I was driving across Virginia last month when I stopped in a town named Sutter’s Mill. The reason for my travels is largely unimportant—I work for a large publishing house planning and prepping sites for book signings and readings for several of their big authors when they have book tours in the eastern half of the United States. I’ve been doing it for five years now, which means I’ve logged a lot of hours on the road. And I thought I had seen just about every small town between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, but I was wrong.
The only reason I even took the road that led me to Sutter’s Mill is because of a bad highway detour combined with my GPS crapping out for a good fifty miles. As afternoon began turning into evening, I found myself desperate for a place to stay or at least get gas and some food. So I was relieved when I saw the weather-beaten sign proclaiming I was entering the Town of Sutter’s Mill.
It wasn’t a bad-looking town as far as small towns go. Like many small, Southern towns I had visited, it leaned heavily on old antebellum mansions and a town square that looked like it got ten times the care and attention of the streets and buildings just two blocks over. Yet whatever aspirations the people of Sutter’s Mill might have had toward tourism, my first impression was that they were out of luck.
I didn’t see many people at all, and those I did see were either old men (a pair playing checkers outside of a barbershop) or children (a trio of boys and one girl playing with a frisbee in the tiny park at the center of the town square). That by itself wasn’t so strange. The really isolated small towns like this were often dead during parts of the day, and around here people were probably home getting ready for dinner.
What was strange was the sunglasses. I had seen the pair of old men first, and their large, wraparound sunglasses were comically big but not outside the realm of fashion crimes I had seen committed by the elderly in the past. Besides, my working theory was that once you got past a certain age, you earned the right to not give a fuck anymore. The men had just looked at me as I passed, and while they didn’t return my wave, I had just suppressed a small laugh and went on.
I was still looking for an open restaurant or a decent-looking hotel when I found myself traveling around the town square. The kids were out there playing normally enough, but…they all had the same sunglasses on too.
My first reaction was to look up at the sky. Was there an eclipse or something that I didn’t know about? But no, the sky looked normal, and while it was growing darker, that was due to the lateness of the hour, not some astronomical event. I felt a twinge in my belly at the strangeness of it all, but I tried to ignore it. I was tired and hungry, and I couldn’t afford to get too easily weirded out when by my guesstimate the next closest town was nearly two hours away.
Leaving the town square behind, I sighed with relief when I found a moderately cute bed and breakfast the next street over. The sign out front said there was a vacancy, and while I doubted they could give me anything for dinner, I figured I could get a soft bed and good directions to a local diner or something. Parking my car in the small gravel lot behind the house, I went up to the screened-in back door that had a sign above it saying “Guest Entrance”. I felt a bit awkward ringing a stranger’s doorbell, business or not, and had to force myself to wait until an older woman shuffled out onto the porch and opened the door.
“Hey there, honey. What can I do for you?”
I could feel the words stuck in my throat. The lady seemed pleasant enough, but she was wearing the same fucking sunglasses as the rest. What was going on here?
“Um…I was going to see about getting a room, but I think I might just drive on. I forgot I have an appointment later tonight.” This was a lie, of course, but I was ready to get in my car and find a different place that didn’t give me the utter creeps.
The woman’s face lit up with a smile. “Oh yes, we’ve got a room that’ll be perfect for you. Come on in.”
I started backing down the steps. “No, really, I have to be going.”
She flapped her hand at me dismissively. “Nonsense. Pretty young thing like you, it doesn’t pay to be out on the road late at night. Come in and see the room at least, and if you decide it still isn’t for you, I’ll at least point you toward the way you want to go.”
I almost resisted further, but I didn’t see what the real harm was in looking at the room. I was tired, the place looked fine from the outside, and if the woman tried to do some kind of weird shit, I felt sure I could handle her physically. So trying to put on a smile, I nodded and followed her inside.
