The Collector

by Z Hanny

  As he searched the area around him, he found a baseball bat. When he swung the bat at the glass, it rebounded, shocking his hands. He tried a few more times, but the glass wouldn’t even splinter or crack.

  Blaine knelt before the window and stared out. Behind him, a whistle made him jump and he turned as the toy train moved past him. Out of anger, he swung for the train and knocked it off of the tracks. Little bits of plastic flew off in all directions. On its side, the toy train’s wheels still moved.

  Blaine smashed the moving parts of the train with the bat and his feet, then looked around the dark room, frustration making his face heat.

  “Jennifer!” Blaine shouted as he started walking towards the stairway. “Jared.”

  When he reached the wall, he stopped, puzzled as to why the stairs weren’t there. He tapped on the wall. It was solid. He searched along the wall hoping that he’d just been mistaken, but his subconscious told him that this was where the stairs should have been.

  He walked past shelves set up with a wide variety of snow globes. Blaine held the glowstick towards the glass orbs to find all of them whirling with the fake snow inside.

  “Come play, friend,” a child’s voice said from the darkness.

  Blaine stepped back and followed the wall away from the sound.

  “Come play, friend,” the voice said again, this time, from right behind him.

  He spun and saw a small baby doll laying on its back as if someone had carelessly left it there. The doll’s head turned and the mechanical mouth opened, but before it could say the phrase again, Blaine smashed the head in with the bat.

  When he looked away from the doll, he came face to face with a teddy bear sitting eye level on a ledge. Several stuffed bears sat on the ledge, all of them positioned to look at Blaine.

  He stumbled back without looking and tripped over something on the floor. Another baby doll laid on the floor. It turned to look at him with wide, plastic eyes.

  “Not nice, friend,” the doll warned.

  Blaine kicked the doll, grabbed the bat, and ran into the darkness. As he ran, the toys began to turn as if watching him. He began to wildly swing at everything, but with each swing, the toys came more to life.

  The room filled with the flashing lights of toy cars and trains, toddler toys lighting up and playing high pitched tunes. Toy drums beat in an ominous tone as every doll and action figure tore their way out of their plastic prisons.

  Blaine skidded into a new aisle. Hundreds of little plastic army men lunged and parachuted onto his head and shoulders. Some of them successfully stabbed him with their miniature plastic weapons before he swept them from his skin.

  He stumbled while throwing the green figurines off and two moving teddy bears used a jump rope to trip him once again. Several toys quickly worked together to build a little barrier around Blaine made of connecting blocks, but he scattered them across the floor.

  Before running, he grabbed the bat. Wide swings sent the toys flying in all directions and he darted off with his heart in his throat. At the wall, Blaine noticed that the stairway had appeared next to the elevator where it belonged.

  At the top of the stairs, he turned with his bat poised to smash, but the floor was once again dark and silent. He swallowed hard, then held the glowstick up so that he could see as he descended.

  “Jennifer?” Blaine called. “Jared, where are you guys?”

  The electronics level seemed normal, but several of the television sets were on with static screens. He went down the stairway without searching and called out on the first clothing level. Once he noticed the mannequins’ silhouettes in the darkness, he moved on quickly, a shiver going down his spine.

  Jennifer’s voice sounded out and he looked down the next flight of stairs. Mannequins stood over her grabbing at her clothes and trying to pull her back toward them. They had managed to drag her a few feet toward the darkness before Blaine jumped down and began breaking the plastic faces in.

  He destroyed two of the mannequins, but the rest scurried up the stairs and vanished into the shadows of the upper floor.

  “Are you alright?” Blaine panted as he helped Jennifer to her feet. She hopped awkwardly, trying not to put pressure on her left ankle. “I don’t think they can come down here, not for long at least...”

  “Do I look alright?” she choked out, fighting tears. “What the hell is this? This can’t really be happening, can it?”

  “I’m not sure what’s going on,” Blaine confessed. “I tried to break a window, but it wouldn’t to shatter.”

  “I tried to break as well,” Jennifer said. “I just hurt myself by trying, then those monsters came after me.” She shuddered as Blaine kicked the fractured pieces of plastic across the floor.

  “We need to find Jared,” he said, “then find a way out of this place.”

  “Okay.” Jen looked around, shoulders dropping. “I lost my glowstick somewhere.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Blaine said. “Let’s go to the bottom floor and look for him.”

  “What if he’s on one of the upper floors?” Jennifer asked. She glanced at the staircase, then away quickly. She couldn’t get the feeling of those stiff hands grabbing at her out of her head.

  “I woke up on the toy level,” Blaine answered. “I shouted out a bunch up there. I don’t think he was on the very top level and those mannequins went that way. I don’t want to see those things again, and you wouldn’t want to see the toys coming to life either.”

  “What?” Jennifer asked, pausing in her hobbling toward the stairs.

  “I’ll explain later,” Blaine said. He wrapped an arm around her waist. “For now, let’s just make sure Jared’s safe too.”

