"The Doggy Door":
It was the fall of 2005 when I moved into that old house on the edge of a sleepy Alabama town—one of those places where time felt like it drifted slower, where neighbors nodded but rarely spoke, and the nights fell quiet like a heavy curtain. The house itself had charm, sure, but in a worn-down, forgotten kind of way. Wooden floors that creaked no matter how lightly you stepped. A sagging front porch with a swing that groaned with each breeze. The paint had long since faded from white to a tired gray, and weeds grew between the bricks of the narrow path leading to the front door. It was the kind of place people drove past and didn’t look at twice.
I’d bought it for cheap, a fixer-upper with good bones, they said. I was freelancing by then—writing pieces for magazines, ghostwriting when the gigs were slow. After years of city noise grinding my nerves raw, the silence out here seemed like a balm. I thought the stillness would help me focus. Maybe I’d finally write that novel I’d been kicking around in my head for years.
Max, my scruffy mutt with more bark than brains, was my only company. A rescue from a shelter back in Georgia—wiry-haired, with too much energy and eyes that always looked like he was about to tell me a secret. I had a doggy door installed in the kitchen so he could run in and out to the backyard. At the time, it seemed practical. Looking back, I can’t help but think of that door like a wound—something small and unnoticed until it festers.
The first few weeks were peaceful. The days bled together in a quiet rhythm. I’d write until my eyes burned, then step onto the porch in the evening to drink coffee while Max chased squirrels in the backyard. Sometimes he’d bark at nothing—ears pricked, tail rigid—but I figured it was just raccoons or the wind playing tricks.
Then the little things started going missing.
At first, it was harmless enough. A sock I couldn’t find. A coffee mug gone from the kitchen counter. I chalked it up to distraction. “You’re burning the candle at both ends,” I muttered to myself more than once. But then I noticed a half-eaten pack of chips missing from the pantry. That stopped me cold. Max couldn’t reach that high. I even checked to make sure. It wasn’t like me to forget finishing something, especially not junk food—I would’ve remembered that.
Still, I tried to let it go. Chalked it up to absentmindedness. Maybe I’d eaten it without realizing. Maybe I’d knocked the mug off and it broke behind the counter. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But then came the front door.
One morning, I found it slightly ajar. Not wide open, not enough to suggest a break-in—just off the latch, like someone had opened it quietly and didn’t quite shut it right. The lock, which I always secured before bed, was unclicked. I checked the windows. I checked the back door. Everything else was secure. I even looked for footprints in the dew on the porch but found nothing. Max hadn’t barked. He’d just been curled up on the couch like any other morning.
A knot started forming in my gut, and it never really went away after that.
The nights were the worst. I’d lie in bed, staring up at the ceiling fan as it clicked with each rotation. Max would be at my feet, sometimes lifting his head to stare down the dark hallway as if he’d heard something I hadn’t. Creaks in the floorboards. Faint rustling in the kitchen. Whispers of movement I couldn’t explain. The house was old, sure—but this wasn’t settling wood. This was... deliberate. Quiet. Like someone taking careful steps.
I started keeping a baseball bat next to the bed. I told myself it was just for peace of mind. But the truth was, I was scared. Not the kind of fear that spikes and fades—but the slow, creeping dread that wraps around your spine and stays there.
Then came the blanket.
It was just an old quilt I kept on the couch, something my mother had made before she passed. One night it was there. The next evening, it was gone. Vanished. I tore the house apart—looked under furniture, behind shelves, even outside in the trash bins in case Max had dragged it out. Nothing. That quilt didn’t just walk off. That was the moment I stopped laughing it off.
I called my neighbor, Tom. He was a retired mechanic who spent most days on his porch with a beer and a transistor radio. “You seen anyone around my place?” I asked him over the fence. He scratched his chin, eyes squinting against the sun. “Kids been cutting through backyards lately,” he said. “Probably just foolin’ around.” But something about his voice told me he didn’t believe that either. Not really.
I went online that night and ordered one of those bulky, early-model security cameras. Took me hours to figure out how to set it up in the kitchen—angled just right to catch the doggy door and the back entrance. I felt a bit silly, like I was giving in to paranoia. But something deep in me, something primal, told me to do it.
For three nights, nothing. Just footage of Max padding in and out, and me stumbling in at odd hours for water or snacks. I started to think maybe I’d imagined it all.
