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She went to the next video, stamped just two minutes before the doe and fawn. There was no motion, no animal that looked to have triggered it. She peered closer at the tiny screen. There was only an empty view of the trail, the trees, a corner of the pasture with the massive old pine at its edge. Maybe the falling snow had made it turn on? A squirrel?
Or else this dumb hurt eye isn’t doing as well as you thought. Probably the snow falling off the branches was enough motion to trigger it to record.
She looked up, looked around, heard thewhumphof falling snow around her, the cracking noise of frozen wood in wind. The branches were black against the sky, which had turned a deep navy.
It doesn’t matter, what does it matter? Get to the day it happened! That’s what matters.
Overeager, she hit the button twice in quick succession to scroll backward in time. But what flickered and then vanished as she clicked past made her stop breathing, made her ignore the fawn and doe slowly strolling past the lens at 9:00 p.m. the day before.
“What was that?” she whispered to the woods. “What the hell was that?”
She clicked back to a video time stamped 7:03 a.m. that day.
The Corner was carefully picking his way toward the house down the footprinted path left by the police on the trail. He went out of frame at 7:04 a.m.
He came to the house. This morning.
Frantically she looked around her, breath instantly coming fast, hands making the camera shake.
Where is he now? Did he get into the house? Is he here?
The swell of her blood was so loud she couldn’t hear anything but its pounding. Everything in the forest was turned to shadow but the dim blue tint of the camera light. She clicked once more to the second, more recent, video she’d skipped.
It was time-stamped 7:28 a.m. Right about when the locksmith had arrived. When she’d freed herself from the bathroom.
The Corner ran into frame. He slipped slightly in the snow, recovered himself, and stopped. He turned around, craning his neck in the direction of the house. She imagined him watching the locksmith, the alarm company truck, parking in the driveway.
That means—what? Maybe he was trying to get in—maybe he got in? Then he heard the locksmith coming and ran without being seen.
For eight minutes, the Corner stood in the camera’s frame, moving sometimes as if to get a better view. She fast-forwarded, desperately skipping thirty seconds at a time to see what he’d been doing, to find out how the video ended. She had to force herself to breathe. It was as though a nightmare that should play only in her head had been filmed.
Did he try to get in the bathroom? He could have, given his size. He could have knocked the door down if he wanted. Why didn’t he? Was he searching for your daughter? Seeing if she was back home again? Did he get in?
Her heart seized, imagining what could have happened if she’dbeen brave. Reasonable. Hadn’t bothered with changing the locks and putting in an alarm system. If she’d slept in her own bed. If she hadn’t gotten so tired of the children constantly bursting into the bathroom when she was using it that she’d screwed in that bolt, up high, out of their reach. It was so many things coming together all at once that even there, frozen and terrified in the snow, she felt lucky. Grateful for the bolt. For how frustrating the children had been. For whatever bizarre impulse, logic, or horrifying, stomach-churning biding of his time had kept the Corner from breaking in, breaking the bathroom door down.
On the screen she stopped fast-forwarding at a sign of change. Watched the Corner straighten himself to his full, massive height. He stood in profile. His mouth moved, and in imagination she heard the rasping voice seethe between his teeth.
He made a fist, pounded his chest as if knocking the Corner’s rattling malice from his lungs. His mouth kept moving. Swearing to himself, making a plan?
Cold sweat trickled down her spine, settling metallic and frozen at the small of her back.
The Corner turned and walked away from the camera. He traveled just inside the tree line, hidden from view should anyone look his way from the direction of the house. He easily passed through the snow in long strides before disappearing behind the massive pine at the edge of the forest some eighty feet away from her.
After thirty seconds of no more movement, the video ended. She clicked, frantic, onto the next video. It was the scene of emptiness, of the pasture, the tree, the forest, at 4:00 p.m.
This time as she watched, she had eyes only for the pine. She stared at it, pixelated and distant on the tiny screen. Not even daring to blink, she saw motion.
Her daughter’s voice rang out in memory, pointing out the window at the old pine. “Maybe it was Daddy? Daddy always liked that spot. By the tree.”
Through the wavering glass of the kitchen window, she’d seen movement near that pine. Gone out to find nothing.
But he was there. That’s where he watches.
On the screen a dark blotch that must have been the Corner moved out from behind the tree. For a moment the blotch stilled, then vanished behind the tree again. It was too far away to tell what he was doing. But she knew. She knew.
He was watching. He was there the whole time. He ran away from the house when he saw the workers coming up the driveway. He waited. Saw them leave. Saw you leave. Stepped out, only just now, when you came back from the repair shop. He saw you come out here. Right here. Into the woods.
Trembling, she clicked the “off” button and hugged the camera to her chest to hide its residual glow. She swallowed cold air so quickly it burned. Blinked into the darkness, eyes blinded from the dim light of the video, empty gray spots obscuring her vision.
