Chapter 4: The Follower

Chapter 4: The Follower

The four walls of Alex’s dorm room were closing in. The air was thick with the scent of stale coffee and paranoia. Every time he looked up from his screen, his gaze snagged on the grotesque flipbook lying on his desk, a cancerous inkblot on his reality. The teddy bear, Barnaby, sat on his bookshelf now, turned to face the wall. He couldn't bring himself to throw it away—what if that made things worse?—but he couldn't stand the sight of its single, accusatory eye.

He felt like a specimen under a microscope. The false memories of a childhood with Chris kept trying to surface, slick and invasive, and he had to actively fight them back, clinging to the true, painful memories of Leo like a drowning man clutching a stone. He needed to get out. He needed air that wasn't recycled, light that wasn't fluorescent, and the sight of other human beings living normal lives. He needed proof that the world outside his door was still sane.

He grabbed his keys and bolted, not looking back.

The campus was a picture of idyllic college life. Students sprawled on the great lawn, tossing frisbees and laughing under the autumn sun. The vibrant normalcy was a balm, and for a few precious minutes, Alex let himself believe. He walked aimlessly, letting the anonymous murmur of the crowd wash over him, trying to scrub the silence of his room from his mind. He bought a coffee from a campus cart, the simple transaction—the exchange of money, the brief, polite smile from the barista—feeling like a ritual to ward off evil.

He found an empty bench near the university library, a spot where he could watch the world go by. As he took a sip of the scalding coffee, his eyes scanned the flow of students. A flash of something out of place caught his attention. Across the quad, partially obscured by an old oak tree, stood a woman.

She was skeletally thin, her posture unnaturally rigid. Her hair was lank and stringy, hanging in greasy curtains around a gaunt, hollow-cheeked face. Even from this distance, he could see her eyes—dark, cavernous pits that seemed to swallow the light. But it was her mouth that made the breath catch in his throat. It was stretched into a smile so wide and fixed it looked like a wound carved into her face. It was a smile of pure, agonizing horror, devoid of humor or warmth, displaying gums that looked pale and empty.

Alex’s skin prickled. He looked away, telling himself she was just some local eccentric. This was a large campus; there were all kinds of people. He focused on his coffee, on the warmth of the cup in his hands. When he looked up again a minute later, she was gone.

A wave of relief washed over him. See? Nothing. Just his overactive imagination painting monsters onto strangers. He decided to head into the library, to lose himself in the quiet, ordered sanctity of the stacks.

He found an empty carrel on the third floor, a small wooden cubicle overlooking the main lawn. He opened his laptop, determined to force himself to work, to bury his fear under a mountain of code. He studiously avoided opening any new browser tabs, keeping only his programming environment open. As the minutes ticked by, he felt a semblance of control returning.

Then he saw her again.

Through the large window of the library, he could see the bench he had just vacated. The woman was sitting on it now, ramrod straight, staring directly up at the library. Directly up at his window. Her horrifying smile was a white slash against the grey pallor of her skin. She hadn't been gone. She had just moved. She was following him.

His heart began to hammer against his chest. This wasn't a coincidence.

A small notification box slid into view in the top-right corner of his laptop screen. It wasn't an email or a system update. The icon was a crude, stick-figure drawing of a den. The source was TheDen.███. He hadn't visited the site, hadn't even opened a browser, but it was pushing a message directly to his desktop.

A new follower has joined your session.

Alex slammed the laptop shut. The click echoed in the silent library. He was being hunted, and the hunter was being announced by the very entity that had started it all. The physical and the digital were working in concert. He shoved the laptop into his backpack, his hands shaking so violently he could barely zip it closed. He had to get away. He had to talk to someone real. Someone safe.

Not Chris. His mind recoiled from the thought. How could he trust Chris when the entity was actively trying to rewrite their entire history? He needed an anchor, an undeniable, unchangeable pillar of his past.

Sarah.

His older sister. She was ten years older, married, with a five-year-old daughter. She lived in a quiet suburb an hour away, a universe removed from this campus nightmare. She was his emergency contact, his reality check. She remembered Leo. She remembered Barnaby. She would know.

He stumbled out of the library, fumbling for his phone. He found a secluded spot behind the humanities building, his back pressed against the cold brick wall. He scrolled to her contact and hit call, praying she would pick up.

“Hello?” Her voice was a wave of pure, unadulterated normalcy. He could hear his niece, Maya, chattering in the background.

“Sarah? It’s Alex.” He tried to keep his voice steady, but it came out as a ragged croak.

“Alex! Hey, you. Is everything okay? You sound awful.”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine. Just… swamped with classes. Haven’t been sleeping well.” The lie tasted like ash in his mouth. “I just… I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” she said, her tone softening. “Everything’s good here. Maya just learned how to spell ‘dinosaur,’ so our entire house is now covered in sticky notes that say D-Y-N-O-S-A-R.”

Alex laughed, a brittle, fragile sound. This was real. This was his sister. This was the world he was fighting for. “That’s great, Sar. Tell her I’m proud of her.”

“I will. Are you sure you’re okay, Al? You sound really spooked.”

“I’m sure. Just… stress.” He had to be sure. He had to test it. “Hey, Sar, weird question. Do you remember that old teddy bear Leo had? The one with the missing eye?”

There was a brief pause on the other end. “Barnaby? Of course. Mom buried it with him, remember? You were so upset. Why?”

The confirmation was a gut punch of relief and terror. She remembered. The real memory. He wasn't completely lost. “No reason. Just something I was thinking about.”

“Okay, weirdo.” She chuckled, but the sound was suddenly flecked with static. “Well, I’ve go- ksshhht - get dinner started. Maya’s demanding- zzzzzt-saurus shaped nuggets.”

“Sarah? You’re breaking up,” Alex said, his newfound relief instantly evaporating.

“Wha- krrrk - an’t hear you ve- ssshhhk - well.” Her voice was degrading rapidly, the words stretching and compressing like a warped cassette tape. It wasn't the clean digital breakup of a bad cell signal; it was an analog decay, a sound full of hiss and distortion.

“Sarah!” he yelled into the phone, his voice tight with panic.

The line fell silent for a moment, filled only with a low, humming static. Then, a voice spoke. It was a layered, mangled sound, the barest recognizable trace of his sister’s voice buried under a guttural, clicking rasp. It spoke a short, sharp phrase—a language of knives and gravel, of corrupted data and dead tongues.

“…זֶה לא בשבילך…”

It was the language from the website's source code. It was the distorted whisper from the bear.

The line went dead.

Alex stood frozen, the phone still pressed to his ear, listening to the dial tone. He slowly lowered it, his hand trembling uncontrollably. The sun was setting, casting long, menacing shadows across the campus. In the distance, standing at the edge of the quad, he saw the gaunt woman. She was still smiling, a fixed, black gash in the fading light. And for the first time, he thought he saw her nod, a slow, deliberate gesture of acknowledgment.

The entity wasn't just following him anymore. It had his sister.