The Two Children with Weird Eyes - An Original Short Story by Josh
I’m writing this down because I can’t keep replaying it in my head. If you live out in the sticks—or you’re thinking about moving somewhere “peaceful”—read this all the way through.
Two weeks ago my wife and I left the city and bought a house on seven acres. Half of it is open land, half of it is woods that get so thick the light just… dies in there. The driveway is about half a mile long. Nearest neighbor is a mile away. The kind of place where, if you scream, you’re basically screaming at trees.
It was expensive. We told ourselves it was an investment. Privacy. Quiet. Space. You know the lie people tell themselves right before something proves them wrong.
Everything was perfect until the night somebody knocked on our door at 9:00 p.m. and tried to come inside.
We were on the couch, half-watching a show. Steaks for dinner. Dishes done. That safe, boring feeling you only notice after it’s gone.
Then there was a knock.
It was a new moon. No porch light reaches the end of our driveway. Out here, the dark isn’t like city-dark. It’s heavy. It feels like it has weight.
We ignored it for a second—thought it was the TV. Then the doorbell rang.
My wife looked at me like, are you serious? I grabbed my sidearm from the table anyway. Nobody “accidentally” finds your front door when they have to walk half a mile to get to it.
I tried to look without making it obvious. Side window first—nothing but black glass. Then the peephole.
Two kids. Twelve, maybe thirteen. Standing too still. Not shivering. Not fidgeting. Like they’d been paused and someone hit play when I leaned in.
I cracked the main door and left the screen door between us. I didn’t step onto the porch. I didn’t even put my face in the gap. “Can I help you?”
Both of them stared at my welcome mat like it was the most interesting thing on earth. One said, without blinking, “We got stuck. We’re waiting for our parents.”
“Stuck where?” I asked. “What’s your address?”
They didn’t answer. The other kid said, “Let us in. We need to use your phone.”
I asked again. I’m not proud of it, but my voice got sharp. “Where do you live?”
Same exact words. Same exact tone. “Let us in. We need to use your phone.”
My gut was screaming at me by then. “You can sit on the porch,” I said. “I’ll call the police and they’ll help you.”
That’s when they lifted their heads.
I’ve tried to describe it a hundred different ways and none of them feel right. It wasn’t that their eyes were “black.” It was that there weren’t eyes at all. Just two smooth, dark pits where eyes are supposed to be—like holes cut into a photo.
My whole body went cold. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t move. It felt like the air in the doorway turned to glue and I was stuck in it.
One of them reached for the screen door like he owned the place. The handle rattled. Locked. That tiny metal click is the only reason I’m alive to type this. I slammed the main door shut so hard the frame popped.
I called 911 and tried to sound normal. I said “two kids” and “they won’t leave” and “something’s wrong.” I didn’t say anything about the eyes because I needed the operator to take me seriously.
Right then, their voices changed. It wasn’t a kid asking anymore. It was a demand, loud enough to hurt. “LET US INSIDE.”
They hit the storm door first. Glass spiderwebbed, then burst inward. Immediately they were on the main door—fists, palms, shoulders—like they didn’t feel pain and didn’t need air.
I don’t know how else to say it: I knew—knew—that if I opened that door, or if they got it open themselves, I wouldn’t get a second chance to regret it.
The operator told me deputies were coming. Fifteen to twenty minutes.
I told her I couldn’t wait that long. She kept saying, “Do not go outside. Do not open the door.”
Then it stopped.
Not “calm” quiet. Not “they left” quiet. The kind of quiet you get when something is standing perfectly still right outside your line of sight.
This is the part where you’re going to call me an idiot. I told my wife I needed to check the property—because she’s home alone most days, and I couldn’t stand the thought of those… kids… hiding out there and waiting for daylight.
I grabbed a flashlight and took the four-wheeler around the cleared land. Every time the beam hit the treeline, the woods swallowed it. I kept thinking I’d see two short silhouettes between the trunks, just watching.
After half an hour there was nothing. No footsteps. No voices. No kids. Just the storm door in pieces and three deep scratches in the front door—too high and too long to be from any animal we have around here.
I haven’t seen them again. Not like that. But I dream about them all the time—standing on the porch, heads tilted, repeating the same sentence over and over like it’s a password: “Let us in. We need to use your phone.”
I always wake up right when the door gives way. Heart pounding, mouth dry, convinced I can hear knuckles on glass.
The worst part is this: after that night, my phone log showed three missed calls at 9:03 p.m. from an “Unknown Number.” I was holding my phone the whole time. It never rang.