Horrorstor: A Novel

by Grady Hendrix

  Amy allowed herself a quick flash of Basil’s cell phone every few minutes to orient herself. Each time she turned it on, she expected to see some distorted face grinning at her in the dark, some pale twisted body coming out of the shadows. Maybe Warden Worth standing in the middle of the aisle, waiting patiently for her return.

  But she made it to Home Office unchallenged. On her right were ranks of Smagma bookshelves lined with row after row of Design Is Good books, their shadows dancing as Basil’s phone trembled in her hand. And there was her familiar info post with its familiar greeting: “Have a question? Just Orsk!” The pun felt painfully normal. It was the first landmark that reassured her she was moving in the right direction.

  Amy turned right, heading deeper into Home Office. The next time she flashed the phone, she glimpsed movement in the distance. She pressed the device to her chest, concealing its light, and crouched as low as she could, bruised knees trembling as she squatted next to a Karezza.

  Something was definitely moving up ahead—she could hear it. Up there in the darkness, a motor was churning. The Path went straight past the noise, and Amy knew she had no choice. If she wanted to get out, she would have to get closer.

  Terror singing in her veins, she began to crawl on all fours down the Path. The machine got louder, and soon she could hear a raspy breathing, along with another less human noise, like something sticky being stepped on over and over. The motor was loud and the panting was louder, and there was something familiar about it. Unable to resist, Amy pulled Basil’s cell phone away from her stomach and pointed it toward the sound. The darkness evaporated, and she saw an Alboterk treadmill desk. Its black belt was moving fast and its desktop was angled forward. On the treadmill, a deformed figure was struggling to keep up. Its back was bent beneath a heavy burden and its sneakers were falling apart; one sole had peeled loose and was slapping the belt like a dog’s tongue lapping a bowl of water.

  “Trinity?” Amy whispered.

  Trinity’s wrists were bound with packing tape to the front of the desk. One of her enormous black gear bags, crammed full of something heavy, was strapped over her shoulders. She looked back at Amy, her hair matted with sweat.

  “I saw a ghost,” Trinity mumbled. “I finally saw a ghost, but he didn’t like me.”

  “Let me get you off this thing.”

  “I’ll be well soon.”

  “Was it Josiah?” Amy asked.

  Trinity smiled. “Warden Worth promised to cure me.”

  Then her face crumpled and she began to cry.

  “Hold on,” Amy said.

  She went to the front of the desk and tried to unwrap the tape. That’s when she saw what had happened to Trinity’s fingers. They were shattered. Bundles of broken pencils sticking out in every direction, bruised and purple where blood pooled beneath the skin. Amy found the end of the tape and unwrapped Trinity’s hands carefully to avoid hurting her more, but Trinity didn’t seem to notice.

  Next Amy lifted the bag from Trinity’s back and eased her mangled hands through the straps. It was so heavy that it twisted in Amy’s arms and fell to the floor. The zipper split open and Orsk catalogs spilled out like entrails. Amy wrapped her arms around Trinity’s waist and pulled her off the treadmill.

  “No,” Trinity said, struggling weakly.

  “Shhh,” Amy whispered, holding her.

  If anyone had come to Orsk that morning and asked Amy if she and Trinity were friends, she would have answered “It’s complicated.” But pain and fear have a way of simplifying things. Trinity was lost in the same hell as Amy, only Basil wasn’t there to save her. There was only Amy.

  “No,” Trinity chanted under her breath. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  “We’re getting out of here,” Amy said, trying to imitate Basil’s confidence, putting her arms around the struggling girl. “I’m not going to leave you behind. I promise.”

  She reached around Trinity’s waist and guided her along, both of them limping down the Bright and Shining Path.

  Amy whispered a monologue as they stumbled forward. She hoped the sound of her voice—a human voice—would be a comfort to Trinity. “Once we’re down the escalator, we can use the manual release and open the front doors and then we’ll be outside in the parking lot. We’ll call for help and send people back here. Lots of people. You’re going to be okay. Everyone’s going to be okay. We just have to get out of here.”

