[Not in Use]
written by Henry Ridgeback
You can never escape the eternal gaze of the Cosmic Eyes. (Warning: Mildly Disturbing Content)
Last Updated
05/31/21
Chapters
4
Reads
592
The Doctor's Ramblings
Chapter 1
No one had heard from Dr. Redford in quite some time. Perhaps that was for the best.
Dr. Harlan Redford and I were good friends. We met when we were roommates at Harvard. I had always thought I was smart, but Harlan was a genius! He could solve an equation in a few seconds, while it took me about half a minute. Logic came as second knowledge and he passed with a PhD in Astronomy and Psychology. I don't know why his entire incident happened. After all, he was completely sane, never showing any signs of abnormal behavior. Sure, he was eccentric, always pulling pranks or cracking jokes, but he never went fully mad. He was a handsome man, with blue eyes and brown hair that was always scruffy and rugged.
Every weekend, Harlan would invite me to his house. We would play chess and checkers, sometimes a board game. I would win most of the time, but I'm fairly certain he would let me win. I'm terrible at strategy, that's mainly why I never thought of going to the army. He would go on and on about astronomy and physics, but I never had any interest in gazing out into space. Harlan had been training at NASA to become an astronomical researcher, and one day, after a few years of labor and study, I think in April 2018, he arrived at my house, practically screaming in delight that he was accepted. From then on, he began to investigate the supernatural as a hobby. He would go to places where supernatural phenomena would take place. One time, he lost a hand at some small town near Richmond. Of course, he got a bionic hand as a replacement, but that's another story.
Soon, we grew distant. I got a job as a bank manager, and Harlan was overwhelmed with his work. About four months after he was accepted as a fully fledged scientist at NASA, he came to my house abruptly in the middle of the night. It was August 5th, 2018, because that was my mother's birthday. I had gone to sleep and my dog, Lassie, started to bark panicked and scared, so I put my pillow over my ears and fell back to sleep. She barks at the slightest sound in the house, so I dismissed her reaction as another instance of this and fell asleep once more. I woke up to get a glass of milk, and there he was, watching me in my bed. Harlan must have been watched me for hours by then, never moving and never blinking. What I saw in his face was a mixture of apathy and twitchy anxiety. But the worst part of it was that emotionless stare in his eyes. I'll tell you this much, those sagging, glassy white eyes were not the eyes of my friend.
I got up, shocked at the sight of Harlan. I tried to wake him up from this hypnotic trance, but nothing happened. Suddenly, his mouth began to move, as if he were tried to cry out in terror and agony, but the words could not budge out. Out of his horrible, glassy eyes came tears running down his face. But he never moved. He just stood there, his eyes following me with every movement. Then, it stopped. The white clouds that seemed to fog up his pupils vanished. Harlan fell to the floor, screaming out in pain. The words he spoke were not in English, but possibly some foreign dialect that sounded like scratching and moaning at the same time. He kept babbling, that odd screeching noise spewing out of his mouth. Then, he seemed to regain his grasp of the English language, as he stopped his constant gobbledygook.
"Please, Xavier! Help me! Don't let me go back into there!" Harlan wailed, clutching frantically at the bed to regain his balance. "I can't, I can't, I can't!" he screamed, the tears rushing down his face like waterfalls. I asked him to calm down and he did, taking in deep and filling breaths as he wheezed. I thought desperately for something comforting to say. "Don't worry," I said, "You'll be fine. Take deep breaths. I'll drive you to your house," Looking out of the bedroom window that overlooked the driveway, I searched for Harlan's bulky car, but I only saw my own truck. It was then I realized that Harlan had not taken a vehicle here. He had somehow walked the forty two miles between his house and mine in the span of about an hour. There was something wrong with Harlan.
So, I took him back to his home in Arlington, Virginia, made sure he got to his apartment safely, and left. I looked at the camera I had installed for security reasons and saw that Harlan had been watching me sleep for two hours. We didn't see each other for about a year. None of his friends saw him. His neighbors began to hear increasingly alarming sounds from his house, like screeching and sobbing. He wouldn't answer my phone calls and asked I leave him alone for work reasons. Then, I guess he snapped. Harlan stopped going to work and no one saw him on the streets anymore. I had always respected my friend's decisions and choices from that point, but it was then that I broke my promise and decided to visit his apartment. It was exactly one year from the sleep incident, August 5th, 2019. I walked up to Room 217, but Harlan was gone. The cleaning crew were fixing up the room, wiping away the stains of drink on the wall and tidying up the bed. I asked the apartment manager for Harlan's whereabouts, but he refused to tell me, as per hotel guidelines.
