Shadyside Mall is a haunting relic of a once-thriving era, frozen somewhere between the late 80s and early 90s. Its exterior is built in a cold, utilitarian brutalist style—a blocky concrete structure with tall, vertical paneling that looms like a fortress over its cracked parking lot. The sign reading “Shadyside Mall” is mounted above a squat entrance, lit at night by dim golden floodlights that cast long, unsettling shadows across the facade.

Inside, the mall still functions—barely. The main wing is dimly lit with aging tile floors, faded skylights, and a mix of national chains and local businesses, their signage glowing in flickering neon. Teenagers loiter near the dry central fountain, and the food court, lined with stalls like Slice Spot Pizza and Sweet & Swirl, hums with a tired rhythm.

But past the food court, down a half-lit hallway, is the closed wing—the site of the infamous 1994 massacre. It’s been barricaded for years, but the stories linger. The lights flicker more there. The air grows colder. Old storefronts like Westridge Records and Ink & Spine Books sit behind rusted gates and broken glass. Police tape still clings to corners, and the floor bears the faint, sticky memory of blood. Time doesn’t move the same in that hallway.

Locals say the mall is cursed. Most pretend they don’t believe it. But everyone knows—Shadyside Mall remembers.

After finding out that Eli had been keeping secrets from her, she’d been in a bad mood all day. When it came time for her break, she didn’t want to wander the mall to find him. They had stupid arguments here and there, but he had never done anything to upset her this much. Max ignored the first of his text messages, but when she didn’t answer, Eli came venturing into the record store. Not wanting to cause a scene, Max grabbed her book bag and flung it over her shoulder before following him out.

Once they got a few feet away from the entrance, Max let him have it. She glared at him, “You said you’d never keep secrets from me!” Eli was the only person she had, and now it felt like she couldn’t trust him. “I’m talking about Benji looking for the witch! Why are you playing stupid?” She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s looking for the witch because he believes what I’ve been saying this entire time! Mitchie didn’t do this!” Despite already knowing Eli only kept this from her to keep her safe, she was still furious with him.

“It’s a small town, Elijah. How do you think I found out?” She rolled her eyes at Eli when he finally started to give in and admit to knowing a lot more than Max thought he did. A bit stunned, “He found a tunnel?” Max sat down on the closest bench. Her mouth hung ajar as she stared off, trying to process everything her boyfriend had told her.

Elijah thought he'd been doing the right thing by not including Max in Benji's wild conquest to bag some Sunnyvale cheerleader. However, Max's actions were telling him that he'd fucked up. He didn't feel bad though, he knew that nothing good ever came from messing with the witch. He didn't mind Max having a blog because she knew better than to get tangled up with actually digging too deep. So, when he didn't hear back from her, Eli wasted no time getting to the record store. He didn't want Benji to have roped her into helping him.

Trying to play dumb clearly wasn't working but he had to at least try. "How'd you find out?" he asked once he knew he was busted. "Fine. I'm sorry. I thought... I just didn't think anything would come of it, alright? I had hoped that Benji was just trying to get laid, you know? He met some crazy Sunnyvale girl in the graveyard and there might be some tunnel that has to do with the witch or something." Elijah realized he was feeding too much into this whole witch thing when he'd really rather pretend it didn't exist at all; it seemed safer for some reason. "I don't know who found them and I honestly don't care. I just wish everyone would drop it with this witch shit."

Some mall patrons walked by and stared, clearly eavesdropping and Eli shot them a look to get them to pick up their pace. Lowering his voice to avoid drawing any more attention, he continued. "I'm really sorry I didn't tell you, but I was trying to protect you the best way I know how. No, I don't believe that Mitchie would do what he did but that doesn't mean I'm ready to accept that it is because of a witch yet. And even if I were to believe it, I feel the best way to keep out of trouble is to not go digging."

“I'm not a porcelain doll,” Max was annoyed with the current situation and shook her head in disbelief. “You don’t always have to protect me. I was doing quite fine before we started dating.” Honestly, she was surprised Eli hadn’t broken up with her yet. It didn’t matter how much she tried pushing him away. He always ended up coming back loving her harder. Sometimes it was difficult for Max to reciprocate those feelings.

Max side-eyed the mall patrons as they passed in front of them. She waited until they were out of earshot before continuing. “They’re not just tunnels, Eli,” Max said numbingly, ignoring his apology. “They’re Solomon’s. The ones that he forged with dark magic,” she informed her boyfriend. “What else did Benni say?” The tone in her voice was a bit more concerned. “I only ask because in ‘94, after the whole Deena and Samantha incident. The police department never recovered the Black Widow’s book. They went back to get it, but it was already gone.”

