Meadowview

Please note: this story was provided by the author and published as is.

My name is Sadie Phillips, and if you’re reading this, I’ve gone missing. I’m leaving this note in the upstairs bedroom of 7 Meadowview Lane. Aunt Anna, you’re probably going to be the first one to find it. I want you to know that I’m sorry for the stress that I’ve caused you, and I’m sorry that I’ve been lying. 

If you’re not my aunt, then there are some things you should know. First, my mom and I moved into Meadowview Lane last spring. It had been her childhood home until she was about eight, but my grandparents never sold it. When they passed away a little while ago, Mom inherited the old house.  

It was built a long time ago and has been left to fall apart ever since. Most of the lights have long since burned out or had their wires eaten through, leaving the walls to peel apart in darkness, bleeding mold and dust out into the open air. The windows are glazed with dirt and smothered with moth-eaten curtains, turning any view of the street outside to smudges of dull light. In some of the rooms the walls are completely torn away to reveal the wooden supports sticking out like ribs with pipes and metallic cartilage looping around them.

My room is one of the only habitable ones upstairs. The ceiling is slanted with the roof, with age stains dripping all the way down the white wallpaper to the hardwood floor. I claimed it as soon as we first moved in, mostly because of the big circular window. I could see the entire backyard, from the porch to the old bird bath to the edge of the forest. It was a little cramped, but I was happy with it.  

Renovation was a lot of work, but Mom’s spirits never dipped too low. Every time I came back from school, there’d be a new set of shelves, a fresh coat of paint in a room, or another box of junk she’d sorted through. She brought her Bluetooth speaker to whatever room she was working on so that Amy Winehouse and the Beatles could help out. 

The second thing you should know is that in October, my mom disappeared. I’d woken up in the morning to go to school, assuming that she was still asleep. But when I got back, the house was still quiet. As the afternoon drew on, I tried to call her, and got no response. I remember the feeling of my heart dropping down into my stomach when I saw the sun starting to set. Something was very wrong. 

I called Aunt Anna, and after her first attempts to contact my mom failed, she picked me up and drove me back to her own house. I remember trying to eat the pasta she made me while listening to her calling Mom’s number again in the kitchen. I heard it go to voicemail for about the hundredth time, then Aunt Anna swore and called the police. 

I was reluctant to move into Aunt Anna’s guest room, as I was sure that any day Mom would show up, explain, and we’d go home. But as time wore on, with no answers. The police investigation was moving in circles, searching for evidence that simply wasn’t there, losing steam fast. Once they’d taken down the crime scene tape, all I wanted was to go back to Meadowview lane.  

Aunt Anna said I shouldn’t. She said it wouldn’t be healthy for me, but I was desperate for some semblance of normalcy. I just wanted to go home. And part of me was hoping that there would be something – anything – that I could find. 

A couple of nights after this conversation, I snuck out of Aunt Anna’s house and to my car. I steered nervously through the dark streets, part of me afraid to return to Meadowview. The house must have had something to do with Mom’s disappearance. 

I still had the key, and I found myself opening the door slowly, and nearly tiptoeing through the hallway. The air was dense with dust and the smell of crumbling wood, darkened by the shadows pooling out of the cracks of the decaying walls. Just like it used to be. I wanted nothing more than to call out and tell Mom that I was home. 

I kept the lights off so the neighbors wouldn’t see and felt my way upstairs over the familiar sound of the creaking floorboards. My room was quiet, lit up by the moonlight spilling in from the window. I collapsed into my bed, curling around a pillow. Maybe I could wake up and everything would be back to normal. 

But sleep didn’t come. After a few hours, I sat up in frustration, gazing out of the window into the mess of green and black smudges that was the backyard. It took me a moment to realize that the scene I was seeing was wrong, and when I did, my entire body went rigid, any drowsiness dropping out of my mind. Out in the backyard, right next to the birdbath, was a dark silhouette. 

It looked like a statue, naked and strangely smooth, with a humanoid frame and a tall, lopsided head. Its skin was inky black, blending into the shadows of the grass beneath it. It was standing in front of the birdbath, with its hands clutching its face as if it was crying, or maybe praying, holding completely still. 

