Doug Hills Have Eyes 〈2024〉

Mickey ran to the Jeep, spun it in a screaming three-point turn, and floored it. He didn’t look in the rearview mirror. He didn’t have to. He could feel their gaze on his back, heavy as stones, all the way to the county line.

He saw the first one near the burned-out church. A shape, upright, standing too still at the side of the road. In the high beams, it didn’t flinch. It was a man—or had been. His skin was the color of dried clay, stretched tight over a skull that seemed a little too long. But it was the eyes that made Mickey’s foot slip off the accelerator. They were wide, lidless, and reflected the Jeep’s light like wet river stones. They didn't blink. They just watched . doug hills have eyes

Then he saw the hills had eyes—all of them. Dozens. Hundreds. They blinked, one after another, a slow wave of pale light rippling through the dark. And from the center of that wave, a voice came. Not from a throat. From the gravel itself, from the dry air, from the inside of Mickey’s own skull. Mickey ran to the Jeep, spun it in

And if they ask about the girl who went missing six years ago—the pretty one with the dark hair—Mickey just touches the passenger seat of his Jeep. It still smells like her perfume. And on quiet nights, when the desert wind blows just right, he swears he can still see two pale, lidless eyes reflected in the side mirror, watching him from the back seat. He could feel their gaze on his back,

Mickey, twenty-two and full of the kind of boredom that itches under the skin, thought they meant coyotes.