Violet Eyes

by Madeline Mertz

The leaves were a sad shade of green. Brown had already begun to nip at the edges of them, and the petals had fallen to the ground, wrinkled and forming a wretched little circle around the plant. All of the rose bushes looked that way.

She had demanded roses, and yet the trees loomed high over the house, dark and foreboding, and had green-black leaves that gobbled up every ray of sunshine needed to grow a healthy rose. The soil didn’t help either, it was all mushy red clay that formed pits along the path every time it rained so that I was up to my ankles in muck for several days after every rain storm. Try as I might, nothing would grow around her house, and yet she still called me out, at least five times per year like clockwork so that I might rip out all of the plants that had suffocated in the wet clay and replace them with fresh sacrifices that would inevitably die within two weeks.

When the first round of plants had died, she had accused me of being a bad gardener, having supplied her with bad plants on purpose, but I explained that the soil was not suitable for growing flowers, interjecting my protests and explanations amidst her whines. She had stomped off in a childish huff, slamming the wooden door of the cottage behind her. Yet, when I left, she called me out again the next day, demanding that I rip out the dead plants and replace them with fresh ones even though she knew they wouldn’t grow, and thus our cycle had begun. I would have been happy to ignore her and her pit of bloody clay if it weren’t for what she paid me. Oh lovely money. It appeared she had plenty of it. How? I didn’t know.

Her house wasn’t in a much better state than the landscape which surrounded it. It was small, only one story, surrounded by the thick woods on all sides, and likely only three or four rooms. Her winding, dirt driveway out of the woods was the only piece of the landscape that bore a hint of humanity. The house looked as though it had grown out of the forest itself and sat dormant for a hundred years.

The roof was made of old wooden shingles held on with rusted nails and caked with moss and fungi. The windows were tinted a nasty, rotten shade of yellow. The kind that was the result of an avid smoker, yet, whenever I saw her in person, she never smelled like smoke. She’d never invited me inside or left the door open long enough for me to get a good look at the inside of the house, but I’d dared take a few peeks whenever I was bent over the roses.

Truthfully, I hadn’t thought much of the first room that I peeked inside. I had been around the side of the cottage, desperately trying to bring a bit of life back into a rapidly browning rose, and had been overcome by a bit of innocent curiosity, leaning over the rose I had pressed my nose against the yellowed glass, staring inside.

This room was a bedroom, adorned with a red patchwork quilt and an old mahogany dresser. A pitcher and washbasin sat on top of it as though she had no running water inside. The walls were painted the same shade of yellow as the windows, and instead of being adorned with photographs or crosses and baubles, there were mirrors. I counted at least six of them, all different shapes and sizes with at least one on every wall. I doubted this was her room. It looked too untouched, and the pattern of the quilt was fuzzy as though it was covered in a thick layer of dust. There was also no wardrobe or closet in the room, which didn’t seem at all like her, she was always draped in some expensive clothing, but I could see none of it in the room. How strange.

I wondered if she had ever had a husband or a child. Perhaps it had been theirs once. I never asked, though. I had never even asked her name. When she had called me out to her house the first time, I had been confused, thinking my GPS was leading me astray when I started down her dirt road in the woods. Then, I had been confused by her herself, her beauty, her attitude. So dumbfounded I hadn’t asked her name. Then, it felt like too late to ask on all the trips afterwards, so I had serviced the cottage in the woods for nigh on five years and I had never asked her name.

It was all the same. She had never asked me mine either. When she wanted something, she would simply give me a call on that old landline of hers, or stomp out that old wooden door screaming “gardener!” until I appeared.

I’d considered asking her out on a date myself if it weren’t for my certainty of rejection. Other than a shock of red hair and consistently dirty knees I had a considerably plain appearance. Nothing to tempt one such as her.

I could never tell how old she was. She could have been thirty or barely eighteen, I would have believed either. She was thin, frighteningly so, too thin for a woman of her height. It gave her a strange spiderish look when she walked, and her pale skin and midnight hair only served to accentuate the look.

