by Jae Vogel
“They are both alive,” he told her. “I know everyone at school think they’re dead. But they’re very much alive.”
“Then why do you stay with your aunt and uncle?”
“Protection,” he explained. “The same person who kidnapped them wants me as well. My aunt and uncle can stand up to that person. Alone, I can’t. I’m not strong enough… yet. But when I am, I’ll get them back. But not until I’ve reached my full strength.”
Lilly looked up at Dion again. She wanted to help him, but what was she getting herself into today? She didn’t know this guy. In a few months, she’d be off to college and a whole new life awaited her. Enough with the petty smart kids and the cheerleaders. The hell with the officer’s wives and the daughters whose names were kept out of the paper.
She remembered a girl carried to the car, high as a kite, by her boyfriend. The same girl was featured in the local community paper when she received a scholarship from an air force service organization. Good and fine, she could snort some real quality drugs in college before she returned to be married off to some corpsman.
And how much of what Dion told her had truth to it? Sure, it had seemed strange and wondrous to see fire run in circles on the floor, but if he knew the secrets of illusions, couldn’t Dion fool her with his assumed powers? How much was a trick and how much was what she wanted to believe? What kind of game was he playing? Was she in the process of being set up for something?
“You don’t understand,” Dion told her. “Most people can’t. There aren’t too many of us around who have this ability. My dad once said that most people can do some of it, but people in our family who can manipulate the elementals are very rare. I was taught not to use it. But I’m on the verge of something and I have to figure out what the best way is to get it.
“And this has taken you here?” she asked. “Can’t your aunt and uncle help you?”
“They could, but I don’t want to put them into harm’s way. My uncle has some of my ability, but not much. He has more than most people and this might attract the wrong sort of attention to him. All kinds of people would like to take what we can do and use it for bad things. It’s happened in the past, which is why we don’t talk about it.”
“So why are you telling me this?”
A few moments passed in silence.
“I need help… and I like you, Lilly. You have a good head and a better heart. I don’t see that very often.”
“This is crazy,” she said and started to rise up from the ledge around the fountain. “All you want to do is get into my pants. Sorry, Dion, I am no woman’s fool and everything you just did can be explained.”
Lilly felt anger overtake her senses.
She was angrier than when her last boyfriend had tried to do some things she objected to in the back seat of his parent’s Ford at the local drive-in movie theater. She had to explain the bite mark on her neck to her mother, who seemed to find it funny. At least she didn’t have to explain anything else. Mark this one down as another guy who’d stolen his dad’s copy of The Sensuous Man.
“Perhaps you need a better demonstration,” he said to her. “This will tire me out, but I think you will find it instructive.”
Before she demanded Dion tell her what he was talking about, he leaned back away from the water and closed his eyes. He began to concentrate intensely and breathed deeply.
Lilly cocked her head and looked at him again. If this was his attempt to impress her, it was not going to succeed. She turned and started to walk back to her car.
The wind stopped her.
It began as a steady breeze, which slowly reached its zenith as she turned and looked in the direction it came. The breeze began to pick up and emerged from the entrance to the mall. Both doors of the main entrance were blown open by a sudden rush of air from the inside of the building. It began to howl in her direction, threatening to blow her over. Lilly was certain, if anyone had been at the entrance, it would have blown them into the parking lot. Lilly felt her curly hair sent into a halo behind her as the wind picked up in intensity. It felt as if she was inside a tornado.
She turned and looked in the direction of Dion.
The young man continued to sit on the ledge in a state of concentrative meditation. His hands were on top of his knees with the palms facing up in the air. His hair also blew back from him, away from the force of the wind inside the mall. Lilly wanted him to make it stop; she was ready to tell him to bring this thing to an end because she believed him.
She heard a whirling sound and something was spinning out of the doors in her direction. Stunned, Lilly watched her shoes fly out of the mall at her. They were the Earth Shoes she’d bought last year and still liked to wear, no matter how out of style they’d fallen in the past few months. The shoes spun around each other in a rapid circle, then struck not ten feet in front of her. When they hit the ground, the shoes slid in her direction and stopped moving the moment they bumped into her feet.
The howling wind died down and turned into a breeze. With the force of the wind gone, the mall doors slowly closed shut. Soon the breeze was gone and Lilly stood there facing her shoes and the dust blown around her from the wind.
She turned to look at Dion.
He was bent over the ledge of the waterfall with an exhausted look on his face. Dion gagged and sat back up. Lilly, ignoring her shoes ran over to him and helped him sit back up.
“Are you okay? You made the wind blow like that? That’s insane!”
“I’m all right,” he told her, his eyes still having trouble focusing. “Just don’t ask me to do it again.”
“I didn’t.”
“Not by words, but by your actions. I could tell I would have to prove this to you. It’s worn me out and I can’t do it again today. Not until I have the power given to me by the Grandmaster of the Air. Don’t forget your shoes; I went to a lot of trouble to retrieve them for you.”
