Peep

The problem with integrated, online security systems these days, Ava thought, was the fact that they weren't very secure... not if you had any real technological skills or knowledge. With so many cracks, crevices, and peep holes to exploit, it was no wonder that peoples homes were less safe than they had ever been... Of course, it was a blessing for her; being paid to shore up faulty defence systems paid well. More importantly, it scratched that itch she could never tell anyone about; she always left a little peep hole of sorts in her solutions. A space she could slide into to watch her previous clients as they went about their daily lives.

In the darkness of her bedroom, she opened the artfully hidden app and flicked through the channels; Dawn Shearer was still having an affair, it seemed, and her taste in men was atrocious. Ava considered sending a security alert to her husband just for the fun of it, then scrolled away. Maybe another day; they still paid handsomely for monthly maintenance. Gina and Lola were having another lovers spat, God knows how they had made it to the altar. As she watched their lives play out in mundane detail, Ava felt the tension of the day melt away. Yasmine Asif was a new favourite; a dancer and singer, she was the kind of social butterfly that made everything look easy. Ava had been mimicking her expressions and movements for weeks, trying to get the same effect with limited success.

The itch in her fingers increased, just as it always did when she had a new channel to open. Dr Baird had been... eccentric, and so she couldn't help but feel she would be disappointed if all she found on the other side of the proverbial keyhole was an old man doing the crossword every morning watching Question Time every evening. And then there was the what if; what if he had a secret life... a penchant for taxidermy, a BDSM club on Tuesdays, an occult gathering at the full moon...

What if, in short, Dr Baird was the proof positive that the world wasn't as mundane as it seemed to her? The itch couldn't be denied; bracing for disappointment she opened the channel, holding her breath.

He was building something. Ava tilted her head and sipped her wine slowly, zooming in. It was metal, not wood. The tools were small and foreign to her. Exciting? Perhaps not... but interesting? Certainly. With a content sigh, Ava settled into watch the slow but steady process of creation, her mind finally quieting.

*

No matter how much progress he made, Ava couldn't determine what he was building. She checked nightly, at first, then in the morning and the evening because as far as she could tell he did nothing else. His home security system showed dishes and takeaway boxes piling up in the sink, letters stacked on the sideboards, clothes piled by the washing machine. Whatever Dr Baird was building, he was doing it on a firm deadline. Ava checked the camera for the third time, her eyes narrowing. A shape was taking form; not so much circular as oval; it was getting higher and higher. If the curve kept going like this it would be seven or eight feet tall by the time the two sides met.

As far as she could tell it was made up of hundreds, no thousands, of tiny metal plates, all meticulously pinned together and wired in. It must be costing him a bomb to make, she thought and froze... it didn't look like any bomb she had ever seen... and she'd seen more than her fair share, but the nagging sensation that something wasn't right crept in again. She had driven by his house last night, something she swore she would never do again after that girl in Edinburgh. All of his curtains and shutters had been closed. Every single one. Yet the cameras showed he was up, he was working. Whatever it was, he wanted to keep it a secret.

Her fingers itched as she dialled 999... then deleted it. Reporting it would end her career, her life, and more importantly it would close all of the windows she had spent so long opening. Ava put her phone down and picked up a screwdriver of her own to continue securing the new cameras in the lovely Croatian couples back garden. What did she have to report, after all? Nothing but an old man who worked too hard and slept too little. If he started to deteriorate she could call in anonymous welfare check, she reasoned,

"That's what I'll do..." she muttered, relief seeping into her itching body. She wasn't a bad person, after all... just a voyeur.

*

Ava watched with morbid fascination as Dr Baird peered around the door to speak to the police. Turning on the front door cameras audio she listened in silence they told him that they had been asked to conduct a wellness check. Not by her, no, but by a concerned colleague at the university. The relief of not having to get involved was palpable, but it was quickly swallowed by the strange timbre of his voice,

"I understand, of course, I'll call the university directly to assure them of my wellbeing," Dr Baird said in the hoarse voice of a man much older. The natural light spilling in through the door showed grey in his hair that hadn't been there when she installed his security system. His posture was a little... stooped,

"That would be appreciated, sir," the young policeman said amiably, "they're worried about you."

"Of course, of course... you know I get so caught up in my work..." Dr Baird said with a chuckle that sounded like stone grating on stone, "... I just forget the rest of the world is going on around me."

When he shut the door, Ava felt a sudden, cold certainty that the old man would never open it again. For the first time in her life, she did the one thing she said she never would; she started to snoop. Strange, perhaps, that she felt herself above using her peepholes to look into peoples lives when she was happy to watch them living them, but she felt the distinction like a razor to her throat,

"What are you hiding old man?" She murmured and flicked through his cameras. Two had been taken offline since she last checked on him; the upstairs study and the one facing the door to the cellar. Ava swallowed. Either he knew she was watching and didn't want her to see what happened in those places or...

He had no idea and what was happening made him want to ensure no evidence was available. Her fingers itched and tingled as she logged onto her computer to override the shut down; it would give him a notification, but she only needed a few minutes. With her screen recording app on, Ava plunged into the darkness.

