Rule No. 1: The Midnight Mall can be found between 12:00 a.m. and 3:33 a.m. Guests are welcome inside at any time during this period, but the mall locks its doors promptly at 3:33 a.m. No exceptions.
Rule No. 2: Outside food is welcome anywhere except for the Pet Store and the Funitorium.
Rule No. 3: The cinema’s nightly showings start promptly at 12:45 a.m. Once seated, we remind guests not to exit the theatre until the end of the credits.
Rule No. 4: There are no refunds, returns, or renegotiations at any of the shops or kiosks inside the Midnight Mall.
Rule No. 5: The Security Guard makes his rounds between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. If you happen to bump into him, do not make eye contact.
Rule No. 6: The Janitor works weekends only. If you see him, he will ask you for your help cleaning up a spill. Politely decline.
Rule No. 7: Shoplifters will be persecuted to the full extent of our laws.
Note: each area of the Midnight Mall operates under their own rules and guidelines. Please contact stores individually for a complete list of regulations and opening times.
The first time I encountered the Midnight Mall, I hadn’t been looking for it. None of us had even heard of it before. And by us, I mean Mike, Remy, Carter, and me. The Frightful Four. That’s what we had been calling ourselves for years, ever since a pissed off substitute had bestowed the title upon us in the seventh grade. She said the four of us together was a teacher’s worst fear, and although she had obviously meant it as an insult, it was a moniker we tried our best to live up to. While others (mostly conservative, middle-aged Algebra teachers) trembled before us, we aimed to live life to the fullest, never cowering before anything or anyone. In middle school, that meant staying up late playing Five Nights at Freddy’s and watching Nightmare on Elm Street; but as we grew older, we grew more restless. Craving adventure, adrenaline, that nighttime feeling…and I guess that’s how we found the Midnight Mall.
Kind of. Not really. Like I said, at the time, we didn’t know it existed. We were trying to break into the mall. Not to shoplift or vandalize – we just wanted somewhere to hang out without our parents snooping around. And since Carter was working the closing shift at the food court, he had perfect access to the Employees Only back door to sneak us in.
Remy had grabbed a half-empty bottle of fruit schnapps from her mom’s stash and Mike had scored a handful of weed gummies, and our plan was to get crossed in the parking lot, wait for Carter to sneak us in, then fuck around the empty halls, dodging the janitors and, I don’t know, probably daring each other to make out with the faceless mannequins or something.
Our lives would have looked a lot different if we had stuck to that plan.
Or if we had taken the stairs instead of the elevator. If Mike hadn’t dared Remy to press the ‘Do Not Touch’ button on our way up. If it hadn’t taken us down, down, down onto a lower level that even Carter had never seen before. If I had listened to the awful feeling in my gut and refused to get out.
So many ifs, buts and maybes, but none of that matters. What matters is that we were the Frightful Four, ready to take on the world, and when we stepped out of the elevator and saw a plain wooden door next to a set of rules about something called the Midnight Mall, we looked at each other, laughed, and headed inside. None of us thought it was going to be anything more than a weird prank.
“What the hell?”
That’s the first thing Carter said when we walked through the door. And I’m pretty sure we were all thinking the same thing. We had been expecting some cramped and dingy storage closet, hidden away in a space where almost nobody could find it.
Instead, we walked into an exact replica of our mall.
At least, that’s what it looked like. It was as though we had blinked and found ourselves back at the entrance of the first floor. Kiosks, boutiques, the food court up ahead. The layout was a clear copy, and if it weren’t for the hordes of people wandering around and enjoying themselves, I would have thought the elevator had glitched and we had simply gone in a weird loop back to the first floor.
Again: if.
“I don’t understand,” Remy said. “What just happened? What is this place?”
“The Midnight Mall,” Mike replied, a dopey smile on his face. “Duh. Didn’t you read the sign?”
“I read it just fine. But that doesn’t explain - this. We were three floors underground.”
“And we still are,” I said. “We have to be.”
“But this place is huge!” Remy argued.
Mike just shrugged. “Kiera is right. How would we have gotten back upstairs? Besides, some places build parking garages that go ten stories lower than we are. This place must have been built by a badass architect.”
“But where did all these people come from?” Remy pressed. “There were barely any cars in the parking lot.”
