Page 13 of Don’t Watch Alone

Chapter eleven

Blaiz

Tony’s coming over tonight, so I get the tuna casserole started.

I fill a pot with water, toss the noodles in, and set it on the burner.

I’m standing there, zoning out—just staring at the coils like they might offer up some kind of answer—when a shout cracks through the hallway outside. It snaps me out of my thoughts.

I walk to the door and press my eye against the peephole.

Just as I lean in, I catch someone slamming their door across the hall.

But it’s not the door that messes with me.

It’s the voice. Something about it hits a nerve buried deep in my memory, a sound I know but can’t place, and it turns my stomach in a way I don’t like at all.

Before I can even start digging through the mess of my thoughts to figure out where I’ve heard it before, a finger covers the peephole from the other side.

Then, a knock.

I stumble backward like the floor just shifted beneath me.

From the kitchen, a violent hiss rises up—the pot boiling over.

“Shit!”

I rush to the stove, yank the pot off the burner, and water splashes onto the coils, spitting and snapping like it’s pissed off. The knocking doesn’t stop. It keeps going, louder now, like whoever’s out there isn’t planning on leaving until I open the door.

I slowly move back to the front door, keeping the chain latched, and crack it open.

Tony.

Relief rushes through me so hard I almost laugh. I shut the door just long enough to unhook the chain and pull it open again.

“Did I scare you?” he says, grinning like he already knows the answer.

“Yes, you fucking scared me,” I snap. “There was yelling right before you knocked. Did you hear or see anything?”

He shakes his head. “No. Didn’t hear or see shit.”

I turn back toward the kitchen. “The noodles boiled over,” I mutter, grabbing a towel and wiping up the mess like that’ll help calm me down. They’re cooked through anyway, so I dump them into a dish, mix in the rest, and shove it all into the oven.

Tony follows me into the living room, and we sit on the couch, but it doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t feel like us. There’s something thick in the air tonight, something heavy and wrong.

“You’ve been quiet lately,” he says. “What’s going on?”

“You know Mary from work?”

“Yeah.”

“She hasn’t shown up in days. She hasn’t called or anything. And it’s not like her at all. I’m starting to get worried.”

He watches me while I speak, and I can feel the tension building between us.

“Greg already replaced her… he hired Andy.”

His face changes immediately. “The guy that’s been stalking you?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve got to quit.”

“I can’t, Tony. Rent’s due, I don’t have another job lined up, and Greg’s not exactly the type to offer references if I bail.”

“Did you tell Greg about Andy?”

I shake my head. “No. And I think he’s got something to do with Mary’s disappearance.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He said something. He told me he had warned Mary, but she didn’t listen. Then he told me not to go to the movies Friday night. The way he said it… it wasn’t just some creepy comment. It felt like a fucking warning.”

“He’s screwing with your head.”

“Maybe. But it didn’t feel like some random scare tactic. It felt like he knew something. Like he’s trying to tell me something without actually saying it.”

The timer ticks on the stove quietly in the background, the only sound cutting through the silence. When Tony speaks again. His voice is serious now.

“You have to tell the police.”

I glance at the door. Then back to Tony.

“And say what? ‘Hey, my coworker’s missing and the guy who’s been stalking me just got hired and now he’s saying weird shit’?

If I’m wrong, I will sound insane. If I’m right…

then I’m next. He knew I was planning to go to the movies Friday night, Tony. But I didn’t tell anyone about that.”

Tony goes still. “Wait. He knew about Friday?”

“Yeah. And I didn’t tell a soul. The only time I ever said it out loud… was to Mary.”

Tony curses, rubbing his face. “Jesus. That’s not just creepy. That’s something else entirely.”

“It felt like a threat,” I whisper, barely hearing my own voice. “Like he was saying, ‘Look what happened to her. You’re next.’”

Silence falls between us again. The TV flickers in the background with a world that feels too far away now to even matter.

“This is bad,” Tony says finally, and he reaches for my hand, gripping it tight. “You can’t just ignore this. Mary’s missing, and Andy shows up out of nowhere saying things he shouldn’t know. That’s not a fucking coincidence.”

“I know,” I say. “But what am I supposed to do? Walk into a police station and say my coworker said some weird shit before another one vanished?”

A sudden bang cuts through the hallway.

Tony and I jump to our feet. It sounds like something heavy slamming against a wall, or maybe the floor.

“What the hell was that?” Tony asks.

Another sound follows. Muffled. Like someone sobbing into fabric. Then—nothing.

We freeze. My eyes lock on the door. That voice I heard earlier… was it Mary? Was she out there? Was she trying to get help?

The oven beeps.

“The casserole,” I whisper.

“I got it,” Tony says, jumping up to go to the kitchen. He opens the oven, and the heat and smell of bubbling cheese pour into the room, but I don’t move. I can’t. I’m stuck on that voice. On that sound. What if it was her? What if I ignored her?

Tony sets the casserole on the stove and glances at me. He doesn’t need to say anything. I can see it on his face. He feels it too.

Something’s wrong. Something’s happening. Right now. Just across the hall.

“Should we check it out?” I ask, my eyes are still on the door.

Tony steps up to the peephole again. “I don’t see anything,” he says. Then he notices something. “The blinds are moving. Like someone just pulled them hard. Did someone move in over there?”

“Yeah,” I nod slowly. “I think while I was at work the other day.”

Tony flicks off the light. “I want to see without being seen,” he says, catching the look on my face.

The casserole’s getting cold, but I couldn’t care less about food right now. I glance back at the kitchen, then at him. “Should we go check to see what is going on? Maybe pretend we’re bringing them dinner, like a neighborly welcome. ”

Tony looks surprised, then nods. “That might work. Let’s do it.”

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 feeling completely 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.

“You’re probably right. Shit, now you’ve got me all worked up,” Tony says with a nervous laugh.

I glance toward the kitchen. The tuna casserole still sits on the counter, untouched, the steam is long gone now.

I wasted the whole damn night making that thing, stressing over Andy, obsessing over what he might be up to, all while Gus was right here, quietly slipping under the radar.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’m wrong again. And that’s the part that gnaws at me—not knowing. Not being sure.

Tony breathes out and pushes off the wall. “If Gus is just heading out for a late-night stroll or whatever, I guess we’re done for the night, huh?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. My eyes are glued to the now-empty doorway, my brain retracing every sound we heard, every second of silence that followed. That leads straight down to the alley. There is nothing back there but dumpsters.

“Blaiz?”

I shake my head, a shiver passing through me. “We’re not done.”

I meet Tony’s eyes, and whatever brave face he’s trying to hold breaks just enough for me to see the same flicker of dread I feel within me.

I step toward the door, with my hand resting above the lock.

There’s something off about Gus, something troubling in that apartment, and I’m not about to sit here and pretend everything’s normal.

Not when everything in me is screaming that something is very, very wrong.