He kept seeing the girl with the milky cataracts eyes. Her sad, broken face was in every fold of wallpaper, every scuffed fiber of carpet, every shadow thrown by the dim globe lamps, and now, the shadow of doubt falling over his panicked mind.

She wasn’t real. That’s how he’d kept himself moving: his belief in that. To accept that something so terrible could actually exist…no, no. And the things she’d said, her warm breath like fog on his ear, heavy and wet. Oh God, the things she’d whispered, not like a lover, like a mad conspirator, pulling him close with her panicky grip, breathing down on his ear desperately.

And her baby.

Will stopped running to duck his head into an opening in the wall, a cutout for a pair of guest rooms, to puke.

The belief. He was losing his belief that none of this was real. His acceptance—this new belief—was threatening to consume him. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears and feel the slimy sweat coating his hairline. How long had he been running? Where to?

Not to. From.

He checked over his shoulder and began again, racing through corridors that couldn’t decide what they wanted to be.

Fear pushed him forward. It also held him back. She could be around any corner. But to stand still offered no prospect of escape—no matter how small it might be.

It had definitely been a hotel, back there. The carpet a maroon and black pattern that smelled of powdered cleaning agents and vacuum tracks. There’d been openings in the walls every fifteen feet, on both sides, across from each other, and pairs of doors set into each. Each door had a gold knocker beneath a high peephole and above a low one. Globe lamps every twenty feet shed paltry light, giving the hallways and corridors a dungeon-maze-labyrinth feel. None of the doors were numbered.

She’d been on the other side of a ninety-degree turn in the hall—a turn completely indistinguishable from the previous fifteen or twenty turns he’d taken—huddled against the near-side wall, clutching herself. Her dress was the color of wallpaper—skin-toned, dingy—and her eyes were twin glasses of spoiled milk.

That had been a shock, finding her. She’d been so close to the curve and his line-of-sight so limited he’d nearly run her over. Will hadn’t seen another person in hours, or so it seemed, despite starting out with so many others, and how big was this God-forsaken place?

He’d almost hugged her, clutched her arms the way she’d been holding herself, but then her eyes had opened and he’d seen her vacant white stare, and her mouth had opened and he’d seen her little gray teeth, covered in dark slime like the underside of a rock or rows of miniature tombstones, and she began to speak and he turned and ran back the way he came, and still none of this looked familiar.    

It wasn’t even a hotel anymore. Now it was a shopping mall, and the globe lights with their pathetic glow were replaced by harassing fluorescent bars, and all the shops that surrounded him were closed, their cages slid down to keep intruders out. 

Will was on the bottom floor. He was emerging into an open courtyard, one with huge white tiles for his feet to slap, and a closed movie theater off to his left, and an escalator in the middle of the floor, right in front of him. He was walking now, out of breath, pushing his wet hair from his forehead so that it would stop poking his eyes.

Jonathan came jogging along next to him, equally out of breath.

“We gotta get out of here, man,” he said. He was dressed for work: baggy gray slacks, a brown sweater, cheap rubber shoes from Payless. Will wasn’t sure if they’d come here together—wherever here was—but running into Jonathan felt somehow unsurprising. 

“The doors are upstairs, come on.” He started up the dead escalator—stairs now—and Will followed.

Jonathan was right; Will knew that before they were halfway to the second floor. Of course the doors were upstairs: This was the Evergreen Mall, the one he’d frequented every weekend growing up in Richmond. Of course, Jonathan was from Wisconsin. Will hadn’t known him until last January when he’d joined their small media relations team, and he didn’t think Jonathan had ever been to the east coast, let alone Richmond, and he knew for damn sure he’d never told him about the Evergreen Mall, but he didn’t stop to think about that. There was no time.

They reached the top and went left, passing a few more closed, nameless shops. Directly ahead was a break in the storefronts—the curved entrance way he recognized from childhood. A row of eight glass doors stood between them and the sunlight outside. Will wanted to run, but he knew not to. They might notice that, and if they noticed the doors, the doors might disappear. Jonathan seemed to be on the same page. They walked quickly.

A young woman popped out from behind a directory sign. Will flinched, but he calmed when he saw her eyes: brown, like her hair. She was roughly his age, upper-twenties. Pretty. Scared. She looked like someone he’d seen in a movie once. Not a big movie, some indie horror flick. Maybe it was her.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“We’re leaving.”

“Leaving how?”

“Those doors,” Will said, trying to stay cool. He was worried that acknowledging them might erase them. It seemed to do the opposite.

“Doors?” She turned, and as she did the glass cleared and grew a shine, as if freshly cleaned.

There was a woman standing in front of the doors now. She was wearing khaki pants and a red polo and she had dark black braids that dangled at her hips. Will couldn’t tell if she was one of them. He wasn’t sure the others even saw her. They walked quickly past and through the doors, scared that at any moment they might fade away, become more unyielding wall.

Even as they stepped outside into the night and inhaled fresh air, Will couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a trap, a fake, a facade. Something meant to build them up just to knock them back down, and hard.

There were police outside. Three or four cars, parked out front, their lights turning, painting the night sky red and blue, the colors of freedom, ironically. Officers congregated around open car doors, talking. Some had rifles and armor. They used walkie talkies clipped to their chests.

Instantly, Will turned right, grabbing his two companions and dragging them around the corner. This was it: the trap. The cops were going to grab them, cuff them, beat them up a bit. Then they’d throw them into the backs of cruisers, drive them somewhere, although they wouldn’t actually be going anywhere, not really. Sure, the roads might change and the cars might move, but in the end they’d end up right here. Again. And again.

It might not look like a mall anymore, but it’d still be here, still this place. And they’d be separated again: Will and Jonathan and their new familiar friend. They weren’t supposed to be together; they didn’t want them together. Will wasn’t even sure how they’d managed to find each other in the first place, when the whole world had seemed so empty just minutes prior. What he did know was that they were better together, safer.

So he dragged his friends around the corner and out of sight of the cops looking to trap them and bring them home. Or maybe they wouldn’t even bother with the cuffs: maybe they’d simply yell “Stop!” and then fill them with thirty holes a piece. Same result; different method.

There were more cop cars around the corner, these ones unguarded and dark. It was a dead-end with a large turnaround and a few massive metal garage doors for deliveries and unloading. The police vehicles were strange: boxier, more square than they should have been. Almost European. They looked like they’d been designed by a child. They were white with green trim.

“We have to steal one,” he said, knowing he was right, not knowing how he knew. 

“I want to get the fuck out of here,” Eliza said.

“Maybe they left the keys inside.” Jonathan was around the passenger side, trying to see through the tinted window.

That sounded good. Will thought he could believe that. He opened the door and grabbed the keys, sitting between the two front seats, and started the car. The others piled in. Jonathan took the passenger’s spot and Eliza slid behind the dark green metal partition meant to separate captors from captive.

The car started fast and Will wasted no time putting his foot down.

The “mall” was in a huge shopping plaza, it appeared. They were racing through a narrow, sinuous road that cut through the massive, interconnected parking lots. All around them were department stores—anchor stores is what they were called in shopping malls and strip plazas like this one, Will remembered from school—interspersed with smaller shops. He couldn’t read the names of any of those, the signs were too small, but above each of the department stores were huge letters, most glowing in red neons, marking the impressive storefronts with various names.

Will couldn’t read these either, because he only spoke English. The formats and fonts looked familiar—he thought one was a Michael’s and another a Target, maybe even an Albertson’s in the distance—but he was really driving too fast to spend any time on it.

He noticed the lights were burning on top of their cruiser, a bright blue. He had no memory of getting past the cops barricading the exit.

Jonathan was gripping the handle over his seat and his eyes were squeezed tightly shut beneath the small glasses that sat crooked across his face. He was talking to himself.

