Before the Murder

The Thornley Ritual

Richard Thornley did not like mirrors at the best of times. Tonight, they were worse. The one in the hall caught him as he passed, his reflection a fraction too slow, as though it were considering whether to follow. He stopped. The reflection stopped, too, but its eyes lifted a heartbeat after his own, tracking him with a faint delay that set his teeth on edge.

“Enough,” he muttered, breathless.

His heart fluttered painfully in his chest, an irregular, panicked thing, and he pressed a hand flat against his ribs until the sensation eased. Nerves. That was all. Anticipation. The house had always done this to him on ritual nights. Thornley House remembered things. It had been built to remember.

He moved carefully, his steps measured, his palm trailing the wall for balance as he descended the narrow stairs to the basement. The stone beneath his feet was worn smooth by generations of Thornleys doing exactly as he was doing now, carrying their fear like a private shame, convincing themselves it was reverence. At the bottom of the stairs, he paused.

The mirror had already been uncovered.

It stood where it always stood, tall and narrow, its glass faintly clouded with age. Not ornate. Not special. And yet his gaze slid away from it instinctively, as if looking too closely might invite something to look back.

Richard swallowed and reached into the pocket of his dressing gown. The bottle was small, stoppered, labelled in Edith Postlethwaite’s neat, precise hand. No questions had been asked. None ever were. She might have been a Postlethwaite, but he couldn’t deny she knew what she was doing.

He uncorked it with trembling fingers and tipped the liquid back in one careful swallow. Foxglove and Angel’s Trumpet. A dangerous combination, if misused. But he had measured it precisely. He always did. The tincture slid down his throat, bitter and floral, and within moments the familiar calm began to spread, his pulse slowing, the tightness in his chest loosening its grip. Better. Much better.

His hands steadied. The tremor left his fingers. The world felt slightly softened at the edges, as though someone had turned the volume down. It would be enough. It had to be.

He knelt within the chalk circle, the marks etched deep into the stone floor, renewed and retraced so many times they had become part of the room itself. Candles guttered softly at the cardinal points, their flames unnaturally still. He did not look at the mirror as he began to speak. The words came easily. They always had. This was not curiosity. This was inheritance.

The Thornleys had never been content with what they were given. Land, wealth, influence, these were foundations, not achievements. The ritual was older than the house, older than the village as it now stood. A bargain, struck long ago, renewed only when necessary.

Richard had waited as long as he could. But age was a thief. His body betrayed him daily now, his heart faltering, his strength waning, his name spoken with the careful patience reserved for relics. He would not go quietly. He would not fade.

The mirror darkened. At first, he thought his eyes were failing him. The glass seemed to ripple, as though submerged in deep water. His reflection wavered, stretched, then settled. It was him.

But not him.

The face staring back was older than his own reflection should have been. Skin slack, eyes sunken too deeply into their sockets. Veins stood out beneath the surface like blackened roots. Richard’s breath caught.

“No,” he whispered. “That’s not—”

The temperature dropped. The candles shuddered, their flames bending inward, drawn toward the mirror as if by a silent breath. His heart stumbled in his chest, a sharp, panicked skip that made stars dance at the edges of his vision. The tincture should have prevented that.

The mirror began to show him things he had not asked to see. Not memories. Not visions. Assessments. His reflection peeled away in layers, the man he had been, the man he pretended still to be, and beneath it all the truth: a body failing at every level. Organs worn thin. Bones brittle. A heart that could not sustain what he was demanding of it.

The presence arrived without ceremony. There was no roar. No explosion of light. Just the sensation of being noticed. Something cold and immense pressed against the ritual space, probing, testing, sliding through the cracks in the circle as though the chalk were nothing more than suggestion. Richard’s mouth went dry as the mirror reflected what the entity perceived.

Rot.

Age.

Waste.

“No,” he gasped, clawing at the edge of the circle. “I’ve prepared— I’ve always prepared—”

The entity lingered, examining him with a dispassionate patience that was somehow worse than rage. His lungs burned. He could not draw a full breath. The tincture weighed heavy in his veins now, a false calm that dulled his instincts when he needed them most. Displeasure rippled through the mirror. The glass fractured with a sound like ice cracking on a frozen pond. The candles went out all at once.

Richard screamed.

The ritual collapsed violently, chalk smearing beneath his scrambling hands, the air turning thick and noxious as the presence withdrew. Not bound. Not claimed. Merely… done with him.

And free.

He did not think. He did not reason. He ran. Up the stairs, slipping, gasping, his heart hammering wildly despite the poison meant to soothe it. The hall mirror showed nothing now, only a smear of movement behind him, something that did not reflect properly at all.

He burst through the front door into the night, lungs screaming, legs barely holding him upright as he fled down toward the village. Toward the church. Toward sanctuary. Behind him, Thornley House stood silent, its mirrors dark. And something unseen followed, displeased and searching for better ground.