by Jae Vogel
After Matt left, he reviewed the security tapes and watched Dion and his fine-feathered friends enter the mall. He had to switch tapes constantly into the player to find the right ones. They only had a few of the bulky cameras located in the mall and there were still places they didn’t cover. The official reason was the enormous cost of the audiovisual installation, but Karanzen speculated there were parts of the mall the owners didn’t want taped. The tape recorders were expensive and few malls had them, he understood this, but why did they cover only a few parts of the concourse in each section of the mall? Why was there only one camera to cover the parking lots and why was it conspicuously aimed away from the clock tower?
He didn’t like reviewing the tapes here. Karanzen suspected they were watching him inside his own office. Sure, he could never find evidence of a camera of any type, but it was just like the owners to have something hidden he couldn’t locate. Given who opened the mall, he didn’t think they would employ a physical camera to watch him. They had other ways to observe their charges in the mall.
He looked down at the ashtray, which was made of a fine carbonite stone, and reflected the light in mysterious ways. It had the name of the mall and management company carved into it. He’s seen these things all over the mall. Funny, the management banned smoking on the inside when the mall opened. He couldn’t recall too many places with this rule. Why did they have these fancy ashtrays in every office and secure room in the mall? If smoking wasn’t allowed, why did they insist everyone display them as a token of the management’s esteem? He’d picked one of the ashtrays up one afternoon and examined it when these thoughts had crossed his mind. It sent a tingle through his hand and almost caused him to loose physical form. The ashtray was tied in with the mall builders, he was certain and it was not just a little token thing. Furthermore, when they were first issued, every place where they were sent was informed they were never to leave the mall and to be displayed in a prominent place at all times. There was even a section on the security log to check where the “mall ashtrays” were seen. A clothing store manager tried to take one home one night to show her family and had a phone call the moment she arrived home. She was informed the ashtray was mall property and to be returned immediately. She drove all the way back and returned the ashtray to her store. The next day her corporation terminated her and never gave a reason, but he was certain it had to do with the ashtray.
Karanzen saw the two guards walk up to him as he stood on the edge of the parking lot with a clipboard in his hand. He didn’t know how far the eyes of the mall management went, but if they could see him in the lot, he had an excuse to be there with the clipboard. They needed to police the lot and he could always say the guards were with him to look over the sewer inlets and check on the electrical conduits.
He cursed himself for his subservience to the mall owners. They’d found him just before he was ready to cross over and made him the offer. Now he was in their thrall. Sure, he could do the nasty little pestilence tricks to transform himself into a cloud of insects, but what did it accomplish? It scared the stuffing out of most of the miscreants he caught who needed a little demonstration of his power, but it left him in a vulnerable state. He never bothered to show the security guards what he could do. It wouldn’t impress them anyway. They were good men who happened to be some trouble when he found him. They were intensely loyal because they knew working for him was the only way they would ever keep a job. He had plenty of information that could put every one of them away for years.
One of his first hires thought he could lift something and no one would notice. Karanzen called him down into his office the next day and showed him, lined up on his desk, five “diamond” necklaces of the same appearance and quality.
“I just thought you should know, Amon,” he told the man. “I know what you took yesterday. Don’t worry about bringing it back because we’ve already taken it out of your locker and returned it to the case. It had no value, just like the ones you see here. They don’t leave real ninety-carat bracelets out in the open as you thought they did. They don’t even lock the case, so you didn’t get lucky. But they do watch who from the mall staff walks around and does his rounds. I just wanted you to know, because if I ever catch you doing it again I will have to let some federal people know where they can find you.”
Karanzen never had another problem with the man.
It reminded him of the last panhandler he’d dealt with in his former position.
Karanzen had been a security guard outside a store in the Washington District in Scipio. The Washington District was an old entertainment division in the city. At one time, it was very fancy and held a lot of restaurants and theaters. But the business had moved elsewhere ten years previous and the city was desperate to renovate it and get some tax money generated. As it was, the district was a tax sinkhole and the only people found inside it after dark were single men shopping at the disreputable stores, which lined both sides of the streets. Fights were common when the bars closed and shootings happened on a regular basis.
An older restaurant got it into its mind to hire him as a parking lot attendant and security guard for the weekend. Business was dropping off because people didn’t like to be hassled by the street people who lined the block every time the police car left to deal with another issue. As soon as the cops left, out would emerge the mentally ill and mendicants. The state hospital decided the year before to release many patients to group homes. Many had been patients for years. This was humane, but it meant many people were walking the streets that needed better care. Many people who babbled at the air.
Karanzen’s job was to make sure they left the patrons alone. He’s just finished his latest stint with a security guard company and hated the low pay. This job didn’t pay much better, but at least he wasn’t stuck riding around from one rabbit-tripped alarm to the next. At one point, he thought about mowing the weeds around a bus under his watch because he was tired of the animals using it as cover. They slipped under the gate where they would inevitable set off an alarm. The company who employed him didn’t care because they made extra money each time the alarm was tripped. He cared because every time an alarm tripped he had to haul rubber across town and respond to it.
