Chapter 5 - THE MONSTER WAS ALREADY INSIDE
I didn't sleep that night.
Lily did.
Eventually.
I sat outside her bedroom door until I was certain she was asleep.
Then I went downstairs and listened to the recording again.
And again.
The man's voice was unfamiliar.
But Claire's voice wasn't.
I knew every sound of my wife's voice.
The way she breathed when she was tired.
The way she lowered her tone when she was angry.
The way she paused before lying.
And on that recording, she had lied.
“Daniel is dead.”
But the man had said:
“Dead men don't send messages.”
I opened my laptop.
I searched Daniel Carter.
There were dozens of results.
But one caught my attention.
LOCAL BUSINESS OWNER PRESUMED DEAD AFTER CAR CRASH THREE YEARS AGO.
I clicked the article.
The picture loaded.
I stared at the face.
It was the same man from the photograph.
Daniel Carter.
Claire's first husband.
Lily's biological father.
The article said he had disappeared after a single-car crash.
His vehicle had been found near a river.
No body had ever been recovered.
The police had eventually declared him legally dead.
I sat back.
Claire had told me he died.
Technically, maybe she had believed that.
But the recording had been made recently.
And the man's voice had called her.
I listened again.
This time, I noticed something I had missed.
In the background.
A clock.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Then a distant sound.
A train horn.
I opened a map.
There were several places near our city where trains passed close to old industrial buildings.
I wrote down every possibility.
Then I noticed something else.
The recording had been saved on a memory card.
I removed it.
There was a file name.
LILY_07_14.
July 14.
Lily's birthday.
I stared at the screen.
Why would someone record a conversation and name it after a child?
I suddenly remembered the photo.
The scratched-out face.
The words on the back.
HE KNOWS WHAT SHE DID.
I heard a sound upstairs.
I stood immediately.
“Lily?”
No answer.
I ran up the stairs.
Her bedroom door was open.
The window was open too.
Cold air moved through the room.
I rushed inside.
Lily was gone.
For one terrifying second, I couldn't breathe.
Then I saw her.
She was standing in the hallway.
Holding the purple shirt.
“Daddy?”
I ran to her.
“Where were you?”
She pointed toward the window.
“I heard someone outside.”
My heart pounded.
“Did you see them?”
She nodded.
“A man.”
“What did he look like?”
She hesitated.
Then whispered:
“He had the same watch as Mommy.”
I stared at her.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“Black watch. Silver line.”
I knew that watch.
Claire had given it to me.
She had said it belonged to her father.
But Claire's father had supposedly died fifteen years ago.
I returned downstairs.
The front door was locked.
The windows were closed.
Nothing appeared disturbed.
Then I noticed something on the kitchen counter.
A white envelope.
No name.
No address.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed me standing beside Lily in the backyard.
Taken from outside the fence.
On the back, written in black ink:
YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED YOUR WIFE WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FIRST MAN WHO PLAYED FATHER.
I stared at the words.
And for the first time, I understood.
May you like
The monster in our house wasn't outside.
It had been watching me from inside.
