The Mall by Richie Tankersley Cusick

Tagline: Shop till you drop…dead

Back tagline: N/A

Summary: Trish loves her job at the mall — until the day a weird customer comes into her shop. Then the creepy phone calls start… and Trish realizes that someone is watching her every move…
What does he want? And what is the Mall’s terrible secret? But if Trish finds out, will she have to stay there for ever..?

First impressions: I absolutely loathed the only RTC book I’ve recapped so far, but I’ve finally decided to give her another go. Deathkins has had three chances after all, and they were just as bad as, if not worse than, RTC’s Trick or Treat! I have a growing collection of RTC books, and this one seems to be a fan favourite [Although so was Trick or Treat, but apparently I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t like that one :(]. I think malls are a great environment for horror, so I’m cautiously excited. I like this cover, too – are we going to see a dead body hidden among some mannequins [I hope so!]. Let’s find out!

Recap

Roll call:
Trish – Our heroine who’s being stalked by the Muffin Man!
Nita – Trish’s obnoxious but kind best friend.
Imogene – Trish’s other best friend and Nita’s studious twin sister.
Storm Reynolds – Trish’s sort of love interest whose behaviour is pretty questionable.
Wyatt – A mysterious mall worker Nita takes a fancy to.
Muffin Man – The villain who’s scarily obsessed with Trish.

We begin with a prologue from a guy who likes to stand in store windows, ‘hiding among the mannequins as if he were lifeless, too, and one of them.’ [Mum, can you come pick me up? I’m scared :(] Apparently all this guy has is time, and he’s had hours and hours of practice in his room not moving a muscle, just staring and thinking about his dream gal. He’s finally seen her tonight, and he’s sure she works at the mall. She was with two friends and has long, thick, brown hair, blue eyes, and a laugh that’s ‘bright like sun.’ [Well, if he’s only just seen her tonight, I guess he’s been thinking about what his potential dream girl might be].

She walked right by him [Are we talking about Trish?] as he stood in the store window like a mannequin, completely oblivious while he ‘imagined how she would feel the whole time he stared at her’ [This guy is gross :(]. She’s the one he wants, that’s for sure, but not quite yet because everything has to be perfect [I can’t get over the fact that this guy’s hobby is acting like a mannequin hahaha].

We then meet our heroine, Trish Somerfield, who’s on shift at Muffin-Mania [Has there ever been a restaurant in a Point Horror book without an alliterate name?] in The Eatery at the mall, which is a fancy way of saying she works in the food court. She very recently got the job thanks to her best friend Nita, who happens to be here now, buying some muffins and telling Trish all about how ‘”weird things happen at this mall,”‘ [Do tell, Nita!] although no-one is supposed to know because ‘”they don’t like rumors'” around here, afraid it will scare off the customers [Who’s ‘they’? The mall owners?].

Nita explains that this morning, her boss at The Latest Trend, a clothing store in the mall, got a call before the mall opened because the store was unlocked and the doors weren’t even closed. The money was still in the register, safe and sound, but Freida, who was supposed to close up last night, is nowhere to be found [!!!!]:

“I was off yesterday, but the night before, she and Pat had this huge fight—so the first thing I think of is that she’s trying to get back at Pat, right? But nobody can even find Freida to ask her what happened.”
“What do you mean they can’t find her?”
“I mean, she’s not at her house. I guess some neighbour said she was supposed to leave on a trip last night after work, but he doesn’t know where she is or when she’ll be back.”

[Ooky spooky! Was Mannequin Man watching Freida in the prologue, not Trish? Either way Freida’s probably dead] Trish notices her own manager watching the conversation from afar and tells Nita she should go. Bethany’s been a real bitch ever since Trish started, and Trish suspects that she just has something against new people [Which is the stupidest reason ever not to like someone lol] while Nita has another thought:

“Maybe she thinks you’re after her job.”
“Right. My all-consuming, burning passion for life is the be the full-time manager of Muffin-Mania.”

[Hahaha savage, Trish. Not that there’s anything wrong with that sort of career. Retail, supermarkets and hospitality are the backbone of society and should not be looked down upon!] Instead of letting her get back to work, Nita points out the hunk working in Pizza Park [It’s no Pete’s Pizza, but it’ll do], Storm Reynolds [Omg no, is that really his name?! That is a porn star name if ever I’ve heard one!]. Trish takes a peek and is caught by the tall, broad-shouldered, lean-muscled studmuffin [You like that pun?] and he glances back at her, giving her a wink and an amused smile.

Trish is super embarrassed and refuses Nita’s dare to ask him out, sending Nita on a long rant about how cute Trish is and boys are always looking at her, including some guy wearing sunglasses while reading a newspaper nearby [I like this friendship. I hope Nita doesn’t die]. Nita heads back to her own store, and soon Bethany stalks over to reprimand Trish for socialising when there’s ‘”always things that need to be done around here.”‘ [So why don’t you do some work instead of standing around being a stare bear, Bethany?].

Trish is just gobsmacked as her boss stomps off but is soon startled by a customer asking for a honey muffin. The man has a long, wispy beard and is wearing sunglasses, and his voice is soft, almost a whisper. As Trish slips the muffin into a paper bag for the man, some of the honey comes off onto her fingers and a strange smile beams on the man’s face:

“You have lovely hands,” he said softly. “So small. Petite.” He was silent a moment, yet she could feel his eyes studying her hands, even as she tried to wrap them in a cloth. “The way that honey looks on your fingers…one could almost…taste it.”

[Ewwwww this guy is gross] Trish is as nervous as anyone would be in this situation and glances around for Bethany, but of course she’s nowhere to be found [Must be one of those managers that doesn’t do any work herself], so she just takes his money and hands back the change. The man thanks her and says ‘”You’ll see me again”‘ [Please, no] glancing back at Trish as he walks away. She busies herself at the back of the booth until he’s gone, convincing herself he’s just an eccentric customer and it’s nothing to get upset about [That was weird af, Trish, you can be upset if you want to!].

On her dinner break, Trish meets Nita and tells her all about the creepy Muffin Man, who Nita thinks sounds like the same man she saw reading the newspaper before. The girls then collect Imogene, Nita’s nonidentical twin sister, from her job at the bookstore and head back to The Eatery for the favourite food, Mexican [Yummy]. On the way, bookish, glasses-wearing Imogene gives us some backstory about the mall, which is the oldest one in the state and has been renovated at least 15 times. She thinks there’s ‘”so many tunnels and hallways and passages built on and added to over the years”‘ that it’s likely no-one alive today would even know about them [I’m sure she’s telling the truth because this is Point Horror, but why would the mall owners over the years just allow so much space to sit there unused?].

Imogene’s bringing this all up because she’s been hearing rumours about shoplifting – apparently things are going missing all over the mall, and none of the alarm systems are going off, even the newer, more sophisticated ones [Assuming it’s Mannequin Man, but how is he outsmarting alarm systems? Surely there’s not secret passages to every damn store]. And it’s all sorts of things going missing, too – clothes, kitchen stuff, an ice pick, linen, books, perfume, even furniture! Imogene has a theory but we don’t get to hear it yet because rude Nita interrupts to complain how hungry she is. She’s also conveniently left her purse at the store, so it’s Imogene’s shout [Hmm, maybe I don’t like Nita].

After talking about how hot Storm Reynolds is [I cannot take him seriously with that name] and why Trish should pursue him, Nita turns her matchmaking skills onto Imogene and seeks out the perfect man for her:

“Look at him, Trish—he’s just her type! Five foot—what—ten? Or maybe six whole feet if he stood up straight! Long hair—combed back—or is it greased back? Jeans with holes—oh, sorry—maybe he’s trying to be stylish—and a T-shirt with something…” Nita squinted her eyes, trying to see. “…something written on the front—wait a minute—yes—yes—okay, now we know he loves rock music! And the sexiest combat boots—don’t you think so, Trish? Oh—and that denim jacket with the sleeves cut off—the absolute perfect touch!”

[Wow Nita is obnoxious] Trish recognises the guy – it’s Wyatt, who she always sees working around here but keeps mostly to himself. Imogene thinks he’s actually ‘”rather nice-looking”‘ [Which is such an old person thing to say], so as he walks past them carrying a large stack of trays, Nita shoves her chair back, ramming him in the stomach and causing the trays to scatter all over the floor in a rude attempt at a forced cute-meet between him and Imogene.

She fakes an apology and insists she didn’t see him, but Wyatt’s like ‘”Yeah. It’s so hard to see me with all this stuff I’m carrying,”‘ which absolutely stuns Nita, who’s clearly used to getting her way [You tell her, Wyatt!]. Nita tries to cover herself and makes introductions, but Wyatt just walks off, as she’s talking [Hahaha suck shit, Nita]. Nita’s salty about how rude he was but Trish, Imogene and I think it’s hilarious, with Trish insisting it was her own fault, which is definitely true. Trish also thinks he was pretty cute, and despite her protests, it seems like Nita might just be infatuated with the guy who showed her absolutely no interest [I get the feeling she’s not used to that!].

