I pull her along with me as we weave around a broken table, heading toward a pair of swinging doors. I stiff arm them and they crash open, revealing a long, dark hallway that leads off to our right and left. From past experience, I know that the left leads to another theater and then a fire exit, while the right leads to the concessions and the main lobby. We race right, the doors swinging wildly behind us.
“Stop!” One of the three men calls out, followed by another crash as they come through the swinging doors.
Mary looks over her shoulder, redoubles her effort, begins to pull me.
“Theater four,” I huff and she glances at the numbers above the doors that line the hallway.
As we pass theater three, its door swings open and out walks a muscular hispanic man in a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and a yellow hard hat. The look of surprise vanishes from his face as he catches sight of the three men chasing us. He shouts something in Spanish over his shoulder and pulls out the large hammer that is hanging on his belt. Our pursuers try to go around him but he swings his weapon, causing the three men to pull up short.
I stop at the door to theater four and watch as they begin to spread out, try to encircle our would-be savior. They have just about succeeded when five more construction workers pour from within theater three. I chuckle to myself and push my way in beside Mary who is standing just inside the doorway. The theater looks nothing like the one we have just exited. For one, the sconces in the wall are all freshly polished. The wallpaper appears new and even the screen is white and pristine. Stacks of new seats line both of the side walls, waiting to be installed, the plush red cushions still wrapped in plastic. Another hispanic man rests in one of the chairs, his hard hat pulled low over his eyes. I motion for Mary to follow me and we move towards the projection booth. My heart drops when I see the new door and the even newer hardware. I hold my breath as we approach, hoping that the door is unlocked and let it out slowly as the door clicks open before us.
“What was that?” Mary looks at me as I close the door behind us.
“More like who, and I don’t know, but we need to hurry. Pretty soon the winners of that fight are going to come looking for us and I don’t want to be here when they do.”
“But, why were they just standing around in there, I mean, why hadn’t the workers cleared them out before?”
I shake my head, “I don’t know.” I kneel down, begin prying at floor boards. “Help me, there used to be a hatch that went into the sub-basement in here.”
I can feel the look she gives me, but she complies and pretty soon, she lifts the corner of a slat of hard wood about an inch off the ground. I stick my hand in and a section of the floor lifts up, revealing a square hole and a ladder leading down.
“Down there?” She asks and I nod. She protests, but a noise from the other side of the door sends her scrambling down the ladder and into the waiting darkness below.
I follow closely, letting the door drop back into place above my head, shutting out all light completely. I hear a slight whimper below me. “You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, it’s just dark.”
“As soon as I have a hand free, I’ll get the orb out again.”
“Where are we?” She asks as I bring the sphere to life, revealing barren concrete walls.
“It’s storage for the theater. Through here.” I indicate an opening in the wall that leads us into another empty room. We pass through two more rooms, all of them empty, before coming to a final room, a pallet of boxes labeled popcorn set against the far wall. I push the boxes, grunting as the wood grates across the concrete floor, revealing a metal door set into the wall.
I hold the Sigil Sphere up to the door and it opens without as much as a squeak, revealing a small room with another ladder set into the floor. I pocket the sphere and descend deeper underneath the theater, followed closely by Mary.
As I step off the ladder, something crunches beneath my feet. I have the sphere out and glowing again by the time Mary is standing beside me.
“Welcome to the Graveyard,” I tell her and she screams, staring at the corpses of thousands of rodents heaped beneath our feet.
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