He hands me the key ring, which I appreciate. I can well imagine what Billy Wayne would do in this situation, which is take charge and establish dominance. But Hunter seems to understand that I feel ownership of this place. It’s nice.
We open the back emergency door, and there’s the alley. Hunter props it wide with a concrete block sitting conveniently outside. “Abraham used to open it up for a cross breeze when things got too warm,” he explains.
The hardware store’s back door is maybe ten feet away, and we go through every key in the ring without finding a single one that works.
“Is there another key ring?” Hunter asks. “Because this door is pretty heavy.” He grabs the handle, and…the door pulls open.
We share a look.
“It shouldn’t be doing that, right?” I ask.
He silently shakes his head and holds a finger to his lips as he gently, gently closes the door. His truck is right across the alley from us, so he jogs over there and returns with a metal baseball bat. I move out of the way to let him go first, and he gives me a nod of acknowledgment before opening the door again, reaching inside, and flicking on a light switch, all the while holding the bat like a club in his right hand.
Maybe I should be scared and staying out of the way, but it’s my hardware store, damn it, and I want to see it. The door has a stopper, so I kick it into place and follow Hunter inside.
There’s not as much light as there is in the video store, as the shop is full of tall shelving and peg racks, one big open room. The front windows are papered over with yellowed newspapers and plywood, so it almost feels like something from a zombie movie,the light warm and blurry and glittering with dancing motes of dust. This back part is filled with pallets of wood and large boxes that haven’t been unloaded. Everything looks untouched but older. Wire racks and hangers dangle from the cobwebbed pegboards, and somewhere, up ahead, a small creature has a heart attack and scurries away.
Hunter follows an aisle to the front of the store, and the little homey touches make me feel nostalgic for a place I never saw in action. There’s a calendar on the wall, forever stuck in 2008, plus plastic toys and aTake a Penny, Leave a Pennydish bereft of coins. Some of the inventory has been cleaned out, but plenty of random things have been left behind, their plastic bags now brittle and stained yellow.
Satisfied that there’s nothing weird going on in the store, Hunter points to the door that will lead to the storage room. I nod, slide a dusty hammer off the pegboard, and follow him.
My senses are all on alert, my ears straining to hear anything that shouldn’t be expected in a building that’s supposedly been untouched for almost twenty years. The wood boards squeak and complain with every step. I smell sawdust, regular dust, oil, and age.
As Hunter reaches for the storage room door, I tighten my fingers on my hammer, hoping I don’t have to use it, because it’s just now occurring to me how very close you have to be to someone to hit them with a hammer, and how very gross that would feel when and if it happened. The door swings open with a long, whining creak. It’s pitch-black inside, and Hunter fumbles for the light switch.
The lights flicker on, and my heart just about falls out of my butt.
I guess now I know why the storage room door won’t open from the video store.
Someone has piled dozens of chairs in front of it, an impossible and strangely intricate barricade of white folding chairs that reaches all the way to the ceiling like some sort of modern art. I look to Hunter, who appears just as confused as I am.
“What is this?” I ask.
And then one of the chairs detaches and flies directly at me.
24.
Before I canreact, Hunter steps in front of me and swings his bat. It connects with the flimsy white chair, which explodes with a meaty crunch. The chunks fall to the ground and go still. All I can do is stand there and boggle.
There is no one else here.
Chairs should not just be throwing themselves across the room.
They should not be stacked like a house of cards.
Another chair wiggles free of the clot, and Hunter grabs my arm, but gently. Still I don’t move. I can’t stop staring at the chair, watching it shimmy like a giant is playing Chair Jenga and doesn’t want to topple the tower. Hunter tugs at me, but I am frozen in place.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he murmurs quietly, as if trying not to spook a wild animal.
When I don’t respond, he picks me up with one arm, tucks me against his body, and carries me toward the door. As I am pulled out of danger, I notice a cascade of strange little details. Thestorage room runs the full length of the building and is maybe twenty feet wide. Other than the Chair Jenga, there are boxes, a mop bucket, a broken fan, the kind of detritus anyone might expect. As I watch, the mop bucket’s wheels twitch, and then it zooms directly toward us. The mop flies out of it and skitters along behind it like an uptight snake.
And that’s when I remember I have feet and start moving on my own.
We all but dive into the hardware store, and Hunter slams the door and puts his back against it. The loud clatter that makes him jump suggests the mop bucket is apoplectic at the fact that it hasn’t murdered us.
“What is happening?” I ask.
Hunter’s face looks like a very sexy thunderstorm, dark and determined with a promise of violence. “What’s happening is that you have a poltergeist.”
