10

Abi wrestled many fears and anxieties on a daily basis; some big, some small, most illogical. A psychologist had once told her that everyone battled with anxiety and irrational fears. “Confidence,” he said, “is just a smokescreen employed by people who have learned to hide, deny, or accept their fear.”

Knowing that confidence was an illusion didn’t make her feel better. If anything, it made her worry more about the future of humanity. How can we hope to evolve, to grow, and to continue doing amazing things if we’re all secretly worrying that we’ve left the oven on?

The psychologist wasn’t acting in a professional context. She had bumped into him at a house party, quite literally, and he’d given her his spiel after listening to her mumble her way through an apology while trying to clean wine from his pants. If she had been an actual patient of his, instead of a random madwoman trying desperately to feign interest while she crossed her legs and internally debated the pros and cons of using a stranger’s toilet, she might have pushed him further.

Some of her anxieties could be traced back to actual memories, such as the time her rabbit escaped and was run over on the road, causing her to double-lock and triple-check every pet’s cage thereafter. Or the time she became momentarily trapped in a public toilet, causing her to avoid them when possible and leave the door ajar when not.

One of her oldest habits had been formed on Halloween when she was just nine years old. She’d opened the front door to find a tall grim reaper standing before her, his bony face staring back at her, his clawed hand reaching for her. It was one of the neighbor kids trick-or-treating, and she’d opened the door just as he reached for the bell, catching her unaware as she began her own Halloween adventure. In that split second, she thought she had come face-to-face with a monster. She soiled herself, screamed, slammed the door in his face, and spent the rest of the night being consoled by her grandmother.

Since that day, twenty-plus years in the future, she never left the house without checking through the peephole first. It hadn’t saved her from any further Halloween incidents, but it had helped her avoid awkward conversations with neighbors and postmen.

It was one of the few irrational fears that served her well, and as she pressed her face to the peephole, she was thankful once more. No grim reapers were waiting ominously for their share of fun-sized Snickers bars, but she did see something that scared her nearly as much.

Robert was walking past her house and looking her way. Abi’s heart stopped momentarily, and she felt the same way she had felt last night, knowing that he couldn’t possibly see her but feeling like he was looking directly at her.

His gaze lingered in her general direction and then flickered upstairs, to the same room Abi had been in the previous night when she phoned the police. He was still staring at the office when he disappeared out of view, on his way down the street.

Abi retreated from the peephole and waited, her heart still pounding heavily.

He’s just an awkward, weird neighbor, she told herself as she pressed her eyes closed and waited for the anxiety to subside. I’m overreacting. Nothing’s going on.

But what if something is going on?

What if he really is up to something?

She took a deep breath, checked the peephole one more time, and then silently opened the door. He would have made it to the end of the street by now and would have turned a corner out of sight, but she still double-checked to be sure.

The street was empty, with no potential awkward encounters, no small talk to be dragged into, no questions she didn’t want to answer. Robert was probably heading into town, which meant she would have to follow him, a prospect she wasn’t entirely happy with. There was also a chance he could turn around and head back, in which case she would bump into him and be forced to endure another conversation.

Her feet were rooted, her eyes darting down the street and then to Robert’s house. It was empty. Inviting. In a few steps, she would be standing in the same place Robert had stood last night; a few steps more would take her down the side of the house, into the backyard or to the front door. The house beckoned her, practically begging for her to take a peep through the windows—the curtains open, the lights off.

With her head down, she quickly scurried across the lawn to his front door. She paused, composed herself, and then knocked three times. He wasn’t going to answer; she knew that much. It was an excuse in case she was being watched or Robert caught her in the act.

I just wanted to welcome you into the neighborhood, that’s all.

Her heart rate increased with each passing second, but she fought through it. After the first three knocks, she edged closer to the front window and peeked through, turning her baseball cap around before pressing her hands to the side of her face to block out the sunlight.

I knocked and you didn’t answer, so I panicked a little. I got it into my head that something might have happened, and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do anything. I was just taking a peek to make sure you were okay.

The living room was empty but for a small two-seater sofa, a coffee table, and a laptop. Robert had just moved in, so she didn’t expect to see a fully furnished home, but she had expected to see some boxes, bags, or other junk.

When she peeled back, she realized that her sweaty hands and face had left an impression on the window. She used the window’s reflection to check behind her and at either ends of the street, keen not to turn around lest she look suspicious to any onlookers. If there had been a sight or sound of anyone else on the street, she would have retreated immediately, no doubt losing her composure at the same time, but there wasn’t. It was quiet, unusually so, and that spurred her on.

A small part of her told her to stop, to give up and let things be, but a greater part of her knew that something wasn’t right. She wanted answers. After pausing at the front window momentarily, standing with her hands on her hips in a theatrical look of befuddlement, she quickly walked around to the back of the house.

Our house has the same layout and I know it can be hard to hear the front door if you’re in the kitchen, so I thought I would try the back, as well.

