I Found a Lost Hallway in a Dying Mall

Lisa finds her senile old coworker, Saswin, lost in an abandoned mall hallway. He's talking to a circle of mannequins, their limbs twisted and fused in unnatural ways.

When Lisa looks away, she swears the mannequins have moved, and that this abandoned hallway has grown longer.

After Saswin disappears down the impossible hallway, Lisa goes to find him, but she’s unprepared for the horrors that await her in the mall's forgotten depths.

Chapter 1

I saw a mannequin’s head dragging itself across the dusty floor of a shuttered Sharper Image.
It was March sixteenth, a week after Hank told me he wanted us to move up to Fairfax with our daughter and grandson.
I’d told my manager, Helen, that I was taking my thirty. She always humphed when I told her instead of asking permission, but she couldn’t fire me. Who else would take a job at Dillard’s department store, when corporate announced another store closure every month? And it’s not like any of the young girls could be trusted to accurately count a cash drawer.
So I left my assistant manager name tag beneath the perfume counter, set down my sample of Eau du Pontificate, and walked out of the empty Dillard’s into the very empty Cloverleaf Mall, where Hank waited for me. He still wore his blue apron, since untying the knot in the back was difficult ever since his stroke. He offered me a bite of his daily free Auntie Anne’s pretzel. I declined, since he had a habit of not eating enough, but he could easily wolf down an entire pretzel by himself.
We started our daily walk which led past a hundred empty storefronts and the not-dead-yet food court, to the Macy’s that was still clinging to life across the mall.
In my twenty years working here, I’d watched each of these stores close, until all that remained were the food court, two anchor stores, and a handful of shops that clung to each of those points of life like vultures desperate for scraps.
A T-Mobile reseller had the shop next to Dillard’s, across from a Christian bookstore. I waved to a familiar clerk on our way past.
Hank and I walked without speaking, since our current disagreement had no resolution yet.
The mall had finally switched the Christmas music over to love songs back in February, but now a month later it was still playing the same thirty tracks of instrumental yacht rock.
Fake ferns and empty kiosks sat in the center of the hallway, atop the white and pastel green tile. A similar color scheme was painted in stripes along the walls above the stores.
Hank broke the silence. “Please let’s tell her yes.”
Our daughter, Marissa, had been offered the first big job of her career. But it was up in Fairfax, right outside D.C., a two-hour drive up 95 when there was no traffic, and there was always traffic. She’d invited us to share an apartment. Hank could quit his job at Aunt Annie’s—which was always beneath his computer certificates anyways—and I could try to find another retail assistant manager position.
I told Hank what I’d been saying for the past month. “Let’s not decide that yet.”
He grumbled. Whether he couldn’t find a more articulate response because the stroke had scrambled his speech center or because he was angry, I couldn’t say. At least, I didn’t want to.
But today, I didn’t care for walking without chatting. For some reason, Marissa’s invitation had me remembering what this empty mall used to be. Thousands of daily visitors exploring over two hundred shops. When I’d been a junior clerk at Dillard’s, I’d felt like I was an integral part of this living, breathing place. And you know what? I still did.
The customers had trickled away, followed by most of the stores, but I was still keeping this place alive. Every time I helped a soon-to-be mother-in-law pick out a dress to stand out at her son’s wedding, or every time I helped a back-to-schooler choose this year’s wardrobe, or every time I sold a customer on a store credit card, I was pumping a bit of lifeblood into what Cloverleaf Mall used to be and what it still was.
“I want to keep seeing Marissa and Jake every day,” Hank said carefully.
I sighed. This decision wasn’t only about our feelings. “My health insurance covers your medicine. If I switch jobs, we’ll only be able to afford the generic. You scared me the last time you tried the cheap stuff. I don’t want to worry about you like that again.”
Hank offered a loving laugh. “I’ll be fine.”
“Probably,” I granted him. “But maybe not.”
My flats clicked on the tile floor.
It felt like the noise called attention to me, but from whom, I couldn’t say. Since the Christmas rush, we’d rarely passed a single soul on our walks.
The tapping was not keeping time with my steps.
I stopped walking.
A moment later, so did Hank. “What is it?”
The tapping noise continued. Every handful of taps, a scraping noise interrupted.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
He tilted his head like our old cocker spaniel and then nodded.
We looked around.
Taptaptaptaptap scraaaape.
Hank leaned on a dusty bench which faced an empty kiosk designed to look like a merchant’s cart.
Gray metal gates were pulled down over all the stores. Inside each one, the lights were out.
We’d stopped in front of the old Sharper Image. I used to love going in there and laughing at the high prices they demanded for such useless junk. It’d been so bright and slick in there. Now, matted dust covered the floor and the bare, shadowy shelves.
I pointed through the closed garage-door-style gate, with its grid of pinky-width metal bars. “It’s coming from in there.”
Something glistened on the floor. A mannequin head lay on its cheek, facing away from us.
A plastic arm attached seamlessly to the thing’s neck. Its plastic skin reflected the fluorescent lights of the main corridor, a shiny surface contrasting with dingy surroundings.
The mannequin head faced the Sharper Image’s back wall, for which I felt a deep gratitude. It wanted to look at me, to satiate some dark curiosity, and if it did I wouldn’t like the result. Yet with nightmare logic I expected it to roll over and open its plastic eyelids.