The black textured plastic of the dashboard has finally started to cool down after a day’s drive in the Californian sun. Street-lamps are winking into life, in anticipation of the rising night; they flicker and flare through a tiny chip in the windshield. Bora fiddles with the radio, hunting for reception amidst the swell of static, tucking her fine black hair behind her ear whenever the warm wind from the car window blows it into her eyes.
The last vestiges of sunlight are slipping below the horizon at the far-end of the highway, deep orange beams illuminating the wisps of cloud that still linger in the blue-black sky, yet to be swallowed by the darkness.
‘I need to pee.’ Bora doesn’t even glance up from the radio. ‘Fiona?’ She prompts, lifting her eyes to me.
‘Yeah, I kinda do too, there’s a rest-stop just after we get off the highway, can you wait another twenty minutes?’
Bora huffs and returns to the radio. ‘This stupid thing,’ she mutters.
‘Yeah, it’s weird. I’d have thought we would’ve got somewhere with reception by now.’
We’re the only car out, or at least that’s how it feels. It’s almost 8pm, in the early days of August, and only now does it feel like we’re stepping over the boundary of day and night. Occasionally a truck will whip by, but mostly the only thing I can hear is the rumble of hot evening air through the windows, the wash of the radio, Bora’s muttering, and the groan of the engine. There’s a rash on the back of my right hand, my thighs keep sticking to the seat.
‘…AND THERE SHOULD BE WARM WEATHER FOR THE REST…’ the radio explodes into life, making us both jump; I swerve the car a little. It was hard to see in the muddled light and confusion, but I’m sure I saw someone jump out of our way. Looking in the rear-view, I can’t see anyone — the mind playing tricks.
‘Shit,’ Bora scrambles to turn the volume down. ‘Are you alright?’
It felt like I had just had ice-water thrown over me while lost in the most serene dreams; my heart pounds out of my chest as I try to convince myself I have control of the car.
‘I’m fine,’ I splutter eventually, ‘all fine, just think I’ve been driving a bit too long now.’
Bora places a hand on my leg, it’s warm and a bit sweaty. She squeezes, just a little, so I know she’s holding on to me, that she’s got me.
‘My turn then,’ she strokes my leg comfortingly, ‘come on, pull over.’
Strange Folk
If I were to ask you what comes to mind when hearing the word ‘folktale’, I think I’d be able to make a pretty good bet on what you think of: Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, etc. But what is a Folktale? Who are the ‘folk’?
Folktales are a subset of folklore, the overarching category of oral-tradition that includes things like songs, jokes, poems, and stories, passed down through families and groups, generation to generation. Many aim to convey some kind of lesson, or principle, some are just for entertainment. The ‘folk’ in question were originally the 19th century peasants and farmers that lived in rural areas, a term assigned to them by the urbanites, but over time came to include most groups of people, who in some way or another could be classified as one unit.
Folktales form important parts of our history, showing us not just snippets of life from times before, but also the values shared by the groups they stem from. They let us peer into the hopes, fears, and longings of ancestors we’ll never get to meet.
The modern world we live in today is more connected than ever before, but the groups that spring up around different values or ideas persist all the same, for better, or for worse. Just look at something like the SCP, subreddits, or the communities that are drawn to particular video game worlds. All these groups develop their own oral traditions that reveals something of the soul of that community. Once, it was fairy-tales and songs, now, it’s memes, fan art, creepypastas, and in-jokes. Even in the age of the internet, folklore persists.
However, even though we have access to more information than ever before, the lines between fiction and reality can sometimes become blurred.
As I step out of the car door I falter, just a little as my legs get used to standing again. I must have been behind the wheel for hours, all my limbs somewhat locked, both aching and numb. Pausing on my route around to the other side, I lean against the car’s hood for a second, and breathe. The expanses of nothingness roll all the way across the landscape, right up to the deep blue haze that lies across the horizon, and back again to the dusty ground beneath my feet.
Bora joins me. She stops against the car, just like me, then takes in a deep breath through her nose, and lies back on the hood. I join her, and look up. The first stars are winking at us as the veil of daylight finally slips away, giving way to the serene blackness of a cool, clear night. I close my eyes and take a breath, drinking it in, and feel Bora’s fingers intwine themselves with mine.
‘Can’t we just sleep here tonight?’ I whisper.
She chuckles, and turns on her side, the car’s hood making a hollow crumpling sound beneath her. ‘I wish,’ she pulls my head around to face her, ‘but I’ve gotta do this.’
Bora’s parents don’t know that I’m the “partner” that she’s bringing to meet them. They’re expecting a boy, not a girl. It’s for her, and I’d do anything for her, but I can’t help but feel like there’s a lot on me.
I kiss her, then hold her with a weak smile, playing with her smooth, black hair. ‘I know, let’s get going.’
We hop off the car and head to the opposite sides from which we’d come. Just as I’m about to close my door, I notice that Bora is still stood half outside, looking into the distance. ‘Hey, Fi?’ She says, not moving, ‘what’s that?’
