[Oxrun Station] The Orchard

by Charles L. Grant

  "All right," he said to hear the sound of his voice. "You're all right, pal. No sweat. Get up and get moving before they think you're dead."

  His legs weren't listening. They refused to hold him, the muscles jumping in spasms until he had to grab for an armrest and hauled himself to his knees. Lowered his head. Panted again for air. Ignoring the dark while he listened for footsteps, for the rub of fleshless hand over cloth, over wood, for someone other than himself in the balcony's night.

  What he heard was thunder; what he felt was the floor vibrating until the thunder was gone.

  He stood at last, not knowing how long it had taken for him to do it without falling down again; he used the seats to pull himself painfully up the aisle, not knowing how he managed to find the strength even to hold on; he used the wall to keep from falling and eventually made it to the top of the staircase, checking behind him twice every step of the way while he talked himself into believing he had imagined the whole thing. And talked again, commanded, when his hands began to shake, so badly his wrists and knuckles began to ache. And a third time when he knew that unless someone talked to him, and talked to him soon, he was going to cry.

  If only, he thought, it wasn't so damned dark!

  Five minutes while he leaned against the wall and felt the blood on his shoulder and the sweat on his face; and five again while he stared at the faint light on the landing below him. He didn't bother to wonder why he couldn't hear the others, only drinking in the sight like heady gulps of fresh spring air. Calming. Real. No threat or nightmare there.

  God, he thought; Jesus God.

  He swallowed dryly and coughed, then gripped the banister white-knuckled until he reached the turn. There was silence below, but he forced himself to wait, to claw fingers through his hair, to pull off the jacket and brush a palm over his shirt. Then he stepped around the corner, smiling grimly, eyes narrowed.

  The lobby was empty.

  Katherine and Paula weren't on the couch, and when he staggered down to the carpet, he couldn't find Gary.

  No, he thought; no. They couldn't have gotten out and forgot me. They couldn't!

  "Hey, Katherine!" he called as he hurried to the exit. "Mrs. Richards?"

  The doors still wouldn't open, the remains of the battered chair still scattered by the ticket booth.

  "Katherine?"

  The rain washing the glass, the wind bringing in the cold.

  "Paula? Gary?"

  The office door was open, and he started toward it in a rush, slowed, and moved cautiously though he wasn't sure why. And every step he took, he expected Ginny to leap out at him, shrieking with laughter, the flesh still falling from her skeleton and the blood still running from her nose.

  The chandelier trembled; the crystals rang like tiny bells that had never been tuned.

  "Look, guys," he said as he stepped over the threshold.

  The office was empty, except for the injured man still sleeping on the couch. The candle burning on the desk was much lower, and he could see the bruise on the man's temple darkening, spreading, as if there was hemorrhaging. He hurried over and shook his shoulder, shook it harder when there was nothing but a waggling of the man's head. Holy shit, he thought, and knelt beside him, put a finger to his neck, to his wrist, to find evidence of a heartbeat. It was there, but it was weak, and he licked at his lips as he returned to the lobby.

  "I don't get it," he said aloud, hands on his hips. "Hey, Katherine! Mrs. Richards? Paula?" He pushed the auditorium door in and braced it open with one foot. "Gary! Hey, Richards, where the hell are you guys, huh?"

  Nothing in there but the dark; even the huge screen had stopped its glowing.

  It's all right, he told himself. It's cool, it's all right, they'll be back.

  He backed into the lobby and watched the door swing silently shut. A nightmare, he decided; Ginny, the rain-it's a goddamned nightmare, that's all.

  Ellery

  He whirled to stare at the staircase he'd taken, whirled again to peer at the one on his right. No one was there; no shadows, no nightmare.

  But he noticed the men's room door and rushed in, propped it open with a trash can to give him feeble light, and called again for Richards, shutting up instantly when the name echoed flatly off the dull white tiles. The three stall doors were open; water dripped from one of the faucets; a shred of brown paper towel dangled from its dispenser and waved at him in a draught. The stench of stale disinfectant gagged him; the smell of his own sweat was sour and strong.

