Horrorstor: A Novel

by Grady Hendrix

  Amy heard something slamming into the surface over and over: BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! In the tight space, each blow was like a gunshot at point-blank range. It was the sound of nails being driven into her coffin, sealing it shut. Hammering filled the Showroom floor, and the Beehive was alive with the sound of toil once more.

  Finally the hammering stopped, leaving only a great silence. Amy was completely immobilized in a wooden box roughly six feet long, twenty inches wide, so shallow that her face touched the lid. It had the dimensions of a coffin, but she knew right away that it was a Liripip, one of the most popular sellers in Wardrobes.

  Amy couldn’t bend her knees and her right arm was pinned underneath her body. She pressed her left hand against the lid of the wardrobe, but with no leverage it was like trying to move a mountain. Her breath rasped loudly in the tight space. She tried to think rationally. She told herself she couldn’t possibly run out of air. There was no way a major corporation like Orsk would make a wardrobe that was airtight. What if a child crawled inside?

  But what if this particular Liripip was built airtight by accident? What if the penitents had encased it in sheets of plastic shipping wrap? What if they planned to bury her somewhere in the Beehive? Or what if they hoisted her to some distant shelf in the massive Self-Service Warehouse and left her there? Would anyone be able to hear her? She could be trapped up there for months before someone found her.

  Amy screamed. She thrashed and struggled, bruising her shoulders against the sides of the box, but it was no use. She could barely move. And the less she could move, the more she needed to move, the more she needed to get out right now.

  That’s when she felt the water.

  At first she thought it was sweat—but it was too cold and there was too much of it. A chilly hand wrapped itself around her right thigh. It was so frigid her feet began to shake inside her Chuck Taylors, and if there had been any light she would’ve been able to see her own breath.

  Amy listened, trying to figure out what was happening, but the raspy sound of her own breathing was too loud. She forced herself to slow her panting until she heard the rustle of her clothes, the high-pitched ringing in her ears. And then, beneath it all, the quiet, steady, implacable sound of water flooding the Showroom and flowing around the Liripip.

  Amy rubbed the fingers of her right hand against the back of the wardrobe. They came away wet. Now she could feel the water soaking through her upper sleeve. She rubbed her fingers against the bottom again, and this time she felt standing water; she could actually splash it.

  The freezing water continued streaming in, lowering Amy’s body temperature, making her teeth chatter. The wardrobe was a stone in the middle of a stream with water rushing past on either side. It suddenly slid to the left. At first Amy thought she was being lifted by the penitents, but as the wardrobe swayed and bobbed she realized she was floating. The flood was lifting her up and carrying her away.

  Soon the fingers of her right hand were completely submerged. She realized that in order to breathe she’d have to press her nose against the top of the wardrobe. She screamed and thrashed as the water rose higher and higher, over her arms and knees, filling the Liripip’s lower half. In spite of everything that had happened—escaping her chair and escaping the store and rescuing Basil and nearly escaping again—Amy realized she was going to die after all. She was going to drown while trapped inside a Liripip.

  And that’s when she realized: you are trapped inside a Liripip.

  The one thing every store partner knew about Liripips was that customers hated them. They were bargain priced so the store sold them in droves, but everyone who purchased one lived to regret it, and irate customers were always carting them back to Returns. Assembling the wardrobe was an exercise in frustration. Four hex screws connected the top to the sides, and fully securing them was almost impossible; even when you did, they fell out at the slightest movement. Liripips on the Showroom floor required constant tightening, which could be done only with Orsk’s proprietary Magic Tool. And like all good Orsk employees, Amy carried her Magic Tool at all times.

  All she had to do was get it out, reach up inside her coffin, loosen two of the hex bolts at the top, and then pop the lid. With luck the whole frame would come apart, like a badly constructed piece of flat-pack furniture. Under normal circumstances, it would be easy … but with an increasingly numbed arm? Submerged in frigid water, trapped in the dark? Water lapped at Amy’s ribs and she realized it was her only option.

