Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

“You sure?”

Laura shrugged. “Life’s weird.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. Just weird.”

“You’re pretty weird, too,” I told her, smiling.

She didn’t smile back at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “It was a joke.”

“That’s okay.”

I felt a spatter of raindrops on my skin.

“Seriously, what’s wrong?”

“I’m just thinking about stuff.”

“Like what?”

Laura hugged her knees together. The drizzle ran like tears on her cheeks. “Do you think you could ever kill someone?” she asked.

I stared at her. “What kind of question is that?”

“I mean, do you think only an insane person could do it?”

I tried to read her face, which was a mask of shadows. I realized it wasn’t rain. She was crying.

“You’re scaring me, Laura. What is this about?”

“What if Dad were abusing me?” she asked. “Could you kill him?”

I felt a chill. “Oh, my God, did something happen between you two?”

Laura shook her head. “No, it’s not that.”

“Then tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

I was afraid she had opened up to me as much as she ever could. “Laura, please.”

“I just wish everything weren’t so complicated,” she said.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Everything.” Laura looked at me. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course.”

“Even from Jon?”

“If I have to, sure. What is it?”

She didn’t tell me. She never got the chance. This time, we both heard it. Something snapped in the woods behind us. We spun around, and I heard Laura suck in her breath. We couldn’t see anyone, but someone was there.

“Jonny?” I called.

No one answered.

“Wait here,” I said.

I didn’t shout this time. I charged the woods, sprinting through the sand onto the trail, where I skidded to a stop. I listened but heard only the wind as it landed with a frenzy, kicking the forest to life. I made a slow circle, my eyes narrowing as I tried to penetrate the darkness. I stared where I thought I had heard the branch break and was rock still.

I knew I wasn’t alone.

I heard a shout from Laura, and when I turned back toward the beach, I could see that the rain had come. It was sheeting down. Lightning sizzled, and the forest shook with thunder. The noise covered everything else. Whoever was near me could use the storm to escape.

I waited a few more seconds, and then I smelled something odd and sickly sweet above the freshness of the rain.

Marijuana.

Tish Verdure nursed a gin and tonic and studied the row of aging high school sports photos hung above the booth in the downtown bar. One was a group photo of a state championship hockey team. Another was an action shot of two tall white boys fighting over a basketball layup. In a third, she saw a cheering section of baseball players in a stadium dugout, with bats strewn around them on the ground. Some of the photos were from the 1970s, and she saw faces that looked familiar. For all she knew, some of the boys were in the bar right now. She wouldn’t recognize them today.

The waitress, a bored UMD student in a Rascal Flatts T-shirt, told her that one of the men at the bar wanted to buy Tish a drink. Tish waved her off without giving the man a look. It wasn’t the first time tonight. Men assumed that a single woman in the bar was on the prowl, when all she really wanted was to get drunk. She knew she drank and smoked too much. It was a way to get through the days and nights.

Tish wondered if she had made a mistake by coming back. Stirring up her life wouldn’t accomplish anything, and she was already lying about her past. Stride knew it-she could see it in his eyes when he looked at her. A part of her wanted to pack up and go before things got worse, but she owed it to Laura to be here. She owed it to Cindy, too. She had foolishly made a promise to her, and she couldn’t put off any longer her need to honor it.

She paid her bill. It was one in the morning. She left the bar through the crowd of smokers outside the door and strolled past dark storefronts toward her rental car. Rather than get in, she continued past it, down the sharp slope of Second Avenue toward the corner. She stood by a parking meter on the curb and stared diagonally across the street, where a crumpled piece of newspaper blew up against a brick building like a tumble-weed. The ground floor of the building housed a wireless phone store behind its big windows. Neon glowed brightly in the display.

Back then, when she was a child, the same space had been a bank office. The bank where her mother worked as a teller.

Tish had been in school when it happened. The policeman who came to get her had a black mole on his cheek and breath that smelled like burned coffee. He took her to the station and put her in a white room, and then a woman in a flowery dress came in and told her. That was it. She slept with strangers that night.

“I’m home, Mom,” Tish murmured to the air.

She turned around, leaving the old bank building behind, and stalked briskly to her car. The fresh air had burned off some of the alcohol clouding her brain. She drove north out of downtown through streets largely empty of traffic. The lights stayed green. She turned right at Twenty-first Avenue, crossed over the freeway, and curled around a sharp curve to the cliffside road that led to the condominium she was borrowing. She parked under the trees at the end of the street and got out. She lit a cigarette and stood there, smoking, letting it burn down. The lake twinkled below her. The birches were silhouettes with a thousand arms, moving and alive. Behind her, the freeway overpass rumbled on its stilts like a concrete giant. She felt strange. As if eyes were watching her. That was how Laura must have felt. Tish shivered, but she finished her smoke before crushing out the butt in the street and continuing to her front door.

She stopped. Froze.

One of the miniature square panels of stained glass in the door was shattered, letting out a square of white light. The broken pane was near the dead bolt.

Tish backed up, listening. Everything was quiet. She looked behind her, feeling a stab of panic. The sensation of being watched had fled. She was alone now, but she felt violated. With her cell phone, Tish called the police. They told her a car would be there soon. Knowing that help was close by gave her the courage to return to the door, which was unlocked, and nudge it open. She took a cautious step into the foyer, listening for anything that would betray a stranger. She breathed the air, trying to smell an echo of whoever had been here, but all she detected was a lingering paint smell from the work that had been done on the place before she arrived.

Nothing was disturbed that she could see. Nothing taken. But she had only been in town for a few days, enough time to get up her courage to see Stride, enough time to visit the north beach in the park. A pilgrimage to feel Laura’s spirit again.

All she had in the condo was her suitcase and some food.

Tish waited for a long time by the front door, and when she was convinced she was alone, she went to the bedroom. Her papers were strewn over the bed, not the way she had left them. Her clothes were in and out of the drawers. The closet was open, and so was her suitcase. Tish caught her breath and immediately went to the case and unzipped the netting over the main compartment and found the hidden pocket inside. She reached in as far as she could and exhaled with relief.

The letter from Cindy was still there. Untouched. So was the clipping about the robbery.

She returned to the living room to sit down and wait for the police. It was obvious that no matter how little time she had been here, someone already knew she was back.