The Reality Escalator

Eric stepped closer. The escalator’s handrail was warm beneath his fingers, almost feverish. Its rubber surface vibrated with a faint pulse. The steps were not metal but a dark material that swallowed the atrium’s fluorescent glare. Each one rose from the floor, traveled upward, and disappeared into the black pane.

A sign stood beside the entrance.

LEVEL 0, it read.

Below it, a smaller display flickered between symbols Eric couldn’t recognize and a familiar red numeral.

1.

He looked across the atrium. The security desk was occupied now. A guard sat beneath a bank of monitors, eating from a plastic container.

Eric hurried over.

“There’s an escalator by the fountain,” he said.

The guard chewed, eyes on a monitor. “There are elevators by the fountain.”

“No. An escalator. It wasn’t here last night.”

“Then it’s probably part of the renovation.”

“Which renovation?”

The guard finally looked at him. His gaze slid past Eric toward the fountain. His face changed for half a second - not surprise, exactly. Recognition without permission.

“There’s no escalator there,” he said.

Eric turned. The machine was still visible. Steps gliding upward. Black opening. Level 0.

“You can see it.”

“I can see the fountain.”

“Look again.”

The guard stood, irritation replacing the flicker of fear. He crossed the atrium with Eric following. As they approached, the escalator’s motor gave a low mechanical groan. The sound traveled through the tile and into Eric’s shoes.

The guard stopped three feet away.

His eyes fixed on the empty space beside the fountain.

“Management doesn’t discuss construction with customers,” he said.

“This isn’t construction.”

“Sir, move along.”

“What’s your name?”

The guard’s hand went to his radio. “Move along.”

Eric glanced at the black pane above the stairs. Something pale moved behind it.

Not a reflection. A hand, perhaps, pressing from the other side.

He stepped onto the first stair.

The guard grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t.”

The word came out so quietly that Eric almost missed it.

Then the escalator lurched.

The guard released him. The entrance shifted backward with a soft metallic click, and the first step carried Eric away from the atrium.

He grabbed the handrail. It dragged his palm forward, smooth and hot. Behind him, the fountain shrank. The guard stood frozen beside it, his radio dangling from one hand.

“Stop it!” Eric shouted.

The escalator did not stop.

The atrium lights flickered. For a moment, every storefront sign changed. The mall became something older and emptier: boarded windows, cracked pillars, a ceiling stained with black water. Then the image snapped back to Riverside Plaza, bright and crowded despite the early hour.

Crowded.

Eric saw people now - dozens of them moving across the atrium floor below. Shoppers in coats, children with balloons, a woman carrying a red umbrella though there was no rain. None looked toward him. None cast shadows in the same direction.

The escalator rose through them without occupying their space.

Eric gripped the rail harder. “Where are you taking me?”

A speaker mounted beneath the handrail clicked on.

“Level one,” said a voice that sounded like Eric’s own.

The black pane ahead rippled.

The escalator did not ascend. Eric felt no change in balance, no pressure in his ears, no shift in his stomach. Yet the mall below slid away as though it were being pulled behind glass. The atrium’s geometry stretched into thin vertical bands. The fountain became a white line. The bronze horse folded in on itself and vanished.

Then the pane opened.

Eric stepped onto a landing.

The floor was carpeted in a faded blue pattern he recognized from photographs of Riverside Plaza before its grand reopening. The walls were unfinished concrete. A row of storefronts stood along the corridor, but their signs bore names that had never appeared in the mall directory.

HARTWELL’S DEPARTMENT STORE.

NORTHSTAR ARCADE.

RIVERSIDE CINEMA - SCREEN 19.

At the far end, a directory board leaned against the wall. Eric hurried to it. Dust filmed the glass, but the map beneath was clear.

LEVEL ONE contained the atrium, the food court, the cinema, and a service corridor.

No escalator.

No Hartwell’s. No Northstar Arcade. No Screen 19.

A red dot marked Eric’s position.

BELOW PLAZA FOUNDATION.

