by Kevin Lucia
Shane closed his eyes and breathed in deep, the wheels in his head turning.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“It’s Tuesday,” he said softly, eyes still closed, hiding in the darkness there. “It’s Tuesday afternoon. We had lunch at The Skylark. It can’t be later than two or three in the afternoon.”
“But,” the woman sputtered on the other end. “That’s not possible. It’s night. Friday night. I know it is!”
“Have you looked out the windows recently? Y’know, the funny thing is, I can’t remember. I thought it was day, but I can’t remember if the classrooms’ windows were boarded up or not. And there aren’t any windows here, and I sure as hell ain’t going into any more of those classrooms to find out. So I can’t tell you if it’s night or day outside. Here’s my big question: what’s the year? What month is it? Do you know? Do you remember?”
“What are you getting at? Month? Year? I don’t understand.”
“The hell you don’t. What’s. The fucking. Year?”
Silence.
For a moment, Shane thought the Nokia had died again. After several seconds passed, he heard a resigned sob. “2006. It’s May, 2006.”
Shane gazed down the hall lined on both sides by blood-red lockers; lockers which could open at any time. It was darker at the hall’s end, the lights dim.
“It’s 2017,” he said, voice sounding amazingly steady and calm. “July 20th, 2017.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know. When Amanda and I woke up this morning, it was July 20th, 2017. We had lunch at The Skylark Diner, as I said. She’d found out about this place—where, I can’t remember—because we’re furnishing a new house in Eagle Bay. Trying to start a new life, right? A new start. Lunch went okay. As good as anything these days. Since Benjamin-our son-died. Before he was a year old. But things were okay today. Sorta. Then we got here. She tensed up a bit. Maybe because shopping here, searching for furniture for our new house, away from our old house, Benjamin’s house, made it more real, y’know?”
On some level Shane knew he was babbling, but he sensed he had to, because he was nearing some kind of break. The woman hadn’t said a word. He didn’t know if she was still on the phone, but he kept going, regardless. “But we were okay. I guess. Managing. Not fighting, at least, but we never fought. Honestly? Sometimes I wish we would. Sometimes I think we should fight. Clear the air. Let it out. She was quiet, y’know? Ill at ease. But we were okay. Until I found your husband’s damn phone in one of these lockers. Where I thought I heard Amanda’s ringing, just now.”
He ran out of words, feeling winded, as if he’d run a race. He listened, and for several seconds there was nothing until, “Your son died?”
Shane breathed in and held it. His heart ached. After a stretch of silence, he rasped, “Yes. SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Died in his sleep. Taking a nap, for God’s sake.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was at the sitter’s,” Shane said, reciting a rehearsed spiel imprinted on his brain. “Amanda and I took the day off work and went on a short day trip. Some time for ourselves, right? Benjamin hadn’t been sleeping well at night. Colicky. Doctors thought maybe that’s why he died. Undiagnosed breathing problems. Anyway, we needed some time for us. We came home after a road trip to Ithaca, the sitter said the day was great, Benjamin active all morning, happy, now taking an extra-long nap. I saw it in Amanda’s eyes, right then. She knew. He never took long naps, even if he’d been up the whole night before. She found him face down. Must’ve rolled over in his sleep. She wouldn’t touch him. I had to turn him over. He was still a little warm. But his face was like a mask. His lips a little blue. Always looks like makeup on TV, y’know? Not real. This was different.”
“I’m sorry. Michael and I were doing the same. Starting over, I mean. We were moving to Old Forge, from Utica.” She paused, sounding oddly embarrassed, considering their bizarre situation. “I don’t want to go into all the details. But we’d both been unfaithful. This was our last chance, I suppose. To move away from everything, patch things up and start fresh. But we argued all the time. It wasn’t working. When we got here, we argued over something stupid, like the color of a couch. He stormed off. Said he was leaving, I could come or not, he didn’t care. I tried to follow, but I got lost on the first turn. That was hours ago. I’ve been searching and I can’t find anyone, and the rooms where they display furniture, I don’t want to go in them. I don’t know why. I just don’t.”
