“Hello? Is someone there?”
The light in Oliver’s hand flickered and dimmed, as if the power that compelled it to amplify vanished at the same time the escalator did. It didn’t go away completely, though, sticking to something close to the power output of a regular flashlight.
The phone continued to ring. Nobody was around to answer it, but the idea that somebody might be calling gave him hope that an entire city of people hadn’t literally ceased to exist.
“Hello?” he repeated. “Wilson? Minerva? Anyone here?”
There was a rustling, to his right. It made him jump, and once he was done jumping, it made him seek out the source of the noise.
The floor layout was racetrack-oval, with paths leading off in both directions. He shoved Ben’s treasure map in his pocket and headed around the short bottom part of the oval. Around the corner—there was a wall bisecting the center of the oval—was a mannequin-heavy clothing section with a plastic tarp drooping from the roof. It looked like a tumor that was breathing.
This is ridiculous, he thought.
He’d somehow ended up stuck in the middle of Mad Maggie’s Shop-O-Rama, which was insane because he made up Mad Maggie’s. He might well have made it up based on a dimly remembered understanding of the very floor layout he was now stuck in the middle of, except that the actual store—it was called Daniel’s—wasn’t this big.
The possibility existed, then, that the store was now mimicking the story, and not the other way around.
The phone was still ringing. Oliver directed his flashlight down the main drag, past the annoyingly accurate running mannequin display in the sporting good section, to electronics. The same cardboard cutout as the one in the subway greeted him with a cardboard wave and a cardboard smile. He headed her way.
On the route, he got to take in the creepy shadows cast through the joint efforts of the emergency lighting, the display endcaps, and the wide assortment of humanoid dummies in active wear, formal wear, sleepwear, and other miscellaneous wears, ready to jump up and move around. Perhaps they could help him storm the doors, break out, and fight an alien invasion.
Stranger things have happened, he thought, although that was probably untrue.
What he didn’t feel was fear or dread, or any kind of anticipatory concern that something in this store was about to jump up and harm him. He thought maybe that was the problem with the actual story: there was no real danger, just the things the main character—Orrin—convinced himself of. The fear was all in his head.
It probably would have made a better movie, he decided. He’d never written a screenplay, but maybe that would’ve been the way to go.
Oliver reached the electronics section, stepped past the friendly, smiling cardboard spokeswoman and found the recycle bin. It wasn’t a surprise that the ringing was coming from inside there, because of course it had to be.
There was still a lock on the lid. He reached down to his belt, at his right hip, and was surprised to discover a ring of keys there, which hadn’t been there before. The smart thing to do would be to take the keys to the front door, unlock it, and get the hell out of this place. Then he could either go find Minnie and Wilson, or go the hell home and sleep off whatever this was. He didn’t think he could treat the entire city losing touch with reality the same way he did a drinking bender, but he was willing to give it a try.
But, he didn’t do that, because the phone was still ringing and he was going to have to answer it. And when it was obvious he didn’t have the right key—the lock had a tiny keyhole and he didn’t have one small enough to fit it—he headed over to gardening supplies, found a mallet, and swung it at the top of the container until it caved in. This took a few minutes, but it was tremendously satisfying, so he was a little disappointed when the lid finally caved. He tipped the container over, scattering outdated handhelds all over the floor.
The ringing came from a flip phone that required an antenna to be extended before functioning properly. Oliver was pretty sure he saw one of these in an old TV show once, but it was the first time he’d held one.
He flipped it open.
“Hello?” he said.
Static. He remembered the night he got a call like this in his apartment, and just the thought of that night made him reconsider how scary or not-scary the moment he was now experiencing was.
“Hello?” he repeated.
“O…You have to…Wilson…”
“Minnie, is that you?”
“You have to come back.”
“I can’t, the… the stairs vanished, I don’t know how to get out of… where are you? Where did you guys go?”
Static. He’d have thought she’d hung up except for the interference.
“Join…”
“What? Minnie, what?”
“Join us.”
Then the line went dead.
“Well of course it did,” he said, putting down the phone.
All of the phones were supposed to start ringing next, because that was how things went in the story. It was actually where he left off, because once that started happening he didn’t know where to go. He figured if he ever picked up the story again, he’d edit out the whole all the phones were ringing thing, because that was creepy, but not all that scary.
Also, what’s a guy supposed to do with a hundred ringing phones? Answer them one at a time? Orrin would have probably been so freaked out, he turned and headed for the door, and since—unlike Oliver—Orrin could leave when he wanted, he’d probably do that.
