The Eyes of Ashman

Aisling Delaney had always known there was something wrong with the attic.

When she bought the crumbling Victorian townhouse in East London—a “fixer-upper” with charm and cheap rent—she had no illusions. The place needed work. She didn't mind, though. She was a director, after all, and saw potential in the cracks. a location for writing. to produce. More than anything, she needed silence.

Critics had panned her most recent film, a psychological thriller about identity and self-erasure. “Overwrought,” they called it. “Style over substance.” She had put everything into it, but all she got out of it was ridicule. Her first stop-motion horror short was supposed to be a rebirth with this new project. a reversal of course. She would do it alone, frame by frame. Just her and the puppet.

She called it Ashman.

At first, Ashman was just armature and clay—a crude figure of a man with exaggerated limbs, hunched shoulders, and a vaguely human face. But it was the eyes that made it different. She hadn’t sculpted them herself. She found them in an antique shop near Camden: two glass marbles, deep crimson, shot through with swirls of darker red. They were old, too perfect. She bought them without thinking. He changed as soon as she placed them in his face. She changed.

She worked obsessively, sometimes for 18 hours a day. A miniature stage made of black drapes, tiny furniture, and hand-made props was installed in the attic. Ashman dragged a burlap sack across it in a jerky, surreal motion, whispering words that Aisling had never written. The script had begun to grow on its own. Scenes written in unfamiliar handwriting would appear on her desk. Considering that her hands were already shaking from exhaustion, the puppet's movements seemed too lifelike and precise. However, she was taken aback each time she looked at the footage. It was brilliant. Unreal. Like something dredged from a dream.

A nightmare.

She was editing until three in the morning when, one night, she heard scratching. Upstairs. In the attic. She believed that it was rats. Ashman's position had changed by morning. He was not seated where she had left him; rather, he was standing at the edge of the set with his crimson eyes aimed squarely at the camera. She discovered an additional three seconds of animation when she played the video, just enough for Ashman to smile and slowly turn his head toward the camera. She hadn’t filmed that.

From then on, the attic grew colder. Darker. She taped the puppet to the desk, but each morning found the restraints snapped, the puppet in new poses. She discovered clay footprints on the stairs one day. Another, a blood-red smear across the attic wall.

She gave up eating. Stopped sleeping. She heard Ashman at night—his tiny fingers tapping on the attic door. She stopped checking.

Then, she found a note on her bedroom mirror, written in the same unfamiliar scrawl.

"Let me conclude." She tried burning the puppet. It failed to work. The flames licked at the clay but never caught. The red eyes gleamed through the smoke.

She threw the puppet into the street after smashing the attic window in a final desperate act. It hit the pavement with a sickening crack.

He was, however, present when she returned to the attic. Waiting.

She screamed, and the camera blinked.

For three days, no one saw her. Her neighbors assumed she’d gone on another creative binge. However, on the fourth day, the attic's sounds stopped. And that same evening, a new short film appeared online, uploaded from her official account.

The title of it was "The Eyes of Ashman." Six minutes of perfect, mesmerizing horror.

As Ashman dragged his bag across the tiny house, he stopped to look at the camera with bloodshot glee as he did so. He opened the bag, revealing a clay figure—a woman, gaunt and pale, eyes wide in terror.

Frame by frame, he took her apart. Arms. Legs. Head. He changed her into a new person. Something terrible. Something vivacious. Critics raved. “Genius,” they called it. “Unlike anything we’ve seen.” Horror festivals from Europe to America fought over screening rights.

No one noticed the blurred reflection in the final scene: a woman’s face, half in shadow, her mouth open in a silent scream. Aisling Delaney never returned to sight. Ashman, however? He’s still out there.

They say that if you stop the final frame and look closely, you can see a tiny shift in the color of his eyes. observing you. Waiting.

And if you hear tiny footsteps in your attic tonight…

Don't look around. He’s already filming.