She couldn’t finish and broke down into sobs, but Shane didn’t need her to finish. Somehow, he could guess what she was trying to say.
“I wonder where your husband is,” Shane murmured. “I found his cell in a locker. Where is he?”
A sniff. “Maybe he dropped it.”
“But who put it there? That’s what I couldn’t figure out when I picked this damn thing up. Wish to God I never had. Who knows? Maybe that’s what started everything. Hell. Maybe in a few years, someone will find my phone or Amanda’s or yours in one of these lockers, pick it up, and get lost. Maybe they’ll be folks trying to start over like us, too, but they’ll get lost instead.”
“Is that why we’re here? Why this is happening? Because we’re lost?”
Such a wonderful, pat little solution. A nice Twilight Zone-twist, the kind which wouldn’t make any sense in any other context. It made Shane think in strange, new ways. How many people got lost over the years searching for direction and purpose? How many eventually threw up their hands and walked away or slammed their phones down, or shut their cell-phones off? Dropped off social media, or, even more drastic, pulled their car to the curb, got out and walked away into the mists, leaving their car running? How many folks every year did any of these things, and then disappeared? Never to be heard from again.
What if someone simply gave up, or simply couldn’t take any more and wanted to get lost?
The next leap, of course, was simple. Her husband’s phone, discarded in a locker. Amanda’s phone, also in a locker?
The wheels in Shane’s head turned. After standing in one place for so long, he took a tentative step into the hallway. And then another. Followed by another, until he walked slowly and steadily down the hall toward its end, past both rows of lockers, with nothing holding them closed.
nothing holding back the things inside
“Hello? Are you still there?”
Shane walked slightly quicker, now. “I am. And it makes sense, because here’s another thought. I don’t know where your husband is, or where Amanda is. But we’re still here, searching. Why?”
“Because we’re lost,” the woman said in a plaintive, little-girl voice.
Shane walked faster. Oddly, something akin to excitement mounted inside him. “But maybe we don’t want to be. Honestly. Who fought harder to save your marriage? You or your husband?”
Silence.
Shane imagined he could feel her reluctance through the phone, until she whispered, “Me. He agreed to try, but I had to beg him, and I think he only agreed because he thought it would make things easier on him in our eventual divorce, because it would seem like he ‘tried.’“
A tremulous hope blossomed in Shane’s chest, along with something sharp and bitter as the end of the hall got nearer. A strange mixture, indeed. “Amanda never said anything out loud. Not in so many words. But I don’t think she wanted to move on.”
He realized dimly he’d referred to Amanda in the past tense, but he kept talking, moving forward. “For a while I thought she didn’t love me anymore. I still wonder, honestly. Struggle with it. Who knows, maybe she doesn’t—maybe she has stopped loving me. Maybe the only reason she’s stayed with me is because she can’t move on. Benjamin’s death stopped her. I think she felt it was our fault. For going away and taking some time for ourselves. She mentioned once, after—in a causal, off-hand way—she’d never thought to have Ben checked for infant asthma. It’s rare to be found in someone so young, but I guess it happ
ens. So I wonder. Maybe she doesn’t want to find her way. Or can’t. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why your husband and my wife got lost. Because they didn’t want to find their way out.”
“But why did you find my husband’s phone in a locker? Why do you think your wife’s phone might be in one?”
“I don’t know,” Shane admitted, walking faster, trying to reach the hallway’s end, which suddenly appeared miles away. “Sounds crazy, I know, but ever since I walked into this place I’ve thought that something is in the lockers. In so many of the halls the furniture’s pushed back against the lockers. To keep them closed. Or to keep something inside. Again, commit me to the nuthouse, but I think those lockers can open. Maybe for the right people. People who are lost, and don’t want to find their way home. And you know what? Maybe I wasn’t sure until now. Maybe I needed this to convince me. I loved Ben dearly, and it kills me he’s dead. It kills me he died while we took a day off for ourselves. I know it’s not our fault, but I still kinda blame us. Blame myself for convincing Amanda it’d be good for us to get away. I love Amanda and I’m going to do my damnedest to find her, and pull her out of this place. But—”
He paused.