Will noticed his beard. Brown in some spots, but mostly white. Patchy. It didn’t connect in a few places and hardly made any effort to climb above his jawline and clothe his rosy cheeks. Will had never really liked him much. Jonathan—never Jon, no, he’d correct you if you tried to get friendly—was an older man, or at least older as far as Will was concerned. Fifty maybe? Somewhere around there. He was mostly a cold person who kept to himself. But he was terrified and now Will found himself feeling bad for his often forgotten coworker.

He checked the rearview and saw Eliza staring out the passenger side window, her mouth open.

“I went to France last summer,” she said to no one. Then she said a word Will couldn’t understand. She was reading the signs above the stores.

Will was starting to believe it wasn’t a trap. Or, maybe what had started as a trap, a ruse meant to get their hopes up, was turning into a legitimate jailbreak. The mall and its oceanic parking lot was so far behind them he couldn’t even catch a glimpse of it in the rearview.

He couldn’t exactly remember when it had gotten light, or how they’d found themselves on this desert road, curving along the face of a basalt cliff with a drop that had to be close to a thousand feet looming on their left. There were no other cars on the road. The sun was a blinding pinhole blazing through the blue blanket of sky.

It was time to make sense of this nightmare.

“Where are we going?” asked Will, the driver.

“Away.” Eliza was sitting upright, alert, staring through the screen and the windshield. They rounded another curve and the view opened up. Empty hardpan desert stretched to infinity in all directions. Will checked the gas gauge. There was none.

“But where?” he asked, not sure why Eliza would have the answer, but sure she would.

“Does it matter?” She held his eyes in the mirror.

“I don’t love the idea of driving into that,” he motioned vaguely in front of them, “with no idea where I’m headed. We have no water, no food, no idea how long this car will run. Something tells me my GPS would be completely fucking useless out there.” He patted his empty pocket. “Do either of you even have your phones? I don’t know where mine is.”

Eliza laughed. Only her eyes were visible in the rearview. Her eyes were not laughing.

“Just drive, okay? We’ll worry about the rest when we have to. Just get us as far the fuck away from that place as possible.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” he heard himself ask. Her eyes were hard, not flinching, staring back at him.

“Just because you’re driving and I’m behind bars doesn’t mean we’re playing cops and robbers. Focus on the road, would ya?”

“No, I’m serious.” Now he couldn’t break her gaze. Something told him to watch her eyes for the truth. “I’m not driving into the middle of the fucking desert with no plan, so unless you know—”

“Desert?” And now her eyebrows drew down; there was no mistaking genuine confusion.

 “What fucking desert? Are you—” Her eyes doubled in size. “OH MY GOD!”

Will looked through the windshield. There was nothing there. They were driving into black nothingness. A couple of space explorers in a starless void.

But then there was something. The road was forming, line by line, and it was turning, another curve, and they were flying out over the edge.

“OH SHIT!” Will felt his stomach drop out beneath him; felt the absence of solid matter between himself and gravity’s unforgiving rush. And he felt himself screaming. Their unified voices woke Jonathan and he joined the chorus.

It wasn’t desert beneath them. It wasn’t a lifeless stretch of interstellar space either, although it was night, down there. The mall or hotel or whatever it was sat beneath them, surrounded by its blacktop prison, its connected parking lots. They were falling from a height much greater than a thousand feet, greater than ten thousand feet, judging by the view, and as far as the horizon stretched they could see more blacktop, more department store signs.

Will hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and the sudden drop sucked him back, turned him around. He watched Eliza’s eyes bulge as she screamed, screamed.

“I don’t want to die!” she screamed. “Please, I don’t want to go back! I can’t! I can’t go—”

Something shot through the back windows—in one side and out the other—too fast for Will to identify it. He looked at Eliza; watched as the top of her head slid off, her gaping mouth split horizontally. Her lower jaw stayed where it was, atop her neck; the top row of teeth and everything above slid off like a plate of jell-o on a tilted dish. He watched her screaming eyes as they fell to the floor.

He started to remember then, bits and pieces. He understood why their supposed escape had felt so much like an open snare, lying in wait. Jonathan’s face showed comprehension as well. They screamed their shared nightmare as they fell, remembering more with each foot lost between them and their black fate below.

“I won’t do it again.” Jonathan looked remarkably calm considering: his neck was turned at an angle, his face pressed to the roof. His glasses had fallen off and his wounded eyes looked small. “I can’t, Will. I can’t.”

The ground was getting closer. Beneath their tumbling car Will watched as its face changed. It could be whatever you wanted it to be, or whatever you didn’t want it to be.

“As soon as we get back there, I’m killing myself.” Jonathan was no longer screaming; he spoke with a deadly calm, one that said better than his face ever could that his decision had been made. And wasn’t there a certain appeal to what he was saying? Will wasn’t sure he could do it again, either. It wasn’t the dying, wasn’t the pain he couldn’t take anymore—it wasn’t even the resetting, not really. It was the fear. He couldn’t imagine running through those cloaked, changing walls, turning blind corners, never knowing what nightmare it might conjure for you next. Because it could be anything, anything your mind could create. Even a girl with milky cataracts eyes. He couldn’t stand to be scared anymore.

Ah, but wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t that exactly what it wanted? For them to die there, to end it all at their own hands, to check in permanently? More trophies on the wall, more voices from the sink, more rattling and groaning heard at night.

Eternity in that place. That scared Will deeper than anything.

The ground was close now, rushing at them with deadly speed. Outside the windows all was night again. They were almost home.

He grabbed Jonathan’s hand. He understood it all. Good God, there was a way out!

They weren’t supposed to find each other. This had been more than a cruel joke to build and then break their spirits. They’d almost done it. He knew everything, needed to tell Jonathan all of it, but there was no time.

“Give me a chance!” he said. “One more time! Please!”

“Will, I—”

There was a deafening crash, and then there was black, all around them.

The ballroom was empty, but its very size gave the impression of a busy room, an auditorium recently vacated. Will almost felt he could hear echoes of laughter, a fading murmur of voices all jumbled up, the way a high school cafeteria sounds during lunch hour. There was the impression of a party so recently finished. The remnants danced and swirled and teased him.

He could almost remember what he’d just been doing, and who he’d been doing it with. Tired feet carried him to the exit.

Will jammed the push bar and slipped through the grand double doors; found himself in a wide hallway, more a river than a stream.

He was in an empty convention center. Sure, he’d only seen one room, but that didn’t matter. The place felt empty; it seemed to radiate silence the way all busy places do when there is no one to fill all the blank space between the walls and windows, carpets and ceilings. It felt the same way the halls of the Moscone in San Francisco had when he’d stepped out of his session early, something useless about AI and integration, a blatant sales pitch blanketed as education. He’d left the ballroom, found himself between classes, standing in a strangely lonely hall, marveling at the silence.

The carpet supporting his shoes was maroon and black, an odd pattern that gave him pause and filled his heart with an ill-defined sense of dread. It looked familiar. It was nothing like the carpet at the Moscone, nothing like the beautifully tiled floors in the Venetian in Vegas, and those were the only two places he’d been sent for those terribly boring marketing conferences.

Work. The thought filled him with vague unease.

He turned to look at the doors he’d just come through. He wanted to see the name of the room—it might help him remember where he was. The door was unlabeled. As were the ones in the cutout across from him.

His panic—and that nagging sense of deja vu—doubled. Fear pushed him forward, down the corridor.

What Will really wanted was to find a window. A place like this should be full of them, he thought. Splendid, showy floor-to-ceiling windows, something to display the skyline. He would have settled for a tiny rectangle of glass, like something you’d find in the bathroom at a bar. He wanted to slide it up, taste the outside air. Also, he needed to know if it was day or night out there.

