Because I'm Watching (10 page)

Why had he waited so long? Why had he imagined it would be better to be out here and awake and watching Maddie than take a chance on the ghosts in his bedroom?

Because he recognized what she was doing. Exactly what he wanted to do but didn't have the guts for. She was headed over the cliff.

What was he going to do about it?

Every house on the street was dark. He was the only one who saw her, and probably the only one who wasn't scared of her. He could call the cops, but they wouldn't get here in time …

He found himself on his feet and limping down the ramp, onto the street, and following Madeline Hewitson, the bane of his life. He called her softly. “Maddie.”

She kept walking, not fast, not slow, a smooth, confident stride.

He limped faster, called louder. “Maddie! Stop!”

She pretended he wasn't there.

She passed the last house, the one that tenaciously clung to the edge of the crumbling cliff. She swerved left to avoid walking into the metal traffic barrier.

“Maddie!”

She ignored him.

He broke into a painful run. He caught up with her, grabbed her arm as she was taking that last, long step into the waves twenty feet below. “Maddie!”

She reacted quickly, like someone waking from a dream.

Abruptly, he realized—that was it. She'd been sleepwalking. He shouldn't have woken her like that.

Too late. She looked at him wide-eyed and terrified. She opened her mouth. She screamed.

Damn it!
She screamed like a fire alarm. She screamed like he was attacking her. She screamed loud enough to wake the dead—or worse, the neighbors.

Jacob let go and jumped back. “Shh! Shhhh! Stop it, Maddie. Stop!”

She kept up that unearthly shrieking.

The earth was crumbling beneath her feet.

Lights came on in a couple of houses. The house with the kids. Dayton's house. They were probably calling 911.

Nothing to do but to stop her, save her. Stepping close, he wrapped one arm around her body, trapping her arms. He dragged her away from the edge of the cliff. He covered her mouth with his hand. “Shh, Maddie, it's me. It's Jacob. Remember me? You crashed into my house. You gave me a sandwich. I'm not going to hurt you.”

She got in a couple of good kicks on his shins—of course, right on his bruises—but with his size and his training, petite little Maddie didn't stand a chance.

At some point she really did wake up and realize what was going on; her tension changed from terror to confusion. She looked around—at him, at where they were standing—and her eyes held recognition, then, when she looked at the cliff, horror.

“Okay now?” he asked.

She nodded.

Cautiously he took his hand away from her mouth.

She shut it.

Even more cautiously, he took his arm away from around her waist and stepped away.

“What am I doing here?” she whispered. Then she looked at his face. “What happened to you?”

At that moment, some man opened a door and shouted, “I've called the cops!”

“Shit!” Jacob grabbed her arm. “Let's get inside or it's FUBAR all the way.”

“Right.” She shook off the last of her stupor and headed full speed up the street toward her house.

“
My
house,” he said.

He hadn't known she could snap. But she did. “In your
living room
?”

She was right. Damn it. Yesterday he'd been hiding in the dark.

Today he had left his house and now he was going to visit his new friend. What a special couple of days these had turned out to be.

In the distance, they could hear the wail of sirens.

She gave up on her fast walking and sprinted.

He tried.

He should have taped up his toe. But he did have the advantage of longer legs, so he got into her house—she left the door open—only a minute behind her and a good thirty seconds before the first police car turned onto the street.

Good enough.

He shut the door behind him. “What the hell do we do now? Turn off the lights and pretend we're not here?”

She stood in the middle of the room and looked around as if she were still dazed. “They'll suspect me. They will come here. You should hide.”

He moved farther into the room.

She went to the window, opened it, and fanned like she was trying to chase a bad smell out. “Hide in the bathroom. Take a shower. With soap. Lots of soap.”

He found a moment of grim amusement in her aggression. “Are you insinuating I stink?”

“No, I'm saying it. You stink. I'll handle the cops.” She flipped on the light in her bathroom. “You take a shower. Towels are in the cabinet over the toilet. If you use enough soap, I'll let you sit on my furniture.”

