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If Hollis found out that they hit up a cab to head to the other side of town when they should’ve been sleeping, then Adam knew her fury was going to be severe.
But what Hollis didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt her. Norma was also unaware, blissfully sleeping in her bed when Lizzie checked on her. They would have invited Sam, but she was away from the Motherlobe to visit her brother at home. She had mentioned something about his brain being stolen and returned in the same day, though Adam hadn’t the time to ask for more information when she scampered out of the Atrium.
Four people were a party. They had barely enough room in the taxi, and the driver hadn’t questioned why the unaccompanied teenagers were heading out after midnight. He just wanted to make his money and be done with it, accepting the crumpled dollars they had pooled together.
When Gisu and Lizzie wanted to sneak into the old strip mall, it was going to be their last chance. Every store had closed with a whimper, leaving behind fixtures of its former glory. Soon, it was going to be bulldozed out of existence and replaced with a swanky apartment complex.
Naturally, Adam was game, and Morris had said he wouldn’t miss it. Sneaking from the Motherlobe had been the hard part. Now, they stared down the long stretch of interconnected, abandoned shops. Signs had fallen on the cracked sidewalks, and individual, neon, lettered lights flickered. The stucco exterior was as drab as peeling wallpaper, but they weren’t interested in loitering.
Gisu approached an emergency exit. She knocked twice. Its hollow call beckoned them. She peered at the rusted hinges, humming, then set two fingers to her temples. Three, small telekinetic hands formed, and they nudged on those creaking joints. As hints of rust trickled, Gisu slowly pushed in the door, and as a crack startled the otherwise silent night, the door opened.
“Bingo,” she sneered, and tapped it with her foot, letting the door bang against the wall.
Following her inside, Morris whistled. “Kinda surprised there aren’t any guards.”
With Adam and Lizzie in tow, the latter gently shutting the door, Gisu said, “Yeah, they gave up on security. No guard wants to take on a shift at three o’clock in the morning at a grimy place like this.”
“Probably because of the poor pay, too,” Adam piped up, tilting his head. Water trickled, and he spotted hints of corroded pipes in the exposed walls. His nose wrinkled. “Sheesh. They couldn’t have bothered to board anything up? It’s like they want rats and vermin.”
“Don’t let Sam hear you say that, or she’ll sic a grizzly after you,” Lizzie jeered, wrapping her arms behind her head. “Besides, who’d wanna do that when they’re gonna knock it down in a few days?”
“Fair point.”
The end of the short hallway came with another door. In the dark, listening to the dribbling water, the only light came from Gisu’s telekinetic hands. Once again, she pressed on the hinges, and the process repeated. Another crack delighted Adam, for their persistence was rewarded.
The interior was littered with abandoned stores and kiosks. Water damage soiled the damp, loose tiles and soaked the few, snipped carpets. Shadows played across the walls and danced over abandoned mannequins. Stray patio furniture and capsule machines were overturned, victims of ransacking and reflecting the only source of illumination. From the windows in the stores facing the main parking lot, where the street lights could no longer reach them, were seeping rays of moonlight exposing the swirling dust.
A train might as well have barreled through the insides and hollowed out everything. Not a scrap of clothing remained, nor a sliver of cheap jewelry. When Morris floated over to the capsule machines, he clicked his tongue, saying they were empty. They weren’t his style, but it was better than walking aimlessly.
Adam peered ahead toward the largest store. He couldn’t recall the name, but it was shuttered with bars like those on a prison cell. Gisu couldn’t easily break it open, and they couldn’t squeeze through them to explore further. Instead, they stopped and squinted through the slats toward the vacant interior of what might have been luxury in this part of town. Gisu muttered that she could see all the way out to the other parking lot.
Then, glancing at a nearby bench bolted to the ground, Lizzie made her announcement.
“You know, right in there, a kid went missing.”
Adam steepled his fingers. A grin tugged at his lips. It clicked all at once why Lizzie wanted to venture out so late at night.
