HauntingAdeline {1}

C11

The Manipulator

Daya said Nana was the freak, but I’m starting to wonder if it was her mother
that was the freak. I skim through the diary, reading over her words.
I’m sitting in the same rocking chair Gigi used to sit in to write in her diary
while her stalker watched on. While she let him feast his eyes on her, and got off
on it too, apparently.
Snapping the book shut, I throw it on the footstool before me, the furniture
rocking from the movement of the heavy book.
I sigh heavily, pinching the bridge of my nose to ward off the blooming
headache.
I mean, what was she thinking? Letting a strange man watch her, come into her
home, and touch her? That’s insane. Certifiably insane.
What’s truly insane is the fact that I found this diary, and a stalker found me on
the same night. I don’t want to think about what that means.
The wind blows outside the window, rattling the glass. Storm clouds are rolling
in, the ever-present weather that plagues Seattle like bad acne. Just when you
think we're going to have a lovely sunny day, a storm cloud pops up, ready to
burst.
Okay, gross, Addie.
A loud thump sounds from the kitchen, causing me to nearly jump out of my
seat. Heart pumping heavily in my chest, I look towards the direction and find
nothing amiss.
“Hello?” I call out, but no one answers.
Attempting to even my breathing, I turn back right as movement from the
corner of my eye snags my attention right outside the window. My head snaps in
that direction and my eyes zero in on whatever it was I just saw. It’s nearly pitch-
black outside save for the moonlight and a single light outside my front door.
Another flash of movement causes me to nearly plant my face against the glass.
It’s a person, walking towards my house, having emerged from between two large
trees. My eyes narrow into thin slits as the person’s shape becomes more
apparent.
He’s back.

After two nights of nothing, the son of a bitch actually came back.
My hand drifts over to the end table next to me, snagging the butcher knife I’ve
been carrying around with me since he broke into my house last. Turns out my
security cameras are useless with him. The second he left, I checked them just to
find out that they didn’t catch sight of him.
When Daya looked into it, her face dropped, and her eyes went wide with
terror. He spliced the cameras. Hacked into them and made it appear as if nothing
was happening while he was walking through my house while I slept.
She said not only did he splice the camera feed, but he did it so well, it was
untraceable. The only reason Daya was even able to come to that conclusion is
because she knows how technology works and she does the same thing herself for
her job.
This guy is dangerous—in more ways than just his violent tendencies.
I grip the handle in my fist and settle it on my lap. As he nears, my heart
pounds in my chest, matching each step he takes towards me.
I stand and close in on my window. I don’t know what I’m doing exactly.
Provoking him? Daring him to come inside my house again? If he does, I have
every right to defend myself.
The man stops about twenty feet away, his face once again hidden deep in a
hood. He widens his stance as if getting comfortable, plunging a hand into his
hoodie pocket and pulls out something I can’t see. It’s not until I see him flick a
lighter, defining his impossibly sharp jawline and a cigarette sticking out from his
mouth. He lights the cigarette, and then the flame goes out, leaving nothing but
his moonlit silhouette and a blaring cherry.
He stares.
And I stare back.
Without looking away, I grab my phone from the end table. I listened to him
and didn’t call the cops when he sent me that fucked up box of hands, but he
didn’t say I couldn’t call them when he’s standing twenty feet outside my
window.
I look down to unlock my phone, and when I glance up, my thumb freezes.
The moonlight spills over his silhouette. And with perfect clarity, I watch him
slowly shake his head at me. Warning me not to do what I’m about to do.
I glance at my front door, fear steadily trickling through my body at an
alarming rate. It’s locked, but he’s already proven that it’s futile. I calculate the
distance between him and the door. How long would it take him to run to it, break
through, and get to me? At least a solid thirty seconds.
That’s enough time to dial 911 and tell them someone is trying to hurt me,
right? But it would be pointless. It’s going to take the police no less than a half-
hour to get to me.