In a lot of ways, school was worse than anything. A lot of kids were sympathetic and supportive, but others seemed to think it was something to joke about. They’d call out to any guy who happened to be walking behind me and ask him moronic things, such as was he stalking me.
But even harder to take were the snide remarks I’d hear — mostly from girls. It wasn’t so much what they’d say as the way they’d say it. Their comments made it sound as though I’d manufactured the entire story for attention — the last thing I’d actually want!
I couldn’t do anything but swallow my anger and humiliation and hope they felt like dirt when they found out how wrong they’d been.
And then there was the worst thing of all: whoever the stalker was, he was almost certainly a student at Little River High. The fact that the e-mail had been sent from the school meant he had to have been inside in the daytime and had an opportunity to jimmy the lock on the side door. Any outsider would have been noticed.
He also had to know where the computer lab was and what time the building was deserted in the evenings. And, of course, he had to have been around me in order to have developed this bizarre obsession.
Then something else happened — something horrible — and it removed any hint of doubt I might have had that the stalker was a fellow student.
I’d been so wrapped up in how awful it was for me that I’d forgotten something. This jerk had threatened to do something to Greg. I guess none of us had taken that very seriously, which strikes me as odd, looking back on it. But it just seemed, at the time, to be nonsense. And then there was the fact that we didn’t know just how sick and dangerous he really was.
My fears centred on being followed, watched, possibly approached by this guy. I never thought of him doing anything really hurtful. The idea that he could be seriously violent seemed melodramatic and totally over-the-top.
It happened on a Tuesday, right after school, when the hallways and locker areas were crowded with kids who were anxious to head out, to breathe outside air after being stuck inside all day.
Like so many other students, I was fishing through my locker, making sure I had the books I needed for my homework, getting my jacket on — just doing what we do every school day.
I wasn’t even alarmed when I first heard the screams. It’s not that unusual, especially after school when every-one’s energy has been pent up all day. It sounded like the shrieks you might hear in reaction to a silly, scary trick.
But the sound changed fast. It swelled with real alarm and panic. I stood frozen with the sudden certainty that, somehow, this had something to do with the stalker.
Everything slowed down, as though sounds and movements had been stretched. I became aware of a heavy thudding in my chest. My brain was struggling to put the surge of thoughts together, and when it did I heard a low, frightened moan, and knew it had come from me.
No one had to tell me — somehow I just knew! Something had happened to Greg!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Getting to Greg’s locker felt like one of those slow-motion dreams you have where you’re trying to hurry but your whole body feels as though it’s weighed down with lead. As I manoeuvred my way down the hallway I felt a wave of nausea, and small dark clouds began to form in my field of vision.
Don’t faint! I told myself sternly, but I knew I was going to if I didn’t do something to stop it that very second. Those warning signs couldn’t be ignored. I paused and squatted, putting my head down and breathing deeply. It was the hardest thing: to stop and do that when everything in me was screaming to hurry up and get to Greg.
I forced myself to stay that way for a good two or three minutes, though every second that ticked past was an agony of waiting. When I stood again I came face-to-face with Ben Hebert.
“You okay?” he asked. “You look kinda pale.”
“I felt faint, but I think I’m okay now. Thanks,” I said. I nodded toward the sounds of the commotion and began walking that way. “I have to see what’s going on.”
“Yeah, I was on my way there when I saw you bent over,” he said, falling in beside me. After a moment or two he said, “You can take my arm if you need to.”
“I’m all right,” I said impatiently. We were almost there by then. Just a few more steps to the next hall where the grade twelve students had their lockers.
The sight that met my eyes when I turned that corner is one I will never be able to forget. Greg stood surrounded by other students, some of who seemed to be holding him up. Blood almost covered his face and I might not even have known for sure that it was him except for the fact that I recognized the shirt he was wearing.
“Greg!” I tried to push my way forward through the growing crowd, but no one was budging.
“Please, keep back! An ambulance is on the way.”
I recognized that voice as Mr. Grimes’s and saw that there were several other teachers there as well. Their efforts to keep order weren’t meeting with much success.
“Greg!” I called out again, and saw his head turn toward me slightly.
“Shelby?” His right hand lifted in a little wave, which brought tears to my eyes. “Hey, can you let her through, please?”
At least the kids listened to him, and I was ushered through the crowd.
“It’s nothing, really,” he said when I got close enough to touch his arm. “It probably looks bad, but I’m okay.”
My throat was tight and aching so fiercely that I couldn’t speak. I stood silently, squeezing his arm and trying not to break down sobbing in front of everyone. Other things began to register, like that a couple of other kids were also bleeding, though not nearly as much as Greg. And there were shards of glass all over the floor.
I tried to ask what had happened but the pandemonium was growing and more and more people were arriving on the scene, creating so much noise that my voice was lost in it all. It seemed that half the people there were talking to Greg — asking him questions, telling him things like “keep pressure on the cuts” and so on.
The ambulance arrived just a moment later and, in spite of his protests that it wasn’t necessary, Greg was taken to the hospital. As the ambulance workers strapped him to the stretcher he told me that he’d call me later.
