The Watcher in the Wall (28 page)

Assuming there was a Brandon.

The city sprawl gave way pretty quickly to houses and dirty little
storefronts and deserted, vacant lots. There weren’t very many people outside, not much light. The Lincoln passed a few cars headed in the other direction, but otherwise they were pretty much alone.

Gruber was eyeing her again from the driver’s seat. “Brandon said you guys met on the Internet.”

It wasn’t a question, so Madison didn’t reply. She stared straight ahead and listened to the music, the DJ, the static coming more frequently, the reception fading. The scenery outside was less civilization, more darkness. Farm fields and wasteland and dense, black forest.

This was a mistake, she realized. She should not have done this.

“A suicide website, wasn’t it?” Gruber asked her. “People trying to kill themselves?”

Madison met his eyes, gave him a brief smile. Turned back to the window and still didn’t answer.

“Suicide,” Gruber said. “My stepsister did that. Hanged herself with a coil of cheap rope.” He looked at her again. “You actually look a lot like Sarah, you know?”

He lisped when he talked. She’d missed it at first, but there it was. It was Brandon’s lisp, only it wasn’t Brandon talking. This was definitely a mistake. This was a very bad decision.

“I think I left something back at the mall,” Madison said, keeping her voice calm, that friendly smile on her face. Innocent, nonthreatening. “My suitcase, actually. Can we go back and get it?”

Gruber didn’t seem to hear her. He kept driving, kept talking. “She was sixteen when she did it. I was, well, I was fifteen.”

“That’s really sad,” Madison said. “That’s really tragic. I’m so sorry. Can we go back and get my suitcase, though?”

Gruber laughed, a terrifying sound, longer and louder than any sane
person’s laugh. “I watched her do it,” he said. “There was this little hole in the wall between our bedrooms—you’ll see it. I used to watch her all the time, and then I watched her die.”

“I’m really,
really
sorry,” Madison said. “You must miss her terribly. I can’t even imagine—”

“My
stepfather
,” Gruber said, interrupting her. “Earl, her father. He used to hit me so hard I thought my eyes would roll out of their sockets. He always treated Sarah better than me. I pushed her to it. I hated her. I
wanted
to watch her die.”

Madison said nothing. What could she say? She was too busy trying to quell the panic that kept rising in her throat, pushing her to do something, anything, to get away from this guy. Grab at the door handle and pull the door open, leap out of the car at sixty miles an hour.

But the door handle was broken off, Madison realized. The door was locked and the handle was gone, and she was trapped inside this car with this creep. And wherever he was taking her, there was no way she was getting out until he got there.

“Please,” she said. “Dude, please. Whatever you’re trying to do, just please don’t, okay? Please?”

“Twenty years.” Gruber’s eyes were distant. His voice the same, like he was seeing those years pass by outside the car, instead of the last rapidly dwindling traces of civilization. “Twenty years since I watched her.”

His breath hitched, and he coughed, came back laughing again. “But I’ll watch you tonight,” he said. “I’ve waited so long for this. I’ll watch you tonight, and it’ll be just like before.”

Madison shook her head. “I’m not your sister, dude. I’m not Sarah, I’m Madison. Do you understand? I’m a real, live human being. And
what I need is for you to turn this car around and take me back to the city. Like, right now.”

Gruber didn’t answer. Madison wondered if she could kick out the passenger window and hurl herself through the gap without the creep grabbing on to her. Were there door handles in the backseat? Could she wriggle back there somehow?

“You want to die,” Gruber said. “That’s why you found that website. That’s why you came all the way here. To die.”

“No,” Madison said. “No, really, it’s not. I met Brandon . . . he and I were . . . I mean, at first, yeah, but not now, not anymore.”

She
didn’t
want to die, and never had she been more conscious of that fact than now, trapped inside a speeding car with this lunatic.

“It doesn’t get better, you know,” Gruber was saying. “My sister could have turned out a fuckup like me. I
saved
her by helping her die.”

His eyes were jumpy and unfocused, Madison noticed, live wires. “Your mom, your sisters, your new school, none of it will matter anymore. The freaks in your classes, Lena Jane Poole, your runaway dad.” He smiled. “I’ll take you away from this messy life, Madison. Won’t that be nice?”

