Black family disappeared after leaving church in 1987.

18 years later, this is found in a junkyard.

On a blinding July afternoon in 2005, Jasper Clay, new owner of Dupri Salvage and Scrap outside Shriveveport, dragged a rust choked 1977 Ford LTD Country Squire from the deepest corner of his lot.

Nothing about the wagon matched the intake books.

No plates, no vin, no reason to be there at all.

It had squatted so long the tires sank into clay like sunken gravestones.

The driver’s door groaned open, and a scent wafted out.

Not gasoline, not rot, something sweeter, like half-burnt incense.

On the passenger seat, untouched, beneath a skin of mildew, lay a black leather Bible.

Gold letters still gleamed Msia Delane.

Jasper wiped sweat, then froze.

20 mi south, the name Delane belonged to a file cops whispered about a file everyone else had long stopped praying over.

July 12th, 1987.

Marvin and Loretta, Dellay and their children, Jasmine 10 and Marcus 7, vanish after Sunday service at Midway Baptist.

Car never found, case cold.

18 dead silent years until a forgotten station wagon blinked back into daylight.

Like tales of southern gothic hit.

Save so you don’t lose track of this thread.

What happens next twist deeper than cypress roots.

Step back to summer 87.

Cado Parish alive with sicatas and choir music.

The delaines were the family everyone trusted with an extra house key.

Marvin tall steel mill foreman by weak wedding piano.

Sideman by weekend.

Loretta, teacher’s aid, who pressed every church bulletin flat and filed them chronologically.

Jasmine, gap tooth storyteller, queen of flashlight ghost tales.

Marcus still swapped his Rs for W’s shadowing his sister everywhere.

They drove one car, this very country squire wood paneling, peeling yet polished every Saturday night.

On July 12th, they parked under the peekon tree by Midway.

Baptist exchanged pleasantries with Pastor Mccclure, promised Loretta’s sister they’d swing by that afternoon with peach cobbler and rolled west onto Highway 19.

Peon shells still crunched under tires when the world simply lost them.

Helicopters combed Bayou’s volunteers poked through roadside ditches and billboards, begged, “Bring our babies home.” “Nothing like the car got peeled off the earth,” a tired deputy muttered.

By Thanksgiving, the flyers curled in humidity and the station wagon became folklore until Jasper’s crowbar made the lock pop.

In 2005, Shreveport PY reopened the file, now led by Detective Ellen Harrow, a methodical career cop who believed in tire prints, not curses.

Evidence hall from the wagon.

The Bible pages stuck but intact.

A children’s Bible with Marcus D scrolled in blue crayon behind the locked rear seat.

An empty high sea juice box.

A cheap cassette recorder labeled simply July 12th.

Play button clicked.

Tape hissed.

Then the faint breathing of a child Jasmine whispering, “Don’t go out.” Daddy said, “Stay hidden.” Next, a metallic scrape, slow, deliberate, then static.

Harrow sent the audio to the state lab.

Beneath the noise, a second frequency pulse like Morse, but wasn’t Morse.

A Latin scholar later teased out two words, non-read Ibis, you will not return.

Inside the glove box, wedged behind cracked vinyl forensics, found a palmized notebook.

Loretta’s handwriting began mundane Jasmine’s dentist, Marcus’ spelling test.

But 5 days before they vanished, the entry shifted July 7th.

Jasmine saw the white shimmer again by the treeine.

Marvin says, “Dreams.” July 9th.

I saw it, too, like heat ripple at night.

Didn’t move.

Just waited.

July 11th.

Jasmine asked if God can find us if we’re not on a map.

I said, “Yes, I hope that wasn’t a lie.” Harrow highlighted treeine and shimmer.

Both terms would surface again in statements most folks were afraid to put on paper.

Midway Baptist still stands.

Tin roof, sagging pews, choir loft that smells of wasp nests.

The new preacher shrugged at old rumors, but an elderly janitor remembered a chained logging road behind the property long grown over.

Harrow’s team cut through honeysuckle and found a rotted post where a sign once hung.

