The night after I found the message with my name on it, something in me changed permanently.
It wasn't just fear anymore — it was awareness.
A sharp, electrifying awareness that I was being seen, moment by moment, breath by breath.
My house used to be a place where I could collapse into my bed and let the world fade away. But now… every wall felt thin. Every window felt like an exposed wound. Every small sound felt like fingers tapping lightly at my sense of safety.
That night, after dinner, I locked my bedroom door. My parents didn't notice — they were absorbed in their usual rhythm: my mother cooking, my father scrolling through his phone, the television mumbling in the background. Life continued for them like nothing was wrong.
For me, everything had changed.
I sat on my bed with my knees pulled up to my chest, trying to breathe evenly. The lights were off, except for the faint glow of the street lamp outside. The shadows on my walls flickered softly.
I kept replaying the message in my mind:
I know your name. Jenny.
How?
Why?
And the part that made my skin crawl the most:
Why now?
I turned my head toward the window. It was closed, the curtains half-drawn, letting in only a thin strip of golden light. I tried not to look at it, but my eyes were drawn to it like a magnet.
That window had always been ordinary. Something I barely noticed. But tonight it felt like the thinnest barrier between me and something hungry. Something waiting.
I tried to sleep.
I truly did.
But the moment I closed my eyes, a soft tapping came from the window.
Not loud.
Not violent.
Just gentle, as though someone were trying to get my attention.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
I froze. My breath caught in my throat. I didn't move at all — even blinking felt too risky.
The tapping continued. Slow. Patient.
"Maybe it's a branch," I whispered to myself.
Even though there was no tree near my window.
Tap.
Tap.
TAP.
The last one was sharper. More deliberate.
I squeezed my eyes shut and clutched my pillow, my heart banging against my ribs like it wanted out. For a moment — a long, soul-stretched moment — everything went silent again. All I could hear was my own shaky breathing.
Then I heard it.
A whisper.
Right outside my window.
Right on the other side of the glass.
"Jenny…"
It was soft.
Soft enough that a normal person would think it was the wind or imagination.
But I knew my name when I heard it.
And this voice — low, breathy, almost loving — was not from my imagination.
My eyes shot open.
The curtains fluttered gently even though the window was fully closed. I could see the faint outline of something — someone — standing behind the curtain. A shape. A presence.
I didn't move.
Not even to scream.
And then… slowly… the curtain pressed inward, as though a hand were brushing it from the outside.
My stomach knotted with terror.
But then something happened that terrified me more than anything else:
I wasn't shocked.
I wasn't screaming.
I wasn't running.
Instead, I felt a strange numbness creep over me — like part of my mind whispered:
Of course he's there. He has always been there.
I don't know how long I sat like that — staring, trembling, listening — but eventually the shadow shifted away from the window. I heard nothing. No footsteps. No whisper. No fading presence.
Just nothing.
When I woke up the next morning, I wasn't sure if I had ever fallen asleep. My body felt heavy and disconnected, as though I had been awake for years. My parents stared at me with mild confusion as I walked into the kitchen, my hair a tangled mess, my eyes swollen and red.
"Rough night?" my father asked casually.
I couldn't answer.
What was I supposed to say?
That someone whispered my name through the glass?
That someone touched the curtain without touching it?
That someone had stared at me through the window while I lay frozen?
I grabbed my backpack and left for school without saying a single word.
I thought the worst of it had passed.
I was wrong.
Because the window was only the beginning.
At school, I felt his presence again. Not physically — but I could feel it. That prickling sensation on the back of my neck, the slight dizziness when someone stares at you for too long. I kept looking over my shoulder in class. Each time, I found nothing.
But that feeling…
That unwelcome, lingering awareness…
It stayed.
During lunch, while my classmates were chatting and laughing, I noticed something that turned my blood to ice.
From across the courtyard — standing behind the chain-link fence outside the school — I saw him.
A tall shadow.
Not a clear figure, not a face…
Just the shape of a man standing perfectly still.
He didn't move.
Didn't shift.
Didn't even seem to breathe.
