Page 28 of The Girl on Hallow's Eve

“Cory!” Austin shouts. “You need to see this.”

Several people have gathered around the person shouting about the dead body, alternately trying to comfort him and get more information.

Rob is shaken up, barely able to string words together to tell them what he saw. Or at least, what he thought he saw. It was dark. The lights, like the ones here, were disorienting. He’d gone to find something else to eat, having left his friends in the arcade after they spent more than an hour playing the same game. The check-in tables were removed shortly after the beginning of the event, but the last time he came through, a few of the organizers were still there, milling around and chatting with anyone who came in to grab food and drinks set out for them.

A woman who’d introduced herself as Marissa was pacing near the doors each time he came, looking out into the parking lot when she didn’t think anyone was watching her. As soon as she noticed someone there, she stopped, smiled, and talked with them, but went right back to pacing as soon as they were gone.

Only this time when he went through, the space was nearly empty. The guests in attendance must have gotten their fill of the snacks and treats and were making the most of the shopping time instead. That likely gave the people working there a chance to take a break and not have to play host. No matter how much they smiled and acted like they were thrilled to talk to every person who was there, Rob knows they have to reach their limit at some point. No one loves answering questions and doing the bidding of dozens of strangers for hours at a time. Or at least, they don’t love it enough to not want a break.

But even considering that, it seemed oddly quiet and empty when he went in. A couple of people had fallen asleep with their heads rested on folded arms at the tables, getting power naps in before more shopping and partying. Two were sitting with their heads close together eating and talking. Without the context of the party, it would look like they were whispering conspiratorially with each other, but the volume of the party meant it was more likely they were leaned that way simply so they could hear each other.

The fresh food was long gone, but there were still packaged snacks, plates of cookies, and soft pretzels sitting out on the tables along with large buckets of canned drinks and bottled water. He wondered if that meant the restaurant workers had been sent home. It seemed the number of people inside the mall was dwindling, but the invitations had been clear that the doors would be locked and no one would be permitted in or out after a certain time.

If it hadn’t been so empty in that area, it wouldn’t have been so startling when the girl came screaming through the food court and tried to open the doors. It was those screams, the commands for him to run, to get out of the mall, the seemingly nonsensical warning that there was someone there, that brought his attention to the corner near the entrance.

Her screaming had jostled the people sleeping at the tables, waking them so they sat up and looked around in confusion. But there was one person in the corner, near the doors, that didn’t move. Rob saw him while he was grabbing a handful of cookies. He seemed to be curled up facing the wall, sleeping away the late-night hours. His first thought was that this was a man who thought he could get through the night awake, but had been hit by exhaustion when his body reminded him that these are the hours when he’s usually asleep. Knowing he wouldn’t be comfortable at a table, he curled up on the floor with his jacket folded beneath him.

Only he didn’t move when the girl startled everyone else, causing some of them to run after her in fear and confusion. He didn’t even shift position. Rob approached him, getting close enough to see the blood spread out on the floor beneath him.

They aren’t listening to her. They think it’s a joke. Or that she’s crazy. No one will listen to her.

But Mindy has to keep trying. She has to tell everybody she can find. And when she can’t find anyone else, she has to try every door. They are locked. She knows that. The organizers of the event warned them when they received their invitations and then again when they arrived that they wouldn’t be able to leave before the event was over. It was a safety issue, they told them. Because of the late-night hours of the party, it was important to keep everyone securely in place.

Now they were locked inside, trapped with a hooded man wielding a knife and a growing collection of corpses.

She has tried to keep everybody away from the atrium, out of that wing of the mall. They can’t get out, but at least if they stay away from that section, they are farther away. It will give them time. If they can chase the sunrise maybe they have a chance. But instead of them listening to her and heeding her warning, they’ve done the exact opposite. They’re flowing toward the atrium, curiosity pulling them to exactly where she said not to go.

The hopelessness is building inside her. She’s trying. She’s doing everything she can and all she’s done is feed them to him.

She doesn’t know where he is. She can feel his eyes on her everywhere she goes. Because she doesn’t know who he is or why he’s there, it means he could be anyone and anywhere. She left him on the upper floor of the store as she crawled over Gabe’s body and ran, but she doesn’t know where he is now. What he might have done.

The reporter gave her a tiny glimmer of hope. She recognized him as soon as he saw him at the beginning of the evening. It was George McCarthy, the man who always charms her mother with his sparkling eyes and wide smile she seems to think is directed specifically at her when it comes through the television screen on the news each night. She had heard he was going to do a live broadcast, but it didn’t mean much to her. She didn’t have any interest in being a part of it.

Now George McCarthy could be their savior. He was filming when she ran out of the store. Maybe somebody saw something. Maybe they called the police. Every phone she has encountered has been useless. But if the image of her screaming as she ran for the escalator was beamed into the living room of everyone throughout Sherwood and the surrounding area, maybe someone noticed. Someone had to have noticed. George McCarthy had to have noticed. He heard her. She wasn’t far enough away for him to have missed her. Maybe he spoke to the show producers and told them to call the police.

But then where were they? How had they not arrived yet?

She’s coming out of the empty bookstore when she hears a young man’s voice shouting.

“He’s dead! Somebody help! He’s dead!”

She watches the man she saw in the food court run into the open area in front of it and then turn to head for the atrium. Several people run after him, and Mindy follows after. She catches up as he gets back to the atrium. Chills of fear roll through her body at being back here. Her eyes scan the upper floor, the shadows around the atrium. He’s here.

“Cory! You need to see this!”

Mindy moves past the confused, scared people around the edge of the atrium and the group comforting the man still talking about the body in the food court. She hadn’t seen it. Maybe she should have checked. But now she’s drawn to the young man trying to get the other’s attention. They’re the ones who ran this way after she tried to get them to come with her. She’s seen them before, but she can’t place exactly who they are or even the context of seeing them.

She can easily superimpose their faces into any situation and any environment. In any of the hallways. In any of her classes. On the football field. On the baseball field. In the band. On the stage. They are those uniquely rubber people who can be readily molded to fit into anything so believably they become both recognizable and forgettable.

“What are you over here bitching about?” Cory demands, angry at Austin for pulling the attention away from him and breaking what he still thinks is the fun of the moment. He stalks over toward the fountain where Austin is standing, but his steps falter when he gets close. “What the hell is that?”

The group around them, who have up until this point been focused only on either Cory and his performance or their own efforts to sort out what’s happening, turn their attention to the fountain. Mindy pushes through them as they gasp and fall back, trying to get away.

“It’s a person,” someone says. “Someone is dead in the fountain.”

Mindy gets to the edge of the fountain and moves around the side until she can see what the guys are looking at. The massive fountain is thirty feet in diameter at its widest base point, creating a stunning centerpiece for the atrium, and providing more than enough water to accommodate the grown man floating face-up in the shadow cast by the second tier. Now that she’s this close, she can’t believe they missed him there, but his dark clothes and dark hair effectively blur him into the background and the lights confuse the eyes enough to make him all but disappear.

A woman in the crowd screams and everyone looks up. The figure of the hooded man is standing at the low wall surrounding the edge of the mezzanine looking down over the crowd. Mindy steps back, fear gripping her, but refuses to look away. If he’s looking at her, she wants him to see her staring back.

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