So for the story to work, Oliver would have to create a situation in which Orrin was trapped inside. Up the stakes, make it so the danger is real, that sort of thing.
How would I keep him inside? he wondered. The key could stop working, or he could lose the key ring, or…
“Or the exit could vanish,” he said. “Crap.”
For just a half-second, he actually was afraid. Not because he appeared to be caught in his own unfinished horror story, but because he was stuck in the middle of a rewrite of that story.
But that didn’t make sense. Of course the regular exit was still there, because it had to be. He never introduced anything into the story that would allow for the front doors to just disappear; if he had, it would have blown up the whole thing. The reader would drop out. Any reality-altering event like that had to be telegraphed by something smaller first, and he hadn’t done that in any part of the story.
Ergo, the front door was still there. It was just the escalator that was missing, but it was missing because Mad Maggie’s had no basement. Weirdly, this made sense to him.
He was stuck in a rewrite of some kind, though, because the phones on the floor weren’t ringing. As long as that was true, he had no impetus to flee the premises, and yet the story had to head in that direction because there was nowhere else to go.
The scary part was that he didn’t know what was supposed to happen next if those phones didn’t start ringing.
Then somebody touched his shoulder.
His response was something like the reaction to a live electrical wire: he yelped, jumped away from the contact, and turned all at the same time, which resulted in his feet getting tangled up on themselves and him falling over onto the scattered outdated phones on the floor.
There was nobody behind him, aside from the cardboard spokeswoman, and she didn’t look like she’d moved.
“Of course she didn’t move,” he said, to the nearest mannequin, “she’s cardboard.”
The mannequin appeared to agree, albeit silently.
He scampered to his feet, clumsily.
“So who did that?” he asked, trying for a confidently loud, low voice but landing on whiny, high-pitched, and scared. “Come on, I just want to know how to solve this.”
There wasn’t any response, but the tarp at the other end of the room did make a little noise. It wasn’t helpful.
“That’s the deal, right? You guys are ghosts or whatever, and you need me to do something or fix something or… join you, whatever the hell that means. Is there a curse? What’s the issue?”
Nothing. He turned to the mannequin again, the one opposite the electronics. She was a part of the business casual section of the store, and wore a smart pantsuit with a frilly blouse.
“Well, I tried,” he said.
The mannequin nodded.
He tried to convince himself that hadn’t actually happened, but he was doing that convincing while also fleeing, as this seemed prudent.
The run to the doors was more exhausting than anything he’d done earlier in the evening, and that was crazy because not at all long ago he ran over two kilometers in battle gear, in the rain. Yet he was winded before he even reached sporting goods. He had an awful idea that the reason for it was that the character of Orrin the night watchman was in worse physical shape than the character of Opie, the soldier.
I’m just tired, that’s all.
None of the mannequins jumped in his way en route, which was nice. This was probably because the one Oliver saw move didn’t move at all, and it was a trick of the lighting, and he was just allowing his own imagination to spook him. Ironically, in this instance, just because it was all in his imagination didn’t mean the mannequin hadn’t moved. Both of those things could be 100% true.
He got past the tarp and the water-damaged floor and turned the corner. From there it was a straight line to the exit. Already, he had the keys in his hands.
Someone was standing at the door.
He stopped running, of course. That was the proper reaction when confronted with a ghost.
It was a woman. She was barely visible in the shadows that seemed in some ways to partially blur her existence, but he could see enough to conclude that it was a her. She looked a little like Minerva, too. He didn’t know what to make of that.
At first he thought she was standing on the other side of the front doors, because she was out of focus. She wasn’t; she was on the inside, but she also wasn’t anywhere. When he directed the flashlight at her, the light found nothing physical to illuminate. It passed right through.
“I guess this is how the story keeps me from leaving. Cool, cool.”
She raised an unfocused arm and pointed at him, which was a little unsettling in a lot of ways.
“What? Look, just tell me what you want so I can fix this or whatever.”
Join us.
She didn’t say this, precisely. The words appeared in his head, but didn’t pass through his ears first.
“No thanks?”
Join us.
“I don’t know how you’re doing that, but no. I wouldn’t even know how.”
It was an annoying impasse. He was kind of spooked by the appearance of a ghost, just like he was unnerved by a nodding mannequin, but these things had only temporary shock value. Connecting jump-scares to real-world threats was difficult; no wonder he never finished the story.
