The Watcher in the Wall (8 page)

He grew frustrated, then bored. Left her alone and went to watch TV in the living room for a while, game shows with his mother,
Jeopardy!
and
Wheel of Fortune.
Sarah stayed in her room. He didn’t know how she could stand to be in there for so long.

When he checked on her, it was dark, and Earl had disappeared for the night. Their mother had retreated to her bedroom, closed her door. Gruber’s homework was finished. He had nothing to do. He hoped Sarah would be more interesting this time around.

She had the bottle out, was the first thing he noticed. It wasn’t the same bottle obviously; she’d been sneaking them in with an increasing frequency as the months wore on. This bottle was filled with brown liquid, Jim Beam, like Earl drank. She was about halfway through it, and it was the first time Gruber had seen it.

It was the first time he’d seen the rope, too. Yellow rope, like the kind the guy across the trailer park used to tie up his poor dog. Rough,
plasticky stuff, the kind that burned through your skin if you held on too tight while playing tug-of-war, or whatever. The rope was about an inch thick. Sarah was fiddling with it, tying some kind of complicated knot.

She wasn’t crying, but she didn’t exactly seem happy, either. Her face was still blank, her eyes almost lifeless. Like she was through being the lion at the zoo. Like she was a robot carrying out some mechanical task. She finished the knot and held it up to examine it. Gruber recognized it. He’d seen it in Western movies, cowboys and Indians. A hangman’s noose.

Holding the other end of the rope, she brought it to her closet. Shoved her clothes to the side, the blouses and dresses and sweaters, until there was only a bare stretch of dull metal dowel. She examined it for a moment. Then she started to loop the rope around its length.

He watched her, the thrill starting deep in his belly and radiating outward. This was serious, he knew. This was something far more dangerous than the game with the razor. He wondered if she would really do it, how far she would go.

But he could see from her face that she was finished playing games. She was beyond that point; she was determined. He had convinced her. The only question was whether he would let her go ahead with it.

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.