Things You Need

by Kevin Lucia

  Shane supposed, given everything which had happened, he should be horrified. That was probably the store’s intention. One last fatal shock to send him and Amanda scurrying off into its depths forever. But something inside him had reached a threshold. Not only was he done playing games, he’d also realized the truth of things. Whatever this store was, however it got its power to lure people here and trap them, the only power it had was what people like him—lost people like he and Amanda, and maybe the woman and her husband Mike—gave it.

  He was done giving it power.

  He was taking it back.

  A quiet, tremulous peace filled him as he reached for Benjamin’s blanket.

  “No. No!”

  Amanda jerked her hand away. Shane stood and reached for her, desperate pity and sadness welling up inside. “Amanda! Please. This is the only way!”

  But it was too late.

  Amanda was gone.

  Vanished back into the crowded rows of coats, jackets, dresses and suits, with barely a ripple to mark her passing. Shane reached into his pocket, fingers desperately grabbing his iPhone to call her and plead with her one last time.

  He glanced down and saw her cell lying on the floor, at the edge of the sea of hanging clothes. He stepped toward it.

  some people want to stay lost

  He stopped and stared at the clothes. His throat closed tight with emotion, eyes blurred. He wiped them with his hand, and choked back a sob. “I’m sorry,” he rasped, the words harsh against his throat, “so sorry.”

  He wiped his face again. Turned, knelt before the chest, reached in and pulled Benjamin’s blanket away. As the power blue fabric fluttered upward, he caught the barest outlines of a small, heart-shaped face, bright blue eyes . . .

  And nothing.

  No trinkets. No baby toys, or Benjamin’s favorite stuffed animal—Snoopy, it had been—or his pacifier, or any of the other things Amanda had stored inside for his future. The chest was empty except for dust and small, indefinite particles of debris. It wasn’t Benjamin’s chest any more, but an old, battered thrift store cast-off. When he held up the blanket, it was no longer Benjamin’s baby-blue blanket with birds on it, but a dusty stiff rag peppered with holes.

  He dropped the rag to the floor.

  Gazed at the open double doors. It tore him in half and made him want to throw up, but still. He dropped his iPhone on the floor. Withdrew Amanda’s inhaler from his pocket. Squeezed it once, then opened his hand and dropped it also. It hit the floor with a plastic rattle. A macabre notion: The asthma inhaler rattled like a maraca, filled with tiny bones.

  Shane walked toward the doors, away from the sea of clothes.

  ***

  The glamour of an antique store had disappeared. The hallway outside the gym was dim and the floor coated with grit and dust. Instead of used furniture neatly lined up, the hall was cluttered with overturned school desks, podiums, rolling chairs and bookshelves. Several lockers—old, dusty, tinged with rust—hung open, but for some reason Shane felt no menace from them with the glamour now gone.

  He made his way easily to the front lobby. Gone was the professional cherry wood desk, corporate-style phone, computer, and filing cabinets, and the plush waiting area. It was empty, the floor strewn with debris. Through cracked windows he saw desks and chairs in what had once been the main office. It was dark, and for some reason he didn’t want to linger, as if something in there . . .

  like in those lockers

  . . . was watching him carefully, waiting. When he heard the warble of a ringtone—Amanda’s ringtone—deep within the shadowed recesses of the shattered office, he sped up, trotting to the front doors short of a run. He had a panicked moment when, at first, the push-bar stuck and the door wouldn’t open and his iPhone warbled Amanda’s ringtone even louder in the darkened office behind him, but a frenzied, angry flush of adrenaline pulsed through him. He pushed the bar down, laying his shoulder against the door.

  It opened a crack.

  His iPhone warbled louder.

  He laid his shoulder against the door once more, with everything he had, whispering between gritted teeth, “Let me out, damn you! Let. Me. Out!”

  The door screeched open a crack. Turning sideways, he slipped through, for one awful moment thinking he might get stuck, the door pinning him, crushing him against its frame.

  Then he was out.

  His momentum carried him forward several steps. He stumbled, nearly fell, but he caught himself in time. He stood, heaving in deep gulps of air, turning around, astonished to see the door now standing wide open.