Then he thought maybe that was the problem.
“You want me to finish, don’t you? Well I don’t know the ending. I had a couple of ideas, but I never really decided which one to go with. And look, you’re just a light show and a voice in my head. It’s spooky, but a couple of hours ago a flying alien tried to eat me. I don’t think you’re going to top that.”
Join us.
“I went with ghosts because ghosts scare the crap out of me, but now that I’m here… I mean, maybe it would be different if I were responsible for your death. That’s how these things are supposed to go, right? But I’m not. Or rather, Orrin wasn’t. He was just a night watchman.”
We will help you.
“What? What does that mean?”
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and directed the light that way. It fell on a dais that until a second ago had a male mannequin modeling flannel pajamas. The stand was empty.
He had exactly enough time to register this fact when a white plastic arm slammed down on his wrist and knocked the light out of his grip. It skittered across the floor, while the owner of that plastic arm grabbed Oliver by the collar.
Ollie shouted and elbowed the dummy in the gut. This didn’t have the kind of effect one would expect it to have if this were a person and not a facsimile of one, but since the point he struck was a swivel spot—where the torso was attached to the waist—it was still effective. The mannequin managed to register surprise on its featureless face as it lost its balance and fell over backwards.
But then the other ones started to move, and the enormity of the problem Oliver was facing came into focus: he was surrounded by an army. It was a fashionably dressed plastic army, moving slowly and missing a lot of joints, but he had nowhere to run and they had no reason to stop.
He didn’t know what they were planning to do to him once they caught him—join us was hardly specific—but it didn’t seem like a good idea to wait and find out what they improvised.
I need a weapon, he thought.
But Mad Maggie’s didn’t carry weapons, because he hadn’t written them into the inventory. He would have loved to still have the pulse cannon, but that was long gone, and the only other one he knew about was sealed up in the now non-existent basement with Minnie. Unless Minnie was now the ghost near the door, because why not? Either way, her cannon was not going to be of any help. That was too bad; Oliver was pretty sure the mannequins wouldn’t fare well against one of those.
He started running down the near side of the oval, far from the clothing half of the store and hopefully near some things that could be used to defend himself from whatever the plastic army had in mind. The mallet he used to crack open the recycling bin might have come in handy if he’d held onto it, but it wasn’t like it was the only one in the store. Hardware was just past home goods…
Then he remembered the map in his pocket.
He stepped off the main concourse into an aisle that featured shag rug tops for toilet seats and decorative plungers. The light wasn’t great there, but it was out of the way. Given a little time for his eyes to adjust, he was able to work out the details on Ben’s hand-drawn map and line them up with where he stood. The smaller X was just about where the cell phone display was. The bigger one was three rows further down from his current position.
He caught the scent of… motor oil. It was a plot detail he’d forgotten about, a clue to an explanation he never entirely developed. Honestly, it was another element of the story he half-expected to edit out of any final version. It smelled like the smoke from a helicopter crash.
The smell was uniquely helpful in the moment, because it made it a lot easier to find the right aisle. This was especially true when it turned out the spot didn’t have an X painted on the floor. There was actually nothing special whatsoever about it at all, aside from the odor. It was in a row of coffee makers, food processors and slow cookers, and these were also pretty unremarkable.
He stood in the spot anyway; perhaps he would beam up somewhere or there was a hidden button or a save point or something, but no.
Mad Maggie’s, meanwhile, was coming to life around him. He could hear the slow shuffle of feet—shod and unshod, depending on which section they were coming from—along the industrial carpeting. Did they know what they were doing? Or why? Was there any thought process going on at all?
“If I promise to never leave another story unfinished, will you guys leave me alone?” he asked. That was dumb, because now they knew where he was, but it was hard to take that concern seriously when none of them had ears.
The first mannequin appeared at the end of his row. A female one, in a very fetching mauve tennis skirt, a sporty blouse, and a sun visor to shade the eyes she didn’t have. Her hand was shaped in a grip to hold a tennis racket that wasn’t there. Either she dropped it getting down from her display dais, or someone forgot to give her one.
She was moving so slowly, it was hard to feel terribly concerned about this development. He walked up to her, and stepped past, around the corner and into the face of a second mannequin. Then the ready-for-tennis one had an arm around his neck and he was taking her very seriously.
She was strong. Really strong. And the one right in front of Oliver—businessman-on-the-go—was about to show how strong he was by swinging an open palm into Ollie’s stomach.
