The Mall (30 page)

“You acted inconsiderately and I guess I… wanted to hurt you.”

Simon studied her.
 
“You couldn’t possibly hurt me.”

Drawing her hand back, Lara turned aside to look over at her daughter.
 
Cora sat up in bed, wide-awake and arms folded.
 
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she told him.
 
“I just wasn’t, I suppose.
 
Guess emotion took hold of me.”

Simon continued to stare at her in confusion.
 
“I’m trying to understand this violent reaction.
 
It gets us no closer to your son.”

“No, it’s not logical and I’m sorry,” she murmured under her breath in exasperation.

“There’s no need to apologize.”

“I want to, now shut up about it, already!”

Simon took a few steps toward Cora’s bed then turned back to Lara.
 
“Now you know what I know.
 
We’re not alone in the Mall.
 
Others remained behind like you or were trapped here.
 
This Boogeyman, she speaks of…”

I smell it.
 
It smells like copper.

“…why does it strike such fear in you?”

“Me? You’re confusing me with Cora.”

“Moments ago you accused me of lying,” Simon snapped. “You’re lying to me now.”

Lara sighed.
 
“It’s a child’s fear.
 
Something irrational.
 
Something… imaginary.”

“Yet, your daughter is clearly distressed.”

“She’s got a vivid imagination.”

“Her perception extends beyond yours or mine. That much is clear.”

Shaking her head to clear her mind of the clustering webs of anxiety collecting there, Lara said, “Listen, we can stand here speculating or we can go take a look with our own eyes.
 
Do you have Reggie’s last coordinates?”

“No, Reggie was destroyed before the coordinates could be transmitted.
 
The only reason I know a beacon was sent at all is because of the low frequency blast that Reggie sent just before he expired and that could have come from any direction north of us.”

“Where does that leave us then,” Lara sighed.

Simon turned to look over at Cora.
 
“To be quite frank, Lara, the best chance you have right now of finding your son is through your daughter’s heightened emotional perception.”

Lara took a deep breath and nodded.
 
“Fine.”

At the word, Cora’s short legs popped up and out of the blankets and she pulled herself by her legs across the length of the mattress to the far edge.
 
“Are we going now?”

Lara stepped over and took her by the hand, helping her down to the floor.
 
She stepped up to Simon and stood blinking before him.
 
“Well?”

“I’m afraid that I cannot lead you directly into a potentially dangerous situation.”

She stared in confusion, her eyes slowly hardening.
 
“But my son is in potential danger, right?”

“At this point, I can only speculate.”

“Let’s just say for the sake of argument that he is,” Lara replied, forcing her voice to remain steady.
 
“Who’ll keep
him
safe?”

Locking eyes with Lara, Simon slowly shook his head.

“Are you going to try and stop me from going after my son, then?”

Simon again shook his head.

“Fine then,” Lara said, seizing Cora by the hand and pulling her toward the escalator.
 
“We’re going then.”

Owen ran deeper into the second floor of the department store, feeling the cold wetness of his own urine-soaked underwear pressing up against his shriveled genitals and knowing with mounting desperation that he was running farther and farther from the exit and escape.
 
But what else could he do?

The Boogeyman of his nightmares had found him again!

He could hear its footsteps on the tiles of the aisle behind him, its patient evenly-paced footsteps displaying the confidence of one who knew the conclusion was inevitable.
 
After all these years of waiting for the right opportunity, now it would get him.

Owen could see the rear wall of the store coming up and he darted into the home décor section to his right running in a stooped position, his head lowered and retracted against his shoulders like a turtle, legs pumping as fast as they could manage.

His instinct was to take another right and head back toward the entrance.
 
Instead he stopped and squatted for the two seconds it took for him to yank off both of the worn tennis shoes and dashed to his left back toward northeast corner of the store, tossing one of the shoes as hard as he could toward the right.

The shoe struck the corner of a display in the distance and gave a hallow clang.

Owen stopped and held steady beneath the entrance of a separate department.
 
The sign above read “Family Photo Center.”
 
Squatting at the edge of the entrance, he looked along the rear wall and could see a darkened entrance leading to a hallway.
 
Just above it read a “Restrooms?” sign.
 
His muscles contracted in preparation to move in that direction, then hesitated.
 
Cocking his ear, he strained to hear the impending approach of the other.
 

Steady, unyielding, the footsteps grew louder.

“I know what you are.
 
You and your mother and sister and all the rest of you,” he could hear the distant voice calling from the direction he had thrown the shoe.
 
