A Stranger in the Mirror By Sidney Sheldon

The headaches were constant now, a savage, rhythmic pounding that would not let her rest. Jill wished that the pain would stop for an hour, a minute, a second. She had to sleep. She went into the maid’s room behind the kitchen, as far away from Toby’s quarters as she could get. The room was warm and quiet. Jill lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. She was asleep almost instantly.

She was awakened by the fetid, icy air, filling the room, clutching at her, trying to entomb her. Jill leaped up and ran out the door.

The days were horrible enough, but the nights were terrifying. They followed the same pattern. Jill would go to her room and huddle in her bed, fighting to stay awake, afraid to go to sleep, knowing that Toby would come. But her exhausted body would take over and she would finally doze off.

She would be awakened by the cold. She would lie shivering in her bed, feeling the icy air creeping toward her, an evil presence enveloping her like a terrible malediction. She would get up and flee in silent terror.

 

It was three A.M.

Jill had fallen asleep in her chair, reading a book. She came out of her sleep gradually, slowly, and she opened her eyes in the pitch-black bedroom, knowing that something was terribly wrong. Then she realized what it was. She had gone to sleep with all the lights on. She felt her heart begin to race and she thought, There’s nothing to be afraid of. Nurse Gallagher must have come in and turned out the lights.

Then she heard the sound. It was coming down the hallway, creak…creak…Toby’s wheelchair, moving toward her bedroom door. Jill began to feel the hairs rise on the back of her neck. It’s only a tree branch against the roof, or the house settling, she told herself. Yet she knew that it wasn’t true. She had heard that sound too many times before Creak…creak…like the music of death coming to get her. It can’t be Toby, she thought. He’s in his bed, helpless. I’m losing my mind. But she could hear it coming closer and closer. It was at her door now. It had stopped, waiting. And suddenly there was the sound of a crash, and then silence.

Jill spent the rest of the night huddled in her chair in the dark, too terrified to move.

In the morning, outside her bedroom door, she found a broken vase on the floor, where it had been knocked over from a hallway table.

She was talking to Dr. Kaplan. “Do you believe that the—the mind can control the body?” Jill asked.

He looked at her, puzzled. “In what way?”

“If Toby wanted—wanted very much to get out of his bed, could he?”

“You mean unaided? In his present condition?” He gave her a look of incredulity. “He has absolutely no mobility at all. None whatsoever.”

Jill was still not satisfied. “If—if he was really determined to get up—if there was something he felt he had to do…”

Dr. Kaplan shook his head. “Our minds give commands to the body, but if our motor impulses are blocked, if there are no muscles to carry out those commands, then nothing can happen.”

She had to find out. “Do you believe that objects can be moved by the mind?”

“You mean psychokinesis? There are a lot of experiments being done, but no one has ever come up with any proof that’s convinced me.”

There was the broken vase outside her bedroom door.

Jill wanted to tell him about that, about the cold air that kept following her, about Toby’s wheelchair at her door, but he would think she was crazy. Was she? Was something wrong with her? Was she losing her mind?

When Dr. Kaplan left, Jill walked over to look at herself in the mirror. She was shocked by what she saw. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyes enormous in a pale, bony face. If I go on this way, Jill thought, I’ll die before Toby. She looked at her stringy, dull hair and her broken, cracked fingernails. I must never let David see me looking like this. I have to start taking care of myself. From now on, she told herself, you’re going to the beauty parlor once a week, and you’re going to eat three meals a day and sleep eight hours.