“No.”
Madison spun and searched the backseat. A tire iron, something, anything. “I don’t want to die, I swear to freaking God. Just take me back to the city,
please
.”

Brandon,
she was screaming inside.
Paul. Someone, anyone. Help me!

But there was no Brandon. She’d been stupid to ever believe there was. And nobody else was close enough to come save her. She was on her own with the madman. Trapped in his car. And like it or not, she would probably die.

What did you expect?
Madison asked herself.
You found this guy on a freaking suicide forum, you moron.

It was stupid. Maybe it was ironic. She would have laughed at herself if she wasn’t so scared.

<
106
>

Gruber took the back road
into the trailer park. Wasn’t much of a road, mostly gravel and dirt and weeds, mud puddles, the trees hanging overtop like greedy fingers. The Lincoln’s suspension lurched and jostled, bottomed out a few times. It was a slow, torturous drive.

He drove by memory mostly. Remembered hiking this road with Sarah to school sometimes, when they’d slept in and missed the bus. The road wound its way around back of a few farmers’ fields, eventually dumped out in Elizabeth, a stone’s throw from the high school. Not many people drove the back way, back then. Judging from the way the weeds grew, the road was just as neglected now. Nobody would notice the Lincoln.

This was a genius idea, he decided, and he muttered a silent thank-you to the mopes in the Malibu for messing up his plans. Nobody would find them here, Gruber and Madison, not while they played, not while Madison died.

Nobody would spoil their fun.

>>>

Gruber finally stopped the car
on a stretch of dirt, no light for miles. He pulled over to the side, killed the engine. Removed the keys and slipped them in his shirt pocket. Then he turned to study Madison again, his face hidden in shadow.

“I don’t normally do this,” he said. Laughed a little bit, sheepish. “Usually, I’m just the person on the other end of the Internet connection, watching from a distance.”

He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “But you’re different, Madison. You’re special.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Madison told him. “Whatever you’re planning, you don’t have to do it. I don’t want to die, I swear. Just leave me here and keep driving and, I swear to God, I’ll forget I ever saw you.”

Gruber didn’t seem to hear her. “The moment I saw your picture on the forum, I knew you were the one. I
knew
you were special, Madison. That’s why I brought you here.”

He gestured beyond the car, through the black maze of trees, and Madison could see a gate to somewhere, crooked and pocked with bullet holes. There were shadows beyond, rectangular hulks, an impossible dark against the night sky. In the gloom, a
NO TRESPASSING
sign, rusty and faded, its message barely visible:
SHADY ACRES MOTO
R COURT, RESIDENTS ON
LY
. The place was a trailer park, Madison realized, long abandoned.

“I used to live here,” Gruber told her. “Back before the accident. Mom moved us here when she took up with Earl. We didn’t stay long, on account of Sarah dying.” He laughed. “And neither did Earl, after the story came out. He went to jail, but he’s out now. I was going to see
him this afternoon, for old times’ sake, but I ran out of time. So I guess I’ll have to postpone our reunion for a bit.”

There was no light but the moon. Madison couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a pair of headlights, even. The place was deserted. They were alone out here. No one would save her.

Gruber clucked his teeth. “I know you’re scared,” he said, and he actually sounded sympathetic. “Nobody reaches this point without feeling scared. But I know this is right for you. I know this is what you need.”

He reached for the door handle, opened his door, and Madison blinked as the bulb in the ceiling sent a dim beam of light into the car. When she opened her eyes again, Gruber was out of the car, leaning back in, staring at her.

“You look so much like Sarah,” he said. “That’s how I know what I’m doing is right.”

“You’re crazy,” Madison said. “You’re certifiably nuts. You’re not saving anyone, you’re freaking killing them.”

But Gruber wasn’t swayed. “I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but believe me, you’ll see. If you could thank me when this is over, you would.”

“Fat chance,” Madison said.

Gruber just smiled. Dead-calm, serene, utterly at peace. As she watched him, he reached down between the driver’s seat and the door, pulled out a long kitchen knife. The blade gleamed in the light, the sight of it sending cold spasms of fear through Madison’s body.

