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They Live in the Mall (chapter 2)
By SeanArcher
My stuff was nowhere in sight. I knew no one could have taken it because no one could have known I was there, and if they did they would have stolen my laptop or my bike, not something cheap like a water bottle. The most scary part about it though was that whatever it was, it had only been about five feet outside of my tent and knew about me being there. I rolled under the curtains and looked around the theater. There was no one. I slowly opened the door and didn't see anyone in the hallway. There was no one in the lobby either. Everything was just like I remembered it. It was like no one had been there at all.
The whole day I had the incident on my mind. I looked for my missing stuff for a little while, knowing I wouldn't find it. I never did. It was like it just disappeared. It was probably somewhere in the mall (and probably still is) but there was just too many places it could be. I gave up on it and went to McDonalds to eat breakfast. On the way back I stopped at Wal-Mart and bought some more food. I spent most of the day riding my bike around the parking lot and on the roof, the whole day going by slow. I didn't want to spend a lot of time in the mall and I dreaded when it would get dark, but inevitably nighttime came.
That night I was walking through the broken glass entrance heading back to my tent when something caught my eye. I turned and looked down the corridor that led to the foodcourt and I saw a tiny light floating around the area by the foodcourt about a hundred feet away. I stopped and stared at it, my heart beating. I thought for a second maybe it was someone with a flashlight, but it didn't change shape (like if someone was moving a flashlight around) or have a beam. It was just a ball of light hovering around, disappearing as it moved behind support columns and reappearing. Then I saw another one move into view.
There was no sound at all. It was just small white lights hovering around, like they were looking for something or studying something. I knelt down and watched for about 30 minutes. I thought about running to the Wal-Mart and buying a one-time-use camera but I didn't want to miss anything. Some would leave down a corridor and disappear from view and others would show up. At times I saw four or five of them at a time. I think they're called "orbs" and are supposed to be spirits. I remember seeing something about it on the SciFi channel. I wished I had my video camera to record it but I didn't. I wasn't really scared, I thought it was interesting. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I just kept watching silently until they floated away after about thirty minutes.
I stayed there for a long, long time, waiting for them to come back. I couldn't believe what I had just seen. I had never believed in ghosts but I had just seen something I couldn't explain. I started to believe in ghosts and I also realized that meant my home was haunted. I just hoped they were friendly.
Fast forward five days. Nothing much exciting happened. There were no more sightings or noises in the night. I spent most of the time hanging around the mall like I did before, riding my bike around, watching the sunsets from the roof. A couple days before, I rode my bike to a movie theater a few miles away and spent the whole day watching movies, sneaking into another theater when one movie would end. I bought a cheap paintball gun and would "snipe" cars on the highway at nighttime from the rooftop, where nobody could see me. I ate mostly at a nearby McDonalds and food I bought from Wal-Mart. Every few days I would take a city bus to the Greyhound station and take a shower in a public wash room. I had bought another battery for my laptop from a Circuit City that was across the street and was allowed to charge them in a local library, so at night I could sit in the theater and watch DVDs and play games. I also read the script for George A. Romero's new living dead film, Dead Reckoning.
It was the night of July 4, eight days since I first arrived at Belle Promenade. I sat back in the rolly chair with a bag of snacks and drinks at my side and watched from the rooftop as the fireworks started. Around 9 o'clock, the annual New Orleans Riverwalk fireworks show began. The sky lit up in a spectacular display of lights and colors. It was all very beautiful and entertaining. Around midnight, the action came to a halt and I decided to head back to my theater and watch some Lord of the Rings.
The next morning I woke up and rode my bike down to a local gas station and bought a newspaper to see what was going on in the world, and to have something new to read. I rode back and sat in a rolly chair next to the door, where there was sunlight, and began reading. The front page was something about the city building back the levees. Boring. I flipped to the weather section and was shocked when I read the headline:
"Louisiana braces for Hurricane Claudette"
Apparently there was a category 2 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. The projected path would bring the storm to the Louisiana/Texas coast by Monday evening (a little over two days away), the newspaper said. New Orleans was going to be hit with 50-70 mph winds and there was a mandatory evacuation for low-lying areas like Grand Isle and my school town of Lafitte, which always floods during bad weather.
Jimmity crickets! In less than three days I was going to be hit by a hurricane. I had gone through dozens of hurricanes before, but had always been in my home. My attitude quickly changed from care-free to responsible. I decided to weather out the storm from the shelter of the mall. It was definately a solid enough structure and was the best place to be.
To prepare for the storm I went up to the roof and carried down whatever I didn't want to be blown away, like my lounge chairs I tanned on and my rolly chairs. I closed the two doors that I was using for light in the theater. I also recharged my laptop batteries and stocked up on some extra food and water, because I probably wasn't going to be able to leave the mall for a few days. Then I had nothing to do but wait.
The next morning I started seeing the effects of the storm. The sky was growing darker and there weren't many people outdoors. It was all very quiet and ominous.