Break time’s over now, so Trish heads back to Muffin-Mania where she’s accosted by that cow Bethany for being three minutes late. Bethany also hands her a note that someone had left for her – apparently someone hit her car in the parking lot and a report needs to be made. The note instructs Trish to check out the damage and notify the security office, so Trish heads outside to take a look at her car.

Employee parking is in the lot furthest away from the mall because of course it is, and after five minutes Trish finally arrives at her Mustang. To her surprise the car is totally fine, with not even so much as a scratch on it! She decides that it must have been another car and someone got the plates mixed up somehow and as she starts to head back to work, the nearby payphone starts ringing [Can you really call a payphone? How do you even get a payphone’s number?]. She answers it just in case it’s something important for whoever it is the caller is trying to reach, but it turns out the call is for her[!!!]:

“Hello, Trish,” the voice said. It was a whisper…soft and familiar…yet strangely unreal…
It sounded like dark reflections and ash-gray shadows…
“I’m eating the muffin,” he said. “It tastes just like you.”

[This Muffin Man is both terrifying and hilarious. And I can’t tell if I like that description of his voice or if it’s dumb?] Trish rushes back to the mall and finds a security guard, but he assumes she’s just playing a prank on him and is super condescending before walking off.

Trish is almost knocked over as she heads back to work, and the clumsy ox is none other than Storm Reynolds! He apologises and flirts with her, even inviting her to join him on his stroll right now while he’s on break, but Trish has to get back to work. He notices how cold she is and asks if she’d been outside, and Trish explains about the car situation, leaving out the phone call because she doesn’t want to make a bad first impression.

They introduce themselves now, and it turns out Storm Reynolds [I’m sorry but this name is too dumb not to use it in full each time hahahaha] knows she’s worked at the mall for exactly five evenings because ‘”I always notice the really important things.”‘ [He seems like kind of a wanker tbh]. He walks her back to work where Bethany continues her bitchiness because apparently Trish took too long [Fuck off, Bethany].

After work, Trish heads to Nita’s store so they can walk to the parking lot together, since Imogene’s going to the library to study and already has a ride. Nita won’t be finishing anytime soon though, thanks to a group of girls who came in at the last minute and are still in the dressing rooms [Ew I hate those kind of people]. Freida was supposed to be closing with her tonight, too, but Nita’s all by herself thanks to her mysterious disappearance [And likely death!].

Trish tells Nita about the car park incident and of her suspicion that the Muffin Man was behind it [I love that they’re calling him that too hahaha. Also the Muffin Man/Mannequin Man are definitely the same person so I’ll just refer to him as the former from now on], but doesn’t want to tell anyone about it because it’s such a crazy story. She’s super creeped out because whoever it was was most likely watching her the whole time, although Nita suggests he just timed his call accurately after watching Trish head for the parking lot.

Trish is also uneasy that the Muffin Man knew her name [Does she not wear a name badge at work?], but a supportive Nita insists it was most likely a one-off and the Muffin Man is probably gonna do the same thing at some other mall tomorrow. Nita invites Trish to stay over if she wants, since Trish’s divorced mum is away on business for the rest of the week, but Trish doesn’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill if she’s not really being terrorised [Do it, yolo!].

While Nita starts cleaning the store, she encourages Trish to try on a lacey white dress she spots her admiring. The group of girls are finally exiting the change rooms as Trish makes her way over, and she selects one of the only two clean ones at the back. She leaves the stall’s curtain open since she’s the only one there [So? I’d probably still close it], and as she’s undressing, ‘a cold chill suddenly snaked around her legs’.

Startled, Trish peers out into the hall, suspecting Nita’s trying to scare her, but there’s no-one there, and she can hear Nita at the counter, ringing up the girls’ purchases. Trish decides she’s just being paranoid and steps out of the dressing room and into the hall so she can look in the big mirror there, before she even slips the dress on [Like, she’s in her underwear still. She’s making some weird decisions, almost like she wants to be watched].

Trish has to admit she looks stunning in the dress and soon feels cold air again as the hem of the dress rustles softly, ‘as if some invisible hand had touched it.’ Trish gasps as she realises what had frightened her before, made her feel like she wasn’t alone in the dressing rooms:

Eyes.
She knew it now, just as surely as she was standing here, that she really wasn’t alone. That someone—somewhere—was watching her—and had been watching her for some time.

[Ooky spooky! Is Mannequin Man hiding somewhere in the store? Maybe a secret passageway somewhere? Also, I’m assuming Muffin Man and Mannequin Man are the same person,  so I’ll just refer to him as the former from now on] Trish bolts from the dressing rooms and out to the main part of the store, where Nita’s finally gotten rid of those annoying girls. Trish frantically explains that there’s someone in the dressing rooms, but Nita is doubtful because she would have seen someone while she was back there earlier. She grows even more dubious when Trish admits she didn’t see anyone, rather just felt a draft and thought she was being watched, and as expected, the girls can’t find anyone else in the store, so Nita theorises that Trish is just anxious because of the Muffin Man ordeal.

After cleaning up the store, the girls head out to the car park and because Nita’s concerned about Trish after the day she’s had, they decide to go get some food before heading home [OK I’m starting to like Nita again]. It’s a foggy evening now and at one point Nita thinks she hears footsteps, but they chalk it up to being spooked [Or is the Muffin Man watching?!?]. As they near Trish’s car, however, they find Wyatt seemingly trying to break in [!!!].

He claims that he thought it was his car, because apparently he’s got the exact same make and model as Trish [I doubt that]. His car’s parked somewhere around here too [How convenient], but since the lot is pretty empty now, he assumes it must have gotten stolen. He seems completely unfazed, however, so of course the girls are hesitant to believe him. He limps off as the girls jump in Trish’s car, and they realise he must have been injured when Nita shoved her chair into him earlier.

Nita doesn’t want to help him because he was rude to her earlier [You purposely shoved a chair into him, hun, what do you expect?] and besides, he might have been trying to break into the car and lied just when he got caught, but she changes her mind and they offer him a lift. He tells them he’s fine to be dropped off wherever they’re going because he’s not heading home straight away [He’s blasé attitude toward everything and has no manners, so I’m not a fan of him tbh], and they head to an all-night deli for some grub.

Trish invites him to come inside and eat with them, but he accidentally left his wallet in his car today, so he’s got no money. Nita offers to pay because it’s the least she can do after injuring him, and although she’s been just as rude to him as he’s been to her on the car ride here, she makes a pass at him when he declares he doesn’t take handouts:

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Nita gave him a coy sidelong glance. “I’m sure we can think of some way for you to…pay me back.”
An equally sly smile played at the corners of Wyatt’s mouth. “No thanks.”

[Hahahaha savage. It’s funny to see him shut Nita down so often when she’s clearly not used to it] He eventually agrees that he’ll pay one of the girls back and they head inside, where Wyatt continues to be sketchy, glancing around the restaurant as if trying to imprint the whole place into his memory. The girls try some small talk and ask him about himself, but he’s as annoyingly mysterious as ever, replying that he does maintenance work around the mall, ‘”filling in for someone.”‘ [Could Wyatt be the the Muffin Man and the Muffin Man outfit was just a disguise? It’s just stupid and farfetched enough to be the plot of a Point Horror book and would actually be a fun idea. Kind of hope I’m wrong about Wyatt just so it’s not so predictable though. I’m sure he’s just a red herring!].

He tells them he does things like repairs, upkeep and letting people into places when they forget their keys, admitting he can pick locks [So maybe he was trying to break into Trish’s car?]. Nita froths over the idea of being able to pick locks and do some shopping at the mall after hours [You mean steal, Nita?], but Wyatt insists the mall is different after closing and not as fun as they think:

He was silent for a long moment. “It can be fun. But nobody really knows the mall. Not really.” Again his voice drifted off, sank to a whisper. “It has…life. You know? Like…thoughts. Like…a weird kind of…mind.”

[Ooky spooky! Still sounds fun though. Also I’m beginning to notice RTC’s fondness for ellipses and italics. She has been throwing them both in every chance she gets, and I don’t think we’ve had a single page so far where there hasn’t been at least two italicised words, and I feel like she’s not using them right so it’s very noticeable].

The girls are creeped out by his behaviour and decide it’s home time, prompting Wyatt to asks ‘”where do you live?”‘ while staring at Trish. This catches her off guard, unsure if he means just her or both of them, but Nita quickly pipes up that it’s not too far from here he explains he was just wondering [Sussssssss!]. Trish offers to drop him off somewhere on their way back to the mall to get Nita’s car, so he asks to be dropped at a certain drugstore so he can pick up some things before he goes home.

