The trap

A tutor installs an antique Copenhagen mirror brought from the tropics in his private-school rooms and soon notices a peculiar inward whirl visible only from certain angles. A pupil, Robert Grandison, reports a tactile sensation as if the glass were pulling his finger, and shortly thereafter the boy inexplicably vanishes, his belongings and usual haunts untouched. Searches and worry follow, and with the campus emptied for holiday the tutor returns to the mirror, observing torsional motion and a distinct sense of suction while increasingly convinced that the missing boy may be trying to communicate through the glass.