“AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” Beth screamed.
“You two! Twenty feet away!” Mom said angrily as she lifted up the stroller top.
“I didn’t do anything!” Peter protested.
“She kicked me!” Dill whined.
“Twenty feet! Now!”
Dill stuck his tongue out at Beth as he and Peter trudged off into the women’s jeans section.
“Man, your mom is so unfair. She’s always taking your bratty sister’s side.” Dill peeked sideways at Peter, who was looking distractedly all around the store. “Cuz she’s such a brat, she’s the biggest brat, the brattiest big-bratty – yo, PETER!”
Peter swung his head around. “Huh?”
“What is with you?!”
Peter glanced nervously around the store. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to make fun of me?”
Dill stifled a laugh. “Oh yeah,” he said, in a tone of voice like Suuuure I will.
“When we were sitting down back in the mall, did you see the mannequin in the dress shop?”
Dill clasped his hands and lifted them to his cheek. “Ohhhhh, does Pe-tah want a dwess? Does he wanna look all pwetty for the big dance?”
Dill began twirling around like Cinderella at the ball.
“Boom-ba-ba Boom-ba-ba – ” he sang, imitating some kind of polka music.
“Dude, SERIOUSLY,” Peter snapped. “I think she looked at me.”
“Cuz she knew you wanted her pwetty, pwetty dwess!” Dill snorted, and doubled over from the laughter. “She wanted to buy a Teen People and look at all the dweaaamy boys with you!”
“I think she might have been alive.”
Dill stopped laughing and looked up.
“Say what?”
“I didn’t see anybody move her head when she looked at me. And I didn’t see anybody move it back, either.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Dill said, his eyes narrowing.
Peter scanned the department store. “No.”
“You’re telling me that the dummy moved her head herself.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s stupid.”
Peter just kept watch on the room.
“Why do you keep looking around like that? Even if it was true, she’s not here now.” Dill stopped, then got a frantic look on his face. “Is she?”
Peter lowered his voice. “I’ve always hated mannequins. Ever since I was little, I always felt like…something was wrong about them. I can’t explain it. All I know is, I saw one move back there in the mall, and now we’re surrounded by a whole bunch more. I’m not takin’ my eyes off of them.”
As Peter spoke, Dill started looking around the store.
There were mannequins everywhere.
Women in dresses and sweaters.
Men in suits.
Headless bodies in t-shirts.
Legless torsos wearing winter coats.
Bodiless sets of legs in blue jeans.
And heads. Heads with no eyes, no noses, no mouths, wearing cold weather hats and baseball caps.
Dill was fidgeting now. “Why are you always freaking me out?” he whined.
“It’s not like I’m making it up,” Peter protested.
“Let’s get out of here, then.” Dill brightened. “Let’s go see a movie!”
There was the Cineplex 6 halfway down the mall. Peter had seen a couple of matinees there with Dill since he had moved to Duskerville, but never an evening show.
“Are you crazy? My mom’s not going to let us out of her sight.”
Dill looked around the women’s section, and rubbed his lower lip. “Leave that to me.”
5
Melissa Normal had found two new suits and four blouses, all of which were on sale for 25% off. Beth was quietly occupying herself in her stroller, which was a miracle unto itself. All in all, Melissa felt pretty happy. When she stopped to wonder why, she realized that she hadn’t heard Dill Bodinski’s voice in over five minutes.
When he suddenly piped up again, every muscle in her back automatically tensed.
“Hey, Mrs. Normal, can we go sit outside on a bench? It’s pretty boring in here.”
She didn’t bother to turn around. “No, Dill.”
“Okay. Hey, how do you wear this thing?”
Melissa sighed and looked over her shoulder. First she saw that five other women were all standing nearby. Some were giggling behind their hands, others had a look of disdain on their faces.
Then she saw Dill, who was wearing an oversized bra on his head. One cup fit neatly like a cap, while the other dangled onto his shoulder.
“I never saw anybody wear it like this, but I can’t figure out how you’d do it otherwise,” Dill yelled across the aisles.
“Dill, take that off right now,” Melissa hissed. Her eyes darted to the other women nearby, who looked at her like, Can’t you control your children?
“He’s not mine, he’s my son’s friend,” she explained to the nearest woman, who just turned up her nose and walked away.
“What about this?” Dill called out, and held up some rather skimpy women’s underwear. “It looks like underroos to me, but I ain’t never seen underroos like this before.”
“Dill, put those DOWN!” Melissa seethed. She could feel her face flushing red.
“Hey, where do babies come from?” Dill shouted.
• • •
“Told ya,” Dill whispered as he and Peter stood in line at the movie theater.
“You wore a bra on your head,” Peter said, horrified. “And you touched girl’s underwear.”
Dill wiped his hand on his jeans with an expression of disgust. “Don’t remind me. And don’t ever say I never did nothin’ for ya.”
The entrance to the Cineplex was actually on the outside of the mall. Night was beginning to fall, and dark clouds were moving rapidly in the distance.
Mom stood beside them in line. Beth was in her stroller, crying about not being able to go see a movie, too.