The drugstore he requests is on the street right behind the mall, so the girls are confused, but Wyatt explains that he can get a lift home with his friend that lives on the street who works nights so wouldn’t have been home earlier, but should be home by now [God, it’s annoying how mysterious this guy is acting]. As the confused girls drop him off, he asks if they’re going back to the mall now, telling them ‘”You can count on it”‘ when Trish nods and says see you later [Muffin Man said something very similar, so maybe they are the same person? Hmm…].

As the girls head back to the mall, Nita complains that she must be losing her touch since Wyatt seems immune to her feminine charms [Maybe he thinks you’re obnoxious like I do!]. Trish drops her at her car and watches Nita head off, but as she starts to drive away herself, her car sputters to a halt right in the middle of the lot and refuses to go any further [Although it’s conveniently bad timing, I’m not so sure that someone’s tampered with it because she’d mentioned earlier her car is pretty unreliable].

She treks back to the mall hoping of finding a security guard to help her. Her imagination understandably runs wild on the way what with all the thrills and chills she’s had today, so she can’t be sure if she really does hear footsteps and a car door slamming nearby or if it’s all in her head [Is the Muffin Man watching?]. The mall entrance is locked when she reaches it with no-one in sight, and her day goes from bad to worse when she slips on a broken bottle and cuts up her knee, the poor thing [Trish is not having a good time today and she’s barely complaining! I can’t help but wonder what miserable Martha would do in this situation…probably find some way to blame her stepbrother?]

Trish decides to walk the perimeter hoping to find an entrance with a security guard nearby, but she has no luck until she reaches the dingy little alleyway behind the south wing of shops that’s cluttered with dumpsters and old rubbish. There’s a line of doors that open to the back of some of the stores where smaller deliveries are received, and she wonders if one of them might have been accidentally unlocked [With your luck today, Trish, I don’t think so]. To her surprise, one of them opens and a man in a security uniform steps out for a ciggy break [Ciggy Butt Brain! Click here if you’d like to understand the reference and get an insight into Australian junkies].

The man is completely silent as Trish approaches and explains her predicament, and she notices he’s wearing a cap over his thick, black curls, ‘dark-tinted glasses that completely hid his eyes’ [Never trust somebody who wears sunglasses at night] and his face seems to register no emotion whatsoever [Sounds like Wyatt!]. He beckons her inside and as she steps through the door, she can’t help but stare at the jagged scar that ‘sliced down from his earlobe to his chin.’ [The fact that he’s practically silent is super creepy]. He finally pipes up when she’s inside and tells her she shouldn’t be walking around out there by herself and she also shouldn’t be here, ‘”Not now”‘:

“Well—I just thought I could use your phone. I was so scared—”
“Of course,” he said slowly. “Of course I can do that for you. The important thing is that…that you came. That you…found me.”

[This is definitely the Muffin Man!] Trish feels the exact same way, apparently unconcerned by this guy’s demeanour, and after noticing her injured knee, the guard insists they take care of that first before worrying about the phone [Stranger danger, Trish!]. She notices for the first time that they’re in some sort of cluttered storeroom and they move further into the room as the man heads for a first-aid kit.

The guard seems to get nervous when Trish mentions that she doesn’t recognise him, and he explains that he’s been sick and mostly works nights [RTC is really…making use of…the ellipses with this guy… There’s like… four… of them every time… he speaks… It is very annoying]. Trish is a chatty Cathy now, asking all sorts of questions, and through his answers we learn that it’s only him here at night, he doesn’t get scared because ‘”it’s much nicer when… when there’s nobody here”‘ and he has lots of time to think and dream of the things he really wants most [How is Trish not scared right now lol? I’ve changed my mind about Wyatt being our Muffin Man, he’s definitely just a red herring].

Trish admits she dreams of what she wants a lot too, like getting along better with her manager, and the man is like ‘”She’s…she’s not very nice to you,”‘ and Trish realises is a statement, not a question [Red flag, Trish, red flag!]. She blurts out that she looOOo000O0Oooo0OoooOoOOves her job, but hates starting the work day wondering what Bethany’s gonna bitch about this time, but then apologises for unloading on the guard like that. Although she can only see his profile at the moment, she notices that ‘the corners of his mouth seemed to move slowly in a secret sort of smile’ [Oh god, Trish, get out of there! This is the Muffin Man and he probably killed Freida!].

Trish approaches the guard after he finds the first-aid kit, but he briefly turns his back on her and Trish hears the the sound of something being poured. He faces her again, a large piece of gauze in hand [Did he put chloroform on the gauze so he could knock her out?], but Trish unknowingly probably saves herself by accidentally knocking a crate of glass bottles to the floor. The man tells her it doesn’t matter and to leave it, but Trish apologises profusely and picks up the shattered glass anyway, and we get a prime example of RTC’s overuse and what I think is incorrect of italics:

“Oh, I am just so sorry! I am such a klutz!“

[Those words don’t need to be emphasised! It reads exactly the same way without the italicised words, and I feel like if anything, you’d emphasis ‘such’ over ‘klutz’] The man moves toward her as she looks around for a bin to put the glass in and she gets a whiff of the gauze, which has ‘a strange, sweet sort of smell’ [I don’t know what chloroform smells like but that’s what I’m guessing. Why isn’t she questioning the smell, anyway?!]. Trish spots a portable trash can in the corner and heads over to it while the man tries to call her back [Seriously, how is she not concerned for her welfare right now? Especially after the day she’s had, you’d think she’d be hyper-aware]. The trash can is basically full already when Trish drops the glass in, and she freezes in horror when she sees, through a long tear in the topmost bag, a ghastly sight:

The girl’s face was staring out, eyes dull and glazed with lifeless horror.
Her cheeks were scabbed over with crusted blood.
And like a macabre piece of jewelry, the dark red end of an ice pick protruded from the center of her throat.

[Freida or a mannequin? If this was a Stine book, it’d definitely be a mannequin, but I’m not sure about RTC’s tropes yet] Trish alerts the man and he goes in for a look [As if he doesn’t know already lollllllll Come on, Trish]. He immediately stiffens, grabs the walkie-talkie from his belt and radios for someone named Sam to get down here ASAP to help him. Unlike me, Trish must be too stunned to realise that he’s just called to another guard even though he’d told her he’s all alone at night, and he calmly tells her she needs to leave, steering her to the back door. He explains that letting her into the building is ‘”strictly against the rules”‘ and he could lose his job if anyone finds out, so he needs her gone before the police come.

He asks for her address so he can call her a cab, and she hesitantly gives it to him, also revealing she’s home alone until Monday [Her stupidity gets a free pass here because she’s just had yet another traumatic experience]. He then hands her some money for the cab and shoves her out the door [Why would he just let her go so easily? Was he not planning on killing her?].

Trish is still in a complete daze when she arrives home in the cab the guard called, the memory of the dead girl playing over and over in her brain. She debates whether or not to call Nita and tell her everything, but Nita’s bad with secrets [Like me!] and besides, Nita’s parents won’t appreciate a call at this hour. As she checks that the house is secure, Trish concludes that it’s best to keep her mouth shut to avoid jeopardising the guard’s job after he was just trying to help her [If I was here, I would be completely suss that he murdered her, especially after the day she’s had, so I don’t get how she’s so trusting of him].

The next morning, Trish is surprised to find no news in the paper or on the radio about the murder at the mall, and nobody seems to have heard anything about it at school either. It’s the same deal at the mall, too, so she walks up to a security guard and explains she wants to thank the guard who helped her with her car troubles last night, and describes his curly dark hair since she didn’t catch his name. The guard points her toward the pet store, where a curly haired guard named Roger is standing. Although she thinks it’s weird that he’d be working right now when he said he only works nights, Trish hurries over to Roger, but besides the hair, he doesn’t really resemble the guard from last night.

She asks about the guards that work the late shift,  but the guard has no idea what she’s talking about because after 10:30pm, ‘”this whole place goes on alarm systems”‘ so they don’t have any all-night guards at the mall [This would be a terrifying realisation for Trish]. In shock, Trish runs away from the man and straight outside to the alleyway and snoops through dumpsters for any sign of the body, but they’re all completely empty [You don’t have time for this anyway, Trish, Bethany’s gonna have a bitch fit!].

Storm Reynolds suddenly appears, having overheard someone mention a girl rifling through the dumpsters in the alley, and he simply had to come check it out [Dumpster diving is his kink xx]. Trish makes up a lie about searching for a lost pair of Nita’s gloves, which he kindly pretends to accept before walking her back to work.

As expected, Bethany is fuming and it’s not long before she humiliates Trish in front of all the customers and staff [How big is Muffin-Mania? I’m sure it was established earlier that it’s just a booth, yet there seems to be a back room, baker’s ovens and bakers walking around too?] for accidentally knocking over a tray of muffins. ‘”That’s coming out of your paycheck,”‘ says Bethany, who assures Trish she’ll be written up for being late, careless, antagonising management and being rude to customers [I think we’ve all worked for a power-tripping Bethany at some point or other, right?]:

“I have never been rude to customers!” Trish protested hotly, standing up and confronting her. “I have never once been rude to a —”
Her words died in her throat. Standing at the counter was a tall figure with flowing gray hair… a gray beard… sunglasses…
“If I say you’ve been rude, then you obviously have an attitude problem.” Bethany was seething.

