The rain had turned the windshield of Maya’s Volvo into a kaleidoscope of grey and silver. She sat parked in the empty lot of the Gables Community Center, the engine idling, the heated seat doing nothing to chase away the chill that had settled in her marrow.
It was Tuesday again. Release day.
She had told Dan she was going to the store for almond milk. She had told herself she was just being thorough. But the truth was, she couldn’t listen to The Gables Ghost inside Number 4. The house felt too porous now, the walls too thin. The glass sunroom, once her pride, now felt like a stage where she was performing a play she hadn’t rehearsed.
Maya tapped the screen on the dashboard.
EPISODE 3: THE WATCHER Runtime: 28:14
The familiar, gravelly voice filled the cabin, wrapping around her like smoke.
“Privacy is a luxury tax we pay in the suburbs,” the narrator began. “We buy the gates. We plant the hedges. We install the blinds. But light travels. And so do eyes.”
Maya stared at the wiper blades slicing back and forth. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
“Juniper Black loved the light,” the voice continued. “She lived in the sunroom. She read there. She slept there. She thought the wetlands behind her house were a barrier. She didn’t understand that to a predator, the wetlands aren’t a wall. They’re a blind.”
Maya shifted in her seat. She knew this. She had felt it—the sensation of being observed from the reeds.
“He watched her for three months,” the narrator said. The audio quality shifted, becoming more acoustic, more intimate. “He knew she drank Earl Grey at 7:00 AM. He knew she paced when she was on the phone with her mother. He knew she touched her stomach when she thought no one was looking.”
Maya gripped the steering wheel. The detail about the pregnancy—the touching of the stomach—wasn’t in any police report. It was a visual memory.
“He watched,” the voice whispered, “because watching is possessing. To see someone when they think they are alone is to own them. And Juniper… she was very owned.”
The podcast segued into interviews with old neighbors—voice-modulated, but Maya recognized the cadence of Mrs. Gable from the next street over, talking about how “that girl” never closed her curtains. Victim blaming packaged as nostalgia.
Maya checked the time. 26:00. The episode was almost over. It had been creepy, atmospheric, but it hadn’t offered a new clue. It was filler. A bridge episode.
She reached out to turn off the engine.
“But histories echo,” the narrator said abruptly. The background music—a low, droning synth—cut out completely. The silence in the car was heavy. “The houses change hands. The furniture changes style. But the angles remain the same. The lines of sight don’t move.”
Maya’s hand froze in mid-air.
“And sometimes,” the voice purred, “the watching doesn’t stop just because the tenant changes.”
A sound crackled through the car’s high-end speakers.
It wasn’t the narrator. It was raw audio. High fidelity. The noise floor was low, buzzing with the distinct hum of an HVAC system.
Rustle. Squeak.
Maya frowned. It sounded like fabric moving against wood.
Then, a whimper.
It was a wet, breathless sound. The sound of a child waking up from a bad dream.
Maya stopped breathing.
The whimper escalated into a cry. A sharp, rhythmic wail that hit a specific pitch—a high C that cracked at the top.
“No,” Maya whispered.
She knew that cry. It wasn’t a stock sound effect. It wasn’t an archival recording from 1994.
It was Leo.
The crying grew louder in the speakers. Maya could hear the wet intake of breath between screams. She could hear the thump-thump-thump of a small foot kicking the mattress.
Then, footsteps on the recording. Soft. Padded.
A woman’s voice shushed the crying.
“It’s okay, Lee-Lee. It’s okay. Mommy’s here. It’s just the thunder. Shhh.”
Maya screamed.
She screamed inside the closed car, a sound of pure, animalistic terror that clawed her throat raw.
The voice on the recording was hers.
She remembered it. Last night. 2:00 AM. A thunderstorm had rolled through The Gables. Leo had woken up screaming. She had gone in, rubbed his back, and whispered those exact words. Lee-Lee. Her private nickname for him.
The recording ended with the narrator’s voice returning, smug and terrifyingly close.
“Sleep tight, Bittersweet Court. We’re all watching over you.”
The episode ended. The silence that followed was deafening.
Maya slammed the car into drive. The tires screeched on the wet asphalt as she peeled out of the Community Center lot.
He was inside.
He wasn’t just looking through the windows. He wasn’t just listening to the walls. He was inside the nursery. The audio was crystal clear. It wasn’t recorded through a window. It was recorded from inches away.
She drove like a maniac. 45 in a 25. She blew through the stop sign at the entrance to The Gables. The security guard in the booth barely looked up from his phone.
Useless, Maya thought, her vision tunneling. They’re all useless.
She turned onto Bittersweet Court, the SUV drifting slightly on the slick road.
