Chapter 3: The Shot

I know it’s a gunshot. It’s not the first one I’ve had the misfortune of hearing, and their thunderous ring is unmistakable. That incident, though, was nowhere near home. No one I cared about was in danger, and I had no reason to believe it had anything to do with Springwater.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Was the shot even from our apartment? It couldn’t have been, right? It couldn’t have been. Please let it not have been.

I run upstairs. As I reach each floor, I can’t help but hope that I’ll see the apparent source of the shot. Whatever happened will still be a terrible tragedy, but please, let it have nothing to do with me. It’s a selfish thought, and I hate myself for having it, but I can’t make it go away.

I reach the top floor. The door to our apartment hangs open. The light inside is off, which is not how I left it. No. Please God, no. “Mom!” I shout. I run to the door, and soon I’m through it. “Mo…” I begin again, but then I see her. She hasn’t actually moved much. She’s still sitting on the couch, head facing toward the television, which is playing the same show. She can’t see it, though. She can’t see anything, as proven by the giant hole in the back of her head, where a bullet seems to have left her and embedded into the wall.

“Mom,” I say again, but this time it’s a pathetic whimper. “No!” I run into the room. I grab her hand. I’m trembling. I’m trembling so much that I can see myself moving her arm, and it’s following my movements like a limp noodle. She doesn’t make the slightest motion in response to me. Her eyes hang open, but do not follow me. Her hand is still warm, though there’s a bit of blood speckled on it that I get on my finger. There’s an entry wound in her forehead to match the exit wound in the back.

This feels like a nightmare. A living nightmare. Maybe that’s what it will turn out to be. Maybe all of this could turn out not to have been real? I want to think so, but no. Dreams can fool you into thinking you’re awake, but when you’re truly awake, you know it. Everything around me is too vivid and solid and real to be a dream.

I’m better off hoping that she somehow survived this shot to the head. That happens, right? Sometimes people get really lucky and survive being shot in the head. I don’t think most of them were hit right between the eyes, though. This bullet hasn’t grazed her. The wound is smack in the middle of her head. There are little pink specks on the wall, along with the blood.

Why? Why did this happen? Why did this have to happen? Was it Springwater? Was it because I met someone from Springwater today and didn’t even tell her about it? Did that Nick guy follow me here?

A noise. Something creeks, deeper in the apartment. My gaze snaps in that direction. The door to the bedroom is open. It was not open before. I closed it when I came back from the bathroom. Whoever did this, they’re still here.

I want to kill them. I want to charge in there and kill them. I want to avenge her. She wouldn’t want me to try, though. She didn’t like to take risks when things got serious. She would want me to survive. To get away. I need to find a crowd. That was what she always said. If the people of Springwater come after us, I need to get somewhere crowded. The people from there will do awful, horrible things, things most people can hardly imagine, but they never want to do something with someone else watching. The key to staying safe around Springwater’s threats is to never be alone.

This probably only happened because I left her alone.

I run away, full of terror like I haven’t known since I was a little kid. I feel the same malignant, phantom presence I knew then, the one that seemed to hide in every place I couldn't see. Only as I descend the stairs do I think to call 911. Idiot. What if she did somehow survive? I don’t think she could have, but I’m not a freaking doctor. I can’t just not call an ambulance. What if I waited too long? What if she could have been saved, but dies now because I wasn’t fast enough?

“911, where is your emergency?”

“1195 Dry Lake Street. It’s an apartment complex. I live in apartment 5D. My mom was just shot. I need police and an ambulance.”

“Do you know who shot her?” the operator asks.

“No.” My mind flashes back to that torturously brief, glimpse of someone headed up the stairs. I focus with everything I have on the memory of that moment. That person was a man. I know he was wearing a hoodie. I know he wasn’t Nick, because while he wasn’t short, he wasn’t tall enough. I don’t remember anything else. “I think they’re still in my apartment.”

“Alright,” the operator says. “Police are on their way.”

“And an ambulance?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“From you request for an ambulance, I take it you believe she might be alive?”

“I don’t know. The wound was in her head. I don’t know if someone could have survived it. I just don’t know.” As I say it, a little voice sounds in my head, telling me that of course no one could have survived that, and that I’m being ridiculous and pathetic.

“Understood,” the operator says.

“Should I pull the fire alarm?”

“If you think there’s an active shooter, that might be a good idea.”

