They're Watching (2010)

by Gregg Hurwitz

  She ground out the cigarette against the edge of the window frame, her eyes never leaving mine. Puzzled. "You trying to give something else up?"

  "Yeah," I said. "My wife."

  Chapter 6

  When I pulled in to our driveway, Don Miller strode out his front door. Like he'd been waiting. It was just before ten o'clock--popcorn and Milk Duds for dinner at the Arclight cineplex. I'd promised a student I'd go to this pseudo-indie film he was ripping off for his assigned short, which was good because I'd seen all the other releases. It beat time at home.

  As I walked over to grab the mail, Don met me at the curb. A broad, confident guy, ex-athlete handsome. He cleared his throat. "The . . . ah, the fence at our property line is falling down. Section in the back there."

  I shifted the dry cleaning slung over my shoulder. "I'd noticed that."

  "I was gonna have my guy fix it. Just wanted to make sure that's okay with you."

  I looked at his hands. I looked at his mouth. He'd grown a goatee. Animal hatred bubbled to the surface, but I just nodded and said, "Fine idea."

  "I . . . ah, I know things have been a little thin for you lately, so I figured I'd just cover it."

  "We'll cover half." I turned to head inside.

  He stepped forward. "Listen, Patrick . . ."

  I looked down. His boot was across the pavement line, in my driveway. He froze and followed my stare. His face colored. He withdrew his foot, nodded, then nodded again, backing away. I watched until his front door closed behind him. Then I continued up my walk.

  I went inside, dumped the mail and dry cleaning on the kitchen table, and chugged down a glass of water. Leaning against the sink, I ran my hands over my face, doing my best to ignore the mounting stack of dignified taupe envelopes on the counter, from the Billing Department of my lawyer's firm; his evergreen retainer had dipped beneath its thirty-thousand-dollar threshold yet again and needed refreshing. Beside it sat a forgotten dry-cleaning tag, set out by Ariana yesterday; in the morning commotion, I'd neglected to grab it. Despite everything, we were still trying to split our chores, maintain civility, dodge the mines floating beneath the calm surface. She needed that suit for a big client meeting tomorrow. Maybe by some miracle, the dry cleaner had pulled it with our other laundry. As I crossed to check, the little mound of mail caught my attention. The red prepaid Netflix envelope looked different, altered somehow. Blood moved to my face, warming it. I walked over, picked it up. The outside flap had been lifted and retaped. I tore it free, tilted the envelope. A blank sleeve slid out.

  Inside was another unmarked DVD.

  My hands shook as I fed the disc into the player. I was doing my best not to overreact, but my skin had gone cold and clammy. As much as I hated to admit it, I was as creeped out as a kid listening to a camp-fire ghost story, the ragged unease starting in my bones and moving outward, eating me up in reverse.

  Falling back onto the couch, I fast-forwarded through footage of our front porch. It's weird how dread turns to impatience--can't wait for the ax to fall. Same shitty picture quality. The oblique angle, I slowly realized, had to be from the neighboring roof.

  Don and Martinique's roof.

  I'd made up the couch like a bed this morning, but already the sheets were shoved around from my fidgeting. Fists pressed to my knees, I waited, watching the screen to see what the action would be.

  Sure enough, it was me again. The sight of my face sent a bolt of ice down my spine. Watching spy footage of me going about my clueless business was something I doubted I'd adjust to anytime soon.

  On-screen, I stepped into view and glanced around nervously. The clothes I was wearing were the same ones I had on now. I appeared gaunt and not a little unwell, my expression sour and troubled. Was that really how I looked these days? The last year had taken its toll on me. How much younger I'd seemed in that bright-eyed picture they'd run in Variety when my script had sold.

  As I stepped off the porch, the picture wobbled a little to keep me in frame. I went blurry, then came back into focus.

  This effect, however minor, set my nerves on edge. The angle on the last DVD had been static, fixed; it suggested that someone had set up the camcorder and gone back to retrieve the footage later. This new clip left no doubt: Someone had been behind the camera, actively tracking my moves.

  I watched myself walk around the house. Studying the ground, my head bent, I paused by the bathroom window. Adjusted my position. Inspected the wet grass. The Millers' chimney edged into the shot. I looked around, my gaze passing disturbingly close to the camera's position, Raymond Burr in Rear Window, only oblivious. A slow zoom to a close-up found my face drawn and angry. I said something to the window, and then the slats closed, pushed down from inside by Ariana's invisible hand. I trudged back to the porch, disappearing into the house.