Max sighed as Eli expressed his feelings about wanting to protect her and not wanting to get involved. “It’s too late for that,” she said, standing. “It’s been a quiet 19 years, and suddenly a Shadysider goes crazy? You can sit here and watch me walk out those doors, or you can come with me, so we don’t lose another friend.” Max was going to leave with or without her boyfriend. It was up to him what he wanted to do. “Benji has no idea what the fuck he’s gotten himself into.”

Max may have done fine before he came along but in his mind, that no longer applied. She had stolen his heart and Elijah was going to do whatever it took to make sure she was safe because that meant his heart remained safe as well. Elijah rolled his eyes, ran his fingers through his hair and looked away when Max insisted on continuing with all this witch bullshit. It hadn't bugged him before because to him, her blog was simply a silly little thing that made her happy. Ever since what happened with Mitchie and now Benji going all Sherlock Holmes, he was starting to wish she liked reality tv or something safer.

His eyes darted back to her immediately when she mentioned going after Benji. "No! I refuse to let you go." Eli growled at her as he grabbed her arm. He had a much darker side of him he tried to not bring out when around her but he'd had about enough at this point. First his best friend completely ignored him telling him to leave it alone and now his girlfriend was doing the same thing and he felt out of control at this point. In his household, when no one listened to you, you got angry in order to get their attention.

When he saw the look in her eye, he dropped his grip on her and instantly began apologizing before she could get a word in. "I'm so sorry, babe. It's just... This whole thing is fucking crazy... and too much. We were supposed to just finish high school and get the hell out of here, not go running around hunting down witches and magic books!" He no longer cared if anyone heard them, he had plenty of anger he would happily unleash on someone.

Max had only ever seen Eli get this upset at other people, never at her. She looked down at his hand on her arm and then looked back at him. It hurt. He'd never made her want to cry until now. Still in shock when he finally let go, Max shook her head. "No. That's not okay!" Max wasn't going to accept Eli's apology quickly because she didn't want him to think it was acceptable to do something like that. "You're really starting to make me hate you right now," Max warned.

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked over at him. "Well, that's navie of you," she told him. "You should've known better. The witch would be back, whether everyone believed or not." Everyone assumed that the curse ended with Sheriff Nick Goode, but Max had a hunch it wasn't over.

It was not Sarah Fier responsible for the new killings. It was whoever had the book. Anonymous sources had confirmed that Nick was responsible for Nightwing and the 1994 massacres. "It's really not the witch. It's a real person," she tried to convince her boyfriend. "Whoever has the book made a new deal. I'm being serious, Elijah! I'm not some fucking crazy person like everyone thinks!"

'Fuck' he thought to himself as he stared into the fear in her eyes. Elijah knew he'd fucked up and he was going to be beating himself up over that for a while. Anything to make sure he didn't act up like that with her again. "I know. I'm so sorry. I really am... I... FUCK! I hate all of this!" He motioned away from them and toward Shadyside as a whole. "Naive? I prefer to think of it as optimistic. Is it so terrible of me to want us to not have to deal with this? I don't think so. And until Benji and that girl started digging around, we weren't involved. We were this close to achieving my dreams."

Eli sighed and pushed back his hair with his hand before looking back at her while she tried to explain to him about the witch, book, and new deal, all things he really didn't want to hear but since he loved her, he was listening. "I don't think you're crazy. Something fucked up is clearly happening, so, yeah, let's go get Benji before it's too late." Elijah had no idea how the hell he was supposed to protect his girlfriend from some supernatural deal shit, but it seemed she was going whether he liked it or not, so he was just going to have to try his best.

The emergency exit hallway swallowed them whole the second the door swung shut behind them.

The air shifted—denser, colder, heavy like wet wool draped over her shoulders. Max tugged her sleeves down to her wrists without thinking, fingers brushing the worn strap of her backpack, grounding herself in the scrape of fabric against skin.

Overhead, the dead fluorescents loomed like broken teeth. Only their flashlights pushed back the dark—narrow beams jittering across scuffed concrete walls and the maze of exposed piping overhead.
The place felt wrong.
Like a body hollowed out from the inside and left standing.

Max led them without looking back.
She could feel the others behind her—Benji’s steady weight, Heather’s restless shifting, Caleb falling easily into step with Alice Mae.
And Eli, always Eli, a quiet, steady gravity at her side.

When the floor changed, she knew.

The concrete dipped—barely perceptible—but enough that her instincts snapped taut.
She stopped short, boots scuffing against grit and grime.

Ahead, half-swallowed by dust and cracked cement, lay the grate.
Thick. Iron.
Bolted into the floor like someone thought they could lock hell itself underground.

Max knelt slowly, the blueprint crumpling between her fingers.
The cold hit her first, radiating up from the metal like a living thing.
Colder than it should be.
Colder than it had any right to be.

Her gloved fingers skimmed the edge, catching on grooves worn deep into the frame.
Tampered bolts.
Fresh enough to gleam dull under the beam of her flashlight.

Someone had been here.
Someone who knew.