He stared at the words.

A metal door beside the directory bore a plaque: STAFF ONLY. Beyond its wired glass, fluorescent lights buzzed over a corridor lined with white doors. One had a narrow observation window. Another was smeared with fingerprints from the inside.

Something struck the other side.

Eric flinched.

A second impact rattled the glass.

“Hello?” he called.

The corridor lights went out one by one.

At the landing behind him, the escalator continued moving. Its steps rose from the dark opening and disappeared upward, but the upper pane now showed a place Eric had never seen: a mall atrium filled with waist-high grass. The fountain was cracked. Trees grew through the ceiling. A flock of black birds lifted from the food court.

Eric backed away from the door.

His phone buzzed.

The photograph he had taken was no longer gray. It showed the escalator clearly, but the atrium behind it was deserted and burned. Across the image, in white letters, someone had written:

DON’T LET IT RETURN YOU.

Eric looked toward the escalator.

The sign beside it had changed.

LEVEL 1.

Underneath, the unfamiliar symbols formed a neat second line. This time they resolved into English.

YOU ARE NOT ABOVE.

The landing shuddered.

A deep vibration rolled through the walls, and dust sifted from the ceiling. Behind the staff door, something began dragging itself along the corridor. The sound came slowly, with a wet scrape between each pause.

Eric reached for the landing’s emergency exit. The handle turned, but the door opened only an inch before striking something solid on the other side.

He pulled harder.

The gap revealed a wall of brick.

Not a hallway. Not outside. A brick wall pressed against the door as if the mall had been built around it.

The scraping stopped.

A face appeared behind the wired glass of the staff door.

It was pale and flattened by the window. One eye stared directly at Eric. The other was covered by a strip of adhesive marked with a black numeral.

1.

Eric stumbled backward.

The face lifted one finger and pointed toward the escalator.

The machine’s motor rose to a shriek.

The landing lights burst on. Every storefront along the corridor opened at once, revealing empty interiors filled with desks, medical carts, and rows of dark glass tanks. Tubes hung from the ceilings. In one room, a child-sized chair sat beneath a metal frame. In another, hundreds of paper files covered the floor.

A speaker crackled overhead.

“Return transit available.”

The escalator reversed.

Its steps began sliding downward toward Eric, though the machine itself remained perfectly still. The black pane above it showed the original atrium again, bright and crowded. People streamed past the fountain. The security guard stood at his desk, untouched by the impossible morning.

Eric could go back.

He could step on and pretend the landing had been a stress dream, a trick of bad light and too little sleep. But the face behind the door was still watching him. Its finger remained aimed at the moving steps.

Eric took one step toward the escalator.

The staff door slammed open.

A hand shot through the gap and caught his jacket.

Eric twisted. The fabric tightened across his throat. The pale face pressed closer, mouth opening behind the glass.

“Which one?” it whispered.

The voice came through the corridor, thin and doubled.

“Which mall?”

Eric kicked at the door. His heel struck metal. The hand held fast.

The escalator waited three yards away, its steps moving downward into darkness that had no visible bottom.

He tore free, leaving a strip of jacket in the hand, and ran.

The landing tilted beneath him. The carpet rippled like fabric pulled over a body. Eric reached the escalator just as the last visible step passed.

He jumped.

His shoes landed hard. The handrail snapped against his wrist. Pain flashed up his arm, and the corridor dropped away.

Behind him, the landing doors slammed shut.

Not the staff door.

The glass doors at the entrance.

They sealed with a hydraulic hiss, locking the impossible floor on the other side.

Eric spun and seized the rail. Through the glass, the pale figure stood in the corridor, its face turned toward him. The directory board toppled. Its map slid across the carpet and stopped against the doors.

The red dot marking Eric’s position moved.

It traveled down the printed map, through the foundation, past a level that did not exist, and stopped beneath the words:

FAILED PLAZA - VERSION 6.

The escalator carried him into the dark.

End of chapter one. 40 more chapters and about 72,749 words in the full book.