The Eyes In The Photograph

The Eyes in the Photograph

Outside the wind was mad, stirring up a cyclone of dead leaves in the air. The sky was black and gray with only a vague spot of the full moon. The air was crisp, leaving me bundled up with my elder worn out a suede jacket and a scarf around my neck. I was walking down the deserted streets in this small town on account of my wife craving chocolate ice cream. I didn’t fuss with her over the fact that it was late at night and no store would be opened, she was pregnant and that made her the boss. Of course the only store that was opened late at night had to be the one about three blocks away.

As I walked alone cold from the wind, I saw a photograph lying on the ground. I reached down to pick it up. In the photograph you could only see red eyes, if you looked in closely you could see a man wearing all black holding a lantern. I held onto the picture and put it in my pocket, maybe one of my neighbors knew the person.

My hands were cold, and my legs were shaking as I turned the corner of 5th Avenue. The street lights started to dim until I couldn’t see a blessed thing. I made my way down the street not stumbling when a cold chill ran up my spine. I looked up at the moon and it became brighter, which creeped me out. The sound of footsteps stepping on leaves followed behind me, closer and closer as I approached another corner. I stopped at the stop sign and looked both ways before I crossed the street. There weren’t any cars driving down the road so I ran across quickly, hoping to leave the noise behind me.

“Nobody in their right mind is out at Eleven o’clock at night walking alone on theses streets, especially on a full moon.” A mans voice whispered. I looked around but didn’t see anything except my own feet.

I carried on by walking but with a faster pace toward the store only one more block away. I didn’t know who the man was but I could still feel his presence around me. In my mind I kept telling myself it was all in my head that I imagined a person talking but as I looked up from the ground to the sky, a man stood there right in front of me.

“May I ask what you are doing here?” The man was 6'7, maybe more than 310 pounds, and had strong hands holding a kerosene lantern. I looked up at him from head to toe. He was wearing a black top hat, black overcoat, black shiny boots, and the oddest thing of them all was seeing the man wearing sunglasses.

Gulp. This man looked familiar. I looked again at the photo and compared the two men finding out they looked exactly alike. I closed my eyes and tried to calm my nerves. But I felt bad vibes around this man.

“Sir, my wife is pregnant and she wanted chocolate ice cream. I love here dearly and I am only out to get her the ice cream.” I opened my eyes and the man was still.

I tried walking away from the man but every move I made, he followed me. I tried to run but he caught up putting his hands close to my neck. His hands were dead cold clenching to strangle me.

“Sir, please I am trying to get to the store. Will you leave me alone?” I didn’t want to show him I was scared but the fact that I was shaking and panting might have given it away.

The man released his hands from around my neck still watching my every move. I dashed down the streets running out of breath. The man was out of sight but I still ran just in case he appeared again. The store was across the street with the open sign still up. With the little breath I had I continued to run for it. As soon as I got there the clerk from inside turned the open sign to close.

“Sir, please open up . . . I need a few things. Please sir, there is this man following me.” I banged on the glass door. The clerk nodded his head.

I turned around to see the man across the street staring right at me approaching to cross the street.

“ Sir, please.” I yelled. “ That man is following me, I just need a few things. Please, open the door.” I banged harder on the door. Finally the man let me in. He was looking at me like I was a maniac.

“Thanks a lot.” I said to the clerk out of breath. He stood at the cash register waiting for me to leave. I grabbed the last container of chocolate ice cream glancing at the man from across the streets.

“Is this all?” The clerk asked.

“Um . . . no can I have one of your cheapest disposable cameras too.” The man rang up the sale. “ This one is one of those sticker ones where the picture comes right out.” I gave him the money glancing over again at the man but he wasn’t there.

I took the camera out of the box and headed toward the door looking down at the camera trying to figure out how to use it.

CRASH.

I looked up seeing a car and a body lying in the middle of the road. I ran over to help the man who got hit. Blood was everywhere and the body was dead. I took a few pictures of it to get a closer view of what the person looked like. As the pictures came out of the camera, I noticed that all you could see in the picture were red eyes.

“That’s funny.” I looked closer at the picture to see the physical features. “That looks like me.”

The body appeared to look exactly like me. The body had the same sued jacket and scarf that I was wearing. I scratched my head thinking “is this for real?” I was still living, my heart was pumping, I was breathing. But there I was lying dead in the road.

I went over to talk to the man who was sitting still in his car but when I peeked in the window the man seemed dead . I couldn’t really see if he was dead or just unconscious so I opened the passenger door and sat inside. I tapped the man on his shoulder and asked “Are you ok, sir?” but the man didn’t respond. His body fell and his face hit the steering wheel. The man wasn’t breathing so I assumed he was dead.

“Tonight has been so strange.” I said to myself. My hand was on the door ready to open it when a cold hand touched my neck and pulled my arm back.

“Well I told you, you shouldn’t be out alone on a full moon.”The man stepped on the gas and the car drove off down the streets slow and quiet.

I moved my way to the backseat where I tried to open the door to jump out, but both doors were locked. I sat in silence not moving one bit. I couldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t tell where the man was driving to, all the street lights were off and the sky was still pitch black. The man kept looking at me through the rear-view mirror.

“What do you want with me?” I asked. The man made a wide smile and laughed.

“You asked for it.” He responded.

“Asked for what?” I was scared and confused, tears were even running down my face. I was afraid he was going to hurt me and I would never see my wife again.

“You didn’t read the back of the picture then, did you?” I took the picture out of my pocket and flipped it over to read the back. On the back it read:

On this crisp fall night, a man will appear out of spite, anything could happen when there’s a full moon, death is coming after you real soon, You can run but you can’t hide, it’s a fact that you’ve already died, so here’s your will on my behalf, because you looked at the eyes in the photograph.

I was chilled to the bone shaking and confused.

“So, you’re telling me that I must die because I looked at the picture.” I was still confused.

“No, you’re already dead.” The man laughed and laughed an evil laugh.

The car began to speed up going 100 miles per hour flying down the road. I was holding on tight to the car door. Everything around me started to spin in multi-colors making me feel sick to my stomach. The man kept laughing like he was psychotic.

“I don’t understand!” I yelled. The man slammed down on the brakes causing my body to fly out of the windshield tumbling down onto the street scratched up with glass inside my skin. The man opened the car door and slowly walked over to where I was hurt.

“Why? All I wanted was to get my wife some ice cream.” I began to cough while blood gushed out of my cut up face. My heart began to slow down as I was suffocating on my own blood.

“Like I said before, Nobody in their right mind is out at Eleven o’clock at night walking alone on theses streets, especially on a full moon. Anything can happen on a full moon. It makes us all go a little crazy.”

I watched the man walk down the street into the night slow and mysterious. He stopped at the corner and dropped another one of those pictures. I’ve heard the excuse before that a full moon makes people do crazy things, but I never really witnessed it before. As I was lying there running out of breath, more so from the shock then the bleeding to death, another man was walking alone late at night. I saw the man pick up the picture just like I did.

“NO!” I tried to yell but my low raspy voice he couldn’t hear.

All I could do was watch the moon as I lied there dying, listening to the mans voice saying the riddle once again.

“On this crisp fall night, a man will appear out of spite, anything could happen when there’s a full moon, death is coming after you real soon, You can run but you can’t hide, it’s a fact that you’ve already died, so here’s your will on my behalf, because you looked at the eyes in the photograph.”



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