  The first thing to do was to reach into her right pocket. She couldn’t do it with her right hand because it was pinned beneath her. She tried to lower her left arm from where it was wedged between her chest and the Liripip’s door. Flexing her elbow pushed her hand backward against the door so hard that for a moment she thought she was going to snap her wrist. But she got it past the crisis point and reached down to her waist.

  Her fingers clutched at wet folds of empty cloth before rooting deep into something that felt promisingly like a pocket. The muscles in her forearm corded and strained, and suddenly Amy feared the worst. What if she’d lost it? What if it’d fallen out of her pocket when she was running? She tried to look down, but in doing so she banged her forehead so hard against the door that she bit the end of her tongue. Her fingers burrowed, and then she brushed something hard and sharp and tilted her hips, coaxing the item out of her pocket. She snagged the wet metal handle between her fingertips and dragged out the Magic Tool. Now came the hard part.

  Somehow Amy had to twist her arm off her chest and raise it above her head. With her left arm resting across her stomach, she began slithering it like a snake toward her face until the pain became too intense—but she forced herself to continue. She whimpered as she pushed her arm farther and farther. With one last superhuman push and a loud gasp, she forced it all the way up, smashing her fingers against the top of the wardrobe, bruising her knuckles and dropping the tool.

  Amy resisted panicking until she reached into the water and couldn’t find the Magic Tool. The sound from outside was quieter now, but she could feel the wardrobe buffeted by the flow as it filled her coffin, rising inexorably toward the lid. The water was up to her chin now, and her whole body was prickling with cold. It reeked of dirty oil and mud. She felt for the tool underwater, careful not to knock it farther away, but it wasn’t there.

  It. Wasn’t. There.

  Had it slipped out a seam? Or had the water pushed it underneath her body, between her shoulder blades, maddeningly out of reach no matter how hard she tried? Amy was all too aware that if the tool had fallen lower than her neck, it was as good as lost. Her elbows weren’t double jointed. She would drown.

  Forcing her thoughts to slow down, she did what she always did when something was lost: she looked where she least expected to find it. Starting as far away as she could, improbably far from where she’d lost her grip, she felt along the back of the wardrobe, reaching over her head and backward under the water. Her hand was so numb she wasn’t sure she’d feel the tool even if she came across it.

  Feeling along the bottom, she proceeded in slow sweeps. Then in the most unlikely place, about two inches from the top of her right shoulder, her fingers knocked against something that slid away.

  “Gotcha,” she whispered.

  She stretched more carefully now, and her hand came down right on top of it. Using a fingernail, she pried it off the back of the wardrobe and took a moment to hold it in her palm as tightly as she could.

  Clutching the tool, she felt for the top right hex hole. Because her fingers were so numb, it took several tries before she found it. She fed the tool inside and started to turn. For a moment she thought she wouldn’t have the leverage to crank the wrench—but then she stretched her arm, mashing her biceps against her nose, and with a sharp crack the bolt began to move.

  Amy could rotate it only in a tight semicircle before she had to pull the tool out, turn it back, reseat it, and start again. Every time she went through this ritual, she
banged her nose and cheekbones, but she scarcely noticed the pain. Eventually the hex screw came loose and Amy was able to pull it out with her fingers. The right side of her head was now totally underwater, and she heard a satisfying tak as the screw touched down on the bottom of the wardrobe. She reached across, found the opposite screw hole, and began the long laborious process of loosening it.

  With every crank, her elbow banged the lid of the coffin. But the pain kept her going and soon she found her rhythm: screw, bang, screw, bang, screw, bang, screw, bang. It was taking longer than the first one. Was she doing something wrong? Had she stripped the threads and was now uselessly turning it in the wood? Then suddenly it was out.

  Bracing the soles of her shoes against the bottom of the wardrobe, Amy placed her left hand against the top and pushed. For a moment it didn’t move, but then the water-softened fiberboard yielded with a crack, the screws on the other side let go of the saturated wood, and the entire top hinged open like a trap door and swirled away. As water flooded into the wardrobe, Amy gripped the sharp lip with both hands and slithered out like a molting snake. She stumbled to her feet. All around her in the darkness she heard the sound of rushing water.

