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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MadienMotherCrone on 2026-08-19 03:27:47+00:00.
The kids in my town all talk about the “mirror tunnel.” I mean, hell when I was growing up we used to call it the ‘echo tunnel’. Every generation had a different name for it and everyone that goes to Pine Shade Elementary goes into the tunnel. It’s a right of passage, an urban legend that each generation changes to their own interpretations of the story.
You see the mirror tunnel is just that it’s a mirror. The kids say that when you crawl into the tunnel underneath the school, that you’ll see something down there. I can barely remember what it was like to be five and I don’t recall seeing my doppelgänger. But the kids still talk about it and swear that it’s actually real. Every kid I talk to tells me a different story, but one thing in the story always remains the same, a constant point that links everything.
They always see themselves down there, a little different but it’s always them. The girls say sometimes they see themselves, and they might have a different tooth missing or they have a bow in their hair. Adults always laugh it off as some elaborate joke that only children could think of. A whole different world down there, where your doppelgänger lives? That must be a joke, right?
I mean surely if there was an alternate world underneath of the elementary school. By now one of the children would have brought back the other version of themselves and we the adults would then have a completely different problem on our hands, right?
That’s what I thought until now.
I don’t work at the elementary school, but I do have a daughter that goes there. She’s a sweet girl, and I’ve loved her from the minute that I laid eyes on her. She was my baby girl and I knew in that moment I would do anything for her. I know some parents say that they’d do anything for their children, and they think they mean it. When she had been diagnosed, I had cried and cried. My husband had tried to console me, that we’d get her all the care she needed. But that was the first night that I mourned my daughter. Mourned the idea of her not growing up and getting older. Never getting to see her go to college, find someone that made her smile or be there for her first child.
That was also the night I decided that we needed to move out of the city and back home. Back to the town that I had grown up in. It was a small town, big still big, if you know what I mean. Everyone knows everyone and it’s a close community. My mother also still lived there and I could work remote, my husband could do the same so we left the hustle and bustle of the city. Maybe, the change of environment would help her get better. At that point I just wanted my baby to be comfortable.
My daughter was happy to move. She was excited to be near GeGe. We’d moved during the start of second grade, but she was able to make the adjustment easy enough.
“Mom,” she had come bounding up to me one afternoon. Her cornflower hair wild as she bounced foot to foot. “I made friends!” Her smile had been radiant. It had been over a month since we moved there but she had finally settled in.
The town was just as I remembered it, even though it was decently sized it was still small town vibe. Everyone knew everyone. Mom complained that people acted different than I remembered. She insisted that something was going on in the town. I patiently agreed with her, and mentally noted that I should probably take her along to the next doctor’s visit. It had probably been a while since she had gotten a check up. Her age was probably starting to catch up to her. Plus, most folks commented that they hadn’t seen her inside town for a couple years now.
“She stopped coming about three years ago,” the cashier, an older lady probably around mom’s age, Rhonda had explained. “Now she calls over and we pack her groceries and James delivers them to her.” She pointed towards a man who looked vaguely familiar.
I’d thanked for her then pushed my cart towards the man that was at the customer service counter. The closer I got to him the more the feeling of knowing him gnawed at my mind. He had short dark hair, a straight toothed smile that was pearly white, and a scar that ran down his right cheek. He looked up from the word search that he was working on and met my eyes. The iris were a warm brown, and he blinked slowly at me. It was reminiscent of a cat that was just waking up.
“If it isn’t freckles,” he said. I rolled my eyes at the nickname, I’d gone away for the summer and came back covered in freckles from being out in the sun. Children always come up with the meanest nicknames, picking out that single flaw that makes you feel small. Now as I stand here as an adult,I find that the nickname once anxiety and panic inducing. Instead, it feels like a waypoint back into an old fond memory.
“Very original Jimmy,” I said snorting. He smiled bashfully, then he quickly puts down the pencil in his hand and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Yeah, I go by James now, it’s more Professional,” he said. I nodded my head in agreement. It seems that I wasn’t the only one that had grown up.
“I’d heard you moved back to town, you’re married and have a kid. We’ve all grown up haven’t we freckles?”
“It feels just like yesterday we were rough housing on the playground doesn’t it. Don’t call me freckles, it was a mean nickname even if it was true.”
“My bad, Claire,” he quickly said. Holding his hands up in mock surrender. I smiled he was the same old jokester that I remember.
“So you’re the one that’s been delivering stuff to my Mom?” I asked.
“Yeah, I have been for a while. I always liked your Mom. She made the best cupcakes. But why do you ask?”
“I was just curious, has she been seeming okay to you?”
“What do you mean? She’s gotten maybe a little more paranoid.” His face wrinkled in confusion. “Why is there something wrong with her? I just saw her last week and she seemed fine.” His barrage of questions was sweet and I reached out and patted his arm.
“Mom’s doing just fine, I just see her more often and I wanted to make sure she’s keeps up with her health. She’s getting older and I want to make sure she comfortable.”
After than he visibly relaxed and I carried on with the small talk and enjoy the comfortable conversation, before excusing myself and heading home. But the entire way home something itched at my brain as if I was forgotten something important. I couldn’t dwell on it because Tera was waiting for me, and we had to get her to chemo.
The chemo was working, but her cancer was severe. Medication was helping, but it wasn’t completely destroying it. I’d choked back my tears and we’d gotten ice cream on the way home. She’d gotten mint chocolate chip ice cream in a waffle cone, her favorite. That night I’d talk to my husband, cried and decided that we wouldn’t tell her that it wasn’t going away. She deserved to enjoy being a kid, even if I didn’t know how much longer that was…
Now looking back maybe she had heard us, maybe she saw how sad I was and made the decision. I can’t claim to know what a seven year old is thinking. But we continued on, it wasn’t until one day in mid October that’s at least I think when it happened, that something fundamentally had changed.
Just the week prior she had been talking to me about the “mirror tunnel.” Saying that some of her friends had dared her to head into it. I asked her if she had, and she quickly told me that she hadn’t gone there. She had, of course, quickly changed the conversation into something else and I was happy to go with the flow. If she was smiling then I was happy, that’s all any parent wants right for their child to be happy and healthy.
It had started raining and I had a meeting running late. I couldn’t pick her up right as school ended, I’d arrived to pick her up and found her waterlogged, looking like a drowned cat. I’d quickly shuffled her into the car, toweled her off and jumped back into it.
“Honey, why are you drenched?” I asked.
It was then that I noticed that she was wearing a pink shirt with hearts, but I thought she had left the house in a pink shirt with stars. But I could have been wrong it was a long day and I had started my morning at 4 am. Not to mention her hair was in braids, I knew that I didn’t have time in the morning to do that.
“I saw a kitty,” she told me softly.
“Okay, well next time tell one of the adults. You shouldn’t be running around in wet clothes,” I told her softly. “Can you promise me that you wouldn’t run outside in the rain?” I asked.
“I promise,” she said, holding up her pinky and I smiled and raised my pinky up in response.
Everything seems normally, but thinking back that was the first day I noticed the changes. At first it was small things, she normally loved playing with her dolls, but she didn’t touch them and had wanted coloring books. Habits that I had grown accustomed to were different. Now I understand children’s wants and desire change like the wind, but Tera had loved dolls and stuffed animals for as long as I can remember. Probably due to how much time she had spent in the hospital.
She was also eating more, I had at first attributed that to maybe the medication was working. They said that increased appetite was a good sign that the body was fighting off the cancer and that the chemo was working. I’d be over joyed to see my baby eating and looking healthier. It was the second time I’d taken her to her doctor appointment after that rainy day. I felt the same dread I always felt, whe…
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