It's late September. You remember these nights? Humid, muggy, just a hint of the coming fall. Too cold for a T-shirt, but too warm for a sweater.
These are the nights best spent at Cook Place Community Mall, in my modest Midwest hometown. A diamond in the rough, in my eyes, this shopping center is a break from the monotony of tired hardware stores and family grocers that lined main Street. The Cook Place Mall is typically packed to capacity.
But not tonight, because it was 8:15 PM on a Tuesday night, 45 minutes until close. Not exactly prime window shopping hours.
Despite that, my three friends and I were still going strong. We were ending the night in the dusty arcade located in the basement of the shopping mall. It was down a short flight of stairs, between the Dairy Queen and Sbarro in the food court. Faded and flickering carnival lights lined the dimly lit hallway and steps.
"Andy, do you have another quarter?"
Philip, my youngest friend, questioned as the words 'GAME OVER' splattered across the screen. Philip was 12 years old, and a bit underdeveloped for his age.
Andrew, his older brother, my best friend, and my Biology partner scowled as he rummaged through his pockets in vain.
"Maybe if you were a bit better at the game, I'd have more quarters for you to play on."
It was 8:16 PM, and it seemed our time in the arcade may be coming to a close. I had a few loose quarters left in my pocket, but that was gonna stay my secret. I was hoping to spend it on a Coke tomorrow before class started.
Clay, a guy Andy and I had just met in Biology, had clearly been waiting for this moment.“Honestly yeah, guys, it’s getting a bit late. I think I’m gonna bounce, gotta study for our exam on Cellular Reproduction.”
The exam wasn’t for a week yet, but I wasn’t bothered. Clay had been acting a bit ambivalent since we got to the mall, seemed he wasn’t a huge fan of having Philip around. ‘Cramped his style’ or whatever. I didn’t care. Philip was pretty much like a brother to me, so he came first.
Philip, having realized there would be nary a quarter for him, gave up aimlessly pressing buttons on the greasy machine.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Didn’t you just go?”
Sighed Andy.
“Yeah but we had a large soda!”
“YOU had a large soda, kid. By the time I got a sip is was all backwash.”
I chuckled as Andy and Philip started away from the arcade machines. Clay, while texting, followed lazily behind them.
It was 8:24, and we had located a bathroom. The bathroom we were used to using in the mall (on the way out the front door) was closed for renovations, so we had to find another one.An ‘L’ shaped hallway lit with yellow, humming fluorescent lights ended with a corresponding bathroom on either side of the hall, with custodial equipment blocking the Women’s entrance.
Philip rushed into the restroom.
The mall closed at 9:00 PM, so we were gonna need to get moving. Sure enough, as the thought crossed my mind, the rattly-old mall intercom crackled to life with a ‘Ding-Dong’ : An adolescent male’s voice spoke sharply:
“MALL CLOSING IN 30 MINUTES. MALL CLOSING IN 30 MINUTES.
”I checked my watch: It was 8:26 PM.“Huh, someone’s in a hurry to get out of here tonight.”
I thought: “That’s retail.”
Clay spoke up: “I might just get going, you guys. I live pretty close to here, I’m just gonna walk instead of the bus. Goodnight!”
“Night Clay” we said in unison. He turned his back and walked away, turning right to depart the mall. Andy and I looked at one another:
“I dunno, kind’ve a wet blanket. He seemed really cool when I met him.” Andy explained.
“Nah he was okay. Maybe just a little bit quiet. The texting was a bit annoying though.”Our attention was drawn to the sound of a flush from the bathroom. Andy’s face twisted into a mischievous grin.“Hey we should give Philip a little fright when he comes out.”
Remembering how jumpy Philip tended to be, I felt a pang of guilt. It really wasn’t very nice to spook him, and we did it often. Nevertheless, I stood on the other side of the door, opposite Andy, waiting for Philip to step between us, not expecting a thing.
The door swung open.
Philip stepped out into the hallway, focused on drying his hands on his pants. He stepped by none the wiser.“AGHHH!”
