Drew Barnes could almost smell his grandpa’s famous hickory-smoked barbecue when the old mall rose from the horizon, a tired husk hiding in a too-bright summer. The thought of Joe Morgan’s barbecue was replaced by the sudden scent of Apple Orchard Cotton Candy.

Golden Hills Mall. The cotton candy scent almost arrived ahead of the memory. The side of Drew’s mouth lifted in recognition. He first tasted that sugary sweetness fifteen years ago, when he was nine years old. He could still see the wonder on his little brother’s face when Drew offered him a bite. It was one of their good days. One of the few.

Drew thought they’d torn the mall down years ago. If there were good memories beyond the fleeting nostalgia for a sugary treat, they were lost to the dark rumors that emerged once the mall shut its doors for good.

Still, his own memories of Golden Hills weren’t all bad.

Drew checked the dashboard clock. Half past ten. The party wasn’t until three; he had plenty of time. His grandma didn’t even know he was coming, but how often did someone who raised you celebrate their retirement? Despite the occasional friction between them, Drew couldn’t miss the big day. They’d been through too much.

He thought briefly about the amateur photography contest he was missing. He could really use that money, with his bank account hovering in the double digits. But his grandma was worth it. Of course, if Clay was there…

The cornfield snuck up on the side of the road and Drew cursed. Gripped the wheel so hard his fingers burned. He knew where he was, there was no forgetting it, but something about the dry and dying stalks drove the point home like a punch to the gut. Drew grasped for his old mantra like a sleepwalker startled awake in the middle of the night, flailing for the lightswitch. Found it. “There were birds. You’re still you,” he whispered. The words were a heavy blanket, smothering the flames of anxiety before the fire could spread.

He focused on his breathing. Did his counting: three beats on the inhale, five beats on the exhale. You’re doing fine. See? Almost past the cornfield already.

Thunder split the air despite the clear blue sky and Drew jerked the wheel on instinct. Shit, he was jumpy. Calm down. All good. Then a speeding truck emerged ahead of him. What was this guy’s hurry? It happened in a flash: the truck jumped into Drew’s lane, racing straight toward Drew’s front bumper.

“What the hell?” His heart leapt into his throat, pounding like mad. Then he saw a head on the road, rolling out from the field. Terror took him. Was that—? No. Just a scarecrow’s head.

Drew yanked the wheel hard. Back tires slid over gravel before grabbing the old asphalt lane. Sweat turned his hands slick and he pulled one off the wheel, swatted it on his pant leg. Ragged breaths slowly settled, but his pulse was still going like a rabbit’s when it’s hunting season and the bullet goes wide. The back tires skipped a little. The Neon kicked out to the right, but Drew quickly got it back on the level.

He eased off the gas. Let out a nervous laugh and unclenched his hands from their death grip on the wheel. He checked the rearview. There was no sign of the pickup that almost killed him, and the scarecrow head was either gone or too far back for Drew to make out.

Why did he take this route, anyway? The backroads would have taken twice as long, but at least he could have avoided the memory of that cursed cornfield. Of the mall.

The mall.

Golden Hills didn’t rise above the dense trees beside the lane; it sat back and waited, baking in the indifferent sun. Why haven’t I turned around yet? The danger had passed; there was no need to keep driving down this side road, no lurking scarecrow waiting to jump from the dying field and pull Drew into the stalks. So why was he still driving toward the abandoned mall?

Drew’s mental scrapbook was filled with carousel rides, weekend meals at the Johnny Rockets by the cell phone kiosk, and his favorite: the Apple Orchard Cotton Candy stall. But there were also heated arguments with Clay, and more than one memory of a night that ended with Grandpa Morgan swearing he’d never take the brothers there again.

Then there were the deaths.

Six months after Golden Hills went dark, two high school sophomores went missing. They were last seen running along the road by the cornfield. A few of their friends claimed they dared them to break into the abandoned mall. Police searched every inch of the building, the trees, the field across the road. They never found the bodies.

They did find the hands. Four of them: two belonging to each of the missing teens.

After that, police tape and barricades went up all around the mall’s perimeter. For a while, the whole lane from the mall to the cornfield was shut down.

Six more Golden Hills unfortunates were presumed dead in the months that followed. As far as Drew knew, the strangeness finally stopped two years ago, long after he’d outgrown the mall that seemed to somehow give so much and take even more.