Half buried beside it lay a cracked hand mirror stamped with a Sunday school sticker dated July 87.

tilted just right, sunlight bent along its edge, making the air behind her ripple like heatwave at night.

She lowered the glass.

The shimmer vanished, raised it again.

There it was, a boundary you could only see by reflection.

The deeper Detective Ellen Harrow dug, the more Louisiana itself seemed to lean in, as if the humidity carried half-heard testimonies.

James Le Moine had vacuumed Midway Baptist isles for 40 years and feared two things termites in the himynelss and talking to police.

Harrow coaxed him with chory coffee.

Saw the Dellay wagon locked tight.

He rasped.

Passenger door slammed without a body behind it.

Heard a child say, “Don’t.” Figured it was grief playing jokes on an old black janitor.

So I kept my mop moving.

He pointed her to a dust choked closet behind the baptismal font.

There, framed by mildew, hung a projection screen she’d missed on her first sweep.

Church purchase orders from 87 listed folding chairs, lemonade powder hymn pamphlets, no AV gear, yet rusted bolts in the ceiling match the footprint of a 16 mm film unit.

Harrow checked regional repair logs.

One invoice from April 9th, 1987.

Install mirrored split projection system.

Youth hall client independent ministry paid cash.

Signed by a traveling technician, Rafford Elgen.

When she called the number on file, an elderly voice whispered, “I already told her everything once.

Don’t ask me to watch that film again.” And hung up.

State lab tech Franklin Deont ran the July 12th tape backward at half speed.

Under Jasmine’s warning, a woman’s voice surfaced velvet calm.

One eye sees, two eyes stay, three eyes serve.

Audio spikes blew a speaker cone.

The lab’s fluorescent lights fluttered until the tape stopped spinning.

Dumont quit two days later, citing persistent dreams of windows that looked back.

Loretta’s bulletin collection listed a guest lecture for July 12th, Sister Eleanor, the nature of reflection and faith.

Midway elders swore no nun ever spoke there.

Harrow fed the name through every diosis and archive in the Gulf South.

Zero hits except a blurry 1984 church directory from St.

Helena Parish.

In the back row, a scarf wrapped woman gazed downward.

Someone had penciled beside her headshot mirror.

Lady, never blinked.

Enhancing the background revealed a handheld mirror catching two children’s reflections.

kids who were not in the posed photo.

Le Moine’s logging road looked more like an animal trail now.

20 yards in Harrow’s compass spun lazy circles magnetic interference.

Her cell flash caught a spiral scorch mark in the grass long cooled.

A plastic keychain lay half buried a piano shape branded Marvin’s music est2.

She pocketed it, ignoring the prickle at her spine that she just crossed a line the map didn’t show.

Back at the salvage yard, Jasper unearthed a leather diary from the previous owner, Harold Dupri.

March 1992, entry car came back.

No rust this time.

Seat impressions fresh.

Heard whispering through tail light chrome.

April 1993.

Saw her reflection smiling in the rear glass.

told me, “Don’t move the wagon again.” May 1994, car gone.

But I still hear the kids in the side view.

They loop.

Dri 1999 throat cancer.

The wagon, however, had not stayed gone for good.

A forgotten 1994 Arkansas Ranger report found in a microfich drawer described a warm empty station wagon off Talamina Scenic Drive.

Same cracked tail light as the Dellay car.

Bible on dash ribbon fluttering through windows were shut.

Ranger left to fetch tools.

On return, the vehicle had vanished gravel undisturbed.

A pattern emerged every 3 to four years.

The wagon surfaced near a church or state park, always around midsummer, always accompanied by mirrors or tapes.

Families sometimes disappeared in its wake.

Harrow pinned a neon index card over her evidence board.

One, reflection safe.

Two, stay put.

Three, gone for good.

Who wrote the rules? Whoever Sister Elellaner served or was.

July 1st, 2006.

The precinct switchboard lit up.

Call traced to a pay phone gutted since the ‘9s.

