Idaho 4 Killings. Through the Eyes of a Survivor.

0:00 [Music]

0:04 I woke to a sound that didn't belong.

0:07 The heater was doing its soft, steady

0:10 hum, the way it always did at night when

0:13 the temperature fell into the 30s. The

0:16 old house settled now and then, little

0:19 dry creeks slipping through the walls

0:21 like the house shifting its weight. I

0:24 knew those. I knew the soft tap of

0:27 plumbing, the thin were under the

0:30 fridge, the way wind nudged the siding

0:33 when it changed direction.

0:36 This wasn't any of that.

0:40 I lay still, listening.

0:42 The dark was complete. No street lights

0:45 sneaking around the edges of the blinds.

0:48 No phone glow.

0:50 For a few breaths, I let my mind supply

0:53 easy answers.

0:55 Kayle's dog, Murphy, scratching a paw.

0:59 Someone getting water. The dryer

1:01 tumbling the last of somebody's laundry

1:03 in the basement.

1:06 It was late and her house was a living

1:08 thing. It made noises. It breathed.

1:13 I closed my eyes again, thought about

1:16 the day that would come after sleep. The

1:19 usual small things. Coffee. Maybe a plan

1:23 with friends.

1:25 Classes coming, assignments waiting,

1:28 normal anchors I could tug on to bring

1:30 myself back down.

13:5 Then the sound came again,

1:39 sharper this time, pulling me upright

1:42 inside my own head. A voice, a girl's

1:47 voice,

1:48 familiar and muffled through wood and

1:51 space, but clear enough to cut through

1:54 whatever dream I'd been in.

1:58 There's someone here.

2:01 I didn't move. The words didn't make

2:04 sense at first. They hovered like fog.

2:07 And for a heartbeat, I pretended they

2:10 were part of a TV in another room. a

2:13 clip on a phone, something from outside

2:16 drifting in. But the room stayed dark,

2:20 silent.

2:21 My eyes had adjusted enough to make out

2:24 the suggestion of my dresser, the edge

2:27 of my desk, the soft shape of clothes

2:30 over a chair.

2:32 My heart started tapping harder, a small

2:36 drum just under my collar bone. I sat up

2:39 slow. The carpet was colder than I

2:43 expected when my feet found it. I put my

2:46 hand on the doororknob and waited. Ear

2:49 pressed to the wood. House noises.

2:53 Nothing.

2:55 Then something that wasn't nothing.

3:00 Fud.

3:03 Not loud.

3:05 Not falling book loud or tripping over a

3:09 shoe loud.

3:11 A contained sound,

3:13 a wrong sounding wait where there

3:16 shouldn't be wait.

3:19 I told myself I was overreacting.

3:22 Told myself I'd open the door and see

3:24 the long empty stretch of hallway and

3:27 feel foolish for waking up over nothing.

3:30 I turned the knob and made the gap the

3:34 smallest possible line of darkness.

3:39 The hallway lay there like a tunnel.

3:42 Carpet flattened by a thousand student

3:45 steps. Door shut, the end swallowed by

3:48 the house's own shadow. No movement, no

3:53 light, just the still picture of a

3:56 sleeping place.

3:59 I listened until my ears achd from the

4:02 effort.

4:07 I closed the door again and stood there

4:10 with my hand on it, counting breaths in

4:13 silence.

4:16 That's when I heard it. The thin, broken

4:20 sound that can turn your body cold in a

4:23 single second.

4:25 Crying,

4:27 muffled,

4:29 close from Zana's room.

4:34 I didn't realize I was holding my breath

4:36 until my lungs made me take a small

4:39 shaky one. Then another sound threaded

44:3 through the first.

4:45 A man's voice, low, controlled, carrying

4:50 the kind of softness that doesn't

4:52 comfort.

4:53 Words coming slow, deliberate, almost

4:57 tender in a way that made every part of

4:59 me recoil.

5:02 It's okay. I'm going to help you.

5:07 The room seemed to shrink around me.

5:11 The heater's hum moved farther away. My

5:14 hands went cold as if someone had

5:16 touched them with ice. I reached for my

5:19 phone with both hands to stop the

5:21 trembling.

5:23 The screen lit up too bright and turned

5:26 the room into a box.

5:28 My reflection ghosted there for a

5:31 second, hair tangled, eyes wide.

5:35 I opened messages to Bethany upstairs,

5:39 lower level. Our phones were how we

5:41 bridged floors, how we said the little

5:44 things without leaving our rooms.

5:47 I typed the first thing my brain could

5:50 form.

5:51 What's going on?

5:54 I stared at the screen like it could

5:57 pull an answer out of the air. No three

6:00 dots, no reply.

6:03 I looked back at the door, at the strip

6:06 of wood and the thin space beneath it,

6:09 the place where sound had just slipped

6:11 in. I typed again, faster, the letters

6:16 jumping because my hands weren't steady.

6:19 No one is answering.

6:22 I'm really confused, RN.

6:25 The minutes stretched in an elastic way

6:28 that made me doubt the clock.

6:31 It could have been 60 seconds. It could

6:33 have been 5 minutes.