*

"I understand," Ava said calmly, though her body was cold as ice and trembling, "as I said, sir, its a backup security measure designed to make sure that any cameras taken down by power surges or cuts are automatically rebooted..." her eyes flicked to the screen recording, "But I've taken those two offline permanently as requested and you can manage your footage data bank from your computer."

The unaffected, mildly bored tone she adopted must have convinced him that she had seen nothing and had no desire to pry, because he ended the call after a promise of a discount on his next bill for the inconvenience. The short recording played on a loop on her computer. Nothing sinister; just an office piled with books. Big heavy books and strange looking tools and items that could have been antiques or film props.

But the sight of it made her stomach churn for a reason she couldn't place. The room seemed... smaller than it should based on the floorplan she had made up. Darker. He had torn the electric light fittings out and placed a gas lantern on the desk.

It was the last second that made her stomach churn; in the bottom right corner something shifted, just out of sight. A shadow, an animal, a fluttering bit of paper... who could say what it was? But it looked like a bare foot to her. Ava picked up her phone and watched him return to working on his... arch. That's how she had started to think of it: The Arch. Now that it was almost closed, it looked like an elongated oval of shining metal, embedded into a raised base.

"What the fuck is it?" She hissed, knowing she should check on Yasmine, or Mrs Shearer, or anyone but this mad old academic... but her other channels had been playing into nothing for weeks. Unobserved, private. Her phone hit the wall with a clatter, "Fuck!"

Ava gripped her hair as a dull, niggling pain took up behind her eyes. The first one had come when she zoomed in on the open book on his desk, but they were getting closer and closer together now; her head pounded and ached like something was inside it, pushing outwards like a bird trying to hatch... then it passed.

"Eye strain," she told herself and fumbled for sleeping tablets. She would take the day off tomorrow. Her installation in Aviemore could be pushed. She needed to sleep. She needed to rest and she needed to stay away from the damn cameras.

*

Text messages piled up, voicemails went unread; she couldn't seem to wake up. Ava swallowed thickly, caught between sleep and wakefulness and greyish light filtered through her half opened curtains. The room smelled foul, she knew that, but she couldn't seem to care. The Arch was nearly done. She watched him as she placed a strange, angled piece of black material at the very top and started to screw it into place. It seemed a painstaking process; for the first time since installing the system, she watched him install the piece in full. It took hours, or perhaps just minutes, but despite his gnarled hands, visibly shaking through the camera feed, Dr Baird was meticulous and nimble as he fed the tiny wires into place.

When he stepped back and flicked a switch it lit up, blue light seeping through the seams between the plates... Ava blinked and sat up, watching intently. Nothing happened. Nothing else anyway.

She flopped back onto her bed and sighed.

"Four weeks watching a fucking art project," she grumbled and dragged herself out of bed to get a glass of water. She kept one eye on the screen nonetheless, watching him flit in and out of the room with books and bags. When he started to pour something white in a circle around the arch, she frowned, "is that fucking salt?" She asked no one, turning on the tap. It was. Salt being poured from what had to be a restaurant sized bag of the stuff. A smile started to tug at her lips unbidden; the poor old bastard was clearly mad. Howling at the moon mad, but it was entertaining. Icy water splashed into her pint glass as Baird walked around the arch and stepped onto the base plate. When he stepped through she frowned, tilting her head.

"Frozen..." she murmured and tapped the screen, jerking when it zoomed in. The image wasn't frozen, but the old man was nowhere to be seen, "what the fuck..." Ava whispered, her eyes wide, stomach flipping. Water spilled over the rim of the glass and onto her hand without eliciting a reaction as Dr Baird stepped out of the other side. A lag... that's all it was, she thought as her shoulders slowly dropped and she turned the tap off, shaking her hand dry. When he turned to look at the camera, his face was... tight. Like a drum skin... as if a great hand had gripped the loose, paper thin skin around his jowls and neck and pulled it back. Ava closed the app and swallowed gulps of icy water with shaking hands; had his eyes always been brown? She couldn't remember

*

"A respected academic, Dr Simon Baird, was found dead in his office at Glasgow Caledonian university today," the newscaster spoke matter of factly, as if she were reporting the weather, "known for prolific publication on subjects such as metaphysical philosophy and religious history, Dr Baird was recently placed under investigation by the university for academic misconduct. Despite reports that the investigation was never concluded, he returned to work and was found in the early hours of the morning..."

Ava gaped at the TV, her hands shaking. The clients were talking between themselves, shaking their head, speculating, but they may as well have been speaking Greek for all she knew,

"...indicate Dr Baird, who was seventy-eight, may have suffered a stroke, but this has not been confirmed..."

Ava pulled her phone slowly from her pocket, opened the app. The itch wasn't in her fingers now, it was everywhere. Some small part of her mind was screaming that she didn't need to know, but she did. She needed it like she needed air. Ava pressed on Bairds channel and felt a wave of nausea as she saw him dismantling the arch with the jerky, aggressive movements of a much younger, less careful man. When he stopped, the hair on her neck prickled and rose; Dr Baird, or whatever was wearing his face, turned like a great beast, the movement fluid and predatory. She stared at his strange, smooth face in silence as he raised it to the camera and grinned, a wide, hard, impossibly sharp smile, before raising a pale, crooked finger to his lips.