Glen froze completely in front of the bedroom door.
An icy sensation pierced the base of his spine and crept upward to the nape of his neck. He stared wide-eyed at the hanging mirror at the end of the hallway.
In the real world, his physical body stood with its back to the mirror, facing the bedroom door where Amelia was. Yet within the surface of that old mirror, his own reflection stood turned the other way—staring straight at Glen's back. The reflection's face was dark and indistinct, but its wide, split jaw revealed a jagged row of razor-sharp fangs gleaming in the darkness of the glass.
(The creature was no longer hiding only behind his closed eyelids. It was beginning to take over every reflection.)
"Glen? Zoning out again? Come on in!" Amelia scolded as she turned the doorknob and opened the door.
Amelia's firm voice broke the grip of terror. Glen jolted awake and instinctively turned back toward the mirror.
Zap.
In the blink of an eye—half a second—the reflection in the mirror returned to normal. Glen's reflection once again had its back to the mirror, matching the position of his physical body.
Glen breathed heavily and wiped his neck, damp with cold sweat. He followed Amelia into the room, then pulled the door shut tight behind them.
"Sit there," Amelia ordered, pointing to the edge of the bed. She set the plastic bag on the study desk, then pulled the drawing chair closer to Glen. "Now explain it to me. Where did you get that cut on your cheek? Don't even try to lie to me, Glen. I've known you since we were kids."
Glen collapsed weakly onto the bed. He cupped both hands over his face, feeling a fierce throbbing inside his head. The extreme exhaustion that had built up over several days now felt even more agonizing, making his vision blur and sway from time to time.
"Mel..." Glen's voice was painfully hoarse. "If I tell you... you'll think I'm crazy."
"Try me first," Amelia replied flatly, though the deep concern in her eyes was unmistakable. "I've heard all your stories about weird things since elementary school—from the logical ones to the completely impossible. Just tell me."
Glen drew a long breath, trying to organize his chaotic thoughts. "That creature I draw all the time... the fanged-mouth thing in my comic... it's not just in my nightmares anymore, Mel."
Amelia listened in silence, not interrupting.
"Every time I doze off for a moment... every time my brain microsleeps..." Glen pointed at his injured cheek with a trembling finger. "It leaks its form into the real world. Last night, black liquid that smelled like wet earth seeped out of my tablet screen. And then earlier... I recorded myself sleeping with my phone's camera."
Glen snatched the phone with its spiderweb-cracked screen from his jacket pocket and placed it in Amelia's hand. "Open the last video. Watch from three minutes and fifty seconds."
Amelia studied Glen for a moment, brow furrowed, then accepted the phone. She opened the gallery and played the video in question.
Glen held his breath as he watched Amelia's expression. He waited for his friend's reaction—for a shocked scream or a panicked cry when the fanged figure appeared on camera.
But several seconds passed.
Amelia only stared at the phone screen, her brow furrowing deeper in confusion. She rewound the video, watched it again, then looked at Glen with a baffled expression.
"Glen... you're joking, right?" Amelia asked softly.
"Joking?" Glen's eyes went wide. "You didn't see my shadow standing on its own and pressing its face against the camera?!"
Amelia shook her head and held the phone screen back up in front of Glen's face. "In this video... you just lie on your back on the bed for four minutes. Your shadow on the wall stays right where it is. Nothing stands up. Nothing approaches the camera."
Glen glared at his own phone screen.
In the video playing right before his eyes... the shadow on the wall really was completely still! There was no anomalous movement. No fanged silhouette pressed against the camera like the one he'd seen a few hours ago.
(The footage was clean.)
It felt as if the blood stopped flowing through Glen's veins. A wave of intense nausea slammed into his stomach.
'No... no way!' Glen panicked inwardly. 'I saw it myself last night! That video was really there!'
"Glen..." Amelia spoke softly, her voice now gentler and filled with genuine pity. She placed a hand on Glen's trembling shoulder. "You've been suffering from severe sleep deprivation. Your brain has started producing incredibly vivid visual hallucinations. Even when you look at this video, your brain is fabricating whatever it is you want to be afraid of."
"No, Mel! I'm not crazy!" Glen cried out, his voice strangled. He felt the wound on his cheek. "Then where did this cut come from?! And where did the wet-earth smell in this room come from?!"
Amelia looked at the cut on Glen's cheek, then let out a long sigh. "You might have scratched your cheek without realizing it while you microslept in a panic. And the smell of earth... this is an old room on the second floor in Sewon, Glen. It's highly humid."
Amelia stood, opened her plastic bag, and took out two cans of energy drink and a bottle of sleep medication.
"You need to go to the hospital or take a sedative right now, Glen," Amelia said firmly. "I'm not letting you stay in this room alone anymore."
Glen stared at his friend with trembling lips. Amelia's logic made perfect sense. The medical explanation for hallucinations caused by sleep deprivation felt completely rational.
For a moment, Glen almost believed that he really was just losing his mind.
However, when Amelia turned her back to him to pick up the bottle of mineral water on the study desk... Glen saw something that stopped his breath in his throat.
On the back of Amelia's neck—right beneath the row of short hair brushing her shoulders—the girl's smooth skin slowly pulled apart. Two thin black slits shifted open beneath the tissue of Amelia's neck, revealing a row of tiny fangs moving as they chewed in the darkness of her flesh.