DALE BAILEY

THE MALL

ELLIS WATCHED THROUGH the rearview mirror as the city shrank to a jumble of
angular boxes, lit up against the midnight horizon. Ahead, the highway ran
straight through a seemingly endless expanse of shopping malls and reticulated
lawns. At last, however, the suburbs began to give way to rolling pasture and
woodland; a long-suppressed nostalgia for the curve of tree and slope welled up
in Ellis. He felt like a snake, sloughing layers of stress and grime like husks
of faded skin.

"We're off," he whispered. "Vacation at last." Katie shifted restlessly in the
passenger seat, draped her slim hand across his knee, and muttered in her sleep.
The kids did not move. Jason, ten, slumped in the back seat with his fingers
resting lightly on his Gameboy. Donna, fifteen, clad in cut-off jeans and that
damned Guns 'n' Roses T-shirt, pillowed her head against her arm.

Ellis turned his attention back to the road. Despite the long drive ahead, he
could barely dampen his excitement. God knows, they deserved the holiday. Katie
had been working long hours at the catering company and he was exhausted after
months as supervising architect for the new mall going up at city center. This
year, despite the voluble protest of the kids, Ellis had insisted on something
more relaxing than people-chokedbeaches and amusement parks. The camping trip
had been his idea. After all, he hadn't spent a night beneath the sky since he
was Jason's age, when he had spent a summer at his grandfather's farm in Ohio.

During that memorable summer, Ellis had passed his days swimming and fishing,
his nights supine in manure-scented fields, searching out the constellations he
had discovered in an old book on his grandfather's shelves. Ever since, he
supposed, he had taken solace in the heavens. He had missed them during the long
years in the city. How many times during those years had he peered into a night
sky hidden behind a canopy of nacreous city light?

Ellis was startled out of his thoughts when he topped a hill and discovered a
galaxy of blinking lights sprinkled across the valley below. GAS! blazed a sign
from the near end of a vast building. SHOPPING! glared another from the opposite
end, almost lost in the distance. Atop the building, three stories high,
ten-foot-tall letters flashed alternately red and yellow against the night sky:
REST STOP! OPEN 24 HOURS!

Ellis glanced at the fuel gauge; the needle stood at half a tank. He guided the
car down the curved exit ramp and parked beneath the pavilion overhanging the
fuel islands. Across the moonlit parking lot lay the vast building he had seen
from the highway. His headlights glared back at him from a towering glass
vestibule. Beside a battery of revolving doors a sign proclaimed in flashing
orange neon: The American Mall! Amusement Park Inside! The building seemed to
shimmer momentarily in the clear air, wavering like a mirage behind ascending
ripples of heat. Ellis yawned and turned off the headlights. Maybe some coffee
was in order, too.

Katie stirred beside him. "What's wrong, honey?" she asked.

Ellis opened his door and stepped onto the pavement. "Rest stop," he said.
"Better wake the kids. I don't want to stop again."

Ellis set a pump to fill the car and walked to the edge of the pavilion. He
peered up into a hazy wash of gray. The light from the huge complex behind him
blotted out the stars. Shaking his head, disgusted, Ellis returned to the gas
pump. On the far side of the car, Jason yawned and robbed his eyes with his
fists.

"Wow!" he said. "Dad, it says amusement park inside. Can we go in?"

"No way, stupidhead," said Donna, closing the door beside Ellis. "We're in a
hurry." And then, as she caught sight of the enormous building at the other end
of the parking lot, "Holy shit!"

"None of that," Ellis said. His eyes met Katie's across the car in the unspoken
communication natural to them.

Raw-boned and dark as her mother, Donna had for years been reserved and
studious. In recent months, however, she had started dating seventeen-year-old
Eric -- her first real boyfriend -- and though she had remained studious she had
become . . . well, less reserved. Leave her alone as long as she keeps her
grades up, Katie had said, and her eyes flashed the same warning now.

"Dad," said Donna, her voice dreamy. "Can we go in?"

Ellis studied her for a moment. Her eyes had a glassy faraway look. If he hadn't
known better, he would have sworn she was stoned.

"Dad!" Donna said.

Ellis shook his head. It was just the lights reflecting in her eyes, he told
himself. He glanced at his watch. "Not tonight," he said. "It's after one."

"It says open twenty-four hours," Jason said.

