Chapter 8 - The Visitor
Daniel picked up the velvet pouch with a pen, carefully, as if it might be contaminated, and emptied the contents onto Lily’s desk.
Thirty-six small, silver magnets clattered onto the wood. Exactly thirty-six. One for every month Lily had been alive. The exact same number Patricia had fed her a year earlier.
We called the police immediately. Officer Carter arrived within twenty minutes, followed by a team of forensic investigators who dusted the entire room for prints, took the pouch and the magnets as evidence, checked every door and window in the house for signs of forced entry, went through the security camera footage from the past twenty-four hours frame by frame.
The results were impossible.
There were no fingerprints on the pouch or the magnets other than Lily’s—small, smudged prints from when she’d obviously touched them at some point. There were no signs of a break-in. All the doors and windows were still locked from the inside, the security system had been armed all night, no alarms had been triggered. And the security footage? It showed nothing. No one entering the property. No one walking around the house. No one climbing through Lily’s window. It was as if the pouch and the magnets had just… appeared. Out of thin air.
Officer Carter was stumped. I could see it on his face—the confusion, the frustration, the growing fear that maybe, just maybe, there was something going on here that couldn’t be explained by logic or police work. He called the prison again, spoke to the warden personally, even had them send a current photo of Patricia in her cell, taken that very morning, to prove she was still there. She was. Gaunt, pale, her hair cut short, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, staring dead-eyed into the camera. But definitely there. Definitely locked up.
“Rachel,” Carter said, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “I don’t know what to tell you. The evidence doesn’t make sense. There’s no way anyone got into this house last night. No way. And there’s definitely no way Patricia Hale got out of a maximum security prison, drove three hundred miles, broke into your house without leaving a single trace, left thirty-six magnets in your daughter’s room, and then drove back and got into her cell before morning roll call. It’s physically impossible.”
“Then how do you explain this?” I shouted, pointing at the magnets sitting in an evidence bag on our kitchen table. “How do you explain the things moving around the house? The perfume? Lily talking about a lady in a blue dress? How, Carter?”
He sighed, sitting down across from me at the table. “I don’t know. I wish I did. But I do know this—whoever is doing this, whatever is going on, they’re trying to scare you. They want you to be terrified. They want you to think you’re going crazy. They want you to be so busy looking for ghosts that you don’t see what’s really happening right in front of your face.”
He leaned forward, his voice serious. “I’m going to assign a uniformed officer to park outside your house twenty-four seven. I’m going to have the techs upgrade your security system—add more cameras, better motion sensors, everything. And I want you to think, Rachel. Really think. Who else would want to hurt you? Who else has a grudge against you? Who else would have access to your house, who would know about the magnets, who would want to continue what Patricia started?”
His words hit me like a ton of bricks.
Patricia had friends. A lot of them. People who’d supported her during the trial, who’d raised money for her defense, who’d harassed us for months, who still believed she was innocent. People who’d sent us threatening messages, thrown a brick through our window, called CPS with false reports. People who were just as crazy, just as dangerous, just as obsessed as she was.
And one of them had just proven they could get into our house. Without a trace.
The next few weeks were a nightmare. The police officer parked outside our house made me feel better during the day, but at night, the fear came back, stronger than ever. The strange occurrences continued—objects moving, doors opening and closing on their own, that lavender perfume scent appearing out of nowhere, Lily talking more and more about the “nice lady” who visited her at night, who told her stories, who promised she’d take her away soon to a place where she’d never be hurt again.
Daniel installed even more security cameras—inside the house this time, in every room, including Lily’s bedroom, set to record twenty-four hours a day to a cloud server that even he couldn’t delete from. We checked the footage every morning, every night, looking for anything out of the ordinary. For weeks, there was nothing. Just normal footage of us sleeping, of Lily tossing and turning in her bed, of the house sitting quiet and empty during the day.
Until the night of August fourteenth.
We were sitting at the kitchen table the next morning, drinking coffee, going through the previous night’s footage, when we saw it. At 3:14 a.m., the camera in Lily’s room suddenly went fuzzy, the picture breaking up into static for exactly seven seconds. When the picture cleared, there was the velvet pouch, sitting on her nightstand, right where it hadn’t been seven seconds earlier.
We watched the clip over and over again. Seven seconds of static. Then the pouch. No one had entered the room. No one had walked past the camera. The door hadn’t opened. The window hadn’t moved. It was impossible. And yet, there it was. Right in front of our eyes.
Daniel sent the footage to a friend of his who worked in cybersecurity, a forensic video expert who analyzed it for any signs of editing or tampering. His report came back three days later: the footage was completely authentic. No edits. No doctoring. No tricks. The static was caused by a sudden, powerful electromagnetic pulse right next to the camera—strong enough to disrupt the signal for a few seconds, but not strong enough to damage the equipment. And the pouch had definitely not been there before the static, and definitely been there after.
That was when Daniel finally believed me.
We decided we had to get out of the house. At least for a little while. We packed a few bags, grabbed Lily and her stuffed rabbit, and drove up to a small cabin we owned in the mountains near Flagstaff, a place we’d bought a few years earlier as a weekend getaway, a place no one but us knew about. No Patricia supporters. No strange occurrences. No ghosts. Just us, and the pine trees, and the quiet.
For three days, it worked. We hiked during the day, roasted marshmallows over a campfire at night, slept in the same bed together, all three of us, holding each other tight. No objects moved. No perfume smells. No lady in a blue dress. Lily didn’t mention her “friend” once. It was perfect. Peaceful.
But on the fourth morning, I woke up early, before Daniel and Lily, and went into the kitchen to make coffee. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what was sitting on the kitchen table.
A small, velvet pouch. And next to it, a handwritten note, in tight, looping handwriting I would have recognized anywhere.
You can run, Rachel. But you can’t hide. I always find what’s mine. And Lily is mine. Always has been. Always will be. See you soon.
I screamed.
Daniel came running into the room, his gun drawn—he’d started carrying it everywhere after the second pouch appeared—ready to fight. But when he saw the note, when he saw the pouch, his face went white. We’d locked all the doors and windows before we went to bed. We’d set the portable alarm system we’d brought with us. No one could have gotten in. And yet, there was the note. There was the pouch.
Patricia was everywhere. And nowhere. All at once.
We left the cabin immediately, driving back to Scottsdale as fast as we could, not stopping for anything. When we got home, there was a message waiting for us on our answering machine, left while we’d been gone. I pressed play, my hand shaking.
It was a woman’s voice. Soft. Syrupy sweet. Exactly like Patricia’s.
“Hi, Rachel. Hi, Daniel. Hi, Lily-bug. Did you have fun in the mountains? The air is so nice and clean up there, isn’t it? But you should have stayed longer. I was just starting to enjoy the view from the trees. Don’t worry, though. I’ll see you soon. Very soon. Sleep tight, my little fish. Grandma’s coming for you.”
The message ended with a soft, cold laugh that sent chills running down my spine.
Daniel called Officer Carter, who traced the call. It had come from a burner phone, purchased with cash at a convenience store in Flagstaff, just ten miles from our cabin. There was no way to trace who’d bought it. No way to trace who’d made the call.
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We were being hunted. By someone who knew everything about us. Someone who could get into our homes, our cars, our lives, without leaving a single trace. Someone who was just as obsessed, just as dangerous, just as evil as Patricia herself.
And we had no idea who it was.
