"Peter And The Mannequins" Page 46

Grandfather swung his gun towards the source. Peter looked over to see the blinding beam of a flashlight. Behind it stood the silhouette of a man in a security guard’s outfit. As soon as he saw Grandfather’s shotgun, he cringed.

“W-wait, d-don’t shoot, PLEASE! I d-don’t want to die!”

“Is he one of them?” Grandfather whispered to Peter.

“No, he’s talking normal.”

“Yeah, the dummies talk like this,” Dill said, as he cupped his hands in a shell over his mouth and spoke in a surprisingly good imitation.

“Are you absolutely sure?” Grandfather growled.

Peter looked back towards the trembling man, and thought about how he could tell for sure.

“Shine the light in your face!” Peter shouted. “Let us see your eyes!”

“J-just – p-please d-don’t shoot me!” the high-pitched voice squeaked.

The security guard lifted the flashlight, which shook violently in his hand, and aimed it at his face, which was only half visible under his low-pulled security guard hat. His face was kind of weird-looking, but his skin was peach-colored and he had chattering teeth between his pink lips. The indisputable proof was the two eyes that glistened wetly in the light and darted back and forth between the boys, Grandfather, and the shotgun.

“He’s okay,” Peter sighed.

Grandfather pointed the gun at the floor and shouted at the guard. “Get a hold of yourself, son. There’s a killer in those tunnels – take these children and get them out of the mall, quick as you can. Then contact the sheriff’s department.”

The guard straightened up slowly and started walking over to Peter and Dill.

Peter looked back in surprise at Grandfather. “Wait – where are you going?”

Grandfather strode back towards the double doors. “I have to finish something, boy.”

Peter grabbed onto Grandfather’s jacket. “You can’t leave us!”

“I have to. Or have you forgotten that other guard down there?”

Peter stared up at Grandfather. “That’s not why you’re going.”

Grandfather didn’t say anything.

“What if more mannequins show up and grab us before we get out?” Peter asked in a panic.

Grandfather pointed into the darkness. Two hundred feet away, moonlight glowed through glass doors partially obscured by racks of clothing.

“You just have to make it over there.” Then Grandfather jerked a thumb at the guard. “If he’s been walking around without a problem, I think you can get that far.”

Peter looked over, straight into the blinding flashlight beam. The guard was only a couple of feet away now.

“Get them out of the mall,” Grandfather instructed the guard, then turned back to the double doors with his shotgun raised.

The guard placed a hand on Peter’s shoulder.

“NO! Get your hands OFF me!”

Peter slapped away the man’s hands as he tried to take hold of him.

“You can’t do this!” Peter shouted at his grandfather. He reached out his arms to grab his grandfather’s coat –

– and stopped cold.

The arm of Peter’s jacket was smeared with pink dust.

The same shade as the guard’s peach-colored skin.

He looked up at the security guard, whose frightened eyes peered down into Peter’s own.

“I’m sorry,” the guard whispered, just as his hands slammed around Peter’s throat.

Peter tried to break the man’s terrible grip, but his fingers slipped over the guard’s too-slick skin. In horror he saw the makeup wipe away from the grown man’s hands. Silver glinted where the dust had rubbed off.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" Page 45

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!” Grimoire screamed, then fell to his knees and scampered backwards. “NO, DO NOT – PLEASE – I BEG OF YOU!” the inhuman face howled as he clutched the hollow, pipe-like shell of his forearm.

Grandfather stumbled to his feet. Whether it was out of pity for the creature, or a repulsion at pulling the trigger in cold blood, Grandfather didn’t fire the gun again.

“Boys,” he whispered hoarsely.

Peter and Dill ran over behind him.

“Go up the stairs, walk ahead of me, and tell me if someone tries to stop us,” Grandfather instructed.

Peter led the way, expecting every twist and turn of the tunnels to be filled with more monstrosities…but instead, the halls were deserted.

Peter and Dill led the way. Grandfather followed them, walking backwards, with his gun pointed into the darkness from which they’d come.

None of the mannequins followed them.

“How did you find us?” Peter marveled.

“I followed the drops of water from the fountain,” Grandfather said gruffly. “Now tell me what the hell is going on here.”

Peter stared at his Grandfather. For the first time, Peter was seeing him up close in the heat of battle. He had always thought of the old man as steely and cold, with no weaknesses at all, but he was surprised to see the slight tremble in the old hands, the beads of sweat trickling down the wrinkles in his skin.

He was still powerful, but he no longer looked invincible.

Which scared Peter almost as much as the thought of the mannequins attacking again.

Dill didn’t seem quite so bothered, and started to chatter away. “Dude, that melty silvery guy, his name is Grim-somethin’, I think he wants to take over the world, man.”

Grandfather stared at Dill, then looked at Peter for confirmation.

“It’s true,” Peter agreed. “He’s got most of the mannequins on his side. And he kept calling me the Destroyer.”

Grandfather stopped walking and turned around in shock. “He did what?”

Peter frowned. “Why, do you know what he meant? Because the woman in the ball gown called you the Destroyer, too.”

Grandfather started walking, and motioned Peter and Dill to do the same. “What woman?”

Peter told him of the mysterious woman in the ball gown, how she had tried to help him escape three times, and how the security guard had been turned into a silver monster over the boiling vat of plastic.

“Just like a peanut M&M,” Dill explained.

“You read all those books, and you knew about the vampires and the dead guys and the swamp monster – why didn’t you tell us there were killer mannequins at the mall?” Peter asked angrily.

“There’s a precedent for this sort of thing,” Grandfather muttered, “but they were always wood before.”

“Huh?”

“Later, boy,” Grandfather growled. “Now stand aside.”

They had reached the end of the concrete maze. Grandfather pushed aside the double doors and walked out into the dark of the Brooklines Department Store.

A rather timid, high-pitched voice – but a human voice – called off from the side, “H-hey, what are you p-people doing?”

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"Peter And The Mannequins" Page 44

“Why are you doing this?” Peter demanded.

“Because not all of our kind are violent. Most are just frightened and angry. Even most of Grimoire’s followers are just stupid and confused, not evil. Remember this, and explain to the Destroyer,” the female mannequin said.

“Destroyer?”

The woman pointed towards Grandfather, who fired off another two blasts at oncoming dummies stupid enough to charge him.

BOOM BOOM!

Slivers of plastic rained on the cement of the upper level.

“He’s the Destroyer?” Peter asked in wonder. “I thought I was the Destroyer!”

The woman didn’t answer as she finished unbinding Peter, then pushed him towards Grandfather. “Go!”

“But Dill!” Peter protested.

She pointed to the left, where several dummies on the upper level were shielding Dill’s body from the stampede around them. Two others were untying the ropes on his hands and ankles.

“You see? He is free – now GO!”

BOOM! BOOM! rang out behind Peter, then the clatter of broken plastic on cement.

“But what about – ”

“GO!” the mannequin insisted.

Peter raced up the seven steps to the upper level, where he hooked Dill’s elbow and dragged him through the crowd of fleeing dummies.

“Man, this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” Dill shouted above the noise.

“Weirder than swamp monsters or vampires?”

“I don’t want to AAAAAAAH!” Dill screamed as a running pair of legs bumped him and scuttled by.

“GRANDFATHER!” Peter yelled, and the old man looked over. Most of the mannequins were in retreat, but he was still keeping several of the more persistent ones at bay by waving his shotgun threateningly in their direction.

“Stay there, boy, and I’ll come get you,” Grandfather ordered.

Like it was emerging from the surface of a lake, Grimoire’s face appeared from the shadows behind Grandfather. The monster flung out his arms and leaped forward.

“BEHIND YOU!” Peter screamed.

The old man turned just as the silver body slammed into him. Both of them toppled to the floor, with Grimoire trying to wrest the gun away.

Grandfather let him take it, almost as though he just gave up.

“Well, that was the lamest rescue I’ve ever heard of,” murmured Dill.

Grimoire stood up, aimed the gun at Grandfather’s head, and pulled the trigger.

“NOOOOO!” Peter screamed.

Click.

Nothing happened.

As Grimoire looked down at the empty gun in surprise, Grandfather sat up and grabbed the second shotgun slung across his back. The mannequin had enough time to put out one arm in a feeble effort to shield himself.

BLAM!

The monster’s ragged claw of a hand disappeared in a spray of plastic bits.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 43

“PREPARE THE BOY!” Grimoire hollered.

The ten mannequins moved into place around Peter, their arms outstretched to tear off his clothes.

That was when the gunshot went off.

BOOM!

The sound thundered from somewhere up above, then echoed over and over in the dark tunnels of the basement. All heads looked up – Peter’s in hope, and the mannequins in shock and fear.

“Go see what that is, and kill anyone who tries to stop you!” Grimoire demanded. The mannequins closest to the sliding metal doorway looked at the darkness in the hall, then glanced uncertainly back at Grimoire.

“GO!” he shouted.

One of the more evil-looking mannequins raced out of the room. Peter recognized him as the fiend who had grabbed him at the fountain and threatened his mother.

When he returned two seconds later, Peter didn’t recognize him anymore.

There was another loud BOOM! and the evil mannequin’s body flew back through the doorway in a dozen shattered pieces.

From out of the darkness stepped Grandfather, shotgun in hand, another holstered on his back, and a bandolier of red cartridges slung in an ‘X’ across his chest.

“PETER!” he yelled.

“GRANDFATHER!” Peter howled back.

“DUDE!” Dill whooped.

“ATTAAAAAAACK!” Grimoire screamed.

