or laughed at. Others knew that no one would believe them and didn’t bother to voice their theories.
When Dave looks back on those dark days, he remembers two inexplicable events, so peculiar that he wasn’t sure what to make of them. He had shrugged them off at the time, and it’s only in retrospect that he realizes that he should have been paying closer attention. The first occurred in the springtime, though he can’t remember exactly when. “It was still cold out. I was coming home from the bar. It was rather late—I would guess about 11:00 or midnight.” On foot because he’d been drinking, he was walking across the dimly lit lot toward his unit when something caught his attention. “I heard rustling.” He peered into the shadows and witnessed a startling sight. “I saw Liz crawling!” Confused, he watched her “army crawling” with “butt down,” in the same fashion that he’d been trained to do when he was in the National Guard. She crept between a car and the building, and she seemed to be hiding. “I was fairly inebriated. I hollered at her a couple of times. She didn’t come out, and she didn’t answer me.” He couldn’t figure out what kind of weird game she was playing. Annoyed and too cold to pursue it, he went inside and shut the door. “Then my phone started blowing up. It was Liz. She was calling and texting me. She said, ‘I’m sorry! I’m drunk! I was over across the street at the bar with my friends. I don’t know what I’m doing.’” Too drunk to realize she had been crawling like a crab across dirty pavement on a freezing night, she had managed to sober up at a record pace and leave Dave a coherent message.
The second event also involved a figure in the shadows. Dave didn’t see it, but his daughter did when his kids were staying with him. One night when Calista had stayed up very late, she was certain she had a ghost sighting. “She saw someone creeping down the hallway, and she threw her shoe at it and shouted, ‘Go away, ghost!’ She was about twelve at the time.” The preteen was fascinated with the paranormal, and she assumed that the phantom-like being that had retreated into the darkness was a restless spirit. Did she manage to hit it with her shoe? She didn’t know. She was too spooked to investigate.
Dave had dismissed Calista’s story at the time. He didn’t believe in ghosts, and he figured it was a simple case of a tired kid with an active imagination. But he now realizes that there very well could have been someone sneaking into his apartment, someone who knew he was a deep sleeper but did not realize his daughter was awake. He wishes that he had taken her “ghost sighting,” more seriously. Maybe he could have set a trap and caught “the phantom” in action.
Dave was so exhausted by the never-ending deluge of hate that his thinking was uncharacteristically jumbled. If he could have gotten a break from the stalking and been able to live free of the anxiety that comes with knowing that someone with ill intent is constantly watching, he might have been able to see the situation with more clarity. If only he had had a week or two to clear his mind, he might have suspected the truth. But Dave’s tormentor relentlessly tortured him and never allowed him a moment of peace. Thousands of texts and emails continued to inundate him that July 2013, including one at 6:40 A.M. on the third day of the month, targeting Sally: I will ruin your loser life everyday if you do not break up with your ugly whore . . . I have a key to the building. I will just go in then. I will figure out how to get inside, kill the whore in your apartment, get you arrested.
On July 5, in a 10:30 P.M. email, the bully warned: I am going to fuck the whore up when she comes out. A few hours later, Dave received an email focused on Liz. It arrived with an attached photo of Liz’s Honda Civic: Found the slutty whore who took everything from me. I hate her so much . . .
Shortly after, another email popped up, this time with complaints about Amy who had had a heated email exchange with someone claiming to be Cari: I am going to the cops for harassment