The Stranger Inside

by Lisa Unger

  But if I’ve learned one thing in my work and life, it’s that bad things happen everywhere, and almost no one ever looks like the demon inside. Markham was movie-star handsome. The Boston Boogeyman looked like Mister Rogers, kind and graying about the temples, soft-spoken.

  Forest bathing. I walk first, then jog, mindful of my step, picking my way through the trees. Yes, this is it, my last night out here. If I don’t find the cellar, I’m going to have to let this go. Angel—she might be lying, or delusional, or just confused. She thought all of those boys were the boy she called Valentine. Her hands were shaking. When she looked at me, I saw confusion, fear. I can’t act on what she’s given me; but I can look one more time. Just in case.

  The plan was for you to stand on the porch, an apparition, the thing that lured him into the house. When he drew you, you were always in a simple red dress, your hair loose around your shoulders. So, that’s what you wore, how you had your hair. Maybe you would wave to him, then you’d turn and walk through the door. Once he was inside, you would leave through the back and wait in the car, the engine running, my getaway driver.

  We’d never speak of it. Afterward, we’d never see each other again.

  I was ready. I had been training and studying. At the gym, I had a trainer who conducted a punishing workout—heavy lifting, brutal cardio, wrestling, mixed martial arts. On the dark web: how to assemble a kill bag. How to best a larger man in a fight. How to immobilize a victim. How to commit a murder and not leave a single trace of evidence. It’s out there. Some of it’s bullshit; some of it is the ranting of madmen.

  But if you know your way around, you can find anything you need to know. My favorite was the site of a paramilitary guy, who meticulously laid out his training as a fighter, a survivor, an interrogator, a killer. I learned everything I needed to know from a US soldier turned mercenary. The most important weapon you have is your mind. If you’re not prepared to kill, you’ll die. There’s not a gun or a knife in the world that will save you.

  He gave his video tutorials in a balaclava.

  Turned out that everything he said was bullshit. Fighting for your life, and the life of your friend, is a very different thing than killing in cold blood.

  Of course, things didn’t go as planned, Harper’s words suddenly making sense. It’s not what you think. Not during, not after.

  Funny how when you’re a kid, grown-ups seem like gods. Impossibly powerful, free from rules, the keepers of secrets. Then you go through a phase where they seem so old, so out of touch, where you dismiss them completely. Finally, you realize that at least a few of them knew what they were talking about. By that time, you’re old, too, having gleaned wisdom of your own that no one hears.

  I remember that night, Lara. But the memory is like a low-quality film reel, something that I watched on a small screen. I remember the leaden silence between us, the pale of your face, how your expression was taut with fear and anger. When I caught your eye, I saw that you hated me. Who could blame you? Look what I asked you to do.

  I have mistreated you, Rain Winter. I could blame it on him. But I am not separate from the beast within, not entirely.

  Just like tonight, I hid the car and shouldered that pack. I walked through the woods and you followed. Your breath was ragged. You were crying, and I ignored you.

  Tonight, I walk and walk alone. It’s a slog for some reason. Though I’ve walked far harder terrain much faster, a kind of fatigue has settled in. I keep looking around for Tess, but she’s abandoned me—like all smart women. They keep their distance.

  I reach the fork Angel described and veer left, note the time to clock fifteen minutes. I haven’t been this way before, so—maybe.

  There’s a waxing gibbous moon, casting off a weary light from behind drifting clouds. I hear the occasional cry of the barred owl, that mournful: Who looks for you? But largely it’s quiet except for the skittering of a squirrel who dances across my path and up into the branches above me.

  The woods thin, and I come to a clearing. This is deeper onto the property than I’ve ventured and suddenly I’m mindful of how far I’ve come, how no one knows I’m here. How I’ve left my phone in the car—after all, the intruder doesn’t often resort to calling the police. Besides, I don’t trust that thing. I know how easy it is to track and watch someone, how vulnerable these devices are to spyware. Using it, I’ve created a clone of your phone, Lara. I know every text and phone call, every move you make unless—as you sometimes do—you turn off your location services, or the phone itself. So, naturally, I’m distrustful of my own device. If people only knew.

  I kneel down and open my pack, retrieve the metal detector I’ve purchased online, and assemble it quickly. I tested it at home. It’s such a cheap piece of made-in-China garbage, I couldn’t believe it would actually work. But it seems to. It’s as light as a drinking straw, emits a low clicking noise when I turn it on.

  I walk the clearing. The perimeter, then zigzag across. It isn’t until I’ve almost given up that the light turns red, and the device starts to beep. I look down and see a wooden door in the ground, with a metal latch and padlock. I stare at it a moment.

  Huh. Well, how about that? Angel was telling the truth. From my pack, I retrieve a set of bolt cutters. I could try to pick the lock, but the night is growing long, and I have a niggling sense of unease.

  I cut the bolt, with effort.

  It’s not easy, any of this. The amassing of tools, the research, the recon, the stalking, the physical act of taking a life. You really have to commit.

  The lock falls with a clatter, landing loudly on the wood. When I swing the door open, the smell hits me like a fist, knocking me back.

  Oh, god.