So, confused and frightened, I went back to my house, trying to think of where Harlan might be. Opening the door, I called for Lassie, but there was none of the usual excited barking she was known for. An echoing silence filled the house. However, on closer inspection, I saw the window in shattered glass. It took a moment, but I realised that Lassie had jumped out in fear of someone in the house. "Lassie!" I cried, looking down my street for that familiar hide of yellow fur, only to find nothing. Nearly on the verge of tears, I went into my bedroom to find Harlan. On his face were bloody scratches on his suddenly ghastly pale skin. That horrible, white stare was back, but accompanied by a smile that looked ever so off. Shivers crept down my spine like spiders, as I saw that he had a gleaming kitchen knife in his hands. The blade was already bloody. A mix of mostly terror and a sick relief I had found Harlan churned inside me.
"Harlan, please put down the knife," I said, struggling to keep a composed face. "Ah, ah, ah, Xavier. Don't you want to chat for a while. Here, I made you this picture," Harlan hissed, almost brimming in a sick glee. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of bloody paper. Harlan shoved it into my hands, as I slowly unwrapped the drawing. I don't even know what I saw. It was horrific, terrifying even. I look back on it and wonder how a drawing, simply a two-dimensional drawing could shock me, but I can't really explain. There was something about those lines and the shading that made what I saw so sinister. I'll try my best to explain it, but I try to forget about it every day.
It started with a circle, roughly drawn and imperfect, with sharp beams of light emerging from it. Inside that circle was a crude drawing of a severed eyeball. However, the way it was shaped made me feel like it was there, a tangible eye that was observing me right now. Around the drawing of that circle and the eye and the beams of light was a ring of people, joined hand in hand. But these weren't happy children singing and dancing. They looked like demonic things, not even humanoid, just blobby serpents with wings and claws. Then, my suspicions became true. The pupil moved to look straight into mine, and I screamed out in horror, dropping the drawing to the floor. "How do you like it?" Harlan laughed, a twisted grin on his face.
Harlan lunged at me with the knife, almost stabbing me before I pushed him back. We struggled, both of us trying to get the knife away from each other. The blade came terrifyingly close to slashing me across the face several times, but I tripped Harlan over, and out of the bedroom window that overlooked the driveway. The glass shattered as Harlan fell, unconscious and battered, onto the black asphalt, leaving a small splash of red blood on it. I called 911 immediately, using the cameras in my room as evidence. The court ruled Harlan insane, and he was sent away to an old mental institution. I never really forgot about that. You rarely forget about the time when your best friend tried to kill you and your dog. However, as soon as the police and investigators came, the piece of paper with that horrible eyeball had vanished. But, it's burning image stayed clear in my mind.
Dr. Harlan Redford and I were good friends. We met when we were roommates at Harvard. I had always thought I was smart, but Harlan was a genius! He could solve an equation in a few seconds, while it took me about half a minute. Logic came as second knowledge and he passed with a PhD in Astronomy and Psychology. I don't know why his entire incident happened. After all, he was completely sane, never showing any signs of abnormal behavior. Sure, he was eccentric, always pulling pranks or cracking jokes, but he never went fully mad. He was a handsome man, with blue eyes and brown hair that was always scruffy and rugged.
Every weekend, Harlan would invite me to his house. We would play chess and checkers, sometimes a board game. I would win most of the time, but I'm fairly certain he would let me win. I'm terrible at strategy, that's mainly why I never thought of going to the army. He would go on and on about astronomy and physics, but I never had any interest in gazing out into space. Harlan had been training at NASA to become an astronomical researcher, and one day, after a few years of labor and study, I think in April 2018, he arrived at my house, practically screaming in delight that he was accepted. From then on, he began to investigate the supernatural as a hobby. He would go to places where supernatural phenomena would take place. One time, he lost a hand at some small town near Richmond. Of course, he got a bionic hand as a replacement, but that's another story.
Soon, we grew distant. I got a job as a bank manager, and Harlan was overwhelmed with his work. About four months after he was accepted as a fully fledged scientist at NASA, he came to my house abruptly in the middle of the night. It was August 5th, 2018, because that was my mother's birthday. I had gone to sleep and my dog, Lassie, started to bark panicked and scared, so I put my pillow over my ears and fell back to sleep. She barks at the slightest sound in the house, so I dismissed her reaction as another instance of this and fell asleep once more. I woke up to get a glass of milk, and there he was, watching me in my bed. Harlan must have been watched me for hours by then, never moving and never blinking. What I saw in his face was a mixture of apathy and twitchy anxiety. But the worst part of it was that emotionless stare in his eyes. I'll tell you this much, those sagging, glassy white eyes were not the eyes of my friend.
