Night of the Mannequins

by Stephen Graham Jones

  “I trust that the two of you have ticket stubs to prove you paid to get in this time,” the assistant manager said, an evil grin to his voice.

  “Just go knock on my dad’s window, he’ll show you what we’ve got,” JR said, stepping even closer, doing his crazy-eyes thing Danielle had taught us, via her mom, that was supposed to make you not worth messing with.

  “Yes, yes, take me to him, I would love to have a discussion with—” the assistant manager tried to say.

  What stopped him was JR’s dad wading into the crowd, a pistol in each hand, his lips twisted into this drill-sergeant scowl.

  He’d woken up, found his charges spirited away, probably in danger.

  “Shit,” JR said.

  When you’re right, you’re right.

  Like they were all following the same script, the concessions line fell into twenty people going twenty different ways—Gun! Gun!—most of them shrieking and hyperventilating and trying to hide behind whoever they could put between themselves and JR’s dad.

  It’s a good response, right? Especially taking into account the zero - nonsense look in JR’s dad’s eyes, the I’ve - been - waiting - for - this - day look. JR’s eyes hadn’t been crazy at all, I could see now. Here were some real and true crazy eyes, and a twitching cheek to match, a hungry pair of trigger fingers.

  “You’re the one the cops already cleared?” JR’s dad said, stepping forward, pressing the barrel of his Glock right into the assistant manager’s head like a pointing finger.

  “I was—I was—” the assistant manager said, probably trying to vomit out whatever alibi had been good enough for the homicide detectives.

  This was a higher court, though. One with more immediate sentencing.

  All behind us in the sea of cars, dome lights were coming on from doors opening. People were standing up to see what the commotion was over at concessions. Phones were out, documenting this for social media. Probably more than one or two laps were wet and warm.

  “Maybe the city cops were hampered by certain laws and regulations surrounding prisoner rights,” JR’s dad said, his left gun swinging around to whoever had just tossed a half-full cup of coke at his shin. He considered his wet leg, came back to the assistant manager with, “Out here in the field, though, the rules can be . . . shall we say . . . less Queensberry?”

  This had been JR’s dad’s go-to since forever: no Queensberry boxing rules in the alley, son. It’s all about who can hurt who first, and worst.

  It was nice to talk about, kind of made you puff up a little, even.

  Seeing it was all different, though.

  “I don’t, I wasn’t, we can—” the assistant manager sputtered, and then flinched with his whole body when the sound came.

  It wasn’t the Glock, firing its round into his head like he thought, like he knew it was going to be, it was the tornado siren blaring from far off, its long moan winding up and up like someone back at the courthouse or wherever was hand-cranking air pressure into it. It sounded like Fate just had one siren, and it was in the center of town. But it was enough.

  The world went soft all around me, then, I swear. Soft and slow but fast and loud too, and so all at once.

  “Look, look!” the assistant manager screamed, pointing, and JR’s dad, which probably wasn’t good training or detention practices but whatever, he looked around with everybody else, and we tracked a boxcar from a train tumbling in slow motion across the sky, mostly in silhouette, but definitely a real thing that was really happening.

  “No, no, not yet,” I whispered, and then I was pulling JR away.

  The drive-in was instant chaos. Almost immediately, engines were starting, headlights were shining everywhere, and wrecks were happening, then trying to unhappen, and making even more wrecks. All the training and drills we always got, they were out the window.

  It would be the perfect place for a kid to show up dead, I knew, which, again, was the world putting this ball up on the tee for me to hit, right?

  I pulled JR into the darkness beside concessions, then behind it, and then I let the glow string unfurl down from my hand like the most evil thing ever.

  “Run, run!” somebody behind us said then, and pushed past, into me, knocking me to the side.

  But it was too late already.

  JR had seen what was in my eyes. It wasn’t a flicker of light. Kind of the exact opposite.

  “You?” he said. “You were serious about all—all that?”

  “Manny’s here,” I said back, holding my hands out wide to encompass all this random disaster, and then, moving slow so as to hypnotize him, I reached into my shirt, came out with the mannequin mask even though it was too late for him not to know it was me under it.

  “You carry him around in your pocket?” JR said, not believing this enough yet.

