The Mirror's Eye

After my little aunt passed away, the family, following custom, covered her vanity mirror with a red cloth and stored it in the attic of the old house. My cousin, bold and unafraid of superstition, made a bet with his friends one night and snuck into the attic alone, pulling off the red cloth. The mirror only showed his own reflection; everything seemed normal. He mocked his friends for being scared, made a silly face at the mirror, casually threw the red cloth back on, and went downstairs to sleep. The next morning, the family found my cousin dead in his bed, his eyes wide open, his face frozen in that strange, exaggerated grin from the night before. Police arrived to investigate but found no signs of forced entry. The elderly coroner carefully examined the cousin's pupils with a magnifying glass. The coroner's expression instantly turned to extreme fear, and his hand trembled, dropping his tools. Someone leaned in to look— Reflected clearly in the cousin's pupils was the scene from the attic the previous night: when he covered the mirror with the red cloth, the 'him' in the mirror didn't turn away with him. Instead, the 'him' in the mirror was pressed against the glass, hands pushing hard against the red cloth, a cold smile on his face as he watched the cousin outside. And the real cousin... had actually been trapped inside the mirror all along.