“Don’t waste your time coming to the hospital,” he said. “I’ll be out before you know it.”
As if! I phoned home and Mom came at once and drove me straight to the emergency department. I hurried in while she parked the car.
A nurse directed me to the examining room he was in and, finding the door open, I stepped inside. Another nurse was there, cleaning the blood away from his face.
“Yes?” she asked, turning to me.
“What did I tell you?” Greg said before I could answer. “That’s my girlfriend, Shelby.”
“Oh, yes.” The nurse smiled. “Greg was just saying that you never listen to him, so you should be arriving any minute.”
“She’s a walking advertisement for the modern, liberated woman, that Shelby,” he commented.
“How bad is it?” I asked, ignoring his teasing.
“I’d say he was pretty lucky, considering,” the nurse said. “There are a couple of cuts that will need stitches, but mostly they’re superficial wounds.”
“But there was so much blood,” I said. “His whole face was covered.”
“Mmm. Scalp wounds are like that. They bleed like crazy. He actually doesn’t have any cuts on his face. A few small ones high on the forehead and the deeper ones on the scalp. Could have been worse.”
“What happened?” I asked Greg.
“I don’t really know. I opened my locker and the next thing I knew I was bleeding. I felt something smash into my head but I was looking down at the books I was holding, so I didn’t really see anything.” He shrugged, like it was no big deal.
“You have no idea who did this? You didn’t see anyone coming at you?”
“No one came at me,” he said. “It came from inside my locker.”
“From inside your locker? But how…?”
“Someone booby-trapped it, I guess. And it had to be spring-loaded because it came out with quite a bit of force. You probably noticed that I wasn’t the only one who got cut. My guess is that someone rigged a bunch of broken glass on the shelf so that it would fly out when the door was opened.”
“It’s just fortunate he had his head down,” the nurse commented. “If he’d been hit in the face he could have ended up all scarred. And you don’t even want to think about what it could have done to his eyes.”
I shuddered at that, and I saw that Greg looked pretty solemn too.
“I’d like to know what kind of monster would do something like this,” the nurse added. “I suppose it’s the one they wrote about in the paper. Well, I hope they catch the guy soon. Bad enough he’s making your life miserable,” she said with a glance at me, “but this! This is no joke.”
I hadn’t thought what the stalker was doing to me was exactly a joke either, but I knew what she meant. Getting phone calls or e-mails or being watched is one thing; actually being injured is something else again.
The doctor came along and sent me out while he stitched up the deep cuts. I found Mom in the waiting area and sat down next to her. While we waited, I told her about how Greg’s locker had been booby-trapped. Just as I finished going over the whole thing, Greg came along, smiling and saying he was good to go.
“Oh! Oh my goodness!” Mom said, looking at him in horror. I guess hearing about what had happened hadn’t really prepared her for the stitched gashes on his head (clearly visible since they’d shaved those spots) or the sight of the drying blood all over his shirt. I hadn’t even realized myself how much blood had run down. It looked pretty bad.
“I’m fine,” Greg told Mom. “Just a few nicks, really.”
“Has anyone called your father?”
“Nah. He’s in Viander today and anyway, there’s no reason for him to come rushing home or anything.”
“Well, I think he’d want to be told,” Mom said. She looked worried. “I know I’d want to be contacted if it was Shelby.”
“I’ll call him if you really think I should,” Greg said slowly, “but then he’s just going to be worrying driving home.”
“You’re right. I don’t know what’s best now!”
In the end it was decided that Greg would call his dad and tell him he’d gotten cut a bit and had to have stitches, and that we thought he should come over to our place until his dad got him, just to be on the safe side. It went fine until Dr. Taylor asked to speak to Mom.
“Yes, Malcolm, how are you?” she said. “Yes, Greg is fine. I just thought he could stay with us until you get home. Okay then, we’ll see you later on.”
“You might as well expect to see my dad in about forty minutes,” Greg said as we piled into the car. “He’ll be leaving Viander right about now.”
“But I didn’t give anything away,” Mom protested.
“Not in what you said,” Greg smiled, “but your voice wasn’t exactly steady. No way Dad missed that. He knows there’s more to it than what we told him.”
“In that case,” Mom said, “I’ll just make enough dinner to include Malcolm, too.”
Sure enough, Greg’s dad pulled into our driveway a little over half an hour after we got home. If the thought that he might be overreacting had ever entered his head, it probably vanished once he saw the police cruiser in the driveway.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was Dr. Taylor who suggested that I look to see if the stalker had sent any more messages.
“From a professional view of this person,” he said, “I’d say it would be almost impossible for him not to make sure you know he’s responsible for what happened to Greg.”
“Hey, that’s right, you’re a shri…er, a psychiatrist, aren’t you?” Officer Holt said. He, along with Officer Stanton, had responded to this particular call.
“A psychologist, actually,” Dr. Taylor said. He turned back to me. “Would you like someone to come with you while you check your e-mail?”