The side of Robert’s house was separated from hers by a stretch of paving slabs bisected by a wooden fence. There were two gates at the front of the fence, the left leading down the side of her house and into her backyard, the right into Robert’s. With a glance down the street to check that her creepy neighbor hadn’t made a quick return, she opened the gate on the right and quietly closed it behind her.

—

Abi’s hand, coated in a thin film of sweat, trembled uncontrollably as she reached for the patio door. Her mind raced with thoughts of what she might find, what might happen to her. The window at the back of the house looked onto the dining room, but the blinds had been closed and she saw nothing but her pale, petrified expression staring back. She had been about to leave, preparing to race down the side of the house and run to the comfort of her home, when she spotted the door.

It was unlocked, the lever stuck in the “open” position, visible through the clear glass surface of the sliding door. The same doors had been fitted on her own house. She’d spent months worrying about the flimsy mechanism, constantly checking and rechecking to make sure it was locked, going so far as to leave via the front door, walk to the back of the house, and check from the other side just to be doubly sure. At first, Martha found it funny and would play tricks on her, cheekily unlocking the doors while she was outside checking them, causing her to repeat her fastidious cycle several times. Eventually, Martha tired of the joke and paid to have new doors fitted, much to Abi’s relief.

With her hand gripping the handle, Abi closed her eyes and pulled. There was no relief when she felt the door open and heard the satisfying creak as it slid across its rollers. There was no sense of adventure coursing through her veins as she stepped inside and quietly slid the door shut before her. There was no curiosity eating away at her as she moved quietly through the dining room and entered the living room. There was only fear—a growing, niggling fear that resisted every step she made and told her to flee. She fought through it.

Abi headed straight for the laptop, which sat unopened on the coffee table. Her own laptop had facial recognition software that automatically unlocked every time she opened it, but this machine was old and incapable of advanced security features. It could have been secured with a PIN, but none had been set and Abi was given instant access to the desktop. Despite being an older machine, the desktop looked brand new, clear, empty. Abi reasoned that Robert was either just as fastidious as she was, or he had recently formatted the computer.

In addition to the standard OS icons, there was a folder marked “Current.” Abi opened it without hesitation and was greeted with two additional files. The first of these was a Word document fixed with a padlock symbol, suggesting it had been secured with a password. Abi didn’t have time to try and guess his password, nor did she need to, because the second folder, marked “Pictures,” was unlocked.

She opened the folder after several messy miss-clicks, her fingers quivering madly, her anxiety increasing with each passing second. What she saw inside made her even more anxious and even more determined.

One of the folders was alarmingly named “Victims,” but it was the second that drew her attention the most.

“Abi/Martha.”

She mouthed the name several times, not quite taking it in, not understanding why her name and her grandmother’s name were on Robert’s computer. “What the—”

With a little less eagerness and considerably more apprehension, Abi moved to click on the folder, but the laptop trackpad failed to register. Initially, she panicked, believing the computer to have crashed. After dragging her finger quickly across the screen, she realized the inaction was due to the trackpad being coated in a film of her sweat.

She wiped her hands on her jeans, used the cuff of her shirt to clean the trackpad, and then paused to steady herself, squeezing her eyes shut and taking several sharp breaths. There was no telling what she would find, but she knew now that her fears had not been unfounded, her phone call to the police had not been a moment of neurosis from an unstable woman.

“As anxious as I was,” she imagined herself saying as she related her story to the police, moments after they apologized profusely for reacting the way they did, “I had never felt more alive.” In actual fact, she felt like she was on the brink of death, her heart ready to explode out of her chest, her arms weak, heavy. Adrenaline raced through her body like electricity, and blood rushed so violently in her ears that she worried she wouldn’t be able to hear the sound of the door if it opened.

But she did.

The sound, when it came, was just as deafening as the noise in her ears, just as shocking as the adrenaline that coursed through her body.

The front door opened onto a hallway and was just a few steps from the door leading into the living room. Abi quickly rose to her feet, her eyes moving from the living room door to the laptop and then to the sliding doors she had entered through.

The folder on the computer glared at her when her eyes met the laptop—one click from discovering what he was up to, one click from learning whether he was an obsessed lover, a crazy stalker, or an aspiring serial killer. A click from knowing if she was heading for the “Victims” folder, and if the content there chronicled his murder victims or rape victims or if it had something to do with revenge porn, snuff films, BDSM pictures, or just poorly worded sexual conquests.

The keys were pulled out of the lock; the door creaked loudly as it slowly closed.

Abi dived for the laptop. As desperately as she wanted to open the folder, she knew she didn’t have time. She closed the folder, slammed the lid down, and then backtracked. That’s when she heard the living room door open, stopping her dead in her tracks, rooted to the spot in the middle of the room, in direct sight of her former date and potential killer.

Abi swallowed despite the lump in her throat, stood firm despite feeling like her legs were about to buckle, and regretted every decision she had made over the last ten minutes.