ONCE SECRET, TWICE TOLD
[A New Story From the Author of HELLO, MY NAME IS: DEATH Series - BuffyFaithfan1]
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Chapter Three: A House is Not a Home
ONE WEEK LATER…
    Jessika had packed everything she would need, miscellaneous wise anyways. She wouldn’t pack her clothes until a day or two before they left because what if she needed to wear something she packed away? Then she would have to dig through everything just to find it. Jessika zipped the last bag and put it by the other one by the door. So far she only had two bags. For her clothes she would use the Space Bag that her parents got her from the TV infomercial and make them as small as she could and pack them in this giant suitcase she got from her Grandma Edna two springs ago and put the two bags into the suitcase so she only had to carry the suitcase itself.
    Her mom was already gone and her dad was all business man-like and she didn’t really like it. But then again, her parents were always businessy. Jessika had texted a few of her friends and wondered if anyone would like to go, even posted a post on Facebook, but she didn’t get a comment on it or any text messages back saying they would go. If she did, it was to tell her no they can’t or no they don’t want to go. Finding this out, she had sighed.
‘All alone.’ She thought. ‘Heading back to the horrors all…alone.’
Laying down watching the rest of “RINGER”, her cell phone bleeped. She
opened the text message. It was from someone called NEVERfearIMhere from Facebook. She opened the text message, confused.

Well, well. Returning to a place where darkness stirred? Be careful. You never know when the darkness will come back to haunt you. – N.F.I.H.

    Jessika stared at the screen confused and realized that she had accepted a friend request with this exact name a week ago today when she put the post online. She always accepted, even if it were role-players pretending to be book/movie/TV characters. Sometimes, even dead people. She always expected them because she didn’t want to look mean. She wasn’t that type of girl. She knew she would probably never meet this person or talk to them so she just accepted to make her friend count happy and the requester happy.
    But this…how did they get her number? She read the message again realizing she never posted her number on Facebook like some people did. She didn’t want this exact thing to happen. She read it a few more times and realized two things.
1.)    N.F.I.H. was talking about her horror-filled night in the attic three years ago
2.)    N.F.I.H. was doing what she had just finished reading about a month ago.
A month ago, Jessika had finished Sara Shepards “Pretty Little Liars” novels
where four pretty girls got text message kind of like this. But why would someone who didn’t even know Jessika want to pull an A? She didn’t know them, afterall.
    Or did she?
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ONE WEEK LATER…
    A week had gone by since Jessika received that text message. She went to her Facebook profile and looked up NEVERfearIMhere’s profile and couldn’t figure out who it was. All it had were pictures of TV show promotional posters, cast photos, and other randomness. Out of all the 155 photos, there was no sign of telling who NEVERfearIMhere was. So, seeing how Jessika never got any more messages from him/her/it/whatever, she plopped down at her desk and looked at the blank screen. She had opened a new Microsoft Word document but couldn’t pull herself to the present to create anything new or write anything random just to fill time.
    And just as she started thinking of something to create on the blank document, her cell phone dinged. She clicked the SLEEP button again to wake her BlackBerry Torch 4G up and found that it was still opened to the message from NFIH.

Well, well. Returning to a place where darkness stirred? Be careful. You never know when the darkness will come back to haunt you. – N.F.I.H.

    Jessika then put the phone aside, ignoring the new text message she had just received, and minimized the document to reveal her desktop. She double clicked on a file that read “My Pixx!” and began to surf through them for a certain picture. Once she found it, she opened it up to see a house that was made of bricks on the outside. It had a small chimney duct that ran at the south side of the house and had windows all over. A big glass sliding door stood on the patio and swing hung from the over-hang roof. There Jessika sat, on the swing, while her cousins sat at the picnic table in front of Jessika.
    Jessika sighed.
    “This house is never going to be my home.” Jessika said to herself out loud and heard her phone ding again. This time, Jessika opened up the newest message before the first one she ignored.

    Don’t ignore me. You’ll be sorry. – N.F.I.H.

    Jessika scrolled down to the previous message she ignored and read:

    Your new home will be full of good memories and good times, from the past and the ones yet to come. Try not to get too attached. – N.F.I.H.

    Jessika gasped and looked back up at the picture on her computer. Far off in the right hand corner, for the first time ever, she saw a shadow. The shadow didn’t belong to anyone in the picture, not even from the trees, plants, or anything else behind the camera’s view.
The shadow took the shape of a man.