“It’s fine. There’s probably nothing there and I’ll be back in two seconds.”
Traven lets go of her arm. Brigitte gets out her pistol, kneels by the opening, and worms her way inside. More balls pour into the room. When she’s up to her waist, she’s still burrowing. Then only her feet are showing and she disappears.
A whoop comes through from the other side of the wall. Balls begin to fall again. In a few seconds Brigitte has dug back far enough to stick her head back into the room.
“Come through,” she says. “It’s incredible.”
Before I can say anything, Candy dives in after her. I shove Delon through next. I follow him and Traven and Vidocq follow me.
It’s not much of a climb. Only a few feet. I’m suspended in plastic balls for a second when I hear Candy say, “Put your feet down, dummy.”
I shift around until I clear enough balls under me to move my feet down and touch a floor. When I straighten up I find myself waist-deep in the plastic balls. The others pop up behind me.
The room is dark and smells of mold and something sweet. Like old soft-drink syrup spilled and left to go bad in wet carpets. Brigitte has her flashlight on. I can make out shapes under the collapsed ceiling. Booths. Pool tables. Pinball and motorcycle-racing machines against the walls.
“What the hell is this place?” I say.
“It’s one of those family joints,” says Candy. “You know. The family fills up on pizza and the kids get to run around and play games, including climbing around in ball pits.”
She bounces some of the plastic balls off my chest.
“We’re saved by America’s shitty eating habits,” she says.
Brigitte leads the way out of the pit and we follow her through the restaurant. The aluminum doors have long since been knocked down. We step over them and a small sea of broken glass and then we’re back in the main floor of the mall.
I say, “Hallelujah. Back where we started.”
“Not quite,” says Delon.
He’s standing by one of the upright mall maps.
“According to this, we’re one floor above the baths.”
“Lead the way,” I say.
He starts down a long flight of marble stairs. There’s a wet breeze coming from below and the smell of salt. Seawater?
WE COME DOWN into the middle of a whole spa complex. Massages. Manicures. Hair salons. Skin salons. Probably designer blood transfusions too. But it looks more like we landed in Dracula’s forgotten root cellar. Mushrooms sprout from mist-covered cracks in the marble floor. Small, stunted palm trees and bromeliads sprout along the hall. It looks like this entire level of the mall is rotting in the salt air. The walls and ceiling have buckled from the moisture. Dripping vines dangle from the metal grid that once held ceiling tiles. In our feeble lights it looks like no one has been down here in a thousand years.
Underneath the vines and mold on one wall is a sign pointing the way to the Roman baths. As we head down there I move the bones from my pocket into the lining of my coat. Stick the SIG in my pocket. If I can’t throw any hoodoo, I’m sure as shit going be ready to blast every Shoggot and monster Morlock piece of shit in Kill City.
There’s a cool wind blowing between the doors to the baths. Maybe a hole that’s letting in a sea breeze. Thin, dawn light filters through filthy windows in the ceiling several floors above the main bath, turning it into a strange ceremonial space. Somewhere to come for a baptism or human sacrifice after getting a perm.
There’s a fake Roman temple at one end of the bathing area. The main pool is octagonal, with three tiered steps down to a foot of tea-colored water full of loose tiles and broken furniture. Delon heads for the temple. The others circle the pool, staring into the scummy water like maybe the 8 Ball will float to the surface like Excalibur and fling itself into our arms. I sit down on the top step of the pool and take out a Malediction. The flare from the lighter gets everyone’s attention, but when they see it’s just me, they go back to looking disappointed.
“What happens now?” says Traven. “Does anyone know how to summon the ghost?”
All their beady little eyes turn in my direction. I shake my head.
“Don’t look at me. I couldn’t pull a bunny out of a hat right now.”
“Anybody else?” says Traven. “Brigitte. You worked with the dead. Do you know anything?”
She squats at the top of the pool and flicks in a pea-size piece of concrete with her thumb.
“This is the wrong type of dead. I know nothing about ghosts.”
“Vidocq? Do you have any tricks or potions?”