Penpal

by Dathan Auerbach

  As I was grappling with the decision of whether to wait for Veronica or go into the theatre once I got there, I noticed that the steady stream of streaking car lights that had been overtaking me had been replaced by a single, constant spotlight that refused to pass. The road wasn’t illuminated by streetlights, which was why I had been walking in the grass to begin with. I was already about two feet away from the road, but thought that it might not be far enough for a nervous motorist; I stepped a little more to my right and craned my neck over my left shoulder, ready to flag the person to pass, and I heard the squeaking of old brakes as I adjusted my posture.

  A car had stopped about fifteen feet behind me.

  I stopped walking and turned around to face the car. All I could see were the violently bright headlights that were cutting through the otherwise stygian surroundings. I thought that it might be one of Chris’ parents; maybe they had come to check in on us and seen that I was gone. It wouldn’t have taken much pressing for Chris to confess. In fact, he might have done it gladly since it would be even more humorous to him if my big date had been intercepted by his mom. I took one step toward the car, and it broke its pause and started driving toward me at a slow pace.

  As it passed me, I saw that it wasn’t Chris’ parents’ car, or any car that I recognized for that matter. I tried to see the driver, but it was too hard to see inside the car at all since my pupils had shrunk when faced with the blinding headlights just moments before. They adjusted enough that I could see a tremendous crack in the back window of the car as it drove away.

  “Asshole,” I muttered.

  After a few more minutes of walking, I laughed a little now that the urgency of the situation had passed. I could see myself doing something like that to a pedestrian. Sometimes it could be fun to scare other people – I’d often hide around corners and jump out at my mom, after all.

  I timed the walk correctly and got there about ten minutes before the movie started. There wasn’t a line, so I approached the ticket seller and bought a pass for myself. He was overweight and sweating so profusely that beads of perspiration were sliding off the top of his hairless scalp and down the stringy ponytail he had fashioned with the hair that still grew on the back of his head. When he handed me my ticket, it was damp.

  After about a minute, I went back to the counter, slid another dollar bill through the slot, and bought a ticket for Veronica. As the employee handed me my half of the cheap raffle-tickets they used as stubs, he snorted and said that I must really like this movie to see it twice in one weekend and buy extra tickets. I walked away even more surprised that The Dirt Theatre was still in business with him handling the cash and counting it.

  I had decided to wait outside until around 11:57, since that would give me time to find Veronica inside if she was already seated. As I was reconsidering the possibility that she might not show, I saw her.

  She was beautiful, and she was alone.

  I waved to her and walked to close the distance. She smiled and asked if my friends were already inside. I said that they weren’t coming and realized that it must seem like I was trying to make this a date; I felt my palms start to sweat inside my pockets as I rubbed the already-damp tickets between my fingers and debated whether or not I should just let her buy her own now. Despite the fact that I had come alone, she didn’t seem bothered, nor was she bothered when I pressed my luck further and handed her the ticket I had already bought for her. When she looked at me quizzically, I said, “Don’t worry, I’m rich.” She laughed, and we went inside.

  I bought us one popcorn and two drinks and spent most of the movie debating whether or not I should time reaching my hand into the popcorn bag when she did so that our hands might touch. Having seen the movie already last year, I didn’t pay much attention to it; instead, I donated it to Veronica in the form of sidelong looks and occasional comments. For the past two weeks, I had played out cliché scenarios in my mind wherein she would get scared and cling to me. That didn’t happen, but I thought that probably never really happened anyway.

  Aside from one unfortunate interruption where I had to run out of the theatre and find somewhere that would hopefully sound like Chris’ house to take a call from my mom, there were no awkward moments during the movie. Veronica seemed to enjoy the film, and before I knew it, it was over. We didn’t linger in the theatre, and because this was a midnight showing and the theatre was closing, we couldn’t loiter in the lobby. So we walked outside.

  The parking lot of the theatre was big because it connected with a mall that had gone out of business years before. We stood and talked for a long time as the rest of the audience drove away from the theatre. Not wanting the night to be over just yet, I continued the conversation while causally walking toward the old mall, away from where I thought Veronica had parked. Since she wasn’t scared during the movie, I thought to tell her a story I had heard about this mall. As I began the tale, I looked back and saw that her car wasn’t the only one left in the parking lot.

  The other one had a large crack in the back window.

  I stood and stared at it, puzzled and unnerved.

  “So there was a robbery?” Veronica said in an attempt to put me back on the story.

  “Right!” I continued. I tried to put the car out of my mind as we resumed our walk and left the theatre out of sight. “Well, kinda …

  “So, this mall closed like five years ago, but way back this was the place where everyone would come to hang out and shop.”

  “As opposed to all the other awesome places in this town?” she interjected, sarcastically.

  “Damn right! Anyway, everyone thinks that the place just went out of business, but that’s not true. What happened was that at some point the manager, or whoever, noticed that a lot of the food inventory was going missing. I don’t mean like candy bars – I’m talking about whole freezers full of food. So, he put all these security cameras everywhere, ya know, to try to catch who was taking it, but the cameras never showed anything. They’d be on all night – pointed at the freezers – but in the morning, they’d open them up, and all the food would be gone, and there’d be this huge mess.”