That seemed like a good deal to him. He went in and shut the door.

He didn't remember the last time he had showered. He sure as hell didn't remember the last time he had showered using sandalwood-scented goat soap and a mint and rosemary shampoo. Washing his face made him wince, and getting the dried blood out of his eyebrows took a couple of rounds of lathering, rubbing, and rinsing. He used a brush for his nails and toes, and a different brush for his back. He found a jar of apple-and-cinnamon-scented oatmeal scrub and used it after the goat soap. He couldn't work the shampoo down to his scalp, so he poured liberal amounts of lavender and thyme conditioner onto his hair until it was slick, then he shampooed it again.

He was in there a long time, and when he came out he smelled like he'd fallen into his mother's herb garden. He found scissors in Maddie's drawer and cut his jagged nails. Inspired by his success thus far, he tried to cut his hair. He got the left half hacked off, his arms got tired, and he gave up. He was using Maddie's razor to shave when, without fanfare, the door opened. He swung around, ready to kill whoever stood there.

It was Maddie. She held an armful of clothes. His clothes.

He was naked.

If she cared, she didn't show it. She put the clothes on the hamper. “Here. After the cops left, I went to your house and found you something to wear.” Her lips curled with disgust. “You have perfectly good clothes in the closet, and you were wearing … these.” With two fingers, she picked up his pants, his underwear, his T-shirt. “I'll take these out to the garbage. You're a pig.”

“You sound like my mother.”

“That's because we both have vaginas. People with vaginas are smarter than people with penises. If we weren't, we'd live like pigs, too.”

His penis apparently heard its name mentioned and took this inopportune moment to remember she had a nice ass. He turned back to the sink to finish shaving.

“When you come out, if you want, I'll give you a hand cutting your hair.” She said, “Wow, you're skinny.”

He glanced at her.

She was looking at his
face.
“Shaving makes you look even more like a concentration camp survivor. And that bruising. Not a good look. You should put some ice on your nose. And eat something.”

For whatever reason, his penis found that exciting, too.

So much for his comforting theory that he was impotent.

He leaned against the cold porcelain sink.
That
knocked back his erection.

Damn Madeline Hewitson. Like he didn't have enough trouble already. Horniness: God's gift for caring whether Maddie walked off a cliff.

When he came out, he was dressed in a pair of his boxers, a worn pair of jeans, and, of all things, a polo shirt. He remembered the jeans—they were his favorites, he'd had them all through his twenties—but his mother must have bought him the polo shirt in one of her periodic attempts to make him more mainstream. Or maybe more eligible. Probably more eligible.

“What happened with the cops?” he asked.

“They asked if I'd heard anything. I said no. I hadn't. Because I was screaming.”

Made sense.

“Then they had to go talk to Mrs. Butenschoen, who probably tattled on us because she sees everything. But the cops didn't come back, so maybe she was sleeping the sleep of the self-righteous. I brought your shoes.” Maddie pointed at the pair of running shoes and socks.

“I can't wear those. I broke my toe.”

“How did you do that?”

“I was kicking someone who wasn't there.”

“Oh.” She was the only other person in the world who immediately and without question knew about kicking things that weren't there. “Here.” She handed him an ice bag and started pulling stuff out of the refrigerator. “Put that on your face while I get you something to eat.”

 

I let her catch sight of me. She knows what's going to happen now.

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Driven by a curiosity he didn't want to admit, Jacob wandered over to Maddie's desk and looked at her work.

She made drawings in ink, black ink, no color. Disturbing drawings of a young woman, victimized and in anguish, and a monster in a black hat and an open black coat who haunted her, mocked her, drove her to become a superhero.

“You draw comics.” He picked up a sketch and looked at it. “Damned gruesome comics.”

“Don't look!” She hurried over and plucked the sketch from his fingers. “It's no good.”

“Good? No, but it's visceral.”

