The Mall (6 page)

‘What the hell are they doing here?’ I say.

Dan doesn’t answer, but he must be thinking the same thing as me.
Someone brought them here deliberately
.

Far as I know we could be miles away from the mall. Not that I can imagine these particular mannequins being used by Truworths or any of the other chain fashion shops. There’s something
just…
wrong
about them.

It’s the heads that are the most disturbing. The majority seem to be attached to some sort of body, although there are a few severed ones in among the limbs. But disembodied or not, the
eyes all seem to be staring directly at us, like those portraits where the subject’s gaze follows you around the room. All of them have flat black irises and too-long eyelashes like wolf
spiders’ legs. And unlike the pouty blank expressions you see on the dolls displaying overpriced tat in the stores, none of them are smiling. With their too-wide eyes and slightly down-turned
lips, they seem to be gazing at us in despair, or (some part of my brain insists) pity. The grisly scene isn’t helped by the fact that the usual fluorescents have been exchanged for two naked
bulbs that hang from the ceiling, lazily swinging in opposite directions. One moment the tableau is lit almost too brightly, and has the look of an over-the-top art student project; the next
it’s a shadowy nightmare of twisted limbs and pseudo-suffering.

‘Fuck,’ Dan breathes. ‘I nearly had a heart attack. I thought they were real.’

I spot something at the end of the corridor – a familiar flash of green neon. The light bulb sweeps in its direction again.

Thank. Fucking. God.

‘Come on!’ I say, heading towards the body pile.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Climbing over them. What does it look like?’

‘No ways! Let’s just go back.’

‘Try and look past the plastic tits, Dan,’ I say. ‘We’re home and fucking dry.’

‘What are you…?’ His voice trails away as he catches sight of the exit sign.

The pile can’t be higher than a metre at the most, but the mannequins’ skin is ultra slippery, and as I climb up, their fingers snag on my clothing, almost as if they’re
deliberately slowing my progress. There’s also something awful about the way their skin feels; it’s warmer and clammier than I was expecting. I’m nearly at the top when one of the
dolls beneath me starts sliding backwards and my left hand reaches up reflexively to steady myself and lands on a small breast with a pert nipple. Next to me Dan’s having the same trouble. He
slips and grabs hold of a sculpted crotch. We glance at each other.

‘Shouldn’t you buy her a drink first?’ I say.

‘Nah,’ he fires back. ‘She’s a good Christian girl.’

Before I can stop myself, I’m giggling, and after a second or two, Dan joins in. I try to control the laughter, but it seems to be erupting from deep inside me, and tears are now streaming
down my cheeks.

Finally I manage to get myself under control. I take a deep breath, propel my body upwards and swing my legs over the pile. I slide down, narrowly avoiding being blinded by a curled finger.

My brief shriek escapes before I can stop it.

‘What is it?’ Dan calls, twisting his body and sliding down feet-first.

‘See for yourself.’

‘Fuck! Ugh!’

This is seriously sick. There are a couple of mannequins propped up against the wall next to the pile, but these aren’t as innocently naked as the others. One of them is strapped to a
wheelchair-like contraption, which has toppled over onto its side. Its handles are wrapped in barbed wire, and it’s only when I squeeze past it that I realise that the doll strapped into it
has no mouth, just a shiny blank nothingness. The other one is partially hidden in the shadows, but they’re not deep enough to conceal the chain looping around its neck, the rusted handcuffs
around its wrists, or the fact that its eyes have been gouged out, leaving gaping holes.

My phone beeps, and I scramble in my pocket.

‘You got a signal?’ he says hopefully.

I check my LCD screen, but the reception bars are still flat.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Just a message.’

‘So if there’s no reception, how did you receive it?’

‘How the fuck would I know?’

I click through and read it. prize and don’t forget to mention your free gift the gift of life oh yes LOL>

What the fuck? I pass my phone to him. He scans the message and then his own phone beeps. He pulls out his phone and stares at the screen, his eyes wide.

‘Well?’ I say.

He hands me his phone.

‘Huh?’

