The Mystery of Lakeview Mall

"The old mall is haunted!"

Even by Hazelwood High's rumor mill standards, this one was dumb. A lot of students liked to talk about it, but very few actually believed it. Still, when your high school is located in a sleepy suburban-at-best town where so little happens that a broken taillight could make the newspaper's front page, you're all-too-happy to share local news, even if it's news from the next town over.

"What, the Lakeview mall?" Zoe asked in between bites of her lunch.

Tyler enthusiastically nodded. "Sightings, feelings of dread, the whole 'people go crazy when they're there too long' thing -- it's perfect!"

"Perfectly dumb," Zoe shot back, giving Tyler a look of derision. "You can't actually think that kind of shit is real."

"Of course I don't! But it means adventure. I wanna go. Who's in?"

The trio sat at their lunch table, eyeing one another. They were together through thick and thin, and they were always searching for the next adventure -- and even if no one but Tyler was going to say it out loud, this 'haunted mall' was the perfect excuse in too long to go on a proper adventure.

But enthusiasm was for the nerds of the table, so Zoe Heracleous wasn't going to say anything until someone else did. Despite her last name, she looked visibly Korean; her dad's last name was deceptive enough to hide the majority of her family's history. She inherited more than just a name, of course -- a strong, beautiful yet determined face, beautifully wavy long hair, and a figure that screamed, 'I bet this girl looks amazing with no clothes on but she'd beat the crap out of me with her muscles before I ever found out.' It didn't help that, even though she was reasonably fit, the most intimidating thing about her was her assertive attitude.

Nami Smith wasn't the opposite of Zoe, per se, but she was enough to be her foil. Nami was white as a ghost and quiet, but not timid -- despite her assertive attitude, Zoe would never make friends with someone timid, they'd be seen by her as too 'boring' -- and thoughtful. If she said something, she had enough of a track record with the others that she'd be listened to, which was nice for her. Her short red hair had, much to her annoyance, gotten her the label of a 'dyke' among the school boys, and hanging out with a confident young woman like Zoe didn't help those rumors subside. This was, of course, absolutely awful for the boy-crazy Nami.

Luckily, she'd made fast friends with the one guy at Hazelwood goofy enough to make her reconsider creating complications in their friendship. Tyler Massamba could have been bullied a lot less when he was younger if he'd just shut up. It wasn't that he had a highly expressive face, or the fact that he was one of maybe six black kids in all of Hazelwood, or even that he was a little bit fatter than he would have liked, but it was mainly his wild wacky spirit and tendency to talk out in class, and say whatever he wanted, no matter whose ire it drove. Bless Tyler, he never learned, and he lived for his own excitement, which made him happy as a clam that he managed to find friends in two girls that couldn't pass up an opportunity for adventure.

"Go to the mall?" Nami asked. "Would we have to break into it?"

Tyler grinned a toothy grin. "I already scouted the place out and found an in. Ground floor, no danger, easy as pie. Because I love you both so much, I didn't even go in myself yet. I saved it for the moment where all three of us can enjoy it."

"You're too kind," Zoe replied dismissively. "Well, it's got to have been abandoned for, what, a few months? If there was any kind of security, they'd probably have sealed that up."

"It could have been made the day Tyler found it," Nami pointed out. "How about we go on the weekend? That way, if it's still there, we know we won't get busted. If it's sealed, we know it's a bad idea."

Zoe gave an approving face towards Nami and turned towards Tyler. "I think that's our way of saying we're in."

Tyler hooted and hollered. "This is gonna be awesome!"

***

Because the lockdown of the Coronavirus pandemic only lasted about half a year, thanks to some government assistance not too many businesses went under. Lakeview was perhaps the only mall in the area to be entirely shut down by the half-year pandemic. With construction projects already overwhelming its workers in the city, the mall was just left there, not rotted at all and yet eerie; potentially fully functional and yet visibly dead.

"There it is," Tyler triumphantly stated as he pointed to some kind of service entrance. "Check it out." He walked over to the door and tried it out. Sure enough, it opened, revealing some kind of maintenance room that led to the rest of the mall.

"Woah, what an oversight," Zoe mumbled as she approached the entrance. "We'd still need to make sure if those doors on the inside work though. If not, we're fucked."