The gas pump clicked off. "Come on," Ellis said. "You can come with me to find
the attendant."

The four of them crossed the parking lot. Ellis and Katie dropped back to clasp
hands, but the kids ran ahead.

"You know," Katie said. "I know it's late, but you could give them an hour or so
inside."

"Honey, we still have a long drive."

"Well, I know, Ellis, but we're on vacation. Your vacation, remember. No one's
particularly excited about it but you."

"I thought you wanted to go camping," he said.

"Well, I don't mind. But the kids aren't too happy. Come on, Ellis, it's an easy
compromise."

Ellis shrugged. "We'll see. It probably won't even be open."

They followed Jason and Donna through the revolving doors and Ellis stopped
abruptly, staring in astonishment at the enormous central gallery that extended
before him to the limits of his vision. For a single moment he was so
overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the place that he could not absorb
particulars. Then slowly, details began to seep into his awareness.

They stood at the edge of a broad walkway high above a sunken atrium. Far
overhead, the ceiling disappeared in a sheen of subdued lighting. Six levels of
deserted walkways, connected by escalators, encircled the vast central area.
Calliope music reached Ellis, and he realized that below lay the amusement park
the sign had promised. Stunned, he stared down at a slowly revolving Ferris
wheel.

"Holy shit!" he heard Donna say again, but he couldn't bring himself to
reprimand her. That was more or less what he was thinking.

Polished railings gleamed at him. Stores beckoned from the surrounding walkways.

"Daddy, please!" Jason said.

It took a conscious effort for Ellis to wrench his attention from the vista and
focus on his son. The ten-year-old stood before him, holding his Gameboy loosely
in one hand. Ellis stared at the boy as if he didn't quite recognize him: Nikes
and Levis, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle T-shirt he had become shy about
wearing to school. And in his eyes, the same glassy faraway look Ellis had
previously noticed in Donna's eyes.

He was still pondering that when Donna spoke. "Come on, Dad! Can we please spend
an hour or so in civilization since we have to spend the next two weeks out in
the woods?"

"Now, listen--" Ellis began, but Katie clamped down hard on his hand. He tried
again. "Guys, it's one-thirty in the morning."

"Well, you still have to pay for the gas," Katie said.

"No kidding. Where do you suppose the attendant is? Outside?"

"I didn't see anyone," Katie said.

Donna shifted on her feet impatiently. "Come on, Dad."

Katie squeezed his hand again and Ellis looked down into her clear eyes.
"Listen," she said. "It is late and we do have to get on the road. But since
it's obviously going to take a while for you to find that attendant, why don't
we look around?" She glanced at her watch. "It's one-forty now. Let's say we
meet back here at three. Okay?"

Always the peacemaker, Ellis thought. But what the hell, they were on vacation.
And it was going to take a while to find the attendant, he supposed. "Fine," he
said.

"Great!" Jason said.

Katie apportioned money to the kids and they disappeared down an escalator,
moving toward the amusement park.

Ellis turned to his wife. Katie grinned up at him. "Always have to have your
way, don't you?" he said, smiling. "I suppose you want to check out the mall,
too?"

"You bet."

"Okay, then. I'll see you at three." Katie pecked him on the cheek and then
stepped on the escalator to the lower levels. In moments, the vast mall had
swallowed her.

"Well," Ellis said. Turning around, he peered out into the night. The car sat
alone at the fuel pumps. Ellis couldn't see anywhere to pay for the gas out
there. Nothing for it but to look in the mall.

Ellis turned to his right and moved along the railing that lined the walkway.
Carnival sounds-- calliope music and the seductive cry of barkers, their pitches
unintelligible in the distance -- rose to his ears. He caught a faint whiff of
cotton candy. As he walked, trailing one hand along the smooth railing, he
studied the stores on his right. They were typical of those he had seen in
countless malls -- an assortment of shoe stores and clothing stores,
interspersed with occasional specialty shops.

Ellis had been walking for a while and was on the verge of trying his luck in
the other direction when something caught his eye. He wasn't really sure what,
but it was simultaneously familiar and strange, like the face of a high school
acquaintance when encountered years and years later.

He paused, searching, glanced out at the walkway opposite, a thin line that
blended into the mosaic of stores and signs behind it. Below, and far to his
left, the Ferris wheel turned and turned. The scream of a thrill-seeker rose out
of the pit, and he caught another saccharine hint of cotton candy in the still
air. Cotton candy and something else, something pleasant and long-forgotten.