Oliver threw himself forward and down, which flipped the tennis pro over his head and into the businessman. That took care of the immediate problem of him being choked, but there were seven more of them around already. If they were all as strong as that, he was in a huge amount of trouble.
I should have gone to hardware, he thought, instead of stopping.
Something hard hit him in the back of the head. He fell to his knees, and got kicked, and lost his breath for about five seconds. In that time, both arms got pinned down, and then both legs.
He was spread-eagled in the middle of the concourse, in a store that didn’t exist.
Join us, the girl said. She was there, at the edge of his vision, beside an endcap boasting discount pet food.
“I don’t want to join you!” he said.
One of the intimidatingly athletic mannequins from the sporting goods section turned the corner then, carrying a sledgehammer from the hardware section. It was on his shoulder, and the intent was clear.
They were going to kill him.
This was how he would join them—by becoming a ghost himself.
It was one of the plot solutions he had been considering: a not-happy ending for Orrin. He didn’t like that ending. Horror stories were generally cautionary tales of some sort. Yes, there were other kinds of horror stories, with bleaker outlooks. He didn’t like those as much.
The problem was, Orrin hadn’t sinned, so he shouldn’t have to die. He was a good guy who hadn’t done anything to deserve it. That was why Oliver preferred not to go in that direction.
Perhaps Oliver had sinned, though, in which case this was appropriate. He just couldn’t imagine how. There had to be an opening for either redemption or acknowledgement.
But, that kind of closure only happened in stories, didn’t it? This was the real world. Haunted mannequins notwithstanding.
“Hey, can we talk about this?” he asked.
Join us.
“Aw, come on.”
The one holding the sledgehammer got within striking distance, and was about to swing it into Oliver’s chest, when some sort of commotion caused the mannequin to turn around.
“HAVE AT IT, YOU UNDEAD FIEND!” someone shouted. There was a whoosh, and the sledgehammer mannequin’s head bounced along the concourse.
They jumped up and ran at the new attacker, and Oliver was freed.
All he could see at first was a massive sword swinging around. The man wielding it roared, and plastic parts flew everywhere.
It was Cant.
“Sorcerer,” he roared. “What manner of beasts are these?”
Of course, it couldn’t be. Cant wasn’t real.
It was, undeniably, the large man Ollie had encountered previously, who either claimed to be Cant or starred in a hallucination in which he claimed to be Cant. But where before he’d been dressed somewhat appropriately for a citizen of the modern world, he now wore animal furs with patches of leather armor, a heavy cloak, and enormous metal-tipped boots. In his hands was the largest sword Oliver had ever seen. This wasn’t necessarily saying a lot, since he’d had few encounters with swords in his life, but it was still very large. It was the sort of thing that made more sense as a prop for an oversized statue.
“They’re mannequins,” Oliver said. “I don’t know how they’re moving around like that, I think they may be haunted.”
“Possessed by wraiths? Yes, I have heard of such an enchantment. It is very powerful.”
He fought his way to Oliver, littering the floor with plastic body parts but somehow not reducing the overall number of attackers. It was a big store, but not that big.
He took a defensive position between Oliver and the army.
“I cannot kill what is not alive,” Cant said. “Do what you are here to do so we can be freed of this place, before they challenge my limits.”
Oliver realized they were reassembling themselves, outside of the reach of Cant’s sword, and then coming back at him. No matter how much power he put in his swings, he could only break them at their connection points. If nothing else, it spoke to the durability of the modern mannequin when facing medieval weaponry.
“I don’t know what I’m here to do, though, and I don’t really know who you are. How did you even get inside? This place is locked down.”
“I entered through the flexible barrier in the roof. That portal remains open, if we must retreat, but better to find your treasure first.”
Cant pushed back the attacking force with a quick and furious charge, and then closed off the concourse by toppling a display. Dozens of fashion-forward serving bowls and stand mixers scattered on the floor.
“And you know well who I am,” Cant said. “I am Cant of the Warven tribe, and you are a sorcerer under my employ, in a quest to locate the Kingdom. These are all things you know, Osraic Tal Nar Drang. Atha cautions patience, but we have no more time for you to recover from your addle-brained state. These creatures do not respond to force, only magic. I am here for violence; magic is your domain. Now why are we in this place?”
“I don’t know! And my name is Oliver, not Osraic.”
“Govern your own name as you’d like, but know that you led us here. You read the signs in the stone that none but a sorcerer could glean, and they brought you to this… merchant storage. Now enchanted guards block our way. We are well past your insistence that you understand nothing of what’s happened when your actions have made it so.”
