The Mall Read online

  Straining to hear, Lara drew even closer until she was pressed against Simon’s back like a lover. Her breath began to quicken, her eyes dilating. “What’s happ..?”

  “Don’t hurt Reggie,” Simon continued in a raspy whisper, like a court reporter reading back a witness’s statements. “Please. Run Owen. Run.”

  Suddenly, Cora leapt up, throwing her head in the air and screaming at the top of her lungs: “Run Owen run!” Her eyes darted around the empty space around her until it fell on Simon and Lara. Tossing the covers off, she flung herself into her mother’s open arms, sobbing with abandon.

  As Lara gently rocked her daughter, Simon turned away, his artificial eyes distant, hazy.

  Cora lifted her tear-stained face from her mother’s shoulder and blinked at Simon’s back. “I dreamed they killed him, Mr. Simon. They killed Reggie.”

  Simon nodded. “Yes.” He rose and walked away from them to stand at the escalator. Almost as if he were using the escalator entrance for support, he locked both arms out and hung his head.

  Lara studied Cora’s face. “You’re okay, hon. It was just a bad dream.”

  Cora’s eyes dulled for a moment and the corners of her mouth sagged briefly. She shook her head slowly, her glistening eyes widening. “I don’t think it was a dream, Mommy,” she said in a hushed confidential tone of voice. “We have to go get him before he catches Owen.”

  “Before who catches Owen, hon?” Lara asked.

  “The Boogeyman. Wicked like the green witch on TV that set the straw man on fire. Except worse. He’s real. He’s here.”

  “There is no boogeyman, Cora,” Lara replied in as soothing a voice as she could manufacture.

  Then Cora gave Lara a look that was so patronizingly adult-like that she felt a moment of disorientation. “But you know that there is, don’t you?”

  The darkness closed around her like a cloak and the walls of the store dissolved around her, her chest tightening. For a moment, she was small and defenseless again. Eight years old. Trapped. Alone. Mommy and Daddy gone, never to return. All alone.

  Where’s auntie? She’s been gone so long.

  Cora watched as Lara closed her eyes and laughed, a sound off-kilter and as shocking as a cold splash of river water. The little girl stiffened for an instant as a seething yellow color began to bubble all around her mother, boiling up from her tummy down her legs and arms until they began to quiver. Finally, Lara reached out and smoothed Cora’s sweat-moistened hair against her head gently, the warm amber glow settling back over her.

  She had been playing the color game since they’d entered the Mall that afternoon.

  It had happened so rarely before in her five years of life that she found herself relishing the novelty of the game. The Mall must be a magical place that she could do it so easily here. It had been fun to stare at all the interesting people passing them, each with their own individual color, changing with mood and emotion.

  Anger mostly red and orange. Blue or amber usually relaxed or happy. Green or brown meant nasty thoughts, sometimes a prelude to red. But yellow--that was the color of fear. Did Mommies get afraid, Cora wondered? Maybe she wasn’t playing the game right after all.

  “Mommy, are you okay?”

  “Relax, kiddo,” Lara replied, a calm returning to her voice. “We’re going to find your brother if it takes all night.” Then she sat her gently back on the edge of the bed and knelt between her dangling white-socked feet. “What was Owen doing in your dream?”

  Cora remembered the darkness. The dustiness. The soft material around her.

  “Hiding in a hole. Everything’s muffled and quiet.”

  “Hiding from whom?”

  “I told you.”

  Lara’s eyes hardened briefly. “Where was he… in your dream?”

  “Clothes. Smells like new clothes,” Cora replied with a frown, her eyes drifting down to the hands of her mother holding her own. “Towels. Fluffy towels all over, then carpet against his palms. He’s running away from Reggie, because he doesn’t know Reggie.” Her eyes returned to her mother’s face. “He’s holding something big and heavy and metal, like a…it’s a flashlight. And something else, too. Something thin and sharp.”

