Chapter 5: The Only Follower

Chapter 5: The Only Follower

Sal’s grumbling faded down the hallway, leaving Trevor alone in the yawning doorway. He was a statue carved from ice, his gaze locked on the small, brassy glint of the deadbolt. It was a simple mechanism, a dumb piece of metal, yet it screamed a truth more terrifying than any ghost story.

The deadbolt was thrown. From the inside.

The cold, stale air from the apartment crept around his ankles, a predator’s breath. It didn’t smell like his apartment anymore. It smelled… used. Occupied. The silence within was no longer empty; it was the coiled, patient silence of something that had been disturbed and was now waiting for him to step inside.

He took a hesitant step over the threshold, his shoe landing with a soft squelch in the puddle of spilled milk. The floorboards groaned under his weight. Every sound was magnified, every shadow a potential threat. He left the door wide open, a desperate, irrational escape route he knew he wouldn’t be able to use.

With the golf club he’d left by the couch gripped tight in his hand, he began a slow, terrified sweep of the tiny apartment. He wasn’t looking for a person. A human intruder would have made noise, would have left a mess, would have stolen his laptop. This was different. He was searching for a presence. He flicked on the light switch, and the sudden, harsh glare made him flinch.

Everything was exactly as he’d left it. His unmade bed, the pile of dishes in the sink, the unpacked boxes. But the air was thick with violation. He checked the closet, his heart hammering as he pulled the door open to reveal nothing but his few hanging shirts. He looked under the bed. Behind the shower curtain. Nothing.

And yet, something had been here. It had breathed his air. It had stood on his floor. It had reached out with an unseen hand and turned the lock, sealing him out while it claimed his space.

His eyes fell on the wall behind his desk. The ugly, silver scar of duct tape seemed to mock him. He could almost feel the smug stillness of the eye behind it. It had been in the wall, and now it had been in his room. The barrier was gone.

He stumbled back to the couch and sank into it, his mind a frantic mess of scrambled connections. Gary’s words echoed in his ears. A student, like you… heard scratching… felt eyes on him… Wallflowers.

wx11flow3r_75.

The username, once a random string of characters, now felt like a brand seared into his brain. It wasn’t a coincidence. It was a name. A title. The name of the thing that had tormented the student before him, and the thing that was now tormenting him.

His brief, hopeful conversation with Anna felt like a memory from another lifetime. The warmth of her smile, the promise of coffee—it was all tainted now. The creature had been here. It had been listening. It had heard her call him a ‘creature of the dark.’ Had it been amused? Had it felt a flicker of possessive jealousy? The thought made his stomach churn. The one glimmer of a normal life had been observed, and likely corrupted, by the very entity he was trying to escape.

A surge of desperate, furious energy shot through him. He was tired of cowering. He was tired of being the victim in the dark. The physical world was compromised, his own home a cage he shared with a monster. But there was another space. A digital one. The place where this had all begun.

He scrambled to his feet and marched to his desk, a grim resolve settling over him. He felt a twisted sense of control clicking the power button on his PC, the familiar whir of the fans a prelude to a digital confrontation. If this thing had a name, if it had a profile, then it had a digital footprint. It had an origin.

He didn't launch a game. He didn't even open his browser. He went straight to the streaming software, his movements sharp and jerky. The chat history from his last, aborted stream was still there. The plea.

wx11flow3r_75: Please don’t go.

His finger hovered over the username, a hyperlink to a profile page. His heart hammered against his ribs. He was about to knock on the monster’s door. He was terrified of what he might find, but the terror of not knowing was somehow worse. He clicked.

A new window opened. The profile page was a barren wasteland of default settings. No avatar, just a grey, anonymous silhouette. No banner image. No bio. It was a ghost account, designed to watch without being seen. His stomach sank. There was nothing here.

But then his eyes caught it. At the top of the page, a series of tabs: ‘About’, ‘Schedule’, ‘Videos’, and ‘Following’.

He clicked on ‘Following’. His breath hitched in his throat as the page loaded, the small spinning icon a vortex of dread. He expected to see a long list of streamers, thousands of them perhaps. He expected to be just one name among many, a random target for a bored, creepy troll.

The page finished loading. There was no list.

There was only one name. One icon. One channel.

T-Rev_Streams.

His own face, a grainy profile picture from two years ago, stared back at him. A wave of vertigo washed over him, so intense he had to grip the sides of his desk to keep from falling. It wasn't just watching him. He was the only one it was watching. This entire account, this entire digital persona, existed for the sole purpose of observing him. The obsession was absolute. This was not a random encounter. This was targeted.

A cold, methodical dread pushed him onward. There had to be more. He clicked back to the ‘About’ page, his eyes scanning the blank space for any scrap of information, any clue at all. And then he saw it, tucked away at the bottom in a small, light grey font, a detail he had overlooked in his initial sweep. A simple line of text.

Account Created: June 14.

The date meant nothing to him for a moment. It was just a date. He scrambled for his phone, his fingers fumbling with the screen lock. He opened his calendar, his thumb swiping frantically back through the weeks.

June 14.

The sick, sweet smell of cheap coffee from the U-Haul truck. The strain in his back from carrying a box of books up three flights of stairs. The echoing silence of his empty apartment as he plugged in his computer for the first time.

It was the day he moved in.

The truth crashed down on him with the force of a physical blow, knocking the air from his lungs. This thing, this entity, this Wallflower, hadn't found his stream by chance. It hadn't been drawn in by his game or his commentary.

It had been waiting for him.

The account was created the very day his key first slid into the lock of apartment 3B. It had known he was coming. His loneliness, his desperation to fill the silence, his decision to start streaming—none of it was the cause. It was all just the inevitable unfolding of a trap that had been set the moment he arrived. He wasn't just being haunted. He had been chosen.