Why do prayers spoken here echo back with different voices? What confession weighs so heavily that the booth door won't open? Which penitent still kneels at the altar though the pews appear empty? And why do the stained glass windows show scenes that change when no one is watching?
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I don’t like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
― Abraham Lincoln
The Chapel of Reflection stood at the crossroads where three villages once thrived, its weathered stone walls bearing witness to centuries of prayers---though perhaps not all were directed toward heaven. Father Michael had inherited the chapel from his predecessor, along with a brass key that opened no door he could find and a leather-bound journal filled with entries that made his hands tremble.
“The mirrors show truth,” read one faded entry. “Not what is, but what watches.” Father Michael had dismissed it as the ravings of an addled mind until he began conducting evening services alone. The chapel’s name, he discovered, wasn’t merely poetic---polished brass plates had been embedded in the walls decades ago, creating an endless network of reflections that seemed to move independently of those they should mirror.
Mrs. Holloway was the first to mention seeing additional figures in the reflective surfaces during prayer. “There were others kneeling behind me, Father, but when I turned, the pews were empty.” Soon others spoke of similar occurrences---shadowy congregants who appeared only in peripheral vision, their lips moving in silent prayer to something that cast no reflection of its own.
The journal’s final entries spoke of a revelation: that reflection was merely another form of dimension, a thin membrane between worlds. The chapel had been built as a conduit, its mirrors serving as windows for things that existed in the spaces between light and shadow. The previous priest had written, “They do not seek to enter our world---they seek to pull us into theirs, one reflection at a time.”
Father Michael discovered the truth on a moonless night when he found himself staring into the brass plates during his evening prayers. His reflection began to mouth words he hadn’t spoken, its eyes fixed on something standing directly behind him. When he spun around, the chapel was empty---but in every reflective surface, he could see himself turning back to face a congregation of figures that shouldn’t exist, all waiting patiently for him to join their eternal service.
