He knows you are Here
920 Words
Maya grabbed the notebook and ran downstairs.
The hallway was dark. The library door stood open. No light. No sound except the sea and her own breathing.
She stepped inside and hit the switch.
Empty.
The desk was clean. No pages. No photograph. The lamp she had left on was now off. Maya turned in a slow circle, notebook clenched in one hand. The dragging sound she heard earlier had left no mark on the floor.
She moved through the ground floor fast—kitchen, living room, front hall. Every room sat quiet and undisturbed. The front door was locked from the inside. The deadbolt had not been touched.
Maya climbed back upstairs, checked the west wing hallway, and stopped outside the door she knew belonged to Elias. Light showed under it.
She knocked once, hard.
Footsteps. The door opened.
Elias stood there in the same black sweater, no surprise on his face.
“You heard it,” Maya said.
“I heard you running.”
She shoved the notebook at his chest. “This was open on my desk. I left it closed. Someone wrote inside it.”
Elias took the notebook, looked at the page, and went completely still.
Three words in dark ink:
He knows you’re here.
His jaw tightened once. That was the only change.
“When did you find this?”
“Ten minutes ago. Right after I heard something heavy drag across the floor downstairs.”
Elias stepped past her into the hall, notebook still in his hand. “Stay behind me.”
He moved through the house with controlled speed, checking every room, every lock, every window. Maya followed. Nothing was out of place. No forced entry. No footprints. No open doors.
They ended in the library again. Elias turned the overhead lights on full and examined the notebook under brighter light.
“This is not my handwriting,” he said.
“I know.”
“It’s not Clara’s either.”
Maya’s stomach dropped. “Then who?”
Elias didn’t answer immediately. He closed the notebook and set it on the desk with deliberate care.
“Pack a bag,” he said. “Essentials only. You’re moving to the west wing tonight. The room next to mine.”
“What?”
“Someone is either inside this house or has access to it. Until I know which, you don’t sleep on the east side alone.”
Maya laughed once, sharp and without humor. “You think I’m going to sleep next to you after everything?”
“I think you’re going to do what keeps you breathing,” Elias said, voice flat. “The east rooms have too many external walls. West wing is more defensible. This is not a discussion.”
“The man at my apartment—”
“Is probably connected. Yes.” He looked at her directly. “I will handle it. You will not contact your sister again until I say so. You will not go outside alone. You will not leave doors unlocked. Clear?”
Maya’s hands had curled into fists. “You knew this could happen.”
“I knew it was possible. I did not know it would start this fast.”
“Start what?”
Elias’s silence lasted too long.
“Start what?” she repeated.
“The part where the past stops staying buried,” he said. “Pack the bag, Maya. Now.”
She went upstairs because the alternative was standing still and screaming. She threw clothes, charger, and the hairpin into her smaller suitcase. When she returned to the hall, Elias was waiting. He took the suitcase without asking and carried it to the room beside his.
The new bedroom was smaller, darker, with one window facing the trees instead of the sea. A connecting door stood between her room and his. He unlocked it from both sides, then left her door open.
“Connecting door stays unlocked,” he said. “If you hear anything, you come through. No hesitation.”
Maya stood in the center of the room, arms crossed. “You still haven’t told me who ‘he’ is.”
Elias paused at her doorway.
“Someone who helped Clara leave,” he said. “Someone who believed I owed him something I refused to pay. I thought he had disappeared years ago. I was wrong.”
“Name.”
“Not yet.”
“That’s not good enough.”
Elias’s eyes hardened. “Right now I need you alive more than I need you informed. Accept the difference.”
He stepped back into the hall.
“Sleep with the lamp on if you have to. I will be awake.”
The door to his room closed softly.
Maya sat on the edge of the unfamiliar bed, suitcase at her feet, notebook still open to those three words on the desk across the room where Elias had left it.
He knows you’re here.
Outside, wind moved through the trees. Inside, the house made no sound at all.
Maya lay down fully clothed, staring at the connecting door.
Sometime past two she heard quiet footsteps in the hall—slow, careful, stopping once outside her room before continuing.
She sat up fast, heart slamming.
The footsteps did not return.
But under the connecting door, a thin line of light stayed on until morning.
Elias had not slept either.
And somewhere beyond the walls of the house, the man who wrote those three words already knew exactly where she was.
- Writer