  “What the hell are you doing on my property?”

  The voice causes me to spin and I’m standing face-to-face with Tom Walters.

  He’s thin and hunched, a kind of strange young-old to his drawn face. Straw for hair, cut badly, clothes ill-fitting. His face clenched in menace. In his hand a mallet of sorts, something that looks like it would hurt a lot if he managed to hit me with it. Which he won’t.

  “What’s down there, Mr. Walters?” I say, opting for the direct approach. I square myself off against him, size him up. I estimate that I have about fifty pounds on him.

  His expression broadens into surprise. Maybe he expected me to react with fear or retreat. “What the fuck—who are you?”

  “Who’s down there?” I repeat.

  My pack. In a moment of carelessness, I’ve left it on the far side of the clearing, open after removing the bolt cutters.

  He advances, and I hold my ground, bring my left foot forward ready to fight. I almost laugh when I think of all the men, nearly twice his size, that I’ve bested inside the ring and without. He’ll swing high I bet, looking for strength from the shoulder. I see his shoulder twitch, a telegraph. I prepare to block. Instead he roots.

  “You’re trespassing. And I’ve called the police,” he says. He glances behind me at the open door. “Best get out of here.”

  “I doubt you’ve called the police,” I say. I advance a step; he takes a step back. I intend to relieve him of that mallet.

  But the blow, when it comes, comes from behind.

  The knock to the back of my head is brutal—the world tilts and my ears start to ring. The pain, it takes a second, but my nerve endings start a siren. I spin to see a woman I recognize as Wendy Walters standing behind me, holding a shovel, which she’s lifted, followed through like a baseball bat swing.

  I’m stunned, too stunned to defend myself as Tom Walters moves in with his hammer to deliver a devastating hit to the knee. I hear myself roar. And then the push.

  I stumble back into the abyss of that hole, falling and falling, knocking stairs on the way down. Pain and fear delayed, just a horrible twisting disorientation, the knocking of my head, my hip, my knee.
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  The last thing I’m aware of is the door closing above me with a clang.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Wear this.”

  Hank pushed a rubbery mask at her, covered with feathers.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice wobbly.

  “Just put it on.”

  She obeyed. It stank like chemicals, the plastic rubbing against her skin.

  “Pull up your hood, and let’s go.”

  After a certain point, the whole thing had taken on the unreality of a nightmare. It was so far out of the realm of anything she had done or would have thought to do. Her life since Kreskey, it hadn’t been easy. But she was on a traditional path—therapy, school, internships, Greg. She knew what she wanted to do, where she was headed. Kreskey, and that awful, life-altering day—those things behind her, the fears and memories locked up tight.

  Then Hank. He opened up something in her. Maybe it was always there.

  They walked and walked, she following him, watching him through the eye holes of the mask. It made her feel invisible somehow, like she almost wasn’t there.

  The house rose in front of them, ugly and small. She nearly turned around then, chucked off the mask and started running. You owe me this much, Lara. It was the idea of that that kept her from bolting. She owed him. She did.

  “Take off your coat,” he told her. “And the mask.”

  He took both from her.

  “When you see him, walk inside and out the back door. Wait in the car with the engine running.”

  When he backed away from her, she thought she saw something flash in his eyes, which she could see through his mask, a hawk, ferruginous feathers, sharp yellow beak. Was it regret, sorrow? That’s when he stepped on a weak board on the porch, his foot falling through with a crack.

  He swore a blue streak and when she tried to help him up, he pushed her away. It wasn’t him, not the man she’d given her body to, not the boy who used to give her piggyback rides. It was the other one. She hated him.

  She was shaking, a quavering that started at her core and moved through her body like a virus. Her stomach was an acid roil of nerves. He freed himself and went into the house. He didn’t seem scared—at all. He was a robot again, his focus and intent only on the task at hand.

  She stood there—how long?

  The night was silent and so cold. All stars obscured by cloud cover, and the tops of trees. She paced the porch, avoiding the weak board. Hope ballooned—maybe he wouldn’t come. She wouldn’t let Hank talk her into this again. In fact, fuck it, she was going to call Detective Harper and tell him what they’d tried to do. She’d tell her father. Maybe not Greg—who was never going to forgive her anyway. But he didn’t need to know that she continued to sink lower and lower for this guy.

  She was thinking about Greg, how alone she felt, how furious he’d be, how terrified, if he knew where she was, how wrong it all was—when she felt eyes on her, that tingling of the skin. Gaze detection.

  A jolt of fear moved through her body when she saw that someone had emerged from the shadows, a bulky darkness leaking from the black all around, his face as white and round as a moon. Kreskey.

  She backed away as he advanced, reaching out a hand to her, and she choked back a scream. Inside the door, Hank handed over her coat, her mask.

  “Now go.”

  She moved quickly, blindly, through the house, down the hall, to the kitchen, feeling her way. As she left, she saw the living room—a tarp laid out. Tools. Rope. What was he going to do, exactly? She didn’t need to know, kept moving.

  The back door swung open, and the night lay out before her. She could run to the car. She could even leave him there, drive to the police station they’d passed on the way in, stop all of this before it began.

