The Oculus

It was a cold fall night in Northern Indiana, and the trees were naked and dead. The old
farm house where James Miller lived was quiet and eerie. White paint of a once grand estate was
now peeling away like the skin of a sunburnt face and James was in no condition to start
rebuilding this place. James sat alone in the kitchen and tried to eat his dinner around the clutter
that had piled up over these last few months. The harvest hadnt been good last year and was
even worse this year, leaving him with a meager dinner of fried potatoes and deer steak. Luckily
he had managed to nail that buck on the run this season and was the only deer he had seen since
things started getting bad. James finished his plate.
James sat on the porch smoking a cigarette and listening to the slight breeze of the dry
corn stalks bumping into each other. Birds would no longer fly near his land and he couldnt get
a bite out of the fish in the pond. He was thinking about his wife, who had died only 7 months
earlier from an auto immune disease that had literally been eating her brain from the inside. It
was sudden and harsh. She had been bed ridden for 3 months before that and he would no longer
go into their room. He preferred to sleep in one of the many guest bedrooms that lined the
upstairs hallway. At night he had trouble sleeping and would, on many occasions stare all night
at the ceiling listening to the creaking and rattling of the old house.
He couldnt quite wrap his head around the decay that had been happening. What had he
done wrong? He still went to church and dealt with all the hugs and looks of pity about his
wifes death and still worked this farm until the sun went down.
The moon cast a splash of light on the pond in front of James and after finishing his
cigarette, he went back inside. He laid his plate in the sink and plopped down on the couch
leaving a trail of dried mud from his boots on the wood floor. He looked at the beautifully

furnished living room filled with antiques that had been in the family for generations. In the TV
he saw his reflection; young, handsome, yet weathered and exhausted. Alone and without the
family that his wife had so badly wanted to raise, he began to cry. He took a deep breath and
decided to lose his mind in the little box in front of him. He turned on the TV and within
minutes feel asleep with his head leaned back on the sofa.
He snapped awake about 3 hours later and was panting heavily. It was still very dark
outside and the wind had picked up a little. He had just had the same nightmare that had been
haunting him whenever he would find the courage to go to sleep. The dream was of him
standing alone in a freshly plowed field, very muddy. The sky was a dark blue and not a star was
in the sky. His boots were stuck in the mud and he could not move. A figure would suddenly
appear in the distance and get closer. The figure was wearing a hooded cloak and hunched over
a plow that was pulled by his wife. The figure would shout at her in a degrading hiss that made
James head want to explode. He tried to go and help her, but he kept falling face down in the
mud and was screaming so that she would hear him. The figure would whip his wife and James
could see that her hands and feet had been rubbed to the bone by the constant pulling. James
would then notice that the figure was now looking at him and had gotten close. Warm breath
would blow out of the hood that was filled with blackness and the figure would step off the plow
and walk toward James. It would reach into the mud and pull out a scythe from the wet field.
Just as the figure stood over him and began to swing the blade down on his exposed neck, he
would wake with haste just as he had now.
James felt disturbed by this dream and decided not to sleep the rest of the night. He
walked up the stairs into one of the guest bedrooms and stared at the ceiling like he did every
other night, listening to the creaking and rattling of the house. After about half an hour

something very strange started to happen. James started to hear whispers in the hallway and sat
up in bed to make sure he wasnt going crazy. But he heard them again and thought they
sounded like they were coming from his wifes bedroom. He slowly crawled out of bed and
navigated his way through the dark room, only lit by the waves of blue light that the moon
produced. After reaching the door to her room, he pushed it open and saw a figure sitting up in
his wifes bed. It was her, and two little girls were playing on the floor.
He didnt know what to think when he saw this, but his wife immediately greeted him
saying, Hi James, wont you come play with our little girls. Theyve missed their daddy very
much.
James then looked at the closet door which was wide open. A strange circular shaped
form was floating there and distorted the space around it. Inside the form, there was darkness.
An immense and powerful darkness that seemed to pull him closer and reach straight down into
his essence. James wondered how he could be seeing this. The little girls acted like they had
seen him before and ran to hug their long lost dad.
James, Ive waited so long to tell you that Im ok. Weve been in a safe place, away
from all this mess. Please come back with us, his wife said.
Everything about his wife looked beautiful except for her voice. The little girls looked
just like her, long dark hair, and were tugging at James pants to follow them back into the form
in the closet. James couldnt take his eyes off the form and felt the pulling get stronger. He was
so lost in its dreadful blackness that he didnt notice his wife raise out of her bed and glide over
toward him, uncomfortably close.
Its safe, she said in monotone, and you dont have to worry about the farm, we can
take it with us. Her unusual assured tone didnt set well with James, that wasn't his wife.

The house then started to shake, even more than its usual creaks and rattles, and the walls
were bellowing, almost starting to shriek. The form was dragging the bed and all the other
antiques into its infinite wasteland. The girls were flung into the form and James almost half
expected them to say, Love you daddy, as they were engulfed.
This women grabbed his hands and reach in for a kiss. He pulled away and this angered
her. Her grip tightened and she began to drag him with her into the form. He caught a glimpse
of what was inside as he neared. A strange place lay before him, not earth-like in anyway. The
unbounded space seemed to stretch on forever and gave a sense of dread and longing that he
couldnt handle. He found the strength to rip away from this womens grip and ran for the door.
All of the furniture was moving toward the closet and whipping around the house. The
walls were warping and floor boards were ripped out of the floor. This form seemed to be taking
everything in its path, including life itself. He ran out of the house and just kept going, past the
pond and the barns that were being drug into the forms immeasurable being. After he made it
across the road, he turned back to look at the carnage that was left behind. His whole farm had
imploded into this form and left nothing for him to look at. He didnt even know what he was
seeing, as the black hole had taken space and light itself out of existence. It was just darkness.
He never knew what to make of the incident. The nightmares stopped and the harvests
got better, but indescribable vision of that place never left his mind.