“Well, I think I heard about that,” Morris said, leaning forward with a challenging grin, “or is this another of your infamous ghost stories, Lizzie? Trying to make up a new Green Needle Witch on the spot?”
“No, no, it actually made the local news,” Gisu insisted, waving her hand. “It was a pretty big story that happened about ten or twelve years ago.”
“Fifteen, actually. The kid would’ve turned eighteen this year,” Lizzie corrected. “Channel 8 News ran a special on the case while I was eating dinner. This mom and her son were shopping in that store.”
“Obviously,” Morris tacked on with a scoff, “because what else can you do here? There isn’t even a cheap food court or weird architecture to do tricks off of.”
“Anyway, Mom’s doing her Mom thing. She’s buying clothes for her son, and just looking at the size of this place, that store’s pretty huge, right? You can imagine it crammed with clothing racks and other shoppers. Nice and condense.” Lizzie grinned, arching her back and letting her eyes sweep across everyone. “So, when she’s putting a bunch of jeans in her cart, she’s not looking at her kid, and he takes off. Some say he ran like he was possessed. Others say he was impulsive. But the commonalities in everyone’s stories are they say he vanished into thin air, and Mom drops everything to find him, screaming his name.”
Adam peered at the store, envisioning as Lizzie described. She must have thought the impossible would have never happened to her. She probably raised her son to stay by her, but a mere moment was all it took. For whatever reason, he ran, whether possessed or on impulse. The explanation hardly mattered with a missing child.
“Mom's frantic. Eyewitnesses reported she thought her kid ran out of the store when the sliding doors opened. Later on, security cameras didn’t catch a kid, though, but she didn’t know that. Mom darts out, too, and as soon as she's in the parking lot?” Lizzie smacked her palms together near Morris’ ear, and he yelped, his levitation ball wavering. “Boom! Car crash! She goes flying in the air and splats on the ground. It's said she was splayed out on the concrete like a burnt out starfish. Worst of all? Her son was never found.”
“Sounds more like a tragedy than a ghost story, Lizzie,” Morris quickly huffed, and he rubbed his ear. “Damn. Burst my eardrum wide open, why don’t you?”
Gisu snickered and crossed her arms. “Aw, chill. It goes with the story, and there’s more to it, right?”
But when Gisu raised her eyebrows at Lizzie, Adam drawled, “Oh, let me guess. Her spirit haunts this mall, and she’s still looking for her child to this day? Not very original, if you ask me.”
Lizzie fixed him with a grin, her piercing eyes, the colors of a tombstone at dusk, blazing. “Original or not, that’s why we’re really here.”
Adjusting her cape, Gisu tugged her shoulder bag in front of her stomach. She unwound the clasps, and pinching the flap up with telekinesis, she searched around for a moment. Her tongue poked out, concentrating deeper than Adam deemed necessary. Then, like Lizzie, she brightened, her lips curling in a delighted grin as she presented Adam and Morris with an Otto-Shot.
Morris swept his hand through his hair. “Oh, now, we’re talkin’. If I knew, I would’ve worn something nicer than my day clothes.”
While Gisu fiddled with a knob on the camera’s side, Lizzie once again took charge, wiggling her fingers. “Rumor has it that the mother’s soul is still roaming this mall.”
Adam shared a smirk with Morris, whispering, “Called it.”
“But when she tires of walking, she sits down in front of the store. If her son didn’t run out one way, then she thinks he could have sprinted into the mall. So…” She slowly dragged her finger to the bench, and there, lopsided on the unappealing backing, was dull, bronze plaque too dark to read. “...there she sits, waiting for her son.”
“And if you’re the kid she’s looking for-” Gisu raised the Otto-Shot to eye level. “-she appears.”
