Halloween night in Rain City felt much colder than usual.
The wind howled, swaying the pumpkin-shaped lights hanging from the porches of the residents' homes. Their shadows crept across the wet asphalt—stretching, shrinking, then changing into shapes that shouldn't have existed.
Rian cursed himself the entire way.
At just seventeen, he should have already been in costume and getting ready to attend the Halloween party at school. Instead, he was running through the drizzle in his regular clothes, while every major store had already sold out of costumes.
The only place still open was an antique shop at the end of a narrow alley.
Its sign was nearly falling down. The light above the door flickered, as if trying to issue a warning.
Rian went in anyway.
The air inside smelled of damp wood, dust, and something that faintly reminded him of old fabric kept too long in a sealed room. Tall shelves filled the shop. An old wall clock ticked irregularly. Behind the counter, an old woman stared at him with cloudy eyes.
“Looking for a costume?” she asked.
Rian nodded quickly. “Anything. I’m late.”
The old woman didn't answer. She simply raised a hand and pointed toward the corner of the shop.
A pitch-black robe hung there.
A leather mask shaped like a weeping face was attached to it. The details were so realistic that Rian could see the fine lines around the eyes, the wrinkles on the forehead, even pores that looked like they belonged to a real human being.
“How much is it?”
“Free.”
Rian turned toward her.
“The previous owner never came back for it,” the old woman whispered. Her raspy voice sounded like a throat that hadn't been used in a long time. “So now the costume is looking for a new owner.”
Rian gave a small laugh, trying to take it as a joke.
“Then I’ll take it.”
He didn't see the old woman smile as she turned to bring him the costume.
At eight that night, Rian stood in front of his bedroom mirror. The black robe fit snugly around his body. The leather mask covered his entire face, leaving only two small openings for his eyes.
A perfect fit.
Too perfect.
At first, the mask felt cold as ice. Then its temperature slowly changed. Warm. Damp. As if it were absorbing the heat from Rian's face and returning it in the wrong way.
He rubbed his cheek.
The mask shifted slightly with his touch.
“Just my imagination,” Rian muttered.
He left before noticing that his reflection in the mirror had not stopped staring at him.
At the party, the costume immediately became the center of attention.
His friends praised how real the mask looked. Some of them even backed away when Rian approached. Rian tried to laugh, but the face on the mask continued to display profound sorrow—downturned lips, watery eyes, and wrinkles that made it look like someone who had just lost their entire family.
“That’s creepy,” one of his friends said.
Rian wanted to answer, but for a moment his voice seemed to come not from inside the mask, but from behind him.
He turned.
There was no one there.
By midnight, the party was over.
Rian walked alone through the deserted streets. The rain fell harder. Streetlights reflected in the puddles, broken apart like shadows trying to escape.
At an intersection, a fierce throbbing suddenly erupted in his head.
His ears rang. His steps faltered. Then, from somewhere he couldn't point to, a whisper sounded inside his own head.
“Let me go...”
Rian stopped.
The whisper repeated itself, closer this time.
“Or let me take over...”
He ran.
He didn't look back once. He burst through the front door, raced up the stairs, then entered his room and locked himself inside. He was gasping for breath as he stood before the mirror.
“Get out,” he whispered. “Get out of my face.”
With trembling hands, he slipped his fingers beneath the mask's chin and pulled upward.
SCRAPE!
Rian's scream caught in his throat.
Pain spread from his chin to his temples. It wasn't the mask that came off—it was the skin of his own face. A thin layer of flesh was pulled away with the mask, clinging to its inside like wet fabric.
Rian staggered and let out a short, breathless gasp.
In the mirror, his face no longer looked like the face of a terrified human being. The mask had fused tightly with his flesh.
Then its surface moved.
Slowly, the corners of the lips that had initially drooped began to rise. The mouth stretched past the boundaries of the face, splitting into a grin far too wide for any human being.
Rian tried to cover it with his hand.
His hand moved.
His smile did not.
The mask's grin grew wider and wider without following the movements of his own facial muscles. His eyes in the mirror went wide, but the face attached to him laughed instead—silently, without blinking.
Then Rian's reflection raised one finger to its lips.
A gesture Rian hadn't made.
From behind the mask, that raspy voice whispered directly into his ear.
“Now it’s your turn to see the world from the inside.”
The mirror in front of Rian began to fog from the inside.
On its surface, directly behind Rian's reflection, writing appeared, scratched out by something invisible:
I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS.
Rian stared at the sentence.
Then his reflection smiled even wider.
And for the first time that night, Rian realized something far more terrifying than having a mask fused to his face.
That face had never been his.