  “Did you see a place, hon? The name of a store?” she asked, the excitement leaking through her voice.

  “Scared and running, hands sliding over something hard black and smooth, smells like under a car’s hood, grease and metal,” Cora said dreamily. Then more clearly, “Escavator, right?”

  “Escalator,” Lara corrected with a look of wonder on her face.

  “There are only fifteen stores with an interior escalator,” Simon announced from beside Lara, making both she and Cora start in surprise. He’s fast, Cora thought. “Only eight of the anchor stores have clothing, bedding, and items such as flashlights and cutting tools all in one store. Excluding the one we’re in now, that leaves seven. Judging from the time it took for Reggie to locate him, this store had to have been one of the far six in the other three sectors, Green, Yellow, or Red. West, East, and North respectively.”

  Lara turned back to Cora. “What else did you see, sweetpea?”

  Cora closed her eyes and nibbled her lower lip. Try as she might, she could remember nothing else. After a few moments she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

  Lara gave her a kiss on the forehead and glanced over at Simon, who took a few steps away from Cora and glanced coyly back at Lara. She pulled the blanket back up over Cora’s legs. “I want you to lie down for a few more minutes for Mommy.”

  “But I don’t want to.”

  “A few minutes, Coraline, while I go talk to Mr. Simon.”

  With resignation, Cora flopped back onto the display bed and watched Lara with a suspicious eye as she joined Simon at the foot of the escalator. The now bluish-green glow surrounding her mother encompassed Simon as she drew closer to him.

  Simon himself had no color. Cora studied him with interest. She’d yet to see anyone without even a little color dancing around them. Strange.

  28

  “We’re back where we started from, aren’t we?” Lara asked.

  Simon simply stared at her.

  “We’ve narrowed it down to six stores, but we still don’t know which sector.”

  “There’s something else, Lara.”

  At the use of her name, she glanced up at the artificial man suspiciously.

  “Just before Reggie was destroyed, he sent out a distress beacon,” Simon explained. “When a Bot does that, he’s moments from total system failure.”

  “So Cora was right?” Lara asked in a small voice, shifting her eyes toward Cora without moving her head. “So it wasn’t just a dream, was it? My daughter is… what would you call it?”

  “Clairsentience.”

  “What is that? Like a psychic?”

  “No, it’s somewhat different. Clairsentience is a form of extra-sensory perception conveyed directly through feelings or emotions.”

  “You believe my daughter has that?”

  “The facts clearly bare it out, therefore it must be true. If you listen closely to her descriptions, she accesses various senses apart from sight, most often touch and smell, which are more closely linked to emotion than sight or hearing,” Simon stated.

  “Clairsentience,” Lara murmured, sampling the feel of the word on her tongue, as if seeking the texture of it. Was its taste fair or foul?

  “Perhaps, you should be more concerned right now about whoever destroyed Reggie.”

  Lara squinted at the other. “Do you think it was my son?” She asked the question, though she knew the answer already.

  “No, Reggie clearly expired protecting the boy under the dictates of the code,” Simon replied. “That much was communicated quite directly. When a human is in danger, a priority one distress beacon is sent giving the exact coordinates where the human can be found, so that other units can come to their aid.” He turned to look at her directly, the effect so dramatic that
he had her full attention instantly.

  “When a human being is killed…” At the word, distortion entered his voice and he seemed to choke on the word like a taste of rancid food. “…a separate distress beacon is sent. Before Reggie located Owen, this beacon was transmitted by another Bot in Red Sector, a Bot that saw evidence of the m-murder of a human.” Once again, his voice failed him and his body gave an infinitesimal shiver, a gesture that caused Lara to consciously think of that childhood phrase, “Someone must have stepped on your grave.”

  Then the implications of what he was saying struck her, and her body turned cold.

  “Did you say murder? Before Reggie found my son, you knew someone was killed here? In this Mall?” Lara asked in breathless exasperation. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  Simon appeared to swallow awkwardly. “It would have caused you undue distress.”

