The Eye

I stirred restlessly in my sleep on this humid June night. My eyelids felt slightly uncomfortable–heavy and painful–like pocket-sized cinder blocks had been placed gently on top of them. I had awoken thrice in the past few hours, always from the same horrible nightmares that tormented me. My shirt clung to my skin as a slickly and icy layer of sweat lay on my back. I blinked at the piercing moonlight. Through my blinds, I observed thin slivers of moonlight carving precise panes of strange shadows on the wall. My chalk-dry throat welcomed down the cool water as I drank with deep, heaving gulps of satisfaction.

My head throbbed. I have had the same painfully sharp dreams for the past month. They were dreams of Mary smiling in Giza, her lips red from cherry lollipops as if she were a kid. She played with the red elastic hair tie on her hair, a memento of our wedding anniversary. Her eyes glanced directly into mine. For a second, I had thought it was merely a trick of the mind–for the sun’s glare was intense–but her olive-colored eyes contained a brief spark of crimson red. These dreams, I know, will eat away my life until I am reduced to skin and twig-like bones. 

 I shivered like a candle flame beset by the night breeze. I felt disoriented as a succession of images depicting Mary passed through my mind’s eye. A heavy layer of cold perspiration still coated my skin. I glanced again in some strange fear at the shadows dancing on my bedroom wall, but there was nothing. It was only the moon’s lonely dance tonight. 

I shifted my weight to one side and reached for my cane propped up against the bedside table. It was a simple four-foot-tall cane made of river bamboo and coated in a light walnut color. Without it, my legs only carried me so far. As I leaned the bulk of my thin mass on its sturdy point, I let it slowly guide me towards the windows. The waxing crescent moon shined her radiance tonight for it to be swallowed by the encroaching darkness. The thick, ivory bark of an ancient tree was the only visible object in my line of sight. Not a single gust of dry summer wind blew the leaves. I breathed in this smell of earth and detritus, far from the cities of men and women. The air was stuffier than in Giza, Egypt, where Mary and I traveled only six years ago. I remembered the red elastic tie on her hair, her cherry-red smile, and the powder she put on her cheeks to hide the wrinkles that came with age. 

I yawned and made my way back to bed and slid my head under the covers as if terrified of some bedroom story monster coming alive. Later, horrid images of disturbing figures came to me in loose forms. A hooded figure cloaked in darkness. A woman’s decaying body that floated in a tar-black river. An inexplicable, pulsating red beam of light that shone in a cavern. A slight chill went through me as I thought of these; I longed for them to grow into a distant realm of my exhausted memory. Weary of the sweat that stuck to my skin like a permanent layer of resin, I reached for my cane absentmindedly and made my way towards the door when I bumped into the wall. 

“These walls,” I cursed under my breath.  

At this point, a vibrating sound filled my eardrums like the raspy voice of a person painfully aware of his mortality. In my frantic attempts to silence them, I pulled my ear and pressed them against my palm but the noise was omnipresent. 

Wruuuuuh…

Bile caught in my throat. 

I realized that the kitchen door knob was turning as well. It was like an invisible, powerful gust from afar that beat everything relentlessly. It was strange, for there was no wind. It was a summer night and the air was dry with the promise of greater heat. 

“God, what—“ 

BANG! 

My stomach clenched. There was nobody at the kitchen door, yet the knob twisted and turned as if it had its own mind. One revolution. Two revolutions. Three—

BANG! 

It rattled rapidly now; the door knob threatened to fall until—

Crreeeeaak…

The sound of wood on wood as my heart thundered in my chest. 

It opened. I was distinctly aware of my own breathing–harsh, uneven–as I stood exposed to the stale kitchen air. Then everything—the banging, the noises in my ear—ceased. It was like someone pushing the off button on a remote control.

I raised a shaking hand, picked up my cane, and locked the kitchen door. 

As I turned to my bedroom, a feeling of alarm enveloped my body as I suddenly dropped my cane. My mouth became chalk-dry again as I looked at the thing before me. This strange creature–nameless, formless, composed of smoke and shadow–materialized out of murky nothingness; it stood motionless in front of me. I felt the heavy presence of something invisible behind my back that threatened to swallow me whole. Were it not for a small, primitive part of my brain that warned me to stay alert, I would most likely have gone insane. This thing of horrors was of a considerable size, perhaps nine to ten feet tall, black like the depths of Hades. The room was now fifty shades darker. Its arms reached down to its legs, but strangely, no moonlight penetrated it. I glanced at its face; terror stabbed my heart. No lips. No nose. Most strikingly, red orbs—its eyes—were the only feature in this formless, shapeless, Stygian mass. They were cardinal red orbs that burned like infernal flames, praying off the life force of those unfortunate souls they came into contact with. It was still; its red orb-like eyes peered directly at my hunched figure like an inquisitor. 

