A cold wind, putrid and marshy, blew out of the doorway, ruffling Amy’s hair. She felt like she was standing in front of an open refrigerator full of rotten food. The display shirts swung wildly on their hangers. It was the Brooka smell again, the bathroom smell, the smell of the séance.

“This is a hallucination,” Amy said, desperately wanting to believe her own words. “You try to walk through that door and you’ll break your nose.”

The glow from the Maglite lit up the first few feet of the hall. Its white plaster walls were rank with yellow water stains. Its dirty floor was unfinished concrete. It stretched for twenty feet before taking a sharp turn to the right.

“Did you hear that?” Basil asked.

The three of them listened.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Matt said.

“It’s Carl,” Basil said. “He’s in there.”

Then he walked through the closet and stepped over the threshold, and the hallway swallowed him whole. Matt started to follow and Amy grabbed his arm.

“Don’t,” she said.

“He’s got the light,” Matt said. “We’ll never find our way out in the dark.”

“But this isn’t the way out. This is the way in. It’s all wrong.”

“We have to stick together,” Matt said.

He twisted out of her grip, followed Basil into the closet, and entered the impossible hallway.

Amy could see Matt and Basil, backlit by their flashlight, walking away from her down the corridor, and she hurried after them. At the end of the narrow Mesonxic she hesitated and then stepped into the doorway.

Immediately the tight walls shut her off from the store like a fist closing around her skull. Matt and Basil were a few steps ahead, the wall at the end of the hall getting brighter as they got closer, the shadow of the corner bouncing up and down.

Amy’s feet crunched down the dirty hallway behind them. In the bright white circle of the light, the walls looked sick, covered in overlapping stains and mildew blooms. “We need to get out of here,” she said to their backs, panic bubbling in her voice. She didn’t want to be scared, but it was a physical body-wide reaction she couldn’t fight. “Seriously, guys, the store doesn’t go this way. This hall shouldn’t be here. It shouldn’t even exist. We should not be in here.”

Something shocked Amy’s leg and she jumped.

“Yah!”

Matt and Basil instantly whirled around.

“It’s my phone,” she said gratefully, pulling the vibrating cell out of her pocket with both hands and showing it to them. “Hello?”

“This is the dispatcher at the Brecksville Police Department. Our unit still can’t find the feeder road. Are you sure it’s off Route 77?”

“I drive here every day,” Amy said. “Don’t you have GPS or something?”