starry eyes ✮ slashers.

chapter 008.

eight. everlong.

It's strange— the feeling of being watched. It comes in many different tells, from the hairs on the back of your neck, to a swell of discomfort in your gut, a shiver down your spine, or perhaps even the urge to look in the corner of your eye.

Lyra battles her fright and shuffles the egg in her pan, looking around the room absent-mindedly. Tom is at work now, and the large structured halls and rooms are at her mercy. So why does it feel like she's not alone?

Still unnerved, she plates her food and sits at the dining table, lonesome and in silence. She thinks maybe it should've been peaceful for her and yet it was anything but. Every bird's song, every branch swaying against the windows struck her nervously.

Discarding her half eaten plate, Lyra rises to her feet, a new found determination erupting like a shield around her frail form. She walks back to the front door and peers through the peep-hole, nothing to be found but the little steps and garden ornaments, pre loved by the past home's owners.

She finds herself back in the kitchen, inspecting every inch of the room as though it was a foreign setting to her since after-all, every familiarity of the place had walked right out the door along with Tom.

The dining room, connected to the kitchen hadn't much to offer as far as her unsettlement goes, perhaps a few old paintings with uncomfortably positioned eyes, but nothing significant.

She follows the home's structure, down the hall and opens the first door. An abandoned playroom, the sight that had brought her sorrow upon her first entrance. It felt ever so cruel to leave a children's toys behind during the move, which led her to belief the child had passed away.

She was only young, lacking too many motherly instincts she was yet to develop, but the sight of toys gathering dust would never fail to pull on her heart strings. It screamed tragedy to her and she shuts the door quickly with a sigh.

Next is the bedroom, also of what she assumed to have belonged to the child. A twin sized mattress, with a bed frame worthy of royalty and gorgeous drapes across the window. It was awfully bland in decoration, she can't imagine a child would've appreciated it's price when it was lacking so much colour. The room's clear and so she moves onto the next.

A guest bedroom, minimal furniture, awfully reminiscent of a hotel room. The next few doors are the same, duplicate rooms to fill the space. She wonders if the last owner truly had guests often enough to fill those rooms? Or if they'd been laid dormant for their lives.

Then came a small break in doors, where the shed would be from the outside door, Lyra realises, directly next to the master bedroom. She opens the door and a wave of discomfort attacks bitterly at her skin, she fights it off by looking at the familiar objects.

Tom's jacket visible from the ajar wardrobe door, but even that falls through as she realises she'd shut the door before making breakfast. And she couldn't be remembering incorrectly because she'd made a point of jokingly calling Tom lazy for leaving it open.

Doubt crawls it's way into her mind as she approaches it carefully, her jewellery basin gleaming at her past the gap in the door. She opens the door carefully and observes it, taking a moment to notice the lack of her silver pink hearted necklace. But when she does, the realisation settles in, she's not alone.

Perhaps she's naive for not feeling urgency suffocate her instantly, but instead of running, Lyra decides to close the wardrobe door and turn to face the rest of the room.

There's a painting placed opposite her bed, how had she never noticed? Noticed the way the whole painting leads towards those little beady eyes, the way they've added texture to the painting— in the hopes it goes unnoticed, the way there are such little holes in the eyes of the painting?

Lyra holds her breath, reaching to remove it from the wall, shakily but delicately she observes the drilled holes in the wall, allowing her to see into the shed. As she's replacing the painting on the wall, realisation almost sweeps her off her feet.

If she's holding her breath, then why can she hear breathing? She turns slowly, looking around the room until it's clear where the sounds coming from, under the bed.

Ensuring to not cause suspicion, she walks calmly out the room and into the kitchen, beginning to question and notice every painting whose eyes follow her as she moves.

Her skin's crawling awfully as she steps past the front door and locks it behind her, phone in hand as she sits on the steps, facing sideways, back pressed into a bush.

The phone only rings twice before she hears him on the other line and her heart thumps even further.

"Hello, love." He speaks with chirp in his tone and Lyra allows her to be charmed by his voice for only seconds.

"Are your lessons for the day over?" She speaks in a whisper but he hears every word, the urgency she speaks with triggering an itch in his mind that he hadn't felt in a little while.

"Yes, i'm walking to the car now. What's happening?" He fears what he believes to be is the worst, the police had found them, people from Harmony had come to demand justice, something, anything he can blame himself for. But nothing could prepare him for her next words.

"There's someone else in the house."