Vacancy

by Fredric Shernoff

  Jim pulled out the large pocketknife that Clyde had given him as a wedding present. He had thought it was the strangest gift you could give someone, but he found that flipping the closed knife around in his hand made for a calming habit.

  “I’m not inclined to make a purchase decision one way or another based on fairy tales, Clyde.”

  “Jimmy, you mean to tell me you’re not intrigued by this missing store thing?”

  Jim shrugged. “I am. It’s weird, and I like a little variety in my day. But let’s just keep some perspective and look at the numbers. The alleyway is a potential upside, if the permits and approvals check out. That’s what matters, not some ghost building.”

  “Tell you what though,” Clyde said, “the full moon is in a week. What say we table this discussion until then, and we’ll come back out and really do our due diligence. Sound good?”

  Jim couldn’t help but laugh. “Fuck it. Whatever you say, man.”

  Jim found himself wondering if it would matter if the moon was visible during the day when they revisited the Butler Avenue property, and mocked himself for giving the whole notion that much credibility.

  When the day finally came to return to the property, he and Clyde drove together, parking a little way down the street. They walked down the sidewalk and stood in front of the space where the mystery store was supposed to appear.

  "So what now?” Jim asked.

  “I don’t know,” Clyde said.

  “Oh my God.”

  “What?”

  Jim laughed. “You’re actually disappointed! You thought something magical was going to happen, didn’t you!”

  Clyde’s face flushed. “No… I mean, maybe.”

  “Oh man, do you hear yourself? Can we just get back to the office and go over this deal? We’ve dragged our feet for a week already.”

  “Fine, man, you’re right,” Clyde said, defeated.

  Jim had a thought. “You know what? Let’s grab a selfie so we can remember your embarrassment.”

  Clyde frowned. “Fine. When did you become such an asshole? Is it the impending fatherhood thing?”

  They positioned themselves in front of the alley and Jim aimed his phone. The screen showed the far side of the street. “Sorry,” he said. “I have to flip it.” He reached out and touched the button to use the front-facing camera. The screen changed and Jim felt lightheaded.

  “Do you see this?” he heard himself say from a mile away.

  “Jim, what the hell? Is this some kind of practical joke?”

  They stared with wide eyes at the building behind them. Jim spun around and flipped the camera image again so he was aiming the rear camera at the alley. “Holy shit, there is something there.”

  “There’s a door!” Clyde marveled. “I want to try it.” He ran over to the alley and felt around the space. “Oh my God. I can feel the wall! And the door… and there’s the knob!”

  “Wait,” Jim called. His voice was still weak and far away and his legs were unsteady.

  Clyde opened the door and went inside. Jim saw it all happen through the screen of his phone. At least in that image everything looked totally normal, except the store next to Galaxi’s didn’t have any windows, and the door was dated and unusual for that kind of a building. It looked more like something on an old house.

  “Come on in here!” Clyde called.

  Jim felt his feet move before he realized he was going to heed the command. Curiosity had taken control of him. He pushed through the opening in the emptiness and stumbled in the darkness.

  Chapter Three

  “What is it?” Emma asked.

  Dylan struggled to find words to explain what he was seeing. For someone who had just entered and exited a seemingly magic store, he thought he should be able to handle just about anything. Yet, the little hints he saw of a world out of place scared him.

  “I don’t know what it is,” he said. “There’s something different about the street. Look at the cars. They’re not from around now. They’re all old.”

  “I recognize that one!” Emma pointed at a blue Mustang moving away from them down Butler Avenue. “My uncle had a car that looked just like that when I was little. It was really beat up though and he got rid of it by the time I was in Kindergarten.”

  “That one doesn’t look beat up,” Dylan said. “None of them do.”

  “Well, there’s one,” Emma said.

  Across the street was a small truck that looked like something Dylan had only seen in old photos. He thought it was from the 1950’s. It looked worn and weathered, but not as much as he’d expect.

  “So we’ve got, what, 1980’s cars up and down the street looking brand new, and one a few decades older than that looking like the other cars should look.”

  She nodded. “That seems about right. The stores don’t seem too crazy, though.”

  Dylan turned around. He took Emma by the shoulders and spun her as well.

  “Oh, shit,” she said.

  Helen’s Discount Boutique looked different, but the name was the same. Two doors down was a store called Adventure Comics and Games, and in between them was the store they had just left, fully visible with two windows. The lettering above the still-open door read “Maveri k Supplies and Drugs.” The letter c had fallen off at some point in time.

  “It was a drug store,” Dylan said. “I don’t think that’s how you spell maverick, though.”

  “Well, look, the store is open for business,” Emma said, pointing to the windows. Through the glass, Dylan could see shelves with products. He saw a little boy in a bright green t-shirt stop to look at them, and then a woman, presumably the boy’s mother, took him away.

  Emma ran back into the store, pushing the door the rest of the way open and darting into the building. Dylan began to follow but she came back out before he got to the doorway.

  “There’s nothing,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “There’s nothing,” she repeated. “It’s just the same as when we were in there a minute ago. Whatever we are seeing through the glass is just an illusion or something.”

