Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Author:Grady Hendrix [Hendrix, Grady]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59474-727-4
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2014-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

Amy heard a distant click and her vision went black. The spotlights went dark. The exit signs. Power indicator lights. Everything. With no windows or skylights, the Showroom was blacker than midnight, and Amy was blind, isolated from everyone else, lost in darkness. She stumbled backward and at some point realized that Carl had released her wrist.

“The safety lights,” a disembodied voice said.

Amy recognized the voice. Basil was somewhere to her left.

“No one can turn off the safety lights,” he continued. “This is impossible.”

The Showroom floor was massive, but Amy felt the walls and ceiling closing in. Her pulse was popping in her wrists, throbbing in her neck like a headache. But it wasn’t the darkness that frightened her. It was the silence.

Normally she could hear the endless roar of Orsk’s air-conditioning system blowing through the miles of ductwork, but now it was completely silent. The darkness was eating every sound, muffling it, muting it. The air felt warm and suddenly stale.

“Use your phones,” Matt said.

Eerie blue light bloomed in the darkness as Matt powered on his iPhone and increased its screen brightness to the highest setting. Amy powered up her flip phone and realized that her battery was down to its last bar. She aimed the screen in Matt’s direction and saw him squatting over a gear bag, rummaging inside. “It’s got to be in here someplace,” he said.

“The safety lights never go out,” Basil repeated. “Not even in an earthquake.”

This is worse than an earthquake, Amy thought. This is something the Orsk engineers never anticipated.

“Here.” Matt switched on the Maglite and cast the beam around the dining room display. That’s when they discovered that they were alone in the darkness. Except for a few spatters of blood and candle wax, the surface of the Frånjk was bare.

“What the hell?” Matt said.

“Oh, thank God,” Basil sighed. “He’s just injured.”

“That’s not possible,” Amy said. “You didn’t see what we saw.”

Basil snatched the Maglite away from Matt and shone it around the Showroom floor, its beam bouncing across furniture and room displays, chasing away shadows. “Carl!” he called. “Can you hear me?”

Amy turned to Matt. “This is crazy. You saw what happened. We need to go.”

If she had any courage, she would have walked out by herself, but the darkness was too complete. Her pathetic cell phone was too faint to guide the way. Amy had never been scared of the dark, or of ghosts, or of serial killers, but right now she felt small and vulnerable and surrounded by something hungry. Ruth Anne’s talk of Creepy Crawlies echoed in her mind; they haunted the thick shadows, creeping closer and closer.

“Amy’s right,” Matt said. “We have to go.”

“With an injured man bleeding all over the Showroom? I can’t do that, Matt.”

“He sliced open his throat,” Matt said. “He killed himself.”

“If he was dead, he’d still be on the table.” Basil stepped out on the floor, aiming the flashlight toward Bedrooms. “Carl?”

Amy turned to Matt. “Please, let’s get out of here. We’re safer if we go together—”

“I have to get Trinity,” Matt said.

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