Page 26 of Don't Watch Alone
We throw on our shoes. I grab the casserole. Tony opens the door and we step into the hall. It’s quiet except for the sound of our footsteps. As we approach the door across the hall, we hear something. Voices, maybe movement. But the second we knock, it all stops.
No one answers.
We wait. Nothing.
Back inside my apartment, I set the dish down; the weight of it suddenly feels like too much. Tony shuts the door behind us, leaning against it like he’s trying to catch his breath.
“Well, that was… something,” he mutters, still staring at the door across the hall.
“They stopped the second we knocked,” I say. “You heard it, right? It was like someone was talking… or struggling.”
Tony nods slowly. “Yeah. And those blinds… that wasn’t wind. It looked like a fight. Or someone trying to get out.”
The casserole sits forgotten on the counter, the smell of it filling the room but feelingcompletely wrong now. My stomach twists with something that has nothing to do with hunger.
“What do you think’s happening over there?” I ask.
Tony walks to the window, pulls the curtain back just enough to peek. “No movement,” he murmurs.
Then we both hear it—a faint metallic clink, followed by a low groan, like something heavy dragging across the floor. Tony freezes. I meet his eyes.
“You heard that?”
He nods. “Yeah. Could be furniture, but that groan…”
He walks away from the window and back toward the door. “We wait.”
“Wait for what?” I ask. “For them to come to us? Or for whatever’s happening in there to spill out here?”
He doesn’t answer right away. “We watch. That’s what we do. We keep our eyes open.”
He presses his eye to the peephole, and I stand behind him. Across the hall, the door stays shut.
And I can’t help but feel like something is watching us back.
“Blaiz, someone’s coming out of the apartment,” Tony whispers, close enough that I feel the breath of it against my ear. We freeze, both of us locked in place, eyes pinned to the cracked door across the hall. Slowly, a thin figure steps out, and a body curved like he’s carrying something far heavier than age on his back. He pulls the door shut behind him with a quiet click, and I feel my breath stop.
“Gus?” I mouth. There’s no mistaking him—not with that frail body, not in that same faded blue jacket I saw him wearing at the mall. Only now, the sharp creases of his usual security uniform are gone. He looks worn the hell out, drawn in a way that goes beyond plain exhaustion, like he’s hiding something, like the hallway walls are closing in on him just as much as they are on us.
“Who the fuck is Gus?” Tony murmurs, his eyes narrowing as Gus struggles with his keys, the jangle far too loud in the dead quiet of the building.
“He’s the nighttime security guard at the mall,” I say, my mind trying to stitch together disparate pieces of information. Gus finally locks the door and rubs both hands down his face, like he’s trying to erase whatever just happened inside, or maybe trying to wake himself up from it.
“He didn’t tell you he lives across from you?” Tony asks, glancing at me like I’ve missed something obvious.
“No. Why would he? He doesn’t even know where I live. I’ve only talked to him a handful of times after work, and even then, he barely says two words to me.” My voice is low as I watch Gus begin to walk slowly down the hall. He doesn’t head toward the stairs. Instead, he turns toward the fire escape at the far end. I notice the limp first, more noticeable than I remember, and then I see it—a dark smudge on the sleeve of his jacket, just above the cuff. I can’t tell what it is in this shitty lighting, but my gut’s already piecing it together.
“What do you think all that noise was earlier?” Tony asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. A new thought hits me with great impact, like a shock I didn’t see coming—what if Andy had nothing to do with Mary disappearing? What if we’ve been thinking the wrong thing this whole time?
No, that’s fucking insane.
Gus is old. Slow. I’ve seen his hands tremble just holding a cup of coffee. If he tried anything, Mary would’ve fought back. She was tough, always quick with her mouth and quicker with her fists. She wouldn’t have gone quietly, wouldn’t have disappeared without something.
“Maybe I’m just working myself up,” I mutter, more to silence the chaos in my head than to actually reassure Tony.
Gus turns the corner and disappears toward the fire escape.
