Page 29 of The Girl on Hallow's Eve

“Who the fuck is that?” Cory demands. “Hey, jackass, what are you doing? This isn’t funny anymore. Joke’s over.”

“He isn’t joking,” Mindy says.

“This is bullshit,” the impulsive teen growls and darts toward the escalator.

“Stop!” Mindy shouts, her voice overlapping with the outbursts of his friends and the other people around them.

But it does no good. Cory takes the escalator several steps at a time until he reaches the upper floor and comes around the corner toward the hooded man. Cory is poised to attack, his fists already clenched. The hooded man shows no sign of defensiveness or fear. He’s unbothered by the approach. He doesn’t brace himself or try to get away. Mindy waits for him to lunge for him with the knife. Instead, the man turns calmly and faces Cory. During that brief movement, Mindy catches a glimpse inside the hood. There’s nothing but blackness, his face and neck completely concealed in featureless, smooth black fabric.

When the boy gets close, he pulls back a fist and rushes the hooded man. There’s a brief tussle and Mindy lets out a terrified, stunned gasp as the hooded man picks Cory up and tosses him over the edge of the wall. Brandon dives to try to catch him, but the force of Cory plunging from that far up knocks Brandon to the ground. The music is too loud to hear the impact of Cory’s head on the floor, but the bounce and the blood is enough to make Mindy sick.

The crowd starts screaming, the sound only getting louder when the hooded man’s gloved hand dips into the pouch of his sweatshirt and comes out holding something. She expects his knife. This time, it’s a gun.

Sherwood…

“I talked to Glen,” Sam says when I come into the kitchen a couple of minutes later, dressed and tying my hair back into a ponytail.

“Did you tell him what we saw?”

“Yes,” Sam says.

“What did he say?”

“He says there’s nothing to be worried about. He knows about the girl seen in the background of the live report and the transmission cutting out, but he says nothing is happening out at the mall.”

“A girl in torn clothing screaming and telling everybody to get out because someone is coming is not nothing happening,” I say as I connect my beeper to my hip and my gun to the holster. “Especially when it’s followed by the news footage cutting out that way after McCarthy fell.”

“Glen says he doesn’t have an explanation for the transmission going dead, but the anchors say there must be some equipment failure and are trying to get in touch with the production team. Things like that happen. As for the girl, he thinks it’s just a sick Halloween prank.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am. He has officers stationed outside the building just in case the protestors decide to make a fuss again. There’s also a security guard inside who has direct communication with the officers. There’s been no signal for help,” Sam says.

“Call him back. Tell him to radio those officers and have them see what’s going on,” I say.

As he does that, I strap on my boots and go to the closet for my black jacket. The conversation lasts only a few moments before Sam hangs up.

“He’s reaching out,” he says. Barely a minute later, the phone rings and Sam answers it. He listens, making affirmative sounds, for a few moments, thanks Glen, and hangs up. “He says the officers answered the radio and did a quick perimeter check, looking in all the doors and windows to see if they noticed anything strange. They said everything looks exactly the same and they haven’t heard anything that indicated anything was wrong. He did mention it was hard to hear them clearly because of the noise, but as far as he could tell, they didn’t sound upset or stressed.”

This doesn’t sit right with me. I shake my head.

“Get on your radio and try to get in touch with them,” I tell him.

“Just give me a second.”

We don’t have to talk about it. We both know we need to get out there. He goes upstairs and comes back down dressed in his uniform. He’s attaching his radio into place and his face is drawn.

“So?”

“They answered immediately,” he says. “But it was so loud I could only just make out what they were saying. Everything’s fine.”

“Except for the fact that if those officers are stationed outside the mall there shouldn’t be that much noise. You should barely be able to hear the music.”

The mall…

Bullets slicing through the crowd have the equivalent effect of a herd of animals induced to stampede. It isn’t a machine gun. There’s no spray, only individual shots, but they come steadily and rapidly. The crowd crushes in on itself trying to escape the bullets as people drop indiscriminately. Mindy sees four of the victims collapse. There’s no type of person. No target. He’s firing where he wants to in the moment his finger pulls the trigger.

Finally the screams are louder than the music. Finally people know the seriousness of what’s happening. But she struggles to think in the barrage of sound. She’s shoved and crushed against the people to either side of her and then into the cement edge of the fountain. Pain radiates through the injuries being further damaged by the panicking crowd. Suddenly her feet leave the ground and she feels herself falling backward. She gasps when she breaks through the surface of the cold water.

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