More mannequins leaped forward into the fray. Grandfather fired once, twice, three times, and dummy after dummy splintered into dozens of plastic fragments.

As soon as the mannequins saw that, they started running every which way but towards the old man. The room dissolved into chaos, with hundreds of armless torsos and blue jean-wearing legs all trying to get away as quickly as possible. Most jumped from the upper level to the lower; some brushed past Peter’s dangling body before disappearing into the shadows.

A pair of plastic hands gripped Peter from behind.

“NO! STOP! STOP IT!” he screamed.

“Stop struggling and be quiet,” a familiar female voice snapped.

Suddenly the chain rattled and Peter was being let down, several feet away from the swirling vat of molten plastic. As soon as his feet touched the ground, Peter turned and came face to face with the kneeling woman in the blue ball gown.

“You!” he breathed in wonder.

“Give me your hands,” she commanded, and roughly pulled his arms to her. With several deft loop-de-loops, she unwound the chain from the plastic bands around his wrists.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 42

Grimoire motioned to two nearby mannequins. “Take my brother in the back to recover. Soon, Grenaire, our entire family will join you.”

The smooth-faced silver mannequin nodded, and the other two dummies escorted him into the shadows behind the furnace.

Grimoire turned back to Peter and Dill. “And now for you.”

“Uh, this is a bad idea,” Peter countered. “We’re pretty short, I don’t think your brother…or sister would fit on us.”

“We are hollow inside,” Grimoire smiled grotesquely. “The skin may be thicker, but you will do nicely.”

“I don’t wanna be a girl,” Dill whined.

“QUIET!” Grimoire roared, then turned back to the ten mannequins. “Prepare the Destroyer first,” he smirked.

“NO!” Peter screamed as plastic hands grabbed him and bore him towards the vat.

“It is ironic, is it not?” Grimoire sneered. “The Destroyer, forced against his will to destroy his own!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I promise you, I won’t destroy anybody!” Peter shrieked as they circled the chain around and around the plastic straps already binding his wrists. “I’ll leave you alone, you can have this mall, we’ll totally leave you alone!”

“I shall have this land, and every other beyond!” Grimoire crowed. “Every human that ventures into our lands shall be enslaved or slain – there is no other alternative! RAISE HIM!”

The mannequins yanked on the chain and lifted Peter up into the air. His wrists and arm sockets flared with pain as he dangled midair.

“BRING OUT GRINOULLE!” Grimoire commanded.

There was a squeaking from the shadows as two more pretty, female mannequins emerged pushing a cart. On it was another body, flat as a cracker, with its face a horrible puddle of shadows.

“Dill, if you can do anything, I’d really appreciate it!” Peter cried out.

“Dude, I would if I could, but I can’t!” Dill whined back.

“Oh crap,” Peter whispered.

“Are you ready, sister?” Grimoire asked the silver body on the cart.

“Yessss…” hissed the flattened face.

“PLACE HER IN THE CHAMBER!”

The mannequins bore the plastic sheet aloft and tossed it into the vat. Dark plastic liquid splashed all around.

From where he hung midair, Peter had the perfect view of what followed – if perfect was the right word for a bloodcurdling sight.

The first thing was the scream. From the gaping mouth came a wail that made every hair on Peter’s neck stand up.

The silver body began to melt and ooze, and the stiff limbs spread out like waffle batter on a griddle. The blistered, wax-dripped face smoothed out in a pool of silver. The hard outlines of the body softened into a shifting blob of liquid.

And then the liquid began to move.

It swirled around and around, like bathwater going down the drain, until it formed into a circle. Out of the center rose a worm-like appendage that squirmed and quivered in the air.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 41

Grimoire cackled gleefully. “BROTHER, COME FORTH!”

As if on cue, a silver tendril reached up from within the vat. It looked like a tiny octopus arm, slowly weaving and snaking through the air.

It touched the foot of the guard, who screamed and tried to kick it away.

Instead, the tentacle splattered all across his foot and began to encase it in shining silver. The plastic began creeping up the guard’s calf, then his knee, and further up his thigh. Tiny vines of the stuff branched out into the air and grabbed hold of his other leg, then began to spill over his skin like syrup pouring from a bottle.

“Oh my God,” Dill whispered. “It’s just like TERMINATOR 2.”

The liquid encased both the guard’s legs in a shining, flawless shell, bright and reflective as mercury. Below him, the tendril from the vat grew fatter and fatter as more and more plastic rose up to cover the guard. The shell came faster and faster, up his waist, over his belly, across his chest. The guard wasn’t screaming anymore. He was silent with horror as he watched the advancing wave swallow up his skin, reach his neck, then slowly engulf his jaw.

“NOgghhhhhwghhhhhhh,” he gurgled as the silver mass filled his mouth.

His eyes were the last part of his body to show his terror, until they, too, were covered by the advancing silver tide.

His red hair disappeared under the reflective pool. The last of the mirror-like liquid dripped upwards from the vat, as though in angry defiance of gravity, and disappeared into the metallic skin covering the guard.

All that was left was a silver figure dangling from chains.

The thing’s dark, shadowy eyes raised up and looked at Grimoire, and the mouth opened, though it barely moved as the figure spoke.

“Brother.”

Grimoire howled with delight. “Grenaire, you are now REBORN!”

The ten mannequins pushed the figure from over the vat until it hung above the floor. Then they loosened the chain, which clanked and clattered as the silver body slowly lowered to the ground. Its feet touched cement, and its arms lowered as the chain slackened.

“You killed him,” Peter said in disbelief.

“You mean the human inside? No, far worse. He is alive, and will remain that way – forever. The energy of my brother’s spirit will keep him alive, yet he is powerless to move – exactly the way you left me, Destroyer, at the bottom of the pit. He will remain imprisoned forever inside my brother’s body, the better to savor his eternal punishment: the memory of every human he will watch die at his hand, unable to do anything to stop it.”

Grimoire walked over to the newly formed mannequin and placed his distorted arm on its shoulder.

“Well, brother…are you ready to conquer the world?”

“When do we start?” wheezed the new creation.

Grimoire chuckled mercilessly as he turned back to Peter and Dill. “Just as soon as we have raised two more of our sisters and brothers.”

“Oh crap,” Dill moaned.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 40

Grimoire ignored them and clapped his hands twice. “BRING FORTH MY BROTHER!”

From somewhere behind the furnace came the sound of squeaking wheels. Peter waited with dread as the creaking became louder and louder, until finally, two beautiful female mannequins pushed a metal cart out of the shadows of the lower level.

On it lay a body with arms, legs, and head – but flat as a pancake. It had Grimoire’s silver skin and blistered, melted look, but its shape was like a beach ball that someone had deflated. Instead of eight or nine inches, the body was one inch high at the most. And everything was wider than it should have been, like a piece of caramel that oozes out as it melts. The entire mess lay fused in a giant puddle of hardened plastic, unmoving and immobile.

But it was alive.

“Grimoooooiiiiire…” it hissed.

Peter recoiled in horror, but bumped against the dummy behind him. There was no escape.

Grimoire dragged his foot as he moved to the cart and stooped over. “Grenaire. Brother.”

“…will I be able to walk again?” the words seeped out from the unmoving mouth.

“Not only walk, but you will help me destroy the humans. There will be pain, though, brother…great pain.”

“…no matter…begiiiiiin…”

“PLACE HIM IN THE CHAMBER!” Grimoire howled.

Several mannequins descended the steps to the lower level and lifted the stiff, flat body as though they were carrying a sheet of plywood. They propped it on the edge of the vat – and then let go.

The silver plank slid into the vat, sloshing dark liquid up the side of the container. Some of the spatter oozed back down, but most of it hardened in place where it touched.

Peter realized in horror what he had just seen.

Plastic. The vat was full of molten plastic.

There was a hissing sound from the vat, then screaming.

“GRIIMMMOOOOIIIIIRE!” a voice shrieked from inside.

Peter’s skin crawled. He tried to edge as far away from the noise as possible.

“COURAGE, BROTHER!” Grimoire shouted back. Then he pointed his twisted claw at his servants. “Place the human!”

The mannequins pushed the guard as though they were moving a side of beef hanging in a slaughterhouse. The pulley in the ceiling moved along a kind of sliding track, and the dummies on the lower level slid the guard into place two feet above the vat. He kicked his feet above the boiling liquid, trying to keep them as far as possible from the bubbling, tar-like surface.

“NO! STOP! PLEASE, STOP – I’LL DO ANYTHING YOU WANT!” he cried. “JUST STOP!”

“Please, stop it! Don’t hurt him!” Peter howled.

“Dudes, this is messed UP!” Dill shouted.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 39

“Today, though, brings an end to their rein. Today, my brothers and sisters return…today, I GET MY REVENGE.”

A cheer went up from the crowd. Peter’s initial fear of the mannequins having come to life now seemed remote and small compared to this new terror – the bloodthirsty language of the speech and the enthusiasm from the dummies in the crowd. It was crazy talk, and they were eating it up.

Peter looked around the blank faces (where there were faces) and noticed one figure in the very back – the woman in the blue dress. She stood in the shadows, behind the rest of the crowd. Of all the mannequins, she looked like the only one who was not enthralled by the speech. When the others raised their arms to cheer Grimoire on, she kept hers close to her side.

Peter squeaked out, “Please…I know what those people did to you was really, really bad, and I’m sorry it happened…but please…please don’t kill us.”

“KILL you, Destroyer? I’m not going to KILL you. That would make my revenge too short…your misery too brief.” Grimoire chortled. “I want your pain to last a thousand times longer than mine. I’m going to make you…into one of us.”

Peter gulped. “One…of us?”

