Number One Fan

by Meg Elison

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Horror

Synopsis

Not Yet Available

Release date: August 30, 2022

Publisher: MIRA Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

1

The car rolled into view, the lit decals on the dashboard letting Eli know that her driver was typical: working for all the rideshare services at once.

Gotta hustle, she thought as she quickened her pace away from the airfield. She hoped he hadn’t been waiting long.

“Elizabeth?” He seemed bored, not even bothering to turn around.

“That’s right. I go by Eli, though.”

“Sure,” he said, tapping his phone.

She settled in, her satchel beside her. “Thank you.”

The car was air-conditioned against the cushion of heat that pressed against its tinted windows, and as they headed toward the freeway, she finally began to relax. She was grateful the driver didn’t seem to want to talk. She was tired of talking from the event, and her throat was dry and sore.

“There is a cold drink there in the cup holder. Down in the door.” His voice was low, a raspy baritone.

“Oh, cool, thanks.” Eli reached down and felt the blessed condensation on a plastic bottle. She pulled up a blue Gatorade and wrenched it open, suddenly very thirsty. She drank half of it in huge gulps, disliking the weird, salty taste of the electrolyte mixture, but unable to stop herself. It felt good, after hours of talking and the dry air of the flight. She breathed deep and drank again, coming close to finishing it off.

Must be the heat, she thought. That and the two miniature bottles of Jack Daniel’s she’d had to calm her nerves on the plane.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket in an unfamiliar cadence and she slid it out to check.

Her notification from the rideshare app blared.

Brenda has canceled the ride for reason: no-show. You have been charged a cancellation fee of $5.

Eli frowned at her phone. Had she summoned two cars by accident?

She unlocked it with her facial scan and checked. The app showed only one ride: a black Prius driven by Brenda, which had arrived five minutes ago and canceled four minutes after that.

It wasn’t a busy day at the airfield. It certainly wasn’t curbside pickup like at SFO, but it was still possible that she had gotten in the wrong car.

But he had known her name.

She leaned forward to get the driver’s attention. “Hey, just clarifying—you’ve got my info, right? I just got a cancellation from another driver, and I’m worried that I got someone else’s ride.”

The driver tapped his phone and his eyes darted between it, the rearview mirror and the road. “Elizabeth Grey. Headed to the Sailing Stones, right?”

The phone displayed a highlighted blue route along the freeway. It was a map program, rather than the rideshare’s software, but Eli had seen drivers toggle between those before. She glanced up at the rearview mirror, but his eyes were on the road and he had put on a pair of dark glasses.

“Right,” she said. “Huh. Wonder what happened.”

Eli settled back into her seat. She stared out the window and thought of home, of the deep gray fog rolling down over the hillsides and the wind coming in, salty from the Bay. She was homesick. Even in the same state, the air felt wrong on her skin. Los Angeles had been an endless parade of palm trees against a blameless sky, and the tacos were so good she could barely stop shoveling them in, but the traffic had left her feeling exhausted upon every arrival.

And then there was the way that people looked you over in Los Angeles, deciding whether you were famous or fuckable or useful in some other way before sliding on to the next thing. Her audiences had been lively and engaging but draining, and after each of her events, she’d wanted nothing but some dinner, a hot bath and sleep. Maybe a couple fingers of bourbon over ice.

Traveling always left her wrung out and unmoored. It didn’t help that the sun was so all-encompassing outside the car it could have been anywhere, anytime of day, the hot, white light blinding. She couldn’t look at a surface other than the black asphalt without squinting. Living in San Francisco gave her what she had thought was a passing acquaintance with the sun, but the glare as the 10 freeway led out into Kern County and the high desert landscape was just too much.

How are people here not dog-tired all the time? Doesn’t the heat suck all the life out of them? How do they ever leave the house? Christ, it’s March. Imagine later in the year. I gotta get some sunglasses.

She set the phone beside her on the seat to avoid pawing it in and out of her jeans. She belatedly buckled her seat belt as they picked up speed. Out the window, the freeway was sliding past, one unfamiliar mile blending into the next.

The driver turned his radio on. It annoyed her at first that he had not asked, but then she reminded herself that he probably spent the whole day in his car. She wasn’t talking; he was probably both lonely and bored. Let him have his Oingo Boingo.