The interior of the house was beautiful—well-decorated and clean without coming across as overly staged or sterile. The woman led me at a slow pace up a creaking staircase to the second floor, and when she opened the door to the room, I felt myself relax some.
The room looked…normal. It had a phone, a small but relatively new LCD tv, and a queen-size bed that looked wonderful after hours on the road. It even had a little laminated card on the table with the wifi-password. Seeing all the trappings of and connections with the outside world made me feel less like I was in the opening act of a horror story, and when she told me it was only $75.00 for the night and the included breakfast, I decided to stay.
The owner of the B&B—she told me her name was Valerie as we went back downstairs—didn’t have much to offer in the way of dinner, but she could point me to a nice steakhouse just on the other side of the town square. When I mentioned I was a vegetarian, she quirked an eyebrow from behind her dark glasses and gave a little laugh.
“Well, I’m sure they’ll find you something to eat too.”
I headed back to the car and roamed around for twenty minutes looking for other options for food than the steakhouse. The kids were thankfully gone from the town square now, but I had no luck finding any other restaurant that looked open. Resigned to eating a mediocre salad bar, I pulled into the steakhouse parking lot.
It was packed with cars, and given the lack of options in town, it was kind of easy to see why. Still, I thought it was strange that I hadn’t actually seen anyone driving around, or any other people yet at all. And when I went into the restaurant, I found that there were only a couple of handfuls of people sitting at the various tables and booths inside—less than half of what I would have expected based on the cars outside. But that thought fled as soon as I realized that everyone in there were wearing the same sunglasses too.
I almost bolted right then, but something made me stay. I think part of it was a slowly building, sullen anger. I felt like I was the target of some weird, elaborate practical joke and I didn’t like it. Didn’t like reacting to it. So I forced myself to approach the hostess and ask for a table for one.
When my waitress came over, she told me her name was Holly and she’d be taking care of me tonight. What could she start me out with? I surprised myself by pointing at her sunglasses.
“Well, Holly, not trying to sound like a bitch, but can you tell me what the deal is with all the sunglasses? It’s dark outside and everyone I’ve seen in this town is wearing them. Is it some kind of town fashion trend or joke or something?”
The girl visibly paled at my questions, clutching tightly at her order notepad. “Well, I guess it looks funny to someone not from here, but its part of a special treatment we have here. It helps a lot, but it makes your eyes real sensitive like.”
I frowned at her, my curiosity supplanting my irritation and anxiety for the moment. “Treatment? What kind of treatment? And what does it help?”
“Um…well, I…” A man that looked to be in his thirties, as best I could see around his stupid fucking glasses at least, came up and patted Holly on the arm. “Now Holly, don’t hold this nice lady up with your chit chat. Go get her a water and let her ponder the menu for a minute.” Holly looked between the man and me before nodding and hurrying out of sight. The man looked back at me with a yellow-toothed smile. “You have to forgive her. She’s a good girl, but she does love to talk.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Actually I was the one doing the talking. I was asking about everyone wearing sunglasses and what kind of treatment you all are getting.”
His smile widened slightly, or at least he showed more teeth. “Oh, it’s a private matter, you understand. We’re lucky enough to have a talented doctor around these parts and she’s helped us all greatly, but it’s not my place to divulge other people’s business.”
I had already decided I was leaving the restaurant and the town right away, but I wanted to tell this smarmy fucker off first. Sliding out of the booth, I looked at him levelly. “So what keeps you from telling me what they did to you then?”
He chuckled. “Why nothing, of course.” He reached up and pulled off his glasses. “They helped me to really see.” I stared into where his eyes had been, but now they were just raw, red sockets with the withered remnants of cutaway eyelids curled at the upper edge like a drawn up windowshade. He leaned forward merrily to give me a better look. “And I can see so well now.”
