by Riley Sager
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 us 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. They remind 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 to 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 b
reakfast nook. I pour two cups of tea and join her, grateful for her presence. It makes me far less jumpy than 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 sees the flowers. Head in the clouds. Prone to flights of fancy. Now I know better. You see the faces, don’t you?”
I give her a quick nod.
“That means you’re a realist.”
“What about you?” I say.
“I see both at once and decide which is more important to focus on,” Greta says. “Which I suppose makes me pragmatic. But today, I choose to focus on the flowers. Which is the real reason I stopped by. I wanted to give you this.”
She digs through her tote bag, eventually removing a first-edition hardcover of Heart of a Dreamer.
“It’s signed,” Greta says as she hands it to me. “Just as you requested when you first attacked me in the lobby.”
“I didn’t attack,” I say, feigning annoyance when in fact I’m touched beyond words.
That feeling—of friendship, of gratitude—lasts only a moment. Because when I open the book and see what Greta wrote on the title page, my blood turns cold.
“You don’t like it?” Greta says.
I stare at the inscription, rereading every word. I want to be sure I’m not mistaken.
I’m not.
“I love it,” I say, a bit too loudly, hoping the sound drowns out the voice of doubt that’s now whispering in my ear.
It doesn’t.
“Then why do you look like you’re about to be hit with one of my sudden sleeps?”
Because that’s how I feel. Like I’m perched on the edge of a great chasm, waiting for the slightest breeze to shove me screaming into it.
“I feel bad, that’s all,” I say. “You didn’t need to go to all this trouble.”
“It was no trouble at all,” Greta says. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to.”
“But you were right to be annoyed with me when we first met. You must get bothered all the time to sign copies. Especially by the building’s apartment sitters.”
“You’re wrong there. I haven’t signed a copy for any other person at the Bartholomew. You’re special, Jules. This is my way of showing you that.”
I try to act flattered, clutching the book to my chest and pretending to be as thrilled as I truly would have been if Greta had done this a day or so ago. In truth, I want this book as far away from me as possible.
“I’m honored,” I say. “Truly. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Greta continues to give me a concerned look. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
“To be honest, I’m not feeling well.” Since faking enthusiasm didn’t work, I might as well try an excuse that’s slightly closer to the truth. “I think a cold is coming on. It always happens when the seasons start to change. I thought the tea would help, but I think what I really need is to lie down for a bit.”
If Greta sees through my attempt to get her out of the apartment, she doesn’t show it. She simply downs the rest of her tea, hoists the tote bag onto her shoulder, and shuffles out of the kitchen. At the door, she says, “Get some rest. I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
I force a smile. “Not unless I check on you first.”
“Ah, so it’s now a contest,” Greta says. “I accept the challenge.”
With that, she slips out the door, giving me a little wave on her way to the elevator. As soon as she’s gone, I close the door and hurry down the hall to the bookshelf in the study. There, I grab the copy of Heart of a Dreamer I found my first day here and flip to the title page.
Seeing it creates a strange expansion in my chest. My heart exploding into jagged shards.
I gave Greta an opportunity to tell me the truth, and she refused to take it. I don’t know why. Nor do I know what it means.
All I know is that the title page of this book bears not just Greta’s handwriting but the exact same inscription she wrote in two other copies. The only difference is the names.
Mine in one.
Ingrid’s in another.
And now this.
Darling Erica,
Such a pleasure! Your youthfulness gives me life!
Best wishes,
Greta Manville
34
I tell myself it means nothing.
That this is what Greta writes in every copy she signs.
That there are hundreds of women out there with books bearing this very inscription.
That she certainly didn’t befriend Erica and Ingrid like she did me. That she didn’t invite them in, take them to lunch, tell them about her past, and then—what? Kill them? Abduct them?
Of course not.
She’s not capable of that. Not physically. Not mentally.
Greta Manville, by virtue of age and infirmity, is harmless.
Then why did she lie? There’s nothing suspicious about signing books. Greta’s an author. It comes with the territory. If she had simply admitted to signing copies for Ingrid and Erica, I would have thought nothing of it, even with the knowledge that both are now missing. It’s her lie that has me freaking out right now.
My hope is that Greta feels a misguided sense of protection. She knows what I’ve gone through. I’ve told her all my sad tales. It’s likely she pities me and fears that my knowing about the copies signed for the others would make me feel less special. As if thinking I’m her favorite will somehow make up for all the shitty things in my past.
Or maybe Greta knew Ingrid better than she’s let on. Erica, too. She was friendly with both, knows they’re now missing, and understands that being associated with either of them might drag her unwillingly into a search. It doesn’t mean she’s involved in their disappearances. Nor does it mean she doesn’t care if they’re found. She just doesn’t have the time, energy, or stamina to look for them the same way I’m doing.
Those two explanations are eclipsed by a third—that Greta is hiding something.
She already told me Ingrid went to see her, allegedly to ask about the Bartholomew’s unsettling past. What if that was also a lie? What if Ingrid knocked on Greta’s door asking not about the building but about Erica?
It’s not as outlandish as it sounds. I ended up on Greta’s doorstep seeking information about Ingrid. Which makes it possible she did the same in regard to Erica. Maybe, like I did, she had reason to believe Greta and Erica were friends.
On the flip side, maybe Ingrid did ask Greta about the Bartholomew, because she suspected Erica had done the same thing. Iffy but still possible. In order for that logic to hold, I need something to suggest Erica had also been looking into the building’s past.
I return to the crimson sofa with Erica’s phone, opening the web browser to check her bookmarked sites and browsing history. The bookmarks are typical for a young woman in Manhattan. The MTA schedule, a local weather site, a handful of takeout menus. Her browser history, however, is empty, meaning Erica cleared it. Of course. It was ridiculous of me to expect a browser hi
story filled with incriminating searches about the Bartholomew’s dark past.
Rather than close the browser, which I should do, or toss the phone across the room, which is what I want to do, I start a Google search. No, Erica didn’t save her browser history, but there’s a chance she used the autocomplete function, which automatically types frequently queried topics into the search bar.
I start with the Bartholomew. Just typing in a single T brings up a familiar name: Thomas Bartholomew—the doctor who designed and built this place, only to leap from its roof half a year later. Erica was clearly reading up on him.
I click, and the screen is filled with articles about the ill-fated Dr. Bartholomew. The first link takes me to the same New York Times article I’d read a few days ago.
TRAGEDY STRIKES BARTHOLOMEW
I go back to the search page and keep scrolling, not stopping until I find something that doesn’t seem to address the death of Dr. Bartholomew. Clicking the link, I’m taken to a listing for the Bartholomew in a no-frills directory of Manhattan real estate. It’s nothing more than the building’s name, address, and a dusting of facts.
Year built: 1919
Number of units: 44
Owner: This building is privately owned and operated by the Bartholomew family. No public records regarding building value, annual profit, and income or estimated price per unit could be found.
I close the web browser and try a different approach, scrolling once more through Erica’s old texts. There’s little of interest. Just routine exchanges with friends or arranging trysts with Dylan. It’s the same with her call log. In the days leading to her disappearance, Erica called only Hunan Palace and Dylan.
But she did receive a call from Ingrid on October third.
The day before she disappeared.
I quickly swipe to Erica’s voicemail, bypassing the ones Dylan and I listened to in the park. Just beyond them is a message we didn’t get to.
I tap it and hear Ingrid’s voice, hushed and worried.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what you told me yesterday, so I did a little digging. And you’re right. There’s something deeply weird going on here. I still don’t exactly know what it is, but I’m starting to get really freaked out. Call me.