Andy yelled, as we each grabbed a shoulder. Philip yelled as he twisted around and fell backwards.
Philip fell into the wall.
And then, Philip fell INTO the wall.
That’s the only way I know how to describe it. One moment, he had slipped off his feet and crashed into the wall. The next, everything but his legs had gone through the wall, as if there were a perfectly shaped hole in the concrete.
Philip’s legs spasmed in the air in the same looping, spastic pattern for but a few seconds.
And then there was nothing left but solid concrete.
“What...I…” Andy stuttered as he fell to his knees, his face a mixture of curiosity and confusion. As he shuffled towards the wall, his face turned to fear.
“I don’t understand. I don’t...understand. PHILIP?”He shouted his brother’s name with a desperate, wavering cry.
“PHILIP.”
He slammed his hands into the wall.
Once.
Twice.
Not a third time.
Andy’s head now protruded from the wall, facing the ceiling. His head seized from side-to-side, as he continued to scream for his brother.
God...He sounded like he was yelling through a box fan.
I stepped backwards as my best friend disappeared from sight, and I was left with his scream bouncing off the hallway walls, intensifying as it mixed with the hum of the fluorescent.
The howl of the fluorescent.
My back pressed against the bathroom door, and I jumped.
I screamed as my world exploded with static, deafening and blinding me. The noise was unbearable, and the grain obscured everything.
And all at once it stopped.
I clutched my head in my hands, eyes squeezed shut. The static had dissipated, but was replaced with the hum of fluorescent lights, and the all too familiar yellow glow through my eyelids.
But there was something new. A smell that hadn’t been there before. The musty, wet smell of carpet. Carpet that should have been changed decades ago. The smell reminded me of the dilapidated bowling alley down the road from the mall.
I opened my eyes.
Before me was the bathroom hallway, as expected, lit by the same light as before. The bathroom doors were-
Gone. There were no more doors. No more custodial equipment. Just a smooth slab of concrete wall.
I got to my feet, and looked around me cautiously. It seemed I was in the mall still but...it was quiet. It felt different. The fluorescent hum-buzz was too loud.
My ears itch.
I walked down the hallway in the direction of the food court. As I turned the corner; I was met with, not the opening to the food court as expected, but by another abrupt 90 degree corner, turning to the left.
**Ding-Dong**
I froze.
The loudspeaker was engaged, the empty air of the speaker nearest me told me that, but the operator had nothing to say.
After a motionless moment, (what felt like hours), the microphone snapped back into the console, cutting the empty noise. Whomever had activated the speaker seemed to have hung up.Confused, and growing ever more frightful of where I had found myself, I turned the corner.
I was met with a large, empty room that I had never seen before. It was about the size of a classroom, with stained concrete walls. The smell of must was even stronger in here.
Each wall had an identical, rectangular, door-shaped opening that seemed to be placed at randomly decided positions among the wall. The popcorn ceiling, littered with smears of dirt and greasy imprints, had long cracks spanning it. This room was clearly in need of renovation.
“I don’t understand.” I muttered out loud. I truly didn’t.
This featureless room served no purpose, other than a passageway to these other rooms. The lack of planning and absent attempt at caring for the room made me feel as if this place was long-forgotten.
Might as well try the next room. I thought to myself, as I walked through the door to my left.
The room I found myself in was as bleak and unrecognizable as the last. From my first glance, the only difference in style was that this room was shaped as a triangle.
I heard a single cry from my right. It was more of a whimper, actually.
“What...the...fuck.”
It was Clay’s voice. It couldn’t be Clay. I watched him leave the mall.
I rushed through the door to find Clay lying in a fetal position in a long hallway, stretching a distance to my left and right.
“Change the channel...change the...change the channel.”Clay babbled incoherently as he sobbed on the floor.
“Clay? Clay you gotta get up.”
Clay didn’t respond to me. He never would. His eyes, wide and unblinking with fear, were glued to the floor.
How can fluorescent lights be so damn NOISY?
And then I saw it.
And then I felt it.