I rode to the gas station to pick up another newspaper. When I was paying for it I said something to the cashier (an old man) like, "So what do you think about this hurricane? You going to leave town or what?" He said he was getting ready to close the shop in a few hours because he lived in a trailer and was taking his family somewhere safer out of town. He asked about me and I said I was just going to stay in my home. I said "good luck" and rode back to the mall.
The newspaper said the hurricane was still heading on the same course at the same speed, but had intensified to a category-3 hurricane. We were expected to get hurricane force winds (79 mph or greater). I spent the afternoon walking around the mall doing some little things like making sure everything was off the roof and that my laptop was high above ground in case it started to flood. As I walked back through the JC Penneys I said something stupid like "Hey, any ghosts in here? We got us a hurricane coming... Any ghosts better leave." I regret saying it. After a couple minutes I made it to the center walkway of the mall and turned my flashlight off.
The sky was also so dark that not a lot of light was coming through the sky-windows so I was having a hard time seeing. The whole time I walked around the mall I felt like there were other people around. I would hear noises like metal on metal and voices. I swear to god one time I heard a voice behind me that was so clear that I quickly turned around and caught a glimpse of what looked like a dark shape move by real fast and disappear. If it were any other day, I would regard the noises as being something natural and blame what I saw on poor lighting. But because of what I saw a few days before, I wasn't so sure.
I finished what I needed to do, feeling a little frightened like someone was watching me the whole time, and went back to the tent. It was around 6 p.m. when I first heard rain falling. I opened the emergency exit door and saw a light rain falling over the parking lot. It had started. I watched for a while and then I started getting wet so I closed the door and started waiting it out in the theater. It got really boring. To help pass the time I started rolling across the area in front of the screen on the rolly chair real fast with the lantern on my lap. I also rode down the slanted theater aisle on my bike and the chair, having to stop real fast or slam into the screen. A few hours passed.
At night the weather was really bad. I watched from the lobby behind the ticket booth as forty mph winds were blowing water and debris far into the lobby of the mall, soaking the carpet. I went back to the theater where I could hear the howling wind and thunder outside and the rain really pounding on the roof. It continued through the night.
I woke up the next morning and still heard the raucus outside. But inside everything was nice and calm. I fumbled for my lantern and flipped it on, lighting up the tent. I put my shirt and sandles on and walked out to the lobby. The wind and rain was still blowing in heavily through the broken entrance and there was a huge puddle about six inches deep around it. There was a bunch of broken tree limbs and stuff as far in as about two hundred feet. I looked through the doorway and saw the trees swaying like crazy in the wind. There was also areas of the parking lot already flooded. The mall was built up though so it was unlikely water would ever get in the mall.
It was the morning of Monday, July 7th. The wind was already blowing at least 60 mph and the worst of it wasn't expected to come until that evening. It was bad. Too bad to go buy a newspaper. I just had to wait it out from the safety of the mall.
After eating a can of "Vienna Sausage" and some Pringles chips, I grabbed my flashlight and started walking toward the foodcourt. It was so dark that I had trouble seeing, and it was in the middle of the day. In the foodcourt area, the roof was made mostly of glass pyramids. That was the brightest part of the mall so I stayed there for the rest of the day. I sat on the edge of a water fountain (which used to shoot water thirty feet up in the air) and watched the rain fall on the pyramid window above.
Several hours passed. I sat there all alone in the dark and quiet mall while the hurricane moved by overhead. Outside it sounded like something terrible and violent was going on. Thunder and the sound of rain echoed through the mall. I started kicking pieces of scrap metal and sheet rock around with a metal rod, the whole time feeling like I was being watched. Three corridors connected to the foodcourt. All I could see down them was darkness. I wanted to save my flashlight batteries for the night, so I couldn't leave the foodcourt. That wasn't exactly the best place I wanted to be either, since it was right where I had seen the "lights".
As time went on, the storm got stronger and stronger. Around 6 p.m., the worst of the weather moved overhead. Eventually it was so dark that I couldn't see a thing and there was no reason for me to stay where I was, so I turned the lantern on and went back to my tent. I stayed up most of the night, watching DVDs and stuff. I guess it was around three in the morning when I put my laptop aside and fell asleep.
Morning rose over the battered city. I woke up to the call of birds outside. I opened the door and was a little surprised, and relieved, that the storm had mostly passed. It was still a little cloudy but the rain and wind had stopped. The lobby of the theater was a mess. The entire carpet was soaked in puddles of water. There was all sorts of trash and mud that had blown in also. I walked along the wall to avoid the puddle and walked down the corridor to the foodcourt.
I took the long path to the roof to inspect the damage. When I walked out onto the rooftop and saw the surrounding area, I was truly shocked. Aside from the water puddles covering most of the roof, half of the parking lot was flooded. There were pieces of trees and people's garbage scattered everywhere. The streets were completely flooded and there was almost no traffic at all. In the distance I saw powerlines knocked down and trees stripped to the bark. It was like a bomb had hit.
I rode my bike around town. People's homes were flooded. Fences were knocked over. Power crews were working on downed power lines. Store windows were broken. I rode around for hours in disbelief.
8/5/2003 12:45:20 AM
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