Dark Reflection

It was supposed to be a peaceful getaway, a break from the demands of daily life. My husband and I had decided to spend a few days camping around the Great Lakes, seeking solace in nature. Our trip had gone smoothly until that night, when a sudden bout of illness struck me, threatening to ruin everything. We had pulled into a small, cheap campground near Lake Huron. It wasn’t the most picturesque spot, but it was quiet, secluded, and a perfect place to recuperate. Or so I thought.

The sickness hit me hard that evening, an intense wave of nausea that left me doubled over in pain. My stomach churned, and I could feel the bile rising. Barely able to stand, I staggered out of the camper, desperate for fresh air. My husband called after me, but I could only manage a feeble wave before the first violent heave took over. I barely made it past the tree line before I started throwing up, the contents of my stomach splattering against the damp earth. It felt like my insides were being wrung out, my body rebelling against whatever had invaded it.

When the retching finally stopped, I leaned against a nearby tree, trying to catch my breath. The night was cool, and the air smelled faintly of pine and damp soil. The world seemed to sway around me as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, cursing the flu—or food poisoning, whatever it was—that had ruined our evening.

And then, I saw it.

At first, I thought it was just my reflection in the shadows, a trick of the dim moonlight playing off the trees. But the longer I stared, the more I realized that what I was looking at wasn’t just a shadow or a reflection. It was… me. Or something trying very hard to look like me.

The figure stood a few yards away, partially obscured by the trees. It was the right height, the right build, but everything about it was slightly wrong. Its skin was pale—almost sickly white—and its eyes, deep and sunken, were much darker than they should have been. They were empty, like two black holes, absorbing the moonlight instead of reflecting it. The nose was almost nonexistent, just a slight indentation above its lipless, oversized mouth that stretched across its face in a grotesque mockery of a smile.

It stared at me with an intensity that made my skin crawl. I could feel its eyes boring into me, as if it was dissecting every aspect of my appearance, every movement I made. And that’s when I realized—it was mimicking me. As I straightened up, it straightened too. When I reached out to steady myself against a tree, it mirrored the motion, its pale hand rising to touch a tree beside it.

I froze, every instinct screaming at me to run, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. There was something inherently wrong about this thing, something that spoke to a primal part of my brain. It was dangerous. It wasn’t just trying to look like me; it was trying to be me.

The seconds ticked by, but it felt like hours. I backed away slowly, careful not to break eye contact. My heart pounded in my chest, each beat louder than the last. I wanted to scream, to call for my husband, but fear had clamped down on my throat, rendering me mute. As I inched closer to the camper, the creature’s mimicry grew more exaggerated, more distorted. Its head tilted to the side, its grin widening, as if it was amused by my terror.

When I finally reached the camper door, I fumbled with the handle, still keeping my eyes on the creature. I managed to wrench the door open and slipped inside, nearly collapsing against the wall. My husband was already on his feet, alarmed by the look on my face.

“Grab your gun,” I whispered urgently, my voice barely more than a croak. “There’s something out there. Something… that looks like me.”

He didn’t hesitate. Years of experience in the wilderness had taught him to trust my instincts. He grabbed his rifle and followed me outside, his flashlight slicing through the darkness. I pointed to where I had seen the creature, praying it was gone, that I had imagined the whole thing. But when the beam of light fell on the spot, my blood ran cold.

The creature was still there, but it had dropped to all fours, its long limbs splayed out in a way that no human could replicate. Its face was pressed against the ground, its mouth open wide as it lapped up the vomit I had left behind like a deranged animal. The sight was so grotesque, so wrong, that I almost vomited again.

My husband froze, his eyes widening in disbelief. “What the hell…?”

The thing must have heard him, because it stopped, lifting its head slowly to look at us. Its mouth was stained with my bile, and its eyes… God, those eyes. They were even darker now, as if feeding on my sickness had given it some twisted satisfaction. It grinned at us, a horrible, wide grin that seemed to stretch its face even further, as if the skin itself was struggling to contain the expression.

“Stay back,” my husband warned, raising his rifle. But the thing didn’t move. It just stared, its grin growing impossibly wider. My husband fired a warning shot into the air, and the sound echoed through the trees. For a moment, the creature didn’t react. Then, it slowly rose to its feet, its movements unnatural, like a puppet being jerked upright by invisible strings.

