He threw with all his might, but the third stone came skipping back. The boy stood before the wall, staring as it cast its massive gaze down toward him, enveloping his body wholly in shadow. The small brook didn’t mind being in the maw of this beast; it casually rolled under the small archway in the wall, through the bars, and to the other side. The boy had always wondered who lived in the house on the other side of the creek at the end of the stream. He’d always imagined that the water flowed past the wall and into a little pond in the backyard of some wealthy family. He’d spend his weekends skipping rocks out across the river while whistling the melodies that his mother used to sing to him before he went to bed, thinking that one day he would be able to have a house like that. One with a whole river that flows through a vast backyard, and every day, he’d return to his family’s small apartment, mind plagued with hope. Nobody really knew the family who lived in the house at the end of the stream. In a small town like this, word gets around, skipping between the ears and mouths of people with a frantic desperation. He’d heard they had a daughter that they homeschooled, that they sent a maid out to do their shopping, that the father worked from home, that the whole family was part of a secret society, that they were in the witness protection program, that they were aliens… that they ate children who climbed over their walls. Some of the stories seemed more believable to him than others.
He’d only seen them once when they moved in two years ago. He’d sat on the side of the curb bouncing a ball and watching the ducks awkwardly waddling their way towards the creek, part of the earth, one with the world as if to announce their disturbance of the peace, a sleek jungle cat emerged from the tree line, its engine roaring. A cloud of dust chased closely behind it. It slunk up to the front of the house, just a small quaint cottage by a stream, no ominous wall guarding its form. The beast’s engine purred as the family began to step out, the man first, tall… very tall, and wearing a suit with a fedora. The woman also towered above most women the boy had met in his life; not quite as tall as the man, however. She donned a black sundress that ran all the way down to her feet and a massive black hat, its circular brim wide enough to block out the sun from ever hoping to kiss her skin. The two were wordless as they approached the house. Quickly after, a more diminutive form stepped out of the back of the jet-black car and stood for a while next to its door. She looked like a smaller version of her mother, a black lace dress with a smaller hat to match. She looked at the boy, only for a moment, but it sent a jolt through his spine. Her eyes pierced straight through him; he could see the rage of a tempest within them, swirling fire from the depths of the sea, a seething ice like a blade straight off the whetstone. Yet in the center, her eye, the helpless serenity. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around how someone his age could have eyes like that. The image of them never left his mind. They floated around in his mind’s eye again today as he stared up at the wall that had risen from the earth only a week after they moved in.
He’d tried to skip rocks through the grate under the wall before. A slight arch cut out in its bricks stretches over the creek with iron bars firmly hanging down into the waters below, bars too close together to hope to fit through but far enough to allow a rock to bounce through. He usually skipped his stones out across the brook; however, occasionally, he’d try and slip a rock through those bars, never to any avail. But today was different. He absentmindedly sent the stone rocketing past the wall, making no sound as it crossed the threshold and entered whatever lay now on the other side. He was initially racked with giddy excitement to finally get one through; however, that fulfillment melted into a nervous curiosity as the rock came bouncing back through the bars. It bounced twice across the slow-flowing water, leaving little splashes to drop back down and merge with the brook as it went before landing softly right at his feet. He stared at it in awe. He looked up to the wall. Back down to the stone. Reaching down, he plucked the stone from the soft grass on the bank of the water and held it up in his hand. It was smooth and wet as expected; however, it was not the same as when it last lay in his palm. Two letters had been etched into the face of the stone glaring up at him. ‘Hi’. He didn’t know what to think of it at first. Was it the girl with the cold eyes?
The letters had been scratched in with what looked like another rock. He knelt down and pulled a jagged stone from the creek, turning his rock over and beginning to write his own message back. Now he stood ten feet from the iron bars, staring down the wall with his stone reading ‘Hi’ on both sides. How many times had he tried and failed to get a rock through and failed. His back foot slid back and planted firmly in the grass as he bent his knees and stared down the grate with a focused ferocity. He had one shot, his arm cocked back behind his head before he swung it forward as hard as he could, whipping his wrist forward and letting the stone fly straight toward the grate. It took a perfect skip off the water, sending ripples out toward the edges of the creek as it barreled toward the opening under the wall. The stone flew across the water and let out an ear-piercing ring as it struck against the edge of one of the bars and fell into the water, sinking to depths and bringing the boy’s hopes with it. A feeling of dejection came over him as he walked up to the wall and knelt down, looking into the water for any sign that the stone was within reach. It wasn’t. Suddenly, a voice echoed across the bricks that hung above the water, bouncing across the surface and up to the boy.
