The Eye in the Gap

One of my earliest childhood memories involves telling my mom about the eye that watched me from the doorway. I don’t remember the first time I saw the eye, even then it was just a part of my life. But I distinctly remember trying to explain to her in whatever broken english I was speaking at that point in my development, that there was an eye that followed me everywhere I went.

She played along and pretended to say ‘hi’ to another one of my ‘imaginary friends’. That was that until a few years later. I was at the age where my other imaginary friends had all gone, but the eye stayed. I’d always known it was different, more real than the others, but I’d grown up with it. Certainly everyone else had something similar to deal with. Maybe it wasn’t an eye that stared at them from the crack in their ceiling, but surely I couldn’t be alone in this.

I remember talking to friends on the playground one day and telling them about it, how the eye was watching us from the gap between the slide and stairs. I told them about how, sometimes when the shadows hit my binder just right it would watch me in class. I started to talk about how it changed colors every time I saw, it but one of them cut me off and told me to stop pretending. I was hoping for a glimmer of recognition, or maybe laughs and similar stories of the imaginary friends that wouldn’t leave them alone. But I was met with reserve and silence for the rest of the day. I had unnerved them and I was determined to never mention it again.

That day I asked my mom if she still had any imaginary friends, but she didn’t laugh it off.

“Those all go away as you get older honey.” She pulled me closer. “Do you still have any imaginary friends?” The way she asked it sent chills up my spine. It was the tone of voice she used when I’d done something bad and she was trying to coax me into admitting it. I knew if I said yes, that it would be the wrong answer.

“No I was just wondering.” I made up some excuse and left the room, only to be greeted by the eye watching me from under my bed. I jumped up as quickly as possible, for the first time feeling uncomfortable that it was there. The eye meant that I was weird, different from the other kids.

Ever since that day, the eye has been my best kept secret. All through elementary school I hoped it would go away if I just ignored it. I gradually became more and more aware of just how abnormal it was, but again it’s tough to find something strange when it’s been with you your whole life.

After my first day of middle school I decided that I had had enough. I was growing up and it was time for this eye to leave me alone. I closed my closet door just enough for an eye to peek through and waited less than a minute before it showed up. It was green this time, like mine.

“What do you want?” I said it very calmly for a person talking to an imaginary eye in their closet. It just stared at me, so I tried to get a closer look. I knew from experience that it would vanish if I opened the door, but I was hoping I could maybe get close enough to see if there was any more substance to it.

It only ever showed up in gaps veiled in shadows and given how quickly it disappeared, I never really considered what else might be around it. But now, moving my own eye level with it, I felt a chill run my back, like something else was lurking behind me.

“What do you want?” I whispered it more forcefully, trying to get my eyes to adjust to the darkness around it.

I moved my eye mere inches away from it “Answer me dammit!” The creeping feeling behind me persisted but I wasn’t about to look away. My back started to burn from the angle I was hunched at, and it made me wonder about the height of the eye. The whole closet was dark enough for it, but it had chosen to appear as if it belonged to a person, peering through the door.

“Let me out.” The words were playful and I flinched, involuntarily looking behind me. Its voice was like the voice in my head, devoid of any inflection or pitch. It sounded like a thought spoken aloud, the tone ambiguous enough to belong to any person. Looking back at it, I grabbed the closet door and started to creak it open. The eye stared me down just until the first few rays of light started to sneak their way in. I caught the barest hint of something more before it vanished.

After that day the eye started to appear more and more. It followed me whenever the shadows permitted, and if I dared to make eye contact for more than a second, it asked me to let it out. It was always light hearted, like it was just throwing out suggestions, but it couldn’t care less if I actually complied. I was never really scared of it, but as the years wore on, I started to resent it.

It felt like a brand on me. The eye meant that there was something wrong about my mind, and when I entered highschool I dedicated myself to studying mental illnesses. I was convinced the eye meant that I was due for a schizophrenic break. The way I saw it there were two options. Either I was hallucinating, or I had to accept that something unnatural and unknown to science had attached itself to me.

I’d known from an early age that I was adopted, so the lack of mental problems in my family just meant that these tendencies had to have come from my birth family. Because of this I refused to entertain the idea of any paranormal explanation. The eye started to get more forceful each year, going from playful, to pleading, to demanding. Rather than being defeated by it, I used it as motivation. I was pretty sure that once the eye got ‘out’ that my mind would go with it.

It didn’t matter to me that none of this lined up with the typical development of schizophrenia. It was the closest rational explanation and I was determined to face it. I graduated early and overloaded on college classes, desperate to make some headway in studying the hallucinations before I ended up a sad blubbering mess in some state run facility.