Static.

Miss Detective.

A child listed Rs soft like Marcus Delains.

You see her yet? Harrow froze.

Where are you? Click.

She returned to midway at dusk with a handheld mirror angled toward the woods.

Heat rippled forming that same white shimmer.

Within it, a silhouette sharpened a female figure head veiled hands folded.

Harrow’s pulse hammered.

She blinked only once, but when her eyelids lifted, the figure was closer edges strobing like bad tape.

The mirror cracked in her grip.

She dropped it, banishing the image, and heard distinct immediate the slam of an unseen car door.

July 2nd, 2007.

Shriveport air clings to detective Ellen Harrow like wet gauze.

Her incident board fills the cramped squad archive.

Neon cards shards of cracked glass polaroids whose subjects appear only in reflection.

At its center, an equation.

1987 + 20 2007 111:45 a.m.

12:06 p.m.

Pike and Tree Logging Road.

She circles the time span 18 minutes.

That’s all the Dellay family needed to drive out of recorded existence.

And July 12th is 10 days away.

The retired audiovisisual tech finally agrees to talk.

Harrow meets him at a sagging diner in Nachez.

Elgen’s fingers tremor as they cradle black coffee.

Elgen that projector rig at midway.

It wasn’t built to show movies.

It was built to multiply them.

Harrow multiply.

How Elgen 3 mirrors at 45 wardro angled.

So the same frame appears in triplicate.

Customer insisted she must be visible in more than one place at once.

Paid me extra to etch scripture on the glass edges.

Psalm 27:1.

He slides a photocopy of the spec sheet across for Micah.

Handwritten note at bottom.

E Wells to collect reels 7 to 10.

Signing initials match sister Eleanor.

Harrow thanks him.

Elgen refuses payment but leaves a final warning.

If you stand between her and a mirror, you’re part of the picture.

Back at Baton Rouge, Professor Camille Vu filters the July 12th tape through algorithmic separation.

Underneath Latin below Jasmine Marcus and the metal scrape, a fourth ultra low register emerges a woman articulating syllables stretched like taffy claustrom vet claustrom servat.

The enclosure sees the enclosure keeps.

Camille’s headset bursts with feedback so hot it welds plastic.

She leaves the lab with secondderee burns across her ears, mumbling one phrase, “The window walked.” Days later, journalist Theo Klene slides an envelope under Harrow’s door.

Inside glossy four or six print of the Midway parking lot, timestamped 0704 07411.

The Dellay station wagon is there, but something defies optics.

The shadow of the pecan tree lies on the wrong side of the car against the sun’s angle.

When Harrow blinks, the shadow creeps closer to the photographers’s point of view.

She clamps the photo beneath glass.

The shadow freezes.

She decides to bring the picture to climate controlled evidence.

On route, the frame fogs from the inside.

Harrow drafts a memo to the task force rookies.

One, no reflective surfaces on site after July 10th.

Two, body cams taped over.

Use matte screens only.

Three, if you hear a child whisper, “Don’t close your eyes once, never twice.” The captain signs off, though he thinks she’s lost in southern ghost stories.

Still, he triples patrol units near Midway for the anniversary.

July 8th, Jasper phones at 3:00 a.m.

The wagons back, windows clean, driver side mirror fogging and unfogging like it’s breathing.

Swad arrives 40 minutes later, finds nothing but tire impressions and a cracked cassette deck on the dirt.

The tape inside plays only cicada song and a rhythmic click.

60 beats per minute human resting heart.

They leave.

At sunrise, Jasper texts a photo.

Impressions gone, but side view mirror imprint remains in the dust like a fossil.

July 9th, Harrow and Sergeant Monroe stake out the youth hall.

They sandbag doors, drape blankets over glass at Iro Zoro 43.

Generator dies in the dark.

Projector woron though its plug hangs loose.

A beam cuts through cloth lands on the opposite wall.

Flickering image of the station wagon idling under starlight.

Inside the reflection, Marvin Delane turns the wheel as if searching for a parking space that exists offcreen.