  “He’s all around us,” I said, lowering my face to the mask. By the time I was looking through those eyeholes, the elastic strap squeezing my head, JR was scrambling away, into the wind I knew wasn’t wind, was really Manny. The same as he’d thrown a boxcar through the sky in a frustration so pure it probably made him grow even bigger, he was also, I don’t know, clapping his hands like in the superhero movie, and making a windstorm.

  I strode after JR like the killer I am, far too dignified to resort to running, and came around the side of concessions after h im. He was hardly ahead of me, was running the opposite way everyone else was. Because—they were all running past us because the huge bright movie screen behind them, it was coming down, pieces were flying off. It wasn’t just one humongous board like I guess I’d always default-thought, it was like three hundred sheets of plywood painted white.

  Manny was doing this, I knew.

  He was standing behind it, pulling it apart, finally coming for us all, and all because me and JR were standing in the middle of the place, drawing him in.

  “Wait, wait!” I screamed up to him, to the idea of him, and then I ran, somehow knowing where each body coming at me was going to be so I could step the other way. I caught up to JR just in front of the playground that’s close enough to the screen it doesn’t get in the way of the movie. As kids we’d played there. I still had a scar inside my nose from the stitches from when JR had pushed me off the monkey bars.

  This time it was him falling.

  I had my knees down hard into his back, the glow string already around his throat, joystick handles in my hands, and I was pulling back with every muscle I had, with every pound I had, with every wish and regret I had, and the superhero movie was flickering on the few parts of the screen still up, and, and behind them, through the black boards and whatever, I saw a flash of Band-Aid-colored skin, and then, through another part of the screen, a giant painted-on eye with a movie trying to play on it.

  “Look, look!” I screamed up at Manny, pulling harder, finally feeling that crunchy give I’d felt through the string with Danielle. “I’m doing it! I’m doing it!” But the only response, it wasn’t from Manny. He probably can’t even talk. His lips probably don’t even come apart to make words.

  Who spoke, she was behind me.

  What she said, it was “I know you’re the one doing it, Sawyer Grimes.”

  My first fear was that it was my mom, or JR’s mom—who else would use my whole name like that? But the thought of either of them having to see me hunched over JR’s dead body, my hands glowing with guilt, it made my eyes hot.

  I turned, ready to slink away like the guilty dog I was, only . . .

  It wasn’t any mom, it wasn’t anybody I even could have come close to expecting.

  Shanna?

  “What?” I said, shaking my head no about this, that if she were still alive, then that meant, it meant—

  I shook my head no, this couldn’t be her.

  Except there she was, right?

  That meat crushed into her driven-over house, it hadn’t been her, it was just her two huge dogs, it was her mom and her sister.

  As for her, she’d—she’
d been knocked into the woods somehow, I guessed, had probably had amnesia for the first week or two, had been having to steal food from open cars, from backyards. But she was Shanna too, the toughest of us all, always, the best WoodScout. And . . . that bowling shirt she was wearing, it was my dad’s from when his work had had a team. It was from our costume box, out in our fort behind Holy Trinity.

  That’s where she’d been living. Because she didn’t have a family. Because somebody was killing all her friends.

  I peeled the mask back, my eyes instantly crying.

  “You’re—you’re alive,” I told her.

  She answered by running directly at me, and I sat back, ready to hug and be hugged. But then at the last moment before that would have happened, her knee slashed up to connect with my face, arcing my head back, sending my whole body flying.

  “No, no,” I told her when I could, holding my hand with the glow string out, trying to explain to her, “I was—I thought Manny had killed you, see? I thought you were the first. But, but I’ve only been doing all this, because . . . because if I don’t, then he’ll—then . . . he’ll kill all our families, Shanna, not on purpose, he doesn’t know, it’ll just be on accident? But, but I’ve just been, ever since you—I’ve been saving everyone, right? Their families, I mean. Tim’s, Danielle’s—”

  “JR’s,” she said, about JR, dead at her feet.

  I wiped my bleeding nose but that just made room for more blood to keep splashing down.

  I nodded yes, JR’s family too, I was saving them just the same.

  “Steve’s family too?” Shanna added.

  “He doesn’t count,” I told her, snuffling what I could in. “Co-collateral damage.”