Around the turn of a corner the hallway ended. Another pair of doors was set into the wall. This room was labeled. In French. He thought he might vomit. When he turned back, unhappy with the opportunity in front of him, he found himself face to face with a wall. The corridor had erased itself behind him, the blank, unyielding, obdurate wall had followed him down the hall, nipping at his heels.

So, no choice then. Will walked beneath the hanging globe lamps and opened his door.

It was another ballroom. Empty, just like the last. Except instead of exuding warmth and telling stories of parties recently wrapped up, this one was cold and dark and entirely unwelcoming. The air was musty and heavy with the smell of mold. All around the edges of the room—the corners, the far walls—was black. He couldn’t see the walls. In the center was a spotlight, shining down on a dance floor. Eliza waited there in a beautiful pale gown.

Will walked to her.

His footsteps echoed above him, chasing off toward an unseen ceiling somewhere up in the darkness. Eliza stood still, beckoning with her smile. It was as beautiful as he remembered. Will joined her in the spotlight, took her hand; they began to dance.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” she said.

Not knowing what she meant, Will said, “Yes.”

They locked hands and he let her lead, turning him right then left, going forward and back, the spotlight following them always. She let go of his left hand and he twirled her, catching her at the end of her spin, dipping her, watching as her long chestnut hair danced just above the floor, staring deep into her chestnut eyes, bringing his face close, so close.

There was the impression of an audience. An eager crowd, clamoring in the shadows.

“Again!” Someone said excitedly.

“She’s gorgeous,” a voice added.

“Be with us,” said another.

“Yes. Yes. Don’t leave.” The crowd agreed.

Will was staring at the darkness, trying to see through it, trying to find the faces that held those hidden voices. He was beginning to feel sick again, and could feel sweat beading up at his temples and his forehead, even though the room was icy, the dance floor a frozen lake.

“Where are we?”

He turned to his date, still in his arms, bodies pressed close together, and looked into her white eyes. The pupils swam in a cloud of sick and her skin was graying and beneath her rotting nose where maggots squirmed and fed on decaying skin her lips were pulled back and she was grinning, showing her black tombstone teeth.

“Mister,” she said, “won’t you help me feed my baby?”

Will saw the straps of her flesh-colored dress, slipped below her shoulders. Not wanting to, knowing what he’d see but unable to stop, his eyes slid down, and he saw the horrible black thing clamped to her chest, its sharp teeth needling her nipple, sucking blood with a grin, and it looked at him, yellow eyes filled with hate, and he knew it was smiling as surely as he knew that he was screaming, he must be screaming. He tried to let go but she pulled him closer and put her lips to his ear to tell him dark secrets and sing him nighttime songs of eternity. There was madness in that voice and it found the madness inside of him.

Pushing off, he broke her grip and ran. The light followed him and soon she was in the darkness, cackling, her voice a clash among the chorus.

The pounding in his throat was getting to be too much, so Will slowed, gasped, choked on air. It had the same effect as always. When running from something—blindly, hurried by fear—it was easy to stop thinking. Necessary, even. But now, standing still, gaining his breath, the circuits began to run again. Systems fired up. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, but once that object begins to slow…

He needed something to get him moving again. Fear of the girl with the glossed-over eyes should have been enough. The problem was, now that he’d stopped he remembered how he’d found her in the first place. Which led to him realizing that she was as likely to be ahead of the next curve as she was to be behind the last.

It was quiet. No one was chasing him. Paralyzed by fear, he slid against the wall and whimpered.

The place looked something like a hotel now. Not quite, but that was the closest he could get to seeing it. That got him thinking of work again. The only time Will ever found himself in a hotel lately was when the company sent him away, hoping he’d bring something valuable back from a conference or seminar.

Somehow he always got stuck going with Jonathan, boring old Jonathan, just the two of them.

A funny image struck him: Jonathan gripping the overhead handle in a car, his face pressed uncomfortably against the ceiling, all bulging eyes and white teeth as behind him, through a cracked window, a blackness darker than the voids between stars turned and turned.

