The Mall of Cthulhu

by Seamus Cooper

  "Good enough. Thank you." Laura grabbed an extra-large Maglite—handy as a bludgeon as well as a flashlight—and headed over to the temple. Traffic was sparse, and the second she saw no cars on the street, she slipped in through the hinged board over one of the temple windows. She shone her Maglite around the large, empty room she found herself in, holding her gun in her other hand. "Providence police!" she called out. "We had a call for trespassing in here? Anyone inside this building must show themselves now."

  No one showed themselves.

  Having established to her satisfaction that the temple was empty, Laura examined her surroundings more closely. She was in a large room with scraps of ancient linoleum clinging to an ancient wooden floor that was filthy where it wasn't rotten. Pillars covered in cracked tile lined the perimeter of the room. At one end of the room, a cracked slab of granite that had once been a bar slumped onto the floor. The ceiling had once featured some ornate mural, but it was so badly water stained that all Laura could make out was that there had once been something painted there.

  There was a lot of peeling paint, rotting wood, and God knew what kind of animal droppings everywhere. She glanced up and let out a yelp of surprise. Bats. But they seemed to be snoozing. It smelled like scented candles in here, but not as much as it smelled like mold and shit. Despite her best efforts, Laura felt her shoes squishing in piles of bat droppings.

  "Hey," she thought. "I mean, I knew these guys were batshit, but this is ridiculous!" She imagined Ted rolling his eyes and laughing. "Thank you! I'll be here all week. Tip your waitresses . . . " A pang of sadness hit her in the side as she realized that she might never get to share this very Ted-esque line of humor with Ted himself, since he was probably cooling his heels in a Providence lockup by now.

  She pushed thoughts of Ted away and got back to the job at hand. She was pretty sure that this place was empty of anything that could harm her, but it was still creepy to be in here in the artificial darkness among the rot and decay and filth. She realized how right Ted had been to reject her initial hypothesis about this place—nobody was perverted enough to want to bring a date in here.

  In the center of the floor, she saw evidence of a new secret society—Ye Olde New England Candlery scented candles, still in their attractive glass jars, sat in a circle on the floor. Some symbols were drawn in chalk on the ancient, peeling linoleum floor, and there were metal folding chairs arranged in a circle around the symbols. This was where it all happened. Laura pulled out her phone and quickly snapped a few pictures of the graffiti on the floor. Mastering her fear that she'd be sucked into another dimension just by touching the chalk inscriptions, she stomped on the floor. She then ran her flashlight carefully over the linoleum, looking for seams, looking for hinges, and finding nothing. Whatever secrets this temple held, a trap door was not among them. There was nothing here but some linoleum even nastier than what Laura's grandma had in her kitchen, which was saying something. She took a few more pictures of the floor in question.

  She returned to the van. Killilea looked up. "Find anything?"

  "No."

  "Well, I guess even if you had found something, we couldn't have used it anyway."

  "But it's what I didn't find that's important! There's no trap door! Shouldn't that convince them of something?"

  Killilea just looked at her. "It should. But I can tell you from my conversation with Nguyen that it won't."

  Laura thought of arguments, thought about calling Nguyen herself, but she was new and inexperienced, and all telling him she'd broken the law would accomplish would be to get her suspended or fired, and then she'd really be no good to the investigation. Fuming, she sat down, put on her headphones, and clenched her teeth. She spent the day listening to nothing happening in the temple and poring over William Castle's cached web pages, pathetic job application letters, and angry racist letters to the editor. Necro.pdf opened as a bunch of unintelligible symbols—she checked against the pictures on her phone and found several that matched. She supposed she could spend a day calling various professors at Brown or Providence College until she found somebody who knew what the symbols meant, but even if she had the time to do that, she doubted that anybody practicing an ancient, depraved religion in an abandoned building would amount to anything more than a trespassing complaint in the eyes of her superiors. If Nguyen didn't believe a supernatural conspiracy was afoot, then the fact that a document she'd obtained in an illegal search matched some graffiti she'd found on an illegal search wouldn't really carry much weight, even though it seemed like rock-solid evidence to Laura.