There’s the sound of cracking plastic, and I glance behind me. The doll pile is shifting; the bodies on the top starting to roll forwards as if someone (something?) on the other side is
trying to scramble upwards.

‘Go!’ Dan screams in my ear, shoving me forward so hard that I almost trip over my feet.

Before I’m really aware of what I’m doing, I’m sprinting towards the exit sign, vaguely aware that Dan is shrieking, ‘Nononononono!’ behind me. I slam my shoulder
into the door, but it’s too heavy to budge. Dan throws his body into mine and his added weight provides enough momentum for us to slip through. I have to grab onto a rusty banister to stop
myself from tumbling down the steep stairwell that stretches into the gloom in front of us. The door slams behind us, and both of us descend, taking the stairs two at a time.

We only start to falter as the light gradually fades. The stairwell bends to the right and leads down into inky darkness. Grasping the banister as tightly as I can, I start edging down the
stairs, one at a time. They’re getting narrower and steeper as we go, and several feel crumbly and shift beneath my feet. Both of us are breathing so heavily that it’s impossible to
tell if anything’s following us or not, but we haven’t heard the door banging again, which has to be a good sign.

The light has now faded completely and I wait for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. They don’t. The darkness around us is impenetrable.

‘I really don’t like this,’ Dan says.

I save my breath and don’t bother answering him. I creep further forward, now clutching the banister with both hands and moving down sideways like a crab. The air feels colder the deeper
we get, and reeks of urine and something else – a smoky, familiar odour.

Then I hear something echoing towards us through the walls.

I’m almost sure it’s the sound of voices.

I listen again, but this time there’s nothing but a faint mechanical whirring.

‘Come on,’ I say to him. ‘There’s someone down here.’ But how much further can we descend? There’s not much chance of us exiting into a street somewhere,
we’re way too low for that. Christ. Would the kid have come this way? We’ve been choosing our direction almost at random.

I increase my pace slightly, but then my foot hits empty air, and I have to cling to the banister to stop myself from plummeting forwards.

‘Dan! Stop!’ He bumps into me, and I struggle to regain my balance. ‘Just wait, you fuckwit!’

‘What’s going on?’ he whispers.

‘We’ve come to the end of the steps. There’s nothing in front of me.’

‘Huh? How come? It’s a concrete stairway.’

‘I don’t know! I’m just telling you how it is.’

Holding onto the edge of the banister I drop my leg down as far as I can and swing it around experimentally. Nothing.

‘Shit. Can you see the floor from there?’ he says.

‘Of course not. Hand me your phone.’

‘What?’

‘So I can use the light. Mine’s useless.’

His clothes rustle as he fumbles around, and then I feel the phone pressing into my palm. I shine the screen towards the darkness below me, but it’s way too dense for the light to have any
effect other than to illuminate the edge of the steps.

‘Keep as quiet as you can.’ I drop the knife down and hear it clank onto a solid surface less than a second later. ‘It’s not too far. Wait for me to get clear before you
drop.’

I sit on the last step and let my legs dangle over the edge. Counting to three, I jump forward into the gloom, praying that I won’t impale myself on anything sharp or break a limb. But I
land on both feet, stumbling forward with the momentum. My shoe knocks against something that skids away with a metallic clatter. Must be the knife. I reach down and feel across the floor’s
dusty, rough surface. My fingers close over the handle and something skitters over my hand. Something with too many legs.

‘Ugh!’

Dan lands heavily behind me. ‘What?’

‘Christ! I don’t know. Probably a spider or something.’

‘Ugh! I hate spiders.’

‘Look, shine your cellphone around again.’

He sighs as if I’m asking him to do something unreasonable, but finally does as he’s told. He flinches and knocks against me as several pairs of pinprick eyes glow back at us half a
metre from where we’re standing. The light snaps off.

‘Relax, Dan. Just rats.’

‘I hate rats!’

‘Listen.’ True enough there’s the sound of scuttling feet on concrete and something brushes over my shoe. ‘See? There had to be some somewhere.’

‘What now?’ he says.