[Yeah, Trish, if Bethany says it, it must be true!] The Muffin Man is gone when Trish glances back at the line of customers, and feeling overwhelmed, Trish scampers off to one of the mall’s bathrooms to have a long cry [Poor girl :(]. She’s terrified of the Muffin Man, upset about Bethany’s cruelty, and confused about the mysterious guard and dead body. She feels like she can’t tell anyone about last night, assuming she’ll get in trouble for being in the store and everyone will think she’s made the whole thing up:

I can’t say anything. Not to anyone. So what do I do in the meantime? That guard—whoever he is—is he here today, too? Watching me? Working somewhere in the mall? And wherever he is, is he the one who killed that girl? And did he really get rid of her body—or does he still have it with him?

She realises in horror that she’d told him absolutely everything about herself – her name and address, where she works, and that she’ll be home alone until Monday. She calms herself down after a quick terror vomit and tries to make sense of it all, but one of the hardest things to understand is why he let Trish go when he easily could have killed her there and then [Exactly! Very strange. Maybe he just likes watching her or something].

Imogene coincidentally walks in and tries to comfort her friend, insisting Bethany isn’t worth crying over and ‘”Maybe Bethany will have an accident.”‘ [Which is a weird choice of words, right?]. Trish accompanies Bethany to pick up a messed-up delivery down in the loading docks, which is a super creepy place that neither of them is fond of. It’s also a fair hike away in the oldest part of the mall and to reach the docks, you have to travel through ‘a complicated series of underground passages and tunnels that seemed to wind forever’ [Seems like a very inconvenient place to receive deliveries then?]. The girls have to take a service elevator down to the basement, and then a rickety old freight elevator even further down to finally reach the level that the docks are on [Why is the mall this fkn big?].

After getting off the second elevator, the girls walk down a dimly lit tunnel with low ceilings and cold damp walls, ‘part of the mall’s structure that been built conveniently into the surrounding mountains’ [I am so confused by the layout of this mall lol. So it has several sub-basement levels, 1957568786 passages and halls, and the loading dock is accessed by walking through hollowed out mountains.., So do delivery trucks have to drive to the mountains to make their delivery instead going to the main part of the mall?]. They finally reach the docks, which is full of people unloading trucks and sorting stock, and Trish stands in the middle of it like a stare bear while Imogene wanders off to sort out her delivery issue. And then Trish bumps into one of the delivery men:

He was wearing a khaki uniform and matching cap. His hair was combed straight back behind his ears, and there was a thick mustache on his upper lip.
He was wearing dark glasses.
As Trish stared in cold, creeping terror, his mouth formed a crooked smile. Some of his teeth were black.

[The Muffin Man in another disguise?!] He disappears into the crowd before Trish can say anything, and Imogene soon returns with some boxes. They head back to the elevator but have to wait for it to return, so Imogene sets the box on a trash can, noticing something gross in there that resembles a rat. Trish’s blood runs cold, recognising the ‘the long gray wig’ as Imogene lifts it into the air [Gross why are you touching it, bin scab!] and ‘dangled the fake gray beard from her fingertips.’ [OK, so the Muffin Man is some kind of master in disguise who lives in the underground tunnels somewhere. Why does have all these disguises, though? Why does he pretend to be a worker?].

Trish realises that the Muffin Man, the guard and the delivery man are all the same person, and worse – he’s a murderer who knows everything about her [Sounds like a good time to go to the police!]. Trish asks to hear Imogene’s theory about the mall as they head back to the main floor, and Imogene explains that due to all the renovations and rebuilding over the years, there’s probably all sorts of rooms and halls that new builders never knew about [What, no floor plans?], and that’s how whoever’s doing all that shoplifting is getting around without setting any alarms off:

“There are probably a million secret ways to get into these individual stores and then transfer the stolen goods straight to the loading docks. For all we know, there could be other ways out of this place besides the loading docks. It’s a totally inside job.” She stopped, looking pleased with herself.

[I don’t understand why, with each new build, no-one thought to look at floor plans or something? I think we can assume Imogene’s theory about secret ways into each store is correct, but why would anyone want that? Like what is the purpose of several hidden ways to enter a damn store?] Trish is filled with dread over how plausible Imogene’s theory seems. Imogene, of course, thinks Trish is upset because of Bethany, and suggests she goes home instead of back to work, but Trish’s purse is still at Muffin-Mania. ‘”Face the bitch,”‘ says an encouraging Imogene [Yeah, face that bitch!], who delves into another theory she’s formed based on the gossip she’s heard around the mall:

“I hear Bethany’s the most frustrated manager on earth—and the biggest failure. Rumor has it she’s worked at practically every store in the whole mall and failed miserably at every one of them. No people skills. Total lack of communication. Really…such a waste. She’s just not worth your having a breakdown over.”

[Why is everyone giving this bitch a job when she’s doomed to fail each time? Don’t these store owners talk? Also Imogene is so much better than Nita we need more of her] Instead of going back to work, Trish visits Nita to ask her to retrieve her things for her. Nita agrees to go on her break, before revealing that beautiful white dress Trish tried on has mysteriously vanished [Does this store only sell one of each item?]. Nita’s confused by the disappearance because it would have beeped at the door if someone had walked out with it [Imogene’s theory is correct]!

Trish takes a leisurely stroll through the mall while waiting for Nita, thinking about the Muffin Man and all his disguises. She really wants to tell someone about the whole thing, but she knows how silly it all sounds and without proof, she’s not sure the police would believe her [You’re not in Shadyside, give them a chance!].

She comes to a vacant store that’s in the early stages of remodelling, with a makeshift tarpaulin over the doorway. She can’t hear any sounds coming from inside and wonders if it’s been empty all day – ‘What a perfect place to hide. What a perfect place to watch from.’ What a perfect place to investigate for the Muffin Man! thinks Trish, who’s pulling open the tarp before she can stop herself.

But then a tradie opens it from the other side, which spooks Trish enough to scream and run away [Hahahaha], ‘shoving people out of the way’ to get away from the worker. She heads for the escalator, ignoring the out of order sign and heading down the motionless treads. She stops to look back halfway down, relieved that no-one’s after her. As she starts to continue down, the escalator gives ‘a sudden, violent lurch’ without warning, and Trish grabs for the railing but ‘touched nothing but air’ [Huh? The railing didn’t run away, how could she miss it?].

She’s knocked unconscious from the fall [Which was just a simple accident – a mall worker turned the escalator on without realising she was on it] and wakes up later in hospital, her body aching and stitches in her chin. She’s otherwise fine, but has to stay overnight so they can keep an eye on her, and with her mother is still in Europe, she’ll be released to Nita and Imogene’s mother tomorrow.

Trish falls asleep until later that night where she notices ‘a tall shadowy figure’ by the foot of her bed. The figure tells her not be afraid, but how could she not be as she recognises the Muffin Man’s voice [!!!]. He assures her he didn’t turn the escalator on – he’d never hurt Trish because ‘”you’re my life!”‘ [Oh god].

The Muffin Man stays in the shadows the whole time so she never sees his face, and explains that he’s been watching her for a long time, not just while she was sleeping tonight but everywhere. He knows everything about her including what makes her happy, sad and afraid; how her face lights up when she smiles; the way she smells; and even how she tastes thanks to that honey muffin she’d sold him at the start of the book, ‘”the taste of you still on it…”‘ [I think he thinks he’s being romantic].

Although he would never hurt her, he promises to do something so she won’t be able to talk [Like what, though?] if she tries to scream, before telling her about all the things he’s noticed about her, like her long, thick hair [OK, so he was watching Trish at the start, not Freida], how she looks in that white dress, ‘”and how you look…out of it.”‘ [Terrifying]

Trish grows angry as she remembers the dressing room  and threatens to call the police and tell them all about him, including the body in the stockroom, but the Muffin Man ain’t scared because the police probably wouldn’t take her too seriously [Without any proof, he’s probably right]:

“I’ve waited all my life for you, Trish,” he whispered slowly. “All these years…all these… lonely… years.” He took a long, deep breath and moved closer. “We’re destined to be together. And I promise you—it will happen. Soon. But not just yet. Not till everything is perfect.”

[The Muffin Man sounds like a Fear Street guy] No-one else has a place in their world, says the Muffin Man, and he warns that if she tells anyone about him, he’ll have no choice but to hurt Nita and Imogene, rattling off all the information he knows about them to assure Trish he’s not messing around.