  “Spooooky!” she gibed.

  “Just hang on! So the owner-guy hires these two security guards to stay overnight and keep an eye out. The first couple of nights are no problem, right? No food is missing, everything’s cool. But then one night, the guard hears this huge crash coming from across the empty mall, and so he runs over to see what’s going on. Then he hears these screams.”

  The smile was disappearing from Veronica’s face.

  “It’s his partner. But he can’t tell where the screams are coming from, exactly. On the video, it’s just him running back and forth, back and forth. And he’s shouting something, but the cameras don’t have sound, so no one knows what he’s saying.”

  “How do you know all this, then?”

  “Just a second. So, eventually the guard runs up to one of the freezers, ya know, the one behind the Chinese food place? Well, he opens it up. He takes a look inside and backs away, and then just runs out of the mall. He didn’t even lock the doors.

  “The owner comes back in the morning, finds his mall unlocked and no sign of the security guards. He checks the tapes, and doesn’t understand what happened, but he sees who left the door unlocked. After he checks the freezer and sees the mess and the missing food, he calls the police and sends them after the guard who just ran out.

  “They find him at his house, just locked in his room, shaking. They asked him what happened, but the guy won’t talk. They ask him about the food, but the guy just keeps shaking. Finally, they take him into the station for more questioning.

  “The police have a theory that these two guys were involved somehow so they start really interrogating the guy, but he just won’t talk. ‘Where’s your partner?’ they ask him. ‘What happened to your partner? Where’d he take the food?’ But the guy won’t crack. Finally, they start threatening him with jail time, and he just br
eaks down.

  “The guy says he saw his partner being pulled through the big drain in the floor of the freezer. The police are like ‘Pulled? Pulled by what?’ And the guy just starts crying and screams, ‘A MONSTER!’

  “They do an investigation but never find the partner, but when they opened the grate on the floor of the freezer, they saw the pipe was gone, and it was just this big hole. The investigation shuts the mall down for months, and the owner goes bankrupt.”

  “What about the guy? The security guard?” Veronica asked, her voice trembling a little.

  “He winds up in the insane asylum down south. He draws these pictures of the monster during free time, but they always look different …”

  I started trying to guide us to one of the giant windows that stretched from the foundation to the roof of the mall.

  “But here’s the thing. They never found any monster, but they did find all kinds of boxes and big plastic wrappers in that hole under the freezer. And they found the missing guard’s flashlight down there too. It was smashed to pieces.”

  We were right in front of the window.

  “But the craziest part is that they just gave up – they just shut down the mall and locked it up forever. They say that if you’re quiet, and you look for long enough, you can still see the monster walking around the mall now since no one’s there to bother it. But what’s weird is that everyone who’s ever seen it tells a different story of what it looks like.”

  I pressed my hands in C-shapes against the window and peered through the dirty glass. Veronica followed my lead. We waited silently for almost a minute, our breath fogging against the window. Right as she was in the middle of saying that she didn’t see anything, I kicked the window hard with my foot, and the whole pane vibrated.

  Veronica shrieked briefly and tore away from the window, grabbing my arm as she moved back.

  “You jerk!” she yelled with a smile growing on her lips.

  “What?! Didn’t you see it?!” I started laughing. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  She playfully shoved me. I had heard that story so many times from Chris, but the window-kick was my idea. Veronica seemed to like horror movies, so I was hoping that she would appreciate the story, and I was happy that she took the joke well.

  As the laughter and false hostility abated, my mind returned to the car with the cracked window. Suddenly, uneasiness turned to understanding and amusement.

  That makes a lot of sense. The driver of that car works here and must have figured I was on my way to the movie, I thought. Injecting real horror into the life of a horror fan seemed like an obvious move; that was exactly what I had just done.

  With things more relaxed, we continued walking around the mall and started talking about the movie we had just seen. I told her that I thought Day of the Dead was better than Dawn of the Dead, but she refused to agree. I told her about when I called her old number and about my dilemma about who would answer the phone. She didn’t find it as funny as I did, but she took my phone and put her number in it. She commented that it might be the worst cell phone she’d ever seen. Her evaluation wasn’t rescinded when I told her I couldn’t even receive pictures on it.

  “At least it plays really good music,” I said. She looked at me quizzically, and handed my phone back to me. I shook the phone rhythmically, and some chip of plastic or a stray metal screw that had come lose inside the phone’s casing began to rattle around inside the phone. I danced in a self-mocking fashion briefly, and then tried to call her so she’d have my number, but I had no service. I power-cycled the phone, and took advantage of the high connection I always had when it first turned on. The call went through, and I watched her cancel it.

  “Hey! I was going to leave you a voicemail! I had an important message for you!”

  She laughed. “Oh yeah? What was it?”

  “Well, maybe I don’t remember anymore … should’ve just let it go to voicemail.”

  “I messed up the settings on this thing. It never goes to voicemail; it just rings forever!”