Ellis glanced at his watch and saw that he had been walking for half an hour. A
wave of uneasiness began to build within him. Surely the gas attendant would be
located closer to the door. That thought served as the catalyst for another,
even more enigmatically disturbing. Surely, the gas station attendant would be
located outside the damn door, else what was to keep people from filling up and
driving away without paying? People did it all the time, he knew, having worked
at a gas station one semester when he was in school. And that thought led to yet
a third, like a tiny chain reaction of explosions in his brain: how could a
facility this large afford to operate twenty-four hours when almost no one was
using it?

The wave of anxiety crested and crashed over him. He turned abruptly to walk
back in the direction of the revolving doors and that something familiar caught
his eye again. What was it?

Ellis surveyed the nearby shops. He stood before the window of a used bookstore;
a single word in gilt letters had been pasted high against the inner surface of
the glass: STARS! A number of books and magazines were stacked below, astronomy
texts and journals mostly, which struck him as a curious choice for a window
display. That thought barely registered, however, before it was gone, displaced
by a well of nostalgia. Ellis crouched, his elbows on his knees, and stared in
disbelief through the glass.

He didn't know how long he had been there when the voice spoke: "Can I help you,
sir?"

Ellis looked up into the slim pleasant face of a young woman, barely more than a
teenager. She was dressed neatly in dark jeans and a lacy white blouse. Staring
at her, Ellis could not help but think of Donna in her ragged shorts and black
T-shirt. She was every bit as pretty as this young lady. If only she dressed
better

"Sir?"

"I'm sorry," Ellis said. "It's just that . . ."

"What ?"

Ellis stood up. "That book," he said, indicating a thin book with a faded
dustjacket, half-hidden beneath a stack of Sky & Telescopes. "Can I see that
book?"

"Certainly."

Ellis followed the girl inside and watched as she fished the book from beneath
the stack of magazines. "There you go," she said. She placed it in his hands and
moved away to stand behind the counter.

Ellis barely noticed. A warm flood of nostalgia suffused him. The Boy's Book of
Constellations, read the title; below it was a dusty watercolor of a boy and a
man looking into the night sky. The man held a book in one hand and pointed at
the stars with the other. The stars themselves had been connected with chalky
lines to form constellations: the Dippers, Virgo and Aquarius, others.

Ellis thumbed through the crumbling pages, stopping at last to study the central
illustration: a map of the night sky, with the constellations traced in glowing
lines against the darkness. Blackness rose like inky vapor from the pages,
encircled his wrists and flowed away to fill the air around him. The bookstore
receded slowly, becoming ghostly and faint. Finally, it disappeared altogether,
and he found himself in a rolling pasture. A full moon drenched the scene in
pale light. The rich heavy scent of cow manure, borne on a summer breeze, washed
over him.

Inhaling deeply, Ellis sat in the long grass. He plucked a single blade, and
chewed it idly as he stared up into the night sky. Stars stood out, bright and
unblinking against the darkness. He lay back and it seemed to him that he fell
into the sky, as if the earth had been inverted, gravity reversed. He drifted
without thought into blackness, into a night place where the constellations
stood out with clarity and order. He might have stayed there forever, had not
some importunate worry begun to tug at the base of his consciousness.

For a while, Ellis tried to ignore it, as he had sometimes tried to disregard
the sound of a television in the next room when he was reading a particularly
engrossing book. Concentrating with all his might on the stars that stood out
against the darkness above him, he almost succeeded. It was that knowledge, that
awareness of success which doomed him however, for with awareness returned the
persistent tug of worry.

What? he thought. What was it?

And then: Katie. The kids.

Suddenly, the stars drew away to glimmering points. The field tore apart,
shredding into dark rags that blew to the corners of his vision and disappeared.
He stood in the bookstore, a grassy taste lingering on his tongue. For a single
moment, Ellis thought he detected the scent of cow manure, half-familiar and
weighted with all his memories of that long-ago summer. And then it too was
gone, supplanted by the cloying odor of cotton candy. Ellis looked down at his
hands, clenched white about The Boy's Book of Constellations.

"Sir?" the girl said. "Are you all right sir?"