‘I’m going to start moving forward.’ I reach across to my right and my fingers graze a brick wall. ‘Give me your hand.’ His palm feels clammy and hot and I hold it
as loosely as I can as we shuffle forward, using the wall as a guide. It starts to curve to the left, and then, bit by bit, I start to make out the details of our surroundings. It’s clear
that we’re in a low-ceilinged tunnel, and the more it curves, the lighter it becomes.

‘Light at the end of the tunnel,’ Dan says, burping out a giggle.

I drop his hand and start jogging towards the exit, ignoring the stitch in my side and the fact that my lungs feel like they’ve been napalmed. Dan shuffles up behind me.

It’s only a matter of metres before we reach the end of it.

‘Oh God,’ Dan says as we both stare out at the scene in front of us. ‘I can’t take much more of this.’

We’ve ended up in a vast area the size of an airplane hangar. The soot-caked brick walls instantly remind me of old disused London Underground stations – although there’s no
sign of a train. The ceiling is scored with ancient fluorescent lights, mostly broken or dim.

‘Hello?’ I call out. ‘Hello?’

‘What are you doing?’ Dan hisses. ‘We don’t know what kind of people are down here.’

‘At least we know there are people here,’ I say, pointing towards the fires flickering in the dented oil drums around us. The floor is covered with debris, old bundles of rags,
cardboard boxes and the occasional blackened mannequin and overturned shopping trolley. A couple of bloated, albino rats totter sluggishly away to our right and disappear behind a rusted structure
that might once have been a car. Although the ceiling is high and a faint cool breeze seems to be wafting in from somewhere, the stench of piss is thick in the air.

Dan stares up at the ceiling. ‘I think I know where we are,’ he says. But he’s not looking where he’s going. He stumbles over one of the rag bundles and, before I can
react, a scabby, filthy hand darts out from its depths and clasps his ankle.

chapter 6

DANIEL

Surely this isn’t real. You can’t feel this way for so long and still be living. It can’t be real. It’s a dream. I’ll wake up.

Wake up
.
Please wake up
.

Once again I’m cowering in a dark place, in fear for my life. Peering over the incomplete counter I’ve ducked behind, I make out a half-finished parking garage, rusted girders
sticking out of concrete columns, warped and battered scaffolding jacks holding up the ceiling. A wide sweeping arc of shopfronts funnelling into a food court. I’m holed up in what would have
been a restaurant with a romantic view over the parking lot.

Rhoda scoots next to me. For about ten seconds, I’d forgotten about her. It was a relief. I don’t want to be doing this with her. I want her out of my nightmare. I want to go home.
But she’s trailing me like a rabid dog. As long as she’s here it’s impossible to fool myself.

‘What the fuck are you doing running like that?’ she pants.

‘They were going to get me.’

‘Get you?’ she snorts. ‘I don’t think a posse of blind hobos is likely to “get” you.’

‘What? They’re not bli—’

But they are. The two men anyway. One of them yells out in our direction, but not exactly at us. His words are incomprehensible. I can feel his anger, though. A recognisable rage, in some
bizarre way more frightening than the terror of being chased by that screaming elephant thing.

The trio of rag-people mill around at the kerb of the parking lot, grumbling. They have a grey, mouldy sheen over their skin, like potatoes forgotten in the cupboard under the sink. The rags
that used to be their clothes have the same coating, so when they move, they look like parts of the concrete walls and floors shifting in chaotic patterns. They have grey eyes, too, mole-eyes
atrophying in the barely lit cavern. They must have lived here for years.

After all this running, I don’t know if I’m relieved or depressed or terrified to know that we’re still in Highgate bloody Mall. We must have been running around in circles for
hours. A few years ago there was talk about opening a new wing of the shopping centre. Working at the bookshop, we heard the subterranean thumping of jackhammers and mallets for a couple of months,
then the financial crisis hit and everything went quiet. Talk of the new wing just petered out as if it had never really happened.

Here we are. The new wing. I’m amazed they got this far and then just left it. But what’s weird is that this place should only be one level underground. We’re way lower than
that. There’s no hint of sunlight, or moonlight, or anything outside. I have no idea what time it is. My watch is broken and the cellphone seems to be fucked. Currently its time reads:
<27:79>.