The Mall (56 page)

There was a noticeable quiver that wasn’t there before.

“Are you okay, Simon?”

“I’ve sustained minimal damage in one of the lower sub-sections of my CPU.
 
Nothing I can’t repair, given time.”
 
Drawing his hand away, he stepped outside and started to pull the door shut behind him, but Lara blocked it with her arm.

“Will you be okay,” she asked tentatively.
 
“I mean, seeing the blood again?”

“I’ll be fine, Lara.”

“Come directly back.”

“You look different,” Cora said as she followed her brother up the carpeted steps to the second level landing.

Owen held his tongue and waited for her just outside the main sales office, casting a look downstairs at his mother and the other man talking close together at the entrance.
 
He wasn’t sure he trusted him.
 
Something about the guy didn’t sit well with him.
 
At least, Mom seemed to like him, he thought.

“You’re the same color that you were before.
 
Just a shade darker,” Cora stated, stepping past him down the left-hand corridor leading around to another batch of identical glass-walled sales offices.
 
Cranking the dim beam of the flashlight up to a brighter level, she trained its light on him as she walked backwards down the hallway.
 
“When you were all by yourself out there, you saw him, didn’t you?”

“Saw who?”

“The Boogeyman.”

Owen gave her a look and brushed past her to a set of unmarked double doors with panes of glass set at eye level.
 
He pushed himself up on tippy-toes and trained the beam of his flashlight inside.
 
It was a break-room of some sort set with tables.

“There’s no such thing.”

“Mommy told me the same thing,” Cora said, pushing into the room past Owen. “But you saw it last night and we all just saw it again.”

“Sorry to be the one to break it to you, Cora, but Grandma’s just crazy.”

Owen followed Cora into large spacious room lined with four varieties of food and beverage dispensing machines.
 
Two couches and two reading chairs sat in one corner of the room, along with a coffee table cluttered with paperbacks and magazines.
 
A television cowered in the shadows.

Deflated black balloons and streamers were taped to all the walls and fixtures.
 
A banner adorned with skull and crossbones hung over the entrance reading:
 
“Happy Birthday, Nelson!
 
Still Kicking After 50!!”

The back wall was composed entirely of solar-sensitive glass, of the type that allowed the occupants to dial-in degrees of opaqueness, allowing filtered sunlight inside during the day.
 
Presently, the glass had been dialed to “full open,” casting the room in an alien red glow.

Setting her flashlight atop one of the tables, Cora wandered over to one of a pair of refrigerators in the back corner of the room. “Something got that security guard I saw this morning outside of Grandma’s apartment and then it got Grandma too.”

“You know about the guard,” Owen asked, staring at Cora with interest.

“I saw him along with Chance’s friend Jesse, last night while I was sleeping.
 
Something got them both,
then
got Grandma Charley, too.”

“What are you talking about?” Owen asked in a timid voice, wandering over to one of the food machines and staring through the glass with hungry eyes.

“There are ghosts in here.
 
Ghosts of people.
 
Ghosts of machines,” Cora said, with blunt sincerity.

“There are no ghosts.
 
And even if there were, a machine wouldn’t have one,” Owen said.
 
He narrowed his eyes at his baby sister, certain she was using this opportunity of perceived weakness to get back at him. “Machines don’t have souls and they’re not alive.”

“Mr. Simon’s alive and he’s a machine,” she replied, reaching inside the fridge and pushing aside a couple of Chinese food boxes to peek inside a pizza box.
 
“Look!
 
Pepperoni!”

“What did Mom say about telling stories?” he sighed, trying a faucet next to the fridge and finding that the water still did not work.
 
He rifled through a drawer below the sink.

“It’s not a story,” Cora continued.
 
“He looks like a man but he’s really a Bot.
 
He told me so.”
 
She carefully set the box of pizza on the nearest table,
then
returned to the fridge for a plastic jug of orange juice and a half-eaten chocolate cake, again for 50-year-old Nelson.

Not sure what to make of this new elaborate fantasy Cora had created, Owen held his tongue.
 
Perhaps, it was just her way of coping with everything that was going on.

He tore open one of the wet-nap packets he found and handed it to Cora with a smirk.
 
“Wash your hands,” he gently prodded verbally.
 
“You’re filthy.”

Cora wiped her hands in silence and stared down at the pizza box.
 
“I’m glad you’re my brother,” she said quietly.

 
“Yeah, just you keep on talking, Smeagol” Owen snapped, setting his flashlight aside and throwing open the pizza box.
 