“I should have known that first throw was a fluke. You never make it through.” Shock ran through the boy; he knew someone was there, but actually hearing a voice come from the other side of the wall made him jump back with surprise. “There’s no rocks on my side to throw normally.” The voice of a girl floated through the grate again. The boy stood there, dumbfounded; somehow, no words came to him, no matter how hard he tried to force them out. Those eyes just floated through his mind. Was it the girl from that day? Then the voice from the great echoed out again, “You didn’t run away, did you?” With that, his senses rushed back to him, and he opened his mouth to speak.
“Uh.. no, no, I didn’t.”
“That’s good. Who are you?”
“I’m…” still bewildered, he started to regain a bit of his confidence. “I’m just from the neighborhood about a mile up the creek.”
“I never knew it went that far. I always just thought it was a pond.”
“No, not at all. It runs about a mile and a half before it reaches the lake up north.
“That sounds beautiful. Do you go to the lake often?”
“Every now and again, but I usually spend my time on this end of the creek. There’s a ton of ducks and frogs and salamanders and stuff.” She chuckled to herself, just loud enough to be audible to the boy.
“Yeah, I’ve also seen quite a few of those over here. Although they’ve come past the wall less and less recently.”
“Don’t you ever come outside?” There was silence for a moment,
“Mother doesn’t want me going out; she says I have all I’ll need in here.”
“But you must come out for school, to get food, or for some reason, right?”
“My father teaches me and helps me with my studies, and we have our maid go out to get food.”
“But why?”
“She says she’ll allow me out on my 18th birthday.”
“Oh…”
“What’s it like? In town, I mean.”
The boy stood there for a moment, thinking before he responded. He started telling her all about the town and his friends at school. How they would go on Wednesdays to the baseball fields and play tag with each other. As he told his stories, the girl would listen and laugh when she heard about the dumb things the boy had done with his friends, like sending one down a hill on a piece of cardboard into a mud pit, but there was always sadness behind her giggles and responses. A particular ache to her words would seep its way through the cracks in her happy facade. By the time the boy left that day, dusk had already befallen the small creek, and he could hear the crickets chirping all around. She called out as he got up from his position with his back against the wall to leave, “Will you come back tomorrow?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s only Saturday, so I don’t have school tomorrow.”
“Alright, tomorrow then.”
He could hear the smile in her voice, and he felt his own face begin to lift up. “Wait, what’s your name?”
“I’m Eris.”
The boy had never heard a name like that before. Eris. The name didn’t leave his mind. Not as he was walking home, not as he lay in his bed waiting for sleep to overtake him. The name floated around in his mind, along with a pair of soft blue eyes that shone like the sun off a quiet sea.
The next day, the only thing the boy could think about was returning to the end of the creek to talk to Eris again. He’d told her about his friends at school and everything they did together, but he didn’t have much of anybody to talk to there. He stood up from his bed and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked away; he hated looking at his face in the mirror. When he got into school, all his classmates started calling him ‘Piggy’ because of the way his nose was squashed against his face. His mother said it was cute as a button and that he shouldn’t be ashamed of how he looked. But it made it hard when the other kids would throw him down the hill into the mud pit, making oinking sounds at him as they laughed and laughed. He hated school, so he’d spend every day he could by the creek. His mother greeted him warmly as he went downstairs for breakfast. He told her all about how he’d made a new friend, and he was going to hang out with her again today. As he ran out the door towards the water, she yelled after him to be home by dinner, tears welling in her eyes.
The boy spent all day by the wall talking with Eris, telling her about his favorite movies and comic books, about his parents, and the vacations he’d been on. She didn’t have many stories to share, but she’d listen and occasionally tell him about a book she’d been reading. That’s all she really did as she wasn’t allowed to pass the walls and only had books in the house. She didn’t pick out her own books, so she had an assorted knowledge of the most random subjects. He listened, fascinated as she’d explain to him the ins and outs of being a doctor or how the mailmen were unionizing, all sorts of things he’d never thought about or figured anyone his age would be interested in. He’d pass rocks to her by hanging off the edge of the creek and tossing them through the bars. She could skip them right through the bars every single time without fail, something to which the boy expressed his amazement, but she only replied that it wasn’t that hard and not everybody’s aim sucked like his does. He’d leave when the sun would dip behind the treeline, and the glow would leave the leaves around him. That whole week, all he could think about was going back to the creek. It’d be the longest week of his life; however, he found his life at school got better that week.
