The Stone Eye

A/N So for my bronze Duke of Edinburgh award earlier this year I wrote some short stories for my skill section and I thought, why not share them with you? So here is the first!

I stood outside the intimidating grey building, biting my lip nervously. Now that I was here, I was having second thoughts. However, I couldn’t waste all that time I had spent reading through old reports, contacting doctors to persuade them to let me talk to her. Emily Davies. The woman who murdered her little brother Johnny when she was just sixteen.

That had been over thirty years ago, and I had figured that after all the help she was receiving here, she would be stable enough to talk to me about it. A story that nobody else would dare write, but me. If I was lucky, this report would soon grace the front covers and instantly kick-start my career as a journalist. Who wouldn’t want to know what went on inside the head of a killer?

Pen tucked safely behind my ear, I walked up to the front door, which creaked ominously as I went inside. Emily’s doctor was waiting for me in the lobby. He had reassured me over the phone that he would stay with me in the visitors room for the duration of my visit, just in case anything happened to go…wrong. After a short introduction, he guided me towards the visiting room. I looked around warily as we walked through the corridors. The mental home had a horrible musty smell, and everything was cold and grey. In contrast, when we arrived at the visitor’s room, I saw they had tried to make it more cheerful by painting the walls with pastel colours and decorating with brightly coloured furniture. It felt fake compared to the unwelcoming corridors.

There were a few other people in the visiting room, but I knew instantly which one was Emily, even though she looked nothing like what I had imagined. She sat alone in a corner, small and frail, her hair coarse and greying. It looked as if her time here had taken a toll on her.

The doctor nodded reassuringly to me, and went to chat with one of his other patients. Feeling a little lost, I went to sit in a red armchair opposite Emily.

“Hello Emily.” I said cautiously. Her eyes locked on to me, and I dug my nails into my hands in surprise. I had just watched too many horror movies, and was making too big of a deal out of this. She was a person, just like me or anybody else. I had pushed so hard to come here, I couldn’t give up just because I had frightened myself.

Her eyes were dark, guarded. Although she had agreed to talk to me, I could see she has her doubts about it. “You want to publish a story about what happened.” It was a statement, not a question. Her voice was soft and quiet, as if she didn’t talk very often. I pulled out my notebook from my bag and got out my pen, ready.

“None of them ever believe me about what happened.” she crooned softly, “What makes you any different?”

I tapped my pen against the side of my leg, wary. “I just want to hear what you have to say. A new perspective, if you will.”

Emily stared at me thoughtfully, then her grey eyes flicked to something in the corner. I glanced over my shoulder, but I couldn’t see anything unusual. When I turned back to face her, she was staring at me. Uneasy, I reassured myself that the doctor was chatting to somebody else on the far side of the room, and if anything…happened, he was there to help. She’s just a sick little old lady, I repeated to myself. What could she possibly do to hurt you?

“It started when I took Johnny to the beach near our house.” she began. I snapped to attention, pen at the ready. “It was a cold day, considering it was the middle of the summer. Johnny went to paddle, whilst I went looking through the pebbles for shells. It was a little hobby of mine, you see.” she laughed faintly. “I spent so much time that summer looking for beautiful shells.”

This struck a chord inside me. I had seen pictures of Emily whilst looking through old reports, and she had been a lovely looking child. But now, just fifty years old, she was shrivelled, a husk of her former self. In reality, she was the shell of what had once had been beautiful.

“That day I found something that caught my interest, but it wasn’t a shell.” she breathed, her eyes glazed, caught up in the memory. “A beautiful stone, black as midnight, like an onyx. It was so shiny I could see my reflection in it, clear as a mirror. Well, I just couldn’t believe my luck! I plucked it up off the ground, and then a short blast of cold wind blew past me, shoving me a few steps back. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now of course…” She trailed off, her eyes focusing lovingly on something I couldn’t see, something way back in the past. Still looking into the distance, she reached inside her dressing gown and pulled out a black stone, lifting it up so I could get a clear view. It truly was breath-taking; such a rich colour and clean cut. It hardly looked like something you could just find at the beach.

