"I need to go home." I turned and looked at Jackson. "Can you take us home?"
He tensed his lips and turned them down. "We can, but we should go back into the meeting first. It's really important that we do this, honey. They need us. They need our energy."
I bit my lips, alternating between the top and bottom one every second or so. "I understand that, but I feel like I’ve been travelling through hell on Earth to find you. I need to see our home, and know that everything's going to be OK. Please. Please?"
Jackson shook his head and looked out the driver's side window.
"You're scared, aren't you? What will happen if we don't go back to that meeting?"
He turned to me, and grabbed my hand. "We need to go back. It won't take long, I promise."
Anger simmered beneath an equivalent relief to be by my husband's side once again. I trusted him. We opened our doors and got out of the car, walking across the overcast raised parking garage and back over to the stair well. We descended the concrete grey steps without a word until we found ourselves back on solid ground.
Jackson lead me over to the entryway of the large nondescript building, which I now recognized as a former department store. The Target had gone out of business many years ago, but remnants of its red painted store signage remained, faded yet unmistakable. Once we re-entered the building, we had to climb back up several half-flights of stairs to reach the upper level where we had left Carol and the others.
We noticed that the bright fluorescent light that had flooded the stairwell earlier had been replaced by a more concentrated halogen glow.
Emergency lights.
"Why is the power out?"
Jackson’s skin looked ashen, although it might have been the lighting. "I'm sure it's fine upstairs."
We climbed the few dozen stairs to the second floor. As we approached the door which would lead us back into the meeting room, I noticed for the first time that the door had a window in it. Whatever lay beyond the window was dark.
Jackson leaned forward and peered into the glass. Over his shoulder I could see that a smattering of safety lights were lit: nothing like the overwhelmingly white fluorescent tube brightness in which we had found ourselves earlier. Overall, it looked like a very dark room. Jackson hesitated slightly before he opened the door. I told him that I was afraid, and he put his arm around my waist. A rare feeling of physical security overtook me and I walked confidently beside him into the partially-lit room.
We couldn't hear anything at first.
"Hello?" Jackson announced our presence. His word jarred with its hasty echo.
A scrambling sound above us alerted all of my senses. I looked up, but the security lights a few metres ahead of us momentarily blinded me. I recalled from my earlier visit to this room that there were long stretches of industrial ventilation pipes suspended from its high ceilings. I guessed that the sound had come from those pipes, located about twenty feet above our heads.
Jackson squinted upwards as well, but I could tell that he saw nothing but the glare of the lights. There didn't seem to be anyone in our vicinity. Presumably the meeting had ended abruptly and everyone had fled in light of whatever had triggered the emergency lights. A power outage?
Before either of us had a chance to speak, we heard the scrambling sound again. This time it was louder – more of a screechy clank accompanied by something akin to a sharp object scraping across a metal surface. Both of us jolted instinctively and craned our necks to look back up at the ceiling. My right eye closed reflexively, stinging as a large drop of warm liquid engulfed its surface.
Instinctively, I wiped whatever it was out of my eye. It was a thick, syrupy liquid. I thought it smelled faintly of minerals.
Blood.
Jackson seemed to be frozen in fear, until I felt his hand slowly make contact with my own. His reach meant that he wanted to flee. There was no mistaking it.
I gripped his hand and glanced behind us at the door through which we had entered, but found it had seemingly been erased. The EXIT sign and markings around the doorway, which I had noticed subconsciously during the daytime, were still there. But beneath the glowing red EXIT sign stood only a concrete wall. I blinked and turned my head around in various directions but knew without a doubt that that brick wall had - just a few minutes earlier - been a doorway through which we'd entered this room.
Very suspenseful! Great writing as always… I feel as if I’m in the room with you.