72

The eyes were intrigued. The ever-open eyes were always attentive, but not always excited. They were now.

“You wanted the girl to bring me up?”

The neighbour had been released from the clutches of the man without eyelids for now. He had permitted him to crawl through to the box of dressings and bandages and watched as he clumsily wrapped his head. The visitor had pulled a chair through into the antechamber, and the neighbour himself had carried in a couple of cushions to sit on the floor. The clutter was seeping in, though these were exceptional circumstances - this was not how a room in Number Seven typically developed its mess, so he forgave himself. He knew the eyes had asked him something. He had waited a long time to meet him, to speak with him. But now he was finding it wildly difficult to concentrate.

“I’ve been holed up here for quite some time. I’d started to question whether you were even real. It was, it was Bethany who had mentioned you. Said she’d started seeing you around clear as day. As though you were up here.”

“What did you tell the girl?”

“Told her what any sensible adult would. Told her of nightmares. But you were obsessed with her, it seemed. Obsessed with each of them. I’d watch them up here. At times we’d be sat and one of them would just pause a while. Eyes a little, a little vacant, you know. And I’d know. I’d know they were with you.” The neighbour paused. Wanted to check his tone wasn’t leading him to a second mauling.

“Go on.” Said the eyes.

“I’d started with my watches then. I took the first one from the bloody diamond when the family were away. It somehow - somehow cracked something in me. My ‘deep’, right - that’s what you called it. Well, I was down there constantly. The watches keep the door open. They leave a door open for me, waiting for me to come back.” He leant back and breathed deeply. One long drag on an invisible cigarette. He ran his right hand along the antechamber wall, feeling for the variable textures of the homes he’d been in. The eyes on him leant closer, thought to rush him, before remembering they had no rush bar the one they set.

“I looked for you down there for a long time. But I just had this one room. This huge, never-ending room. I’d started to think there was something wrong with it - this deep. The Hag had this dog, too - a great, barking thing. You want to check they’re real, you see - these places. And, and the only way to do that is to take something else living there. I swear I didn’t know until you said so that I’d locked it. I still don’t know how that happened. But I did manage to bring the Hag’s dog in with me. I’d tracked it out as it passed through her fence to the sisters' field. It wandered far. I found it by this creek. It was spring.”

The eyes knew. They were watching it now.

“I stuck my knife in the thing's belly. It howled a moment, before I stuck it again in the neck and pulled it down with me. It seemed to melt in the creek, like ice. It sort of ran into me then. I could hear it bounding around. Immediately I resented the thing. It ran around my great chamber, lighting the whole thing. So I built it a little room and left it there to rot. Never fed it much of anything, but the bloody thing refused to die.”

The man without eyelids relished the sick man, he quietly muttered his affection again - “One eater. Tell me, what else did you take?”