Lilly ran over to her Earth Shoes and strapped them on her feet. How had he known where to find them? Of course, he’d realized barefoot senior girls didn’t wander around a mall and deduced she’d left her shoes inside. But how did he know where to locate them?
“How did you find them?” Lilly asked as she walked back over to Dion. At least the rough concrete and asphalt no longer hurt her feet.
“They called to you,” he explained. “You wear something long enough, it becomes part of you. It’s why I don’t change styles very often. I’ve had jackets plead with me for help.”
Lilly felt her pulse race again. She might be able to discount what he’d done with the lighter and dirt as a parlor trick, but a windstorm? No, there was no way he could’ve blown her shoes out of the mall unless he knew of some technology far in advance of anything in the world.
She sat down next to him. “Didn’t you say you needed my help? How?”
“I have to go into the mall today,” he told her. “There are four Grandmasters of the Elements at any given time. All four of them are inside that mall for reasons I don’t understand. I can’t fully use my abilities unless they confirm them on me. I can only go inside when the mall is open and I can’t do it alone. I need someone I can trust who will watch my back and protect me from what is inside that mall.”
“But it’s just a shopping mall,” Lilly blurted out. “What in the world could be inside it that would hold you back?”
It’s not just an ordinary shopping mall,” he told her. “It looks that way from the outside. My parents knew one of them was about to spring up somewhere in the United States. But just as they located this one, someone kidnapped them. I need full use of my powers or they won’t be rescued.”
Lilly turned around and starred at the entrance. She’d just been inside the mall. “Looks perfectly normal to me,” she said. “What makes this one so different?”
“It’s not what is on the outside that makes it different,” he told her, “it’s what’s on the inside.”
He stood up and walked over to the entrance a
nd made sure he never ventured too close. Dion walked around the front, but kept a respectable distance away from the doors. Lilly noticed he stayed away from the area under the roof of the porch. It appeared he sensed something he didn’t like which came from its direction.
“You might think it’s just a mall,” he said to her, “and for all practical purposes it is one. Most people who come here don’t think about how it showed up so suddenly. My aunt and uncle have watched over this place for years. It used to be a barren field, you know. Some farmer had it in his family for generations. Nothing of value would grow here. Before the settlers came, the Indians avoided this patch of land; they knew something wasn’t right with it. But it was right for one thing, and the mall hides it nicely.”
“What does it hide?” Lilly asked him. By now, she was ready to believe anything. Anyone who could make a whirlwind bring her shoes out the door had to be plugged into something powerful.
“It doesn’t hide a thing,” he continued. “It stands watch over the Abyss. Note what is over the top of the mall on the porch.”
Lilly looked up and saw the fiberglass sphinx over the entrance. Everyone laughed at it the day the mall opened. They poured in to look at all the shops on display. She’d noticed the sphinx symbol all over the mall and assumed it tied in with some kind of Egyptian motif. Never did it occur to her the symbol might have something to do with the mall itself.
“The sphinx stands watch and guards the gate,” Dion explained. “This mall is a gate of sorts, and the builder of it wants to keep the gate hidden from view. What better place to hide something than in plain sight?”
“Are you telling me this place is dangerous?”
“Not unless it knows you are wise to it. Even then, it won’t bother you if you don’t bother it. I know all about its secrets and so it would rather I stay out. But, if I am to rescue my parents, I need to go inside and find the elemental grandmasters. The problem is that the mall closes at nine promptly and it’s almost two in the afternoon.”
“It’s spring break,” Lilly explained. “We can always come back tomorrow.” Whatever he wanted to do in there, she wanted to be part of it.
“Not enough time,” he said. “It will take me long enough to find each one of them. I can’t do what I have to do in one day. Why don’t you come in there with me and see if we can find the first of them?”
Chapter 2
I didn’t take long for Lilly to give her answer.
They walked into the mall, beautiful music playing on the PA system and waited for the electric doors to open. This time a few shoppers trotted out.
It was a Monday and it meant fewer shoppers than usual. Plus, most of the buying would take place on the weekend, when there were sales. The luncheon Lilly had helped to cater was tied in with a big sales promotion several of the anchor stores were involved with as part of a national program. The TV stations were all set to run the ads through the week. When she heard about it, Lilly was pleased, as she was sick of all the Bicentennial crap they ran all week long.
They walked into the mall and headed up the main corridor to the inside. On either side of them were small restaurants and shops. Lilly could see the waterbeds place, but never went inside, as it seemed sleazy for a mall store. Too much incense and peppermint for her taste. They continued on their way and walked past a novelty store, which sold plenty of lava lights and posters. It was another day in the mall to most of the people who strolled around it. Hard to believe they were at the gates of hell, according to Dion.
“Looking for something special?” a tall man with a military haircut said to them.
They stopped the moment they saw the security guard uniform. He was a tall man with a muscular build, but the look of a predator was in his eyes. Lilly knew who he was: Officer Karanzen, who was in charge of mall security. Look the wrong way at him and you’d be hauled down to a holding cell until your parents arrived.
