Chapter 3: I See You

I found the perfect room at the end of the upstairs hallway. It was one of the empty ones, or almost empty. Mark was planning to turn it into his office, so there were boxes stacked against the walls, a desk without a chair, and a pile of cables tangled on the floor like sleeping snakes. A single window let in a pale strip of moonlight.

On the far wall was a closet. I opened it and grinned. Inside hung a row of Mark's winter coats, thick and heavy and smelling like cedar. I squeezed between them, pulled them around me, and left the door open just a tiny crack. Through that thin slit, I could see almost the entire room. If Tyler came in, I would spot him before he saw me.

I stood there in the coat-smelling dark and listened to the house. Somewhere downstairs, someone shrieked and laughed. A door banged. Feet thumped across the ceiling. Several minutes passed, and no one came near my room. That didn't worry me. The house was huge, and it would take Tyler forever to check everywhere.

Then I heard the office door creak.

I pressed my eye to the crack. The door swung open slowly, all by itself, and it kept swinging until it bumped the wall. I stared at the empty doorway. There was nobody in it. From where I stood, I could see the entire room, and I could see no one.

I told myself it was the wind. But there was no wind, and all the windows were shut.

Then the floor began to creak. It was one slow step, and then another, moving across the room from the door. They were the sounds of real feet, each one making a board groan under its weight. I looked through the crack again, and again I saw nothing. The steps kept coming, and they were heading straight for the closet.

I ducked back among the coats and pressed myself against the wall. My first thought, honestly, was that it had to be one of the kids messing with me. Maybe Ethan was playing a trick, or maybe somebody was sneaking around in the dark pretending to be a ghost. That made me mad more than scared. I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound and told myself to stay quiet and win the game.

The footsteps stopped right outside the closet door.

I could hear someone breathing on the other side of the wood. It was slow, heavy breathing, the kind a person makes when they are trying not to laugh or trying to listen. I held my own breath. The coats brushed against my cheeks. A drop of sweat crawled down the side of my face.

And then a voice whispered through the crack, so close that I felt it on my skin.

"I see you."

It wasn't Ethan's voice. It wasn't Tyler's, or Mark's, or any of the kids I had met that afternoon. I didn't know that voice at all. It was soft and flat, and it sounded almost young, but it didn't sound like a friend. It sounded like something that had said those words a thousand times and had never gotten an answer.

My whole body froze. I couldn't blink. I stood there waiting for the door to fly open, and I stared at that thin crack of light until my eyes stung.

It never opened.

Nothing happened for a very long time. I don't know how long we stayed like that, me on one side of the door and it on the other. It felt like several minutes, maybe more. The breathing kept going, in and out, in and out. It never said another word. I have heard people say that you can feel when someone is standing behind you, and I always thought that was just a saying. It isn't. I could feel it, and it was exactly as bad as it sounds.

Then, without warning, the footsteps ran.

They didn't walk or tiptoe. They pounded across the room and out into the hallway, fast, like whoever it was had been startled. Then the house went silent again, so silent that I could hear the blood rushing in my ears.

I was too scared to leave. I stayed pressed against the wall of the closet, shaking, staring at the crack. Then the door began to move. It opened by itself, slowly, and the hinges gave a long, loud creak that sounded like nails scraping down a chalkboard. Moonlight fell across my feet.

The room was empty.

I stood there like an idiot, half-hidden in a coat closet with my mouth hanging open, and that was exactly how Ethan found me. He came running down the hallway, poked his head in, and yelled, "I see you!" Then he slapped my arm and shouted that I was it.

I didn't even react. I just stood there, staring past him into the empty room.

"Dude, what's wrong with you?" Ethan asked. "You look like you saw a ghost."

"Nothing," I said. "I'm fine."

I wasn't fine. I had heard something walk across a room I could see clearly, and I had heard it whisper to me. Whatever had been standing outside that closet had known exactly where I was hiding. It had chosen to find me, and then it had chosen to leave.

But why? That was the part I couldn't stop thinking about.