The Collector

by Z Hanny

  Jared went to what he thought was a better spot for the camera, positioning it securely on the ledge. He unfolded some nearby shirts and placed them around the phone and on the ground, in case it fell again.

  He hit record.

  “Well, I’m officially creeped out now,” Jennifer said. “We still didn’t determine what caused the sounds downstairs.”

  “Old building, it could just be rats,” Jared said.

  “After everything that has happened so far?” Jennifer asked. “You of all people are going to come up with answers like that?”

  Jared nodded. A loud crashing sound came from behind them and they turned to see that Jennifer’s phone was no longer up on the ledge. When they went over to check it, they found it on the floor just past the piles of clothes that were meant to save it.

  Jennifer lifted her phone up and shards of the screen fell to the floor. She tried to turn it on, but the phone wouldn’t load up. Not a single light came from the device.

  “My phone,” Jennifer mourned, her face turning sour. “Can it be saved?”

  Jared took the phone from her and looked it over. “I don’t think so. It’ll need a new screen.”

  Jen unhooked the phone from the battery pack then placed it carefully into her pocket. She muttered under her breath as she kicked at the blue t-shirt on the floor.

  “Well, that wasn’t a coincidence,” Blaine said while looking toward Jared’s phone as he recorded. “We should go check on my phone and see if it captured anything.”

  “Or if it is even still in one piece,” Jennifer muttered.

  As the group began to ascend the stairs, Jen stopped and looked over the room. A chill ran down her spine as she noticed that the mannequins were all faced towards her and the stairs.

  She ran after the others, chastising them for leaving her behind. She made them stop so that she could tell them about the mannequins, but both boys just stared at her, not willing to acknowledge how creepy it was.

  “We’ll worry about it on our way back down,” Blaine said, not making eye contact with her. It didn’t take long for them to get to the top level of the building.

  The lights were still off and when they went to the phone’s location, they couldn’t find it. They searched all around the area and even looked for clues of broken phone bits, but nothing remained - not even the battery pack.

  “This is almost worse than having a broken phone,” Blaine said. “We did leave it on this floor, didn’t we?”

  “Yea, it was this floor,” Jared said while he doubled back and re-checked every corner and crevice. “There isn’t a sign of anything. Other than the phone being gone, everything else looks the same.”

  “I don’t like this at all,” Blaine said. “I’m starting to see why everyone thinks this place is haunted. Either that, or there is someone in here, and they’re trying to scare us to death.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Elevator

  “Well, we are two phones down,” Blaine said. “That’s a lot of footage that we lost. I’m pretty over this whole thing - my phone was really expensive.”

  “Mine too,” Jennifer said. “I’m ready to throw in the towel if you guys are.”

  “You two lose your phone and that makes you want to quit?” Jared asked. Jen and Blaine stared at him in surprise. He laughed nervously. “I saw something terrifying and you two wouldn’t let me leave, so I say you’re staying.”

  Blaine and Jennifer glanced at one another, then sighed. Jared walked to the window and recorded the snow falling outside. It was coming down heavier and already covered the ground with a bleak white blanket.

  They decided to leave the top level, but before returning to the television floor, they stopped at the sight of the elevator lights on. All three of them swallowed hard as they stepped closer, Jared slipping his phone out to record.

  Just as the group reached the doors, they opened on their own. No one was inside.

  “Okay, everything about this just screams bad idea,” Jennifer said. “Did either of you turn on the breaker for the elevator?”

  “No,” Jared said. “I don’t think any of us even went near the breakers while we were up there. Unless they’re somehow connected to the electronics section? I’m going to run up and check it.”

  He jogged off towards the stairway, leaving the other two by the elevator. The top level seemed normal, but he didn’t like being alone and when he checked the breaker, he found it on, so he flipped and called out to the others.

  “That made it turn off,” Blaine shouted back.

  When Jared returned the elevator was dark, but the doors remained open. They took one last recording of it, then went down to the television floor. Jennifer pointed when they reached the level.

  The elevator was on once again with the doors open. But none of them had heard it come down.

  “Well,” Jared said. “We might as well ride it down to the lower level, then we can leave. I think that we’ve all had enough of this place.”

  Jen and Blaine both looked relieved at his words, then Jen turned to the camera and said, “We fail the 24-hour challenge - now it’s time to get out of this place, which we feel safe in saying is completely haunted and in need of further investigation. But not by us. We’re down equipment and all a little freaked out.”

  “Are you sure we aren’t just going to get ridiculed?” Blaine asked. “Let’s cut that. You guys, we can’t go now. This could make us a laughing stock of the internet.”

  Jared and Jennifer remained silent, glancing at one another. They had worked hard to bring their channel together, and they were actually becoming well-known in the area. The other group had very publicly challenged them. If they didn’t post some kind of response, everyone would know they’d failed or chickened out.