“They probably Ubered,” Mike said. His nose scrunched up the way it always did when he was annoyed. “Or they parked somewhere else so they wouldn’t spill the secret. Probably because this place is one of those cool underground finds. A find that we’re completely ignoring – come on, you saw the sign. The place closes at 3:33. We only have a few hours. Are we really going to spend it arguing about semantics? Us? The Frightful Four?”
At that, Remy pursed her lips. Although she was the most cautious of all of us, she was also the most prideful – and she’d never live down an accusation of being scared.
“Come on,” Mike said. “Let’s see what this place has to offer.”
Eyes wide, we followed Mike a few steps forward to a large directory. There were hundreds of store names written in tiny font – more stores than I thought could physically fit into a mall – but I didn’t recognize most of the names. Not like I had brought much shopping money with me.
“Why don’t we check out the pet store?” I recommended. Partially because dogs were adorable, but mostly because petting puppies and cuddling kittens cost nothing.
“That sounds alright,” Mike agreed. “It’s a night mall, so maybe they’ll have some sick nocturnal animals. I’ve always wanted to pet an owl.”
“I don’t know. I’m allergic to cats,” Carter reminded.
“Then don’t pet any of the cats,” Mike said.
“Why don’t we see a movie instead,” Remy suggested. She glanced at her watch. “We still have ten minutes before it starts.”
“But movies cost money,” I said. “Besides, we can watch a movie anywhere.”
“And you can find owls in literally any forest.”
Like most of our arguments, nobody was keen to switch sides. And so, in the end, we chose to split up. I know, I know. Classic horror movie mistake. But then, you never think you’re in horror movie territory until it’s too late. At the time, I thought the place was bizarre as hell, but I figured we were in a more surreal, Wes Anderson type situation.
So, while Carter and Remy went to check out the cinema, Mike and I headed toward the pet shop.
As we made our way through the crowds of people, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of out-of-towners had made their way to this strange attraction. My town wasn’t small by any stretch, but it wasn’t New York City, either. We rarely had tourists. And yet, every few feet, I heard people speaking French, Mandarin, Spanish. And the styles were strange, too. Although the majority of people looked normal enough, some wore trailing Victorian dresses or steam-punk attire.
“The Midnight Mall,” I mused, my thoughts growing hazier as the edibles kicked in. Maybe that’s why everything felt so surreal and dreamlike. “You think we stumbled on some kind of comic con?”
“Maybe,” Mike said.
But I could tell he wasn’t really listening. We had made it to the pet store, and all of his attention was now focused on finding the coolest birds of prey. As Mike roamed the aisles, I looked around the front of the store. The aisles were lined with boxes of treats, toys, and frou-frou outfits, and there were tons of wire cages housing puffy-cheeked hamsters, sleeping kittens, and sad-looking dogs.
I headed closer to the dogs. There were only three or four in the cages, and all of them perked up when I took a step forward. A few of them whined in anticipation. Poor things. I wondered how long they had waited here, hoping someone would stop and take them to their forever home. Although the mall was quite crowded, we were the only customers in the pet shop, so it didn’t seem like they got much business.
“It must be a lonely life, huh guys?” I said.
And it must have been my imagination, but I could have sworn the golden retriever closest to me actually nodded his head. Eyebrows raised, I stepped even closer. I had watched over my neighbor’s golden retriever a few months ago, and this one looked nearly identical to that one…except for the eyes. They were a light green color, half-covered by the dog’s matted hair, and bore straight into my own. I couldn’t have explained it to you, but somehow, those eyes looked more intelligent than any other dog’s I had seen before. More perceptive. More analytical. More human.
I reached a hand towards the cage – just as Mike squeezed my shoulder. Hard.
“What’s with the grip, dude?” I demanded, twisting around. But my attitude short-circuited when I realized that Mike was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, an intimidatingly tall and gaunt man stared down at me with blank, sunken eyes. His pale, almost greying skin made it look like he hadn’t stepped foot into the sun – or perhaps out of this shop – in months. And I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover…but fuck that, I was judging this Nosferatu look-alike hard. Especially since his yellowing fingernails were currently digging quarter-moons into my shoulders.
I jerked away from him. “E-excuse me,” I said, trying to sound more annoyed than nervous. “Can I help you?”
“No touching.”
“Yeah, I would appreciate that very much.”
“No touching the animals,” he clarified.
“Oh,” I said. Some of my indignance deflated. “Sorry. Do you work here?”
“Yes. I am the curator.”
“The curator? You mean, like you decide what animals to buy for the store?”
