Before My Tears Could Even Fall Chapter 1

Since last week, my five-year-old has set an extra dinner plate every night. When I ask who it is for, she does not look up. My big brother needs to eat. We have no son. I thought it was an imaginary friend, something common for children in single-parent homes.

Until late last night. Walking past her bedroom, I heard her talking to someone. A boy’s voice, seven or eight years old, spoke clearly from the head of her bed. Did you memorize it. First, swap Mom’s pills with the white ones. After she falls asleep, press the pillow down hard.

My daughter answered in a sweet, obedient tone. Okay, brother. I remember. My entire body went numb. I shoved the door open. The room was empty. She sat up in bed, hugging her pillow, smiling at me. Mommy, my brother says it is time for you to sleep.

I tore the room apart, checking under the bed, inside the closet, behind the curtains. No one was there. I tried to believe I had misheard. Swallowing my terror, I crouched down and coaxed her back to sleep.

At 4:00 AM, a voice whispered directly into my ear. It is okay if Mommy does not remember. I will help her remember. I will make her remember everything.

The high-pitched, childlike voice seemed to scrape right against my eardrum.

Every drop of blood in my veins instantly turned to ice.

I vaulted out of bed and slammed my hand against the bedside lamp switch.

Dim, amber light instantly flooded the bedroom.

The room was completely empty. The windows were locked tight, the heavy blackout curtains pulled shut without a single gap.

Except for the sound of my own ragged breathing, there was absolute silence.

I threw off the covers and walked barefoot across the freezing hardwood floor into the master bathroom.

I twisted the faucet, letting the icy water run over the back of my hands.

I pumped the soap dispenser three times and began scrubbing vigorously between my fingers.

I had to wash for exactly sixty seconds. That was my absolute baseline.

The rushing water sounded deafening in the dead of night.

By the third wash, the skin on the back of my hands was raw and violently red.

I stared at my own reflection in the mirror.

My eyes were heavily bloodshot, my face as pale as a corpse.

Someone was clearly using external stimuli to manipulate Laura, and they were trying to terrorize me.

There was only one person on earth who had unhindered access to this house and a pathetic enough motive to pull a stunt like this.

I snatched my phone off the vanity counter and dialed my ex-husband, David.

It rang for a long time before he finally picked up.

The background noise was a chaotic blend of thumping nightclub bass and the giggling of multiple women.

"Sarah, what the hell is wrong with you? It is the middle of the night!"

David’s voice dripped with his signature cocktail of deep annoyance and arrogant superiority.

"What kind of twisted electronic toy did you buy for Laura?" I demanded coldly, forcing my voice to remain perfectly steady.

"What toy? I barely even want to pay her child support, you think I am buying her toys?"

He let out a harsh, mocking laugh.

"Are you hitting early menopause, or has raising a kid by yourself finally given you clinical paranoia?"

"David, I am warning you. If you are using micro-speakers to play ghost games in my house, I will completely destroy your reputation."

My fingers gripped the edge of the phone so tightly my knuckles turned white.

"If you are sick, go take your meds! Stop using your half-baked psychology degree to act crazy and project it onto me!"

He raised his voice, completely losing his temper.

"You fought tooth and nail for full custody during the divorce. Now that you realize you can't handle it, you are trying to frame me to cover your own incompetence? In your dreams, psycho!"

The call abruptly ended.

I listened to the dial tone, a wave of nausea rolling through my stomach.

David was a textbook narcissist. He was too arrogant to lie about something like this. If he had actually pulled this off, he would have taken the opportunity to brag about how clever his psychological torture was.

If it wasn't him... then who the hell was it?

The moment the sun came up, I told Laura we were going to buy new crayons and drove straight to an electronics market.

I bought two of the smallest voice-activated recording bugs on the market, along with four micro-pinhole cameras disguised as everyday objects.

When we got home, I let Laura watch cartoons in the living room while I went to work.

I hid the first camera in the AC vent of her bedroom. The second went into the rim of the living room chandelier. The third was buried in the potted plant in the hallway, and the fourth was mounted above the shoe cabinet by the front door.

Finally, I taped one of the audio bugs to the absolute deepest corner under Laura’s bed, and stuck the second one under the dining table.

Once everything was armed, I forced myself to walk into the kitchen and cut some fruit.

The rhythmic crunch of the knife slicing through the apples barely kept the mounting panic in my chest at bay.

The apple on the cutting board was divided into exactly eight mathematically even slices.

At 9:00 PM, Laura brushed her teeth and got into bed.

I sat on the living room sofa with all the lights off.

My laptop sat open on the coffee table, splitting the screen into a four-way grid of live feeds.

I stared into the dark, watching her sleep, and waited.

The minutes crawled by.

Ten o'clock. Eleven o'clock. Midnight.

Suddenly, there was movement on the bedroom feed.

Laura’s blanket shifted.

She slowly sat up in bed.

The room was pitch black, so the camera was operating in infrared night vision.

She sat completely still, her head tilted slightly to the side, as if she were deeply focused on listening to something.

I leaned closer to the screen, my jaw dropping open.

After about fifteen seconds, Laura’s lips started to move.

She said something, nodded her head, and then reached her tiny hand out into the empty air, mimicking a grabbing motion.

It looked exactly like she was holding someone’s hand.

A second later, the laptop’s audio monitor picked up a faint, staticky rustle.

Following the sound of fabric scraping against fabric...

An incredibly distinct boy's voice exploded through the living room speakers.

"You are hurting me."