Then came night four.
The timestamp read 2:17 a.m. I watched the footage, not expecting anything. The kitchen was dim—just that thin band of silver moonlight cutting across the linoleum floor. The doggy door flapped once. Then again. And then... he crawled through.
A man. Not a kid. Not some drunk neighbor. A man. He moved low to the ground, his limbs wiry, gaunt, deliberate. He wore a hooded jacket, gloves, dark pants—his face obscured. He moved like he’d done it before. Like he knew the layout. He opened the fridge without hesitation, took out a carton of milk, and drank it straight from the jug. Then he grabbed a loaf of bread from the counter, stuffed a few slices into his jacket pocket, and slipped back out the doggy door like a shadow. The entire thing lasted barely three minutes.
I sat there for what felt like hours, watching that moment on loop. My body was cold, like I’d swallowed ice water. My hands trembled so badly I had to grip the desk just to keep from falling out of the chair. I called the police. When they answered, my voice cracked like glass.
They came out fast—two cruisers, four officers. They watched the footage with blank expressions. One of them rubbed his chin and said, “Looks like he’s using the doggy door.” That was it. Like I was dealing with a clever raccoon. “You might wanna lock that up.”
I wanted to scream. This wasn’t some animal. This was a man—a man—coming into my house while I slept, eating my food, moving through my home like it belonged to him.
That night, I bolted the doggy door shut. I shoved a chair in front of it. I slept with the lights on, baseball bat clutched tight in both hands. Max curled against my side, restless and twitchy. I didn’t sleep so much as drift in and out, waiting for the sound of movement.
The next morning, I checked the footage again. Nothing. No one came.
But the dread didn’t lift. It thickened. Like fog in my bones.
That afternoon, I checked the backyard. Max followed me, sniffing the air. We didn’t go back there much—it was overgrown, filled with tall grass and wild bushes. But something told me to look. I followed Max past the tree line near the edge of the property—and there, nestled behind a tangled wall of blackberry bushes, I saw it.
A tent. Small, dirty, stained from weather. Half-covered in leaves, like it had been there for weeks—maybe longer. I didn’t go near it. I turned around and walked—ran—back to the house and called the police again.
This time, they didn’t take it lightly.
Inside the tent, they found my missing quilt, a spoon from my kitchen, an empty jar of peanut butter, and a stack of food wrappers. He’d been living there. Right behind my house. Sleeping, eating, waiting. One of the officers pointed to a trail of footprints leading deeper into the woods. “He’s been here a while,” he said. “Probably watching you for months.”
Months.
That word hit me like a punch. I felt sick—physically ill. This man had been inches from me, night after night. While I slept. While I showered. While I worked and thought I was alone.
Two nights later, they caught him. He came back—tried to slip in through the backyard again. They tackled him to the ground. He didn’t resist. Didn’t say a word. Just stared at the dirt while they cuffed him. They found a knife in his jacket. He hadn’t used it.
Not yet.
I stayed for three more months. Tried to pretend it was over. I replaced the locks. Let Max sleep in bed with me every night. But I never really slept. Every creak, every gust of wind outside made me flinch. I kept the footage. Watched it again and again. Maybe to remind myself it happened. Maybe because some part of me still didn’t believe it.
Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. I sold the place at a loss and moved into a small apartment in the city. No backyard. No doggy door. Just deadbolts and street noise. Max came with me, of course. He’s older now. Slower. But he still perks up at night, listening to sounds I can’t hear.
I still check the locks. Sometimes twice. Sometimes more.
And I still wonder about that man. Where he went. Who he’s watching now.
Because the scariest part of all of it wasn’t what he did.
It’s what I didn’t know.
He was there. For weeks. Maybe months.
Watching me. Learning my rhythms. Crawling into my house like it belonged to him.
And I never even knew.
"The Thing That Wore My Son's Face":
I don’t think I’ll ever sleep soundly again after that night.
It started off like any other quiet Tuesday evening. The sun had long dipped behind the trees, and the golden afterglow had faded into a cool blue twilight outside. The kind of calm that makes you feel safe—secure in the humdrum rhythm of domestic life. Dinner was simple. Mac and cheese, Tommy’s favorite. He barely picked at it. I figured he was just tired from school, or maybe he was getting one of those colds going around his class. After dinner, we did the dishes together, like always. He stood on the little green step-stool next to me at the sink, his small hands dunking the cups with slow, distracted movements. I ruffled his hair, but he didn’t even smile.