  “Basil!” she shouted.

  Her eyes instantly located the one source of light on the pitch-black floor. The fallen Maglite was still on, submerged next to an info post and lodged behind a Drazel chest of drawers. Amy sloshed over to it, each step like plunging her legs into a bucket of ice. She stuck her arm into the frigid water up to her elbow and pulled it out.

  Immediately she started looking for Basil. Wardrobes had toppled over, and as she watched, the current upended two more and sent them splashing down and tumbling away. Behind her in the distance something was roaring like a waterfall. If she had been nailed inside a wardrobe, it made sense that Basil would be in one, too.

  Riding low in the water was a double-doored Finnimbrun wardrobe on its back, encased in a cocoon of clear packing wrap. Amy sloshed over and banged on the door.

  “Basil!” she yelled.

  She heard a faint cry from inside. She slogged back to the info desk and rummaged in the drawers, yanking them out and letting the contents fall into the water. Normally there were box cutters all over the store, but tonight Amy had to dump out every last drawer before finding a blade at the very bottom. She sloshed back to the wardrobe and slit the plastic with a single swipe. Basil was floating inside. She reached in and hauled him out by his arms, realizing that until that moment she’d been terrified he was dead.

  “Ow!” he screamed as she crushed him to her in a sudden hug.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, letting go of him.

  “They broke my wrist in the door,” he said, cradling it.

  “They nailed me inside a Liripip,” Amy said. “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded.

  She played her flashlight over the Showroom walls, trying to figure out which way to go. Suddenly she froze. “Holy crap.”

  Torrents gushed from every fake window and every door to nowhere, foaming out in massive sprays, sending furniture tumbling and splashing into the vast oily lake that covered the Showroom floor.

  “We need to go,” Basil said.

  “We have to find Matt and Trinity,” Amy said.

  “The water’s rising too fast,” Basil said.

  He was right. It was up to their knees now.

  “We’ve got time,” Amy said. “This is the second floor. The water won’t get any higher.”

  “Normally, sure,” Basil said. “But has a single thing been normal here tonight?”

  “So we’re just going to leave them?”

  “We’re lucky we’re still alive,” Basil stuttered through chattering teeth. “We’re minutes away from hypothermia. The water is rising. If we don’t leave right now, we might not leave at all.”

  A Potemkin armchair floated past them, bobbing and bouncing in the current, heading toward the front of the store.

  “We have to come back for them,” Amy insisted. “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” Basil said, shaking convulsively. “Now, please.”

  They sloshed toward the front of the store, following the current. In Children’s, they waded through a layer of stuffed pandas whose drowned faces grinned at the ceiling. The sound of rushing water was louder up ahead, and the current was picking up speed, threatening to sweep their feet out from under them. When Amy saw what was making the noise, her heart sank. They both stopped, water raging past their legs, and gawked at the stairs that led down to the Market Floor.

  Water cascaded in a torrent, foaming into furious rapids. It wasn’t just rushing down the stairs, it was pouring from the entire second-floor mezzanine, forming three waterfalls that sent sheer walls plunging down, transforming the stairs into a roaring flume.

  “We’ll go around,” Basil shouted, trying to be heard over the din. “Through the café to the escalator at the front of the showroom. Then down to the main entrance.”

  Amy swept the flashlight into the café and watched the current snatch three Arsle chairs and suck them down the steps, end over end, where they disappeared in the furious torrent.

  “Can you do it?” Amy asked.

  Basil nodded, and the two of them walked into the café, away from the raging waterfall on the stairs. The current tore at them. Every time they took a foot off the floor, the water snatched at it, trying to drag them away. Water foamed up to Amy’s waist and the greasy spray almost reached her shoulders. She guided Basil in front of her, holding on to his left arm; the right one hung dead at his side. Another Arsle chair tumbleweeded past, sucked toward the stairs; its legs sliced into Basil’s shins. He fell, disappearing beneath the waist-deep water.

