Eyes of a Stalker (13 page)

Still, it only took a little patting and face-scratching before he started purring and snuggled in beside me.

As tired as I was, I fell asleep quickly that night. Thankfully, it was a dreamless sleep, and when I woke the next morning I felt a tiny bit better.

The next six days kind of ran together in a jumble of suffering, though there were a few things that stood out. The comments and questions at school faded after a day or two, but that was the least of it for me.

It felt like Greg was everywhere! Of course, it was normal that he'd be in the cafeteria at lunch, but I seemed to pass him in the hallways between classes way more often than I used to, and every time I caught a glimpse of him my stomach contracted with pain and I felt as though the breath had been knocked out of me.

Book club was the worst. I'd toyed with the idea of dropping out, but I didn't want to take the chance that the stalker would read that for what it was — a sign that I still really cared for Greg. What other reason would I have for avoiding him?

Pretending that everything was okay was hard enough when Greg wasn't around, but when the book club met I was forced to spend two hours in that small group — with Greg.

If he'd ignored me or even glared at me, it might have been easier, but he did neither. He didn't speak, but if we came face to face, he nodded politely the way you might do with someone you barely knew. His eyes were the worst, though: void of any emotion. It was like looking at someone in a trance.

I made an unexpected discovery in the book club meeting, too. When I first got to the room where the club met I took a seat between Annie and Sharon. To my surprise, Annie reached over and patted my hand.

“It doesn't
always
hurt this much,” she whispered, just loud enough for me to hear.

I looked sideways at her and saw a shadow of sorrow in her eyes. I knew instantly that she understood exactly how I felt. She and her ex-boyfriend, Todd, had broken up sometime during the summer after going out for close to a year, but I hadn't given any particular thought to it except to think it was too bad, since they'd seemed so happy together.

Now, with one quick glance, I saw that she had carried the same pain that was weighing so heavily on my heart. And just as clearly, I could see that it wasn't gone yet, though it might not be as intense as it
had been when it was fresh.

Is that going to be me in four months, I wondered? Still walking around hiding a wound, even if it isn't as raw and painful as it is right now? That thought made me realize how sincere Annie was, reaching out past her own pain to offer me a few encouraging words.

“Thanks,” I whispered back, meeting her eyes.

A ghost of a smile crossed her face and her head tilted down ever so slightly — a barely perceptible acknowledgement of my gratitude.

I forced my attention back to the group, though I couldn't bring myself to join in the general discussion about the book we were reading. I noticed that Greg remained silent, too, but when we moved on to talking about our own writing he read a few paragraphs from a story he was working on. It was about a whooping crane under a silent moon.

“Oh, Greg,” Sharon said softly when he'd stopped reading. “That was beautiful.”

“It was,” Lynn spoke up. “It was…
haunting
.”

“Is it supposed to be symbolic of anything?” Jason asked.

“It's just a story about a crane,” Greg said. He closed his notebook. “Who's next?”

“I'll go,” Ben said quickly. “I have a poem.”

Ben
always
has poems. That's all he writes. They're in free verse and, to be honest, I really don't know whether
or not they're any good. This one was something about a castle that had been deserted so that it fell into ruin. Then this guy came along on a flying horse, and when he looked at it he had magic eyes or something and it was suddenly restored because that's how he saw it.

“Very interesting,” Mr. Grimes said when no one else commented.

“Yeah, it was good,” Nora added after a pause. “Anyway, I have a short story. Well, just the beginning of one. Should I go next?”

Nora's piece was a love tragedy, but it was totally unconvincing. A couple of the girls said it was nice, which made Nora look a bit cross.

“It's not supposed to be
nice
,” she said. “It's supposed to be
moving
.”

“Yes, well,” Mr. Grimes said. “Everyone takes away something different from a story.” Then he told us we should probably wrap things up for the evening and it was, mercifully, over.

Drama club wasn't a joy that week, either. Jimmy teased me, Eric borrowed my favourite pen and forgot to return it, and Tina asked me how I'd feel if someone else started seeing Greg that soon after we'd broken up. The way she blushed when she asked left little doubt as to who she was hoping that “someone else” would be.

“I don't care,” I said, though even the
thought
of it was like getting hit hard in the stomach.

“For real? You don't mind?”

“I said I don't.”

“I know, but if you mind
at all
…”

“Look, if you want to ask Greg out, you go right ahead. I really don't want to talk about it for the rest of the night,” I snapped. Then I realized I'd let my emotions get the better of me: if the stalker happened to be in that group, he'd be suspicious about me snapping at her. I tried to cover by claiming I had a headache and apologizing.

Unless you've ever been through something like a stalking, there's no way you can understand how much you're affected by someone with this sort of obsession. I knew that every single thing I said and did at school could be under this creep's scrutiny. Since I still had no idea who he was, I never knew when he was watching and listening, maybe even standing beside me or talking to me.

He did make contact with me twice over that period of time. The first time was another e-mail — the third that the police were able to confirm had been sent from the school. It basically said he was glad I'd realized Greg was no good for me.

The second was a letter sent through the mail. I didn't actually see it because Mom checked the mailbox earlier in the day and when she found an envelope addressed to me in block letters, she called the police.
They took it and checked for fingerprints and then put both the letter and envelope in plastic bags.

There were no fingerprints on the letter itself, and the only ones on the envelope were from the mailman and my mom.

“This guy is being careful,” Officer Mueller told me when he came by to tell us they hadn't turned up a single print from the stalker. Then he went over extra security measures we should take, and promised that patrol cars would cruise our neighbourhood as often as possible until he was caught.