  “Let's just go to the bottom level and grab some blankets to bring up here,” Blaine insisted. “We can camp out and watch and a movie, then we don’t lose a ton of views. We aren’t a very good ghost hunting team if we chicken out of a place like this.”

  “Alright,” Jennifer agreed reluctantly. “But, one of us has to remain awake. We can take shifts. I don’t want anything weird happening to us in our sleep.”

  The others nodded. The group ignored the elevator with its doors still open and went down the stairs until they reached the floor with bed displays. Each of them took a few blankets and some pillows.

  A ding stopped them in their tracks as they walked past the elevator. It opened on its own. Jared looked at it with a shrug and walked towards it.

  “What are you doing?” Jennifer asked.

  “It is going to be a pain carrying these all the way up those stairs,” Jared said. “At least this way is faster and takes less effort.”

  He stepped into the elevator and Blaine scurried in behind him, leaving Jen on her own. She had no choice but to follow. Jared continued to record while awkwardly holding his phone and the blankets.

  They pushed the button to take them to the electronics floor and the doors closed. The elevator went up one level then stopped, the light on the button they’d pressed faded. Jennifer frantically pushed the button again. It lit back up, but for going down instead of up.

  “I don’t like this at all,” Jennifer said, dropping her blankets and trying to open the doors.

  “There’s only one level we can go down to,” Jared said calmly, waiting for the elevator to stop. It didn’t.

  The digital display near the buttons read the first floor, then a B1 for basement, and finally came to a stop at B2. The elevator doors slid open.

  They looked out onto an extremely dark floor. Jared flashed his phone light out to see what lay before them. It appeared to be much like the top level, a room for storage, but the stock in this room was a lot older than up above.

  “All of the department store’s unwanted things?” Blaine asked.

  “That’s what it looks like. Should we check it out?” Jared stepped off of the elevator without waiting for the others. “T
here could be something valuable in all this old junk.”

  “I’d rather just go back up,” Jennifer said quickly. She’d picked the blankets backed up and was hugging them to her chest. “I thought the top floor was creepy, but this is by far worse than that.”

  She reached out and pressed the button to go back up to the first level. The light lit up, but quickly faded and the doors remained open. When she pressed it again, the entire elevator lost power and the lights vanished.

  The group stood in the dark elevator with only Jared’s phone to light the area around them. Jared had one foot in, and the other out of the elevator.

  “I guess that solves that,” he said and took two glowsticks from his pockets, handing them to the others. “Time to break out the emergency glowsticks.”

  Jared stepped out further, and the other two followed trying to use the dim light given off from the sticks to see the junk piled around the room. Much of the old clothing appeared to have been eaten apart by moths and the shoes had gathered a layer of dust.

  “Look at this old television set,” Jared said to the others. “This thing has to be way older than we are.”

  Blaine looked closely at the boxing. The cardboard appeared to be made in an older fashion and only red ink was used for the printed image of the television inside. It was square and had large knobs to change the channel.

  “It doesn’t have a date on it or anything,” Blaine said, “but yeah, way, way older than us. These books near it are even older than the television set and these have dates printed in them.”

  He opened the book and found a page with a date, holding it up for Jared to record. 1961.

  “Craig’s store has been around for a while,” Jennifer said, “but not that long. Maybe this stuff was here when they started setting up the store thirty years ago?

  “This building is probably much older than that even,” Blaine said and put the book down.

  The three of them became distracted by looking at the old overstock and wondered what the company would do with this stuff since they couldn’t sell it.

  “I'm surprised they don’t clear out this floor and set up more things for people to buy down here,” Jared said. “A clearance section or something.”

  “I haven’t seen a staircase yet,” Jennifer said. “The elevator might be the only way to get back upstairs.”

  “Great, so we might be stuck down here all night,” Blaine groaned. “What if we can’t get out from down here?”

  “If we are stuck,” Jared said, “then we’ll be able to use the elevator once the store opens and the power turns back on. Hopefully we’ll get lucky and one of those random power surges will happen.”

  The group looked at a gathering of older toys and figured if anything was worth money, it would be those. They each pocketed something small that they might be able to pawn off.

  “Evidence that we were here, too,” Jared commented, glancing at Blaine and Jen. “It’s pretty dark – I'm not convinced our viewers will believe what’s down here, even with the light on the phone.”

  A cluster of boxes fell in a far corner, drawing all of them to look towards it. It was dark, and the junk interfered with all of their light sources. They approached the corner slowly.

  “Hello?” Jared asked into the shadowy corner.

  “Hello,” an unknown voice muttered back.

  Jennifer screamed and was the first to book it back toward the elevator. Jared and Blaine froze only for a moment before following her, jumping over piles of clothing, not wanting to see who or what the voice belonged to.

  As they ran and avoided the cluttered junk, the elevator came back on. Jennifer led the other two to it and inside they pushed the button to go up a level. Jared shined his light out into the darkness.