  Without thinking, not daring to think, he crossed to the sink and turned the faucet off with an angry twist, yanked away the strip of toweling and used it to dry his hands, tore off another length and soaked it in warm water. He rinsed his face, dried it, dried his hands twice, all the while avoiding a look at his reflection in the mirror above the basin. He was not a brave man, and was not ashamed to admit it; and he knew that as soon as he saw the look on his face, the look in his eyes, something inside was going to shatter.

  He sighed explosively, and moved on his toes to the door so not to have to hear his footsteps.

  A look at his watch; it was well past midnight.

  A look to the outside; it was still raining hard.

  It wasn't until he found himself staring at the candles on the table that he realized he would have to do something soon or they were all going to go out at about the same time; and when they did, he would be alone. In the dark.

  Quickly, he pinched out the flames of all but one, sagged into a chair, and stared blindly at the front doors. A single candle wasn't much, but four of them would last a hell of a lot longer one at a time. By then, if he were lucky, it would be daylight and he'd be able to signal someone out on the street to get help, to let him out.

  But Davidson had left, and so had Seth and Toni, and in all the time they'd been gone, not one had returned.

  Ellery He ignored it. It was only his nerves playing stupid games.

  "I will wake up now," he said loudly, pleased his voice didn't crack or waver. "I will wake up now, and I will go home."

  It had been a boring film.

  "Now! I am waking up right now!"

  He couldn't even remember the title, and he had fallen asleep somewhere in the middle, drained because of the problems at the store, weary because he couldn't seem to get his personal life in line, disgusted because he had no one to blame but himself. Every morning without exception, he woke up determined to take charge; and most evenings he returned home, thinking that perhaps his brother during their last meeting two years ago had been right, that he was a loser. Not because he wasn't smart, but because he allowed too many people to have too great a say in what should be his destiny, his own fate.

  "I will wake up," he said to the empty lobby.

  "Then can I wake up too?" Katherine asked him, leaning against the frame of the ladies' room door, her makeup smeared, her eyes red from weeping.

  When he spoke her name, his breath was white. When he took off his jacket to place around her shoulders, a fresh flow of blood stained the sleeve of his white shirt.

  When she asked him what happened, he only looked at the stairs.

  "Did your brother really call you a loser?"

  They were on the couch, his arm around her shoulders, and they were staring at the rain.

  He hadn't realized he had been speaking aloud, and he answered her truthfully, making her frown.

  "He was wrong, then, wasn't he," she said.

  "I guess. I don't know. Sometimes I wonder."

  She snuggled closer, laying her head on his shoulder as she drew up her legs, not bothering to adjust the skirt that exposed most of a thigh. He touched her hair. She sighed and told him that not long after he had gone upstairs after Ginny, Richards had decided he and his wife would do what Ellery was obviously incapable of doing-find a way out. The man, she said, had virtually dragged his wife into the auditorium, and when they hadn't returned after fifteen minutes or so, she had gone in to check on them. They were g
one. She had called to Ellery from the middle aisle, but he hadn't answered. She could not, however, bring herself to go up the stairs, so she'd gone into the rest room instead. Hidden. And started to cry.

  "I want to know what's going on."

  "So do I. Believe me, so do I."

  "But there has to be a reason!"

  "I know, I know."

  And he told her about his earlier notion it might be some sort of hostage situation, though not the kind Richards had claimed, or a prank, or maybe someone was out there fiddling around with electronics, which might explain why the doors wouldn't open and the telephone wouldn't work. He knew next to nothing about such things, and could not explain, when asked, why the glass wouldn't break. Nor could he explain what had happened to Ginny.

  "Now that has to be a trick," she said in disgust, shivering in spite of the fact he hadn't told her the whole story. "I mean, that kind of weird stuff just doesn't happen."

  "Except in dreams," he said quietly.

  Without warning she pinched his chest hard and he yelped, almost slapped her when she pinched him again. "Not a dream," she said. "So what the hell is it?"

