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The Emotionless Eye

A Man and His Dog

By Elijah TroubaPublished 6 years ago 8 min read
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It was a sultry and misty night of September 24th, 1924; it had rained significantly hard for the past few days, turning the woodland floors muddy and revealing many of the tree roots from the loose dirt. A farm hand by the name of Gabriel McCoy and his loyal companion Brodie, a large black Labrador whom Gabriel took good care of since he was a young pup; Brodie would keep raccoons and possums away from the house usually bringing back one of the critters in his mouth and burying it under the porch after a successful hunt. Gabriel was also a bit of a hunter as well, hunting and selling deer hide in this days off of Schröder farm for spare money. They lived on the weekends in a small wood house big enough for two people in a lightly wooded area in northwestern Scotland.

The day before the 24th was like any other, to begin with; however, the wind had grown harder when noon had come. Gabriel had left Schröder farm for a weekend; the three days off were, at first, the same as every weekend. He and Brodie drove through the tall trees of oaks and the sparse ash trees. In the back was packaged beef, of which Gabriel brought from the farm out of his wages. He and Brodie would eat this sparingly until Sunday dinner with other ingredients from the nearby town of which he lived a few miles northeast. Noon was when they had finally arrived after stopping in town and having short conversations with the clerks and acquaintance. The Friday night was calm, but one unique event occurred: what looked to be a comet danced in the night sky; it spun once, then disappeared.

Then came the events that only Gabriel would know about until it announced itself to the rest of the United Kingdom. Around 6 pm on Saturday, Brodie started to whimper and whine; for Gabriel it meant nothing. But when seven came, Brodie became even more anxious and began to bark out the window and snarl at the woods; Gabriel got up from his chair in front of the fireplace and placed a hand on Brodie's head as he looked outside for himself. Nothing was out there that Gabriel could see. When the clock which sat above the fireplace chimed 8, Gabriel finally had let Brodie out to get whatever critter he was barking and whining about and waited for Brodie’s triumphant return with a badger or a pine marten. However, before he could return, Gabriel then soon dozed off and slept in his chair slumped on one shoulder.

When Gabriel finally woke from his stupor, he saw that Brodie had not returned. He began to worry about his loyal friend, Brodie’s hunts usually took about less than half an hour. Gabriel then pulled his boots and overcoat on; he then lit an oil lantern and began sloshing around in the thick soupy mud in search of his old friend.

The woods were not a safe place to be at night, with the occasional wolf packs hunting the local deer and talk of ghosts in the woods. Gabriel never believed in superstition; but the wolves, however, plagued his mind; if he had not left his house so hastily he would have brought his dual barrel hunting rifle if he did run into any of the snarling hounds. But what of Brodie? He had been out here for more than an hour; how would Brodie fend off the wolves? Is Brodie alright? He then started to call for Brodie frantically; he didn't hear Brodie respond at all, not the sound of paws sloshing thew the mud, not even a whimper.

The night grew colder and the eerie hooting of an owl began to haunt him as the mud sucked at the bottom of his boots. He was becoming tired and was starting to give up hope of finding his loyal friend till his lantern revealed something in a tree only a few yards from him. At first, he thought it was a bear, but then he realized it was too small to have been. He got closer to the ball of black fur, it was covered in mud and reeked of death. Gabriel then touched the still black mass, it then slouched down and revealed ahead. The mass of black fur was Brodie.

Gabriel fell to his knees distraught with the overwhelming weight of remorse for what he had done to his loyal friend, he had let him out, and now he was dead. Gabriel wept at the base of the tree and saw that the trunk of the tree had caked with blood, Something had torn Brodie’s neck and stomach open crudely. Whatever it was left a gray powder that crumbled as he placed his lantern down by the base of the tree and began to carefully take Brodie’s bloody and torn corpse out of the tree; he wished to bury him out in the back of his house. But before Gabriel got him halfway out of the tree he heard a strange chittering come from above him in the tree. Terrified, Gabriel slowly reached with a trembling hand for his lanterns stiff huddle and raised it, looking carefully up with tear filled eyes as if a tiger was crouching above him.

Shadows slithered across the branches and trunk and what he saw in the tree horrified and confused him. A flat, gray, boney, and triangular head with one reptilian eye that seemed like it started right through him with its cold, unblinking gaze. It slid back slowly into the shadows behind the tree and let out a shrill bone-chilling screech.

Gabriel fled through the murky fog with his lantern barely lighting his way and mortified even further for leaving Brodie’s corpse dangling in the blood covered tree. He could hear the sound of twigs snapping and the sound of mud lapping behind him, and the thing giving chase, hunting Gabriel through the thick mist still screeching with that horrible shrill sound, like the warped sound of swarms of cicadas or crickets.

Gabriel got to the porch of his house but tripped, smashing the lantern on a rock next to the porch, then quickly scrambled to the door with the horror still behind him. He slammed the door shut and rushed to load his rifle with deer pellets as he frantically watched for the thing to emerge from the shadows of the trees, and soon enough it did. It slithered through the thick soupy mud on a mound of pale gray, writhing, trunk-like tendrils pushing the brownish black muck aside. Its thin, meatless, humanoid torso slouched with thin gleaming black spikes protruding from its back. Its arms were humanoid except for the second pair of forearms extending from the elbows and the two fingers and two thumbs on each hand. The head was still a boney squid shape but it didn't have one eye but three, the other two being on the side of the head like a horse, and they were a third smaller than the forward unwinding glassy eye.

The frightening thing didn’t go any further to the house, it only stayed a yard or two from it with the slowly growing fire, from the shattered lantern, casting an eerie orange glow on its pale gray skin. It was staring at or through the door with its unblinking cold stare with its tendrils shifting underneath like a pile of writhing, slithering snakes. Gabriel couldn't take that things' chilling glare any longer; he swung the door open, and without a second thought, shot off both barrels at the ungodly thing.

It did not phase the horror. Instead, both shots hit the tree behind it even though it looked as though the shells would have torn its body apart. The spray of metal beads had only fazed right through it.

It then lunged at Gabriel as he tried to slam the door on it, but not even the door was an obstacle for it. It glided through the door like a chilling breeze. Gabriel’s rifle was torn out of his hands and he was thrown across the living room into an end table and his chair. It slithers towards him, staring him down with its unblinking eyes. Gabriel crawled to the kitchen with a stinging pain in his back and left leg. He could barely stand from the pain.

He reached up to the counter and took one of the carving knives and knocked over the left out food, but the monster was already on top of him, wrapping its tendrils with a tightening grip around his waist, crushing him and gripping his forearms, snapping them like twigs with its outbranching arms. Gabriel was able to cut the thing's wrist with the knife, which unlike his gun, injured it. It let out a shrill shriek again, but it did not bleed. It then began to constrict its python-like tendrils. Gabriel screamed in agony but was suddenly cut off by the tightening tendrils now crushing and splintering his ribs and other bones, and as its tendrils pressed against him, he felt it touching him through his clothes. Its skin felt like a searing cold. Gabriel tried to gasp for air, but he was drowning in his blood that filed his punctured lungs and a second time as he attempted to wail in horrified anguish when he finally looked down and saw his body crumble to a gray dust which dissolved instantly on the tendrils. Even if he could, he would have been drowned out by the trumpet-like blast that came from above. The horror only stared through Gabriel with its one emotionless eye as the world shook.

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About the Creator

Elijah Trouba

I was a reader of horror and weird fiction; however, I now aspire to become a writer of what I loved. My inspiration comes from my love of cosmic fear and the outer unknown in our reality.

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