Gary didn’t sleep especially well that night.
Not because anything was wrong, exactly. He simply found his mind returning, again and again, to the small YouTube channel glowing on the computer screen.
Frank Calder.
Five hundred and seventeen videos.
Twenty-seven subscribers.
And, for reasons Gary still couldn’t quite explain to himself, one of those subscribers appeared to be him.
By the following evening he found himself sitting at the computer again, the rain tapping gently against his windows while the channel page opened once more in front of him.
“Well,” he said quietly.
He pressed play.
The first video was much the same as the others he had seen the night before. Frank stood beside the indoor pool, adjusting the camera so that it balanced precariously against a bench.
“Evening swim tonight,” Frank said, squinting slightly at the lens. “Looks like it’s going to be quiet.”
Gary watched him slide into the water and begin a slow series of laps.
The video had no music, no clever editing, none of the usual tricks people used to keep viewers interested. Just the soft slap of water against the tiles and the faint echo of voices somewhere deeper in the building.
It was oddly calming.
Gary clicked another.
This one took place at the archery range he had already seen in the search results earlier. A line of targets stood in the open air while Frank stepped back from the camera and lifted a bow.
“Wind’s coming down off the hills today,” he said conversationally. “Makes it a little tricky.”
He loosed an arrow.
The shot landed just outside the centre of the target.
“Not terrible,” Frank said.
Gary leaned back slightly in the chair.
“You’re alright,” he murmured.
Another video began.
This time Frank was walking along a narrow trail somewhere above the town. Pines moved gently in the breeze and the camera swayed slightly with each step.
“Bit cloudy today,” Frank said, glancing back toward the lens. “But it’s still good hiking weather.”
Gary clicked again.
And again.
He watched Frank swim.
He watched him shoot arrows.
He watched him wander along quiet paths in the hills above a place called Missoula.
After a while Gary became dimly aware that he had been sitting there for nearly an hour.
The tea beside the keyboard had gone cold.
“Right,” he said quietly.
But instead of closing the browser, he scrolled further down the channel.
The videos stretched back years.
Winter walks.
Summer swims.
Windy afternoons at the range.
A small, quiet life recorded in hundreds of fragments.
Gary clicked another video almost at random.
The scene opened again at the swimming pool. Frank was setting the camera down on the same bench Gary had now seen several times.
As he adjusted the angle, someone passed briefly through the background.
A woman.
She moved quickly across the tiles and out of frame before Gary had properly registered her.
“Hold on,” Gary murmured.
He dragged the playback bar backwards a few seconds.
The woman crossed the screen again.
Dark hair tied loosely behind her head. A towel slung over one shoulder.
She didn’t look toward the camera.
The video continued.
Frank slipped into the pool and began swimming.
Gary sat there for a moment.
“Alright,” he said softly.
He clicked another video.
This one appeared to have been recorded outdoors. Frank stood beside a trailhead somewhere above the town, the hills rising behind him.
“Going to take a short walk this afternoon,” he said to the camera. “Nothing too ambitious.”
Someone spoke just off to the side.
“You brought the camera again?”
Gary froze.
The voice was…familiar.
He leaned forward slowly.
Frank turned slightly toward the speaker and the woman stepped partly into frame.
It was the same woman from the pool.
“You know I like documenting things,” Frank said.
She rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, well, Nadine likes hiking without being filmed.”
Gary felt a sudden prickle run down the back of his neck.
He rewound the video.
The woman spoke again.
“You brought the camera again?”
The same easy American voice.
The same voice that had said Hi, Frank on the phone.
Gary stared at the screen.
“That’s her,” he said quietly.
On the video Frank laughed and started walking up the trail while Nadine followed a few steps behind him.
Gary glanced down beneath the video window.
Two small icons sat there, exactly as they had on the others.
The thumbs-up symbol was highlighted.
Liked.
Gary looked back at the screen again, where Nadine was now disappearing further up the path beside Frank.
The video played on for a few moments longer, the two of them climbing slowly into the hills until the frame emptied and the screen faded to black. Then another video began automatically, and then another after that—Frank swimming again, Frank adjusting arrows at the range, Frank walking through the hills while Nadine’s voice drifted in and out of the frame.
At some point Gary became aware that the room had grown darker around him. The rain had stopped. The small digital clock beside the monitor read well past midnight.
“Bloody hell,” he murmured.
He closed the browser at last and leaned back in the chair, rubbing his eyes. His head felt thick now, the sort of dull exhaustion that arrived after staring at a screen too long.
For a moment he simply sat there in the quiet house.
Then something occurred to him.
The tablets.
He glanced toward the kitchen, where the small plastic pill organiser sat beside the kettle.
“Right,” he said softly.
He had meant to take them earlier that evening, at the usual time, but the hours had slipped past while he watched the videos.
Gary went through to the kitchen, swallowed the tablets with a mouthful of tap water, and stood there for a moment staring absently at the dark window.
Then he switched off the light and went upstairs to bed.
And as he lay there in the dark, waiting for sleep to come, the images returned again—blue water under bright lights, a row of targets beneath open sky, a narrow trail winding up into the hills above a town called Missoula.