Will gasped; suddenly he had strength to run.

This time the courtyard was empty. His heels clicked as he crossed the white tile floor toward the escalator, alone. He thought of calling out to him, but he was scared to raise attention. He considered the escalator, upstairs, potential escape. But alone, he worried the doors would not be there.

Last time, Jonathan had come from his left. The closed movie theater sat there, its dark opening so much like a yawning mouth. The box office was boarded up. Coming attraction posters hung in tatters. There was a faint smell of butter and sour ropes as he approached the place where the ticket-taker would normally stand, the place where the tile turned to dark blue and purple galaxy print carpet.

“Jonathan?” He called tentatively, knowing it wasn’t loud enough to be halfway useful.

Will looked back in the direction he’d come. There the tile ended too; turned to maroon and black carpet. A hall began there as the courtyard narrowed. The hall was draped in shadows.

Jonathan could be in the movie theater, in the darkness, the same way Will had been in the hotel’s darkness just moments ago. A horrible thought fell on him: What if Jonathan had emerged five minutes before him? Perhaps he’d gone upstairs and continued on. Maybe it had been nothing more than luck that had put them together, in the same place at the same time, last go-round. 

But, that same voice suggested, what if you’re early? Will considered standing in the lobby and waiting, but he knew what was apt to happen if he stopped now. It was hard to get moving again. Each second he stood here paralyzed by his decision threatened to cement his feet into place.

Will drew a slow breath and stepped into the shadows.

It smelled worse on the inside. The overly-sweet, cloying aroma of candy and butter was replaced by the stench of burnt popcorn. It attacked his nose, filled his lungs. It was still quite dark inside, but no longer full black; there were running lights along the edges of the carpet to guide his feet. Soft purple to match the print. Will traced them down the corridor.

He reached the end of the main hall, passing dark, empty theaters along the way. The hall ended in a T; a blank wall sat in front of him, and the path continued to the left and to the right.

Left: More dark entrances to theaters with dead marquees above. It was a tapestry of shadows; blacks and grays and darker blacks mixed in an empty alcove. To the right was much of the same, with one major difference: there was a lit marquee above one of the doors.

Will was maybe thirty feet away from it, and without his glasses—which he really only needed at that distance and farther. From where he stood, the title of whatever film was playing was indecipherable; the red, digital readout blurred together and became a sort of shifting mass, like snakes in a pit.

And now that he was getting closer, he could hear it: bass rattled the doors and bounced across the hall, thundering like a boulder sent downhill. The title was still blurry, but now he was close enough to read it: Casablanca. Which made sense; Jonathan had one love above classic movies, and that was his late wife, Bianca.

As he crossed underneath the marquee to pull the theater door open, Will glanced above at the title one last time. He’d been mistaken: it didn’t say Casablanca. He walked in, wondering if he’d ever heard Jonathan talk about foreign films.

The theater was dark but the screen was bright; the picture running was in black and white, and seemed to be a silent film. Gray, grainy actors pantomimed exaggeratedly to one another. Will stood at the bottom, facing the audience. The auditorium was empty, save one seat. Jonathan sat in the second-to-top row, middle seat. His glasses showed a reflection of the evening’s show. He listlessly fed handfuls from a bucket in his lap to his mouth.

Will sat next to him.

“We gotta get out of here, man.” He found himself whispering to his seatmate, despite the empty stadium.

Jonathan reached down, palmed his mouth, returned his hand, palmed his mouth. His chewing was monotonous and steady.

Will shook him. “Hey! Let’s go!” Whisper-shouting.

Jonathan rotated his neck slowly, faced him, let his hand rest in the soggy bucket a moment. His small eyes were lifeless behind his lenses.

“Would you keep it down?” he asked. “We’re trying to hear the movie.”

From behind his head a face emerged, slowly. Will had only seen Bianca in the photo Jonathan kept on his desk. She was wearing the same sweater; smiling the same smile. She leaned back.