Officer Karanzen had a tough-as-nails attitude with a reputation to match it. He was known to personally body tackle shoplifters and kept the mall free from thieves and scam artists. He also had no love for freaky kids and could spot a bottle of cheap wine hidden inside a purse or jacket at fifty yards. More than a few of Lilly’s friends were forced to have their parents scrub their arrest records to get into the right college because of this man. He was feared and hated by half of her high school class. The other half had quit going to the mall soon after it opened.
“Just here for the mall shopping, Officer,” Lilly said to him, doing her best sad little girl smile. She hoped it would work.
“You, I know,” the security officer said to her. “Him, I don’t know.” He stared intently at Dion, examined his eyes and seemed to recognize something.
“Don’t give me any trouble,” he said to Dion. “I’m here to make sure this place stays open. We don’t want to close like that mall on the other side of town.”
The Shell Mall due north of where they stood had opened ten years ago, one of the first in the area. But it was on hard times and all the stores were about to close. Some said it was just bad luck and the new mall took away all of the business.
Officer Karanzen was an old style security guard who didn’t appreciate smart mouthed kids in his mall. He considered it his mall because it was where he worked and lived. No one ever saw him leave the mall. Ever. He seemed to be there before anyone else in the morning and was always the last person to leave in the evening. If there was a break-in or a problem with the utilities, he was the first one on the scene. No one knew where he lived because his personnel files were accessible only to the owners of the mall. It was said he could be seen walking around at night checking out abandoned cars and people who were parked in the lot too long after closing. No one ever saw him eating or taking a bathroom break. He came with the mall and was there when the construction crews were pouring concrete.
No one in their right mind crossed the officer or they would vanish into his holding cell until the cops, or parents, came to pick them up. There were a few kids from the high school Lilly knew who tried to mess with him. They never said what happened from the time they were placed in confinement until picked up, but none of them ever wanted to return to the mall.
“He just stared at me while I was in there,” one former bad kid had said to Lilly. “He sat in front of the cell and grinned. He never said a word. I’ve never been so terrified in all my life.” The kid went on to become the president of the school bible club.
One of the rumors, which circulated around the high-schoolers, had Officer Karanzen as a former marine sergeant in Korea who was dismissed for injuring too many recruits. Others said no, he was an ex-green beret from Vietnam who enjoyed his deep cover missions too much and the military had to get rid of him. The current favorite theory about Karanzen was that he was an experiment in progress. A group of scientists decided to create the perfect sentry and he was the prototype.
Lilly didn’t believe him to be evil, as most of the kids who came under his glance. She thought he truly believed that what he did protected the mall. He seemed to have a strange sense of ownership when it came to it. She’d never run afoul of him, but noticed the officer in his daily rounds checking every little imperfection and finding the slightest thing out of commission. She’d watched him inform a store that one of their exterior light bulbs was out three seconds after it popped. She observed him take a missing toddler to his mother before the woman was aware the child was gone. He seemed to have a strange way of knowing when something was just “not right” in the mall.
As they stood there, Officer Karanzen’s security guards emerged and slowly formed a semi-circle around him.
He had eleven security guards working for him at the mall. All of them were young men. The oldest was only thirty years old. He’d picked them up in the first week the mall opened. Although some of them were from the area, no one recalled seeing any of the guards outside the mall once it opened. They were all rumored to live in a group house somewhere
near Miamisburg. Each wore the grey pants and blue shirt with a cap. It was on the cap where the name of the security company who employed all of them was listed: Bread and Salt Services, or “BS” as everyone she knew called it. For some reason the symbol of the company was a black diamond. It was sewn into the patches on the guards’ uniforms.
Lilly stood there and wondered when the last time was when she’d seen all of the guards together. Usually no more than three or four were on duty at any given time, including the afterhours shift. But today, they were all here at once. They stood at attention, hands to each side and backs straight. For some reason, Karanzen wanted to make a show of force, which was a little bit strange since the only two people he faced was Dion and Lilly.
“Have you met my boys?” Karanzen asked them. “No, I don’t think you’ve ever had a chance to meet them all. I had them in today for a training exercise. You never know when walking dead zombies might take over a mall, heh, heh. You haven’t seen any zombies around here have you?”
“Only the ones I’m looking at right now,” Dion responded. He folded his arms over his chest and continued to stare at Karanzen and his men.
“Let me introduce them to you,” the older man said to them. “This is Bella; we call him ‘Toadie’, because he’s always looking for things under rocks. After him is Gamer, he has a little bit of trouble remembering things, but we’re working on that aren’t we?”
The second young man smiled. “I try, boss.”
“That’s a good boy. Next we have Amon.”
A black guard with a very wolfish appearance stepped forward and grinned.
“And we have our great hunter, Bayer; you bagged a deer last week, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sah,” another young man said as he made a small bow. “With a bow too.”
“I thought hunting was over,” Dion noted.
“Not for me,” Bayer grinned.
“I’m sure he’s hunting some place where it’s legal,” Karanzen said. “I also want to introduce Zeppy; he came to us from New Mexico, by way of the army.”