"I -- I have to meet my family," Ellis said. He forced his fingers to relax and
shoved the book under his right arm. He glanced at his watch. Two forty-five.
"I'd like this book, please," Ellis said. He placed it on the counter and
reached for his wallet.

"Oh no, sir. Take it. It's yours. Your money's no good here."

"I'm sorry?"

"Your money,"she said. "It's no good here. The book is yours. The night manager
has seen to that."

"The night manager?"

"Yes, sir."

"I see," Ellis said, but he didn't, not at all. He picked up the book and
hesitated briefly. "You don't happen to know where I pay for gas in this place,
do you?"

The girl gave him a puzzled smile. "Your money's no good here, sir," she
repeated.

Ellis nodded. "I see. Well, I need to go. My family's waiting."

The girl didn't reply. Ellis left the store and walked rapidly in the direction
of the revolving doors. Katie and the kids, he knew, would be waiting-- Katie
smiling because he hadn't made it back by three, the kids tired and grumpy.

But when he reached the doors at ten minutes after three, no one was there.
Puzzled, Ellis went to the edge of the walkway and stared into the depths. From
this angle, looking down beyond a lattice of walkways and escalators, with the
Ferris wheel spinning below him, the mall seemed as void of stable perspective
as an Escher print. Ellis felt as if he was staring into a kaleidoscope.
Impossible angles converged in an endlessly replicating network of images that
was somehow hideous. Sour bile rose in his mouth. With one hand, he clutched The
Boy's Book of Constellations --

-- Open it!--

-- and shut his eyes. The music of the calliope built to a frenzy and swept him
up in its jaunty rhythm. Against the dark screens of his eyelids, Ellis saw
projected that whirling paradox of images, a crazy melange of escalators and
walkways that slowly resolved into the ugly and familiar vista of the city as he
had seen it through the rearview mirror: a hodgepodge of garish boxes, drowning
out the stars.

Once, when Ellis had been in school, a professor had commented, "Nature hates a
straight line." That statement returned to him now, in company with an arresting
vision: a world with nothing but straight lines, a grid of streets that went on
forever. Nostalgia for the curve of tree and slope surprised him again. A
fleeting image of his grandfather's rolling pasture, the stars above, passed
before him, and unbidden the thought came to him: the book. Open it.

He turned his back to the pit and opened his eyes. He held The Boy's Book of
Constellations in trembling hands. Open it! part of him cried. Open it and be
done with this! No, Ellis thought. That was too easy. What the hell was
happening here? Where were Katie and the kids?

Steeling himself, he turned and peered into the depths. Empty escalators and
walkways intersected at wholly prosaic angles. The Ferris wheel revolved
lethargically.

"Katie!" he screamed. "Jason! Donna!"

The mocking strains of the calliope drifted up to enfold him -- that and his own
voice, crying ghostly out of the distance. They're late, he thought, that's all.
They're probably on their way right now. But even so, a hundred tenuous
filaments of panic began to work through his body.

What if they weren't?

"Katie!" he yelled, and a rational core at the center of his mind wondered at
the hysterical edge to his voice. What's wrong, Ellis? it asked. Something
bothering you? And something sure as hell was, he knew. Something about this
mall and this long strange night. Something about The Boy's Book of
Constellations. "Donna! Jason!"

From behind Ellis, a mellifluous voice said, "It really is no use to shout, you
know. They won't hear you," and panic -- fear -- came on like a light within
him. Each one of those tiny filaments glared suddenly incandescent with
hysteria. Out of the distance, his own cry returned to him, dissolving in the
frenetic cadence of the calliope.

"Ellis," that voice said. "Why don't you turn around?"

Ellis opened his mouth to speak, but his throat had gone dry. Blood roared in
his ears. Finally, his voice a sandpapery rasp, he said, "Who are you?"

The voice said, "I'm the night manager, Ellis. I think you knew that. Really, I
don't see any point in talking to your back. Why don't you turn around?"

Ellis did. The night manager stood quietly before the revolving doors. He was
angular and tall -- too tall, some part of Ellis's mind insisted -- dressed
impeccably in a gray double-breasted suit with a pink vanity handkerchief. Ellis
said, "What in the hews going on?" He clutched the book --

-- Open it! --

-- against his chest and began to back away, skating his hand along the rail.

"Ellis!" said the night manager. "Stop!"