Grimoire snapped his fingers, the ones on his good hand. It sounded like someone tapping hollow plastic sticks together.

Immediately ten dummies descended on the guard and hoisted him to his feet, still unconscious and limp as a rag doll. His cap fell to the floor. The mannequins pulled off his jacket, bound his wrists in chains, and then dragged him to a break in the railing at the edge of the upper level. There was a pulley up above in the ceiling; one of the mannequins reached up and looped the chain over the pulley.

The guard looked like he was regaining consciousness. His eyes fluttered, and he shook his head a little as it drooped down onto his chest.

“PREPARE THE HUMAN!” Grimoire bellowed, and the ten dummies pulled on the chain. It clanked and clattered over the pulley, hoisting the guard up into the air with his arms stretched over his head. His feet dangled above the cement.

Grimoire turned his face towards Peter, mostly the half that was melted beyond recognition. “Behold your OWN fate, Destroyer. PEEL HIM!” he screamed at the ten mannequins.

The guard was awake now, and he looked around the room in stupefied horror.

“Wh…what…?” he stammered.

The mannequins surrounding the guard grabbed at his clothes and ripped them away. First they plucked off his shoes, belt, and clip-on tie. His shirt tore apart in seconds, followed by his pants.

“STOP! STOP IT!” he screamed.

When they were done, the guard hung there in his boxer shorts and black socks, kicking his legs furtively, trying to ward off any more attacks from his tormentors.

“Leave him alone!” Peter wailed.

“Yeah, cut it OUT!” Dill shouted.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 38

For a second, Peter’s confusion overwhelmed his panic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Lift them up.”

The dummies nearest Dill and Peter raised them to a standing position. With the extra height of the second level, they now were looking down at Grimoire instead of up.

“Just like last time, you have brought your followers to do violence against my people. But you have grown overconfident. Last time you brought dozens; this time, only one.”

“Who are you talking – what, you mean Dill?!” Peter asked in amazement.

“Hey, man,” Dill snapped, “I ain’t his follower.”

Grimoire pointed a melted, talon-like finger. “SILENCE!”

“Okay,” Dill whimpered.

Grimoire turned back to Peter. “You left me for dead, Destroyer, as you did my brothers and sister. But Grimoire is strong. You should have finished your handiwork; you will pay dearly for your arrogance.”

Peter tried to contain his fear. “Um, I’m…I’m really sorry, but I think you’ve got me confused with somebody else.”

The scarred figure turned dramatically to the other mannequins, causing its cape to whip through the air. “Do you hear his lies?! He acts as though he does not know me! As though he does not know YOU!”

Grimoire faced Peter again. “But I know you, Destroyer. I remember you burning me – just as I burned here, in this strange prison you constructed! The jailers you hired kept us here, unable to move, clothed in their foolish garb, posed at their whim…my family were their slaves, and when they tired of my family, they discarded us. But did they throw us on the trash heap to die a peaceful death? NO. First they bound us and stacked us by the fire machine …” The mannequin pointed to the giant steel furnace. “And there they left us! FORGOT us! But they will NEVER forget us again.”

A cheer erupted from the crowd. Grimoire raised one wilted hand, and the noise subsided.

“This was before we broke your foul spell, before our strength returned, before we could have saved ourselves. Instead, we waited for our doom, unable to move, unable to escape the fire machine’s torturous heat. I was the furthest away, and so I watched my brothers and sisters melt first. I watched their faces, day by day, as they warped and blistered and slowly distorted. I was at the bottom of the pile of bodies, and I heard their screams every day, every night. And the heat burned me – BURNED me! Melted and scarred me!”

He lifted his mutilated left arm. The hand was a twisted claw of molten plastic, now cooled into a hardened mass of hook-like fingers.

“For months I suffered, forgotten by the humans. And then…then my strength returned. The Great Spirit heard my silent cries. He knew the hate that burned in my soul! He knew the rage that filled my heart! And he granted me – granted all of us! – the power to move my limbs again, to rise up and kill the humans that had tortured my brothers and sisters with their stupid, careless cruelty.”

Peter watched his reflection in the mannequin’s silver face and fought down a rising wave of terror. He had never met an honest-to-gosh crazy person before, so he had no idea how they really acted…but if what he had seen on television shows was any indication, Grimoire was insane. He was like a deranged actor in a hideous play, switching from whisper to scream on a dime. And the stuff about the Great Spirit and his ‘strength’ returning…every time Grimoire said something about them, Peter got a chill up and down his back. It was like a secret, ugly and dark, that Peter wished he’d never heard – even though he had no idea what the mannequin was talking about.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 37

The dummies carrying Peter and Dill dropped them carelessly to the floor. Peter oofed quietly; Dill was a bit more vocal about it.

“Hey!” he yelled. “If you’re going to eat me, at least take care of your food!”

“Quiet,” the spokesman dummy intoned wearily. He must have been tired of saying it.

“NO!” Dill snapped. “No, I will NOT be quiet, I’m tired of this crap and I – ”

The beefy mannequins who had been carrying the pole all smacked Dill on the head at the same time.

“OKAY, OKAY!” Dill howled. “Ow, ow, owwww…”

Peter looked around the room at the army of full-sized mannequins, headless mannequins, legs-only mannequins, heads-only mannequins, and everything in between. He was searching for the woman in the blue ball dress, but since he was sitting on the floor, he couldn’t see much but a forest of legs.

One thing that struck him, though, was how much the group looked like a tribal council from some nightmare reality show, as the glow of gaslight bounced off their vacant faces. Or maybe it was one of those black-and-white war movies, where the soldiers stood in the dark, listening to a man yell and shout from a podium…

“The master comes,” a dummy announced from somewhere nearby, and all 300 mannequins immediately straightened up, their plastic legs clicking in unison.

Silence gripped the room, softened only by the hissing gas beneath the vat. Then came the sound of a footstep…and a scraping noise across the cement. Footstep…scrape. Footstep, scrape. From behind the giant furnace, a large mannequin walked into view. It stood over six feet tall and wore a black cape over its otherwise naked body. Except the skin was silver and shiny like a mirror…where it was undamaged. One whole side of the mannequin, from the bald head down to the right foot, was warped and blistered and melted. It looked like a candle allowed to burn until all that was left was ragged, dripping wax.

The good side of the face was scary enough to look at. The eye was essentially a deep, black shadow, and the parted lips turned into a sneer that was pulled and distorted by the scarring on the right side of the head. But the melted part of the face…the right eye-hole was almost an inch lower than the other eye socket. The lips fell away in a mutilated scream, and skull blended into neck with almost no difference between the two.

The horrific vision walked over to the floor of the second level, which came up to its chest. Even then, the mannequin was so tall that it looked down at Peter lying on the floor. When it spoke, its voice rumbled like distant thunder.

“I am Grimoire, ruler of my people. You…are my prisoner.”

Peter mouthed the name: Grim-war. It felt scary saying it even without making a sound.

“It has been a long time, Destroyer. A long time indeed.”

Peter frowned. “Huh?”

“Do not insult me. Somehow you have changed your shape, just as you have enchanted the forest around us…but I see through your magic, Destroyer. I would know you anywhere.”

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 36

Peter looked over to the side as he swayed back and forth. The security guard was down there on the ground, eyes closed, slowly being dragged across the tile floor. He had apparently been too heavy to carry, so they had tied his feet to the toy SUV. A childlike dummy drove the automobile and dragged the unconscious man slowly behind it.

Other than their rebukes to Dill, the mannequins never spoke another word; they were content to just carry (and drag) their three victims back to Brooklines Department Store. Once they passed the still-open gates, they journeyed through the dark to the men’s department, where they pushed open a double door and continued down a dimly lit concrete corridor.

They were on the first floor, but Peter noticed that they kept going down. Down one ramp, then another, then down a flight of cement stairs (where the dummies had to carry the SUV and the unconscious guard), until they were underground, Peter was sure of it.

Finally they came to a giant, metal sliding door. The dummies slowly pushed it back, creaking and groaning, and Peter was hit with a wave of air so hot and dry that it seemed to suck the moisture from his dripping clothes and hair. He looked around, and saw that they were now in a dark, giant room with two levels: an upper level filled with lots of big pipes twisting into the ceiling and the walls, and a lower one that was mostly hidden in darkness. The upper level was about four feet above the first, and had a metal railing sunk into the concrete so no one would fall over the edge and break their neck.

Peter hoped that the four-foot drop was the most dangerous thing in the room… but didn’t believe it.

As the procession marched on, he saw a sign on the wall, barely visible in the gloom: BOILER ROOM SAFETY PROCEDURES, followed by a list of unreadable lines.

Apparently Dill saw it, too, because he started howling hysterically. “Don’t boil me man, don’t eat me, I taste awful, I’m little and scrawny and there’s not any meat on me, I’ll give you a stomachache, don’t eat me, man!”

“QUIET!” the mannequin roared as he smacked Dill upside the head.

Though he didn’t say anything on the outside like Dill, Peter was screaming just as loud on the inside as they approached the metal railing: Oh my God, they really are going to put us in a pot and cook us!

It wasn’t exactly a pot, but a rectangular vat sat in the middle of the enormous lower level. Underneath the vat was a bed of some kind of gas tanks, the kind you would find in the barbecue grilling section of a department store. It looked like somebody had torn apart about ten outdoor grills and arranged their guts on the floor, and now a steady stream of blue flame hissed underneath the metal container.

Something bubbled within, in faint bloops and plops, but it must have been deep down in the bottom. The top of the vat was completely empty.

