The Girl Without Eyes

Chapter 1: Dead

I am dead.

I'm dead.

I am no longer alive.

It doesn't matter how I say it because the words always sound so wrong. Not because I haven't accepted that I'm dead. I have accepted it. I'm dead. It's just strange to think of myself as being dead because, well, here I am. There was no light at the end of a tunnel, and there was no ceasing to exist. For me, death was neither an ending nor a beginning. It was a continuation. I'm still in 407 West Marshall Street, and I'm still away from my family, and I'm still unhappy about both of those things.

Some things have changed, though. For example, I no longer get hungry or tired. The biggest change, though, would be with my mind. It's strange to think, but in some ways I feel more alive now than I ever did before.

I'm not sure if this happens to everyone when they die, but the best way I can think to describe it is like popping open one of those tubes of dough when making rolls for Thanksgiving. You know how the dough puffs up all of a sudden? My mind feels like that. My body was the tube, and my brain is the dough. Now that my mind's free of my body, it's finally able to expand.

I'm only twelve, but I feel much older now. Sometimes, I don't even recognize my own thoughts. It's like I'm listening to a wiser older sister, but then I realize my thoughts are my own even though they don't seem to be. I wonder what actually living with this mind would have been like.

Oh, and the other big change is that I can see again.

If The Man with the Accordion Legs had his Farewell last June and I died in late April of this year, that means I was blind for less than a year. Is that right? It feels like it's been so much longer. Maybe it's like "dog years," except for me it's called "dark years." One year in complete darkness is like seven years of seeing. Maybe that's why I feel so much older than I actually am.

The Man with the Accordion Legs. I think about him quite often. I assume we all do. I don't see how anyone couldn't. He is, afterall, the reason for all of this.

He was a very old man, or so the deep wrinkles and sagging skin of his face suggested. Everyday at dusk, he walked the streets of Oak Knoll, his legs scrunching up and down underneath his pants legs just like they were made of accordions, sending him bobbing from side to side as they expanded and contracted with each step. And the sound of it. All of these dry bone cracks and wet slurps with each step. It just sent shivers through your joints, through your soul.

No one ever spoke to him. We avoided him, to be honest. He made everyone uneasy because of his strange legs and the sounds they made, but he didn't seem to want to talk to anyone. He was always just so gruff. I don't think I ever saw him without a scowl on his face. Looking back, though, I don't know if we avoided him because he was so surly or if he was so surly because we avoided him. Having lived in 407 West Marshall Street, having been different, having now been on the other side, I'm not so sure of what truly caused what anymore.

One day, The Man with the Accordion Legs took his walk through town, as usual, but he did something that was very unusual. He left a note on everyone's front door. It told us he was having a farewell party and that everyone in town was invited.

No one had ever been inside 407 West Marshall Street, and it turns out that no one was going to pass up an opportunity to finally go inside of that mysterious house. The entire town showed up. I think I heard someone even cancelled a vacation to be there. Yes. People would do just about anything to finally find out what was inside that big windowless house that stood alone at the end of a road in the woods north of town.

Oak Knoll is a small town. There's only about three hundred people. But that's a lot of people to fit into a single house. We all crammed in, though. He let us nose around his house for a while, just mill about, opening doors and gawking at the empty, bleak rooms, but then he called us all into the parlor.