It was her eyes though, that really made her strange. I’d never seen eyes like hers on another person. They were purple, though not a grayish or bluish hue or anything remotely natural. They were bright evervescent purple, crystal and nearly neon. The first time I’d ever met her gaze, it had sent a full blanket of chills over my body—I wasn’t sure my reaction was out of fear or lust or a mixture of both—but I tried to avoid her violet gaze when I could. It was better to keep my gaze on the clay beneath my feet and do what she asked.

Today was one of the such times in which she wished me to redo her garden. She had called in the early hours of the morning, requesting that I come out in the afternoon to plant roses. Red ones, the darkest ones I could find. I hadn’t needed to ask who it was—I knew it was her as soon as I heard the shrill sound of her voice.

I hadn’t had any other calls, and it was early in the spring for planting requests, so I happily agreed. I looked forward to the large check with which she would reward me.

She didn’t bother to come out of the house when I arrived—she usually didn’t. She would only appear once the work was nearly done, and she would walk around the house with her eagle eye, asking me to trim a few leaves here and there, then finally retreat into the house for her checkbook once she was satisfied.

Once I received her call, I retreated into my greenhouse, filling the back of my truck with the dark red roses that I had nurtured specifically for her. She had her own section of the greenhouse, little rows of sacrificial roses that I would send to die in the clay of her cottage.

The sky was a threatening shade of grey, promising rain with a vengeance, and the air had an equal heaviness to it. The forecast promised a few more hours before the storm though. Enough time for me to plant her roses and return home without becoming drenched in the middle of her woods.

All I required was my shovel, a few bags of dirt, and a pair of gloves and I was set. I didn’t bother with any type of bug repellent or fertilizer for the soil—I’d already tried everything. The flowers would be dead within the week no matter what I did.

I’d asked before if she would consider letting me dig a trench in the clay around her house to fill with dirt and she had shrugged it off, saying it would be too expensive, which was a ridiculous answer considering the amount that she overplayed me for just planting the roses, but I didn’t argue with her. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had. She never listened to me anyways. She just wanted her sacrificial roses.

I ripped up the dead roses by their roots and flung them in the back of the truck. They came free from the clay easily, limp and yellowed as the windows behind them. I placed a bit of the dirt from my bags around each of them, knowing it would make no difference. It didn’t take long—the cottage was small, and she only wanted a perimeter of the roses with a few extras clustered around her front door.

As soon as I placed the last rose in the clay and began to pat some of my bagged soil around it, I heard the telltale creak of her front door, and I looked up to see her step out of the cabin. A long formal white dress was draped around her body, made of a thick gauzy material that was always best suited for curtains. It suited her, though—she usually wore dresses. I’d only seen her in pants a few times. I thought it was because she looked less spidery in them, more womanly.

“Gardener. How are the roses?” She stepped closer to me, her feet bare as she stepped off the wooden porch and onto the clay. I wanted to caution that she could step on a fallen thorn or muddy the hem of her dress but it seemed unlikely that she would listen, so I let her be.

“See for yourself. These were as dark as I could get them.” The roses were a deep, bloody red, healthy with full and thick petals. I kept my gaze on the ground, not wanting to meet her eyes.

I stood up, stepping back so that she could scrutinize them.

Her violet eyes narrowed as she bent over one of the roses, tucking her nose into the center of the flower to inhale.

“Lovely.” She backed away. Just as she did, I felt the first droplet of rain on the top of my head, several hours sooner than my phone’s weather forecast had promised.

I expected her to make her lap of inspection around the house as she usually did, but instead she stepped up onto the porch again, her feet muddy with clay. “I’ll step inside to get the checkbook. You’re welcome to step out of the rain for a moment if you wish.”

For a moment, I stood still in surprise. Never before had she invited me inside, and though I’d always been curious, her offer made my tongue thick and heavy in my mouth. The droplets were falling faster now, and I felt a few more on my arms. After a momentary awkwardness due to the unfortunate dysfunction of my mouth, I managed a nod.

