1032: Story 1032: Eyes in the Attic 1032: Story 1032: Eyes in the Attic The house on Crooked Elm Street was a tilted thing — all warped shingles, splintered steps, and windows that looked more like eyes than glass.
No one had lived there in decades.
Until Reed Halston inherited it.
A small-town professor with no next of kin, Reed arrived with dusty boxes, antique books, and a love for solitude.
He thought the creaks in the floorboards were charming.
That the flickering lights were just old wiring.
But the attic?
The attic was always locked.
The key came on his third night.
It wasn’t in his pocket before, but there it was — cold brass, looped with red string, resting on his nightstand.
He opened the attic door the next morning, flashlight in hand.
It was empty.
Except for a single chair in the center.
And the mirrors.
Seven of them.
Each mirror was tilted at odd angles, pointed to different parts of the room.
One faced the door.
One faced the chair.
One faced the others.
They were smeared.
Not with dust — but fingerprints.
Long, greasy streaks from the inside.
That night, Reed dreamed of watching himself sleep.
Not in a symbolic, surreal way.
No.
He saw himself from above, mouth slightly open, legs twitching.
He saw his own eyes fluttering behind the lids.
And then — the worst part — he saw himself open his eyes in the dream.
And look directly at the ceiling.
At something watching him.
He boarded the attic door shut the next day.
Nailed it closed.
Painted it over.
Sealed it with salt and prayers from old books.
It didn’t matter.
Every night, the dreams returned.
The same perspective.
The same angle.
Until one night, the viewpoint changed — the angle dipped lower, closer.
It wasn’t just watching now.
It was moving.
Then came the whispering.
Not from behind the walls — above them.
“You let me out, Reed.
I see now.”
The mirrors began to appear throughout the house.
On the bathroom ceiling.
Behind cabinet doors.
Even in the fridge, embedded in the frost like silver eyes.
Every reflection was slightly delayed, just a heartbeat behind.
And sometimes, they smiled when he didn’t.
Reed finally smashed them all.
Every shard.
But reflections have a way of lingering.
And so did it.
In the attic, the chair no longer sat alone.
Something was sitting in it.
A tall, impossibly thin figure stitched from shadows and skin — with dozens of tiny eyes blinking across its head.
Eyes that spun like marbles.
Some human.
Some not.
“You taught me how to look,” it said, “Now I want to see more.”
When Reed vanished, the police found the attic open again.
No mirrors.
No chair.
Only a faint imprint of someone kneeling where the chair had once been.
And in the corner, scrawled in something dry and flaked:
“I see you.
Do you see me?”
They say if you stare too long into a mirror in a quiet attic, you might catch a reflection not quite your own — blinking.
Waiting.
Watching.