For his latest position, most of the time he didn’t have any trouble. The street people would see him and scuttle away, to bother someone else for spare change. One look at his black uniform and silver badge was enough to send them in full retreat. Every now and then, one of the miscreants would stop at the edge of the block and yell. He didn’t care so long as they stayed away from his turf. After he’d ambushed one of them the first week he had the job, they stayed away.
This particular night he was on his way to work and was out of uniform. Karanzen would park in the back of the restaurant most of the time, but this evening he was forced to take a bus into work because he needed to get his car repaired. He had non-standard windbreaker jacket and pair of rumpled pants. His uniform he never wore outside of work and always kept it in the same locker room the cooks used.
He was on his way down the street to the restaurant, ready to start his shift when a familiar tone rang behind him. “Excuse me, sir,” the voice said, “I wonder if you could help me.”
Karanzen turned around to face a slovenly dressed white youth with a silver pendant dangling from his neck. The man appeared to be twenty years of age and was in bad need of a shower. Karanzen felt his blood pressure begin to rise. He’d seen this punk on the roam outside his place of work. The kid stayed far enough away from the parking, so he had no idea how Karanzen appeared up close. This was the reason for a very bad mistake he’d just made.
“I need fifty cents,” the man said to Karanzen.
“What do you need it for?”
“A pizza. I’m hungry and need to buy a slice of pizza.”
“Really?” Karanzen snapped back at him. “I’ll go buy you one. I don’t start work for another half hour. Come on; let’s go get you something to eat.”
The young man’s face changed instantly. “Uh, no, that’s alright, I’ll be moving along.”
Karanzen could tell the panhandler’s eye had spotted another mark and he was about to move on. The young man tried to move away from him, but as he did, he felt a vice tighten around his shoulder. As he winced in pain, he turned around and saw a hand clamped on him.
“Where you going? I thought you were hungry and wanted something to eat. Are you going to turn down my hospitality?”
“Please,” the mendicant said, “I need to go. Please, I didn’t want to start anything…”
Karanzen saw his opportunity. There was an alley between the nearest two buildings and it was still too dark for anyone to see what was about to happen. As the young man struggled, he pulled him to the passageway between the two buildings.
Karanzen slammed him up against the wall and starred right into his eyes. “You know what, sonny boy?” he snarled at him. “I think you have been driving business away from my boss because you don’t like to work. I think you have some serious issues which need addressed.”
“Please,” he cried out, “just let me go.” The young man didn’t think the man who held him to the wall could see his hand slip down to his pants’ pocket, but he was wrong.
The knife hit the ground as Karanzen used his other hand to smack it out of the street person’s hand.
“Not smart, punk. You lied to me about being hungry didn’t you? Now why don’t you look into my eyes and tell me the truth?”
He looked into Karanzen’s eyes and watched the pupils disappear. They were replaced by the image of something that had no form a sane mind could comprehend.
No one was close enough to the alley to hear the screaming, which lasted for a good two minutes. When it ended, Karanzen continued on his way to the restaurant and his shift, a big smile on his face. The day had turned out decent after all.
Three days later the state hospital took in a new patient they’d never seen before. The police brought him in and let the orderlies strap him down as the young man was found walking down the street while crying at shadows in the air. He claimed the ground was full of tiny creatures who were laughing at him. It took a long time for the duty physician to get his hysterics under control. It was another three months before they located his wealthy family in New York and told them their wayward son was located in Scipio, Ohio.
A few minutes later, two of his boys, Lab and Woody, were with him walking around the outside of the mall. To everyone coming inside the mall, they appeared to be on their rounds, in the performance of some job crucial to the security of it. One or two people stopped and asked them if everything was all right, Karanzen assured them he was in the process of checking out some electronics in the lot. It satisfied them and he continued on his tour with the two men.
“The mall owner is not happy about what happened yesterday,” he repeated to them from the message from Matt. “We need to do better if all of us want to continue working here. I happen to like my job and I don’t need to worry about making the people in the tower mad.”
“I don’t know what else we can do, Boss, “Woody said to him. “We did everything we were supposed to do yesterday. No one was hurt and you had those kids in your office for a while. I thought everything was fine.”
“They’ve got it in for those two. I don’t know why, but they don’t want me to ban that kid Dion or any of his little friends from the mall. They seem to think they can handle the situation better than I can. Fine. We’ll be on standby until they want us. In the meantime, continue to watch them and look out for anything funny. Keep in mind there are four of them today.”
“Funny like those cheerleaders who just disappeared?” Lab asked him. “They just popped away when that Dion kid faced off to them. The weird thing was that no one seemed to act as if anything strange happened. The audience walked away as if they’d never been there.”