Drew in a deep breath, and exhaled, “I don’t want to be lost anymore. I want to get out of here, now.”
As the words left his mouth, Shane experienced a strange optical illusion. As he’d walked down the hall, the end had appeared further and further away, as if the hall was made of taffy, and someone was stretching it. But the instant the word “now”left his lips, it felt as if the hallway snapped back. He found himself standing at the end of the hall, the lockers behind him.
To his left were closed double doors, chained and padlocked shut. What little he could see through the rectangular windows appeared abandoned, unused and cluttered with debris. An unused wing of the store, perhaps.
is this a store?
To his right, a hall lined with coffee tables, all of them, mercifully, pressed back against the lockers. Before him were open double doors leading to the auditorium.
The auditorium.
Where the lady said she was near. “Hey—you still there?”
“Yes,” the woman whispered, sounding faint.
“Okay. I have no idea what the hell this is. How you’re here in 2006, and I’m here ten years later. But I want out. I’m not leaving without trying to find Amanda, but I want out.”
Again, maybe it was his imagination, but at the word “out” he thought the walls, floor and doors ahead of him shimmered, momentarily as insubstantial as a desert mirage.
“I don’t know. I need to find Michael. He’s here somewhere, I know it.”
“Listen. You’re near the auditorium, right? I’m on the other side. There’s a hall here full of kitchen tables and coffee tables, but I’m done with these halls. I’m cutting through the auditorium, and I’m coming to you.”
“No!” The woman’s voice spiked in hysterical panic. “Don’t go in there! I’ve heard things moving in there!”
“Sorry, lady,” Shane said as he stepped into the auditorium, “I’m coming through.”
He entered the auditorium. On cue, the Nokia fell silent. He stuffed it into his pocket and took another step forward, but froze before his next, arrested by the sight. “Oh, shit. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Mattresses.
Stacked higher than him, in maze-like rows. Because the auditorium’s floor curved slightly downward, and he was essentially standing uphill, he could see just above the mattresses, rows and rows of them, running the width and length of the auditorium. The other doors were directly opposite, which meant he’d have to wind his way through the rows of mattresses to reach them.
I’ve heard things moving in there!
He shook his head and slowly descended the slope. Directly before him rose a wall of mattresses. He could only go right or left, and who knew which end left space to get around?
“It doesn’t want me to leave,” Shane whispered. “Son of a bitch. It doesn’t want me to leave.”
Again, he thought of Venus flytraps and angler fish.
His iPhone warbled.
He pulled it out of his pocket, swiped his thumb across it and saw the number flashing on the screen.
Amanda.
He stared at it, waves of despair and loneliness washing over him. He couldn’t leave here without trying to save Amanda. Everything he’d said about wanting to get out, about Amanda not being able to move on didn’t matter. Maybe she was still here somewhere. Hiding. Alone. Afraid. Or maybe wandering and confused.
How could he leave her?
How dare he? He needed to find her. Needed to rescue her, if he could. He could heal her, he knew it, if he could find her, get her to listen, to think. Maybe she was calling him, right now.
she’s gone
you can’t get her back
Bullshit.
His thumb hovered over the answer button, mind weighing options, theories, concepts, thoughts which didn’t make sense but still were, anyway. When he’d tried to call Amanda’s phone before he thought—though he wasn’t sure—he’d heard it ring in one of the lockers in the hall behind him. Which meant wherever she was now—alone, dead, or other—she didn’t have her phone.
But had it been Amanda’s phone, ringing in a locker?
Was this her, now?
Again, the image came to him of a Venus flytrap, along with the realization he’d been standing and staring at his ringing phone, not moving, doing nothing. He remembered another bit from the Animal Planet show, about Venus flytraps stunning their prey with nerve toxins, paralyzing them.
