Chapter 5 - MARGARET HARRIS
Twenty-one years earlier, Bellweather’s ninth floor had been renovated.
Before that, it contained storage rooms and one mechanical corridor.
During construction, workers found a sealed room behind 9B.
No door on the original plans.
Inside:
old plaster walls.
A floor covered in black glass tiles.
Mirrors.
Dozens.
Some silvered.
Some dark.
Some almost transparent.
The contractor removed them.
Three workers quit.
One disappeared.
Then residents began reporting:
voices,
duplicates,
people in hallways who looked exactly like them.
Harris was assistant manager then.
He thought:
stress.
Drugs.
Pranks.
His wife Margaret lived with him in a management apartment on eight.
One night she heard Harris knocking.
He was actually downstairs.
Margaret opened the door.
The thing outside looked exactly like her husband.
Harris returned thirty seconds later.
He saw Margaret standing with another Robert Harris.
Two husbands.
Margaret screamed.
Then the hallway lights turned red.
When white returned, only one Harris remained.
The other was gone.
Margaret survived.
For six months.
Then she began waking at 2:13 every morning.
Standing in front of mirrors.
Whispering to herself.
One night Harris found her talking to another Margaret in the bathroom reflection.
The reflection said:
“Let me finish.”
Harris smashed the mirror.
The next morning Margaret did not remember their wedding.
Three days later she disappeared.
A woman who looked exactly like her stayed.
Harris knew it was not Margaret because he asked one question.
“What was the name of the dog we buried under your father’s apple tree?”
The woman smiled.
“Charlie.”
Wrong.
There had never been a dog.
Harris forced her out of the building.
She stood on the sidewalk for seven hours.
Then vanished when he looked away.
That was when he began writing rules.
May you like
Not because he understood the phenomenon.
Because rules were the only things that survived repetition.