“Are you allowed to have that?” I asked, a little sharply. If she had chosen to start her story there, then this stone must have some significance. Wasn’t it – what did they call it – a trigger item or something? Surely she should not have been allowed to keep it.

Emily pressed a bony finger to her lips. “They thought they took it away, but we cannot be separated so easily, no, not us.” A wicked giggle escaped her, and she began humming to herself. A drop of sweat trickled down my back and I chided myself for being foolish. They had probably just let her keep it to keep her happy and quiet. All I needed to focus on was the story and not ask stupid questions.

“Emily?” I asked. “Are you with me?”

Her eyes snapped back onto me and she began speaking without a breath in between the last note of her humming. Taken aback, I dropped my pen on the patterned floor, and had to hurry to pick it up, almost missing what she said next.

“So then when we got back and although I had meant to throw it away, as it was not one of my precious shells, I put it on my shelf, the prize of my collection. I could spend hours admiring it, how it always remained cool to the touch, how it never collected a single speck of dust. It was always the first thing I looked at, whenever I entered my room, you just couldn’t help being drawn to it. Well there was one night, when I fell asleep looking at it.” She frowned, the first sign of discomfort I’d seen from her. “I had a dream where I woke up, in my room, and everything was the same…except from the stone.” Her hands, which had been resting docilely in her lap, began shaking. She spoke in a different tone now, not the calm voice that she had been using up till now. “It was…it was…”

“We can take a break if you need to.” I said reassuringly, but she didn’t give any sign that she had heard me.

“It was…an eye.” she gasped out. “A horrible bloodshot eye, and it was watching me. And the worst thing was, it wasn’t a human eye, that’s the one thing I’ve always been sure of. It was so cold, and intelligent, and evil.” She shuddered. “And then it rolled off the shelf towards me, and somehow it got onto my bed, and I couldn’t move, no matter how hard I tried. It just advanced menacingly towards me, until it was right next to my finger, and then it touched me.” Emily let out a little gasp of horror and shuddered. “And then I wasn’t in my bedroom anymore. I was suddenly hit by the sting of wind and a horrible stench. When I mustered up the courage to open my eyes, I was in a barren wasteland. It stretched out as far as I could see, one huge, menacing black sky, smothering the dry wilderness that surrounded me. I think I tried to scream but I couldn’t make a sound over the raging wind. And then I saw where the stench was coming from.” She paused, now perfectly still. Her eyes were hollow, and I knew that this was the moment that had broken something crucial inside of her, something that no matter how hard the doctors tried, could never be recovered. “Corpses rose from the sand, bloodied and rotting, some with flesh hanging off, exposing their fragile skeletons. They stumbled towards me, so I started running, even though was nowhere to go. I could hear their screams alright; screams of fear and misery and hunger. So I ran, fear chasing me all the way. But that was not the end of it. More creatures rose from the sand, hideous shadow creatures, with withered wings and talons. They were faster than the corpses, and it wasn’t long before they landed on me, screeching and jabbing, their sharp claws all over my body, pinning me down. One of them sat atop my chest and brandished its repulsive talons at me, before digging it in to my eye. I am certain the whole world must have heard my screams then. It plucked my eye from the very socket, and waved it around wildly, screaming with laughter. That was when I woke up. I clutched my eye instantly, but it was fine, still there. So you see, just a nightmare.” She laughed shakily.

I let out a deep breath that I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. This case went too deep, I would never be able to write a story about it that had a hope of being published. It was a stupid idea, to think that people would believe I was a good reporter because I published what a crazy woman had to say. Because that’s what she was; absolutely crazy. I shouldn’t have been here at all, but it was too late now, it would be disrespectful to leave at this point, and besides, I was a little curious. Curiosity, as they say, killed the cat.

Emily continued, slumping back in her chair. “After that, I slipped the stone into my pocket, so it would go with me everywhere. I didn’t want to just leave it, with the knowledge that is was just sitting in my home, waiting. Irrational maybe, but I found myself constantly sticking my hand inside my pocket, reassuring myself that it was still there, and oddly, it comforted me. I needed it just as much as it needed me. But it was virtually my only comfort in those days. The monsters from my dream kept appearing, in the corner of my eye. I would whip around, and they would disappear instantly. Nobody else could see them, but they followed me, always. They started getting closer every time they saw me, until they were so close, I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t tell anybody of it, because I didn’t want to seem, well, crazy.” She laughed hollowly. “They weren’t just feeble shadows of my dream, they were really there, I know it, no matter what they tell me.”

