reflection of her bifocals. She studied my face with intense scrutiny. After what felt like an eternity, she broke the most awkward silence of my life with, “Sorry to stare, but you’re just the spitting image of someone I used to know a long time ago. You could be her ghost.”
“Oh, that’s interesting. Maybe I have a doppelganger running around out there,” I said with a smile, trying to lighten up the awkwardness.
“Where did you say you were from, Cora?” she asked. “It’s not every day that someone moves to Black Hills. Even less common that someone leaves.”
“Oh, well, I don’t think I did. I’ve moved around a lot, but I was passing through this town from up north when I saw your advertisement at the café. I’ve never been to West Virginia before, let alone Black Hills, but I think that is what has compelled me to want to stay. It’s a new adventure” I explained.
“So, you’ve never had any family, close or distant in relation, that has lived near this area?” Anna May asked.
“Not that I know of,” I responded.
Once the tea was poured and we settled in with our cups, Anna May had shaken herself out of whatever spell she was under. She went over the basics of the job functions and duties, hours, pay, etc. We talked about my work history, which was sporadic, yet relevant to the vacancy. She tested my knowledge a bit on literary genres and asked who my favorite author was, to which I replied Charlotte Brontë.
She didn’t ask me much else about my life other than why I left it behind. I told her I just needed a change. With a knowing look, I understood that she knew there was way more to my story than I was willing to tell, and she respected that without asking any further questions on the matter.
“Well, Cora. I think you would be a good fit here. You have the experience and the interest, you can talk to people, and you evidently take initiative on things,” Anna May explained. “The job is yours if you want it.” It worked out that Anna May was also the landlord of the vacant studio apartment above the bookstore. As a perk of the store associate job, I was able to rent it out from her at a very reasonable rate. Everything seemed to be falling into place for me for the first time in a long time.
The night i saw the candle
“Don’t go to that place” something whispered to me in the darkness.
“What place?” I asked, feeling my conscious mind rising up out of the deep sleep I had fallen into.
“Wake uuuup” the voice teased.
“Please, not again” I groaned, and my eyes shot open.
I stared at the ceiling for a bit. It needed dusting. I scanned the room with my eyes, and I was alone. Just me, sweating—my chest tight with anxiety and my head pounding—and a few remaining unpacked boxes. The two empty bottles of red wine on the kitchen counter were reminders of why.
But I never felt alone here; not entirely. At the time, I couldn’t pinpoint why. I fumbled for my phone. It was 4:02am. I threw the dampened sheet off me and hobbled over to the kitchen for Advil and water. I moved to get away from these habits and the chaos that always followed.
But you can’t run from your demons, and you can’t drown your memories in Merlot. At least not permanently. They eventually find their way back to you.
The Advil couldn’t kick in fast enough, but at least the physical pain reminded me I was still alive; I still existed in this world. I ruminated on these thoughts as I stared into nothingness in the middle of the kitchen. All I could hear was the white noise of the dusty ceiling fan. Ambient light from the streetlights outside streamed in through the warped glass of my windows. I walked over and peered out into the quiet night. Perhaps I would see one of the neighbor’s cats run across the road, or maybe one of the regulars at the bar was stumbling home by themselves again. That would make me feel a little better about myself.
I scanned the backdrop beyond the storefronts and the halos of the streetlights. I could make out a sliver of the dark purple night sky and moon partially obscured by the pitch-black masses of steep mountains and trees.
My reflection in the window stared back at me. My tangled black hair fell past my waist. My dark blue eyes were bloodshot, and my pale skin looked grey in the moonlight. I looked tired; I felt empty. I didn’t like what I saw in my reflection, so I turned my attention back out into the pitch-black darkness of the mountains.
That’s when I saw it. A faint, pale light coming from a window far off in the distance. It wasn’t moving. It just flickered. A single candle had been lit in the lonely old house on the hill. From my understanding, the place was completely off limits. No one wanted to go near it—whether that was for safety reasons or superstition, it was hard to tell. The house did have some character and semblance of charm left from when it was occupied. But years of abandonment made its presence haunting. Fear of the place overruled curiosity for carefree teenagers and urban explorers. Even transients opted to squat somewhere else.
However, this time the house looked different. It was almost as if it had been stamped out and replaced with an altered copy of itself. A version not abandoned, but not lived in either. It was a prosaic prop that didn’t fit in with rest of its surroundings, enticing you to come closer while simultaneously making the hair on the back of your arms stand up.
