30 Apr Hallway of Shadows

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of vending at conventions, it’s that you follow the crowd. The folks who’ve been there before have already made all of the mistakes for you. As long as you’re smart enough to learn from those who came before, you don’t have to make those mistakes over again. If you see the other vendors bringing in fans, you’d better go get a little desk fan for your table or you’re going to be suffering in inadequate AC. If everyone’s avoiding a specific food truck, it doesn’t matter how popular it is with the attendees. You stay away if you’re smart.

More than anything else, it’s important to just go with everyone else during setup and teardown. You might think you’ve spotted a shortcut, but the tables who’ve been vending this convention for years almost certainly know something you don’t know. Maybe that convenient elevator moves at a snail’s pace. Maybe those nearby stairs are dangerously low-friction. Maybe that door to the parking lot has an alarm that goes off if you prop it open for too long. Whatever the reason, if no one’s using an easier path, it’s because that path isn’t actually easier. You can believe those who already know, or you can become one more who had to learn the hard way.

There are always a few who have to see for themselves. At this convention, that was Partha. He had comic books for sale, long boxes densely packed with carefully sleeved issues. He was setting up at the table next to mine, and laughed when he saw me wheeling my bins all the way from the doors at the front of the convention hall.

“Man, you went the long way around, huh?”

“It’s where everyone was going,” I said, waving at the stream of vendors behind me. “Seemed the best way not to get lost or stuck somewhere.”

“Nope. See that door twenty feet behind us? Opens to a hallway that goes straight to the parking lot. Can’t be a hundred feet from here to the door of my car. How far did you have to walk, like a quarter mile?”

I looked back across the convention hall. It was at least two hundred feet just from the doors, and before that I’d had to wind through a couple of corridors and cross the lobby, and that was all after the parking lot. Probably not a quarter mile, but maybe a tenth. Certainly much more than the hundred feet Partha was boasting about.

“Must be a reason no one else is going through there,” I said. “Maintenance hallway, maybe? Could be we’re supposed to keep it clear.”

“They haven’t marked it if so,” he said. “Nothing on or in it but that stupid sign.”

A piece of paper had been taped to the door with the handwritten words “HALLWAY OF SHADOWS.” It was stuck down with wide strips of transparent packing tape, fully covering the paper and fastening it securely to the metal of the door. Whoever had put it there had wanted to make sure it didn’t come free.

“Sounds like a sideshow exhibit,” I said.

Partha shrugged. “Nothing in there but an empty back corridor. Nothing stored, nothing staged. It just looks like a rusty emergency door from the parking lot side. I figured it’d be locked, so I was stoked when it opened and turned out to be the most convenient way in. I guess no one else thought to try the door.”

“I guess,” I said. It did seem much more convenient, but I knew that later I’d find Partha locked out, or locked in, or looking for the number of the lot that had towed his car, or something. If there was an easier way that wasn’t being used, then it wasn’t actually easier. I knew that was true, even if I didn’t know why in this case.

All day long, that door stayed shut. I saw a few folks walk toward it, only to be shooed away by the vendors nearby. I couldn’t make out the conversations, so eventually when I had a slow moment, I walked over to ask for myself.

“What’s with the ‘Hallway of Shadows’? We allowed to use that, or what?”

“Nah, it’s got an alarm on it,” said the man at the booth. His nametag identified him as Norman. His tired attitude confirmed what I’d seen. He’d been telling people this all day.

I gestured back toward my booth. “Partha says it was fine this morning.”

The change in Norman’s attitude was abrupt and intense. “He went through it? What time?”

“Load in, so like seven?” I guessed.

“Way too late,” he muttered. “Might’ve been cloudy enough still. Maybe.”

He looked down the row to where Partha sat, happily arguing with an attendee about the condition of one of the comics. He shook his head.

“Guess we’ll see,” he said, again mostly under his breath.

“See what?”

My question startled him, as if he was surprised I was still there. “Uh, nothing. We’ll see if, uh, there was a silent alarm. If the fire marshal comes. If he doesn’t, then I suppose he got away with it.”

“Suppose so,” I said. I wasn’t sure what was going on here, but it was pretty clear that I wasn’t going to get any further answers. I started to walk away.

“Hey,” Norman called after me. “Don’t go through that hallway, though. In case they turned the alarm back on.”

I gave him a thumbs up. I could see someone approaching my table and looking around for the vendor. I hurried back to catch them before they wandered past. The more games I sold this weekend, the less I had to pack back up at the end. Money was nice in the abstract, but getting to do less manual labor was always my more immediate motivating factor during these conventions.

