My Eyes Beguile | Sai Macha (10)

“How could this have happened? We were so careful!” Zara yelled, her voice strained and broken as we raced

through the woods in the freezing night air.

“That doesn’t matter now. It’s out and we need to warn the others!” I responded, my legs on fire and my

lungs raw.

It felt like centuries before we finally saw the camp before us, a light at the end of the tunnel. I grinned and

felt a final burst of strength rush through me as I scrambled my way over the rough, tangled terrain of the

forest floor and onto the soft grass of our camp.

But wait. Something was wrong.

Our camp was more like a small village: 50 people strong, from all walks of life. Young, old, men, women,

scientists, survivalists, chefs, carpenters, you name it. Always busy. Always bursting with life.

Except for tonight.

“Guys! Come out now! Something is coming!” Zara called, having caught up with me.

“Sasha? Oliver? James? Jonas? Ellie? Dad?” she continued, her voice growing more and more panicked with

each person whose reply we never heard.

The camp was deserted. Not a soul to be found, not a familiar face to be seen.

“What happened to everyone?” she whispered, eyes going wide.

There was nothing. No laughter, no playful banter, no stupid arguments. Just the faint whoosh of the wind

and the rustling of a dying fire.

Then the snap of a twig.

I whipped my head around, hope and anxiety stirring up a deafening cacophony of thoughts, to see a figure,

standing just next to one of our tents. He was tall, gangly, with brown hair and pale skin. I recognized him.

My son, Oliver.

Except, that wasn’t my son.

Something was off about him. Maybe it was the fact that his hair was longer and messy, unlike my Oliver who

prided himself on staying neat. Maybe it was how unnaturally skinny he was. My boy was thin, he was always

running around and hated eating, but whoever… whatever this was seemed like it was nothing more than skin and bone. Or maybe it was how, when I looked into its eyes, I couldn’t see my little boy’s emerald green ones

staring back at me. I couldn’t see anything at all, only empty sockets.

“Mo-o-mmy?” it called, voice hoarse and raspy. I felt my hope vanish, my brief relief evaporate. All that was

left was pure terror. Suddenly, I heard Zara, her usually strong and bold voice reduced to a whimper.

“Mom, look”

Then I saw them. They looked just like the people we had once known. But they weren’t. These were

imposters. Horrifying, malicious replacements for friends, family, lovers, and children. They all looked just

like the thing that had replaced my son. Thin, gangly, ragged. And they had no eyes.

I turned to Zara, about to tell her to run, to get help, at the minimum to save herself. But she wasn’t there. I

was alone. Alone with these things.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I was too scared. They were looking at me with those disgusting, horrid, sunken

sockets. Just staring. Their expressions were blank. Their bodies motionless. I wanted to run. I wanted to

scream. Hell, I just wanted to stop seeing those empty sockets.

It felt like 10 lifetimes before I mustered up the courage to step back. I hoped that that would be the end of

this nightmare. Maybe I was dreaming and I would wake up and find my husband, my son, and my daughter

were fine. Or maybe my body would give out, and I could go into cardiac arrest and die before I met the

same fate.

But fate wasn’t kind to me.

They started smiling at me. Not kind smiles. Not ‘haha you got pranked!’ smiles. They were cruel smiles. And

they just kept getting wider. They started as barely noticeable, then turned into grins, then smiles that seemed

to split their faces in half. Their mouths opened, revealing an absence of teeth, and the same dark pocket of

flesh that mirrored their eyes.

At that moment, something changed in me. I realized that running wouldn’t save me. The only chance I had

was to fight back. These things weren’t my fellow campmates anymore. They were something else. They were

gone now.

Suddenly, the Oliver-Thing lunged forward at me, razor sharp talons raised. Thinking fast, I grabbed a

burning log from the weakly burning fire and struck it with it. It recoiled in pain, letting out an ungodly

shrieking sound that turned my fear into anger. It had taken my son from me, and it had the nerve to sound

hurt? Seeing that their comrade had been hurt, the rest of the group stepped back, their smiles never faltering.

“That’s right” I said, voice quavering in anger and adrenaline, “get away from me you filthy monsters!” I

screamed the last word, anger boiling over to muzzle the fear. I threw the log into the crowd, still burning,

and saw them all recoil from the light and heat. They hissed and shrieked and evaporated like vampires in the

sun.

Then I ran. I ran and I ran, right back to the place where this all began. Down the hill our camp was situated

on, back into the dark forest with its floor of thick, tangled, and twisted roots that made walking difficult. But

I didn’t care. This needed to end now. I needed to save them.

My lungs burned, my legs ached, my heart felt like it was about to give up. Then I saw it. The mouth of that

cursed cave where this whole nightmare began. A sense of morbid relief washed over me yet again. But this

time, I wasn’t foolish enough to fall into its deceptive embrace. I tightened my jaw and kept running, never

slowing down.