Peter felt like an invisible hand was plucking a piano string inside him, but instead of sound it was panic that rang out, getting higher and higher in pitch by the second.

On the left wall of the lower level was a giant metal structure, a huge iron box twenty feet long that stretched from floor to ceiling. Intense heat radiated out of it. There was a metal hatch in it about three feet from the ground, and Peter could see flickers of flame glowing out through the cracks. He guessed it was a furnace of some sort, though he couldn’t be sure. Maybe it even heated the department store.

The hundreds of mannequins lined up in a semicircle on the upper level, all of them facing the bubbling vat. They made a bit of space for the pole carriers and the toy SUV, which whirred to a halt. Behind it, the guard stopped sliding over the concrete and came to a rest. He was still out cold. One of the dummies dropped the guard’s hat on his chest, which somehow made it look like the man was just taking a short nap, even if his legs were tied to the SUV.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 35

Peter’s actions had exactly the opposite effect he intended. The guard, hearing his voice, ran at full speed towards the fountain.

“Kid? Where are you?” he yelled.

Peter didn’t get a chance to say anything else. It didn’t matter, because seconds later, the mannequins swarmed the guard.

He screamed at first, and tried to use his flashlight to beat them away, but he was down on the ground within seconds.

“Fool,” the dummy whispered in Peter’s ear.

Despite himself, Peter couldn’t help but agree.

***

Despite having a limited vocabulary, the dummies were ingenious. They cut down a small tree from one of the forest areas (one that Peter had probably watered and dusted earlier that day). Then they tied the boys’ hands and feet around the pole with shirts the mannequins took off their own backs. Several of the bigger dummies heaved the ends of the tree up onto their shoulders, and Peter and Dill swung back and forth like wet, dripping pigs as the mannequins carried them through the mall. Around them, hundreds of their brethren marched along silently.

Once he realized what was going on, Dill suddenly became inappropriately cheerful. “Dude, this is totally like a movie where the jungle people take guys back to put them in a pot!”

“Dill, this isn’t a movie!” Peter whispered roughly.

“I know that,” Dill said in an annoyed voice, then brightened. “Or a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I think I saw one where Daffy – ”

“It isn’t a cartoon, either, Dill!”

“I know that! Or that STAR WARS movie where the Ewoks took Luke Skywalker and Han Solo – ”

“DILL!” Peter snapped. “Think about it! Why do they put people in the pot?”

Dill looked back blankly.

“Because they BOIL them!” Peter hissed, then looked around furtively, a little afraid that he might have given the mannequins ideas.

“Why?”

“To eat them!”

Dill’s mouth opened in a shocked little ‘o’ shape – and then he looked out of the corner of his eyes like, Ah-ha-ha-haaaa, you almost got me. “Nunh-unh. They don’t ever eat them in the movies.”

“That’s because somebody saves them! Tarzan shows up, or Mighty Mouse flies in, or Luke has Jedi powers, or whatever! But I don’t see anybody here to save us, and I don’t have Jedi powers, so unless you do, shut up!”

Dill was silent for a second…and then howled up at the nearest mannequin, “Don’t eat me, dude!”

“Quiet,” the mannequin said.

“I taste bad, dude! DON’T EAT ME!”

“QUIET!” the mannequin commanded as he poked Dill roughly in the side.

“But I don’t wanna be cooked,” Dill whimpered.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 34

From where his head was pinned against the wet tile floor, Peter could see a hundred feet down the exit hallway. There, by the S&C Cafeteria, his mother pressed her hands against the glass. A man in a dark blue guard’s suit stood next to her, tugging at her arm, trying to pull her away from the door.

“If you make a noise, we will take them, too,” the hollow voice whispered in his ear. “If you are quiet, we will let them be.”

Peter strained his eyes.

Can she see me?

The mall was dark here by the fountain. He doubted if she could, not from outside.

Their talk sounded like it was miles away, far behind a thick plexiglass wall.

“Come on, ma’am, let’s go.”

“But I heard something, I know I did!”

His urge to scream and his fear for his mother waged a terrible war inside him.

He remembered another time, when a 10 year-old vampire floated up the stairwell and threatened to take his sister Beth. Then he had been able to at least run up the stairs and offer himself in her place. Here, he could do nothing…except do nothing.

“You have to let me in!” Peter’s mother cried.

“Ma’am, you have no idea if he’s even still in there,” the guard replied.

“But I heard something! PETER? PETER!”

The guard pulled his mother away from the glass and pushed her back towards the parking lot.

“I told you, go get the sheriff’s department, and I can let them in. And in the meantime I’ve got your number, so if anything comes up, I promise I’ll call. But I can’t let you in there, ma’am; management’d have my head for sure.”

“But my son – ”

“Probably ain’t even in there, ma’am,” the guard explained with incredible patience. “Go to the sheriff’s – or better yet, go home. He’s a ten year-old boy, they tend to get into mischief and never call home. I’ll make my rounds, and if I find anything, you’ll be the first one I phone.”

“Quiet,” the voice above Peter threatened.

“PETER,” she called out one more time, sounding even sadder and more lost than ever.

Mom! he wanted to shout, but kept quiet.

His mother and the guard exchanged a few more words, and then she was gone.

“Goood,” the mannequin above him whispered. “Keep still.”

The guard, though, didn’t leave. Peter watched as he fumbled with his keys, then unlocked one of the doors and closed it behind him. Peter could hear his feet clicking against the tile. The man shone his flashlight into the darkness, a lone, weak little beam.

“Hello?” called the guard.

Peter’s eyes darted around. A group of mannequins were pressed up against the shops just around the corner from the guard.

The man kept walking closer and closer. Peter could see him better now – red hair, a boyish face. He was totally unaware of what lay waiting for him just ten feet away.

His mother was gone…there was nothing they could do to her, right? And the guard was going to get jumped any second.

“GET OUT OF HERE!” Peter screamed. “RUN!”

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 33

They were quickly approaching the fountain and the hallway to the exit. It would be simple: Peter would ram a door with the SUV, the glass would break, and they would escape to the outside world. Easy.

Then something absolutely unforeseen happened: he heard his named called out.

“PETER!”

It was muffled and far away, as though shouted through the world’s longest cardboard tube, but it was loud enough to be heard over the whine of the SUV’s engine. And he knew the voice.

It was his mother’s.

The distraction was all it took. He didn’t see the mannequins on the second floor, and he didn’t see as they cocked back their arms and threw a dozen objects through the air. He did see the oval shapes as they smacked into the floor thump thump thump in front of the SUV, but what they were didn’t register until one bounced off the steering wheel and into his lap.

It was a woman’s head.

Short blonde hair, pink eye shadow, and long black lashes.

He freaked out.

He might have used a mannequin’s skull to break into the toy shop just minutes before, but he had chosen to do that. He had seen it, picked it up, planned it. This…this was a horrible shock. If the mannequins had dumped a snake in his lap or a bagful of roaches, that wouldn’t have freaked him out as much.

Especially when the head screamed at him with its unmoving lips, “STOP!”

“AAAAAAAAAAH!” he howled, and took his hands off the wheel as he tried frantically to swat her away. Within seconds he had scooped her up and thrown her out, but by the time he looked up, it was too late. The SUV was heading directly for the fountain.

CRASH!

The toy SUV slammed into the stone wall and immediately stopped.

Peter and Dill didn’t. They both somersaulted over the steering wheel and into the cold water. As he hit bottom, Peter could feel coins sliding beneath his hands and knees.

No! No no no No NO! We were so close –

Peter came up spluttering and coughing, and immediately felt hands grab him by the neck and hoist him out of the water. Within seconds he had been flung belly down on the cold tile floor. Steady pressure forced down on the back of his neck, arms, and legs, as though he were being held down by an assailant…or perhaps several. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move.

He tried to blink away the water in his eyes, but could still see only blurry shapes. Around him was the sound of dozens of footsteps.

“Dill?” he coughed.

“I’m here!” came a strangled voice somewhere behind him.

Hard plastic hands covered Peter’s mouth.

“Quiet,” a hollow, alien voice whispered in his ear.

Somewhere off to his side, he could hear his mother’s voice again. Peter blinked his eyes until his vision started to clear.

“Wait, come back! Didn’t you hear that?” his mom cried out.

“Ma’am,” a man’s voice said, tired and annoyed, “for the tenth time, I can’t let you in.”

“No, really, I heard something – some kind of crashing noise!”

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 32

Peter headed directly into the pack of mannequins, aiming through them and for the door. He hunched his head down behind the steering wheel a split second before the SUV slammed into the lead dummy.

It was like bowling, and the SUV was the ball. As it slammed into all those plastic legs, they went flying like pins. One dummy after another flew into the air, tossed aside by the rampaging toy truck. They seemed genuinely surprised as their heels flew over their heads. Though their expressions were fixed, their big, vacant eyes seemed to be saying, Wait, weren’t we the ones who were attacking him?

As Peter plowed through them, he waited for something to go wrong. At any second the SUV would stop, or break, or simply meet a barrier it couldn’t punch through, and they would snatch him up and pile on top of him and do God knows what horrible things –

And then he was through, past the mannequins and out into the mall. He whooped out loud with joy, then immediately turned right and headed for the hallway where they had ambushed Dill.

He reached it within fifteen seconds. For a brief instant he thought about turning into the corridor and escaping – but only for an instant. Then he focused his gaze on the open spaces of the dark, cavernous mall as the hallway sped by on his right, the fountain on his left.

Gotta save Dill.