  “It’s not just the glass,” Dylan said. “Look, there’s a mirror through the window that’s showing the doorway. Stand over in front of the door. Yeah, I see you standing on the street. Everything checks out.” He walked past Emma and looked through the doorway. Past the threshold, the stocked shelves and the people inside vanished. All he could see was the empty dustiness they had already explored.

  “You kids okay?” a man’s voice called.

  A short, rotund man with a warm smile stood on the steps to the comic book store.

  “Yeah, we’re fine,” Dylan said. “No problem, sir,”

  “Glad to hear it,” the man said. “Come on in if you’d like to get out of the sun and take a look around.” He turned down the street. “Ah, here’s the man I was waiting for. Hugo, my boy, you’re more reliable than a pocket watch.”

  A preteen boy jogged up to the store. He shook the store owner’s hand. “Did the new Web of Spider-Man come in?”

  “Got it all set aside for you, as promised.” The man gave Dylan and Emma a wave and escorted the boy inside the store.

  “Was that Hugo, like the owner of Galaxi Collectibles?” Dylan asked. “He’s just a kid!”

  “This world, or whatever it is, it’s supposed to be the 1980’s or ’90’s, I guess,” Emma said. “It’s pretty crazy. Do you want to explore a little?”

  “Not really,” he said. “I’m hungry and I don’t think our money is any good here. Also not sure we could eat anything in this world anyway.”

  “You think it’s an illusion?” she asked. “That man saw us. And so did the boy in the drug store.”

  “Maybe not an illusion, but something isn’t right here. Can we please just try to get back? Maybe we just need to close the door and open it again.”

  “You’re right. Let’s go. Maybe we can try it another time?” She looked hopeful.

  “Maybe.”<
br />
  They turned to go back in the store. Dylan heard a voice. “Hey you! Kid!”

  He looked at Emma and she shrugged. They walked to where the sound had emerged. At the corner of Helen’s Discount Boutique, a man sat on the ground, leaning against the brick wall. He was filthy and wore a dusty leather hat pulled down low over his mop of dirty brown hair. The man sat up straight and looked at Dylan and Emma.

  “Kid, you got any change?”

  “No, sorry,” Dylan said. He felt terrible for the strange, miserable man in front of him.

  “Never any change,” the man said. He winced, then closed his eyes and leaned back again.

  They hurried back to the store. As they moved through the doorway, the sounds of the confusing world outside seemed to quiet just a little. Emma shut the door. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and pulled the door open again.

  Dylan wandered out cautiously. Before he could even say that the world still felt wrong, he saw the blue Mustang pass by.

  “That’s the same car we just saw,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” Emma sounded nervous.

  “No, how could I be sure? But it looks like it.”

  They walked outside. Everything looked the same as it had earlier. That same late eighties vibe. He jogged down the street one way, while Emma went the other. “Anything?” he called.

  “This thing keeps on going,” she said. “If it’s an illusion, it’s vast. What are we going to do?”

  “Come on back over here,” he said. “Let’s look in the store and see if there’s anything we can figure out.”

  “Ah, here’s the man I was waiting for,” said a voice. Dylan turned and saw the man from the comic store out on the step again. And just as before, the boy named Hugo jogged up to him. “Hugo, my boy,” the man said, “you’re more reliable than a pocket watch.”

  Again, the man on the corner called to them. This time Emma hurried over to him and before the man could speak, she explained that they had left all their money at home. “Never any change,” the man muttered again.

  Back in the store, with the door closed and the strange, repeating world kept at a distance, Dylan sat on the floor, his arms wrapped around his knees. Emma faced him in a similar pose. They had tried three more times to reopen the door, and each attempt reset the same scene, but didn’t bring them home.

  “What are we going to do?” Emma said for what Dylan thought was at least the tenth time. Her voice was shaky and her eyes sparkled with the hint of tears.

  He sighed and moved over next to her. He put an arm around her. He really liked her. A lot. She was beautiful and she was exciting. But she was also responsible for the mess they found themselves in and he resented her a little for it. For that matter, he resented himself a little too, for hadn’t he been more than willing to go along with her experiments? And not just because he liked her, no. He had wanted to see what would happen. As they had gone deeper into this new experience, he had felt the imagination of the little kid he had been maybe a decade earlier kick in to high gear.

  Emma’s head rested on his shoulder and he put one hand on it, feeling her soft hair. A single tear escaped from one eyelid and rolled onto his shirt. His resentment faded the longer they sat there and he started to have the strongest urge to kiss her on the head, not in a romantic way, exactly, but in the way one would to console a scared child, or maybe one who had scraped up her knee in a fall.

  “I never should have done this,” Emma said. “I just thought…”

  “What?” he asked.

  She sat up and looked at him. “I don’t know. I guess I thought that maybe this was why I had to come to this town. Maybe I was meant to discover this magical thing. And maybe you and I were supposed to explore it.” She blushed as she said that last, and turned her face away.