“Do you still…see this creatures?” I asked warily.

Emily’s glance flickered to the corner again, but she replied, “No. Not anymore.”

I glanced out of the window. The sky was getting darker, I had been here far longer than I thought. Emily seemed to sense my agitation and picked up the story once more. “I suppose you know the next bit. That’s the bit you really want to hear about, right?” I nodded warily. Indeed, this was what I had spent hours reading through newspapers from decades ago for. Why Emily was really in this sickening place.

“I was at home, lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Several of the monsters crowded around me, but the abject terror of their presence had gone, I didn’t feel anything anymore. I was hollow, ready to be taken. Then the biggest one reached forwards, and touched me, and I was in that desert once again. This time I was terrified, but bitter and angry. I was failing school, driving away my friends, and worrying my parents all because of these sick creatures. I screamed with anger, and flickered briefly back into the normal world, where I grabbed the hockey stick that lay be my bed, untouched for months. I flicked back to their world, and it continued like that, a constant buzzing in front of my eyes. But the monster was always in front of me, taunting me, clear as day. I let my rage consume me and started swinging at it with the stick, but it was too fast. The constant change of worlds in front of my eyes disorientated me but I could sense that I was stumbling out of my room, into the hall. Suddenly, the monster came into clearer focus, and I swung at it again, harder this time. It collided with its head and it let out a hideous shriek of pain, so I kept clubbing it, beating it until it fell to the ground, coated in a slick layer of blood. The world flickered one last time, and I was finally stable again, back in my world. My hockey stick was coated in thick red blood, and I dropped it besides my little brother’s dead body, so small and now unrecognisable, what with having being beaten to death. The monster had tricked me; hiding in the form of my brother so I would kill him. I felt nothing – it wasn’t my fault, it was the monsters, but of course nobody would understand that. I stood there for a time, staring at his bloodied form, the tiny boy mistaken for a hideous creature. I wondered if he screamed, if he begged to me, his loving older sister, in his last moments. He must have been so confused. Then I went back to my room and sat down on my bed again, waiting for my parents to come home. I was alerted by their screams when they opened the door, and saw blood trickling down the stairs. An investigation was unnecessary, I freely admitted I was guilty, and then I ended up here, at just sixteen years old.” She glanced wistfully out of the window, perhaps thinking of the life she never had.

“Thank you for your time.” I managed to get out, and stood up to leave, too shaken to say anything else.

Emily grabbed onto my sleeve. “You aren’t going to publish it, are you?”

“I’m not sure.” I said cautiously. It would be wrong to publish this with my original intentions, to jumpstart my career. “Sometimes it’s better to leave the past behind.”

“Indeed,” she sighed, “Which is why I want you to have this.” She held out the stone, so dark against her pale white hands.

“Oh, I couldn’t.” I stuttered. It was a perfectly normal stone, a little prettier than usual, that was all. But, even so, my instinct told me to leave it her with her, to keep it here in this place where it would never escape into the outside world.

“Please.” she whispered, and it broke my heart, this fragile lady who was a slave to her delusions, who would probably stay locked up here forever. Surely I could do this one thing for her. Against my better instinct, I slipped the stone into my pocket, and a weight seemed to lift of her shoulders. She looked at me regretfully, but shook my hand with thankfulness.

Unsure what to say, I ended the conversation with, “I hope you get better.” She stayed silent, turning away from me to look out of the window again. Maybe now she no longer had the stone, she would be able to heal and move on, maybe even become a functioning member of society again.

With the full intention of discarding the stone as soon as I got home, I left the building and got into my car, touching the stone absentmindedly as I drove home. Its presence was strangely comforting and I wondered vaguely how it would look on my shelf. Outside of the windows of my car, the sky had faded to night, full dark, no stars.

#originalwriting