  The screen went black, and I realized I was standing up halfway to the TV. Breathing hard, I stepped back to the couch and sat again. I shoved a hand through my hair. Sweat dampened my forehead.

  Ariana was in bed upstairs; I could hear the TV through the floorboards. When I wasn't there, she liked to have a sitcom keep her company; she didn't like being alone, as I'd painfully learned. A few cars zipped by on Roscomare, their headlights brushing the family-room blinds.

  Too agitated to sit still, I rushed around the downstairs, closing blinds and curtains and then peering through. Was there a camera trained on our house right now? My emotions were a blur--concern bled through anger into fear. Scored at intervals by the laugh track from the television upstairs, my movements quickened, grew a touch frantic. First the Entertainment section of the newspaper. Then Netflix. Both seemed to point to Keith or someone at the studio. But the on-set altercation had happened months ago--an eternity ago in Hollywood time, so someone outside the industry might have read about it and decided to make use of it to misdirect me.

  A light shone in the Millers' bedroom. Their roof was dark. I thought about how Don had popped out of his house when I'd pulled up. And the new video had been shot from his roof--this morning, when it would have been tough for someone to sneak up there unseen. He was the obvious choice.

  I started out for his house but balked at the brink of the street. It struck me that I might be gravitating toward Don because that was reassuring. He was familiar, a known entity. An asshole, sure, but what reason would he have to film me?

  I went to the front of his house, staying a step back from the curb. Still couldn't make out whether there was a camera set up on the roof. Scrambling up there to search for it was my logical next move. So, clearly, not what I should do.

  Spinning in a full circle, I peered across the other rooftops, the windows, the parked cars in the shopping strip a half block up. I imagined lenses peering back from every shadow. From what I could see, no stalkers or hidden cameras were in evidence, waiting to watch me climb onto the Millers' roof. But I couldn't see very well.

  I needed to find a better vantage to see if the camera was still up there. The apartment balconies across the road would offer only a partial view onto the Millers' roof. As would the nearest two streetlights and a telephone pole. And the roof of the grocery store was too far away. Maybe I could see up there from another position on the ground? I hurried up and down the street, trying different perspectives, getting winded. But the pitch of the Millers' roof was too flat to allow a clear glimpse of the spot from which I'd been filmed. It became apparent that the only unobstructed view would be from our own roof.

  I jogged back to our house, more deliberately now. As I pulled myself onto the low eaves over the garage, the unchecked wind was strong, cutting through my shirt, rising up the cuffs of my jeans. An elm blocked the yellow throw from the nearest streetlight. I tried to minimize the noise of the shingles under my sneakers. Crossing to the slope above the kitchen, I hooked a leg up over the second-story gutter.

  "Hey!" Ariana, in the driveway in sweatpants and a long-sleeved T, hugging herself. "Checking that sagging fence again?" More irritat
ed even than sarcastic.

  I paused midclimb, my leg still up past the gutter. "No. The weather vane's loose. It's been rattling."

  "I hadn't noticed."

  We were almost shouting. The idea of the stalker's camera capturing Ariana--let alone our exchange--made me all the more uneasy. My shoulders tensed, a wolf's hackles rising protectively. "Look, just go inside. You're freezing. I'll be down in a minute."

  "I have to be up early. I'm going to bed. So that should give you plenty of time to come up with a better story." She disappeared under the eaves. A moment later the front door closed, hard.

  The pitch was steep, and I lowered my body, keeping a knee and a forearm in constant contact with the shingles. Scuttling like a crab, I worked my way up and diagonally to the highest peak, near the Millers' house. I eased around our chimney.

  There was no camcorder on the Millers' roof.

  But the view onto the balconies, streetlights, and other rooftops was pristine; this was the best vantage yet to search out hiding places. Houses, neighboring trees, backyards, vehicles, telephone poles--I scrutinized them until my eyes ached.

  Nothing.

  Sagging against the brick, I exhaled with mixed disappointment and relief. I turned to start back. That's when I saw it, glinting in the dim light. Way at the edge of the east-pointing run of roof extending out over my office, raised elegantly on a tripod and looking alertly at me, was a digital camcorder.