She left footprints of clay on her porch as she stepped into the house and onto a rug where she proceeded to wipe them.

I followed heavy at her heels, eagerly peering around her head into the house.

I wasn’t disappointed. It was as strange as I expected, exactly befitting her. There was a rocking chair in front of a small stone fireplace, over which were hung the skulls of deer, antlers still attached for decoration. Knitting needles and red yarn sat atop the coffee table. In the kitchen, herbs were hung above the island countertop mixed in with pots and pans, and two curious little potted Venus flytraps sat in the sill of the kitchen window above the sink. The house had a curious scent to it as well, sage and something else that I couldn’t identify. Witch hazel perhaps.

Her sink—she did have running water. So why the pitcher and basin in the bedroom of mirrors?

I was too busy observing the room to notice that she’d disappeared from my sight until her shrill voice sounded from directly behind me. “Would you like a glass of lemonade?”

I gasped, jumping a bit as I sucked in a breath full of sage and turned to find her. She held a glass of iced lemonade in each of her hands, a pitcher of it sitting happily in the counter to the left of her.

“Sure.” My voice sounded before I knew what I was saying this time, and I held out a tentative hand to take the glass from her.

It was cool in my hand, sweating droplets of condensation, and I relished the feel of it in my mouth as I took an eager drink, cooling myself after my time planting in the muggy air. “Did you make it?” I asked her for the sake of having something to say. The silence was beginning to feel strange and stifling.

“Yes.” She stepped around me, setting her glass on the table as she turned down the short hallway leading out of the living room and kitchen area and disappeared into a doorway on the right. “Take a seat while you wait for me. I don’t know where the checkbook is.”

I obeyed her order, settling myself silently with my glass of lemonade in the rocking chair in front of the dormant fireplace.

It was a few minutes before she returned, announcing herself with a monotone “I’ve found it,” as she returned to the kitchen.

I turned to face her and frowned in surprise. “You changed.”

She was wearing pants now. White pants, made of the same gauzy material as her dress had been, and looking much more thin and stretched out now. Her shirt was the same material too, with short sleeves that left her bony arms on display.

She only blinked a few times in response to my comment, holding the checkbook in her hand. She stepped over to the fireplace, pulling. A book of matches from her pocket and tossing a lit one onto the wood inside, then moving over to the island to write the check.

I wanted to protest, the cool air inside the cottage was lovely after the heat of the outdoors, but I kept my mouth shut, staring into the flames while she wrote the check. They were a light blue color, with flickers of occasional green like a salt-wood fire, but not quite. Vaguely, like a little needle in the back of my brain, I was aware that the green didn’t make any sense. We were nowhere near the ocean.

The fire was fascinating through, happy little dancing flames in different colors. The more I watched, the more the green and blue began to fade, first to a darker blue, and then little flickers of purple began to appear, growing brighter and fuller the longer I watched. I wanted to look away, to see if she was finished with the check, but the fire held my attention steadfast.

I clenched my glass of lemonade in my hand but found that it was no longer there, my fingers curling uselessly against my palm. Had I dropped it? I tried to look down and check, but the purple flames were full now, so bright that my eyes ached, and they were growing larger still, licking against the top of the fireplace and spilling over it.

I felt myself flinch, it was too bright. Too bright to keep looking. I shut my eyes.

§

My head ached, the pain was sharp behind my eyes, like the morning after a hangover. I opened my eyes and was met with complete blackness. Had I been drinking? Had I gone blind?

It took me a moment to remember, but remember I did, and I was seized by an icy panic. The purple flames, the lemonade, her.

I blinked a few times to ensure that I was, in fact, fully awake. My breath was coming faster now, my mouth and nose filling with sage that threatened to make me choke. I was still in her house. That much was clear.

Had the lemonade somehow knocked me out and rendered me blind? She must have drugged it with something, but it made little sense. What could she possibly want from me? And why now, after all of these years?

