Ronnie's tennis shoes crunched on glass as she entered the empty arcade, careful not to scrape her knees and palms. Her legs were already plastered with multicolored band-aids from previous adventures that month; school had let out two weeks ago, and this was the third place to check off on her list of things she wanted, needed, to do this summer. "Gotta bout a month. Then its back to it." She had told Sam. Now, Sam was holding a flashlight between his teeth, working a splinter of glass from his palm.
The place has been mostly gutted, as they had expected. Geometric grime on the floor was all that was left of some arcade games. A plastic panel with the words "Space Rocketer" was left behind from one of them. Black wires hung from the ceiling from what used to be neon lights, and the peppered light from the black smeared windows cast a gloom over the place. Surprisingly, the place wasn't tattooed with graffiti.
"Yknow why this place was shut down right?" Ronnie said. "Shut down after one charity night event. One. Said it was held by the police department to raise money for missing people 'round town."
"Missing people? Huh. Spooky."
"Sure is. Heard it was over a game too. They brought it some kind of game where you could match faces to the missing people's pictures. Someone got so scared they died."
"You don't die because you're scared. Heart attack?" Sam said, annoyed at the sound of the sticky floor.
"I'm guessing."
Neither of them knew any missing people, but they had heard stories. A boy at their school had vanished at a time when their parents attended, and security had been upped for about two days. They talked about police cars milling about the roads near rivers and bridges, but Ronnie's dad, who had known the boy, claimed he wasn't "stupid like that". But whatever happened to the boy faded into town legend and tragedy, and his picture, a smiling kid in a camo baseball hat, was hung up in honor of him. It was the best they could do.
After rummaging around boxes of outdated electronics, there wasn't much else. The place wasn't huge; Ronnie remembered talk that they would expand the place with a skating rink, but that never came to fruition. While Sam looked over washed out wall art of shooting stars, moons, and ufos (all the aliens inside held up peace signs.) Ronnie bit back her diappointment. She'd beg ber parents to stop whenever they passed by here every other day on the way home from the grocery store to let her look inside, to see what creepiness lurked inside the abandoned arcade. She closed her eyes and tried to recall the sounds of hundreds of games pinging off and buzzing and singing around her, but it was empty, and not even the ghost remained.
"Thats about it, huh?" Sam wiped his hands on his jeans. "So much for that- hey now." His expression changed. His nose scrunched up as he neared the back of the room. "Ronnie, ugh. Smell that?"
Ronnie paused to sniff the stale air. "Rat crap."
"Nah nah I know that." He pressed on the purple painted wall with his shoulder. "Rat crap, but what do rats like?"
"Cheese?"
"Nacho cheese, sure. And popcorn. I bet there's a-" he tested the wall again, "concession stand stashed back here. Maybe more stuff." Ronnie began to pry at the back wall too. The slight crinkle of wall paper tearing met their ears, and Sam fell forward as the wall gave way.
Dust and plaster swirled in the air, but surprisingly, they weren't met with darkness in the hidden hall. The harsh glow of fluorescents lit up their features eerily as Ronnie helped Sam up. She would have laughed at him, but there was a chill running through her. "What the heck man?" Sam pulled plaster from his hair. His eyes got wide. "You don't think anyone's still here?" Ronnie shook her head.
"No. It doesn't feel like it."
The room was older than the first room. The ceiling was nearly rotten, and the smell of rat waste and mildew was soaked into everything. It reminded Sam of an abandoned shoe store he has explored earlier, where the ceiling had a gaping hole and rain wster poured in freely and ate away anything it touched. That was his first adventure of the summer, but something in this room made this one, the third, feel like it would be his last. "Ronnie. Ronnie, I don't think we should looking through here."
Ronnie touched his shoulder. "Hey, just five minutes? Alright? Then we'll high-tail it."
Sam was the first to see the papers. Taped to the wall, dozens of papers, yellowed with time, moved slightly with the warm current of air from the door they had opened. Newspaper cut outs. The faces where blurred, and by what Sam could see, it wasn't by age. No, the faces were swirled. Stretched. Pulled and twisted like taffy. One man had his eyes pushed into his face, his lips pulled over his nose. One woman had her hands covering her face, but soggy flesh dribbled from between her fingers, like she was attempting to hold herself together. MISSING. MISSING. MISSING. MISSING. MISSING. Sam could barely get the words out. "We gotta leave. Please."
There were arcade games galore, colorful in primary colors, but the text for the games remained unreadable, smudged beyond repair. None of the screens reflected anything, and when Ronnie popped a quarter into a racing game, only a slight buzz (which was enough to make her jump) emitted from it. A ride with rocking horses stared out with green marble eyes, paint scuffed. They looked distressed, as if running away.
"How long has this placed been closed?" Sam squeezed past two shooter games, the silhouettes of zombies and a big man with a big gun remained on the sides. Plastic tokens, gold and pink and blue, were scattered on the puke yellow and pink carpet, but Sam couldnt help but notice a pattern, moving in a straight line to follow down the florescent-humming hall.
They caught their breaths outside, unable to feel the oppressive July heat in their flight. The sun had just started to set, and the sound of crickets, after the long bout of silence, was nearly overwhelming. "That was...weird." Sam knew it was an understatement. "Weird as hell."
"Hmm? What-ouch!" Ronnie bumped her head on the display case where tickets could get exchanged for toys and candy, full of powder-dusty teddy bears and inflatable swords. Rubbing her head, she peered over the machines, looking for Sam's mess of hair. He looked awful lonely down the hall, awfully small. "What is it? Found a ghost?"
Sam could just point at the papers. Ronnie knew suddenly. She sat down a pile of plastic junk she was holding and made her way over. She peeled one off of the wall. A missing poster. This one was of a child, crying, little hands pulling at his ears until they bled. MISSING.
"Hell is right." Sam leaned on a telephone pole. "Oh my gosh man."
They became really quiet for a moment, even after the panic had pulled away from them. "Yknow," Sam said, breaking the silence, grinning, "we still didn't find the concession stand." They just blinked for a second, and Ronnie burst out laughing, smacking him on the arm. "Youre not right man. I think we were supposed to be the snacks."
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