Don't Look At Her Eyes | Horror Story
Exploration – Noah loves traveling to remote places and uncovering local legends.
Village – A secluded settlement surrounded by dense forests and towering hills, untouched by time.
Inn – A small, creaky wooden building run by Eleanor, the only place for travelers to stay.
Warning – Samuel, an old villager, tells Noah never to look at the face of the woman in the red veil.
Silence – The villagers grow uneasy, their expressions darkening as the legend is spoken aloud.
Curiosity – Noah is fascinated by folklore and feels a thrill at the eerie warning.
Wind – As Noah lies in bed, the wind howls outside, making the night feel colder.
Noah didn’t move until the first light of dawn pushed through the cracks in the shutters. His muscles ached from how stiffly he had lain in bed, his mind too paralyzed to let him shift even slightly. The silence in the inn was thick, pressing against his skull, making every sound that finally broke it feel too loud, too unnatural. He sat up slowly, his breath uneven, his body feeling disconnected from reality. Something had stood outside his door last night. Something had waited.
The morning felt unreal, like he had crossed over into a place that only resembled the world he knew. The village was the same, yet wrong. The buildings stood where they always had, the people moved through the streets with the same quiet efficiency, but their eyes never met his. They moved past him as if he wasn’t there, as if acknowledging his presence would somehow make things worse. The only one who looked at him was Eleanor. She stood at the entrance of the inn, her gaze heavy, unreadable. She wasn’t asking if he had heard anything. She already knew.
Noah didn’t want to be here anymore. He had spent years traveling to places like this, searching for the strange, the forgotten, the things that people spoke about in hushed tones. But this was different. The weight in the air, the way the villagers carried their silence like a shield—it was more than fear. It was resignation. They lived with this, whatever it was, and they had learned not to fight it. He wasn’t part of this place. He wasn’t meant to stay.
He made his way to the road leading out of the village, his steps too fast, his hands curled into fists to keep them from shaking. The dirt path stretched ahead, winding through the trees, disappearing into the distance. The air felt thicker the closer he got, as if something unseen was pushing against him, slowing him down. Every instinct told him not to turn around. To keep walking. To pretend he hadn’t felt the shift in the air, the drop in temperature, the absence of sound that had suddenly swallowed the world behind him.
His steps faltered.
The road was different. It should have led straight out of the village, past the hills and toward the main road. He had studied maps before coming here. He had walked part of the route the day he arrived. But now, the path twisted in ways it hadn’t before, curving back toward the village even though he had been walking away. The trees were closer, darker, their branches reaching toward the sky like skeletal hands. The sun was still out, but its warmth never touched his skin.
He wasn’t alone.
The sensation of being watched crawled over his back, heavy and suffocating. He could feel her standing behind him. Close. Closer than anything should have been without making a sound. The air was still. Even the wind had stopped moving. The world had narrowed down to this moment, to the presence waiting just beyond his vision. The warning pounded in his skull, over and over again, louder than his own heartbeat.
If you see a woman in a red veil, do not look at her face.
His breath came in sharp, uneven gasps. The temptation to turn around gnawed at the edges of his mind, an overwhelming pull stronger than fear, stronger than reason. He clenched his jaw so tightly it hurt. His muscles locked, every nerve in his body screaming at him to move, to run, to do anything but stand there, frozen between instinct and something far worse.
A whisper brushed against the back of his neck, softer than breath, colder than ice. His vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping in where light should have been. The road beneath his feet shifted, tilting ever so slightly, making it impossible to tell which direction was forward, which was back. His fingers twitched. A single thought wedged itself into his mind, twisting with unnatural certainty.