My wife (Lily) and I recently moved into our first home together. It was the happiest day of my life. We’d found what we called our perfect home, a quaint old Victorian-era house with a huge garden on the outskirts of the town we both grew up in. It needed some TLC, but the opportunity for renovation was one we both jumped at. After all, Lily was an artist, and I loved the idea of an ongoing project. It was something that we could truly make our own after years of renting flats that we weren’t allowed to touch with our personality for fear of losing our deposit. The day it came up on the market we couldn’t believe our luck, we were starting to believe that we’d never find something suitable that we love within our budget. The process was entirely smooth sailing and within weeks we found ourselves booking the moving vans and beginning our new life there. It was almost too easy.
It started out perfect, the house was in good enough condition to live comfortably while renovating on the weekends and during our free time. We started with our bedroom, trying to keep the Victorian aesthetics but modernising it enough to feel cosy. We’d moved in during the autumn, and by the time we were happy with the state of the bedroom, the winter had come and caused a lull in productivity. It wasn’t until spring came that we decided to get started on our next project in the living room.
We were told by the estate agents that there was beautiful Victorian wood panelling being covered up by some (very outdated) gaudy wallpaper, and on a particularly warm day in March, Lily couldn’t wait any longer and started ripping it all down. At the first sight of the dark wood panelling, we couldn’t imagine why someone would have ever wanted to cover it up with the absolute eyesore that they called wallpaper, the details carved into the wood were beautifully intricate, like each panel held its own story. I found myself staring in awe as I watched Lily reveal more and more of the original architecture. I was filled with childlike excitement thinking about what other wonders we’d come across in our renovation process.
My daydreams were quickly interrupted when Lily called me over to look at the panel above the old fireplace that she’d just finished uncovering.
There were 5 pairs of photo realistic eyes carved into the wood. As I looked back over to Lily, I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, she was studying them in the same way I’ve watched her study paintings and sculptures in art museums.
“It’s creepy” I broke the silence. Something about them gave me the chills, probably the way they seemed to follow you around the room.
“It’s beautiful” she countered, “they all have dates underneath them, I wonder if this is a kind of portrait of the family who first lived here?” I’d failed to notice the dates etched into the wood below each pair of eyes, I was too busy pacing back and forth watching their gaze follow me around the room as if they belonged to a human. Sometimes I swear I could see them blink. I would have been happy to cover it back up and finish up for the day, something about it made me feel sick. But watching Lily study it like a piece of artwork, I couldn’t see that happening any time soon. I thought maybe I could try and convince her over time. We finished pulling down the rest of the wallpaper on that wall and called it a day. It wasn’t until the next weekend came that I noticed something was strange about Lily.
At first I didn’t question why Lily was spending so much time in the living room, we both work from home, and I assumed she’d just become busy with commissions and wanted a bigger space to work in. Considering the living room was covered in a plastic sheet for the decorating, it seemed like a perfect place to do her art. She had started only coming out of the room to use the bathroom and eat with me, and when we ate together she didn’t seem to want to talk about anything. I began to think I’d done something to upset her, it was totally out of character for her to be acting like this, her usual self being bright and bubbly. I held hope that she just had a big workload and it was weighing her down.
I don’t usually disturb Lily when she’s working, but I was worried about her, and I thought it couldn’t hurt to check in on her in the short breaks I got from work throughout the day. Except, when I went into the living room, she just stood there, staring at the panel above the fireplace, the same way she did the first time she pulled the wallpaper down.
“Lily? Is everything okay?” She couldn’t even take her eyes off of the thing.
“I’m a little busy right now, can we talk later?” she replied. It felt strange but I didn’t know what else to do, I thought I could deal with it after work. If there was something wrong, I needed to know. I was barely able to concentrate on my work for the rest of the day. Once I finished, I immediately checked back in on her, and there she was standing in the exact same place as before. Our house is so old that you can hear every footstep, so I thought maybe she’d heard me coming downstairs from my office to check on her and she was pranking me.
“Lily this is really creeping me out now, please stop” I was virtually begging at this point, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the intense look on her face as she stared at the weird eyes on our wall all day. This time though, she didn’t even answer me. That night, when I cooked dinner, she refused to move or come and eat at all.
Another two days passed and it felt like we weren’t even living together anymore. She’d stopped eating with me, and she was even sleeping in the living room. The strange thing is, even her family had started to suspect something when I received a call from them at the weekend asking where she was, apparently she hadn’t replied to any of their messages. I immediately marched down to the living room, whether this was a sick prank, or whether she was actually ill, it needed to stop now. It was one thing to be ignoring me, but to ignore her family too? It seemed like things were a lot worse than I’d first thought. When she didn’t reply when I knocked at the living room door, I felt my heart rate spike. When was the last time I actually saw her acting normally?