6:38 The house breathed its old bones breath.

6:41 Somewhere wood ticked like cooling

6:44 metal.

6:45 Her reply lit the phone. short, clipped,

6:49 familiar, and not enough.

6:52 Yeah, dude. What TF? Zana was wearing

6:56 all black. I looked at the words until

6:59 they blurred. What did that even mean in

7:02 this moment? That she'd seen her

7:04 earlier, that she was thinking of her

7:06 now. My hands were shaking again, thumbs

7:10 tripping over letters. I didn't go back

7:12 to fix it. I'm freaking out, RN.

7:17 I stood, touched the door with the backs

7:20 of my fingers like I was testing if it

7:22 was hot,

7:24 and turned the knob again. The gap was a

7:27 thin crescent of hallway, and the

7:29 hallway was no longer empty.

7:33 [Music]

7:35 He was already moving when I saw him.

7:39 The light in the hallway didn't so much

7:41 illuminate as sketch him.

7:45 tall, more than six feet. The black of

7:48 his clothing swallowing any detail.

7:52 Pants, jacket, something covering his

7:56 mouth and nose.

7:58 The only part of his face that

8:00 registered was above that. Eyes I didn't

8:03 look straight into, and the strong dark

8:06 shape of eyebrows that seemed chiseled

8:09 out of the low light.

8:12 There's a thing that happens to the body

8:14 when fear moves past the idea of fear.

8:18 When it becomes a state, frozen shock.

8:22 People say it like it's dramatic, like

8:25 it's something you'd notice while it's

8:27 happening. You don't. Your body does the

8:31 noticing for you and then stops telling

8:33 you what it's doing.

8:36 Everything in me went still.

8:39 He passed my doorway without turning his

8:41 head, without slowing, without any sense

8:45 that he knew I was there at all. The

8:49 fabric of his sleeve shifted as he moved

8:52 just enough to make a tiny whisper.

8:57 His steps were steady.

9:01 The weight of them a measured pressure

9:04 into the carpet one after the other.

9:08 I watched him walk toward the back of

9:10 the house,

9:12 watched him reach the slider that led to

9:14 the deck.

9:16 The door gave its soft track sound as he

9:19 opened it. A sound I'd heard a hundred

9:23 times before and never thought about.

9:27 He stepped into the November air like it

9:30 was the most ordinary thing in the

9:32 world.

9:34 I stayed exactly where I was, a hand

9:38 braced against the door frame, the other

9:41 hand on the door knob, as if those two

9:44 pieces of wood were the only things

9:47 keeping me upright.

9:50 I didn't call out. I didn't step into

9:53 the hallway.

9:55 Time hiccuped and left me in the space

9:59 between seconds.

10:02 Somewhere deeper in the house, Murphy

10:04 barked. A short alert bark like he did

10:08 when someone left a room.

10:10 I closed the door.

10:13 This time, the lock turned under my

10:15 fingers with a small metal certainty

10:17 that barely touched anything inside me.

10:22 I sat on the edge of my bed and realized

10:26 I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

10:30 I picked up my phone and typed with

10:33 whatever parts of me were still

10:35 connected to my hands,

10:37 like a ski mask, almost.

10:41 I watched the words leave the bubble and

10:44 land in the space between us,

10:47 like he had something on his head and

10:50 little on mouth.

10:53 The sentence came out wrong the way

10:56 sentences do when panic has already

10:58 gotten to the motor skills that shape

11:00 words.

11:02 I didn't fix it. There wasn't time to

11:05 fix anything.

11:07 I'm not kidding. I am so freaked out.

11:12 Her replies came like dropped pebbles,

11:15 quick and small.

11:18 Shut the [ __ ] up. So am I.

11:22 Then one word that landed with a weight

11:26 all its own.

11:28 Run.

11:30 I stared at that word until my eyes

11:33 watered. The room felt like it had

11:35 become smaller, like the air was being

11:39 used up too quickly.

11:42 I looked at my door, at the lock, at the

11:46 place the door met the frame. The black

11:49 line where they touched could have been

11:51 miles thick or paper thin. I couldn't

11:54 tell.

11:56 I didn't run. I couldn't. The thing that

12:00 had moved through the hallway had moved

12:02 through me too and replaced everything

12:05 quick with everything slow.

12:08 I slid my back down the door until I was

12:11 sitting on the floor with my knees

12:13 pulled in. The carpet pressed a pattern

12:16 into my skin.

12:18 My phone was warm in my hands. I

12:21 listened to every possible sound like my

12:24 life depended on identifying them.

12:29 The house made its house noises. The

12:32 heater breathed, the wood ticked inside.

12:37 Once a car passed outside, and the tires

12:40 whispered on cold pavement.

12:44 The smell of cold air lingered, thinner

12:47 and sharper than the heated air of the

12:50 room, as if that one small opening and

12:53 closing of the slider had left winter

12:56 inside the house.

12:59 Time turned viscous.

13:01 It didn't move forward so much as pool

13:04 around me.

13:06 I counted breaths.

13:08 I made myself swallow. I pressed my

13:12 fingertips to the floor just to feel

13:14 something that wasn't fear.