He just stood there.
Facing me.
I blinked repeatedly, trying to convince myself that I was imagining it. But each time my eyes opened, he was still there. Watching. Waiting.
When the school bell rang, I turned for one last look —
He was gone.
That evening, back home, I tried to distract myself with homework. I sat at my desk, my back facing the window, afraid to look behind me. Every so often, I felt the urge to peek, but something inside me whispered:
Don't.
If you look, he'll know you're watching him too.
I finished studying, pushed my chair back, and forced myself to breathe steadily. My room was too quiet. The air felt heavier here than anywhere else. It was then that I noticed something wrong.
The curtain had been pulled aside.
Not wide — just a few inches. Enough for someone to look in.
I hadn't touched it.
I knew I hadn't.
And no one else had been in my room.
My throat tightened.
I approached the window with slow, hesitant steps. The sky outside was dark, painted with thick clouds. The streetlights flickered. The world outside looked emptier than usual — like all sound had drained out of it.
I grasped the curtain and yanked it shut.
The moment I did, a faint reflection appeared in the glass — just for a split second.
A pair of eyes.
Wide.
Dark.
Unmistakably staring back at me.
I stumbled backward, tripping over my own feet, falling onto the floor. My breath came out in broken gasps. I waited for another sound — tapping, whispering, anything — but the room remained silent.
I crawled toward my bed and sat there for a long time, hugging my knees to my chest. My heart wouldn't stop trembling.
Minutes later — or maybe hours — there came a soft scrape at my window.
A fingertip.
Tracing the glass from the outside.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Up and down.
Up and down.
I covered my ears but I still heard it.
I could feel it.
The finger kept moving, dragging along the glass like it was drawing something.
A shape.
I forced myself to look.
And when I did, I saw the condensation on the window — forming lines, curves, strokes.
Drawing a heart.
A heart with my name inside it.
JENNY
I choked on my own breath.
He wasn't just watching.
He was claiming.
I didn't sleep at all that night. Every sound felt amplified, every flicker of light a threat. My mind kept spinning, trying to piece together the impossible. Was he a person? A shadow? A hallucination? Something else?
By morning, exhaustion had woven itself into my bones. My mother knocked on my door and said breakfast was ready. Her voice sounded distant, muffled by the fog in my mind.
When I finally dared to check the window again, the heart drawing was gone. Like it had never been there. The glass was clean. Ordinary. Innocent.
But I knew better.
I knew it wasn't just imagination.
Because on my desk, carefully placed where I couldn't miss it, was another note.
A new one.
Written neatly.
Precisely.
Almost lovingly.
"You looked beautiful last night."
I staggered backward, my heart pounding so violently I wondered if it would burst.
He had been close.
Close enough to see me clearly through the window.
Close enough to watch me recoil in terror.
Close enough to study me.
I felt like I was living in a glass box — exposed on all sides, fragile, vulnerable, breakable.
I ran downstairs, clutching the note in my shaking hands.
"Mom," I said breathlessly. "Someone was outside my window last night."
She looked up at me, concerned but not alarmed.
"What do you mean? A neighbor?"
"No — someone was WATCHING me!"
My father glanced over the top of his newspaper, eyebrows raised.
"Jenny, maybe it was a dream. You haven't been sleeping well."
"It wasn't a dream!" I insisted, my voice cracking.
But they exchanged that look — the one parents give each other when they think their child is being dramatic.
"Maybe," my mother said gently, "you should take a break from horror movies."
"I haven't watched any!" I shouted.
They didn't believe me.
Of course they didn't.
And that was when I realized something that broke my heart more than anything else:
I was completely alone in this.
The world continued as normal for everyone else — but mine had darkened. Mine had cracked. Mine had become a place where shadows had eyes and windows breathed whispers.
The sun was setting by the time I returned to my room again, hoping desperately that nothing would happen tonight.
But deep down, I knew the truth.
This wasn't just a stalker.
This was the beginning.
Because he wasn't just outside the window anymore.
He was getting closer.
And soon…
He would come inside.