Horrorstor: A Novel

by Grady Hendrix

  She was facing nothing, looking at nothing, surrounded by a darkness so profound she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. With no input, set adrift inside her own skull, Amy’s mind began to turn on itself. It began to sort through her twenty-four years and calculate what she had to show for all the fighting, all the struggle, all the scrimping, and saving, and double shifts, and finishing papers, and working on her portfolio. All that effort, all that pain—for what?

  Every morning she woke up more exhausted than the morning before, every month her rent was late, every week she mooched groceries from her roommates. She never had enough gas, she was always borrowing money, she was constantly in debt, and still it wasn’t enough. The hamster wheel kept turning faster and faster.

  In a way, the chair was her friend. It freed her from all the illusions. It showed her the truth. She was alone. No one was there to help her. All her life she had run from the one thing she’d been born to do: wear a uniform and work a register. It was time to embrace her true nature.

  The problem was the liars. They said she could do anything she set her mind to, they told her she should shoot for the moon because if she missed she’d be among the stars, they made movies tricking her into thinking she could achieve heroic things. All lies. Because she was born to answer phones in call centers, to carry bags to customers’ cars, to punch a clock, to measure her life in smoke breaks. To think otherwise was insane. The chair didn’t lie to her. The chair cured her of madness. The chair showed her exactly what she was capable of, and that was nothing.

  Something floated up from the darkness inside Amy’s brain, and she realized that she finally had her sit-down job. It was funny because it was true. This was the last thing she would ever do, and it was about time. She had failed and failed and failed, all the way from the beginning. She had failed to escape her mom’s trailer, she had failed to earn her degree, she had failed the Shop Responsible test, she had failed to do anything with her life. That was her nature. Fail and quit. If you cut her open, it was fail and quit right down to her bones.

  For years, Amy had wondered what would happen if she stopped fighting and let go. For as long as she remembered, she had been scared of how far she would fall if she stopped struggling. It was a relief to finally have an answer. This far. This was how far she would fall. This was the bottom.

  A sense of relief numbed the pain as her limbs lost circulation. She could feel her mind getting better; she could feel it healing, sloughing off decades of lies and madness, accepting her place in the natural order. She would stay in this chair not moving, not doing anything, and there would be no more illusions, no more lies, no more useless struggle, no more failed attempts to escape. She was thankful for the chair. It was where she belonged.

  Chest hitching, the bands around it so tight they kept her from drawing a breath, Amy became light-headed. She could not move. She could not see. She could not hear. She could not breathe. And her only thought was a single loop running over, and over, and over again.

  “I’m home … I’m home … I’m home … ”

  Hands. There were hands on her face like two soft spiders crawling over her skin. She couldn’t gulp enough air to make a sound. All that came out was a pathetic mewling. The big sound, the insane sound, was still trapped inside her head.

  Light smashed into her eyes. Her pupils contracted to pinpricks.

  “Shhh, shhh, shhh. It’s me, it’s Basil. Are you okay?”

  Amy wanted to turn her head away, but the straps held it in place. Because her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, she was blinded by the dim glow of his cell phone. If she’d been capable of speech, she would have told him to go away, to leave her alone. Basil ran his fingers over the straps, which were as taut and rigid as steel. Amy’s body was numb. Circulation to her extremities had all but ceased; her limbs were as cold and lifeless as wood. Blood starved, they had floated away on a sea of pain, one by one.

  Then Basil simply turned and walked away, taking his light with him. Amy closed her eyes and felt tears slipping down her cheeks. They were tears of relief. Now she could be alone again in the dark. It was cruel to make her think that someone had come for her. It was sadistic to make her think she was not alone when she knew that she was always alone. It was—

  The strap holding her chin in place got tighter and tighter and then snapped and was gone.

  She involuntarily sucked in a great mouthful of air—“Heeeeeeee!”—and gagged on it. Her lungs wouldn’t inflate enough to force it all down.