Like he was paralyzed, now.
this place doesn’t want me to leave
He thumbed reject call. Turned his phone off and stuck it into his pocket, oddly enough, keeping the Nokia out, clenched in his other hand. He descended the sloping floor into the auditorium, to stand before the first wall of mattresses.
The stacks reached about six or seven feet, each mattresses varying in thickness. Each mattress was also affixed with a tag, on which, in neatly printed script, was listed the price and the brand. Each tag was also annotated as either ‘new’, ‘hardly used’, or ‘used’. The tags themselves more than anything else made the whole situation feel surreal. So utterly prosaic. Mundane. Normal. Neatly printed letters and numbers. Shane wondered, as he walked in either direction, if the neatly hand-printed sales tags would slowly morph into insidious messages of evil and malice, made all the more horrible by their impeccable print.
He glanced to his left. The wall of mattresses extended, so far as he could tell, all the way to the auditorium’s wall. He couldn’t tell if there was space at the end to slip through to the next row. To the right, same dilemma. He assumed there must be space somewhere, to allow customers . . .
what customers?
have you seen any?
. . . to walk through this gargantuan maze and peruse all the other mattresses. How would they browse all the mattresses otherwise?
He actually smiled. In the face of the impossibility of what was happening, here he was, wondering about the ineffectual shopping layout of the mattress section at Save-A-Bunch. He shook his head, but a horrible thought occurred to him. What if Amanda and this Mike thought they were still shopping? Whatever this was—hell, purgatory, some weird-ass Twilight Zone alternate dimension—what if that lady’s husband and Amanda and who knows how many others were stuck in some sort of loop, endlessly browsing, endlessly shopping? Amanda, browsing the store, searching for furniture for their new home, for an eternity. Complaining to herself about the layout, the lack of service, these aren’t real deals, where the hell did Shane wander off to? Because deep inside, she didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to be found. She wanted to stay lost, and the store was more than happy to oblige.
Shane took a deep breath. Turned left, turned right, muttered, “Hell with it,” and started walking right.
***
Shane was
about halfway through the rows of mattresses—there were openings on opposite ends, the paths so far running back and forth, zig-zagging—when he rounded a corner and saw, about halfway down the walkway, a wall of mattresses, and an opening to the right, making the arrangement even more maze-like.
“Oh, c’mon,” he whispered, a sick feeling curdling his guts. Inexplicably, the rows, which until this point had followed some sort of order, were now going to feature random turns in the middle of the rows.
this place doesn’t want me to leave
“Screw this,” he muttered, turning around. “There’s gotta be another way out of this.
Mattresses.
Stacked above his head.
Blocking the way he’d come.
“No,” he muttered, fighting down a cresting fear which threatened to drown his newfound resolve. “No, no, no. This is not happening.”
A sound.
Fabric stretching.
Hands, or fingernails, scraping across fabric.
A ripple passed lengthwise along the mattresses barring his way, at eye level, along with the same stretching-fabric sound.
In the midst of his rising fear, a strange fascination nudged him forward. He approached the wall of mattresses . . .
which hadn’t been there before
. . . peering at them. Oddly, they appeared less rectangular and more oblong, swollen, a pile of cocoons, or eggs.
Another ripple, along with the sound. Against his will, he took another step closer, part of his mind screaming to run, because he knew what was going to happen next. The rippling mattress bulged outward. He could see them clearly: Four fingertips and a thumb, pressing against the mattress’s fabric, reaching, grasping from the inside.
like the things inside the lockers
Something larger bulged next to the hand, with the suggestion of a nose and a gaping mouth, opened wide in a silent scream.
Shane turned and sprinted, but skidded to a stop. He’d forgotten how the path had changed angles in the middle of the row, and he’d nearly slammed into a wall of rippling, squirming mattresses bulging with reaching hands and gaping mouths. He turned right, dashed into the next aisle, looked both ways, and saw to his left a wall of mattresses a few feet away—also now shaking and rippling—and to his right the aisle extended all the way to the auditorium’s far wall.