“They aren’t enchanted.”
“Creatures who do not bleed, feel no pain, and can re-form themselves using the component parts of their fallen comrades are not natural beings.”
“I know, but… I mean to say it isn’t magic. It’s the supernatural. There’s a difference.”
Thinking Cant distracted, one of the mannequins pounced from atop a shelving unit two rows away. Cant saw the attack coming, though; he grabbed the dummy out of the air and knocked off its plastic head with a single blow.
“All right, what is the difference?” he asked.
“Ghosts aren’t magic, they’re something else. Supernatural and magical are different things.”
“Just break the spell. I am quickly running out of patience with your delays.”
“Look, I didn’t even want to do this.”
Oliver was talking about not wanting to go to Pallas in the first place, but for a moment there he felt like what he was really talking about was being drugged and tied to a horse and taken through the mountain pass against his will. In that moment, it felt like a sense memory, rather than a plot point in a story that only existed in his head and on his laptop. He remembered how sore his behind was, and the smell of the horse, and the color of Atha’s eyes.
It was just a moment.
“Sorcerer: whether these beings are puppets haunted with the implacable spirits of the dead, or soulless guards propped up by a magical spell, there is no-one here but you. Cut their strings or counter the spell, I care not how. But we are going to lose if you fail to act.”
“I’m just not sure what kind of story this is any more,” Oliver said.
A proper regroup had taken place among the mannequins on both sides of the aisle. They’d put themselves back together somewhat haphazardly, with two and three different departments represented in the clothing choices of each one. There was a real possibility Oliver was about to be bludgeoned to death with a field hockey stick by a dummy in a suit jacket and bikini. At least they hadn’t figured out how to throw projectiles yet. That was probably coming.
They were, anyway, about to charge. Cant may have failed to grasp the layers of absurdity that led to this moment, but he was right about the rest of it.
“There’s something under the floor,” Oliver said.
“The floor is made of rock,” Cant pointed out.
“Cement, yes.”
Oliver spied the sledgehammer, still at rest where the beheaded mannequin dropped it. He picked it up and took it to the spot on the map, where the smell of burning oil filled his nostrils.
“Can you cut through the carpet with that sword?” Ollie asked.
Cant pulled a dagger from a sheath on his hip and handed it over.
“Make quick work of it, whatever you plan.”
Ollie dropped to his knees and cut an X with the blade. It wasn’t quite as sharp as the average carpet knife, so it took multiple passes to get through. He tore open the material, which kicked up a cloud of dust and particulate matter from eons of foot traffic, and all of it smelled like oil.
Why burning oil? he wondered. It wasn’t even an odor he was familiar with, although that didn’t stop him from the certainty that this was what he was smelling.
Underneath the carpet, only a little off the center he’d defined when he cut the rug open, was a large X, glowing brightly on the concrete surface. Whatever marker that was used to scrawl the messages he’d seen on the walls earlier also made this mark.
Oliver jumped to his feet, grabbed the hammer, and swung down on the X. The heavy end bounced against the surface, and that was all. He lifted it for another swing, and wondered if he was even strong enough to do this.
There was a fire, he thought. That was going to be the big reveal in the story. But he never could decide on the particulars, or how Orrin was going to come across them.
“Where was the fire?” he said aloud, still swinging the hammer. The cement continued to reflect the impact back into the hammer, but there were signs that it was starting to give in.
“What did you say?” Cant shouted. He was trying to defend an attack on two fronts alone, which looked really exhausting.
“There was a fire, but I can’t decide where it happened. This building was where fire trucks used to be stored, so the fire could have happened somewhere else but then why would the victims haunt this spot?”
Cant didn’t answer right away, because one of the dummies was coming at him with a barbecue fork. Ollie took a couple more swings at the floor. The cement was starting to chip.
“I do not know the ways of magic so I can be of little use to you here, sorcerer.”
“I know. I wish I could talk to Wilson about this.”
“I know not who this person is.”
“Oh he’s my, my teacher I guess.”
A real crack was showing now, and fragments were flying away with each strike.
“You are the master now,” Cant said. “Teach yourself. And in the event I have not stressed this enough as yet, do so quickly.”
“He’s right, you’re really on your own.”
It was Wilson’s voice, coming from the far end of the row, on the other side of the hole Oliver was attempting to make in the floor.
“Wilson?”
And then he was standing there.
