The Stars are Watching

By Citlali Meritxell Diaz

It was only one room. One small wooden room with a thatched roof and holes in the planking. Naran had to house her four children plus herself in that room.

She sighed and tried to remind herself that it wouldn’t be forever. Zenzontla was only an hour or so from where they had lived in her old family house; Iulius, her husband, had family in town and he worked relatively nearby. Naran would have to live off the charity of her husband’s sisters until she and Iulius saved enough to buy their own house, or at least a dwelling that was bigger than just one room.

It didn’t help that Iulius would only be home every fortnight. She hated the ache in her heart that wanted to miss him, but love would have to be put aside for now. There were more important manners at hand, like the financial situation her family was in, and the damn room she had to live in. It pressed in on her and she had barely stepped past the threshold.

She already hated it, but it would have to do.

Iulius’ family were kind enough in their greetings, though it wasn’t like they would be blatant about not wanting them there. Perhaps their annoyance at her indefinite stay was demonstrated in only giving her family of six one room, but then again it was trying times, and they had promised to renovate it for them.

Naran pushed those thoughts out of her mind. All would be revealed eventually, she told herself, though it didn’t do much to comfort her.

Her hosts had included them in their dinner after they had arrived earlier that evening. It was a fulfilling meal; it even had meat, something which was a luxury these days, but Ikal, her youngest, was a hungry child, always wanting more food, always asking too many questions. Naran hoped he wouldn’t ask for anything else to eat because for the first time in her life, she had nothing to give him, and hunger couldn’t be satiated like half-hearted answers to curious questions. Considering their supplies had dwindled to rags of clothing in mostly empty packs, they would all have to wait until breakfast for more food.

That thought shot a pang through her heart. She had to rely on the kindness of others for her survival. For her children’s survival. Something which she had vowed never to do, but what other choice did she have?

Naran steeled herself. This was simply taking any advantage she could get. She would get herself situated, not needing to worry about housing. She would tend to the livestock and find a way to get extra money on the side.

The school here was smaller, only two classrooms divided by older and younger grades, but it was still an education her children would get. Donovan, Yul, and Amaite would all be together. Amaite didn’t worry her. Her only daughter, thoughtful yet tough, knew how to take care of herself and how to persevere. Donovan and Yul, her two oldest, were always getting into foolish trouble but she would keep her foot down and find a way to keep them out of trouble, just like she always did.

Ikal did worry her, though. He was scared easily, a picky eater, and easy to take advantage of. Even then, in the small room, her main concern was if he would be too unsettled to sleep, which would make her lose valuable hours of rest.

Naran relaxed her face that she had contorted in worry with her brown brow creased and her firm jaw set. She rubbed her eyelids with her calloused fingers, trying to ease the tension that seemed to pass from her mind into tight wrinkles.

“What’s wrong?” Amaite asked, observing the look on her mother’s face. She looked around the room as if to figure out what was the problem.

“Nothing,” Naran quickly responded. The last thing she wanted was to panic her children.

It wasn’t like they could change anything anyways. “Help me unpack.”

Amaite was quick to take up the light packs from her mother’s shoulders, but Naran had to snap at Yul and Donovan to quit their playful wrestling to help. Ikal got more in the way than helped and it wasn’t long before he frustrated Naran enough that she placed him on the small creaky bed to keep him out of the way.

In a matter of a few minutes, they had arranged themselves in the room, placing their thin blankets on the floor where the eldest kids would sleep; Ikal and Naran would barely have enough room to fit on the bed.

They had arrived in Zenzontla quite late, so through the holes and gaps in the planking, full dark engulfed the world.

To her surprise, Ikal fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. Naran only needed to fiercely whisper at Donovan and Yul two times to get them to stop talking.

At long last, the peaceful breathing and quiet snores of her children filled the room. She finally let herself relax. With a deep sigh, Naran loosened her tense muscles and let herself feel the aches that came with age and traveling. The body pains hardly registered in her tired mind. She felt her brain shutting down and let her eyes close to the peaceful sleeping darkness that pulled her into unconsciousness.

Someone was watching her.

With a start, she sat up. Her eyes narrowed through the dark to see which one of her children was awake, but they were all fast asleep. She shifted her gaze to the door. Nothing. It was shut tight.

Naran shook her head slightly. It had felt that someone was watching her, that sixth sense one gets when a pair of eyes land on you. Slowly, she laid back down and turned on her side, trying to get more comfortable on the old mattress. She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was, but if her mind was playing tricks on her, then she truly needed to get some rest.

She managed to take in two deep breaths before her shoulders shriveled up. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. For a second, she held in her breath and laid completely still.

Something was watching her; she was sure of it.

In a flurry of movement, she sat up and spun around to the wall behind her.