"That door's ajar though," Tyler pointed out, motioning towards a door inside the room. Zoe shrugged, walked carefully inside, and got her flashlight out of her pocket. She turned it on and opened the door, peering through the doorway with the help of her flashlight illuminating her path.

"Yup, that's the mall alright," Zoe confirmed. "Looks like we have our in."

"Um, excuse me, Zoe, could you come back out for a sec?" Nami asked. Wordlessly, Zoe obeyed, giving Nami a slightly impatient look. "I just thought that... if we're doing another abandoned building, it might be smart if we use these." She held out a couple of facemasks.

Tyler winced. "Eugh! Fuck no. Those things just remind me of last year. I lost a whole summer due to these things."

"We didn't lose more time exactly because we wore them," Zoe countered.

"It was more because of the cure getting made," Nami couldn't help but chime in. "I mean, they clearly helped, but..."

"Still, whenever I see it, I just think of, what, five months of not being allowed to leave the house. Isn't this trip about getting to forget that crap?" Tyler protested.

"I'm just worried about anything in the air in the mall," Nami commented. "I don't know how long it would take, but if there's asbestos or anything toxic or something like that..."

"Can't believe I'm coming down on Tyler's side about something..." Zoe mumbled, turning to Nami. "I don't think that a mall would be built so that within a year, or, less than, of it shutting down, it would be unsafe or inhabitable or something."

"Yeah, there's probably some hobo bum living in there. Maybe that's why the door is unlocked," Tyler added.

"Yeah, really making us feel safe about going inside," Zoe replied. "Also, 'hobo bum?' Jesus, dude."

"What? I mean I get it. If I was homeless I'd probably live here too. Beats the hell out of living under a highway bridge," Tyler argued.

Nami accepted her friends' points, but wasn't convinced. "Okay, I'll just wear mine," she told them. "If you ever want to wear one though, let me know."

With one of them masked, the three cautiously walked into the mall, turned on their flashlights, and began to wander into the dark abyss known formerly as the...

"Food court," Zoe observed. "Check it out. This was the last time I ate Subway."

The three looked over the gutted Subway, the gutted KFC and the gutted obligatory Chinese food place. None of the stores had anything left except dusty counters and disheveled equipment that was too heavy to carry out quickly.

"Do you think this stuff still works?" Tyler asked.

"What, do you want to see if you can make me a sandwich?" Zoe joked with one eyebrow down.

Tyler shone his flashlight in his friend's face in response. "No, I'm just saying, this stuff has gotta be worth a fortune."

"It would be impossible for someone like us to sell," Nami pointed out. "Plus, where would we even sell it?"

"Kijiji?" Tyler offered.

"I didn't come to explore this mall so we could lug off seven-hundred-pound deep fryers and sell them on Kijiji," Zoe butted in annoyedly. "We don't even know if they still work. If you want to play packrat, bring a bag or something."

"What's this look like?" Tyler demanded, turning around and showing off his backpack.

"Ooh, nice," Zoe dryly commented. "How many deep fryers do you think could fit in that bad boy?"

While the other two were arguing, Nami was having her own little problem. It was odd -- last year she could go for hours without having a mask on, it really was no bother to her, and yet... in this mall, every passing second she kept the mask on, it felt like she was getting less and less air. Stranger still, when she lowered the mask, she felt normal again, so it wasn't like the air was just thinner in the mall somehow or something. Mulling over what Zoe said earlier, Nami decided to discard her normally cautious nature and join her friends with a naked face.

Neither of the other two noticed as the group pressed on, exploring store after store.

"This gives me Five Nights at Freddy's vibes," Tyler murmured as he looked over a clothing store's inner walls.

"Yeah, try not to think about how all of our flashlights have limited batteries," Zoe laughed.

"I brought a spare!" Nami cut in helpfully.

"Namiiii," Zoe sang angrily, "Don't tell Tyler that! I wanted to see him get all scared like at the Carlevale house."

"I was not scared at the Carlevale house!"

The other two began to laugh. "You yelped like a baby, Tyler," Nami laughed.

"This is treason," Tyler complained.

"Even if you were our leader, no it's not," Zoe laughed.

Tyler would have said something in response but a loud echoing clang from down the mall cut him off. Instinctively the trio looked at each other, then all ran to the counter of the store they were currently in, ducking down behind it and giggling with fright.

"Holy shit," Zoe chuckled.