Adam chuckled, slightly shaking his head. The story of the Green Needle Witch was far more grounded and a tad more tasteful. But he bit his tongue, withholding his criticism when Morris swerved in front of the bench. He rested his arm on the crooked seat, as if setting it around the shoulder of an attractive woman. He flashed a sparkling grin, one that somehow glimmered in the dim lights.
“She’s gonna appear in the photo next to me, right? Try and get my good side, so-” He tried to sneer, and Gisu startled him with a white flash, the camera clicking. His confident composure swapped for a cross-eyed visage. “Hey! I wasn’t ready. You know I like to look good.”
The Otto-Shot spat out the photo. Gisu snatched it, waved it around, and sighed. As Adam expected, only Morris’ stupefied, mid-twitching stature was present. Lizzie took her turn, draping her legs off the armrests. Again, only herself, including her smirking face and middle fingers, was visible for the camera. Then, it was Gisu’s turn, who balanced on the backing with her arms thrust toward the ceiling. Adam caught the perfect snapshot of her shocked face in mid-yelp when water from a stray, open pipe slithered down her back.
He chuckled as she snatched the photograph from his hand. Brushing down on his jacket, he knew it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. He settled in the seat and fixed his buttons, exactly as his father would insist before a family portrait.
“By the way, what’s the kid’s name? You remember how old he is, so I figure you might know,” Morris wondered as Gisu raised the camera.
Lizzie uttered an elongated, monotonous groan, lasting until Gisu narrowed her eyes, snapping it was distracting. “Uh, you know, I think her son was named, um, it’s gonna come to me. Just a - oh, right, Aaron. His name was Aaron.”
Adam blurted the name with unintentional bewilderment. It wasn’t like it was an uncommon name. There were plenty of people named Aaron in the world. But he puffed out an abrupt chuckle that sounded more like a sigh when the others faced him, Morris asking what he found strange.
“Funny that. If my mother had the chance to pick my name, she was thinking of calling me Aaron.”
And with that, he smiled, sitting with his back straight, shoulders squared. He was the epitome of poise. It would’ve done Norma some good to gain spinal pointers by observing him. The bench creaked as he adjusted himself, and as it did, the plaque tumbled loose, slipping through the gaps in the seat. Another squeak resounded.
The white flash of Otto-Shot briefly blinded him, shutting out the structures of grimy, shuttered shops. Dark spots dotted his vision like a chess board. He gnawed on his cheek as he rapidly blinked, the forms of his friends fluttering as if moving in a strobe light. Trying to rise, he sank down, dizziness tugging at his eyelids, as if he needed to sleep, or dump an entire bottle’s worth of eye drops on his sore, warm retinas.
He saw Gisu pull the photo free from the Otto-Shot. As she flapped the picture, the deep aqua of her cape meshing around her body, Adam squinted, unable to focus. He rubbed his eyes, and the irksome sensation was obstinate. The spots might have lessened, though ruddy splotches oozed in the corners of his peripheral vision, he managed to ask how the photo looked.
No one answered. They crowded Gisu. She showed Morris, and then, still gawking at Adam, she guided it to Lizzie. Blinking just as swiftly as Adam, Lizzie stared at him, her cool countenance melting like ice on a sunny day. Their jaws were slackened, betraying their once composed, cocky selves. Morris’ levitation ball sputtered, and his chair threatened to give out. Gisu’s hand trembled, her forefinger slipping, and Lizzie snatched the picture, breathing as if she had run a marathon.
“Adam, get out of that seat.”
Her order cut him to the bone. Adam grabbed the underside of his seat, grimacing at dry gum pressing into him. He adjusted his knees, feeling like he had sat down in a chair that was too close to the ground. And while a faint pressure pushed on his shoulder, which he insisted to himself was because of a stressed joint, he could only scoot forward by a mere inch.
“D-dude, you gotta move,” Gisu hastily warbled.
But he paused, his vision settling. No spots remained, and he broke in to a wide, disbelieving grin. He couldn’t believe he had almost fallen for it. The last person sitting down was obviously intended to be the one frightened. If everyone else had failed, only he remained to scare.
