They sat there for so long that Amy thought Basil had fallen asleep.
“We need to go,” she said. “You can rest when we’re outside.”
She tried to help him up, but Basil didn’t seem anxious to brave the Showroom floor again and Amy knew she had to motivate him. “You’ve got a sister waiting for you. She needs you to come home, right?”
“Her birthday’s tomorrow,” Basil said. “Today actually, I guess.”
“What’s her name?”
“Shawnette. She’ll be ten.”
“What did you get her?”
“Legos,” he said. “She wants an iPad, but we’re on a budget.”
“And a cake? Did you buy her a cake?”
“Gonna make one. It’s a thing we do. Tradition.”
“Then we better get you out of here,” Amy said. “We better get you home so you can bake your cake.”
“One more minute,” Basil said. “Just let me rest for one more minute.”
Amy sat beside him. Her flashlight was dying, yellowing to the color of old bone. All right: one more minute. It felt good just to sit, to not be moving, to not be running. It felt good and it felt right. They could stay here and be safe until the morning crew found them. There was no need to be scared, or to make any more difficult decisions. Her flashlight grew dimmer and dimmer. Eventually it would die and they could sit in the dark and wait.
Another part of Amy’s mind knew this wasn’t true. This was the building thinking for her. Worming its way inside her head, dredging up old habits and old fears. She reached down to her missing fingernail and squeezed it hard until she saw bright stars flashing in her field of vision. The pain got her on her feet and thinking clearly. She clapped her hands, the sound echoing harshly against the walls of the room. “No more stopping,” she said. “We can’t stop until we’re out.”
Basil looked up, groggy. “Just one more minute.”
“No,” she said, grabbing an arm and hauling him to his feet. “This is how the store wins. When we stop trying, when we’re lazy. Come on, Basil. Move it.”
She felt like a gym teacher, clapping and cajoling, pulling and threatening, but she finally got Basil to his feet.
“Whoa,” he said thickly through smashed lips, staggering to the right.
Amy caught him under his ribs and held him up while blood surged back into his legs, sending pins and needles cascading down his calves and into his feet. Basil hunched in pain and Amy helped him stand until it passed.
“Which way?” he asked.
“Follow me,” she said with great confidence, even though she was completely lost. She remembered someone telling her that the way out of every maze was to follow the wall on the right. It wasn’t much of a plan but it was something to focus on, a goal that would keep the store out of her head.
She helped Basil hobble out of the cell, but at the door his legs gave out and he went down.
“It’s cold,” he moaned.
In the dim glow, Amy saw that his bare feet were wet. A thin scrim of water was rushing across the floor, flowing down the hall. Small cataracts were forming around his heels.
“Something spilled,” she said.
“Broken pipe,” Basil corrected as she helped him to his feet.
He was right. More water was coming, surging along the floor. It was only an inch deep at most, but it showed no sign of letting up. They began to walk quicker, their footsteps echoing down the hall.
“How do we get out of here?” Basil asked.
Amy was about to explain her labyrinth proposal when she had a better idea: “We’ll follow the water,” she said. “Water always finds a way out.”
Freezing air rose up from the water as they splashed down the hall and rounded a corner, returning to one of the corridors lined with grates. A sea of hands reached through the bars, agitated by their arrival, grasping at their scent.
“What the hell?” Basil asked.
Amy handed him the dying flashlight. “Keep it pointed forward and stay close.”
“There’s too many of them,” he said.
“I don’t see a lot of options,” Amy said. “You going to quit on me?”
Basil shook his head. Before he could change his mind, Amy grabbed his belt and entered the gauntlet. The hands came at her fast, albino bats flapping out of the dark, snapping at her face. Snatching hands, grabbing hands, pinching hands. Amy put her head down and forged through the whirlwind. Hands grabbed her hair and tore out chunks; they wormed their way into her mouth, hooked her cheeks, snatched at her clothes, slapped her eyes, sending white light strobing inside her skull, trying to knock her off balance, trying to pull her to them.
