The Great Mall Mirage

Trolls

Your eyes don't deceive you. They're really trolls. A whole stampede of them scrambling down the escalator. You hear screams from behind and below, and thuds, and you don't need to look down to know that they're throwing people off the stairs.

Mr. Aspen pushes you aside and stands in front of the escalator. He reaches into the breast pocket of his lab coat and whips out a switchblade, staring down the point at the creatures. In a heartbeat, they're here.

The first one comes with its head lowered, barreling straight at Mr. Aspen's stomach. He jabs his knife under its chin and redirects its blow upwards, skewering it by the throat. The troll's stuck to the knife like a fish to a line, but it seems unharmed. It shakes its head, tearing the knife from Mr. Aspen's hand, and lets out an ear-splitting roar. Then it charges at him.

Mr. Aspen's eyes go wide, and he dives away from the stairs. "Get out of the way," he yells.

You press yourself against the wall of the escalator and feel the troll's body collide with yours, bruising your side. But the creature ignores you as it continues trampling up the stairs.

Then they come. More of them. Stepping on your feet, smacking your head with their shoulders, bruising your sides with their elbows. But as long as you're not in their way, they ignore you.

The flood doesn't stop.

Mr. Aspen makes a half-hearted attempt to block one of the trolls, but only ends up being shoved out of the way.

With your bodies planted against the side of the escalator, you Jack, and Mr. Roots try to withstand the crushing force of the troll. But it's no use. You can't move without being trampled. Can't escape. Your only choice is to scramble down with them.

Mr. Aspen is waiting at the bottom of the stairs with a broken, bloody nose and fierce scowl. Only a machine could stop them," he says.

You watch the downpouring of beasts. "We need to find a different way up."

The floor you've landed on contains only a single door. The thick red carpet muffles your footsteps as you walk to the door, and pull them open. They're heavier than they look, but move noiselessly. When you're inside, you glance back, at the three people silhouetted in the door frame. Wiry Mr. Roots, with his arms folded, stout Mr. Aspen, his hands ready to pull another tool from his lab coat, and springy Jack, shifting from foot to foot.

Jack steps to your side. "Let's go."

As soon as the four of you are inside, the doors swing shut with a gulp, and the darkness swallows you whole. The room is filled with an inky blackness that absorbs all light and muffles all sound like the darkest velvet. The thick rug deadens your footsteps to only the lightest whisper. You fumbled behind you for a light switch, but the walls are cold and perfectly smooth. Silence reigns. From the way the gasps of your breaths reverberate, you guess that the room's massive. Jack whoops and claps, listening to the sound echo back to him one, twice, three times. Somewhere deep inside, a rustling begins.

Behind you is the rustle of fabric and the clink of metal on metal. The click of a switch. From Mr. Aspen's hand comes a beam of glaring light. It stumbles a few feet out into the darkness, and then is absorbed into the night, like a pearl dropped into oil.

Mr. Aspen takes Mr. Root's hand, who takes Jack's who takes yours. His fingers are cold and clammy, numb like the grave. You squeeze his hand to reassure him that you're alive.

The four of you inch forward like a caterpillar crawling into the belly of the beast. You count a dozen furtive heartbeats before you hear the sound of steel toed boots clinking against a very solid wall. "It's a maze," Mr. Aspen says. He swings his flashlight back and forth, revealing awol. It continues interminably on into the darkness, punctuated only by a few dark squares. Entrances into the maze. Mr. Aspen picks the closest to you, on the right, and you continue on.

The darkness seems to thicken; the light of the flashlight is nothing more than a feeble shimmer. The air seems to suffocate, filling with dust, making you cough. The farther you go, the more it smells like an abandoned warehouse.

You snap your fingers, listening to the timbre of the sound. Dull Dead. Numb. The space feels oppressive. Your elbows brush walls on either side. You're caged. Like lab rats in a cage.

Mr. Aspen stops. You gather around him as he flicks his flashlight on and off, illuminating four passageways. You're at an intersection. Which way to go?

The flashlight is too feeble to make out more than the first few steps of each passageway, so you shuffle forward, testing the one in front of you. Like all the others, it plunges into darkness. With a few steps, you notice the ring of your footsteps — no longer muffled by the carpet. Your footsteps reverberate. You take a few steps back, and the sound disappears, muffled by the carpet.

"Follow the carpet," you whisper. There can't be anyone else to hear you in the darkness, but you're still somehow afraid to speak. You shuffle to the left, and find that the carpet continues. "Left. We need to go left."

"I can't hear you," Mr. Aspen says. "There's no one here. You don't need to whisper."

You repeat yourself, but in the echoes of your voice that return to you, you hear a rustling sound.

You follow the carpet for what seems like hours, but may have only been minutes. Time seems to lose all meaning in the blackness. All you have to rely on is the weariness of your feet, and the hollowness of your stomach that tells you something's wrong, but you can't figure out what.

The deeper you go, the older the place seems to get. It's hard to believe this place was only opened today. There's something in the thick dust that smells of broken dreams and lost hope. A place no one wants to be.

The dust makes you cough, and the sound echoes and echoes and doesn't stop echoing. It doesn't die down, but rather crescendos into a wave of rustling, murmuring fabric that screams in your ear. You feel something cold cling to the nape of your neck and begin to wrap its tendrils around your face.

You scream.

Jack senses the presence behind you and shoves Mr. Roots and Mr. Aspen forward. "Run," he yells.

You scramble forward, bumping into him, your feet sticking and slipping against the ground. You try to run, but you don't move fast enough. Tendrils have wrapped around your ankles and arms, pulling you backwards as you desperately try to escape.

Jack senses that you're not behind him and turns around, running towards you to grab your arms and try to pull you free. The darkness takes a hold of him, too and pulls him in towards you. He whispers your name just before the darkness gags him. "Don't let this be the last time I see you."

You glimpse Mr. Aspen and Mr. Roots running towards you. Mr. Aspen has another pocket knife in his hand, ready to slash away, but they're too far away.

Tendrils cover your eyes as you feel blindly for his hand. It's there. You squeeze, trying to hold on, before the darkness envelopes you and you lose all consciousness.