He changed lanes to get into the faster flow of traffic and the motion of it made her feel a trifle ill. This heat had produced all kinds of new feelings. She ignored it, drinking the last swallow of the Gatorade.

She looked around for a polite place to deposit the bottle. The motion of her head made her dizziness worse and she tried to blink it away. “Do you have a spot for trash?” she asked him. As the words slid out of her mouth, she realized she was slurring like she was very, very drunk. She was horrified to realize she was drooling, too.

Eli tried to get ahold of herself. She pushed with her palms and worked to sit up straight, but found that she could not. Her head felt far too heavy for the wet noodle of her neck to have ever supported. Her abs were slack and her spine was a worm. She sagged against the seat; the seat belt the only thing keeping her from sliding to the floor.

“Whass going on?” The words seemed to take a long time to reach her ears.

Oh shit, I’m having a stroke. An old classmate of Eli’s had had a freak stroke event a week shy of her thirtieth birthday. Frantically, she tried to recall the diagnostic that the woman had posted on Facebook right after. She couldn’t speak clearly. She couldn’t lift her arms at all. Her hand flopped uselessly in the direction of her phone.

“Ooogoada tachme to ahspital,” she slurred at him in molasses-thick nightmare slowness. “Shumding wruuuuunnnnng.”

“Relax,” he said clearly, his voice less deep than before. “You are fine.”

With her last spasm of strength, Eli pulled at the door handle, intending to tumble out of the car. The child safety lock held her in place.

I’m not fine, she thought with her last clear and lucid moment. As her eyes fell closed like heavy curtains, she finally registered that they were going the wrong way. The steely spike of panic that stabbed at her heart was almost enough to counteract the soporific effect of whatever was wrong with her, but not quite. Fighting, terrified, she slipped out of consciousness.

2

A rumbling sound. Flashes of bright light. A thin jet of icy air. A roll of nausea, then another.

Eli Grey had brief moments of something approaching being awake, but she couldn’t make sense of what was happening. She was on a plane—or was it just the memory of a plane? No, she was in a car. She was very hot, and when she could force her eyes open, dust motes swirled past her face into a blurry field of vision. She groaned and went back out.

When she came to again, she was in a bed and under covers. It was not her bed, and the covers did not feel like that industrial foam-plastic stuff she knew from hotels. Deep breaths brought more strange smells: cleaning fluid, ant bait, an unfamiliar soap. She thought hard.

Did I hook up with someone after a reading? Did I get hammered last night? What’s the last thing I can remember?

But all she remembered was the tiny plane that had flown her across the Southern California desert, and the creases in her hands when she had let go of her death grip on the Naugahyde seats.

Deep breath. Figure it out. You’re okay. You’re alone, for now. Deep breath.

Eli remembered fidgeting in the cramped airplane seat. She had badly wanted another drink. When she thought about the series being almost done, about the eighth book coming out, there was a small panic somewhere inside her. The success of her book series had brought her financial security: a little house and a little money, her debts paid off. When this series ended one day, she knew what she wanted to write next. There was a little thrill in her belly when she wondered whether people would like it as well as the Millicent Michaelson books or not. Her other books out of the series had done well, but not blockbusters.

The craft had bumped and bounced to a stop, and she breathed a long, shaky sigh of relief. They began to taxi around the small airport and she knew her drinking window had closed.

Airport personnel scurried out to roll one of those old-fashioned staircases to the tiny plane’s door, and Eli emerged, blinded by the sun and taking the heat of the Mojave to the face like the first volley of a pillow fight in hell. Blinking and pulling her sunglasses down, she turned her phone back on.

She tweeted:

Back on solid ground and it feels so good! Thank you, Los Angeles!

She attached a selfie in the big gray headphones, with the tiny plane evident in the background. Eli wrote in the caption about her private plane experience; not glamorous like a G6, no flight attendants to bring drinks and no luxurious seating. But it had been only her and the pilot, unable to speak over the roar of the engines. She had also gotten a shot of the city she had taken in the air, added it to the gallery post. Immediately, likes and retweets began to roll in. She muted the notifications and pocketed her phone. She thought about texting her assistant, Joe, who was going to check in with her at SeaTac tomorrow, but decided it could wait. The kid deserved a day off.