All the Muffin Man wants from Trish is her love and loyalty and he forbid hers to see ‘him’ again. Trish isn’t quite sure who ‘him’ is [I assume he means Storm Reynolds, Pizza Park superstar!], but Muffin Man doesn’t give her a name, warning ‘”He is not what he seems to be”‘ and to never trust ‘him’ no matter what. Before slipping from the room, the Muffin Man tells her she may call him Athan, [I think i’ll stick with Muffin Man, thank you], her protector and guardian, and reminds her that he’s always nearby and will be coming for her soon.

The next day, Trish is taken back to the twins’ house to recover, but the parents have dinner plans that night and with the twins at work, Trish is left on her own and soon receives a call from the Muffin Man to say goodnight [Poor Trish, she’s not safe anywhere!].

Too terrified to stay in the house by herself, Trish escapes into the backyard and sneaks through the neighbours yards until she reaches the library, relieved to be surrounded by people once more. Storm Reynolds suddenly appears, and Trish wonders if he’s the ‘him’ the Muffin Man meant [Duh]. Storm’s been worried about her after hearing about the escalator incident and wonders why she’s not at home recuperating. Trish is apprehensive about trusting him, though, because usually he’d be working at this time and he’s not carrying any books, so he can’t be here to read or study [Not sure about that logic, Trish].

Storm Reynolds either can’t take a hint or chooses to ignore her obvious discomfort and steers her out of the library and into his car, and this is despite her literally begging him not to the whole time and repeatedly saying she doesn’t want to go with him [Sounds like a Fear Street guy!]. After a few minutes of driving, she begs Storm Reynolds to just let her out right here, but he tells her ‘”If I let you out at all, it’ll be at your house”‘ [Dude you have literally kidnapped her], and Trish is on the same wavelength as me:

“Are you kidnapping me?”
To her surprise, he chuckled softly, giving her a sidelong glance.
“Well…don’t think I haven’t thought about it. But I’m too young to spend the rest of my life in prison.”

[So what exactly is this if not a kidnapping, Storm Reynolds? Dragged her to your car against her will and are refusing to let her go sure sounds like kidnapping to me] He starts complaining about how he doesn’t have close friends like she does because his family moved around a lot while he was growing up and then brings up her accident on the escalator, advising she should be more careful because ‘”People who aren’t careful just end up getting hurt.”‘ [Wow, deep…]

Trish explains she was just upset about her manager, but Storm reckons Bethany won’t last much longer if any of the rumours he’s heard going around are true – no-one likes her because of her bullying and incompetence, and she’s only lasted this long because her dad owns half the stores [Ohhhhhhh, that explains it].

He then speeds up the car as he asks if Trish is gonna go back to work [Why are we speeding?], and he only slows down again when she says she will be returning [Was this some sort of threat? What was the point of this?] before gushing over his car because ‘”What power”‘ [So did the speeding have nothing to do with the conversation? What is going on?].

They drive for a few more miles before Storm starts to slow down again, explaining he wants to show her something that will make her feel good despite her begging once again to just be taken home [Ugh Storm sucks]. He turns down a side road towards some special place he doesn’t share with just anybody, but poor Trish grows more and more panicked, so the next time he brakes she yeets out the door and bolts frantically through the thick woods, Storm Reynolds not far behind her.

The poor girl eventually trips begs Storm not to hurt her when he catches up, but he’s stunned and insists he’d never hurt her. He doesn’t understand why she’s acting like this [Bruh you fucking kidnapped her?!?], but Trish is too scared to tell him the truth and says she’s just upset.

Now that they’ve established that he didn’t bring her to the woods to take advantage of her [What else is she supposed to think though, you literally fucking kidnapped her?!], he guides her back to the car and they drive a little longer, finally arriving at a small clearing where the rundown remains of an old cabin sit right in the centre. Storm found it one day while exploring and as they enter the cabin, there’s a breathtaking view of the valley below thanks to a missing wall.

Trish gets nervous again when Storm Reynolds asks where she lives after she gushes over how cool it’d be to live in a place like this. She turns the questions back onto him without answering it herself, which seems to catch him off guard. Trish presses on with some follow-up questions, but relaxes when she recognises the apartment block he describes [Even thought he could be lying? It really seems like he’s lying, but she doesn’t seem to notice. How come the only time Trish doesn’t seem terrified for her life is when she’s actually in potentially dangerous situation?]

Storm’s heard rumours about the cabin’s history, which Trish wants to hear all about [And so do I]. Supposedly the cabin belonged to a woman who wasn’t particularly well-liked and had ‘”these wild notions that someone was after her. That someone was going to sneak up here to her house during the night and carry her away.”‘ [That would be terrifying. If you thought someone was after you, though, is living in an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods really the best choice for you?]

One day, some people came to check up on her and found the door wide open, the fireplace alight and no sign of the woman. She was never found and while some say she finally went insane and killed herself, others believe that her greatest fear came true and she was finally murdered by whoever she thought was after her [It’s a very similar story to Trish’s current situation with the Muffin Man, which is very convenient and very suss…].

Trish is terrified by the story and is all like ‘”Why are you telling me this?”‘ even though she asked to be told the story [????]. She wants to go back now, and although Storm Reynolds apologises for scaring her, he has no intention of heading back to civilisation just yet:

She tried to pull away, but he only pulled her closer.
“Please!” Her voice rose. “I just want to get out of here.”
“Not yet.” Storm cut her off, and suddenly he was kissing her, his arms tight around her, pressing her close, and she could feel his lips, warm and soft, tasting hers, trailing down the side of her neck, into the sensitive spot on her shoulder.
“Stop it!”
She slapped him—hard.

[Attagirl, Trish! The audacity of this guy to say he didn’t bring her here to take advantage of her, just to then try take advantage of her. If she ends up with him in the end I’ll be really mad]

Trish is just as shocked by her own reaction as Storm is, and they head back to town in stony silence. Trish gets scared yet again when he turns onto her street and demands to know how he knows she lived here. There’s a long pause before he finally explains he didn’t know she lived on this street and is just taking another way to the library, but she’s still suss [Just axe him, Trish. He’s probably just a red herring, so I wonder how RTC will explain all this dodgy behaviour?].

After being dropped off at the library, Trish heads back to Nita’s house and finds herself still home alone. As she’s about to close the curtains in Nita’s room, she notices a parked car directly opposite the house and in the light cast by the streetlamp, she can see someone moving around inside – Wyatt!

She pulls away from the window in shock, trying to convince herself that she’s mistaken because why would Wyatt be out there, and when she takes another peek out, the car’s gone! Nita arrives home and notices Trish’s dishevelled appearance, so Trish she about being chased by a dog and falling into a bush while out to get some air.

Imogene returns later and mentions seeing Wyatt at the film festival at the mall’s theatre a few times this week, making Trish wonder if it really was Wyatt outside the house [Well Imogene didn’t say she saw him there tonight, so probably. Why was he there, though?]. Nita suddenly remembers that Bethany wasn’t at work today [The Muffin Man got her! Good], and Trish chillingly recalls what Storm said earlier about her as well as how the guard the other night [Why is she referring to him as if she doesn’t already know he was really the Muffin Man] knew all about how Bethany made Trish unhappy.

Trish reveals that she’ll be going to work tomorrow, much to the twins’ surprise, who both think she should be prioritising rest and recovery. Trish insists it’s important that she goes to work tomorrow, but Nita can’t understand what’s more important than Trish’s health:

Your health, Trish wanted to tell her. All of our health. All of our lives. But instead she said, “Goodnight, Nita,” and pulled the blankets up over her head.

[Trish is such a good friend, trying to keep her friends safe. I hope all her other protagonists are this good and Trish isn’t just a fluke. Although it wouldn’t take much for any character to be better than Martha]. The next morning, Trish picks up her car from the gas station [Shouldn’t it have been at a mechanic’s? Or do gas stations double as mechanics in America?], but as she heads to school, she notices a cassette she doesn’t recognise on the passenger seat. She chucks it on, expecting it to be one of the classical music tapes Imogene’s so fond of, but instead, the voice of the Muffin Man fills her ears, telling Trish she’s a naughty girl who shouldn’t have told anyone [She didn’t, though?].

The Muffin Man’s voice angrily reminds her that she ‘”can’t have anyone else,”‘ not now, not ever, and he’ll have to show her how serious he is as punishment [This isn’t fair, she literally hasn’t told anyone! Storm kidnapped her, Muffin Man!]. He also warns that she’d better be at the mall today before lovingly whispering that by tonight, they’ll finally be together…forever! [My first thought is that he’s planning a murder-suicide, but he’s told her he’d never hurt her so that can’t be right. Maybe he’s just gonna kidnap her and keep her hidden away in the mall forever!].

For some reason that even she doesn’t understand, Trish heads straight to the apartment building where Storm Reynolds claimed to live because she wants to get far, far away from the voice [Take the tape out?]. She plans to just sit in the car outside Storm’s building because just knowing someone else is nearby will make her feel better [Go back to Nita’s place? Or school? Why the hell is sitting outside Storm’s building her first plan of action, especially when she couldn’t wait to be away from him last night?], but of course she runs into the building when she arrives, searching for Storm’s name on the letterboxes in the hall.

To her surprise but certainly not mine and probably not yours, his name isn’t on any of them, and a bewildered Trish realises how stupid it was to come here because the Muffin Man is probably watching her and thinks she’s talked to Storm [But if Storm doesn’t live here, would Muffin Man even understand why she was here in the first place?]. She decides to go to the mall, hoping that by going early she’ll appease some of the Muffin Man’s anger.

The mall is still closed when she arrives, with the stores setting up for the day, and Storm’s not around but she does find Wyatt doing some cleaning in The Eatery. She asks him straight up if he’d been outside Nita’s house last night, but as usual he acts all mysterious instead of giving her a straight answer, reminding her that his car got stolen, so ‘”I guess it wasn’t me.”‘ [You don’t have to be such a wanker, Wyatt].

As Trish spends the whole day walking around the mall [Like, literally from 10am-3pm, how fkn boring], she thinks about her predicament with the Muffin Man, and also decides Storm’s name wasn’t on any of the mailboxes because he must have gotten confused [Wouldn’t it make more sense that she had gotten confused about where he lives, not him?]. She also believes she was wrong about seeing Wyatt last night – he said he doesn’t have a car, so it can’t have been him [People lie, Trish. Maybe it was his parents’ car? Or maybe his car never got stolen in the first place and he really was trying to break into yours?] and besides, what could he possibly have to do with Trish anyway? [I mean he could have been there for Nita or Imogene…it’s not all about you, Trish]

There’s still no Bethany by the time she starts her shift at Muffin-Mania, much to the delight of absolutely everybody in the mall. Nita comes by to visit before her own shift, telling Trish about how she’s decided to make herself irresistible to Wyatt so he’ll be putty in her hand [Good luck with that].

Trish is kept busy with work for the next few hours and is able to forget about the Muffin Man for a while, although she does notice that Storm doesn’t seem to be working today and Wyatt seems to have disappeared [You saw him working at like 9:30 this morning, Trish, do you expect him to be there all night too?]. Eventually, Trish is told by a coworker that someone called for her, but hung up before the girl could alert Trish and with a bit more info, Trish is able to deduce that it was Imogene [Nooooo! Take Nita instead!]. Apparently Imogene told the coworker that it’s ‘”a matter of life and death,”‘ but didn’t say where she was, insisting Trish needs to come now ‘”before it’s too late.”‘ [Imogene, how do you expect her to find you if you can’t even give a hint to your whereabouts?]

Without an explanation, Trish ‘shoved the girl aside and took off for the bookstore’ [Why do you need to shove her, Trish? Rude] where a salesgirl tells her Imogene had to leave for a while, but should be back in about 20 minutes or so – something about an invoice and mixed-up delivery [The fact that it takes so long for Imogene to get to the loading docks and back again is just further proof of how stupid this mall’s setup is]. Apparently someone from the loading dock called about 10 minutes ago and asked for Imogene specifically [Uh oh].

Trish thanks the girl and heads straight for the service elevator [Don’t wanna shove her aside, too, Trish?] before taking the freight elevator to the level the loading docks are on. It seems she’s the only one down here as she wanders the dark, twisting halls, and Trish realises that she has no idea what hours the workers at the docks work – the warehouse workers could have already locked up for the night [Tbh I’d probably be shitting bricks even without knowing the Muffin Man is down there].

Trish stops as she comes to a bend in the passageway, suddenly overcome with ‘the unmistakeable feeling that she shouldn’t go around that curve.’ She senses that she’s not alone, and almost instantly she hears a sliding sound ahead of her, ‘like a foot… dragging across the floor’ and coming closer:

And suddenly she saw the outline of a face—
An arm—reaching—
And as his hand groped out into the sickly light, she saw the ice pick—the blood dripping thickly onto the floor.
With a scream, Trish whirled and took off for the elevator.

[Oh no, I hope Imogene’s not dead :(] Inside the freight elevator, Trish plan is to get help when she reaches the main floor, but wonders if Nita will be next if she tells anyone anything [Get Nita and then get help!]. Unfortunately the elevator doesn’t stop at the basement level she needs, but instead just keeps rising [So to even get to this freight elevator from the main part of the mall, workers need to catch a seperate elevator to the basement first… doesn’t that suggest that the basement is the highest floor the freight elevator reaches?] 

The emergency button does nothing when Trish presses it, and the comms system is dead, but eventually it comes to a stop and the doors start to open. Trish thinks that the Muffin Man somehow got from the sub-basement level the loading docks are on all the way to the whatever level she’s on right now, without using an elevator [????] and smashes the close button as ‘something dark and shadowy’ tries to work its way in from the other side [There’s absolutely no way the Muffin Man got here that quick, so this is either some random person trying to get in, or that wasn’t the Muffin Man with the ice pick down there].

The door slides shut and the elevator descends, but again it goes straight past the floor she needs and stops at the level leading to the loading docks. She stops the doors from opening again before deciding there must be emergency stairs somewhere on this level that she can take back up to the main floor [Trish, use your damn brain, it is more likely the Muffin Man’s on this floor than the one up there. Why would you want to get out here?], but before she can get the doors open, the elevator starts rising again.

This time the elevator stops on the floor she wants, but the doors refuse to open despite any button she presses. When the doors open, she finds that ‘the elevator had missed the floor by three feet,’ meaning she’d have to climb up to get out. She’s cautious to attempt an escape, which is lucky because something suddenly falls into the doorway, blocking her escape as it swings back and forth from the roof of the elevator – an arm!

There’s puncture wounds ‘swollen and clotted shut’ down the length of the whole arm [There’s gotta be a better weapon than a damn ice pick], and Trish’s nostrils are invaded by the ‘thick stench of death’ before the arm slips down further, causing the head to fall down from above ‘like a broken puppet’:

Trish recognised the face at once—the hair matted with blood, the features smeared with blood, blood, and more blood, the sightless eyes staring and pleading and terrified, the handle of of the ice pick wedged deep in her throat.
“No,” Trish murmured. “Bethany…”

[Bye bitch xx] And pinned to Bethany’s neck by the ice pick is blood-smeared note that reads ‘YOU’RE LUCKY. THIS COULD HAVE BEEN IMOGENE.’ Trish pushes her fear aside and begins to climb through the doors, but then Bethany’s corpse topples to the floor. Traumatised, Trish jumps back and gets the doors closed before the elevator begins to bounce and sway slightly and she realises with dread that the Muffin Man is ‘on top of the elevator!’

The elevator ascends once more as Trish despairs over how utterly helpless she is, and before she realises what’s going on, the elevator plummets down. She loses consciousness as it falls, and in her final waking moments ‘she felt sad, somehow, for the way she was going to die.’ [This would be horrible! Something like this, or being trapped underground or  in a fire or underwater or something like that, would be a horrible way to go. It would be fkn terrifying to realise you’re about to die].

Trish awakens sometime later on the floor of the elevator and in a lot of pain, but at least she’s alive. Checking the directory above the door, she’s relieved to see that the elevator stopped at the level of the loading docks, not the bottom of the shaft [How many fkn levels are there in this mall?]. The elevator seems to be working as normal now, and she’s able to get to the basement and then up to the main floor of the mall, which is now completely empty because it’s after closing time [Ooky spooky! Great setting for a horror movie though].

She wants to find and exit and get help, but thinks that she’d just look suspicious if she told the authorities she’d gotten locked in [Not really, you work there? You’re not some random customer]. She knows Bethany’s body would be gone by now [There was no mention of it when she woke up before], and without any proof to back up her story, she theorises that no-one will believe her and ‘she’d be in more trouble than she’d ever been in her whole life.’ [Trish, you’re a teenage girl who works at the damn mall, with no evidence that you’ve stolen anything? And you’d be willingly going to the police, why would they think you’re a criminal turning yourself in?].

Despite thinking the authorities will believe that she’s just a petty thief that got locked in rather than the truth [She’d be willingly going to the police though, surely that gives her some credibility? Like, I don’t think they’d believe a she’s turning herself in as a criminal?], Trish decides that her current situation is a lot worse [Lol true] and starts running around to all the exits, finding each one locked [So find something to smash one with? Surely some of them are just glass doors]. She then tries the payphones, but the lines have all been cut [!!!].

A cold breeze in one corridor alerts her to an open door leading to the outside world, and although she knows it must be a trap, Trish is intrigued by the shopping bag in the open doorway and finds Nita’s sweater inside [!!!]. She bolts straight to The Latest Trend, whose entrance is wide open, and searches for her friend, arming herself with two heavy paperweights from the counter after hearing a sound from the dressing rooms.