Now Drew pulled into the old potholed parking lot, washed-out letters welcoming him to the ghost of the Slick Beatz music store. He turned the car off and stared through the windshield.

He didn’t like the silence that greeted him when he closed the car door. He scratched his arm. Cleared his throat. Maybe it was the weight of the deaths that made him uneasy. Or that damn field. But it felt like more than that. Age-tattered police tape waved to him from the music store’s entrance. Its sound did not reach his ears.

Something about the way the light bounced off the siding, as if repelled the moment it got too close, made Drew think, Camera. He opened his door and retrieved the Canon EOS Rebel from the front passenger seat. Even if he couldn’t get inside, the mall was creepy enough to warrant a dozen or so exterior shots. He might not be able to enter them in today’s contest, but why not get a head start on his next exhibit? Maybe he could finally quit his job at the bank and go pro.

The roaring quiet reigned over the forgotten lot. Treetops swayed tentatively in the distance, but no crickets or other wildlife sounds felt like keeping Drew company. The highway was just down the old road, but it might as well have been a hundred miles away—no car horns or rushing slipstreams reached him. It was as if he’d driven straight into another world, some parallel plane that existed for the mall and the mall alone. Even his breathing sounded loud here.

Drew scratched his arm and fumbled the camera, caught it by the strap and caught his breath. This was crazy. They were just rumors. Scary stories to tell in the dark. Even if someone had been killed here, the place had been quiet for years.

Yet he found himself walking slowly, almost tiptoeing toward the sleeping structure. He stopped in front of the old welcome sign, its faded etching of a serene hillside now more rust than bronze. Steadied his camera. Took a breath, held it.

Metal shrieked through the silence and Drew ducked on instinct. What kind of—

A gate. Drew peered around the side of the sign for confirmation. Thirty yards off, the Slick Beatz security gate was rising. Impossible. The place had been abandoned for years, even the police didn’t bother with it anymore. How…?

A voice cut through the hazy air: “Hey, you lost?”

Drew squinted. A lanky young man—looked to be around Drew’s age, mid-20s—waved at him from the open Slick Beatz entrance. Not a cop. At least there’s that. Drew came out from behind the sign, made his way to the stranger. The stranger who had somehow come from inside the mall.

Drew’s sneakers slapped the pavement and he winced. Somehow his footsteps sounded too loud out here.

The young man’s features seemed to emerge as Drew approached. A few steps, and he saw a beige polo shirt. Another, and close-cropped brown hair appeared. The tattoos showed up last. The guy looked to be about Drew’s age, maybe a little older, late-twenties.

“Hey, do you …” Drew was going to say work here, but that was ridiculous. All of this was. Instead he said, “You been in there long?” Something alarmingly like fear traced its way across his shoulders. Who hung out in abandoned malls?

“I’m Brooks.” The guy nodded for a second, then stuck out his hand as an afterthought.

Drew looped his camera around his neck and shook the man’s hand. “Drew. You look … familiar.” Drew yanked his hand back like he’d touched a hot stove. He had no idea why.

“You all right? What happened?” Brooks ran a thumb behind a necklace Drew didn’t realize the guy had been wearing. It flashed in the sun; Drew shielded his eyes.

For a moment, both men stopped dead. Like this had been just a bit too much for their brains to handle and they were resetting. When the spots from the sun-flash faded, Drew felt substantially lighter. “I’m surprised you made it,” he said.

“What, you thought I’d end up changing my mind?”

“I thought you’d end up in Shamokin.”

Brooks laughed. “That was one time.”

Drew pulled his old friend in for a one-armed bro-hug. “So how’d you get in?” Drew nodded at the mall.

“Someone left a door unlocked back by the side entrance.” But as Brooks spoke, doubt creased his eyebrows.

“Cool. So when did you get here?”

“About ten minutes ago. Didn’t beat you by much.”

Drew grinned. “Ready to do this thing? You really think she’ll say yes?”

“She better. I’m not vandalizing this place for nothing.”

Then: a humming in Drew’s ears. They stared at each other then, a couple of temporary mannequins stuck in the sun with nowhere to go and no reason to be there. Silence, while whoever was directing this little film switched reels.

Drew woke first: “Come on, I want to get some shots before we hit the carousel.”

The two walked into Slick Beatz and Brooks slid the security gate back down behind them. “Yeah, I thought you said something about getting back into photography.”