The man’s lips thinned. I couldn’t tell if he was unhappy, or if he was suppressing a smile. “Something like that,” he said.
I didn’t like his tone. But before I could press – or ask him how much the golden retriever was – I heard Mike scream.
A howling, terrified scream. I had never heard that kind of desperation in his voice before. Without thinking, I sprinted away, deeper into the store – and then skidded to a stop. I took a short, shallow breath, my legs frozen with fear.
Because something was eating Mike. I said something because whatever the animal was, I had never seen anything like it before. It had a long, slithering tail like a rat, the matted fur of a hyena, and the head of a vulture. And it was that long, thin vulture’s beak that was reaching through a gap in its cage to gouge strips of skin from Mike’s thigh.
Riiiiip. The nightmarish creature tore another long line of flesh from Mike’s thigh, as easily as if his skin was a fruit roll-up peeling off the bone. Mike jerked forward, but before he could move an inch, the creature speared him once more with its beak.
“Fuck!” Mike yelled, his body convulsing as he tried desperately to escape. As he shook, his head jerked to the left and we made eye contact. “Fuck! Kiera! Help me!”
With a burst of adrenaline, I rushed forward, grabbing Mike’s arms and tugging him forward. But the bird wasn’t finished. Threatened by my presence, it clamped its massive beak over Mike’s ankle. When I pulled, it’s beak pressed down harder; hard enough that Mike’s curses became an incessant wail, painfully loud and just as animalistic as any of the other creatures in the store.
Crunch. Splinters of yellow-white bone shard rose through Mike’s skin like cheese pushed through a grater. In some distant corner of my mind, I was ready to panic-vomit, but I worked in autopilot, my mind going blank as I played tug-o-war with the bird. The creature was much stronger than me, but as I pulled, it yanked more flesh from Mike’s foot – allowing me just enough wiggle-room to pull him backwards.
We both fell to the floor, gasping. But there was no time to rest. Mike’s ankle was already a purple, swollen mess decorated with bone splinters, and his left thigh looked even worse. Blood, gaping muscle tissue, tendons shredded like plucked piano chords… Holding in the urge to vomit, I tore off my cardigan and pressed it to the wound. But with the amount of blood he was losing, I knew that wasn’t going to be nearly enough to save him.
“Help!” I yelled. “Someone help us!”
My gaze darted back and forth down the aisles, searching for the Curator, but he was nowhere to be seen. Apparently touching the dogs was a criminal offense, but customers being pecked to death wasn’t his problem. I gritted my teeth. Mike was in no condition to walk, but I had to get him to a hospital. And fast. I would let myself think about how fucking insane the situation was after that.
Placing both my arms underneath his pits, I pulled him backwards with a grunt. Shit. If he made it out of here alive – no, when, I chastened myself – I was going to tell him to go on a juice cleanse.
“Just hold on,” I said. “You’re going to be okay.”
Another step backwards. His blood smeared against the tiles, and the vulture let out an enraged squack. Although it had eaten nearly a quarter of Mike’s leg, apparently it had room for seconds. At the sound of the avian cry, Mike gave a harsh whine, his body convulsing in my hold. I tried my best to make soothing noises, even as I jerked him toward the entrance, his ankle bones skidding across the floor in a way that was probably not the most comfortable for him.
“It’s okay,” I repeated. “You’re going to be okay.”
He craned his neck to look at me, his gaze distinctly not okay.
“The gummies,” he whispered, his voice hoarse from his screams. “They were in my back pocket.”
“Right. That thing must have ate them. But I wouldn’t worry about that right now.”
“No,” he said. “The gummies. The rules. Don’t bring food into the Pet Store.” He looked up at me with a helpless, haunted expression that I had only seen twice in his life. Once when his younger sister died in a car accident, and again two years later, after his parents divorced from the stress. Now, he looked up at me with that exact same expression and said: “Kiera. Where the hell are we?”
And then he passed out.
“Mike? Mike!” I shook him, but he was out cold. He was running out of time. “Dammit.”
Pressing my hand against his shredded, weeping skin, I tugged with all my might, finally managing to pull him out of the store. But I hadn’t made it more than three feet when my back hit a sturdy, muscular wall.
“You seemed to have caused quite the commotion, little lady. Maybe I could be of some help,” someone said.
And that’s when I turned around and slowly looked up at the security guard.
You can read more about the Midnight Mall here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/13oxqwo/the_seven_rules_of_the_midnight_mall_part_ii/