  But she didn’t.

  She stopped in the door frame, the cold outside a wall, her hot, ragged breath in clouds. She stood a moment, listening to the silent night, and thought about the hollow of the tree that had hidden her. The sound of her friend screaming.

  Then she turned around and went back inside.

  What does it mean to be strong? To be brave?

  When she was young, she thought she knew the answers to those questions. It was easy—you didn’t back down from a fight, you defended your friends. You got up onstage to deliver your speech about recycling even though your stomach was queasy, and your voice shook at first. You didn’t cry when you fell off your bike.

  Later, it came to mean something different.

  You didn’t leave the room when your mother was living the last hour of her life, even though she didn’t know you were there, even though you wanted to get out on the street and run away, as far as you could get, wailing with all your pain and sadness.

  You endured hours of mind-altering pain so that you could have a natural childbirth. You gave over your body to your child. You gave up parts of yourself, of your life, to be a good mother, a good wife. You faced down the demons of your past, so you could be whole—so that you could counsel your daughter to live right.

  Now, not even an hour after leaving Greg and Lily, Rain watched Hank park his car, and take that pack from his trunk. She wasn’t sure if what she was doing was strong, or brave, or just plain stupid—reckless.

  She almost called out to him.

  Stop, she wanted to say. I know what you’ve been doing. It has to end here tonight.

  But she stood, silent in the night, miles from home, from where she should be.

  Where was he going? Was it braver to follow him? Or to go back to her family and leave Hank to do whatever it was he was off to do? She could call the police. Or Agent Brower. Or Chris. But then again, she couldn’t do that, could she?

  Was it braver to keep a secret? Or to tell it, no matter what the cost to Hank, to Rain, to her family. Or she could go home and say nothing, as she’d done before.

  She waited until he disappeared and then, she went after him.

  THIRTY-NINE

  In the hero’s journey, there are always extraordinary trials, enemies to fight, crushing failures. The path is fraught with peril, from without and within. There are dark nights of the soul, where despair closes its black claws around you and you think that you can’t, that you shouldn’t, go on. And sometimes you just fuck up.

  Do you know what I mean, Rain? Have you ever made a mistake so huge, suffered a failure so abysmal, that you think you might not be able to find your way back?

  I am kind of in that place right now.

  Get up, loser.

  He’s raging, filling me with the strength, with the power I need. Unfortunately, the body we’re both in has taken a terrible fall.

  I’m afraid to move, my arm and leg are twisted, my shoulder on fire, my hip, my head feels like it might not be on right. I breathe, try to extract myself from this unnatural position. The smell. The utter pitch-black. The leaden silence. Shit. Maybe I’m dead.

  I used to think that as I floated in the Gulf of Mexico with my mother. That hot sun, the bathwater warm of the ocean, the smell of salt and sand and sunscreen. The jewel-green water lifted my body and I floated effortlessly. My mother sang, soft ballads by Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, Norah Jones. Her voice was sweet and melodic, mingling with the calling of the gulls. What did we know about death? Maybe Kreskey killed me that day, and my soul moved to Florida with my mother.

  With effort, I push myself to sitting.

  “You have really fucked this up,” Tess says. “Does anyone even know you’re here?”

  I can’t even see her; she’s just a disembodied voice. I pull my shirt up over my nose to block out the odor. My phone, my flashlight, all my tools are in that pack.

  You never leave the fucking pack out of arm’s reach. What is this, amateur hour?

  I can move everything—fingers and toes. There’s pain—head, shoulder, hip, leg. Knee b
adly twisted. But there isn’t that crazy pain from a break, everything is intact. Everything moves. I can only chalk it up to my vigorous fighting and exercise routine, muscles strong and flexible. Bend and bounce or break and shatter.

  “Hello?”

  A frightened whisper coming from my right.

  “Hello?” I answer.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Billy?” I venture. “Billy Martin? Is that you?”

  A sniffle. “Yes.”

  I get on all fours and crawl toward the voice. “I’m here to help.”

  Which is ridiculous because we’re both trapped down here, thanks to my utter ineptitude.

  “Do you have a light?”

  “No,” he says. “Don’t you?”

  “Is there anyone else down here?”

  I come to the bars of a cage. There’s not a single pinprick of light. I’m completely blind. I put my hands on the bars and feel a set of bony fingers. I cover them with mine. The kid absolutely reeks; I try not to retch.

  “There were others,” he whispers. “But it’s been quiet for a while. Do you have any food? Any water?”

  In my pack, yes. Protein bars. A bottle filled with water. “No,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “How are you going to get us out of here?” His voice is a desperate croak. “Did you—fall in?”

  “Don’t worry,” I tell him, deeply worried myself. “We’ll figure it out.”

  I handed you your coat, Rain, and your mask, and I let you go. I knew you’d wait in the car—that you wouldn’t leave me or go to the police. Because I knew you—your heart, your mind, or thought I did. I knew when I left that house, you’d be waiting for me with the engine running, just like we planned.

  I was ready. He was in charge—and I wanted him to be. That part of me that didn’t care what he did, or who he hurt, who wasn’t afraid and who didn’t have nightmares.