The Eyes

There were many summers, before the last, that were flush with happy moments. No one knows why the fateful summer of 68’ at Cedar Hill ended so badly. The world at that point was twisted in many ways. Martin Luther King was assassinated. As well as Bobby Kennedy. The food yield wasn't keeping up to the population boom and hunger was a growing concern. Permanent food stamps were placed after Nixon became president. It seemed as if the whole world was upside down. Cedar Hill was not an exemption from the haunting year of 1968.

Cedar Hill was a quaint lake town nestled in the lush woods of Montana’s deep countryside. Mountains covered the parts of the sky that the trees didn’t. Crisp air surrounded the countryside; so fresh it felt healing. There was one road to get in and out. The road snaked itself past the weather and time decayed sign with more bare wood showing then painted spots. ‘Cedar Hill’ it read, ‘Home of the Wander’s’. The road carried on going between properties that lined the beach, stopping at the parking lot beside the beach playground. The playground consisted of one metal jungle gym, a small and large slide with wooden ladders up to the top, and three swings coming off a wooden structure. A mix of sandy spots and grassy bits made up the beach as it had been many years since they cleaned it up. The lake was deep, but it didn’t take more than half an hour to swim from one side to another; overall it was on the smaller side. About 15 once colourful homes, now more of a muted pastel colour, dotted a 5 mile stretch of the north side of the beach . Everyone got along pretty well and most residents were pretty close. It was like a small commune in the summers when everyone made their way down. Neighbours often shared meals together and people floated from one house to the other through the day.

Jenny was one of the long-time residents' daughters. She ran the activities for the children, which was mostly just supervising the lake while they ran wild. It gave her plenty of time to work on her suntan, and catch up on the magazines she didn’t read throughout the school year. When taking law there isn’t much time for gossip, her nose was too stuck in thousand page textbooks. The summers were her only time to relax, well at least try to relax. Since Jenny was a teen she had felt eyes that follow her. She dreaded the summers due to those eyes. Her parents brushed it off, the community was too close to believe there was a creep living amongst them. Here, on the beach, she could feel them the most. Her arms began to crawl with goosebumps and a chill set over her. Her blonde, curly locks bounced as she swept her eyes quickly over the beach properties, looking for the culprit. Like always, she couldn’t spot anything.

“Must really be losing it,” she mumbled to herself, sticking her nose back into a magazine.

There were only about five children that were young enough to need supervision, ranging from age 4 to 7. The twins were angels. Two ginger beauties that were obsessed with catching the crickets that ran rampant around the lake. The rest were boys. All but one were as crazy as bats out of hell. They chased each other down from one end of the beach to the other, almost all day long. Oftentimes screaming things like, “the King demands your heads!”, or “there must be only one!”. Jenny was intrigued by the face of innocence, but after a couple days of exposure to the wild animals, she was quite turned off of the prospect of having her own. She had worked hard to maintain her independence and never considered marriage, kids too were off the menu.

An unheard of break from the constant screaming fell over the beach and Jenny whipped her head up from the pages. The twins were still hunting the crickets; silence wasn’t unusual for the girls. But the silence from the boys was a cry for help. To Jenny’s dismay, they were not on the beach anymore; she scanned it one, two, three more times to confirm her fears. A sinking feeling set into her gut. It was as though she was being dragged to the depths of hell from her stomach.

“Girls!” she uttered, “Where did the boys run off too? Did you see them leave?”

The twins looked up. Silent. Pointed to the woods on the North end of the beach, past the playground, then continued searching the beach for tiny creatures to chase. The lack of emotion caused the hair on Jenny’s arms to raise. She shook off her jitters and ran in the direction of the woods.

With all the adrenaline pumping through her veins she didn’t expect anything to stop her from finding the children. When she got to the edge of the woods though, she stopped. She was being watched again. But the kids were lost and she had more important things to worry about than a feeling so she begrudgingly trekked on.

The woods were quiet, though she could hear the boys here. There were no cars, no drunk laughter from the parents, just a blanket of silence and in the distance young boys playing. She could hear everything and nothing. That’s how she heard the snap of a twig behind her.

Bruce had been coming to Cedar Hill since he was a kid, his parents cabin became his cabin and surely one day it would become his girls. His wife and he had only the twins to carry on their legacy and he was glad it could be them. He wanted to bottle their innocence. It was the purest substance, hard to not get intoxicated by. He had to stop himself from loving them too much. Not a thing you hear parents often say, but he knew. He never said it but he knew what he was.

His first obsession was the little neighbor girl. She would come with cookies her mother had baked, and bound bath and forth from the beach to the lake, often in the nude. Children were allowed to do such things. But oh, how it tempted him. How he lusted from her. Bruce knew he was perverted. He knew he couldn’t act upon these desires. So he watched. Giving himself just enough to quench the thirst but never enough to feel satisfied.

She, like most kids do, grew up. Year after year growing in different places. Becoming a strong, young woman. He was proud of her. “Maybe,” he thought to himself, “I love her like a father. Maybe I am not what I thought I was.” But he continued to watch.

So, of course he was watching when the boys ran off. He was watching as Jenny realized they were gone. He was watching when she left his girls. Alone and unsupervised on the fucking beach. Within that moment the obsession shattered and was replaced with a burning hatred. Every good thing she had done was unraveled and the truth revealed itself to Bruce. All those cookies were flirtations. The childish skinny dips were seductions. He was no longer perverted for lusting after her young body. She was manipulating him into this. Now she had left his babies on the beach. Why? To replace them in his heart when they perished?

Bruce hadn’t even realized he was following her until he stepped on the twig that made her head whip around. It woke them both up. His rage had been spreading like a wildfire through his body. It started in his feet when he first saw Jenny leave the girls, that’s probably why he followed her. It grew to his legs, his torso, and had just reached his hands when he saw her face.

“You left them.” he growled. He was trying to read her face when he felt the rock in his hands.

Jenny whipped around, facing the eyes. She knew it was them, they always felt the same.

There he stood. His menacing figure seems so unlike what she was used to seeing around the lake. His face, normally so warm and loving, was dark and terrifying. It all made sense now. The hugs that lasted a second too long. The joy of her accomplishments. The open door policy they had together. She thought they were just good friends, like a distant father figure. Jenny saw the rock. She ran.

Bruce may have strength on her but Jenny had agility. If they were anywhere else she probably could have escaped, but the brimbly forest floor reached out and grabbed her legs. She was going so fast that when her leg stopped, the rest of her kept going, till it smacked down on the hard ground. It seemed as though she couldn’t get up, which made Bruce sigh of relief. He knelt on her, trapping her arms, and stroked her face. Bending forward to be close to her for the first time in this way he smelt the fear on her face. He couldn’t stop himself from running his hands through her hair as she struggled. It was when she screamed that he snapped her neck.

Looking up, he saw the boys, mouths agape, watching him.