  “Just like Manny was going to do to our families, you mean?” Shanna said, stepping forward, her hands balled into fists at her legs, fists for me, and on the outside I was shaking my head no, no. But on the inside—Shanna was always the smartest of us too.

  She was right.

  I didn’t just look like Manny. I’d become Manny.

  And, and, if he hadn’t killed her, then had he even been going to kill anybody? If you take the first domino away, do all the others keep standing?

  But, but: he had walked out of the theater, hadn’t he?

  “I saw him leave the movie!” I told Shanna, standing now to insist.

  “I don’t know what you saw, but it wasn’t him,” she said, close to me now. “Do you know how I know, Sawyer? Cousin of mine? Do you want me to tell you?”

  I fell back away from her, away from this, my hands in the dirt, and I was shaking my head no, no, I did not need to hear about any mannequins in Lost and Found down at the movies, I did not need to hear about any mannequins wearing green visors in the break room, I did not need to hear anything remotely like that, thank you.

  “You’re lying!” I screamed at her, my own spittle misting in front of my face because I was putting everything I had behind this, to make it true.

  “Let’s go see right now,” she said back, and in pure self-defense, just to shut her and her lies up, I slung my hand forward whip-fast, the one still looped into the glow string, and Shanna had to see it coming, it was glowing, had soaked up all the light from the movie, but she couldn’t stop it.

  The joystick handle caught her across her eyes, more on the left side I guess, but it blinded her long enough for me to run through the swirling debris Manny was throwing up everywhere, the ground actually shaking from his giant footsteps pounding down all around out there in the pasture. I ran, I ran harder, I fell and got up, and, worst of all, what I stumbled onto two or three rows back, it was my dad’s motorcycle, right? The wrecked Kawasaki, lying there like a horse that had known I was going to need to ride away on it.

  In the middle of all this swirling chaos and death, all this screaming and crazy everywhere light, my face actually went slack, matching the mask I was wearing. Not just from seeing the motorcycle again, but because I was hearing the six hundred paranoid calls from my house to JR’s all over again. The calls about the sleepover.

  What had happened, what had to have happened, was they’d called JR’s dad on his cell, finally found out where we were, and after all their hair-pulling and panic attacks and promises to never trust any other parents ever again, they’d taken the only ride they had, since both their distributor caps were chilling in the freezer in the garage. So—so my mom had hugged my dad’s back and he’d twisted the throttle back on that death machine that was going to save my life, and they’d raced to the drive-in to save me from whoever was killing all my friends, and probably coming for me next.

  I’m sorry, Mom, wherever you are. I’m so sorry, shit.

  I stood the bike’s bent self up, hit the starter, and only looked back when someone called my name.

  It was my dad.

  His hair was lifted and his shirt was torn and his glasses were gone, all from this destruction Manny was causing, all from this destruction that didn’t even have to be happening.

  Right now, I had to imagine, he was clomping through the playground and concessions in his huge cumbersome way, trying to catch Shanna under the cup of his two hands, the way I might try to trap a lizard. She’d tried to step in and be the final girl, the one who rises at the last moment, finds a strength she didn’t know she had, but come on, right?

  She was already dead.

  Leaving just me.

  “I have to get away, I have to go!” I screamed through the wind at my dad, my tears hot on my cheeks, under the mask, but there was too much to explain, too many lives at risk for sad goodbyes, so I just dropped my glow string at last, a gust of wind delivering it right to my dad’s shin, and when he looked down at it, maybe registering it for what it was, what it had been, I stepped back, away from him, away from all of this, and screamed the bike’s 750cc higher than it had ever gone then dropped the bike into first gear and peeled away, veering left and right at every last moment to avoid plowing through moviegoers trying to save themselves from the angry storm Manny was swirling up all around us. I went down the row, up another, always meaning to jump out onto the road but all I kept finding was fence and cars snarled together, people running every which way. I stood on the pegs, prairie-dogging around, finally saw the entry, its barber pole of a wooden arm lowered.

  I sat back down into the seat and rocketed forward, crashed through that bar like this was a movie, the wood splintering on my handlebars, not sweeping me off the bike like it probably should have, if this wasn’t all meant to be.

