Night of the Mannequins

by Stephen Graham Jones

I slithered the cord back to me,

That sound, that crushing impact, it could only really be Manny, right?

And Tim and Shanna would, in hindsight, just be prelude, prequel, prologue, whatever,

It maybe killed a mouse or two. I mean, sorry, mice, you matter too,

And, I admit it, I was crying now, sort of, behind my mask. Starting to, just quietly. Not because of Steve, who cares about him, but because, ever since I’d started doing this, I’d accidentally started kind of imagining that when it was over, Danielle was going to wake up, see me for who I really was, and that was going to be the beginning of everything.

The one who was coming for her, now that her boyfriend was out of the way.

“I’m sorry, D,” I called out to her,

I let the long loop of glowing green line unspool down from my hand and blinked away the tears forming in my whole body. Danielle took one step back,

Because I didn’t want to scare her anymore, and because I was pretty sure my voice would break anyway, betray me, I came around beyond her, looped the string around her throat, her hair tangled in it, and pulled back hard to make this fast, and the least painful for her as I could. It’s what you do for someone you secretly love.

something in there creaking loud and kind of snapping, and then her chin kind of lowered forward onto her chest.

Her eyes were still wet, staring, the dark pupils dilating wide from whatever she was seeing now, where she was.

I pushed the mask up onto my forehead and, for the first time, as goodbye, as hello, kissed her slow and soft on the cheek, and touched her lips with the side of my gloved index finger, and then I was flying backward.

“No,” I said, sanding the eyeholes of my mask larger with my mom’s emery board. “It’s Manny.”

This way it could be one-and-done, like my dad used to say when he coached our Little League.

I didn’t have any tears left in me, though. The whole night after Danielle, I’d pretty much emptied out, and ever since then all I could think about was that it was almost over. It was almost over except for one person. Was it fitting that JR would be last? I mean, because it was his creek we’d originally found Manny

The blank plastic face.

And, for a while, we were so perfect for him. We were everything to him, weren’t we? He was the perfect toy, until he wasn’t.

That’s why I’m taking it on myself to do what I have to do. It’s not my fault exactly, but it sort of is, too, if you look at it from just one side,

I didn’t even really want to live if all my friends were dead. Better to be with them than to be without them.

It wasn’t until eight days later that I was able to get JR sort of alone. Except then that all blew up too.

Nobody deserves that hand coming down on them, I mean, but nobody especially deserves it just for having JR or me for a son, for a brother. It wasn’t them who walked away from Manny at the end of that summer, it was us. Cause and effect, action and inevitable reaction, man, knocking us down like dominoes.

If that movie hadn’t been playing, all those kids might have lived, right?

JR was, I thought then, the last of us except for me. Did I really and for sure want to rub all of us out of existence, just like that? Like we never even were?

All I’d been doing ever since Shanna, it was saving lives left and right.

Sometimes the way you know you’ve done good is that the whole town hates you and wants you dead.

and I knew that whatever you hit when you pushed high enough and hard enough, it kind of mellows the patient out permanent.

Because this was JR. And, because the injuries would be internal, not visible, nobody would think to look for the guilty clothes hanger hidden under the carpet or wherever, and I could blast off into the woods like I was supposed to.

that he could take us out in public and keep us completely safe, never mind the promises my mom had extracted from him. That was then. This was now.

and I saw the movie that was playing. It was the same one we’d taken Manny to, the same one that had been playing when Shanna’s window became a truck, the same one Tim had ready to watch and the same one Steve had taken Danielle to, the same one tucked into the side pocket of my bag back at JR’s place.

What are the odds of that, even? The same movie popping up for each kill?

should get a medal for thinking like that, I should be a model thinker for some public service announcement.

secret and bad and murdery.

There was most definitely going to be a murdery part, though.

trusty glow string,

We would have made it, too, I know we would have made it to that dark empty pasture, but then, as bad luck would have it, the assistant manager from the movie theater in Rockwall was in line for a popcorn refill or whatever—

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

most evil thing ever.

JR had seen what was in my eyes. It wasn’t a flicker of light. Kind of the exact opposite. “You?” he said. “You were serious about all—all that?”

JR was scrambling away, into the wind I knew wasn’t wind, was really Manny.

I strode after JR like the killer I am,

Manny was doing this, I knew.

“Wait, wait!” I screamed up to him, to the idea of him,

This time it was him falling. I had my knees down hard into his back, the glow string already around his throat, joystick handles in my hands, and I was pulling back with every muscle I had, with every pound I had, with every wish and regret I had, and the superhero movie was flickering on the few parts of the screen still up,

His lips probably don’t even come apart to make words. Who spoke, she was behind me. What she said, it was “I know you’re the one doing it, Sawyer Grimes.”

Shanna?

I peeled the mask back, my eyes instantly crying. “You’re—you’re alive,” I told her. She answered by running directly at me, and I sat back, ready to hug and be hugged. But then at the last moment before that would have happened, her knee slashed up to connect with my face, arcing my head back, sending my whole body flying.

I’ve been saving everyone, right? Their families, I mean. Tim’s, Danielle’s—” “JR’s,” she said, about JR, dead at her feet.

“Steve’s family too?” Shanna added. “He doesn’t count,” I told her, snuffling what I could in. “Co-collateral damage.”

She was right. I didn’t just look like Manny. I’d become Manny.

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