  “Take it easy,” Basil whispered. “Small breaths.”

  He was crouched behind her chair, foolishly trying to rescue her from what she had already embraced. Taking away what she truly wanted just when she had finally found it. Pretending that she could get out of her chair. Telling her lies.

  “A good manager carries a pocket blade at all times,” he was saying. “You never know when a customer will need help opening a flat pack.”

  With a sudden snap, the straps binding her chest came loose. The instant rush of oxygen made Amy’s head spin. She tried to talk but managed only nonsensical sounds. She could feel Basil working all around her, on her sides, behind her, slashing away with his knife. One by one, the straps on her fingers and wrists and forearms and elbows went slack. Each time there was a blessed moment of numbness, and then the limb exploded into fire as the blood rushed back, hammering pins and needles into the tips of her fingers and toes. It hurt so badly and what was the point? She wasn’t going anywhere. Why couldn’t he stop trying and leave her alone?

  “Amy, please, talk to me,” Basil said from the darkness.

  Amy held very still, her body wracked with tremors.

  “I’ve been stumbling around in the dark looking for anyone,” he said. “All the power is out. The exit signs aren’t working, the air is shut off, and, to be honest, if this is what that sick freak did to you, then I don’t want to hang around and wait for him to come back. Come on.”

  Amy didn’t move, she didn’t speak. All she did was close her eyes and sink back into the darkness.

  “I’m going to help you stand,” Basil said.

  She didn’t talk. She hoped that if she didn’t talk, he would go away.

  Instead he stood behind her, grabbed underneath her armpits, and hauled her up. As her weight shifted, she felt boiling oil draining into her ankles and feet. The feeling was so excruciating that she slithered out of Basil’s grip and slumped to the floor. Instinctively, she drew her legs into a fetal position, sobbing as she hugged her knees to her chest. She wanted to get back into her chair. It was so much easier in the chair.

  Basil hooked a hand around her belt, braced his legs, and pulled her to a sitting position. She collapsed bonelessly against the wall.

  “Go,” she whispered. “Leave.”

  He squatted next to her, brushed her sweaty hair away from her face, and shined his cell phone into her eyes. They were unfocused, unseeing.

  “I can’t leave you here. I’m your supervisor. It’s my responsibility to keep you safe.”

  Amy slumped over onto one side and tried to crawl away. Her arms were on fire, her muscles felt like they’d been torn apart and stapled back together. They pulled and knotted in all the wrong directions, and they didn’t fit inside her skin. Her body felt old and frail. Basil tried to stop her, but she kept crawling. She wanted to slither back into the darkness, she wanted this useless struggle to end. She mindlessly began to crawl along the wall.

  Basil doesn’t understand, Amy thought, but if he keeps talking they are going to hear him, and they are going to come, and they are going to fix his sickness, too. That thought made Amy smile.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “He’ll make you whole again.”

  “Who will?”

  “Warden Worth,” Amy said.

  “Do you mean Carl? The homeless guy? Is he Warden Worth?”

  She tried to shake her head, but even this simple gesture triggered another excruciatin
g flash of pain. “The warden is inside Carl. He wears Carl like a glove. The warden wants to help us.”

  “Amy, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Basil said. “But something’s really wrong with you. Do you know where we are? What day it is?”

  “We’re in the Beehive,” Amy said.

  “There is no beehive. You’re not thinking straight.”

  “It’s where we get what we deserve.”

  “We’re in Orsk,” Basil said.

  “No,” she said. “We’ve always been in the Beehive. There is nowhere else.”

  “Right,” Basil said. Again he tried lifting her, and again Amy went limp in his arms. When he paused to adjust his grip, she spilled back onto the floor. Basil walked away again, and this time she hoped he was gone for good. Amy let the blackness wash over her and carry her away. True, she no longer had the security of the tranquilizing chair, but as long as she didn’t move or fight, as long as she surrendered, she could feel like she still was part of the Beehive.

