Home
Buy the Book
Read for Free
Reviews
Press
Trailer
About
Myspace Page

* * * * *

Arnie rolled to a stop in the football field-sized weed-and-dirt patch that would have been the mall parking lot, had they ever gotten around to paving it. Arnie squinted at the sprawling skeleton of the mall and said, “This is the place?”

“You think a town could have two places like this?”

I ran my hands through my hair and glanced at the darkened sockets on the decomposing mall where windows should have been. I heard the faint sound of a plastic tarp snapping in the breeze somewhere.

“Well?”

“You scared, Arnie?”

“Should I be? Is this place haunted?”

“Nothin’ so simple as that. I wish it was. You say it’s haunted and you picture the ghost of some old lady wandering around aimlessly. The things that come and go around here, I don’t know that they were ever human. Or maybe they just don’t remember it. Try to imagine a Hitler or a Vlad the Impaler or even the nasty old man at the dump who steals people’s cats and buries them alive. Now imagine those guys but strip them of all their limitations. No bodies, so they never die or run down or get tired. Give them literally all the time in the world. Imagine that malice, that stupid hate just burning on and on and on like an oil well fire-“

“-Yes, they’re demons. They’re evil. I got it.”

“-No, you get it but you don’t get it. What if you crossed somethin’ like that? I mean, really pissed it off. That irrational rage just boiling over and over and over. Words of reason or begging to a thing like that, would be like squeals from a mouse in a trap. All it means is that they’ve got you. It’d carry that mindless grudge on and on, for centuries. Long after you’ve gone nuts, long after you’ve gone dead. Picture it tormenting your great granddaughter’s great granddaughter over it, planting fish hooks in her psyche until she’s screaming herself to sleep every night.”

“Like, what, a curse? You think you’re cursed now? Your family?”

“Not even that. You keep wanting to revert back to things you know, things from movies. ‘Ghosts’ and ‘demons’ and ‘curses. You use a word like ‘curse’ and you think of mummies and boobie-trapped tombs and all that Egyptian bullshit. It’s nothing like that, nothing so mystical and invisible. A curse, hell, you could maybe live for a day and forget it was there. Not this. Not this.”

Arnie sat, waiting for me to go on. I didn’t. I was realizing all of a sudden how hard it was going to be to tell this next part.

Weird how my throat clinches shut at just the thought of it, suddenly no air in my lungs, no spit on my tongue.

Finally, I unlatched the door and got up out of the car. I walked across the lot toward a concrete ramp, a would-be loading dock for a stillborn mall department store. I heard Arnie’s door click and thunk behind me and knew he was following. I said, “There was a girl here in town. She disappeared last year. It wasn’t a big story, but you can look it up.”

“Let me guess. You were the last person to talk to her.”

I didn’t answer. I turned from him and continued toward the mall, climbing up the loading ramp. I heard Arnie flipping pages behind me and I knew he had pulled out his notebook.

“What was her name?”

I opened my mouth to answer, nothing came out. I reached a doorway and was greeted by a shadowy smell of mildew and urine. I tore aside a strip of yellow warning tape and stepped into the cool darkness within.

28 ->

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32 - 33 - 34 - 35 - 36 - 37 - 38 - 39 - 40 - 41 - 42 - 43 - 44 - 45 - 46 - 47 - 48 - 49 - 50 - 51 - 52 - 53 - 54 - End

Copyright © 2008 David Wong and Jason Pargin - All rights reserved. No part of this book or website may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the express written consent of the author and publisher. This online book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidence.