Free The Mall by S L Grey Page A

doesn’t make sense. It reads: “Do not attempt to enter under any circumstances. All trespassers will be corrected.”’
    ‘What the fuck do they mean by “corrected”?’ I ask.
    There’s a long pause before Dan answers. ‘It makes me think of getting caned at school. Or corrective surgery.’
    I don’t really want to consider either of these options, but now Dan has put some seriously gothic imagery in my mind. I try to shake it out. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake. This is
totally mental.’
    ‘So what now?’
    I pull out the stompie and light up. I take a couple of drags and watch the thin grey smoke melding and dancing with the black emissions from the paraffin lamp. ‘We don’t have a
choice,’ I say. ‘Trousers down it is.’ Dan smiles at me for the first time, and even though the yellowish light makes his too-white skin seem ghoulish, he actually looks like a
different person. ‘I mean,’ I say, nipping the butt and leaving one last drag for later, ‘after what we’ve already been through, how bad can it really get?’
    This floor seems to extend even further along than the one above. Enough parking for all the cars in Joburg. The ceiling is lower down here and I’m starting to feel the
walls pressing in. And the cigarette and blow aren’t helping to calm my heart or soothe my stomach, which is bunched into a tight knot of nausea.
    Dan pauses and holds the lamp out to me. ‘Can you hold it for a while? It’s burning my fingers.’
    He passes the lamp to me, and even through the hoodie’s layers I almost drop it when I feel the heat. He must have really struggled to hold it for so long. ‘Fucking hell, Dan! You
should have said something earlier!’
    He shrugs. ‘Ja. It wasn’t—’
    ‘Shhh!’ I say. ‘Hear that?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Listen!’
    The sound drifts back towards us.
    ‘Is that… music?’ Dan says.
    Both of us keep absolutely still. It comes again. It’s a jaunty folksy tune that for some reason reminds me of the Mos Eisley Cantina riff in Star Wars .
    We quicken our pace, and I almost forget about the uncomfortable heat of the lamp. A stark white door with a reassuringly normal metal handle appears out of the gloom to greet us, the only
feature in an otherwise solid concrete barrier ahead.
    ‘You think it’s locked?’ Dan asks.
    ‘Only one way to find out.’
    He pulls open the door and both of us have to shield our faces against the sudden glare of light that blasts back at us. We’ve been in the dark for so long that my eyes tear up, and it
takes me a second to realise what I’m seeing. It’s another one of those narrow stairwells, this one at least heading upwards. The stairs, walls and ceiling are tiled in a seamless white
mosaic, giving it the antiseptic look of an institutional corridor. With the door open the sound of the music floats down towards us with more clarity. And there’s something else – a
familiar low rumbling sound.
    ‘Shit,’ Dan breathes. ‘Voices! There are people up there!’
    ‘You think this leads back into the mall?’ I say. ‘Like a back entrance or something?’
    Dan shrugs. ‘Fuck knows, Rhoda. We’re way underground now.’ His eyes are beyond tired. He’s wearing the same expression you see on disaster victims on CNN, one of weary
acceptance.
    ‘You want to take a break?’
    ‘No,’ he says. ‘I want to get this over with.’
    I place the lamp carefully on the ground, and, without speaking, we both start heading up.
    I’d expected the stairwell to lead upwards for ever, like everything in this fucking place. But after navigating just a few flights, we’ve reached a white
melamine door and neither of us is rushing to pull it open. From the sounds we can make out from here, it’s already clear that whatever we’re about to encounter it’s not going to
be the bland muzak and polished shopfronts of the mall. The music actually sounds creepily similar to old-school funfair calliope music – the kind that scores