A woman lives alone in a haunted house with a tragic past—but it’s the man who watches her from outside every night that terrifies and thrills her most. As lightning flashes and shadows deepen, fear and forbidden desire blur. Is he just a stalker… or something far more dangerous? Something tells her the worst is yet to come.
Shame creeps in. I should’ve told her this sooner, but I had a weird protective need to keep the texts to myself, just like with the police officer. Now, I realize how stupid that is when Daya is one of the best hackers in the world. Or so she says, at least. I nod sheepishly…
Mom sent me to therapy specifically for my fascination with gory horror movies. She thought I was a psychopath. And really, I just get off on being scared. I think it’s a step up from being a psycho, but the therapist disagreed. Too often, I’d hear my mother telling my father that I was a…
ME: I’m calling the police. I can feel the judgment through the walls. Here I am, calling him a pussy and challenging him to come out. Then when the tables turn, I threaten to call the police. Because that’s the smart thing to do, dumbass. Then why the fuck do I feel so stupid for…
“There’s a man that’s been stalking me. He broke into my house a week ago. And now he’s standing outside watching me.” “He’s standing outside right now?” the operator asks. I hear typing in the background, accompanied by the smack of her gum. “Yes,” I whisper. “Ma’am, is he doing anything? Does he have any…
I turn, run over to the string, click off the light and dash down the stairs like the girl from The Ring is chasing after me. Slamming the attic door shut, I take in a deep, cleansing breath of air. It’s so much lighter down here. It feels like the entire house collapsed on me,…
I roll my eyes. “Because I manipulate people’s emotions with my words when they read my books,” I grouse. “Exactly. So that’s all you do, except your mouth says the words instead of your fingers. Fake it till you make it, baby.” I nod my head, looking at my underarms in the mirror from all…
I force a smile. “I love you for offering, but I think we both just need sleep right now,” I say. Daya nods, and after wishing me goodnight, retires to her room. I flop on the white duvet in her guest bedroom. Just like the rest of her house, it’s pretty bare in here. Light…
I locked myself in a room and didn’t come out for twenty-six hours after watching that first video. I was physically unable to go on living my normal day-to-day with the knowledge that this was being done to children. That helplessness grew as I explored the dark web and found thousands of videos of parents…
They haven’t made the same mistake twice. This job gives me the freedom to live wherever I want, so it took only a day to settle on moving to Washington, where I could find the hellhole and destroy it. And times like these, where I’m at my lowest, I can’t help but feel like it…
I bite my lip, the thought eliciting guilt, yet I can’t help but think it. What if he was still an accomplice? I shake the thought from my head. No. There’s no way. My great-grandfather loved Gigi, despite the fact that their marriage was falling apart at the seams. It had to be her stalker.…