My hands are trembling so badly I almost drop the phone. I look up, back at the window, and see the man is still there. Unmoving.
Waiting.
I don’t know how I start moving.
I just know I have to.
So, while Lilia is watching the scene in front of us, wide-eyed, I slip out the side door near the back hallway as quiet as I can manage, my feet barely making a sound on the polished floor.
The cries, and screams follow me as I do, but I don’t look back.
Not once.
***
The garden is almost completely dark now, save for the soft golden spill of the string lights strung up along the hedges and the faint spill of light from the house behind me. But it’s not enough to chase the shadows away. Not enough to make me feel anything close to safe.
I step out slowly, cautiously, my phone still clutched in one hand, the message glowing faintly on the screen. My breath puffs out in little clouds. The cold bites, but I barely feel it.
And then I see him.
A figure detaches itself from the trees. Steps out, slow and steady, boots crunching over frost.
For a moment, neither of us says anything.
“Who are you?” I ask, my voice thin in the air.
The figure takes another step forward, and I take one back.
“Why are you doing this?”
And that’s when he lifts his hands to the edge of the hood.
And pulls it down.
I freeze.
Because it’s Anderson.
My lungs seize. My mouth opens, but no sound comes.
Anderson, the teacher. Andersonmyteacher. My polite, kind teacher who had beenworriedabout me.
It was all fake.
Every moment. Every word. A performance.
Because the man standing in front of me now is not the man I knew. No, this one is real. And he looks nothing like the mask he wore.
He smiles.
“Hello, Adeline,” he says. “We meet again, though I wish it were under better circumstances.”
My heart punches against my ribs.
I take another step back. My hands are shaking. “No,” I whisper. “No, no, it’s not—”
But it is.
