The Mall (13 page)

Still she had insisted that all three of them take a bathroom break together.
 
She was comforted to see several other people moving through the corridors, even a couple not much older than her.
 
She even held hope that she’d see the elderly couple, George and Tess, again.
 
They’d reminded her of her parents, though her memories of them had grown sketchy over the years.
 
She’d only been eight years old when they’d died.

One thing she did recall, though, was that they had been inseparable, with a bond that seemed so exclusive that at times, Lara had felt like the third man out.

When they had died, Lara had gone to live with her aunt on her father’s side, the only available relative.

Tragically, her parents had died within a month of each other, her mother of ovarian cancer and her father of a heart attack, though she often told people that they both died of cancer (because in her mind her father had ultimately died of a fatal case of “lack of wife”).

“Because they shared the same soul,” a friend of hers had once remarked upon hearing the story.
 
“One could not survive without the life force of the other,” had been the friend’s poetically misplaced conclusion.
 
“When your mother left this world, your father had lost his will to go on.”

Maybe it was that touch of the tragic which made it seem so romantic, but Lara feared that she had carried that ideal of perfected love along with her to every relationship she’d ever formed.
 
Perhaps it was this more than anything else that had ruined her ability to be happy.

Even with Ben, she hadn’t appreciated him as much as she should have, until the day it was too late for second chances, she thought, staring at a coming attractions one-sheet on the wall of the theater.
 
It was an advertisement for another one of those low-budget slasher pics that John Carpenter’s
Halloween
had made popular.

The poster portrayed a dirty-faced teenager clutching the bars of a jail cell, her eyes terror-stricken.
 
In the darkness behind her was a shadowy figure with--what else--a butcher knife.

For the briefest of moments, the face on the poster was hers, and the figure behind was a grim-faced woman.

The Witch.

“Mommy!”

The sound of her daughter’s voice jarred her out of her thoughts.
 
“Yeah?”

“Can we go watch the
Goonies
while we wait for Marty McFly to start again?”

“No, Cora. Let’s make this as simple as we can,” she’d answered, watching as her suave ten-year-old son exited the restroom and checked his zipper in the lobby.

As Owen started up the corridor in front of them, Lara ran her fingers through his hair playfully, “Hey, Casanova, try XYZ’ing yourself inside the lavatory next time.”

Keeping his thoughts to himself, Owen had increased his pace and let the door swing shut behind him as he entered the auditorium again.

“What’s wrong with him?” Cora wanted to know.

“He’s just struggling with his independence,” Lara heard herself saying.
 
My baby boy’s kicking at the walls of his protective egg shell, she thought.

Once they were settled into their seats and the Universal logo came up on the screen, Lara fell into an impossibly, almost immediate REM sleep.
 
In the dream, that elderly couple, George and Tess, were wandering around the house where she had grown up.

They were having an argument, though Tess seemed to be doing the lion’s share of the yelling. Seemingly oblivious to her outpouring of emotion, George sat down at the kitchen table where a newspaper lay open, only the pages of the paper were all white, devoid of ink print.

Slowly, he began to turn his chair away from Tess, until his back faced her.
 
As he stared out the window, Lara could just make out the solemn expression on his face in the reflection of the glass.
 
His eyes were haunted, like bottomless pools filled with dark water, seemingly focused on some object too far away to reach yet too precious to avert his eyes from.

In the moment just before her awakening, Lara realized that the reflection belonged not to George, but to her father.

Cora shook Lara
awake
three quarters of the way through the second run of the movie with a look composed of one part shame, one part guilt.

“Wha--?”
Lara babbled, then like a soldier in the trenches already half awake, Lara leapt up in her seat.
 
“What’s the matter?”
 
She glanced over and realized that Owen was missing.
 
“Where’s Owen?”

“He said he was going to the bathroom,” the little girl said in a high-pitched voice, bordering on hysterical.
 
“I told him that I would wake you up if he left and he didn’t go, but then I fell asleep too, and when I woke up, he was gone.”

Lara rose and started up the aisle toward the exit, the auditorium still empty except for her and Cora.
 
“How long have you been asleep?”

“I guess just after Marty got hit by the car,” Cora yelled after her, trotting to keep up with Lara’s much larger strides.
 
“Then he woke up in bed and I got sleepy too.
 
I’m sorry, Mommy!”

They rushed out into the corridor awash with green carpeting and green paint.
 
Good Lord, it looks like the Emerald City after a weekend of hard drinking, Lara thought distractedly, glancing first one way then the other.
 