“Yes. Hello. Sorry. It’s the camouflage; it really works. I’ve been here for a while.”
“For how long? You couldn’t have helped?”
“I don’t know, but I’m here now. So what’s the issue?”
“Is Minerva here?”
“No, I haven’t seen her. I thought she was with you. Things got weird. How can I help?”
“I was trying to explain why ghosts aren’t magic. To Cant, who can’t possibly really be here. He’s fighting animated mannequins who can’t possibly exist either.”
“Like I said,” Wilson said, “things got weird. Ghosts are magic.”
“This is what I was saying!” Cant shouted. He was free-swinging his massive sword with one hand while beating back the army with their own body parts. This seemed smart, given they couldn’t use the parts if they were getting hit by them.
“I mean technically,” Wilson added. “In the sense that magic doesn’t exist and neither do ghosts. I suppose you could say ghosts are supernatural while magic is unnatural.”
Oliver took another swing at the floor. A real crevasse had begun to form, but there was nothing on the other side but more cement. He became concerned that the floor was too thick to get through. This was assuming he wanted to reach dirt in the first place. Maybe he did. If he was dealing with normal physics what he’d hit first was the basement, but that was probably gone.
“You’re being too general,” Ollie said. “I’m thinking a ghost story can’t be a magic story. They serve different functions.”
“But you could have a ghost in a fantasy story, and a magic-user in a ghost story.”
“I appreciate that, but I need to know what kind of story this is.”
“I never liked either kind of story. Hey, hang on a second. Looks like it’s getting tight out here.”
Wilson stepped past Oliver and the hole he was making and onto the concourse.
He had a pulse cannon on his back.
“Where’d that come from?” Oliver asked.
“Minnie handed it to me. I forget when. We should really find her when this is over. Hey, big guy, stand aside.”
“Is this a magical device?” Cant asked, looking skeptical.
“Sure.”
Wilson fired a high-energy blast at the center of the army of mannequins. Then he turned around and fired another pulse in the opposite direction. The mannequins on both sides scattered—or rather were scattered—all over Mad Maggie’s.
“That is great magic indeed!” Cant said. “I can see why Osraic called you master, even without a beard.”
“Well, forget this,” Oliver said, “turn it up, point it at the wall, and let’s get out of here.”
“I can’t, it’s damaged. Probably from when yours blew up. I was surprised it worked twice.”
“Of course it is.”
The component parts of the mannequins remained intact, and already Oliver could see them begin to pull themselves together. Wilson had bought only a few minutes.
“So you were saying,” Wilson said.
“Right, they’re fundamentally different kinds of stories. Magic reaffirms man’s need to feel in control of the natural world. It’s the idea that we can impose order through force of will. Ghosts are reminders that there’s disorder and chaos and we aren’t in control and we don’t know the rules.”
“The world is your oyster versus don’t go out into the woods at night.”
“Exactly.”
“So, children’s stories is what we’re talking about now.”
“No, stop, you do that with everything you don’t understand: reframe it as childish.”
“It is childish.”
“Stories have value… you know what, I’m not going to get into this with you. The problem, right now, is that I don’t know how to make the ghosts animating those mannequins stop. If this is a ghost story, I have to find out why they’re so angry. If this is a happy ending kind of story, I’ll live, free them, and probably suffer a lot anyway. If it’s not a happy ending, I’m gonna die and haunt this place along with them. Either way, I first have to figure out what the big secret is. But, if this is a magic story, I just need to figure out how to break the spell.”
“I vote for the second one,” Wilson said.
“I do as well,” Cant said, “if we are voting.”
“The problem is, even with all the fantasy and sci-fi mashup going on here, I think we’re all stuck in a horror story.”
“So we do not get a vote,” Cant said. He looked disappointed.
“All right, what’s the big secret, then?” Wilson asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You mean you haven’t finished revealing it yet.” He gestured to the hole in the floor to make his point.
“Yes. No, that’s not really what I mean. I mean that when I wrote this story I didn’t know what the big secret was and I still don’t.”
“Not a problem. You’re here, just make up something.”
Wilson dropped the backpack with the pulse cannon on the floor and picked up the sledgehammer. He got going on the floor as if this was what he was supposed to be doing.
“Just make up something?”
“Well, I don’t know, Oliver, I’m not the expert on genre fiction in the room. I told you to work on literary fiction, and you didn’t, and now here we are.”