“Keep a record of those kinds of incidents,” Karanzen said to them. “I want to know about them. The management may be playing with fire and I don’t want to get burned.”
“What do you think they might be up to?” Woody asked. He tended to be the suspicious one. Years of clandestine missions in the jungles of South East Asia had taught him not to ask too many questions. It also made him suspicious of the motives of anyone who gave an order.
“I’m not sure. I don’t like it, I will tell you that. Right now, we work for the mall directly, I’m sure they’d like to save money and hire an outside security contractor. If that happens, we’d all have to find new jobs. Not right away, but I can assure you they would try to replace every one of us.”
“Not always.” It was Lab, who looked on the positive side of life. “I worked for a post lieutenant who kept his job through five different contract companies. He had some inside with the plant management so they always had him appointed as lieutenant.”
“I don’t think we’d be so lucky,” Karanzen told them. “Just watch for anything strange and careful what you say inside the mall. Too many ears in those cornfields. I don’t worry out here because I doubt the management can reach this far. But I can’t be sure. If I suspect anything else we might have to start meeting off-site.”
He didn’t tell them what he knew about the nature of the mall. All of them would quit if they realized they were positioned over the abyss. Who would stick around if they knew they were supposed to guard the passage over the bottomless pit of midnight? He felt guilty not telling them the truth, but the truth was more than anyone of them could tolerate. Even he couldn’t fully deal with the truth and he knew what the mall was all about the day they hired him.
Karanzen closed his eyes and tried to forget the day Matt had found him living in the van near the Atlantic shore. He’s been sleeping in it every night since the dreams started. The dreams, which took him, back to Korea and human wave assaults. Every night he would find himself walking out from behind the tank to see the endless wall of Chinese soldiers walking down the hill in his directions with their bayonets fixed. He couldn’t tell them about it, not the gunfire and the solid steel pin of fear that went through him when he saw what he was up against. Not the cries of his men as he turned and ran in the other direction. No one knew about it, except Matt when he knocked on the side of the van and told Karanzen he had a job for him.
“You alright, Boss?” Lab asked.
Karanzen opened his eyes and saw the two men starring at him. “I’m fine,” he said and turned in the direction of the mall. “I thought about another meeting after work, but I’ll hold off for the time being.”
Chapter 6
“I think we need to go back and see Hobbs.” Dion said to his friends as they wandered through the mall.
Something seemed very wrong about the atmosphere of the mall. Dion had the map and knew where the location of Jupiter Hitch’s hobby store could be located, but the cheerleaders’ sudden appearance worried him. The elementals knew he was there and would do everything possible to keep him away from the Grandmaster. Plus there was the issue of the security guards.
“Why do we need to go see him?” Lilly asked. “You need to buy something else from his store?”
“I might. I’m not sure about the kind of people who are inside this mall. He might have something to help me plan things out today. If anyone would have what I needed, it would be him.”
“That short guy who runs the head shop?” Sean asked him. He wasn’t sure if Dion had noticed him talking to the cheerleader Randi or knew that she wanted to get the map away from him. It still sickened him that Emily paid Dion so much attention. Why? Couldn’t she just leave him to Lilly? What was it that these girls had to compete for attention? It made no sense to him.
“That’s the man I’m talking about,” Dion said. “We need to go back to the other side of the mall and have a word with him.”
The trip to the part of the mall where they had been the previous day went quick. Lilly noticed a few of the ghoul cleaners who bowe
d to Dion as they went past, but otherwise didn’t say a word. The whole atmosphere changed in this section once they were inside it. Dion was master of the earth elementals and they were prominent in this section.
She also noticed the bull platform was gone, hauled off since it hadn’t done what it was supposed to do. Even the pharmacy where he’d been bestowed with the full powers of the earth elemental was closed. There was an “On Vacation” sign on the window with a notice of who to call until the owner returned. Lilly wondered if the owner, the Earth Elemental Grandmaster, Athena West, hadn’t planned that vacation a long time ago and waited until Dion came to her before she took it.
Emily found the little underground shop where Dion took them to be funny and amusing. It wasn’t the sort of place she would have willingly spent much time, but she enjoyed it. She liked the abundance of black light posters on the wall and the record bin full of ninety-nine cent specials. Then there was the stuffed bear at the front. It, like everything else, was for sale. But nothing had a price tag she could find. What matter of store lacked price tags? What kind of place was this?
“Hello again, Dion,” the short man from behind the counter said. “I see you have some more friends with you. How did the seer stone work out?”
“Good, I have it in my pocket today, although I don’t think I need it. We have the map back and the lettering is stuck on English. Is it locked in place because of the stone?’
“No. The stone makes it possible for the holder of it to read the map and anyone close to him or her. If you can read the map and not hold the stone, then the map was fixed on the last language used. It depends on the map, but most of the maps made for what you are using it don’t have that ability.”
