Horrorstör

by Grady Hendrix

Despite the glam-punk look, Amy knew the nails cost $125, the hair was professionally dyed, the piercing cost a fortune, and the tattoo wasn’t cheap, either. Scratch a rebel, Amy thought, and you’ll always find a father’s credit card.

For her, the world was divided into two kinds of jobs: those where you had to stand up, and those where you could sit down. If you were standing up, you were paid hourly. If you were sitting down, you were salaried. Currently Amy’s job was standing (bad), but she knew that one day, if she was lucky, she would have a job that was sitting (good).

The more Amy struggled, the faster she sank. Every month she shuffled around less and less money to cover the same number of bills. The hamster wheel kept spinning and spinning and spinning. Sometimes she wanted to let go and find out exactly how far she’d fall if she just stopped fighting. She didn’t expect life to be fair, but did it have to be so relentless?

“Now I get it,” Ruth Anne said. “You’re like the Paranormal Investigators on A&E.” “We are nothing like the Paranormal Investigators on A&E,” Matt said. “For starters, we are not lame.” “But you have lots of equipment, just like the people on A&E,” Ruth Anne pointed out. “Stop saying A&E,” Matt said. “We’re aiming higher than that. Trinity wants us to be the first ghost hunters on Bravo.”

It suddenly dawned on Amy. “You don’t believe in ghosts,” she said. “At all.” Matt powered up his camera. “I believe a ghost is a subjective experience. It doesn’t have an objective reality. It exists solely in the perceptions of the people who see it.”

“Maybe you’ve got a safety net, but I don’t. I don’t have a family, I don’t have a lot of friends, and when I’m home at night, I usually spend my time doing crosswords and watching TV with Snoopy. You know who Snoopy is? He’s the stuffed dog I won at the Great Lakes Fair. Now, you know what I do have? This job. It pays my rent, it gives me a family, it bought me a beautiful kitchen, and I am not going to lose it because some little girl who thinks it’s her job to lip off all the time has the willies and won’t go upstairs to help her coworkers find the person sneaking around this store.” “Ruth Anne—” “No, you’ve talked plenty tonight. Now it’s time for you to listen. The last time I checked you were twenty-four years old. Thirteen and angry is a long way back in your rearview mirror. You need to buckle up because it is time to toe the line and act like a grown-up woman. You don’t want to go out on the floor? Tough titty, said the kitty. I don’t want to go on the floor, either, but having a job is all about doing things you don’t want to do. That’s why they pay you money for it. Life doesn’t care what you want, other people don’t care what you want. All that matters is what you do. And right now, what you’re going to do is stand shoulder to shoulder with me and march out that door, find our friends, and help them deal with this situation. Tomorrow you can do whatever the heck you want, but I am going to keep my job. So get up, put some pepper in your pants, and let’s get mov...

get her ass ruth anne!!

“You do realize that you’re not in control of this situation anymore,” Amy said to Basil. “I am one hundred percent in control of this situation,” Basil said, hurrying to keep up.

“My whip shall split your bestial hides and drive you on to work, for work is the moral treatment that will mend your degraded minds,” he warned, his voice rolling like thunder across the Showroom floor. It was the voice of a preacher, a voice of the past, a voice for cathedrals, a voice from a time before microphones. It was a voice that denounced witches and flogged sinners. It was a voice that sang Latin while women burned at the stake and men were crushed beneath stones. “Now, let us make the necessary sacrifice for my great work to begin again. Let us use the materials at hand to fling wide the gates and open the door. Come inside my mill,” he said, licking colorless lips with his pale tongue. “Come inside, and let hard work cure the weakness inside your minds.”

“Stop talking and go to the break room,” Basil said. “I can’t believe this is happening. There is a dead man on the Frånjk! And Corporate is going to be here in”—he looked at his watch—“five hours! We’ve got five hours to clean up and sort this out. This is a nightmare.”

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 othe...

That was her nature. Fail and quit. If you cut her open, it was fail and quit right down to her bones.

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.

If anyone had come to Orsk that morning and asked Amy if she and Trinity were friends, she would have answered “It’s complicated.” But pain and fear have a way of simplifying things. Trinity was lost in the same hell as Amy, only Basil wasn’t there to save her. There was only Amy.

“Ruth Anne!” she yelled. Her friend didn’t seem concerned at all. She was no longer resisting; she had stopped trying to fight back. “Don’t you worry,” Ruth Anne said. “If I can’t see them, they can’t see me.” Then without hesitation she hooked her bony fingertips into her eye sockets and raked them down her face.

Ruth Anne had hugged her that morning when she thought she’d been fired. Snoopy was sitting on the sofa waiting for her to get home and watch TV. She hadn’t hesitated when Carl was hurting himself, she’d just stripped off her blouse and tried to stop the bleeding. Ruth Anne had been the best of them.

Basil looked pained. He closed his eyes. “I told you to go,” he said. “When have I ever done what you told me?” Amy said. Basil made a face, and Amy couldn’t tell what it was. His lips stretched tightly over his bloody teeth and his cheeks and forehead crinkled up. She realized he was smiling. “S’responsible,” he muttered. “What’s that?” He cleared his throat and spat out blood. “You’re Shop Responsible,” he said. “I knew it.”

“You aren’t in chains anymore!” Amy shouted over him. “Your sentences are just habits. You’ve been free for decades—you just never realized it!”

“They might not,” Basil said. “We don’t know what happened in there.” “I do,” Amy said. “There was a prison here, and we built a new prison on its ruins, and all the old prisoners came out to give it a try.”

We’re going to do right by the two of you, and by Ruth Anne’s family.” “And Matt and Trinity,” Amy said. “Well, that’s something different,” Pat said. “I know you guys say they were here, but I’m sure tonight has been very confusing, and it was probably hard to know exactly what was going on. They weren’t on the clock, you know.” “They were here,” Amy said. “I know you believe that,” Pat said. “But this situation is challenging enough without adding more people to the mix. Let’s not start making up things that sound worse.” “They were here,” Amy repeated. “I saw them. I dragged Trinity halfway through the store. I spoke to Matt. I’m not crazy.” “No one’s saying you are,” Pat said. “But what we’re wondering is that if they weren’t on the clock, and if Basil wasn’t paying them, are they really our responsibility? Here you go, Amy.”

One hundred thirty-four people went to Ruth Anne’s memorial. Every single one of them was an Orsk employee or customer. They gave eulogies, cried, talked about the little kindnesses she had shown them. Snoopy was sitting on a table at the front surrounded by flowers and framed photos. A lot of people wore their Orsk uniforms. Amy stood in the back for half of the service and then she left, feeling more numb than when she’d arrived.

this made me tear up gah damn

“How about Matt? Or Trinity? Did you see them?” “Not yet,” Basil said. “Is that why you’re here?” “I’m getting them out,” she said, nodding. “Everyone keeps telling me it’s all over, that it’s back to normal, but I don’t want to go back to normal. I don’t like the person I used to be. I want to keep being the person I was that night.”