I threw with all my might, but the third stone came skipping back. Standing before the wall, I stared as it cast its massive gaze down, enveloping my 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. I’d always wondered who lived in the house on the other side of the creek at the end of the stream. Always imagined that the water flowed past the wall and into a little pond in the backyard of some wealthy family. Usually, I would spend my weekends skipping rocks out across the river while whistling the melodies that my mother used to sing to me before he went to bed. It was not something I did consciously; I wasn’t a baby; however, sometimes the subconscious does whatever it can to bring itself comfort. I’d whistle along and think to myself, “One day… one day, I’ll be able to have a house like that. One with a whole river that flows through a vast backyard.” Every day, I’d return to my family’s small apartment on its rundown little street. Slotted into its rundown little place within the rundown grid of other apartments that fit together like cells on D-block, mind plagued with hope. Nobody 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 frantic desperation, pebbles of rumor bouncing along the water from ear to ear. Once, I 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 than others.
I’ve only seen them once, when they moved in two years ago. I’d been sitting on the curb bouncing a ball and watching the ducks awkwardly waddling towards the creek. I remember watching the mother raise her slender neck and cock its strangely shaped head to the side before leading her entourage of ducklings off on a detour to the right. As if to confirm those animal instincts, a sleek jungle cat emerged from the tree line, its engine roaring. A cloud of dust chased closely behind it like its own little following of ducklings. It slunk up to the front of the house, just a small quaint cottage by a stream then, no ominous wall guarding its form. The beast’s engine purred as it stopped, and the family began to step out. The man first, from the passenger seat. He was tall… very tall, wearing a suit with one of those old-timey fedoras. I remember giggling to myself, watching the lanky figure and picturing the cover of some old Sinatra vinyl my mother had. A name came to me at that moment: old blue eyes. The man from the car dawned tiny circular mirrored sunglasses, but for some strange reason, I could feel how piercing those eyes were. I knew they were blue, but beyond that, I knew they were ancient.
The woman also towered above most women the boy had met in his life, although not nearly as tall as her basketball player-height husband. 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. It created a strange shower curtain effect as shadow enveloped her body, desperately warding off the sun in the small circle in which the area of the hat encompassed. 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 glanced at me, only for a moment, but it sent a jolt through his spine. Her eyes pierced straight through me, and I 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. Old blue eyes, I thought again. If only my mother could see hers. She broke eye contact less than a second after making it and caught up to her parents. Her eyes hadn’t been old at all; however, I got the feeling that if I had looked at them much longer, I wouldn’t have been able to stop. Yet, there had been a helpless serenity in the center of her eye. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around how even someone so young my age could have eyes like that. The image of them never left my mind. Not fully.
They floated around in my mind’s eye again today as I stared up at the wall that had risen from the earth only a week after they moved in. I’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. Usually, I skipped stones out across the brook; however, occasionally, I’d send a stone and a prayer at the bars, never to any avail. But today was different. I absentmindedly sent the stone rocketing toward the wall, making no sound as it crossed the threshold and entered whatever lay now on the other side. I stared, shocked for a moment, dumbfounded that I’d actually made the throw. A moment later, I 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 that dropped back down and merged with the brook as the stone raced on before landing softly right at my feet. I stared at it in awe and looked up to the wall. Then back down to the stone.
Reaching down, I plucked the stone from the soft grass on the bank of the water and held it up in my hand. It was smooth and wet as expected; however, it was not the same as when it last lay in my palm. Two letters had been etched into the face of the stone glaring up at him. ‘Hi’. I 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. I knelt down and pulled a jagged stone from the creek, turning the rock over and beginning to write my own message back. I stopped just before the two stones touched as I realized I had no idea what to write. There wasn’t a lot of room for anything besides ‘hi,’ but just saying hi back didn’t feel like enough. “No, not nearly enough,” I thought as I etched the letters ‘H-E-Y’ into the slate. “Good one, now that’s much better,” I thought to myself as I rose back to my feet.
Now I stood ten feet from the iron bars, staring down the wall with the stone reading ‘Hi’ on one side and ‘Hey’ on the other. How many times had I tried and failed to get a rock through those bars? My back foot slid back and planted firmly in the grass as I bent my knees and stared down the grate with a focused ferocity. One shot. My arm cocked back behind my head before I swung it forward as hard as I could, whipping my wrist forward and letting the stone fly straight toward the grate. One shot. 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. But I could feel it was off the way that mother duckling could feel the sleek black car before I could even hear or see it. It barreled toward the wall, but I could see it was heading directly toward a bar. 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 my hopes with it. I couldn’t say exactly what I’d been hoping for, yet a feeling of dejection came over me 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.
“I should have known that first throw was a fluke. You never make it through.” Shock ran through the boy; he knew someone could be 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. I stood there, dumbfounded; somehow, no words came to mind, no matter how hard I tried to force something out. Those cold, piercing eyes suddenly bubbled up to the front of my mind. Was it the girl from that day? It had to be. The voice was so sweet and tender and yet full of sorrow and yearning long beyond its age.