  My heart seized. I felt a calm terror, the kind that comes in a nightmare in which horror is mitigated by the suspicion that you're only dreaming. The tripod, a few feet down from the peak, had been adjusted for the slope. The rise of roof behind acted as a windbreak, the trembling weather vane just above attesting to the necessity. Whoever had placed the camera there--aimed not at Don's roof but at where I would come to look at Don's roof--had planned my move for me, had thought through everything I had and come out one step ahead. Across the rutted stretch of dark shingles, the blank lens and I regarded each other, gunslingers on a dusty boomtown street. The wind whirred in my ears, Ennio Morricone on the upsurge.

  My rubber soles gripping the rough surface, I left the safety of the chimney, heading toward where the rooflines met. Getting on all fours, I worked along the spine. My mouth had gone dirt dry. The two-story fall looked higher from up here, and the wind, though hardly gale force, didn't help. As I reached the brink, the drop confronted me dizzyingly. I hugged the rusty rooster weather vane, getting my first up-close view of the camera perched barely out of reach below.

  It was mine.

  The swung-out viewfinder framed the stretch of roof I'd just come across. No glowing green dot, so my passage hadn't been recorded.

  Cars whined by on the turn below, light streaming fluidly across metal, disorienting me further. I leaned down and snagged the unit. The digital memory had been wiped. And the camera hadn't been set to record. So why was it here? As a decoy?

  The light in the Millers' bedroom switched off. Fair enough--it was ten-thirty. Yet I couldn't help but find the timing suspect.

  Awkwardly hauling the camcorder--a cheap Canon I hardly ever used--I worked my way back along the roof's ridge and then jumped from an interior corner to our bed of ivy.

  I hurried inside and sat at the sleek, dark walnut dining table--one of Ariana's designs--and turned the camera over in my hands. With optical zoom, extended battery life, and a straight-to-DVD recording option, it was fairly idiotproof.

  I got up, shoveled water over my face, and then stood with my hands resting on the lip of the sink, staring blankly at the closed blinds two feet from my nose.

  Finally I went upstairs to my office. A chipped desk, bought at a fire sale, predominated. I checked the cabinet where I stored the camcorder, stupidly confirming that yes, it was missing. Downstairs, moving with purpose, my thoughts burning like a fuse. Collecting the two discs, I compared them. Identical. I forced myself not to take the stairs back up to my office two at a time, which would wake Ariana.

  I retrieved the spindle of blank DVDs from my office bookshelf. Same cheap kind, all right. Same exact cheap kind, down to the write speed, gigabyte capacity, and the brand stamped on the polycarbonate. Since I'd started burning shows from TiVo last year, I'd used maybe a third of them. The plastic cover said Paquet de 30. A quick count showed that nineteen remained, stacked unused on the spindle. Could I account for the missing eleven?

  Downstairs once more--this was turning into a workout. In the entertainment center, I found four discs containing reruns of The Shield, two 24s, and a Desperate Housewives (Ariana's). An American Idol from the Jordin Sparks season bore visible beer-glass rings. So eight total. Despite the fact that I rarely rewatched shows, I'd yet to throw away any of the DVDs once I'd burned them. Which meant three were unaccounted for. Three.

  I scoured the cabinets beneath the TV again, then craned to see if a disc had fallen behind the unit. Nothing. Three missing DVDs, of which I'd received only two back.

  I checked the porch, letting in a blast of cold air. No magical delivery had shown up. I closed the door, dead-bolted it, set the security chain. I peeped out the peephole. Then I turned and put my back to the door.

  Was the third DVD en route? Had I been caught by another camera from somewhere else as I'd recovered my own from the roof? Was that why my Canon had not been set to record?

  The obvious finally hit me, and I laughed. It wasn't a laugh of amusement, not at all. It was the kind of laugh you let out when you lose your footing and fall down concrete steps, the kind of lying laugh that says everything's okay.

  I crossed to the kitchen. I sat at the dining table. I popped the loader on the camcorder.

  The third DVD was inside.

