Page 21 of The Girl on Hallow's Eve

If that’s what happened, she’s still in the store. She wouldn’t leave Mindy. Just like she didn’t leave her when they were playing on the playground and she broke her arm falling from the top of the swings when they weren’t supposed to be climbing up there. And Mindy didn’t leave her when they snuck out of the house to go to the movies and Gloria got caught trying to go in without a ticket.

And Gloria didn’t leave her when she stopped being Beth and started being Gloria.

The thought calms her. Gloria isn’t in the dressing rooms. She’s hiding somewhere in the store. That means she can find her. She can still get to her and they can find help. Maybe she even called the police already.

That thought makes her stomach sink. The police. When she was crouched behind the cash register counter, she was inches away from a phone. She could see the coiled black cord of the phone hanging over the edge. She could have easily grabbed it and yanked it down, dialed 9-1-1, and told them to get to the mall. That would have been all she needed to say. They would have come. But she didn’t do it. The thought didn’t occur to her. Even as she was seeing the faint sheen of her own reflection across the clerk’s static, sightless eyes, Mindy didn’t think to pick up the phone and try to get in touch with someone who could help.

But maybe Gloria had. Maybe that’s where she is right now. She escaped from the dressing room, found one of the cash registers, and called the police, and now she is just waiting for them to arrive. That sounds like her. It’s what she would do. It’s what she had to have done.

They just have to wait. It can’t take long. They’ll come. The dispatcher sent the officers out while she was still on the phone with Gloria and they’ll be here in just a couple of minutes. They just have to wait.

The seconds tick on. Footsteps sound again, moving down the last corridor of the dressing area, the third wall of the square. Step. Step. Step. Mindy holds her breath as they get close, not even wanting a slight flutter of air to be heard in the moments when he’s closest to her. The steps hesitate enough to make her heart stop for a beat or two before they start up again.

They move with more determination, falling more heavily as they move away from the dressing area. The police aren’t there. They haven’t come. There’s been no siren, no announcement, no one rushing in to rescue them. But Mindy realizes she can hear something more than just the man walking away.

She hears voices. Other guests to the party have come in to the store.

Her heart leaps into her throat. They don’t know what they’re walking into. They don’t know about the hooded man or the long, grisly knife gripped in his hand, dripping with a woman’s blood. She hopes only one woman. Though, she hasn’t seen the cashier since going into the shoe department.

Mindy can’t just stay here in the cabinet waiting for the police to come. Not when there are others who have come innocently into the store. Not when Gloria is still out there. She slowly opens the door to the cabinet and dares to stick her head out and look. When she doesn’t see anyone around, she collapses out of the tight space and onto the carpet. She’s about to climb to her feet and run when she sees something in front of her.

The carpet leading down this side of the hallway is clean and neat up until the fifth stall. After that, there’s something staining the gray surface. From where she’s still sitting on the floor, Gloria sees that they are footprints made in something glossy and red. She can’t quiet the curiosity and dread that pulls her down the passage toward those footprints. She lets them lead her forward until she reaches the partially-open door to the fifth stall.

Pressing her hand to the door, she slowly swings it open. Immediately she stumbles backward, her hands clamping down over her mouth to muffle another scream. But she can’t hold this one in. Her loud cries tear out of her chest like they are the sound of agony itself.

Gloria is sitting on the floor, slumped against the bench bolted to the wall. Her eyes are pointed toward the mirror in front of her, but they aren’t seeing her reflection. The smell of the blood makes her stomach churn. Mindy grabs onto the door frame to try to hold herself up, but her knees buckle. She hits the carpet and crawls forward to Gloria.

There’s nothing she can do. She knows there isn’t. The blood has already stopped pumping out of Gloria’s neck and the tips of her fingers and her lips have gone blue. She’s gone. But Mindy can’t accept it. She can’t make her brain wrap around the reality that her best friend is sitting there in front of her, slaughtered and left alone to struggle and fight through her last breaths.

She thinks about the sound of the footsteps and the bloody marks on the carpet and realizes the hooded man didn’t just come to the dressing room in search of her. He came back to visit Gloria. Perhaps to make sure she is actually dead. And perhaps just because he wanted to look at her, to admire what he had done. She was beautiful. She still is. Even in the state she’s in, she’s beautiful.