“You may be able to fool the others but I know the truth now!”

The strength left Owen’s legs and he fell forward onto the palms of his hands.

The man was insane.
 
He knew this as sure as he knew he had made the biggest mistake of his life by separating from his mother and sister.

And yet, somehow, he somehow knew this distinct flavor of the voice of madness.
 
He recognized it.
 
Almost as if he had had personal experience with it.

Owen glanced over his shoulder into the darkness of the photo center.
 
There were doors back there, perhaps leading to offices or photo studios or stairways downstairs.
 
But he couldn’t bring himself to move, hands and feet planted on the floor like an animal, one shoe tucked beneath an arm, the smell of urine wafting up from around him, he felt miserable and pathetic.

It’s going to get me now, he knew.
 
Finally, after all this time.

“I know where to find them now, you know.
 
In the Sears with Simon Peter, right,” it said in a casual yet imposing voice.
 
“I’m going to give you to the count of three to come out,
then
I’m going to go get them first.
 
Then I’ll be back for you, Owen.”

Owen felt the blood drain from his face.
 
How did he know his name?

Because He’s the Boogeyman.
 
That’s why!

Reggie called him by name, didn’t he?
 
Surely that must be how he knows.

As Owen watched his shadow drifting up the aisle--darkness slowly crawling along the small area lit by the emergency lighting--he cringed back like a beaten animal and found the check-out stand, the first dark area available, and crawled behind it.

“One.”

The time to run had passed.
 
The only chance he had now was to wait for it to find his hiding place.
 
It wouldn’t be long now.

“Two.”

Owen set the other shoe aside and prepared to fight--to kick and scream and claw just like they had taught them to do in school if they were ever grabbed by a stranger.

“I’m over here,” a tiny disembodied voice called out from the depths of the second floor.

At first Owen thought he was hearing things,
then
the shoes of his pursuer squeaked to a stop and started erratically, uncertainly in the other direction.
 
The muscles in Owen’s long-tensed arms loosened and he nearly collapsed forward onto his face.

Now, he forced his legs forward up the aisle toward the hallway along the rear wall that he had seen.
 
Stealthily, he approached the center aisle and peeked out to his left.
 
The six foot figure was indeed retreating toward the escalator again.
 
Back toward the dead Bot.

Owen waited until he had disappeared then rushed across the tiled floor, sliding in his socked feet into the pitch black hallway.
 
He pressed himself down against one wall and glanced back around the corner.

The figure was gone.

He spared a single forlorn look back toward the place where he’d thrown his shoe, then resignedly turned his attention back to the hallway.

A thin strip of light glowed beneath a door twenty feet ahead on his right.
 
His feet made muffled slaps as he found the door and tried the handle.
 
He pulled and it stayed stubbornly shut.

He turned and looked back down the aisle.
 
Maybe he had time to run back down the escalator.
 
Maybe it wouldn’t see him.

Or maybe it was just a sick mind game to lure him out of hiding.
 
Maybe it would simply be waiting for him at the bottom of the steps with a mouthful of needle teeth and razor claws.

That was when he heard the scream.
 
It was a sound of pain, simple and un-distilled.

In his fear, his hand reached out and grabbed the handle one more time, this time his finger instinctively finding the latch-release button beneath and pressing.

There was a satisfying sound of metal retracting from metal and the door swung open.

Owen gasped and looked behind.
 
The dim blue beam of morning sun filtered down from above and he threw himself toward it like a suffocating man at an open window.

At the third floor, he gazed up to see a sealed sky light casting a spot of morning light down into the stairwell like a taunting vision of an oasis.

But maybe there would be a fire escape on the top level.

He rushed up the last flight and pulled open the final door.

When he had heard the distant voice, every muscle in Albert’s body seemed to tense at once and he felt a substantial weight settle back into his bones.
 
Teetering unsteadily on his feet, he quickly realized the Voice had relinquished control.
 
He stumbled forward a few steps, like a sleep-drunk man just stepping out of bed, and began to trot slowly forward, speed steadily increasing as his strength and confidence returned.

When he reached the escalator, Albert bounded down the frozen steps two at a time, conscious with every footfall of a dull ringing pain in his mouth and hands.
 
He knew without a doubt that the distant voice he had just heard was the other skater punk, the one who had spray-painted that filth about him on the tram.
 
In his excitement to get down to him, he never saw the first crossbow bolt slice the air about two feet over his head.