By Al Bruno III
March 5: As malls go, Colonie Center wasn't all that bad, especially now that it had been re-renovated. The stores were 80% the same, but the design had shifted from 'generic' to ‘1970s rec room.'
Nearly a decade before that makeover, I had spent many afternoons there as a teenager—sometimes for legitimate reasons. Other times, my friends Eric and Georgie would sneak through the employee hallways and stairways to find a secluded spot to partake in the Devil's Lettuce.
Sara's sleepwalking incidents had faded away thanks to nightly burnings of sage and a necklace of black tourmaline, amethyst, and clear quartz crystals. I wasn't so naïve as to think she was entirely out of the supernatural woods, but it was still a reason to celebrate. Besides, she had just turned twenty-one a few weeks ago, and after grabbing some fast food and catching a movie, I wanted to buy her her first drink. We walked through the mall together—Sara in a long skirt and peasant blouse and me in my leather jacket, jeans, collared shirt, and lucky straw fedora.
###
First, we stopped by Friendly's for a bite to eat. As we made small talk, it was nice to learn about the everyday details of Sara's life. I discovered that her father owned a glass factory known for producing some of the cheapest wine bottles in America, and her brothers worked in management there. Her mother was involved in an organization dedicated to preserving historic buildings in Clifton Park.
Sara shared that her mother had become pregnant with her despite her father's vasectomy, which nearly led to a divorce. Her father was convinced her mother had been unfaithful, and it was only after Sara was born that a DNA test confirmed the vasectomy had failed.
This made Sara feel like the deck had been stacked against her from the very beginning. She grew up mostly in the care of stern nannies, a dismissive mother, and a father more inclined to shouting than hugging. As for her brothers? She considered it a victory when they made any eye contact with her.
She also assured me, to my relief, that she would be turning twenty-one in November.
In return, I shared that my grandmother had been a showgirl in Las Vegas. She left in 1972 after being labeled an "undesirable element." Arriving in Albany pregnant and penniless, she rebuilt her life and raised my mom. She never revealed who my grandfather was, and in a twist of irony, my mom never told us who my father was, though she was pretty sure I knew. I had gone to college in Loch Sheldrake to study journalism but dropped out when my grandmother reached the final stages of pancreatic cancer.
Unfortunately, it wasn't long after that I encountered my first monster... and the rest, as they say, is history.
After an awkward pause, we left the restaurant and headed to the Palace Cineplex. It was a tall, standalone building, a recent addition to Colonie Center. The theater was about fifteen feet away from the rest of the mall and connected to it by a single hallway leading to the south entrance. Every half hour or so, the theater became bustling with people arriving and departing for the latest film screenings.
What movie were we seeing? As it always was these days, the choices were superheroes, resurrected IPs, rom-coms, or horror movies. Considering everything Sara was dealing with, she opted for a superhero movie. I agreed—watching the good guys win was good for the soul.
Tuesday nights at the movies were always nice—no crowds, no kids talking and texting, or worse. In fact, it was just us and a few old-timers. We watched the commercials, the previews, and the requests to keep it quiet. The movie's first fifteen minutes were great fun, with a nice CGI-to-banter ratio.
A member of the audience sitting three rows ahead of us stood and turned around. He was pudgy and gray, his grin shining through the shadows that hid the rest of his face. "There they are," he said in a voice reminiscent of the guy from Mary Poppins who kept floating up to the ceiling, "the High Priestess and the Fool."
I didn't have to ask which one was me. I knew.
I stood up, and Sara cowered in her seat. "I don't know who you are, but we don't want any trouble."
"He says he doesn't want any trouble!" Laughter rippled through the theater. I could see other figures leaving their seats—more gray, monochrome clowns with smeared makeup and empty eyes. I knew they were called Athanatoi, or the Ashen Hearts, but they were Bozos to me.
Sara asked, "What are you?"
He chuckled. "What am I? What are you?"
