First timer

Previously

…Mr. Abernathy’s denial had only strengthened my resolve. He wanted me to believe it was all in my head. But I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that it was not. The presence in this house was real, and I was its intended victim. And if I was to survive, I had to understand it. I had to learn its weakness, its origin, before it consumed me entirely. The outside world, represented by Mr. Abernathy, had offered no solace, no answers. The answers, it seemed, were still locked within these walls, within the frantic scribblings of a woman who had walked this path before me. And the night was drawing in, the house beginning to stir with its familiar, unsettling life.