Stumbling, shaking, whimpering, covered in filth from the dirty hands, she staggered forward, dragging Basil behind her by the belt. She tried to slap the forest of hands out of the way, but they snatched at her fingers and cracked her knuckles as they tore at her face. And then they were gone.
Amy and Basil stumbled out like swimmers reaching the beach, and both of them stood at the end of the hall gasping and panting. Basil’s eyes were wide and glassy, fixed on the floor, his shredded lips moving soundlessly. The hands had reopened his wounds and he was bleeding freely. Amy let go of his belt and bent over, feeling dirty.
“Your hair?” Basil said. “They ripped it out.”
Amy raised her arms and felt her scalp. It was sticky with blood. Something cold touched her feet and she jumped. The water was soaking into her Chuck Taylors. “Just keep moving,” she said. “We’re almost there.”
They went left and right and right again, always following the flow of the water. Amy knew that more water meant they were moving in the right direction; water always followed the path of least resistance. Her flashlight could barely cut through the shadows anymore, it was just a glow that dimly reflected off the surface of the surging black current. Despite his injuries, Basil kept up with her; when he fell behind, she grabbed his good arm and pulled, and the pair kept scurrying forward. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, Amy thought.
Finally they rounded yet another corner, and there, twenty feet ahead, was the back of a cheap white wooden door. It was the way out to the Showroom. Water was pooling in front of it and Amy sloshed forward, turned the cold knob, and pushed. The door swung open and the water cascaded out, spreading across Bedrooms, disappearing beneath Pykonnes and Finnimbruns.
“A flooded Showroom,” Basil muttered, collapsing onto a display bed. “Corporate is going to love it.”
“That’s the least of our worries,” Amy said, taking the flashlight from him. Then she saw what Basil was sitting on. “Bedrooms,” she said. “We’re in Bedrooms. Come on.”
She raced off, taking the light with her. Basil followed. Her feeble flashlight flickered and guttered like a candle. Amy raised it high then swung it low, crawling over beds.
“What are you looking for?” Basil asked.
“The bags,” she said. “Matt’s gear bag had flashlights.”
“This place is huge, Amy,” Basil said. “There’s no way you’re going to find them.”
Amy stopped darting around and zeroed in on her target. She flung herself over the Müskk, reached down behind it, and hauled up a dripping black duffle bag.
“You were saying?” she said.
Jamming her arms into the zippered mouth, she rummaged around and then turned it upside down and shook it over the bed. Out fell a long black Maglite.
Basil seized it and clicked it on. A powerful beam of white light lanced out.
“You are my new superhero,” he said to Amy. “Now come on, we have to find the others.”
Basil swept his light across Bedrooms.
“Stop!” Amy shouted.
It was too late. The arc of the beam showed what was around them. The filthy ghosts, hundreds of them, scattered through the furniture. Everywhere Basil’s light landed were more penitents, waiting for them with infinite patience, surrounding them, filling the Showroom floor.
&
nbsp; Amy remembered being grabbed and carried off to her chair, and a spear of pure terror struck her spine, rooting her to the ground. Hundreds of these un-men with their smudged faces encircled them, motionless, not breathing, corpse still, dead silent. Then a disturbance came from somewhere within their mass—a cluster of figures shuffled to one side, making way for someone bubbling up within their ranks. Finally the figure emerged from the colorless crowd of the dead: Carl, or rather Warden Josiah Worth, dabbing a fabric sample at his lips, his face a twisted leer of pure hatred.
Amy’s first instinct was to switch off her light, tuck her head under her arms like a little girl, and make them go away. As if they were merely Ruth Anne’s Creepy Crawlies. If she didn’t see them, they wouldn’t see her. But she knew it was too late for that. She couldn’t hide anymore. They were real. So she forced herself to look.
She saw a gallery of rotten and humiliated flesh. Arms hung at obscene angles, legs were twisted and shattered at the knee, spines gnarled and bent, their rags and flesh hanging in tatters, caked with reeking mud. She couldn’t take her eyes off them.
