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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Wild-Tea-9242 on 2024-09-24 14:15:14+00:00.

This is where everything took a sharp turn for the worse.

We crept quietly through the house, making our way to the back door, in the utility room. The yard was overgrown and the night was still deathly silent. The moonlight barely illuminated us, and we kept our flashlights off while we were outside so Sarah the ghost girl wouldn’t know we were out there. Yazmine turned to us, “So, when we get in there, where should we look?”

“The basement,” Vanessa whispered, looking at the world through the camera lens, “the eyes could be in there. There were some kids toys in there, I think the killer liked taking souvenirs from his victims, he must’ve had more than the four they found in the basement. The eyes could’ve been kept as a souvenir before he decided to kill himself.”

My heart raced as we snuck our way around the side of that house towards the back door of the Eye Ripper house. We were actually going into the basement for a third time after everything that happened, and I hated it more than anything, but I knew that I wasn’t gonna stay in that room with Zack. Not just because I was afraid of looking like a coward, but also because the general atmosphere felt so ominous with him around, even more than usual in this ghostly realm.

We went through the back door, and our tensions were the highest there. We quietly padded down the hall towards the kitchen. I stopped the two, shakily asking, “What if that boy is in there again?”

“I think Bryce just pissed him off, maybe he won’t hurt us,” Vanessa said hopefully, “so far no one has really gotten hurt.”

“We don’t wanna test that theory, though,” John said doubtfully.

“We’ll be in and out, quick and quiet,” Yazmine assured me. It didn’t help ease my frayed nerves. John put a finger to his lips to shush us as we carried on.

The basement door loomed before us like a gateway to hell. We opened it and shined our flashlights down the stairs, the beam just barely touching the floor beyond the last step. We didn’t hear or see anything from our vantage point, so John took the first step, followed by Yazmine, followed by me, followed by Vanessa. It felt like walking into a lion’s den, and not only that but knowing full well that the lion hadn’t eaten in a long time.

When we descended the flight of steps, the basement seemed devoid of life, and that somehow felt creepier than if another entity was down there.

“Hurry,” I whispered, immediately starting to search for anything that might look like it could possibly contain decomposing children’s eyeballs. I didn’t know what that would even look like, maybe a morbid keepsake chest? Everyone started looking as well, shining their flashlights around and spreading out, a frenzied urgency in their movements.

I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder to make sure that monster wasn’t looming over me again, especially when I bent down to check inside the furnace, which definitely seemed like a place someone would get rid of remains. I didn’t even think about the fact it would be ash, my brain was too focused on ensuring I wouldn’t be ambushed by something that looked like the kid from the Grudge. Strangely enough, though, a teddy bear was inside, old, worn, and full of dust and soot. It looked familiar. I grabbed it and studied the plush, trying to think of where I’d seen it.

Wait…. The picture.

When I’d looked up the Eye Ripper case online a week ago, this exact bear was being held in the arms of Millie Jenkins, the girl in the purple dress. On Wikipedia, I read an article about her, and one of the photographs included there was of her cuddled up next to her mom on a couch during Christmastime, and she was clutching that bear to her chest. It was unmistakable, with orange button eyes, a cute tiny smiling mouth, and a red plaid bowtie under its chin. The belly looked like it had been stitched poorly, the sewing work abysmal.

I could feel my heartbeat in my ears as I took my fingers and yanked up the seams. As the sounds of my friends’ shoes scuffing the ground while they explored the dank basement became white noise, I forcibly ripped open the hole inside the teddy.

There was a little sack inside, tied at the top by a string, something of a sachet with a texture like a potato sack.

It absolutely reeked.

My nose scrunched up and I held it away from me. “What the fuck,’ I said, garnering everyone’s attention.

“What is that?” Vanessa inquired, coming over quickly to film my finding. John and Yazmine approached, too.

“I don’t know.” I noticed the bottom of the sachet was darkened with the stain of a long-dried substance. Something viscous enough to not disappear when the fabric wasn’t wet anymore, like water. With quivering fingers, I pulled the string and opened the bag for everyone to see. John shined his flashlight down in it.

“What the hell is that?” Yazmine sounded befuddled.