“Dill, you’re sure your mother is coming to get you at nine o’clock?”
Dill nodded. “She gets off from the diner at nine and she’s gonna come pick me up after that.”
Mom handed a ten dollar bill to Peter. “Be good. And when you get out of the movie, tell Dill’s mom you have to come right home, got it?”
Peter nodded. “No problem.”
“You’re going to see the animated movie, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. You sure you’ll be all right?”
“Mom, we’ll be fine!”
His mother smiled worriedly, then turned to go.
Dill coughed.
Mom looked back at him. “Bye, Dill.” Then she started to push Beth’s stroller.
Dill coughed louder.
Mom looked around again. “Is there something you want, Dill?”
“Could you loan me fifteen dollars?”
“What?” Mom asked in disbelief.
“Well, it takes nine bucks to get in. I thought me and Peter could get a popcorn and soda, too.”
Mom’s face contorted in rage. “You said you were planning to go to this movie anyway!”
“I didn’t say I had any money.”
“Dill Bodinski, I have had more than enough of you today! You have been nothing but a pain in my rear end, and you’re always asking for money, and this is too much, it is TOO MUCH!”
“What if I promise never to make smoochy sounds around Eric anymore?”
Mom stared at Dill and gritted her teeth. Then she reached for her wallet.
6
“Am I good or what?” Dill mmphed through a mouthful of popcorn.
“You’re good,” Peter admitted.
They had walked into the theater pretty early, so they had the best seats in the house. As they ate their popcorn and watched the slide show ads for Army recruitment and Arlito’s Sandwich Shop on 4th street, Dill turned to Peter.
“Do you really think the mannequin moved?”
“Can we not talk about that?” Peter asked, irritated.
“Hey, I’m usually the one who says that.”
“No, you say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it!’”
“Well, I don’t want to talk about it,” Dill huffed. “You’re sure you didn’t imagine it?”
“I didn’t imagine it.”
“Did any other dummies look at you in the department store?”
“Just you.”
“Ha ha,” Dill said without laughing.
The Coming Attractions started, and Peter spent the next two hours trying to forget the mannequin.
At one point during the movie he almost had a heart attack. In the darkness at the side of the theater aisle, a woman’s white face appeared in the shadows. Her hair was dark, and he could see some kind of blue clothing on her, too.
Peter was about to scream when a bright scene in the movie bathed the room in light, and he could tell that she was a teenage usher in a blue vest. She scanned the faces in the room, then walked out.
It took Peter a long while to get back into the story onscreen.
7
The movie let out at 8:55.
“That was kind of dumb,” Dill said as they left the theater.
“I thought it was pretty funny.”
“The octopus was stupid. He wasn’t scary at all, and I don’t think he woulda turned good like that all of a sudden.”
As they argued and walked out of the Cineplex’s rear exit into the mall, they found themselves near the giant fountain. A two-foot-high marble wall enclosed a shimmering pool that stretched twenty feet across. A stone tower rose up out of the center and gushed water into the air. But the best part was the money.
A metal plaque invited everyone to pitch in and make a wish; four times a year the fountain would be cleaned out, with the proceeds going to the “Make A Wish” foundation for terminally ill kids. Apparently a lot of people made wishes, because the fountain floor was a carpet of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. There were even a few gold-colored dollar coins scattered here and there.
Dill stood at the edge of the fountain and gazed longingly at the bottom. “Man, if I could just get in there for ten minutes, I’d be the happiest dude on the planet.”
“Yeah,” Peter agreed. The glittering treasure trove was inviting. “But we’d be stealing money from sick kids, and that’s not cool.”
“Why do you have to always ruin my dreams?” Dill asked in exasperation. He looked around stealthily; the last movie theater crowd had dispersed, and there was nobody else in the mall. All around them, the shops were closed up for the night. Giant metal chain link gates had been pulled down from the ceiling and extended all the way to the ground.
“You know, I could just – ”
“NO,” Peter snapped.
Dill sighed, then walked over to one of the metal gates. “Cool, I’ve never seen that before.”
“You’ve never been at the mall when they all closed up?” Peter asked. He had seen it several times back in California.
“Nope.” Dill grabbed the metal links of the gate and pulled up on it.
CLANK.
The gate rolled up maybe six inches off the floor, but was stopped by a hook and padlock chaining it to the ground.
“Cut that out, you’re gonna get us in trouble.”
Dill rolled his eyes. “No I’m not, I’m just experimenting. You know what your problem is?”
“No, what,” Peter said, with absolutely no interest in the answer.
“You don’t experiment enough. You’re always too worried about – ”
“Where are we supposed to meet your mom?” Peter broke in.
“Oh. Oh, yeah, I guess I should call her.”
“CALL her?! I thought she was going to meet us at nine!”
“You believed that? Pff.” Dill waved his hand like give me a break. “I knew your mom was gullible, but…”
“You LIED to my mom?!”
“I didn’t lie, I kind of bent the truth.”
“How did you bend the truth, exactly?”
Dill shrugged. “Okay, so I lied.”
“So no one’s coming to pick us up?!”