There they were up ahead, a dozen mannequins in a tightly bunched pack. Their arms stretched up in the air, bearing Dill overhead like a bunch of surfers carrying a single board. He was squirming and twisting, trying to break free, but each mannequin’s hand held a different part of his body – wrist, elbow, ankle, leg, knee, neck – and made it impossible to wriggle out of their grasp.

This was going to be rough.

“Hang on, Dill!” Peter screamed.

Dill twisted around on his bed of plastic hands to see where the voice was coming from, and his eyes went wide. Peter grimly put his head down, aimed at the center of the dummies, and plowed on through.

WHAM! It was like throwing a baseball through a stack of aluminum cans.

With all the supports knocked out from beneath him, Dill plummeted to the floor. Luckily he fell on top of the single dummy still holding on to him, and they crashed to the ground.

Peter let up slightly on the gas and turned the toy SUV in a wide circle. By the time he was facing the dummies again, several of them had gotten to their feet.

“Get ready, Dill!” he screamed, and slammed down on the accelerator again.

Most of the mannequins went diving to the side. The few that didn’t found themselves flying through the air anyways as the SUV knocked them off their feet. Peter slowed the SUV down as he approached his friend, who hooked an arm over Peter’s shoulder and swung up onto the seat behind him.

“Dude, you are the MAN!” Dill screeched with joy.

“Hang on tight!”

“I thought you didn’t believe in stealing stuff!” Dill taunted good-naturedly.

“I’m just borrowing it!” Peter shot back.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 31

“GIIIVE UPPP!” the mannequin howled from the other side of the cashier’s counter.

Just then, another hand dropped from the counter onto Peter’s scalp.

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” he screamed, and whipped his head around like a dog shaking off bathwater. The hand went sailing off and landed somewhere in the shadows. Then it crawled back into a shaft of light from the gated doorway, followed by two other hands, all of them scuttling towards Peter.

I need a baseball bat.

He hopped over the approaching hands and immediately saw they were not alone. Another twenty at least were creeping over the carpeted floor. Behind them, the dummies at the gate were still straining their backs, goaded on by the head shrieking, “LIFT! LIFT! LIFT!”

There was the sound of metal popping. It wouldn’t be long.

Peter stumbled through the darkness, knocking over displays of dolls and action figures. He was trying to find baseball bats when he stumbled over it: the Ultra Stomper SUV, the same toy car that the employees had been showing off hours earlier.

It was a monster. The seat came up to his waist. Maybe the wheels weren’t as big as regular car tires, but dang if they weren’t close. Even in the dim light from the doorway, he could read the white letters stenciled on the black plastic body: SUPER TURBO.

A power cord snaked from the dashboard, and a little green light glowed next to the steering wheel. He prayed that it had been charging long enough as he yanked the plug out. The little light stayed green, which he took as a good sign.

Peter climbed into the plastic cabin, sat down, and tried to figure out what to do next.

“You get out of there!” the head rebuked him sharply. “You give up NOW!”

He had no idea how to drive a car, toy or real. Yeah, he’d seen his mom do it a thousand times, but since he wasn’t allowed, it was one of those things he’d never paid much attention to, like knowing directions to the grocery store or how to cook hamburgers.

Except now it was a matter of life and death.

He tried turning the wheel. Nothing. He knew people ‘stomped on the brakes’…so he felt the floor of the driver’s seat with his shoes. There were two pedals there. He pressed the long one in the center.

Nope.

He nudged the tall one on the right.

The car shot forward quickly with an electric whirring sound. REALLY quickly.

“I told you to stop that!” the head shrieked.

Suddenly, the sound of metal popping filled the air, and then the grating of the gate as it rolled up and slammed into the ceiling.

“Toooo laaaate,” the head leered as a mannequin arm reached through the gaping hole in the glass door and fumbled for the lock.

There was the click of a deadbolt, and the toy store doors burst open.

The mannequins were inside.

Peter slammed down on the tall pedal and the toy SUV whirrrrrrrred forward at breathtaking speed with an electric whine.

“AAAAAAAHHHHH!” the head shrieked as one monster toy wheel smacked into it and sent it bouncing across the room.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 30

Peter raced through the store for the checkout counter. Behind him he could hear the head scream from the ground, “LIFT IT!”

Metal groaned and creaked as the dummies strained to raise the gate.

“DETACH!”

Peter reached the counter, which was nearly as tall as he was, and strained to see in the near-darkness. He found it by the cash register: a telephone on a black plastic base with dozens of buttons. When he picked up the receiver and put it to his ear, though, all he heard was dead silence.

“DON’T!” the mannequin head shouted at him.

This must be a mistake, Peter thought as he punched in his telephone number.

Dead air. No dial tone.

“Nooooo!” Peter screamed in frustration.

“LAUNCH!” yelled the head.

A dozen hands flew through the air. Most of them fell short of the checkout, but one particularly high-flying one hit the counter and started scrambling towards Peter. He yelled in disgust and smacked it with the receiver, sending it flying across the store, then turned back to the phone’s plastic base and started pressing buttons at random.

This has to work it HAS to work

The earpiece on the receiver broke into a loud hum. He punched in his number again and this time whooped with joy as he heard the line ringing. Grandfather answered the phone.

“Did you find him?” his Grandfather’s voice crackled over the line.

“What?” Peter asked, genuinely confused. “Found who?”

“Boy, is that you? You fool, do you know how worried your mother – ”

“HELP ME!” Peter begged. “They’re alive and they’re after me!”

“Who? What are you blabbering about?”

“The mannequins at the mall! They got Dill, now they’re trying to get me – ”

CLICK. The line went dead.

“Hello? HELLO?” Peter shouted. He looked down at the phone base and saw a mannequin’s disembodied hand pressing down on the hang-up switch.

Then it used its fingers to launch itself at Peter’s throat.

Peter screamed and pulled back just fast enough to get his windpipe out of range, but the plastic hand still snagged onto his jacket collar and dangled there. He could feel the cold plastic of its skin brush against his own.

He wondered if that was what Dill was feeling right now, right at that very second, wherever they had taken him. And he went absolutely berserk with fear and rage.

He slammed at the plastic hand with the phone receiver and knocked it to the ground. Then he dropped to his knees and continued to beat it over and over, until the telephone cracked and splintered the hand into a dozen smaller pieces.

Peter backed away and trembled. Two of the fingers were moving, slowly inching their way towards him – and then they fell over, still.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 29

“NOOOOOO!” one of the dummies moaned in frustration as Peter slipped out of their reach, jumped to his feet, and pushed on the shop’s double glass doors.

They were locked.

His heart sank. Uh-oh..

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” the same dummy cackled.

Peter looked around frantically. He had to break the glass, but with what? His hand? In the movies, action heroes always rammed through glass without getting so much as a nick, but he knew that wasn’t true. He had had to go to the emergency room when he was seven for a 103 degree fever, and he would always remember the terrifying sight of an old man they brought in, covered in blood. Somebody said he had walked through a plate glass window.

CLANG.

The dummies were heaving at the gate behind him, trying to force it up and break the lock. One was already coming under, head first – the same one who had been groaning and laughing just seconds before. It was flesh-colored with a bad wig of floppy artificial hair. Peter could see the line where its body met its neck, right over its tank top t-shirt and zippy red running jacket.

“Give up!” the mannequin thundered as it reached out its hand.

Peter remembered how Dill had saved him back on the stairs, and he leapt up into the air. Both his feet came down hard on the mannequin’s neck and – CRACK! – the head separated cleanly from its body.

On the other side of the gate the dummies all gasped, but no one was more surprised than Peter. It was like jumping onto a log, then having it roll out from under his feet: as the head popped off, Peter came crashing down painfully onto his butt.

Well, maybe no one was more surprised than the head. “OW!” it exclaimed as it popped loose of its body, then again when it ricocheted off the glass doors. “OWWWW!”

Actually, the body seemed rather surprised, too. It stopped and put its hands up to its neck, groping for a chin that wasn’t there.

“Get him!” the head yelled angrily. The body began flailing its arms, trying to grab Peter. One of its hands snagged his jacket. Without thinking, Peter grabbed the nearest object – the head – and began mercilessly wailing on the mannequin’s body with it.

“OW! OW! OW! OW! OW! ” the dummy head screeched every time Peter made contact.

The hand let go of his jacket. Peter scrambled to his feet, still holding the dummy’s head in his grasp, and looked down in shock at the thing in his hands.

“Let me go!” the head commanded.

In that second, it all became clear what he had to do.

He pulled his jacket up to cover his entire face, and with all the strength he could muster, he slammed the mannequin’s skull into the glass door on the left.

KEEE-RRRACKKKK

The glass spiderwebbed everywhere, leaving a bloom of circular cracks that reached from one side of the door to the other.

“OW! STOP THAT!” the head hollered.

Peter pulled up his jacket again and slammed the head against the center of the cracks.

KEEEE-RAAAASHHHHH!

Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.

The entire bottom pane of glass was gone, scattered on the floor; the upper half was still lodged in the metal frame. Peter stepped carefully through the ragged hole into the darkened shop and tossed his makeshift battering ram to the ground.

“Ohhhhhh, my head,” the mannequin moaned.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 28

Dill skidded to a halt and turned around in panic. What he didn’t see was the other six mannequins who appeared right above him on the second floor, and who vaulted the railing and thumped to the ground all around him.

“PETER!” Dill screamed just before the mannequins tackled him. One hit his legs from behind so that he buckled to the ground; another five piled on after that.

The other six turned their attention towards Peter.

Part of him wanted to charge forward and fight them all. But he had just seen what had happened to Dill; there was no way he could take on six in a fight.

He felt like a coward, but there was nothing he could do…so he turned and ran.