  Before Lara could stop herself, her hand had instinctively lashed out and struck his cheek. Instantly, she felt the solid metal that rested just beneath his skin (or whatever skin-like material covered his body) and turning her face away from him, she sucked in a pained breath. In an instant, she wondered at her reaction. Shame? Shame in front of an artificial construct?

  Simon grasped her hand with lightning fast speed and held it before his face in obvious concern. Lara snatched it back in frustration.

  “Never mind that. Who was murdered and by whom?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was obvious now why Simon’s behavior had been so erratic over the last hour and why he had stood vigil at the top of the escalator. He had been guarding them from this unknown assailant lurking somewhere downstairs.

  “If you knew this person was in Red Sector all along, why did you lie when you said my son could be in any of the other three sectors?”

  “I never lied. There was no evidence that your son was in the same location as the suspect.” Simon studied her now, reaching for the hand that had struck him, and this time she let him take it with a resentful frown. “It may bruise, Lara. You should’ve known better than to strike me.”

  “It was... instinct to lash out like that.”

  “Instinct?”

  “You acted inconsiderately and I guess I… wanted to hurt you.”

  Simon studied her. “You couldn’t possibly hurt me.”

  Drawing her hand back, Lara turned aside to look over at her daughter. Cora sat up in bed, wide-awake and arms folded. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” she told him. “I just wasn’t, I suppose. Guess emotion took hold of me.”

  Simon continued to stare at her in confusion. “I’m trying to understand this violent reaction. It gets us no closer to your son.”

  “No, it’s not logical and I’m sorry,” she murmured under her breath in exasperation.

  “There’s no need to apologize.”

  “I want to, now shut up about it, already!”

  Simon took a few steps toward Cora’s bed then turned back to Lara. “Now you know what I know. We’re not alone in the Mall. Others remained behind like you or were trapped here. This Boogeyman, she speaks of…”

  I smell it. It smells like copper.

  “…why does it strike such fear in you?”

  “Me? You’re confusing me with Cora.”

  “Moments ago you accused me of lying,” Simon snapped. “You’re lying to me now.”

  Lara sighed. “It’s a child’s fear. Something irrational. Something… imaginary.”

  “Yet, your daughter is clearly distressed.”

  “She’s got a vivid imagination.”

  “Her perception extends beyond yours or mine. That much is clear.”

  Shaking her head to clear her mind of the clustering webs of anxiety collecting there, Lara said, “Listen, we can stand here speculating or we can go take a look with our own eyes. Do you have Reggie’s last coordinates?”

  “No, Reggie was destroyed before the coordinates could be transmitted. The only reason I know a beacon was sent at all is because of the low frequency blast that Reggie sent just before he expired and that could have come from any direction north of us.”

  “Where does that leave us then,” Lara sighed.

  Simon turned to look over at Cora. “To be quite frank, Lara, the best chance you have right now of finding your son is through your daughter’s heightened emotional perception.”

  Lara took a deep breath and nodded. “Fine.”

  At the word, Cora’s short legs popped up and out of the blankets and she pulled herself by her legs across the length of the mattress to the far edge. “Are we going now?”

  Lara stepped over and took her by the hand, helping her down to the floor. She stepped up to Simon and stood blinking before him. “Well?”

  “I’m afraid that I cannot lead you directly into a potentially dangerous situation.”

  She stared in confusion, her eyes slowly hardening. “But my son is in potential danger, right?”

  “At this point, I can only speculate.”

  “Let’s just say for the sake of argument that he is,” Lara replied, forcing her voice to remain steady. “Who’ll keep him safe?”

  Locking eyes with Lara, Simon slowly shook his head.

  “Are you going to try and stop me from going after my son, then?”

  Simon again shook his head.

  “Fine then,” Lara said, seizing Cora by the hand and pulling her toward the escalator. “We’re going then.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear, Lara,” Simon said starting after her, with what she could swear was an expression of great relief.

