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Somehow, the darkness outside intensifies—as if his evil spirit is out there, watching me. I stare at the phone, then close my eyes. I dry heave, my body freezes, vision blurs. Finally, my body reacts how it should. Frightened like a kitty cat.

That voice… I know that voice so intimately. Every dream I’d hear him, feel him, experience him. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t some guy with a weird crush trying to ask me out.

He touched my most vulnerable places, talking to me in my sleep, making me experience things. And at an age where I was just innocent and confused. He made me fantasize about things no girl should ever fantasize about. He’s been stalking me for a long time, saying things to me that are so utterly vile, so messed up…

And it led to me falling in love with him.

A dark laugh echoes from the phone. A twisted, cruel, and utterly sexy voice. “I wish I could see your face right now. How rosy those pretty cheeks must be. Don’t worry, pretty girl, we’re just getting started. Before I’m done, you will be the one begging to take your clothes off for me.”

It takes a moment to compose myself, to find the voice I so confidently had only moments before.

I choke out a stuttered breath. “So, what are you, then? Are you Shadowface?”

A pause.

“It’s physically impossible for me to be Shadowface, if that’s what you’re thinking. He would be in his forties, depending on which one you are referring to. Do I sound like I’m that old? I’m not your father’s age, Summer.”

My head spins, my throat dries up as the words form like ash in my mouth at the mention of my father.

The insinuation is not lost on me.

A memory floods my brain, the one that’s been in the periphery since I got here.

A face. A boy a few years older than me, sitting across from me as we eat our usual Sunday roast. My heart stutters and a sickening feeling falls over me.

I can’t remember how old I was—the memory is fleeting. He was older, that much I remember, but the years blur.

My father said he wanted this boy to experience a happy family dinner because he lost his own family. He was so insignificant, I never gave him another thought.

I’m positive it wasn’t Lincoln, even though he had similarities to Lincoln. Lincoln didn’t come into my father’s life until after. And that boy was timid; he didn’t act like Lincoln does now. My father often volunteered with troubled kids, helping them recover from trauma. There could have been more than one orphan he was working with.

He wouldn’t look at me the entire dinner. My mom tried to talk to him, and he’d only give one-word answers, his eyes downcast, pushing food around his plate with his fork. He stole glances at me, though. I only looked him in the eyes once, and I started to feel itchy. Something was off about him.

He spent the night in the guest bedroom, and I never saw him again.

I suddenly feel very dirty… My skin starts to itch all over at the thought of my nameless monster being that boy.

What was his damn name?

Mikael… I think it was Mikael.

I can hear his familiar breathing on the other line, like he’s waiting for me to ask him something. “I’ve been asleep, Summer,” he finally says, and I have no idea what riddles he’s spewing. “That’s where I’ve been.”

Asleep. I was asleep when he whispered to me for the first time, and all the times after. It always started out in a state where I couldn’t move. I was helpless, my body was paralyzed as if caught between sleeping and waking.

He must have crept into my room that night and watched me. Then he found a way into the house during the years after, and as I got older, he got bolder. His whispers became more intense.

My father was barely home; it wouldn’t have been hard.

A heavy anger ripples inside me, but I hate what he’s insinuating about my father even more. “You’re nothing but a pathetic orphan who decided to sneak up to my room and take advantage of me.”

A deafening silence settles as I wait for him to respond.

“Do you know why Shadowface covered the faces of his victims?” He’s so composed, yet his voice is sharp as a razor’s edge.

I refuse to dignify that with a response. Tension grips me as I inhale deeply.

His deep relenting voice continues, “It’s because he cut their tongues out and mutilated their faces. Probably because they talked back to him like you are right now.”