Chapter 20

Early Sunday, Bret returns to his empty Mulholland house and finds a Maxell cassette in the open mailbox. He assumes it’s a mixtape from Debbie but notices his name is misspelled “brett,” which unsettles him. Exhausted, he sleeps, wakes to obsessive thoughts of Susan and Robert, and checks the answering machine: two messages from Debbie, one from his mother, and hang-ups.

Back in his room, Bret reconsiders the cassette, realizing the handwriting isn’t Debbie’s. He plays it: first only wind, distant waves, and a crackling fire. Switching to his Walkman, he discerns a grotesque “Halloween” voice ordering someone to “eat it,” while a weeping boy resists, saying he’s cold and begging for the mask to be removed.

As the audio continues, Bret understands it’s real, not staged. The boy is Matt Kellner. The perpetrator forces Matt to eat something—Bret realizes it’s Matt’s aquarium fish—while the wind and surf continue. Matt grows increasingly frightened and disoriented, apparently tripping on a large dose of LSD.

The voice demands Matt sing along to Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat,” then taunts him with crude, invasive sexual questions. Slapping sounds punctuate the song and surf, implying Matt is naked and being struck with something flat, which explains the bruises later found on his body. Matt repeatedly mentions “the lights” and the cold.

Bret infers the scene is a nighttime bonfire on Crystal Cove beach, with the perpetrator recording everything. The tape ends abruptly, and Bret, overwhelmed by terror and nausea, runs to the bathroom to vomit, grasping that Matt’s overdose was a staged cover for torture.