Page 11 of He Sees You

The ones I've removed from the world. Before and after shots, you might say.

Monica Reeves at the grocery store, laughing with the checkout girl like she wasn't selling her daughter's innocence.

Davie Phillips outside the elementary school, watching the playground with the wrong kind of interest.

Quinn Murphy leaving the bar, not knowing it would be his last drink before I showed him what happened to men who broke their wives' ribs.

Patricia Morse in her office at Child Services, taking bribes to look the other way.

The deer skulls mark their graves, though the police haven't made that connection yet.

They think the skulls are random, some signature of insanity.

They don't understand the symbolism—deer are prey animals, but they're also survivors.

They adapt. They watch. They know when they're being hunted, and sometimes, they choose their moment to fight back.

Just like Celeste is going to choose.

The room goes deeper.

Behind the photos of the dead, there's another door.

This one requires a key I keep on me always, worn against my chest like a talisman.

Inside is my real sanctuary.

My shrine, Juliette would call it if she knew.

Though shrine implies worship, and what I feel for Celeste Sterling transcends anything as simple as worship.

Her books are here, but not just the published versions.

I have the proof copies with her handwritten notes in the margins.

The manuscript she submitted at twenty-three that got rejected for being "too dark for mainstream markets."

The short stories she published under a pseudonym in college, thinking no one would connect them to her.

The journal entries she posted on a defunct blog in 2015 before she got famous, when she was still raw and honest about the darkness that lived inside her.

One entry, dated October 31st, 2015, reads:

Sometimes I think I was born with a monster inside me.

Not the kind that hurts people, but the kind that's attracted to hurt.

That sees beauty in blood and poetry in violence.

Is there something wrong with me for wanting to crawl inside the darkness and make a home there?

No, Celeste.

There's nothing wrong with you.

You were just waiting for someone who could show you that darkness isn't something to crawl into—it's something that crawls into you.

My phone vibrates.