Loretta clutches children.

Jasmine mouths the syllables.

Hide.

Monroe whispers.

They should smash the projector.

Harrow stops him.

Remember rule two.

Two eyes.

Stay.

Smash the mirror and they might release whatever’s half present.

They wait until tape burns out.

Beam dies.

The blankets resolidify into mere cloth.

Hook checkpoint.

If this is the first time you’ve heard about a projector that rolls film, no one loaded tap bookmark, trust me, you’ll need directions back.

Historical aerials showed a sky blue house teleporting across parishes in archived photos.

At 13:15 July 10th, deputies on Hawaii 165 radio and abandoned shotgun shack that matches the house.

Fresh paint, no dust.

Harrow races there.

Within furniture is staged like an open house.

In every window sits a propped mirror angled inward.

On the kitchen table a tin lunchbox hums.

She unlatches it inside.

Plays an endless loop on a micro cassette.

Child’s voice.

If you see her in three windows, close one.

A sheet of polaroids is taped to the fridge tptics of the delaines inside the station wagon.

Each frame jittered further away like a photocopy losing ink.

Harrow steps outside to radio the lab.

When she turns back, the house’s sighting has shifted to beige.

By the time backup arrives, it’s a foundation slab surrounded by nails.

Harrow re-reviews all 911 logs and witness watches.

Every malfunctioned clock froze at 12:06 p.m.

Marcus’ broken Timex, the Rers dash cam.

Loretta’s dove-shaped pendant watch pulled from evidence.

They all lock on 12:06.

Why? 6 minutes past the last confirmed sighting.

What happens between 11:45 and 12:06? A transit window.

She scrolls a theory.

12 surro 1206 mirrorbound travel time.

Night before the anniversary, Harrow fits the youth hall with motion sensors.

At 2322, an alert pings.

She streams the cam feed.

Nothing obvious yet.

Sensors show movement.

Another ping closer.

She flips the lens to infrared.

Still zilch.

Then she remembers.

No direct line of sight.

She grabs a shaving mirror, angles it toward the center aisle.

There in phosphor green stands a woman in white scarf hands folded.

She lifts her head, one eye visible.

Harrow’s reflex dropped the mirror.

She fights it, recalling rule.

Nur one, one eye safe.

Instead, she steps sideways, forcing the reflection to break line.

The figure pixelates, then pulls backward into a pin prick before vanishing entirely.

Sensors go quiet.

She has interrupted the approach.

On the floor, she finds a Sunday school attendance card from 1987.

Elellaner W signed in perfect inc.

Heat index 104 degra wars.

Local media camp across the gravel lot.

Captain orders perimeters.

Harrow sits alone in her sedan mirror taped over staring at the logging trail.

At 11:43, a shimmering heatwave curls where asphalt meets pine needles.

11:45 wind kicks up.

Cicada’s cut out.

11:56.

Captain’s radioatic forms.

Half words, eyes serve.

120.

Squad dash cams glitch freeze.

Harrow’s watch ticks on.

She steals herself.

Holds a single compact mirror.

Chest high angled at the trail.

123 wagon materializes like film double exposed onto reality.

Chrome immaculate.

Engine silent.

No driver visible.

Reflection shows the family seated eyes, closed hands intertwined.

12:04.

A second shimmer spawns right of the first.

Now wagon appears duplicated, but in the mirror only the first copy holds the family.

Second holds sister Ellaner.

Eyes milky smile slight.

Two reflections.

Harrow feels gravity tug her feet.

Rule states stay.

But if a third appears, the loop completes family lost again.

12:05 Harrow angles the mirror, aligning Eleanor’s reflection to overlay the family’s forcing two images into one.

Shimmer flickers sound like film melting.

She keeps her eye locked, refuses to blink twice.

Sweat rivers down her spine.

12:06.

Both wagons snap into one physical car.

Doors unlock kachchunk.

Air bursts outward like a pressure cabin decompressing.

The Delaines gasp alive.

Same age they vanish.