“Look, it has to be a big secret, okay? It has to be something jaw-dropping, something that makes the reader gasp and think, you know what? If this happened to me I’d be haunting that place too. Someone has to have been wronged.”
“And you don’t know what that is.”
“I never worked that part out! And now you want me to come up with it on the fly?”
“All right, all right, I understand. But look, you had some subtext, right? Something about a fire? Burning oil? Something connected to the military, maybe. I assume since they’re haunting this warehouse you’re leaning toward an Indian burial ground kind of twist. The secret-burial-site or whatever.”
“Yes, that was where I was heading. I just didn’t like it.”
“So we’re digging up bodies over here.”
His last hammer strike had dislodged the under layer of cement, with the first evidence of the ground underneath it starting to show. With dirt, there could be bodies. There could be a lot of things.
“It’s just cliché. I wanted something bigger. And that doesn’t even solve the problem. It doesn’t explain why the ghosts are turning up now, why they picked on m… on Orrin, and it doesn’t explain why or how they died.”
“So what?”
“So it should be monstrous, or it’ll just be like every other ghost story. I mean, who doesn’t expect the secret burial ground angle? It’s not even worth finishing.”
Wilson set aside the hammer.
“Look, if you tell anybody I said this I’ll deny it, but maybe it’s okay to write the by-the-numbers cliché everybody can see coming from a mile away if it gets us to the end of the story.”
“I agree with this one,” Cant said. “Whatever you can do that works in stopping these monsters, you should do. Here they come.”
Problematically, the ghost-animated mannequin army appeared to be learning. This begged the question; why would such beings behave like a mindless horde in the first place given they were thinking beings at one time—as always, assuming first that ghosts were even real. Perhaps there was something about dying and becoming a ghost that robbed a (former) person of their intellect. More likely it was just easier to have a mindless horde than it was to have a large mob of discerning undead individuals, from a writing standpoint.
Oliver decided it was probably his fault, indirectly, since this story was evidently his. He had no regrets as far as this point went, because the horde was easier to defend against when they were collectively stupid and predictable. At the same time it was probably his fault when they started throwing things, given that was something he predicted would be happening eventually.
The things they were throwing weren’t all that lethal—charcoal briquettes—and their aim was terrible, but the fact that they decided to try it at all meant he could count on their learning curve to continue to trend upward. Once that happened, and they located the cutlery a couple of aisles over, things were going to get pretty dicey.
“All right, well, let’s find your secret burial ground evidence,” Wilson said. He got down on his knees and started digging at the dirt with his hands.
Oliver crouched down next to him to help. The earth was cold, and a lot easier on the hands than it should have been. Loose topsoil is not what one should expect to discover underneath the floor of a warehouse.
But, they had no shovels. Those were four aisles down, on the wrong side of the mannequin horde. So it was a good thing, even if it didn’t make a lot of sense.
“Got something,” Wilson said.
He leaned in deeper, to his elbows, then started pulling. Oliver thought that if this was a very different kind of story, the thing he was grabbing would end up pulling Wilson down instead.
Nice twist, he thought. Then he held his breath until Wilson got his arms out of the dirt.
What he’d found was a human skull.
“Yuck,” he said. “You know, if you’d taken my advice, we’d be at a cocktail party on the seaside or yachting or going to a family reunion, instead of digging up bodies. You and your genre fiction, I swear. But this should do the trick, right?”
“It might.”
Wilson got to his feet and stepped out onto the concourse, the skull aloft.
“We’ve found the bodies!” he shouted. “Very tragic, I’m so sorry, we’ll go tell the world and… I don’t know. What else, fellas?”
“We will vindicate you!” Cant added.
“Yes, that’s very good. Vindication!”
The response of the dummy army was unspectacular in that they continued to exist, a fact that was particularly acute in Wilson’s case after he took a briquette in the forehead.
“Aowww!” he said. “Oliver, it isn’t working. Should we find more skulls?”
“Maybe the ghosts think that idea’s been played too,” Ollie said.
“This is stupid, just make this the ending and, I don’t know, fix it in a rewrite.”
“Pretty sure we’re not allowed a rewrite here. Hang on.”
Oliver reached into the dirt. He thought he saw something else in there while Wilson was intent on discovering a bone. Something that wasn’t in the shape of human remains.
What he came up with was a small box. It was rectangular, metallic, and looked the right size to hold a set of decorative fountain pens.
“What did you find?” Wilson asked. “It is better than my skull?”
“Could be.”
