Mason and I head downstairs. We’ve been in his room reading books for over an hour. I wanted to make sure Detective Layne and Ms. Walker were gone for good before coming down. We’re almost to the landing when my eye catches sight of a small piece of paper lying on the entryway floor in front of the door. It’s Monday. The mail already came. There’s no soliciting allowed on my porch.
Everything stills. My throat tightens so hard it cuts off my breath. “Honey, why don’t you go into the family room and play with your toys while Mama makes you a snack, okay?” I let go of his hand. He doesn’t move. “Go.” I push him in the direction of the family room, and he shuffles off.
The fear rolls in like a slow fog that’s been waiting for me. Relax. God is in control. Everything is going to be okay. Detective Layne or Ms. Walker might’ve put it there before they left, or they could’ve dropped it on their way out. Talking to myself does nothing to calm my racing heart. There are only two steps to the door, but it feels like my feet might fall through the floor with each one, and it takes forever.
Then I’m there.
I can’t swallow. I can’t breathe. I’m going to be sick.
But there I go bending over and picking up the paper. I watch my actions from somewhere outside myself as I examine it. Thick. Hard. Good card stock. Time moves in slow motion as I read the words printed on the back:
This isn’t over.
Everything gets bigger, smaller, louder, quiet. All of it and nothing.
Three words typed out perfectly. Ones I’ve been worrying and wondering about since the moment we met That Monster. I didn’t know he was there at first. He wasn’t supposed to be. None of this is right. This can’t be happening.
Except it is. Exactly what I was afraid of.
Mason was hunched over Annabelle’s body, trying to give her CPR, when I found him. Blood was smeared all over his face like he’d tried to eat hers. Even on his teeth. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie. There’s so much blood. That’s all I kept thinking over and over again as my brain tried to process what my senses were telling me, but everything was so muddled and messed up.
“Ma. Ma.” He spoke the words I’d spent hundreds of hours teaching him to say.
Those words shocked the life right back into me, and I sprang into action. I lurched forward just as That Monster stepped out from behind a tree. I froze as his eyes flicked over me like a snake’s tongue.
They’ve been following me ever since.
I feel him at the grocery store when I hurry in to grab milk or something else I forgot to put on my delivery list. I swear I feel him breathing down my neck at the gas station when I’m standing there pumping my gas. He’s everywhere, and he’s coming after me. He doesn’t want to hurt Mason. If he wanted to hurt him, he would’ve done it that day. He wants me.
I’m his target. I’m his prey.
Fear sucks the air from my lungs—the same kind of fear I had when I was a kid, terrified of the dark. I didn’t have a lamp at my bedside, so I had to flick off the bedroom light from all the way across my room. Every night I waited until the last possible minute, until after my daddy had hollered at me to turn the light off one last time, and then I’d flick it off and sprint to my bed as fast as I could before something—those awful somethings that slept underneath my bed and hid in my closet—grabbed me by my ankles and pulled me down to torture me. That’s how it is every second that I’m awake.
I flee to the other side of the house like Mason and I fled from the creek that day.
I practically dragged him. By the time we made it out of the ditch and up to the main road, the gravel parking area was filled with media trucks and vans. The police and paramedics who arrived first had already secured the scene with their yellow tape, so the reporters were all champing at the bit to know what had happened. I don’t know who spotted us, but as soon as they did, they rushed us like an angry mob with their flashing cameras and flat black sticks.
Mason’s nails dug into my arms as I ducked my head and kept walking, trying to shelter my face with my free arm.
“Genevieve! Are you okay?”
“Genevieve, what happened?”
“Is it true there’s a dead body under the bridge?”
“Will you give us a statement?”
“Genevieve!”
They lobbed their questions from all directions, and we instinctively ducked like they were a real presence we needed to protect ourselves from. They surrounded us like a pack of hungry wolves as we pushed our way to the car.
Everything spun and twirled while I searched for my car, the level of disorientation almost crippling. Mason felt me coming undone in the same way I feel him. And then I spotted the car. That became my focus.
We moved at a frantic pace, as if our only salvation lay in getting to the car. I half expected them to pound on the windows and doors, but they backed off as soon as we got inside the car. We sped away from the scene. That’s the first time Mason cried. He burst into tears in the passenger seat.
“It’s okay, it’s going to be okay,” I soothed, rubbing his hunched-over back. “Mama’s going to take care of everything, I promise. Just like I always do. You’re okay, baby, you’re okay.”
But nothing’s okay. It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now.
I race to the office and whip open the entertainment center, obsessively scanning the security monitors, but there’s nothing out of place. Everything is as it should be, just like always. I grab my phone from my pocket and pull up my Ring app. I rewind slowly, stopping every few frames to make sure I don’t miss it, and then suddenly, there’s movement. A person walks up the sidewalk and onto our front porch, where they slide a piece of paper through our mail slot. Then they quickly turn and walk away without so much as looking over their shoulder.