Sponsor a story at EDF - Your message can reach thousands of readers for just $4
Lucas Drake absolutely despised estate sales. His mother was addicted to them, finding no less than two a month and Lucas simply had to take her. Who else would she prattle to about whether some credenza would impress the experts on the Antiques Road Show. Today they were in the home of the late Roselyn Grey, browsing the items about to be auctioned.
“How old do you think that ottoman is?” his mother whispered. This was virtually espionage with her. ”I think it’s the oldest thing in here.”
Lucas shook his head. ”Ma, you’re probably the oldest thing in here. Mrs. Grey didn’t seem much into antiques. Can we go?”
“Just for that we’re looking at the jewelry table.”
Lucas followed. He was trying not to look at anything, but a marker on the table drew his attention. “Ma, do we have some sort of family jewels?”
“Trust me, there have never been any Drake family jewels. You’d have eaten a lot less Kraft Dinner growing up if there were.”
“Then what’s with this ‘Drake’s Eye Opal’?” The stone was quite beautiful, though smaller than he’d expected. It was round and flat, a little larger than a quarter, mostly green with a red football-shape in the center. It certainly resembled an eye, feline more than anything. Lucas leaned for a closer look and the colors changed from red on green to gold on blue. He pulled back and the colors returned. ”I think I’ll bid on it,” he said, this time his voice the suspicious whisper. ”We could use a family jewel.”
Lucas paid more than he could afford for the gem, but much less than it was worth. The auctioneer commended him twice on the acquisition, calling it an excellent investment. Lucas was so pleased that he even bought his mother the ottoman she liked.
The gem went straight to the mantle when he got home. He settled in to watch the news before heading to bed, but couldn’t get comfortable in his chair. He had this odd feeling he wasn’t alone in the apartment. He went so far as to check all the rooms.
“I buy one gem and turn into a paranoid basketcase,” he chided himself. ”Tomorrow I’ll be getting an alarm and a Doberman.” He laughed and went to bed.
***
The eye glistened through the spectrum, each new color angrier than the last. A rabid growl grew until it was the rumble of thunder. Steam filled the air, burning, searing.
“Give me back my eye!”
***
Lucas sat up so fast he fell off the bed. He was drenched in sweat, heart racing. He hadn’t had monster nightmares since childhood. It was almost two in the morning. He dried off with a towel then returned to his pillow. The image of the shimmering eye haunted him, even lying awake. He watched the red digits on the clock change, minutes rolling into hours; three, four, five.
***
The eye quaked with rage, its outer ring drifting from green to deep purple to near black; the vertical pupil burned red then brilliant orange then searing white. Steam surged from every direction.
Red scales surrounded the eye now, tough and leathery like an alligator’s. The scales multiplied virally, forming a reptilian face, enormous and scarlet and furious. The second eye socket was empty.
“Give me back my eye!”
***
“No, Ma, I don’t know why I was dreaming about a pissed off dragon.” It was just after six. He hadn’t known who else to call. Was there anyone else he could talk to about this?
“Watch your language,” his mother snapped. ”It’s a bad dream. You probably feel guilty for getting such a good price on that gem. Get over it and go back to bed.”
Lucas had always been susceptible to guilt. His mother used it on him regularly; it was how she got him to take her estate shopping. Still, he couldn’t sleep. He fired up his laptop instead and searched for opal prices.
He discovered a gemstone auction site. None of the opals he saw were as lovely as his. Smaller, poorer specimens were bringing in three times what he’d paid. He opened an account and listed the stone.
The nightmares grew continually worse. There was no question the beast haunting him was a dragon and its eye was the opal. He didn’t get more than two hours combined sleep in the three days the auction lasted. In the end, he quintupled his money. Was that worth the lost sleep? It didn’t matter, he just wanted to get that rock out of his house.
The stone had been boxed up since the second night, but Lucas still felt the thing staring at him every moment, even when he left the apartment. He slapped a shipping label on the box and brought it to the post office the minute the auction officially ended. He walked home smiling, ready for some peaceful sleep at last.
He returned to find the apartment door open. Someone was inside making a terrible racket. Lucas picked up the coat rack and held it before him like a lion tamer’s stool. “Who’s there?” he called.
A man with unkempt hair and weeks-dirty clothes stumbled out of the bedroom. ”Where is it?” the man screamed. ”Where is the eye?”
Lucas leveled his impromptu weapon. “It’s gone. I sold it to a collector in Prague. You’re too late.”
The desperate man collapsed to his knees. ”Why would you do that?”
This man knew. ”The dreams,” Lucas said. ”I had to get it out of here. I had to make them stop.”
The man emitted a mocking cackle. ”Why do you think I sold it to the widow Grey? It doesn’t work. The nightmares only get worse. They never stop. Never!”
“Impossible. There’s got to be a way.”
Another cackle. ”Roselyn Grey found the way.”
And Lucas knew it was true. It was the only way. He only hoped the dead didn’t dream.
