The Watcher in the Wall, page 7
Gruber was breathing heavy, feverish, sweat blearing his glasses. He knew his stepsister would die if he didn’t do something. Knew it was wrong to watch and do nothing. Couldn’t turn away. Couldn’t move.
She was in the closet now. She was almost ready. He watched her take a deep breath, survey the little bedroom. Her eyes scanned the window, the mirror, the bed. And then they landed on the hole in the wall.
Gruber froze. Held his breath as long as he could, until he couldn’t stand another second and he had to inhale, a loud, sucking gasp that must have given away his position, must have betrayed to Sarah that he was watching her.
But if she knew he was watching, she didn’t seem to care. She looked away from the hole, leveled her chin, her shoulders squared, her eyes defiant. She took another breath, tested the rope. Closed her eyes.
Gruber watched. He watched until it was over, and Sarah was gone.
< 28 >
Madison Mackenzie was sick of it.
Another city. Another crummy neighborhood to bum around in, another shitty house. Family dinners with her mother and her sisters, her mom’s forced cheerfulness doing nothing to hide the stress in her eyes, the fatigue. Another move. Still no work. Still no money.
Another high school. Classes full of kids wearing designer clothes, talking on expensive cell phones, driving cars their parents had bought them. Eating lunch at McDonald’s every day of the week, while Madison filled her brown bags with last night’s leftovers, with tomato sandwiches, celery sticks. Cheapness.
She ate those brown-bag lunches alone. Not that this was anything new, either. She was sick of having to smile and be pretty and fight to fit in all over again, when, if history was any precedent, her mom would just pick up the family and skip town like usual in a few months, a year. She was sick of having to dress the way everyone else dressed, hit the right parties, date the right people. Sick of having to put forth all that effort.
She’d put forth the effort the first, like, dozen times. She’d pooled her meager savings and splurged on a few outfits that resembled what the popular kids were wearing. Tried to make friends with the people who everyone liked, hung out at the trendy spots after school. She tried her freaking hardest to fit in, make friends, be cool. But something always went wrong. Somebody always noticed that the clothes she was wearing were off-brand. The gap between her front teeth was a little too wide. Her accent was funny. She walked goofy.
There was always a reason they turned on her.
• • •
It took maybe two weeks for Tampa to go sour.
Madison looked in the mirror on a Monday morning and found the biggest, reddest zit in the world staring back at her from the end of her nose. Like a supersized growth, all angry and huge. Like no makeup in the world was going to cover it up; the zit was probably visible from space.
Lena Jane Poole saw it first. Within five minutes of Madison walking through the school doors.
“Holy zit.” Lena Jane pointed, giggling, her friends crowding around. “New girl, you’re Rudolph the Red-Nosed Loser.”
And that was that. Rudolph. Nobody in the whole school could remember Madison’s name, but they sure remembered “Rudolph.” The name chased her down the hall, through every class, in stereo. Even after the zit disappeared, the nickname stuck.
Rudolph with your nose so bright . . .
Not that the details really mattered. There was always a reason they turned on her, always something she did wrong. She cut out of class and smoked cigarettes by herself down the block, far away from the school and Lena Jane and her friends. Screw them. She was sick of busting her ass to be normal when, no matter what she did, someone always came around and pushed life’s giant reset button, and everything wiped away and she had to do it again.
She was sick of it.
She’d started lurking around online suicide forums a week or so after her mom moved them to Florida. She’d read a little about Sylvia Plath, about Virginia Woolf, figured if it was good enough for those women, why not for her?
You say you want to do something, don’t talk about it. Do it. But most of the people on the forums were weirdos. There were the obvious fetishists. Goths, or whatever. The people fascinated by death, but not so much enamored of the idea to experience it firsthand. People for whom suicide was a fantastic idea in theory, but not so much in the gritty reality. After all, how could you continue to obsess over your own personal melodrama if you weren’t around to enjoy it?
As far as Madison could figure, most people who were actually serious about ending their lives were out doing exactly that. They weren’t online moaning about their situations, or batting around theories and conjecture. They were dead already, or in the process of becoming. Maybe going on the forums was nothing but a stupid waste of time.
But then she found something. Someone. Not on any of the major forums, the ones that attracted the bulk of the posers and death freaks. A smaller site that showed up at the bottom of her Google search, a place simply called The End.
Here, wandering through the personals section of the forum, she found Gabriel98.
According to his profile, Gabriel98 was an eighteen-year-old boy from Iowa. He had a cute picture, was handsome in a midwestern, unpretentious way. He was smiling, but there was something behind the smile, a pain in his eyes that made Madison immediately want to reach out and hug him.
Seeking like-minded spirits who are fed up with the struggle, his profile read. Fellow quitters, apply within.
He’d been online for four months, Madison noticed. A slightly concerning amount of time. If he’d really been serious about quitting, wouldn’t he have gone ahead and, you know, done it already?
Still, he seemed interesting. Cute and kind of mysterious. Madison opened a chat box.
So why haven’t you done it yet? she typed.