I barged my way in and saw her standing there unmoving, her eyes fixed in a staring contest with those things above the fireplace. Had she drank anything? Had she even eaten anything? Had she been standing in that same place for two whole days? I felt awful, why didn’t I check on her sooner? When I called out to her, she opened her mouth “I can hear them talking to me, they’re telling me a story” I had to strain to hear her, her voice wasn’t much more than a croak. “Lily look at me” I walked towards her, grabbed her head and turned it towards mine, I could have sworn for a split second her eyes looked different, almost lifeless… “We need to cover up this wall, I don’t want it in my house”.
I took the rest of the week off work, and spent the next day wallpapering above the fireplace. It wasn’t the prettiest but I had to cover it quickly and it was the best I could get. I could always fix it later. As soon as it was covered, Lily started eating with me again, we were sleeping in the same bed again, and I watched as the life slowly returned to her eyes. She wouldn’t talk to me about what happened, but I don’t think she even truly knew herself. We’d decided it was best for her to seek some help and try and move on with our lives. We didn’t want this to get in the way of the things that were otherwise going so well for us. We ended up completely avoiding the living room. I think both of us were disturbed by what had happened and didn’t really know how to just go back to how it was. We started focusing on smaller projects around the house for the time being.
Some time later, I had to go on a business trip for work, it would only be for the day, but I was still worried about leaving Lily on her own in the house. She promised me she’d be okay, and seeing how quickly she had seemed to return to normal comforted me. We promised we’d keep in contact when possible throughout the day giving each other updates just to put my mind at rest.
Maya 8:46am
Just got to work! I hope you’re enjoying your sleep
Lily 9:32am
I only just woke up (embarrassed emoji) I’m going to get started on some commissions!
Maya 12:47pm
On lunch now. You wouldn’t believe how boring these meetings are (crying emoji) I can’t wait to be home! Good luck with the commissions!
Lily 2:22pm
I can hear them calling out to me. You shouldn’t have tried to stop them, they were here first.
Maya 4:24pm
What? I only just finished.
Lily what does that mean? Are you okay?
Maya 4:26pm
Lily please answer me
I’m coming home now.
I didn’t hear anything from her after that. I rushed out of work, calling a taxi and willing the driver to drive quicker the whole way home. It felt like the longest 20 minutes of my life. I was trying to figure out her texts, who did she mean by ‘them’? Was she ill again? Was I wrong to have left her alone so soon? She wasn’t answering my calls, I was preparing myself for the worst. Everything was a blur from the moment I stepped out of the taxi, my hands were shaking as I fumbled for the keys to unlock the front door. I called out for Lily, but there was no answer. After checking upstairs, I felt my heart sink. She had to be in the living room. As I tried to turn the doorknob to the living room, I noticed the door was locked. “That’s strange” I thought, “did this door have a lock on it before?”. In a moment of sheer panic, I grabbed the closest tool I could find, we had a lot of them hanging around from the redecorating. I started hammering at the door, in a situation like this I couldn’t bring myself to care about the Victorian architecture that I was breaking through, there was something wrong with my wife. Breaking a sweat, I’d finally managed to make a hole big enough to fit my arm through and unlock the door from the inside.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I walked into that room.
Lily looked awful. She hadn’t even reacted to me breaking the door. Her face was like a zombie you’d see in a cheap horror film. Her eyes were sagging and dark, her lips chapped and bloody like she hadn’t drank in days. Her skin was grey, and her body was skeletal, how was this possible? I’d only been gone for a few hours. Her hands were covered in blood. My eyes darted to the panel above the fireplace, there was dried blood smeared down the walls where she’d clawed at the wallpaper and pulled it away from the panel, and there staring right back at her were those horrendous eyes. This had to stop now. With my heart in my throat, I raced into the hallway where I’d left my phone and called an ambulance. There was something clearly very wrong with her and she needed help now. I rushed back into the living room as I tried explaining the situation to the emergency services. But Lily was gone.
“That’s impossible” I found myself saying it out loud.
“Ma’am is everything okay?” A voice came from my phone. I felt my head spinning, there was no other way out than through the door I’d just had to break through, I would have seen her.
As I turned around to search the rest of the house, I found myself looking into my wife’s eyes, and today’s date etched into the wood below them.