“Jonathan, we have to leave. Right now.”

“There is no leaving this place.” Hand down. Hand up. Palm. Chew. The burning popcorn smell was worse up here. Hot and somehow fleshy. Jonathan crunched along loudly in his ear, as if he were chewing handfuls of burnt kernels.

“Yes there is. I’ve figured it out this time.” He was growing impatient with Jonathan, getting more anxious by the second.

“You don’t learn, do you?” Jonathan shook his head sadly, funneled another crunchy palmful to his tongue. “Can’t leave this place,” he said through a full mouth. “Never.”

“Listen to me, would you! We can leave, but we have to do it together. Don’t you remember what I told you last time? I remember it all now.” This last bit he said quietly, to himself.

“There is no last time,” Jonathan said in his same droning, resigned voice. Another handful. Another crunch.

“Shut up and let me finish. Last time was a mistake. We weren’t meant to get that far. It only worked—or almost worked—because we were together. Don’t you get it? This place eats what you feed it. That’s why it wants us alone. Alone and afraid. When the three of us were together, we believed we could escape and we almost did! We make the rules! We have to believe we can leave!”

His voice had been steadily rising and someone in the crowd shushed him. Will ignored it and pressed on.

“I wish it could be the three of us again, but I think we’re too late for that. But it doesn’t matter because we know this time! We know what to do!”

“It was only ever us, Will. No three.” He shuffled the bucket in his lap and it rattled like bones. “You’re right about one thing, though. It is too late.”

“I’m not leaving you here alone. So put that fuckin popcorn down and let’s go!” Another impatient shoosh darted past his ear, this one from over his shoulder.

“I’m not alone. And I never have to be again.” His wet eyes shimmered behind his lenses. Another handful disappeared into his mouth.

“Jonathan, I don’t care what you think you saw, your wife is not here. Can’t you see that man? Come on!”

“You’re one to talk about seeing people that aren’t there, Will.” Jonathan turned his head slowly. “Stay. It’s better here.”

“Stay,” someone in the crowd whispered.

“Yes, stay!” A whisper-shout.

“Oh, please Will! Stay awhile!”

“Don’t go.” Hot breath on his ear.

The theater was packed. Every seat in the house was taken. Mostly he saw the backs of heads, a few faces in profile. There were some seats where he could see neither, just writing blackness, as if the light from the screen died on its way down.

“Fuck this!” Will grabbed Jonathan by his collar and stood him up, knocking the bucket from his lap. It hit the ground with a rattle like a sheet of dominoes tumbling down. Spilled across the floor was a collection of nail clippings and children’s teeth and burnt black popcorn kernels. Will gagged.

Jonathan was laughing, the sound swelling and building to delirium. Will turned and saw his face, ashy gray, his eyes the complexion of curdled yogurt, his tongue a dead black snake hiding behind a picket fence of dark tombstone teeth.

“Parlez-vous Francais, William?” Jonathan threw his head back and screamed, a sound both laughter and misery, acceptance and desperation.

The crowd turned to see the main event. A hundred faces considered his, all gray skin and white eyes.

“Stay!” a man screamed.

“There’s nowhere to go,” a woman added.

“There’s so much to see,” said a black hole.

Will turned to flee, but Jonathan was in his way. He slammed into his chest. Jonathan’s face had returned to color; the pale eyes he recognized once again regarded him from behind their twin panes of glass.

There was a hole at the top of his head, spraying blood like a geyser. A smaller hole sat underneath the shelf of his chin. The skin was burnt, reeking. Jonathan thrust a silver revolver into Will’s chest. He opened his mouth to speak and his teeth weren’t black, they were white stained red. A torrent of blood fell from his mouth before his words could.

“Here,” he said, dropping a puddle of hot blood at Will’s feet. “For you.”

Will took the gun. All around him the crowd cheered and roared; they laughed and screamed and chanted. Will’s hands were numb. His brain was turning off.

