Chapter 1: Waking from the dream?
Happy Burger. Such an assuming name really, a deceptively simple boast of the owners belief in his store. Perhaps if anyone had been there to appreciate the irony of the empty restaurant, it might of made the name less of a lie…
There was only one person currently occupying the restaurant, even the staff had departed without realising they had left someone behind, for she was tucked into a booth in the darkest corner, illuminated only by the fading sunlight that squeezed its way through the blinds, her head pillowed on her arms as she tossed fitfully in her sleep.
Her dirty blond hair hung across her face, plastered there at odd angles by fevered sweat and curving out away from her head at the tips.
The girl, Heather, let out a startled gasp and sat up so suddenly she almost cracked her skull on the poorly padded seat of the booth. She looked around wildly, unable to understand either her fear or her surroundings as her mind made the reluctant transition from asleep to awake.
Eventually the haze faded, taking the last lingering residues of the dream with it, and with that her breathing resumed its normal pace and in time, she didn't even remember what had roused her.
Something bounced lightly against her chest as she shifted into a better position and she looked down to find the gold pendant, a gift from her father, swaying lightly on the outside of her padded white flannel jacket. She cradled it carefully, her father had been very insistent that she carry it everywhere, and she loved him enough to take that to heart despite the strangeness of the request.
Heather slipped it back into her jacket and levered herself out of the seat, walking carefully over the recently mopped floor and out of the door.
The mall outside was practically deserted, many of the shutters had been drawn on the more popular shops, meaning that it was probably near closing time.
Heather shook her head in annoyance, she had only meant to stop in for a burger before going back to the shops to pick up the items that had caught her eye on what her friends would call, "The scouting run". She hadn't even really been that tired, but from the looks of it she'd been out for hours. That meant the shop she was supposed to collect her dad's order from was probably closed too.
She groaned and kicked at a piece of trash not yet collected by the mall's army of custodians. There was nothing left to do but call up her father and tell him what had happened before heading home.
Finding a telephone and eventually fishing the correct change out of her pocket, being careful not to disturb the pocket knife she had hidden there in case of an emergency, she dialled the number for her apartment.
There had barely been three rings before the receiver was snatched off the hook at the other end and the panicked voice of Harry Mason, came over the line.
"Hello! Heather, is that you?"
"Yeah dad", she said with a poorly suppressed giggle, her father always worried to much, "It's me… um, I kinda didn't get that thing you wanted…"
She waited for her father's endless stream of reassurances to end.
"Ok… Yeah, I'm coming home now… I love you too dad…"
She shook her head ruefully as she hung up, sometimes her father was loving to the point it was weird.
As she looked up her smile died.
Standing with his back to the wall, was an old man, his rough white stubble, making his already shabby face look even seedier. He was dressed like a Private Eye reject from the fifties, although his clothes were rumpled and the slight paunch of his belly had pushed his shirt halfway out of his trousers.
Heather feigned nonchalance, and gestured to the phone to hide her almost instant suspicion. This guy was after something she was sure, and she didn't want to hang around long enough to find out if it was her.
The old man shook his head minutely and fixed her with a piercing gaze.
Heather flipped her head dismissively and walked away, trying her best not to look back, even though she could imagine his eyes boring into her back.
She glanced over her shoulder as she rounded a corner, he was following her.
She tried not to panic, tried to recall what they had told her to do at school if you thought you were being followed by someone who meant you harm. She drew in breath to scream when he suddenly spoke.
"Heather? Heather Mason?", he asked, his voice was rough, but not unkind, and there was enough authority that it made her stop and face him.
"Who wants to know", she said scrutinizing him, her father's old paranoid stories and sudden moves surging to the forefront of her mind for some reason.
"There is… someone who wants to meet you…"
'Yeah right, like I'm gonna fall for that pervert', she thought.
"I'm a private detective, I-"
"Not interested", she cut him off, turning and walking off at a brisk pace as he made to follow. Up ahead she spotted a way out.
"If I could just have ten minutes of your time, no five-"
"Are you still following me?", she asked, pointing at the door to the ladies room, "Do I have to scream?"
He held up his hands palms outward and gestured to the floor beneath him, "No, no, I'll wait here".
Heather tilted her chin imperiously and strode in, aware as the door closed that if he really was a pervert, an empty bathroom was the perfect place for him to have his way with her out of sight, and the room was empty this close to closing time.