Time has bruised but not aged them.

Sister Elellaner is nowhere.

The mirror Harrow holds now shows only peon leaves.

Mirrors across police cruisers spider crack simultaneously.

Clocks resume.

Jasmine’s first words in 20 years.

You found the angle.

Paramedics assess mild dehydration, sunlight sensitivity.

Marvin mutters Latin in sleep.

Loretta clings to her church bulletin dated July 12th, 1987 as crisp as if printed this morning.

Marcus keeps eyes closed, asks if the tree is still shining.

Officers photograph everything.

Every image captures Harrow twice, one crystal clear, one faint overlay offset by half an inch.

Forensics later delete the doubles.

The files restore themselves overnight.

Search grid yields no footprints beyond the logging trench.

The cracked mirror in Harrow’s hand holds a new etching on its backing.

Three eyes closed, door stays closed.

Harrow stores it in leadlined evidence.

By dawn of July 13th, every network van in Kado Parish had jammed the gravel lot.

Reporters asked the same breathless question.

Where have they been for 20 years? Marvin blinked at microphones like they were foreign insects.

Loretta shielded her face with July 12th, 1987’s bullet in its ink, somehow still wet.

Sheriff’s deputies erected caution tape that looked more symbolic than functional curiosity can pass through plastic just fine.

Inside the mobile command tent, Harrow drafted a statement.

Family located investigation ongoing no comment on supernatural speculation.

Public information officer cut half the words, added a smile, and fed it to the cameras.

Word supernatural never reached prime time, but the rumor mill already used stronger vocabulary.

At WK Piermont Hospital, blood panels crashed the lab’s limb software.

Timestamps on samples kept resetting to 1206 or zero.

Marvin’s red cell morphology matched a man half his age.

Jasmine and Marcus displayed mild phototohobia, but no vitamin D deficit you’d expect from decades of darkness.

Loretta’s EKG printed with reverse polarity lead to reading upside down waves that spelled non red ibis if you trace them like cursive.

Text blamed machine error.

Machines blamed input error.

Harrow blamed mirrors.

Someone had wheeled too close to the trauma bay.

Evidence lockers filled with paradox.

A wagon older than the rust on its frame cassette loops that erase new recordings when placed beside them.

Mirrors wrapped in lead foil still fogging with invisible breath.

The state attorney demanded linear causality.

Harrow sent back a single sentence memo.

The line is a circle.

He scheduled her for a psychiatric fitness review.

The rescue triggered memory quakes across the deep south.

In Meridian, Mississippi, an elderly usher recalled seeing the Reed family vanish in 1984 and produced a Polaroid showing their sedan behind Midway.

Even though records said they attended a different church 120 mi east, park ranger Jacob Terrell mailed his resignation letter.

Every reflective surface at Wittita trail head now showed the Dellay’s wagon idling where no car existed.

A pattern analyst charted the sightings on a state map.

Pins formed a lazy spiral converging on Shreveport radius, shrinking every cycle.

The next inward loop by her math would land sometime summer 2011.

July 17th, a wildlife drone captured aerial footage of a skyb blueue shotgun house sitting in a soybean field outside Nachio.

Farmers swore no structure existed at dawn.

Deputies kicked the door inside.

Only mirrors angled inward around a single dining room chair.

On the seat, a children’s Bible opened to Matthew 18.

Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Someone had underlined three until the page tore.

A cassette softly played from the closet.

Serena Gospel humming layered under projector clicks.

When a deputy shut the door, the house lost color shingles, bleaching to gray before his eyes.

By sundown, the building had slumped into unpainted studs foundation dated mid 1950s, according to tax records that didn’t exist that morning.

The boy, now technically 27, but mentally paused at 7, rarely opened his eyes.

On July 20th, he whispered to Harrow, “She still wants second sight.

One is safe.

Two is stay.” She asked where he learned the rhyme.

He said, “Not learned, remembered.” Windows talked inside the car.

Windows said we were in too many places, so they folded us.

That night, the hospital windows fogged from within.

Security footage later showed condensation spelling se before wipe cleaning itself.

Harrow convened the delanes in a mirrorless room, tin foil over outlets, monitors off.

She laid out the pattern map, the projected inward spiral.

Whatever held you can retighten, she said.

You can vanish again or we expose every artifact to public eyes.

More witnesses might pin it down.

Loretta clutched her bulletin.

“God grants free will does it?” Marvin answered by placing his wedding band on the table.

“The inscription, once smooth, now bore a new engraving, one eye closed.

Metal fatigue or warning, no jeweler could tell.

Jasmine spoke for them all.

We will not be folded again.

Decision turn seance into spotlight.

Host a service at Midway Baptist July 26th.

Invite press scholars congregation pack the chapel with more retinas than any mirror maze could replicate.

Flood the system break the loop.

County workers felled the pecan treewood sent to a kiln so no reflective sap could seep.

Every pew received matte black fabric.

Ushers confiscated phones, lipstick mirrors, polished shoes.

Stor the youth hall projector was dismantled under lead aprons.

its reels stored offsite in a salt dome used for natural gas reserves.

Harrow rehearsed her team eyes forward.

Blink once when fear hits, never twice.

The night before the service, Sister Elellaner’s name reappeared on the felt announcement board.

White plastic letters no custodian admitted touching.

They left it, deleting names had never worked before.

July 26th, 2007 fell on a sweltering Sunday thick with dragonfly buzz and hymbook must.

By dawn, Midway Baptists gravel lot looked like a county fair for skeptics vans from CNN and TBN anthropology grad students scribbling in Moleskins two truckloads of folding chairs on loan from the Pentecostal tabernacle down the road.

Sheriff’s deputies in sunbleleached cowboy hats checked visitors at a plywood table.

A handlettered sign read, “Welcome.” No cameras, no glass, no mirrors, no polished metal.

The old ladies of the congregation complained they had to leave their compact powders in a box by the door.

But curiosity trumped vanity.

They filed inside waving paper fans printed with Psalm 27:1.

Ironically, the very verse Rafford Elgen once etched on forbidden projection mirrors.

Every reflective surface had been tackled like a sin baptismal rail, sanded down to dull wood chrome, offering plates swapped for rough clay bowls.

New light bulbs housed in cheesecloth sleeves.

A maintenance crew sprayed silicone haze on the piano’s lacquer so Marvin could still play without catching glare.

Harrow’s command center operated from the choir loft.

30 officers rotated posts, each armed not with sidearms, but with black duct tape rolls in case some rogue shiny thing flashed.

She herself wore goggles coated with autotint film that allowed forward vision but blurred her peripheral.

Blink once, breathe, repeat.

At precisely 11:30, the Delane family stepped through the narthx.

Marvin’s suit, borrowed from Jasper, hung stiff on shoulders that hadn’t aged yet carried two decades weight.

Loretta wore her 1987 Sunday dress, the dusty rose one, salvaged from the wagon wardrobe seams, led out by a nurse so she could breathe.

Jasmine gap still in her smile.

Though braces were planned, clasped Marcus’ hand.

The boy kept his eyes mostly shut, opening once every dozen steps like a camera shutter, trying a slow exposure.

The congregation rose on instinct.

Some clapped others, crossed themselves, unusual for Baptists, but desperate times borrow neighboring rituals.

A few reporters wept quietly.

Even cynics respect a family reunion.

Yet when the delaines reached the front pew, they did not sit.

Marvin walked to the deis, rested fingertips on the clay offering bowl, and spoke in the firm piano baritone that used to guide weddings.

Before we begin, we must testify to where we were.

The HVAC hummed, cicas outside slowed their rhythm, as if lending silence.

We were in the wagon, Loretta continued voice, fragile but certain, but the wagon was nowhere.

Time inside ran like a tape start scratch rewind.

And outside, a lady in white asked us over and over to look back.

We learned not to.

Harrow checked her watch 11:44 a.m.

the minute the delays last confirmed leaving church in 87.

She radioed Monroe to secure the west door.

Heat shimmerred at the stained glass windows, even though friends on scaffolds had painted them with dull varnish.

No direct reflection pathed into the room, yet Harrow sensed pressure like water rising behind a dam.

Pastor Green, a broad-shouldered man who’d inherited midway after Mccclure’s death, opened to Psalm 27, and read the first line.

The microphone checked twice that morning, screeched feedback so sharp people clapped hands to ears.

When it settled, Green’s voice came through, doubled an echo, half a beat late.

The room’s acoustics were borrowed.

Another chapel’s cough drops and page turns over overlapped their own.

Marcus squeezed Jasmine’s arm.

She’s close, he whispered.

Jasmine lifted her paper fan, covering both their faces as though shielding from sun.

At noon, a procession of cicas outside fell dead silent.

Captain Douglas signaled perimeter all clear, but his voice on radio phazed like am skipping under lightning.

Harrow’s goggles dimmed unbidden light sensors frying.

She removed them one blink and surveyed the congregation.

Every person’s shadow was correct except the deanes.

Their outlines appeared faintly misaligned, as if hung from puppet strings an inch behind their bodies, and in the dull glaze of the siliconecoated piano panel, Harrow caught a glimpse of an extra silhouette.

A seated woman veiled hands folded, first reflection, one eye safe, she reminded herself, heart hammered.

She tore medical tape from her wrist and slapped it over the panel.

The phantom winked out.

Loretta straightened as if relieved from sudden nausea.

Deputy Suarez radioed from the logging trail.

Ma’am, we got mirrorhouse debris popping up blue sighting pieces swirling in wind, then gone.

His voice cracked, grounds cracking in a spiral.

Harrow ordered him back, but static swallowed his answer.

She archived the channel.

Fear was a contagion.

Pastor Green abandoned his notes and went full oldtime revival improvisation voice thick as river clay.

Some storms you don’t rebuke, you outshine.

If reflections the snare be too bright for it, he invited the choir stripped of sequined robes to hum blessed assurance in low contrast linen.

The notes layered into a drone, drowning whispers tickling ear canals.

Marvin took the matte piano fingers, rolling gospel cords dusty from two silent decades.

Keys clacked, but strings rang dull.

Harrow had stuffed felt between hammers.

Yet the music warmed the sanctuary.

Jasmine mouthed every lyric, though she hadn’t sung them since age 10.

Visitors recorded audio sound.

Only no video per agreed rules.

Faith and protocol braided tight.

Second reflection arrived without warning.

Mrs.

Harrove 78 fanned herself with a foil lined medicine list she’d sneaked inside.

Sunbeam hit the foil, rebounded onto the clay bowl, revealing in its curve the mirror lady seated three pews behind.

Harrow sprinted, yanked the foil sheet, and crumpled it.

Too late the figure had a foothold.

Rule two, two reflections stay.

Congregation froze.

Room temperature plunged, condensing breath clouds in July heat.

The lady’s outline sharpened in the dusty haze.

White scarf dress pressed as if ironed by moonlight.

12 AO520.

Harrow counted heartbeats.

1 minute until the loop hour.

She had prepared for this a large blackout drape rigged to fall via stage counterweights.

She yanked the cord.

Fabric cascaded over congregation extinguishing stray glints.

Darkness swallowed the lady’s image except one location still glowed beneath the peak and wood stump space where the tree had stood.

Marcus screamed third eye.

The wagon manifested a yard outside the open church doors.

Chrome immaculate windows black.

The reflection count threatened to hit three.

Harrow barked orders flood lights.

Deputies powered H hallogen rigs painted black but bright enough to blast silhouettes into featureless halos making mirrors meaningless.

Dr.

Vu from LSU wearing welding goggles aimed an experimental strobe generator set to random frequencies.

Flashes jittered through the sanctuary like lightning confused white scarf figure flickered body stuttering between frames.

On the third pulse, she fractured, not faded, splintering into shards of light that skittered across floorboards like mercury droplets seeking cracks.