“Really?” She shuffled it together with the other papers scattered over the desk. “No one has ever seen these, so I didn't know … but visceral? That's excellent.”

He turned his head sideways to look at the sketch on top of the pile. “Are you trying to publish your comics?”

“They're not comics. I'm seeing if I can create a graphic novel.” She opened the belly drawer, slid the papers inside, and closed them away from his gaze.

“Comics. Graphic novels.” One and the same, his tone implied.

“Graphic novels are more complex, they're set in an already existing universe, and they're bound like a book.”

Right. He remembered now. While he was stationed in Korea, one of his kids had avidly read graphic novels. Lydia Adelaide Jenkins's mother had sent them by the boxfull … He had called her mother when he got back to the States. He had wanted to pay his respects and offer his wholehearted apology for the death of her daughter while under his care.

Her mother hadn't cared what words he offered in his broken whisper. She despised him. She had hung up on him.

He didn't want to remember. “Why don't you just write a book?”

With a fair dollop of sarcasm, she said, “I've
just
written a lot of books.”

“Have you? I thought your brother was the author.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. He's A. M. Hewitson. He writes horror based on … stuff.”

“Is he good?”

“Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I don't. The books sell well. There's not much money in writing, but I'm not good for anything else.” While he was puzzling that out, she walked over to the kitchen table and put her hand on a chair. “Sit down, have something to eat, then I'll cut your hair so it's not so … lopsided.”

He put his hand up and felt the ragged ends on the cut side, then touched the mats—now conditioned, but still mats—on the other side. He walked over and sat down. “Do you know, while you work I can see you outlined against the light?”

She looked toward her desk in alarm. “When they sold those blinds to me they said … no, I didn't know. Thank you for telling me.” She brought him a plate.

He looked it over. Vegetables, olives, crackers, thin rolls of cheese wrapped in prosciutto. “You got any coffee?”

“Yes. Yes, I do!” She beamed as if having coffee was an accomplishment. “Do you want me to make some?”

He didn't. He shouldn't. “No.”

“I'm going to make myself some, anyway.”

As he chowed down, he kept an eye on her.

She got a bag of gourmet coffee out of the freezer. She thought for a minute, then got on her knees, opened the cabinet in the corner, and dragged out a cheap drip coffeemaker. She placed it on the counter and plugged it in, got out the instructions, and read them.

“Don't make a lot of coffee?” he asked drily.

“I don't like it.”

“Then why do you have it?”

“It'll keep me awake.”

Like her understanding him kicking someone who wasn't there, he understood why she wanted to stay awake.

She loaded the basket with ground coffee, filled the pot with water, filled the cistern, turned on the machine, turned to him, and beamed.

Quickly he said, “Put the pot back under before the—”

A stream of coffee started pouring out onto the hot burner.

She stuck the pot under the stream.

The stench of burned coffee filled the air.

Still, she seemed pleased. “Not bad for my first time.”

Nothing much shook this female's composure … except for imaginary monsters.

She got the scissors out of her desk.

“Do you know how to cut hair?” he asked.

“No. Sometimes I forget to make a hair appointment, so I trim my own bangs to get them out of my eyes, and they're crooked.” She surveyed him critically. “But I can do a better job than you.” She went into the bathroom and came back with a comb and brush. She tossed a towel over his shoulders. She moved close to his side.

She smelled nice. Like an apple pie, so he guessed she had been using her oatmeal scrub. He said, “I used up some of your soaps.”

“No kidding. How else were you going to get rid of that rancid smell?” She was picking up pieces of his hair. “A rat could live in here and you'd never know it.”

“Once you get the length cut off, I can shave my scalp.” In fact, he looked forward to it.

She slid the scissors along a thin line of hair and slowly cut. She dropped the shorn part on the floor. She moved on to another section. The sound of the blades shearing off the strands sent a shiver through him. She must have noticed, for she said, “Do you know, you're probably the only person in the world who would let me near them with something sharp.”