“Just like those blue eyes,” I thought to myself. Then the voice from the grate echoed out again, warped like an old record from the water,
“You didn’t run away, did you?” With that, my senses rushed back to me, and I opened my 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.” I hated how much like a kid I sounded when the words escaped my mouth, but I heard her chuckle softly, just loud enough to be audible from across the wall.
“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…” Another pause, “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.”
I stood there for a moment, thinking. This girl had never seen anything outside those walls, and all I had to describe was the sleepy little town where nothing ever happened. I figured I could at least give her the rundown on school and daily life outside the wall. I told her stories of how my friends and I would go to the baseball fields on Wednesdays and play tag with each other. Or Frankie, the one-eyed owner of ‘Little Pete’s Diner’ where we’d go for milkshakes after school. As I told her stories, the girl would listen and laugh when she heard about the dumb antics suburban boys get up to, like sliding 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 I left that day, dusk had already befallen the small creek, and I could hear the crickets chirping all around. She called out as I got up from my position with my back against the wall to leave,
“Will you come back tomorrow?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s Saturday, so I don’t have school tomorrow.”
“Alright, tomorrow then.”
I could hear the smile in her voice and felt my own face begin to lift up. It was the first time she’d sounded like this… different. There was something in her voice. Hope?
“Wait, what’s your name?”
“I’m Eris.”
I’d never heard a name like that before. Eris. The name didn’t leave my mind. Not as I was walking home, not as I lay in his bed waiting for sleep to overtake me. The name floated around in my head, along with a pair of soft blue eyes that shone like the sun off a quiet sea.
The next day, the only thing I could think about was returning to the end of the creek to talk to Eris again. I had told her about these friends at school and everything we did together, but in reality, I didn’t have much of anybody to talk to there. Much less somebody to really call a friend. I stood up from the bed and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked away; I hated looking at my face in the mirror. When I got into school, all my classmates started calling me ‘Piggy’ because of the way my nose was squashed against his face. Mother said it was cute as a button and that everyone in the family had a squished-up nose. She said it was because my great-great-grandpa used to be a pig farmer and that he was so good at it that he started to look like one. That used to make me giggle as a kid, but it made it hard when the other kids would throw me down the hill into the mud pit, making oinking sounds as they laughed and chortled. My mother greeted me warmly as I went downstairs for breakfast. I told her all about how I’d made a new friend, and I was going to hang out with her again today. As I ran out the door towards the water, she yelled after me to be home by dinner, tears welling in her eyes.
I spent all day by the wall talking with Eris, telling her about my favorite movies and comic books, about my parents, and the vacations I’d been on. She didn’t have many stories to share, but she’d listen and occasionally tell me 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. I listened, fascinated as she’d explain to him the ins and outs of being a pediatric dentist or how the mailmen were unionizing, all sorts of things I’d never thought about or figured anyone our age would be interested in. I’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 I expressed amazement, but she only replied that it wasn’t that hard and that not everybody’s aim sucked like mine did. I’d leave when the sun would dip behind the treeline, and the glow would leave the leaves around the creek.
That whole next week, all I could think about was going back to the creek. It’d be the longest week of my life; however, I found that life at school had gotten considerably better. The kids didn’t stop calling me Piggy, but it didn’t bother me as much. I just carried on, eagerly awaiting the time when I could go back to see Eris. After spending another whole weekend laughing and skipping rocks with Eris, I asked my mother over the dinner table if I’d be allowed to go to Eris’s on a school night. She replied that if all my homework was done, she’d let me go, but never too late, to always be back by nightfall. I didn’t mind that as long as I got to be there. I looked over to my 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. Mother said that we should invite her over for dinner sometime, something that I knew wasn’t a possibility, but I told her I would anyway.
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 I sat our backs to each other against the wall. It could almost feel her warmth through the rough brick as she rested, breathing softly.
“What do your parents do all day if they don’t leave either?”
“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 I went to leave. It always hurt a little to hear her say that, the desperation in her voice she tried so desperately to hide. I replied the same way every day.
“Yeah, sure.”
It had been two months since I met Eris. I’d go over every day after my homework and all day on the weekends. I asked his mother to get me a watch so that I could leave Eris’s at the last possible moment. It was exceptionally dark that Thursday night despite it being only seven at night. The purple of twilight had long since faded and been smothered by the gaping maw of the black sky. I was on his knees, reaching toward the bars under the wall, blocking the house from the outside world. I’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 I needed was to get one bar off, and it’d be wide enough to fit through, but just barely. My mother had stopped questioning why the sleeves on my shirt were always wet by the time I returned. I didn’t mind getting wet, but I’d freeze if I went all the way in, so I always stayed just on the edge of the water, reaching down. Sitting back against the wall in my usual spot, done for the day and breathing heavily, I 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. We 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?”
I paused for a moment. “Yeah… yeah, sure.”
I began to whistle a melody, a slow melancholy tune with a hint of hope to it. Something that would always lift me toward the dream realm and guide me through. Something that felt like home. The familiarity and comfort were audible in the tune as I whistled on. I could almost feel Eris’s breathing steady into comfortable, long breaths through the wall. Soon, she began to join in. Creating a perfect harmony. So perfect. Almost divine. I could feel my eyes growing heavy as we whistled. I heard the tune echoing back to me from the water under the wall. From Eris’s lips, the song sounded even more beautiful, just like my mother whistling to me when I was little. Time passed as we slowly stopped whistling and began to lie silently, comfortably, back to back against the barrier that separated us. I could feel a slight, peaceful smile etched into my face. A warm smile. Tragically warm.
