Watch Them Die

by Kevin O'Brien

  She watched in horror as he plunged the knife down into the woman’s chest. He did it again, and again. The pretty blonde started to scream, but then she appeared to go into shock. She stopped struggling.

  He kept stabbing her. Yet the wide-eyed, dazed expression on her face didn’t change. Her body took each savage, bloodletting blow without so much as a twitch. The woman was dead.

  Numbly, Hannah stared at the TV screen—and at that poor woman. The blurry form of a man finally pulled away from his victim. The blonde lay amid the bloody bed sheets, naked and perfectly still, illuminated by the staccato light flashes. Her eyes were open, unblinking.

  “Jesus,” Hannah whispered. “This looks real.”

  From the sidewalk, he had a view of the third-floor balcony walkway—and her living-room window. She was watching the tape, he could tell. He could see the rapid, flickering light from her TV, like a lightning storm going on inside her apartment. It was the strobe lamp in the video.

  Hannah was watching the murder right now.

  He wished he could see her reaction. Was she terrified? If only he were watching the movie with her: That would have been something. Like a great director, he manipulated his audience. He pulled the strings, and Hannah Doyle responded.

  He wanted to be there while she responded.

  Soon enough, he told himself. He would get closer to her—much, much closer.

  The video was rewinding in Hannah’s VCR.

  She took her dinner off the stove and threw it away. The videotape had made her sick. She couldn’t stop shaking. She kept telling herself that it couldn’t have been real.

  In fact, the home video seemed eerily familiar. That death scene had already been played out by Tom Berenger and Diane Keaton at the end of Looking for Mr. Goodbar. It was the climax of Richard Brooks’s 1977 film: the strobe light, the couple in the throes of violent sex, him pulling out a knife, then repeatedly stabbing her in the chest. The video’s blond victim even had the same death stare as Diane Keaton in the original movie.

  Hannah refilled her wineglass and stared at her blank TV screen. She needed to prove to herself that the tape was just a reenactment, a fake.

  She took another gulp of wine, then edged up close to her TV screen. She pressed “Play.” With a hand over her mouth, she forced herself to watch.

  Hannah thought she’d catch a false note. But the more she saw, the sicker she felt. It was like studying the Zapruder film. Every frame was real. Wincing, she played the stabbing in slow motion, and it didn’t look fake. She studied the dead woman, and didn’t see her draw a breath or blink.

  At the end of the video, Hannah was shaking again.

  It didn’t make sense. How could this reenactment of Looking for Mr. Goodbar look so real? More important, who had made the movie, and why?

  Whoever had dropped off the video at the store must have been a customer. But Hannah didn’t recognize the woman in the film, and despite her constant scrutiny, she couldn’t make out the killer. He must have edited himself out.

  Hannah ejected the tape. She thought about calling the police. Instead, she called Tish, the store manager, at her home.

  “Tish, it’s Hannah. Did I wake you?”

  “No, I’m up. What’s going on?”

  “Well, I took home a video that’s been sitting in the limbo drawer for two weeks. I just looked at it, Tish. I think it’s some kind of snuff film.”

  “You’re kidding,” Tish murmured.

  “I wish I was,” Hannah said. “In it, this poor woman is stabbed over and over again. And it looks very real. Maybe you could take a look at it, Tish. I think it’s some kind of reenactment of Diane Keaton’s murder in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Maybe it’s just a hoax and I’m too freaked out right now to see it. You might recognize the woman in the video; I didn’t.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing, Hannah,” her boss said. “Take it from me, I’ve been working in video stores for over ten years. Snuff films are something you read or hear about, urban legend stuff.”

  “Well, I wish you’d at least look at this.”

  “Okay, I’ll take a gander,” Tish said. “Bring it in tomorrow. I bet it’s somebody’s project for a film class or something. Don’t let it scare you, Hannah. Mellow out. Pour yourself a glass of wine.”

  She managed to chuckle. “I’m way ahead of you.”

