The Follower by Kate Doughty (ebook reader with built in dictionary TXT) 📕

Instantly, he knows that he is wrong.

He is wrong in a way that is so, so much worse than what he’d imagined. Strange shapes emerge from the darkness—shapes that are too orderly, too neat for mere piles of junk.

He turns on the light and steps into the room. Behind him, first Amber and then Cecily poke their heads into the attic and take it in.

“Someone isn’t hiding here,” Rudy says. “They’re living here.”

CHAPTER 29

Amber

Amber has no words. Her pulse picks up as she looks down at the mess before her.

The attic opens up into a space barely high enough for her brother to fully stand up in. The floor is strewn with objects: a mixture of things stolen from the Coles—Mom’s Bluetooth headset, a tube of Cecily’s foundation—and what has to be years’ worth of junk. Old toys from past days of the house, mugs, blocks, dolls, and stray pieces of ancient silverware are intermixed with candy wrappers, water bottles, paper, and pencils. There’s a small mattress shoved up against the corner on a rickety iron bedframe clearly meant for a child. Amber tries to imagine Mrs. Armstrong on it, curled up in a little ball underneath a threadbare blanket that was once sky-blue.

The Reena doll sits on the end of the bed, in a place of honor. It has been painstakingly reassembled after Rudy destroyed it, pieces of porcelain glued back together with care and precision. More than anything, this is what makes Amber want to scream.

Until she sees the wall. It’s covered in small pieces of paper, tacked on one by one over a mural clearly painted by the same hand that did the artwork in the turret room. Castles and horses and trees, all covered in the strange makeshift wallpaper.

Amber takes a step toward it, but her foot hits something. An old composition notebook with a name scrawled across the cover: Evan Andrews. The other boy who died. All the paper has been torn out.

The wall is covered in pages from Evan’s journal. The handwriting is the same as the writing on the cover of the notebook, so Amber knows the pages belonged to him. But the wall is not only obscured by Evan’s pages; there are other papers, with a different handwriting, interspersed with his. Amber knows what they say before she walks forward. Her breathing accelerates as she goes through letter after letter, reading at a frantic pace:

GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.

How dare you touch my home.

How dare you, how dare you, how dare

you—

Amber swallows and reads. The composition notebook’s paper has another set of handwriting, not blocky but neat, that grows more and more chaotic as the days progress.

Working today. Thought I heard someone

humming. Received a note, not sure if I

should go to the police . . .

Notes are faster and faster now. No one

believes, not even Mom . . .

Evan had been just like us, Amber thinks with a paralyzing jolt of fear. Evan had been just like them, and . . .

“She killed Evan,” Amber whispers. “Alex and her mom, and then Evan. Oh my god, these notes—”

Cecily reads them, too, and Amber notices her sister start to shake. “What are we going to do—”

“We need to call the police, we need to—”

Amber’s phone buzzes. It’s an all-too-familiar flood of alerts from the Cole Patrol, warning them. The follower has broken their silence, posting on their last message, the one where they went dark. Rudy and Cecily stare at her. “What does it say?”

Amber takes a breath and reads:

YOU’RE GOING TO REGRET THIS

Rudy and Cecily whip around, scanning the attic. Amber follows their gazes, half-convinced that Mrs. Armstrong is going to emerge from the shadows, slink out of the woodwork, come for them—

Another series of pings.

How dare you think that you can sell MY house.

Ping.

YOU CAN’T TAKE THIS FROM ME. I WON’T LET YOU.

Amber forces herself to relax. Tries to get her heartbeat to calm down. “The follower doesn’t know that we’re here,” she says after a few breaths. “She only knows about our parents’ meeting . . . But how?”

It’s Cecily who figures it out. “The dumbwaiter,” she says. “It carries noise, too—like how we’ve been listening. She hasn’t just been using it to sneak around; she’s been listening to us. She’s heard everything, she knows—”

And then, another message. One that almost makes Amber start to hyperventilate with fear.

Drive safely.

CHAPTER 30

Cecily

Cecily’s mind has gone blank.

“Oh my god,” Amber whispers. “It’s Mom and Dad—what if she hurts them—”

“We need to distract her,” Rudy says. “We need to do something.”

Their words fade into a mash of syllables as Cecily’s mind hinges on one definite fact: She’s been here. The person who did this to her face has been here. They’ve been here this entire time—as she ate, slept, wept, healed. The person who killed Bella has been here. Lives here.

Cecily looks around the room, trying to piece her thoughts together. There are so many things. So many small pieces of the person who killed her bunny and stalked her family. She can’t stop herself from staring at the collection of polished rocks on a rickety end table, the small china figurines lined up just right, the meticulous collection of hospital bands . . .

Everything is arranged with a pristine sense of order. Just like her makeup collection had been.

“How can we—”

“We use the room,” Cecily whispers. “If we post the room—she’ll know we’ve found her. That we know who she is.” She swallows. “If we threaten the room, she’ll come.”

“She’s right,” Rudy says. “We can call the police, make a post, lure her here instead of—” He cuts himself off. Instead of to our parents.

“We can livestream it,” Amber suggests. “Expose her online. That has to distract her. If we call the police first, she should be close enough—right? But . . . are we sure?” Amber asks, her voice