“When was I ever not into it?” Drew looked around. Lonely music stands wore their dust with shame. A wall of guitars slept back by the empty counters where registers used to sing out transactions. It was weird how fast things died when you weren’t around to watch them. “Well this is depressing,” Drew said.

Drew turned on his phone flashlight and Brooks hissed. “Damn, warn a guy, will ya?”

A piano by the back caught Drew’s eye. The effect was immediate; a warm memory relaxed his shoulders. “You think you still know ‘Crocodile Rock’?” He grinned.

Brooks returned the smile, making his way to the piano in the eerie too-bright light from Drew’s phone. He lifted the cover and cracked his knuckles. The sound made Drew uneasy. He had the sudden feeling they were not alone. And they were not welcome.

Brooks’s fingers crashed down on the keys, testing the waters. “That can’t be in tune,” Drew said. “Not after all this time.”

Brooks played a few chords and an arpeggio. “Good enough to jam. Now we just need someone to sing.”

There it was again. That off feeling. Like the uneasy quiet in the potholed lot outside, or the way the scarecrow head was there one minute, gone the next. A memory popped up like a lottery ball: Drew saw a younger Brooks sitting at the same piano, head bobbing side to side, fingers dancing while Drew sang along.

Which was all kinds of wrong. Drew didn’t sing. Ever.

The sound of the cobwebbed piano in its dusty mausoleum yanked Drew out of the memory. “Crocodile Rock” shouted off the sleeping walls. Drew took a photo, then threw a look back over his shoulder. He could have sworn someone was watching him.

Brooks stopped playing, the last notes swallowed up by silence. “I feel it too.” Brooks got up, scanned the store.

Drew pointed at the back of the store, where another gate connected Slick Beatz to the rest of Golden Hills. “Was that open when you got here?”

“No, but—huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I just thought I locked that behind me when I came in.” Brooks punched Drew’s shoulder. “So what do you say, ready to grab that brass ring?”

“I thought I was just here for emotional support. Now you’re making me an accomplice.”

“I want to stop by the jewelry place, see if anyone left anything behind. Come on, it won’t take long. You can take some photos on the way.”

It was even darker in the mall. Shadows seemed to reach out from every corner, every forgotten pizza place, abandoned shoe store. They passed the movie theater, its lobby like a yawning mouth. Drew bumped the flashlight brightness up.

“This place smells like mothballs,” Brooks said.

Drew murmured in agreement, setting up a shot with the Canon Rebel and immediately knowing it wasn’t good enough. Four years studying picture composition and lighting and he still felt like an amateur.

“So how’s the hospital?” Drew asked.

“It’s even better than I imagined. I barely get any sleep, and half the senior doctors already hate me, but the patients make up for it. It still feels weird, though. This whole being an adult thing. I swear graduation was a week ago.”

“I know the feeling.”

Brooks stopped. “Thank God they didn’t tear the carousel down before they closed the place. Wait. Is that?” Brooks leaned over a horse whose mouth was painted open in an eternal cry. He wiped a finger over the saddle, showed it to Drew. “Give me the light.” Drew moved his phone closer. “That look like blood to you?”

Drew swallowed. What was he doing here again? “Probably just ketchup,” he said. They looked at each other, wondering if either of them bought it.

Something clattered in the distance. Past the photo booth.

Brooks tried a nervous laugh that turned into a dry cough. “Whose idea was this, anyway?”

Drew smiled. Then he realized he didn’t remember.

“Right. I’m gonna hit up Gordon’s, you find the brass ring and meet me at the food court.” Brooks took off.

Drew set his camera down on a bench and approached the carousel. The contraption that dispensed rings looked somehow sinister in the low light, a too-long arm reaching to pet the plastic whose galloping days were behind it.

He wove his way through the horses. Cut across a carriage with chipped paint. Tried to ignore his loud footsteps. He was reaching toward the ring dispenser when a metal door fell shut somewhere in the darkness. “Shit!” Drew dropped his phone. Fumbled around for it. Finally got the damn flashlight on again. He aimed it toward the sound. But all he saw was the cold gray light of a long-dead mall.

He had to focus. His friend was depending on him. Drew was still waiting to hear if Brooks wanted him to be best man for the wedding, but knowing Brooks, he’d torture him right up until the rehearsal dinner.