Tommy’s always been scared of the dark. Ever since he was four, he’s been convinced that something lived under his bed. Not every night, but enough that we developed a routine—our little monster check. Every night, before lights out, I’d crouch down, shine my flashlight underneath, and say in a silly dramatic voice, “Nope, just dust bunnies and plastic dinosaurs!” And Tommy would giggle and pull the covers up to his chin, content in the knowledge that Daddy had done his duty.
But that night… that night was different.
I should’ve known the second I stepped into his room. The air felt off—thicker, heavier, like walking into a room just after a heated argument. The soft yellow light of his bedside lamp flickered for half a second when I turned it on, casting jagged shadows across the walls that seemed to stretch a little too far. I brushed it off, told myself it was just a bulb going bad, but my skin prickled anyway.
Tommy was already in bed. That alone was unusual. He usually waited for me, bouncing on the mattress or building something last-minute with his Legos. But tonight, he was still—tucked in so tightly that the blanket almost swallowed him. Only his head stuck out, his face turned toward the door like he’d been waiting.
And his eyes… they weren’t right.
They were wide, yes, but not with his usual nervous anticipation. No, these were blank. Glassy. Lifeless. It was like he was staring through me, not at me. Like I wasn’t even really there.
“Daddy, check for monsters under my bed,” he said.
The words were familiar, but the tone was… wrong. Hollow. Too even. Too practiced. Like he was reading a line from a script he’d rehearsed a thousand times, and none of it meant anything to him anymore.
I hesitated. Just for a second. But something cold began to slither its way down my spine.
“Of course, buddy,” I said, forcing a smile. “No monsters getting past me tonight.”
I knelt beside the bed like I always did, trying to ignore the tightness in my chest. My hand trembled just a little as I lifted the bedskirt and angled the flashlight beam into the space beneath. At first, I saw the usual—stray socks, a broken action figure, a half-finished coloring book. But then the beam caught something else.
Eyes.
Another pair of eyes.
My breath caught in my throat. It took my brain a few agonizing seconds to register what it was seeing. Curled up tightly in the shadowy space under the bed was Tommy. My real Tommy. His face was streaked with tears. His arms were bound at the wrists with coarse, rough rope. A filthy rag was shoved into his mouth. His eyes locked onto mine the moment the light found him, and I swear, in that split second, I felt everything he felt—terror, confusion, desperation. He began to shake his head violently, eyes wide, screaming silently behind the gag.
Then I heard him.
The voice above me.
“Daddy… there’s someone on my bed.”
Time froze. I didn’t want to look. I couldn’t look. But I did.
Slowly, I turned my head toward the bed.
“Tommy” was still lying there, face turned toward me. Still tucked in, just like before. But now, I saw it for what it really was. The differences I’d ignored earlier came into sharp, awful focus—the jawline too angular, the skin too smooth and pale, the eyes cold and devoid of light. And the mouth… the mouth curled into the faintest of smirks. Not a child’s smile. Not my son’s grin. This was something older. Something cruel.
My knees buckled. I barely caught myself.
“Tommy?” I managed, my voice cracking. “Who… who are you?”
The thing sat up, moving in slow, deliberate motion, like a puppet on invisible strings. That smile never wavered. It tilted its head, mimicking confusion.
“I’m Tommy, Daddy,” it said. “Who else would I be?”
The voice was too perfect. Too smooth. It was Tommy’s voice—but drained of all warmth, like someone had memorized the sounds but didn’t understand the meaning behind them.
A whimper came from under the bed. My real son.
I dropped flat to the floor, my hands reaching into the darkness. I grabbed hold of his little arms, feeling the quiver in his muscles, and yanked him out. He clung to me like a lifeline, his body trembling so hard I thought his bones might rattle apart. I tore the gag from his mouth, fumbled at the ropes, barely able to see through the tears welling up in my own eyes.
“He said he’d hurt you if I screamed,” Tommy whispered, choking on sobs.
I pressed his face into my chest and held him, shielding him with my body, my eyes flicking back to the bed.
Empty.
No smirking face. No smooth imposter. Just wrinkled blankets and silence.
The door was still shut. The window still locked. No sound of footsteps. No rush of air. It was like he had never been there at all. But he had. I know he had.