< 29 >
Randall Gruber was creating a new persona on the Death Wish forum when he heard the chime from another open tab on his browser. He’d been riding the high all week, seeing Adrian Miller every time he closed his eyes: the boy rigging the noose, downing the last of the whiskey. Felt an electric thrill when he thought about what came after.
Adrian Miller. The ninth teenager he’d watched die, six of those recorded on webcam, not only for Gruber’s viewing pleasure but for those of his acolytes, too. He’d packaged Adrian’s footage, sent it off yesterday. The response from his contact was almost instantaneous.
Outstanding! Great picture quality. Awesome sound. We’re going to make a lot of money with this.
Good news, though Gruber didn’t care so much about the money. The real magic was in the footage itself, in the images burned into Gruber’s mind.
Nine dead now. The first two, those awkward fumbling efforts—the breakthrough in Texas and the second, Sacramento, soon after. He’d been too caught up in the thrill of victory to care that the footage didn’t cut it—the prospect had spurned the webcam in Texas; in Sacramento, the footage was grainy and off-center—but later on, replaying the kill, he’d realized he needed clarity. A better picture, and sound. If he couldn’t be in the room with the victim, Gruber wanted the next best thing.
Adrian Miller had given him that clarity. But the killing was addictive, and Gruber wanted to watch again. The high never lasted long enough.
• • •
The notification hadn’t come from any of the big forums, Gruber saw, but from one of the minor sites.
The End, it was called. Catered to the no-nonsense crowd, high turnover rates. The users weren’t there to buy webcams or learn about rope. They had their plans. They were looking for tips, troubleshooting, one last affirmation, but they generally killed themselves without needing Gruber’s help. Which would have been fine, except they wouldn’t let him watch.
Gruber wasn’t “Ashley” on this site. He was Brandon, a clean-cut farm kid, his profile designed to cater to lonely girls mostly, and to the kind of teen boys whose uncertain sexuality had driven them to the forums in the first place. He’d found one prospect here, a fifteen-year-old from Baltimore named Dylan, but it wasn’t Dylan who’d messaged him today. The user was a young girl, a teenager, “DarlingMadison.” Gruber clicked on her profile picture. Stared.
The resemblance was uncanny.
She was Sarah, this person. Give her lighter hair, just a little. Maybe put a smile on her face instead of that tough-girl glare. She was Sarah, though, the same bone structure. The same way her bangs curled down over her eyes. She looked like Sarah had, years ago, in her bedroom in that double-wide.
Gruber stared at her picture and felt his heart pounding. Felt as if he could reach through the screen and touch her.
He’d gone online to talk to Dylan. To cultivate his next prospect. He hadn’t intended to make more friends; he had a rule about these accounts, one prospect per persona. Plus, he’d just opened a new Death Wish account no more than five minutes ago. But this girl, this DarlingMadison—if ever there was a sign from above, this was it.
Gruber clicked through to her message. So why haven’t you done it yet? she’d asked.
He hesitated, his mind searching for just the right words. Draw her in slowly. Don’t scare her off.
Guess I’m just waiting for the right partner, he wrote. Hovered his hand over the mouse for a long time.
Then pressed send.
< 30 >
“Here it is,” Mathers said, looking up from his computer. “Someone behind that anonymizer software just opened up a new account on the Death Wish site. Links back to that same Ashley Frey Outlook account.”
Stevens and Windermere hurried over. “‘Azrael99,’” Windermere read. “‘Sixteen years old. Vancouver, Canada.’”
“Guess she’s broadening her range,” Stevens said. “Trying to get a piece of that Canadian market?”
“Whatever she’s doing, she literally just did it,” Mathers said. “This account wasn’t here fifteen minutes ago.”
Windermere studied the profile. As with Ashley Frey’s previous personas, there wasn’t much information. A username. A profile picture—poor Chantal Sarault, standing in yet again. A location, and a tagline—LIFE IS FOR THE DYING—that could have belonged to anyone on the forum. Nothing to give away Ashley Frey’s real identity. Nothing but a blank slate onto which the next unhappy teenager could project his desires.
“It sure didn’t take her long to get over Adrian Miller,” Windermere said. “This chick is picking up speed.”
“She’s found a model and she’s using it,” Stevens said. “Refining her MO, streamlining it. Just like we figured.”
“So how do we stop her?” Mathers asked.
Stevens and Windermere looked at each other, and Windermere knew Stevens was having the same thoughts as she was.
“We create a fake profile,” she said. “Lure Ashley Frey to us. String her along as a potential victim, and hope like hell we can pry something out of her to reveal her location. Best-case scenario, we catch her. Worst-case, she spends her time with us instead of some other poor teen.”
“Works for me,” Stevens said. “So let’s do it.”
< 31 >
Madison hadn’t really expected a response from Gabriel98. She’d logged off as soon as she sent the message, ashamed that she’d even bothered. But then she’d logged on again, just a few hours later.
Maybe just to see, she thought. Just to see, what if he actually answered.
He had.
Guess I’m just waiting for the right partner, he’d written. Kind of a cheesy line, like something he’d practiced. Or maybe he’d used it before.
Slow down, tiger, she typed. You on here to get laid, or do you really want to die?
