The Empty Gaze

October 21, 2015

by Graciela

In the autumn of 2021, I moved into my grandmother’s old farmhouse after she passed. It was a sprawling Victorian with creaking floors and a dusty attic I never dared to enter. I brought my tabby cat, Jasper, but he ran away after two weeks, vanishing into the overgrown fields behind the house. I mourned him, but life went on.

One evening, as I descended the creaky staircase, a glimpse of something large and black caught my eye in the parlor. It sat by the window, but it was the size of a Great Dane. I blinked, and it was gone. I shrugged it off as a trick of the dim light.

The next day, crossing from the kitchen, I saw it again. This time, it stayed. It sat in the same spot, its head tilted, staring at the stairs. Its fur was slick, like wet coal, and where its eyes should have been were smooth, empty sockets. A cold dread wrapped around my spine, but I forced a laugh and said, ‘Must be a stray.’ I walked past, refusing to look back.

Day after day, the creature appeared. It never moved, only watched. On the fifth day, I noticed its mouth was slightly open, revealing a black void inside. On the sixth day, my mother visited. As she came from the kitchen, she froze, her face pale. ‘There’s something in the parlor,’ she whispered. I told her not to look, but she already had. She began to sob, saying it was looking at her, and she couldn’t see its eyes. She left that night, and I haven’t seen her since.

On the seventh day, as I sat in the living room, the creature appeared right in front of me, close enough to touch. Its head was the size of a boulder, and the empty sockets seemed to suck the light from the room. I smelled wet earth and decay. It opened its mouth wider, and a voice, not quite audible, whispered my name. I realized it wasn’t Jasper’s ghost; it was something older, something that had been waiting in the house long before I arrived.

I grabbed my coat and ran out the front door, not stopping until I reached the main road. I never went back. They say the new owners saw a black shape in the parlor window, watching them. I have nightmares about those empty eyes, and sometimes, late at night, I feel a presence behind me, breathing. But I never turn around. I know what’s there.

I’ve learned to live with the fear, but the question haunts me: why did it choose that spot? Then, one day, I received a letter from the new owner. He wrote that during renovations, they found a hidden staircase behind the parlor wall, leading to a sealed room. Inside was a child’s bed, a bowl of dried food, and a photograph of a woman holding a black cat. The cat had no eyes in the photo. And at the bottom of the letter, he added, ‘I think it was waiting for you.’

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