  Something crawled out from the underneath the clutter. It was hard to make out but looked like a body dragging itself along the floor. It was coming directly for them. All three held their breath as it approached the elevator. Jennifer whined, jamming the button over and over again until the doors finally began to close.

  Scratching came from the other side in the moments before the elevator lifted. It only rose a few feet before lurching upwards quickly. The group cried out and before they knew it, the elevator came to a dead stop – so hard that all three slammed into the ceiling, causing them to blackout.

  Chapter Ten

  Jennifer

  Jennifer rubbed her head as her vision cleared from a fog. She remained lying on the floor for a moment as the pain radiated in her head and the back of her neck. On either side of her were racks of women’s clothing.

  Before standing, she looked around to see if either of the boys was nearby, but she was alone. The glowstick lay next to her face and she grabbed it with shaking hands. As she rose, she peered in all directions. Very little light came from outside as the snow storm had grown stronger and a thick fog clung to the windows.

  “You guys?” she called out, and waited for a response.

  She stood in the same spot but spun around hoping that Blaine or Jared would poke their heads up out of the darkness. No responses came, so she began to take small steps.

  The glowstick didn’t give off much light but she kept it low to light up the floor. Blaine or Jared might be unconscious, as she had been, and she didn’t want to trip over them or miss them completely. As she bent to observe the floor, the sudden appearance of a pair of plastic legs caused her to jump up.

  When she stood, she met the clothing mannequin in the eyes. It remained completely still. Her breath quivered as she walked on.

  “Jared?” she called out again. “Blaine? Come on you guys, what’s going on?”

  The sound of boxes rummaging came from a few aisles over. She froze and glanced over her shoulder, peering through the darkness until she found the elevator.

  She dashed for the elevator and once she was inside, she turned around. Nothing followed after her. Only mannequins stood in the darkness.

  The elevator was out of power, but she knew that the stairs were nearby, so she skirted along the wall. Where she stopped, she hoped she’d found the stairs, but it was only flat wall.

  Panicking, she went the other direction but still couldn’t find the stairway. Her eyes began to well up with tears.

  “You guys!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Where are you?”

  The same feeling that she got when she stood in front of a large crowd seemed to wiggle its way into her stomach as she felt there were eyes upon her. The squeak of plastic came from beside her and she turned to meet the face of another mannequin.

  When she spun around, she noticed that all the mannequins were still watching her. Tears streamed down her face as she ran to one of the windows and began kicking at it. It wouldn’t break so she grabbed a coat rack nearby and shook the clothes from it.

  She swung the rack into the window, but it was like hitting a metal wall and hurt her hands, arms, and shoulders. From a distance, she threw the rack at the window, but the glass remained unaffected.

  After placing her back against the wall, Jen looked out over the clothes and the shadowed figures of the mannequin. A sound came from the opposite side of the floor - the same squeak of plastic she’d heard earlier.

  She noticed movement and heard rustling. Then a loud whining sound erupted from underneath a spindle of clothing - a mannequin on all fours crawled towards her.

  Jennifer screamed, jumping up and dashing in the opposite direction. She could hear the hollow plastic sound of the mannequin following her, speeding up.

  The weak light of the glowstick made navigating the area difficult. She could hear the plastic running against the hard floor and started to pull the clothing racks down behind her. It slowed the mannequin only enough to give her time to knock over more racks.

  As she pulled a rack of coats down, she leaped back when she met the eyes of another mannequin. It blinked and reached out for her. Jennifer kicked at its hand, crushing a few of its fingers, and s
he ran again.

  She caught sight of the stairs and bolted for them. When she reached them, she tripped and fell, crying out. The fall down the stairs jolted every part of her body. She tried to stand and her ankle buckled under the pressure.

  Behind her the whining sound came once again, as well as a strange crackling and cranking sound. At the base of the stairs, she tried to pull herself up and saw several mannequin heads slowly peeking around the corner. It was clear now that the cranking sound was caused by the turn of their heads as they twisted to get a better view of her.

  “No! Stay back!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Blaine

  When Blaine opened his eyes, all he could see was dark fog. He felt a sharp throbbing in his head. His vision began to clear. He was lying on the floor and a teddy bear sat before him, hunched sideways.

  Blaine reached up and grabbed it by the neck, tossing it away from him. It took him a moment before he could stand and get his balance. He quickly realized that he was on the floor with all of the toys, then looked back at the teddy bear. It was gone.

  After a quick stretch, Blaine started calling out for the others. Neither of them responded so he used his glowstick to look for them. He searched the floor because he assumed that they were both nonconscious nearby, but it soon became apparent that he was alone.

  “You guys!” he shouted out again, voice echoing in the large space. “I’m ready to leave this place.”

  He looked toward the windows. Outside was nothing but the fog-shrouded snowstorm. The ground wasn’t visible. He knew that it was several levels up and that it could be dangerous, but he wanted out and he prayed that the snow had created enough of a pillow for him to fall on safely.