“Could Officer Stanton come?” I said quickly, before either of my parents could say anything. I didn’t want them, or Greg, to be with me when I opened my e-mail account. It just seemed as if it would be easier with a stranger there.
Officer Stanton stood behind me while my computer whirred to life, waiting silently as I went online and into my e-mail account. I scanned the new e-mails, most of them stuff friends had forwarded. His was third from the last, sent at 3:24 that afternoon. The entire message was one line long.
Now you see what happens when you trifle with me.
“Print it,” Stanton said.
I did as she’d asked and watched the sheet feed out into the printer tray. Officer Stanton picked it up and then rested a hand on my shoulder.
“I know this must be rough on you,” she said quietly. “But we will catch this guy.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I knew as well as she did that this creep was going to have to make a mistake before they’d ever figure out his identity, and so far he’d been careful. It didn’t take much brainpower to guess that today’s e-mail would have been sent from the school, just like the last one.
We went back to the other room, where our entrance was met with instant silence. Everyone was looking at me; everyone’s face had the same question on it.
“You were right,” I told Dr. Taylor. “He sent a message.”
“It was short,” Officer Stanton said. She lifted the printout and read it. “‘Now you see what happens when you trifle with me.’”
Dr. Taylor nodded. “This person is taking increased risks,” he said. “He went from carefully covering his tracks with the plant delivery to taking a huge chance in setting up a booby trap in Greg’s locker. This means he’s either becoming more desperate, or he’s developing a sense of invincibility.”
“Which do you think it is?” Dad asked.
“I couldn’t venture a guess. Either scenario, this is a dangerous person. I don’t think either Shelby or Greg should be left alone at any time until this person is in custody.”
He looked at the page again and added, “Something else that suggests this person feels powerful is the name he’s chosen for himself.”
“You mean ‘soreros’ is a real name?” Stanton asked.
“Not as it appears,” Dr. Taylor said, “but it looks as though he’s barely hidden the name of Eros, the Greek God of love and desire, in there. If you start at the centre of the word it reads Eros backward to the start and forward to the end.”
He was about to say something else when the phone rang. Officer Holt went with Mom into the kitchen to answer it. A few seconds later Mom came to the doorway and beckoned for me.
“It’s him,” she whispered, “but the officer thinks you should talk to him. See if he says anything that might give away his identity.”
I followed her, my stomach clenching as I approached the phone.
“Hello.”
“Shelby.” It was the same whisper as before.
“Who is this?” I demanded, knowing I was letting my anger take over, knowing that was a mistake, and powerless to stop myself.
There was a soft chuckle, like I’d just said something amusing. I guess I had, by asking him who he was as if he might actually tell me. Then I realized it wasn’t the question, but the anger behind it, that was giving him such a kick. He’d heard the emotion in my voice and was enjoying it.
“Not so pleasant to look at now, is he?” he said after a second of silence.
“Who? Greg?”
“Yes, Greg. Or,” another horrible chuckle, “maybe we should call him Scarface.”
“Listen. Whoever you are and whatever you want, please leave him alone. He hasn’t done anything to you.”
“Ah, Shelby. You still don’t understand. You’re the one who caused this. I told you to break up with him, but you didn’t listen. You still haven’t seen the truth.”
; “And what is the truth?”
“I won’t repeat myself.”
A click sounded, startling me. I turned to Officer Holt. “He hung up,” I said. “Sorry.”
“You did fine,” he assured me. “Now, before anything else, write down everything he said the best you can remember it.”
I did that, scribbling quickly before his words faded, though at that moment I suspected I wouldn’t be able to get them out of my head if I tried.
“Oh!” I said, pausing for a second. “I forgot to check the phone to see if it said where he was calling from. Or to press star fifty-seven to trace it, if it doesn’t show.”
Mom glanced away from me.
“What? What is it?” I knew immediately that there was something she didn’t want to tell me.
“The call,” she said heavily, “came from the Taylor house.”
“What? From Greg’s place?”
“Yes. The police radioed for a car to swing by their house, but I imagine he’ll be long gone by the time they get there.”
I went into the other room, where Officer Holt was telling Dr. Taylor and Greg that the call had been from the perpetrator and that it had come from inside their house.
“Well,” Dr. Taylor said with a rueful smile, “that answers the question of what’s motivating him.”
“How?” Officer Holt asked.
“He has no reason to break into our house to make the call when he could have done it from a public phone with very little risk to himself. Instead, he’s chanced being seen by a neighbour entering or leaving our home. Or, we could have walked in at any time and caught him. He’s also taken a chance on leaving forensic evidence behind with no way to explain how it got there. Those aren’t acts of desperation. They’re acts of bravado. He feels invincible, like no one can catch him. Fortunately, it’s that very sense of omnipotence that will probably be his downfall.”
I was only half listening to what Dr. Taylor was saying, even though it was about the stalker. Knowing that this guy had been inside their house when he’d called really scared me. I couldn’t understand why everyone else wasn’t thinking of all the possibilities that went along with that.
Eyes of a Stalker Page 8