Not the least bit of motion anywhere.

That fear crept back into her bones.

All alone here.
 
All alone.

She forced the feeling back and turned to Cora.
 
“What was that movie he said he wanted to see?”

“Explorers!” she snapped, hopping and pointing up the corridor toward the end of the T-shaped hallway.

“Ma’am, may I be of assistance?” one of the theater Bots asked as they dashed past an open auditorium door.

“Cora, wait!”
 
Lara turned back to the Bot.
 
“Yes, I’ve lost my son.”

“Lost child!” the Bot chirped sharply, its eyes pulsing bright red.
 
Then in the distance, Lara could hear the identical cry repeated at least twice more from the direction of the lobby.
 
“Please give the full name and description of the male child in as much detail as possible so that we might search our database.”

“Owen Myers.
 
Ten years old.
 
Brown curly hair.
 
Green eyes.
 
He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans.”
 
Which t-shirt had he been wearing this morning, she asked herself?
 
Damn, how could she not remember what her own son had been wearing when he got dressed this morning?
 
“Cora, what kind of shirt was your brother wearing?”

Cora started blankly at her mother,
then
snapped, “OP.”

That’s right!
 
It was a Caribbean blue Ocean Pacific t-shirt, the one with the silhouetted surfer on the back.

“Ma’am?”

“I’m sorry,” Lara asked, turning back to the Bot.
 
“What did you say?”

“Which auditorium were you in?”

“Thirteen.
 
Lucky number thirteen,” she tittered with nervous energy, then regaining her composure she started up the corridor again, “but we think he might be in another theater.
 
C’mon, Cora.”

Cora stopped at the door to theater number seventeen and waited with wide-eyes for her mother.
 
Lara pulled the door open and dashed inside.

She staggered down the sharp incline into the darkened auditorium, letting her eyes slowly adjust.
 
The seats appeared to be empty.
 
No, there was someone.
 
One person.

Lara rushed up the aisle, a low growl starting in her throat, her mind formulating what form of punishment she would bring down on him after this unpardonable offense, when the single dark silhouette of a person split into two teenagers, horny, breathless teenagers, staring with wide, startled eyes.

The blue and purple haired girl shrieked and threw herself into the next seat, while the boy with the Flock-of-Seagulls-special thrust his hands out before him in a defensive posture.
 
Lara couldn’t help but think that he had been through this scenario before.

Looking past them and registering that no one else was in the auditorium, Lara turned away in frustration and started back up the aisle without an apology, Cora trotting to catch up.
 
When she thrust the door open, she nearly collided with a Bot.

“Ma’am, we may have identified your lost child,” the Bot announced in a disinterested monotone.
 
“This child is still within the confines of the Mall.”

“Thank God,” Lara barked.
 
“Where?”

“One of the central protocol Bots
have
located a child matching his description.
 
He can be located at..,” the Bot began, his eyes flaring once more before winking completely out.

The lights around them first dimmed then extinguished, casting Lara and Cora in complete darkness.
 
In the walls and in the floor, the vibration caused by projection equipment ceased, along with an unidentifiable hum of air-conditioning that had so thoroughly penetrated the building that only the lack of it was conspicuous.

Beside her, Lara could hear her daughter’s sudden intake of breath.

“It’s okay, hon,” Lara tried to comfort.
 
“Just a power outage.
 
Give it a few moments and the emergency lights should kick on.”
 
Lara reached down, found her daughter’s warm little hand clutching her pants leg, and held it tightly.

Suddenly, Cora screamed in pain and released her hand.

“What is it?”

“My eyes,” she whined.
 
“It burns.”

Lara reached out and found Cora’s shoulders, then her head.
 
She felt cool to the touch.
 
No fever.
 
“Like before?”

“Yes.
 
Just louder.”

“Louder?
 
What do you mean, Cora?
 
What do you hear?”

“All of them.
 
They’re all a-scared of the dark.
 
All the grown-ups are acting like kids.”

What was she talking about?
 
Was she hearing things?
 
Cora had always had an active imagination.
  
She had been much easier to entertain than Owen at her age.
 
All she needed was a doll, a room and time and she’d create some amazingly intricate scenario out of nothing.
 
But what was this new fantasy about?
 
Should she take it seriously?

Cora shivered and clutched her mother tightly.
 
“Mommy, I want to go home.”

I do too, Sweetie, Lara thought, holding her protectively in her arms.

“Just what makes that little old ant,” Lara began to sing, “
think
he can move that rubber tree plant?
 
Everyone knows an ant—“