by Riley Sager
“That will change,” I say. “You might not think so now, but it’s true.”
Dylan pushes the phone into my hands. “Then let’s rip the fucking Band-Aid off now, I guess.”
“Where should we look first?”
“Her call log,” Dylan says.
I swipe to the phone’s call history, starting with outgoing calls. The first one listed is a number with a Manhattan area code. Seeing it brings a tightness to my chest.
This is the last place Erica called.
I look at the time and date the call was made. Nine p.m., October fourth.
“That’s just hours before she vanished,” Dylan says.
“Do you recognize it?”
“No.”
I dial, my heartbeat knocking at my rib cage as the phone rings once. I hit the speaker button so Dylan can hear the second ring. Still, he presses against me, our shoulders touching.
On the third ring, someone answers.
“Hunan Palace. Takeout or delivery?”
Immediately, I hang up.
Dylan pulls away from me, his hopes dashed. “She ordered us Chinese food that night. I forgot all about that. Fuck.”
Undeterred, I scroll through a month’s worth of Erica’s outgoing calls. Nothing stands out to me. There are a few calls to Dylan. Some made to a woman named Cassie and a man named Marcus. I see another call to Hunan Palace made a week earlier and a second one to Cassie a few days before that.
The rattle of my heartbeat slows to a disappointed crawl. I’m not sure what I expected. A frantic call to 911, I guess. Or a goodbye message to Dylan.
I move on to Erica’s incoming calls. The last one she received was from Dylan.
Yesterday. Three p.m. He didn’t leave a message.
But he did the night before, when he called shortly before midnight.
I play the message, watching the clench of Dylan’s jaw as he listens to his plaintive voice blare from the phone.
“It’s me again. I don’t know why I’m calling because it’s clear you no longer use this phone. I hope that’s the reason and that you’re not avoiding me. I’m worried, Erica.”
Dylan says nothing as I play the other messages he’s left in the past two weeks. In each of them, I note the way his voice wavers between worry and defeat.
It’s the same with messages from other people. Cassie and Marcus and a woman who doesn’t give her name but sounds vaguely British. Tension tightens their voices. An aural tug-of-war between forced hopefulness and barely contained concern.
Tucked among those messages are ones from less well-meaning sources. Visa calling to remind Erica that she’s sixty days late with her payment. Discover calling to tell her the same thing. A man named Keith calling from a collection agency asking where the hell their money is.
“If you don’t contact us in the next twenty-four hours, I’m going to call the police,” he warns.
That was eleven days ago. How wonderful it would have been if he’d followed through on that threat.
I search the text messages next. Again, Dylan is well-represented. He’s sent dozens of them. So many that my index finger cramps up before I get through the past week.
The most recent was sent shortly after midnight, two days ago.
Please tell me where you are.
It was followed a minute later by another.
I miss you.
Two of the people who left voicemails also texted.
Cassie: Haven’t heard from you in a while. You OK?
Marcus: Where you been?
Cassie again: Seriously. You OK?? Text me as soon as you get this.
Cassie a third time: PLEASE!
There are even two texts from Ingrid, made the day after Erica disappeared.
Um, where are you?
Are you around? I’m worried.
I swipe back to the main screen, taking inventory of her most-used apps. Missing are the usual suspects. No Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
“She didn’t—” Dylan catches his use of the past tense and stops to correct himself. “She doesn’t believe in social media. She told me it was a huge waste of time.”
I go to the gallery of photos stored in the phone, finding a trove of ones snapped inside the Bartholomew. The most recent photo, taken in a bathtub, is a close-up of her toes peeking out of a mound of frothy suds.
It’s the claw-foot tub in the master bathroom of 12A. I know because I took a bath there myself during my first night at the Bartholomew. I might have even used the same bubble bath. It makes me wonder if Erica, too, found it beneath the bathroom sink or if she brought it with her. I hope it’s the latter. The idea of me repeating her actions gives me an uneasy chill.
I scroll through the rest of Erica’s pictures. It turns out she’s an impressive cell phone photographer. She took dozens of well-composed shots of 12A’s interior. The spiral steps. A view of the park taken from the dining room. George’s right wing kissed by the light of dawn.
It seems she’s also a fan of selfies. I find pictures of Erica in the kitchen. Erica in the study. Erica at the bedroom window.
Sitting among the selfies are two videos Erica took. I tap the oldest one first, and her beaming face fills the screen.
“Look at this place,” she says. “Seriously. Look. At. This. Place.”
The image streaks away from Erica to the bedroom window before swirling around the room itself, the visual equivalent of the dizzy euphoria she must have felt in that moment. I felt the same way. Amazed and fortunate.
After two full spins around the room, Erica returns. Looking directly into the camera, she says, “If this is a dream, don’t wake me up. I never want to leave this place.”
The video ends a second later, freezing on a shot of her face halfway filling the screen. The other half is a canted angle of the window, George and the city skyline beyond his wing.
I turn to Dylan, who’s still staring at the phone with a vacant look in his eyes. I saw that same expression on my father’s face shortly after Jane vanished. It never truly went away.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Dylan then shakes his head. “Not really.”
