The Camera Man

by Amy Cross

  “Jess, wait!”

  I turn and see that Doug is out of the car too, and that he's coming toward me.

  “I don't want to!” I say firmly.

  “Alright, alright.” He holds his hands up. “Point taken.”

  “Maybe I should walk,” I tell him, even as more rain starts to fall and as a strong breeze starts ruffling my skirt. “It's only five or six miles, I could be back in town in just -”

  “No, of course you can't walk,” he replies, interrupting me. “Come on, back in the car. I'll drive you. What kind of gentleman would let a lady walk home in the rain, eh?”

  “I'm just not sure I can...”

  My voice trails off.

  “I'm not sure I can trust you,” is what I was about to say, but I manage to hold back.

  “Get in the car,” he says after a moment, gesturing for me to go closer. “I'm sorry, Jess, I don't know what came over me.”

  I so desperately want to walk all the way home, but the rain is getting worse with each passing minute and I guess maybe Doug was just a little over-enthusiastic. Figuring that I should take his attention as a compliment and be glad that he understands he was wrong, I start making my way over to the car, although I can't help noticing that now Doug seems to be looking down at my waist as I get closer. I raise my hands slightly, just in case he tries to grab me again.

  “I made the wrong approach,” he says.

  “I'm sorry,” I reply as I start to get into the car.

  “Maybe this would be better,” he adds, pressing himself against me from behind and placing a hand on my right hip. “Is that what you like? Something more -”

  Before I have a chance to push him away, he lets out a sudden groan and I feel something wet splatter against the side of my face.

  Startled, I pull away and turn to see that Doug is stumbling back with blood flowing from his mouth and running down his chin. He reaches up and touches his face, and then he holds his hands up as if he can't quite believe what's happening.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, wiping some of the blood from my neck.

  “What the hell?” he gasps, before starting to retch again. He heaves several times, and then finally he vomits more blood against the side of the car.

  I step back again, startled by the sheer volume of blood that's now running down the side of the car and dribbling onto the gravel.

  “Doug, are you okay?” I ask again, even though I can see that he's not.

  He tries to say something, but his mouth seems to be full of blood and after a moment he leans against the side of the car. He's clearly having trouble getting his breath back, and he looks as if he might fall to the ground at any moment. I swear, I can actually see his legs shaking.

  “I think maybe I should call you an ambulance,” I tell him, “and then -”

  Suddenly he lets out an agonized groan and stumbles toward me, vomiting more blood that sprays across my feet. I step back as he falls against the car's open door, and then I watch in horror as he struggles to hold himself up.

  “Doug,” I stammer, “what's going on? Are you sick?”

  He tries to speak, but there seems to be something in his mouth. A moment later, I realize something dark red and wet is glistening between his teeth, and his mouth starts opening wider and wider until an immense blob of bloodied meat starts to roll out. Whatever's coming out of him, it drops slightly and then dangles on a thick, knotted meaty thread that runs from his mouth, and then I watch as a lighter, pinker blob starts to press itself out between his teeth.

  Letting out a muffled cry, Doug takes a stumbling step forward before dropping to his knees.

  “This can't be happening,” I whisper, stepping back as I watch the second mass of glistening flesh start to slip out of his mouth, accompanied by a torrent of blood that splatters down against the ground.

  Doug whimpers slightly, as he gets down on all-fours with the two meaty blobs dangling by threads from his mouth.

  I reach into my pocket for my phone, only to realize that I must have left it in the car.

  Suddenly Doug cries out again, and I can hear his frantic attempts to draw breath as a loud crunching sound emerges from his chest. A moment later, another mass of pinkish flesh bursts from his mouth, this time accompanied by shards of what look like broken ribs. As the ribs drop onto the gravel, Doug leans forward and I see that his eyes are almost bulging from their sockets, and he lets out another groan as his already-full mouth opens even wider, splitting at the edges of his lips and causing more blood to dribble from the tears.

  Too shocked to know what to do, I watch as the splits open all the way to his ears, and then I hear a crunching sound as his jaw breaks.

  A sudden rush of blood sprays from his mouth as the initial chunks of meat fall to the ground, but now a river of pink and red rushes out along with pieces of shattered bone. Several crunching sounds are working their way up through his chest, and his hips are starting to twist. A moment later I see another, larger length of bony material starting to poke out from his mouth, and I realize to my horror that I'm watching him vomit part of his own pelvis.

  As soon as that chunk of bone has hit the ground, it's followed by several more. He slumps down against the gravel and rolls onto his side, but he's no longer groaning and I can't help noticing that his wide-open eyes are no longer moving. I step around him, and slowly I realize that although his body is still shuddering wildly as material flows from his mouth, I think Doug himself might be dead.

  “This isn't real,” I stammer, as I watch more and more of his internal organs come sloughing out from his mouth. “Please, this can't be real...”

  As his face starts to split open, I put my hands over my eyes and try to force myself to snap back to reality. I know none of this is really happening, but I can hear a horrific tearing sound and I can't find a way to make the hallucination stop. The sound gets louder and louder, and I wait for several minutes until suddenly all I can hear is the sound of rain falling all around.