Clutching Tommy with one arm, I grabbed my phone and called 911 with the other. My voice was barely coherent, shaking so badly the dispatcher had to ask me to repeat myself twice. The police arrived within ten minutes. Guns drawn, flashlights sweeping every corner, every closet, every attic and crawlspace. They found nothing. No signs of forced entry. No fingerprints. No footprints. No disturbed dust. Like the intruder had just… vanished.
But Tommy saw him. I saw him.
They took our statements. An officer knelt down in front of Tommy, trying to make him feel safe, but even she couldn’t hide the unease in her eyes as he told her what he’d seen.
“He looked like me,” Tommy said quietly. “But he wasn’t me. He knew everything I know. He knew what Daddy says when he checks for monsters.”
That was the part that stuck with me. This wasn’t random. This wasn’t a break-in gone wrong. This thing had been watching us. Studying us. Learning us.
How long had he been in our house?
We didn’t sleep that night. I sat upright in Tommy’s room, the biggest kitchen knife I could find clutched in my hand, staring at the closet door, waiting for it to creak open. Tommy curled up beside me, never letting go of my shirt.
The next morning, I bought every security system I could afford. Cameras. New locks. A motion detector. I started doing full sweeps of the house every night. Closets, crawlspace, basement. Even the attic. Every corner. Every shadow.
Tommy stopped asking me to check under his bed. Now he just looks at me and says, “Stay with me, Daddy,” his voice a whisper barely strong enough to reach me.
The months passed. No sign of him. No break-ins. No new evidence. The police labeled it an isolated incident. A bizarre fluke. They said maybe it was a drifter—someone who slipped in through an unlocked door and escaped before we noticed. But I know the truth.
This wasn’t someone looking to steal. This was someone trying to replace.
And sometimes, late at night, when the house is still and the world outside is dark and silent, I catch myself watching Tommy—studying him. Watching his eyes, the way he moves, the words he chooses. Wondering. Checking.
Because the real monsters? They don’t hide in closets. They don’t live under beds.
They walk right in through your front door.
They wear your child’s face.
They say your name.
And they wait.
"Unknown Number":
I’m Heather Kuykendall, and I live in Fircrest, Washington—a quiet little town nestled under a canopy of evergreens, the kind of place where people wave to each other at the grocery store and leave their doors unlocked. The sidewalks stay empty past 9 p.m., the most exciting thing is the annual chili cook-off, and neighbors gossip about stray raccoons like it’s breaking news. It’s safe. Or, it was.
Until the summer of 2007.
It started on a warm, breezy evening—June 25th. The kind of day where the sunlight stretches lazily across the lawn and you forget the world can be anything but peaceful. I had just finished cleaning up after dinner—Courtney, my sixteen-year-old daughter, had barely touched her plate, too busy with her phone as usual. I was drying the last of the silverware, the warm hum of the dishwasher behind me, when she came into the kitchen. Her face was pale, her eyes wide and unfocused in a way I’d never seen before.
“Mom,” she said, holding out her phone like it might bite her. “My phone’s doing weird stuff.”
I took it from her, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“It’s... sending texts. Stuff I didn’t write. And some of them—” she hesitated, swallowing—“are to numbers I don’t even know.”
I scrolled through her messages. Sure enough, there were strings of text she swore she hadn’t typed. Short, fragmented things. Some messages just said, Are you alone?, or I see you. Others were darker. Blood looks better on your sheets, Courtney.
My stomach gave a little twist, but I kept my voice light. “Probably just a glitch, honey. Restart it.”
I chalked it up to some virus, or a prank app—teenagers download all kinds of crap. But something about her eyes stuck with me. There was real fear there.
That night, after Courtney had gone to bed and the house had quieted, I stood in the bathroom brushing my teeth when my phone rang. The screen lit up with a number I didn’t recognize. Private number. I let it go to voicemail.
I shouldn’t have listened.
The voice on the message wasn’t human, not exactly. It was like someone speaking through gravel—distorted, guttural, and terrifyingly calm. “I know where you are, Heather,” it said. “I’m going to kill you.”
I stood there, toothbrush in hand, foam dripping down my chin, frozen.
It wasn’t just the words—it was the certainty behind them. Cold. Deliberate. I deleted the voicemail immediately, trying to push it out of my mind. A prank, I told myself. A sick joke. Some kid using a voice changer.