Investigating further, she finds the dressing rooms empty but in one of the end booths, the one she’d used when trying on the white dress, part of the back wall is gone, ‘as though someone had simply come in and conveniently lifted out the panel’ [I refuse to believe any store would have something like this in real life lol]. She suddenly senses someone behind her and whirls around to find none other than Wyatt creeping closer, beckoning her over to him [I briefly entertained the idea that Wyatt was the Muffin Man but thought it was too obvious lol. Also, like, surely she’d recognise Wyatt’s face underneath those disguises? I guess facial hair and glasses were used with most of them, but the actual face underneath can’t have been so inconspicuous, right? We’ve still got a few more chapters left anyway, so I reckon Wyatt was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Not sure why he’s here after closing time, though].

Trish hurls the paperweights at him, knocking Wyatt to the floor, but he grabs her as she tries to get past him. She manages to shake him off and decides her best escape route is through the hole in the dressing room wall [Go around him, Trish! Around!], and after scrambling inside, she glances back ‘just in time to see the panel slam back into place.’

Plunged into darkness, Trish throws herself at the wall, but it doesn’t budge [You were just trying to get away from him, why would you want to try get back out there?] so with no other choice, Trish moves down the corridor, forced to crawl due to the low ceilings. When the passage makes a sharp turn, Trish finds herself standing in front of a large window that looks into the hall of the dressing area and realises in horror that it’s a two-way mirror [Do clothing stores really have two-way mirrors like this? Seems like a privacy issue… I guess it’s not in the dressing rooms themselves, but it’s still weird. And weird that no-one knows about it?].

Trish pushes on further, reaching a wooden door that opens up to what seems like one million stairs heading down. At the bottom of the stairs is another door leading to a tunnel, and down the tunnel is yet another door, a large one this time, that opens to… yep, you guessed it, another door! [I don’t understand this layout hahaha. Like what purpose would these doors and passageways actually have if they were being used by the mall?].

The room behind this door appears to be full of clouds, but she quickly realises they’re cobwebs and even worse, they’re ‘infested with huge spiders’ [Grosssssssss]. And then a spider drops onto her shoulder [Omg] and as she jumps back in fright, she just tangles herself in more webs as more and more spiders scurry across her scalp, ‘along her cheeks, down her throat’ [Down her throat? As in her open mouth?!? Does RTC mean neck?].

She finally manages to free herself and realises that the room is also filled with mannequins [So she couldn’t see all this through the webs?], and the room is lit by torches along the walls. As she examines her surroundings, Trish notices the room goes deeper than it looks:

It was as if certain rooms were defined by specific shadows, and where this room ended, another began in a different sort of light—calmer and dimmer. Trish could see candles burning atop a long wooden table… the sturdy wooden chairs placed around. To her amazement, she saw plates and platters of food arranged there… goblets of wine… a three-tiered wedding cake….
“Oh, no…no….”
She moved back farther into the chamber and saw a wooden cupboard… a washstand with a basin and old-fashioned pitcher. A handcarved cradle. A huge wooden bed with white canopy and snowy bedcurtains….

[How did he get a damn canopy bed, cupboard and big-ass table down there all by himself? And where’d he get a wedding cake from? Is it a real cake? Surely malls don’t sell wedding cakes that he could steal? Also,  why was there still so many cobwebs when Trish first entered here if the room is in use? Like, the Muffin Man has clearly been in and out lately, wouldn’t he have disturbed the webs?] Trish also spots the beautiful white dress she’d tried on draped over the bed before the Muffin Man appears behind her, once again hidden by shadows and lovingly whispering ‘”I knew you’d come.”‘

Trish demands to know where her friends are, but it turns out they’re perfectly safe, probably both at home by now with no idea of what’s going on. The Muffin Man explains that he’d pretended to be Imogene when he called Muffin-Mania earlier after sending Imogene off on a wild-goose chase, and Nita’s sweater was accidentally left behind after she bought a new one and wore it home [The Muffin Man’s a sneaky little bastard, isn’t he!]. He reveals the phone call and sweater were just tests to see if Trish would choose freedom for herself or to help her friends, and he seems impressed that she made the right choice [Brave girl, Trish!].

When Trish tries to reason with him, calling him Wyatt, the Muffin Man is offended that she’d confuse him ‘”with someone who has such little class.”‘ [So I was right, Wyatt isn’t the Muffin Man! Why was he in the mall still, though? Does he live here too?]. The Muffin Man reiterates that his name is Athan and that he did all this because he loves her, but Trish protests that he doesn’t even know her [I think he’s already shown a few times that he knows you pretty well, hun]:

“But I do know you. I’ve watched for a long, long time. While you work… with your friends… in the parking lot… in the library…”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t—”
“I’ve watched you go to school… and go home. I’ve watched you in the hospital… and in the mirror… ”
“Stop!” Trish cried. “Please let me go! Please!”
“And that night in the woods—at that cabin—your face in the moonlight—”

[I get how he can follow her around the mall, but how can he be going unnoticed out in public? Like he’s clearly followed her from Nita’s house to the library, and on second thought I’m sure she thought she heard footsteps at some point on her way there, but then how did he manage to keep up with Storm Reynolds’ car all the way to the cabin? And neither of them saw him? He couldn’t know ahead of time Storm would take her there?]

Still shrouded by darkness, the Muffin Man explains that he’s lived down here for such a long time, stealing whatever he needs from stores and delivery trucks, and he knows every inch of the mall, fancying himself as a king because ‘”down here, it’s my domain.”‘ He’s waited for someone to share his realm with his whole life, and Trish gets to be the lucky gal [Woo!]. He then wraps her in a hug, and Trish realises it’s best to go along with him for now [Good plan, Stan] as he admits to murdering that bitch Bethany.

She tells him she knows it was all for her and asks to see his face. He reveals that she’s seen him many times before as he lights a lamp on a nearby table. He pulls off a dark, curly wig and sunglasses and peels off the scar from his cheek, and Trish seems to recognise him, but we’ve got a few more paragraphs before we’re treated to the big reveal:

“You’ve seen me in store windows… posing with my mannequin friends. And in The Eatery reading my newspaper. You’ve seen me in work clothes and delivery clothes—as a mailman, a salesman, doing repair work and maintenance and emptying trash. I’ve been a security guard and an usher in the theaters—I’ve shopped and pushed brooms and handed out flyers. I’ve got a million disguises—and I never have to look the same way twice.”

[OK but if he’s posing as all these different types of workers, wouldn’t everyone else who works in these jobs at the mall realise something’s off? Like wouldn’t the other salesman in whatever store he pretends to work at think it’s weird how he’s not on the roster and seems to come and go as he pleases? And the other cinema workers? And the other guards? How is this all even possible?] 

Trish realises he killed the girl she saw in the trash can and was about to take body out to the dumpsters when Trish came in that night, and the Muffin Man reveals ‘”Freida got too curious”‘ [Did anyone expect it not to be Freida?]. Turns out she found the secret panel in The Latest Trend, which gave him no choice but to keep her from telling anyone since the last thing he needs is people snooping around down here.

He then divulges that he almost kidnapped Trish that night, but decided against it because he wanted the big reveal to be perfect, with the wedding feast, the wedding dress and ‘”the wedding bed”‘ [Is that a legitimate term? Wedding bed?]. The Muffin Man orders her to put the dress on so they can get the wedding ceremony underway, and we finally find out who Trish recognises him as when she please ‘”Roger—Roger—don’t—”‘ [Does everyone remember Roger? He was the security guard by the pet store that another guard pointed out to her…the one Trish recognises as not being the guard she was with the night before. His disguises can’t be that fkn good, can they? And back to my point before, the other security guards have clearly worked with him enough times to know him as Roger, so what happens when he misses a shift because he’s in another disguise? How does it work with his bosses? Do they even realise there’s some random working for free? Or is Roger his true identity, maybe? But then it doesn’t explain all the other disguises and potential jobs, right?].

He shouts that his name is Athan, not Roger, and then he explains to her what his name means – ‘”Immortality,”‘ [Ohhhh, some Greek! He didn’t just leave the ‘N’ off Nathan after all :)], which also happens to be his wedding gift to Trish [How’s he going to make her immortal? Is this like ‘House of Wax’ and all the mannequins were once real people?].

The Muffin Man continues to show his possessive and jealous side, banging on about how ‘”both of them”‘ [Meaning Storm Reynolds and Wyatt] have been following him, but ‘”I’m the one you were saved for”‘ and ‘”He will never touch you again!”‘ He proudly announces he left Storm Reynolds in the loading dock ‘”with an ice pick in his heart”‘ and Trish realises it wasn’t the Muffin Man she’d seen rounding the corner, but a badly wounded Storm Reynolds [OK, so at least we know the Muffin Man wasn’t magically teleporting from the loading dock to some higher level of the mall before the elevator reached it lol. I wonder why Storm was left for dead, while the Muffin Man seemed to go to town on Freida and Bethany].

The Muffin Man is also super proud of Trish for finally realising she’s destined to be with him and attacking Wyatt, but he’ll have to go finish the job while Trish changes into her dress. He exits the room, locking her in behind him [So there’s only that one door? Again, what’s with all the webs then?]. Realising there’s no other way out and aware that the Muffin Man could simply be waiting on the other side of the door to see if she’ll try to escape, Trish searches for a weapon in the room, wondering how long it’ll take before he returns.