  Sitting in silence, Laura felt her bad mood infect her every thought. She started playing back memories of Ted that she still resented. Countless times in college when she'd helped him through drunken puking, acid freakouts, and weed-induced paranoia. That exam in her first year of law school that she'd gotten a B on because Ted called her after midnight crying about some girl who'd told him he was a scary delusional lunatic after he'd confided in her . . . sitting in the van, she just felt the weight of ten years of Ted on her shoulders. It might be kind of a relief if he did get arrested, a nasty little part of her pointed up, but her rational brain reminded her that this would mean losing the only other person on earth who believed in the seriousness of what was going on here. And as she tried to imagine life without Ted, it felt strangely empty.

  Finally, after several silent, sullen hours in the dim humidity of the van, the silence was broken by the chirping of Laura's cell phone. Killilea looked disapproving, but said, "Well, might as well take the call—nothing happening here. But you really shouldn't have it turned on in the van . . . "

  "I know, I had it in my pocket when I was breaking and entering, and I just forgot . . . " Laura looked at the phone and saw that it was, of course, Ted. She silenced the ringer and let it go to voice mail. She was still mad at him, she was annoyed with him for calling her in the van and embarrassing her, and if he'd made his one phone call from jail to her cell phone, she was going to have to answer some pretty uncomfortable questions about how it was that she and her friend the fugitive just happened to be on the same block fifty miles from Boston.

  Agh. She held the thought of him in jail in her head for about thirty seconds before she decided she did have to pick up the voice mail, and she did have to bail him out, and even if he was just calling to make up, she had to do that too. She didn't know how much he was right about, but it was kind of weirdly admirable that he could still be so trusting after all this time, and it was one of the things she loved about him. She dialed the voice mail number. After entering her password and pressing one to listen to new messages, Laura heard Ted screaming.

  "Laura, it's happening, they're in the mall! Help!"

  She dropped the phone and ran out of the back of the van. She heard Killilea yelling behind her, but she ran full out, drawing her gun and hoping she wasn't too late.

  Thirteen

  Ted walked to the coffee shop, got a pint glass full of Organic Peru, grabbed a stool by the window, and stewed. Laura was such a jerk. What he really hated—geez, where on earth did he start—what he hated the most was that "wiped your nose" comment, her whole thing about how he was a little kid. It might have actually been true, but it was really unfair. She'd only seen him behead Bitsy—she hadn't seen any of the others he'd killed, she hadn't had her roommate staring at her, puncture wounds in his big, stupid neck and tears pouring down his face, going "Teddy, please, you have to fucking kill me! Don't make me end up like them, don't make me melt in the sun, please! Please, for Christ's sake, kill me before I turn! Kill me! Make it quick!"

  Ted knew that he'd saved Steve from a fate worse than death, but that didn't make the memory of swinging the axe any easier to live with. And so, yeah, he was a mess. And he was coming to the conclusion that he'd always be a mess. And it was probably easy to look at him and say he was a baby if you hadn't seen what he'd seen and done what he'd done.

  And it wasn't like he wanted to have Lau
ra be the only person in his life. That's why he was always telling people, and last night, for the first time, it didn't feel like a terrible mistake.

  Except—he drained the last of his coffee and started walking to the mall—Laura did make a pretty good point about how it might not have been the best time to tell somebody, and if Cayenne were smart, she would have googled the Queequeg's shooting immediately when she got home and probably found a picture of his long-haired. bearded former self. She would have found out that his name wasn't Jonathan and that he was wanted in connection with the Queequeg's killings. And, he supposed, after you'd found out that your own dad was a murderer, it wasn't too much of a stretch to believe that some guy you just met was a murderer, even if he seemed nice and told you he didn't do it. Yeah, probably only innocent people ever said that.

  Shit. Laura was right. He really was an idiot. He hoped he didn't have to watch the end of the world through the windows of a jail cell.