Everyone wants to look at her.

But the thought of the man who did this to her coming back to the door of the dressing room and looking down at her body crumpled there where he left it, getting close enough to cover the bottoms of his shoes with her blood, makes Mindy feel sick. He doesn’t deserve to be near her. He didn’t deserve to be the last person to see her with her heart still beating. Those were moments that shouldn’t have happened for many years and that should have been shared by someone who loved her. A husband, a child, a grandchild. Someone else had claim to those moments and he stole them.

Mindy processes the feeling of warmth on her palms and looks down to realize her hands are pressed into the carpet in a pool of blood. Sitting back on her heels, she lifts her shaking hands and stares at the blood in her palms. A stinging, seething combination of anger and fear pulses through her veins, stinging her cheeks and shivering down her spine.

Gloria’s hand is resting on the floor close to her leg, her palm and fingers up and stained with a shallow pool of drying blood. Mindy reaches for it and takes it into hers, intertwining their fingers. There’s still warmth in her best friend’s skin, still softness. She hasn’t been gone long enough for death to have taken those things from her. Mindy can still hold her hand and pull it to her chest to press it to her heart.

The fleeting, wild thought flickers through her head that maybe the feeling of her own heartbeat could remind Gloria’s body of life, could start it up again. But there’s no hope. There’s only escape.

Mindy leans forward, unwilling to care that there’s no breath left in her best friend, that her blood has spilled down the front of her clothes and soaking into the carpet beneath her, that all thought has stopped and her body has already started the process of breaking down. She touches a kiss to the side of the other girl’s head. Her hair still smells like strawberries and hairspray. A tear rolls down her cheek as she rests her forehead against it for a brief second. She can’t allow herself any more than that.

“Goodbye, Beth. I love you,” she whispers.

With her best friend gone, Mindy is left only with thoughts of getting out of the mall. She knows there are others. She’ll help them if she can, but she needs to get out. She has to survive this for herself and for Gloria, for the years of life and the valuable moments the man stole. He had no right to those, and Mindy is determined not to let him take any of them from her. She’ll take Gloria’s being into herself and live for her. She’ll be her heartbeat, her voice, her thoughts. Everything but her fear. Mindy has enough of her own, and if she’s going to tell Gloria’s story and deny the hooded man anything else that isn’t his, she can only contend with the terror boiling in her own stomach.

Climbing to her feet, she peers cautiously out of the dressing room door to make sure she can’t see the man beyond the entrance. She doesn’t see him, but somewhere in the distance, she hears something that sounds like a startled, strangled cry followed by a scream. He’s found someone else.

Sherwood

George McCarthy doesn’t look quite as chipper when he appears on the screen again. He’s smiling, but it’s not reaching his eyes and there’s a distinct tightness to his jawline as if he’s gritting his teeth hard against something he wants to say but can’t. There’s an awkward couple of seconds of him just standing there staring at the camera before the go-ahead from the producer allows him to start.

“Thanks, Claire and Lionel. I hope you guys brought snacks and extra coffee and are ready to pull a late shift because we’re going live at the Village Square Mall for the next three hours. Hey, everybody joining me, this is George McCarthy. If you saw the earlier segment, welcome back to Village Square, and if you didn’t, thanks for tuning in and visiting with me tonight.

“Like I said, we’re live at the brand new Village Square Mall to cover the exclusive pre-opening party celebrating Monday’s grand opening. The Calloway Group, the development company responsible for bringing the mall to the Sherwood area, ran a contest recently and selected one hundred lucky shoppers, and their plus-ones, to come out tonight for an all-night shopping rave. Guests have been able to explore many of the stores throughout the mall for early shopping and special deals, can take advantage of complimentary services at the salon, dip into the arcade for some all-night free play, collect goodies and giveaways throughout the night, and dance the night away to the sounds of DJ Wyld.

“Of course, it’s going to take a lot of energy to keep them going, so party guests have also been enjoying treats and refreshments from restaurants in the food court. Your loyal reporter may or may not have sampled some of the offerings for myself.”

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