Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
NO ONE NOTICED
ZACK
What the hell is going on?
I look at Hazel, my heart stuttering at finding these two journals with both of our names. My grumpy ass self knew that this is 100% something that Cameron would do. This is not, however, what I expected to find when I came up here today.
Hazel moves slowly, scanning the living room with that sharp gaze of hers—like she’s expecting to catch something mid-move.
I hover near the drawer for a second before letting it close, the click sounding like a gunshot in the still room.
I hand her the top one and she takes it, our fingers leaving prints in the dust.
I open to the first page and start reading.
March 1st
I thought I saw someone across the street again.
Same spot, three nights in a row. Just standing under the streetlamp.
Not moving, just watching. When I finally worked up the courage to go outside, they were gone.
Leyla thinks I’m imagining it. She’s trying to distract me with movie nights and dumb games.
I love her for it, but she’s wrong. I know what I saw.
My throat goes dry as I flip through the next couple pages. Hazel reads them with me with bated breath.
March 4th
Leyla heard it this time. The knock on the back window.
She laughed it off—some neighborhood kid, she said.
But I saw her face. She’s scared now, too.
We didn’t sleep last night. I sat in the living room with the lights off and a knife in my hand like some paranoid idiot.
Still…I swear I heard breathing in the hallway.
I look up at Hazel. Her eyes are wide, fixed on her own notebook.
“They were being hunted,” I whisper. The words come out before I can stop them.
She nods slowly. “Or at least Cameron thought they were.”
I turn to a page marked with an old receipt. Cameron’s handwriting is more frantic now, the letters jagged. My best friend is slowly descending into his own form of madness, and my cold, dead heart can’t handle that. Just another way that I’ve let someone else down.
March 7th
Leyla wants to go to the police. I told her no, that I’m pretty sure it’s connected.
Plus, we don’t have proof. I barely believe it myself some days.
But the feeling doesn’t leave—like someone is in the walls.
In my head. There’s something wrong with the lights.
The clocks. My memories. I keep thinking about conversations I never had.
Time jumps. Did I dream last night? I don’t know anymore.
If you find this—anyone—we weren’t crazy. Someone did this. We were followed. Watched. Marked.
I think they’re in the house already.
My fingers tighten on the page, and the room feels smaller now—warmer, like hot breath against my neck. There’s a part of me that wants to turn around, but the ghost of these memories already haunts me.
Hazel pulls the last journal from the pile—thinner, barely a dozen pages. She flips to the final entry and hands it to me.
March 11th
Leyla said she saw a figure in the mirror that wasn’t her reflection.
She laughed it off. I didn’t.
We’re leaving tomorrow. No more talking. No more waiting. I’m not going to die in this house.
I think it’s too late. We’re gonna go on a trip. Maybe Tennessee, maybe Pennsylvania. Just not Michigan anymore.
She’s coming for us.
The words hang there, heavy. My soulless eyes connect with the glowing embers of hers, and before I can even get the word out, she says what was on the tip of my tongue.
“He knew,” Hazel whispers, a full body shiver hitting her. I feel the same sensation slowly climbing up my back.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice shaking. “He knew something was coming.”
She lifts her phone and snaps a photo of the page. “We’re not letting this end with a fire report and some bullshit news coverage,” she says with determination. Her voice is steady, but I can hear the tremor under it. “Cameron was right. Someone did this.”
I look around his office. At the one crooked blind and the faint smell of smoke still clinging to the walls.
And for the first time since they died, I feel it, too—that creeping sense of being watched.
I hated their building 99% of the time. I had really only been here once or twice before when it was just Cameron living here.
The past comes flooding back to me, and it feels like it’s ready to hit me like a train running off the track.
This isn’t over. I turn to Hazel, my lips pressing to a firm line as if the words don’t want to form. “How do you feel about a trip to Tennessee?”
Her eyes brighten, a glimpse into the confident girl that everyone seems to talk about—who she portrays on social media. “Ooh—can I book the Airbnb?”
I roll my eyes but nod, seeing as I’m not gonna invite her into my home. That’s definitely not on me, not my choice. “Sure. Nothing too frufru though. We want to stay out of the way. Nowhere that's too obvious.”
The grin on her face is way too happy, and she has this gleam in her eye that she’s going to absolutely ignore my requests.
I sigh knowing that I have absolutely no idea what I’m getting myself into, and at the same time realize I am in world of trouble.
She’s going to be the death of me, not in the literal sense, but in every other way possible, I know I’m in deep shit.
“Oh yeah, for sure I can do that.” A feline smile sits on her face, and I just know that this place is going to be my literal worst nightmare. I sigh and accept my fate.