I spent my college years in an overcrowded house with a bunch of other girls willing to sacrifice comfort to end up in less debt. The house was in disrepair, with a massive crack in the living room wall that got worse each year. Not bad enough that the landlord would fix it of course, but bad enough that the eye could always make an appearance.

On the rare occasion we threw house parties, it would yell above the din of the crowd to be let out, and I had to pretend I couldn’t hear it. When I ventured outside the city, it was always waiting for me in whatever campsite or hotel I was staying at. Usually watching from the closet or the gaps in a friends sleeping bag. It kept me up at night sometimes, pleading to be let out if I made the mistake of catching its gaze for even a second.

At night, when my eyes adjusted, it always found somewhere to watch me. In my bedroom it liked to stay in the gap between the dresser and desk. That was fine, but it started to get louder as I neared my second year in that house. I mastered the art of avoiding it, because I couldn’t stand it’s incessant pleading once I caught it’s attention. Things were stable for a bit, until one night, it spoke before I looked at it.

“I know you can hear me. Just let me out.” The change in its dialogue, however small was still chilling. Until then it could only say the phrase ‘let me out’ over and over. I didn’t look around for it, fearing that attention might make it worse. I stayed as still as possible like a little kid hoping that the monster would go away if I just ignored it.

The silence was pervasive, consuming, the kind of silence that felt heavy in the air with the anticipation of something terrible. I can’t say how long I laid in bed, but eventually my thoughts became fuzzy enough to tangle with the edge of sleep.

“Let me out.” Its voice pulled me back from the edge of rest and sent my heart rate racing. I tried to rationalize it. Surely I must have made eye contact with it, just for a second. It had never been able to speak to me without acknowledgement before, and there was no reason it should be able to now. It spoke to me twice more before I finally tuned it out enough to sleep that night.

The next night I closed my eyes and felt my way to my bed by touch. There was no way I could meet its gaze. I turned out the light and pulled up the covers, certain I was going to get enough rest to make up for the night before.

“Jennifer. Why won’t you let me out?” It’s voice still had that toneless, inhuman quality, but it had never said my name before. I was scared for a second, but that quickly turned to rage.

This thing, whatever it was, had shaped my whole life. Forcing me to keep secrets from the people I cared about. Robbing me of essential experiences, the school trips I turned down, the sleepovers I couldn’t go to as a kid because I just didn’t have the energy to tune it out that day. Hell, even just a few short months ago when things were getting serious with some guy at one of our parties, but I couldn’t bring myself to take him to my room, knowing that the eye would be watching. Even that wasn’t enough, now it had to deprive me of sleep.

It persisted about an hour into the night before letting me rest, but I knew it would only get worse. That morning, when I finally dragged myself out of bed, it was waiting for me in the living room. I sat on the couch, staring at it as I ate my cereal.

“Let me out here, Jennifer.” It sounded nicer than usual, like it was in a good mood and it just wanted to toy with me again. One of my roommates stumbled in and I stopped looking at it, but I started working on a plan. Spring break was coming up, so I was about to have the house to myself.

I spent the next few weeks in a stressed out, restless slumber. Somehow making it through finals despite the steadily worse noise in the night. I knew all of my roommates except Shelly would be gone the first day, so I convinced her to have a date day with her boyfriend, heavily hinting that I would love some alone time, a rare commodity in college.

I bought a sledgehammer and some spackle and mesh in preparation. I didn't know what it meant by ‘let it out’ but I thought I had hit rock bottom, and it was about time to find out. It had been especially bad that night, I think somehow sensing what I planned to do, and it was determined to make sure I wouldn’t change my mind.

“Please let me out Jennifer.” It sounded mechanical now, like it was just going through the motions because it knew I was going to go through with it.

“Fuck you.” I said, landing the first swing completely on top of it. The crack buckled and bits of drywall rained onto the tarp. Once I got the first swing out, it was like I couldn’t stop. It felt so good to just keep hitting the drywall, over and over again, letting out a lifetime's worth of frustration and hate.

The wall fell in a decidedly unnatural way, the cracks spreading out like a section of the wall had already been weakened. The damage from one blow would spread out, only to the left in thin tendrils, while another hit would result in a spiderweb of new cracks. It was like the wall was showing me where I needed to hit.

Suddenly my arms gave out. Like all of the pain from lifting the hammer hit at once, and I became aware of my lungs burning from all the dust. I collapsed onto the pile of drywall and stared up at what I’d created. The hole in the wall was taller than me, with four distinct branches growing out near the top and bottom, and one short branch at the very top. It resembled a person, but rougher. Like the outline of someone who didn’t have the same skeletal structure that a person is supposed to have. At the end of its ‘arms’ several smaller cracks branched out like fingertips, but longer than they should have been, and it’s legs bent in more places than one. It was like a child’s drawn silhouette of a person roughly sketched out before their hands are capable of really capturing the most basic human form.