She waited to the count of ten, her eyes never leaving the door, but he still didn't come through. Sighing with relief she didn't really feel, Heather walked over to the nearest sink and splashed her face liberally with water.
When she looked up, her face still dripping, she noticed that something had been painted onto one of the mirrors with lipstick. It was a strange circular motif, centred around a triangle and what might have been an eye, strange runes surrounding the circumference of the circle.
As she lent over for a closer look, pain flared through her brain in a thousand icy needles, dropping her to her knees before the symbol.
As soon as she wrenched her eyes away, the pain stopped, vanishing altogether. Careful to avoid looking at it again, she stood on suddenly weak limbs.
She felt she had seen that symbol before, but where?
It was on the altar…, a voice in her head, her own? Whispered, and Heather could almost see the symbol again, woven with great care onto the cloth that had covered the altar.
'Wait", she thought, "What altar?'
Having reached her 'freak out' quota for the day, Heather made to leave, but stopped just short of the door, and crouched down so that she could see outside.
The old detective, if that's what he was, was still there, pacing back and forth impatiently. She didn't want to stay in this bathroom all night with that strange symbol, but neither did she want to go anywhere with that freak, as he would probably try to force her to.
Looking around the bathroom she found a small window, easily big enough for someone her size to climb through, leading out into the service alleys at the back of the mall.
After a couple of false starts she was able to lift herself through, feeling slightly exhilarated despite herself, she was fleeing a potential pervert by climbing through a window and escaping into the alleyways. It was almost like something out of a movie and that thought held at bay her worries about her stalker and the evil drawing that had somehow hurt her, allowing her to almost enjoy the experience.
She hopped down onto an over turned crate and looked around to get her bearings before starting up the alleyway towards the only door she could see.
Her boots rang hollowly on the concrete, sounding abnormally loud. It took Heather a moment to figure out why she was making such a racket. It was because there were none of the other sounds that would normally obscure the clomp clomp of her boots, in fact, there were no other sounds at all…
Surely that wasn't possible. Even if the mall was completely empty, she should still be able to hear the cars on the highway, the drone of the machines in the industrial park nearby.
Fear began to work its way back into her gut, taking away her childish amusement at her current situation, and casting everything in a much more sinister light.
She hurried the last few paces to the door, and slipped quickly inside. The silence inside was just as complete as that outside, and just as deafening. To her horror, the feeling of being exposed didn't fade when she closed the door; it remained at the back of her mind, and as an icy presence in her gut.
Heather hurried from room to room, finding each one either abandoned or locked.
She ran down the staff service corridors trying every door that might lead out, but all were locked. Just when she felt her panic beginning to rise, the door she tried next swung silently open, allowing her blissfully out of the confinement of the service corridors… and into that of the clothing section.
Heather had spent enough time here that she knew which shops were which, even with the shutters closed, but she hardly spared them a glance, the thick shutter that cut off the alcove housing all of these shops from the rest of the mall, starred back at her with inanimate glee, immovable and mocking.
She began to panic again, suddenly feeling very hot despite her lack over covering, was there no way out? Would she be stuck here in the dark till opening time the next morning?
Heather had had a fear of being alone in the dark for as long as she could remember, she didn't want to stay here unless she had to.
It was then that the small pool of light caught her eye. It came from a shutter only drawn down to waist height, showing that the door of the shop had been left open.
Heather didn't know or care why it had been left unattended, it was her way out, the shop would lead to more service ways, and one of them had to lead out of the mall at some point.
Stooping awkwardly in her mini-skirt, Heather ducked under the barrier, careful not to scrap her back on it as she passed under.
As she was about to stand on the other side, she noticed something gleaming on the floor a few feet away, catching the light in such a way that she felt drawn to it.
Walking slowly over to it she bent to retrieve it, her hand closing around it and lifting it into the light. It was a handgun. Its weight might have meant that it was loaded, but having no experience with firearms she couldn't be sure. Her father was fairly proficient, he was a member of the local gun club and practiced regularly, but he'd never been able to interest her in it.
It was as she was examining the weapon that she noticed the sound. It was like a wet, slurping, tearing sound, and it was accompanied by a smell she felt she should know but couldn't identify.
Heather looked around, her eyes lighting on the source of the noise, and she screamed in terror.
The thing, and that's what it must be called, because it matched no archetype her struggling brain could find, was vaguely female, even to the point that it seemed to be wearing a dress of burnt plastic, but it was powerfully muscled, each thick, ape like arm almost as wide as its torso, and ending abruptly without hands.
