Contest Winner: The Man With No Eyes

(Eds. note: San Angelo LIVE! held a contest for area students to submit their best spooky story for Halloween. This is the winning entry by Carson Kent, a senior at San Angelo Central High School. Please enjoy!)

When I was 10, my family moved into a new house. My brother Adam, who was 6 at the time, and I had our own rooms for the first time ever. They were connected by a bathroom that we shared, but I wasn't too worried about it. I was just excited to finally have a place to call my own.

Now this house was old. It was right in the middle of Santa Rita, where it's pretty standard protocol for houses to be old, but this house was the grandpa of the neighborhood. Dad said it had been around for just under 100 years. When a 10-year-old hears that, they have one thought: haunted.

I'll be the first to admit I wasn't the nicest older brother to Adam. The first night I told him a ghost story about a man that had been murdered in his sleep by a serial killer when the house was first built. His name was Henry, and his spirit was restless from the killing and haunted the house at night. Of course, it was a stupid ghost story I made up on the spot, but it genuinely scared Adam. He didn't want to sleep in his own room for the first couple of nights after I told him and ended up sleeping in my bed until he forgot about the story a couple weeks later.

I remember waking up and hearing Adam's voice through the door to our bathroom. It was just over a whisper, but enough to carry into my room. I couldn't make out what he was saying: it was all slurred together into a mumble. I wasn't too worried about it--he would sometimes talk in his sleep--so I rolled over and tried to go back to bed. However, I soon realized his voice wasn't coming from his room, but from the bathroom. I looked at the time: 2:18 a.m., and I hopped out of  bed to get him to be quiet, and found him standing directly in front of the mirror, still mumbling. His eyes looked glazed over, and he didn't even acknowledge me as I opened the door.

"Adam?" I said.

He stopped talking, but continued staring at the mirror. His eyes appeared to be glass in the darkness. I flipped on the light switch and almost immediately his eyes returned to normal.

"Adam?" I repeated.

" Yes?" he said.

"Who were you talking to?"

He pointed at the mirror. "The man with no eyes."

I glanced over at the mirror, but only saw Adam's reflection.

"Go back to bed, Adam." I commanded. He did as I told him, and I returned to bed as well.

The next night, the exact same thing happened. I awoke to Adam mumbling at 2:18, turned on the lights, asked him who he was talking to, again, he said, "the man with no eyes," and I sent him back to bed. The next night, and the next night, and the next night, the same things happened. It was becoming a routine.

About a week after the talking started, I was awoken by his voice again. Sure enough, Adam was standing in the bathroom, staring directly at the mirror in the darkness.

"Adam?" I said, but he didn't acknowledge me. I decided this time around I wouldn't turn on the lights.

"Adam." I said, louder. Again, no response.

"ADAM!" I yelled. He slowly turned his head toward me. Only this time, instead of seeing the normal glossy eyes, I saw nothing: two gaping holes where his eyes should have been. I screamed and fumbled to turn on the lights, my heart racing. Light filled the room, and sure enough, Adam had two completely normal green eyes.

I couldn't speak; I was at a loss for words. Adam just stared back at me, smiling.

"Henry says hi." he said and returned to his room.

Needless to say, I slept with the lights on that night.

The following nights, the talking continued, but I refused to stop it. He would only talk for around 10 minutes, so I waited it out.

I decided it might be best to tell my parents about this. They were skeptical of at first, but I convinced dad to come sleep with me to check it out.

Nothing. Adam didn't get up that night.

Despite my pleas, dad brushed it off as crazy talk and didn't look into it any further. I was mad, but couldn't blame him.

The next night, I woke up at 2:18, but Adam wasn't talking. I thought maybe he had finally stopped, but I was sadly mistaken.

"Henry's mad at you." Adam said from the foot of my bed. I rocketed backwards into my headboard. I had no idea Adam was even in my room. I looked at him in the darkness, rubbing the back of my head. Sure enough, his eyes were two holes in his face. "He's mad you tried to expose him. He says 'don't try it again.'"  The last line was not in Adam's voice, but instead, it sounded like a grown man had taken over Adam's body. I swooped out of bed, pushing Adam onto the floor and turning on the lights. Once again, Adam had normal, working eyes.

"Ouch!" he said, getting up. "Henry doesn't like that."

"Who is Henry?" I pleaded.

"He's the man with no eyes. You told me about him."

"Henry? From the story? That was just a stupid ghost story. It wasn't real," I told him.

"He doesn't like you calling him stupid."

"Go back to bed. Please." I cried.

"He wants to meet you."

"Go to bed!" I said. Adam hobbled off to his room as I sat crying by my door.

I didn't get any sleep that night.

The next night, at 2:18 a.m., I awoke to silence. Nobody was in my room except me. I cut across our bathroom to see if Adam was in bed, and there he was, sleeping as peacefully as could be.

 I returned to bed, but I couldn't fall asleep. I could hear a soft whispering. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, or what it was saying, but it was there.

As the years passed, Adam's 'meetings' became less and less frequent, until they stopped altogether. But sometimes I still wake up at 2:18 a.m. to a cold breeze, like a finger running across my body, and a soft whispering that dies down till I once again am left in complete silence. Occasionally, I'll catch glimpses of a shadow moving in the mirror in our bathroom, or feel like there's somebody standing at the foot of my bed at night, but I never look.

I wish everything I just wrote was a work of fiction. I wish I had conjured up this story in my head. But it's all true. I know I shouldn't be writing this. He'll be mad at me. He doesn't like it when I try to tell people about him. Even now, he watches from his mirror. He's looking at me now.

He says he wants to meet you.