A chill came over me and I blinked hard. I tried to come up with a logical explanation as to why I was seeing life inside a permanently lifeless place. I was ill. I could process this in the morning. I crawled into bed and stared back up at the ceiling. That’s when the feeling of not being alone intensified. Someone was watching me. I crawled slowly out of bed and back over to the window. I looked out to see the candle still flickering. Only this time, it illuminated the withered face of an old woman—her sunken eyes looked like two big black holes. And although I couldn’t see them, I know she was staring back at me
The Discovery
She never did anything—the woman in the window. She simply stood and stared until the sun broke over the horizon. Once the first rays hit her window, she slowly turned and disappeared into another room. And for reasons I would only later understand, I did the same thing.
The next few days felt like purgatory. I was exhausted, yet I felt like a constant current of electricity was pulsing through me. If it was a lucid dream, I had never had one before, and certainly not one that lasted hours. I was distracted with everything, yet intently focused on figuring out the history of that house. I worked morning shifts at the bookstore by myself and took advantage of the fact that the bookstore doubled as the town library and archives due to budgeting constraints.
I didn’t tell Anna May about it. I thought I was finally losing my grip on reality. I didn’t need someone else thinking it too.
The most I could find on the property is that it was purchased in 1799 by a merchant with no noteworthy connections. The house was built a decade later and several generations lived in it before the last of the bloodline let it fall into disarray over forty years ago. That was it. No names, no deeds, no other records. Nothing made sense.
Who was the woman and why did I see her? I needed to find out for myself.
My shift at the bookstore ended at 4pm and I immediately headed towards the back road, up the hill to the house. Any sense of fear in me had melted away, replaced by pure adrenaline. As I approached the house, I saw no sign of life. I didn’t even hear birds chirping. The air was thick, cold, and damp. It smelled like moldy wood and soil. I could see the town below, but everything felt so far away.
The house was magnificent up close. The decaying panels revealed evidence of what was once richly stained wood. Embedded underneath the steep, gabled roof were Gothic stained-glass windows. A heavily-ornamented front door with flaking dark green pain was boarded shut, and most of the windows on the first floor were covered up. It must have been a stunning home back in its day. Now it was just neglected and forgotten. I walked around to the back of the house to see if there was any way I could get in. I found a window that wasn’t completely boarded up on the back porch and, miraculously, it opened. I crawled in slowly, not wanting to make a sound, and I found myself standing in the middle of a room.
Reality had shifted once again, and the house was no longer boarded up and abandoned. It was sparsely decorated compared to its ornate exterior, but tidy. Someone had made it a home. A fire was burning in the fireplace and a copy of Villette by Charlotte Brontë rested on top of a quilted blanket on the chair next to it. I looked to my left to see a calendar on the wall. October 10th, 2063.
As the realization that I had somehow jumped ahead into the future—into another plane—set in, the old woman appeared. The ambient light from the sunset streamed in through the warped glass of the windows. She walked over and peered out at the sea of red sky. She was still holding the candle, only this time she wasn’t staring at me anymore. She was looking straight ahead towards the setting sun. She looked more human. Her tangled gray hair fell past her waist. Her dark blue eyes were hazy with cataracts and riddled with broken blood vessels, as if she had been crying. Her thin, pale skin looked almost translucent in the lighting. She looked tired. She looked empty.
Without exchanging words, I felt everything she was feeling. I understood her trauma, and I felt the pain of her memories. Visions of a life never lived flashed through my mind. Friends that were never made. Opportunities that were never acted upon. Love that was never received or given in return. Moments stolen away by addiction and isolation until she became a shell of who she once was. An overwhelming sense of loneliness and regret took hold of me, and tears began to stream from my bloodshot eyes. The woman in the window was not a ghost—she was me. She was me forty years into the future, after I gave up hope. After becoming overrun by my demons, giving into self-hatred and medicating with anything that numbed my past.
Epilogue
As I packed up my last box into my car, I felt a sense of gratitude and renewal. I said goodbye to Anna May, and with a knowing smile she whispered to me, “Fate brings us hope in the most peculiar ways, doesn’t she?” I hugged her tight and promised to keep in touch. On my way out of Black Hills, I stopped to look back at the cabin on the hill. The woman in the window was gone, and in her place was the glittering reflection of the sunrise. I drove away as visions of a new life now flashed through my mind.
@the.introverted.traveller
