The Stovetop Gaze

It was the summer I turned thirteen, the year my parents sent me and my little sister, Maggie, to stay with our great-aunt Edna in her old farmhouse outside of Lubbock, Texas. The house was a two-story relic from the 1920s, with creaking floorboards and a kitchen that smelled of mothballs and stale coffee. Aunt Edna was a kind, frail woman who went to bed by eight, leaving us to our own devices in the vast, humming silence of the house.

That night, after a dinner of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, Maggie and I were settled in the living room. She was curled up on the floral-patterned couch, fast asleep, while I lay on a quilt pallet on the hardwood floor, staring at the ceiling’s water stains. The house had a way of amplifying every small sound—the refrigerator’s hum, the wind outside, the occasional creak of the settling wood. I must have dozed off, because when I opened my eyes, the clock on the mantel showed 2:47 AM.

A pressing need to use the bathroom pulled me from the warmth of the pallet. The bathroom was down the hall, but to get there, I had to pass through the kitchen, which was a narrow, dimly lit room with a large window above the sink that looked out into the backyard. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and began to crawl toward the end of the pallet, trying not to wake Maggie. As I reached the edge, I looked up—and froze.

Two glowing red eyes stared back at me from atop the stove.

My first thought was that it was a reflection, maybe from the window catching the porch light or the moon. I blinked, trying to focus, but the eyes remained, unblinking, fixed on me. They were small, about the size of quarters, and they seemed to hover in the darkness where the stove top met the wall. I told myself it was a trick of the light, that I was still half-asleep. I forced myself to continue crawling, planning to stand once I reached the kitchen doorway.

But as I moved, the eyes tracked me. They didn’t blink. They didn’t move. They just watched. My heart began to pound, a cold sweat prickling my skin. I stopped crawling and slowly backed up, my hands trembling as I reached the couch where Maggie slept. I shook her shoulder desperately, whispering her name, but she only murmured and turned over, buried in her blankets.

I turned back, and the eyes were still there, growing slightly brighter, as if they were drawing closer. I could now make out a faint silhouette—a small, hunched figure, no bigger than a cat, perched on the stove’s burner. The red eyes were set in a dark, featureless face. I could feel its gaze boring into me, a pressure against my own eyes.

I knew I had to act. I scrambled to my feet, my legs like jelly, and made a dash for the light switch near the kitchen entrance. My fingers fumbled against the switch, and when the overhead light flicked on, the figure vanished. The kitchen was empty, the stove bare, the window showing only the pitch-black night. I stood there, panting, my heart racing, convincing myself it was a nightmare.

But the fear didn’t leave. I went to the bathroom quickly, leaving the lights on, and when I returned to the living room, I couldn’t sleep. I stayed awake, sitting against the couch, watching the kitchen doorway. At some point, I must have drifted off because I woke to morning light streaming through the windows. Maggie was already up, eating cereal at the kitchen table, acting as if nothing had happened.

I tried to shake off the memory, telling myself it was a hallucination. But that night, as I lay on the pallet again, I couldn’t help but look at the stove. The eyes were back.

This time, I didn’t run. I stared back, my breath shallow, and I noticed something else: the figure was not alone. Behind it, in the deeper shadows of the kitchen, I saw movement—small, furtive shapes, with more red eyes, peeking from behind cabinets and the refrigerator. They were everywhere, waiting.

I grabbed Maggie, who was awake now, her eyes wide with terror. She had seen them too. We huddled together on the couch, pulling the blanket over our heads, and for the rest of the night, we listened to the soft patter of small feet on the linoleum, and the occasional whisper that sounded like our names.

We never went back to Aunt Edna’s house. When I think about it now, I wonder if maybe the house was older than we thought, or if maybe those eyes belonged to something that had been there long before us, something that only shows itself in the quiet hours when the world is asleep. And sometimes, late at night, when I’m in a dark kitchen, I’ll catch a glimpse of a tiny red glint from the stove, and I know it’s still watching.