  After Hannah hung up the phone, she studied the unmarked cassette again. Perhaps she’d see it was fake if she looked at the tape just one more time. But she couldn’t. Hell, she didn’t even want the damn thing in her apartment overnight.

  Hannah stuffed the cassette in a bag and set it on the kitchen counter. Then she topped off her glass of wine and opened the Melba toast.

  Hannah flipped her pillow over, gave it a punch, and turned to look at the luminous digital clock on her nightstand: 2:53 A.M. What had made her think she would fall asleep tonight?

  Every time she closed her eyes, she kept seeing that dead woman lying amid the rumpled, bloodstained sheets. Hannah had been tossing and turning for the last two hours.

  She finally flung back the covers and climbed out of bed. She wore a T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. Rubbing her forehead, she staggered toward the bathroom next door. She glanced down the hallway.

  And gasped.

  A shadowy figure moved at the end of the hallway. For a second, all she saw was a blur, like that faceless killer in the video. It darted away so quickly it might have been a ghost—maybe that young man who had killed himself in this apartment.

  Hannah stood paralyzed for a moment. Goose bumps crept over her arms. Her feet grew cold, and she realized the front door must be open. Had someone broken into the apartment? Was he still there?

  She stepped in front of Guy’s doorway, instinctively blocking anyone from getting in. The door was closed, but she heard Guy breathing as he slept. Hannah told herself that he was all right.

  Another shadow swept across the hallway wall. She was dead certain someone was in her living room.

  “I have a gun!” Hannah heard herself say in a loud, shrill voice. Her whole body tingled.

  Not a sound. After a minute, Hannah caught her breath, then crept toward the living room. She switched on the light. No one.

  The curtains on the window were open a few inches. She noticed the headlights of a car coming down the street, three stories below. Were those the shadows she’d seen?

  Hannah checked the front closet. Then she peeked into Guy’s room.

  He was sitting up in bed, looking utterly terrified. “Mommy?”

  “It’s okay, honey,” she said, still trying to catch her breath. “Just stay there, sweetie. Everything’s all right.”

  She poked her head in the bathroom, then returned to the living room. She checked the door. “Oh, shit,” she whispered.

  It wasn’t locked. She could have sworn she’d double-locked it earlier in the evening.

  But that had been at least three glasses of wine ago. Just last night, she’d resolved to cut back on the chardonnay consumption.

  Her heart still racing, Hannah double-locked the door. She glanced around the apartment. Nothing was missing. Nothing had been disturbed. Was she drunk? Maybe she was just a little paranoid after watching that creepy video.

  She checked her purse—just where she’d left it, on one of the barstools at the kitchen counter. Inside, her wallet, cash, and credit cards were still there.

  “Mom!” Guy cried out. “Mommy, where are you?”

  Hannah hurried back to Guy’s room. He was still was sitting up in bed, clutching the bedsheets to his chin. “There was a scream,” he murmured.

  Hannah smoothed his disheveled blond hair. Her hand was shaking. “I, um, I just had a nightmare, honey,” she whispered, trying to smile. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  Guy squinted at her. “What did you dream?”

  Hannah shrugged. “I can’t remember now. Isn’t that silly?”

  Sighing, she sat down on the edge
of his bed. She kept having to tell herself that they were all right. Safe.

  “Think you can go back to sleep now?” she asked.

  Guy yawned, then tugged at the bedsheets. “Could you stay a little longer, and make the choo-choo sound?”

  Hannah kissed his cheek. “Okay, just pretend the train is carrying you off to Dreamland.”

  She swayed back and forth, rocking the bed ever so slightly. “Listen to the train,” she whispered. Softly she began lulling him to sleep with her rendition of a locomotive. “Choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo…”

  “Are you still scared?” he muttered sleepily.

  “No, I’m okay, honey,” she said, with a nervous laugh.

  “It was just a bad dream, Mom.”

  “Sure it was,” she agreed, patting his shoulder. “Now get some sleep. It’ll be morning soon.”

  Three

  For the last five minutes, they had been looking at static on the TV screen.

