The Mystery of Lakeview Mall by BashfulScribe

“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.