At her scream it stopped what it was doing and turned to face her, allowing her to see the torn corpse it had been feasting on, and the twisted, cone like, travesty of a face that seemed to be just a mouth, and a blob of burnt, cancerous flesh where the rest of its features should have been.
It stood, and Heather felt her neck wrench as she tried to follow it to quickly. The creature was huge, easily seven foot, its willowy frame and gargantuan arms supported by impossibly spindly legs.
It began advancing without a sound, the long, blood soaked, bone spines that slid out of its arms making its intent perfectly clear, it was going to kill her, and then feast on her as it had the other poor soul who had happened across it.
Heather thought of running, but her legs were wired to the spot and she couldn't move. So she did the only thing she could.
She raised the gun and fired.
"Stay back!" she screamed as the first shot ripped free of the barrel and imbedded itself in the creature's shoulder.
The monster jerked as it was hit, but after a moment continued its advance as if nothing had happened.
"I mean it!", she shouted with a trembling voice, firing again and again with little effect. As the last shot left the chamber she screamed and closed her eyes.
This shot hit higher than the rest, crashing through the creature's 'face' and carrying small chunks of greyish matter with it as it exited the other side.
The abomination took another step, as if even the destruction of its mind couldn't stop it from killing her.
Suddenly it spasmed violently, letting loose a cry of inhuman pain before collapsing with an earth shaking thud at her feet.
Heather scrambled away quickly, while it twitched in its final death throes before falling still.
"What the hell is that thing?", she said, so shaken that she spoke aloud, needing the comfort of her own voice, "…a… a monster?"
It seemed ridiculous spoken out loud, but that was all it could be, its body, its presence, and above all, its smell, provided her senses all the proof they needed.
'What if there are more of them!', she thought suddenly. That might have been the only one, but she didn't want to stick around to find out.
She quickly made her way out into the service ways again, taking a kind of comfort from their neon lit simplicity. She saw many more strange things, including a kind of giant, skinless fish with legs that jumped out of a supply closet to attack her.
The creature was so pitiful and comical, that she almost didn't consider it a threat, until it knocked her down and tried to tear her face off with the teeth concealed in the puckered maw where it should have had a face.
She managed to get away, and hid in a storage room, where she found a fresh clip for the gun she carried and after a few minutes successfully loaded it.
Thus, armed and sensibly more cautious than when she first set out, Heather made her way slowly down the remainder of the deserted corridors, trying to ignore the silence so thick that it even muted the hum of the lights above her.
When she saw the human silhouette through the double doors ahead of her, she almost wept with relief, pushing them open recklessly and rushing through.
The shadow it turned out, belonged to a woman of middle years, her almost waist length blond hair a shade or two lighter than Heather's, hung limply from her head, and her high collared, buttoned ankle length black coat, wouldn't have been out of place in any Amish village. Her appearance screamed zealot, but Heather would have been happy to see anyone at that moment.
"Thank god, another human being", she said, panting and resting her hands on her knees until her breath returned, "Do you know what is going on here?"
The woman turned a beatific smile upon seeing her, but it vanished as soon as she spoke.
"You… don't remember me?", she said, her eyes ranging between sad and angry as the same emotions tightened the creases in the corners of her eyes and mouth.
"What, why should I?", Heather said, confused even as she began to pick up on a new vibe from this strange woman, what where the odds of someone waiting here, right where she would be forced to come, after the mall had closed? And what were the odds of that person professing to know her?
"Do you know what's happening?" she asked suspiciously, anger causing her to take a few steps forward, Heather didn't like being kept in the dark, either physically or metaphorically, "Where is everyone? And those weird monsters…"
"They… have come to witness the beginning", the woman said cryptically, her eyes becoming unfocused as if she were somewhere else, "The rebirth of Paradise… despoiled by mankind"
There was such bitter hatred in that last statement that Heather took a step back, "What the hell are you talking about?"
The zealot's eyes focused on her again and Heather shuddered involuntarily, "Remember me… and your True self… the one who will lead us to Paradise… with bloodstained hands".
Heather opened her mouth to ask her what she meant, but fire coursed through her skull dropping her to her knees. She cried out and the pain intensified, icy fingers racking through her stomach in an agonising counter point to the fiery tongues that licked across her brain.
As her vision began to blur, the zealot looked at her quizzically, what might have been concern crossing her features. Suddenly she nodded as is satisfied with what she saw and walked away.