"I'd like an answer," I said.
"I'm Mister Jack," he said proudly.
So, he was a Talker, not a Stalker. I decided to keep him talking. "Shouldn't you be at a birthday party? A rodeo, maybe?"
"You're better at secrets than jokes, Fool. How did your Grandma die? Did you tell her the story?" Mister Jack said as he climbed over the first row of seats separating us. His fellow Bozos were making their way toward us, crawling over their own seats or shuffling down the aisles.
"Sara, you've got to come with us now," Mister Jack breathed. "You've got places to be, things to do."
I pulled Sara to her feet. "When I say run…"
"You can feel it, can't you, girl? You've been empty all along."
We were surrounded. I wracked my brain for some kind of decent strategy and then said, "Fuck it," and pitched my big gulp drink right into Mister Jack's grinning face. He didn't shout or scream; he just giggled.
And then the screen went dark—no, everything went dark. Even the exit signs. The only thing we could see was a half-dozen toothy grins moving toward us through the black. They glowed like moonlight.
"Run!" I shouted, but Sara was already moving. We headed the other way down our row, away from Mister Jack.
One of his fellow clowns was coming up on us from the other direction. I threw a punch, a right cross, hitting him on the side of the head. The clown's skin felt cold and grimy against my knuckles.
That smile disappeared, but there were still more coming. Sara squealed in protest when I lifted her up in a fireman's carry. Filthy hands clawed at me as I ran. I dodged grins and tried to judge where the door out of this nightmare might be.
Finally, my eyes adjusted enough to the darkness for me to charge toward the door and find myself in the access corridor the employees used. The lights were on here. I leaned against the door, trying to catch my breath. Sara looked like she was on the verge of collapse. All I saw was a stairway leading up, most likely to the projection booths.
WHAM!
The Bozos began throwing themselves against the door. "Sara," I said, "Count to three, and we're going to run up those stairs, okay?"
She nodded. "Why did he say that about you?"
The door rattled in its frame, the heavy metal trembling as a dozen fists pounded on it. "I'll explain later. I promise."
Then I counted down. "One. Two. Three!"
We sprinted away, managing to reach the end of the corridor before the Bozos finished squeezing through the entrance.
"Get your knives out," Mister Jack said, mostly for my benefit. "I think a certain Fool is going to get the Full Pagliacci."
At the end of the stairs, we found ourselves in a narrow passage leading to the projection booths. At the end was a utility closet beside a ladder marked 'Authorized Personnel Only; Alarm Activated Upon Opening.'
And that was fine by me. I grabbed Sara's hand and ran for it.
We were stopped midway by a projectionist. "You're not supposed to be here! This is trespassing."
The Bozos blundered down the hallway, knocking into each other as if they were trying to escape a maze. Their faces were twisted with maniacal glee as they waved their knives in the air.
"Get out of here!" I yelled, but the usher pulled away.
"Is this some kind of prank?" he gawked at the oncoming figures.
"Don't look back!" I shouted to Sara. But I did look back and saw the poor guy being shoved around—not by hands, but by blades. The so-called Ashen Ones were now splashed with red. So much red.
Sara reached the ladder first and started climbing. I was close behind, but soon enough, so were the Bozos. The ladder led to a hatch, and she struggled to open it. "It's stuck!" she yelled.
I kicked at the Bozos as they tried to climb up. I hit the one with the Larry Fine hairstyle, knocking him down, but another climbed over him and slashed at me with his knife, cutting through the bottom of my sneaker. I screamed.
After what felt like a dozen eternities, Sara got the hatch open, and we hauled ourselves through, pulling it shut behind us with a desperate heave. "What are we going to do?" Sara had to shout over the piercing alarm we'd justn activated.
"We wait!" I held the hatch down with my full body weight.
"We wait?"
The hatch bucked beneath me. "The fire company and, most importantly, the police should be here soon! We just have to hold out!"
