BIO
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
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INTRODUCTION
Have you ever been creeped out by a mannequin?
I have.
I don’t care what anybody says – they’re creepy.
Every time I find myself in the presence of a mannequin I can feel the thing watching me. Sometimes, from the corner of my eye, I see them move. I swear.
They’re sneaky. They know when to stand still – still as a piece of plastic.
They know when it’s OK to tilt their hands back and spread their fingers.
And in “Mall of the Dead,” they know when it’s OK to kill.
I want to point out an episode of the old Twilight Zone series that features mannequins who spring to life when the lights go out. I did not see that episode until a couple of years ago, and I wrote this story in 1997. So no, I didn’t plagiarize it.
I guess great minds think alike, or, when comparing Rod Serling to Del Stone Jr., strange minds think alike.
Oh, and do me this favor: Next time you’re in a store, keep an eye on the mannequins. Be discreet. Don’t let them see you looking.
Tell me if you see them move.
—
MALL OF THE DEAD
When Beverly came out of the department store fitting room, she found the sales associate sprawled in the aisle, a mannequin knocked over and a colorful heap of sweaters lying around her.
The lady was dead.
Beverly gulped a solid lump of breath and backed away, staggering to the cash register kiosk.
The associate there was dead, too.
A madman, Beverly thought, and almost simultaneously she realized that if a madman were on a killing spree, she might become his next victim. She ducked below the sales tables and crawled for the entrance to the mall center court.
As she made her way she spotted more bodies – women and men – blocking the aisles, every one of them frozen in rigid postures of stark terror. Impossible, she thought. No man could have done this alone. It must have been a gang. Mannequins lay amid the chaos, their wigs knocked off, staring with blank eyes at the ceiling tiles. What had they seen, she wondered, and if they could speak, what would they tell her?
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She reached the store front. The mall spread out before her, a fresco of corpses, scattered packages and smashed windowfronts.
A clot of bodies lay by the counter at Morrow’s, surrounded by scatterings of candy-coated peanuts that still trickled from the broken display case. Packages and articles of clothing lay in a confused jumble. Even mannequins from stores two or three windows down the concourse lay by the counter. Beverly guessed that whatever had killed these people had blown through with the suddenness and violence of a tornado.
She darted across the concourse and held up at a pillar that separated Morrow’s from a tuxedo-rental shop. She could see the mall entrance, and there, piled by the doors, was a huge mound of bodies. The glass in the doors had been shattered. Outside, she could see the blue strobe of police lights. She thought she saw movement – huddled figures training guns on the doors.
She began edging along the front of the tuxedo rental shop. The windows there had been broken too, the silk-clad mannequins leaning in well-dressed apposition to the chaos and death that surrounded them. As she stepped closer to the slaughter at the front door, she heard a voice shouting through a bullhorn:
“This is the police. If you can hear me, you must leave the mall at once.”
No shit, Sherlock, she thought morosely.
“If anybody inside can hear me, this is the police …” the voice boomed.
She glanced at the shadowy figures outside and saw them point to her. They began waving to her, motioning for her to run. Several of them scurried toward the mall entrance.
At that moment, something touched Beverly on the shoulder.
The knobs of her spine glazed over with a sudden coating of ice, and she stopped, willing every molecule of her body into absolute stillness. She peeked at her shoulder. …
She had bumped into the tuxedo-clad mannequin.
The breath hiccuped out of her in a sob, and she felt her knees going weak with relief. That was when she noticed the jumble of bodies at the door consisted partly of human beings. The rest were mannequins.
And some of them had their plastic hands around people’s throats.
Beverly stopped breathing. She turned, and the mannequin in the tuxedo was staring at her.
The scream that had been simmering at the back of her throat boiled out now, and she jerked away and ran madly for the doors as a stampede sound of plastic feet against carpeting and tiles arose behind her, and the piles of bodies at the door began to stir sluggishly. She threw herself onto the pile and began to scramble for the top, stepping in the soft, pliant faces of people, and the hard, shifting torsos of dummies. Something grabbed her ankle and she screamed again and kicked as a shot blew just past her ear and something behind her exploded into plastic shrapnel. The grip on her ankle tightened and she could feel its remorseless strength and knew she would never be able to pull herself free, that she would be drawn into that pile and strangled and –
A hand grabbed her and hauled her over the top – the cop, the cop, thank God it was the cop, and other cops were shooting through the entrance to the mall as the officer dragged her through the broken glass and into the blessed dark, where men in flak vests swarmed around her and helped her to her feet as the shooting rose to a roar –
“It’s happening all over!” one of the cops screamed at her, but all she could think of was: Get it off, get it off me –
The plastic hand around her ankle, trailing a broken connecting rod, still squeezing, squeezing—
– as the war continued. …
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .