Supernatural
4 min
Don’t Say His Name
Vivian Lai
I'm not afraid of ghosts, malevolent spirits. The creepy, supernatural stories told around the campfire never freak me out like they do your average Joe. Yes, I believe that ghosts are real. Have I seen one?
Well, not until that one fateful night, not a year ago...
The ad said: Live-in caregiver needed. Quiet, isolated environment. Suitable for responsible teens. That last part should've warned me. Nobody hires teens for something easy.
Bellgrave Manor sat hunched on the cliffs, as if bracing for some storm that never came. The sky above it was always overcast, like the house absorbed too much light to let the sun through. My first morning there, I stepped onto the gravel path and felt the weight of the place settle on me like wet clothes.
The butler introduced himself as Mr. Carr, but it was his apprentice—Evan—who showed me around. He was my age, maybe a bit older, and wore a hand-me-down uniform that didn't quite fit his slender shoulders. His eyes were alert, like he was listening for something I couldn't hear.
"First rule of this house, Aliya: don't go near the third-floor washroom," he said without preamble.
"Why?"
He shrugged. "Because I don't."
That's when I noticed the smell—faint, but ever-present. Mildew. Wet stone. Like something left too long in the rain.
Mrs. Bellgrave was already half-gone when I arrived. A withering, ancient woman, with knobbly joints and wispy cotton-candy hair. She didn't speak. Didn't blink her cataract-ridden eyes most days. Her skin was paper. Her breath rattled like wind through reeds.
"She's been like this for years," Evan said. "Doctors say it's dementia, but..." He trailed off.
"But what?"
He glanced toward the ceiling. "I think it's something else. Forcing her to be silent."
I didn't believe him until the third night.
I woke to the sound of water dripping. It was slow, rhythmic. I thought I'd left the tap on. But when I checked, everything was dry. The sound wasn't coming from my room. It was coming from the hallway.
I followed it.
The halls twisted in ways that made no sense. Turned corners that shouldn't have existed. At the end of one hallway, I found a mirror—tall, black-framed, old enough to remember war. Someone had scratched symbols into the glass: spirals, slashes, a jagged eye.
In the reflection, I wasn't alone.
A boy stood behind me, pale and dripping. His mouth was open, and water streamed from it like a silent scream.
When I turned, he was gone.
-
The next morning, I found Evan in the laundry room, scrubbing something from his sleeves. His hands were trembling.
"You saw it," he said.
I nodded. As I said earlier, I'm not scared of ghosts. The encounter last night hadn't fazed me, rather. It was just... odd. "Who is he?"
Evan exhaled like he'd been holding his breath for days. "You ever heard of mirrorfolk?"
"No."
"My grandmother was a psychic—she studied these kinds of supernatural things. She used to say water remembers things. Faces. Names. That mirrors are just water, stilled and stretched. When someone dies violently—especially in water—their spirit can get caught. Especially if their name was never spoken."
That gave me pause. "You think this place is haunted?"
"I think it's something darker than haunted, Aliya."
-
We found the first diary in the attic. Bound in seal leather, with bone clasps.
It wasn't Mrs. Bellgrave's. It belonged to her great-grandmother, Mor. A healer. A whisperer of the old ways.
The boy in the basin is not mine, one entry read. He came from the well. The villagers fed him salt and locked the mirrors. But Bellgrave blood opened them again.
Another one warned: He waits in water. He learns names. If he knows yours, he takes your voice first. Then your skin. Then your bones.
The entries ended abruptly.
We later found out Mor drowned in the clawfoot tub on the third floor.
-
We stopped using mirrors. Covered them with sheets. Taped crosses made of willow to our doors, like Mor wrote in her journal. But the house fought back.
Taps turned on by themselves. The plumbing groaned like it was in pain. Once, I found wet footprints outside Mrs. Bellgrave's room—bare, child-sized, leading to the locked door.
That night, as I was tucking her in for bed, her eyes staring straight up at the ceiling with her mouth slightly ajar as if mid scream, she whispered.
It wasn't speech. It was a long, wet gargle of syllables, like someone speaking through a throat full of pond water. I leaned close.
And she said my name.
"Aliya."
"Yes?" I said, pressing my ear closer to her lips.
"It is not safe here."
-
Evan and I started sleeping in shifts.
I found more writing—scratched into the wood under my bed.
"THE NAME IS THE KEY
HE LIVES IN SILENCE
DON'T LOOK IN THE MIRROR."
But I did. Once. In the corridor mirror. Just for a second.
He was right behind me again.
But this time, he smiled.
-
Evan and I confronted Carr. He was older than he looked. He told us the truth in fragments, as if speaking it all at once would invite it.
"There was a son," he said. "Mrs. Bellgrave's only child. Drowned here. In the house. They never buried him. Too ashamed."
He looked down the hall, toward the sealed bathroom. "They left his name out of the obituaries. Out of the family tree. That's why he's still here."
Evan stared at him. "What was his name?"
Carr flinched. "Don't speak it."
-
That night, Evan found me in my room. He had Mor's journal open to an entry we'd already read, his brown eyes glittering. "Aliya, I found his name."
"What?" I said, glancing up from where I'd been drawing star charts by the window.
"It's here. Mor wrote it in code, but I figured it out."
"Carr said not to speak it," I warned him, swinging my feet over the edge of my chair.
But it was too late.
Evan said the name out loud, then. I begged him not to, but he thought it would free the spirit. End the haunting.
It didn't.
The house changed.
Walls bled water. Doors warped. Mirrors cracked from the inside.
And the boy came.
He didn't walk. He flowed—like a reflection sliding across the surface of a lake. His face was Evan's. Then mine. Then nobody's.
Evan grabbed my arm, shouted at me to run.
I turned once, saw the water pour into his mouth, down his throat.
Then he was gone.
I sealed the room shut and never opened the door again. Burned the willow. Scattered salt in every drain.
Mrs. Bellgrave died three days later. Smiling. She'd been waiting for it.
I left before they came to take her body.
Sometimes, when I pass a puddle or a mirror, I see something shift behind my reflection. Not always. But enough.
I don't say his name.
Evan is still listed as missing.
But I know better.
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