by Amy Cross
“Do you know what they say about the Native Americans being scared of having their photo taken?” he asks suddenly.
“I...”
I pause for a moment, but now he's staring at me with his mouth hanging open.
“They're scared of having their souls taken, aren't they?” I suggest finally.
He shakes his head.
“I thought I'd read that,” I continue.
“Some might have been,” he replies, “but not all. Not by a long shot. And yet, a lot of people believe that they believed it, which I find interesting.”
He tries to take the glass, but somehow he misses completely.
“We want to believe,” he continues, “that primitive people are afraid of cameras. Why? Why do we want to believe that? Is it just a way of making them seem foolish and uneducated? Or is it because deep down we know there's something to fear? Something primal, something gnawing away at us?”
“I think you need to drink this glass of water,” I tell him, “and get some sleep. You're going to feel pretty bad in the morning.”
“We sense it,” he stammers.
“What do we sense, Doug?”
“What they do to us.” He's staring at the camera on the TV again. “Cameras gaze at us all day long, and the thing about a gaze is -”
Suddenly he lets out a loud hiccup that seems to shake his entire body.
“The thing about a gaze is -”
And another.
“The thing about a gaze is...”
He pauses to take a slow, deep breath.
“There has to be somebody behind the gaze,” he continues finally. “You can't be watched by nothing. See that camera on the TV? Who's watching me?”
“I don't think anybody's watching you, Doug.”
“But I can feel its gaze. Can't you?”
“Doug, I really -”
“Look at it, Jess. There's something there. We might not know what it is, but there's something on the other side of that gaze. Tell me you don't feel it. Come on, Jess, I dare you. Tell me you don't feel it lurking.”
Sighing, I turn and look at the camera. For a moment, staring at the tiny lens, I feel absolutely nothing. And then, slowly, I realize that I do feel as if I'm being watched. I know that there's nobody on the other side, and that there's nobody sitting in a room somewhere watching this desperate drunken conversation, but at the same time I can't deny that I feel as if something is staring out at me.
After a few seconds, I realize that this is ridiculous.
I'm simply letting Doug spook me. He doesn't know about my scares recently, but by pure accident he's started rambling about something that cuts a little close to the bone. Turning back to him, I see that while he's still sitting up, his eyes are closed and he seems to have fallen asleep.
“You're not going to drink this water right now, are you?” I ask, before setting the glass on the table next to the TV. “Doug, when you wake up, you need to drink. You're going to feel so bad in the morning.”
He mumbles something, and then he slumps back against the bed. After just a couple of seconds, he starts snoring.
“Way to go, Doug,” I say with a sigh. “Thanks for coming. I don't know what I would have done without you this evening.”
He lets out another snore, which I guess is my cue to get out of here. I might not be drunk, but I am exhausted, and I still have to go back downstairs and make sure that Kelly is okay. I know she's most likely off in a bush somewhere, throwing up, but I have to be sure. As I step out into the corridor and pull the hotel room's door shut, I briefly think back to Doug's rambling comments, and I've got to admit that it takes a moment before I'm able to remind myself that he's just drunk. The camera on the TV felt creepy at the time, but only because Doug was going on and on about there being somebody watching.
Sighing, I turn to head back toward the elevators.
Stopping suddenly, I see that there's a man standing at the far end of the corridor. He's wearing a beige trench-coat, and his features are obscured by the camera he's holding in front of his face.
It's him.
It's the man I've seen so many times before.
I freeze, convinced that there has to be some kind of mistake, but I can feel a slow sense of dread starting to creep up onto my shoulders. Whenever I've seen the man before, he's always been quite far away, but this time he's absolutely brazen. He's not even trying to hide what he's doing.
I open my mouth to call out to him, but the words catch in my throat.
He's not real.
This is all in my head.
If I focus hard enough, he'll blink out of existence entirely.
“Go away,” I whisper, trying to find the strength to see through this illusion. “I'm not letting this happen again.”
I wait, staring at the man, but he's still standing there. He's about twenty meters away, and he must know that I've spotted him. Finally, as I feel my skin start to crawl, I instinctively turn and walk away, heading the other way along the corridor and then stopping as soon as I get around the next corner.
I'm in another corridor, and this time there's no sign of anyone. I look both ways, just to check, and then I force myself to peer back around the corner and look the way I just came.
He's gone.
I feel a rush of relief as I realize that the man with the camera has vanished.
He must have been an illusion after all.
I cautiously step around the corner, half-expecting him to reappear in the same spot, and it takes a few more seconds before I allow myself to accept that he's really gone.
And then, a moment later, I hear a faint bump over my shoulder.
Turning, I see to my horror that the man has returned, this time at the farthest end of the next corridor. Once again, he's just standing there, aiming his camera straight at me.
“Leave me alone!” I blurt out, before realizing that I'm talking to a shadow.