But the next morning, the calls started again.
At first, they were just hang-ups. Silence on the other end. Then, that same voice. “I’m watching you. You can’t hide.”
I blocked the number. Within hours, it came back from a different one. I changed my number. Within a day, the calls started again—same voice, new number.
Then it escalated.
Courtney came into my room one night, trembling, phone in hand. She had a voicemail too. The same warped voice, saying her name. Slowly. Like tasting it. “Courtney… I know where you sleep. I’m coming for you.”
That was when I knew we weren’t dealing with some stupid prank.
One night, around dinner, just as I was trying to act like everything was okay, both our phones rang at once. That never happened. We locked eyes, picked them up. I held mine with shaking fingers.
The voice said, “I’m standing outside your house right now.”
We flew to the living room window, yanked open the curtains.
Nothing. Just the quiet hum of suburban life. Sprinklers ticking back and forth on the lawn. A raccoon scuttling into a bush. But I felt it—eyes on us. I slammed the curtains shut.
I called the police that night.
They came, took our statements. I showed them the voicemails. One of the officers—a tall, balding man with tired eyes—said, “Ma’am, these calls are coming from your own phones.”
I stared at him. “That’s not possible. My phone was off when some of those calls came in.”
He shrugged. “Could be a spoof. Or a software bug.”
He didn’t believe us. Not really. None of them did.
The fear grew like mold. Creeping into every corner of our lives.
We weren’t alone. I found out, through hushed whispers at the supermarket and Facebook posts that vanished hours after being written, that the Prices and the McKays—families just a few blocks away—were dealing with the same thing.
We met in a dingy coffee shop off Mildred Street, all of us pale and sleep-deprived, hands wrapped around lukewarm mugs like they might protect us. We compared stories, and it was like listening to echoes. Same voice. Same threats. Same details.
The stalker knew everything.
I once got a message that said, “Nice red blouse, Heather. Looks good with those black pants.” I froze. I was wearing that exact outfit. Another time, “You’re at the food court. Eating a pretzel. You should’ve gotten the pizza.”
I left immediately, dragging Courtney with me. My eyes scanned every stranger. Could it be that old man? The teenage girl in the hoodie? Someone was watching us.
Desperate, we hired James Atkinson, a local tech guy with a reputation for “unusual problems.” He ran diagnostics on our phones, checked our laptops, and came back with words I didn’t want to hear.
“Whoever’s doing this… they’ve got root access. They can turn your phones on, even when they’re off. Use the mic. The camera. Send messages, make calls. You wouldn’t even know.”
I remember going numb. I imagined someone listening to us whisper goodnight. Watching us brush our teeth. Tracking us like prey.
The harassment grew more invasive.
“You’re washing dishes, Heather. Don’t drop that plate.”
I dropped it. It shattered across the tile.
We got burner phones. Switched carriers. Threw our electronics in a drawer and didn’t touch them for a week. It didn’t help. The calls came back. Always.
Then came the night that broke me.
Courtney was at a friend’s house. My husband was working a double shift. I was alone. It was late, and I was curled up on the couch, watching a rerun of Top Chef, trying not to feel the silence pressing in from every wall.
My phone rang.
I picked it up without thinking.
“I’m inside your house, Heather. I’m right behind you.”
I screamed, the phone slipping from my hand and clattering to the floor. I spun around, heart racing, eyes darting from shadow to shadow. Empty. But I could feel someone there. Breathing behind me.
I grabbed the kitchen knife. I searched every room—closets, the attic, under beds. Nothing. But that night, I sat on the couch with the lights on, knife in my lap, and I didn’t sleep.
We installed security cameras. Replaced windows. Got a dog. But the calls never truly stopped. They just changed. Became less frequent. Less obvious. A text here. A voicemail there.
Once, two years after it started, I got a call from a restricted number. I answered by instinct.
The voice, softer now, almost mocking, said: “I’m still here.”
I don’t know who they are. Or why they chose us. Maybe it was random. Maybe it was someone close. A neighbor. A coworker. Someone who smiled at us in the grocery store.
All I know is that the fear never leaves. Not really. It sits in the back of your mind, a shadow that never fades.
And every time the phone rings… I still feel that old dread, crawling back.
Because I know—deep down—that they haven’t stopped watching.
They never left.