Chapter 15
“Tonight’s knocking at the window?” I said. “That wasn’t Madison climbing the building. I asked a girl on the floor above us to help lower a weighted mannequin outside the glass and tap it against the window. The shadow did the rest.”
“The blood was fake. The attacks were staged. The goal was simple.”
I looked straight at Reilly.
“To corner you.”
“And when I saw you pull out that pendant, I got exactly what I needed.”
Reilly’s face had turned paper white.
Then, slowly, she laughed once. A tiny, broken sound.
“Yeah,” she said. “Fine. You know now.”
She swallowed, then spoke in a voice so calm it was almost worse.
“My mom is a hypnotherapist. She taught me some things when I was young. More than she should have. Enough to plant suggestions. Enough to influence dreams. Enough to guide simple actions in someone already vulnerable to sleepwalking.”
She looked at Madison.
“When I realized how vulnerable you were, I tested it a few times. And it worked. I could influence what you dreamed about. I could get you to do simple things in your sleep. Stand up. Move to the window. Climb out and climb back. Not something complex. Not enough to make you kill.”
Her voice cracked.
“So I did the rest myself.”
Madison made a strangled, horrified sound.
Reilly still did not look at her.
“After Kayla betrayed me, I wanted her to pay. I wanted him to pay too. I couldn’t stand seeing them together after everything she said to me, after everything she made me believe. So I killed them. And every time, I made Madison go out onto the ledge in her sleep long enough for the camera to catch enough to look damning. I thought eventually she’d confess, or fall apart under the guilt, or maybe do something drastic and save me the trouble of ever being questioned.”
The room fell into stunned silence.
Madison was sobbing now. “Why? Why would you use me like that?”
“Because I didn’t have a choice!” Reilly screamed, finally breaking. “She chose him. She lied to me. She made me feel insane. I needed someone to pay.”
“If you wanted someone to pay,” I said coldly, “then you should have paid for your own actions. Not pinned them on someone else.”
That was when her rage seemed to burn itself out.
For the first time since any of this began, Reilly looked small.
We called the police.
This time, no one stopped me.
They came fast, and Reilly did not resist when they took her away.
By the time the dorm hallway finally fell quiet again, dawn was beginning to break.
Madison sat on the edge of my bed wrapped in a blanket, staring at nothing. Jessica cried softly beside her.
And I stood there in the pale morning light, exhausted beyond words, thinking about how close we had all come to believing in the wrong monster.
That was the worst part.
Not the blood. Not the fear. Not even the shadow outside the window.
It was how easily someone could turn friendship into evidence, fear into guilt, and a girl’s illness into the perfect cover for revenge.
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