• Anyone who just so happened to enter the Lindel house (which would be trespassing as the inhabitants of the house in question had not talked to anyone for a long time let alone invited them into their house) on this day would have surely thought it empty of any living residents and that the three girls positioned in various rooms where nothing but extremely realistic yet manically depressing dolls.
    However, if that is what whoever-it-was thought, they were wrong.
    The girls were not dolls but in fact Isla, Alyssa and Eden (Edie) Lindel, three perfectly alive yet rather sad orphans.
    Their mother, Loretta Lindel, a well-known (in her time) small-town actress, had passed away shortly after the birth of Edie, the youngest of the sisters. Their father Harry Lindel's 'death' is far more mysterious and will be explained in further later on. Isla is the oldest and Alyssa, the middle child, is the main character of this story and we will now switch to her narration, which really should have happened at the start of the chapter but I (whoever I am) did not think she was really in a state for proper narration at that point in time (i.e. she was rather sad).

    Father left behind a mirror. In fact, father left everything behind but that’s not the point. The mirror is huge. Twice as big as a normal one, reflecting the entire room, framed in intricate golden swirls. Dad vanished two days ago, after going out to get some milk. All the police found was a few shards of broken glass and-

    "Alyssa?" It's Isla. "What are you-hey..."
    "What?" I turned away from the mirror.
    She stared at me for a few long seconds then came storming across the room.
    "Hey" I frowned. "What are you...?"
    Her expression turned ferocious as she grabbed the pendant hanging around my neck. "Is this dad's?! It's the one the police found, isn't it? You little thief! What are you doing? Give me it! NOW!"
    I struggled and pulled as she attempted to wrench the chain from around my throat.
    "No, stop it, STOP! GET OFF ME!" I shoved her away and ran from the room, passing Edie who was curled up sadly outside dad's room. I kept running, right out the front door and out onto the street. The sun was beating down and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I heard Isla yelling, I'm not sure if she was directing her anger at me or Edie but I kept on running, in no real direction.

    I know that I wasn't running for a particularly long time but when I stopped and looked around, I realised I had no idea where I was. At one end of our road was the local primary school, where dad had been a well-loved teacher, and I hadn't seen it so at least I had some idea of which direction I had ran. I started wandering, inspecting dad's necklace. It was a royal blue glass bottle, round with a flat bottle. It was stoppered with a red crystal heart and hung round my neck by a silver chain. As I looked closer, I noticed a small tag hanging from the chain around the neck of the bottle.
    It said 'Drink Me'.
    Suddenly, I tripped and went sprawling, scraping my shins but keeping the bottle intact. I sat up on the pavement I had tripped on and saw that I was sitting in front of a fairground, the one dad had described to me a few days ago. But the weird thing was that dad had said it had opened up just the other day and was brand new whereas this fairground looked as though it had been abandoned for years. But I know for sure that there are absolutely no other fairground type things for miles in a small town like ours.

    I shivered and looked up. The clear blue sky from earlier was now completely clouded over with a thick blanket of grey. I groaned as it started to rain. To escape the showers, I got up and hurried into the fairground to take shelter under one of the many broken and tattered stalls. As I shuddered and jittered with the cold, I saw a flash of white. I dismissed it as my imagination and carried on shivering. Suddenly, I heard a rustling and a small girl, about Edie's age, maybe older, with pink curls and perky white rabbit ears (?) walking towards me cautiously.
    "Erm...who are you?" I drew back as far as humanely possible when you're squashed up against a hot dog stall.
    "Pietri is Pietri. Pietri Marrey. And who are you?" She tipped her head to one side curiously.
    "Um, I'm Alyss-"
    "Alice!" The girl nearly jumped out of her skin. She grabbed my hand and began to run, almost abnormally fast, towards the large, striped dome in the centre of the fairground. The sign outside claimed it was 'T e H use f M rro s'. The door was boarded up but, to my astonishment, swung open easily when it saw (if doors can see things...) Pietri approaching. We plunged through the doorway into a deep darkness. When the lights flickered on I found myself alone and surrounded by what appeared to be reflections of my bewildered face staring back at me with wide eyes.
    "Ah," I thought to myself. "Of course. It's 'The House of Mirrors'."
    I heard giggling and, assuming it was Pietri teasing me, followed the sound. I wandered past mirror after mirror, never knowing if I was making any progress or just going in circles until I heard a second giggle and found myself in front of another mirror, identical to every other in its house apart from the swirled golden frame that curled and snaked around it.
    It seemed to stir something in my memories so I stood and stared at it for a while.
    Suddenly, my reflection dissolved and was replaced by Pietri. I jumped back in surprise as she laughed and, in front of my ever-widening eyes, reached out of the mirror. She grabbed my wrist and jerked me forward. The last thing I saw before I squeezed my eyes shut in preparation for the impact was Pietri's grinning face and the cold glass surface rushing towards me.
    Then, to my astonishment (and I'm surprised I still have any astonishment left after everything that’s happened recently), I did not feel the hard smack in the forehead I had been expecting but instead felt a cool sensation like getting freezing water dumped on your head only a bit nicer. And then I was on the other side of the mirror.