  He could hear it, dimly.

  Ringing inside. His iPhone playing Amanda’s ringtone, over and over. He thought how easy it would be. The door was wide open. He must’ve pushed it all the way as he stumbled through. He could slip back inside, find his phone in the office—it hadn’t been so dark in there, not really—and he could answer it. Guide Amanda out, because maybe she was ready to find her way, ready to beat the store.

  He blinked. For an instant, he saw it. Shivering, mirage-like over the ruined lobby. The spotless, immaculate lobby of Save-A-Bunch Furniture. He stared at it, mouthing Amanda silently. He’d taken two steps toward the illusion before he cried out and flung himself away.

  Whatever compulsion had attempted to draw him back faded. He ran to their car, a black Tahoe, parked all alone on an overgrown parking lot long in disrepair. As he neared the car, however, his stomach sunk.

  Amanda had driven them.

  She had the keys.

  In a movie or maybe a television show, or a thriller novel, someone in his position would break the windows and hot-wire the Tahoe. He had no idea how to do such a thing, didn’t know if you could hot-wire modern cars.

  He placed both hands flat on the hood, bent his head and closed his eyes.

  Amazingly, he could still hear his iPhone, faintly ringing Amanda’s ringtone.

  He shook his head.

  Pushed off the Tahoe’s hood and set out toward the parking lot’s exit. He didn’t know where he was, and didn’t remember much about getting here. Also, he didn’t know how far the store’s illusions reached. He didn’t know how far he had to walk to reach town or in what direction, and he had a strange feeling even if he hadn’t tossed away his phone, he wouldn’t have gotten service out here anyway. The only calls he would’ve received would be from Amanda, or the store using Amanda’s voice to lure him back.

  Had they eaten at The Skylark Diner? Did it even exist? And when he got to town—if there ever was a town in the first place—how could he explain any of this? Explain where his wife was to the police, to his parents, to her parents . . . to anyone?

  Glancing at the darkening sky, however, he pushed those unanswerable questions aside. Wherever he had to go, he had a long way to get there.

  The sun hung low on the horizon.

  Night was falling.

  Somehow, Shane knew he didn’t want to walk these roads alone under the pale light of the moon.

  8.

  “Please! I don’t know where my husband Shane is! That’s all I know! That’s the last time I saw him! You have to help me!”

  At that point my circuits were nearly fried for good. Forget the fact I was locked in a weird-ass thrift shop whose clerk had vanished. Forget my rental car being stolen or towed or whatever. Forget the .38 I couldn’t remember putting away back at The Motor Lodge, and forget the crazy hallucinations I kept having. Here was the impossibility of an iPhone coming to life (when mine wouldn’t work at all) connecting me with some hysterical lady who in the space of ten minutes or so (though it felt much longer) told me some crazy story about being lost in a high school-turned furniture store where

  there were things in the lockers

  . . . she’d somehow gotten separated from her husband. It was a crazy story, but the thing is, I remembered—sorta—passing a sign reading SAVE-A-BUNCH furniture on the way into Clifton Heights, with the impression of a large building set back from the
road. And I couldn’t get over the image of her husband walking forever on a dirt road at night, where instead of things hiding in lockers, things hid in the bushes, watching his every step.

  But I couldn’t tell her that, right? There was no way I could help find her husband, not locked in Handy’s. And I wasn’t sure if she could help me, though I tried to get a word in, anyway.

  Yeah, I know.

  Here’s this lady screaming about being lost, she can’t find her husband and she’s completely frantic, and all I could think about was how to get her to help me. Selfish to the core, for sure.

  “Listen, lady. I’m stuck in this godforsaken old thrift shop in town, the door’s locked, my phone won’t work and someone stole my car. Your phone works. Think you could try and call 911 or something, get the cops over here? If I can get out I’ll try and come get you.”

  “No! This is the only number which works, and it’s my husband’s number! How do you have Shane’s phone?!”

  “Lady, I have no idea how his phone got here. I’m stuck in this crappy junk store, and your husband’s phone was in a wicker basket full of all these other cell phones, and it turned on and started ringing.”

  “Please. Please help me! I can’t’ find my husband!”

  That’s when the iPhone died. Cut off right in the middle of her sentence, never to turn on again. Maybe it was a good thing too, because she was falling back into her mindless litany about not being able to find her husband. It was unlikely she could’ve helped me at all. Still, I kind of freaked out. She may have been crazy and telling nutso stories about being lost in a big furniture store with no exit, but she could’ve been a lifeline, right? My connection to the outside. So when that iPhone fell dark I flipped out, bad. Swearing and pawing through the pile of cellphones on the floor, searching for an AC adapter to plug the phone in somewhere, maybe get it some juice, but wouldn’t you know? No chargers.

  “DAMMIT!”

  I wound up and threw the iPhone the length of the store, where it cracked against the front glass window. Didn’t make a mark, of course, but it gave me an idea: Hell, yeah. Break the windows!

  Why hadn’t it occurred to me earlier?

  Maybe, even as I was losing it, I was still trying to be law-abiding or whatever, but by then I figured: Screw the law. Whoever jacked my rental sure hadn’t cared about the law, had they? And if that weirdo shopkeeper hadn’t vanished and left me stuck in there . . .

  but I’d wanted to get back in, hadn’t I?

  . . . then he wouldn’t have had his windows broken, now would he?

  Swearing and muttering, I scrambled to my feet and dashed to the front window, scanning the shelves along the way for something I could use to smash the glass. At the end of the aisle to my right, I found a baseball bat. A Louisville Slugger. I grabbed it, planted my feet and swung at the store’s glass window hard as I could.

  I’ve never made any claim I was an athlete or anything of the sort. I played baseball in high school but I wasn’t any good. Never got on the field, was hardly used in practice, and to be honest: I was an orphan boy who lived in a foster home. Not one of the popular townie boys all the coaches loved. So mostly I stood on the sidelines and watched everyone else do their thing.

  But I hit the glass hard. The bat thwaked against it.

  And bounced off.

  It bounced. Which, given how hard I’d swung, totally threw me off balance. I spun, and for the second time ended up crashing into the shelves of Handy’s Pawn and Thrift.

  I landed onto the floor, stuff raining down around me. The bat fell from my hand and clattered away. I’m not gonna lie. I started bawling. Crying my eyes out. It was all too much, y’know? My life was a waste. Not ever having a mom or dad. Not growing up in a normal home. All I could think about was the .38 back at the Lodge, because right then I wished I had it.

  Tears poured down my face. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, and that’s when I saw it sitting between my legs in all the clutter I’d knocked down.

  A black paperweight of some kind. A pyramid. About six inches wide at the base and six inches tall, and it didn’t look plastic. More like highly polished stone. With engravings on it. Etchings.

  I grabbed it and picked it up, squinting, trying to read the writing. Foreign, maybe Latin, only I never took Latin in high school, so how would I know?

  Here’s the crazy part. Considering all the weirdness of that night, I sure wasn’t planning on reading those words. At all. Farthest thing from my mind. Regardless, I found myself slowly whispering them, trying to make the weird-sounding syllables fit in my mouth while I rubbed this pattern with my thumb, three hooks spiraling around a dot.

  Yeah.

  Crazy. Damn near insane. There I was, rubbing a stone pyramid paperweight, muttering this nonsense language, acting crazy, out of my head. But I gotta be honest with you. Hitting the window with the Louisville Slugger, hard as I could, and not even cracking it? That took a lot out of me, I’ve got to admit. Sent me around the bend.

  That’s why—honestly—I’m still not sure about what happened next. Not sure if it actually happened, or if I was so close to losing it completely I dreamed the whole thing up. Anyway, I was sitting there, see? Muttering gibberish and rubbing that black pyramid, when the damn thing vibrated. It quivered in my hand. Then a tiny hole or something must’ve opened in the pyramid’s tip, because this gas, or black smoke, or sand burst into my face. I didn’t mean to but I sucked in a huge gulp and started hacking and choking.

