Aside from one unfortunate interruption where I had to run out of the theatre and find somewhere that would hopefully sound like Chris’ house to take a call from my mom, there were no awkward moments during the movie. Veronica seemed to enjoy the film, and before I knew it, it was over. We didn’t linger in the theatre, and because this was a midnight showing and the theatre was closing, we couldn’t loiter in the lobby. So we walked outside.
The parking lot of the theatre was big because it connected with a mall that had gone out of business years before. We stood and talked for a long time as the rest of the audience drove away from the theatre. Not wanting the night to be over just yet, I continued the conversation while causally walking toward the old mall, away from where I thought Veronica had parked. Since she wasn’t scared during the movie, I thought to tell her a story I had heard about this mall. As I began the tale, I looked back and saw that her car wasn’t the only one left in the parking lot.
The other one had a large crack in the back window.
I stood and stared at it, puzzled and unnerved.
“So there was a robbery?” Veronica said in an attempt to put me back on the story.
“Right!” I continued. I tried to put the car out of my mind as we resumed our walk and left the theatre out of sight. “Well, kinda…
“So, this mall closed like five years ago, but way back this was the place where everyone would come to hang out and shop.”
“As opposed to all the other awesome places in this town?” she interjected, sarcastically.
“Damn right! Anyway, everyone thinks that the place just went out of business, but that’s not true. What happened was that at some point the manager, or whoever, noticed that a lot of the food inventory was going missing. I don’t mean like candy bars — I’m talking about whole freezers full of food. So, he put all these security cameras everywhere, ya know, to try to catch who was taking it, but the cameras never showed anything. They’d be on all night — pointed at the freezers — but in the morning, they’d open them up, and all the food would be gone, and there’d be this huge mess.”
“Spooooky!” she gibed.
“Just hang on! So the owner-guy hires these two security guards to stay overnight and keep an eye out. The first couple of nights are no problem, right? No food is missing, everything’s cool. But then one night, the guard hears this huge crash coming from across the empty mall, and so he runs over to see what’s going on. Then he hears these screams.”
The smile was disappearing from Veronica’s face.
“It’s his partner. But he can’t tell where the screams are coming from, exactly. On the video, it’s just him running back and forth, back and forth. And he’s shouting something, but the cameras don’t have sound, so no one knows what he’s saying.”
“How do you know all this, then?”
“Just a second. So, eventually the guard runs up to one of the freezers, ya know, the one behind the Chinese food place? Well, he opens it up. He takes a look inside and backs away, and then just runs out of the mall. He didn’t even lock the doors.
“The owner comes back in the morning, finds his mall unlocked and no sign of the security guards. He checks the tapes, and doesn’t understand what happened, but he sees who left the door unlocked. After he checks the freezer and sees the mess and the missing food, he calls the police and sends them after the guard who just ran out.
“They find him at his house, just locked in his room, shaking. They asked him what happened, but the guy won’t talk. They ask him about the food, but the guy just keeps shaking. Finally, they take him into the station for more questioning.
“The police have a theory that these two guys were involved somehow so they start really interrogating the guy, but he just won’t talk. ‘Where’s your partner?’ they ask him. ‘What happened to your partner? Where’d he take the food?’ But the guy won’t crack. Finally, they start threatening him with jail time, and he just breaks down.
“The guy says he saw his partner being pulled through the big drain in the floor of the freezer. The police are like ‘Pulled? Pulled by what?’ And the guy just starts crying and screams, ‘A MONSTER!’
“They do an investigation but never find the partner, but when they opened the grate on the floor of the freezer, they saw the pipe was gone, and it was just this big hole. The investigation shuts the mall down for months, and the owner goes bankrupt.”
“What about the guy? The security guard?” Veronica asked, her voice trembling a little.
“He winds up in the insane asylum down south. He draws these pictures of the monster during free time, but they always look different…”
I started trying to guide us to one of the giant windows that stretched from the foundation to the roof of the mall.
“But here’s the thing. They never found any monster, but they did find all kinds of boxes and big plastic wrappers in that hole under the freezer. And they found the missing guard’s flashlight down there too. It was smashed to pieces.”
We were right in front of the window.
“But the craziest part is that they just gave up — they just shut down the mall and locked it up forever. They say that if you’re quiet, and you look for long enough, you can still see the monster walking around the mall now since no one’s there to bother it. But what’s weird is that everyone who’s ever seen it tells a different story of what it looks like.”
I pressed my hands in C-shapes against the window and peered through the dirty glass. Veronica followed my lead. We waited silently for almost a minute, our breath fogging against the window. Right as she was in the middle of saying that she didn’t see anything, I kicked the window hard with my foot, and the whole pane vibrated.
Veronica shrieked briefly and tore away from the window, grabbing my arm as she moved back.
“You jerk!” she yelled with a smile growing on her lips.
“What?! Didn’t you see it?!” I started laughing. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
She playfully shoved me. I had heard that story so many times from Chris, but the window-kick was my idea. Veronica seemed to like horror movies, so I was hoping that she would appreciate the story, and I was happy that she took the joke well.
As the laughter and false hostility abated, my mind returned to the car with the cracked window. Suddenly, uneasiness turned to understanding and amusement.
That makes a lot of sense. The driver of that car works here and must have figured I was on my way to the movie, I thought. Injecting real horror into the life of a horror fan seemed like an obvious move; that was exactly what I had just done.
With things more relaxed, we continued walking around the mall and started talking about the movie we had just seen. I told her that I thought Day of the Dead was better than Dawn of the Dead, but she refused to agree. I told her about when I called her old number and about my dilemma about who would answer the phone. She didn’t find it as funny as I did, but she took my phone and put her number in it. She commented that it might be the worst cell phone she’d ever seen. Her evaluation wasn’t rescinded when I told her I couldn’t even receive pictures on it.
“At least it plays really good music,” I said. She looked at me quizzically, and handed my phone back to me. I shook the phone rhythmically, and some chip of plastic or a stray metal screw that had come lose inside the phone’s casing began to rattle around inside the phone. I danced in a self-mocking fashion briefly, and then tried to call her so she’d have my number, but I had no service. I power-cycled the phone, and took advantage of the high connection I always had when it first turned on. The call went through, and I watched her cancel it.