The Eye

It was a rainy summer evening in New York City, the type that made you feel as though anything could happen. The sound of the cool water hitting the tired, hot pavement, and filling the air with a sort of fog that made everything familiar to you appear in a distorted view almost called for something different or chaotic to happen. It was Penny Lipton’s favorite kind of night. Yes, her name was Penny Lipton and she hated it —it sounded like a brand of boxed tea or the name of a girl down the street who always wore her hair in pigtails. In actuality, Penny did not come remotely close to either of these things. She was short and scraggly and her hair never really did what she wanted it to. Her clothes were always dark and the only bright thing about her was the random streak of color in her hair — it was her own act of rebellion against its constant need to fight being tame. Currently it was purple, and would change at any given moment for no particular reason or purpose.

So there Penny stood, on the corner of Orchard and Canal, contemplating the ridiculousness of her name while waiting for an opportunity to cross the street so she could get a slice of pizza from her favorite spot, Scarr’s. Suddenly and out of nowhere, she was jarred back into reality by a rather peculiar feeling. It was as though she received a proverbial tap on the shoulder by the universe, urging her to pay attention. Her gaze was immediately drawn to a man walking at a relatively brisk pace on the other side of the street. At first sighting, there was nothing unusual about this man that would immediately call out to you. However, upon closer inspection, there was something about this man that did come across as quite strange. Penny could not put her finger on what exactly it was that drew her attention to him, but she became quickly fascinated. He carried about him a tall elegance. You would expect from someone with his height to move in a lanky and disjointed fashion, but he walked with an ease and grace that was almost otherworldly or out of this time. The same could be said about the clothes he wore. They were very similar in fashion to something you would see a man wearing if he merged Victorian-era clothing with those from the 1920s. His head was topped with a black bowler hat and, despite it being at night, he wore round sunglasses that seemed to change color with every different reflection that bounced off of them. Oddly, the style suited him so well that he didn’t stand out in the way you would expect. By far though, the strangest thing about him was that he appeared to be simultaneously old and young all in one passing moment. You could see a fully white head of hair peaking out from under his hat even though his face was devoid of anything to indicate he was more than 30 or 40 years old.

Without even thinking or commanding herself to do so, Penny began following him from the other side of the street. She got about a block or two before he noticed her pursuit. Somehow, he had sensed her in the same way she had sensed him. She could feel his eyes examining her from a distance, his gaze was piercing even though it was blocked by the sunglasses he wore. Penny did not know what she was doing or why she had randomly started to follow a stranger. A sense of stupidity and utter confusion by her own actions washed over her. In that moment, he began moving again, picking up his pace and quickly turning a corner so that he was no longer in sight. However, right before he whipped around that last corner, Penny noticed something fall out of the stranger’s pocket. It was difficult to discern from her distance what it was, but she caught a glint of gold right before it hit the ground. She was impatient to get to the item, darting in and out of traffic, almost desperate to gain some kind of knowledge about this man who had become so fascinating to her in such a brief period of time. As she finally crossed the street and grabbed hold of the item laying on the ground, she breathed a sigh of relief. She did not know what she expected to find, but the item now being clutched in her hands was far more peculiar than anything she could have imagined. On its surface, it was a little book covered in black leather about the size of a small journal. The book felt old and its cover contained a gold symbol — it was an eye, but unlike any iteration of an eye Penny had seen before. It was almost as if the Eye of Horus and the Eye of Providence had been combined into one symbol, but there was also more to it than that. On the back of the book appeared to be a stamped set of initials, R.W.