He pulled four rings from the rusted device before the brass ring slid into place. But that one held fast. Drew tried using a horse for leverage. No use. Drew felt like he was being watched again. He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and pulled.

This time the ring came loose, but his finger slipped, and a hot lance cut across his right index knuckles.

“Fuck!”

He wrapped the end of his shirt around his finger, pressing hard to make it clot faster. “Brooks, any luck?” he yelled, just to take his mind off the pain. And that door.

Nothing.

Drew made his way to the food court. At least it was farther away from the unexplained noises. Thunder drummed the rooftop and rain whipped across the milky gray skylight in sheets. A flash of lightning caught the edge of something silver deep in the food court.

Drew’s blood froze. He stopped walking.

It took him a few paralyzing seconds to recognize Brooks sitting at a table across from Apple Orchard Cotton Candy—the silver flash had come from his necklace. The shop’s large painted tree, complete with aggressively orange and purple and red cotton candy poofs where apples might otherwise be, looked lost in the forgotten food court.

“You’re trying to give your Best Man a heart attack,” Drew said, steadying his nerves. “I see how it is.”

“Who said I was picking you?” Brooks tossed a small box in the air and caught it. Drew grabbed a couple of napkins—tried not to think of the germs they’d collected over the years—and joined his friend at the table. Brooks messed with his necklace. “Man, this place used to feel so different. I still remember that time you tried to disown me over a Granny Smith Cotton Cone. Didn’t see you again for a month.”

The memory made Brooks frown, like he just found out two plus two did not equal four.

Drew slapped him on the back. “And yet the second you entered that wing competition, there I was. Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

But that wasn’t quite right. Parts of the memory checked out, but every time Drew tried picturing Brooks’s face, fog kept him from seeing it. Because it wasn’t Brooks who belonged in that memory.

It was Drew’s brother, Clay.

Drew stood up. Backed away from the table. Something was very. Very. Wrong.

Brooks must have felt it, too; he dashed to the other side of the court, grabbed an old tip tray off the cotton candy counter like he was going to throw it. Something shiny clinked to the floor. “Don’t come any closer, man.” His voice was shaky. Drew wasn’t ready for that. Whatever spooked Drew had spooked Brooks, too.

The silence was a sound that itched. Drew had to move, had to do something. Why had he come here anyway? For photos? Of the murder mall?

A shout echoed down the mall from the photo booth. Dunked Drew’s head in cold water. He heard the car horn again. Saw the crows streaking across his windshield. Blinding him. The thump of tires over a sandbag. There were birds, you’re still you, there were birds, you’re still you therewerebirdsyou’restillyoutherewere—

“What?” Brooks stared at him. Had Drew said that out loud?

Another scream. Drew looked over his shoulder, careful to keep Brooks in his peripheral. A silhouette came flying down the concourse. Weaving around ancient kiosks. The shadow tripped, bounced off the side of a gate like a demented pinball. “Run! Run! It’s coming!” the shape shouted.

Brooks cursed, turned, and ran like a pack of wolves was after him. Drew turned back to the shouting shadow, who was now close enough for him to see more details. It was a man: one arm pumping, one arm just hanging there at his side, like it had already resigned to the runner’s inevitable fate. A shock of clown-red hair.

Drew didn’t see the blonde under that redness until it was too late.

Didn’t clock it as blood until Dead-Arm was up in the air.

One second, sneakers stumbling past the carousel; the next, the stranger was swept up off his feet like a giant was picking up a toy. Drew couldn’t see the monster. But he could smell it: rotting apples, a trace of vinegar. Black smoke shot straight through Dead-Arm’s chest. Skewering him like a marshmallow.

Something fell from above as the dense fog rocketed the guy toward the skylight—changed course—and pitched him up into the ceiling, plaster raining down with the stringy mess of the man’s insides.

Screams pierced Drew’s ears, rising in pitch until the black tendrils whipped the body back to the tile floor. Then the man stopped screaming. He stopped doing anything.

And Drew ran.

He followed the route Brooks had taken. He didn’t trust him, but he also hadn’t watched him mutilate a stranger. Drew’s teeth ground together as he pumped his legs. A low hum began to crescendo. He wasn’t dumb enough to look back, but he also didn’t need to. Whatever just snuffed out that life was still hungry.

His lungs burned, pushing for oxygen but screaming for relief. Something brushed his ankle—he cried out before he could stop himself. Pushed harder.