“I get it. Very funny, guys, but I’m not-”
“Get up,” Morris barked, only to gasp, “or can’t you?”
“Adam, this isn’t a joke. You need to move your ass,” Lizzie added, and she stomped toward him, but when she grabbed his arm, he quickly jerked it to his chest.
Brows knitting, he snapped back. “You’re being ridiculous. This is a piss poor job of scaring-”
As if the hairs on his head were pressing inward, his scalp itched. A featherlight touch ghosted around the base of his head. Where that feeling extended, a wet, hot sensation followed. Tang permeated the air, though no one reacted to the smell, other than Adam. Nostrils flaring, as if his short hair was being gently wound around fingertips, Adam examined the photo held in Lizzie’s shaky hand.
The scarlet oil in his peripherals remained. It also lingered in the picture.
Adam was smiling. He was sitting properly. His hands were folded around his knees, a gesture done so automatically that it was second nature. Like his posture, his smile was perfect and full of teeth.
Hers was not.
The form was crumpled. Legs twisted in different directions. Femurs jutted through milk white skin. The left arm was shredded down to the muscle, slabs of sinews hanging like threads. Gushing from her orifices, blood eternally stained her brow and leaked from her scalp, dyeing her blotted shades of crimson and ebony. The attire was nothing more than scraps of tattered clothing that, in her day, might have been considered fashionable, now darkened by her running blood.
And so sat Aaron’s mother, her cracked jaw lifting in a feeble attempt to smile as she set it near Adam’s shoulder, her mangled hand reaching for the back of his head.
He screamed, and so did they. Adam wrenched himself off the seat. He kicked his heels and pushed off the cracked tiles. His environment blended in swirling shadows, hearing the rapid thudding of feet and swerving of Morris’ levitation ball. It cut out in front of him, guiding them toward their freedom. Adam raked his fingers through his hair, feeling nothing but his own clammy sweat sticking to his curls. His breathing was so feverish that his heart launched into his throat. He choked on nothing as Morris rammed open the emergency door.
Wet slaps thundered behind him. As they barreled down the dank, sparse hallway, Adam risked it all to look over his shoulder.
The mother crawled faster than any prowling lioness. Her limbs overlapped across her torn, broken body. Her left leg jutted over her shoulder and propelled her forward. Her right hand with those shattered digits seized across the tiles and carpet. She wrenched her mouth open in a silent scream, saying a name that might have been his, her jagged teeth falling from her gray gums.
Aaron! Aaron! Come back, Aaron!
And as her bulging eyes glistened, Adam was hauled backward. Lizzie dragged him down, and threw up her hand. A wall of ice formed, the crystals shooting up to the ceiling, and the chill was almost pleasant.
The woman was no more. He couldn’t hear her. At the very least, though he could have sworn he saw fragments of teeth from where she lay, Adam did not risk another moment. He ran with Lizzie and tilted the wide brim of his hat, his chin tucking to his chest.
He breathed in the fresh air faintly smelling of smog. They trekked across the parking lot without a spare glance or word. They marched until they were on the other side of the street, standing on the adjacent sidewalk. Lizzie finally released Adam’s arm, and although it stung, certainly going to bruise, he didn’t care in the slightest. As she hunkered down, balancing on her toes, she laced her hands together, quietly shaking her head.
She looked up at Adam, asking, “You okay?”
He took off his hat and fanned himself. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
“I’m gonna-” Morris gulped. “-I’m gonna go over to that payphone, and I’m gonna call a cab.”
“Maybe-” Gisu cleared her throat. “-we should call Hollis, instead. Yeah, she’s gonna chew us out, but, um, maybe the higher-ups should know? Or should we just…”
As Gisu trailed off, and Adam looked to the mall, he still felt her blood staining his vision.
“Maybe it’s best we call Hollis,” he quietly declared, and he handed Morris a few quarters.