  “I’m not sure there’s anything that’s ‘supposed’ to happen,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell this thing is, whether it’s magic or an illusion or something scientific we don’t understand, but I don’t think it’s a living thing. I don’t think it ‘planned’ any of this. We just stumbled on something by freak circumstance, and we need to find our way out of it.”

  “What can we do?” she asked. He could see her visibly steadying herself, and her words were slowing as she calmed down.

  “I don’t know. I’m getting really hungry.”

  “I think that’s mostly in your head,” she said. “It hasn’t been that long. Our phones still keep the time from where we came from, and it’s not even two hours yet.”

  “You’re probably right. Still, if we can’t find a way out of this mess yet we’ll need to eat. And I could go for a bathroom sooner rather than later.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go get food.”

  She led him out the door. Once more, the blue Mustang went past, but they crossed the street and went farther than before, so they didn’t see the interaction outside the comic book store.

  Dylan walked his bike down the sidewalk, and Emma took his free hand in hers. He was a little embarrassed by the sweat on his palm, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  They found a café called Croissants and More, and walked inside. The store was filled with customers who didn’t seem too concerned by the presence of two out-of-place teenagers. Dylan assumed as long as they kept their phones hidden, they would be okay.

  “Emma, how are we going to pay for anything?” he asked.

  “Leave it to me.”

  She ordered each of them sandwiches and Cokes. The woman behind the counter pulled the food from the refrigerated display case and placed all the items in a plastic bag which she set on the edge of the counter. She brought their sodas over and placed them in the bag. “Anything else?” she asked.

  “Oh, you know what,” Emma said, “could we actually get a slice of that pie over there?” She pointed to the far end of the counter.

  “Sure thing,” the woman said. She turned and walked over to the pastries.

  “Time to run!” she whispered to Dylan.

  “Huh?”

  “Run!” she said again as she grabbed the plastic bag

  Jesus, Dylan thought, and then he ran after her.

  “Hey!” the lady from the café called. “Get back here!”

  They ran out the door and hopped on Dylan’s bike. He inched forward as much as possible and Emma wrapped her legs around him with a vice grip. The bag in her hand banged against him over and over as he pumped the pedals, and he wondered if he could make it all the way to the drug store.

  Just as he thought he was going to have to stop, the store came into sight. The bum appeared to be sleeping. Dylan pulled the bike over to the side of the building and they jumped off. He could hear people yelling down the street, and realized other customers from the café were giving chase. “Grab the bike,” he said. “Let’s get inside!” He pushed into the magic room.

  Emma followed him and closed the door. They collapsed on the floor gasping for air and laughing hysterically.

  “I can’t believe we did that!” Dylan laughed. “You’re crazy!”

  “Hey, you said you needed food, I got you food. Who’s got your back?”

  Their eyes made contact and his hand slipped around her back, pulling her toward him. Before he knew what was happening, their lips touched. He was preparing himself for a deeper kiss when Emma pulled away.

  “Oh no!” she cried.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Your bike! I left it outside. Fuck! I’m so sorry.”

  “Shit. Shit! My parents are going to kill me!”

  “Maybe it’s still there,” she said. She got up and opened the door. She poked her head out. “Goddamn it! I’m so sorry, Dylan. It’s gone.”

  “Are we still in the past?”

  She looked again, turned back to him and nodded.

  He was panicked on so many levels, but he couldn’t be upset with her. Couldn’t be upset in general considering what had started to happen on the floor of
that store. “Well,” he said, “it is a nice day, and nobody knows we stole food anymore. Let’s eat outside.”

  They went out and sat on the curb. Dylan guessed he’d missed the Mustang’s trip down Butler Avenue, but he wasn’t surprised when he heard the comic book guy.

  “Ah, here’s the man I was waiting for! Hugo, my boy, you’re more reliable than a pocket watch.”

  Dylan spared a glance at the approaching preteen, and nearly choked on his sandwich. “Look!”

  “What?”

  “He’s got a bike!”

  “Holy shit, you’re right!”

  The boy was walking a bike down the road. It wasn’t Dylan’s, not exactly, anyway. It looked appropriate for the era they now found themselves in, and it was smaller. But still…

  “That can’t be a coincidence,” Dylan said. He felt the panic creep back into his chest. “What the hell is this place?”

  Chapter Four

  The room felt cold and slightly uncomfortable, Jim thought. It reminded him of a time he and Liz had gone on a cruise for a week and he’d forgotten to adjust the thermostat at home. There was something off-putting about artificial air running in a place that didn’t have humans to breathe it in and out.

  “This is fucking crazy,” Clyde called from somewhere a few feet in front of him.

  “Can you find a light switch somewhere?” Jim asked.

  “Hmm. Maybe. Hang on.”

  The lights hummed and the room came into view. It was just an empty store, Jim saw.

  “Weird,” Clyde said. “I thought it would be a little more interesting.”

  “A store that doesn’t exist doesn’t strike you as interesting?”

  “No, I just meant it’s abandoned. Looks like a convenience store of some kind.”

  “Yeah, definitely. Gotta be honest with you, man, I’ve really seen enough. I want to get home to the wife and maybe have more than a few drinks tonight and forget about supernatural stores. How’s that work for you?”