Nothing. No one was there.

Her racing heartbeat slowed down as she laid back down.

It’s been a long day, she told herself, trying to assure herself that she was simply tired.

Naran turned on her side, this time facing the outer wall where she had felt that creeping feeling.

Her eyes roamed the wooden plank wall as they flickered closed. With a deep intake of breath, she closed her eyes for a third time, hoping that this time it was for good.

Not a second later, her gasp filled the silent room, and her eyes opened wide. She was too frightened to move. No breath went into her lungs. Her body trembled under the light blanket and her eyes didn’t stray from the two holes in the center wall, where a pair of eyes watched her back.

Naran didn’t even dare risk reaching for her cross necklace hanging at her throat. She simply laid there, not moving, and praying that her kids wouldn’t move either.

The pair of eyes didn’t leave.

It felt like an eternity of laying there, though it might have been just a few minutes. The fear was paralyzing, until it turned into anger. Naran had enough challenges to deal with already, she would not have a stalker added to that list.

In a burst of adrenaline, Naran shot up from her bed and practically hopped over her children to the door. She grabbed hold of the splintered broom leaning against the wall as she yanked open the door and ran out into the warm night air.

Earlier, she might have complained about the fact that their room hadn’t been part of the original house’s design. It was connected to the house only by a wall, leaving their room door to lead straight outdoors. But as she turned the corner in a sprinted second to confront whoever was watching her, she thanked her fortune.

With her brow furrowed in anger, she lifted the broom in her arms, ready to attack.

She skidded to a halt. There was no one there.

Frantically, she turned her head, trying to see if she could spot anyone running away or a spot where they might have hidden. But the space around the house was empty of people or probably hiding places.

She looked around again, this time feeling her cheeks burn with embarrassment at the thought of someone having seen her foolish run with a laughable weapon.

She headed back inside in a hurry, praying to God that her family-in-law hadn’t seen her. Her teeth grinded together as she tried not to think of that humiliation. She hadn’t even realized she had laid back down until her head subconsciously turned to look at the wall.

There it was again.

This time she didn’t hesitate. Again, she leapt out of bed, grabbed the broom, and ran around the corner. Again, there was no one there.

It took her longer to go back inside. She looked around the outside of the house first and checked around the corner multiple times before she found it useless to stay out in the humid night.

Amaite was awake when Naran went back inside. She was sitting up and looking around wildly. Her eyes were black in the dark and wide open when she snapped her head to look at her mother.

“What’s going on? Why were you outside?” She asked in quick succession.

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.” Naran ignored the fact that her daughter waited for more.

There was no point in both of them worrying.

To prove that everything was fine, Naran laid back down beside Ikal who had sprawled himself over the small bed. She tried to stop herself from glancing at the holes in the wall, where the two eyes still peaked in. Naran knew no one was there, but that only worried her more. Why was she seeing two eyes? She tried to put her back to them as if to put her back to the question, but it only made her wonder why she had such a vivid feeling of being watched.

The following day was dreadful. Her limbs ached with exhaustion and her eyelids hung heavy like stones. Every time she had managed to fall asleep during the night she woke up with a start, automatically glancing at a wall speckled with holes and gaps.

Her daily tasks felt like a nightmare of a performance. Her usual confidence and seeming grace at simple chores were replaced with a clumsiness and slowness that left her apologizing for the messes she made. She wanted nothing more than to get away from these people she didn’t know but was supposed to be kind to, but she dreaded nighttime and that unsettling room.

All day she peered at Iulius’ family, wondering if any of them were the type to spy on her and her kids. It was no use. As much as she wanted a suspect or a reason to leave the place, they were all patient with her, especially Tizoc, Iulius’ younger brother, who went as far as to welcome her kids with games and sweets. Naran tried to hide her surprise at that.

Apparently, Tizoc was off to university in a few months. He somehow looked both younger and older than his true age; he couldn’t be any older than 18. There was a sweet innocence in the soft curves of his face as well as something darker in the shadows of his eyes. All Naran knew about him was the little Iulius had mentioned which was that Tizoc might as well become a priest with how much time he spent at the church. Iulius had said it as an insulting joke, but after the warm, kind smile he offered her, she could see some truth in it. She’d get to know him better with time anyway.

When dark finally settled over the land, Naran went about her nightly routine with a knotted stomach. With every arrangement of a blanket and tidying of a strewn clothing item, she had to focus on breathing in fully. The air never quite seemed to reach her lungs.

Naran told herself that leaving the small lantern on wasn’t a lack of courage, it was simply a way to make things easier, like her living arrangements. The engulfing fatigue from lack of sleep and overwhelming fear agreed with her.

It was earlier than the night before and despite Donovan and Yul fighting and Amaite playing with Ikal, Naran fell asleep as soon as she settled onto her pillow.