"… Help… please", Heather choked as the pain drove her to the floor, "What's… going on… I, I don't… understand…"
The world was swallowed by darkness, taking her consciousness with it…
When she eventually struggled back to consciousness, hours or minutes later, there was no trace of the pain that had so crippled her, only a dim and menacing memory that she was only to happy to leave at the back of her mind.
Heather used a wall to help herself upright and wavered on her feet for a second as she felt a rush of vertigo that quickly vanished.
She felt a little groggy but otherwise fine, and so she could find little reason to hang around, especially if that scary woman was still lurking around here. Heather didn't doubt the religious nut was linked to the monsters somehow.
Heather made her way down the rest of the corridor, her strength rapidly returning the further she got from the spot she had collapsed, eventually forced to ascend to the next level when it became clear that it was the only way to go even if it temporarily took her further from her goal.
The corridor ahead of her ended in a small cul-de-sac, multiple doors lining both sides.
Seeing little other way to do it, Heather began a methodical search of the doors, starting with the right-hand doors. Many were locked, and those that weren't… well the bandaged dog with the quartered muzzle she had found tearing into the remains of one of the malls employees, would haunt her nightmares for a while.
She completed her search finding only a series of storage rooms, a spare handgun clip and a bottle of something labelled 'Health drink' next to a packet of old jerky.
She had never been partial to jerky, but felt inexplicably hungry, devouring most of the packet and downing half the health drink to wash away the salty taste.
The first door on the left, at the top of the corridor where she now stood, turned out to be little more than an expanded storage room.
She probably would have left it without looking if she hadn't spotted something glinting on the floor.
Crouching down she looked for the object that had caused the glint, spotting it under a set of heavy crates. She couldn't reach it, and there wasn't anything nearby that would allow her to scoop it up.
Standing up she kicked one of the nearby crates angrily and several boxes toppled off it on to the floor.
"Oh", Heather groaned, kicking the boxes out of the way with her foot and wondering wither she should try to put them back.
She looked up, trying to guess how many she had knocked down, and found herself looking into a pair of blood shot green eyes.
She started until she realised that it was only her reflection, but that didn't settle her as it would most people, she had never been comfortable with mirrors, they made her feel like there was an impostor starring back at her, and in the poor light of the storage room, her reflection's hair looked much darker, emphasising the feeling.
As if this wasn't enough, whoever had left the mirror here had painted another of the symbols she had seen in the ladies room on it, though this time nothing happened when she looked at it.
Feeling the urge to leave the room as quickly as possible, she almost missed the note hastily tacked to the back of the door.
It read:
Damn it, I dropped my key and can't reach it! I'll take care of the new books later; maybe the bakery has some tongs or something I can use to scoop them out
Heather looked at the note in disbelief; it had just provided her the answer to what she was going to do next. There were too many strange coincidences today, all seemingly directed at her in some way.
The trip to the bakery took only a few minutes, but they were the most disturbing minutes of Heather's life to date, not only were there more of the monsters like the one she had seen in the clothes shop roaming around the sealed off halls of the mall proper, but everything was dirty and decayed, as if the mall had been closed for years not hours, as surely not half way decent manager would let the custodians slack off this badly.
The trip left her, when not huddling in darkened corners to escape the notice of the abominations that traipsed the shopping ring at will, or trying to figure out how to hold her gun in case one of them spotted her, feeling vaguely disconnected and abandoned, as if the normal life she had known was gone forever, not merely misplaced somehow…
She shut the bakery door quietly behind her and looked around, everything seemed normal if a little run down, and the tongs were behind the counter where you would expect to find them, so she grabbed them and made her skulking way back to the storage closet to retrieve the key.
She entered the room and felt almost instantly at ease, and couldn't place why until she saw that someone had been in here recently and shattered the mirror.
There were thousands of tiny pieces strewn across the floor, non large enough to cast a reflection, for which she was happy, even if it did mean she had to be careful not to cut herself while retrieving the key.
Heather slouched roughly down on the floor of the bookstore, blood covering her jacket from where the creature she had shot had sprayed her in its death throes.
She was lucky to be alive, the thing had made no noise as it approached, something that even after dealing with the one in the clothes store she had trouble believing for something that size. It had made only a faint scrapping noise as it closed on her from behind, extending one bone claw in morbid excitement for the kill.
She had shot it in the head, a lucky shot as she had tripped trying to get away from it as it pulverised a section of a steel shutter by where she had been standing, shooting it while it was trying to tear itself free with the rending shriek of tortured steel.