Back in tenth grade, trying out for track and field, he and his brother once raced each other so hard they each had cramps for weeks. Drew was in it for the run; Clay seemed to be chasing something else, he’d always been like that—running after some unnamed oppressor to whom he’d given Drew’s face.

It didn’t help when their parents said they could only afford to send one of them to college. “But I’m a chef, Mom. All Drew does is take pictures.” “We’ll do what we can. You can always get a part-time job.” “Oh, but Drew doesn’t have to?”

Now acid poisoned Drew’s legs as he raced after Brooks’s swinging hair. Both of them running from some unseen terror. And for what? To help Brooks propose to his girlfriend?

Drew caught up to Brooks at the gated-shut game store. Brooks rammed his shoulder into the steel in frustration. “It won’t budge. Its jammed.”

“Probably locked.”

“No, there’s a little clearance by the floor there, the thing’s just stubborn. Give me a hand.”

Drew slipped his fingers under the bottom of the gate and pulled with everything he had. His back winced in protest. No give. They were running out of time. The fog, the shadow, the—whatever!—would surely be dismantling his two new play toys in seconds.

Brooks cursed. Mumbled something, shook his head. Then he cleared his throat, turned toward the food court, and said, “It’s okay. He’s with me.”

Drew froze. “Who are you talking to?”

The humming stopped. That feeling that death itself was racing to claim them vanished, as quickly as a nightmare upon waking. Drew risked a look back the way they came.

The black mist was nowhere to be seen, and even the shadows were retreating, slinking back to the corners from which the creature had no doubt emerged. “It’s getting brighter,” Drew said. And it was. Unnaturally brighter; he no longer needed the flashlight, but more than that, it now looked nearly as bright in here as it had outside.

The reality of seeing a man murdered caught up with Drew then and he doubled over, dry heaving. He hadn’t felt this unmoored since—

No. You’re still you.

Brooks sat on a bench and sighed. “I never remember at first. Every time I meet someone new, the mall does this to us, to me. It tricks me in a way. But trick’s not the right word.”

Drew tried to swallow. Couldn’t. His brain tried in vain to piece the fractured bits of his sanity back together. When the truth came, it was cold and clear. That clarity was almost as jarring as the lie had been.

“We’re not friends. We were never friends,” Drew said.

“We never even met before today.”

But that felt wrong, too.

Brooks took his necklace off now, looked sidelong down the mall, squinting as too-bright light bounced off the carousel in the distance. “Have you ever done something so dark … that it defined you?”

Drew scratched his arms. Fought the urge to start running and not stop for a very long time. The sounds found him before he could hide: Car horn. Flock of birds. Someone stepping out from the stalks. Shattered windshield. There were birds you’re still you. You’re still—

FUCK!

Panic threw him into a sprint, blood thundering in his ears. No matter how hard Drew ran, shame ran faster. What are you doing? Running from your problems again?

He’d spent the past five years running. Never there for his grandpa when he needed him. Indifferent to his brother’s passive-aggressive texts about catching up sometime.

His leg gave out—a cramp. He went down, the tile floor skinning his hands raw. Shouting from behind him. Brooks. His heart beat so hard he wondered if it might actually betray him, leave him to die in a murder mall he had no business coming back to—but that never fully left him.

That’s when he made the choice. The choice to stop running.

Not out of some altruistic need to be better. Not because he was finally ready to face the consequences for his unforgivable actions. In the end it came down to something far simpler. He was just really tired of running.

So he massaged his calf, worked his fingers into his leg muscles. Breathed through the pain. And then he made his way back to Brooks, who winced when he noticed Drew’s limp. “You should sit down. Food court?”

How could he trust this stranger who was already here when Drew arrived? Who’d almost been waiting for him? The pain made the choice for him, and Drew let Brooks help him to a table by Apple Orchard.

“You’re dead, aren’t you?” Drew didn’t believe it; his brain just needed to hear the answer.

Brooks pointed at the corner of the table, pressed his arm against the sharp edge, and sawed down in one quick motion. A thin red line thickened as blood began to seep out.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Brooks nodded at the Orchard. “Napkin?” Drew tossed him a few.

Brooks glanced up as he wiped the blood away. “I’m shocked you came back. Most people just keep running. Well, for a while.”

“Until the mall kills them.”

A warning flashed in Brooks’s eyes. As if on cue, the light seeped back up through the skylight and a dense layer of darkness settled on them. “Careful. The mall doesn’t like that kind of talk.”