  They arrived at the top of the escalator. Downstairs, a toxic orange glow flooded through the windows lining the front of the store. To Amy’s light-starved eyes, it felt as bright as day.

  Then Basil’s phone rang.

  She froze while the theme from Doctor Who played way too loudly.

  Amy fumbled for the button and answered. “Hello?”

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Matt?” she whispered. “Where are you?”

  “I’m all turned around,” Matt said. “I think I’m in Storage Solutions. I’m standing next to a Smagma.”

  “I’m by the escalator in Living Rooms,” Amy said, feeling giddy. Matt was an extra person. Matt could help with Trinity. “You know how to get here?”

  “I’m going after Trinity,” he said.

  “I’ve already got her,” Amy said. “She’s right here.”

  “I just saw her through the shortcut. She’s heading for Wardrobes—”

  “No, Matt, I’ve got her,” Amy said. “She’s standing right next to me.”

  “I can’t leave her in here alone.”

  Amy stuck the phone in Trinity’s face. “Talk to him. Say something.”

  But Trinity stood still, unable to speak. Amy slapped the phone back to her ear.

  “I can’t leave her,” Matt said.

  “It’s a trick,” Amy said. “This place is tricking you.”

  “I’ll call you right back. I’m going after her.”

  The line went dead. Amy tried to call his number back, but it rang and rang and then went to voicemail. She looked up to see Trinity staring at her.

  “This is what it does. It tricks us,” Amy said. Trinity didn’t seem to hear. “We have to keep moving.”

  As she tried to figure out how to get Trinity down the frozen escalator, Amy’s eye caught the row of ten headshots showing Orsk senior management, all lined up along the wall in identical black frames. Only now the ten images depicted “Josiah Worth, Warden.” In the first picture, his eyes were scratched out. Next was one with his entire face slashed to ribbons, the glass in the frame shattered. Next to that was one with a water stain that had eaten away the image, leaving a white shapeless blur on his shoulders. And so it continued down the line, each photo just another mutilated version of Josiah’s grinning face: eyeless, his mouth carved away to a black void, scratched with needles, charred, burned with acid.

  Amy felt Trinity twist in her grip and break free. Fumbling, she snagged the girl’s T-shirt with her fingers, catching her at the last second. Amy pulled and Trinity swung toward her so that her lolling face was directly in front of Amy’s.

  “Sick,” Trinity said.

  “Come on,” Amy said, twisting her fingers tighter in Trinity’s shirt. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Trinity cocked her head, confused.

  “No one’s allowed to leave the Beehive,” she said.

  She leaned backward, pulling away from Amy, until her tattered T-shirt split down the middle, falling away from her body. Amy looked down at the scrap of T-shirt in her hand, then back up at Trinity as the girl ran toward Living Rooms, disappearing into the darkness.

  “Trinity!” Amy shouted, forgetting herself.

  But Trinity was gone. The store had swallowed her like a black stone dropped into a bottomless lake. Nearby, something heavy slammed into a wall, and a crash sounded as shelves toppled to the floor. Seized by panic, Amy ran down the escalator. Her feet stumbled over the metal treads and she gripped the rails to keep from falling. She could see the glass doors leading out to the parking lot, glow
ing orange under the sodium vapor lamps. On one of Amy’s first days at Orsk, Pat had shown her how to manually open the doors in case of a power failure. A special release was built into the frame; she simply had to press it and then wedge her fingers between the doors and pry them apart.

  A scream ripped through the dark. Ruth Anne’s scream.

  This place is tricking you, she reminded herself. That’s what it does.

  Orsk is all about scripted disorientation.

  It wants you to surrender to a programmed experience.

  Ruth Anne screamed again, an animal wail. Someone was doing something unimaginable to her. Amy couldn’t tell where the scream was coming from. It might have been coming from inside her own head.

  They’re trying to slow you down, she told herself. They’re right behind you. They want to keep you here forever. They don’t want you to get out.