Scott W. Baker is a science fiction writer. He’s waited a decade to say that and really mean it. He has sold over ten stories to date, including one to Writers of the Future. On top of dabbling in every flavor of speculative fiction, he also teaches math, loves his wife and daughter, and longs for the days when vampires didn’t sparkle.
GD Star Rating
loading...
loading...
Did you like this story?
A new and interesting story is posted every day.
A new and interesting story is posted every day.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed! (what is rss)
Don’t miss another story! Subscribe to Every Day Fiction via RSS.- Share on Facebook
18 Responses to “THE DRAKE’S EYE • by Scott W. Baker”
Comments
« YANA • by Fadzlishah Johanabas | Home | ON THE WALL • by Ev Bishop »
May 6th, 2010 at 12:47 am
The theme reminded me a little of Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story The Bottle Imp.
May 6th, 2010 at 4:45 am
I usually don’t care for Sci Fi but I enjoyed this tale. I guessed the ending would be about what it was, but that’s OK.
May 6th, 2010 at 5:58 am
An excellent chill to start the day. I’ll see that opal in my dreams. Well done.
May 6th, 2010 at 7:21 am
Quiet good and deserving of a longer treatment, more character development, and a back story perhaps. It works because the reader is challenged to continue the story in his/her head to its horrible conclusion. Worth every one of the five stars I gave it.
May 6th, 2010 at 8:11 am
Very intriguing story. I bet Lucas is glad he got rid of the eye as fast as he can. Let’s hope the collector thinks to do the same thing. In case you couldn’t tell, I loved the ending.
May 6th, 2010 at 8:19 am
I don’t get into today’s type of horror; it has too much blood and guts to suit me, so, I hesitated to read this one. I am so glad that I did! It was surprisingly old fashioned in its delivery – leaving the reader to fill in from their own imagination. I have a FANTASTIC imagnation. (she shivers) :p
May 6th, 2010 at 10:12 am
Nice twist on the ending.
May 6th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
[...] friends, “Drake’s Eye” will be EDF’s story of the day on May 6th. (If you missed it, it’ll be up for a [...]
May 6th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
This story is so good,BECAUSE it’s “old-fashioned”– meaning well-crafted nd literate. It’s a lot like the ghost stories we used to tell around the campfire, in which the ghost moans, “Give me back my golden arm.” But we were too young to think of death as the ending.
With an editor’s eye. I’ll point out that our hero’s name changed from Lucas to Jacob in the las part of the story. Was that the influence of the stone? Am I the only one to notice?
May 6th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
This story is so good,BECAUSE it’s “old-fashioned”– meaning well-crafted nd literate. It’s a lot like the ghost stories we used to tell around the campfire, in which the ghost moans, “Give me back my golden arm.” But we were too young to think of death as the ending.
To quote durable old Shakepeare- :”What dreams we may have/ when we have shuffled off this mortal coil/ must give us pause.”
With an editor’s eye. I’ll point out that our hero’s name changed from Lucas to Jacob in the las part of the story. Was that the influence of the stone? Am I the only one to notice?
May 6th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
When he went to the post office, Lucas stopped by the court house to get his name changed. You never can be to careful when a dragon is looking for you. lol. Liked the ending a lot.
May 6th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Wow, good catch. I hate missing things like that. I think it was an incomplete revision on the author’s part (stinking authors…).
If an editor wanted to clean that up for me, I’d be much obliged. (Stupid writers asking editors to clean up their messes…)
May 6th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
I love old-fashion horror stories and that’s exactly what this is. It’s Night Gallery kind of stuff. Lucas Jacob Drake doesn’t stand a chance in hell.
May 6th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
Creepy – I can visualize a Twightlight Zone or Night Gallery episode with this plotline. More character development would help. It was a little strange that someone would want a family stone. . . what is that? Also, somehow including the mother in the ending would be interesting.
May 6th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Sorry about that — fixed the name issue; thanks, Helen!
May 15th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
This story is well written, but that doesn’t make the plot itself strong. I mean, really, this reads like one of those stories you would read in “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” It reminds me of one of those where this old man decides to cook some toe or body part in a stew when he finds it in the ground, and after he and his wife are preparing it, the thing that it belongs to calls to them (“Give me back my tooooeeee”).
Human acquires accursed object. Accursed object invades the psyche and/or personal space of the protagonist human, threatening to cause him mental or physical harm. Human finds out that object is going to cause something “really really bad” and then the story ends with a basic premise of “Yeah, this object was super dangerous and super cursed.”
I can’t justify more than a 2 out of 5, but the author bio was awesome. He dreams of a day without sparkly vampires… AMEN.
October 15th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
[...] advice and diving into some heavy flash fiction reading. I am starting with Scott W. Baker’s The Drake’s Eye, from the site “Everyday Fiction” because Scott reads and comments on my trash and he [...]
October 14th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
[...] story, “ZFL”. This will mark my third story with EDF (here are one and two), making it the clear winner for the “zine that published the most stories of mine” [...]