Ellis stopped. Moving with the predatory grace and strength of a shark, the
night manager glided across the space between them. He stooped and peered into
Ellis's face, his black vertiginous eyes dissolving first into a wheeling
panorama of constellations, and then into the kaleidoscope of images Ellis had
seen before: escalators and walkways that met at impossible angles; the city,
tawdry against the midnight sky. The night manager raised his bony finger and
leaned even closer. His breath stank of cotton candy.

"Look," he hissed, and jabbed his long finger out over the rail. When he spoke
again, his tone was reverent -- the tone of voice a man uses when he encounters
some awe-inspiring natural wonder. "Look at it. Isn't it beautiful?"

Ellis turned and looked out over the pit, following the line of the bony finger.
The great mall lay spread out all before him, a vast well of light and sound and
whirling movement that stretched to the distant horizon.

"Five-point-two-million square feet of retail space," said the night manager. "A
seven-acre amusement park. I thought it might appeal to a man of your talents, a
man of your profession." He moved closer, his long arm encircling Ellis's
shoulders. His pale thin fingers enclosed Ellis's upper arm.

In his left hand, pressed close against him by the night manager's wiry body,
Ellis held The Boy's Book of Constellations. When he spoke, his voice was tight
with panic. "Where are my wife and children?"

"In the mall, Ellis," the night manager said. "Where else?"

Ellis struggled against the other man's grip, but the fingers about his upper
arm merely tightened. The night manager swept him around and thrust him out
across the railing. Ellis felt his back arch painfully, his feet come away from
the floor, and then he was dangling out into space, the noise of the calliope
rising around him.

"Listen, my friend," the night manager said. "Let's have some cooperation."

Ellis swallowed, and struggled to squeeze words past the huge lump that had
formed in his throat. "Okay," he gasped.

Ellis felt himself pulled back across the rail. His feet touched the floor and
he found himself staring into the night manager's fury-contorted face. His eyes
were black pits. His lips pulled back in a savage grimace.

"Your family is quite content, I assure you. Jason is infatuated with the
amusement park. And Donna. Well, she lives for the mail. She hardly took any
convincing at all."

"And Katie?"Ellis asked. His voice dwindled to a hoarse whisper. The night
manager chuckled. "Ahh, Katie. She was a bit more challenging. At last, she has
a restaurant of her very own. There's always room for another merchant at the
American Mall, Ellis. You, my friend, you're the only problem that remains."

Ellis's fingers tightened reflexively about the book and that interior voice
piped up again: Open it! It's --

"-- the only way," said the night manager. Grinning, he released Ellis's arms
and stepped back. "In there, I won't disturb you. Nothing will. Just open it up,
and I'll go away."

And then Ellis had the book open in his hands. Its pages seemed to whip by of
their own accord, settling at last on the dark map at its center. Black coils
rose up to embrace him, encircled his wrists like manacles, and flooded the mall
with darkness. Ellis concentrated on the night manager's vulpine grin, but
finally it disappeared, occluded by the encroaching blackness. He stood alone in
his grandfather's pasture, beneath a spangled canopy of stars.

Ellis reclined on the hillside. His fingers twined in long grass, plucked a
single blade, and brought it to his lips. Above him, the stars wheeled by. For a
long moment, he fought to remember: a gaunt figure that moved with predatory
grace; a vast enclosed space, where escalators and walkways converged at
impossible angles; Katie and the children, somehow lost. But it was too much,
too much for him to hold. He had fallen into the night sky, with only the grassy
pasture beneath him, and it was all too distant.

A breeze washed across his flesh, bearing the pleasant scent of cow-manure,
baked dry beneath a summer sun. That scent and something else, something sweet
and not altogether pleasant. What was it?

The stars grew distant as Ellis concentrated, filtering out the heavy odor of
manure to focus on the scent which lay beneath. Finally he had it: the midway
smell of cotton candy. And with that scent it all came crashing back. A series
of images exploded through his mind: the city, upright against the dark sky; the
vast rest stop spread out across the valley; the night manager's fury-twisted
features as he said, "Your family is quite content, I assure you."

This? He was to give up everything for this, a boyhood night on his
grandfather's farm ?

The pasture came apart around him, black rags blowing to the edge of his vision
and disappearing. He stood in the mall, the night manager before him.