  They took the next flight of stairs carefully, both shouting for their missing friend.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jared

  Jared opened his eyes to darkness. He was sitting in a corner with the glowstick at his feet, pooling a bit of light out in front of him. He felt around inside his pocket and found his phone still there. Relief flooded through him. Taking it out, he turned on the flashlight and shined it around him.

  He quickly recognized the lowest level of the department store that the elevator had brought them to earlier. All the clutter surrounded him, smelling of moth-eaten clothing and mold. As he stood, he noticed that both of his shoes were missing.

  “Blaine!” Jared shouted into the darkness. “Jennifer! Are you two down here?”

  Using his little source of light, he navigated the piles of junk and made his way towards the elevator. He heard movement coming from behind him. It was then that he remembered the voice they had heard down here. The hair on the back of his neck stood up at the memory.

  He spun and held up his phone, breath caught in his throat. The light revealed nothing when he looked, but the sound came again, and a pile of coffee makers tumbled onto the ground at his feet.

  “Who’s there?” Jared asked, unsure if it was just his own fear playing tricks on him. “Get away from me!”

  He searched around for something to use as a weapon until he found a rolling pin. Grabbing it, he dashed to the elevator and slammed the button even though there was no power running through it. Everything was dark. The junk behind him shuffled around again. His light revealed a momentary glimpse of a white form dashing behind several piles.

  Jared held up the rolling pin, poised to strike, and waited for movement. The creature leapt to a covered spot nearer the elevator, but Jared hadn’t been able to get a look at it. Everything went still and quiet. He could hear his own heavy breathing, loud in the room.

  A few typewriters on a table to the left crashed to the floor. Jared spun, but didn’t see any signs of life.

  “Leave me alone!” he shouted, and the typewriters shuffled.

  From underneath the pile of broken metal and keys, a pale hand reached out and yanked Jared’s phone from his hand before he had time to process what was happening. The creature ran off and the light on the phone
went with it. Jared stood still in the dim light of the glowstick, cursing himself for not holding on to the phone tighter and paying more attention.

  The light of his phone shone off in the distance of the room and he started to walk towards it, now bracing the rolling pin with both hands. He needed that phone. If something happened down here, if the elevator didn’t come on again, he needed a way to call someone.

  Suddenly, there was a smashing sound that made Jared jump and stiffen. The light vanished completely.

  Jared stopped and waited for the creature to come toward him again. He noticed a box to his right with the picture of a knife set on the front, so he quickly opened it and took the longest chef knife from the set gripping it tightly, then put the rolling pin down.

  “Come on,” Jared said. “I’m not going to deal with you all night long.”

  Fingers wrapped around his ankle and yanked him down, then dragged him through stacks of boxes. They battered his face and chest, but Jared pulled himself up and cut at the hand around his foot.

  A hiss came from the creature and it let him go, then scurried back into the piles of junk like a shark roaming its waters. Jared stood ready to strike again when he noticed his phone by his foot. He grabbed it and realized that the forward-facing camera and light on his phone were smashed.

  He used the backlight of the phone as a new source to see and found the creature watching him from the piles now strewn about. It had no eyes, not even sockets for eyes, just a skin covered face and a mouth with teeth that looked like they came from some kind of fish.

  Jared jumped forward and lashed out, causing the creature to scurry further back. He used the creature’s momentary fear to run back towards the elevator. Jared knew he needed to have his back against something. As he neared the elevator, he noticed a stairway he’d never seen to the right.

  He increased his speed but as he reached the base of the stairs the creature leapt on to his back and they both crashed to the floor. The creature clawed at him and bit into his shoulder as he tried to position the knife. Jared cried out from pain, barely managing to thrust the knife into the creature’s chest.

  It released his shoulder to let out another agonized hiss, then took off into the messy room with the knife still lodged in its ribcage. Jared stood and stumbled up the stairs to the next level.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dashed Hopes

  Jennifer and Blaine reached the kitchen and bathroom level. Being one of the darker floors, they were hesitant to check it, but they thought that Jared might be hiding in one of the cabinets as they’d done earlier in the day.

  Their glowsticks began to dim, making the search harder. They called out for him a few times but heard nothing in response, so they decided to go down another level. They reached the wall to find that the stairs were gone.

  “Okay, now I know that the stairs are disappearing, moving, or something,” Blaine said. “I couldn’t find the stairs on the toy level and I knew where they were supposed to be, then they randomly reappeared.”

  “That same thing happened to me when I was on the clothing level,” Jennifer said. “It’s like we kept getting locked on the floors. Let's just wait right here, maybe the stairs will reappear.”

  “Okay,” Blaine said and they both took a seat against the walls, each describing the things they had seen on the different levels

  Jennifer checked Blaine’s small stab wounds from the plastic army men and most of them had coagulated. They both sat in silence as they waited for the stairs, but then Blaine suggested they just follow the wall and maybe they’d find them.

  As they walked, Jennifer accidentally kicked the corner of a kitchen counter and she cursed.

  “Who’s making all that racket?” a voice bit out angrily.

  “Hello?” Blaine asked, holding his glowstick out as far as possible to see the source of the voice. It sounded like an older man.

