Lindsey's Devil

"Lindsey began to talk to Heather. She told Heather how smart she was for watching her all this time and picking up her habits. During school they would have to pretend that they did not talk. After school sometimes they would meet in the woods so they could talk. Lindsey and Heather began to play this game called Profile. They would pick people out of the yearbook and watch their habits. They’d watch everything—the classes they took, when they got to school, when they left, who their friends were, how they dressed, the routes they took to class, what they ate for lunch, how they groomed themselves, and basically everything there was to notice about them. ...I asked Heather where Lindsay is ‘cause we could sure use her help right now. Heather said that Lindsey just stopped going to school one day and was never seen again. Nobody even noticed she was gone. To them, she had been gone a long time ago." ~Sarah's Diary, October 15, 1993

I haven't thought about Lindsey in a long time. I knew her better than Sarah realized. I went to meet Lindsey in the woods one day after school, like we did all the time, but she never showed up. Lindsey had told me about this guy who called himself Devil. She said she saw him show up in town one day and he looked at her with the oddest expression; she said it was like two ghosts recognizing each other. Lindsey always saw more than she let on and she could disappear in plain sight; she had a talent to make herself invisible. She followed Devil and watched him, playing the same Profile game we played together at school. The day she didn't meet me in the woods was the day she was going to tell me what happened when he talked to her. All she told me was that she wasn't supposed to see him, that he moved with the shadows and that he told her if she didn't go back to being a little girl, he would make her grow up really fast. Lindsey was scared, I could tell. She wouldn't tell me over the phone what she'd seen -- that's why we were meeting. She was going to tell me what this Devil guy had been doing, where he'd gone and who he'd been with; she said I'd never believe it, but she had to tell me. She said if anything ever happened to her, I needed to know. She never showed up. I always wondered if she actually had been there, watching me. I still wonder if she's watching me and if she knows what happened to Sarah.