Chapter 4 - The Message From Inside
I stared at the text until the letters blurred.
"He knows you're reading about the house."
My first instinct was to call the police.
My second was to search every room.
The second instinct won.
I grabbed the heaviest flashlight I owned and moved through the hallway while Rick stayed close to my left leg. He no longer barked wildly. Instead, he walked slowly, sniffing the baseboards and pausing beneath each ceiling vent.
The house was silent.
Too silent.
No air conditioner.
No refrigerator hum.
Even the traffic outside seemed distant.
I checked the front door.
Locked.
The windows.
Locked.
The back entrance.
Locked.
Then the phone vibrated again.
A photograph appeared on the screen.
It showed me standing in the hallway.
Taken from behind.
Taken less than ten seconds earlier.
My body went cold.
I spun around.
Nothing.
Only the dark kitchen doorway and the framed pictures along the wall.
Rick rushed toward the linen closet and began scratching at the bottom panel.
I had opened that closet hundreds of times. Towels, cleaning supplies, extra blankets. Nothing unusual.
But when I emptied the shelves and removed the lowest stack of towels, I found a tiny circular hole in the back wall.
A camera lens was hidden behind it.
The red light blinked once.
Then went dark.
I tore the panel away.
Behind it ran a bundle of black cables disappearing upward into the ceiling and downward beneath the floor.
Someone had installed a surveillance network inside the house.
And it was still active.
Another message arrived.
"Do not break what belongs to him."
I typed back.
"Who are you?"
For nearly a minute, nothing happened.
Then three dots appeared.
The reply came slowly.
"I lived there before you."
I called the number immediately.
Instead of ringing, the call connected at once.
No voice answered.
Only breathing.
Weak, uneven breathing.
Then a man whispered through static.
"If the dog found the kitchen vent, you don't have much time."
The line crackled.
I pressed the phone harder to my ear.
"Who is inside my house?"
The man did not answer directly.
He said something that made my knees weaken.
"Harold Bennett wasn't the owner."
A floorboard creaked behind me.
Rick turned sharply.
May you like
At the end of the hallway, the attic ladder was lowering by itself.
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