With horrified fascination, I slipped out of bed and pressed up to the window. As I peered closer, its hands began to move, sliding down to reveal a single white eye as large as my entire face, nearly glowing, the iris a solid black hole punched through the center. It stared straight at me, its gaze like a spotlight, unblinking, frozen into the new position.  

I staggered back in shock, my heart pounding, each breath sharp in my chest. After a second, I stepped forward again, timidly peering over the edge of the window again. 

It was gone. The birdbath stood alone in the moonlight. I hesitated, then rushed out of my room, down the stairs, and to the front door, certain that the creature was pursuing me. But I didn’t see anything on the lawn, on my way to my car, or on the drive home. As I lay down in Aunt Anna’s guest bed, my heart was still pounding.  

I didn’t tell anybody, as I wasn’t even sure if it was real. It took me a while to return to the house. The creature swam around in my head for days, my mind finding its shape in every shadow, and my body tensing in preparation to see it again every time I looked out a window. Eventually, the urge to go back to Meadowview overtook the fear. I needed closure on what I saw, whatever it had been. 

 I went at night again. This time, I sat in the living room, on the sofa angled to face the back door. I sat for about an hour, staring through the window into the backyard, waiting for something to happen. After a while, I checked my phone to see how late it was getting. When I looked back up at the window, the creature had returned, with two others. 

One had its lanky elbows and knees bent at its sides, its body touching the grass, while another was kneeling, its hands on the ground on either side of it. The other one was standing, with its arms dangling at its hips. All three were looking at me, their white eyes blazing against their shadowy bodies. 

I was frozen, unsure what to do. What were they? What did they want? There was only one way to find out. Even while my brain screamed at me to stop, I slowly started towards the door to the porch. Every step seemed so loud, and when I turned the door handle, the rusted hinges screamed. But the creatures didn’t move. 

I walked out onto the grass, maybe twenty yards from the figures. Their inky skin gleamed in the moonlight like wet stone. Their arms tapered down to long fingers, their feet hidden in the shadowy grass. They had no facial features other than the single eye, but as I got closer, I could see their torsos shifting whenever they breathed. 

I called out to them. A quiet, cautious ‘Hello’. 

They didn’t react. No movement, no noise, no sign that they’d registered that I was talking. Their stares were unnerving, but I tried my best to stay calm as I slipped my hand into my pocket to get my phone and take a picture 

They broke their silence. A dull hum, barely more than a vibration. It started so gradually that I didn’t realize until I’d fully taken my phone out, but then I froze. It was like pressing your head against a pillow to hear the blood rushing in your ears. A heavy, dark echo from a seashell. 

I raised the phone again, ready to take a video this time to capture the sound, but while the creatures didn’t move, the humming got louder, faster, more urgent. A threat. They knew what I was doing and were warning me. 

I brought my phone back down. The noise softened but didn’t stop until I’d tucked it into my back pocket. I whispered an apology, and they stared at me. My gaze rested on the one holding itself closest to the grass, its limbs folded almost under its body, like a cat. It was looking straight into my eyes, almost expectantly. They were like animals. What would animals want? 

I moved towards the door, not daring to turn my back on the creatures. As soon as I got back in the house, I dashed to the kitchen and started going through the cabinets, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure that the things hadn’t vanished. 

I had no idea what they were, but I wanted to try and make a peace offering. I found a half-full box of stale Cheerios, poured out a bowl, and took it back out with me. They hadn’t moved an inch. I held the bowl out with both hands, and carefully, moving as slowly as I could, I stepped towards them. 

Part of me expected them to scatter, start humming again, or pounce on me, but they didn’t react. I crossed about half the distance between us, crouched to place the bowl down, and then backed up again, still half-bent over like I was bowing. 

I saw the eye of one creature shift away from me. While its companions held their gazes, it focused on the bowl of Cheerios, slowly taking a step forward. I couldn’t help but hold my breath as it moved. Each time a limb lifted, it was heavy and graceful, yet absolutely silent. The creature crept to the bowl and dipped its shadowy fingers into the Cheerios. The sound of the cereal rustling as it dug out a handful was the first noise that I ever heard these creatures make other than the strange humming. 

