Horror Stories

Eyeless Jack

My name is Mitch. I didn't used to believe in the supernatural, the paranormal, or whatever it's called now. I still don't want to believe creatures like that exist, but after what happened to me, I'd be a fool not to believe in them. It makes me uneasy just thinking about it.

Do you really want to know? Alright, but I've got to warn you: it's pretty graphic.

What I am about to tell you is as much of what happened as I can remember. If there are gaps in my story, that's because either I don't remember what happened during that time or it's not important to my story, so don't ask about it. Alright, so due to some circumstances I won't get into here, the bank foreclosed on my house, so I was out a place to live. Being the epic older brother he was, my brother Edwin invited me to move in with him. Gratefully, I took him up on that offer. Edwin and I hadn't seen each other in about 10 years or so, so we were both excited for me to get settled in and start catching up. With his help, it only took about a week to finish unpacking my things and get everything in my room exactly the way I wanted it.

Since I'm a photographer, naturally my camera is one of the most used objects I own, so I just put it on my bedside table to avoid having to dig it out from wherever else I could have put it. On the last day of unpacking and arranging my stuff, Edwin and I had just put the finishing touches on my room with enough time to have a couple of drinks in front of the TV before bed. I had told him that we would have to stock up on rum and cola if I was going to be living there. He just laughed and turned back to whatever action movie happened to be playing. After the movie was over, we both went to bed. I collapsed into my bed, eager to get to sleep in my shiny new room.

It didn't feel like I had even fallen asleep before I was startled awake by something rustling in the bushes outside my window. I turned over to check the time on my phone. It was one in the morning. "Stupid raccoons," I mumbled groggily as I turned my back to the window and promptly fell back to sleep. "Did you hear those raccoons last night?" I asked Edwin at breakfast the next morning. "Huh?" he replied, over the sound of bacon and eggs on the stove. Then my question registered in his mind, "Oh. No, I didn't hear anything. I was completely passed out, man." "Figures," I snorted, "You sleep like the dead." He chuckled as he grabbed a couple of plates from the cabinet for us, "Chow's ready."

That night, I was startled out of my slumber again, but this time, it sounded like my window sliding open, accompanied by a loud *thump!* sound. I bolted upright in my bed, fully expecting to come face-to-face with some psycho killer or something, but oddly, there was nothing. Not a single thing was out of place in my room. Sighing with relief and thinking that I was just startled awake by noises in my dreams (since it wouldn't be the first time that happened) I turned my back to the window again and fell back to sleep. The next morning at breakfast, Edwin's coffee mug and jaw dropped when I stumbled sleepily into the kitchen. He pushed me back to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. I had a huge gash in my left cheek.

With how deep the cut was, I was surprised I couldn't see teeth through it. Of course, I went to the emergency room. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, a reasonably attractive nurse came in to check my vitals. After checking my pulse and the other usual procedures, she left, saying absently that Dr. Jacobson would be with me shortly. Another eternity later, and Dr. Jacobson finally stepped into my room. He cleaned, stitched up, and bandaged my cheek and asked if that was the only pain I felt. "You know, Doc, my side actually hurts a lot, too, but I can't seem to twist far enough to see why without it hurting more," I confessed. "Well, first off: if it hurts, don't do it," Dr. Jacobson joked, "and secondly, lets have a look, shall we?" I lifted the side of my shirt up as far as I could without too much pain and heard the doctor curse under his breath in apparent shock.

"What is it?" I demanded. "Son, you may want to have a look at this," came the shakey reply as Dr. Jacobson pulled two small hand mirrors out of a drawer. He held one behind me as I angled the other so that I could see the first mirror. And what it reflected. In the mirrors I saw a crude, jagged-looking incision where I assumed my left kidney should be. The black stitches that held the rough edges of skin together were similarly crude and jagged, done with a thick string, rather than actual thread. The whole thing looked venomous, with angry shades of red and putrid yellows.

"I'll have to run some scans to make sure, but I'm fairly certain that your kidney was taken," stated Dr. Jacobson as he gently prodded the wound and the same spot on my other side, drawing small groans of pain from me. "Do what you have to do, Doc," I complied. A couple of days later, I was released to go home, armed with prescriptions for antibiotics and some pretty awesome pain killers. I remembered the pain killers from when I had my wisdom teeth taken out and how they made me really groggy, so I waited until after dinner to take one. That night, however, sleep was just not in my fortune. Around midnight, I awoke from my medically induced sleep to a truly terrifying sight.

Standing on the side of my bed and leaning over me at an impossible angle was this creature in a black hoodie. I say it was a creature because in the light of my bedside lamp that I had forgotten to turn off, I could see every detail of its masked face under the hood. Its mask was dark blue with no mouth or nose and gaping black holes for eyes. Even under the mask, there was nothing of its eyes but dark, empty sockets and the thick, black liquid that dripped from them. My arm shot out for the camera on my bedside table, knocking the lamp off and out of the socket it was plugged into. I quickly snapped a picture just before the thing lunged for me, clawing at my chest and throat. I was able to land a good, solid punch to the side of its head and scramble out of my bed.

Even in my mad dash to get out of there, I still had the mind to keep hold of my camera and grab my wallet from my desk as I bolted out of my bedroom and, seconds later, out of the house into the night. That's when the panic really set in. After I had gotten out of the house, I didn't stop running. Somehow, I managed to end up on a paved trail through the woods near Edwin's house. Since I hadn't really had time to get my shoes on before running for my life, I stepped on a sharp rock, causing me to jump in pain mid-sprint, fall, and knock my head against the path's asphalt. Nighty night.

When I woke up, I was back in the hospital. A few minutes after I pressed the "call" button, Dr. Jacobson walked into my room. He had a very odd expression on his face, like he was about to do something that he's done countless times, but still hated to do. It turned out that something was delivering mixed news, because he said with a sigh, "I have good news and I have bad news." "Okay?" I inquired worriedly. "The good news is that you only have minor injuries and your parents are already on their way to pick you up," he continued, but hesitated. "And the bad news?" I pressed, "Your brother was mauled by some kind of animal. The police are looking for it now, but I doubt they'll find anything. The damage is unlike anything I've ever seen," Dr. Jacobson explained with a look of suppressed shock on his face, eyes wide with clearly apparent fear.

A few days after I got out of the hospital, the police told us it was all clear for me to go back to Edwin's house to get the rest of my things. There were small reddish-brown splatters of dried blood that the officials hadn't bothered to clean up all over the house. I couldn't stand to be there for very long, so I just grabbed a few things and started to walk out, thinking that I would ask my parents or someone to come get the rest later. But as I was rushing out of my room, something caught my eye on my desk. Without really looking at it, I stepped back into my room, swiped it off of the desk, stuffed it into my backpack, and almost ran out to my car. When I got back to my parents' house, I went up to my room to take an inventory of everything I was able to cram into my backpack.

The first thing I pulled out was the thing I grabbed off of my desk. Now, I actually took the time to look at it. After a few seconds of staring at the thing, horrified realization set in and I vomited onto the floor of my bedroom. I was looking at my stolen, and half-eaten, kidney with some kind of thick, black liquid smeared all over it.