The Old Lady in the Mirror
Many years ago, I worked for a man who became my mentor and trained me in my first years of employment as a professional. He was a charismatic man in many respects and he liked to talk. He could talk endlessly and had many good things to say. One of the stories he told me, was a story of when he worked as a construction hand as a young man. This was a summer job that he had, at it was out in the country, in a small fishing town. This is in the early 1970s and he was working for a road construction company, moving earth and gravel to fix country roads and bridges, and such. They pay was good and the company supplied him with a small apartment to stay in, while in town. The apartment was in an old house, which had three floors and his apartment was on the top floor. Because this was Iceland in summer, with daylight 24/7, they were working well into the evening and sometimes into the night. It didn’t matter. During summer, people sleep less than in winter. This meant that he didn’t spent much time in the apartment, except for sleeping. He had no TV or radio either. One day the weather became particularly bad and they had to stay in town for a bit. At a small restaurant in town, an employee asked him how he liked staying in the house. He replied that it was fine. The employee asked if he has seen anything strange. He said no. “Why do you ask?” he said. The employee told him that some people didn’t like staying in that apartment for long. Something to do with the old woman in the house. My friend said that he had not really had time to speak to the other people in the house yet. The employee smirked a little on the right side of his face, and said “ok”. Strange question to ask, my friend thought, but didn’t think much of it. That evening he came back to his apartment and heard some noise coming from the bedroom. Like someone was tidying up the bed. He walked in there, but found no one. Must have been someone downstairs, he thought. This happened a few more times. When he met the restaurant employee again in a few days, he asked about the apartment. Then he was told that on old woman had lived there last many years ago and that she had died in the bedroom of the apartment. In the bed he slept in. Strange, but not unheard of. That would explain the large mirror in the bedroom. Only a woman would have something like that. The next week he began to feel as if he was not alone in the apartment any more. Then one day when he came from a long of work and saw the silhouette of someone looking at him from his own apartment. He got a bad feeling and stormed up the stairs to check who had gotten into the apartment and maybe stealing his things. No one was in the apartment, so he went into the bedroom and locked the door. Then he glanced over to the mirror and a silhouette of a woman standing there looking at him and heard a gentle woman’s voice say: “Relax young man, you are safe in here”.
