Rocco's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

By morning the eyes in his screens had faded to gray static. Rocco slept two hours in his chair. When he woke, someone was banging on his door again. But this time it was not Theo. It was a crowd. Word had spread. People stood on his porch and lawn, faces hard in the cold light. They had found his cameras. A wire here, a black lens there, hidden under eaves and behind gutters all over town. Rocco opened the door. He knew he had to calm them before they smashed every camera he owned. Losing the cameras meant losing everything he had built. A teenage grocery bagger pushed to the front, name tag taped to his shirt. "You spy on us while we sleep," he said. Behind him stood a blond nurse in white, arms crossed. A young mortician gripped his measuring tape like a weapon. And near the fence, a gray-skinned man with red glowing eyes watched without blinking. The crowd went quiet when Rocco saw him. "Listen," Rocco said. He raised both hands. "The cameras aren't spying on you. They're for security. Something's out there. On the other side. It keeps looking in at us. I built these to watch for it, to keep the town safe." The nurse frowned. "I felt it. Something looked back through my hallway last night." "Then you know I'm telling the truth," Rocco said. "The cameras are the only warning we have." A woman stepped forward. Blond hair, pink motel uniform, a stiff smile that did not move. It was Vanessa, his lover. She had come to help him. "He's protecting us," she told the crowd. "I trust him." That turned it. One by one, people lowered their fists. The mortician coiled his tape. The bagger shrugged and stepped back. Rocco had won them. They would let the cameras stay. Then a flat voice cut through. "You made it worse." A short woman with frost-white hair pushed through the crowd. Her apron was smeared dark. Rocco knew her by trade only, the taxidermist who worked on the edge of town. Sue Vox did not smile. She pointed at his house. "Camera lenses are like mirrors," she said. "They open doors. The thing on the other side sees through every glass eye now. You told these people the cameras keep it out." She looked at the crowd. "They let it in. Every lens is watching you back." The red-eyed man by the fence turned his head slowly toward the nearest camera. The crowd followed his stare. On the porch, one hidden lens caught the morning sun. Inside it, deep and small, two points of light blinked open. The crowd screamed and scattered. Vanessa grabbed Rocco's arm. He had convinced the whole town the cameras were safe. Now the whole town knew he had lied without meaning to. And every lens he owned was a door standing open.