The Crawling Eyes

The village of Evershade had always been small, isolated from the world. Nestled between dense forests, it was a place where secrets clung to the fog and the wind whispered things too terrible to be believed. The townsfolk had always been superstitious, their lives governed by old myths passed down from generation to generation, none more haunting than the one about the Crawling Eyes.

It was said that in the deepest parts of the forest, there existed creatures whose eyes could see through darkness, through walls, and through souls. The eyes never blinked, never rested. They crawled, unseen, yet always watching, always waiting. Some claimed these eyes were the remnants of a long-forgotten curse, others whispered they were something far worse—something alive, something with an intelligence of its own.

Mira, a young woman who had lived in Evershade all her life, had always dismissed the stories. She scoffed at the idea of cursed eyes and creeping horrors. But when her brother, Samuel, went missing one autumn night, all of that changed.

It had been a cold, moonless evening when Samuel disappeared. One moment he was with her, sitting by the fireplace, telling stories of his adventures in the woods. The next, he was gone—vanished without a trace. His shoes, left behind by the door, still had dirt caked on them from the forest path. No footprints, no sign of struggle—only the quiet, unrelenting darkness.

Mira had searched the woods for days, calling his name, but the only answer she received was the chilling rustle of leaves and the occasional distant howl of a wolf. Desperation set in, and Mira did what no one in the village dared to do: she ventured deeper into the forest, beyond the areas where the trees stood like silent sentinels, into the heart of the darkness where the Crawling Eyes were said to dwell.

It was late in the evening when she reached the place—the very spot her brother had spoken of so often, a small clearing surrounded by gnarled trees. The air was heavy, thick with an unnatural stillness. The moon barely pierced the canopy, and the wind had stopped entirely. For a moment, Mira stood frozen, her breath catching in her throat. The forest around her felt alive, pulsing with a quiet, unseen presence.

Then she saw them.

At first, it was just a flicker, a shimmer in the darkness, like a reflection in the corner of her vision. But when she turned her head, there they were: eyes. Eyes everywhere—floating in the trees, in the soil, in the very air itself. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all staring directly at her. Unblinking, unseeing, yet somehow, impossibly aware.

Her heart skipped a beat. She tried to step back, but the ground beneath her feet seemed to shift, to move. She stumbled, catching herself against the trunk of a tree, only to find that the bark was slick and wet—coated in something thick, something… wrong.

The eyes were crawling.

They writhed in the dark, slithering like worms through the dirt, through the air, and up the trees. Their gaze never faltered, never shifted. They were everywhere, closing in. Mira could feel them on her skin, in her mind, their unblinking stare seeping into her thoughts, filling her with dread.

She could hear the whispers then, soft at first, like the rustling of dry leaves.

Come closer…

Don’t be afraid…

You’re already ours…

Mira’s breath caught in her throat. She looked down and saw that the earth beneath her feet had begun to shift, like the ground itself was alive. Dark tendrils rose from the soil, reaching out like fingers, brushing against her legs, her arms, her neck. She tried to pull away, but they held her tight, cold and unyielding.

The eyes continued to watch. They never blinked.

“Mira…”

A voice. Her brother’s voice.

She spun around, desperately searching for him, but there was nothing—nothing but the eyes, endless and endless, crawling toward her. The tendrils tightened, and she felt herself being drawn deeper into the heart of the forest, toward the epicenter of the darkness.

Her brother’s voice came again, closer this time.

“Mira, help me…”

She followed the sound, stumbling, her legs weak beneath her. The forest seemed to shift around her, the trees growing taller and more twisted, their branches like reaching arms, as though the forest itself were trying to keep her from her goal. The whispers grew louder, more insistent, calling to her, urging her to turn back, to leave this place.

But she couldn’t. She had to find him. She had to—

“Mira…”

She froze.

A pair of eyes, impossibly close, gleamed in the shadows. They were not like the others. These were darker, deeper—so deep that they seemed to stretch into infinity. There was something almost… human in their gaze. Something familiar.

Her brother’s face slowly emerged from the darkness, his eyes wide with terror. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. His skin was pale, as though drained of life, his hair matted and tangled, and his clothes torn and covered in dirt. But what struck her the most was the way he looked at her—like he was trying to scream, but was unable to. His eyes were wide, not in fear of what lay before him, but in terror of the eyes that followed him, that had followed him here.

"Samuel?" she whispered, stepping forward.

But as she reached out to him, his eyes widened even more, and he opened his mouth in a silent scream.

And then the forest fell silent.

In that moment, Mira understood.

The Crawling Eyes didn’t just watch—they consumed. They were not merely creatures of sight, but of perception, of thought. To gaze into them was to become one with them, to lose yourself in their endless, unblinking stare.

The eyes that followed her were not just in the forest. They were inside her now, a part of her—slithering in her thoughts, in her mind. And as she stared into her brother’s eyes one last time, she realized that they, too, would follow her forever.

Unblinking. Never resting.

The Crawling Eyes had claimed another soul.

And they would never let her go.