Page 42 of Don't Watch Alone
The red glowing fire alarm near the exit looks like deliverance to me. If I can reachit, maybe I’ll draw attention, maybe force him out. I inch down the aisle, silent as I can, the lullaby throbbing through the night. Halfway there, it stops.
The sudden silence is worse than the song.
“Found you, Blaiz.”
The voice is right behind me, guttural and close enough to feel on my skin.
I spin, and swing the bar with everything I have. It collides with something soft, then hard, and a grunt of pain follows. I don’t wait. I bolt for the exit, shove the doors open, and run desperately to get away from the killer.
Chapter twenty-two
Blaiz
Atthispointinmy fucked-up night, I don’t care where Tony ran off to. The idea of finding him, of somehow dragging him to safety, is nothing but a crumbling piece of hope I left behind hours ago. All I have now are the images replaying in my head, the worst moments of tonight repeating over and over, and the resentful desire that we had just left him to his own bullshit. If we had walked out, if we had gone home, everyone would still be alive.
Andy’s voice bothers me. Don’t go to the movies. Stay home. I should have listened. I should have turned the car around, ignored Tony, ignored every stupid instinct that dragged me into this nightmare. Instead, I still came to watch “Don’t Watch Alone”.
I hit Andy. I hit him hard, right across the face, and watched him collapse like a broken dollbehind the concession stand. I used to think he was stalking me, but now I’m not sure if he was the danger. I thought he was the one who had wanted to kill us. I didn’t see it until now, until the real nightmare started to show itself. He wasn’t the threat. He was the only one who knew what was going to happen tonight, and I silenced him. The heavy weight of guilt steals my breath.
Where the fuck is Gus? He should be here. He should be walking these halls, keys jangling, and the smell of cheap coffee trailing behind him. He’s security. He knows every inch of this mall, every hiding spot, every back hallway, and I would give anything to see his stupid uniform right now. He’s supposed to be my last shot at getting out alive.
I run; my footsteps are pounding against the glossy tiles that reflect the dim neon of the closed stores. The air has a bad taste—metallic, damp, and faintly rotten, as if something died in the walls and was just left there. I see motion where none exists andimagine footsteps creeping up behind me, like a stalker getting ready to attack me.
The security office door offers safety as I stumble through it. The room is cold and dark, except for the surveillance wall’s gentle light. No Gus.
Terror and sweat make my fingers clumsy and stiff when I slam the door and twist the lock. The tiny click is the only sound I can hold on to. For now, I am trapped instead of running. I drag myself to the monitors, praying for a plan, for a flash of the killer before he finds me. Endless screens show a vacant mall: gloomy walkways, closed shops, dark shapes that don’t move. Dead space. Empty space. Too empty. My eyes land on the camera behind the concession stand, where I left Andy’s crumpled body.
He’s gone.
My insides are taken over by a new, cold sickness. Did he get up? Did the killer drag him off? Did I… did I fucking kill him? I can almost see his blood on my hands, whether it’s real or not.
Then the monitors die, all at once, the buzzing snapping into silence so sudden it’s like the air itself got cut off. My ears ring with the lack of noise. My heart is the loudest thing imaginable at the moment.
One screen comes back on, and it bursts into life with a cruel, clear picture. In the court’s center stood the masked man, skylight spilling light over his body. In front of him, tied and gagged and struggling in pitiful little jerks, is Tony.
The noise that explodes out of me doesn’t even sound like it’s from a person. My knees buckle, my back hits the cold wall, and I slide to the floor, my eyes locked on the image like I’m bound to it. I whisper his name, scream it, beg the screen to give him back, but it’s like trying to talk through water. The masked man moves around him, like a predator that smells the end coming. His knife catches the light, meant for one thing only.
I can’t move. I can’t breathe. My whole body is frozen. Every part of me wants to look away, to stop this, to erase this moment from existence.But I’m stuck, held by the nightmare, forced to watch as the only person I have left is sacrificed to the night.
The awful sound, halfway between a scream and a sob, tears at my throat as it rises. I slam my fists against the cold floor, the metal and tile stinging my knuckles, and the pain barely registers because my whole body feels like it’s splitting in two. I can’t move. I can’t even take my eyes off the screen.
Tony is right there, right fucking there, on his knees under that dead window sky, just struggling. His head jerks, his shoulders twist, his muffled screams rattling through my imagination because I can’t hear shit through the silent feed, but I know what he’s saying. He’s calling for me. He’s begging me. He’s telling me to save him, and I can’t even stand up.
The masked man’s head tilts, a slow, machine-like movement making me queasy. His knife drags a silver streak through the pale light as he lifts it, like he has all the time in the fucking world to kill him. He squats down beside Tony, close enough that I can almostfeel his breath through the screen, and he reaches out a gloved hand to touch Tony’s face, his shoulder, his hair, like he’s choosing which part of him to destroy first.
I’m breathing hard, and I feel something snapping within my head. I slam my hand against the nearest monitor, leaving a smear of sweat and blood, and scream, “Leave him the fuck alone!” But the room absorbs my voice completely, and the man on the screen doesn’t even flinch. He can’t hear me. Or worse, he can—and he doesn’t give a shit.
The camera shakes for a second, like someone touched it, and I swear the masked man turns his head toward it. Toward me. The mask’s smooth, featureless surface shines in the light; I can feel the pressure of his eyes under that empty covering even through the poor video quality. He knows I’m watching. He’s letting me watch. He’s letting me see exactly how hopeless this is.
Tony strains hard against the ropes, his knees sliding across the polished floor, and the masked man drives his boot into his chestto pin him like he’s nothing. He lifts the knife higher, the tip glinting like a star in a dead sky, and I can’t stop shaking. My bladder is about to give out. My mind is unraveling at the edges, peeling back into intense panic, and all I can think is that I am watching the person I love the most about to be carved apart, and it’s my fault, all of it, every damn second.
I want to run out there. I want to tear through the dark and throw myself at him and tear his mask off and put the knife in my own chest if it means Tony gets to live. But my legs are jelly, and I am stuck in this frozen corner of hell, forced to bear witness to the thing that will end me whether I live or not.
My eyes stay locked on the monitor, following Tony’s every move, when a sudden, bone-shaking thump against the shatterproof glass of the booth yanks me out of my thoughts. I jerk so hard my back scrapes the wall, and I turn around quickly, ready for… I don’t even know what.
Andy’s face is smashed against the glass, twisted in terror and desperation. His palms slap against the window.
“Please let me in, Blaiz!”
