In this short story/book a girl finds herself in a night carnival.  The climax in this story is very similar to the, Come Back Lucy by Pamela Sykes.

This short story, however, I found it at a library a library and was never ever to re-find the story on the shelves or in its database.  I believe the story was in an anthology of short stories.

The story is centered in an almost 1950s style where a little girl interacts with another girl in a mirror.  The girl (main character) mysteriously falls into her mirror and finds herself in a dark somewhat spooky place.

As I recall, she sees a carnival in the distance. I believe the carnival is a type of ethereal place and is ghoul like.  My favorite excerpt, “she found herself on a path dimly lit by the dancing of fireflies.”

I recall she sits down and cries.  She tries to get back into the mirror that she fell out of and it appears she cannot escape the dark, Gothic world in which she landed. Her sobbing countenance becomes the reflection that a new girl sees in her mirror.  This temporal/spatial rift that the girl finds herself in is somehow a trap that is now the main character’s punishment for her self-obsession.

What was most intriguing about this story was that it was dark, twisted and yet eerily beautiful. Strong visuals paint the story and it was from the late 1960s to early 1980s.  That is, within the time frame of the Reader’s Digest short story anthologies.