Then she waited. Regarded Gabriel98’s profile picture again, those haunted, piercing eyes. Felt something, and it wasn’t necessarily the urge to die. Write back, she thought, and immediately hated herself for thinking it.
Then her computer chimed. His reply. Oh, I’m going for it, he wrote. One hundred percent. I’m just searching for someone who’s actually serious about doing it with me.
There are so many posers on these sites, Madison wrote back. Most of these assholes are going to die warm in their beds in the nursing home sixty years from now. There’s nobody real.
Totally agree, Gabriel replied. Too many time wasters. And you?
Madison blinked. And me what?
Are you real?
Madison looked at Gabriel’s picture again. Hell yes, she wrote. I’m as real as it gets.
< 32 >
They worked on the profile for a solid hour. Chose a username—XXBlackDaysXX—and raided Mathers’s laptop for an old school picture.
“Why me?” Mathers asked Windermere.
“You’re barely out of grade school,” Windermere told him. “Plus, you’re not famous yet. Stevens is too old to be playing a moody teen, and I’ve had my picture in the paper too much to stay incognito.”
Mathers grinned. “The curse of the Supercop.”
“Anyway, if we want to attract this girl’s attention, it’s better if we’re a guy.”
“That’s assuming she’s a girl at all.”
“She’s playing a girl on the Internet, Derek. We’re playing the guy who thinks she’s cute in her profile picture. That’s all that matters, at this point.”
“Fair enough,” Mathers said, uploading the picture. “But we need some kind of backstory. What’s our boy doing on this forum, besides scoping out the hotties?”
Stevens and Windermere didn’t say anything for a moment. Then Stevens shifted his weight. “Sure,” he said. “What if we’re being bullied in school? That seems pretty common.”
“Okay,” Mathers said. “Why, though?”
“Because we’re clumsy and awkward,” Windermere said. “Because we’re constantly doing silly shit like falling on our faces in front of the whole school, or wearing our shirts inside out. Or wearing the same clothes over and over because our dad’s in the hospital and our relatives don’t have enough money to buy us a new wardrobe every month—or year, for that matter. Or maybe we don’t have any friends because we’re too tall and funny-looking, and we don’t go to school dances, because if we do, we just stand against the wall because nobody would ever be caught dead dancing with us.
“We’re lonely,” Windermere continued. “We see everyone else in the whole goddamn school walking around with friends and, like, girlfriends or whatever, but we go home alone. We go home and wash our shitty clothes until they’re threadbare so we can wear them tomorrow without smelling bad, and we don’t go to parties or out to the movies, and even the friends we do think we have would sell us out at a moment’s notice, just for a chance to be more popular.” She exhaled. “How’s that?”
Stevens and Mathers were staring at her. Mathers’s eyes were wide, like she’d just told him she’d emigrated from Neptune. Stevens was studying her with that concerned-dad expression of his, like he knew there was something the matter and he didn’t want to let it go until he’d sorted out the problem.
Windermere took a step back, feeling flushed. “Or, whatever,” she said. “Those are just, you know, suggestions.”
“That’s a backstory, all right,” Mathers said, turning back to his laptop. “Should I just type that out and send Ashley Frey a message, then?”
“Heck, no,” Stevens replied. “We send her a message so quick, she’s going to smell something funny. We need to draw her to us.”
“Okay. How?”
“We wait,” Windermere said. The men turned to her, as though they hadn’t expected her to speak up again. As though they figured her little rant had been her exit speech. She pressed on. “We bat our eyes and try to look pretty, and hope that she sees us. Maybe we post something on one of the forum threads, something she’s bound to see. Something that’ll make her take notice.”
“I like it,” Stevens said. “Some kind of forum post. She likes lonely teenagers. Let’s play up Carla’s angle.”
“But we’re not lonely teenagers,” Mathers said. “What if she sees through us, smells a rat?”
“We’ll take that chance,” Stevens said. “I’d say we have a pretty authentic, ah, backstory to work with.”
“Fine.” Mathers studied the screen, his picture in the profile XXBlackDaysXX. “But if this comes back to bite me, I’m going to be pissed, you guys.”
Windermere hit him. “What are you going to do, Mathers?” she said. “Tell the principal?”
< 33 >
Gruber friended DarlingMadison on “Brandon’s” Facebook page. Printed out her profile picture and brought it to work with him, taped it up in his locker in the break room.
He couldn’t see her picture without thinking about Sarah. Without flashing back to that last night in the double-wide, to the thrill he’d felt as he watched her, that high-voltage intensity, the power. Earl hadn’t killed Sarah; he had. And he would do it to this girl, as he’d done with all the others.
He typed her a message on his phone. So what brought you here? Why do you want to kill yourself?
She answered. I’m just sick of living, she said. You know? Sick of putting out the effort all the time just so a bunch of assholes at school can push me around. My mom keeps moving us to new cities and I keep having to change schools and I never fit in. I hate feeling like an outsider, but it’s never going to change. I figure I might as well get on with it.
Yeah, Gruber wrote. I know what you mean. Why do you move around so much?
Mom’s broke, DarlingMadison replied. Dad ran away. Dog died. It’s like a country song. Wah-wah.