  Hannah and the store manager, Tish, were in the cluttered closet that was the employee break room. There were a desk and chair, and several shelves crammed with old receipts, defective tapes, office supplies, and one tiny television with a built-in VCR. Tish screened allegedly flawed videos on this TV to make sure complaining customers weren’t just trying to score a free comp rental.

  But this morning, Hannah and Tish were crammed in that little room, watching the Goodbar copycat video. It was a continual gray blizzard. Standing behind Tish in the chair, Hannah reached past her and tried the fast-forward button. Nothing. More static.

  “Sure doesn’t look like Diane Keaton,” Tish cracked.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Hannah murmured.

  “Do you think you brought the wrong tape back?” Tish offered.

  Hannah shook her head. “I couldn’t have. I remember last night taking it out of the VCR and putting it on the kitchen counter.”

  “Well, maybe you taped over it by accident,” Tish said.

  Bewildered, Hannah stared at the static on the TV screen. Had she erased the tape? She couldn’t have been that drunk last night, though she certainly had a hangover this morning.

  “Well, fine,” Tish sighed, getting to her feet. “My one shot at seeing a snuff film, and you bring me fifteen minutes of snow.”

  A buxom black woman in her mid-forties, Tish had a beautiful face and long, straight hair she always pulled back with a barrette. She wore a pair of jeans, boots, and an oversized purple V-neck sweater. Tish, along with her girlfriend, Sandra, had been the owner and manager of Emerald City Video for almost eleven years.

  She squeezed past Hannah and started out of the break room. “C’mon, let’s get these returns checked in before the store opens.”

  Hannah ejected the tape from the VCR, then wandered toward the front counter.

  Tish was at the register, stacking up the returned videos and DVDs.

  “You know, I woke up early, early this morning,” Hannah said. “And I thought someone was in the apartment. Maybe somebody switched the tapes.”

  Tish stared at her. “You had a break-in? And you didn’t call the cops?”

  “I said I thought someone was there.” She shrugged. “When I checked, I didn’t see anyone, and nothing was missing. I figured I was wrong. Only now, I don’t know.”

  Tish looked at her as if she were crazy.

  Hannah started filing away DVDs. She couldn’t explain it. Hell, she didn’t know what to believe. She’d had a run-in with a bitchy customer last night, gone home, skipped dinner, and downed a glass of wine. Then she’d started to look at a video, and it scared the hell out of her. Two and a half glasses of Chardonnay later, she had thought someone was in the apartment. She didn’t want to share any of this with Tish. She didn’t want her to know that she sometimes drank too much.

  “I don’t get it.” One hand on the counter and the other on her hip, Tish frowned at her. “I mean, if you really think someone broke into your place last night to rip off what looked like a snuff film, maybe it really was a snuff film. You might want to contact the police.”

  Hannah tried to keep busy with the DVDs. She sighed. “They’ll just say it was a hoax. It’s what you thought last night. You were trying to convince me it was someone’s project for a film class. You said so yourself; there’s no such thing as a genuine snuff film. They’re all fake.”

  “Well, maybe you found a real McCoy. What’s the harm in putting in a call to the cops, huh? Let them know what happened—”

  “No,” Hannah said. “It’s too late to call them now. There’s nothing to back up my story. The video’s just static now. I’ll come across as some nutcase. Please, let’s just drop it. No need to call the police, really. I don’t want you to.”

  “You sure?” Tish asked.

  “Of course,” she replied. Hannah finished filing DVDs and started in on the tapes. She could feel Tish studying her. After a minute, Hannah glanced at the clock on the wall, then at the door. “Time to open up,” she said. “And Howard’s waiting. He’ll want to know What’s new in new releases?”

  “Yeah, goddamn pain in the ass,” Tish muttered, sauntering toward the door. “Always wants me to recommend something, puts me through the wringer, and never rents a damn thing I tell him to.” She unlocked the door and opened it. “Well, Howard, how’s my favorite customer?”

  “What’s new in new releases?” the older man asked.

