The next morning, very early, the doorbell sounded twice. Once was for Mrs Madimi, twice was for me.

I hopped out of bed, checked my look in the mirror and discovered I was looking pale and strained. I pressed my nose against the cold window, but could not see who was at the door.

In my pajamas, on my bare feet, I went downstairs to open the door for whoever it was who wished to see me this early in the morning. I shivered. It was a cool September morning.

I opened the door… ajar. A little fellow in a blue duster was looking at me... suspicious.

"Mr Dee?" he squeaked.

“No,” I said. “Mr Dee died a few weeks ago."

The man scratched his head.

“Maybe I can help you? I live in his apartment now.”

“Well… I’m not sure…” The man hesitated. “Mr Dee has ordered a beautiful piece of antique with us… Kind of mirror, or a giant egg… or something. It’s already been paid, I only had to deliver it here today. Maybe you could…”

“Okay,” I said. “I will take care of it.”

The “piece of antique” was about two feet high and thirty inches wide. I lifted it up – it was not too heavy – and had scarcely made a few steps, when the door of Mrs Madimi’s apartment was opened. She appeared with a very satisfied look on her face, her eyes sparkling merrily.

“For Mr Dee,” I said, nodding to the pack in my arms.

“Oh!” cried Mrs Madimi thrilled. “That’s really fine, my young friend! How nice of you!”

It was a beautiful black mirror in the shape of an egg. Although I was not an expert, this “piece of antique” undoubtedly would be very costly. The surface of the mirror was smooth, but it was not glass. The mirror was made of some pitch dark material, unknown to me, but reflecting my image clearly visible.

I looked at the dark spot on the faded floral wallpaper, just between two crowded shelves. Until recently and over a very long time something had hung there. Something of about two feet high and thirty inches wide. There was a hook at precisely the right place… as if the black egg had hung there for years against the floral wallpaper, had been removed a few weeks ago and had now returned to its rightful place.

That night I was awakened by the wail of a police siren. I had a dry mouth and stood up to drink a glass of water in the kitchen. When I returned to the bedroom, my eye fell on the black mirror which was reflecting the street lights. I sat down in a chair, staring into the mirror… as if it was a fairytale picture.

A strange feeling came over me. Something… No, someone… an intruder… was slipping inside my head, infiltrating my mind, penetrating my soul. This intruder took over the voice in my head – the voice that is “you” and which you hear constantly thinking. I was no longer the occupant of this body of mine, it belonged now to the intruder who drove “me” out of my body, steadily, with his cold and sharp claws.

To my amazement I saw my reflection in the black glass egg becoming fuzzier and “I” began to wrinkle, like your reflection in the water when the wind strikes over it. The features of my face blurred, a new face slid over the old one – and suddenly I was an old man with long white hair and a long white beard shaped in the form of an elongated triangle. He had severe eyes and thin lips and he wore a strange shirt with a lace collar and a ridiculous hat and a sort of a cap.

My image... or the image in the mirror which was staring at me… was looking perfectly like the wooden dolls Mr Dee had collected… or even made with his own hands. And for some terrible moments I was no longer me, but one of these dolls… and at the same time the old man with the thin white hair and beard, whispering: “My name is John and I’m eighty… My name is John and I’m pleased! Pleased to meet you!”

With a hoarse cry I closed his eyes, but the image did not disappear… as if it was an after-image burned into my retinas. I had looked too long into the sun which was nothing else than a pitch black egg, a dark ball of fire…

The cold claws that had hooked me seemed now to sink deep into me, but I didn’t see no longer any image in the mirror and in my head there was only a fleeting, vague echo to be heard, of a voice that was not mine.

The sound was reverberating in my skull, hissing: “My name is John and I am forty-seven... And I am pleased! Pleased to meet you!”