Caroline Eriksson - The Watcher

“Please,” I say, “don’t kill me.”

I make yet another attempt to stand up, supporting myself with my hand on the wooden deck, and this time I make it into a sitting position. Veronica backs away. Maybe she’s preparing for another attack.

“Please,” I beg. “Please don’t kill me, please. I don’t want to…”

I pull my shoulders up to my ears to protect my head and press one hand to my throbbing forehead. That’s where the blood is coming from.

“What… what are you saying? Are you crazy?”

“I’m a friend,” I continue. “I’m a neighbor. I know your son, Leo. He asked me…”

I look up to appeal to her sympathy. She’s pressed against the door, with one hand on the handle as if she can’t decide if she should stay out here or go in. Her face is completely pale, and she looks… wait now… She looks scared. Not enraged, not murderous, but scared—terrified, actually. But maybe I’m just imagining that. Maybe strong emotions all look similar. Maybe they contort facial expressions in a similar way? Veronica pushes down on the handle, and the door to the cabin slides open.

“Wait!” I yell. “Don’t do it. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.”

But she goes in and closes the door behind her. The strength drains from me, and I fall back against the wooden deck, bloody and shivering. I roll to the side and listen, trying to hear what’s going on inside the cabin. I can’t hear a thing, no screaming, no banging. It’s completely silent, almost as if Veronica is the only one in there, as if the cabin was empty when we got here.

I close my eyes and don’t look up until I hear the door open again.

“You said you were… Who are you, actually?”

She twists the end of her high ponytail between her fingers, and her anxious eyes dart between me and the deck. When I follow her gaze, I see that the blood has trickled down and is smeared across the planks. It looks really macabre.

In a faint voice, I repeat what I said a few moments before. Veronica comes a little closer.

“Leo mentioned a neighbor who… Are you the author?”

I nod and wince. My forehead is burning and throbbing and there’s blood everywhere.

“Please,” I mumble again. “Don’t hurt me. Don’t kill me.”

“Why do you keep saying that? Are you crazy?”

Her voice has gone up an octave.

“I called the police. They’re on their way.”

The police? She called the police?

“I want you to tell me why you’re here now. Why did you follow me and try to jump me like some kind of freaking lunatic?”

For a few seconds there she seemed a bit calmer. Now she seems revved up again. Her eyes are wandering, and her voice is unsteady.

“Leo was worried,” I manage to say. “I’m just trying to help out. I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret.”

She shakes her head and makes a face as if what I’m saying is the strangest thing she’s heard. I press my sleeve to my forehead, doing what I can to stanch the flow of blood. Even though I’m lying down, I feel dizzy.

“What happened?” I mumble.

“You’re asking me what happened? You are asking me what happened? Oh, that’s precious!”

She crosses her arms in front of her chest.

“I didn’t notice you until I pulled onto the side road, but you must have been behind me for significantly longer than that, right? You scared me, do you get that? So much that I snuck out of the car and hid in the bushes. But you didn’t drive by. You parked and…”

Her voice broke. Yet again, her eyes scan from the wooden deck beneath me to my face and then back to the bloody planks. One of my eyelids is starting to stick shut. If I’m not mistaken, the blood is starting to clot.

“It was just a push,” she says. “But I guess it turned out to be pretty hard what with the adrenaline rush and everything. You fell and hit the railing, and I think… I think you have a gash over your eyebrow.”

She’s holding something in her hand. I see it gleam as she gesticulates. But it’s not a knife. It’s a key. That must have been what she was fumbling with, what she had dropped when we first confronted one another. Somehow I manage to raise myself into a sitting position. I don’t dare stand up. I’m not sure my legs would hold me. Veronica doesn’t take her eyes off me, and I see the faces she’s making. The words she just said catch up to me, the frightened glint in her eyes as she described how she’d tried to hide from me, run away from me.

And suddenly it’s just there, the realization that this whole thing was a mistake. Philip and the redhead aren’t at the cabin. The reason the place looked so deserted, without any lights on, the reason I couldn’t see any other car besides Veronica’s outside is that no one else is here, only the two of us. My chest tightens, and the dizziness comes over me again.

“I’m sorry. I promised Leo that I would… but I… I should have known better.”

I think I need to lie down again. I realize that I might faint otherwise, but I can’t move. I press my sleeve to my forehead, trying to dab at my head with the parts of the fabric that aren’t soaked through yet. I’m so cold now that I’m shivering.

Veronica is stamping her feet as she stands there.

“There’s… We have a first-aid kit in the cabin. I could go get—”

“That’s not necessary,” I manage to say. “I think the bleeding is stopping.”

She squints down at me.

“This business about Leo being worried. What do you mean by that? What is he worried about?”

“He mostly wanted to know that you were OK. And where you were going.”

Her face stiffens.

“The plan was for his dad to tell him that we… that I was coming here. But apparently he didn’t get the message. I did leave a note.”

I nod cautiously, avoiding moving too much or too vigorously. I speak as slowly as I can, since my voice is distorted by my chattering teeth.

“Like I said, he just wanted someone to check on you and make sure you were OK.”

Her face relaxes now.

“He has a good heart, my son.”

Seconds tick by. The police should be here soon. I hope they have a warm blanket with them.

“You’ve seen each other a few times?”

I nod again. And then, as if to explain away or play down our interactions, I add that he evidently wants to become an author, too.

“Yeah,” Veronica says. “So I understand. He has a very active imagination, Leo does. Too active for his own good sometimes.”

She hesitates for a few seconds. Then she straightens her back and looks me straight in the eye.

“Come inside for a bit,” she says in a tone that won’t take no for an answer. “That wound needs to be cleaned. There’s no way around it.”

She stands beside me as I get up. She doesn’t help me but seems ready to step in if I should fall. Then I shuffle into the cabin after her, step over the threshold straight into a large living room. It’s dark and very cold. The way it is in a cabin where no one’s turned on the heat, where no one’s been for a long time. The realization hits me yet again: No one is here.

Veronica flips a switch, and the room is instantly bathed in light. She shows me the way to the bathroom and takes out the first-aid kit and a half-filled package of gauze.

“Here,” she says, handing me some gauze. “I don’t think you’re going to need stitches. It doesn’t look like it.”

I lean over the sink and start cleaning my face. Veronica disappears but soon returns with a long-sleeved T-shirt and a fleece jacket as well as a bag for me to put my dirty clothes into.

“We must wear about the same size,” she says, without making eye contact.