  Ted's heart was hammering as he turned the corner, and he had no idea if it was because he'd just pounded sixteen ounces of organic fair-trade coffee or because he was terrified that Cayenne was going to turn him in, Laura would be right, and Providence would soon have a really big, really ugly problem that he'd be powerless to stop.

  He thought about that for a second. Despite what he'd said last night about how he was tired of it coming down to him, he found he really couldn't stand to be on the sidelines if the fate of the world was at stake. He wanted to help.

  His phone gave four beeps, announcing a text message. Ted looked at the screen and saw it was from Cayenne. He had no memory of giving her his number, of going through the laborious key-presses necessary to enter her number in his phone. Well, they'd had a lot of margaritas.

  He scrolled down and read the message: HUNGOVER & HORNY. U? Ted smiled. He actually thought of forwarding the message to Laura. "See?" he thought. "She does like me! I was right!"

  Unfortunately, he'd known Laura so long that he could hear her voice quite clearly in his brain saying, "Of course she's sending you naughty messages. She's afraid you're spooked about spilling the beans, and she wants to make sure you walk into the trap waiting for you at the mall!"

  Damn that Laura. "ME 2," Ted sent back. Well, in five minutes, he'd be inside the mall, and he'd either be leaving in cuffs or else on cloud nine, feeling like he finally had somebody else to trust, that he could stop being such a burden to Laura, that a new phase of his life was beginning. Maybe his new life would be Laura-free, maybe she was Teddy's friend, Ted's friend, and maybe Jonathan didn't need her anymore, didn't want her smug judgments anymore.

  Of course, without Laura's help, Ted/Jonathan's new life might last all of about two days, or as long as it took for him to succumb to madness at the very sight of the indescribably awful Old Ones. And, as he tried to imagine his life without Laura, even if the Old Ones didn't materialize, it just felt wrong, somehow. Sure, it would be great to have Cayenne to trust, to really get close to someone else, but Laura had been there. They'd grown up together. Or, at least, he'd watched her grow up from the perch of his permanent adolescence. He didn't want to lose that.

  Ted took a deep breath, grasped the brass handle, and pulled open the door of the mall. He scanned the mall feverishly. He saw a few old people, a few tired-looking mall employees, and a couple of security guards. He didn't see any cops, or even anybody who looked like they might be an undercover cop. He took the escalator up to his pushcart. Cayenne was already sitting at hers. She smiled and waved and pointed at her phone. Ted's phone beeped again, and the screen said: 2NITE LESS BOOZE MORE SEX.

  Ted smiled broadly, sat down on his stool, and gave Cayenne the thumbs up. He felt a wave of relief and happiness wash over him. It felt good. He wondered if this was how happy people felt all the time. It was bizarre—for the first time in a decade, he wasn't speaking to his best and only friend, and there were angry white guys preparing a wake-up call for a thing of unimaginable horror, and Ted felt great—better than he could remember feeling in a really long time. Maybe ever.

  He continued to feel great as he unpacked his cell phone skins and started stacking them on the shelves of his pushcart. He wanted to say something to Cayenne, but he found that he had no idea what to say, especially with her sending those sexy messages. His cell phone skins artfully arranged, Ted turned to walk over to Cayenne's cart when he spotted John Thomas, wearing what appeared to be the same rumpled suit he'd been wearing the first time Ted saw him, walking toward him with a serious look on his face.

  "Good Morning!" Ted called out, goofy grin plastered to his face.

  John Thomas did not return the smile. "Sorry, son," he said, his face and tone of voice still deadly serious, "I gotta shut you down."

  "Wait—what? What do you mean?"

  "I mean you have to cease operations here, or at least suspend operations." Ted scanned John Thomas' face closely, looking for any sign that this was some kind of joke, but he still looked like he was on his way to a funeral.

  "Why? Nobody could complain about cell phone skins."

  John Thomas took a deep breath, and his face changed to the "I'm so disappointed in you" face that Ted had seen from far too many employers over the last ten years. "Signage, son, signage." He took another deep breath and shook his head slightly. "I told you that you needed signage, you have no signage. The agreement your employer signed clearly states that signage is a condition of doing business here. No signage, no cart. I'm sorry, but I really can't make an exception here."