  I hesitate for a moment longer, and then I slowly lower my hands and look over at Doug.

  His entire body has been turned inside out. Bones and organs have been left splattered across the gravel, while his skin is nothing more than a pile of pinkish-red flesh with patches of hair poking out from one end. Rain is falling harder and faster than ever, washing much of the blood into the gravel.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “No!”

  Slamming the front door shut, I pause for a moment in the hallway. I'm soaking wet from the long walk home, and my heart is pounding so fast that I'm scared I might collapse at any moment.

  Reaching into my pocket, I take out my phone, which I retrieved from the car before I ran. I fumble with trembling fingers, searching for Doug's number, and then finally I try to call him.

  “Please pick up,” I whisper, hoping against hope that at any moment I'll hear Doug's cheery voice, and that I'll realize the whole horrific ordeal was just another hallucination. “Come on, Doug. Just answer your goddamn phone.”

  I wait and wait, but finally I'm put through to his voicemail.

  “It's not real,” I gasp, dropping the phone and stepping back against the wall. I have to pull myself together. “Doug's fine, and none of that actually happened. It can't have happened. You're going crazy again, that's all. This is the kind of thing Doctor Goodman warned you about.”

  “Jess?”

  Hearing Mum coming through from the kitchen, I take a deep breath and try to think of some way I might make myself look normal. As soon as Mum appears in the doorway, however, I can see that she knows something's wrong.

  “You're soaked!” she says, clearly shocked. “Jessica, what were you doing out there? Where's your friend?”

  “He's not my friend,” I mutter, before looking past her and seeing her open laptop on the kitchen table. “There's a camera on that, isn't there?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I rush past her and head to the table, and
sure enough I see a small camera just above the laptop's screen. Hurrying to the desk, I take out some tape and tear off a square of paper, and then I head back to the laptop and stick the paper over the camera.

  “Jess?” Mum asks from the doorway. “What are you doing?”

  “Where else are they?” I ask.

  “Where are what?”

  “The cameras!” I yell. “Where are the cameras in the house?”

  “What cameras? There aren't any, Jess. Why would we have cameras in the house?”

  “The fridge,” I mutter, hurrying into the kitchen. Just as I thought, there's a small camera on the front of the fridge, and I remember Mum bragging about how it could sense somebody approaching and cause the door to click open automatically.

  “What are you doing now?” she asks as I tape a piece of paper across the little camera.

  “I don't want them watching me!”

  “Who?”

  “The cameras!”

  “Jess, you're scaring me. What happened while you were out?”

  “He -”

  I catch myself just in time. How can I possibly tell her what I think I saw? There's no way Doug was actually ripped inside out, so I just have to buy some time until I'm able to get in touch with him and check that he's okay. He'll show up soon, I'm sure of it, but for now I need to keep my head together and make sure that I don't end up getting sent back to Spellwood.

  “Doug's fine,” I stammer, as I look around the kitchen and watch for any hint of other cameras. “Doug'll call soon. There's nothing wrong with him.”

  “Jess -”

  “The window!”

  Rushing into the front room, I hurry to the window and pull the net curtains aside. Sure enough, I see a CCTV camera outside the corner shop on the other side of the road, and I realize that it's probably able to pick out at least half the house. Stepping back, I pull the curtains closed before turning to see that Mum has followed me through.

  “There's a camera out there,” I tell her, unable to keep the fear from my voice, “so we just have to keep the curtains shut for a while.”

  “What camera?”

  “On the shop!” I shout. “There's a camera on the shop! How can you not notice these things?”

  “There's always been a camera outside the shop,” she replies, sounding utterly confused. “Why does it suddenly matter now?”

  “It doesn't suddenly matter now,” I explain, and my mind racing as I try to think where else there might be cameras. “It always mattered, but I didn't realize until today. But Doug got turned inside out in front of the car, and the car has cameras.”

  Mum stares at me, and it's clear that she doesn't understand.

  “Don't try,” I mutter, hurrying through to the hallway.

  “Don't try what, Jess?”

  “To understand!” I yell, pulling the front door open. “You can't! You never will!”

  I step outside, but suddenly she grabs my arm from behind and I spin around to see the tears in her eyes.

  “You're not well,” she says. “Oh Jess, I think we need to call Doctor Goodman again. Please don't get angry with me, but I think maybe you should go back to the hospital, just for a little while.”

  “They have cameras there!” I shout, pulling away from her.

  “Jess -”

  “They have cameras everywhere!” I add, taking a step back. “Do you realize how hard it is to get away from the cameras? Wherever you go, you never know when one'll be watching you from some secret hiding place! They're on buildings and cars and they're in the sky and they're everywhere! People are even carrying them around on their clothes!”

  “I'm not carrying cameras on my clothes,” she points out. “There are no cameras in the house, Jess. Why don't you come inside while I call Doctor Goodman?”