  “Basil!” Amy shouted.

  His head surfaced six feet away, moving fast in the direction of the waterfall. Amy ran toward him, trying to keep her footing. Basil couldn’t get his legs under him, and he went down again. Amy reached for him, but she wasn’t even close. The last thing she saw were his terrified eyes and shouting mouth as he was sucked backward into the foaming rapids of the stairs leading down into the Market Floor.

  Amy screamed in frustration. They’d been footsteps away from safety via the escalator. Now she’d have to make her way through the entire Market Floor, then through the Self-Service Warehouse and the checkout lanes before reaching the exit. It was too far, and there was no way of knowing if Basil had even survived his fall.

  But he had come back for her. She had to go after him.

  Amy sat down in the water and let the current grab her. Next thing she knew she was flying down the stairs, head over heels, the water throwing her, smashing her, sledgehammering her body. When she finally reached the base of the stairs, the rapids hit her like a truck, pushing her deep underwater. Everything was a muffled roar. Amy was seized by panic, unable to tell which way was up.

  Something sharp gouged her forehead, then buoyancy dragged her to the surface; she bobbed up, blinking into the darkness as greasy garbage water sheeted down her face. The current was carrying her away from the stairs. Incredibly, she’d managed to hang onto the Maglite, and she shined it across the surface. Basil was hanging onto a nearby pallet of bottled water, clinging to it with his good arm.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He looked like he was going into shock. His face was gray, his eyes were hollow, and he was shaking so hard he could have been having a seizure. Amy clung to the boxes next to him. “We can take the shortcut through Lighting and cut over to the Warehouse,” she said. “Then we swim past the registers and we’re out.”

  It was hard to tell if Basil was nodding or shivering. Amy’s left arm, resting on top of the boxes, was caught on something sharp. Instinctively, she yanked it back, pulling something heavy, wet, and black toward her face.

  “Ah!” she said, jerking her hand off the cases of water.

  A fat black rat plopped into the water and swam away frantically. Amy swept her light
across the room. Rats were everywhere. Seething on top of every surface, trying to escape the rising water, the shelves thick with a living carpet of their bodies. They were squirming over one another as they scrambled onto boxes and floating debris, scrabbling for purchase. The water was heaving with them.

  “Go!” Amy shouted.

  When Basil didn’t move, she grabbed his collar and hauled him out into the dark frigid depths.

  The Market Floor was the more conventional part of the Orsk experience, where customers pushed shopping carts past shelves stocked with everyday items: plates, posters, picture frames, spatulas, rolls of shelving paper, glasses, plastic salt and pepper shakers, dish towels, napkins, throw pillows. Now all this merchandise was bobbing in a chest-high river. A cold stink rose off the surface and the darkness was alive with squealing vermin. Amy dragged Basil along by his good arm. The current was at their backs, helping them along, but they were constantly tripping over submerged furniture, flat carts, and electrical cords that wrapped around their legs. “Just a little farther,” she assured Basil again and again. “Stay with me.”

  The entire store reminded Amy of the aftermath of a hurricane. Golf pencils, bottled water, store maps unspooled and softened to delicate membranes, flower-pots, mirrors, rats. Everything was floating free. As they approached the massive Self-Service Warehouse, Amy found she didn’t need to walk anymore—she could simply push off the floor and let the current carry her along. She wrapped an arm around Basil’s chest, holding him tight, and towed him behind her. It was easier this way; floating along with the debris instead of hacking their way through it.

  The current sped up as it rounded the corner and carried them into the cavernous warehouse. The Maglite was useless here, where towering shelves stretched nearly fifty feet to the ceiling. All around Amy heard creaks and cracks as the flooding stressed the building. Far above her in the darkness, the massive metal shelves loaded with flat packs groaned, and splashes echoed as boxes of Brookas and Müskks fell from higher levels.