Chapter 1

[NOTE 1: SEP 22 – 1:37 AM]

I noticed something weird with Dad tonight. He came home late. Me, June, and Mom had been lying in my bedroom talking about school, not realizing the time passing. June talked with her squeaky voice, telling how "Bohr"-ing Mr. Bohr's class was. She told the joke two times before I let an artificial snort out. She smiled with her lower teeth, as her upper teeth were missing. Mom had plucked the teeth out as soon as she reached home from school. Then the locks clicked in the hallway.

It was Dad. He came in after a few minutes, still holding his work bag. Weird, I thought. He always left it at the kitchen countertop. He never brought it to the bedroom. In the whole of my thirteen years, I had never seen him bring it to bed. The bed groaned as he laid down. We scooted over to the right to make space for him.

He ruffled my hair and kept his palm on my face. It was cold – unusually cold, as if it had been sitting on a refrigerator. I asked him about it, and he said "I dunno" as fast as possible and took off his palm hurriedly, as if hiding something. We all slept together that day for the first time in years.

The bed had no space for me, so I took out a blanket covered with big white stars on a red background and laid on the floor next to the bed where Dad was lying. I started noticing things out of place. He was always a snorer, yet his third snore always felt like he was gasping for air. "Asthma aftermath," he had said when I was six and pointed it out. But this Dad didn't have the gasping snore. I counted and tried to keenly hear it, but it was no use. I counted again.

[NOTE 2: SEP 23 – 8:05 AM]

He is not my dad.

He left for work minutes ago. Yesterday, when I was counting the snores, the snoring abruptly stopped and I heard the bed creak. I glanced over while typing in my notes, and he looked at me with hunger in his eyes. He fixated on my eyes and smiled.

He asked, "What are you doing on the phone this late?"

"Nothing, Dad," I answered. "Just reading some stories."

He protested, "Why were you typing, though?" Still, the smile remained on his face while asking me that. It stretched all the way to his cheekbones. When he noticed me noticing the smile, he lowered it a bit, but still kept smiling.

"I was just commenting on it," I said, looking into the phone while I scrambled to the home screen, ran my thumb to the overview button, and swiped this app away. His head hung low from the bed and his hands gripped the mattress tightly. He grabbed the phone and scrolled through the overview button. I heard his thumb scroll through it, touching it more aggressively than before. I could only hear it.

He asked, "Why did you lie to me?" I was caught. Then he added, "You were watching videos, not reading stories."

Phew.

"Sorry Dad, I thought you would be mad."

"It's alright, son."

My dad would have rebuked me if I had been scrolling in the middle of the night. The real one.

Today at breakfast, I brought up the dog we had before June was born and asked him the name. My mom would always get quiet when somebody brought it up. My dad too. He hated it at first, but grew attached to it fast. It was the same for the dog, too. She liked him more than anyone.

"Nicole Colesburg The Third!" he exclaimed enthusiastically.

Mom gave me a look of fear mixed with amazement.

"What were you even thinking about when you named it, Elijah?" he said through chuckles.

Mom wasn't laughing. She and I smiled so as not to seem suspicious, but I could see genuine horror and fear in her eyes. It didn't notice the gaze we shared while still laughing about the dog's name, waffle syrup spilling down the left side of its lower lip.

Mom didn't talk about it even after he left.

[NOTE 3: SEP 23 – 9:39 PM]

He is back early. Earlier than usual.

I saw Mom noticing his every movement. How it did not keep its bag on the countertop. It did not put his expensive leather shoes on the shoe rack either, like he always did. It didn't remove its socks – the same socks he had put on yesterday before leaving for work and kissing Mom goodbye.

We both noticed each and every detail.

Mom noticed me noticing too, but she did not say anything about it.

[NOTE 4: SEP 24 – 12:01 AM]

June and I went to bed at 10:00 PM. She fell asleep right away. I have been awake. It's already past their bedtime. I think Mom has gone to sleep, but I can hear it shuffling and moving through the living room, pacing back and forth.

Then I heard something that made my spine shudder. A chill swept over me. My hair stood straight up.

"Nothing, Dad."

"Nothing, Dad," it repeated in my own voice.

It sounded like a machine. The voice broke and echoed. It was practicing my voice, and it got better each time it repeated itself. It sounded real.

Then it used Mom's voice.

"Dinner is served."

"Di–nner i–ssss sserve–ve-vedd."

It practiced every syllable, stuttering. I could hear its real voice while it stuttered – hoarse, raspy, out of breath. The kind of sound you make with a suppurating sore in your throat. It echoed through the living room.

I slowly took my ear away from where it was pressed against the door. It was about time for Dad to come check on us. He did it every day. Half awake, he would come in and kiss us on our foreheads. I knew he was coming when I pretended to sleep. I would try to hold in my laughter when he came in. One day I couldn't and I snickered. He heard it, gave a chuckle, and tickled me.

I reminisced about it.

It has stopped pacing through the living room.

I slowly bent my right knee while gripping the floor with my palms and looked through the crevice under the door.

It was standing there wearing my dad's socks.

The shadow of its feet blocked the light coming from the hallway.