“Don't assume
anyone
is safe,” he cautioned me. “Now, if you're feeling up to it, I've brought a copy of the letter he sent and I'd like you to go over the text to see if anything he says means anything to you.”

I took the page he held out.

Soon you will be mine. I will come for you when the time is right, when everything has been made ready.

The pathway waits for your footstep. The door opens.

When all light has been obliterated, your bridegroom will come.

I read the letter three times, trying to steady the shaking of my hand. Laying the page on the table, I turned to Mueller and shook my head.

“I don't know what he means,” I said. “But it sounds like he plans to come after me.”

“You're not walking anywhere by yourself, are you?”

“No. Nowhere. And everywhere I go — even at school — I have this alarm keychain my dad bought for me.” I showed him how it worked and the shrill siren blared for a few seconds until I shut it off.

Mueller smiled with embarrassment at the way he'd kind of jumped a bit when the alarm first went off. “That's great. It would sure bring help in a hurry,” he said.

I told myself I was prepared for anything. I even convinced myself that I wished the stalker would come after me so we could catch him and it would all be over.

I guess that's what we were all expecting by then, so it was a surprise to everyone when he made a mistake that led police right to his door.

It happened on Friday evening. Mom, Dad, and I were watching a movie we'd rented. And then the phone rang.

Ever since the night I broke up with Greg, I'd stopped avoiding the phone and instead started answering it every chance I got. There just wasn't any point in having someone else get it when I was going to have to go speak to the creep anyway, and this way there was no chance he'd hang up if I didn't answer.

On this evening, when the phone rang I looked at the call display and saw an unfamiliar number registered, but no name. Still, it was more than we'd had before.

“Hello?”

“Shelby.” It was the now-familiar drawn out whisper of my name.

“Yes,” I said, cutting him off before he'd finished, “it's me. What do you want?”

“You,” he said. It came out in a sigh, sad and heavy, as if he was sorry to have to say it.

“Who
are
you?”

“It's almost ready,” he whispered, ignoring my question.

“What is?” I asked. Mom and Dad came into the kitchen, their faces anxious and questioning. I nodded. Neither made a sound.

“Just one more thing to take care of,” he said, again offering no answer to my question. “Then, I'll be seeing you.”

“I'd like to see you right
now
,” I said. “Why don't you come on over?”

I heard him start to laugh just before he hung up.

“Where'd the call come from?” Dad asked. He came over and put his arm around me, pulling me against him where, at least for the moment, I could feel safe.

“There was no name, just a number.”

“Press star fifty-seven,” Mom reminded me.

I did that and then we called the police and the phone company to make sure the information was passed on right away.

Officer Stanton arrived a little while later. “It's not great news,” she said. “The call came from a payphone in the mall. We've got a couple of cars on the way, but the chance that he's still going to be there isn't great, and even if he is, they won't know how to identify him.”

“Which payphone?” Dad asked, his head jerking up.

“I'm not sure. Does it matter?”

“It could, if he called from the phone across from the jewellers. There are security cameras in there.”

“In which case the phone call might have been caught on tape!” Officer Stanton said. You could tell she was excited as she spoke into her radio.

I tried not to get my hopes up, since there are two locations with payphones at the mall. But just a couple of moments later, Officer Stanton learned that it
had
been the one across from the jewellery store.

“The woman who runs the jewellery store said one of the cameras definitely takes in the phones, though it's a little ways off so it's not easy to see. Still, if the perp is on tape, it's got to give us
something
. They're getting the tape right now!” she said. “This could be the break we've been hoping for!”

Mom, Dad, and I piled into our car and headed to the police station, where we only waited about fifteen minutes for an officer to come in with the tape.

“Our machine is in here,” he said, leading the way to a room at the end of the hall. “We'll just start back a ways, try to catch it at the approximate time the call was made, and see what we have.”

He rewound it a bit too far and we watched for a while as nothing happened other than shoppers passing by outside the store. The main focus was on the display cases, so the figures in the hallway weren't very big. I wondered if I'd even be able to identify the
caller when I saw him. At the same time, my impatience was growing.

And then, there he was. And while I couldn't see his face, I recognized him immediately.

“Eric,” I gasped, shocked to see that he was the one. Even though Betts had told me he liked me, and he'd been kind of obvious about it himself after I broke up with Greg, I'd never really suspected him. He just seemed so harmless. “It's Eric Green.”

“You're sure?” “Yes. He has a unique jacket. See that design? The sword crossed with a candle — that's been Eric's trademark for the last few years. He does it on a lot of his stuff with some kind of permanent marker. And see — his baseball cap has the same design on the side of it. The pattern on the hat isn't very clear on this video, but if you know what you're looking at you can see what the design is.”

The officer went back and froze the picture a few times. I stared at the screen each time, as if I might be able to see something there that would explain why Eric had gone from being a perfectly nice, perfectly normal guy, to a weirdo who'd turned my life into a nightmare.

“I don't suppose you happen to know where he lives.”

“I do, actually. I've been there a few times with some other kids. His place is on Gallant Drive.” I
described the house, a pale yellow bungalow near the corner of Waters Road.

“Okay, we'll send someone over right away. In the meantime, you folks might as well go on home. We'll let you know what happens.”

We did as we'd been told, but all we did when we got home was sit at the kitchen table and wait for either a phone call or a knock on the door. No one suggested that we put back on the movie we'd been watching before the stalker's phone call, even though we'd been enjoying it.

It was Mueller who pulled into the driveway close to two hours later. I could tell he had good news, but there was still something grim in his expression. I think it bothered him to have had to arrest someone that age for something so serious.