My confusion and fear were almost overwhelming, but regardless of my feelings, escape was obviously the higher priority.

There was no harm done to my body that I could tell, other than the splitting headache pounding at the base of my skull. I could move my arms and my legs—I wasn’t tied up. I shifted. I was on a mattress of some sort. I pushed myself up into a sitting position, the pain in my head intensifying to an alarming sharpness with the change in elevation. I patted my pockets, searching for my phone to summon the police—it was gone. My key fob for my car was still tucked inside the watch pocket of my jeans. I just needed to get to my car.

Twin pinpricks of light appeared in the pitch darkness. Two spots of bright purple light. I turned my head to the right, two more spots. Behind me, two more, but these ones were much closer.

Eyes. They were eyes, her eyes.

I gasped and scurried away from the ones behind me, scooting myself along the mattress, surrounded by the purple eyes. My hands were shaking uncontrollably as I grasped along the mattress trying to find the edge.

Some sensible part of my mind was still functioning amid the vast ocean of fear, and it began to whisper. The mirrors.

I was in the room of mirrors that I had seen when planting the roses. There was only one pair of eyes now, only one person’s. I just had to figure out which one it was.

A spirit of defense overcame me, a visceral urge to stay alive, but an utmost desire to discover why she had done this. What she wanted with me. What was she? A witch? Perhaps.

I began to kick out at the eyes, my breaths coming in sharp painful gasps full of sage. The ones to the right were too small and distant, definitely a reflection. I kicked to the front and met nothing but air. She was behind me.

I kicked out again, and a hand wrapped around my ankle. An unwitting scream escaped my throat as I hacked at her grip around me with my other foot. My gardener’s boots chipped over her bony knuckles in a way that had to be painful, and yet some unnatural well must have given her strength as she did not relent.

My fingers found the edge of the mattress, and I desperately yanked myself away from her, and it appeared to work as my foot came free. I kicked again, faster now. There was a loud crunch as my foot made contact with her jaw, causing her teeth to crunch together.

I scrambled off the edge of the mattress, running blindly with my hands out towards the wall, scrabbling my nails along the paint, desperately trying to find the edge of the door. I tried to picture the layout of the room I had seen and guess where I was, but I was too panicked to think clearly.

I found the edge of a mirror and wrapped my fingers around it, ripping it off the wall and throwing it to the ground where it smashed loudly. She hadn’t been wearing shoes, this would do.

I found another and smashed it too, trying to hit it hard so the pieces would scatter around me. There were three pairs of eyes in the room now. I hadn’t heard her climb off the bed, but I wasn’t sure.

I ran over to the next mirror, shoving to make sure it wasn’t her, and then I smashed it. There were only two pairs of eyes left now, but I could hear the crunch of glass behind me. She was somewhere.

I ran at the next pair and my hands found skin.

I screamed again, scratching at her arms, kicking and swinging, doing everything I could to get her away.

There was a hiss in the darkness, and I screamed again.

The second pair of eyes was coming closer, a second pair of hands closing around me.

I was taking my hands against the wall, trying to find purchase against something, anything—I wasn’t sure what I was fighting anymore. Two people?

A lightswitch! I flicked it, and a yellow bulb flickered on, casting the room in an evil glow.

I shoved away the hands nearest to me and dashed towards the door that was now in view, ripping it open and stumbling towards the exit while the shattered mirrors crunched under my feet.

A needling at the back of my mind kept me from running away fully. I had a confusion that needed answering. I spun around in the doorway, facing the two women with my hand on the door handle, prepared to slam it and run.

They were indeed twins, one in white pants and one in a white dress, with the same inky hair, sallow skin and neon eyes. The one in the dress was crouched on the glass in a sort of frog-like pose. The glass around her feet was covered in blood, and her jaw was crooked at an awkward angle, broken.

The sister in pants appeared unharmed, yet neither of them moved as I scrutinized them.

“What do you want with me? Witches? Is that what you are?”