She vows to kill herself before she’d ever let him touch her [Hopefully it won’t come to that :(] and hopes to find a knife or something on the dinner table, but the only potential weapon there is a wine goblet. She’s just about to smash the glass against the table’s edge when she hears someone at the door [!!!!].

It’s Wyatt, bleeding but seemingly OK, and he’s somehow got a gun! He urges Trish to hurry so they can escape, but they hear the Muffin Man coming back! In a frenzied rush, they extinguish every source of light in the room and are plunged into complete darkness as the Muffin Man returns to claim his bride:

Trish expected at any second to be snatched from the darkness.
What she didn’t expect was the sudden thud of bodies colliding and rolling over the floor—the groans—the shouts—a sharp outcry of pain.
“Police!” Wyatt shouted. “Freeze, dammit. Police!”
Without any warning a gun went off—explosions echoing back and back and back through the endless caverns of night. Trish screamed and covered her ears.
“I’m a cop!” Wyatt yelled again. “Freeze!”
“Let go!” a second voice answered back. “”It’s me, you idiot!”

[Oh, so Wyatt’s a cop! That explains all the dodgy behaviour. Actually no, it doesn’t explain why he’s so rude and what he was doing at Trish’s car the other night. Also, alternate title – Trish Somerfield and the Endless Caverns of Night] The scuffling stops and there’s a bit of back and forth between Storm Reynolds and Wyatt as we learn that they’re partners [So they’re both cops!] and Wyatt accidentally shot himself [Lol idiot], but he assures us all it’s just a scratch.

Trish tries to follow their voices through the darkness but she quickly stops in her tracks amongst all the mannequins when her muffin senses start tingling, and she’s absolutely sure the Muffin Man has slipped into the room:

She knew she was going to faint. She took one faltering step and felt the mannequin pressing hard against her back.
She felt the rough, warm layers of clothing….
The broad expanse of chest….
She felt the mannequin breath.

[Absolutely terrifying! Great work, RTC! You have managed to crawl your way out of the cesspit of faeces where Deathkins and her books dwell] Before you can say “This honey muffin tastes like you,” the Muffin Man has his arm around Trish’s neck and promises to kill her before he’ll let the boys have her [Uh oh]. He insists that Trish wants to be with him [Lol no], and she can feel the sharp metal of the ice pick trailing down her body before finding the perfect spot right over her heart. The Muffin Man is all like “Ask her who she wants to be with” and Trish sadly tells the boys that he’s right – it won’t make any difference what they do because ‘”He means what he says.”‘

The Muffin Man starts dragging her further into the room, determined for their wedding night to go ahead as planned, and as Trish’s skirt starts to ride up and twist around her legs, she feels something digging into her thigh – the flashlight she keeps with her at all times that I haven’t mentioned until right now even though I knew it would have some relevance after making two seemingly trivial appearances already [It’s always the things I don’t mention that are relevant, and the things I do mention that are pointless. Sorry xoxo].

Trish thinks on her feet, twisting sideways against the Muffin Man’s arm and aiming the ‘tiny pinprick of light upwards.’ She’s straining so hard against the Muffin Man’s arm that she starts to lose consciousness, but not before she hears the shriek of bullets and feels the Muffin Man sag to the floor, taking her with him.

Trish wakes up after a bit of mouth to mouth from Wyatt and is informed that the pesky Muffin Man is dead [Woo!]. It’s time for a lengthy explanation now, and our two male heroes are more than happy to oblige, sprinkling it with a bit of banter here and there. Turns out they’re undercover cops who’ve been keeping an eye on Roger [So Roger was his true identity then!] after multiple disappearances, ‘”except we just never could quite figure out how he was doing it”‘:

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Wyatt added, “but you’re not the first love-of-his-life Roger’s fixated on. Other girls have disappeared through the years—only nobody ever found them. Only thing they seemed to have in common was that they came here to shop—or work—or both.”

Roger’s intense feelings don’t last, though, and he moves onto the next victim, while ‘”the mall wanted to keep it quiet”‘ to prevent bad publicity, plus nothing could ever be proven [Can’t get a team dedicated to searching the mall from top to bottom?]. Trish asks Storm how old he is at one point [Oh yeah lol, he was all her over! We don’t even know how old Trish is, just that she’s in high school…should we be suspicious of this age difference?] to which Wyatt tells her he’s much older than he looks [Oh god lol].

Anyway, the boys have been watching Trish for a while too [Lol she’s worked there what, maybe six days by now? Define a while], along with Nita and Imogene – they’d noticed Roger hanging around The Eatery, and then Freida disappeared, and the boys determined that one of the trio was his target. So they’d been following the girls, which is why Wyatt was outside Nita’s house the other night, and when Storm Reynolds’ kidnapped Trish from the library, his suspicious behaviour was because he was trying to get her to confide in him so they could help [Why not just blow your cover to her and help her that way?]. He’d also  made the whole story up about the woman at the cabin, too [I knew it was too convenient to be similar!].

Anyway, as part of their surveillance, the boys were checking the girls’ cars when they arrived at work and before they left each night, and Wyatt admits he’d broken into Trish’s car several times [Is that legal?] before eventually finding the tape Roger’d made this morning, which is how they new something would happen tonight.

Storm followed Imogene to the loading docks and was quickly overpowered by Roger, but the distraction of someone coming down the tunnel threw his aim off and he scampered away without making sure Storm was dead [So the Muffin Man was down there…how’d he several floors up so quickly?]. And then Trish ran off before Storm could fully round the corner to warn her.

The boys had known about some of the secret passages and rooms, so in the meantime, Wyatt had been searching around for everyone when he spotted Trish enter The Latest Trend. Trish attacked him when he tried to help her, and Roger was in such a hurry to get Trish alone that he ran off after putting the wall panel back on. Wyatt had seen the whole thing and then followed behind Trish. They know there has to be more than that route to Roger’s secret room, but he’d always disappeared too quickly whenever they tried to tail him.

Roger definitely knew the boys were onto him, and he didn’t like competing with Storm for Trish’s affections, which Storm denies was just another tactic to use her as bait [Again, what is this age difference????]. He’d managed to follow Roger back here after Roger returned to the elevator to hide Beth’s body, and now we’re all caught up!

Storm’s been growing weaker and weaker from his wounds as they’ve been explaining their story, but the help Wyatt radioed for on his way down here should have arrived by now, so it’s time to carry his injured partner back up to the main level for an ambulance ride.

As Wyatt hoists Storm to his feet, he complains about how he’s the real hero, not Storm, ‘”not that it seems to make any difference to anyone.”‘ Nita reminds him that the more he ignores Nita, the more interested she’ll become, which he seems pretty pleased about [Is this also a suspicious age difference? Are these cops predators?]. Trish steps aside as Wyatt carries Storm from the room, and plays her flashlight back over the deep, dark room for one last look, giving us with one final scare as the book ends:

She saw the wedding cake on the table.
And the long white dress in a heap upon the floor.
And where Roger’s body lay so still, darkness had silently slipped in and taken over, so that he seemed to have completely disappeared.
Yet as Trish turned to go, an icy chill cut jaggedly through her veins and into the pit of her heart.
A trick of the light, that’s all it is—shadows… cobwebs… fears….
For just an instant, she’d let her flashlight play across the mannequins….
And she could almost swear that one of them had moved.

Final thoughts

I actually loved this one! It’s crazy to me how much I enjoyed this one when I absolutely loathe Trick or Treat. It looks like The Mall came out a few years after Trick or Treat, which Wikipedia says was her second Point Horror after The Lifeguard, so I wonder how The Lifeguard and her Point Horrors between Trick or Treat and The Mall stack up. Hopefully they’re all as good as this, or at least got increasingly better after Trick or treat. I am a bit worried for The Lifeguard though. Either way, RTC has really redeemed herself here and I’m pretty keen to give her a third chance to see if this one’s a fluke or not.

I love the mall as a setting for horror, and although the secret passage and rooms and all that stuff is a cool concept, I would love to see the blueprints of this entire mall because the layout was super confusing and didn’t make any sense to me. Someone needs to draw this up for us asap.

Trish was a great protagonist, even if her logic at times was a bit strange, and Nita and Imogene were pretty cool too, although my thoughts on Nita were a bit up and down throughout the book. Storm Reynolds and Wyatt sucked though, I can’t believe they were cops! I would love to know how old they are that they can pass as teenagers, but are much older? But still apparently not old enough to rule out Trish and Nita as love interests? Very weird.

Also I’m very sorry about how long this recap is, and I left so much stuff out too! I think i’ll need to work on editing myself a bit more, it seems like the more books I cover the longer the recaps get. My bad!

Anyway, 91 secrets tunnels and rooms in a mall that’s built into some mountains and seems to have 39575 floors out of 106!