Inside the sockets there were endless tiny eyes. They shined in the dim track lights overhead, a flowing, rippling mass of white and red like a froth of bloody milk that was shot through with veins of black that seemed to bind one speckled orb to the next. A thicker grey strand of tissue ran across and into the bridge of the man’s nose before flowing into the other socket where the same shifting horror was repeated. I was already screaming and backing away when I felt rough hands grabbing me from behind.
They drug me back through some double doors that led to a large kitchen, except the back portion was clear of any equipment. It didn’t take long to see this was because the concrete floor had been broken open and led down into the earth.
I had been kicking and fighting hard before, but I redoubled my efforts now. I felt my right shoulder protest and then issue a bright flare of pain as my shoulder popped out of the socket, and I had a moment where I thought I was almost free, but then the hands were clamped on me tighter as they drug me down into the tunnel below.
We travelled along a dimly light path that was periodically illuminated by work lamps, and more than once we intersected with other paths heading off in other directions. The further we went, the more I felt like these monstrous lunatics were ants carrying me to the center of the anthill. Except I soon realized we were going up again, and I found myself wincing as I was pulled out into the bright lights of what appeared to be a local high school gymnasium.
There were a few people in the stands, but many more were milling around on the floor of the old, run down basketball court. At the center of the court was a tall woman in a floral skirt and a long white coat. As I was drug closer, she introduced herself as Dr. Thurber.
“I’m so glad you could join us tonight. We don’t get a lot of visitors to our little town, and if I’m honest, that’s been a good thing up to now.” Her lipstick was too bright red and slightly smeared as she leaned closer to me, only enhancing the look of madness I saw in her eyes. “But I think we’re finally ready to share our gift with the outside world. There’ve been some missteps, to be sure, but I think you’ll find the treatment is a lot less painful and more agreeable that it used to be.”
I realized she was talking to me with the same sing-song monotone that some doctors used when they were getting ready to give you a shot or do something else unpleasant, and then I glimpsed the piece of metal she was pulling from a nearby tray. It looked like a sharp-edged ice cream scoop. Hands were pressing against my face now, holding my head still despite my struggling.
“Oh God no. Please no. I won’t tell just please just….AAHHHHHH!”
I blacked out for a moment from the pain. Out of instinct I had closed my eyes, but it didn’t matter. The biting edge of her instrument sliced through the lid and scooped out my right eye all in one smooth motion. She was finishing the second as I came back to wakefulness long enough to let out another wail of pain.
“Ssshhhh, I understand. That’s the bad part. Don’t you worry. All the pain will be gone in a moment or two.” I couldn’t see any longer, could barely reason at all through the pain and insanity of it all, but after a moment I felt an intense heat as though someone was pouring molten lead into the freshly-excavated holes in my skull. I tried to thrash, but my head was still being held fast, and after a few seconds the sensation began to fade to tingling coolness and then to nothing.
I found myself wishing I could just black out again, or if not that, just go ahead and die. It had to be better than whatever they had in store for me. I flinched when I felt a soft, cool hand on my forehead. Then the doctor’s voice was gently murmuring in my ear.
“There there. That’s it and all. The brood is set now. And don’t you worry. You’ll wake back up with your pretty eyes just like they were. You can tell yourself it was all a bad dream if you like. Just so long as you don’t look too closely or deeply, that is.”
The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed at home. I had a moment of calm wakefulness before I remembered. Gulping panicked lungfuls of air, I felt my face. Everything felt normal. I rushed to the bathroom, and at first glance, my face, my eyes, they looked just the same.
Or almost just the same.
Because in the depths of the black, when I looked closely at my eyes, I could see something back there that wasn’t there before. I could feel it faintly moving and shifting in my head as it took in the world I was showing it. Rubbing my shoulder, I stumbled back to the bedroom and found my phone. It was the very next morning and I didn’t know what to do or who to call.
In the days and weeks since, I’ve grown somewhat used to whatever it is they put in me. I’ve started to move further away from the ideas of killing myself or cutting my eyes out again. I don’t know if that means I’m going further insane or they are just controlling me more.
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