It stood there for several minutes, not moving an inch.

Its knees started bending, and I knew it was gonna look under the door.

I crept up to my bed and slowly tucked myself into the sheets, not making a sound.

I lay there, my eyelids held open just enough to see what it was doing.

I heard a wet, squelching sound – followed by something slick dragging across the floorboards.

Then I saw it.

An eye.

Far too large to belong to anything human.

It pushed itself through the narrow crevice under the door.

It blinked once.

The iris twisted as if it was trying to focus.

Then it looked directly at me.

Then June.

Then the bookshelves.

Something wet slid along the bottom of the door.

Slowly, the eye pulled itself back.

I heard a wet snapping noise as it disappeared into the hallway.

Then the door upstairs clicked.

I couldn't sleep.

[NOTE 5: SEP 24 – 8:30 AM]

I woke up late today. We have school today.

June and I were brushing our teeth when she said something intriguing:

"Dad's face has changed these days. He looks younger sometimes and older sometimes."

"What?" I asked, concern settling in my eyes.

"Oh… and his skin moves every time he scratches himself."

I stopped brushing my teeth.

Mom knocked on the already open door. She had been listening to June.

"Y'all are not going to school today."

She looked at the hallway before continuing.

"THAT IS NOT YOUR DAD. STOP CALLING IT THAT!"

June's eyes widened.

"He hasn't been to the office for the last two days," Mom said. "A call just came in from his work. We don't know where he is."

She paused.

"It might still be lurking around here."

"Then what do we do?" I asked.

"I've been watching it."

Mom's voice became quieter.

"Every night, sometime around four, it stops moving. I don't know if it's sleeping. I don't know what it does during that hour. But yesterday I couldn't wake it."

"How'd you know that, Mom?"

"I call for it every half an hour when it's beside me. I set an alarm for every half hour throughout the night."

She looked toward the hallway again.

"The only time it doesn't respond is between four and five. At five, it wakes up."

"So we leave then?"

Mom nodded.

"We have to."

She swallowed.

"I'm gonna fill the car up and take it to a repair shop. Even if that car won't start, I will have another car prepared for us. Whatever you do, do not act suspiciously around it."

"But you called for it every half an hour in the night, Mom!"

"I tell it I don't know why the alarms are going off. I say it must have set them up itself."

She gave a nervous laugh.

"It believed me."

Just as she said it, the leaves rustled.

It was because of the wind, I guess.

[NOTE 6: SEP 24 – 6:05 PM]

Mom hasn't returned.

[NOTE 7: SEP 24 – 9:00 PM]

I don't think she will.

[NOTE 8: SEP 24 – 10:00 PM]

Both Mom and Dad have not returned.

[NOTE 9: SEP 25 – 12:00 AM]

Both June and I are sitting in the attic, staring through the window and taking turns looking for it.

The lights are on downstairs.

[NOTE 10: SEP 25 – 12:10 AM]

Something is rustling in the kitchen.

It's howling.

Plates are clattering.

"The wolf left through the backyard," June said, and we both looked out the window.

It was a black wolf.

Weird…

Neither of them has returned.

We turned off all the lights upstairs.

It has become foggy; we can't see clearly.

Somebody is knocking on the door.

I don't know who it is, but they are screaming.

I heard rustling in the backyard.

I think it got in from where the wolf got in.

It's moving downstairs.

My emergency 911 calls won't go through – the network is totally dead, but somehow my cellular data is barely hanging on. I copied everything from my notes app and uploaded it directly here because Reddit is my only way out.

Please call 911 for us.

We are trapped in the red house, the third house on Otter Street in Washington, D.C., with the Corolla parked in the garage.

My phone battery is at 2%.

I hear it coming up the attic stairs now.

[NOTE 11: SEP 25 – 4:47 AM]

I'm adding this now because I don't want anyone thinking we didn't make it, and because I need this posted somewhere that isn't just in my own head.

We didn't wait for it to reach the attic door.

There's a maintenance hatch behind the water tank that leads out onto the garage roof – Dad, the real one, showed it to me years ago as a joke. He told me it was our "fire escape."

June went first.

I went last, and I heard something hit the attic door from the inside as I pulled the hatch shut behind me, hard enough that the wood split.

We didn't look back to see if it followed.

We slid down onto the hood of a neighbor's car and ran two streets over before I let either of us stop.

A woman two doors down let us in without asking questions, took one look at both of us, and called the police herself.

I don't know yet where Mom and Dad are, or if that's a thing I'll ever get an answer to.

I'm not going to pretend I have that resolved.

What I have is June asleep on a stranger's couch three feet from me, breathing, and my phone at 1% plugged into a charger that isn't mine, and enough left in me to finish typing this before I let myself fall apart.

If you ever notice tiny, wrong details about someone in your house – a routine that's shifted, an inside joke they don't remember, skin that moves wrong when they scratch, habits that vanish overnight – don't test it.

Don't confront it.

Don't wait around to see if you're just being paranoid, like I almost did.

Get out during whatever window you get.

We only had one, and it was enough.

I'm hoping that's the only thing about tonight I'll ever have to be grateful for.