I head back along the corridor, passing Doug's room as I hurry toward the elevators at the far end. I glance over my shoulder a couple of times, to make sure that the man with the camera isn't following, and then when I reach the elevators I quickly jab at the button. I immediately hear the mechanism starting to whir in the chamber, but when I look up at the panel above the door I see that this elevator is on its way down from the hotel's top floor, while the other elevator is coming up from reception.
I look back the way I just came, but there's no sign of the man.
And then, spotting something in the corner of my eye, I turn and look along the next corridor, and I see him.
He's at the far end, with his camera still aimed at me.
“Go away!” I shout, before looking back down at the panel and jabbing the button a couple more times. “Hold it together, Jess,” I whisper. “He's not real. You're just imagining the whole thing.”
I try not to look again, but after a few seconds I have no choice. Turning, I see that the man is still at the far end of the corridor, still filming me.
“You're not real,” I whisper, staring at the man and waiting for him to disappear. “You won't trick me like this. I know you're not really here.”
Keeping my eyes fixed on him, I force myself to focus on the fact that none of this is possible. A man can't be following me about, filming me in my everyday life, and he definitely can't be the same man I first saw when I was a little girl. This must be some brief remnant of my earlier meltdown, some kind of little trick that my brain is playing in an attempt to remind me that I'm still not quite well. All I have to do is stay calm, stay focused, and get back downstairs.
Suddenly the elevator doors slide open, and I immediately step inside.
My heart is pounding and I quickly hit the button for the ground floor.
I wait, but the doors still haven't slid shut yet.
“Come on,” I mutter under my breath, while staring out at the carpeted corridor and listening for any hint of footsteps heading this way.
I jab the b
utton again.
“Shut, damn you.”
In attempt to calm my nerves, I step over to the other side of the glass-walled elevator and look down at the terrace far below. I can see people still outside enjoying drinks, which I guess means that a few strong-stomached survivors are intent on pushing the party well into the small hours. The second elevator chamber is rising up empty to this floor right now, but for a moment I watch the crowd on the terrace, trying to spot Kelly's distinctive red dress.
Suddenly I hear a footstep behind me. Turning, I'm shocked to see the camera man standing right outside the elevator.
Before I can react, however, the door slides shut and a moment later the chamber starts to descend. I step over to the panel and hit the button for the ground floor a couple more times, just to be safe, and then I lean back against the glass wall and let out a huge sigh of relief.
He wasn't real.
I know that now.
I need to book an appointment with Doctor Sawyer, and I need to tell her what's been happening. She'll know what to do. Maybe she'll even up my dosage. One thing's certain, however: I'm not -
Suddenly the chamber shudders and grinds to a halt, leaving me stuck on the side of the building. I look over at the door, half expecting it to slide open so that more drunk guests can stumble inside, but then I look at the panel and see that the elevator seems to be stuck midway between the twentieth and nineteenth floors.
A moment later, I hear a faint whooshing sound coming from nearby. I turn just in time to see the other elevator chamber come sliding down, only to stop right next to mine.
The camera man is in there.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Come on,” I mutter under my breath, frantically hitting the button for the ground floor. It's been at least a minute since the chamber came to a grinding halt, and I'm starting to think I might be stuck. “Get moving!”
I glance over at the side of the elevator, and sure enough the second chamber is still out there with the strange man still watching me through his camera.
I hit the button for the ground floor a couple more times, before finally pressing the alarm.
“Hello?” a woman's voice says tentatively, crackling over a little speaker next to the panel.
“Hi,” I reply, trying not to sound like I'm losing my mind, “I'm in one of the elevators and it's stopped moving.”
“Alright,” the woman says, and I hear the sound of her typing something into a computer. “How long have you been stuck for?”
“Can you fix it, please?” I ask, and now I know that a hint of fear is creeping into my voice. “I don't like being up here.”
“You're perfectly safe,” she replies. “We've got a technician, I'll have him take a look. Don't worry, you'll be down in no time. This happens sometimes, and he just has to go to the root room and reset a few of the systems.”
“I don't -”
“Hang tight.”
The connection ends. I immediately press the button again, but this time I don't manage to get through. After tapping a few more times, I take a step back and then I turn and look over at the second chamber.
He's still there.
Still watching me through his camera.
Sure, there windows of the two chambers are dividing us, but right now I'm stuck way up here on the side of the hotel, and there's nowhere to hide.
I keep telling myself that the camera man isn't real, but right now all my certainty is starting to fade away.
He sure looks real.
“What do you want?” I stammer finally, unable to help myself. I know it's probably damaging for me to talk to a hallucination, but I think I'm going to scream if I don't say something. “You can hear me, can't you? So tell me. What do you want?”
I wait, but he doesn't reply.
Realizing that even if he's real, he can't hurt me while we're in separate chambers, I force myself to take a couple of steps forward. I can see a hint of my own reflection in the chamber's glass window, but I keep my eyes fixed firmly on the lens of the camera. After taking a few more steps and reaching the window, I realize that despite the divide between us, I'm now only a couple of feet from the camera man. In all this time, I've never once been so close.
“What do you want?” I shout, making sure that he'll definitely be able to hear. “Why can't you just tell me?”