It looked back at me, and then started to crawl back as another one of the figures moved to take its place. They all moved as slowly as the first, each one taking their turn to grab a handful of Cheerios, and then retreating, holding their share in a closed palm. Then, in perfect synchronization, they started to leave. Keeping their eyes on me, they slowly walked backwards across the grass. I stayed still until they’d vanished into the forest. 

I exhaled, letting out all the breath that had been hiding in my lungs. I hadn’t gotten a picture but now I was sure they were real. I had treated them like animals, but they must have been more intelligent than that. They lived in groups. They recognized me as a living thing. They understood that I was feeding them. And they threatened me when I did something they didn’t like.  

I left the house and walked back to my car, glancing over my shoulder as I did. I wouldn’t try to sleep at Meadowview again tonight, but I’d be back. And so would they. 

The next night, I snuck out of Aunt Anna’s even earlier to make sure I got to Meadowview before the creatures. I’d been to the store earlier that day and picked up box after box of cheap cereal. I knew they were okay with Cheerios, so I decided to branch out slowly from there. 

 When I reached the house, I went immediately into the backyard. It was only about ten, and there was no sign of anything watching me. They hadn’t tried to conceal themselves before, so I didn’t waste much time checking. I scrubbed down the empty birdbath with some cleaner and steel wool, something that Mom and I had been meaning to do for months. I wasn’t sure if the creatures would care, but I didn’t want to take chances. 

When the birdbath was as sanitary as I could make it, I started pouring in the cereal, alternating brands until the mound threatened to spill into the grass. Once I was done, I stepped back from the birdbath to survey my work. Then something caught my eye in the forest. Halfhidden behind a tree was one of the figures, invisible in the night except for its gleaming white eye, which was, as usual, staring at me.  

I called out a soft greeting, pointing to the cereal and trying to hide how much my hand was shaking. I wanted these things to like me, but I was too afraid to show any weakness, in fear of what they might do. 

As I was expecting, it didn’t respond to my words. I backed up some more, until I was leaning against the door to the porch. Then it stepped out from behind its tree, still looking at me as it crept slowly towards the offering I’d left in the birdbath. A few others emerged with it, each of their eyes also fixed on me. A couple more came out of the forest behind them. By the time the first creature reached the cereal, there were nine in total, all converging on the food. 

Again, each took a handful. I watched them sift through the pile, fill their palm, then retreat. Even with only nine of them, they somehow managed to pick up the entire bird bath’s worth of cereal. As they retreated back into the woods, each kept their eye on me, in a gaze that I would like to think was grateful, but still made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Then they ducked behind the trees and vanished into the shadows. 

That night, I decided to try to sleep in my old bed again. That was the reason I’d come back to Meadowview in the first place, and while I was afraid of the things, they hadn’t shown any actual aggression yet. Maybe I’d be safe indoors. 

I climbed upstairs, set an alarm on my phone for before dawn so that I could sneak back into Aunt Anna’s, then lay down. As I tried to sleep, the creatures were all I could think of. How long had they been here? I wondered how many times I’d walked through the house at night and one of them had watched me through a window. 

I drifted off to sleep. Images of the creatures from the woods sifted through my dreams, until the memory of a song drowned them out. 

It was light, twinkling, with a tangled rhythm, as if instead of walking, the song was staggering and stumbling. The notes were high and discordant but wrapped around each other in a strangely soothing way. It was something that Mom used to play, both before we moved into Meadowview and after we’d cleared off the old piano in the hallway. She knew normal songs, but occasionally I’d hear her mess up, hitting a few notes from this tune and then switching over to it. I’d always found it strange, but never asked her about it. I regretted that now. 

I stirred awake, my eyes slowly opening to the dark impressions of my bunched-up sheets. The song was still playing. 

I sat upright, frowning as I listened to the music. It was light, but definitely there, coming from the piano in the hallway downstairs. 

