My Daughter Died Three Years Ago — Last Night Her Tablet Logged into Our Wi-Fi
My daughter Ava died three years ago.
She was nine years old.
A drunk driver crossed the center line on a rainy November night.
I survived.
She didn’t.
People say time heals.
They’re wrong.
Time simply teaches you how to carry the pain.
After the funeral, I packed away most of her belongings.
The stuffed animals.
The drawings.
The school projects.
Everything went into boxes in the attic.
Everything except one thing.
Her tablet.
I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.
The screen was cracked.
The battery was dead.
But it still smelled faintly like the strawberry stickers she used to cover everything with.
So I put it in a storage box and left it alone.
For three years.
Last Tuesday, I was lying in bed when my phone buzzed.
A notification from my internet provider.
NEW DEVICE CONNECTED TO YOUR NETWORK
I almost ignored it.
Then I saw the device name.
AVA’S IPAD
My heart stopped.
I sat upright.
Staring.
Reading it again.
And again.
The device was online.
Connected.
Active.
I opened the network app.
The signal wasn’t coming from outside.
It was coming from inside my house.
Specifically…
The attic.
My hands started shaking.
I told myself there had to be a logical explanation.
Maybe another device had inherited the name.
Maybe the app was wrong.
Maybe—
A loud THUMP came from above me.
The attic.
I froze.
Then another.
THUMP.
Slowly, I grabbed a flashlight.
Every step toward the attic stairs felt wrong.
The house was silent.
The air felt colder.
I reached the attic door.
It was already open.
I knew I had closed it earlier.
I always closed it.
My stomach tightened.
I climbed the stairs.
The flashlight beam swept across old boxes.
Christmas decorations.
Furniture.
Dust.
Lots of dust.
Except around one box.
Ava’s box.
Someone had moved it.
The dust around it was disturbed.
Fresh.
Recent.
I knelt beside it.
My hands were trembling so badly I almost dropped the flashlight.
Slowly, I lifted the lid.
Inside sat Ava’s tablet.
The screen was glowing.
Bright.
Impossible.
The battery had been dead for years.
Then I saw the message.
Large white letters on a black screen.
MOM, DON’T LET HIM SEE ME.
My blood turned to ice.
The message disappeared.
A second later another appeared.
HE’S INSIDE THE HOUSE.
I stumbled backward.
My flashlight slipped from my hand.
The beam spun across the attic.
For a split second, I thought I saw someone standing in the far corner.
Watching me.
Then the light settled.
Nothing was there.
The tablet chimed.
Another message.
HE KNOWS YOU FOUND ME.
I grabbed the tablet.
The battery icon showed 100%.
Impossible.
The device shouldn’t even turn on.
Then I noticed something else.
The messages weren’t coming from an app.
They were appearing inside Ava’s old notes application.
Notes she had written years before she died.
I scrolled.
Hundreds of notes filled the screen.
But I had never seen most of them.
One entry was dated three days ago.
Another was dated yesterday.
The newest was from five minutes earlier.
My legs nearly gave out.
Someone had been using the tablet.
Someone inside my house.
Then a floorboard creaked below me.
I wasn’t alone.
I shut off the flashlight.
The attic plunged into darkness.
Another creak.
Directly beneath the attic entrance.
Someone was climbing the stairs.
I held my breath.
The tablet suddenly lit up again.
One final message appeared.
DON’T LET HIM HEAR YOUR BREATHING.
The footsteps stopped.
Silence.
Absolute silence.
Then a man’s voice drifted up from below.
Soft.
Almost gentle.
The voice made every hair on my body stand up.
Because I recognized it instantly.
It belonged to the man who killed Ava.
The drunk driver.
The man who had died in prison eighteen months earlier.
My knees buckled.
The voice came again.
“Emily?”
I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t think.
Then the tablet vibrated one last time.
A photograph appeared on the screen.
A recent photograph.
Taken inside my attic.
I was standing exactly where I was now.
Looking into the storage box.
The timestamp was from ten seconds earlier.
Someone had taken the picture from behind me.
I slowly turned around.
The far corner of the attic was empty.
But the tablet wasn’t finished.
One final message appeared.
The last message Ava would ever send me.
Mom… he’s been here every night since I died.
And then the screen went black.
The battery finally reached 0%.
The next morning, the police searched the house.
They found no intruder.
No fingerprints.
No explanation.
Nothing.
But when they checked the attic insulation near the back wall, they discovered something that made even the officers go pale.
A narrow hidden space.
Just large enough for a person to crawl through.
And inside it…
Were hundreds of photographs.
Every single one of me.
Taken over the last three years.
Including dozens of pictures of me sleeping.
The oldest photograph had been taken the night after Ava’s funeral.
The newest had been taken less than an hour before I found the tablet.
And written on the back of every single photograph were the same six words:
SHE STILL DOESN’T KNOW I’M HERE.