The Jackson - Part Two

2

The night was quiet and Corey watched the trash in the alleyway spin and twirl with the strong wind. The passing headlights highlighted their dance, chip bags and cigarette butts colliding and swirling to the chaotic playlist of shouts and horns from the city behind. Even the scurrying rats had a part to play, their shadows becoming the backdrop to this macabre performance he was witnessing.

He hadn’t remembered the alley to The Jackson looking so menacing before. It was as if it was waiting for something with open jaws.

Corey shivered and pulled his black coat tighter. The old man should be coming out soon.

And right on time, the side door opened and the maintenance man came waddling out, his gray hair blowing in the wind.

Corey watched him from across the street and waited until he had entered the corner market to make his move. There was a blissful moment of silence on the road, just enough space between street lights for Corey to race across the road and into the warm lights of The Jackson. He knew the man wouldn’t be done for another few minutes, so Corey got into position. Across the alley, only steps from the door, was a dark spot. No cameras to see his face, no lights to give him away. It was perfect.

As he stood there and waited, he couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming dread settling over him like a thick fog. It only took an instant for Corey to go from feeling positive that his plan would work, to somehow knowing that tonight would go terribly wrong.

He shook it off. This would work, it had to. He had been planning it for weeks. He knew which families would be gone and which apartments he could rob. He knew that as long as he used the skeleton keys from the maintenance man that the alarms would not go off. Corey had been meticulous in his prepping. All he had to do was get in the building and get the keys.

The jingling of keys brought Corey’s attention back to the present. The Jackson’s maintenance man walked past leaving a trail of strong, musky cologne in his wake. He was quite a bit shorter than Corey but stocky and wide. His movements were sure as he unlocked the side door using two different keys.

This was it. Corey was going to sneak in behind him and he had to do it as quietly as he could. He held his breath and moved.

The door swung wide and the man disappeared into the darkness of the building with Corey right on his heels. Corey had to stop the door with his hand but was careful not to linger. The door always made a loud clunk when it shut from the outside and Corey knew that a man who lived on such a tight schedule would notice if the door took longer to close. The door slammed shut, locking behind him. Corey stood there for a moment waiting to see if the man had noticed another body rushing behind him. There was only the quiet and the dark. He had made it past the first hurdle.

Corey had hoped that once he had made it past the thick steel door that his night would be nothing more than a glorified shopping spree, but things got a lot harder when he noticed it was darker inside the building than it had been outside. Where the hell were the lights? He reached out with every limb hoping to find a wall or a railing and praying that he wasn’t going to fall down stairs, tumbling to a broken bone and a jail sentence.

His fingers brushed a cool stone wall right in front of him. He almost sighed in relief but he still couldn’t see. Corey slid his feet, carefully searching for any obstacle, and his shoes made so much noise he wouldn’t dare move for another few minutes. He was losing time.

“Fuck it,” he mumbled.

He hadn’t wanted to use his flashlight and give himself away before stealing the keys, but he had no choice.

Corey finally let out that sigh when he turned on the flashlight and wasn’t immediately caught. He could see now that there had only been one way he could have gone. To his right was a cement wall. And where the wall met the ceiling was a dead floodlight. When he looked down, the floor shone oddly. Corey moved his toe around and saw that a white substance like sugar or salt covered the floor.

“This is so weird.”

He told himself that the old man could have spilled some of his groceries. Maybe the lights were out and he spilled a bag of sugar all over the floor. He didn’t stop to think that that was ludicrous considering the old man had zero time to do such a thing with Corey on his tail.

A little farther down the narrow hall there were stairs. For a second, Corey thought about leaving but he couldn’t do it. He had made it this far and he was going to see this through.

An ear-splitting scream came from the depths of the building, down that steep staircase. Corey definitely wanted to turn and leave. He hadn’t come here to save anybody, he just wanted some electronics, but it sounded like the maintenance man had a few secrets buried under here. His heart began to pound against his ribs. He should have stayed outside with the wind and the rats. What was he supposed to do? He sure as hell was no hero.

Corey heard the woman scream again and before he could think, he was bounding down the steps and into the darkness.