  She pressed the release button with her thumb, then jammed her sore fingers into the crack between the doors and forced them apart. Without motorized assistance, the panels parted reluctantly, pushing against her, jamming when the opening was only two feet wide. Warm air rushed in all around her, and Amy slipped out through the gap.

  She was free.

  Amy didn’t stop running until she’d reached the center of the vast, orange-lit parking lot. She caught her breath and looked around for cop cars, but the parking lot was empty.

  “Oh, come on,” she moaned. “Where the hell are you?”

  Standing in the middle of the empty lot, she could see the headlights of the cars and trucks barreling down Route 77; she could even see the exit ramp leading down to the feeder road.

  The address you gave me is invalid, the dispatcher had told her. It means that, according to our system, the address doesn’t—

  Doesn’t what? Doesn’t exist? How was that possible?

  Amy ran around to the side of the building, her sneakers slapping warm asphalt, until she reached the distant side lot where partners were required to park their vehicles.

  There was Ruth Anne’s Jeep with its “My other car is a Harley” bumper sticker. Basil’s Nissan Cube with its TARDIS1 license plate. There was a third car, a junked-up Subaru, that had to be Matt’s or Trinity’s. Then there was her sad Honda Civic, leaking oil.

  But still no cops. She had no one but herself.

  Amy fumbled her keys from her pocket and opened the Honda’s door. The car buzzed at her, as if a door ajar was the most important problem in her life right now. You’re not abandoning them, she told herself. You’re going to get help. It was the smart thing to do. It was a good idea.

  She locked the doors, started the engine, and pointed her car toward the exit. Then she floored the gas before she could change her mind, aiming for the feeder road that led to Route 77.

  “Someone has to get out,” she said to herself. “Someone has to get out and get help. It doesn’t mean I’m running away … ”

  But she was running away. That’s what Warden Worth’s chair had taught her: she was always giving up, quitting early, walking away. It was so much easier not to try. The chair had made it so easy to surrender.

  At the edge of the parking lot, Amy pressed on the brakes. From there, she watched the lights of the highway, the endless stream of cars and buses and tractor trailers. No doubt a police cruiser was out there looking for an exit its officers would never find.

  She looked back at the store. From a distance it didn’t seem menacing at all. It was just a big beige box made out of cheap materials plunked down in a sea of asphalt. Everything else was smoke and mirrors, a programmed experience. It was easier to see this reality from the outside. It was easy to forget on the inside. And her friends were still on the inside.

  No, not her friends. They were store partners, not friends. There was a difference, she reminded herself.

  But Basil had come back. She thought he’d just been repeating a bunch of Orsk propaganda about responsibility, but he’d actually meant it. He’d rescued her from the chair and faced an army of penitents to keep her safe.

  And Matt had refused to leave without Trinity, and Ruth Anne wouldn’t have left without any of them.

  They’re not your friends, Amy told herself. You don’t have to do this. They’re not your responsibility. She closed her eyes and felt the throbbing bruises and cuts from the tranquilizing chair laddered up and down her body. Sitting in the driver’s seat reminded her of being back in the chair, and she felt heavy and warm. It was safe with her eyes closed. Her car jerked forward and stalled as her foot slipped off the brake. Amy’s eyes flew open. Before she could nod off again, she bit down on the tip of the finger that had lost its nail.

  Pain screamed down her arm and woke her up completely. Here was the other option: the tranquilizing chair. It was always waiting for her. It always wanted her back. It always wanted her to quit again, to sit down and never get back up.

  In the end, Amy thought, everything always comes down to those two choices: stay down or stand up.

  She cut the wheel hard, drove back to the main entrance, and parked on a yellow-striped patch marked NO STOPPING OR STANDING. She walked to the main entrance and found that the doors had closed and dead-bolted themselves. Of course they had. Amy cupped her hands and peered up through the glass at the Showroom floor. She could see the shadows coiling around in the darkness, skittering through the aisles, dripping down the walls. The Creepy Crawlies wanted to be left alone with Ruth Anne, Matt, Trinity, and Basil. Amy had gotten away. They didn’t want her back.