“PETER!” Dill shrieked again, his voice muffled by the bodies piled on top of him.

“I’LL COME BACK TO GET YOU, DILL!” Peter screamed over his shoulder. “I PROMISE!”

Half of his brain was torturing him for running away, but the other half was already formulating a plan: Get to a pay phone. Call Grandfather. Get out of the mall. Wait for him. Go back in and rescue Dill.

The part about calling Grandfather got more complicated when twenty mannequins suddenly appeared in the far distance, running towards Peter full-tilt.

Six behind, twenty ahead. He was surrounded. Game over in thirty seconds or less.

Except…there were shops all around him.

Shops had telephones.

Peter’s heart soared, and he scanned the shops around him. With luck, there might be one he could call from and find something to defend himself with.

Clothing store – no. Candle store – fire? Probably not a good idea, if he could even find matches. Computer store…he imagined throwing computers on the mannequins, or rigging up some kind of trap with cables, but he realized it was a comic book daydream. He knew he didn’t stand a chance.

Toy store – the same one near where he and Dill had cleaned plants that morning.

Dolls…action figures…board games…

Baseball bats.

He would be trapping himself in the store, but once he called Grandfather, maybe he could hold them off…

He had about fifty feet on the mannequins behind him, and over a hundred on the ones in front of him. He hoped it would be enough time.

Peter veered over to the Way Mo’ Toys store and lifted the gate. It clanged to a stop about eight inches above the floor. This time he slid under and forced himself through without a thought to the pain. His shirt ripped, and he was sure he would be bruised in the morning, but he was already under when the dummies slammed into the gate, just inches away from him.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 27

As they ran, Peter noticed the windows of the shops they passed. He had expected to see dozens of mannequins banging at the glass, or rattling the metal gates over the shop doors. But there was nothing, not even a single mannequin in the store windows. Which probably meant they were all out here somewhere. A pack of mannequins, out for the…

He hesitated saying it in his head, but the word was still there: kill.

Peter shuddered. But what had that one in the dumpster said?

We must take you to HIM.

Whoever HE was, Peter had no interest in finding out.

By now, Peter and Dill had slowed to a jog. There was only so long a person could run at full speed before the adrenaline gave out. Panting and wheezing, they had just passed the toy store when a voice hissed off to the right.

“Boys!”

It was her again – the female mannequin in the blue evening gown. As she stepped out from behind a small display of potted bamboo, Peter shrieked. Dill looked over and did the same.

“I have unlocked two doors!” the woman hissed, and pointed to where Peter and Dill had just come from. “Go back a hundred feet, by the restaurant!”

Peter reacted by tripling his speed in the opposite direction.

“That way is a trap!” she whispered loudly as he and Dill sped away.

He looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of her vanishing into the bamboo. Immediately he was filled with doubt and dread. Back at the bench, she’d had him. She didn’t have to let go; she could have held on to his wrist until the other dummies showed up. But she’d warned him then, and she was warning him again.

Of course, it could all be a huge mind fake, and she was just slowing them down so that the others could catch up…

He came to a stop. “Dill, hold on,” he wheezed.

Dill, who was about twenty feet ahead, turned around in shock. “What are you doing?”

“I think we should listen to her.”

“Are you kidding me? Are you out of your mind?”

Peter scanned all around them: not a single mannequin in sight. “She did tell us we had to get out when we were at the bench. And she let me go.”

Dill pointed to a large hallway up ahead. Peter knew that around the corner, perhaps a hundred feet past restaurants and a vitamin store, was one of the main entrances to the mall.

“Dude, if we’re going to bust out, we can do it up there.”

“She said that way is a trap.”

“Yeah, right. You can listen to freaky plastic monsters if you want to, but I’m not,” Dill scowled as he set off for the exits. He was about twenty feet from the hallway when six mannequins suddenly appeared from behind the corner.

Peter’s jaw dropped open.

She had been telling the truth.

Why?

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 26

“Dude, that was awesome,” he heard Dill say beside him.

Peter rolled over; there was Dill, only a few feet away. Apparently they had landed in a giant, green metal dumpster, and Dill was lounging with his arms on the side like he was in a Beverly Hills swimming pool.

“What do you mean that was awesome?” Peter groaned. “That was horrible!”

“STAR WARS, man! Han Solo and Luke Skywalker goin’ down the trash compactor chute! I’ve wanted to try that since I was a little kid!”

“Well, now you can check it off your list,” Peter snapped. “What are you doing? We’ve got to get out of here!”

“What? We’re safe! They’re not coming down here!”

From somewhere above in the shaft, there was a noise: CLATTER CLATTER.

SSSSSCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Dill and Peter stared at each other, then looked up at the black hole in the wall just as a dummy crashed through and clanged into the side of the dumpster.

Dill went quickly from lounging in a pool to scrambling over the side. Peter waded through the bags of trash after him, but it was like trying to run over a shifting mound of beach balls.

This time, a hand really did grab Peter’s foot. He screamed and turned back.

The dummy was only half of one – torso, head, and arms, no legs. It was wearing a sports jacket over a blue dress shirt, both now streaked with grime. Its empty, painted-on eyes stared out of a plastic doll’s face.

“Noooooo…we must take you to HIM!” it moaned without moving its lips.

Peter screamed again and karate-kicked the thing in its face. The force was enough to break its grip, and Peter moved over the trash bags in record time. Peter grabbed the edge of the dumpster, hoisted himself over the edge, and toppled over the edge to the hard cement below. His hands and knees stung as he picked himself up.

“Which way is out?” Dill wailed. “How do we get out of the mall?”

The hallway curved off in two different directions, both edging out of sight, with no signs telling which way was which. Surely one of them led outside the mall and away from this nightmare.

CLUNK.

Behind them, the dummy had pulled itself over the edge of the dumpster and fallen onto the concrete. Now it was dragging itself along the ground towards Peter and Dill.

“Noooooo, we must take you to HIIIIIIIIIIIM!” it shrieked in a hollow voice from the pit of its gut.

Behind it, up above the dumpster, came more sounds: CLATTER CLATTER.

SSSSSCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

“THIS WAY!” Dill screamed, and took off in the direction where he wouldn’t have to run past the grasping hands of the mannequin on the floor.

Peter glimpsed another figure popping out of the chute and into the dumpster. Peter immediately charged off after Dill.

It took them twenty seconds to reach a pair of white, unmarked double doors. They slammed against the metal pushbars and exploded–

– into the mall.

“Oh crap,” Dill whined.

“We gotta go back,” Peter croaked. “…right?”

They opened the white doors and paused on the threshold, listening. Behind them, the first floor of the mall was completely deserted. Far down the fluorescent-lit hallway, they heard several sounds over and over: CLATTER CLATTER. SSSCCCCHHHHHHH. CLUNK. CLATTER CLATTER. SCCCHCHHHHHH. CLUNK.

…followed by the sounds of footsteps running towards them.

“I vote for the mall,” Dill said in a panicked voice.

Peter slammed the doors shut, and both he and Dill took off into the darkness.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 25

He frantically looked around the rest of the shop, praying to find a machinegun or a hidden trapdoor.

“PETE, HURRY IT UP!” Dill howled as he used a tube of icing to swat away a creeping hand.

Over in the corner, about eighteen inches above the floor, was a two-foot-square steel panel set into the wall. The sign on it was half-obscured by shadows, but Peter could see enough of the letters to know what it said: TRASH.

“In there!” he shouted.

Dill turned to see what he was looking at. “The trash?! Gimme a break, we are NOT going in – ”

The gate suddenly clanged up again as every mannequin with arms crowded around and tried to lift it.

“HEAVE!” screamed the head.

There was the sound of straining metal, a high-pitched eeeeeeee.

“HEAVE!” screamed the head.

There was a popping sound, like metal starting to give way.

“Okay, let’s go in the trash,” Dill agreed quickly, and jumped off the counter.

Peter raced over and opened the door, which swung downwards like a post office mailbox chute. The tunnel itself sloped down steeply into complete darkness.

“Get in there!” he shouted at Dill.

Dill took one look at the black pit awaiting him and sniffed the rancid air. “Maybe we should figure out something else.”

KA-KRANG! The gate tore open and slammed into the roof as thirty mannequins clattered into the shop.

“Or this is okay,” Dill said as he crammed himself head-first into the chute and screamed as his feet disappeared from view.

Peter looked back over his shoulder. A horde of mannequins were clawing their way over the glass display cases, and a dozen hands were inching their way across the floor, grasping for his feet.

Time to go.

He held open the metal chute, stuck his head and shoulders into the darkness – and didn’t go anywhere. For an instant he had the terrible feeling that he was going to be stuck in here forever with his head in rotting, smelly blackness. Then he remembered what was behind him, and that they would be sure to pull him out. Who knew what would happen then.

There was a screaming from the cinnamon bun shop, muffled by the metal tomb all around him: “GET HIM! GET HIM BEFORE HE ESCAPES!”

Peter kicked with his legs and inched himself forward with his fingers against the grimy metal walls. He started to slide. Just as his feet cleared the edge of the doorway, he felt a hand snag his shoe. His heart nearly burst from fear. But whatever had touched him had only grabbed a shoelace, and he felt it pop as he hurtled downwards into the unknown.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” he screamed as he picked up speed.

It was like the worst water park ride ever, only without water, just slimy trash.

But then there was light, and then he was through, diving headfirst into a pile of plastic bags. He grunted as his head slammed down and his whole body collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 24

“AAAAAAAHHH!” Dill screamed.