  29

  Owen ran deeper into the second floor of the department store, feeling the cold wetness of his own urine-soaked underwear pressing up against his shriveled genitals and knowing with mounting desperation that he was running farther and farther from the exit and escape. But what else could he do?

  The Boogeyman of his nightmares had found him again!

  He could hear its footsteps on the tiles of the aisle behind him, its patient evenly-paced footsteps displaying the confidence of one who knew the conclusion was inevitable. After all these years of waiting for the right opportunity, now it would get him.

  Owen could see the rear wall of the store coming up and he darted into the home décor section to his right running in a stooped position, his head lowered and retracted against his shoulders like a turtle, legs pumping as fast as they could manage.

  His instinct was to take another right and head back toward the entrance. Instead he stopped and squatted for the two seconds it took for him to yank off both of the worn tennis shoes and dashed to his left back toward northeast corner of the store, tossing one of the shoes as hard as he could toward the right.

  The shoe struck the corner of a display in the distance and gave a hallow clang.

  Owen stopped and held steady beneath the entrance of a separate department. The sign above read “Family Photo Center.” Squatting at the edge of the entrance, he looked along the rear wall and could see a darkened entrance leading to a hallway. Just above it read a “Restrooms?” sign. His muscles contracted in preparation to move in that direction, then hesitated. Cocking his ear, he strained to hear the impending approach of the other.

  Steady, unyielding, the footsteps grew louder.

  “I know what you are. You and your mother and sister and all the rest of you,” he could hear the distant voice calling from the direction he had thrown the shoe. “You may be able to fool the others but I know the truth now!”

  The strength left Owen’s legs and he fell forward onto the palms of his hands.

  The man was insane. He knew this as sure as he knew he had made the biggest mistake of his life by separating from his mother and sister.

  And yet, somehow, he somehow knew this distinct flavor of the voice of madness. He recognized it. Almost as if he had had personal experience with it.

  Owen glanced over his shoulder into the darkness of the photo center. There were doors back there,
perhaps leading to offices or photo studios or stairways downstairs. But he couldn’t bring himself to move, hands and feet planted on the floor like an animal, one shoe tucked beneath an arm, the smell of urine wafting up from around him, he felt miserable and pathetic.

  It’s going to get me now, he knew. Finally, after all this time.

  “I know where to find them now, you know. In the Sears with Simon Peter, right,” it said in a casual yet imposing voice. “I’m going to give you to the count of three to come out, then I’m going to go get them first. Then I’ll be back for you, Owen.”

  Owen felt the blood drain from his face. How did he know his name?

  Because He’s the Boogeyman. That’s why!

  Reggie called him by name, didn’t he? Surely that must be how he knows.

  As Owen watched his shadow drifting up the aisle--darkness slowly crawling along the small area lit by the emergency lighting--he cringed back like a beaten animal and found the check-out stand, the first dark area available, and crawled behind it.

  “One.”

  The time to run had passed. The only chance he had now was to wait for it to find his hiding place. It wouldn’t be long now.

  “Two.”

  Owen set the other shoe aside and prepared to fight--to kick and scream and claw just like they had taught them to do in school if they were ever grabbed by a stranger.

  “I’m over here,” a tiny disembodied voice called out from the depths of the second floor.

  At first Owen thought he was hearing things, then the shoes of his pursuer squeaked to a stop and started erratically, uncertainly in the other direction. The muscles in Owen’s long-tensed arms loosened and he nearly collapsed forward onto his face.

  Now, he forced his legs forward up the aisle toward the hallway along the rear wall that he had seen. Stealthily, he approached the center aisle and peeked out to his left. The six foot figure was indeed retreating toward the escalator again. Back toward the dead Bot.

  Owen waited until he had disappeared then rushed across the tiled floor, sliding in his socked feet into the pitch black hallway. He pressed himself down against one wall and glanced back around the corner.