Each droplet hit a matte surface sizzled, turned to soot.

Outside, chromed wagon paint oxidizing before everyone’s eyes.

Pristine paneling blistered, tires flattened, windshield spiderweb.

The object could not sustain a form without reflective feed.

12:06 sharp.

Every watch in the room ticked once, then kept ticking normally.

People erupted, not applause, more a collective exhale.

Mirrors taped pew cushions smoldered where soot droplets landed, but no one disappeared.

Fire crews soaked the building.

Smoke alarms belatedly shrilled.

A forensic sweep located 327 tiny glass beads.

Lady fragments swept into leadline jars.

Several attendees fainted from heat and fear.

Local news headlined, “Deliverance at midway faith service ends.

Decades long phantom pattern.” Online forums were harsher mass hysteria sonic weapon hoax deep fake audio.

Yet cell recordings proved something else.

At the climax, every microphone captured a voice not present on site, whispering Latin backward.

Spectrogram arrays revealed three peaks merging into one.

then flatlining exactly when the wagon aged a lifetime.

Back at the safe house, Loretta opened her 1987 bulletin.

Beneath Psalm 27, a fresh note bled through as if ink still wet.

One eye closed, doorbred.

Two eyes open, path marred.

Three eyes seeing world jarred, zero eyes free.

She set the paper a flame in a metal sink.

Smoke curled without reflection.

Marvin to tour universities explaining his temporal hypoxia blood NIH already sent a grant proposal.

Jasmine writing a memoir titled hide until noon.

Marcus enrolled in adult literacy classes.

Teacher insists dim light helps him focus.

Midway Baptist voted to replace stained glass with roughcut cedar planks.

Pastor Green calls it lowluster worship.

Harrow petitioned for a statewide ban on unattended mirrors in rural churches.

Half joking, half not.

The loop appears broken, the wagon reduced to inert rust in a Department of Energy vault.

Yet every July since Harrow wakes at 11:45 a.m.

unconsciously and keeps one eye closed until 12:07 just in case.

The wagon sleeps in a federal warehouse now stripped of chrome windows sprayed with black epoxy.

monthly Ellen Harrow stands on the graded catwalk while technicians scan for EM spikes.

Nothing until she blinks.

In that single lid darkness, she hears the faint ca chunk of a door locking from inside.

Eyes open silence again.

The scientists log background as psychoggenic artifact, but they keep a medic nearby anyway.

Across the south, aftershocks surface like minnows.

A church camp in Meridian reports a dining hall window fogging every day at 12:06.

Campers swear they smell high sea.

In Jasper’s scrapyard, a mirror fragment left outside overnight has grown a spiderweb of silver veins.

Each strand reflecting a different weather.

Ranger Terrell retired males harrow a grainy trail cam.

Still between two pines stands the blue shotgun house.

Only this time the paint is peeling off as though reality itself is trying to forget the color.

The Delaines live quietly under new names in Baton Rouge, far from pews and polished glass.

Marvin tunes pianos with the lights low.

Loretta volunteers at a library that replaced all glossy laminates with cloth covers.

Jasmine’s memoir, Hide Until Noon, hits small press shelves.

Appendix listing rules for safe reflection.

Marcus, a beginner carpenter, builds frames for canvases, never mirrors.

July 12th, 2009.

Exactly two years post deliverance, Harrow receives an unmarked envelope.

Inside a Polaroid of Midway’s empty sanctuary, no pews, no pulpit, only three hand mirrors propped on the floor facing inward.

On the back, neat block letters read, “One eye closed is mercy.” The rest of them are still looking.

Harrow locks the photo in a lightless safe.

But at night, she swears she hears the shutter click again, as if the camera that took it is still in the room, still hungry for angles.

The loop is broken, yet its pieces remain scattered like glass in tall grass, waiting for someone careless to gather them into a circle again.

If ever you walk a rural road near noon and see a car with no driver, keep your gaze forward and your mirrors folded.

Some windows only open one