Chapter 15
As the elevator neared the ground floor, Shane abruptly tensed. Was there going to be anyone else waiting for them when the doors opened?
He pushed Terrance toward the back. The thick end of the pool cue was on the elevator floor. Shane snatched it up, held it in front of him like a knife.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. There wasn’t anyone directly in front of them, just the Flannel Man’s motionless body off to the side.
Shane stuck his head out, looked around the dim floor. The light streaming down from the skylight in the roof, five stories up, cast a weak illumination on the center of the floor. But the sides of the rooms were shaded by the upper floors, and the weak light made the shadowed areas seem even darker.
Shane ducked back into the elevator. He dropped the broken pool cue, grabbed Terrance’s boots, and pulled him out. The wheels bumped going over the gap between the elevator and the floor, and the bump made Terrance’s arms slide off his chest, so they dragged on the ground.
“Fuck,” Shane said.
He stopped pulling, put Terrance’s heels down and went back to do something about his hands. He saw Terrance’s eyes watching him as he kneeled.
“Gotta keep your hands from dragging,” he said.
Terrance’s chin dipped in an almost imperceptible nod. His eyes blinked.
Shane took his hands, crossed them over his chest again. He didn’t have anything to loop around Terrance’s wrists, to keep his hands together. He didn’t have any rope or string, not even a trash bag. He didn’t want to leave Terrance behind while he looked for something.
But he had an idea.
The coveralls they wore had a zipper that went down the front, from neck to crotch. They also had a button at the neck, which Shane had never used. Now he fastened Terrance’s button, and started pulling his zipper. His plan was to open the zipper to just below his hands, and then to curl Terrance’s fingers around the edges of the open zipper. He hoped the button would keep the front of the coveralls taut enough to hold Terrance’s hands in place.
He pulled the zipper down to just below Terrance’s sternum. There was something there, on his chest, glimmering in the dim light. A thick gold cross, hanging from a heavy chain. It looked like it needed a polish—certainly didn’t look new—but Shane had never seen it before.
Shane took hold of the chain with both hands, slipped it over Terrance’s head. He held it up, looking at the length of the chain, the size of the cross, considering. Perhaps he could use it to bind Terrance’s hands together.
He looked back at Terrance.
Terrance was watching him carefully. His eyes looked sunken and bloodshot, but his gaze was intent.
“I can use the chain to hold your hands together,” Shane said.
Terrance’s nose moved to the side slightly, a hint of a headshake telling Shane no.
“You want me to put it back on your neck?” Shane asked.
There was a moment’s pause, Terrance watching him. And then another tiny headshake.
“Want me to put it in your pocket or something?” Shane asked.
Terrance’s nose twitched again, another headshake.
“What do you want me to do with it, then?”
Terrance pulled in a deep breath. It took him a long time to do it, and he paused at one point, as if he had to gather his energy in order to keep drawing air.
He breathed it back out, lips forming the air into words.
“Shai… lene,” he said.
“Shailene?” Shane asked. “Whose Shailene?”
Another slow breath.
“Bay… be.”
“Baby? Shailene’s your baby? You got a kid?”
Terrance frowned. Frustration showed in his eyes.
“Is she your girlfriend?” A sudden thought came to Shane. “She’s your baby mama?”
The chin dip: yes.
“You want me to give this chain to your baby mama?”
There was a fierce look in Terrance’s eye, and his chin dipped again.
“Man, you can give it to her yourself,” Shane said.
Terrance’s eyes blazed with frustration. His brow furrowed.
“Alright,” Shane said. “I’ll hold onto it for now. If something happens to you, I’ll make sure she gets it.”
Another chin dip. A look of profound relief came to life in Terrance’s eyes, and a moment after that, a look of sadness. His eyelids closed, and a tear rolled out of the corner of each eye, racing across his temples.
“Alright,” Shane said, standing. “Okay.” He put the chain and cross in his pocket. “Let’s go get your gun.”
Shane took hold of Terrance’s feet, lifted them and dragged him reverse-wheelbarrow style. And then, as he came out from under the second floor overhang and into the dim light of the open floor, a sound made him freeze in place, goosebumps prickling his skin.
It started out as an eerie moan, from up and to the right. But then a second moan joined it, coming from the left. And then a third and fourth moan added to the sound, from somewhere higher up. The moans continued, long and mournful, swelling in volume as the new voices joined, and yet not blending in any harmonious way. It was a discordant, haunting, horrible sound.
Shane turned his head slowly, almost too afraid to look. He raised his eyes to the second floor railing.
The noob in the black hoodie was there, standing at the second floor railing like a specter of death, his face hidden in the hood’s shadow. There was another figure up on the third floor, dressed in a sky-blue v-neck shirt. And on the fourth floor—the home floor for Team CREAM—a fat, pasty-faced man with an oversized diamond drawn on his shirt, and a ball cap backward on his head, loomed at the railing,
Shane watched them, horrified, as they tipped over the railing one by one, plummeting toward the ground floor.