The last ounce of resistance to the insane idea that an old building was alive snapped its tether and floated into the void at the memory of Dead-Arm and the smoke creature.

Drew sighed. “So why doesn’t it try to kill you?”

“My memory comes back in waves, never all at once. But I do remember that. The reason it doesn’t—the reason it likes me,” Brooks corrected.

“And why’s that?”

Brooks looked around. Gave a quick, sharp shake of the head. Not here. Not now.

“So you’re in no hurry to get out of here? You’ve tried?” Drew knew this line of discussion was reckless, but he didn’t care. The smoke thing hadn’t chased him when he tore off running earlier. Maybe the mall liked him, too.

Or maybe it’s measuring you up. Playing with its food.

The thought sent a chill down Drew’s spine.

Brooks threw the bloody napkins into an overflowing trashcan. “I’ve seen things that never leave me. I’ve done things that either keep me awake or wake me up screaming. We’re all running from something.” He clapped his hands. “Right! I gotta go clean up that dead guy. Can you help?”

Drew began to question his choice to stop running. But denying Brooks might make the mall mad, and Drew did not like what happened when the mall got mad. He nodded and followed Brooks to what was left of Dead-Arm.

Drew’s stomach clenched as he picked up the dead man’s legs and pulled. Brooks lifted the dead man’s shoulders and pushed, guiding Drew. “Sometimes the mall cleans up after itself. Sometimes it doesn’t.” Brooks shrugged, forcing Drew to glance down at the corpse’s shoulders, at the unnatural tilt of a neck thoroughly snapped. Something wet flopped against Drew’s shoe, and he turned his head and retched.

“Yeah, that smell is pretty rough. It means well, though. The mall.”

Sure.

This guy was certifiably insane.

No he’s not.

Because something about Brooks still winked at Drew: Does he have to tell you, or should I?

Every step they took smeared drying blood onto the tiles. Drew held his breath, trying to keep the smell out. He wondered how much farther it would take before a dislodged kidney or some other organ would smack lifelessly to the floor. Drew was not coming back to mop that up. Then he had a crazy thought. Might as well, something to pass the time.

“We’re almost there. See that metal door behind you? That goes to the staff hall. Throw your back into it, the lights should be on.”

“This place still gets power?”

“When it wants to.”

That’s right: sentient mall.

Drew backed into the door as carefully as possible, his back still tender from trying to pull up that gate. Once they were all through, the door crashed shut with a deafening slam. Drew rounded a corner to find what looked like an old break room: two old vending machines, a coffee maker, and a forgotten cake covered in flies on the table.

And, oddly enough, the smell of pickles.

“Keep going,” Brooks said. “Back and to your right there’s another room. Used to be employee lockers back there. Door’s open a crack.” The pickle smell swept over Drew like a wave. Reached up his nostrils, clawing greedily down his throat. The gas assaulted his eyes. His throat went raw.

He backed into the small room, hip crashing into the metal of an old employee locker. His foot caught on something then and he almost went down. “We can drop it here,” Brooks said, casually letting the man’s head smack off the floor as it hit.

Drew couldn’t stop coughing. He dropped the legs, stepped past Dead-Arm. “Don’t you smell that?” He ran an arm across his eyes. Tried to hold his breath, but the odor was too strong.

“Oh, the pickle stuff, right? You get used to it.”

Drew remembered the name of that odor the instant before he turned to look at the small room: formaldehyde. His breath caught, heart panicking. Just off the break room of the Golden Hills Mall, a stack of dead bodies waited for a burial that would never come.

More than a stack, Drew realized as his eyes adjusted to the dim space. A pair of men sat propped in a corner. A few men and women lay against the wall under an old bulletin board. Most of the bodies looked alarmingly lifelike.

“Who did this?” Drew asked once he found his voice.

“Batteries,” Brooks said. “The mall needs power. These people provide. It’s ugly, but it’s … effective.” Something like shame turned Brooks’s head away and he picked up a chair, threw it across the break room. His shoulders heaved. Drew’s mouth went dry.

Brooks let out a heavy sigh. “I’m not a monster.”

Those four words sounded like a single sound: a starter’s pistol. Every neuron in Drew’s brain urged him to run run RUN! But the signal couldn’t reach his legs; terror trapped his feet in cement, one foot in the break room, one foot still in that pickled Death Room.