There was some kind of legend stamped in the metal on the lid. Oliver brushed off the dirt to get a better look, which was a challenge in the half-light of the room. He spat on it, and rubbed with his sleeve.
Lot 42.
Someone appeared out of the corner of his eye. He’d been dealing with highly visible animated plastic mannequins for so long he nearly forgot this all began with a decidedly scarier-looking ghost. And there she was again, at the other end of the row. She was speaking words he couldn’t hear, and pointing at the box in his hands.
“This is it,” Oliver said.
Wilson looked at what he had, not particularly impressed.
“That? What is it?”
“It’s a box.”
“I see that, what’s inside?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t opened it yet.”
Oliver stood up and held it out for all the mannequins to see it with their non-existent eyes.
“LOT FORTY-TWO,” Oliver announced.
He was not hit in the head with a charcoal briquette, which was nice. Instead, a curious occurrence: the army stood still, as if at attention. Then there was a weird doubling effect that looked like a trick of the eyes, as the specters inhabiting each of the dummies took one step forward, and then melted into the ground.
That left nothing to hold up the mannequins, and while they were designed to stand upright for long periods, that required an exactness of positioning that was absent in this case. Thus, they all fell to the ground in a collection of heaps.
“Okay, why did that work?” Wilson asked.
“Magic,” Cant said. “He spoke the words which broke the spell.”
“Or found the clue which released them,” Oliver said.
“But what is it?”
“I don’t know what it is and I don’t know what it means. That was the key.”
“Not knowing was the key? Open the box, maybe it is a key.”
Oliver checked the front of the box. There was a latch, but no lock. Slowly, he unhooked it and lifted the lid.
“It’s not a key,” he said. “And I have no idea what I’m looking at.”
The box contained a glass vial of blue liquid in a cushioned interior that looked designed specifically to safely transport a glass vial.
Oliver showed it to Wilson, and then to Cant, who shrugged.
“We should find our way from this place,” he said, kicking one of the dummy legs on the floor. “I have no interest in your potions.”
“What did you mean, this was the key?” Wilson asked.
“The key to the plot. Since there was no back-loaded mystery to solve, it had to be front-loaded instead.” He looked at Cant. “Any idea how we get out of here?”
Cant pointed with the tip of his sword down the concourse.
“There is a barred exit ahead. Is it a door you can open?”
Oliver checked his hip.
“I think so. I have the night watchman keys.”
They picked their way around the mannequin carcasses, slowly, as if they were all sleeping instead of just being inanimate objects. Oliver kept waiting for one of them to grab his ankle or something.
“So you cheated,” Wilson said.
“What do you mean?”
“You couldn’t come up with a big reveal in the parameters of your ghost story, so you put the introduction of the mystery at the end of the story instead.”
“I guess you could call that cheating, sure.”
They got to the door. Oliver began fumbling for the keys, but didn’t have to bother. Cant took one look at the chain, gave it a yank, and let it fall away from the handles. On seeing the impressed faces of his companions, he shrugged.
“I am not that strong. It wasn’t locked.”
He pushed open the door, which led to a vestibule, and an opaque steel panel gate that rolled down from the top of an overhang. Cant leaned down to grab the bottom of it. Assuming it wasn’t locked, this would expose them to the night.
“Hang on a second,” Wilson said. “Oliver, it’s cheating because instead of ending the story, you’re starting a new one. So what kind of story is it now?”
“I have no idea,” Oliver said. “But I’m pretty sure when he opens that gate we’re going to find a city still under attack by aliens. That’s how we left it.”
Cant ignored the talk of aliens, and opened the gate. Oliver felt like he should be reaching for his cannon, but he didn’t have one any more. Old instincts.
There were no aliens waiting for them outside. It looked like the city was just as abandoned as before, but the rain had stopped. No giant bugs were in sight.
Minerva was there. She was standing in the middle of the street, looking like it was perfectly normal for them to have emerged from this exit at this time.
“Minnie!” Oliver said.
At the same time, Cant was taking vast strides in her direction.
“Gods, Atha, where have you been? Lazy elf.”
Oliver had no time to register this, because Minnie was backpedaling from both of them.
“Stay away, both of you,” she said. “It’s armed.”
She had on a jacket Oliver didn’t remember her wearing the last time they were together. It was an overcoat that was a little big for her, which made sense as soon as she removed it.
There was a bomb vest strapped to her chest.
“You have to do what he says or he’ll set it off.”
“Oh,” Oliver said. “So it’s that kind of story now.”