Eyes of the Wendigo

8 -

The journal sat on the small table in Sarah's cabin, its worn leather cover cracked and faded from years of use. It had been Rob's, the only thing of his she hadn't lost. The only piece of him left that hadn't vanished into thin air like the rest of his belongings. She had spent hours poring over its pages, reading and rereading the final entries, trying to make sense of the disjointed words Rob had scrawled in his last days.

She had started reading it out of desperation, seeking some comfort, some connection to the man she had loved and lost. But the more she read, the more unsettling it became. The words were cryptic, fragmented, as though Rob's thoughts had been unraveling in the days before his death. His writing, once neat and methodical, had become erratic, the lines uneven, the letters rushed. And the things he wrote about...

Sarah couldn't get them out of her head.

She sat now at the table, the fire in the hearth burning low, casting flickering shadows across the room. Her hands shook as she opened the journal to the last few entries. The cabin was silent, save for the soft crackle of the fire and the distant howl of the wind outside. But inside Sarah's mind, there was no silence. There was only the constant buzzing of thoughts, the incessant questions that wouldn't leave her alone.

What had Rob seen? What had he known?

Her eyes scanned the page, her breath coming in shallow, ragged bursts as she reread the words for what felt like the hundredth time.

"They're watching me. I feel it every time I leave the village. Every time I step into the woods, I can feel them—eyes, always watching, always following."

Sarah's heart pounded in her chest, her hands trembling as she turned the page.

"It's not just in the woods anymore. I see them everywhere now. In the village, in the cabin. Even when I close my eyes, I can feel them. There's something inside the eyes. Something I can't explain, but I know it's there. It's watching me. It's inside me."

She swallowed hard, her mouth dry as her eyes moved down the page. The words were becoming harder to read, Rob's handwriting deteriorating into near illegibility.

"I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see them. I see the eyes. They're everywhere, and they're getting closer. I don't know if I'm imagining it or if they're real, but I can't shake the feeling that something is coming. Something is inside me, inside all of us."

Sarah slammed the journal shut, her heart racing. The words burned in her mind, the meaning elusive but terrifying. She couldn't stop thinking about what Rob had written, couldn't shake the feeling that there was something deeper in those cryptic lines—something Rob had understood, something he had seen before he died.

Her hands trembled as she reached for the journal again, flipping back to an earlier entry, one from weeks before Rob had disappeared. His writing had been clearer then, more focused. But even then, there had been signs that something was wrong.

"I saw something today," the entry read. "Something out in the woods. It was watching me. I don't know what it was—just a figure, standing at the edge of the trees. But it felt wrong. Like it wasn't human. I tried to follow it, but it disappeared. When I told the others, they didn't believe me. They said it was just the cold playing tricks. But I know what I saw."

Sarah's breath caught in her throat as she reread the passage. Rob had seen something in the woods—something that wasn't human. But what had it been? And why hadn't anyone believed him?

She flipped to another page, her eyes scanning the increasingly frantic entries.

"It's not just in the woods anymore. It's in the village. I see the eyes everywhere, watching me, following me. I think the others see it too, but they're too afraid to say anything. Or maybe they've already been taken. I don't know who to trust anymore."