“Don’t worry,” Gruber said. “This isn’t for you. Not if you behave yourself.”

He straightened. Slammed the door closed, plunging the car into
darkness again. Madison heard Gruber walk to the back of the car, heard him open the trunk. Figured she didn’t have much time left.

She spun in her seat, lifted her legs, and kicked at the passenger window. Kicked hard, her sneakers thudding against the glass, sending shock waves through her body, but doing no damage to the car whatsoever.

“Come on,”
she half shouted.
“Come freaking on!”

But the window wouldn’t give. She wasn’t getting out until Gruber wanted her out. Madison sat still again. Felt the burner phone in her pocket and reached for it, pulled it out, scrolled to Paul’s saved number. Gruber was slamming the trunk closed, and she could hear his footsteps on the gravel shoulder as he came around her side of the car. In a moment, he’d be on her again.

Madison dialed Paul’s number. Slipped the phone into her pocket, prayed Paul picked up. And then the door was open and the light was on, and Gruber was smiling down at her, holding the knife and a coil of yellow rope in his hands.

“Don’t be scared,” he told her. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”

He reached in and took her shoulder, surprisingly strong. Pulled her from her seat, and she had no choice but to follow. He stood her up beside the car, studied her again in the dim light from inside, his fingers like shackles around her arm.

“She wasn’t much younger than you when it happened,” he said. “Not that much younger at all.”

Then he closed the door, and it was darkness again. He turned her up the road, pushed her forward toward the gate.

“Come on,” he told her. “This way.”

<
107
>

Paul Dayton’s phone was ringing.

He almost didn’t catch it, almost missed the call. Was hunkered down in a corner of Madison Mackenzie’s house, watching the cops come and go and trying to avoid the shade that Catherine, Madison’s mom, kept throwing his way.

In hindsight, Paul knew he’d been stupid to help Madison. Some creepy Internet pervert was running a full-scale catfishing operation on her, and he’d pretty well wrapped her up with a bow and sent her to the guy. She’d be safe if he hadn’t put her on that bus. She’d be unhappy, but she wouldn’t be murdered.

He’d been beating himself up about it since he’d seen the Amber Alert. Figured there was probably a good chance he’d be beating himself up for the rest of his life.

But his phone was ringing, and for who knew how long? Paul reached for it, answered, caught it just before the half ring that meant it was going to voicemail. “Hello?”

There was nothing at first. Just ambient noise, the
swish-swish-swish
of wind or fabric rubbing together or something. Paul checked the number. A Tampa area code, but that’s all he got. It wasn’t a contact he’d saved in his phone.

Wrong number,
he thought.
Pocket-dialed.

“Hello?” he said. “
Hello?
I think you called me by accident.
Hello?
”

No answer. He was about to hang up, end the call, when he heard someone talking. A girl, her voice muffled. Paul strained to listen.

“So this is where you grew up?” the girl was saying. “Shady Acres Motor Court? Is that what they called it when you lived here?”

Someone else said something, a man, but Paul didn’t catch it. Wondered who he was listening to, who he knew went exploring around trailer parks. Then the girl continued.

“Did you always live in Indiana?” she said, and Paul got it. Didn’t wait for the answer, but stood, snapped his fingers at the nearest city cop, pointed at his phone, his heart suddenly pounding, his whole body a live wire.

“I got something,”
he told the cop.
“I got something here. I think this is her.”

<
108
>

Madison slammed her
free hand over her pocket, like she was swatting a bug, prayed to every god and godlike deity she could think of that Gruber hadn’t heard Paul’s squawking coming out through her jeans.

But Gruber’s pace didn’t change; he pushed her through the gate and into the Shady Acres Motor Court—long rows of old, abandoned trailer homes, the roads patched and weed-choked, the trailers themselves empty and ruined. And beyond, just the forest, dense and tangled and dark.

This was the definition of nowhere, this place. But Paul had freaking answered his phone.

Slowly, cautiously, Madison moved her hand from her pocket. “So this is where you grew up?” she asked Gruber. Kept her voice loud, so Paul could hear. Kept her fingers crossed, too, that he was smart enough to know what to do with the information. “Shady Acres Motor Court? Is that what they called it when you lived here?”