House of Eyes by N.D. Graveheart from the DEATHLY AFRAID Collection

Artwork by Breanna Knoth

The wallpaper was of diamonds upon diamonds, perfectly parallel to one another. Some gold, others a chestnut brown with a light tan border between. But as the days pressed on, the house transformed into a king in yellow, orchestrating terrors through shifting lines and morphing intervals. Every new week, the diamonds turned to squares, and the squares into pentagons. And when weeks became days, the pentagons would suddenly change to many triangles, which after another day would appear as heptagons, later evolving into octagons, then devolving into more triangles.

The house became a maddening maze of tortured lines. And the owner, an elder of the neighborhood, was the only person who could witness its insidious unfolding. She lived alone, but never felt alone. On the eve of each morning, the shapes, the lines, and even the colors, would shift again ... and again ... and again ...

“They move, they see, they watch, they need ...”

They’d repeat to themselves until the wallpaper of the rooms became unknown and abstract. Each theorized line and mathematical shape now divulging into hideous crafts of supernatural symbols. And before the old crone knew it, the colors and shapes on the wallpaper reconciled frights throughout the home. The walls opened their thousand stalking eyes, watching from where the shapes had been. Always watching from within.

“They move, they see, they watch, they need ... me.”

House of Eyes by N.D. Graveheart from the DEATHLY AFRAID Collection