I own a bar in Old Harbor called The Rust Nail. It's a dive. I'm not pretending otherwise. We get dockworkers, scavengers, off-duty security, and the occasional runner looking for a quiet drink. The bar's been in the family for thirty years. It has a basement — Old Harbor buildings all do, built into the old seawall foundations. The basement connects, through a locked door I've never opened, to what I'm told is the upper Underworld.

Six months ago, my bartender quit. Said he couldn't work the late shifts anymore because of "the reflections." I thought he meant the mirror behind the bar — it's old, spotted, and in the right light it makes everyone look like they're underwater. I replaced the mirror. My next bartender quit after three weeks. Same reason. "The reflections."

I started working the late shifts myself. On the third night, at approximately 03:00, with the bar empty and me cleaning up, I looked at the new mirror behind the bar and saw someone standing behind me. I turned around. Nobody there. I looked at the mirror again. Still there — a figure, standing approximately two meters behind me, visible only in the reflection. It was shaped like a person. It was my height, my build, and it was wearing my clothes. But its face was wrong. It was my face, but smoothed out — no wrinkles, no scars, no expression. Like a mannequin wearing my skin.

I stared at it. It stared at me. For the first time in my life, I understood the word "uncanny" on a visceral level — this thing was almost me, close enough to be horrifying specifically because of how close it was. Then it smiled. I was not smiling. The reflection of me smiled while I stood frozen, and it raised one hand and waved. Slowly. Deliberately. Then it walked — in the reflection — toward the basement door. I watched in the mirror as it crossed the room, opened the reflected basement door, and descended out of sight.

I've seen them four more times since. Not always me — sometimes they look like other people. Customers. Regulars. People who've been in the bar recently. They only appear in reflective surfaces — the mirror, the polished bar top, the glass windows when it's dark outside. They are always almost right and always subtly wrong. They move independently. They watch us. And they always, eventually, walk toward the basement door and disappear downward.

I've had the mirror replaced twice more. The bartender mirror doesn't matter. I've seen them in puddles. In the chrome of a beer tap. In the screen of a turned-off terminal. Whatever the mirror things are, they aren't in the mirror. They're somewhere else, and reflective surfaces are just the window.