I follow the line drawn by her pointed finger. From the hazy blur of the horizon, a single shadow draws up against the pastel swathes of blue and orange: a figure, tall and slender, moving slowly towards us through the encroaching darkness.
‘Let’s go,’ I’m closing my door before the words have fully left my mouth.
Bora doesn’t even bother with her seatbelt, she just grasps for the keys that are still in the ignition, fumbling until they turn and the engine splutters to life. The radio swirls back into being with it — some local news that I don’t have the capacity to hear — but I can’t focus the energy to switch it off, my eyes are still locked on the shadowy figure.
‘It’s probably just some creepy homeless person,’ I say, trying to temper my heavy, shuddering breathing, ‘don’t worry, really. Let’s just get going.’
Brian Bethel
Established in 1881, Abilene, Texas, was the original endpoint of the Chisholm cattle-drive trail. It was named for Abilene, Kansas. As of 2020, the city has a population of around 125,000 people1, and is located next to the Dyess Air Force base. It is also home to the Abilene Reporter-News, and writer Brian Bethel.
It’s hard to Google the Black-Eyed Kids without coming across Brian’s name, as he seems to be the bearer of the earliest public account of a run-in with them, which he still maintains is truth, not fiction.
In short, Brian’s encounter went like this, some time in 19962:
Brian was sat in his car writing out a cheque to pay his Internet-Service Provider under the illumination of a cinema’s marquee, when he was approached by two boys. They asked him to drive them home to their mother’s house so that they could get money to see a film, but Brian found himself suddenly overcome with both dread, and a strong urge to comply with their requests.
After snatching his hand back from the car’s lock, he looked up to see the absence of anything in their eyes, except for utter blackness. Brian described their eyes as, “soulless orbs like two great swathes of starless night.”3
In a panic, Brian made some excuses, and got out of there as quickly as he could.
According to Brian, he recounted the tale in an email to a group of friends, and from there it eventually leaked out on to the internet. After the tale’s proliferation across message-boards and forums, Brian began to be contacted by people claiming to have experienced similar phenomena. Some, as he notes, were so close to his story that he believed them to be a straight-up hoax, but others focused and expanded on the little details, that made them seem more real.
There are generally a few factors that make up your standard Black-Eyed Kids encounter:
A sudden, overwhelming, and inexplicable sense of fear, and dread. Often before the eyes of the children have been seen, and before the victim would have any reason to really fear them.
Requests to enter, be it a car or a home, and even assurances that they are unable to enter without permission.
An urge to comply, like some low-level hypnotism (as Brian calls it) is at play.
References to “parents.” Either that they need to wait for their parents, or that they want to be taken to them.
We’re back on the road now, and Bora is practically flooring it, not really aware of my attempted reassurances. Just as we’re about to pass the figure — still muddled and indistinct in the black haze of evening — the news report on the radio garbles, slipping back into an ocean of static. We both swing around to look at it as we pass, but as quickly as it appeared, the figure is nowhere to be seen.
I crane my neck, pulling myself around to look through the gap between our seats, but there’s nothing but empty roads and starry skies. The news reporter’s voice returns.
‘You heard that right?’ Bora says, not taking her eyes off of the road, or her foot off the gas. ‘As soon as we got close to…well to whatever the fuck that was, the radio fucked up again. You still think it was just some random person?’
I flip back around and switch off the radio. ‘What are you saying, Bora? I’m sure it’s just coincidence, this isn’t the X-Files.’ I roll up my window all the same.
Her hands grip the steering-wheel so tightly her knuckles pale. ‘I don’t know, sorry. I’m tired, too.’
I twist in my seat on to my side, and smile at her. ‘I know baby, let’s just focus on getting there, yeah?’
She contorts her mouth into a wan smile. ‘Sure.’
I don’t know when I drifted off, I could have been asleep for hours or minutes. The rumbling of the car over tarmac was hypnotic; Bora’s shaking is only just enough to rouse me.
‘Fi?’ She says, probably for the tenth time.
‘Hmm?’
‘We’ve been stopped here for ages, the lights haven’t changed but there’s like, fuck all other cars around. It’s probably fine for me to just go, right?’
The red stop-lights burn against my vision, only coming into focus after I’ve rubbed the sleep from eyes. Bora’s right, there’s nothing else around. I can only hear our breathing, the hum of the engine. We’re surrounded by a darkness totally unsullied with the stray headlights of other travellers.
‘It’s probably fine,’ I stretch, groaning pleasantly, still on my side looking at Bora, ‘let’s just…’
A knock on the window behind me, along with a small voice.
‘Excuse me…’
Reality and Fiction
It’s always interesting to see how the internet blurs reality with fiction. Brian Bethel’s tale is presented as fact, but it could also easily be the mis-remembered, or distorted, retelling of a perfectly normal encounter. Maybe something played a trick on Brian’s mind that night, maybe that night never happened at all, but its sudden proliferation throughout the internet solidified it as an event for the imaginations of others to latch on to.