Heather had barely reined in the urge to scream when its blood covered her, and had failed to stop herself vomiting, wasting more time noisily wrenching while other things gathered in the shadows.
Heather grimaced as her nose took in the stench of her clothes and her empty stomach squeezed itself in a dry wrench. She crawled across the store, as if trying to escape the smell that followed effortlessly.
She hoped this nightmare was over soon.
She starred in angry disbelief at the electronic keypad in front of her. All of the other doors had either had keys of been left open, why had she been directed here if there was no way through?
Maybe she hadn't been, she was forced to consider, maybe she was just clinging to the vague hope that there was still logic and order in a world that now suddenly included such previous abstracts as monsters and religious madwomen, or perhaps she was just being egotistical to think that any of this had anything to do with her at all…
Or maybe she was still dreaming… yes, that would make more sense, but if so, then why couldn't she wake up?
Heather looked around, if this was a dream then surely something would appear to help her… all she could see was a box labelled 'New Delivery' with yesterdays date on the side.
…I'll deal with the new books later…
Heather peeled the sticky tape away from the box and inspected the contents, almost laughing at what she saw. Inside were a number of volumes of Shakespeare's master pieces, each with part of a message of some kind scrawled on the spines. Now she was convinced this was a dream, no one in real life write cryptic messages on book covers; it was like something from an old detective movie, which would certainly explain the old P.I hanging around waiting for her downstairs.
Once more satisfied that she had less to fear than she had previously thought, she set about cracking the 'puzzle' almost cheerfully, soon resolving it into the four digit code she knew must be for the lock.
Heather strafed the gun left and right outside the door, as if she actually knew what she was doing, once more thinking of this whole thing as a strange dream she was having, the fact that she had experienced pain was no surprise, as a little girl she had often had dreams where she was in a fire, and could still remember the pain as the flames licked higher and higher, they had faded in time, and she was glad they had never returned. In all she actually preferred this dream, at least she had some control here, and felt more connected to this dreamworld than the one of fire and pain that had haunted her as a child, despite the abundance of mirrors here.
Nothing came out of the faultlessly clean corridors many turns and twists to assault her, and Heather felt almost cheated, what was the point in realising you were dreaming if you didn't get to have some fun with that fact?
In the end all she found in this new hallway was a single service elevator. It pinged open when she pressed the button and she unthinkingly selected the lowest floor, assuming that it would take her down to a ground floor exit where she could leave this dream behind.
Five minutes passed and still the elevator hummed its dutiful tune as it descended far past the point it should have stopped. Heather hit the STOP button but nothing happened. She hummed, checked her nails, anything she could think of to distract herself.
When she heard the static she felt sure she had imagined it to alleviate her concern and boredom. And when the pocket radio fell from the ceiling with a loud clang, she almost jumped out of her skin.
She picked it up and inspected it. It was only small, must have been lodged in the lighting fixture, but how, and by whom, she could guess. It was also clearly broken, it spat only static on all settings and refused to be quiet no matter what she did to the power and volume buttons.
Stuffing it into her pocket, she lent back against the wall to resume her wait, noticing the sudden lack of noise from the elevator's motor about the same time her back passed the point where the wall should have stopped it.
She flailed wildly as she fell through doors that shouldn't have been there and into a rusted steel cage.
Her head struck the floor and the world's colours inverted for a second as she blacked out. When she came too, the cage was rumbling as it descended, layers of rust and grime flaking off the dubiously constructed lift as she assumed it to be.
She staggered up right, gripping the bars for support… and screamed, throwing herself against the bars in search of a way out.
The lift descended through total darkness, save for the grim light of a number of alcoves, and in each of those alcoves was a new horror. In some woman were bound and gagged, screaming in agony and they were butchered by creatures to horrible to describe, in others creatures danced around wearing pieces of human flesh, committing unspeakable acts on themselves and the dead… and the final thing Heather saw, as she tucked her head between her legs to escape the images, was a tall, almost human figure, garbed in a burn plastic trench coat, starring at her expectantly with the one eye unaffected by the mass of scars that was its face, as if waiting for her to do something.
"This can't be a dream", Heather babbled, unaware of her tears, "Not even a child could believe this…"
The lift continued to descend, and as it passed out of sight, there was one thought in the creature who had watched her; The chosen one… the Mother of God has returned…
Author Notes: hopefully this hasn't put you all of reading anything else I write LOL, next chapter: The darker side of Dreams, will be available by the end of the month work load permitting, sayonara for now.