Brooks turned to face him, eyes dark. Hollow. “Have you ever done something so dark, it defined you?”

Why the hell are you just standing there? You’ve seen what happens next.

“Everyone has,” Drew whispered.

“It needed food.” Brooks spread his hands. “The mall provides for me, so I provide for it.”

Drew flashed on the victims by the break room, lives snuffed out simply for being in the wrong place when the mall got hungry. He imagined his grandparents among them, then realized a few of those bodies had been someone’s grandparents. Rage hurled him forward; he went for Brooks’s throat. Drew leapt at the murderer, flew straight at him, and crashed hard into the countertop directly behind him.

His ribs groaned. What?

He spun around to see Brooks right where he’d been. But—

“You are dead.”

“Not entirely. Look, let me explain.”

“You’re a fucking killer!”

“It’s called survival, Drew! You want me to just roll over and die? Is that what you hoped would happen that day by the cornfield?”

A high-pitched hum started ringing in Drew’s ears. He fought like hell to keep his brain from telling him the truth he couldn’t bear to face. Drew scrambled to his feet. Edged toward the door, wide eyes locked on Brooks.

“Run if you can, coward. You Barnes guys are all alike.”

“What?”

“Your brother says hi.”

Drew blinked.

“By the way, friend. There were no birds that day. I was three months from getting married, did you know that? It was such a nice day, I thought I’d go for a run. Stacy loved to run, I thought I’d surprise her and meet her at her place. Then I cut back through the cornfield and this old fucking beat-up Neon just—WHAM!”

Scalding shame swept through Drew’s body. Burning his blood as he stood there staring at the face he’d only glimpsed years before—one that refused to ever fully leave his mind.

“It doesn’t have to be like this—we can be friends!”

But Drew barely heard him. He was already running. Down the hall. Tugging the door open. The thunder roared as denial and fear took full control. Racing like a speeding car was bearing down on him.

There were birds—

No, there weren’t

You’re still you.

Not even a little.

Somewhere deep in the mall, thunder rolled. The rain started when he hit the carousel. In seconds he was drenched. Don’t slip, keep going. Drew wrestled control of his thoughts away from the adrenaline’s grip. Where was he going? He was a rat in a cage. Trapped with a mad scientist. Trapped with the person you hit out there on the road that day.

Torrents pummeled the metal roof, turning the whole place into a macabre drum Drew was swiftly realizing was about to become his coffin. Lightning flashed.

Drew never reported the hit-and-run. Fear had driven him then, and shame became his close companion all the days after. His memory still insisted that a flock of birds had burst from the corn the instant before it happened, obscuring his vision. Or maybe he was just zoned out, the way you get when you’re driving a familiar road for the umpteenth time.

He had to get out of this godforsaken murder mall …

Slick Beatz! Hadn’t he left the security gate up?

A puddle grabbed his feet and he went down. His hands stung as they slapped the wet floor next to Apple Orchard Cotton Candy. Another flash of lightning. Something shined by the bench where the tip tray had fallen. Drew grabbed it. And stared in disbelief.

The copper was worn, but he could still make out the grinning squirrel face stamped into the pressed penny. The words Welcome to Loopyland, Go Nuts! framed the critter’s portrait. The date on the penny was 2055: the same year Clay went to an amusement park with his friends and said he fell in love for the first time.

But this couldn’t be Clay’s—when was the last time he was even at the mall? Brooks’s words came back to him. You Barnes guys are all alike. He didn’t realize how hard he was gripping the coin until the blood from his sliced finger began to pool around its edges.

Darkness deep and black rolled toward Drew. The same smoke that claimed Dead-Arm swallowed up kiosks and You Are Here signs as it came for him. He scrambled to his feet, slipped, grabbed the edge of a table to keep from going down again. Something sticky. He brought it to his face and stared. Brooks’s blood, from where he sliced his arm. Only this wasn’t blood; it smelled like stale ketchup, left there from the days before the mall shut down and its evil grew restless.

Wind whipped through Drew’s hair. Trash cans flew across the food court; one clipped Drew on the arm. And still the dark fog rolled—it was hunting him, greedy, hungry, and longing to make Drew pay for the mistakes of his seedy past.