A figure was standing there. A girl. Short, skinny, with jet black, ragged hair. I felt my eyes widen as I came to

a complete stop right in front of her.

“Zara” I breathed, “Zara, baby is that you?”. My voice betrayed more hope than I wanted it to let on. I waited.

Waited for her to look at me with those empty sockets. To smile at me with that toothless grin. But that never

happened. When she finally looked at me, I saw her father’s honey amber eyes staring right back at me. Her

mouth still had teeth in it.

She was scared, but my daughter was alive.

“Zara!”

“Mom!”

The wave of sheer joy that washed over me when I felt my daughter’s cool embrace was immeasurable to any

relief I had felt before.

“Zara what happened to you? Where did you go?”

“I don’t know. One second I was standing next to you, the next I was back here, with you running straight at

me.”

“Honey, I need you to listen to me. This will never end unless we go back into the cave and kill the thing that

started this.”

“You can’t go alone. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’ll be fine. You stay here. If anything happens, run.”

“And go where Mom? Camp? We’re in the middle of nowhere. What if those things come back? I’m coming

with you.”

“Zara-”

“That’s final Mom. We do this together, or we don’t do it at all”

I sighed and smiled weakly at her. That bold temperament of hers had never truly left.

We descended into the cave with 2 makeshift torches we’d managed to make out of twigs and matches we

had on hand. It was dark and smelled of damp. We moved quickly, like rats in a city sewer.

Then I heard Zara’s breath hitch in her throat.

“Mom. There it is.”

She was pointing to a pair of glowing orbs. One was a bright, brilliant blue. Calm like the ocean on a sunny

day, pulsing softly, light washing over it in ripples like waves lapping softly against the shores of a beach. The

other was a deep, blood red. It was shaking violently like something unstable. Like a bomb about to burst.

“We need to destroy the red one.” Zara said. There was an absoluteness in her voice I had never heard

before. It was hard to see her in the darkness, even with the torches, but I knew what she wanted to do.

“Ok.” I said, taking a deep breath and raising my torch over my head, “let’s end this Hell”, and I swung the

torch at the orb.

If only I had noticed that the eyes of my fellow campmates were staring at me from inside the orb of blue. If

only I had stopped to question how “Zara” knew it was the red orb that was the cause of all this when the

mysterious box we’d uncovered only held a single purple orb. If only my eyes hadn’t deceived me. If only my

mind hadn’t betrayed me.

The red orb shattered on impact, releasing a bright red light and a horrible shrieking sound that knocked me

back. My head hit the cave wall and everything went black.

When I woke up, I was no longer in the cave. I was back at camp. Everyone was sitting around the campfire.

Joking, laughing, fighting. Everything was fine again. Overjoyed, I joined them, sitting down next to the

figure of my husband.

“So, what’d I miss guys?” I asked, giddy with excitement and relief.

But then, the laughter stopped. The fighting silenced. The fire went out. Suddenly, they all looked at me, their

eyes falling out of their sockets and those wretched, evil smiles coming back.

“What?” I gasped, horrified. “No. No. No, no, no, no!” I wailed, “I fixed this! I fixed you! Why are you

looking at me like that!?”. I felt tears start to stream down my face. Not of sadness, but of anger, of

desperation, of confusion. Why was I still stuck in this messed up fantasy land?

Then Zara stepped in to view.

“Zara, what is going on?” I begged, desperately trying to wrap my head around this.

Then she looked up, and I realized that wasn’t Zara. Her eyes were gone, and when she spoke, her voice was

garbled and raspy. Just like that Oliver-Thing.

“Oohh Mmorgaan. Whaat a sillyy little thiing you are. Youu thoughttt youu could escape from usss?” It

grinned, “all youu didd wass seall yourrr ownnn fate”. Its voice was a mangled amalgamation of my family’s

voices. Hearing it sent a pang of fear and hurt through my heart. It dawned on me that they were never

coming back.

“What are you talking about?!” I screamed. The red orb was supposed to end you. To end this! Why are you

still here? Where are my children?!”. I was screaming now. The pain was too much. The anxiety and fear was

too much.

It laughed. That horrible thing that had taken both of my children laughed. “The reddd orbbb would have

takenn youuu backkk homee, hehehe. The blueeee orbbb is what sustainsss usss” its smile grew wider. Its

face was starting to split. It was coming closer. I was frozen. Not in fear. By compulsion. The thing was

keeping me in place. “Youuu humansss are sooo gullible. Oneee illusionnn is all it takess to foolll youuu,

hehehehe. Redd andd blue. Blue anddd reddd. It’ss alll the sameee. Yourrr childrennn have joineddd uss.

Sssoo have allll yourrrr littlllee friendsss”. Its mouth was opening. Opening. Opening.

“Anddd noww it’sss yourrr turnnnn”

I never needed my eyes anyway. They never could tell the difference between reality and illusion.