Again, he says nothing.
Staring into the lens of the camera, I see nothing but darkness staring back at me.
“Okay,” I continue, “I'll bite. Whether you're real or not, I want to know. Why do I keep seeing you? Why do you keep filming me like this?”
I give him a chance to answer, but he says nothing.
I can't see his face, of course. The camera is covering his features, although I can just about make out a mop of dirty, stringy black hair. His hands are slightly wrinkled, so he's definitely not a young guy, and there might even be a few liver spots around the base of his thumbs. There are some bumps on his wrists, too, which I think are possibly moles or warts. The camera, meanwhile, looks fairly modern, and I realize with a shudder that there's no way of telling whether he's taking photos or recording a video. He doesn't seem to be pressing any buttons on the camera's side, however, and his hands seem absolutely steady.
In all the time I've seen this man, I've never once spotted him lowering the camera. It's almost as if the damn thing is glued to his face.
And then, suddenly, I remember.
I was a little girl, sitting in the back of the car, when I saw this man for the first time. I must have only been seven or eight years old, and we were off to a family camping holiday, which means I first saw the camera man more than seventeen years ago. I can believe a lot of things about myself, I can even believe that I'm cracking up right now, but I find it very hard to believe that I was losing my mind at the age of eight.
“Mummy, who's that man?”
I remember asking that question, and I remember my parents acting as if they hadn't seen anyone.
I remember looking over my shoulder and seeing that as we passed under the bridge, the man turned to keep his camera trained on us.
“Was it you?” I whisper, as I think back to the sight of the man on the bridge over the motorway, silhouetted against a gray sky. “Were you watching me even then? Were you watching me before that?”
I wait, but I know he's not going to reply.
Stepping closer, I lean toward the elevator's window until my nose is almost touching the glass. The camera lens is only a foot away from me now, as I try to stare him down.
“I'm going to make you get out of my head right now,” I say firmly. “This is over. Do you understand? I'm going to push you out of my head, and after tonight I'm never going to see you again in my entire life.”
I wait.
Silence.
“Because I'm strong,” I continue. “Maybe I've been weak before, but I'm strong now and I can force you to leave me alone. I'm not some little kid. I'm not on the verge of madness. I'm too strong to let you rile me, so I'm telling you... It's time to leave me alone.”
Gritting my teeth, I stare into the lens, waiting for him to vanish in a puff of smoke.
Any second now.
He's going.
He has to be going.
This can't last any longer.
Silence.
I won't break. He'll break. And then he'll go away forever.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Leave me alone!” I scream suddenly, taking a step back with tears streaming down my face. Overcome by a sudden burst of panic, I put my hands on the side of my head as I realize that I can't get rid of this man. “Go to hell!” I shout. “Get out of my head and leave me alone forever!”
When even this doesn't work, I storm back to the window and slam my fists against the glass.
“I refuse to see you any more!” I yell. “I don't know what you think you can get out of this, but it won't work! I won't give you what you want!”
&n
bsp; I wait for him to respond, but he simply keeps his camera trained on me.
“Leave me alone!” I scream, banging my fists against the glass over and over again. “Stop following me! Just go to hell and leave me alone!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Slumped in the corner of the elevator chamber, with dried tears on my face, I stare at the camera man as he continues to watch me from the other side of the two glass walls.
I don't know how long I spent screaming at him and banging my fists against the window, but finally I fell back against the floor. I feel completely exhausted, and I've finally come to realize that nothing I say or do is going to make this monster go away. Deep down, I still know that he's not real, but at the same time I've also come to realize that I have no control over him.
He's broken me.
All I can do is sit here and let him watch me through his camera.
My whole body is trembling and I've completely run out of ideas. I can hear the sound of people laughing and having fun far below the chamber, but for now I'm trapped here and there's nowhere to hide. I could go back over to the window and I could rant and scream and yell, but what would be the point? He'd only stand there watching me, and I'd probably be giving him exactly what he wants. For now, all I can manage is to sit slumped here and stare at him, while muttering under my breath about how much I hate him.
I have to see Doctor Sawyer as soon as possible.
I was wrong to think I could manage to live a normal life.
There's something wrong deep, deep in my head, and I don't think -
Suddenly the chamber shudders slightly, and then to my amazement the elevator resumes its journey down the side of the building. I watch as the camera man disappears from view, and then I hear a crackling sound coming from the speaker next to the wall panel.
“- your way down now,” the receptionist says, sounding a little bored. “Sorry about the delay, but both elevators went out at the same time. He's fixed yours now, though. I hope you didn't get too bored up there.”
Realizing that after all this time I'm finally free, I haul myself up to my feet and look out at the terrace. I'll be down on the ground floor in just a few seconds, so I quickly start wiping tears away from my face before heading to the glass window and taking a moment to make sure my hair's not a complete mess. There's no sign of the other chamber, so I guess it must still be stuck up there between the nineteenth and twentieth floors. Peering closer at my reflection, I can't quite make out my features, but I guess there's probably no way I can cover up the fact that I've been crying.