The kids didn’t stop calling him Piggy, but it didn’t bother him as much. He just carried on, eagerly awaiting the time when he could go back to see Eris. After spending another whole weekend laughing and skipping rocks with Eris, he asked his mother over the dinner table if he’d be allowed to go to Eris’s on a school night. She replied that if all his homework was done, she’d let him go, but never too late, to always be back by nightfall. He didn’t mind that as long as he got to go. He looked over to his father, who was sitting at the table, drinking a beer and watching the television, barely paying attention. He just gave a grunt of approval and went back to his show. His mother told him that he should invite her over for dinner sometime, something that he knew wasn’t a possibility, but he told her he would.
The crickets chirped all around them as twilight lay its form across the lands, sweeping all the color into itself, blurring the vibrance of the trees. Eris and the boy talked their backs to each other against the wall. “What do your parents do all day if they don’t leave either?” The boy asked.
“My mother’s very sick. She just lies in bed all day. My father is usually in his study. He never comes outside. He’s working on something to help mother with her illness.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“No, it’s okay. You don’t have to be sorry. I just wish they’d let me go out. But father says if I go out, I’ll end up like my mother.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re outside right now, anyway. What difference does it make?”
“Well… I’m not really allowed to be outside. My father was really strict for months, but as my mother became more and more ill, he began to notice me less, and I’ve been able to sneak out. At first, it was only for a few minutes. But now I can be out all day. As long as I make it back inside before midnight, I’ll be alright.”
“So he wouldn’t know if you left the walls?”
“I suppose not. But it’s impossible to get out. The walls are too high, and the gate in front is locked and too narrow to get through.”
“What about through the grate? The bars are all rusted, so it wouldn’t be too hard to pull them off.”
“Maybe. But it’s getting late now anyway.”
“You’re right; I should get going.”
“Will you come back tomorrow?”
She asked that every day as he went to leave. He replied the same way every day. “Yeah, sure.”
It had been two months since the boy had started talking to Eris. He’d go over every day after his homework and all day on the weekends. He’d asked his mother to get him a watch so that he could leave Eris’s at the last possible moment. It was exceptionally dark that Thursday night despite it being only nine at night. The purple of twilight had long since faded and been smothered by the gaping maw of the black sky. The boy was on his knees, reaching toward the bars under the wall, blocking the house from the outside world. He’d been working on pulling them off for the last few weeks. They’d only budge fractions of an inch every day, but he was almost there. All he needed was to get one bar off, and it’d be wide enough to fit through, but just barely. His mother had stopped questioning why the sleeves on his shirt were always wet when he returned by now. He didn’t mind getting wet, but he’d freeze if he went all the way in, so he’d always stay just on the edge of the water, reaching down. He sat back against the wall in his usual spot, done for the day. Breathing heavily, he excitedly told Eris, “I think I’ll be able to get it off tomorrow.”
“I can’t believe I’ll finally be able to go out.”
“Would you want to come over to my house for dinner when you do?”
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
“Great! My mom’s a fantastic cook.”
She giggled. “So I’ve heard. I’m excited to taste what she’s made.” The pure giddy excitement in her voice was undeniable. They sat in silence for a while. A comfortable silence. Until she finally spoke after some time, “What’s that song you used to whistle when you skipped rocks?” She sounded strangely sad, like a mourner long after their loved one had passed, reminiscing.
“Hmm?”
“That song you’d whistle. Before you would talk to me.”
“Oh, it’s something my mother used to whistle to me as I fell asleep when I was little.”
“Could you whistle for me?”
“Yeah… yeah, sure.”