  “Come on over here,” Hannah heard Tish say. “Let’s take a look….”

  Hannah continued to file away the DVDs. She hoped she’d gotten through to Tish about not calling the police. If the video had still been intact, and they’d determined it was real, she would have asked Tish to handle everything. She’d have asked to be left out of it.

  Only a week ago, she’d confirmed once again that it still wasn’t safe for her to become involved with the authorities in any way.

  In the store, they’d been showing a new comedy called Way Out There. Hannah had recognized one of the actors as a fellow student from her days in Chicago’s Second City troupe. They used to hang out together.

  Way Out There was still playing when Hannah took her break. She dropped ten dollars in the change box, pulled out a roll of quarters, then went across the street to the mall. From a pay phone, she called an old friend in Chicago, Ann Gilmore. Ann had also been at Second City.

  Hannah caught her at home.

  “Hannah? Well, hi. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m doing all right. It’s so good to hear your voice, Ann. Makes me homesick.” She meant it, too. She wished she didn’t have to call her from some public pay phone with all these people around. She covered one ear to block out the music from Old Navy next door.

  “Is Guy all right?” Ann asked, concern in her tone.

  “Oh, yes, he’s fine, cute as ever. I just haven’t talked with you in so long, I wanted to catch up. You know, I thought I saw Rick Swanson in this movie, um, Way Out There.”

  “Yeah, that’s him. He’s doing really well. We talked just about a month ago. Your ears were probably burning. Rick was going on and on about how you were the prettiest and most talented of our group.”

  “Oh, please,” Hannah groaned.

  “No, he’s right. I can’t help thinking, you might have gotten the same kind of break as Rick—if only things hadn’t turned out the way they had.” Ann paused. “I guess you don’t need to reminded of that. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, really,” Hannah said with a pitiful laugh.

  “Rick asked if I ever heard from you at all. I—um, I told him ‘no.’ I hope that’s okay.”

  “You did the right thing,” Hannah murmured. “Thanks, Ann.”

  “A few weeks ago, I had another visit from a private investigator, a new one this time. Apparently he talked to a bunch of people from our old group. Of course, none of us could tell him anything.”

  “Well, thanks for letting me know, Ann.”

  “Are you really doing okay, Hannah? I
mean, are you settled wherever you are? Do you have friends and a decent place to live?”

  “I’m all right,” Hannah replied. “I have friends, too, only none of them know me the way you do, Ann. None of them know.”

  After she’d hung up, Hannah realized that Ann no longer really knew her either. She’d stood near the phone station in the crowded, noisy mall, and she’d felt so alone.

  At the same time, she couldn’t let anybody get too close. And she was always looking over her shoulder, always wary of the police.

  She couldn’t admit that to Tish. There would be too much to explain, too much at risk.

  “Excuse me?”

  Hannah put aside the DVDs, then turned to smile at the tall young man on the other side of the counter. “Where’s Gandhi?” he asked.

  “He’s dead,” Hannah quipped. Then she quickly shook her head. “Sorry. Actually that’s in Ben Kingsley’s section. I’ll show you.”

  Hannah tracked down the tape for the customer. He thanked her, then went off searching for a second movie. On the shelf above Ben Kingsley’s section were Diane Keaton movies. But Hannah didn’t see Looking for Mr. Goodbar among them. She went back to her register and looked up the movie on the computer. It was supposed to be in the store—just where she’d been looking. The video had last been checked out five months ago.

  Someone must have lifted the video from the store. Perhaps they had needed to study the original for a while—in order to get everything right for the reenactment. But was it just an act?

  She rang up Gandhi for the young man, probably a college student. He was also renting an adult movie called Good Will Humping, with a chesty blond bimbo by a blackboard on the cover. Nice combination, Gandhi and porn, Hannah thought as she rang up the sale.

  The tall young man looked her up and down, then gave her a playful smile. Hannah pretended not to notice. She remained polite, professional, and distant. Yet, throughout the transaction, she wondered if he could have been the man in that video last night. After all, it could have been anyone.