Inside were two black, shrunken little round…things. They were very clearly the origin of the smell, and they looked like grapes, olives, or blueberries that had aged a thousand years in the sun.

“Wait a second-” I dropped the sachet and backed away, becoming aware of the horrible truth. “Are those eyes? Are those her goddamn eyes?”

“H-holy fuck.” Vanessa breathed, her bottom lip trembling. “That’s actually what eyes look like when they’re decomposed. I saw it once, on an animal that died on my grandma’s farm. They become these little black things.”

“Fuck sake!” John lifted his shirt over his nose with his free hand. “That’s sick!”

“You guys!” Yazmine’s face was a mixture of horror and excitement at the revelation, if that was even possible. “It’s terrible, but we actually did it! We found the eyes!”

“We found a pair of eyes,” I corrected her, “he hid them in Millie’s teddy bear. I saw a picture online with her holding this exact one, it’s definitely not a coincidence.”

“If we want to appease all four of the victims, we need three more pairs of eyes,” Vanessa realized with great dismay.

“Oh, gross,” John gagged, backing away so he couldn’t smell the rot. I tied the sachet back up. “I guess you can hold onto that, Grace.”

“Gee, thanks.” I rolled my eyes.

“Everyone, keep looking!” Yazmine urged. “We gotta-”

Our walkies crackled, and we all stopped to listen. There was silence for a few moments, as if someone was holding the button to speak but choosing not to say anything. After a bit too long of waiting for them to speak, John raised the walkie to his lips.

“Zack, Bryce, are y’all okay?” He whispered. It felt like the world was still for a few tense moments, as if it had stopped spinning and we were frozen in time.

“John,” Bryce’s quaking voice whispered through the speakers, “you guys need to come back right now.”

“What’s wrong?” Yazmine pressed, panic flashing over her face.

Bryce whimpered, his breathing ragged as if he were truly scared for his life, “… There’s something wrong with Zack, I think-” An unexplainable sound interrupted him and the walkie stopped making the static sound.

“The hell?” I said, feeling fear gnaw at my chest. The walkie crackled back to life again before anybody could say anything else.

“John.” Zack’s voice, quiet and emotionless, sounding nothing like the emotional and energetic Zack we know. It didn’t sound like he was calling him as much as he was just stating his name, as if someone had asked what his friend’s name was and he was answering robotically.

“Zack, the fuck are you doing to Bryce?!” John roared. Yazmine, Vanessa, and I leaned in, listening closely. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure there was no ghostly spectator.

“Where are my eYeS?” Zack asked, his voice warping towards the end of the sentence, like an old doll with a voice box broken from age and wear and tear. It deepened in pitch towards the end, like he was an old machine slowly powering off. “GIve tHeM bAcK.”

“What the fuck?” John screamed. We all looked at the walkie in horror.

Yazmine picked up her walkie. “Bryce?! Bryce, where are you?!”

There was no answer.

“I-Is that really Zack?” Vanessa whimpered, her eyes bulging nearly out her skull.

“Shit!” John ran for the stairs, and Vanessa and Yazmine followed right after him. I immediately ran after them, all of us sprinting towards the basement door, which we’d left open for an easy escape. Desperate to save our friend.

The door slammed in John’s face and he immediately shook the doorknob, trying futilely to open it.

“It’s locked!” He yelled, the panic in his voice contagious.

“Oh my God!” Vanessa despaired, no longer holding the camera up to her eye. “We’re going to die!”

“Break it down!” Yazmine demanded, her face soaked with sweat. “Use that jock strength!”

“Back up.” John said, and we obeyed, right before he started kicking and kicking at the door. It rattled on its hinges with each thrust of his sneakers. Then, he braced it with his shoulder, and started ramming his arm into it over and over.

I watched him and prayed inside my mind for the God my mom always preached about to save us from this nightmare. Then I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and an unwanted presence dangerously close to me.

I turned around in a flash, a gasp ripping out my throat as I shined my flashlight on the pale, eyeless, and dead face of Millie Jenkins. Every horrifying detail inches away from me on the step under the one I was standing on, the way her eyes were like the deepest holes, like she had…

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