a car, glass smashed in and shreds of candy wrappers all over the ground. While the guys were stomping around above him, getting a tarp set up and shoveling snow away from the ceiling wound, John wandered around and noticed a section of hallway that had been blocked off with the same black- and- yellow DANGER tape he saw earlier.
For the second time that day John ducked casually across some DO NOT DUCK CASUALLY ACROSS THIS TAPE tape and saw another hole, one in the wall, again like something blew through it. Something the size of a car or a giant crab with a monkey strapped to the back of it. And at the edges of the hole, there were scars in the drywall like scratches. Claw marks. John leaned in and peered through the jagged tear in the wall.
He saw a room that was clearly not on the floor plan. It was small, maybe the size of an average living room, and had absolutely no features. Four bare walls. Then John turned away from it and, as he did, saw a perfectly round hole in the floor as wide as the room, going down. Way down. John said it was the kind of chasm thing they have in all of the space stations in the
When he looked directly at it, it was not there. A tiled floor. Just like at the mall. So the crab beast escaped from here, but the crew of guys sent to take it down returned to the abandoned mall. Everything came back to the mall, didn’t it? John thought about Robert Marley, the soy sauce Patient Zero who had squatted in the food court, and about Danny Wexler ranting about invisible doors. John decided this whole thing required a shitload of further investigation.
I SPLASHED WATER over my face and studied my own bloodshot eyes in the mirror. Glad to be back home, back in my bathroom. I pulled off my shirt and felt something catch back there. Something itchy. I turned to the side and looked into the mirror at my back. My breath caught in my throat.
There was something elongated, maybe a half inch long, protruding from my shoulder blade. Thin, like a needle. Pink.
A knock at the door.
I leaned in close to the mirror, examining the growth and reaching back with my fingers, afraid to touch it. A shiver of revulsion twitched through my body.
A muffled voice, at the door.
“David? Hey.”
John’s voice. What was he doing here?
“Hold on,” I said, pulling up a hand mirror from the drawer in the vanity. “I’ll be out in a minute. I’m, uh, shaving my balls.”
I held up the mirror, angled it to see the thing on my back, and almost screamed. The little protrusion on my back was a stalk that ended in an eye. A tiny black slug’s eye that twitched as the stalk began curling this way and that, as if getting a look around—
I JOLTED AWAKE.
I was cold. A searing pain in my neck. I smelled the sweet but artificial chemical smell of strawberry shampoo flavoring. Come to think of it, strawberries don’t have a smell. They just smell wet like grass.
I felt something like a steel cable around my chest. I couldn’t move, a weight holding me flat. I pulled my eyelids apart, saw a set of eyes peering down at me through frosted glass. I blinked, looked down and saw copper red. A head full of red hair on my chest. An arm was around me, squeezing, a fist full of my shirt, twisting it.
I was lying with my head against the door of the Bronco, window roller pressing into my back, feet splayed across the bench seats, boot resting against the door across from me. Amy, however, looked rather comfortable since she had me to use as a self- warming mattress. She was curled up on top of me, breathing erratically, her eyelids twitching. Nightmares.
I craned my head and saw the blurred shape of John’s face through a hole he had wiped clean of snow. He waved at me, standing there in full work gear. My watch:
8:07 A.M.
My truck had died at some point because the engine and the heat were off. Amy and I untangled ourselves and I pushed out of the door, standing up in the refrigerated air, joints feeling lined with thick steel wire. I glanced back into the truck and saw Molly fast asleep in the back, paws twitching as she dreamed of clawing somebody to death, probably me.
John said, “It’s your first date and you make the girl camp out at the doughnut shop with you? You know they don’t open for three months, right?”
There were five guys standing around aside from John, though Tyler was the only one I knew. They had come in two tall delivery trucks with ANDERSON ROOF AND GUTTER painted on the side. I glanced at the strangers and said to John, “We, uh, had to leave the house. Shouldn’t you all be working?”
John said, “We had to get a load of shit from Home Depot. We’ve been fucking around for two hours. Passed by here and saw your truck. What happened at the house?”
Amy came around then, arms wrapped around that huge parka of hers and immediately pressed herself up against me.
“Hi, John. Ugh, I’m freezing.”
She reached back and pulled my arm around her, saying, “Warm me up.”
“Uh, I’ve got to have a word with John.” I grabbed her by the shoulders and sort of sat her aside, then motioned to John to follow me across the parking lot. We walked around the edge of the lot, me squinting as my eyes adjusted to the light. John said, “You look like shit.”
“I’m burning out, John. Seriously. I don’t know if I’m up for this. I feel stretched out, like too little butter scraped over too much waffle. And then it all falls down into one of the waffle holes and there’s none left for the rest of the waffle and you sort of have to tilt it to make it run out.”
“They got some serious weird shit going on at the Drain Rooter plant, Dave. Mall, too.”
This was when John told me the somewhat dubious story of his experience at the semi crash site and everything that followed. I saw his story and raised him our experience with the shadow people.
I looked back at my truck, where Amy was sitting sideways in the open door and fishing through her purse. She pulled out a brown pill bottle.
“Well there you go, Dave. It looks like the Drain Rooter plant is making more than drain cleaner. In fact, you could say they’re manufacturing
“No, we couldn’t say that.”
“I wanna see where that hole goes. I think that monster came out of it.”
“We can’t get into the place, John. There’s three shifts at the plant, working around the clock.”
We completed our circuit of the lot and arrived back where Tyler and one other guy leaned against the truck smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee from steaming insulated mugs.
John said, “There may be another way.”
John told me about the mall, and the ghost door that was there but wasn’t there. “Wanna know what I think? I think all those secret doors lead to the same place. Hell, there may be doors like that all over town. Like Wexler said.”
I nodded resignedly, sighed and said, “Well, we’re not waiting for them to just come get Amy again.”
“Absofuckinglutely. We’ll meet at noon.”
“What happens at noon?”
“We’re done with the roof job. They just want us to brace it for now and cover it. Keep the snow out.”
“You’re still going to fix their roof?”
“They paid Steve in advance. Plus, I really need the money.”
I noticed ghosts of exhaust rising from my Bronco; Amy had turned it on to get warm.
