The Daggered Blind

 

~ Rachel Nichols

 

Background Info: This short story acts as a prequel to the well known short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe.

 

 

It started back when I was little, a traumatic experience that changed my life, but you would never guess how it all came together.  So sit back, relax and let me tell you the whole story.  I was minding my own business just outside the middle school I went to, I was sitting on the bench waiting for my dad to arrive. I loved simply sitting, listening to the world around me. It was my absolute favorite thing to do. I could spend hours there, nothing to do, nowhere to go, and never getting bored. As I was waiting I heard something like subtle laughter in the bushes, it was one of my friends.  She was the most gorgeous person I knew and her heart was the lighting that lit up rainstorms. She was acting weird. She kept smiling and laughing as if the funniest thing in the world just happened. I asked her what was going on and she answered with “oh…nothing, just was wondering what my best friend was up to after school.” I knew something was up so I replied with “I'm just waiting for my dad like I do everyday.”

 

We talked for a while about school and what we were going to do on the weekend and before I knew it a dog came running up to us and it definitely did not look friendly.  I yelled for her to run, it was darting straight towards me, but it was too late. The snarling, furious looking dog was staring right at me. I was frozen as if I was a block of ice. I didn't move a muscle. I was too terrified to run away to do anything and then it attacked me.  I let out a heart wrenching scream as I could feel the blood running down my body, but there was no pain. Only ringing in my ear and I suddenly felt as if it wasn't happening anymore, magically as if everything disappeared.

 

The next thing I know I'm waking up in the hospital. I feel so sore and my whole body stings, a nurse walks in and gives me a smile and tells me what happened.  The dog did indeed attack me but before I had lost consciousness my dad heard my scream while talking to a teacher and came running, ripping the dog off me.  I noticed that I was sharing a room with another person, a quite old person. It didn't seem as if anything was wrong with him, but then he opened his eyes and I saw they were white and foggy.  He had told me he was in a plane on his way to paradise and got a cloud stuck in them. I didn't believe him though.  A couple minutes later the nurse comes back in with my dad and her. Just seeing her made me feel better. She ran up to me and continued saying how she should have stayed and that it was all her fault. I reassured her that it wasn't anyone's fault and that I was ok, but I did have to stay the night.  

 

It started off alright. I couldn't sleep well but I still tried to get some rest because I knew I needed it. Suddenly I heard a groan. It was the old man I asked him if he was ok and he said it was his heart. It would ache and ache. That's why he’s here and the next morning he was to have a procedure done to help him but he wasn't too happy about it, he didn't really trust doctors too much.  The next day came and I was very tired. The nurse came in often to check on me and to re-bandage me but nothing too bad. 

 

A while later I heard an alarm go off continuously saying “code red, code red”.  I got really scared. My door automatically slammed and locked, then I saw him. That old man with the cloudy eyes looked very angry and was running into every unclosed room and came out in more and more blood. He was staring right at me holding his bloody dagger and slowly walked towards me. I backed up further and further till I hit the wall.  He broke through the glass door and that’s when I realized those were not clouds, they were trapped souls of people he had killed. He wasn't sick, he was mad.  I somehow managed to sprint out of there as fast as my aching legs could take me, passed all the pools of blood, passed everyone I loved dead. I reached out of there and there were police, firemen and EMTs all outside with many other people.  I told them everything about the trapped souls in the man's eyes and how he wanted mine, but no one believed me. They sent me away to a place they said would help me, a place with others like me.  

 

No one was like me there, they didn't understand. Everyone called me out of my mind, nuts in the head.  I grew older and older, spending more and more years at that horrible place where every night I would go back to the same time it all started and I learned the only way to get out was if I never talked about that night again.  

 

So I did just that and as I turned 18 I got to live with my grandpa who was a famous writer. I had never met him but I knew it was going to be better than this place. He won't say I'm insane or mad or out of my mind.  He’ll be the only person who might understand me, besides you, you don't think I'm insane right?  

 

I was taken to his house. He was waiting for me outside on his front steps, that's when I saw him and my blood ran cold. I heard a sudden pounding in the earth and it must have been him. It must have been the trapped souls begging to get out. The closer we got the louder it got.  I began to breathe heavily, but I knew I had to keep it together. If he didn’t know that I knew his secret he would leave me alone.  I got inside and kept a close eye on him. I knew he would never find out. I was too careful, too cautious to let down my guard.  

 

But everyday it grew and grew, the tension between us, not my grandpa but me and his eye.  That one eye that followed me everywhere I knew was watching my every move and every time I got closer I would relive that night where it all began. Where I heard the pounding first, that man with the two cloudy eyes that carried all of the suffering souls he had hostage.  I often tried to go back to the good days before everything else, when I was happy, and I realized that I never found out what was going on with her, the girl I loved. That day she was acting so weird but in a good way and now she was dead because of that awful man. I still can hear the screams of the people who were lost, and that's when I knew what I had to do.  That wretched eye has only caused pain and it had to go. I made up my mind I had to kill the old man.