  Chapter 7

  Fade in on the rear of our house. Horror-movie low angle, a few branches adding menace to the nighttime view. Cutting into one side of the frame was the green corrugated-plastic wall of the shed where Ariana cultivated her flowers. Advancing, the point of view pushed through the brushy sumac and began a psycho-killer crawl toward the other side of the wall I sat facing, the wall holding the flat-screen I was staring at. The sound track, were there one, would have been shrilling strings and huffy breathing. Silence was worse. Through patches of shadow, images loomed--here a solar-powered garden light, there a patch of grass caught in the cone-throw of a porch lamp. Moving up on the house, the angle stayed low, approaching the windowsill, then creeping north to take in the family-room ceiling, dimly lit by the flickering of the TV.

  My back was slick with sweat. My eyes moved involuntarily to the window. Through the semi-sheer sage green curtains, the black square of glass stared back, giving up nothing. Until that moment I'd never grasped the stale phrase "knotted stomach." But I felt my fear sitting there, deep in the pit of my gut, dense and unyielding. Every second my eyes were off the screen caused a rise in my panic. Surreally, the TV seemed to contain the present threat, and the window itself--outside which someone could be lurking at that very minute--seemed fictitious. The screen reclaimed my absolute attention.

  Growing bolder, the perspective rose above the sill. Brazenly sweeping the interior through the window, it settled on a form slumbering beneath a blanket on the couch.

  As the camera pulled back, I heard the low rush of my heart shoving adrenaline through my veins.

  The image bounced along, moving parallel to the wall, toward the kitchen. A rapid swing to our rear door, autofocusing from the blur. My breath stopped.

  A hand gloved in latex reached out and twisted the knob. It turned. Despite Ariana's reminders, I often forgot to relock that door after running trash out to the cans. A gentle push and the intruder was inside, next to our refrigerator.

  My eyes pulled frantically to the kitchen, back to the screen.

  The point of view floated farther into the kitchen, not hurried but not cautious either. Crossing the threshold to the family room, it angled toward the couch, the couch on which I lay sleeping, the couch where I now sat, stupid
ly willing myself not to look over my left shoulder for a camera on its way, grasped by a gloved hand.

  I couldn't move my eyes from the screen. The angle dipped. The intruder was standing over me. I slept on. My cheek was white. My eyelids flickered. I stirred, rolled over, curling an edge of blanket around a fist. The camcorder zoomed in. Closer. Closer. A blur of REM-shifting eyelid. Closer still, until the flesh was no longer distinguishable, until all bearings were lost, until only the twitching remained, as detached as lines of static across the bleached screen.

  Then darkness.

  My hand was curled in the blanket, just as in the clip. I swiped a palm across the back of my neck, wiped the sweat on my jeans, leaving a dark smudge.

  I ran upstairs, heedless of waking Ariana, and pushed open the door of the darkened master bedroom. She was there asleep, oblivious. Safe. Her mouth was slightly open, and her hair fell forward over her eyes. Relieved, I felt the rush of adrenaline drain from me, and I sagged against the doorway. On the TV, Clair Huxtable was riding Theo about his schoolwork. I had an urge to go over and wake Ari, just to check, but I contented myself with the rise and fall of her bare shoulders. The new bed, an oak sleigh with hand-carved scrolls, looked solid. Protective, even. She'd replaced our old bed last month. The mattress, too. I hadn't slept on either.

  I stepped back into the hall, eased the door closed, and put my shoulders to the wall, exhaling hard. It made no sense that she'd have been harmed, of course; the footage was shot last night at the latest, and I'd seen Ariana less than an hour ago. But rationality was about as helpful right now as it had been when I'd braved my first post-Psycho shower.

  I went back downstairs. To the couch where the intruder had pointedly shown me sleeping apart from my wife. The foldout couch that I'd steadfastly refused to fold out for fear that would add a level of permanency to the current arrangement. In the clip, the blanket covered whichever boxers I'd been sleeping in, so more laundry forensics wouldn't help me deduce when it had been shot. Bracing myself, I picked up the remote and clicked "play" again. Seeing that grainy approach to the house sent another jolt through my system. I tried to detach myself and watch closely. No gauging how recently the lawn had been mowed. No fresh scratches on the back door. The kitchen--no plates in the sink showing the remains of a meal. Trash! I punched "pause" and studied the full can. Empty cereal box. A crinkly ball of foil stuck in the mouth of a yogurt cup.