“A door around back?” Genny still clings to the hope of what the Jeep means, refusing to walk away so easily.
“Can’t hurt to look?” Alicia shrugs, leading the way around the building to where the moon is even less giving of its light.
I follow last, trusting myself to the job of keeping eyes out for things that go bump in the night. As I stare into the parking lot, the van once again leaps into my vision. The painted clowns seem to be grinning with hidden mischief. Their faces mimicking my sister’s comment, turning it into something more than what she had originally meant.
“Can’t hurt to look?” They ask me in my mind with their cocked heads and black painted eyes peering around the car parked around them.
“Can’t hurt to look?” They repeat and this time the secret that they are keeping flutters in my chest before clawing at my stomach.
Chapter 12
We did find a door on the side of the stone building that had been pried open. The pile of decaying trash left dark outlines on the cement from where it had stood for so long. The door wailed on dry hinges as we opened it, setting a mental rush of fears playing in our minds at what we may have alerted to our presence.
We have entered into one of the many theaters. Row after row of seats are resting empty, tilting upward with the floor. The air is stagnant, suffocating after being confined for so long. We fight against the coughing of our lungs caused by the disturbed dust that swirls with each step.
Our little train stops at the door that adjoins this room with what I imagine to be a long hallway with access to each theater and the main lobby. When no sounds stir, Alicia pushes the door open slowly, prepared to slam it closed with the first hint of any danger.
She and Ginjer exit into the hall first, with an eager Genny following them. With one last glance over my shoulder, I leave the theater behind me with the cobwebs blowing in the high corners from the wind entering with the door left opened. I wrestle with the idea of rushing over to close it, but if others truly are trying to find us, it may provide them with a hint as to where we are. I just pray it doesn’t provide anything else that may be looking for us with a hint.
Please Lord, don’t let my daughter see me die today.
The hall is a long cavern of shadows. There are no windows to provide slivers of light, and once the door closes behind me, the darkness becomes alive. My skin crawls with the sensations of spiders’ feet feeling the shadows watching me. The rush of adrenaline makes my scalp tingle with apprehension. Every snap or pop I imagine is something jumping from the unseen darkness to overtake me.
Please Lord, don’t let my daughter see me die today.
The stillness is so encompassing that I can hear the pounding of my heart. It fills my ears with its beating like a drum song of dread. The sharp beats are short and forceful like a march to an execution, telling those that gather near about the event that is about to happen. It’s pounding with such a force that I fear for the damage it might do to my ribs with its pulsing.
Please Lord, don’t let my daughter see me die today.
The hall appears to be growing, mimicking every movie I have ever seen. I wait for each door that we pass to sway open, showing me the dark secrets I fear they might contain. The once beloved actors’ eyes seem to follow our progress. The grime presenting illusions on their faces that contort with silent pleads for us to turn around. As I see what is lying in the next doorway, I wish we had listened.
Please Lord, don’t let my daughter see me die today.
The hall is laid with a vivid carpet, setting the stage for the feeling of attending red carpet premiers of the movies that once played here. In the darkness, the red is a muted burgundy with the dust hiding the true glory the carpet once held. Ahead of us, the carpet’s coloring is spotted even darker, like a stain besmirching its honor. It is dotted in an irregular pattern that weaves side to side, but always forward. Our eyes follow it, never glancing higher than the point of the trail right before us. We walk around it, fearing the stain will cling to us like a sin. Like a crack to a mother’s back, we tip-toe around the damnation in fear of stepping on it.
Please Lord, don’t let my daughter see me die today.
The once small, splattering of freckles now grows larger and more numerous. We can no longer avoid them without moving fully around portions of the hall. When one of us does step on one, the carpet is stiff and crunches under their feet. In a place of such silence, it sounds as loud as brittle bones breaking. The pattern dissolves into a dried pool like pattern of stained, dark black crimson that slides under the doorway beside us with one giant long smear. The three of us silently stare at the half-hidden message of what has happened here. Our nightmares are not lacking in numbers already and since the blood is old, dried from the sins committed in the past, we silently agree to let the secrets rest undisturbed. It feels almost heartless to let whatever the sleeping secret is to further decay alone in the dark, but what comfort can we offer the dead?
A flash of light, so sudden and shocking it startles us comes from the lobby ahead. Without thought, I clamp my hand over Genny’s mouth to suffocate a scream. Standing in the pool of dried blood flickers my mind to a sense of foreshadowing while watching the beam of light that comes and goes.
“What is the plan?” I whisper into her ear, making her startle with finally hearing a true sound.
“Get out. Don’t look back. Use the notebooks. Brain first, heart second.” Genny whispers the rehearsed words against my palm. We have repeated them like prayers at night.
“Can you two not plan for funerals just yet?” Ginjer hisses from a shadow across from us.
“Who has time for funerals?” Alicia slides along the wall, leaving a smudge against the posters where her body traveled.