  By his reckoning it wasn't more than fifteen minutes before they roused themselves from the couch in a tacit decision to make a methodical search of the building for the others, and for a way out. They didn't talk about the storm; they didn't react to the lightning and thunder.

  By consent, they began in Davidson's office, not bothering to remain quiet despite the old man's restless sleep. Drawers were opened, emptied, and were empty of keys; they could find no tools, no extra flashlights, nothing on any of the papers they uncovered that would tell them what had gone wrong with the theater tonight. The rug was turned up wherever they could move it, furniture was shifted, a storage closet was found that was completely empty. They tapped the walls for hidden exits, feeling like fools and doing it twice again. He climbed on a chair to tap the ceiling for a trapdoor entrance to a crawlspace or attic; and she stared at the old man for over a full minute, finally leaned down and shouted in his ear, slapped his face hard, and was about to drag him to the floor when Ellery stopped her, grabbing her in his arms and taking her gently out.

  "Who is he?"

  "I don't know."

  "Where did he come from?"

  "I don't know that either. I just found him, that's all."

  "The sonofabitch. I hope he dies."

  They searched the rest rooms again, propping open the doors to let some of the candlelight creep in before them.

  They each took one of the staircases to the balcony, felt their way along the upstairs wall, and met in the middle. He almost didn't make it. He couldn't look down the aisles, and when Katherine asked him where he had last seen the girl, he couldn't even lift a finger to point. It was too dark up here, darker than it should have been, and it was all he could do to keep from grabbing her and screaming.

  In the lobby he hefted the ticket seller's stool and prodded the doors with its thin metal legs, harder each time as frustration shortened his breath and turned his muscles rigid, until he was ramming furiously against the glass, in the corners, in the center, while the rain ran in white-edged sheets and the thunder mocked him and the lightning showed him nothing but his reflection in its glare. His hair darkened with perspiration, his lips were drawn back, teeth bared, tongue flicking; a leg buckled and he was thrown forward, hitting his shoulder against the jamb, and he whirled and threw the stool across the room, shouting wordlessly, fists in the air, then at his temples. Then down at his sides.

  Katherine reached into a display case and tossed him a box of candy. He let it bounce off his chest, staring at it dumbly until she picked it up, took his arm, and pulled him down to the floor. She opened the package and gave him a piece.

  "It's chewy," she said. "It'll help calm yc>u."

  Her hair was in rags across her face, and no matter how often she pushed it away, it returned. Her blouse was stained wet and bunched over her waistband, and somewhere along the line she had tossed the suit's jacket onto the couch.

  "I think," she said at last, "this is a judgment of some kind."

  His mouth was filled with tasteless candy, but he chewed it anyway, swallowing, sometimes choking.

  "I mean, it could be, couldn't it? Like we've been transported somehow to a different plane than the one we live on-you know what I mean? Do you know about planes? Of existence?" He nodded; she nodded back. "So we're here, see, and we're being judged. Like we're already dead- We don't know it, but we are." She grinned. ''You must have had some pretty interesting thoughts about women, El, to see Ginny that way."

  He spat the candy out behind him, took off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, and pulled it down and back roughly to show her his left shoulder. There was a deep, ragged scratch there, and bits of stained white thread sticking to dried blood. "That's not on another plane," he told her sharply, pulling the shirt back on and trying not to wince. "That's here, Katherine. She wasn't an apparition. I saw her. I felt her. She was nothing like a ghost or some kind of an illusion."

  "But she had to be, El. Don't be silly. You must have cut yourself when you tripped on the stairs, caught it on the edge of a seat or something."

  "I fell later, not then."

  She looked down at her shoes. A finger poked at her skirt, flicked at some lint he couldn't see. "You don't think it's a judgment, then?"

  "I don't think so, no."

  "Then what?"

  "If I knew that, we'd be gone, don't you think?"