  "Signage."

  "Right. Get some signage, get back in business." John Thomas tried to smile, but the result was anything but warm and reassuring. He reached into his pocket, drew out a key ring, and padlocked the shutters on Ted's pushcart. Without another word, he walked away.

  Ted stood there for a moment, looking and feeling stupid. "So," Cayenne called over, "looks like you're out of business."

  "Uh, yeah, I guess so." How could he surveil the mall now? Unless he could just pretend he was a puppy dog wannabe boyfriend pathetically hanging around the hot body-jewelry clerk. Of course, that wouldn't really be pretending, but it would allow him to both hang out with Cayenne and keep watch on the mall. "Uh, hey, he didn't padlock my stool. Can I come and sit with you? I can be your assistant."

  Cayenne smiled. "Well, I can't pay you. At least not in money . . . " and Ted was at her side atop his stool.

  The first two hours of the day went slowly, and Ted and Cayenne talked about movies and music and other things that Ted couldn't really focus on, because he kept trying to look around the mall, but then he kept getting distracted by that stud in her tongue, and whenever there was a lull in the conversation, she pulled out her phone and sent him a pornographic text message.

  Around lunchtime, a wave of shoppers arrived, and Ted turned to the atrium and tried to actively observe everyone and everything in the mall. He ran everybody he saw against his racial and behavioral profile, and he came up empty. He saw two white guys who looked like they could be suspects, but he recognized them as the probable FBI agents from yesterday. Today they were not even bothering to make a circuit anymore, just sitting on a bench by the ferris wheel, drinking coffee and eating Cinnabons,.

  "Hey, Buffy, what are you doing? Are you really checking the mall for evildoers?"

  "Yeah, I actually am. And do you think you could maybe call me Van Helsing or something? Does it have to be Buffy? I mean, it is slightly emasculating."

  "Okay, Van Helsing. The last thing I want to do is emasculate you." She smiled. "I thought the undead only came out at night."

  "These guys aren't undead—just white guys with a chip on their shoulder, and a really bad magic trick up their sleeves."

  Cayenne looked quizzically at him, and Ted began, hesitantly, to test her ability to believe outrageous crap yet again, by launching into an explanation about the Angry White Guys and their Cthulhu Cult. He watched her face closely for signs of disbelief, but all he saw was a shock of
recognition when he started talking about the Cthulhu part.

  "Oh, yeah," she said, "I read all those stories! I had this boyfriend in the ninth grade who was obsessed with Lovecraft, so I read pretty much everything he wrote. Weird shit."

  "I can't believe that."

  "You can't believe I read? Thanks a bunch!"

  "No, I can't believe a kid who was really into Lovecraft actually had a girlfriend in the ninth grade. Especially . . . you know . . . you. It kind of goes against the profile."

  "Oh my God, I was hideous in the ninth grade. Acne . . . well, I'll show you a picture sometime. But trust me when I tell you this guy actually did me a favor."

  "I don't believe that for a second, but okay." Ted told her the rest of what he knew about the surveillance at the temple and about the cultists' plan to wake up Cthulhu.

  When he'd finished, Cayenne looked at him for a long time. "You know, of all the crazy shit you've told me in the last twenty-four hours, for some reason the part about you having a friend who's a lesbian FBI agent is actually the hardest to swallow."

  "So the part about eighty-year-old horror fiction being true and the guys planning to start some kind of supernatural race war . . . "

  "Entirely credible. But why the hell is a lesbian FBI agent gonna hang around with you? Are you like . . . Is there a lesbian equivalent of a fag hag?"

  "I . . . well, here we go again. I saved her life. She was there, in the sorority."

  "A lesbian was in a sorority?"

  "Well, she was still rushing, or whatever, but yeah . . . "

  "You've gotta work on the real-world part of this stuff."

  "I can't work on it! It's true!"