"Wait, quiet," Tyler ordered. The three listened for a little while longer but no sound came. "Do you think that was a natural sound, or someone else?"

"If it's someone else, that means they either are already in here, or that clang was them arriving," Nami thought to herself.

"Which means if they used our entrance, they're between it and us," Zoe finished the thought. "We can't just run for it."

"But if they're already here, they could be anywhere!" Tyler countered.

"That echo sounds like it was from pretty far away," said Nami.

"Yeah, but if it's that echoey but that loud, it had to be big," Tyler pointed out. "We're not talking like a mouse or something. Either this place is more unstable than we thought, or there's someone else in here."

"Wow, both options suck. Thanks, Tyler," Zoe sarcastically grumbled.

"You suck," Tyler shot back.

Normally, the trio were never quite this humorous when a situation like this unfolded. This type of situation only happened once before, when a security guard was looking over the field they were wandering on. The three hid and shivered with fright. Oddly, this time there was no shivering. In fact, the trio kind of found it... exciting, in a weird way.

"I actually kinda like this," Zoe said out loud to no one in particular. "Is this what being an adrenaline junkie is like?"

"A-ha! Junkie! And you came down on me for saying hobo bum," Tyler replied.

"If it has the word 'adrenaline' in front of it, it clearly means something else, idiot," she told him. "You were actually describing a homeless person."

"Speaking of, I don't hear any footsteps. Or any other noises," Tyler replied, choosing to ignore her comment. "Whatever it was, it's not wandering around. It either was not man-made or the man... lives here."

"You did say if you were homeless you'd live here," Nami replied.

"Hell, if their house is an abandoned mall then as far as I'm concerned, they live on public property," Tyler continued, standing up.

"Yeah, this is still private property, and you're still an idiot," Zoe countered, standing up with him.

"Should we get out of here?" Nami asked. "We should at least make a plan." She stood up with them.

"Okay, yeah," Tyler agreed. "Okay, shine your flashlights backwards. On us. That way the trail of light isn't visible, but we can still see. I'll go first, in case the worst happens. I took three years of kung fu so I can do self-defence basics."

"Backwards, on us?" Zoe repeated.

"Yeah, got a problem with that?"

"Aside from it being the dumbest shit I ever heard, no problem at all," Zoe raised her voice at him. "If we point it backwards, and there's a guy at the end of a long hallway, we're literally pointing a light at ourselves. We'll be able to see him but he can't see us. But if we point it forwards, if we're thinking about self-defence, we'll be able to see him and more importantly, blind him."

"But if he's in a store or at an angle or something, he'll be able to see where we are by following the light..." Tyler weakly protested.

"There are three of us and one of him," Nami added thoughtfully.

"Unless there's, like, a commune of 'em," Tyler replied.

"Homeless of the world unite?" Zoe joked.

The three snickered and decided to venture off into the darkness after a few seconds of non-movement. "So are we going back or going forward?" Nami asked.

"I actually kinda want to go forward, if I'm being honest," Tyler admitted. "Think about it. No footsteps. Big clang. Maybe something cool happened and there's no one else here and we get to be the first to see it."

"You are the dumbest person I have ever met," Zoe told him. "I'm in."

Nami didn't reply. She felt her breathing getting deeper. Maybe it was the fear, or just her trying to make sure fear wouldn't set in. Plus, she couldn't smell anything other than must and age in the air, which was a good sign, though every once in a while, she thought she could pick up a whiff of something else. She didn't know how to describe it.

The trio continued into the dark, never knowing what they'd come across. All they knew was that they were walking in the general direction of where the sound was coming from.

"Keep an eye out for anything that looks like it crashed," Tyler piped up in a loud whisper.

"Looks like it crashed?" Zoe asked him.

"Yeah! Like, if something's in a pile on the floor or there's some hole in the ceiling. If we can pin down the noise, we'll know we're safe," Tyler reasoned.

Even though he couldn't see it, Zoe shrugged in agreement. Nami followed the other two, breathing in more deeply than she usually did. All three of them were.

Before long, the three had resorted to looking at different stores again, seemingly temporarily forgetting their goal of looking for the sound;s origin. It was fun playing "guess which store this used to be" without the benefit of seeing the products on display. Over time they'd learn the telltale signs of what store was what -- tech stores had the remains of extra security measures, clothing stores had more shelving setups, etc.