It hung motionless in the air, feet lightly scraping the ground. It had dry, cracked skin that was dressed loosely with torn Rough-spun shorts. It had the torso of a man, but...It’s torso was on the wrong way. Its’ frail and feeble arms outstretched to the ceiling, not quite reaching, as if in an act of surrender. It had a cocked head, as if confused, as It peered down the hallway at me. Dark, beady eyes stared widely at me through the holes in the bloody duct tape, wrapped around Its’ head.And then It started to float toward us.
Every time I blinked, stunned in absolute terror, It was not where I expected. A few feet forward, some inches to the left, never where It should be.
And yet It was getting closer. Ever closer.
What I saw next will follow me forever.
I turned to run, breaking the stillness, and sprinted down the hallway. I don’t know, I guess I just assumed Clay would follow in the moment. I was wrong. A blood curdling screech shook the hallway, and I whipped around:It had reached Clay. He still wasn’t looking, but he was certainly screaming. It extended It’s long, spindly arms and cradled him, like a child.
But It wouldn’t look away from me. No, It’s eyes never left mine.
In one quick, jerking motion, It was holding Clay by the top of his head, palming him like a basketball. I blinked, and It had grasped Clay’s arm with It’s free hand. With brute strength, It twisted Clay by the torso.
Clay’s screaming cut short with a fleshy crunch, as he dropped to the floor in a twisted pile. His eyes had finally opened, to look at me one last time.
And then I screamed.
The louder I screamed, the louder the fluorescent hum became. Which was louder, I couldn’t tell. I turned and ran to the first door I saw, blindly twisting and turning through the rooms that followed.
Why on Earth does every room look the same?
I turned a corner and ran face-first into a dark mass, we both fell to the floor.
Andy!
“How did you get down here? Where the Hell are we?”
“I don’t know Andy. Where’s Philip?! We have to get him right now, and leave.”
We turned and rushed down a third hallway, perpendicular to the hallway Andy and I met in. We ran until we felt we could run no more, and then fell into a final doorway. We landed in a mass on the damp floor, and quickly scuttled to the back wall. The hum of the lights was all we could hear. Louder and louder…
And then they all went out. Silence.
We found ourselves in total darkness, and total silence, as we clutched each other.
No, wait, not TOTAL silence.
The sound of static, as if emitting from a television, slowly coming toward us. Only when the light, coming from the source of the noise, started to slowly illuminate the room did I realize:
This room had only one door.
It floated around the door-frame, toes dragging on the floor as It cast It’s bloody eyes upon us.
Andy and I, mute with fear, stood against the wall. Andy moved himself in front of me. It floated towards us.
Andy raised his arms. It reached out for us:
“LEAVE US ALONE!”
*Ding Dong*
We all became statues. We locked eyes with It, as we listened to the intercom crackle to life.
Shallow, rapid breathing came through the speaker.
“Andy..”
It was Philip.
With a guttural scream, Andy lunged towards It. I fell backwards into the wall.
And I landed inside of a trash can.
What?
I was inside a trash can, filled with the refuse from a full day of food court disposal.
“Kid? What are you doing in there?”I looked out to see a very confused, elderly janitor, wondering why a young man was taking a Sbarro bath after mall hours.
It was 9:32 PM. At least that’s what the clock over the water fountain said. The water fountain?
I’m back in the mall.
“Oh...Sorry. I was just hungry.”
And I ran.
-------------
In the following years I would try to make sense of what happened in that back hallway. I even went so far as to returning there and trying to access that...place. But to no avail. I never found a thing, but I kept trying until they demolished the mall a year later.
Philip and Andy’s parents weren’t really present when they were around, so they didn’t make much of a deal on TV when they were interviewed, despite the media trying to fire them up. They just seemed like it was the final straw to send them to total apathy.
Last I heard, Clay’s parents moved out of town, but were paying exorbitant PI bills to find their son.
After a few years of half-assed detective work, and a few rotations of milk cartons, Andy and Philip were forgotten by our sleepy little town.
But sometimes, when I’m going to sleep, I remember.
And I leave the TV on channel 03. There’s nothing broadcasting on that channel, but the static helps me sleep.
---
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