He pumped his legs, pushed past the stiffness threatening to grip them in a vice. A deafening hum assaulted his ears. Blackness closed in at the corners of his vision. He could feel the shadow reaching its tentacles toward him …

There—Slick Beatz. Was that—yes. Relief administered a fresh surge of adrenaline. Drew pounded through the store, sloshing through puddles, his feet so wet he might as well have been barefoot. The water wasn’t cold—it was hot, almost to the point of boiling. Drew pushed on, eyes fixed on the only gate now standing between him and the cloudless summer sky.

It was down but not latched. He slid over soggy, drowning carpet, got his fingers underneath—hissing at the freshly opened finger wound—and pulled up. A miracle: the gate rolled easily.

It was just up to his shoulders when he stopped. Instinct made him turn back for one last look at the haunted store, the killing shadows now so close he could just make out unintelligible whispers undulating through the tar-black waves. He couldn’t see the mall entrance anymore. Couldn’t see past thirty feet in front of him. His breath hitched.

Then he remembered “Crocodile Rock.” The joy on Brooks’s face as he pounded those piano keys. Was he lying to Drew even then? He wasn’t sure. But something about the memory, false though its foundation had proven, made it just a little easier to breathe as Drew Barnes faced the end.

And suddenly the shadows split, pushed to the sides of the store like a parting of the seas. The shadows still churned, but now they gave him some room, almost like they were clearing a path. As if to say, Go on, Drew. Go meet your friend.

He could see into the mall again now. The rain had stopped. Like Golden Hills Mall had turned off a faucet. The last roll of thunder faded away. Slick Beatz itself even seemed to get a little brighter. Drew thought about roads not taken, and the shameful road he had. He thought about Grandpa Joe’s barbecue and the time he failed to visit the man when Joe had a heart attack, because the thing happened just a week after the hit-and-run and he didn’t want to risk being implicated.

But Drew was done running.

He stepped away from the gate. Headed back through the store, conviction steadying his heartbeat as fear fell to conviction. He found Brooks sitting in front of the carousel, shoulders slumped. His head snapped up when he heard Drew’s footsteps.

“Hey, look. Sorry about being a dick back there. I know it was an accident. The car. The … birds.” Brooks extended a hand. “No hard feelings?” He swallowed. “Friends?”

Drew already felt gone. Like he was watching everything from outside his body. The shadow monster had followed him here; he felt it more than saw it. He took a breath to steel himself. Then he said, “I’m sorry for what I did, Brooks. I took away your fiancée, your wife, your family. Your future. I can never make that right. All I can do is pay the price.”

Brooks kept his hand out, tears in the dead man’s eyes. “Friends?” he whispered, almost pleading now.

Drew brought the Canon Rebel up to his eye. “Nope.”

The shadows surged, anger pulsing as they lashed out to claim the infidel. Black mist reached from the floor surrounding the carousel, seething from corners and walls and ceiling tiles. It grabbed, squeezed, blackness swallowing up Drew even as he took one last picture.

Drew accepted his fate. His last thought was how he’d never get to taste Grandpa Joe’s barbecue again. The camera fell to the floor. The lens shattered.

*     *     *
Wafts of sugary-sweet hickory filled the backyard. The party guests laughed and gossiped. A few had started up a volleyball game with an old net and a bright new ball. Joe Morgan clapped Clay on the back. “How are those ribs coming?”

“Pretty good, but I still think they could use some extra cayenne.”

Grandpa Joe shook his head and laughed. “You’d make a good chef, you know that?”

“Tell that to my parents,” Clay mumbled.

A cold sensation pressed against the bottom of his sock. He dropped into a lawn chair and took off his shoe, peered inside it. Something small and oval-shaped was sitting in the sole. It hadn’t been there when he got dressed this morning.

A penny. Clay pulled it from his shoe and relief spread through him at the sight of the old, familiar squirrel. A crimson border ran around the edge, dried and flaky. Ketchup? Somehow he knew it wasn’t. He scraped it off and squeezed the pressed penny, eyes welling with emotion as the world stood still. And in that moment, Clay determined to make the most of this fresh start. His debt was paid.

Grandpa Joe came through the sliding patio door, glanced over his shoulder to make sure he was alone. “Hey, your brother said he was planning on coming up and surprising Gram. I thought he’d be here by now. He didn’t call you by chance, did he?”

“Sorry, Gramps.” Clay turned the coin over in the midday sun, smiling as it winked off the copper. “I don’t think he’ll make it.”