On the ground, the pilot had found her and wanted to shake her hand. Eli adjusted her satchel to hang between her shoulders and shook back.

“Thank you for the safe flight. I was pretty nervous about such a small plane.”

“No trouble. I make that run all the time,” the man said through his gingery beard. “I was wondering, though, if you’d sign my wife’s book for her. She’s just crazy about that Millicent.”

Eli grinned broadly. “Sure, I will, of course. Do you have it handy? I’ve got a copy in my satchel—”

“No, no, it’s here in my car. If you’ll just wait a second.” He jogged off, holding up both hands. “Back in one minute.”

“No problem,” she called to him. She pulled her phone back out and began to look at her odds of getting a car back to her hotel. Small towns in California had fewer options than San Francisco, which seemed to dream up a new, disruptive transportation solution every two weeks. She checked her favorite rideshare app and was surprised to see a handful of drivers active and nearby. She put in her location and the address of her hotel, and saw that she had correctly guessed it was going to be a while before her ride showed up. She stowed her phone again and spied the pilot jogging back to her.

“Here we go!” He was holding a first-edition paperback copy of The City under the City, her debut novel. She knew it was the first edition on sight, because she had been published the first time by a tiny press with no design budget, and the cover was homely and humble. It gave her a funny twinge in her heart to see it.

“I haven’t seen one of these at a signing in about five years,” she said, smiling and taking the book from him.

“My wife has been a fan of yours since back then,” he said, grinning back. “She used to tell all her friends, her book club ladies, you know, that you were gonna be the next big thing. She says she saw it right away. She wanted me to make sure you knew that she was loyal from the very beginning.”

Eli opened the front cover, noticing how worn this copy of Citywas. “I can see this one has been well-loved. Are you sure I can’t get her a new copy? I could have it sent to you.”

“No, no. This one is her treasure. She says it’s her proof that she’s your biggest fan. She’d be here herself, but we just had a baby and she’s still lying in. Stitches, you know.”

Eli nodded, bracing the book gently against her belly and uncapping her good fountain pen, a Montblanc she had picked out to celebrate hitting the bestseller list. “Should I just autograph this, or make it out to her personally?”

“Oh, she’d just die. Please make it out to Adeline, and say something nice. Or clever. Or both, I guess.” He was grinning and Eli could not help but grin back.

“That’s A-d-e-l-i-n-e?”

He nodded.

Eli wrote carefully, mindful that years of typing were eroding her script into a barely legible scrawl.

To Adeline, my number-one fan, with my thanks and friendship.

Below that, she laid out her practiced author’s signature, tall and wide and cocksure. She had modeled it on all of her heroes’ autographs and hoped it looked like it belonged: Eli Grey.

The pilot smiled again, taking the book back. “She’s gonna be so happy. She didn’t believe me when I said I was gonna be flying you.”

Eli smiled back, but she saw an attendant flagging her down from the edge of the parking lot nearby. “I think my ride is here.”

“Oh! Okay, great! Have a good one!”

She raised a hand to him and began to walk briskly away.

And then I was in the car, she thought, her heart pounding at the memory of that ride. Her stomach dropped the way it had when the small plane had banked a turn.

And then I was here. So where is here?

Upon her first deep breath, Eli immediately began to cough like she’d just smoked her first cigarette. She whooped in big breaths, her head pounding with the effort. She found that she could not sit up, or even hold herself up on one arm.

Once she could breathe, she peeled her dry eyes open and looked around. It was a bedroom, but the extreme gloom and lack of windows told her it had to be a basement. The bed was low, but soft. There was a dresser and a small closet without a door on it. Looking around, she saw that the room had two doors. One she guessed was the bathroom, on the right. On the left, a flight of concrete stairs without a banister led up to a door at the top.

That must be the way out.

With her notice of a bathroom came a sudden and pressing need to pee. She pulled the blankets off herself and realized two things:

The first was that she was wearing someone else’s nightgown. It was a long, pink silky thing, hyperfeminine like something the dame in a detective novel might be wearing when the cops came to tell her that her husband was dead under mysterious circumstances and she had better answer their questions. Eli tried hard to remember what she had been wearing before. It came back slowly as she blinked to clear her head.

Black jeans, cuffed at the ankles. My custom oxfords. Sports bra. A white undershirt and a white dress shirt over it. My good black blazer. Remember, I was too hot. Wanted to take the blazer off, but didn’t. Why didn’t I?