“Alright.” When I next encounter one—I’m down to the second floor by this point—I pull it. A loud ringing sounds. As soon as I do it, I realize it was stupid. This person was probably from Springwater. It wasn’t Nick, but it was probably someone who followed me home after I met him. They’re only after me and my mom, and the only way anyone else would be in any danger is if some idiot were to give them a reason to leave their apartment.

Once I get to the first floor, I can see that some of my neighbors are already spilling out. What the f*ck is wrong with me?

I run the rest of the way down the stairs. From there, I head to the small administrative area, hoping to find the people whose gazes would protect me. There’s no one there. Of course not. It’s after eleven. The landlord isn’t here, and neither is anyone who works for him. I run out of the building, onto the sidewalk. There are people out here, and cars, lots of cars. I hope this counts as a crowd. It’ll have to. I don’t want to get any farther from her. I can’t bring myself not to be here when the police and ambulance arrive.

It’s only a few minutes before the police arrive. There’s a good crowd of people standing outside the building, now. All of them heard the gunshot, and I’ve been as forward as I can about what’s going on, within the limits of my blubbering incoherence.

The police command everyone out of the way while they run inside, guns drawn. These aren’t just ordinary police officers. They’re in full SWAT gear. Well, most of them are. There is a uniformed officer that stays down with the crowd. I approach him and start to identify myself as the caller, but he waves me away.

For an agonizing few minutes, I wait while the police search above. The ambulance arrives during that time, and my first conversation is with one of them. “You’re the caller?” they ask.

“Yeah,” I say. “My mother is upstairs. She was shot in the head.”

“We’ll go up as soon as the police say it’s clear.”

“Is it possible to survive something like that?” I ask. “A headshot?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

I wait with them. For the police to search. For the killer to emerge, for gunshots to sound, or else for the killer to be gone, for him to have gotten away, for the police to, perhaps, doubt his existence, and suspect I did it. I don’t know which of those ideas scares me more.

The gunshots don’t sound, and after a minute, the officer in front of me hears something on his radio. After that, he turns to me. “You’re the caller?” he asks.

“I said that a minute ago, yeah.”

“I’m Sergeant. Barnes,” he says. “Your apartment up there?”

“Yeah. Was there anyone in it?”

“No. Someone seems to have left through the window.”

I look up. I’m an idiot. The window is open. The person in there could have shot me any time while I waited out here. They didn’t, though. I’ve never thought about escaping my apartment through my window before, but looking up at where the roof is, I can see the path one would take to a nearby roof, and perhaps from there into an alley.

“He got away?” I ask.

“For now.”

The officer asks for my account of what happened. I give it. I’m a bit less delirious by this point. Some of the people around can hear what we say, and a few of them chime in to confirm that they saw me running down the stairs after the fire alarm was pulled, and that I certainly hadn’t run out the window.

When I finish my account of what happened, I start to ask what they found up there.

“There was forced entry,” Barnes says. “Where did you say you were when the shot happened?”

“Downstairs,” I say, “at the vending machine.”

“Which floor is that?”

“The first.”

“So you ran all the way from the first to the fifth floor, toward a gunshot, only to run back down? That’s an odd thing for someone to do, after hearing a gunshot.”

“I had to go upstairs,” I say. “I had to check if my mom was okay.”

“Are there CCTV cameras in this building?”

“No,” I say. “I used my card on the vending machine, though. That might be able to get you the time I was there.” Maybe they could correlate that with when one of my neighbors heard the gunshot. If one of them happened to see the exact time it sounded, that could establish that I was downstairs at that moment.

“You said you heard a noise while you were upstairs, one that you thought come from the shooter?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Did you ever actually see anyone else here?”

“Yes,” I say. “Not then, but I saw someone climbing the stairs as I went down to the vending machine. I didn’t get a good look. Male. Kind of average frame. Fit. I didn’t really see his face.”

“Very unlucky,” Barnes says.

“Do you believe me? Do you think I did it?”

Barnes sighs. “It’s early in the investigation. You’re not under arrest, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m glad about that, but that’s not quite what I asked. I asked if I was a suspect.”

He takes a moment to formulate his reply. “You lived with her,” he says. “The forced entry and open windows are points in your favor, but most people are killed by someone they live with.”

That’d be a hell of a way for Springwater to get both of us, wouldn’t it? She dies, and I go to jail for it. Maybe that would be for the best. It’d suck, but at least they probably wouldn’t kill me in there. They only kill you if you’re alone, and I’d never be alone in jail.