  “What about the TV?”

  “What about the TV, Jess?”

  “There's a camera on it. For when you play your fitness games.”

  “No there isn't,” she replies, before sighing. “Well, okay, you're right there is, but it's off most of the time.”

  “They're never off,” I stammer, taking another step back from the house. “It doesn't matter what anyone says. Even if you think they're off, they can still see you!”

  She tries to grab my hand, but I pull away.

  “Jessica, you're ill!” she says firmly. “Do you understand? You're not seeing things straight! Your head's all over the place and you're hallucinating! You're getting paranoid, just like all those years ago!”

  “No!” I yell. “You're wrong!”

  As those words leave my lips, however, I can't help realizing that she might be right. I've seen so many awful things happen, but I have no idea whether any of them have been real. Until I know whether I can trust my own eyes and ears, I won't ever be able to rest.

  “I have to figure this out on my own,” I whisper finally. “One way or the other, I have to know.”

  “Jess, I'm going to call Doctor Goodman and -”

  Before she can finish, I turn and run.

  “Jess!” she shouts. “Jessica, wait! Come back!”

  Racing along the street, I feel a sense of pure panic rushing through my chest. I don't know where I'm going, but I know I have to at least get far enough away that I don't hear Mum's voice anymore. I'm soaking wet and more rain is falling, and when I get to the street corner I stop for a moment and look all around. Mum's still shouting in the distance, but there's no point going back to her, not yet. She doesn't have a clue what's happening to me, and she can't help.

  No-one can help.

  And then, suddenly, I realize exactly where I have to go.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Stopping at the top of the hill, I immediately feel a tightening sensation in my chest as I look out across the valley and see the lights of police cars in the distance. When I squint, I'm just about able to see that Doug's car is still parked at the side of the road, and police officers seem to be dealing with something that has been left on the ground.

  I'm too far away to see a body, but it's clear that something happened out there.

  Suddenly I realize I'm being watched. I turn and look back along the dirt path, but all I see is rain pouring down. Still, the sensation persists, and I look all around, convinced that at any moment I'm going to see the camera man. I look at the horizon, then at the trees, then back across the valley, but there's no sign of anyone watching me at all.

  Finally, with a growing sense of dread, I look up at the vast gray sky.

  ***

  It's getting late now, and the sun is setting at the far end of the road as I loiter in the doorway of a shuttered shop. I'm trying to keep out of view as much as possible, not only to avoid the cameras on a nearby lamppost but also so that I'm not picked out by any satellites.

  Satellites have cameras too, and some of them might be able to see me.

  As rain continues to fall, I watch the building opposite. Even though the police checked the place out and determined that nobody had been living in the camera man's apartment, I feel certain that somehow they must have been tricked. I followed him here and I even ventured through his front door, and deep down I still believe that everything I saw that night was real. He was here, and that means he might come again.

  Reaching into my pocket, I take out my phone. There are scores of texts and missed calls, most of them from Mum, but I swipe past them all and bring up Doug's number. Even though I know there's not much chance of him picking up, I try calling him anyway.

  “Doug here,” his voice says finally. “I'm too busy to answer the phone, but leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Even sooner if you happen to be a lady with a sultry voice.”

  Cutting the call, I put my phone away before leaning out and looking up into the darkening sky. Rain is still falling, but I can't help thinking about all the satellites that must be up there, and about all the cameras that even now are probably scanning the streets. I watch the sk
y for a moment longer, trying to imagine just how many satellites might be above me right now, and then I shrink back further into the doorway.

  Better to be safe than sorry.

  Suddenly I spot movement across the road. Turning, I look over toward the far pavement and see a man shuffling toward the apartment building. He's carrying shopping bags in his arms, and he has his back turned toward me as he makes his way up the steps, but somehow I immediately recognize the sloped shoulders and the slightly stooped gait.

  It's him.

  He's not holding a camera right now, but I know it's the camera man.

  My heart is pounding as I watch him opening the front door, and then he slips inside and disappears from view. I try to tell myself that I'm wrong, that there's no way I just saw him, but deep down there's not a shadow of doubt in my mind. I saw him, and for the first time he wasn't holding a camera at all.

  A moment later, as if to underline the fact that I'm right, a light switches on in one of the building's upstairs windows.

  In his apartment.

  For a moment, I don't know what to do. I guess in some way I never actually thought I'd see him, so I never came up with a plan. Now I know that he's really here, however, I figure I have to get some proof. Last time, I ran away and called the police, and by the time they arrived the man was gone. He even managed to clear his apartment out, and to get the landlord to lie for him. This time, I have to make sure there's no chance of him getting away, which means I have to be brave.

  I look both ways along the street, and then I step out of the doorway, into the pouring rain. Hurrying over to the far pavement, I make my way to the steps and then I hurry up to the front door. I half expect to find that the building is locked, but instead the door creaks open and I slip inside. My wet clothes are clinging to my skin, and the hallway is cold enough to make me start shivering as I head over to the foot of the stairs.