The second thing she realized was that her right ankle was shackled to the bed with an old-fashioned leg iron, like a handcuff.

Her sense of unreality deepened. Had she woken up in someone else’s life? No, that couldn’t really happen. Was this a dream? No. Surreal, but too real. Where was she? How had she ended up here?

There was a terrible significance to these two alien objects when her mind combined them in just the right way, but she wouldn’t let that thought in. Not yet.

The door she had correctly guessed was the way out opened. She stared up at it, riveted. There, standing in semidarkness, was her driver from the airport.

I know you. The thought drifted across her mind and out to sea. She knew him from somewhere; was it just the airport? Was her short-term memory affected by whatever drug she had been given? He was familiar, but why?

He drove you. That’s why. That’s all it is.

She was piecing it together. She knew how she had gotten here.

“I saw you were awake, and I wanted to come greet you properly this time.”

She peered up at him as he began to descend the staircase, all legs, like a stilt walker. “What the hell is this? Unlock my ankle right now.”

He looked pained as he reached the floor, drawing his long arms up as if threatened. He came toward her with that same hurt expression on his long, horsey features. She took in his face carefully now, studying it just as she had ignored it in the car. He was young, maybe all of thirty-five. Only a few years younger than her, she thought. His face was unremarkable, with dark hair cut short and a deep shadow under his carefully shaved cheeks. His beard around that, dark and wild but closely clipped. Dry skin, like he exfoliated but never moisturized. Oval glasses in black wire somehow made his face seem more civilized.

He was incredibly tall. Eli blinked hard, trying to get her sense of proportion to settle right. She was low to the ground; the metal frame was only about six inches off the floor. Even allowing for the extreme angle, she had seen the way he stooped coming through the doorway. She remembered how he had sat in his car, hunched over the wheel like there wasn’t room for him behind it.

His hair, dull, wavy and wild as well, brushed against the acoustic popcorn on the ceiling in the room. Was the room small? His arms and legs seemed terribly long, like a spider’s. He wore dark jeans and indoor shoes, and she saw the bony knobs of his wrists poking out of the sleeves of his flannel shirt, and inches of sock showed between his pants and his shoes. The effect was startling: Abraham Lincoln in lifts, a daddy longlegs in eyeglasses.

He stepped toward the bed, wiry muscle looming over her with elbows cocked, and Eli flinched away involuntarily. His glasses shone in the overhead light, and for just a second she felt like a clam watching a crab scuttle over, ready to rip her apart.

“You are not really in a position to tell me what to do, are you?” His smile was small, almost gentle. A kindergarten teacher reminding you to say please and thank-you.

“What do you want? Do you want money? Let me call my assistant and he can wire you money. I’m not loaded, but—”

He looked offended. “I do not want your money,” he scoffed.

Eli struggled against the ankle chain a bit, testing it. The bed frame was made out of joined steel pipes, she could see now. Getting out of this would not be easy.

“We can release you from the lock, if you will just agree to abide by the rules.”

“We?” She fought rising panic. She was still forcibly holding her mind back from doing the math on what this man almost surely wanted from her. Eli steeled herself.

“I’m not going to play any games with you. I’m not interested in your rules. Just tell me what you want.”

He looked her over. “I can see that you are not in the mood to talk about this now. That is alright. I will come back later.”

He turned, climbed the steps and closed the door decorously behind him. She sat staring at the door for several minutes, numbly trying to figure out what had just happened.

He doesn’t want money.

You know what he wants.

Think, godsdamn it.

He had said that he saw she was awake. Looking around the upper corners of the room, she spotted a round black camera above her, pointed down toward the bed.

Okay, so he can see me. Probably watching right now.

He was the driver.

Her real driver must have been the one who sent her that cancellation notice. Brenda. She felt like the stupidest person in the world, the girl in the horror movie who suggests they all split up and walks right into the basement.

Didn’t I notice the driver was a woman? That never happens. But I just got in the car that showed up. Didn’t check the make or the plate.

That hardly mattered now. She had gotten into his car. She had assumed, and trusted herself to a stranger. She did it all the time—everyone did. Why not?

Okay. He wasn’t really a driver. He was just a guy who...who what? Who knew where I’d be, and then just showed up and got me? How could he know where I was?