Penny quickly began her walk back to her small Chinatown apartment, weaving through the hustle and bustle of the city streets, her feet hitting the wet pavement in loud slaps as she began to steadily increase her pace. She was eager to get out of the rain so she could have a proper look at the contents of the book. As Penny entered her apartment, she immediately sat down on her sofa in her now dampened clothing and opened the book. Inside it was a strange arrangement of numbers and symbols. It took Penny a minute, but as she scanned the book in more detail, she realized these numbers were coordinates. Although she still could not make out what the symbols were or meant, she quickly grabbed her laptop so she could begin looking up the location of the coordinates. Her heart was racing as she began entering them one-by-one, moving as quickly as her hands would allow while being careful not to make any mistakes. The coordinates were pulling up locations all over the world, the only images being shown were that of various doors with no discernible connection or detail of what the place was. After spending hours pulling up locations of places she has never been to or heard of, Penny found one that was here in New York City. She glanced over at the clock to see what the time was — it was almost midnight, plenty of people would still be out in the city. Penny grabbed her jacket and the book and ran out the door, putting the coordinates in her phone to guide her to where she was going.

She ended up outside yet another unassuming door not very far from her apartment. It was a dark wooden door set into a white tiled wall with a singular sign hanging above it that had a picture of an interesting looking bottle and the words “Chemist” written below it in bright yellow. She recognized this place, though she had never been. It was a bar called Apothéke. As Penny made her way inside, she was surprised she even passed the dress code. The bar was full of men and women dressed with a sophistication she never had. They sipped their drinks in a dimly-lit room that was both beautiful and and filled with an intoxicating scent that seemed to permeate from the lights themselves. She began to walk around the room, attempting to find any clues as to why the stranger’s book would have led her here. Penny was not having any luck in her search and soon began to feel as though she was starting to draw the kind of attention she did not want to have.

She made her way over to the bar and ordered a drink, the likes of which she had never seen before. As the bartender was setting a drink in front of her that contained hints of basil and black pepper, she asked if he was familiar with a man whose initials were R.W. When Penny began describing the man in more detail, the bartender visibly stiffened and told her to wait. He disappeared behind a door Penny had not noticed until now, and just as she thought he would not return, the bartender reappeared with a man who she did not recognize but who had the same odd qualities as her stranger she saw on the street. The man asked her why she was looking for the stranger she saw, and Penny said she had a book of his she wanted to return. The man asked her to follow him through the door, and despite her reservations, she was too curious to say no.

She followed him down a long dark hallway that appeared to be part of an old underground tunnel system lit only by intermittent candles along the walls. They walked for a long time, past various hallways and passages, until they reached a door that felt almost medieval. Inside, there was a cavernous room with tall, arched ceilings and large pieces of plush velvet furniture. Vibrant rugs covered what would have otherwise been a cold, stone floor. It was a bizarre scene and completely outside the realm of expectation. The man brought Penny over to a table in the corner and sat down across from her. He appeared to be examining her just as her stranger on the street was. There was an all-knowing quality about this man that was off-putting. It was almost as though not even Penny’s thoughts were safe from him. The man asked for the book that Penny had, but she now felt a reservation in giving it to him. Penny began to look around the room, taking in everything she could. That’s when she noticed it, carved in stone above the door they came in through was the same eye that was on the cover of her stranger’s book. She decided, reluctantly, to hand the book to the man. After all, she was not sure what it was she had and there appeared to be something much larger at play.

The man examined the book for some time, carefully looking at the pages and the cover. Eventually, he seemed to be satisfied and sat the book down on the table, crossing his hands over it and looking back into Penny’s eyes. He looked at her for quite some time, as though he were assessing her or weighing something in his mind. Then, without saying a word, he got up and walked over to another part of the room. After several minutes, he came back with a black envelope in hand. He then gestured to Penny to follow him, leading her out of the room and back into the tunnels. They went a different way than they came and walked for what felt like an eternity. Then, just when Penny was starting to feel a slight sense of panic creep in, they turned a corner, walked up a set of steps, and appeared on the other side of what was a locked gate leading out onto the street. The man opened the gate and handed her the envelope, telling her never to speak of this night or what she had seen.

Disoriented as to where she was, Penny turned onto a nearby sidewalk and looked in the envelope, finding what turned out to be twenty thousand dollars in cash. As she walked down the street, Penny couldn’t shake the lingering feeling that she was being watched, catching occasional glimpses of a bowler hat out of the corner of her eye.

Although it was clear Penny should forget this night, she still had a burning desire to know the meaning behind the eye and the curious contents of the black book.