Chapter 2: The Follower

The Hyatt Regency downtown looked like every other business hotel Ethan had ever stayed in—marble lobby, generic art, the faint smell of industrial carpet cleaner and corporate desperation. He'd checked in three hours ago, unpacked his conference materials with mechanical precision, and tried to convince himself that the drive from Sycamore Lane had been perfectly normal. No shadows in the rearview mirror. No impossible glimpses of dead fathers lurking between suburban houses.

Just his mind playing tricks, dredging up old trauma when he was already emotionally raw.

The conference schedule lay spread across his hotel room desk: "Innovative Data Analytics in Market Research." Three days of PowerPoint presentations and networking lunches that would keep him busy, keep his mind occupied with safe, rational things like regression analysis and consumer behavior modeling. Exactly what he needed.

Ethan showered, changed into his conference clothes—navy suit, conservative tie, the armor of the professionally competent—and headed down to the hotel bar. One drink to settle his nerves, then early to bed. Tomorrow he'd give his presentation on predictive modeling, shake hands with potential clients, and pretend he was the kind of person who had his shit together.

The bar was typical hotel chic: dark wood, leather banquettes, and the kind of ambient lighting that made everyone look either mysterious or jaundiced depending on your perspective. Ethan ordered a whiskey neat and found a spot at the end of the bar where he could watch the room without being watched in return—an old habit from his more paranoid days.

The whiskey burned going down, a familiar warmth that helped unknot the tension in his shoulders. Around him, the usual collection of business travelers engaged in the ritual dance of forced networking. Everyone pretending their lives were more interesting than they actually were, everyone running from something.

He was halfway through his second drink when Sarah Chen dropped onto the barstool next to him.

"Jesus, Ethan, you look like hell."

Sarah was a data scientist from his company's Seattle office, one of the few colleagues he actually considered a friend. They'd worked together on a massive retail analysis project last year, spending weeks buried in spreadsheets and living on takeout coffee. She had a sharp wit, an MIT PhD, and the kind of professional competence that made clients trust her immediately.

"Gee, thanks," Ethan said, managing a weak smile. "Really know how to make a guy feel better."

"I'm serious. You're pale as a ghost, and your hands are shaking." She signaled the bartender. "Gin and tonic, and whatever he's having. On my expense account."

"You don't have to—"

"Shut up and drink. What's wrong? And don't tell me it's conference nerves. I've seen you present to boards full of hostile executives without breaking a sweat."

Ethan stared into his whiskey, watching the amber liquid catch the bar's dim lighting. How could he explain what had happened on Sycamore Lane without sounding completely insane? That he'd seen his dead father lurking in suburban shadows? That every instinct he possessed was screaming that something was wrong, something was hunting him?

"Family stuff," he said finally. "Went back to my old neighborhood today. Stupid therapy assignment."

Sarah's expression softened. She knew about his father—not the details, but enough to understand why certain topics were off-limits. "That sounds rough. No wonder you look like you've seen a—" She caught herself. "Sorry. Poor choice of words."

"It's fine." Ethan finished his drink in one burning gulp. "Just need to get through the next few days, then I can go home and pretend this whole trip never happened."

They talked for another hour, safe topics like work gossip and Sarah's ongoing battle with her condo association. Normal conversation that helped ground him in the present, in the world of quarterly reports and budget meetings where dead fathers didn't lurk in shadows and the worst thing that could happen was a PowerPoint crash during a client presentation.

By ten-thirty, the bar was mostly empty except for a few die-hard networkers still trading business cards over their fourth martinis. Ethan felt almost human again, the whiskey and Sarah's company having worked their combined magic on his frayed nerves.

"I should probably head up," he said, pulling out his wallet. "Early session tomorrow."

"Yeah, me too. Walk me to the elevators?"

They made their way through the lobby, past the check-in desk and the cluster of overstuffed chairs where a few night owls were still pecking at laptops. The elevator bank was around a corner, in a corridor lined with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the hotel's courtyard.

Ethan was reaching for the elevator call button when Sarah grabbed his arm.

"Ethan. Look."

Her voice was strange, tight with something that might have been fear. Ethan followed her pointing finger to the windows, to the courtyard four stories below.

The space was designed as a peaceful retreat—carefully manicured lawn, a few ornamental trees, benches arranged around a small fountain. Landscape lighting created pools of warm illumination connected by paths of decorative stone. It should have been empty at this hour, a pocket of suburban tranquility in the heart of downtown Chicago.