Ginjer copies each step Alicia makes, keeping perfect pace with her. It strikes me how far the pampered socialite has come from the days of chilled wine on poolside patios to facing the dangers that lurk at every corner, forcing her fears at bay. I wonder what this world holds for my daughter and how it will form her.
No longer risking Genny going first, I pull her behind me, shielding her with my body from whatever is waiting in the lobby. The light has stopped with our whispering, marking it as manual and not as a result from something from nature. Something with intelligence is holding its breath as we creep forward. The only question is, why did it signal at all?
Please Lord, don’t let my daughter see me die today.
Alicia signals for Ginjer to drop out of sight, crouching to the floor at the corner of the hall. She pulls from a pocket of her jeans a small compact mirror and holding her breath she extends her hand out, tilting the mirror to see what may be hiding from us. Slowly she pans the room with as far as the mirror will allow her borrowed sight to see. She shakes her head, telling us she doesn’t see anything, but it doesn’t erase our fears.
When the beam comes rapidly again, instantly we shrink back against the wall, slapping it with our bodies in our haste to hide. Genny melts down the length of the wall and I follow her movement, becoming one of the many dark shadows of the hall.
“It’s Morse code.” Genny’s whisper turns our heads back to where we last saw the beam.
Alicia makes a sound of amusement watching the rapid pulses of the beam become a set of patterns.
.... . .-.. .-.. --- .... . .-.. .-.. --- .... . .-.. .-.. ---
The beam flashes against the wall of the lobby, pausing before repeating the pattern again and again. Genny’s face wrinkles with her concentration level, trying to remember the small lesson held in a long gone class.
“I’m not positive, but I think it says “hills”.” Genny is confused by what the word would be used for in a dark lobby.
“It says “hello”.” Ginjer doesn’t turn to us when she corrects the word. She stares out into the void, but feels our eyes just the same. “My husband was a pi
lot.” She does her normal shrug of non-importance about sharing the fact of her life.
“Now what?” I ask the women who have decided to become the leaders of our little band.
Alicia was never one for debates or long talks about choices made in life and their outcomes. She hasn’t changed. Without a hint to her plan, she stands and walks into the lobby as steady as if she owned the room and calls back what the code was flashing.
“Hello?” After whispering for so long, her call is as loud as a scream of suffering. “Terrence?”
If I had thought of the place as a tomb before, now as we strain to hear the smallest sound it feels like time has stopped, stealing the air and noise from the building. A shuffling comes from the center of the lobby where once perky teens would stand offering over-priced popcorn and syrup drinks and that last minute impulse sugar rush. Panic invades our minds, flashing pictures of what may possibly be hiding from us. Panic never pictures butterflies, kittens, or even loppy-eared puppies. Panic watches too many horror movies, also.
“Alicia?” The voice is as tentative as a kid meeting Santa for the first time wondering if he is real and if he is really here?
Genny is the first to recognize the voice and my arms are not strong enough to keep her in the hall any longer. “Kent?” She calls out into the darkness.
Large eyes stare out at us from between the boxes of forgotten candy in the glass cases. His lingering doubts proving that I am not the only parent that drills their children with the importance of the safety that is needed to survive. His goofy teen smile spreads across his face at the sight of Genny. It clenches my stomach more now than it would have if I were simply watching my daughter and her date months back. All that was at risk then were days of moping when they broke up. Now, there might be years of it when I forcefully pull them apart.
They hug over the glass case, forgetting the many eyes of adults that are on them before embarrassment makes them clumsy.
“Touching, but where are the rest?” Ginjer is not amused by the reunion. She has never shown a lot of patience for the boy. I just can’t place why. The woman that made a living from being married seems to have a low opinion for dating.
“Dad and Peyton went looking to make sure the place was secure. Just in case, we had to hold up here and wait stuff out. They went down the other hallway.” Kent points down another long hall that might as well have been a mouth to a cave with the darkness leering from it.
“Anyone else make it?” Alicia is counting the death toll in her head. A very real fact that one night might have reduced us to only a handful.
“Not yet,” He tells her as sadness holds hands with hope in his voice. “We didn’t even think y’all made it out, but here you are…” His voice trails off, leaving the meaning of his thoughts between us. He’s right. There may still be more.
My sister leans against the glass case, holding her head to hands pressing firmly together. Her dark brown hair enfolds her face, preventing me from seeing her expression. If she is praying or just exhausted, it is hard to tell, but I hope God is taking notice either way.
“How long have they been gone?” I watch as Kent tries to figure out the math. Watching him makes me wish the popcorn machines were still functioning. It is almost a small comedy in itself.
“They left way before I heard y’all. I haven’t heard anything since and I heard a lot of noise from your group. I mean, a lot, of noise.” He smirks, amused by his interpretation of our blundering entrance. The way Alicia and Ginjer are staring at him, I smirk too, but for a different reason. Once again, I wish for the popcorn machine.
“Why were you flashing the light, Genius?” Ginjer is not accustomed to having someone mock her. At least in her old circle, they had the grace to do it behind each others’ back.