It took a step toward us, and I instinctively grabbed my husband’s arm, pulling him back toward the camper. “Get inside,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “We need to get inside, now.”

We backed away, the creature following us with that same eerie, deliberate pace. As we reached the door, my husband fired another shot, this time aiming directly at it. The bullet hit its mark, but instead of crumpling to the ground, the creature barely flinched. It let out a low, guttural growl, the sound vibrating through the air, filling the night with an almost palpable sense of dread.

We scrambled inside, slamming the door behind us. My husband bolted it shut and grabbed his phone, dialing the campground’s emergency number. But as he spoke to the operator, I peered out the window, my heart pounding in my chest. The creature was still there, standing just outside the camper, watching us with those empty, black eyes. It pressed its face against the glass, watching us as it licked the glass, smearing it with a mixture of saliva and bile, grinning that horrific grin as if it knew we were trapped.

“What is it?” I whispered, more to myself than to my husband. But there was no answer. How could there be? This thing—whatever it was—defied explanation. It wasn’t an animal, it wasn’t human, and it certainly wasn’t anything that should exist in our world.

The creature pressed harder against the window, its grin faltering for the first time. It was almost as if it was trying to figure out how to get inside. My husband, still on the phone, backed away, his face pale. “They’re sending someone,” he said, his voice strained. “But they said it’ll be at least half an hour.”

Half an hour. I wasn’t sure we could last five minutes with this thing outside.

As if sensing our desperation, the creature began to claw at the window, its fingers—long and unnaturally sharp—scraping against the glass. The sound was unbearable, like nails on a chalkboard, but worse. Much worse. I covered my ears, trying to block it out, but it felt like the sound was burrowing into my skull, driving me mad.

My husband grabbed a kitchen knife and handed it over to me. I held it out in front of me like a makeshift weapon.

“If it gets in, we fight. We don’t let it take us,” he said.

I nodded, though the thought of fighting this thing terrified me more than anything else. But what choice did we have? We were trapped, with nowhere to run, and this creature wasn’t going to stop until it got what it wanted—whatever that was.

Suddenly, the scratching stopped. I looked up, cautiously peering out the window again. The creature had backed away from the glass, its head tilted to one side as if listening for something. For a brief moment, I thought maybe it had given up, that it was going to leave us alone. But then, it did something that chilled me to the bone.

It opened its mouth—wider than any human mouth could ever go—and from deep within its throat, it began to mimic my voice.

“Help me,” it said, the words distorted, wrong, like they were being spoken through a broken radio. “Please… help me.”

I recoiled in horror. The voice was mine, but not. It was a twisted, hollow version of it, drained of any emotion or humanity. It repeated the plea, over and over, each time getting louder, more insistent. “Help me… Help me…”

My husband’s grip on the knife tightened, his knuckles white. “Don’t listen to it. Whatever it is, it’s trying to lure us out.”

The creature’s voice shifted then, morphing into something else—something that made my blood run cold. It began to mimic my husband’s voice, pleading in the same distorted tone. “Let me in… Please, let me in…”

I clutched my husband’s arm, my eyes wide with fear. “It’s trying to break us,” I whispered. “It wants us to open the door.”

But we didn’t budge. We stayed huddled together, weapons in hand, as the creature continued its sick charade. It banged on the windows, scraped its claws against the door, and repeated those twisted cries for help, switching between our voices until I could barely think straight.

Minutes dragged on like hours, each one more agonizing than the last. And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the noise stopped. The creature went silent. The only sound left was the pounding of my heart in my ears.

I risked a glance out the window, half expecting to see the creature still there, waiting for us. But the space outside was empty. The thing was gone.

For a long time, we just sat there, too afraid to move. Even after the emergency responders arrived, we didn’t feel safe. They searched the area but found no sign of the creature, no tracks, no evidence that anything out of the ordinary had happened. It was as if the whole encounter had been some kind of nightmare. But it wasn’t a dream. I knew what I had seen, what we had both heard.

We left that campground the next morning, abandoning our trip altogether. I haven’t been able to shake the memory of that night—the way it looked at me, the way it mimicked my voice. Sometimes, late at night, I still hear it echoing in my mind, that twisted, hollow plea for help.

I don’t know what it was that we encountered that night, and I’m not sure I ever want to find out. All I know is that there are things in the woods that defy explanation, things that wear your face and mimic your voice, waiting for the moment you let your guard down.

And whatever that thing was, it’s still out there.