The first body disappeared before anyone had a chance to kill it.
That was strange, even for Lukas - a detective seasoned in ritual killings, cryptocurrency fraud, and one peculiar case where the victim turned out to be… a corpse. But even he couldn’t explain how a body could vanish before anyone realized there was a crime.
The case reached him reluctantly - no official report, no crime scene. Just a single anonymous letter delivered to the precinct, with one sentence:
“He is already dead, but you don’t know it yet.”
The return address pointed to an old estate on the outskirts of the city. Lukas got the case because he had a reputation for “the strange ones.” And this was very strange indeed.
The address led Luka to a decaying mansion by a mist-covered lake. Once majestic, now it slouched under its own forgotten weight - Rowan Lake Estate.
Three people lived there:
Olena Bilyk, the widow and owner, a woman known for her chain of contemporary art galleries and calm detachment.
Hnat, her reclusive “brother,” gruff and silent.
Iryna, the young housekeeper, recently arrived from Kyiv - nervous, soft-spoken, and vaguely misplaced.
“There’s been no incident,” Olena smiled, her lips moving without sincerity. “We’re all well here.”
Lukas held up the letter.
For the first time, her composure faltered.
“It’s a bad joke,” she said. “But feel free to look around the house.”
The mansion was a maze - halls that curved strangely, locked doors, portraits with missing names. But one room stopped Luka cold: the mirror room. Every wall was covered in antique mirrors. In each one, his reflection twisted slightly - warped, shifted, unnerving.
Except one.
In one mirror, he wasn’t there.
He stepped back. Then closer. No reflection.
Hnat appeared silently behind him.
“That one’s old,” he said. “They say it doesn’t show who you are… but who you’ll become.”
That night, Iryna vanished. Her belongings remained. Her phone was still charging by the bed. The house’s cameras didn’t record anything.
“She likes walking near the woods,” said Olena. “She’s… fragile. We didn’t worry.”
But Lukas did.
In Iryna’s room, under the mattress, he found a torn notebook. One page was heavily underlined:
“He doesn’t come for me — he comes through me.”
At the registry office, Lukas found nothing.
Iryna had no official records. No passport. No registration. The few photos she had in her room appeared doctored. And her emails to supposed friends were dated months before she even arrived at the house.
She was a shadow. Or a ghost. Or a lie.
But in the property archives, Luka found this:
In 1991, the Rowan Lake estate was the site of a suicide. A girl drowned in the frozen lake. Her name?
Iryna Pavlivna Hryniuk.
The same name scribbled inside the notebook.
…
On the fifth day, Lukas returned to the mirror room - this time at night. The wind moaned through the trees, the chandelier swayed gently above.
He looked at the same mirror.
Still no reflection.
But this time… there was a face.
A woman’s. Bruised. Lips blue. Eyes open but dead.
And then - a whisper:
“He knows you’re close. He hides in the walls.”
That night, Lukas demanded access to every room. Olena resisted. Hnat disappeared.
In the basement - a door hidden behind dusty shelves.
Behind it - a dry well.
At the bottom: a body. Female. Frozen, fingers broken.
Besides her: a notebook.
“He is not my brother. He is what she locked behind the walls when we were children. He had no name. Now he wears others. Today, he calls himself Hnat.”
Olena broke down in the kitchen.
“I couldn’t stop him,” she whispered. “I raised a monster. I called him brother. But he was something else.”
Lukas stared at her.
“Why didn’t anyone ever see him?”
“Because he was always behind them. In the mirrors.”
…
Hnat was never found.
But Lukas never looked at mirrors the same way again.
Sometimes, when he brushed his teeth at night or passed a shop window - he would catch it.
A slight delay in his reflection.
Or a figure standing just behind him, closer than any shadow should be.
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