“Work burns the sickness from a man’s mind,” Warden Worth proclaimed. “It is the philosopher’s stone that transmutes the base metal of deviancy into the pure gold of obedience.”
It was the same kind of hellfire and brimstone sermon as before—only this time Amy noticed something wrong with Josiah’s voice. It sounded far away, as if she and Basil were listening over a bad phone connection. Even worse, the sounds of his speech were out of sync with the movement of his lips. He looked like a character in a badly dubbed movie.
“I think we can run for it,” Amy whispered to Basil. “Over on the left.”
He didn’t answer. She turned and saw that his skin was greasy with cold sweat, and he was muttering under his breath.
“My children,” said the warden, smiling at them. “The coward and the fool. What a disappointment that the two of you have not yet grasped my lesson. But I am a tireless instructor, and now you shall join your fellows in my mill where we will grind your minds into a shape more pleasing.”
“Your mill is closed,” Amy said. “It doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Poor sick wretch,” Josiah said. “I want to make you well. My penitents came to me riddled with corruption and I worked their mortal bodies to effect a cure. Some were harmed in the refinement of their minds, some were forced into painful new shapes, but mustn’t the sculptor crack the stone to pull from within it a more pleasing form? Must the surgeon cease his cutting at the first cries of pain?”
“We’re leaving,” Amy said. “We’re taking our friends and getting out of here.”
“I would be violating my oath if I let you go while you are still so sick,” the warden continued. “My patrons could apprehend neither my methods nor my mission, and so they tried to snatch my penitents away before they were cured. I could not let that happen then and I will not let it happen now.”
Amy looked at the water on the floor and a realization dawned. “What did you do?” she asked.
“You would do better to ask how I saved them. I made the ultimate sacrifice. My warders took them to the basement workrooms, and we locked the doors. The ones who would not cooperate were gently shut up inside coffins so they would not disturb the others. Then I opened the sluice gates and let the river sing them to sleep, as a mother takes a sick babe into her arms.”
“You drowned them,” Amy said.
“I hid them in the curtains of time. All three hundred and eighteen of them. I pulled the river over their heads like a veil, and then I opened my own throat and waited until I could bring them back and cure them. I understand it caused much inconvenience to my sponsors. I understand they could not find the bodies and had to pack coffins with river mud and bury them to quiet the mewling families. But I have outlasted them all. These sick men—sick with laziness, sick with misunderstanding, sick with lunacy, sick with deviancy—they shall be cured. I will not cease my labors until they are made whole, even if I must begin my work afresh every night until the end of time. Is that not a commitment worthy of celebration? Is not my mind magnificent?”
As he shrieked and crowed, Amy looked at the man-shapes surrounding them. Their faces were obscured, draped with filth and darkness, but she didn’t feel that they were evil. Instead she felt a profound sorrow for them. These prisoners had served their sentences long ago. These poor lost souls, never paroled, never resting, doomed to repeat the same pointless tasks over and over. They hadn’t put her in the chair because they hated her. They had put her in the chair because they didn’t know what else to do with her. Their guilt had kept them enslaved to this place long after their sentences had been served.
“I regret you could not be cured in one night,” Warden Worth said, looking at Amy. “But your disease has reached an advanced stage. It will be a difficult procedure.”
“I don’t have a disease,” Amy said.
“Oh, but you do. And now you shall join your friends. It is good to have new patients, for there are so many cures I have yet to try. Dr. Cotton’s Theory of Organ Removal. The Rotational Machine. Hydrotherapy Baths. Total Immersion.”
“Listen to me,” Amy shouted, raising her voice and projecting across the Showroom. “You don’t have to be here anymore.”
The shapes gave no indication of having heard her.
“Amy?” Basil hissed. “What the hell are you doing?”
“But ultimately we shall rely on toil,” the warden was saying. Amy didn’t know whether it was her imagination or whether his voice was getting louder, as if he was trying to drown her out. “It will be the backbone of your cure. For toil is the great grinding stone to make keen the blade of your spirit. Toil is the ladder by which your putrid flesh ascends into health.”