  “Children?” the voice asked, but they still couldn’t see anyone.

  Blaine took another step forward and saw the outline of a man. The next step revealed a ghastly man with a caved-in face, mangled arms and legs, and a translucent body that appeared to be the same sickly-green color of the glowsticks.

  Blaine and Jennifer turned and ran, both yelping out, the man shouting behind them: “You’ve woken me up, keep it down, or you’ll have to leave!”

  Jennifer found their previous hiding spot in the kitchen cabinets and the two crawled in. They tried to control their breathing and heart rates as much as possible. Jennifer wept as quietly as possible.

  “We need to get out of here,” Blaine whispered.

  “What about Jared?” Jennifer asked.

  “I don’t know,” Blaine said. “We can’t keep blindly walking around the building. I don’t know what the building wants from us, but it’s obviously nothing good. We can’t help Jared if we're dead, so let’s get out of here and go get help as fast as possible.”

  “Okay,” Jennifer agreed while wiping tears away. She took a shaky breath. “We have to go see if the stairs are there yet.”

  Blaine opened the cabinet door and they both crawled out into the darkness. There was no sign of the ghost, so they made their way to the stairs, which were now where they were supposed to be. Jen looked over her shoulder as they descended the stairs.

  The ghastly man stood nearby watching them. Her skin crawled and she forced herself to look forward. They reached the first floor and it was well-lit from the larger windows. Outside the storm still raged, snow swirling through the light cast from streetlamps.

  They both ran to the doors and searched around for something to break the window with. Blaine tapped the glass a few times with the bat but was afraid to swing with all of his might, knowing that it would just bounce back and bruise his muscles.

  “Jared, are you here?” Jennifer called out, her back to the windows.

  Silence. Blaine smashed in a fire extinguisher case, then threw the extinguisher at the glass a few times. No visible mark was left behind. Blaine grew furious with the results, but he stood still when he noticed a figure outside approaching the door.

  The security guard who they’d encountered in the first few hours of their adventure stopped at the front door and peered in.

  “What are you kid’s doing?” he asked as he inserted the key and turned it.

  When he pulled on the handle the door didn’t budge, so he tried to unlock it once again. Nothing.

  “What did you kids do?” his voice was muffled through the glass, but still threatening. “I told you not to mess around -”

  “We can’t get out,” Blaine responded.

  The security guard pulled on the door one last time, then looked at Blaine for a moment before speaking. “I told you kids to leave. You should have listened to me.”

  He sighed, then turned and began walking into the haziness of the snowstorm and fog. Blaine and Jennifer pounded on the doors and windows, shouting for him to return with help.

  His outline vanished and the headlights from his car were visible for only a moment before he drove away. Blaine and Jennifer sat down, defeated and confused.

  “He has to know, right?” Blaine asked. “He has to know what’s going on here. Otherwise he’d go and get someone, try to get us out.”

  Jennifer didn’t answer. Tears were silently streaming down her face.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Basement One

  Jared stumbled up the stairs and when he reached the next level, he turned to find a wall behind him rather than stairs. A sense of relief washed over him at the thought that the creature was stuck down on the lower level.

  Mannequins of different shapes and sizes filled the room. Some stood, some lay against the wall, and others were strewn out on the floor. He did a quick scan near him to see if there was another set of stairs but couldn’t find any, and the elevator was still without power.

  He started to search around the room, hoping that another pale monster wouldn’t lunge at him
from the darkness. His shoulder was bleeding from the bite mark and his shirt sleeve was already soggy with blood.

  “Jen!” Jared shouted out, praying for a response. “Blaine!”

  Jared stopped when he came to an odd machine. It seemed old and looked to have a furnace attached to it. He started to inspect and found that there were large rolls of plastic wrap as tall as himself near the ancient device.

  As he opened the furnace to look inside, a fire burst into the kiln and sent Jared jumping back. He landed in a stack of mannequins. As he pulled himself up, he noticed that each mannequin he’d knocked over wore an angry expression on their stiff faces. The bright light from the fire danced across the plastic, giving it an eerie glow.

  When he reexamined the room all the mannequins were turned towards him.

  “No - I am not dealing with this shit,” Jared said, and yanked one of the mannequin arms off. It would make a sufficient weapon for now. He was wishing that he hadn’t left the rolling pin down on the lower level.

  At the other end of the room the elevator it up, so he ran to it as quickly as possible, not knowing how long the surge of power would last. He jammed on the up button and the doors swung open. Jared dropped the mannequin arm and stepped in. When he turned, the mannequins were moving toward him, but the door closed before any could reach inside.

  He pressed for the first floor and the elevator clanked before ascending. The door opened and on the other side Jennifer and Blaine stood by the entrance of the building, both on their knees and leaned against the window.

  “You guys!” Jared shouted when he realized that they hadn’t noticed the elevator door opening. “You’re both safe!”

  They turned and met him outside of the elevator. Jennifer gasped when she saw the blood-soaked shirt sleeve.

  “What happened to you?” she asked, dragging it up to reveal the bite mark on his shoulder.