"What is t his place ?" Ellis asked. His voice was the barest panic-stricken
croak.

"Don't you know?" said the night manager. "Haven't you the least idea? And
you've done so much to create it, you with your designs for fancy malls and fine
new shopping centers. It's good work if you can get it, isn't it, Ellis?"

"No," said Ellis. "This isn't mine. I've done nothing to create this."

"But you have!" The night manager threw back his head, threw out his arms as if
to encompass everything. When he spoke again, his voice was filled with an
almost religious wonder. "Feel it, Ellis," he whispered, "feel it."

And Ellis did. A vast aching hunger seemed to sweep across the continent, to
sweep him up in the currents of some voiceless all-consuming desire.

"What is it?" he said. "What is it?"

"Their hunger." The night manager leaned close into Ellis's face, his maniacal
eyes seeming almost to glow. "Out of their ceaseless desire, this --" he
gestured wildly at the surrounding mall, "this was born. I roam the night
highways, Ellis. I feed on your desires."

"No," Ellis said. His voice was calm now, and very cold. He looked away, looked
down at the book in his trembling hands, and all those summer nights on his
grandfather's farm suddenly returned to him. "You can't have my dream," he said.
"It belongs to me."

Ellis turned and cast The Boy's Book of Constellations far out into the pit. It
tumbled as it fell, its dustjacket blowing loose and away, its pages riffling in
the still air. It disappeared into the smear of light and color that was the
amusement park. The music of the calliope shrieked to a climax and fell still.
Ellis spun to face the night manager, but the other figure, tall and elongated
as a praying mantis, had begun to shimmer and grow insubstantial.

"No!" Ellis screamed. "My family!"

The mall wavered like the image on a television with bad reception, breaking up,
colors bleeding into long streaks. Even as Ellis watched, it began to fragment
into long wisps and coils, so much fog before a heavy wind.

"My family!" Ellis screamed at the fading image of the night manager.

As if in answer to his cry, Ellis saw them, one by one, framed by the night
manager's translucent form: Jason, alone atop the furiously spinning Ferris
wheel, his eyes wide with hysterical joy; Donna, turning and turning in some
private dance, with a partner only she could perceive; Katie last of all. She
stood in a vast gleaming kitchen that seemed to go on forever. It was empty.
Empty as far as Ellis could see.

"Katie!" he cried. "Katie!"

She looked up, horrific awareness dawning in her eyes. Then she was obscured by
a veil of shifting colors.

The night manager's thin face split into a mocking grin. In the moment before he
was tom into a hundred wispy fragments and blown away, he reached out and
caressed Ellis's cheek with his long bony fingers. Finally only his voice
lingered, distant and tiny, as over a bad telephone connection in the dead of
night. "Too late, Ellis," it whispered, "too late."

And then he was gone entirely. Everything was gone.

Ellis stood alone by the car, with the rusty gas pumps beside him. Nothing else
remained. All about him, the lone and level parking lot stretched away. A stiff
wind came up, chasing litter across the moonlit pavement, and a rectangle of
heavy paper flattened itself against the side of the car. It rustled when Ellis
peeled it away. The Boy's Book of Constellations, he read.

"Goddamn you!" he cried into the night. And then, "Donna! Jason! Katie!"

He fell silent, and in the silence he heard' Katie's faraway voice, fraught with
the promise of tears, saying "Ellis? Ellis?"

Agreat knot seemed to form in Ellis's throat. He scanned the parking lot, hardly
daring to hope, and at last he saw her. A small pale figure, distant in the
moonlight, she came out of the vast emptiness that had been the mall. She must
have seen him simultaneously, for suddenly they were both running They came
together and Ellis swung her into his embrace.

At last, Katie said, "Oh, Ellis, I heard you. At the last minute, I heard you,
and I understood."

"I know," he said.

They walked across the abandoned lot, back to the car.

"What about the kids?" Katie asked. "What about Donna and Jason?" "I don't
know," Ellis said. But those images remained: Jason, joyous atop the whirling
Ferris wheel; Donna, turning in her private dance. Lost. Forever lost.

I roam the night highways, the night manager had said, and now Ellis repeated
those words to himself like a mantra, forcing himself to believe. Maybe it
wasn't too late, he thought. Maybe, somehow, along some lonely midnight
interstate, they would find this place again.

They would look until they did, no matter how long it took.