  There was a low rumble in the distance and Amy knew Warden Worth was coming back for her. He would return her to the chair, or perhaps he would administer a stronger cure. The rumble grew louder and Amy relaxed her body to welcome him. She was tired of feeling sick and broken. She wanted to be whole. She searched the darkness, waiting for her master.

  Instead Basil’s face emerged from the gloom, faintly illuminated by his cell phone. He was pushing a rolling Hügga office chair. As soon as he stopped moving, the rumbling stopped. He knelt beside her and said, “We’re getting out of here.”

  “You can’t comprehend his plans for us.”

  “You’re right, Amy,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on. But I am still responsible for your safety.”

  He hauled her up by her arms, dumping her limp body into the Hügga. Amy tried to slide out but Basil was too quick. He grabbed her shoulders, holding her in place. With a gentle push he rolled the chair forward, and they set off down the Bright and Shining Path. The chair made an enormous racket, and Amy felt safe in the knowledge that all this noise would guide Warden Worth to them. She relaxed and looked around. A limp banner drooled from the ceiling. Most days it read “Bring new life into your home,” but in the darkness she could make out only the last two words: your home.

  Basil swung his cell phone back and forth, its dim gray glow enough to illuminate couches and armchairs but not strong enough to reveal whatever was crouched behind them. “Almost there,” he said. “We’ll get outside, and if we’re lucky the police will be here. They’ll help me get everyone else out.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Amy said.

  Ahead of them, the Bright and Shining Path was blocked by a tall barricade of toppled furniture—a huge heaping mound of Ficaro storage units, Nelipot media organizers, Gutevol rocking chairs, and smashed Kummerspeck desks. An overturned impulse bin was slung onto its side, beige shopping bags avalanching onto the floor. Broken glass was everywhere.

  Amy remembered the filthy hands, slick with grime, sliding over her face. She wanted to run away but she needed to go back. Run away, or go back?

  “We have to go the other way,” Basil whispered.

  He spun around to face Kitchens, and Amy smiled to herself. The more he struggled, the sooner he’d realize the hopelessness of their situation. They were never getting out. Warden Worth would just extend their sentences, adding years and years and years. He would be so angry that Amy had gotten out of her chair. He would be so angry she’d stopped her treatment.

  Basil pushed her off the Path toward the shortcut door between Kitchens and Wardrobes, only to discover it was barricaded with more smashed furniture. Alone, Basil might have climbed over it, but with Amy it was impossible.

  “Not a problem,” he insisted. “We’ll take the long way around.”

  He turned the chair back toward Dining Rooms. Amy realized that her lungs no longer hurt as badly. She was breathing more normally. Her head felt clearer, and the time spent in the restraining chair was receding from memory.

  “You’re trapped,” she whispered.

  “We’re fine,” Basil assured her, but his voice was a little less certain. “We’ll simply have to go through the back of house.”

  One of the wheels on the Hügga began to squeak, making a steady eek-eek-eek as they rolled along, a clear beacon to anything waiting in the dark.

  “There’s nowhere to go,” Amy said.

  “We have to do something,” Basil said. “We can’t just crawl under a sofa and hide until the sun comes up.”

  The first thing that hit them was the cold—a blast of frigid air that snatched the breath from their throats. Then came the stink, so strong it made Amy’s eyes water. It was like a train of rotten meat passing in the dark. It was so close and so enormous, it chased all thought of being cured from Amy’s brain and left just one thing in its place: fear. Basil stopped rolling the chair and listened. Then he leaned down.

  “Can you run?” he whispered into her ear.

  Amy was too scared to answer. Of course she couldn’t run. She didn’t think she could even stand.

  Basil looked around, frightened for the first time. “I can’t push you fast enough.”