I left my room and made my way down the hall, the song growing louder with every step. I moved carefully down the stairs, the gloom making the shadows blend into the steps themselves, forming one smooth tunnel. When I reached the landing, one of the boards creaked under my foot.  

The piano cut off. 

I leant down over the railing to see the hallway below. The piano sat in the corner, with the bench pushed slightly to the side. I took a few more steps down, still staring at the empty instrument. Then I heard the back door shut, but by the time I’d made it to the living room, the backyard was vacant.  

After a second of standing, stunned, I made my way back upstairs. I sat, awake in silence for the next few hours until my alarm went off and I had to leave Meadowview once again.  

The next day, I decided on a name. Watchers. That was what they did, and until they showed another trait, I would call them that, at least to myself. Thinking of them as shadowy silhouettes or creatures made me uneasy. 

When I arrived at Meadowview that night, the watchers were already in the backyard, standing and crouching in a cluster of fifteen, a few feet from the tree line. They watched as I dragged my bags of food out of the back door. I’d picked some of just about everything, from bread to ice cream to frozen blueberries. I wanted to figure out what they liked. 

I started to unload the food into the birdbath. I unwrapped and opened as much as I could, stacking food in the stone bowl and arranging some of it on the ground below. After the last bag was empty, I gave the watchers a thumbs up and retreated to the back wall of the house. 

The first one crawled over on all fours, holding its eye close to the food the way a dog brings its nose up to something unfamiliar. The others crowded behind it, waiting for their turn. 

Like before, they picked through the food, taking what they wanted until they’d filled their palm, then stepped back. I saw a couple more slipping out of the woods as the original ones fed, but there was more than enough for all of them. 

They ignored the processed food, while the bag of frozen blueberries, bananas, and baby carrots went pretty fast. But what they really liked was the meat. I’d laid out a few cheap steaks, which were picked up almost immediately, and some packages of raw ground beef, which the watchers dug their fingers into and grabbed handfuls of. While they wouldn’t take a fruit if it was too processed, like jelly, that didn’t stop them when it came to meat. One filled its hand with beef jerky, while another gently tore a hotdog in half, stared at its insides until it realized what it was, and then grabbed more. 

Then the watchers left like they always did, staring straight at me as they crept slowly into the woods, their food clutched in their hands. Resolving to clean up the trash later, I went up to my bedroom. 

As I lay down, I wondered what my goal was. I wanted to know more about these creatures, and maybe even get them to trust me enough to show somebody else. But why? 

The sound of the piano cut through my thoughts. The same song. I considered getting up and going downstairs, but I knew that it would just be the same as last night. So instead, I closed my eyes and listened to the warbling, twinkling melody until I fell asleep. 

In the dream, I was in the backseat of a car, the uncomfortable shape of my child seat pressing into my back. Mom was driving and playing eye spy with me, although me not knowing how to spell made it much harder. She solved this by continually picking the word ‘cow’ despite us having seen no cows on the entire road trip. This had sent me into hysterical laughter every time. 

The memory gradually transitioned into the kitchen of our apartment before we moved to 

Meadowview Lane. I’d just come back from school and was listening to Mom talk on the phone to Grandma. Her voice was loud and insistent, as close to angry as she ever got. 

Grandma wanted to sell the house on Meadowview Lane, and Mom was urging her not to, in vague, foreboding words. Instead, she wanted her to let the two of us move in. For reasons I didn’t understand, Grandma was appalled by this suggestion, and instead said that we should find somewhere ‘safer’. She’d eventually agreed, but I remember how strangely Mom had acted when she told me we were going to live in Meadowview. Almost as if she’d been trying to convince herself that it would be fine. 

The dream faded, and I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling. I’d never had a dream so vivid, it must have been something to do with the music. It was still playing, floating through the darkness above my head. 

I sat up, wiping my eyes as I gazed out of the window. The moon was bright, lighting up the empty backyard like a stage. And beneath the window, nestled up against the wall of my room, was a watcher. Its huge, pale eye stared at me, its inky limbs nearly invisible in the shadows. 

I froze, unsure of what to do. As I sat there looking at it, my eyes adjusted and I could make out the shape of its knees tucked tight against its chest, and its arms wrapped around them. 

