Chapter 20 Cat Camera
Cat Camera
I straighten in the bed. Blue shifts lazily beside me, displeased by the motion.
So now I know who sent me that message.
I try not to let my anger toward this man overpower everything—a man who lured my cat into his house, fed him something he shouldn’t have, and chased him away without any consideration to how scary that might be for a small animal.
I need to sleep. I need rest, not stress—doctor’s orders.
But there’s one unwatched video left.
Today’s video.
The thumbnail stares back at me enticingly. I click on it and ease back onto the pillows to let it wash over me.
Lush emerald lawns, blue summer sky, red-brick moss-pocked walls, and half-open windows glinting blindly in the sunlight.
Birds taking flight. I scrub on through, wondering whether to give up and go to sleep, but other than the run-in with the bike man, Blue’s life looks so relaxing, so carefree. I yawn, eyes batting closed, and lazily open.
Onscreen, the sky judders into pavement, then thorny bushes, side walls, rooftops, the timer runs and runs as I near the end of the recording. I lose focus a little, and then a haunted face suddenly appears, filling the screen.
“Fuck.” I pull back, fast, from the screen, slamming the pause button, the video freezing instantly.
A person, a woman, her eyes frantic, wild with panic.
My gaze whips over her frozen features. I am certain that I have never seen her before.
I would remember if I had, because her face is heavily injured, large, blossoming bruises purpling her eye and cheekbone, her lip split and swollen. She stares back at me from her window.
“Oh my God,” I whisper. “What is this, Blue?” I ask him, turning to look at him, but his warm, fluffy body does not stir; his breathing remains steady.
I know the answer. The words from Blue’s collar scream out in my mind. This must be the person who scratched the words.
This is the Help Me.
Blue has gone back to her.
“Oh God,” I chant over and over again, self-soothing.
Finger poised over play, I hesitate.
But I need to know more. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding this, misreading things, sleepwalking while awake.
I lean in to the screen and drag the cursor back to the last shot of greenery before the face appeared onscreen, and I press play.
We are in a garden. It is secluded, with tall bamboo screening out the back and side walls.
We glide over well-tended grass toward a low, thin basement window, almost obscured by the tangle of a bush. We squeeze through the branches to where bright light is visible beyond the glass.
We nudge on through the snagging, dense tangle, and the room inside comes into view behind a thick set of metal bars.
A sickening dread rises up inside me. It looks like a prison.
My stomach drops as I see inside the room. The floor is covered in gray carpet tiles, the walls clad in pale plywood, its rivets visible at every join.
There is only a metal framed bed, a bare table, a wooden chair, a sink, a toilet, and a person. She hasn’t noticed us yet. She is lying on the floor, a pillow from the bed under her head.
I cannot tear my eyes away. I scan for a door, to disprove the theory growing in my head, that this woman is trapped, but there is none. Or rather I cannot see one. I scan for the outline of one but we are too far away.
It is a cell.
The figure on the floor spins around fast, noticing something at the window looking in.
She bolts up and dashes over to the window with a terrifying immediacy.
Her movements are lopsided. She is injured—she cannot use her left leg properly.
But it is clear that she is very pleased to see Blue as she moves closer.
Now inches away, just behind the glass, I can see her more clearly. Her hair is roughly cut, short and uneven, her features beautiful but bruised purple and sickly green around her cheekbone, eye, and lip.
She has locked sights on Blue, above her, tears forming in her frantic eyes. The clothes she is wearing look straight out of a packet—simple, anonymous—a bright-white T-shirt, black slacks, and white sports socks. She has no shoes.
Suddenly, her head whips away from us, to look at the opposite wall, hearing something; someone is coming.
Her face contorts in panic, and she raises her arms to shoo us away.
We leap back and away as one of her hands bangs onto the glass.
And we are running back into the bushes. I scrub on fast, looking for more, hoping that Blue will show me more. But there is no more of the woman, there are only gardens, grass, green blurring into brown, the backs of houses, walls, sky.
The video ends.
I blink at the blank screen, then swallow hard.
Help Me.
I click out of the video and check the time stamps: it was recorded this morning, somewhere in this neighborhood, beneath one of the houses surrounding me.
I need to show this to the police.
I head downstairs, leaving Blue fast asleep on my bed. I pace the kitchen for over an hour, weighing the pros and cons of taking the video straight to the police, before deciding that I have to.
I will have to admit to illegally recording the video. I will face the consequences. If I am right, I could save her.
But what if I’m not? I suddenly feel sick. I think of my new prescription meds in their paper bag on my bedside table upstairs. I think of the impossibly long day I have had, the even longer month and year preceding it.
I look down at my pajamas, my bare feet, my hands trembling. I think of the way the police officers responded to me the night before. That was not good.
What if I go to the police now, and I am wrong? God knows, it’s been a day.
I should sleep first, rewatch the video in the morning, check that I am not going completely mad, and go first thing tomorrow, in the cold light of day. They can’t turn me away then.