  Again, I was half crazy at the time, so maybe I imagined the whole thing but as I was running out of air and blacking out, I swore it wasn’t smoke or dust but flies, thousands of tiny flies filling my eyes, ears and nose and crawling down my throat as I gagged and tried to puke them up as everything went dark, and I thought, Oh my God I’m dying . . .

  THE BLACK PYRAMID

  Reverend Norman Akley perused a table of odds and ends in front of Handy’s Pawn and Thrift, which offered its eclectic collection as part of Clifton Heights’ Monthly Sidewalk Rummage Sale. Norman’s right hand flitted from object to object, never quite touching but considering each as if his fingertips could judge value by intuition alone.

  Norman loved rummage sales, but only occasionally did he find anything worth consideration. When he did, he picked it up and examined it, wondering if it would plead to be taken home. Most often, however, he shook his head, noting a slight imperfection here, a stain there. He’d replace the item, offer the table’s curator a polite smile, and move on to other tables, their contents varied, sublime, ridiculous, amusing, or simply odd.

  The items on Handy’s table were varied indeed. A pewter beer stein, its embossed Viking bust glaring. Neat rows of used but polished tobacco pipes. Not-so-fine, yellowed china. A felt-lined box of tarnished silverware and stacks of dusty board games.

  That wasn’t all.

  There were action figures, Legos, Lincoln Logs, and the ubiquitous Magic Eight Ball, which answered every question with: Ask Again Later. An old Nintendo Gameboy, and a Texas Instruments word processor. A pleather cowboy gun-belt. Wax Calavera skulls for the Day of the Dead. A Nikon digital camera, in decent shape. Rusty old tools. Tins full of assorted colored beads, marbles, rubber bands, and, oddly enough, a basket full of used cell phones. But nothing interested him until a black shimmer caught his eye among rows of dented matchbox cars and piles of jacks.

  He squinted, bent over, and peered closer.

  A pyramid.

  A gleaming black pyramid unlike anything he’d ever seen. He found himself picking it up and turning it over in his fingers before he fully realized it.

  With three sides and a triangular base measuring approximately six by six by six inches, the pyramid was also about six inches tall. As he peered at it more closely, he felt enthralled by its uncanny symmetry.

  “Wonderful,” he whispered, without understanding why. “Absolutely wonderful.”

  He rubbed the pyramid harder. Definitely not plastic,
judging by its heft. Maybe ceramic, though a voice in his head whispered, hand-carved stone.

  He hefted it again.

  Tapped a side and felt a strange resonance.

  Hollow?

  He rubbed the pyramid with his thumb, detecting several fine scratches. A curious sense of dreadful anticipation filling him, Norman felt all around it with his fingertips.

  Scratches.

  Carvings?

  A strange excitement stirred within him. He held the pyramid up for closer inspection and saw whirls, lines, and geometric shapes etched over every inch of the pyramid. It was the work of a medieval artisan. But he felt strangely repulsed, also, and two clashing thoughts arose.

  Put it down. Go home, pour a scotch, sip it while finishing tonight’s sermon notes, forget about it.

  Or.

  Take it home where it belongs.

  He stared at the black pyramid, tracing with a fingertip the designs etched into its surface. Perhaps it was the clouds passing over the sun, but those etchings appeared to be moving. Writhing and wriggling. One of them in particular, three hooks spiralling around a dot in the center, looked like it was slowly spinning.

  With great effort, he glanced up and down the sidewalk. Odd. The other tables hummed with would-be buyers but he stood alone at Handy’s table, no one minding a cash box, even.

  A strange sense of relief filled him. The table’s vendors had stepped out, so he couldn’t buy the pyramid right now. He reached down to deposit it back onto the table . . .

  And saw something he swore he hadn’t moments before.

  Next to the jumbled piles of forgotten toys, propped against an old tin can full of marbles, a rectangular cardboard sign proclaimed in scrawled black marker: Take What You Need!

  Free?

  He supposed it made sense. Yard sales often gave away items they couldn’t sell, a last-ditch effort at passing along things no one wanted before they were thrown away. Not strange at all, except for two things.