Tyler and Nami turned away from their latest store to go look at another, but Tyler stopped in his tracks. Zoe was very good at keeping up her own pace with the others -- she never fell behind. If she wasn't with them, it was because she was blazing her own trail. Slowly, Tyler turned back to see the back of Zoe's head, seemingly fixated on a wall.

"D'you want to stay in this store a bit longer or something?" Tyler asked her.

"Sorry," Zoe mumbled, not even making an effort to turn back around. "I'm just feeling light-headed. Give me a sec."

"Are you okay?" Nami asked. Immediately after, she realized maybe Zoe was feeling the same way she was. "What are you feeling?"

"I'll be fine, guys," Zoe half-chuckled. "Don't fall over yourselves. Just need to clear my head a bit." She turned around, a light sheen apparent on her face. She gave a small, polite smile, which was reserved for Zoe's normal meaningful-smile-or-no-smile-at-all face. "All good."

It was hard for Nami to see Tyler's reaction to Zoe's out-of-character break, since she was ahead of them both. Nami turned around at the same time as Tyler did, and the three resumed their trek throughout the rest of the mall.

"We're just about near the end," Zoe observed in a slightly higher-pitched voice than usual. "This mall only had one floor, right?"

"Yeah, one floor. Three ends though," Tyler replied. "We came in through the west end and travelled south. There's also a north end, if we wanted to go full balls-to-the-wall with it. This end used to be a bunch of clothes stores."

Nami shivered. She remembered coming here before. There was an Old Navy or Hollister or something like that around here. Her old crush Jeremy would hang out here a lot, and she went to the mall a silly amount of times pretending she wanted to buy something but secretly hoping he would be here. He liked to browse, and maybe buy a few things on a whim -- he seemed like the privileged rich kid type, but she liked that cocky arrogance he had in that way.

Most importantly, he bought his cologne around here. If she closed her eyes, Nami could swear she could smell his old cologne from memory. Either that or there was somehow some remnant of it in the mall. Maybe Tyler was wearing it...? No, Tyler was the 'natural musk' type. She was just imagining it... or imagining Jeremy. Fantasizing about him. He was the very embodiment of sexy. He was what every teenage girl wanted. What they craved.

Nami didn't come back to reality with a start or a gasp or anything clicheed. Over time she realized she couldn't afford to let her 'daydreams' get the best of her -- and not in a place like this. Tyler and Zoe teased her enough for being boy-crazy as it was, and she didn't want a reputation for being too hormonal or anything like that. She did note that she let her thoughts get the better of her -- she rubbed her thighs together and realized with a deep blush that, given her 'fluids issue,' she may have needed a change when she got home.

One thing struck her as odd -- she was daydreaming for a decently long time. She would have thought that the others would have snapped her out of her daydream, but they were actually not too far away themselves, looking at the entrance of some clothes store. She cleared her throat and joined them.

"So what are we doing? North end?" she asked.

Tyler looked around and shrugged. "I guess so. Maybe the sound did come from the north end. Maybe I was-"

He paused and instinctively held a finger up. The two girls stood there, motionless, looking at him. With the same finger, he motioned for the three to gather in the clothes store, then tiptoed in there, hiding behind the doorway's wall. The other two tiptoed in behind them.

"Flashlights off," he ordered.

Zoe was unmoved. "Are you s-"

"Flashlights off," he repeated emphatically.

Zoe sighed and turned hers off, with Nami following suit. The three stood in the darkness for a few seconds, the sounds of their breathing the only things to keep themselves company, for a long while. Nami could hear Zoe breathing in to pipe up about what made Tyler do this when her answer came prematurely.

At first, the sounds weren't pronounced. It sounded like shifting. It was unclear where the sounds were coming from, but it was definitely coming from somewhere down the hallway. Nowhere close, and yet, not too far away, especially comparing to the clang they first heard.

For the longest time, it was unclear what the sounds were coming from, with the sounds evolving from some sort of shifting movement -- cloth rustling? Couldn't have been anything that quiet -- to something else. Some sound that was vaguely familiar to the three, but definitely out of their range of believability.

All three denied what the sound sounded like until it became painfully obvious with an echoey, guttural moan. A female moan. A needy, throaty, female moan.

"No fucking way," Zoe whispered in disbelief. The three started laughing in that quiet way you laugh when you don't want to get caught. Tyler turned his light on again but covered it with his hand, so the three could face each other.