  But hadn’t Basil said that the door to the partners’ entrance was still broken? She jogged around the side of the building and yanked on the door. It swung open easily, and in the orange light from the parking lot she could see the time clock on the opposite wall frozen at 3:15 a.m. Just looking into the store again was enough to make her heart race. This was her last chance to turn back. This was her last chance to act like a smart person. She could smell the sour, swampy stink of the store, and the air pouring out the door was cold and stagnant. Before she could change her mind, she stepped inside.

  Her first stop would be the break area. That was where they’d all promised to regroup. Even if no one was there, she could find flashlights, first-aid kits, useful things. Holding up Basil’s cell phone to light her way, she turned it to the left and saw the base of the stairs leading up to the second floor. Amy forced herself to head toward them and then jumped when the door behind her slammed shut, sealing her inside.

  Basil’s cell phone cast a watery digital glow over the walls as Amy made her way to the stairs, her senses hyperalert. At the top she turned down a hallway lined with office doors. Each was hiding something, each was on the verge of swinging open and showing her something she didn’t want to see. In the cell phone’s glow, she saw that the walls were riddled with cracks, weeping water, their paint bubbling, flaking, sloughing off and peeling to the floor in drifts.

  Something darted across the floor—another rat, wet and filthy, racing along the edge of the wall and vanishing into darkness. Amy forced herself to calm down. Rats were the least of her worries right now. They were just more scripted disorientation. She breathed deeply and continued down the hallway. And then she heard it. A gentle scrape from behind one of the doors.

  There is no point in being scared anymore, Amy told herself as she watched her hand reach for the handle and turn the knob. The door swung open. Inside was a supply closet filled with reams of paper and black markers, staplers and printer ink cartridges, everything lined up in neat and orderly stacks on the shelves.

  But at the bottom of the back wall, a hole had been torn in the drywall. It was surrounded by scratches, the edges smeared with something dark. A cold rancid wind vented from the void, and something on the floor caught her eye. Amy knelt down and picked it up. A small tube of Blistex Medicated Berry lip balm. Amy dropped it and backed into the hall.

  She had a feeling that the break area was going to be empty when she got there, and she was right. The
first thing she did was open the first-aid kit bolted to the wall beside the door. Relief washed over her when she saw the yellow flashlight clipped inside. She yanked it out and clicked it on, and suddenly the room was full of daylight. Amy slid Basil’s cell phone into her pocket and ran her flashlight over the walls. She checked under the Arsle tables, just to be sure. No rats, no men in striped pajamas, no Matt, no Ruth Anne, no Trinity. No Basil. Something cold and wet touched her skull, and she ducked to escape it. Whirling around with the flashlight revealed more shadows. Something small and silver dropped in front of her.

  Amy looked up and gasped, then pressed herself to the wall, as far from the center of the room as possible. The stain on the ceiling had grown. It was a huge pregnant bulge, ripe with yellow water, dripping into a vast puddle in the center of the room. It looked like it was going to rupture at any moment. Runnels of dirty water chattered eagerly down the walls, into the bucket of Magic Tools, streaming over stacks of waterlogged Orsk catalogs, or what used to be Orsk catalogs. Now they were toppled and mixed with yellowing ledger paper filled with precise handwriting. The top sheet was dated May 5, 1839:

  … in short, this commission found that the Cuyahoga Panopticon is nothing more than a mill for the manufacture of Lunatics. Many of the Penitents have lost their minds in the numbing grind of repetitive labor; others have given in to Despair and disfigured themselves. The Treadwheel has been disconnected from its grinding stone, Penitents who should be employed in gainful labor are sent to “The Crank” until they become too injured to continue—and there is no gainful industry to be observed. Warden Josiah Worth is not only aware of this situation; but seems to revel in it. Our recommendation is the Immediate Closure …

  Amy dropped the paper. This information was nothing she didn’t already know. There was nothing left to see here, no one was coming; it was time to move on. She took one last glance around the room and noticed that the sign on the wall had changed. Its message used to be “The hard work makes Orsk your family, and the hard work is free.” But the running water had worn away many of the letters. Now, it simply read: “Work makes you free.”