Follow the Leader

There are around 1,500 malls in the United States. Over 300 of them are completely abandoned, being left to rot and collapse in on themselves as time shreds their presence from existence.

The Animas Forks Mall is one of these places. The entrance, once featuring a manicured set of planters and an ornate stone arch, is now overrun with foliage trying to overtake every inch of stone and cement. Soon, there will be no way to see the structure underneath.

It’s fairly easy to get inside. There’s a large hole in the chainlink fence. Rusted and weathered, nearly as old as the fence itself. It’s clear that it has been used for decades by those that came before you. This place is fairly well trodden; there’s little left to unearth, but it is a rite of passage for explorers who come through this town to walk its corridors. And many have told tales of the view from the rooftop.

So you enter, broken glass crunching under well-worn boots. You enter through a service entrance; the door hanging on by one hinge has been propped against a wall as if the building itself is welcoming you in. Encouraging you to enter.

You step inside.

Where there would once have been the bright, blinding lights of store signs, there is now only the cold, natural rays coming through the shattered skylight above. There’s little evidence of people. None living. There’s some graffiti from past explorers, and old flyers from before the mall died that have fused to the floor with time. They advertise carnivals, mechanics, and yard sales long gone, hosted by people who are likely dead. The building’s map has been vandalised to the point of incomprehension.

You have no way to tell what was here before you. There is nothing to see in any of the stores; all of them were emptied long ago by the magpies and vultures that came before.

You cannot see a way up, so you move forward. Deeper. Searching through the concrete maze for a staircase or disused escalator to take you upward. You walk for a few minutes through the corridors, moving past the identical shells of shop after shop. Time has stripped them of their purpose and individuality. Now they are just husks of what they once were. You eventually find what you were looking for, a singular escalator to take you up to the first floor in the middle of a concourse.

You climb the rusted steps, careful to watch where you walk so you don’t fall through and trap your leg in the tetanus-infested metal. You look up. First for just a moment. But then again. There’s something beyond the escalator: a tall figure who appears to be dressed entirely in black. They stand too far away for you to make out any features; the edges of their form are fizzling. Almost like static.

You step closer.
It moves back.

You take another step.
It moves away down the halls.

You follow it. The only thing leading you at this point is your curiosity; common sense has been long gone at this point. Hell, it left as soon as you set foot in this building alone. But you keep going. At first, you move at a meandering pace. The figure only just staying in your line of sight as it ducks around corners and into desolate stores. When you come across the next escalator, it stays still at the top.

You don’t care where this leads; you just need answers. Following curiosity alone is always a dangerous path to sprint down at full speed. Satisfaction won’t be able to bring you back, but you can’t stop. The only thought you can hold onto in your mind is ‘Follow.’ So you do.

You head through hallway after hallway, up decaying escalators and the broken back alleys of stores. Sun-bleached flyers pasted onto windows and off-white walls meld together. You feel like you’re running in place, an animal being taunted by a carrot on a stick you will never reach. But then…

You do.

You push open a rusted door. The metal scrapes up your hands, leaving your palms grazed and stinging from the cold air hitting open cuts. You barely feel it; your mind is fully focused on the fact that the figure has finally stopped. It stands motionless, only a few feet away. A haze of black in and amidst the fog that surrounds you.

You step towards it once more.
It does not move.

You approach it as you would a skittish animal, fearful that moving too fast will cause it to dash off again. Luckily, it stays motionless aside from the gentle jittering of its staticky silhouette, and so you continue towards it. Arm outstretched. Ready to touch it, to grab onto whatever this thing is you’ve been following blindly and never let go. You don’t take your eyes off of it; you nearly trip over yourself as you walk.

Then it is there, within arm’s reach. Again, you reach out to touch it. Again, it stays. Your hand grasps onto the figure; it’s rough and scaly, but you don’t have the time to process that as it unfurls its face to you. Its mouth is a pitch-black maw filled with rows upon rows of teeth jammed together. Crashing into each other to make a mess of broken incisors and protruding molars. Thousands of eyes tumble around the opening, as if it were the centre of gravity for all of these features. Each one is different from the others, as if none of them belong to it. All having been taken from someone different.

They all look at you. Into the very being of you. And it is here that you understand.

This is where you were meant to find solace: in its presence. It’s embrace.

You take one last step forward, and for a second, you are finally in its arms. Finally at home. Then you feel the lack of a floor beneath you. The vertigo takes over as you drop.

The ground is not kind enough to kill you on impact. Your legs are twisted in ways that should never be possible; the bones in your left arm are piercing through the skin in a mess of blood, fragments, and muscle. But you are not dead. You lie there on the harsh asphalt as blood oozes out of the crack in your skull, waiting. Waiting. Waiting for it to come to your side and make this end quicker than it is. To take you away and hold you close again.

But it never comes.

And so you lie there cold. Slowly dying on the asphalt. And, out of the corner of your eye, you see another person stepping through the open doorway.