  They could hear it now—footsteps, dozens of them, hundreds of them, all of them shuffling forward in lockstep. Basil hauled Amy from the chair and dragged her down an aisle, stashing her underneath a Petrichor dining table, away from the filthy rotting leviathan bearing down on them, making the floor shake, filling the air with its stink.

  “Whatever happens,” he whispered over the vast, soft, rotten noises that were getting louder, “don’t help me. I can handle this. Just wait until they’re gone, and then get out of here.”

  He walked back to the Bright and Shining Path, holding his cell phone above his head, a signal in the dark. Something in the shadows surged toward him. As it emerged out of the darkness Amy saw that it had hundreds of legs with filthy bare feet, packed so closely together they looked like they belonged to a single creature. She realized she was seeing an army, stretching off into the store. They were dressed in loose striped shirts and pants, their heads bowed forward, each man’s forehead resting on the back of the neck of the man in front of him. They were standing so close that they looked like a great segmented centipede made of dead flesh. They stopped just a few feet in front of Basil.

  Basil tried to look brave. He stood tall in the center of the Path, legs apart, silhouetted by the light of his phone. But then he saw them—he got a good, careful look at them—and whatever he had expected to see, it wasn’t this. His expression faltered and he fell back on his training. “Orsk is closed for the evening. All of you are trespassing on private property.”

  For the briefest of moments, nothing moved.

  Then his cell phone went into sleep mode, extinguishing the last glimmer of light from the Showroom, and the penitents fell upon him.

  Amy made herself as small as possible. Her hope of being cured, her wish to have the warden find her, everything that had filled her head withered when she heard the noises coming from the Path. It was the sound of meat being pounded into pulp. She knew that she was a coward for not helping Basil, but she couldn’t let them find her. She couldn’t let them put her back in her chair. She dragged herself farther under the table, tucked herself into a ball, and waited for the noises to stop.

  They went on for a very long time.

  Even after the noises ceased and the army receded, dragging Basil away with them, Amy remained hidden underneath the table. She was tempted to stay there until dawn, until the floor lights automatically powered up and first shift arrived. It would be so much easier not to move. But Warden Worth was looking for her, and she knew it would be only a matter of time before the penitents came back, sweeping the floor, searching for her. She had no doubt they would find her, just as she knew Warden Worth was not a man who believed in forgiveness. She had to go. Now.

  But to get out she needed light, and
the only light was with Basil. She crawled on her hands and knees up the aisle, expecting at any moment for a hand to come out of the darkness and grab the back of her neck. The flooring ended and she felt the lip of the Bright and Shining Path. It was gritty now, smeared with mud and sand and something sticky. A marshy odor hung in the air. Amy swept her hands in big arcs across the grimy floor, searching for Basil’s phone. The longer she searched, the more panic tightened her bruised chest. If she couldn’t find the phone, she would have no light, and if she didn’t have light she would have to creep through the store in the dark, wandering in circles, lost.

  Her fingertips brushed something plastic that skidded away. Got it, she thought. She powered on the phone, and its dead television light bloomed in her face. She flashed it around to make sure nothing was waiting for her in the shadows, and then she studied the screen to find a way to brighten it.

  It was locked with a passcode. Amy thought for a minute and then remembered Basil’s devotion to Orsk. She spelled out the letters on his keypad, 6775, and to her delight the home screen opened. She thumbed through to the flashlight app, the light brightening as she punched it on.

  Next Amy tried to stand, but her legs were bags of snapped twigs. She fell almost immediately, bruising her left knee as it smacked into the floor. Her feet ached, the bones in her knees ground against one another, her joints creaked, her spine felt shattered, and it took an enormous effort to brace herself against a Sculpin and haul herself to her feet.

  The best she could manage was a slow and painful limp, but it was good enough to get her down the Path and into Bedrooms and then Bathrooms and then Wardrobes. From there she could go through Children’s, take the shortcut to Storage Solutions, Home Office, and Living Rooms, then reach the escalator and, finally, the front door. Assuming that no other barricades were blocking her way.