“WHAT GOES AROUND…” The sound of a thousand thousand branches that creaked abnormally in a neverending wind. The sound of a million twigs that snapped under some enigmatic force. Nameless anxiety engulfed me, but this bellowing sound stopped abruptly as if in response to my feelings.  

 In the next moment, I felt for my cane in the darkness only to start chanting in perplexing, shrill volumes that I did not recognize as my own voice. 

“Mary had a bloody lamb and its fleece was red as blood…” 

I turned backward, apparently snapping out of my mad reverie. I sensed the unnatural panic that rose within me.

“COMES” 

“AROUND…” Finally, it was the sound of a calamitous windstorm that whirled and whistled on Judgment Day, unending and unbroken. I gasped as a wave of searing pain shot down my head; brilliant white stars erupted in front of me. Am I going to die?

Then an image of a gray, windowless room passed through my mind’s eye. A single large bulb stood in the center and illuminated the dim room, but its effects were not felt at the farther ends of the expanse. On one end hung a portrait of Vlad the Impaler; it was half visible because of the layer of dust that settled on it. The person inside the picture smirked, satisfied with the scene that unfolded before him. Why am I here? Then I recalled. I remembered that 6th of August, a week after our Giza trip. I remembered that maniac, fierce sneer on my face as the sides of my lips curled up. I laughed unusually, my head tipped high to the heavens. I remembered that metallic stench on my hands as I played with my butterfly knife; blood pulsed through me excitedly. I remembered her face. Mary’s face, with two bottomless holes in her eyes. They were filled like little pools of incarnadine red. Twenty different scars of varying lengths crisscrossed her face as bright red oozed from their openings. Her mouth was opened as if to say something, but it was silenced with one blow of my weapon. She was later concealed with my worn leather jacket. Michael. Laurie. I wrote Mary and crossed her name in my notebook as bloody fingerprints turned the parchment pages. 

Two more blistering waves of agony shot down my skull as I was brought back to the present. I looked around me. The same beast stood before me. This impervious, black mass of curses and plagues. A bead of sweat formed on my brow. 

I redirected my attention to my surroundings and felt for the knob only to find it slightly ajar when it had been locked only a few moments ago. Two red orbs floated in the darkness, apparently disconnected and several feet away from their main body. This time they radiated far more intensely. Burgundy red to scarlet. I saw myself in them–an anemic paleness filling my face as beads of sweat trickled down my glistening forehead. I was reduced to no less than the strength of a child under the unknown, menacing power of an ancient force that had probably seen and haunted its victims for millennia. 

My mouth opened and closed, perhaps to plead before God, but no words came out. I almost tripped over myself as I ducked under the red eyes and into the kitchen. I know not what influenced me, but I glanced behind my back. The monstrous black behemoth still gathered there in that terrifying corner; it had not moved an inch since it first appeared. It did not possess its eyes, which floated in the air. They floated like a Portuguese Man-of-War towards where I stood. I raised a shaking arm to point my cane at them. 

“Devil! God forbid!” I cried aloud. 

The cane felt strangely heavy all of a sudden. The eyes gleamed in the darkness and cut arcs of faint light on the wooden floor. The ground was charred. The light moved like a powerful lick of lava. My nose detected a hint of ash and I coughed. I steadied my gaze at them as tears streamed off my cheeks. I gripped my cane with my right hand. 

Three beats thumped in my chest as I mustered all my strength. 

Then I threw the cane. 

It almost hit the eyes when the cane was set ablaze into a wild mixture of red, white, and purple flames. The cane was suspended momentarily in mid-air until it fell to the ground in ashes. Meanwhile, the scorched areas of the floor gradually grew until they almost covered my body. Without the cane, I found it an exhausting task to move. I was alone, surrounded, and assaulted by a sea of endless black fire on all sides. Before long, the black regions converged and formed a marking of one large, black eye on the ground below my feet as I fell off the brink of sanity. 

“The eyes! Those ruby-red, blood-like, God-forbidden eyes that shine even in the nine circles of Inferno!” I howled like a black magician as I felt a metallic taste in my mouth and a stinging sensation within my eyes. 

I dropped slowly to the ground. The last image I saw was Mary in Giza; she still fiddled with the red hair tie as her cherry-red lips opened to reveal her dazzlingly brilliant teeth. A shadow descended over one of her beast-like eyes, now entirely crimson red and glowing, as she winked at me.

“WHAT GOES AROUND…”

“COMES”

“AROUND…”

When the sun rose the following morning and illuminated the room, the markings of the black eye on the ground were gone. In place of the poor man’s eyes were two red elastic hair ties…