  “Yeah, your phone really sucks,” I said, as I shook mine like a maraca.

  We both laughed. I watched as she saved my number. We walked on.

  She told me that she was graduating, but she hadn’t done well in school for the past couple years, so she wasn’t sure if she’d even get into college. She said that she should have gone to the magnet program that I was in, since she might be in a better spot now if she had. I told her to attach a picture of herself to the college application, and they’d pay her to go there just so they could look at her. She didn’t laugh at that one, and I thought she might be offended – she might have thought I was implying that she couldn’t get in based on her intelligence. I nervously glanced at her, and she was just smiling, and even in that poor light I could see that she was blushing. I wanted to hold her hand, but I didn’t.

  As we walked down the final side of the mall, back toward the theatre, I asked her about Josh. I had asked about him when I saw her in the theatre with her friends weeks before, but she had simply brushed it aside, and I let her because I would have talked to her about anything. This time when I asked, she told me that she didn’t want to talk about it. I asked her if he was at least doing okay, and she just said, “I don’t know.” I figured Josh must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and started getting into trouble. I felt bad. I felt guilty.

  As we approached the parking lot, I noticed that the car with the cracked back window was gone and that her car was now the only one in the parking lot. I had no idea how long it took to clean up that theatre before it closed, but as consistently dirty as that place was, I wasn’t surprised that the employees had already left. Veronica asked me if I needed her to drive me back to Chris’ house, and even though I really didn’t need her to, I wanted her to, so I lied and said that it was a long walk and that I’d appreciate it.

  I had finished my soda during the movie, and all the walking was putting pressure on my bladder. I knew that I could wait until I was back at Chris’, but I had decided that I was going to try to kiss her when she dropped me off, and I didn’t want this biological nagging to rush me out of the car. This would be my first kiss.

  I struggled, but I could think of no ruse to conceal what I needed to do. The theatre had closed, so I only had one option. I told her that I was going to go behind the theatre to piss but that I’d be back in “two shakes.” It was obvious that I thought it was hilarious, but she seemed to laugh more at how funny I found it than at how funny it clearly was.

  On the way toward the theatre, I stopped and turned toward her. I told her that I had a weird question, and her interest piqued. I asked her if Josh had ever told her that some kid named Alex had done something nice for me. She paused to think for a moment and said that he had; she enquired as to why I had asked, but I said it was nothing. Josh really was a good friend.

  When I went to go behind the theatre, I realized that there was a chain-link fence extending off of and running parallel to the walls of the building. She could still see me where I was standing, and the fence seemed to stretch on endlessly, so I thought I’d just hop it, duck out of sight, and return as quickly as I could. It may have been too much of an effort, but I thought it polite. I climbed the fence and walked just a little ways until I was out of sight. I heard Veronica yell for me to not stand on any grates or the mall-monster might get me.

  For a moment, the only sounds were the crickets in the grass behind me and the collision of liquid and cement. Before too long, however, these sounds were overpowered by a noise that I can still hear when it is quiet and there are no other noises to distract my ears.

  In the distance, I heard a faint but distinct screeching, which quickly subsided, only to be replaced with a cascade of thundering vibrations. I realized quickly enough what it was.

  It was a car.

  The growling of the engine got louder. And then I thought.

  No. Not louder. Closer.

  The rumblings intensif
ied. It was growing louder still. I started back toward the fence with haste, but before I could get very far at all, I heard a brief, truncated scream, and the roar of the engine terminated in a deafening thud. I started running, but after only two or three steps, I was tripped by a loose piece of stone, and I fell hard and fast onto the concrete – my head striking the corner of a bench as I fell.

  I was dazed for maybe thirty seconds, but the renewed rumbling of the engine drew my senses back, and my equilibrium was restored by my adrenaline. I redoubled my efforts. I was worried that whoever had crashed the car might harass Veronica. Briefly, but forcefully, it occurred to me that we would have to call the police. My mom would be contacted because I was a minor – that wasn’t how I wanted this night to end.

  As I was climbing over the fence, I saw that there was still only her car in the parking lot. I didn’t see any evidence of a crash. I thought that I might have misjudged its direction or proximity, but I swore I could smell the faint and fleeting aroma of burned rubber or possibly machine smoke, and this was corroborated by a metallic taste that clung to my tongue. Each of my senses was telling me that something had happened, but my eyes defiantly returned ordinary images.

  As I ran toward Veronica’s yellow car, I had to change my orientation to move around it. Finally, and terribly, my eyes joined my other alerted senses. I saw what the car had hit, and my legs stopped working almost completely.

  It was Veronica.

  Her car was sitting between us, and as I closed the distance and walked around it, she came fully into view.

  Veronica’s body lay twisted and crumpled on the black asphalt of the parking lot, her limbs so unnaturally contorted that she looked like a child’s discarded wooden art doll that now showcased a catalog of things the human body cannot do. As I looked at her, I actually found it hard to discern whether she was lying on her back or her stomach, and my vision warped the space around her in an attempt to see a human figure again. This optical illusion made me feel sick with dizziness to the point that I had to close my eyes for a moment for fear of vomiting.