Trinity turned to her, awestruck.

“The séance worked?” she asked.

“What are you people talking about?” Basil said.

“You have to call the police,” Amy said. “Call them and tell them to come back.”

“They never showed up,” Basil said, disgusted. “I came here to see if they called you back.”

“I tried to save him,” Ruth Anne said. “I really tried.”

“Go clean up,” Basil said. “There are T-shirts in the break room. And take Trinity with you. I don’t want anyone alone. I’ll come find you when the police get here.”

“We found a ghost,” Trinity said.

“Stop talking and go to the break room,” Basil said. “I can’t believe this is happening. There is a dead man on the Frånjk! And Corporate is going to be here in”—he looked at his watch—“five hours! We’ve got five hours to clean up and sort this out. This is a nightmare.”

Trinity and Ruth Anne set off down the Bright and Shining Path.

Amy tried to explain. “It was nobody’s fault,” she said. “We were having a séance and—”

“A séance?” Basil asked. “Jesus Christ.”

“It’s true,” Matt said. “He was possessed. Or something.”

“Stop talking,” Basil said. “Both of you. Stop talking.”

He pushed past them and walked over to the Frånjk. Carl’s face was still covered with the blouse. Basil tried to lift it, but the blood was already drying; it came loose with a ripping sound.

Amy had seen two dead bodies before. The first was her uncle who had died, as they say, peacefully in his sleep. The other was a neighbor who’d overdosed at the trailer park. Carl looked worse than either of them. His eyes bulged like boiled eggs, his mouth was drawn down in a rictus of pain, and she couldn’t even look at his throat. Amy felt Basil slump, defeated.

“We should … ” she said.

“Not yet,” Basil said, and he sounded exhausted. “Just give me a minute before you start talking.”

Carl’s hand shot out and seized Amy’s wrist. Amy let out a yelp of surprise. His eyes rolled down and fixed on her. His mouth twisted itself into a cold grin. When he spoke, his voice seemed to creep out of the wound in his throat:

“The doors are open.”

09: Mesonxic

Amy heard a distant click and her vision went black. The spotlights went dark. The exit signs. Power indicator lights. Everything. With no windows or skylights, the Showroom was blacker than midnight, and Amy was blind, isolated from everyone else, lost in darkness. She stumbled backward and at some point realized that Carl had released her wrist.

“The safety lights,” a disembodied voice said.

Amy recognized the voice. Basil was somewhere to her left.

“No one can turn off the safety lights,” he continued. “This is impossible.”