The boy began to whistle a melody, a slow melancholy tune with a hint of hope to it. Something that would always lift him toward the dream realm and guide him through. Something that felt like home. The familiarity and comfort were audible in his tune as he whistled on. He could almost feel Eris’s breathing steady into comfortable, long breaths through the wall. He could feel his eyes growing heavy as he whistled. He heard the tune echoing back to him from the waters under the wall. From Eris’s lips, the song sounded even more beautiful, just like his mother whistling to him when he was little. Time passed as the two slowly stopped whistling and began to lie silently, comfortably, back to back against the barrier that separated them. The boy’s peaceful face had a slight smile etched into it. A warm smile. Tragically warm.
The cold, dead air of the night stung his face as he sharply awoke with an awful ache in the back of his neck from sleeping up against the wall. He looked around, taking in the scene before him before the realization finally hit him. He frantically looked down at the watch lying on his wrist, and a look of panic spread across his face. The darkness hung low this night. The stars lay dormant behind the tarp of night resting on the treetops as the boy began to whisper harshly at the wall.
“Eris.” He hissed. But no reply came. He tried again louder. “Eris, wake up.” He heard a soft, content moan from the other side and the sound of something shifting in the grass. This time, he dropped the whispered tone, “Eris, wake up!” He heard her shift around on the other side.
“Hmm? What’s wrong?”
“Eris, it’s 2 minutes to midnight!” He heard her sit up, and he could practically feel the emotion start to seep from the wall. It was pure and raw excitement. But it couldn’t be excitement; it was much too intense, more like fear. “Oh god. I have to get back inside! You have to run now!”
“Are you going to be okay!?”
“My father’s coming. Get out of here!” She frantically whispered her words. But he was rooted in place. Head against the wall. Ears strained. He heard something in the distance. Like waves crashing against a distant cliff side. No, more harsh than that. Like cracks of thunder. Louder and louder, closer and closer. Thunderous footsteps emerge from the house. He stood frozen in fear, listening to Eris’s hysterical breathing and the tiny whimpers that came past the wall. She was crying. Every little noise she made pinged against his heart. It hurt. And then, a voice rang through the bars of the wall. Not just there, it ripped through the cracks of the wall and rang out through the surrounding trees. It was all-encompassing, completely isolating. It smothered every other sound of the night. No more crickets chirping, no more frogs croaking, no wind whistling through the trees, not a breath nor a whimper from Eris. He realized he’d been holding his breath as well.
“ERIS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT OF THE HOUSE!?” The voice was a crack of lightning across the spine of the boy. Eris screamed, “Father, please! I’m sorry! Please!” He heard a scuffle, and Eris shrieked out into the night. He listened to the thunderous footsteps begin to recede, with Eris being dragged behind, crying and apologizing. He couldn’t take it anymore; he cried out and hit the wall.
“STOP!” The boy’s eyes went wide as the sound changed. The footsteps stopped. The crying stopped as if a hand covered her mouth. Nothing. The air was still and dead. The silent night was consuming. He stood there staring at the wall. One second? Ten? How long had it been? Then he heard it. The soft crunch of grass. As something slinked its way slowly toward the wall. Tiny soft footsteps, deliberate quiet steps. A serpent of the damned finding its way towards, groping out in the darkness for him. He heard it go to the side, towards the creek, toward the grate. He stared at the rusted iron bars, waiting as the sound stopped just next to them. He waited. Painful seconds. Minutes? Hours? The air split through his skin, sending the chill of the night all throughout his body. His hairs all on their end, unable to speak, unable to move.
The iron bars stared back at him, unmoving, the center bar almost entirely displaced from its spot in the brick. And then it came, like a sludge dripping slowly down into view. A form came into view from the upper side of the gap in the wall behind the iron bars. Those horrible, horrible eyes burned themselves into the boy’s mind, searing through his irises and branding themselves into the back of his skull. The complete antithesis of the image of Eris’s eyes that would float around in his mind. His eyes were cruel, horrible; they contained this unimaginable madness about them. Rings of chaos swirled together as he stared deep into the boy. The boy couldn’t move. His blood ran cold. The face behind bars cracked a jagged smile and began to let out a horrible hiss of a laugh like damned souls being forced to laugh for eternity. The boy couldn’t take it; he shut his eyes tight and prayed. He couldn’t think of anything else. Only, ‘Help me. Anyone… help me’. He could still see those horrible eyes. He could feel their icy gaze burning inside of him. He could barely hear the form slink back from the bars. Then, there came thunderous footsteps going back toward the house again. And then nothing. Just the chirping of crickets, the croak of frogs, and the whistling of the wind. The boy stood there for a long moment, eyes shut tight. The image of those dreadful eyes staring back into his soul. Impossibly bright and filled with all the darkness of the night. He couldn’t move anything, couldn’t pray, couldn’t think. He was trapped inside his own body, inside his own mind, staring up at those horrible eyes.