The strangest thing was that at the end of the day, once they locked the vendor hall and we were all going home through the night, I saw plenty of people going out through the Hallway of Shadows. It was a strange pattern, though. They only ever entered the door one at a time. Each person closed it behind them, even if they were with other people. The next person would open it immediately, so it wasn’t like they were waiting for the first one to make it down the hall. It was an inversion of the standard societal custom of holding the door for the person before you. When entering the Hallway of Shadows, everyone made sure to shut the door firmly in the face of whoever might be behind.

Except Partha, of course. He gestured me toward the door as we were leaving.

“Look, let me show you how much shorter this way is.” He opened the door and held it for me. “Shoot, it’s pitch black in there! Is there a light switch?”

“There isn’t!” called a slightly panicked voice from inside. “Look, if you’re coming through, then come on! It’s just a straight shot to the far side. It’s like twenty feet. You don’t need lights. The left wall’s clear if you need to keep your hand on something. Come on, don’t hang around in the doorway.”

The whole speech was delivered in a rush. We couldn’t see the speaker. Partha and I shrugged and stepped inside. The door swung shut behind us.

The hallway wasn’t quite as dark as it had seemed. The left wall was lined with windows near the ceiling, and although they let in only a little, dim light from the night sky, it was enough to see by. There was a figure at the far end.

“Come on, this way,” she said. I walked toward the speaker, trailing my hand along the wall as he had suggested. As we drew close, he opened the far door. It led directly to the lot where I had parked this morning, just as Partha had said. We all stepped out onto the sidewalk and the woman closed the door behind us.

“So what’s with everyone else?” said Partha.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“In the hallway. They’re just chilling out there?”

The woman had an expression on her face that at the time I read as confusion. “There wasn’t anyone else in there.”

Partha gave a half-laugh, as if he thought she was telling a joke. “Yes, there was. It had to be, like, half the vendor hall lined up in there against the far wall. I mean, it was hard to see in there, but there were definitely a bunch of people.”

He looked to me for confirmation, but I could only shrug. “I didn’t notice anyone. Maybe you’ve got better night vision than I do.”

“They were definitely there.” He reopened the door to the same impenetrable darkness. “Hello?”

He flipped on his phone flashlight and shone it into the hallway. It was narrow and empty. There was nothing to hide behind. There was no one there.

“I swear,” started Partha. He stopped, then suddenly turned around as if he thought they had gotten behind him somehow. There was no one there but the vendor we had met in the Hallway of Shadows, who flinched away from his light as if it were dangerous.

“Close the door!” she said. “And don’t ever bring a light in there.”

She hurried off before we could ask any questions. Partha and I stared at each other for a moment.

“Definitely some sort of a prank,” he said.

His car was closer than mine, but he was still sitting in it when I left the parking lot. He was staring at the door as if he still expected all those people he had seen to come pouring out. I saw him startle when my headlights panned over him. He gave me a sheepish wave as I drove away.

The next morning, I parked in the same lot. I eyeballed the door, which was not marked at all from this side. I thought about taking the shortcut inside. I told myself it was probably locked, that the alarm was probably turned back on. I walked the long way around.

Partha was at his table by the time I arrived.

“Getting your morning hike in, I see? Could’ve just come through the hallway like I did.”

“No one waiting in there for you this morning?” I joked.

He laughed, but it sounded a little strained. “I’ll be honest, that weirded me out. I dreamed about it last night. I was here in the convention center, but no matter which door I opened to get out, it led to that hallway. It was always pitch black, but never empty. I could always tell the darkness was full, although I didn’t know of what. And every door led to that hallway. Not just a similar one. The same one. Like it was there ahead of me.”

The laughter vanished from his voice as he described the dream, replaced by desperation and fear. I must have been staring, because when he met my eyes he forced a smile back onto his face.

“Anyway! How’d sales go for you yesterday? Shelves are still looking pretty full, but we should be getting the main crowds today, yeah?”

“Hey, if you need to talk about—” I began. Partha cut me off.

“Nah, I’m sorry I brought it up. I just met you yesterday. I didn’t mean to turn you into my convention therapist. C’mon, let’s talk shop. Did you make back your table fee yet?”

I let him steer the conversation away to safer territory, but I wondered what exactly he thought he’d seen in that hallway. It was clear it had rattled him if it was still weighing on his mind under the harsh white glare of the convention hall lighting. I’d been spooked by shadows plenty of times, but it always seemed silly the following day. He didn’t seem to be experiencing the same relief.

As the day went on, Partha got jumpier and jumpier. I regularly caught him suddenly snapping his head to one side or the other as if he had spotted a sudden movement in his peripheral vision. He spent a lot of time looking under the drapery covering his table and around the corner of the fabric divider behind him. And over and over again, I found him staring at the closed door of the Hallway of Shadows.

“Something over there?” I asked him at one point.

He gave me the same sheepish grin I’d seen the previous night. “Nah. Just thought I saw something, is all.”