I slide my finger to the second video. The time stamp says it was taken on October fourth.
The night Erica vanished.
Steeling myself with a deep breath, I tap it.
The video begins with blackness. There’s a rustling sound as the phone moves, giving a glimpse of darkened wall.
The sitting room.
I’m intimately familiar with those faces in the wallpaper.
The phone suddenly stops on Erica’s face, painted gray by moonlight coming through the window. Gone is the giddy, pinch-me grin she displayed in the other video. In its place is quickly building dread. Like she already knows something bad is about to happen. The image blurs as the phone shakes slightly.
Her hands. They’re trembling.
She whispers to the camera. “It’s just past midnight, and I swear I heard a noise. I think—I think something’s inside the apartment.”
I let out a gasp. I know the noise she’s talking about. I’ve heard it as well. That ethereal sound, like the whisper of fabric.
On-screen, Erica looks over her shoulder. My gaze drifts there, too, searching the shadows, expecting to see someone waiting there, watching. When Erica turns back to the phone, she locks eyes with her own image on the screen. She seems unnerved by what she sees.
“I don’t know what’s going on here. This whole building. It’s not right. We’re being watched. I don’t know why, but we are.” She exhales. “I’m scared. I’m really fucking scared.”
A noise rises in the background.
A single knock on the door.
Erica jumps at the sound. Her eyes become as wide as silver dollars. Fear sizzles through them.
“Fuck,” she whispers. “It’s him.”
The screen suddenly goes black.
The video’s abrupt end is jarring. Like a slap to the face. Ya
nked back to reality, I realize I’m holding my breath and have been since the video started. When I do breathe again, it’s a slow exhalation. Beside me, Dylan leans forward, practically doubled over, as if he’s about to be sick. He takes a series of quick, shallow breaths.
“Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?” I say.
Dylan gulps before answering. “None. If she was feeling threatened by someone, she never told me about it.”
That word—threatened—makes me think of Ingrid. She definitely felt that way. For proof, one need look no further than the gun in a shoe box under my kitchen sink. I wonder if she grew to feel that way on her own or if Erica had warned her. If so, I now understand why Ingrid was so afraid of the Bartholomew. Watching that video has shaken me to my core. It’s not just what Erica said that disturbs me. It’s the way she looked. Like someone frightened beyond all reason.
“Dylan, I think we’re in real danger here,” I say. “Especially if we’re right and Ingrid vanished because she knew what happened to Erica.”
Dylan stays silent, his face pensive, almost passive. Finally, he says, “I think you should stop looking for them.”
“Me? What about you?”
“I know how to defend myself,” Dylan says.
Of that, I have no doubt. He’s got the build of a bodyguard. Big enough to give anyone second thoughts about attacking.
“But I need to know what happened to them,” I say.
We have too much in common. Me, Ingrid, Erica, and Megan. All of us adrift, without parents or nearby relatives, somehow finding our way here. Now three of those women are gone.
Unless I learn what happened to them, I fear that I might be next.
“This is serious shit we’re now dealing with,” Dylan says. “You heard what Erica said. Something weird is going on in that building. Maybe we should go back to the police.”
“Do you really think they’ll help? We have nothing to go on but a vague suspicion that something bad happened to Megan, Erica, and Ingrid.”
“I’d say it’s more than a suspicion,” Dylan says.
“Fine,” I concede. “But until we know for certain what’s going on, the police aren’t going to get involved.”
“Then we keep looking.” Dylan sighs, almost as if he regrets the words that have just come out of his mouth. “But we need to be careful. And smart. And quiet. We can’t risk having what happened to Ingrid happen to one of us.”
Dylan steps out of the Ladies Pavilion and turns toward the Bartholomew, staring at what can be glimpsed of it above the treetops. I join him and look up at my own personal section of the Bartholomew. George sits on the corner of the roof, keeping watch. The windows of 12A reflect the white-gray sky. It reminds me of eyes. Similar to the ones in the wallpaper.
Wide.
Unblinking.
Staring right back at us.
33
It’s just past midnight, and I swear I heard a noise.”
I grip Erica’s phone with both hands, mesmerized by her moonlit face, the fear in her eyes, the quaver in her voice.
“I think—I think something’s inside the apartment.”
Dylan and I agreed it was best not to head back to the Bartholomew together. All part of being careful, quiet, and smart. We returned fifteen minutes apart, Dylan going first, his hoodie pulled over his head as he hurried away.
I lingered in the park, strolling the path running along the lake. I stared at the rust-colored leaves on the water’s surface, the ducks that cut rippling paths through them, the people strolling over Bow Bridge. None of it helped. Nothing erased the fact that something sinister is taking place inside the Bartholomew’s gargoyle-studded walls.
Now I’m in 12A, watching Erica’s video on a loop. This current viewing is my sixth, and I know what comes next.
First the quick glance over her shoulder, followed by the slow turn back her phone. Erica then looks at herself on the screen, and alarm shoots into her eyes.
“I don’t know what’s going on here. This whole building. It’s not right.”
