Chapter 9 Chapter 9

He lifted his head.

A woman was coming down the hallway toward them. She looked young, probably mid-twenties. Short black hair. A scar on her face starting at the eyebrow and going all the way down to her jaw. She was in a janitor's uniform. Dark blue pants, light blue shirt and a name tag on the chest.

DENISE.

He'd never seen her before. But something about the way she moved felt familiar. Shoulders pulled in a little. Head slightly forward.

She stopped a few feet away and looked at Leo on the floor. She looked at Maya against the wall. Her eyes were gray and tired. Not unkind. Just used up.

"You're new," she said. No particular feeling in it.

Leo pushed himself up to sit. His knee was bleeding through his jeans. He put his hand over it.

"Yeah," he said. "Pretty new."

Denise looked at the white door behind them.

"You came through the hanging room," she said.

"How do you know?"

"I can smell it on you. Everyone who goes through that room comes out smelling the same way. Death and old rope sticks around for a while."

Maya opened her eyes and looked at Denise.

"Is there a way out of here?" Maya asked.

Denise pointed down the hallway behind her. "There's an escalator down that way. It goes down."

"The mall doesn't have a basement," Leo said.

Denise looked at him. The scar pulled a little when she frowned. It made her look older than she probably was.

"The mall has whatever it feels like having," she said. "You'll get used to that."

She turned and started heading back the way she'd come.

Leo got himself to his feet. His knee nearly went out from under him. He grabbed the wall.

"Wait," he said.

Denise stopped and turned.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Escalator. Same as you."

"Why?"

She looked at him for a second with straight-line eyebrows, neutral wide-open eyes, and a perfectly straight, horizontal mouth. "Because I've been sitting in this hallway for three days staring at the same walls and I'm completely done with it."

Leo glanced at Maya. She shrugged with the arm that wasn't hurt.

"You can come with us," Leo said.

Denise looked at his knee bleeding through his jeans and looked at Maya's arm. She looked at the door they'd just come through with whatever was behind it.

"You'll slow me down," she said.

"Then go on ahead. Leo quickly said.”

Her fingers went to the scar on her cheek. Just touched it lightly. She didn't seem to notice herself doing it. Just a habit she'd stopped being aware of.

She stood there and looked at them for a few second. She took a deep breath and said, "Alright. No. Let's just go together since it's the same direction. "If I go ahead I'm on my own. On your own.. is worse than going slow."

She came back over to them and crouched in front of Leo. She looked at his knee without asking first.

"Can you walk on it?" she asked.

"I can limp."

"Good enough."

She stood and turned to Maya. She looked at her arm properly. The glass cuts, the dried blood around them, the angle Maya was holding it at to keep the pressure on.

"Show me," she said.

Maya held her arm out. Denise turned it slightly to see the full length of it.

"Needs wrapping," she said.

"I don't have anything to wrap it with."

Denise reached into her pocket and pulled out a strip of clean white cloth torn from something bigger.

"Where did you get that?" Maya asked.

"Some rooms have beds. I take what I can find and keep it on me. I know there would be casualties in dead end games like this. It could even be me."

She wrapped Maya's arm tight and fast. Her hands knew exactly what they were doing.

Maya pulled a sharp breath in through her teeth. "That hurts."

"Too loose and it won't do anything. Hold still."

Maya held still.

Denise tied it off and stepped back.

Maya looked at her arm. The bleeding was already easing off.

She let out a small smile. "Thanks," she said.

Denise didn't say anything back to that. She looked at Leo's knee instead.

"You're next," she said.

"It's fine. I can move."

"You can barely stand up straight."

She crouched down and pulled his pant leg up without asking. The skin was torn open with dirt and concrete dust mixed into the blood.

"That'll get infected if you don't clean it," she said.

"We need to keep moving."

Denise looked up at him. Her green eyes didn't shift at all. Not even a flicker of known emotions.

"Infected means you can't walk. Can't walk means I have to carry you. And I'm not going to carry you."