13:17 Darkness held.

13:20 Somewhere between the dozens and the

13:22 hundreds of heartbeats later, the room

13:25 began to lighten in that slow gray way

13:29 that means morning isn't here yet, but

13:31 it's thinking about it. Morning light

13:34 didn't make anything better.

13:36 It made the room look like a room again,

13:39 and that felt wrong.

13:42 The world shouldn't look normal after a

13:45 night that didn't feel like any night

13:47 I'd ever lived.

My phone told me it was after: 10:00

13:53 didn't know how I'd spent the hours

13:55 between.

13:57 Maybe I dozed with my eyes open.

14:00 Maybe my brain had been taking tiny sips

14:04 of sleep and waking me up before I could

14:06 swallow.

14:08 I typed a message that felt like

14:10 throwing a rope into a space I couldn't

14:13 see.

14:15 Grew up.

14:17 No typing bubbles. No reply.

14:21 I tried them one by one the way you

14:24 tried doors even when you know they're

14:26 locked.

14:28 Kaye grew up.

14:32 Maddie

14:33 grew up.

14:36 Santa

14:38 grew up.

14:41 Nothing.

14:44 The quiet wasn't the same as the night's

14:46 quiet. The night had been a sealed jar.

14:50 This was a wide bare field without

14:52 shelter.

14:54 The dread that had been thin and sharp

14:56 now got heavy.

14:59 It settled on my sternum and made my

15:01 breath push up against it.

15:04 I stood up and took one step away from

15:06 the door and my body said no.

15:11 It didn't say it in words. It said it by

15:14 making my knees feel like they weren't

15:15 attached right.

15:17 I leaned my forehead against the door

15:19 and let the coolness there pull some

15:21 heat out of my skin.

15:24 I don't remember deciding to call. I

15:27 remember the phone in someone's hand,

15:29 maybe not mine at first, and voices that

15:32 didn't line up with thoughts.

15:36 A sentence that felt like it belonged to

15:38 someone else, but left my mouth.

15:41 Something happened in our house.

15:45 Time broke into fragments. small hard

15:48 pieces that didn't fit together cleanly.

15:51 Breathing, crying, the operator's voice

15:55 trying to thread a structure through a

15:57 conversation that was all loose ends.

16:00 Someone asking for our address, someone

16:03 asking for a phone number. Words came

16:05 out of me like they were being shaken

16:07 loose. She's not answering.

16:11 She's not answering.

16:14 We saw someone

16:16 last night,

16:18 unconscious.

16:22 I don't know how long the call lasted.

16:25 I know how sirens sound when they're far

16:28 and then near and then outside. I know

16:31 the color of flashing lights through a

16:33 window, even in daylight.

16:36 I know the way boots on old stairs make

16:38 a house speak a different language.

16:42 Officers moved through rooms that had

16:44 always been ours. Their voices were low,

16:47 like the air itself was a person they

16:50 were trying not to startle.

16:52 They were gone a few minutes, and they

16:54 were gone a lifetime. When they came

16:57 back down, something in their faces had

17:00 changed, and that was the moment my body

17:02 understood what my mind had refused to

17:05 let in. I didn't need anyone to say the

17:08 words. The words were already here. They

17:12 had been here since the hallway. The

17:15 sound of a dog barking once. A voice

17:18 saying, "It's okay. I'm going to help

17:21 you." The slider closing with a soft

17:24 click. The shape that passed me without

17:27 looking.

17:31 I had survived a thing that had taken

17:34 the people I loved from the same air I

17:37 was breathing. There isn't a sound for

17:39 what that knowledge makes inside a

17:42 person. It isn't a sob. It isn't a

17:46 scream. It's quieter and heavier. And it

17:50 doesn't stop when the room gets quiet

17:53 again. It stays.

17:56 It sits beside you like a fact.

18:01 Sometimes in the months after, I would

18:03 hear a perfectly ordinary noise and feel

18:06 my body go still before my brain knew

18:10 why.

18:11 A heating duct expanding,

18:14 a door settling in its frame, the soft

18:18 rubbery sound of a slider closing.

18:23 I would remember the angle of a shoulder

18:25 passing a doorway and the way light can

18:29 erase a face and leave only eyebrows and

18:32 the idea of eyes. I would see text

18:36 bubbles in the dark and my hand shaking

18:38 over letters and Bethy's last reply

18:42 hanging on the screen like a command a

18:45 person gives you from a world that

18:47 doesn't exist yet.

18:50 run.

18:52 I didn't run. I locked the door. I

18:57 lived.

19:00 There are nights when I still hear

19:01 Kayle's voice, a line coming through the

19:04 house as clearly as if I were pressed to

19:07 the wood again.

19:09 There's someone here.

19:11 There are mornings when I can feel the

19:14 exact moment the house changed back into

19:17 a house and how wrong that felt. The

19:20 heater hums, the fridge ticks.

19:24 The old bones of the place settle like

19:26 always, and under all of it, a quiet I

19:31 will never not hear.

19:33 The quiet after the figure in black

19:37 walked past my door and into the cold.

19:40 and everything forever be that came the

19:43 sound that didn't belong.