Number 4 stood at the end of the cul-de-sac. It looked peaceful. The rain washed the white siding. The lights were on in the kitchen.
Leo was in there. Dan was supposed to be watching him, but Dan was probably on a conference call in his office with the door shut.
Maya slammed the car into park in the middle of the driveway, not waiting for the garage door to open. She scrambled out, leaving the door ajar, the rain instantly soaking her hair.
She fumbled with her keys, her hands shaking so violently she dropped them.
“Damn it!” she shrieked, dropping to her knees on the wet porch to retrieve them.
She jammed the key into the lock and threw the door open.
“Leo!” she screamed.
The house was quiet. The air conditioning hummed. The smell of dinner—roast chicken—lingered in the hallway.
“Leo!”
“Maya?” Dan’s voice drifted from the kitchen. He sounded annoyed. “What is wrong with you? You’re shouting.”
Maya didn’t answer. She sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Her boots thudded heavy and wet on the carpet runner.
She reached the landing and practically fell into the nursery.
The room was dim, lit only by the star-shaped nightlight Leo loved. The mobile—little felt clouds—spun slowly in the draft from the vent.
The crib was against the far wall.
Maya rushed to it, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Leo was there. He was sitting up, clutching his triceratops, looking at the door with wide, startled eyes. He was fine. He was whole.
“Mommy?” he asked, his voice small. “You’re wet.”
Maya reached over the rail and hauled him out, pulling him into her chest so hard he grunted. She buried her face in his hair, smelling the Johnson’s shampoo and the faint, milky scent of childhood. She checked his arms, his legs, his back.
“I’ve got you,” she sobbed, rocking him. “I’ve got you.”
Dan appeared in the doorway, holding a spatula. He looked bewildered. “Maya? Why is the front door wide open? Why are you crying?”
Maya spun around, shielding Leo with her body. Her eyes were wild, her mascara running in jagged streaks down her face.
“Get out,” she hissed at the room, at the walls, at the empty air.
“What?” Dan stepped forward.
“Not you,” Maya snapped. She looked at the vent in the ceiling. She looked at the baby monitor on the dresser. She looked at the smoke detector blinking its rhythmic red eye.
“He’s here, Dan. He’s in the room.”
“Who is here?” Dan asked, stepping into the nursery. “There’s no one here.”
“The Watcher,” Maya said, her voice trembling with a rage that was hotter and sharper than the fear. “He recorded us. Last night. He recorded me singing to Leo.”
“Maya, stop. You’re scaring him,” Dan said, nodding at Leo, who was starting to whimper.
“I’m scaring him?” Maya laughed, a hysterical, broken sound. “We are living in a broadcast booth, Dan! There is a microphone in this room. Right now.”
She put Leo down in the center of the rug. “Stay there, baby. Don’t move.”
“Maya, what are you doing?”
Maya grabbed the desk chair from the corner. She dragged it to the center of the room, directly under the HVAC vent.
“I’m finding it,” she said. “And then I’m going to kill him.”
She climbed onto the chair. She reached up and clawed at the metal grate of the vent. Her fingernails scraped against the paint.
“Maya, get down! You’re going to fall!” Dan yelled, moving to grab her legs.
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, yanking the vent cover loose. It fell with a clang, missing Leo by inches.
Maya shoved her hand into the dark, dusty throat of the house. She felt around the metal ductwork. Dust. Screws. Cold air.
And then, something else.
A wire.
She pulled. A small black box, no bigger than a matchbook, slid out of the darkness. It dangled by a thin adhesive strip. A tiny green light blinked on its side. Blink. Blink. Blink.
Maya stared at it. It was warm. It was transmitting.
She looked down at Dan. His face had gone pale. The annoyance was gone, replaced by a dawn of horror.
“See?” Maya whispered, holding the bug up like a severed head. “I told you. We’re the show.”
She jumped down from the chair, the device clutched in her fist. She looked at the baby monitor camera on the dresser—the one that connected to the WiFi. The one Dan had insisted was secure.
She walked over to it, grabbed the camera, and smashed it against the wall. Plastic shattered.
Leo started to cry—the same high C wail from the podcast.
Maya scooped him up with one arm, holding the bug in her other hand. She walked past Dan, bumping his shoulder.
“Pack a bag,” she said, her voice devoid of emotion. “We’re going to a hotel. And then I’m calling Chloe.”
“Chloe?” Dan asked, following her into the hall. “Why Chloe?”
“Because she has a signal sweeper,” Maya said. “And because she believes me.”
She walked down the stairs, the bug pulsing in her hand. The sanctuary was dead. The home was a weapon. And Maya Lin-Baker was done being a character in someone else’s script. She was about to rewrite the ending.