“Someone else has seen this strange thing, it sounds just like what happened to me, so the world should hear my tale, too. Yes, the children didn’t have the black eyes, and they just wanted to borrow my phone, but why appear next to my car like that at night? That’s weird too, right?”
Everyone has a desire for their life to be something more, something that goes beyond the experience of others. I’m sure at some point we’ve all been guilty of warping reality in order to make our lives worth hearing about. In his video about the unfaltering beliefs of flatearthers, hbomberguy makes the very compelling point that it isn’t so much that anyone will believe whatever crazy nonsense they are told, but that these people have the inescapable notion that there’s something wrong with the world; that there’s something in their reality that doesn’t make sense, and those in power with the appropriately-aligned interests are intent on making them believe that everything is all fine. If your reality felt off, if you felt alienated and lonely, wouldn’t you latch on to any idea that might convince you that you aren’t going mad, that there is something wrong with the world? Because let’s be real here, there are too many things wrong to count.
Anyone can go and construct an elaborate tale and throw it up on Reddit or YouTube. Just look at things like the SCP, or some of the wildly compelling ARGs out there. The internet provides us with the tools to make any piece of fiction feel more real, and when it attracts believers, it also gives us a platform for those people to communicate with one another, sharing their own tall tales of the strange children with the inky black eyes. And if it has a website, and all these people believe it, it must be real, right?
The child’s hand rests on the window — surprisingly pale for the skin of a kid from Cali’ — fingers spread out against the glass. He, at least I think it’s a he, has the hood from a sweatshirt shadowing most of his face. He’s small, couldn’t be more than eleven years-old.
‘May we wait in your car?’
We? I didn’t notice before, but there’s another figure, smaller again, stood just behind this one. Also hooded.
‘Please?’ He presses, leaning against the window, breath fogging the glass. ‘Father will be along to collect us soon.’
I clutch at my chest, a throbbing pain tugs at me from deep inside — no, not a pain, it’s my heart, beating so hard that it feels like someone is punching me from the inside out. There are goosebumps on my arm, hairs raised.
‘Come on,’ Bora whispers to me, ‘they can just sit with us for a few minutes, right?’
Turning away from the child, I lock eyes with Bora, gently shaking my head. I can feel my eyelids pushing back against the sockets, my eyes wide like a spooked deer. Bora looks fairly calm, like she’s in a trance, and reaches for the switch to unlock the back doors, but I grab her wrist before she gets there. Again, I shake my head, but Bora seems dazed, eyes glossy.
Then, something changes. She shakes back to life, hand reaching up to cover her mouth, like she’s trying to push back her suddenly rattling breathing. In focus again, her eyes are looking right past me at the window. At the children.
It’s so weird, the sensation of being watched. The way it feels like there’s a weight on your back, like someone’s pressing a hand between your shoulder blades. The hair on the back of your neck stands up, a cool sweat on the hairline, the unbearable urge to turn around. To face the thing in the shadows.
‘You have to let us in.’
I turn back to the voice, and the fright pulses through me like a shockwave, encompassing and overwhelming.
Both their hoods are down, revealing their faces. Ghostly pale, black hair, expressionless, and inky-black eyes. No whites, no pupils, just darkness. What is it they say about the void staring back?
I lurch back from the window, the back of my head bumping into Bora’s chin. I’m overcome by a maelstrom of emotion: deep, animalistic, overwhelming fear; a crushing dread like I’ve never felt before; and an inexplicable dragging urge to just pop the lock and let them…these things, in.
‘What the fuck, whatthefuck, what the…’ Bora rambles as, for the second time that night, she hurriedly lurches for the ignition. I can’t sit back in my seat to make it easier for her. Both…things, are against the window now, gazing through us with those eyes. My god, those eyes.
The engine growls, and the wheels scream as Bora slams on the accelerator. Eventually, after what feels like an age, they catch a grip, and the car whips us away.
I don’t want to look, I don’t. What if they were just some kids playing a trick? What if they were really lost and we just abandoned them? What if the car hit them in our panic?
I look, and there they are, staring at us. They are side-by-side in the middle of the road, holding hands. Just as I’m about to turn away, a tall slender shadow rears up behind them, and places a single hand on each of their shoulders.
Father.
Thanks for reading! The first post in a little while, but sometimes life gets the better of me and I can’t find the time for the things I really want to be doing, such as it is.
I’m hoping to be able to queue up a few more posts over the next few weeks, and I have some interesting new topics lined up! If there’s anything in particular you’d like to hear about, please do let me know in the comments.
I’m going to start curating summaries for our characters on a page external to SubStack, which you can find here. It should hopefully make it easier to get a quick recap when a new character reappears for another story. For now though, thanks again so much for reading, and I’ll see you next time!
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/abilenecitytexas
A gorgeous sentence that I had to restrain myself from plagiarising for the narrative component of this post.
Wow - soooo creepy!! Loved it, and I really like the idea of keeping track of the characters that pop up in your stories.