Around noon, he pulled the drape over his comics and asked me to keep an eye on his table for a couple of minutes while he ducked out to get a sandwich. I agreed, but didn’t really pay too much attention to it. I had my own flow of customers to attend to. Anyone who wanted to steal anything would have to move the drape aside first, and I figured I was bound to notice something that large.

A few minutes later, I almost jumped out of my skin when Partha hissed at me from the corner of my booth. He was crouched down, hidden behind a wire rack filled with games. I could only see his wide eyes and the top of his head.

“Who’s in my chair?” he whispered.

I turned to look. The seat was empty.

“No one. No one’s touched your stuff the whole time you were gone,” I said.

His eyes darted past me, staring through the wire rack at his seat. “There’s no one there?”

I looked again, as if somehow I might have missed a person occupying the chair. There was no one. I shook my head.

Partha slowly rose from behind the rack, his gaze fixed on the chair the entire time. His eyes widened even further as he cleared the low rack and gained an unobstructed view of the empty chair.

“Someone was there,” he said. “I saw them through the rack, and then they were just gone.”

“Where would they have gone?” I asked.

“Away,” he said. His eyes flicked wildly from side to side. “I hope.”

He started to crouch down as if to peer through the rack again, then vacillated, wobbling back and forth on his toes.

“Hey, uh,” I said. “Can you go back to your table? I need to keep the space open for the folks who are buying stuff.”

“Yeah,” said Partha. “Sorry. Sorry.”

He skulked past, peering under his chair before flopping down into it. He drummed his fingers on the table before him. He looked underneath it. He did not uncover the comics. He seemed reluctant to touch the drape.

I turned my back slightly to him and tried to focus on my customers instead of his unsettling movements. The next time I looked over, he was gone.

I hadn’t heard him leave. His chair hadn’t been pushed back from the table. I glanced underneath, but there was nothing there but a few cardboard boxes tucked out of the way. The sandwich he had gone to get still sat there with only two bites out of it.

I told myself that he must have gone to get a drink, or to the bathroom, or something else normal—but the minutes slipped by, turning slowly into hours, and Partha never returned. His table of comics remained shrouded all through the Saturday rush. A few people asked if I knew when he’d be back. I could only shrug.

Eventually the flow of shoppers slowed to a trickle, and then even those last few were herded out as they closed the vendor hall for the night. I closed up my booth, looking over at Partha’s abandoned table as I did so. The sandwich was still there. Partha had never returned.

I should have taken the long way around on the way out. I should never have gone back through that hallway. But I told myself I was being absurd, that I was jumping at shadows like Partha had been. I armed myself with my rationality and took the shortcut back to my car.

As the door to the Hallway of Shadows shut behind me, I heard a quiet noise, barely louder than the whisper of air from the closing door. I thought it might have been my name.

“Partha?” I asked, and I did something unfathomably stupid.

I took out my phone. I turned on the flashlight.

For a moment, an instant, the light merely illuminated the dark. The room was still pitch black, but now I was looking at it. Then the darkness scattered like cockroaches, not disappearing as it should have in light but scuttling away in ten thousand shivering pieces. It fled, but only as far as my light reached. I could feel it gathered at the edges.

The hallway was empty, nothing but plain white walls and a cement floor. My own shadow stretched out across it, reaching for the exit to the parking lot. I walked forward, watching that shadow climb the wall and flow over the door, and only then did it occur to me: I was holding the light in front of myself. So what, then, was casting the shadow?

I bolted. I leapt across those last few feet to the door, cringing as the shadow silently roared up in front of me, but when my shoulder slammed into the metal door it flew open, dumping me onto the sidewalk by the parking lot.

The shadows outside were only shadows. The hallway behind me was just a hallway. I slammed the door shut and repeated this to myself. There was nothing wrong. It was all a trick of the light.

I kept the interior lights on in my car as I drove to my hotel, but still I felt there was something in the backseat. I turned on every light in the room when I arrived, but the corners, closets, and spaces I could not see into taunted me. And when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of the Hallway of Shadows.

It was not everywhere as it had been in Partha’s dream, not at first. Only some of the doors I opened led to the hallway. I still had places I could go, places I could run. But the more doors I went through, the more of them opened onto that hallway, until at last I found myself in the convention hall, surrounded by dozens of doors on every side, and behind every single one was the hallway.

I stood there in the center of the room, paralyzed by fear, and then every door began to slowly swing open at once. The darkness poured forth, thick and viscous as syrup, and dragged me away into eternal night.

I woke up screaming. The lights were all still on. I was alive, untouched—for now.

I thought about getting in my car and driving away. I thought about leaving my booth next to Partha’s shrouded collection, and letting them tell whatever stories they might. If I thought I could escape the Hallway, I would have tried. But already I see the movement in the shadows around me, the things darting closer every time I look away. Already, I can feel them closing in.

One way or another, I will end up in the dark. In the Hallway. Forever.