“It’s what Dad told me to do if I think I know who is coming in. It’s a way to get their attention without making any noise to attract the other things.” His look of confusion over what he has done wrong is genuine. Just as genuine as the look Ginjer gives me about him.
Alicia sighs, the events have begun to take its toll on all of us. “Light attracts them too, Kent.” Her statement fills him again with confusion and she chooses to skip right over it. “We need to figure out where Peyton and Terrence are. If anyone else was coming, we would have seen them by now.”
It hurts her to have to admit the truth. So far, most of their former group is either missing or dead and the night is not over yet. The death toll can still rise.
Alicia slowly becomes the leader Kent knows her as and he responds to the authority of her voice. “Have you seen anything else in this place?”
“No. Just us when we got here. Then y’all and nothing else.” Kent glances around him, hoping nothing is stalking the shadows waiting to prove him wrong.
I keep my peace about the nagging sensation that claws at me. I have been looking at the lobby while they held their conversations with nothing to add to it myself. There are subtle hints all over the room that something happened here that whisper to me shy warnings. The fake potted trees by the entrance are leaning, pushed from a panicked exit. They now rest, supported by the same colored velvet ropes as the carpet. Once used to usher the flow of traffic into the place, the ropes no longer line up but are askew; a disjointed path. It gives the appearance of a traffic rush either in or out of the room from the last real crowd that was here.
Cups and paper buckets advertising the latest block-buster are strewn across the floor in strategic places from the opposite concession stand. They almost appear to have been thrown at something, or someone, that stood across from them. Looters would not have gone through the efforts to land them in the same general area. The trash would be everywhere or left alone.
On the walls, there are random streaks of darker grime with jagged edges of different lengths. Oval stains with long paths pulled from them spot the lobby floor that holds the décor of a once well-maintained place. Stains such as these are not something the owner would have let slip by his or her attention. So if they weren’t there when the theater was in operation, then when, and by what were they made?
Where are the owners from the cars left sitting in the lot? The caked dirt tells the passage of time they have sat here alone and forgotten. The clowns peer at me through the other cars’ windows. Their colors don’t seem as bright and cheery as they were when I first saw them, but their smiles are still just as unsettling. Where are the children?
“I think I will stay here with the kids,” I offer, still staring at the clowns and fearing what their presence may mean.
Alicia and Ginjer follow my stare and both inhale with the discovery.
“You don’t think...” Ginjer stalls, letting her silence fill in for the words no one wants to assume.
“If you were running away from something with that many kids, wouldn’t you get back in the van if it were possible?” Alicia is just the bearer of evil truths tonight.
Genny whispers, “So, they are still here?” holding tighter to Kent’s hand.
We each look to the other, feeling discomfort from the thoughts we are having. Some thoughts are just too horrible to endure. Forgive me Father for my sins, but I pray that if they are still here, we find them dead; truly dead. My thoughts betray my bravery.
I have had to kill my fair share of things to survive, but I don’t know if I could bring myself to do the same to children no matter what they might be now.
Genny looks to me for guidance in this new storm, but I have no idea where port is any longer. I just know that it feels like we are sinking more each day into an abyss from which I don’t see an escape. The current grows stronger with each new struggle, pulling us further from the shore of who we once were and I don’t know if we are strong enough to ever swim back.
“Can’t hurt to look?” Was the question that was asked of us when we arrived. Right now, it could hurt a l
ot. It could even destroy us.
Chapter 13
The three of us sit behind the glass cage, waiting for the return of the rest of our new group. Every noise steals our breath, making our hearts race and our bodies freeze with dread. The buzzing of the occasional fly even sets our hearts to race. The tension wears thin the slim hopes of conversation and soon we sit in silence laced with facial expressions of doubt.
“How long do you think they have been gone?” Kent’s emotions are a mask on his face. He wears every thought and every feeling, making him an easy person to understand and to tease.
“Don’t know. Why don’t you check your phone for the time?” Genny’s off-flavored comment arches my eyebrow at her. The saint isn’t normally snippy. “Sorry, just tired. I’m sure it feels a lot longer than it actually has been.” She smiles at Kent, expressing her remorse for the comment. He smiles, just that easy to appease. The river doesn’t run deep with this boy.
Genny rattles the left over gummy bears in her looted box of candy. “What do you think the expiration date is on these things?”
“Wouldn’t it have been smart to check that before you started eating them?” Kent stares at her, watching her eyebrows knit as her mind is searching for a response. “Sorry, just tired. I’m sure they taste like they have sat there a lot longer than they actually have been.” He smiles at her, the pride he is feeling over his wit lighting his eyes. The blow Genny lands on his arm dims it some.
“You’re going to let him talk to me like that?” She tries to mock a pout with pursed lips and sad eyes, but fails. Her giggles are a give away to her mischief.
I shrug and tell her, “He has a point,” finishing off the rest of my looted boxed chocolate. “Good thing I didn’t encourage you to steal milk. Who knows how that might have ended.”
The Risen: Remnants Page 10