Jonathan pulled back the hammer. The sound of the gun cocking was loud in the suddenly silent, empty theater. Will looked down, saw the black bore of the barrel, felt the cold steel press into the soft spot under his chin, felt his index finger wrapping the trigger.

“It’s louder than you think,” Jonathan said as a tear left his eye. “Everything here is so loud.”

Will was running. His breathing was ragged and whiny. But he couldn’t stop. Fear pushed him forward. Jonathan was back there, Eliza was back there, the bad place was back there and he had somehow gotten out.

He hadn’t expected the doors to be there again, sitting in the far wall at the top of the escalator. That had given him no pause as he came running from the movie theater. It was either up the stairs, or back the way he came.

But they’d been there, same as before, and he exploded through them once again, pushing into the hot, dry air. He couldn’t remember how he got past the cops—or maybe there hadn’t been any cops this time. That would explain why he was legging it through the never-ending parking lot, looking for a car to steal.

It seemed that strength in numbers was something he’d overestimated. Will had thought he needed Eliza and, or at least, Jonathan to make the doors come, but here he was, outside, panting fresh air, pressing against his aching side as if he could shove the growing stitch back in. 

And there was a car up ahead, sitting alone in the massive sprawl of blacktop like an island in a dark, unforgiving sea.

This time, he believed he could make it. Not just outside the walls the place put up. Not just to the car. All the way. He hadn’t had that belief last time—the three of them together hadn’t had half as much belief as he did right now. Because he remembered. He was wise to its games; he knew its tricks.

Perhaps that was why it was letting him go. Maybe it had realized he was more trouble than he was worth.

The car looked like a Toyota, but he didn’t stop to read the back. He believed the keys would be in the ignition and they were, dangling like his hope.

Will turned the key. The engine turned over a few times before eventually coughing to life. He slammed the dash and screamed, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”

And then he was gunning it, not noticing the lack of names above the stores. He was focused on navigating his way from the asphalt Alcatraz and hitting the open road.

Soon enough he was climbing the twisting road set into the hill. And this time he remembered it all! No gaps in the picture, no wondering how he made it. He could see himself leaving the lot, going right, uphill; could see himself before that, snaking through the parking lot; and before that, slamming the dash in celebration; and before that, forcing his heavy legs forward to the car because…because something was back there. Something bad. He’d been in the movie theater with Jonathan and he’d gotten out because something bad was happening and now he was escaping.

Will found himself approaching a familiar curve and his heart sank. He’d made it this far last time and then the sky had opened to infinite black nothing and they’d been falling to their fates, back home.

He came around the corner. There was more road. The sky did not change.

And the hill was descending. He could see the desert was ending! In the distance there were trees and grass and he thought he could even see a small city at the edge of his vision! He focused his eyes on it and pushed forward.

Coming to the bottom of the hill, he could see a green road sign ahead. The words were blurry at this distance, without his glasses. It would tell him the name of the city and how far it was. He locked his eyes to it and pressed the gas.

Then he was passed it, driving beneath tall redwoods that hung over the road like eager spectators. He was in the shade now. Heavy shade. It seemed the trees were completely blocking the sun. Will’s eyes were glazed, staring straight forward. He could no longer see the city up ahead; it looked like the road might go on forever.

That was normal, he told himself. He’d had a vantage point coming down the hill. Now that he was on level ground, of course he couldn’t see.

But his mind kept trying to return to that road sign. He didn’t want it to—not because he was scared, but because it was a stupid thing to focus on. He didn’t have his glasses. Of course he couldn’t read it.

Although, his eyes had never been that bad. Certainly not bad enough to make perfectly readable words look like an entirely different language.

Will swallowed hard. He no longer felt so good, but fear pushed him forward. He knew what was back there; might as well see what was up ahead.

He told himself the sign didn’t matter.

He believed it didn’t matter.

And that was what was important. He hoped that was what was important.