“You have served your time!” Amy continued. “Any sentence you had is long over. What did you do? Kill people who would be dead now anyway? Steal food for your families who are already in the ground? Owe money to a company that has been out of business for a hundred years? You’ve paid for your crimes.”
“Beware the words of liars who lure you into weakness!” Warden Worth shouted. “You know the weight of your own sin, which shall never be relieved. Expiation unto eternity. That is the only path to wellness, the only true command.”
“No one’s keeping you here,” Amy said. “You’re not chained, you’re not sick, you don’t need a cure. You can walk away at any time. That’s all you have to do. Walk away. You can be free!”
A muddy restlessness passed through the penitents.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Basil whispered.
“Free!” Amy said, doubling down. “This isn’t a prison anymore. It collapsed decades ago. Its walls are gone. No one remembers your crimes!”
“Freedom through work!” Warden Worth screamed, hysterical. “That is the only freedom! For work is the whip that mortifies your failed flesh and shapes your sins into something more pleasing, something more—”
“You aren’t in chains anymore!” Amy shouted over him. “Your sentences are just habits. You’ve been free for decades—you just never realized it!”
“She’s a liar!” Josiah shrieked. “She’s filling you with honeyed words and false hope. Tonight has but one conclusion. There are no other paths to travel. There is only one end.”
There was silence for a moment, a second when Amy felt that anything could happen. Then Warden Worth stumbled forward, shoved from behind. Splashing across the wet floor, he whirled around.
“Who dares touch me?” he shouted. “I am your keeper!”
The crowd of shadows was shuffling forward now. They surrounded him with their muddy bodies and then seized him and began to pull him and push him, shoving him from one side of their tight circle to the other. They were hungry, like a pack of wild animals. Something had been unleashed. The penitents swarmed around him, thick and heavy with rot and grime, blocking him from sight. Josiah squealed through his torn thro
at. As his screams turned to liquid burbling, Amy was glad she couldn’t see the rest.
She and Basil turned to leave, but a cluster of penitents stood in the way, as still as stones. “Why aren’t they moving?” Basil whispered.
“I don’t know,” Amy whispered back. “Head left.”
They edged to the left, toward the Bright and Shining Path, but more penitents blocked their passage. It didn’t make sense, Amy thought. She had set them free. She had commuted their sentences.
“What do they want?” Basil asked.
Before she could answer, the penitents were on them, crashing over them like a tide, sending Basil and Amy tossing and turning, submerged in their filthy stench, completely at the mercy of the forces that bore them away. Amy’s screams were cut off as she drowned in their attack. The penitents didn’t want anything; they were simply bound to the same cycle that had governed their spirits for more than a century. This was who they were. This was what they did.
Basil tried to reach her but was caught up in the mass and swept away. The beam of his flashlight jogged and flashed across the ceiling as he was buried beneath the onslaught.
It was the chair again. They were taking her to the chair. Amy struggled, but their hands were iron bands, caked with ice and freezing mud, lifting her from the floor, raising her kicking and thrashing over their heads. She saw the ceiling spiraling above as she was borne across the floor, catching glimpses in the fragmented light from the flashlight. She could feel herself suddenly dropped, lowered toward a dimly glimpsed wardrobe lying open on the floor like a coffin.
“I’m not going to fit,” Amy’s mind gibbered to itself as she was pressed into the tight opening. “I’m not going to fit. I’m not going to fit … ”
The penitents closed the door over her. Bracing her arms, Amy tried to get leverage and push against the lowering wood, but she was fighting gravity. There were too many of them, they were too heavy, and they were pushing down too hard. She managed to stiff-arm the door, holding it up as if bench-pressing it, but she started to feel her elbows bending in the wrong direction, ready to snap. The penitents showed no sign of relenting, so she relaxed her arms and the lid slammed down, a concussive blast of air striking her across the face.
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