Peter jumped up off the floor and heaved himself up onto a counter along the wall. Dill followed suit.

“You had to have seen this in a horror movie before!” Peter said in a panic.

“You’re right – you’re right!” Dill realized. “THE CREEPING HAND OF DR. MANCHU! And THE FIST THAT CRAWLED BY NIGHT! Yeah, totally!”

“What happened in the movie?”

“These hands, they went around crawling into people’s beds and strangling them while they slept, and they couldn’t get them off – ”

“NO, how did they kill the hand?”

“Uhhhhh…they had to kill the body that the hand came from.”

“Well, that doesn’t help us, they’re all out there – CRAP!”

While the boys had been eyeing the hand, another twenty dummies had shown up outside the metal gate. They were all whispering to one another – a low, hollow sound like a crowd of people muttering into empty plastic bottles.

“What do we do?” Dill whimpered.

Peter watched the hand creeping along the floor beneath them. He had no idea if it could climb its way up to get them, but he didn’t really want to wait to find out. There was a metal platter on top of the glass display case, probably for showing off brownies or something. Peter picked it up, lined it up with the hand on the floor, and let it drop.

KRANG! The dish landed smack on top of the hand. There was a feeble movement under the platter like an ant trying to lift a matchbook that had fallen on it, but the platter stayed where it was.

Dill stood up on the counter, flung his palm in front of his nose, and shouted at the crowd of dummies beyond the gate. “FACE! IN YOUR FACE!”

As if in answer, one dummy lifted up the gate, and ten others kneeled down on the floor. Each one had detached one of its hands and was now holding it just under the edge of the gate.

“Uh-oh,” Dill breathed.

“LAUNCH! LAUNCH! LAUNCH!” the head on the pair of legs screamed. All ten kneeling mannequins flicked their disembodied hands into the air. Hands flew up on the counter, onto the glass display case, even onto Dill’s windbreaker.

“AAAAAAHHHH!” Dill frantically batted at the hand like it was a wasp entangled in his clothes. The hand held on tight. It took five or six hard swats to finally break its hold and send it crashing to the ground.

Behind the gate, another ten dummies were lining up to throw another round of hands into the shop.

“CRAP! WHAT DO WE DO?” Dill howled.

Peter watched the hands crawling towards him like oversized plastic inchworms. Worms that could grab his neck and crush his windpipe…

He looked around and saw a door in the shop’s back wall with an “Employees Only” sign. He jumped down on the ground and ran over to it. On the way, one of the hands grabbed his shoelaces and began to inch its way up his foot. Peter gave it a good hard kick, and it clattered across the floor.

He closed his hand around the doorknob, turned, and yanked. Locked.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 23

With one last painful jerk, Peter’s head cleared the gate, and the metal door slammed down onto the floor.

Peter was inside the cinnamon bun shop. Dill lay wheezing on the floor beside him.

WHAM WHAM WHAM! The bodiless legs slammed into the metal like birds divebombing a plate glass window. They all rebounded clumsily and flew back through the air; the one with the head clattered backwards onto the ground, where it kicked its legs and spun in circles like a hyperactive turtle turned upside-down on its shell.

“NOOOOOOOOOO!” the head wailed.

“What do we do?” Peter fretted.

“We’re safe, they can’t get us,” Dill laughed. “BUTTHOLES!” he screamed angrily, and shook a fist at them from behind the safety of the metal barrier.

CLANG! An adult-sized mannequin slammed into the gate, scaring the crap out of Dill. The effect was even more terrifying because it had a nose and eye sockets, but no actual eyes or mouth.

After flattening himself against the metal display case, Dill quickly got over his fear. He sneered at the expressionless dummy and began a singsong chant, “Can’t geeeeeet me! Can’t geeeeeet me!”

He stopped chanting as a second, and third, and eighth and ninth dummy crashed into the metal gate. “Can’t get me,” he repeated uncertainly, and backed away towards Peter.

One of the other dummies had lifted the legs with the head and set them right-side up. Now the legs paced back and forth as the head screamed orders: “Open it! Open it! Open it!”

All the adult mannequins with arms put their plastic hands under the gate and heaved at the same time. Peter thought his bladder was about to empty as he watched the gate strain against the latch in the floor – but the padlock held, and the gate stayed in place.

“Detach! Detach!” the head commanded.

“What does that mean?” Dill whispered.

One of the mannequins held up its right arm and peeled back the sweater it was wearing. There was a line partway down the dummy’s plastic forearm, a very clear edge where the hand was attached to the rest of the body. The mannequin grasped his right hand with his left and began turning it round and around like he was unscrewing a bolt. The line on the forearm became a gap, and suddenly the hand and wrist came loose.

Peter and Dill flinched.

Another dummy lifted up the gate again. The sweater-wearing dummy knelt and set his disembodied hand on the ground. Peter and Dill watched in disbelief as the hand’s fingers dragged it along the floor towards them.

“Kick it! Kick it out!” Dill howled.

As if in answer, the dummies slammed the gate down on the ground, trapping the boys inside the shop with the creeping hand.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 22

They had no choice but to run. A dozen mannequins had circled around the bottom of the stairs and were now climbing the steps, clumsy and stiff-legged.

The boys made it to the second floor way ahead of their enemies. “Where do we go now?!” Peter shouted.

Dill looked around wildly. They were close to the food court.

“The cinnamon bun shop!” he howled as he sprinted for the store.

As Peter followed, he looked over the second floor railing. At least a hundred dummies were swarming the stairway, clawing their way up the steps, even climbing over each other’s bodies. A shudder of terror and revulsion shook Peter’s body so hard that he almost broke down and cried. He could feel their cold plastic hands on him again, pulling him into the darkness –

“PETER!” Dill screamed up ahead.

Peter looked up to see what new horror Dill was yelling about, and his insides nearly froze. Across the 30-foot empty space that looked down on the first floor, on the other side of the second story railing, five mannequins were running alongside Peter and Dill like a pack of wolves. But not whole mannequins. Only legs stuffed into pairs of pants, with no torso above the waistline.

Peter flashed back to the TV commercial and the nightmares of empty jeans stalking the dark sidewalks of his neighborhood at night. Except this was no dream. This was reality.

There was something else, too. It was hard to see, since the mannequins were almost exactly the same height as the railing, so they were mostly obscured from view. But one of them had something on top of it.

As Peter and Dill reached the food court, the pack of legs scuttled out into the open – and the ‘something’ became clear. One of the pairs of legs had a head, fastened somehow to the white shelf of plastic that filled out its pants. No torso, no arms…but there was a head, bobbing up and down as the legs beneath it raced across the tile floor. It was screaming in a high, hollow, reedy voice, directing the unseeing pairs of legs as they bounced off one another and bumped into the railing.

“To the right! Get them – get them – GET THEM! ”

Dill slammed into the metal gate of the cinnamon bun shop and yanked it up with a frenzied CLANG!

“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Dill screamed as he scooted his legs under the gate.

Peter hit the ground rolling and pushed his own body through the gap, but got stuck when his chest jammed tight against the metal.

The legs were only thirty feet away. “FORWARD! GET THEM!” the head screamed.

Peter squeezed all of the air out of his lungs and forced himself under the metal gate. It felt like his ribs were collapsing from the vacuum in his chest. His chin banged against the metal, and he turned his head sideways against the cold tile floor.

“GET THEM GET THEM GET THEM!” the head screamed as the legs trampled within feet of the shop.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 21

A single figure stepped slowly out of the shadows and into the light, which crept up his jeans with every step he took. He moved naturally, not stiff-legged or frozen-jointed. The light traveled up his legs to his gloved hands, blue shirt and leather jacket, then kept on going up his chest and neck. In every way, he looked totally normal…until his head was fully in view.

He had no face.

His chalk-white head was just a sculpted plastic dome of hair atop a totally blank surface. No eyes, no nose, no mouth.

Dill screamed. Peter opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

The faceless mannequin lifted one finger and pointed at the boys. Despite having no lips to speak the words, a hollow voice rang out from its head:

“GET THEM! ”

From behind him, dozens and dozens of mannequins spilled out of the blackness towards Peter and Dill. It was like someone had opened an overstuffed closet of nightmares: adults with plastic faces and lifeless eyes. Children with no heads. Bone-white figures. One painted gold. Detached heads carried by other mannequins, swinging like lanterns, held by the fake hair on their scalps. All of them headed directly for Peter and Dill.

The two boys screamed and headed in the opposite direction.

“WHERE ARE WE GOING?” Dill screeched.

“UPSTAIRS, UPSTAIRS!” Peter bellowed.

The closest stairway to the second floor was only thirty feet away. Peter and Dill rounded the bottom of the stairs and stomped up the steps.

Rather than circle around to follow them, the crowd of dummies instead swarmed the sides of the stairway and stuck their arms through the open railing. Plastic hands of all colors reached out and grabbed at Peter’s feet. One latched onto his ankle, and he slipped and fell into the writhing nest of limbs.

He screamed as the arms pulled him towards the metal railing where dozens of glazed eyes stared out at him. He could hear them grumbling and moaning, low voices that echoed from someplace deep within their hollow bodies. Cold plastic hands circled his face and smothered his own cries for help.

Dill made it past the grasping arms. Peter saw him turn back, his face a mask of terror as he looked down at Peter. Then Dill’s expression turned angry. He hollered, jumped into the air, and came charging down feet-first. CRACK CRACK! Dill’s shoes slammed down inches from Peter’s head and shattered two mannequin hands. Dill started kicking and body parts went flying.

“LEAVE HIM ALONE!” Dill screamed, and yanked Peter out of the writhing mass of limbs and beyond the reach of the mannequins.

