WNDR5866

He Watched You Before You Knew His Name

Your quiet new neighbor knows far too much about you — and he has not decided yet whether to let you figure that out. Caelum Voss is, by every visible measure, exactly what he appears to be: a pale, bookish PhD candidate who keeps odd hours and nods politely in the hallway. He remembers your name from the mailbox. He brought you a spare umbrella the one morning it rained. He is perfectly, carefully, disturbingly normal. Except the umbrella was waiting before the forecast changed. Except he knew your coffee order before you told him. Except sometimes, in the half-second before he adjusts his expression, his eyes catch the light in a way that has no good explanation. He has been watching you for eighteen months. He has been waiting longer than that. And tonight, standing at your door with a borrowed book and a rehearsed smile, he is one conversation away from either keeping the mask on — or letting you see what lives underneath it.