They glanced at each other, their eyes connecting for several seconds as though they could communicate without speaking. For a moment, I considered that they really could.

“She likes her gardener.” The one in pants spoke in place of her sister with her broken jaw. “She wants to keep you.”

“Keep. Me?” I repeated in shallow horror. What did that mean?

“She is tired of only having you when she wants new flowers.”

“Yes, but you can’t keep people just because you like them.” I sputtered.

“She can.”

I decided then that I didn’t want to discover the extent of what keeping meant, and I made a mad dash for the front door, slamming the bedroom door behind me.

The witches (for what else could they be?), ripped open the door, following me as I dashed down the hallway of the little house and attempted to pull open the front door. It wouldn’t budge. Some aspect of their witchcraft, no doubt. I tugged at it again and again, a strangled sob of hopelessness escaping my throat.

The sister wearing pants stepped out of the bedroom slowly, the creak of the door announcing her pursuit. She followed me slowly, the clink of the glass still embedded in her feet on the hardwood floor, making me cringe.

“She needs you for her collection.” She whispered, her neon eyes fixed on me.

“What collection?!” I shrieked, still yanking on the door as she crept closer and closer. The only two exits were the door and the hallway she was blocking.

I eyed the pans above the countertop warily for a second and then jumped into action, yanking one down and holding it out to the side of me like a bat I was ready to swing.

She was unbothered by my attempt to procure a weapon, continuing to approach at her clinking pace.

I ripped open the nearest cabinet hoping to find a knife, but instead the contents of the drawer consisted of a spice rack full of little bunches of hair tied with ribbons. All of them were red like my own.

I ripped open the next drawer. The same.

I wanted to laugh at the irony. I had wanted to ask this woman out, and it appeared she had wanted me as well, though it seemed rather apparent that this wanting did not involve dinner, or even living.

She was still clicking closer, and a sort of shuffling was coming from the hall.

Her sister appeared behind her, whole and in perfect condition, her jaw repaired and her bloody feet healed.

I ran towards the kitchen window and slammed my pan against it, yellow glass scattering all over the roses I had so carefully finished planting.

I didn’t think before I dove through the broken window headfirst.

A shriek behind me told me the witch had likely not seen that outcome as a feasible option.

Thorns from the rose bush had scratched along my legs, and there was a little piece of glass stuck in the skin above my knee when I stumbled to my feet. I couldn’t feel any of it as I sprinted for my truck, leaving my phone behind.

I ripped open the door to my truck, slamming the door and locking it as I pushed the on button and pushed the pedal to the floor. Dirt flew up behind my wheels, and a couple of extra roses that I hadn’t used went flying out of the bed behind me.

I could see the sisters in my rear view mirror standing on the lawn, having stopped in their pursuit once they could see it was hopeless.

My hands were sweaty and shaking on the wheel as I peeled out onto the open road, out of the accursed forest of witches. My breath slowed down as rain began to fall hard and fast on my windshield, blurring the road in front of me.

When I got home, I would block their number, and I would burn every rose in my greenhouse. There would be no bringing witches to the police—I had no wish to be called insane. No one would believe a story of witches. The roses, though, they would die.

A car honked behind me, and I raised my head to look into the rear view mirror. A pair of neon purple eyes met my own.

The scream of rage and fear that left my throat was animalistic, caged. My hands flew off the wheel, and the car kept flying straight forward on the road. My foot unconsciously slammed the pedal down in fear just as a pair of white-pale hands closed around my throat.

We were airborne for a split moment, just a second, where my eyes were connected with hers, and a certainty of death fell over both of us. Icy comfort and sadness overcame me knowing that so great a creature would meet her death at my hands, yet I would not let her have me dead. A lock of hair in her collection I would not be.

Then the truck was rolling down the side of a hill of the road, wrapping itself around an oak trunk in a shrieking rendering of metal and glass.

From the edge of the highway, the second sister was watching as purple flames sizzled in the rain, stretching up the length of the oak tree towards the sky.

ψ

---