She was hyperventilating.

Am I stuck in some guy’s basement because he knows who I am and tracked me down? Or because this guy just likes to stalk women? Maybe kill women. How many other women have worn this nightgown?

She was shuddering, unable to slow her breathing. Her eyes swept around wildly. She needed something to ground her or she was going to scream.

Her breath caught in her throat like a door had slammed.

Opposite the bed, a large sheet of paper was taped to the wall. On it was a list printed in large bold letters that she could read from where she lay.

THE RULES:

YOU ARE NOT REAL; YOU ARE THE PRODUCT OF MY WORK.

YOUR LIFE IS MEANINGLESS IF YOU DO NOT SERVE OTHERS.

YOU WILL BEHAVE WELL AND BE TIDY OR THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES.

WE WILL BE VERY HAPPY TOGETHER.

YOU WILL LEAVE THIS ROOM WHEN YOU HAVE A PERFECT UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR PURPOSE.

She stared at it, uncomprehending. She read it again. And again. The words stacked up like a pyramid, immovable proof of the trouble she was in.

Oh fuck. I am so fucked.

The rules were familiar to her for a reason. They were a parody of the rules she had written for the Maginaria, the magical school Millicent Michaelson attended in her book series. The originals ran a little differently:

MAGINARIA RULES:

MAGIC IS NOT BORN; IT IS THE PRODUCT OF WORK.

YOUR GIFTS ARE MEANINGLESS IF THEY DO NOT SERVE OTHERS.

YOU WILL PERFORM TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY OR YOU WILL LEAVE.

WE, THE MAGICAL FOLK, ARE STRONGER TOGETHER.

YOU WILL LEAVE THIS SCHOOL ONLY WHEN YOU HAVE PERFECT CONTROL OF YOUR GIFT. THIS PROCESS TAKES AS LONG AS IT TAKES.

That’s intentional, right? It’s got to be. Has he read my books, or does he just have a sick sense of humor?

Either way, he definitely knew who she was. Rational thought retreated behind a wall of screaming, illogical, fight-or-flight reaction. She pulled hard against her ankle cuff, straining and yanking, trying to spring it or break the eight or so inches of chain that connected it to the post. She reached down and pulled at the footboard of the bed, thrashing and trying to shake it apart. She breathed between her teeth, struggling. Her head swam again.

Okay. Okay. Okay. A crazy person has me. That’s what I know now. I don’t know anything else, even if I suspect it. I got myself into this. I’m going to have to get myself out. I have to think. Must think. Can’t give in to panic. Fear is the mind killer, right? Fuck off. Fuck OFF. Think, godsdamn it.

She fought for a long moment to get ahold of herself. She shook all over, adrenaline washing through her, making her tremble like a spooked Maltese. She forced herself to take long, deep breaths.

I can do this. I have to do this. I’m all I’ve got.

Eli took a quick and despairing inventory of her life. No partner. No family. No friends she spoke to every day, or even every week. Nobody was house-sitting. Nobody was waiting to hear from her.

Fuck. How am I going to—JOE.

He sprang into her mind like the hope of heaven. Joe, her assistant. He would notice she was gone. He would tell someone.

But Joe wouldn’t realize something had gone wrong until tomorrow afternoon. She was supposed to arrive in Seattle for her next event. When she didn’t show, the event coordinator at the bookstore would call her, then him. That was what the email chain directed them to do, anyway. Joe might notice that Eli had failed to check in before then, but maybe not. Eli was not great about touching base. That was not a particularly useful thought at the moment.

I can live through this for a couple of days. He wants something. If this guy didn’t want something, I’d already be dead. If he isn’t planning to kill me right away, then there’s got to be a way out.

She shivered again and thought again about how bad she needed to pee. She didn’t want to wet the bed, since she was stuck in it. She looked around the room and saw no receptacle, no good option. She couldn’t hold it much longer. There was an almost insurmountable mental block here: she couldn’t hold it and she couldn’t imagine doing it anywhere but a toilet.

Maybe in the woods, she thought, recalling one miserable camping trip with a girl who had insisted it made for a romantic third date. Some romance. Poison ivy on my ass. But where am I supposed to piss? There isn’t even a potted plant.

She shifted from side to side, ...