Whenever anyone in my family dies in a way caused by someone else, they become a watcher. A being set on tormenting the remaining family. At least, that’s what we assume. They say eyes are the window to the soul, but I doubt there’s a soul behind those eyes. Every day we see eyes everywhere. Imagine opening the shower curtain and seeing eyes on the walls. Then when you open it again they’re gone. So you take a shower, and then shampoo gets in your eyes. You wipe it away, and then you see little eyes in the shampoo. Even worse, other people can’t see them, only our family.
That’s essentially what we went through. We’ve tried everything at this point. However, it got even worse when my baby sister was born. Evelyn, we named her. She was going to be strong, and live a long life. She had an INCREDIBLE immune system. However, life had other plans for us.
Evelyn was only seven when it happened. She didn’t deserve it. She was so nice to everyone. She helped and reassured people who were scared, and alone. Not only that, she was a natural leader. She took charge of her little first grade class and led them all to victory. She was the pinnacle of joy and happiness. A sudden illness, a stomach bug. She became more like a corpse than a 7-year-old. Her eyes, which were once a beautiful brown, were reduced to withered husks. She always had this way of convincing everyone it’d be alright. However, it was ultimately too much for her. The doctors had no clue what it was, but they assumed something she’d eaten had caused it. It was only when other people came in that they traced it to a restaurant and shut it down.
We were at peace until that news came. We assumed Evelyn had escaped the fate of our other family. However, when we heard that it had been caused by lack of care for food, we prayed she’d moved on.
She didn’t. Ignorance still counted as causing her death. We found that out when we found a brown eye looking at us from her favorite blanket. She had joined the watchers. That knowledge ultimately broke my family.
It was awful. Every second in the house was miserable. An air of sadness filled the house. Normally, people would move on after some time, but how could you move on, knowing your baby sister was one of the spirits tormenting this family? That she would never get to move on. Eventually, we got used to the constant melancholic mood.
I got an email on my computer. I looked at it, and instinctively smiled. The only good news that’s happened since Evelyn died. I was accepted into our community college! I left, against my parents wishes, and promised them I would visit every weekend, and relax.
Turns out that wasn’t enough. I came in on saturday, to find my parents crying on the floor, knives in hand. “Sarah, we couldn’t take it anymore. The constant watching, always dreaming that Evelyn was suffering, we snapped. We stabbed those horrific eyes out of the walls. EVERY. LAST. ONE. But they kept coming back. Why did they keep coming back?” My mom stuttered and sobbed after that exchange.
I decided to leave college and provide emotional support to my parents. I had pretty good credit from high school, and could land a decent job, given enough time. Besides, my parents needed me during this horrible time.
Afterwards, the eyes popped up even more. In more noticeable places. One appeared on my forearm. I’d had a mini heart attack, but it left regardless. I hated those things. I wanted to destroy them. I knew Evelyn was still in that collective consciousness of eyes and torment, and I didn’t know how much longer I could last before snapping like Mom and Dad. They didn’t work much anymore.
There started being reports of missing people. Every day someone new vanished. I thought I saw some different eyes than usual, but I must have been going crazy, the missing people were not family. I wondered if the eyes had somehow gotten them.
Eventually, the eyes started responding to our strife, our constant grief. Whenever we felt sad, the eyes would start crying. It would seem like a heartfelt gesture, had it not come from an eye embedded in my shampoo bottle, or the tv, or the fridge. It seemed like they were saying they shared our pain. That was a breaking point for me.
I did everything I could. I poured vinegar into the open eye sockets. I didn’t care if it hurt Evelyn. I just wanted those eyes GONE. Eventually, that stopped working, so I just stabbed them. I put knives everywhere, in the places they liked to manifest. I didn’t care if my shampoo smelled weird, or if there was a blockage in the tvs center. THEY HAD TO GO.
Eventually, the eyes started glowing, and playing scenes, like a projector. Mom being hit by a bus, dad clutching his chest, me with a stab wound in my chest. Both of the first two things happened. Dad’s recovered from his heart attack, but mom is being treated for several shattered bones. One more scene happened that interested me. It showed me and my parents, sleeping together, like we did when I got scared. That was all the eyes did.
Eventually, we just started avoiding the eyes altogether. They always seemed to recall memories that tugged at our heartstrings, or just were plain terrifying. The thing that got to me, was the way it always showed us visions that displayed one theme. Love. It was always that. Me hugging my parents, a mother bear feeding her little ones, stuff like that. It made me wonder if they were consuming our emotions.
I woke up in the middle of the night. I heard a creak downstairs, and wondered what it was. Another creak, louder this time. I decided to investigate. I grabbed my flashlight, and instantly screamed. I stifled it quickly. A room FULL of eyes. Eyes everywhere. I chose to go to the bathroom, which had a lack of eyes. I looked for a way to dispatch the eyes, and grabbed a razor. I kept moving towards the creaking noises.
I noticed something. It was a burglar. He turned around, demented grin on his face, knife in his hand, and joy in his eyes. He walked towards me, giggling the whole time. He was a monster, I knew that. I knew I would be missing, but I would be found by my family, as eyes in the wall. He stabbed me. I didn’t bleed. He stabbed me again. Confused, we both looked down. I screamed. A bloody, crushed, chocolately brown eye.
I looked at him, and he suddenly started screaming. Blisters forming on his body, popping and turning into eyes. The eyes appeared in his throat, slowly suffocating him. It took 5 minutes for him to die. When he did, his eyes were ripped out, and dragged somewhere. I followed them. An eye appeared on the wall, and the burglars eyes were taken to it. The eye OPENED, revealing jagged teeth. It crunched the eyes. The burglars body was gone when I returned. I knew he was the one causing the missing cases when nobody went missing the next day.
The next night, I heard a creak. I opened my eyes, and saw a glowing blue figure in the corner of my room. It was Evelyn. She smiled at me, and as she did, more people appeared. I recognized my late grandfather, and the pictures of great-grandparents who had died in wars, according to mom. They all faded away, smiling, presumably to the next life.
My sister was the last to go. I looked at her, wondering if this was even real, and she ran up and hugged me. I knew, at that point, that her tendency to help people had helped her, even in the afterlife. She helped those who were lost and confused and not sure what was going on, move on. She faded away too.
The next day, I broke down. I saw no eyes anywhere. My parents didn’t either. I wondered what I would do, with this new chapter of my life. And I knew, deep down, that my baby sis would ALWAYS have my back.