  Out on the blacktop of Airport Road, with my headlight off, as in, off the motorcycle now, I hit eighty, I think, which was more scared than I’d ever been. It felt like if my shoes slipped off the pegs, the motorcycle would keep barreling ahead and I’d just be holding onto the handlebar, my legs flapping in the air.

  When I saw the lake ten bug-pelted minutes later, I killed the engine, coasted into the movie parking lot—Shanna’s theater. I parked the bike right up against the curb, a thick yellow arrow painted on the asphalt, pointing to where I was going, the world still showing me the way in case I was losing resolve at the very end, here.

  I wasn’t, though. Not now, not after everything I’d done to get this far.

  Sixty long steps later I was on the dock, the pier, whatever, and just like I knew there had to be, somebody from the other side of the lake had rowed over to eat at Dodie’s, just left their little boat tied there.

  Two minutes later I was paddling that boat out here, Manny.

  I know that when you’re done doing what you have to at the drive-in, when the sun finally starts to rise over our town again, you’re going to come lumbering across the pastures, shaking the whole world, stepping over the buildings, ducking under the high wires, and every few steps—I’m sorry for this—you’re going to have to be stopping to tighten the pieces of your leg to each other. Because of the dowels we used.

  But, just come to the water, Manny. Come to the lake.

  In the water those
dowels can swell out, they can hold the pieces of your legs in place, right?

  And, on the way, when you’re pushing out through the lake, making giant swells all in front of you, probably big enough to wash cars off the bridge, then you’re going to see one of your old friends out here waiting for you, just bobbing up and down, his plastic face so pleasant and lips-together just like yours always was, his hands holding tight to the side of his little boat.

  It’s me in here.

  What I’ve got in my pocket now, too, it’s that ticket stub Tim couldn’t find for the assistant manager, that night you came back to us. This ticket isn’t for that movie anymore, though. All that superhero stuff is over and done with. What I want, what I need now, what I brought this special ticket for—can you take me with you, please? I think I’m just about done with everybody here, except myself. I just want to, if I can, if you’ll let me—I just want to go with you and sleep, and wait for the next group of kids to find us, the mannequin with the falling-apart legs and the boy mannequin beside him, his face blanked out with pleasure from all the fun that’s coming.

  We’ll play all summer long, and it’ll never go over, I know.

  It can’t, not as long as we’re together, not as long as we have each other.

  I love you, Manny. I never stopped, man.

  You were the best friend we ever could have had.

  Sacrifices had to be made, yeah, but that’s all over now, that’s all done with.

  Roll credits, please.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Larry Dobbs and my brother Spot, for the always-last-minute help with Rockwall. I’ve been there a lot over the years, but there’s little stuff I wouldn’t know if not for them. But, yeah, I still had to fudge this and that to get everything to work out. Sorry, Rockwall. Thanks to Ellen Datlow for making this one come together. She just asked a question or two like always, but they completely shaped the direction of the rewrite, made it all gel into place. And, no, I never found a mannequin in the pastures I grew up in. Everything else was out there in the mesquite, but never a mannequin. Thanks to all the X-Men I grew up with, too. There’s a panel somewhere in all those issues where this giant, blank-faced Sentinel is lowering itself to the ground to try to grab a mutant. I studied and studied that panel so much, twenty, thirty years ago. I was fascinated with the Sentinel’s face. Scared, too. I capitalize them like I’m doing here out of respect, I mean, because I don’t want them coming for me. Which is to say, I guess, that I still feel like a mutant, all this time later. But John Darnielle’s Wolf in White Van was in my head as well while I was writing this. And so was Will Christopher Baer, who said once that I really had a handle on teen angst, which I’m thinking was probably a compliment? Let’s just say that’s what it was. Because otherwise the takeaway is that I somehow stalled out in high school. And big thanks to my son and daughter, Rane and Kinsey, slasher kids to the core—raised on them, always watching them with me, always up for talking them through, always up for one more. And, finally, thanks to my wife, Nancy, who isn’t into slashers even a little but lets me follow her around the house and tell her all about this one or that one anyway, or whichever one I’m writing now, and how I’m finally going to get it right this time, really. I’m pretty sure she knows better, knows that this is never going to stop, but following her around the house talking about slashers, man: if that’s not the best forever I can hope for, then I can’t imagine what would be.