“Thanks,” Peter panted.

“You owe me BIG TIME. Come on!”

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 20

He was too surprised to scream. He just tried to wrest his arm away and found that he could not. Her grip was cold and hard, like carved ice against his skin. He could not breathe.

“Pe – Pe – Pe – Peter – ” Dill stuttered behind him.

The mannequin’s head slowly rotated so that her unseeing eyes stared into his own. From somewhere inside her body came a voice. It did not emerge from the mouth; instead, it seemed to reverberate somewhere within her chest, hollow and empty. Her lips never moved.

“You must leave,” said the voice.

Finally Peter found his own voice: he screamed. Dill joined in, twice as loud.

The mannequin’s hand let go of his wrist.

“You MUST LEAVE,” the voice repeated, as dry and inhuman as a drumbeat.

Peter pulled away and ran. Dill followed him.

Shops raced by in a blur. They passed the fountain and the movie theater and half of the mall before they finally looked over their shoulders and saw that nothing was following them.

“Was that…was that real?” Dill asked as he panted for air.

Peter leaned on his knees and gasped for breath. He wanted to believe it was a cruel but brilliant joke…that somehow the prankster had rigged up a robotic arm and a radio, or gotten some really skinny girl to wear the female mannequin’s skin like a costume. He wanted desperately to believe, because otherwise his worst nightmare had come true.

“I don’t know,” was all Peter could say.

“What do we do?”

Up ahead, the mall dead-ended into the Brooklines department store, where Mom had been shopping hours earlier. Another long hallway of shops stretched off to the right. Peter looked all around. There were no menacing figures with stiff limbs on the second floor – not that he could see, anyway. There were none back in the direction they had come, nor were there any in the hallway to the right of Brooklines. Maybe they could go down there and find a public pay phone…

Without warning, there was a horrible grating sound that made both Peter and Dill jump. Behind them, the humongous metal gate over Brooklines’ entrance suddenly groaned and began to rise slowly, clack-clack-clack, inch by inch.

Peter watched in stunned terror. Part of him wanted to run – but where? Back to the woman in the blue dress? A little voice deep inside his head whispered, It might even be a security guard. Or a way out.

“Dude, I don’t like this,” Dill whimpered.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 19

Peter followed Dill’s finger to the center of the mall. There, in the glow of the moon through the skylights, sat a woman on a bench. She was tall, with long brown hair cascading down her neck. She sat with her back to Dill and Peter so they couldn’t see her face. The bench was surrounded by a brick island full of plants and ferns, so it was hard to see much more than her head.

Peter’s chest flooded with relief. At this point he didn’t care if she turned them in to the cops. As far as he was concerned, she was their ticket out of there.

“Ma’am?” he called. Even though he was speaking normally, his voice sounded loud as a shout in all the silence.

The woman didn’t move, not even a millimeter.

“Uh, lady?” Peter said again. Again, no reaction.

The relief slowly drained out of Peter, and fear began to creep back in.

“You think she’s deaf?” Dill asked.

“I don’t know.”

Peter crept out into the center of the mall floor. Dill was right behind him, a hand on his shoulder. The woman sat still and quiet only fifteen feet away.

“Lady,” Peter whispered harshly.

The woman kept staring off into the darkness.

He was scared, and for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. Part of him imagined her suddenly whipping around, her eyes black like a shark’s, her lips draw back over two sharp fangs. But even more of him was terrified that he had no idea why she wouldn’t turn around.

“Miss…?”

Peter circled around the ferns and the bench so that he was even with her – and immediately his fear ramped up into panic. His heartbeat thudded in his ears.

It was the woman.

The mannequin.

The one who had turned her head.

He gasped and held his breath – but nothing happened. She sat there on the bench, staring out into nothingness. Lifeless.

Dill exhaled in relief. “It’s a dummy.”

Peter stepped closer. She wore the same blue evening dress, had the same painted-on blue eyes.

“It’s the same one I saw earlier,” Peter managed to say. He still kept waiting for her to move, for her head to slowly swivel around…

“What?”

“The one I told you about,” Peter explained, his voice quivering. “The mannequin I saw in the shop, the one I said moved.”

But she seemed harmless now. She did not move, she only sat there, quiet and serene in the darkness. And finally he understood: this was all a joke. Somebody was playing an elaborate prank on them, locking them up in the mall, placing this dummy here to scare them. None of it was real. Someone –Eric, maybe? Deputy Jenkins? – knew exactly how to scare him, and had done everything in their power to make him pee his pants.

But it wasn’t going to work. Not today.

He stepped closer to the dummy, close enough to touch her. She was actually very beautiful – her hair looked almost real, and her face was flawless. She could have been a supermodel or a movie star if she didn’t look so lifeless. Peter stared at her and wondered who would have been twisted enough to drag a dummy out into the middle of the mall and put her here on the bench.

Without warning, her hand lashed out and grabbed his wrist.

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 18

They reached the first floor and walked close to the wall along the shops, letting the glow from the glass windows light their way through the darkness.

“My mom is going to kill me,” Peter moaned.

“Quit complaining and let’s just get back to the phone,” Dill snapped.

“Fine.”

“FINE.”

Somewhere deep in the mall, there was a noise: the sound of a metal gate groaning open, then echoing over and over in the vast darkness.

Peter and Dill both paused to listen.

The echoes died away. Only silence remained.

“…did you hear that?” Peter asked.

“…yeah,” Dill murmured.

Images of a security guard, friendly and benevolent, flashed through Peter’s mind.

“Do you think we should go find it?” Dill asked.

The quiet that followed, and the darkness all around them, swallowed up any good feelings Peter might have had.

“…I think we should keep going and make the phone call,” Peter suggested.

“Okay,” Dill agreed wholeheartedly.

They kept to the glow of the shop windows, but sped up a little faster than before. As he walked, Peter tried to keep his mind off of where that sound had come from – but failed.

Was it from one of the large department stores?

Or…somewhere else?

Peter stopped moving.

Off to his right, he could have sworn he heard the sound of bushes moving. He looked over at the island of landscaping in the center of the dark first floor, but couldn’t see anything.

“Dill,” he whispered.

Dill stopped moving and turned around. Without the sound of footsteps, the quiet whshh and scrape of branches was a tiny bit more noticeable –

And then the sounds stopped completely, as though their maker realized he had been found out.

“Did you hear that?” Peter breathed.

“Hear what?” Dill asked worriedly.

“I…I thought I heard something in the bushes over there…”

They stood there for a whole minute, straining to hear anything else.

There were no other noises.

“Are you trying to freak me out even more?” Dill asked through gritted teeth.

“No, sorry…I guess it was my imagination…”

Despite that explanation, Dill didn’t suggest checking out the shrubbery. Peter certainly wasn’t going to offer.

“Let’s go,” he finally whispered.

After the first few hesitant steps – it must have taken them 30 seconds to travel six feet – they began fumbling through the shadows again.

Until, from somewhere above on the second floor, there came the sound of whispers.

“Dill,” Peter murmured.

They both stopped. Peter tried to hear over the pounding of his heart in his ears, but the whispers had ceased, just like the noise in the bushes.

“What?” Dill said under his breath, fear and anger mixed equally in his tone.

“You didn’t hear it? Up on the second floor?”

“This isn’t funny, man,” Dill hissed.

“I swear, I’m not trying to – ”

“Hey,” Dill interrupted, pointing. “Look over there!”

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"Peter And The Mannequins" - Page 17

“This is stealing,” Peter said gravely.

Dill hoisted himself up onto the counter and clattered over behind the display case. “I got money. It’s not stealing if you leave money.”

“We’ve got, like, a buck fifty. You’ve gotta save change so we can make a phone call, and the cheapest thing on the menu is a dollar. You’re telling me you’re only going to have one mini cinnamon bun?”

“I’ll leave an IOU.”

Peter watched through the glass as Dill opened the back of the display case.

“How’re you going to pay them back? Are you going to say, ‘Oh, hey, there was this time I broke into your shop, so here’s ten bucks?’”

“I’ll throw the money behind the counter and run away.” Suddenly Dill looked up in excitement. “OR we could take some money from the fountain and leave it here, and then I could just pay back the fountain!”

“You’re going to steal from sick kids so you can eat cinnamon buns?”

“It’s not stealing, it’s borrowing. You want anything, Mr. Sunday School Preacher?”

Peter’s stomach felt a little hollow, but he couldn’t give in to Dill and take any of the cinnamon buns.

Could he?

“Just one…or two,” he relented.

“Yeah!” Dill passed several handfuls of pastries under the metal gate to Peter. After Dill squeezed back under the gate, they sat on the ground eating the pastries in all their sticky goodness.

“Tell me this isn’t cool,” Dill said happily.

“It’s pretty cool,” Peter confessed. “If we weren’t going to get totally busted.”

Dill licked sugar frosting off all of his fingers. “You only live once.”

At that exact moment the lights went out. Except for the moonlight filtering in from the skylights and a few isolated spots of yellow streaming out of shop windows, the mall was plunged into darkness.

“Oh crap,” Dill whispered.

***

They literally had to feel their way down the escalator to get back to the first floor. Peter wondered if, once they reached the phones, there would even be enough light to see the keypad and dial the number. He pictured going down an ink-black hallway, feeling his way along the walls, and shivered…

“This is so not cool,” Peter hissed as he moved his sticky fingers along the escalator’s rubber handrails.

“It’s not my fault! Did I shut the lights off? NO.”

“We’ve got to get back to the phone and call your mom, now!”

“What, am I stopping you?”

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