She pulled a small plastic bottle from her other pocket. Half full of water. She poured it over the knee.

Leo hissed through his teeth.

"Still," she said.

She wiped the dirt out with the corner of her sleeve. Then she tore another strip from the same cloth and wrapped it around his knee. Firm and clean.

She stood back up.

"Alright everyone. Now you won't bleed on the carpet," she said. "Can we actually go now?"

Leo nodded.

The three of them went down the hallway together. Leo with his limp. Maya with her arm held close. Denise up front.

They walk past 122. Past 123. Past 124.

Then at the end of the hallway they saw it.

The escalator.

It had metal steps. Black rubber handrails. The completely normal kind you'd walk past without a second thought in any shopping center anywhere. Except this one was going down into solid darkness and the mall was not supposed to have anything underground.

Leo looked at Maya. "There's no basement here."

"I know."

"So what's down there?"

She shook her head.

Denise answered without turning around. "The next part. That's all I actually know."

"Have you been down there before?" Leo asked.

She stopped and turned back. The scar caught the light from above.

"No," she said. "I kept finding reasons not to. But the hallways keep shrinking. It's like I am just moving in circles. Parts keep closing off. There's nothing left up here apart from the hallways and those rooms. I need to get to the Anchor room."

Leo looked back the way they'd come.

The mannequin would be at the far end of the hallway by now. The woman in the blue dress. The delivery driver's face stretched over the plastic and froze there. Suddenly, the mannequin with the delivery guy's face appeared behind the hanging room outlet door. She was just staring at them.

She wasn't walking. Just standing with one hand flat on the wall, watching them.

Leo looked back and was kept at her.

He knew he was doing it. He couldn't make himself stop. His eyes just stayed on that face.

"Leo," Maya said quietly. "Don't."

"I can't look away."

"Yes you can. Look at me instead."

His neck wouldn't do it. His whole body had locked up facing that direction.

The mannequin took a step. Then another. Her feet made absolutely no sound on the carpet.

Denise moved in front of him. She put her hand on his jaw and turned his face toward her. Her grip was steady and firm.

"Look at me," she said. "Right here."

Leo looked at Denise. Her green eyes. The long scar. Her face was now blocking everything else.

"I've seen people do exactly what you're doing right now," she said. "Every single one of them ended up part of the mall. Their face on the plastic. Their smiles. Forever. If you don't want to be part of this mall, don't look at that particular mannequin. "

His breathing was all wrong. Too fast and too shallow. "What do you mean by their face on the plastic?"

"I mean exactly that. Don't let it have yours."

She let go of his jaw.

Maya came up close on the other side of him.

"First rule of staying alive in here," she said. "Don't look back at a mannequin you saw absorb a human being. It could still your will and take you too. It's already doing that."

"That's the first rule?"

"That's the one."

Denise took his arm and pulled him toward the escalator.

Leo stepped on. The metal moved under his feet. He grabbed the handrail and his bloody hand left a red smear on the black rubber.

Maya stepped on behind him.

Denise stepped on last.

It carried them down.

Leo looked back. Just once. He couldn't stop that either.

The mannequin was standing right at the top of the escalator. At the very edge of the first step. She hadn't gotten on. She was just there.

Leo turned back around and kept his eyes forward.

He didn't look back again after that.

The dark came up around them slowly. The hallway above got smaller and further away. The carpet and the numbered doors and the pale walls all shrank down to a small rectangle of light above them and then smaller still.

Denise stood beside him with her eyes fixed on whatever was waiting below. She didn't look scared exactly. She looked like someone who had already made a decision and was just waiting to see if it was the right one.

Maya held her wrapped arm against her chest.

None of them said anything.

The escalator kept going down.

Above them the mannequin stood at the

top and watched until they were gone.

Leo thought to himself. “I hope we enter the anchor room after this. I have to be quick. I can't spend three years here just like Maya." He looked at Maya and Denise. Then he looked back down.