Not content with just watching the video over and over, I attempt to reenact it. I’m in the sitting room—the same place where it was recorded. I’m even in the exact spot where Erica sat.
The crimson sofa.
Dead center.
An expanse of red wallpaper behind me, looking over my shoulder.
“We’re being watched. I don’t know why, but we are.”
Erica exhales. I do, too.
“I’m scared. I’m really fucking scared.”
So am I, which is why I keep watching the video, why I insist on putting myself in Erica’s shoes. I’m hoping it will help me avoid whatever fate befell her.
A noise blasts from the phone.
A knock.
The one that makes Erica jump with a start. No matter how many times I replay the video, the sound still gets to me. Even worse is Erica’s reaction. That last wide-eyed, frightened utterance.
“Fuck. It’s him.”
When the video cuts to black, I continue to stare at the screen, where Erica’s face has been replaced by my own reflection. My expression is more pensive, less frightened. I’m wondering who Erica was talking about at the video’s end, if it’s the same person she thought was watching, if that watcher was targeting her specifically or every apartment sitter in the Bartholomew.
Judging from what I saw on the security monitors, it was all of them.
All of us, I should say.
I’m now part of this.
Unknown is exactly what part I’m playing. Am I prey, like Erica seemed to be, or an inconvenience, like what Dylan and I suspect Ingrid was?
Maybe I’m both—a person who looked too hard and said too much, putting myself in the middle of something I can’t begin to understand.
Yet Ingrid did. Somehow she found out what was going on and tried to warn Dylan. I think she even tried to warn me that afternoon we were together. I see her now, curled up on that park bench, looking years younger than her age as she spoke of the Bartholomew.
It—it scares me.
I should have believed her.
I start to watch Erica’s video for a seventh time.
“It’s just past midnight, and I swear I heard a noise.”
As do I.
Two raps on 12A’s door—as quick and jarring as gunshots.
My whole body jolts. I suspect I look exactly like Erica does in the video.
The walk from the sitting room to the foyer is slow, cautious, my heart beating double time. The same person who knocked when Erica was making that video could be on the other side of the door. The same person who made her disappear.
It’s him.
But when I peer through the peephole, I see not a him but a her.
Greta Manville. Standing at my door with her cardigan and tote bag.
“I had a feeling you intended to check in on me at some point today,” she says once I open the door. “I thought I’d spare you the trip and check on you instead.”
“That’s a pleasant reversal,” I say.
Even though I’m holding the door open for her, Greta remains just beyond the threshold, as if waiting for an invitation to enter.
“Would you like to come in?”
Having heard the magic words, she steps inside. “I won’t stay long. Never impose. That’s a bit of advice many from your generation should heed more often.”
“Duly noted,” I say before guiding her into the sitting room. “Would you like something to drink? I have coffee, tea, and, well, that’s pretty much it at the moment.”
“Tea would be lovely. But only a small cup, please.”
I retreat to the kitchen, fill the kettle with water, and put it on the stove. When I return to the sitting room, I find Greta roaming its perimeter.
“I’m not being nosy,” she says. “Just admiring what’s been done to the place. It’s less cluttered now.”
“You’ve been here before?”
/>
“My dear, I used to live here.”
I look at her, surprised. “Back when you wrote Heart of a Dreamer?”
“Indeed.”
I knew there were too many similarities for it to be a coincidence. Only someone who’s spent hours gazing at the view from the bedroom window would be able to describe it with such accuracy.
“So this really is Ginny’s apartment?” I say.
“No, it’s your apartment. Never confuse fiction with reality. No good ever comes of it.” Greta continues to roam, venturing to the spot by the window taken up by the brass telescope. “This is where I wrote the book, by the way. There was a rickety little table right here by this window. I spent hours tapping away on an electric typewriter. Oh, the racket it made! It annoyed my parents to no end.”
“How long did they live here?”
“Decades,” Greta says. “But it was in the family longer than that. My mother inherited it from my grandmother. I lived here until my first marriage, returning after its inevitable failure to write that book you so adore.”
I follow Greta as she moves through the study and then back into the hallway, her index finger trailing along the wall. When the teakettle whistles, we both head to the kitchen, where Greta takes a seat in the breakfast nook. I pour two cups of tea and join her, grateful for her presence. It makes me far less jumpy that I was ten minutes ago.
“How much has the place changed since you lived here?” I say.
“In some ways, quite a bit. In others, not at all. The furniture is different, of course. And there used to be a maid’s room near the bottom of the steps. But the wallpaper is the same. What do you think of it? And you can be honest. Don’t worry about poking a hole in any nostalgia I might feel for this place.”
I look into the teacup, my reflection shimmering atop the copper-colored liquid.
“I hate it,” I say.
“I’m not surprised,” Greta says as she contemplates me from the other side of the breakfast nook. “There are two types of people in this world, dear. Those who would look at that wallpaper and see only flowers and those who would see only faces.”
“Fantasy versus reality,” I say.
Greta nods. “Exactly. At first, I thought you were one of those people who only see the flowers. Head in the clouds. Prone to flights of fancy. Now I know better. You see the faces, don’t you?”