“More for me.”

Still standing, they each grabbed a slice and ate in silence with frozen smiles for the next few seconds.
 
Half-way through the next bite, Owen stopped chewing and stared at his half-eaten slice.

Cora stopped eating as well.
 
“What?”

He set his slice down.
 
“When Grandma Charley was taking me here, we passed that pet store again.
 
The one with the chameleons.
 
Remember?”

When Simon reappeared, he was alone.

Lara slid open the door, staring at him in blank confusion.

“She’s gone.”

Without a word, Lara shut the door behind him.
 
He reached out with his foot, dropped the bar down into the track, and stood looking out.

“Why don’t you put the children to sleep?” he suggested.
 
“I’ll stay here.”

Lara lingered a moment, glancing back at Chance helping Dugan out of the sedan.
 
He had found the cap filled with keys again and was pointing to a distant row of cars at the back.

“You said earlier that something was using my mother-in-law,” Lara commented. “So, if this thing isn’t her, what is it?”

Simon stared silently outside.

“Simon?”

“I have suspected for awhile that this complex somehow augments certain human abilities, allowing for the perception and communication beyond normal capacity.”

“Simon, what are you saying?”

“There is a phenomenon in your culture,” Simon began his voice slightly distorted.
 
“I believe it is called a haunting.”

Lara stared blankly at him, not knowing exactly how to respond.

Simon’s eyes shifted slightly to glance at Lara before returning to watch the Mall outside.
 
“Perhaps I’m ill-equipped to deal with this situation.
 
I fear I am not operating at full capacity.”

His previous choice of words had been interesting: “I
fear
.”

Lara studied his face as she might study the face of another person to decipher their stress level and she discovered with alarm that she could read anxiety there.
 
Not possible, she decided.
 
I’m reading human emotion into an impassive face.

Yet she could no longer think of Simon in that way.
 
As a simple machine.
 
Whether she had only invented it within her own mind or not, he was now more than just an automaton following a limited set of commands.

There was the spark of life in him, and if he had reason to be afraid, she found that she trusted those instincts.
 
Though limited, she would not fault him for that, for hadn’t she once accused herself of having no maternal instincts of her own?
 
The last twenty-four hours had proven her wrong.
 
Call it, fate or on-the-job training, the end results were the same.

Lara laid a hand on his arm and squeezed.
 
“You’re doing fine by me.”

Simon gave a nod and glanced again at her, an almost melancholy smile touching his lips.

A loud noise came from upstairs that sounded like the slamming of a door.
 
Simon and Lara turned to see Cora and Owen running down the steps leading from the second floor
level
, the ten-year-old, in fact, still chewing something.

“The animals,” Cora yelled, sprinting across the dealership to them.
 
“We’ve got to save them!”

Chance’s head shot up from where he stood beside the open driver’s door of a silver convertible.
 
In the sudden silence, Dugan’s curses could clearly be heard inside the cab.

Lara seized Cora by her shoulders and held her steady as Owen skidded to a stop behind her.
 
“Settle down, you two.
 
What’s all this about?”

“We forgot about the pet store,” Owen exclaimed.
 
“There are animals trapped inside with no food!
 
I just know it!”

Lara stroked Cora’s head.
 
“Okay, we need to take a breath here and talk about this.”

“We have to go and get them before it’s too late,” Cora said with an enthusiastic nod, turning her teary eyes up to Simon.
 
“You promised that we would after we found Owen.
 
You promised.
 
You can’t let them die, Mr. Simon.
 
You’re not allowed to.”

Lara bit her tongue.
 
Damn the child!

Simon nodded and turned toward the door.
 
He reached down with the toe of his foot and lifted the bar again.

“Wait,” Lara said, grabbing his arm.

“They’re right,” Simon stated, fixing Lara with his eyes.
 
“I must protect all living things from harm.”

“Maybe there’s a Bot still inside, feeding them as we speak.”

“Then all that will be wasted is my time,” he responded sliding open the door.

“You can wait until morning.”

“They’ve waited far too long already.
 
I can’t run that risk,” Simon answered, stepping outside, turning to close the door back.

Lara stuck her head out, her eyes reddening. “Don’t leave us again,
Be
…”
 
A hand flew up to her mouth.
 
She lowered her head, her fingers curling into a fist against her quivering lips.

Simon hesitated, started to reach for her,
then
stiffened again.
 
“Lara, don’t open this door again until I get back.
 
You understand?”