The cold, dead air of the night stung my face as I sharply awoke with an awful ache in the back of my neck from sleeping up against the wall. I looked around, taking in the scene before the realization finally hit me. I frantically looked down at the watch lying on my wrist, and a look of panic spread across my face. The darkness hung low this night. The stars lay dormant behind the tarp of night, resting on the treetops as I began to whisper harshly at the wall, worrying and racking my mind.
“Eris.” I hissed at the wall. But no reply came. I tried again. Louder this time, “Eris, wake up.” I heard a soft, content moan from the other side and the sound of something shifting in the grass. This time, I dropped the whispered tone, “Eris, wake up!” I heard her shift around on the other side.
“Hmm? What’s wrong?”
“Eris, it’s 2 minutes to midnight!” I heard her sit up suddenly and 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 I was rooted in place. Head against the wall. Ears strained. I 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. I 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 my 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 my spine. Eris screamed, “Father, please! I’m sorry! Please!” I heard a scuffle, and Eris shrieked out into the night. I listened to the thunderous footsteps begin to recede, with Eris being dragged behind, crying and apologizing. The desperation in her voice was unbearable. I couldn’t take it anymore; I cried out and hit the wall.
“STOP!”
My eyes grew 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. I stood there staring at the wall. One second? Ten? How long has it been? Then I 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 me. I heard it go to the side, towards the creek, toward the grate. I stared at the rusted iron bars, waiting as the sound stopped just next to them. I waited. Painful seconds. Minutes? Hours? The air split through my skin, sending the chill of the night all throughout my body. All my hair stood on its end, unable to speak, unable to move. The iron bars stared back at me, 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 my mind, searing through my irises and branding themselves into the back of my skull. The complete antithesis of the image of Eris’s eyes that would float around in my mind from time to time throughout the months.
His eyes were cruel, horrible; they contained this unimaginable madness about them. Rings of chaos swirled together as he stared deep into me. I couldn’t move. My 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. I couldn’t take it; I shut my eyes tight and prayed. I couldn’t think of anything else. Only, ‘Help me. Anyone… help me’. I could still see those horrible eyes. I could feel their icy gaze burning inside of me. I 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. I stood there for a long moment, eyes shut tight. The image of those dreadful eyes staring back into my soul. Impossibly bright and filled with all the darkness of the night. I couldn’t move anything, couldn’t pray, couldn’t think. I was trapped inside my own body, inside my 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 I 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 Mother. Not 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; I was mesmerized. Suddenly, my own eyes shot open, and I snapped back to reality.
“ERIS!”
I yelled toward the wall as I jumped into the freezing waters of the creek. I shivered uncontrollably as I frantically splashed toward the iron bars under the wall, grabbing the center one and beginning to tug with all my might. The cold, rough bar began to give out a bit, but it wasn’t enough. I placed both my feet against the wall and pulled back with every ounce of strength I had. A groan and a grating sound sputtered out of the bar as it resentingly came free from the rest of the wall with a stubborn squeal. I splashed back into the water, the cold enveloping every part of my body. Quickly, I freed myself from the grasp of the depths and desperately made my way toward the grate. I pushed up against it, turning his body sideways, madly trying to squeeze through. My head passed the bars, and soon, half my body had made it to the other side of the wall. I didn’t take in my surroundings, I didn’t feel the cold, I became a single mind with a single goal. I lurched forward, finally freeing my waist from the bars, and splashed into the pond on the other side. Like a crazed animal, I threw myself up with all the strength I had left and started towards the house, but as I began to run, I started to see where I was. I stopped suddenly, looking at the house that lay before me. A once homey-looking and lovely home was now a derelict shack. I could see through the walls there were so many cracks and holes. I started to notice my 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. I looked around to see the skeletons of all manner of creatures that lived around the area. But as I 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 I heard it. Whistling. From behind me. It was my mother’s song. But it sounded wrong. It sounded off. It wafted around me from behind, raising goosebumps on my skin. I turned around to face the wall. I 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. My mouth opened in horror as I 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. I’d seen those eyes before. Two years ago. Eyes that had morphed in my fantasy 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 frozen blade. Cold black tendrils wrapped themselves around me. I couldn’t stop looking into her sunken sockets, searching for the eye of that storm. The calm in the center. I saw only pure bloodlust. I could feel her raw emotion. Absolute carnage. The tendrils began to pull me in as Eris’s jaw unhinged, and a row of iron teeth emerged from her gaping mouth. She turned me around to face the house and started to lower her mouth over my head. I saw through the walls two skeletons lying on the bed. I felt two long teeth pierce him, but before I could scream, I heard my mother singing the lullaby. I felt my eyes growing heavy as the melody lifted me to the dream realm. The fear melted, and the boy’s face grew into a peaceful smile. A warm smile. Tragically warm.