When she woke up deep into the night, after her kids had been long asleep, chills ran over her. Her arms were covered in goosebumps which she absentmindedly rubbed as she pulled the blanket over herself. She shouldn’t even have needed the blanket on such a warm night.

Naran pushed away the thought and stretched out her arm to the lantern sitting on the small bedside table. She hesitated, her fingers hovering over the notch. Steeling up her courage, she turned it off.

She wasn’t surprised when the eyes were still there. Without a second thought, she turned on the lantern, letting the yellow light permeate the dark, and rushed outside.

She also wasn’t surprised when no one was there, but the frustration bubbled inside of her and tightened her hands into fists.

There was no sound of anyone hiding. No sign of any intruder or night stalker as she lapped the building. Everything was quiet and serene. Even the livestock and bugs were silent.

The only thing that seemed alive were the blinking stars.

The stars.

No. It couldn’t be, she thought. With rapid steps she went back to the wall of her room and looked at the sky that stretched above the towering mountains. The house was set upon a hill; nothing would block the view of the stars from inside the room.

Looking back at the planks of wood, she realized for the first time that the ground around the wall dipped downward. Standing right next to it, she furrowed her brows and tried to find the pair of holes where she thought she was being watched from. It took running her hands along the wall to finally locate them. They were located over her head, far above what any human would be able to look into without a boost.

With a dizzying sense of relief, she hurried back inside, desperate to prove her theory right.

No trepidation filled her when she turned off the lantern and laid down facing the wall. The eyes peered through the holes. She sat up in her bed and squinted into the dark, straining her vision as she peered at the wall. No matter how long she stared at the holes in a sitting position, she couldn’t see anything.

A small smile crept onto her face. She couldn’t see anything. No eyes. Nothing.

She laid back down and the eyes returned. She sat up and the eyes were gone.

Naran couldn’t count how many times she sat up and down on that rickety bed. At last she laid back down with a great sigh of relief. Small spouts of laughter spilled from her lips. She didn’t want to wake her kids, but she couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that the “person” watching her was truly the stars all along. If she had only realized earlier that the eyes were only visible through the holes from the exact position of laying down on the bed, or that the holes were too high for any human to reach, then she would be in deep sleep by now.

She wasn’t even angry at the fact that she had disturbed her own sleep or that by the hand of fortune, a pair of stairs aligned perfectly to be mistaken as eyes. She was just glad that she could now rest in peace.

Naran smiled to herself as she fell asleep. She found it funny that her fear of the past two nights still made it feel as though she were being watched.

It was surprising how much a good night’s rest and relief could affect someone. That was what Naran marveled at as she chatted with Iulius’ family and started to accustom herself to her new home the following day. It was nice to only have to worry about getting used to the town with its humongous church and quiet residents instead of fretting about the night like a small child. Naran guessed that it would be challenging to make this new town her home. It felt unsettling and wrong to be there, but she had never lived away from her hometown, so she hoped that with time those feelings would fade.

Waking up in the middle of the night wasn’t unusual for Naran, especially with Ikal still being quite young, but her hairs usually weren’t on end when she came back into consciousness. Without thinking, she sat up and smoothed the blanket around her and Ikal, taking time to tuck him into the white sheet.

A chill ran over her, causing her to furrow her eyebrows; she shouldn’t be this cold on a late spring night. Her shoulders twitched upwards as another chill ran over her spine and up her neck. Instinctively, she glanced over to where the perfectly placed stars had haunted her. She almost laughed to herself for her foolish fear. Almost.

From her sitting position, she could see the stars through the holes, appearing like eyes.

That was strange. Last night, the stars could only be seen through the holes in the wood when she was laying down. Maybe they were visible because it was far later in the night, she thought.

With her eyes on the holes, she inched herself back into a lying position. The eyes followed her movement all the way down.

She froze. That wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

Again, she sat back up and again the eyes followed her.

Her breath was caught in her throat as she slowly set her feet onto the cold floor. The feeling of being watched that she ignored since she had arrived, it was overwhelming. It tingled her neck, making her want to shrink in on herself but dropping her stomach with such fear that she could not look away. She didn’t know what would happen if she looked away.

Naran’s trembling breaths were the only sound in the deadly silent room. The world around her had gone still. The dark around her felt thick and dangerous all at once. She was blind in it but still susceptible to things that gazed at her through the black.

She pushed through the darkness, shaking with a raw panic and terror that should have been paralyzing, moving forward to the wall. The racing of her heartbeat in her ears drowned out her painfully slow footsteps. She inched closer to the wall, until finally her own eyes lined up with the holes in the planking.

Through the gaps, the eyes blinked.

Author Bio

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