Beneath the Watching

1. Mabel

1

MABEL

It was as if a movie projector had been flicked on for a split second and then abruptly shut down when the flash of light burst through the room.

Just for a couple of seconds, I’d gotten a glimpse of a winter wonderland scene. The snow was so pure and fresh it looked like it came from an arctic Garden of Eden. There were towering Douglas fir trees with deep emerald needles that appeared almost lit from within, and the stars in the sky were so bright and shiny I wanted to put some in my pocket and bring them home. Most of all, I wanted to be wherever this was.

My breath caught in my throat and my eyes began to water as the vision vanished. I’d watched my friend, Kiara, transform into something like a movie character. The crimson gown she’d had on was a thing of beauty that stood out against the epic landscape. It was something straight out of a dream and it didn’t look real.

I’d watched my friend kneel to scoop up a handful of the glistening frost before she paused, alerted by a figure in the distance. Her eyes had turned to a cloaked man in the background, standing as still as a statue.

When the scene disappeared, she jumped a step back, stumbling.

Me and my two best friends had been hanging out drinking in an abandoned house when all this happened. Madison and I exchanged glances when Kiara suddenly became upset and insisted on leaving.

By Madison’s mild reaction to the freak-out, I knew she hadn’t seen what happened to Kiara and me because she would’ve had a heart attack if she did.

The old, abandoned house, wasn’t too far from my foster parents’ home, which was how I’d discovered it. I’d spent many hours exploring the woods while I’d lived with them, finding peace, silence, and freedom in the solitude.

The hundred-year-old Victorian building was set in a small clearing out in the middle of the woods, haunted by legends, deserted, and left to fall into disrepair. I’d only peeked inside it once or twice before tonight, not comfortable spending too much time alone in the building. The home felt off , as if a presence resided there, observing trespassers, and waiting for prey. It was perfect for a visit near Halloween, perfect for the timing of our arrival.

Despite the colorful rumors, young people frequented the home from time to time, using it as a place to scare each other by telling creepy stories. Sometimes they were just looking for somewhere different to get wasted. We’d thought we could use it to celebrate autumn and the spooky season and do something new instead of hanging out at the bars and clubs like we always did.

Kiara had suggested it was infantile for us to do this, and I couldn’t say she was entirely wrong, but it was nice to switch things up.

We brought alcohol with us and then sat around drinking the cheap liquor. Kiara got up at one point and started poking around when she found an old, pretty bottle of wine stashed in a rickety cabinet. We then dared her to open the container and try it.

Well, that was more Madison than me, of course. I’d never try and pressure anyone into doing anything.

Madison couldn’t see the glittering specks in the wine we’d pressured Kiara to drink.

I did.

I knew something was off because that wine was like nothing I’d ever seen before or could even imagine; it’d been so strange looking. And the bottle was unusual too, wrapped in fancy silver filigree that reminded me of a Christmas present.

Did that make me a terrible friend? Because I didn’t speak up? Madison hadn’t said anything, so I thought it was my imagination at first. I’d learned long ago that I never had anything important to say, so I kept my thoughts to myself.

But then, I’d had to watch as my friend’s life got stranger and stranger, her already fragile grip on life appearing to slide away. She’d been through a lot, and after that night things got even worse for her. Her mental and emotional state slipped further away until she began to be a mere fragment of who she once was. She was always tired and grumpy, and she didn’t have the same enthusiasm for hanging out as she used to, staying isolated in her apartment.

Other things began to transform as well.

I watched as some of the people who had existed on the periphery of our social circle began to change and start to take more notice of her, pay us all more attention. It was as if they’d always been there but were now magically an integral part of our lives when previously, they’d been afterthoughts. They shared drinks with our boyfriends and sat at our tables when we went out. It wasn’t like before, when they’d mostly kept to themselves.

When I tried to think of the exact moment this shift occurred, I came up empty and the only thing I could think of was that evening in the deserted house. It was the only thing that made sense I could point to.

Madison, God bless her, was oblivious to all of this. But not me. I swear that one night changed everything and it was not okay. I felt something coming, something bad, and it both fascinated and motivated me. I decided I’d pay even more attention to my surroundings and its occupants, and that I’d get rid of the bottle of wine.

About a month after Kiara drank the mysterious liquid, I went back to the house by myself. It was around the middle of the day when I stepped through the front door and hurried my steps before I knelt on the floor in front of that little cabinet. My heart was pounding, and I had to stop and take several deep breaths. When my head cleared, I remembered Kiara had tucked the bottle behind the others. I quickly pulled it out, moving the other containers around to reach it. .

The wind howled with a whistling sound through the home’s nooks and crannies, the music reminding me of an aria. If I listened closely, I could almost hear the words. The haunting melody seemed as if it were singing about death; I could almost single out that one word. A chill ran through me, and I shoved off the floor, bottle in hand.

I trotted down the front steps and trudged through stiff, brown grass making my way to the back of the house. By the edge of the woods there was an old stone chimney about ten feet tall with a fireplace that would be the perfect place to do what I needed to do. Holding the container, I stared at the decaying pile of stones while I trembled slightly and prayed it would work. If this bottle was responsible for everything, I wanted it gone.

Everything had changed after Kiara drank the strange sparkly wine. Surely everything would go back to normal if it was out of the picture, right? I had no way of knowing whether if I broke the bottle, things would get better.

But I had to try.

Swinging my arm back as hard as I could, I released the bottle. It flew through the air, flipping end over end before it hit the mark and smashed against the inside. The explosive cracking noise forced me to dive for cover as bits of shiny black glass showered down like the rain.

When I opened my eyes, I looked at the ground. Pieces were everywhere, the shards coated with a glittering liquid that dotted their surface like tiny constellations in a nightscape.

When I lifted my head, I saw and heard the flaps of wings and cawing of crows. They were as startled as me at the sudden sound disturbing the silence of the forest. They swooped and dived, angrily voicing their complaints until they settled back in the trees. “Sorry, crows,” I muttered, as if they could understand me.

Slowly, I approached the fireplace, coming to a stop directly before it. The interior was littered with pieces of the bottle and trickles of wine traced a path between thick mounds of moss as it dripped its way to the base of the structure.

Backing away, I rubbed my arms and wiped my face on my sleeve. Small specks of the wine were sprinkled on my coat and residue had splattered my face. It was strange, the force with which the bottle had disintegrated; it wasn’t like it had been airtight and under pressure. The opening had been wrapped with leftover foil and there was no reason it should’ve burst like a landmine. A coppery herbal taste lingered on my tongue, and I tried to spit the flavor out onto the ground.

I walked back to the house and stared at the front door. The crows lifted from the trees and circled, cawing overhead, chasing each other in the wind. Everything else was quiet, the large old home standing vigil over the landscape.

What if there was another bottle, I wondered, one hidden in another cubby? There was no true way to tell if the bottle was responsible for anything that had happened. That’d be too easy, and it was all my speculation.

It was almost as if there had been a higher power encouraging me to destroy the wine. One of my foster mothers had called it “the voice of reason” and credited it for saving her from catastrophe. Now, that intuitive voice was telling me to look in the cupboard again.

I ran up the porch steps one final time and reopened the cabinet just to make sure.

The bottle was back.