The sight of the video camera rattled me for days. I was no longer comfortable in the cabin, every step I took felt watched. I didn’t even want to go out to go to the bathroom anymore; I was now going in bowls and tossing the waste out the window. I woke up in the middle of the night a few times, thinking I heard the sounds of a dog rustling outside the cabin, but was too frozen in fear to get out of my bed and look, just waited for the sounds to go away.
After a few nights of the sounds visiting in the dark, I eventually had to get up and face the noise when I heard a soft knocking upon the door. Quick, almost delicate, the knocking could not have been something produced by a dog, I shivered from my fear and not the cold when I got up out of my sea of blankets to place my ear upon the door.
“Hello?” My voice quivered.
“Please just let me in, I’m freezing,” a woman’s voice answered on the other side of the door.
I was relieved to hear a woman’s voice, but still wasn’t convinced of my safety. My heart pounded and my brain raced until I realized that if this woman really had sinister intentions and wanted in, she could easily get in whether or not I opened the door, it wasn’t that hard.
I slid over the lock and slowly opened the door to reveal a stick skinny woman poorly dressed for the harsh weather with a powder blue kimono barely hanging onto her bony body. She peered at me through small eyes and a face cinched back by a tight bun of dark brown hair at the back of her skull.
“I can help you,” she said before stepping into the warmth of my cabin.
The woman quickly introduced herself as Jo and took a seat on my bed without asking. She then proceeded to make small talk as she started digging through her bright pink purse, all of which I will skip over until she got to the point.
“I know who you are.”
Her statement sent shivers down my spine.
“I’ve seen you on the news.”
I stood in front of her, wobbling on the balls of my feet and chewing on my lip.
“…okay,” I finally forced out a response. “And what?”
“I saw you on the news. That guy got shot at your house and now they are looking for you, but can’t find you. A lot of people think you are dead, but then I was looking at our security camera from a few days ago and I saw you. I saw you walk back with Jimmy. I couldn’t believe it. Thought my fucked up brain was playing tricks on me, but it’s definitely you.”
