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They called it an urban legend. The legend of the black-eyed children. I read about it online. I watched YouTube videos telling the story. I saw the commentary, the ridicule, and also the open credulity.

Black eyed children, like little alien hybrids or something. I thought it was amusing.

The stories were always the same. The children would knock on a door at night and then when some hapless person opened it to them they asked to use the phone.

“It won’t take long,” they promised.

And the stories always ended there, leaving you to imagine the very worst of it all.

I’ve got the right kind of imagination for that. I grew upon a diet of horror stories. This one had some appeal, but not very much because the story never reached the pay off. It made it a rather lacklustre urban legend, if you ask me.

“Why don’t we ever get to see what happens?” I demanded of my laptop screen one evening.

Be careful what you wish for.

I was going to go and cook some dinner, tired of the videos, tired of it all. And then it came, the knock on my door.

I thought it was probably Dave, coming over to free load yet again. His girlfriend kicked him out of the house with awesome regularity and he’d always end up at my place, looking for dinner and the couch to sleep on.

So I didn’t think anything much of it. I just opened the door.

There they were, two young children. And they looked up at me, and their eyes were completely black.

“Can we use your phone?” one asked.

“It won’t take very long,” the other promised.

And then…and then what happened? Well, that would be telling wouldn’t it? And besides, where I am now, I’ve got no real way to describe.  But it’s true. It didn’t take very long.

Still, if you want to know, you’re going to have to ask yourself. Just like I did.

And perhaps they’ll come.

(c) Helen M Valentina