“Geez, calm down. We’ll go call the diner now.”
There was a metallic CLANG behind them. Peter flinched, then twisted around to look.
Some pimply teenage guy in a uniform was at the Cineplex’s exit. He was standing on the other side of a metal gate he’d just pulled down from the ceiling.
“Why are you doing that?” Peter asked fearfully.
“We gotta lock up the entrance to the mall,” the kid said as he padlocked the gate to the floor.
“But there’s 9 o’clock movies! Where’s everybody going to come out?”
“Out the front by the parking lot, duh. You better get out of here, they don’t want people in the mall after nine.”
“We’ve got to call his mom,” Peter said. “Let us back in.”
“Use your cell phone.”
“I don’t have a cell phone.”
The kid frowned in disbelief. “Who doesn’t have a cell phone?”
“Me! Let us back in!”
“Too late, I already locked it.”
“Let us use your cell phone, then,” Dill said.
“Yeah, right.” The kid pointed to the left. “There’s some public payphones down there.”
And then he disappeared inside the glass doors of the movie theater, which snapped shut with a loud CLICK. Doors which, Peter noticed for the first time, didn’t have any handles on the outside. It was like he was being locked inside a prison.
Peter and Dill were the only ones left in the empty first floor of the mall.
“Guess we better go call my mom,” Dill suggested.
8
They looked for five minutes before they found a payphone near a public restroom. It was out of order.
“Stupid phone people,” Dill griped. He looked over at Peter accusingly. “That guy might’ve been a butthole, but he was right – why don’t you have a cell phone?”
“Why don’t you?!”
“You’re rich, I’m not.”
“My grandfather is rich, not me, and he won’t even buy a television. I don’t think he’s going to get me a cell phone.”
“Stupid phone people,” Dill repeated.
They set off in search of a working telephone. As they walked through the mall they never saw a soul. It was eerie, being there by themselves in such a huge, empty place. With no people anywhere, Peter imagined he and Dill had stumbled on the ruins of some ancient civilization whose inhabitants had mysteriously disappeared.
They finally reached another couple of public telephones near a mall exit. Dill pumped in a few coins left over from the movie theater and dialed a number.
“Is that the diner where your mom works?”
“Naw, she’d’ve left there by now. I’m calling home.”
Even from a few feet away, Peter could hear the busy signal.
“What in the world? Are you the only people on earth without call waiting?” he grumbled.
“No, we have it, but we have dial-up internet. Somebody must be on.”
“What about your sisters? They’ve got to have cell phones, right?”
“Charlene racked up a two hundred dollar bill and got hers taken away. Cuz of that, my parents won’t even let Shayna have one.”
Peter hung his head in despair. “What are we going to do?”
“Let’s go outside. Maybe there’s somebody out there.”
They made their way to an exit, but the doors were already locked. Peter grabbed onto the handle and shook, HARD, but it was no use: the deadbolts were in place.
“Oh my gosh,” he whispered. “We’re locked in.”
Dill laughed. “Cool!”
Peter stared at him.
“What?” Dill protested. “It’s cool, you know it’s cool. We got the whole place to ourself – it’s like we own it!”
“I d
on’t know about you, but I’m hungry, and I’m tired, and I don’t want to sleep on a bench, and I really don’t want to have my mom grounding me because YOU lied and said your mom was going to come pick us up!”
“Oh, yeah…that’s not so cool.”
“‘That’s not so cool,’” Peter mimicked him in an angry little kid voice, then shouted, “It is SO NOT cool!”
“Chill, Pete. There’s gotta be somebody around, let’s go find ‘em.”
They started jogging through the mall, footsteps echoing in the empty halls.
They didn’t see anyone.
After a few minutes they stopped to catch their breath. Peter noticed that they had almost reached the place where Mom had rescued them from the plant dusting.
And where he had seen the mannequin in the blue dress.
Peter’s stomach knotted up even worse. He remembered looking over at her and seeing that she was facing a different direction…then looking back moments later and seeing her head had moved again –
A loud CLANG echoed in the distance, followed by the rattling of a shopfront gate.
In his mind’s eye, he could see the gate slowly rising…to reveal her shoe on the floor. A black shoe on a dead, plastic foot.
He felt his knees go weak with fear.
“H– ” Dill started to yell.
Peter didn’t let him get further than that: he wrapped his hand around Dill’s mouth and tackled him to the ground.
“Mrrrrmmmmph!”
“Shut up!” Peter hissed.
Dill slopped his tongue over Peter’s palm. Without thinking, Peter pulled his hand away in disgust.
“EW! Gross!”
“Why – ” Dill started.
“What if it’s the mannequin?” Peter whispered.
“Gimme a break,” Dill said sarcastically, but he was drowned out by a booming voice far down the aisle of shops.
“Those stupid, snot-nose punks…I’ll have their heads on a platter if it’s the last thing I do!” echoed through the empty hall.
Deputy Jenkins.
Peter looked at Dill. Dill looked back at Peter.
“It’s even worse!” Dill said under his breath.
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) (PETER AND THE MONSTERS) Page 40