I knelt in the rubble, sinking further down and before I knew it I was asleep. I woke up to shadows that were significantly lower than they had been, and immediately knew I had to get to work.

Fixing the wall took much longer than I thought, and it was well into the night before I had everything cleaned up. I kept expecting Shelly to burst through the door at any minute and demand to know what I was doing, but I managed to get everything done and head off to bed before she even got home.

That night I enjoyed the most peaceful sleep of my life. I went to bed alone and woke up alone, not the barest hint of the eye or the voice trying to grab my attention. Shelly was still out, but that was okay, that just meant more time to myself.

When she finally came home that night I was happier than I’d ever been. I told her we had to celebrate the end of the semester, so we spent the evening drinking and relaxing until she stumbled to bed.

I could hardly sleep, too caught up in my newfound freedom. My mind was working on overdrive imagining all of the possibilities for my future. I could have a family, a life without the constant worry of my mind slipping away and dragging the rest of me with it.

My thoughts were abruptly interrupted by Shelly’s door closing shut. She must have stumbled awake to get a glass of water or something. But I was bothered by the fact I hadn’t heard her door open in the first place. The stress of the day must have been catching up with me, because I started to imagine that maybe someone had broken in. I decided to check on her, just to settle my thoughts.

“Shelly!” I yelled as I walked down the hall. “Shelly, you okay?”

No response.

I walked up to her door and pressed my ear to it. Nothing.

“Shelly! I’m coming in!”

I turned the knob just as a muffled scream broke the silence. I froze, there was someone in there with her. I tried to will myself to open the door but I couldn’t do it, knowing that real, life threatening danger was waiting for me on the other side.

“Jenny!” She screamed and I snapped out of it. But the knob wouldn’t turn all the way. The door was locked.

“Shelly it’s locked!” I yelled just as a muffled smack echoed out from the room. I had to break down the door. I ran to the living room, ready to beat the door down with a sledgehammer if I had to.

I was greeted by an empty wall, the spackle can and sledgehammer missing. Worse still, even in the faint light I could tell that the discoloration between the old and new drywall was gone.

Running back to Shelly’s room I heard another smack echo down the hall, louder this time. A sickening scream followed it, something I couldn’t imagine coming from a person, let alone Shelly. Without slowing I plowed my full weight into the door. I felt a crunch, and it didn’t even budge. A cracking sound came from the other side, and this time it was followed by a suctioning noise.

Shelly’s screams turned to gasps for air, and the cracking sounds fell in quick succession, while I pulled out my phone and dialed 911. I sputtered out that someone had broken in and we needed help, and I left the call on as I got up to run into the door.

My shoulder started bleeding after the first hit, and I couldn’t hear anything from Shelly anymore. Just the cracks, followed by increasingly loud sucking sounds, like she was being consumed by some awful alien entity.

I don’t know how many times I hit the door, but when the police found me I was laying on the ground, half conscious, and all of the noises in Shelly’s room had stopped.

I was carted off to the hospital, and later questioned skeptically about the events of that night. The timeframe cleared me of any suspicion, but they did find it odd that someone had beaten Shelly to death with a sledgehammer on the same day I bought it.

Eventually coincidences were ruled coincidences, and during the investigation my grief was balanced by my relief that the eye seemed to be gone for good. I came to terms with the fact that the creature must have taken Shelly, and although I missed her, I tried to fight the guilt I felt about it. I mean, I couldn’t have known what would happen, and in a sick way, I was secretly glad that it had been her and not me. I could be someone now, I had the chance to live a life not dictated by some fucked up supernatural entity.

Shelly’s funeral was closed casket, and for good reason. Her parents weren’t able to identify her, and they had to use what was left of her teeth for dental records. At her wake, me and the rest of the girls shared her more appropriate stories from college. Trying to remember when she had made us laugh. She always hated it when people cried.

When they lowered her casket in the ground it really hit me. Everyone had told me that shock is a funny thing, and I might not be feeling anything right away. Seeing her, what was left of her, being put in the ground. To be buried in the dirt, in the dark with worms and maggots, it was just so wrong. I couldn’t stand seeing my friend, however briefly we’d known each other, reduced to an object, something cold and unrecognizable in a box.

I couldn’t stop the tears streaming down my face as her family started throwing dirt on the coffin. I couldn’t stop thinking about how she always hated the cold. I watched the dirt pile up, and through my tears I saw something.

A single eye appeared in the shifting dirt for just a second. Then the shadows fell into turmoil and it was gone. I had almost convinced myself it was a coincidence until I got home.

It was waiting for me in the crack of the closet door. It was silent, observant, just like the early days of my childhood.