I got up, shocked at the sight of Harlan. I tried to wake him up from this hypnotic trance, but nothing happened. Suddenly, his mouth began to move, as if he were tried to cry out in terror and agony, but the words could not budge out. Out of his horrible, glassy eyes came tears running down his face. But he never moved. He just stood there, his eyes following me with every movement. Then, it stopped. The white clouds that seemed to fog up his pupils vanished. Harlan fell to the floor, screaming out in pain. The words he spoke were not in English, but possibly some foreign dialect that sounded like scratching and moaning at the same time. He kept babbling, that odd screeching noise spewing out of his mouth. Then, he seemed to regain his grasp of the English language, as he stopped his constant gobbledygook.
"Please, Xavier! Help me! Don't let me go back into there!" Harlan wailed, clutching frantically at the bed to regain his balance. "I can't, I can't, I can't!" he screamed, the tears rushing down his face like waterfalls. I asked him to calm down and he did, taking in deep and filling breaths as he wheezed. I thought desperately for something comforting to say. "Don't worry," I said, "You'll be fine. Take deep breaths. I'll drive you to your house," Looking out of the bedroom window that overlooked the driveway, I searched for Harlan's bulky car, but I only saw my own truck. It was then I realized that Harlan had not taken a vehicle here. He had somehow walked the forty two miles between his house and mine in the span of about an hour. There was something wrong with Harlan.
So, I took him back to his home in Arlington, Virginia, made sure he got to his apartment safely, and left. I looked at the camera I had installed for security reasons and saw that Harlan had been watching me sleep for two hours. We didn't see each other for about a year. None of his friends saw him. His neighbors began to hear increasingly alarming sounds from his house, like screeching and sobbing. He wouldn't answer my phone calls and asked I leave him alone for work reasons. Then, I guess he snapped. Harlan stopped going to work and no one saw him on the streets anymore. I had always respected my friend's decisions and choices from that point, but it was then that I broke my promise and decided to visit his apartment. It was exactly one year from the sleep incident, August 5th, 2019. I walked up to Room 217, but Harlan was gone. The cleaning crew were fixing up the room, wiping away the stains of drink on the wall and tidying up the bed. I asked the apartment manager for Harlan's whereabouts, but he refused to tell me, as per hotel guidelines.
So, confused and frightened, I went back to my house, trying to think of where Harlan might be. Opening the door, I called for Lassie, but there was none of the usual excited barking she was known for. An echoing silence filled the house. However, on closer inspection, I saw the window in shattered glass. It took a moment, but I realised that Lassie had jumped out in fear of someone in the house. "Lassie!" I cried, looking down my street for that familiar hide of yellow fur, only to find nothing. Nearly on the verge of tears, I went into my bedroom to find Harlan. On his face were bloody scratches on his suddenly ghastly pale skin. That horrible, white stare was back, but accompanied by a smile that looked ever so off. Shivers crept down my spine like spiders, as I saw that he had a gleaming kitchen knife in his hands. The blade was already bloody. A mix of mostly terror and a sick relief I had found Harlan churned inside me.
"Harlan, please put down the knife," I said, struggling to keep a composed face. "Ah, ah, ah, Xavier. Don't you want to chat for a while. Here, I made you this picture," Harlan hissed, almost brimming in a sick glee. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of bloody paper. Harlan shoved it into my hands, as I slowly unwrapped the drawing. I don't even know what I saw. It was horrific, terrifying even. I look back on it and wonder how a drawing, simply a two-dimensional drawing could shock me, but I can't really explain. There was something about those lines and the shading that made what I saw so sinister. I'll try my best to explain it, but I try to forget about it every day.
It started with a circle, roughly drawn and imperfect, with sharp beams of light emerging from it. Inside that circle was a crude drawing of a severed eyeball. However, the way it was shaped made me feel like it was there, a tangible eye that was observing me right now. Around the drawing of that circle and the eye and the beams of light was a ring of people, joined hand in hand. But these weren't happy children singing and dancing. They looked like demonic things, not even humanoid, just blobby serpents with wings and claws. Then, my suspicions became true. The pupil moved to look straight into mine, and I screamed out in horror, dropping the drawing to the floor. "How do you like it?" Harlan laughed, a twisted grin on his face.
Harlan lunged at me with the knife, almost stabbing me before I pushed him back. We struggled, both of us trying to get the knife away from each other. The blade came terrifyingly close to slashing me across the face several times, but I tripped Harlan over, and out of the bedroom window that overlooked the driveway. The glass shattered as Harlan fell, unconscious and battered, onto the black asphalt, leaving a small splash of red blood on it. I called 911 immediately, using the cameras in my room as evidence. The court ruled Harlan insane, and he was sent away to an old mental institution. I never really forgot about that. You rarely forget about the time when your best friend tried to kill you and your dog. However, as soon as the police and investigators came, the piece of paper with that horrible eyeball had vanished. But, it's burning image stayed clear in my mind.