Sara looked at me with an expression of hopeless terror. I was about to say something encouraging when the hatch stopped shaking. Then, Mister Jack started singing. Despite the alarm, I heard him perfectly:
“Sara Bishop's not for you, doo-dah, doo-dah. There's not a thing that you can do, oh, doo-dah day."
"I've heard that song already! But you can't hide from those monsters inside when the witch queen comes out to play."
"You better clear out! The cops are gonna be here soon!" I shouted. "And some of them are way scarier than you."
"Oh, the owls and the lizards and the big broke moon, doo-dah, doo-dah. The sacred moment's coming soon, oh, doo-dah day."
A sudden, searing pain shot through my back, leaving me disoriented. Feathery wings pummeled my head as I struggled to make out what was attacking me. The frantic flapping and scratching made it nearly impossible to focus. High-pitched cries pierced through my skull, intensifying the terror and confusion.
Then Sara—thank God for Sara—kicked the fluttering, clawing nightmare off me. The toe of her boot whooshed past my ear. The bird flew up in a high arc and clung to the side of a ventilation unit. As it settled, I saw that it had been an owl attacking me. Its body was much smaller than the pain it had inflicted.
And speaking of pain, warm blood trickled down the back of my neck. I instinctively reached up to touch the spot that was bleeding, only to feel my fingertip slip beneath a tear in my scalp. I started to feel faint, but then the hatch flew open, and the Bozos, led by Mister Jack, began to make their way onto the roof. "Did you like my bird calls, Fool?"
Now Sara took my hand and led me toward the edge of the roof. It was a fifteen-foot jump with a seven-foot drop, but she wasn't slowing down. "We can't," I panted.
"We have to," she said.
We picked up speed. We jumped over the ledge, and half flew, half fell onto the roof of the southern wing of Colonie Center. She tucked and rolled like a gymnast; I hit that gravelly roof with a sickening thud. We both lay there, painfully trying to catch our breath, still holding hands. We watched the Bozos gather at the ledge above us, notice the incoming emergency vehicles, and one by one, turn away until only Mister Jack was left.
He was wearing my bloodied lucky fedora. He tipped it at me and then was gone too.
"This was the worst date ever," I said.
Sara turned on her side. "This was a date?"
###
As I mentioned before, I spent many afternoons at Colonie Center with my pals, and one of our favorite spots to get high was, naturally, the roof. So, despite Sara being dazed with fear and exhaustion and me looking like I'd been juggling buzzsaws and produce, I managed to get us off the mall's roof in a fairly discreet manner.
By now, Mrs. Vincenzo is an expert at patching me up. She wanted me to go to urgent care for the wound on my scalp, but I couldn't risk someone like Detective Bradshaw putting two and two together and figuring out I was involved in this mess. Besides, Crazy Glue is almost as good as a couple of stitches.
Sara wanted to stay with me to make sure I was really okay. She didn't like the idea of leaving me alone with a head full of troubles and a large bottle of bourbon, but I insisted.
When the Police and Fire Department arrived at the Palace Cinemaplex and began to restore order, they found the following three things, in order of importance:
First, there were smears of theatrical makeup everywhere. It had trace amounts of lead and mercury—the kind that hadn't been sold in over forty years.
Second, a taxidermied barn owl was found on the roof of the Palace Cineplex. You read that right: taxidermied. And much like the grease paint, the taxidermy job was also over forty years old.
Third, they found the body of projectionist Nicky Worth. He was declared dead at the scene, and the cause of death was blood loss from thirty-one stab wounds. Unlike the bird and the grease paint, Nicky was most definitely not over forty years old. He was a sophomore at the SUNY Albany campus.
That was one of the many reasons I had to tell Sara to leave. She kept insisting it wasn't my fault, but my gut told me otherwise. Worse, my head was spinning with what-ifs.
What if I had dodged left instead of right?
What if I had been smarter? Or stronger?
What if I am nothing more than a fool?
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