But there was a light. Not the horrible dark shine from the eyes of the damned but a comforting glow. And then he heard a soft whistling coming from the light. It began to shine brighter and brighter, that melody of home along with it. Suddenly, the branding of those horrific eyes faded, leaving only a scar as they were replaced with the serene blue and the whistling of his mother. Not his mother, Eris! Eris’s eyes gazed upon him with a calming wave accompanying them. Flecks of gold shone towards the center of her blue eyes; he was mesmerized. Suddenly, his own eyes shot open, and he snapped back to reality.
“ERIS!” He yelled toward the wall as he jumped into the freezing waters of the creek. He shivered uncontrollably as he frantically splashed toward the iron bars under the wall. He grabbed the center one and began to tug with all his might. The cold, rough bar began to give out a bit, but it wasn’t enough. He placed both his feet against the wall and pulled back with everything he had. A groan and a grating sound sputtered out of the bar as it finally came free from the rest of the wall. He splashed back into the water, the cold enveloping every part of his body. Quickly, he freed himself from the grasp of the depths and desperately made his way toward the grate. He pushed up against it, turning his body sideways, madly trying to squeeze through. His head passed the bars, and soon, half his body had made it to the other side of the wall. The boy didn’t take in his surroundings, he didn’t feel the cold, he became a single mind with a single goal. He lurched forward, finally freeing his waist from the bars, and splashed into the pond on the other side. Like a crazed animal, he threw himself up and started towards the house, but as he began to run, he noticed where he was.
He stopped in his tracks, looking at the house before him. A once homey-looking and lovely home was now a derelict shack. He could see through the walls there were so many cracks and holes. He started to notice his surroundings, utterly different from the vibrant and lively green on the other side of the wall. Not just different but the utter opposite. The grass was long dead; in fact, nothing at all grew here. The dead gray grass was littered with the remains of various animals. He looked around to see the skeletons of all manner of creatures that lived around the area. But as he looked closer around the house, the animals grew larger and larger. Cats, dogs… people. Still with their clothes on but empty skeletons nestled within them. One looked like a postman, another like a physician, all manner of people. And there were so many, the grounds littered with them. Then he heard it. Whistling. From behind him. It was his mother’s song. But it sounded wrong. It sounded off. It wafted around him from behind, raising goosebumps upon his skin. He turned around to face the wall.
He was met with the image of a horrifying figure. Tendrils snaked across the side of the wall, stretching from end to end and across the ground, all culminating in a single form, directly opposite to where he would sit every day. Its grotesque body fused to the wall, organs visible and pulsating as it stretched itself horribly against the flat surface. It dripped with a black ooze as it painted the brick with its own body. The boy’s mouth opened in horror as he looked up from the organs to see an elongated neck stretching out from the wall with a black sun hat lying on top of it. Infection racked the form’s body and face like a fungus as its rotting body wriggled around on the wall, unable to free itself. The deformities ran across the neck and up to an inhuman face, plagued with unimaginable horror. But those eyes. He’d seen those eyes before. Two years ago. Eyes that had morphed in his brain into something sweet. But there were no flecks of gold. No soft ocean. They held the rage of a tempest. They swirled with fire. As deep as the depths of the sea, as sharp as a blade, cold black tendrils wrapped themselves around. He couldn’t stop looking into her eyes, searching for the eye of that storm. The calm in the center. He saw bloodlust. He could feel her raw emotion, feel her bloodlust. The tendrils began to pull him in as Eris’s jaw unhinged, and a row of iron teeth emerged from her gaping mouth. She turned him around to face the house and started to lower her mouth onto him. He saw through the walls two skeletons lying on the bed. He felt two long teeth pierce him, but before he could scream, he heard his mother singing the lullaby. He felt his eyes growing heavy as the melody lifted him to the dream realm. The fear melted, and the boy’s face grew into a peaceful smile. A warm smile.