Instead, there was a figure standing beside the fountain.

Even from four floors up, even through the glare of the lobby lights reflecting off the glass, Ethan could see it clearly. A tall man in casual clothes, standing perfectly, unnaturally still. His face was turned upward, toward their window, though the distance and darkness made his features impossible to make out.

Except for his smile.

Even at this distance, even through the distortion of height and glass and shadow, that smile was unmistakable. Too wide. Far too wide for any human face. It stretched across the figure's features like a gash, revealing what might have been teeth or might have been something else entirely.

"What the hell is that?" Sarah whispered.

Ethan couldn't answer. His throat had closed up, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. It was him. The same figure from Sycamore Lane, but now it was here, at his hotel, staring up at him with that impossible smile and the patient stillness of something that had all the time in the world.

"That's not normal," Sarah continued, her scientific mind trying to process what she was seeing. "People don't stand like that. People don't—"

The elevator dinged, and its doors slid open with mechanical cheerfulness. The sound broke whatever spell had held them frozen at the window. Ethan grabbed Sarah's elbow and pulled her into the elevator car, stabbing the button for the twelfth floor with more force than necessary.

"Ethan, what—"

"Don't look back," he said, not trusting himself to explain. "Just don't look back."

But as the elevator doors began to close, he caught one last glimpse of the courtyard through the gap. The figure was gone. The space beside the fountain was empty, as if nothing had ever been there at all.

The silence in the elevator was deafening. Sarah stared at him with the kind of wide-eyed concern usually reserved for people having public breakdowns. Ethan realized he was still gripping her elbow hard enough to leave bruises.

"Sorry," he mumbled, releasing her. "I'm sorry, I just—"

"Who was that?" Her voice was steady, but he could hear the tremor underneath. "And don't tell me it was just some hotel guest taking a late-night stroll. I've never seen anyone stand like that. It was like watching a mannequin."

The elevator reached the twelfth floor with another cheerful ding. The doors opened onto a corridor of beige carpet and numbered doors, the kind of anonymous hotel hallway that existed in a thousand identical buildings across the country. Normal. Safe. The antithesis of whatever had been staring up at them from the courtyard.

"I don't know," Ethan said, and it was partially true. He didn't know what it was, only that it wore his father's general shape and had followed him from Sycamore Lane to downtown Chicago like some kind of patient predator.

Sarah followed him into the hallway, her key card already in her hand. Her room was three doors down from his, close enough that he felt marginally better about leaving her alone. Whatever that thing was, it seemed focused on him specifically.

"Ethan." She caught his arm as he fumbled with his key card. "Are you in some kind of trouble? Because if you need help—"

"No." The word came out harsher than he'd intended. "It's nothing. Just... family stuff. Like I said."

She didn't look convinced, but she didn't push. Sarah was smart enough to recognize when someone was drowning and too proud to grab the life preserver. "Okay. But if you change your mind, I'm in 1247. And I'm a light sleeper."

Ethan managed what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Thanks. I'll be fine."

He waited until he heard her door close and the deadbolt click before sliding his own key card. His hands were shaking so badly it took three tries to get the light to turn green.

His room was exactly as he'd left it—conference materials on the desk, laptop plugged in and charging, his clothes hung neatly in the closet. The curtains were drawn tight against the night, turning the windows into blank rectangles of beige fabric. He checked the deadbolt twice, then the security chain, then pulled a chair over and wedged it under the door handle for good measure.

Only then did he allow himself to collapse onto the bed, still fully dressed, his heart hammering against his ribs like it was trying to escape his chest entirely.

The thing in the courtyard had been watching him. Specifically him. It had known exactly which window to look at, had stood there with that horrible smile until it was sure he'd seen it. This wasn't random. This wasn't coincidence.

Whatever was happening to him, whatever his father had gotten mixed up in before his death, it had found Ethan. And it wasn't going to stop.

He lay there in the dark, listening to the familiar sounds of the hotel settling around him—the hum of the air conditioning, the distant ding of elevators, the muffled conversations of late-night guests in the hallway. Normal sounds. Human sounds.

But underneath it all, so faint he might have been imagining it, Ethan could swear he heard something else. A soft, rhythmic tapping, like fingernails against glass.

He didn't get up to check the windows. Some things, he was learning, were better left uninvestigated.