Page 37 of Don't Watch Alone
But this? This isn’t a joke. This isn’t one of my friends screwing with me.
This is something else.
I look up, eyes adjusting to the dimness, and that’s when I see it—a panel in the ceiling, just barely visible in the glow. A square outline. An emergency exit.
Hope ignites in my chest.
I scramble up, my feet slipping, and my hands grabbing for the railing. I brace myself and push. The panel doesn’t want to move. It sticks, but I get my fingers under it and shove until it opens. Cold, stale air drifts in from the elevator shaft above. I don’t think. I just pull myself up, myelbows scraping against the steel, my knees bruising, and finally, I’m on top of the car.
Everything is black. No light, no sound, just the faintest phantom of light from the open hatch. I look up. The second floor is there, just maybe ten feet away, or maybe less. I can see the edge of it, the promise of freedom, of safety. I don’t wait. I start climbing, grabbing at whatever I can—thick cables, the rough concrete walls, grease-slick steel.
My arms shake. My lungs hurt. I can feel my muscles burning, but I’m almost there—my fingers brush the edge. Just a little more and I’ll be out.
And then, without any fucking hint of warning, the elevator springs back to life.
It jerks beneath me, so fast, so sudden, I barely have time to scream before it’s rising, dragging me with it. My lower body is still caught in the gap, my legs still dangling below. I reach, stretch, claw for the ledge, but the space between me and the second floor is closing in too fast.
No.
I scream, but it’s already happening.
The roof of the elevator car slams up against me, determined, and I feel it—first the crush, then the snap, bone after bone breaking like dry branches, a wet, grinding sound that fills my ears and drowns out the world. The pain is blinding, white-hot and unrestricted. I can’t scream anymore. I can’t even breathe.
My vision goes blurry, fading to gray, and the last thing I see is the concrete floor inches from my face; so close before everything fades to black.
And then there’s nothing.
Chapter nineteen
Derrick
Thestalereekofdust and mildew hits me the moment I push open the heavy utility door, the metal creaking in disapproval like even it doesn’t want me going down there, and the air that spills out is thick, untouched, almost wet with the kind of rot that comes from too many years of abandonment. The stairwell beyond is narrow and steep, drowned in a silence so complete it feels wrong, like it’s not just the absence of sound but the deliberate removal of it. Tony vanished somewhere in this damn mall, and after we turned over every inch of the food court, the arcade, even the creepy-ass shoe department, this shitty stairwell was all that was left—Blaiz told me to check it out, insisted actually, like she knew something that I didn’t. Part of me is already certain Tony wouldn’t come down here—he’s always been ahigh-strung little asshole—but when panic sets in, logic gets pushed out the back door without a second thought.
I press the walkie up to my mouth and speak into it. “Jade, you and Blaiz find him yet? Over.”
There’s a burst of static, then her voice crackles through, muffled but recognizable. “No, still nothing. Did you try Eva and Drew? Over.”
“No, but this fucking basement’s giving me the creeps,” I mutter, stepping down the first stair as the chill thickens around me. “There’s mannequins covered in plastic down here. Over.”
“Shit. That’s... creepy as hell. Over,” she says, forcing a laugh that doesn’t do a damn thing to ease the sick feeling churning in my belly.
I don’t laugh back. I just keep going down, each step dragging me deeper into the cold, which isn’t just temperature anymore but something heavier, something psychological, like the place itself is pressing against me, testing the limits of my mind. When I reach the bottom, the stairwell opens into a huge floor, lit by a few dying fluorescent stripsflashing above. It’s a graveyard—an expanse of forgotten merchandise and busted-down displays—and there they are just like I said: mannequins, dozens of them, maybe more, all wrapped tight in crinkling plastic sheeting, standing in stiff little groups like they’re having some silent funeral. The plastic dulls their blank white faces, but not enough. Not enough to stop them from seeming like they’re watching me.
I move past them, my footsteps echoing into nothing, each shift in the light making their shapes ripple like they’re breathing under there, like they’re waiting for something. I get goosebumps as I walk between them, the feeling so strong I keep glancing over my shoulder because I swear to God they’re moving when I’m not looking.
“Tony!” I shout, the sound bouncing back to me. “You down here, man?!”
Silence answers me. Not even the buzz of electricity, just the kind of quiet that makes your ears ring. Then—something. A sound. A soft drag maybe, or something shifting againstplastic deeper in the maze. Not fast. Not random. Not an animal. And not fucking Tony.
Every instinct I have is screaming at me now, telling me to turn around and get the hell out of here. I spin, ready to run, already imagining the relief of being back in the mall where my friends are and exits… but then something hits into my skull from behind, burning pain cutting through my head like a blade shoved behind my eyes, and the floor slants violently as I go down hard, everything tilting and spinning and then nothing.
When I come to, my arms and shoulders are on fire, stretched above my head, wrists locked in cold fucking chains, the metal digging deep into my skin that’s already feeling like it is bruising. My legs dangle. I’m not on the floor. I’m hanging, strung up like meat. I blink, but my eyelids are stuck, sticky with blood. Everything’s blurry at first, a smear of gray and shadow and flickering movement. The mannequins are still here. Of course they are. But something’s different now. They’re closer. And some of them—fuck—some of them are rocking.Not from a breeze. Not from me. From something else.
I try to control my breath, but it’s no use—my chest is pounding and every weak breath rubs against the growing panic in my throat.
“Who the fuck is there?!” I shout.
A laugh answers. Low and slow and dripping with something I can’t name. It’s not a laugh that belongs to anyone with a soul.