  The strain worked on her face, giving her lines about the mouth and canyons beneath her eyes; smudges of dust hollowed her cheeks and streaked over her brow, and though she had tried to wipe away the results of her weeping, flecks of eye shadow and mascara still clung to her skin.

  She's beautiful, he thought, and didn't know the question was coming until his lips moved: "Why didn't you go out with me, Katherine?"

  She was startled and leaned away for a second, and he was embarrassed and tried to wave it all aside, telling her with his gestures that it didn't matter, he was being ridiculous, and this was, after all, hardly the time.

  "I think," she said, "it was because I felt a little sorry for you."

  "You did?"

  A nod, a brief smile. "You were trying so hard, El, all those accidental meetings on the street, looking in the store window like you were an urchin begging for food."

  "Me?" He didn't know whether to be angry or hurt.

  "I didn't want to feel sorry for you, you understand? I wanted to like you without having to feel as if I had to mother you to get your attention." She grinned, like a child who has a wonderful secret. "When you stopped it, I thought you found another girl. Then, when I found out-"

  "You found out?"

  She shrugged. "I asked around."

  It was his turn to grin, and feel awfully foolish.

  "When I found out you didn't have a girl, I couldn't get the nerve to call you. Stupid, you know? I wanted to-it's the thing we women can do these days-and I just couldn't do it."

  "I'll be damned."

  Candlelight danced, and the chandelier sang off-key.

  There was no doubt about it-he could see his breath now.

  And he didn't move when she said, "There's someone in the theater."

  He had heard it almost as soon as she had spoken-a low moaning, someone in pain. Instantly, he was on his feet, grabbing her arm and pulling her with him, telling her to hold the doors open while he went inside, following his shadow to the head of the center aisle and seeing, halfway down, a figure sprawled on the floor. He ran to it without thinking, turned it over, and saw Paula staring back at him, terrified. She began crying the moment she recognized him, threw her arms around his neck when he lifted her and carried her back to the couch. Katherine hovered, and sat beside her on the edge of a cushion as soon as he moved away, helplessly waving his hands until he returned to the auditorium and shouted Gary's name. He knew there would be no response, but he
kept it up for several minutes, walking up and down the aisles, ignoring the dark that reached out from the stage to drag him back, drag him under, to where the thunder was born.

  Ignoring it as long as he could, too angry to yield to the fear lying in ambush, too frightened to dare let his mind out of its cage.

  And when at last he returned to the lobby, wiping his face dry with a sleeve, Paula was sitting up and Katherine was leaving the ladies' room, a wad of damp paper towel cupped in her hand. She gave him a she's all right smile and returned to the couch, daubing Paula's cheeks, her forehead, until her hand was gently pushed away.

  "I'll live," she said. "I got scared in the dark and ran. I think I must have collided with a seat or something." And she looked at Ellery. "Is Gary back yet?"

  "No. Look, where were . . .no."

  "That's okay." She massaged her forearm absently. "He will be. He doesn't like to leave me alone for very long. He says I could hurt myself because I don't pay attention to what I'm doing. He calls me a hothouse flower." A sigh; a deep breath. "Hothouse flowers are stronger than he thinks."

  "Why"-Katherine rose and smoothed her skirt down over her hips-"why don't we check the doors again, huh? God knows there isn't anything else-"

  "It's still raining," Paula whispered, wonder softening the hysteria in her voice. "It's still pouring out there, and it isn't even flooded." .

  When she stopped, her teeth began chattering.

  "Good idea," he said to Katherine. "We'll each take a candle and make the rounds. There's got to be something we've missed. Maybe some sort of special emergency exit, one of those flush-to-the-wall doors or something."

  He picked up a candle from the table, lighted it, and handed it over. Paula shook her head when he offered her one, pushing back into the couch's corner and holding her arms tight at her sides. Her rouge was gone; there was no blood in her face. Then Katherine headed for the auditorium, stopped, and turned. He was still at the table, looking at the staircases. He couldn't go up there again, not a third time. He didn't care if the place was falling down on their heads, there was nothing anyone could say that would make him climb up there again.