It seemed a little smaller than the other ones. Almost childlike.  

I whispered to it, softly, asking what it was doing here. It didn’t move. The piano music from downstairs twinkled away. It kept watching me. I wondered for how many hours it had sat there, staring. They must come into the house when I was asleep, or maybe when I just wasn’t looking.  

I started talking, my words shaky. I kept my voice quiet, so that my questions were almost drowned out by the piano. I was trying to stay calm, so I didn’t bother waiting for a response. I asked questions I already had guessed the answers to, like whether it was one of them playing the piano. Whether my mom learned the song from them. Whether she knew about them at all. Whether that was why she didn’t want a stranger living here. Whether they had anything to do with where she was now. 

The creature continued staring, and eventually my voice trailed off and I lay back in my bed. I didn’t fall asleep, but time wore on, and when my alarm went off, the piano music cut off sharply. I looked up to see the watcher beneath my window was gone. 

When I entered the living room the next night, a watcher was at the back door, staring with its hand splayed out on the glass, and another watcher’s eye over its shoulder. I could see a whole crowd behind them, leaning forward towards the house. 

I stopped with the plastic bags I’d brought dangling at my sides. I asked them gently to move out of the way so I could bring their food outside, but of course, no response. I thought back to the creature under the window last night. They came into the house whenever they wanted anyways, there was no point trying to keep them out. 

I knelt down and started to unpack onto the coffee table. I felt their eyes on me more than ever as I brought out packet after packet of ground beef, raw sausages, and chicken breasts. I unwrapped each, then sprinkled a handful of blueberries over each chunk. It seemed like a meal they’d appreciate. 

I stepped back to the doorway out of the living room as the handle to the back door started to turn. They pulled the door open and slowly spilled into the room, fanning out along the walls and converging on the meat-laden coffee table. 

I couldn’t be sure, but they seemed to move with more excitement at the sight of the meal. They stared for a second at some of the unfamiliar meat but grabbed it all with what might have been enthusiasm. 

I hadn’t brought enough for all of them, but they seemed to understand. Some came in, realized, just went back to watching me, patiently crouching on the arms of the sofas or nestling behind the TV stand. One clung to the wall like a lizard, its neck arched so it could still face me. 

I heard Mom’s song start playing in the hallway. The others didn’t react, they just finished grabbing the food or rubbed their fingers around the edges of the empty meat containers. It was still playing when I went to bed. The melody was beautifully complicated, an irregular pattern that gradually spiraled down into a few notes, then bloomed outwards again. It made me sleepy to listen to. As I went up to my bedroom, I glanced inside of every room I passed. They all had at least one watcher inside, sitting on a piece of decrepit furniture, clinging to the walls, or standing out in the open and looking at me like I’d interrupted them. It was weirdly comforting. Even with Mom, the house had felt empty, too big for the two of us. It seemed better like this. 

I opened the door to my room. The watchers were already inside. The one under the window was back, with others huddled behind it. Others leant against the walls, perched on top of my furniture, and a few even propped up in the corners of the ceiling. Dark hands and ghostly bright eyes peeked out of my closet, more than I could count, and I was willing to bet there were dozens crammed underneath my bed, silently waiting.

Created by: Danny Ingrassia

I pushed my way out to the porch, and almost collapsed with relief. The backyard was full of watchers, more than I’d ever seen. A blinding array of pale white eyes all turned to look at me. Each one of their bodies faced the forest, with only their heads angled in my direction. They were leaving, like they did every night. But this time they were waiting for something. Me. 

I murmured for them to hold on, and rushed inside, up the stairs, into my bedroom. I grabbed a notebook, a pen, and started writing this down.

It’s taken a while. I can hear them playing Mom’s song to remind me to hurry up, but I just need to say goodbye. I know it sounds crazy, but Mom knew about these things. I need to find out what happened to her. Maybe this is what happened to her. 

I know you might not believe me, but I can’t be any more honest. Aunt Anna, I’m sorry about all of this. They’re leaving, and I’m going with them. Whatever happens, I love you.