Max exhaled, the sound thin and shaky in the vast, dead air.
She pressed her palm flat against the grate, feeling the faint, chilling pulse of air leaking from below.

She swallowed hard, voice scraping up from somewhere low and raw.

“This is it,” she said, rough and sure and a little wrecked. “This is where it starts.”

Behind her, she felt the others shift—the tremor of bodies instinctively tightening around a threat.

She leaned closer, nose nearly brushing the rusted bars.

“You wanted proof?” she muttered, not caring if they heard her. “Here it is.”

The Widow’s mark was barely visible, etched into the cement beneath the grate, worn down by time and hate and something older than either.

Max let her head hang for a second, breathing slow through her teeth, letting the weight of it all settle into her bones.

Then she flexed her fingers against the metal, testing it.

“We’re not supposed to open this,” she whispered.
A dry, broken laugh scraped out of her throat.

“Which means we have to.”

She braced herself against the floor.
And pulled.

The emergency exit hallway was colder than it should’ve been.

Alice Mae shifted her flashlight higher, the beam cutting weakly through the dust-choked air. The walls seemed to press in tighter the deeper they walked—exposed pipes overhead, grime slicking the concrete floor, the long hum of the mall’s empty body rattling faintly in the distance.

Benji stuck close to Max, practically glued to her side without even realizing it. Heather hovered nearby, pretending she wasn’t doing the same thing. Caleb drifted a step behind Alice Mae, his fingers brushing the back of her jacket every now and then, the way he always did when he thought she might disappear if he wasn’t careful.

Eli moved like a shadow at Max’s right hand.
Solid. Tethered.
But there was a coil of something tight and uneasy in Max’s shoulders that not even Eli’s presence could smooth out.

Alice Mae noticed.
She always noticed.

She kept her distance as Max led them further down the hallway, not bothering to ask if this was smart. None of this was smart. That had been obvious since the second they decided to come back to this place.

Max stopped suddenly.

Alice Mae caught herself before she crashed into Caleb’s back, muttering a silent curse under her breath. Her flashlight beam darted forward, catching on something low and jagged in the floor.

The grate.

Thick iron, half-swallowed by dust and time.
Bolted into the ground like a bandage over a wound.

Alice Mae watched as Max crouched low, fingers running along the edges like she was reading Braille.
The others inched forward too, drawn like moths to a flame none of them could see yet.

Alice Mae stayed back.

She caught the way Max’s fingers lingered over the bolts—the way her whole body stilled, a shiver running along her spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

Something was wrong down there.
Alice Mae didn’t need a blueprint or a creepy Widow’s mark to feel it clawing up from under the floor.

Max leaned closer, her breath fogging the rusted metal.

“This is it,” Max said, her voice low and sure, cutting through the thick, buzzing silence.

The words sank like stones in Alice Mae’s gut.

Max shifted, pressing her palm flat against the grate, knuckles whitening under the strain.
No hesitation.
No second-guessing.

“You wanted proof?” Max muttered, rough-edged. “Here it is.”

Alice Mae tightened her grip on her flashlight, shifting her weight, eyes flicking over the others.
Benji, tense but locked in.
Heather, chewing the inside of her cheek, fists bunched in her sleeves.
Eli, steady and sure, too focused on Max to notice the way the air down here tasted wrong.

Only Caleb met her glance for half a heartbeat—something flickering there, wary but inevitable.

The breath burned in Alice Mae’s lungs before she could stop it. She spoke, voice low but razor-sharp.

“Max,” she said, the name a warning, brittle at the edges, “this isn’t just old tunnels. It’s something else.”

Max let her head fall forward briefly, breathing hard like she was bracing for impact.

Then she said it—softer, like the words tasted like blood:

“We’re not supposed to open this.”

Alice Mae’s fingers twitched around the flashlight.
Her voice came again, quieter this time, more to herself than anyone else:

“Some things are buried for a reason.”

Max laughed—sharp, broken—and finished it:

“Which means we have to.”

Alice Mae watched as Max dug her fingers under the edge of the grate and started to pull.

And deep beneath the concrete, beneath the rust and the rot and the stupid Shadyside stories everyone told to scare each other—

something shifted.
Something answered.

The farther they went, the worse the air got.

Benji tightened his grip on the flashlight, sweeping it low across the cracked concrete. The beam jittered against the grime-slick walls, the exposed piping overhead casting long, crooked shadows.

Every instinct he had was screaming at him that this wasn’t right.
That it was too quiet.
That the mall itself felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for them to screw up.

Max moved ahead of him, sharp and fast, her shoulders locked stiff.
Benji stuck close without thinking.
Heather hovered just a little behind him, the air between them buzzing faint, electric. Caleb and Alice Mae fell into a rhythm behind them—easy, practiced, worn into their bones after years of crashing back together.

And Eli—silent, focused, a shield at Max’s side.

Benji kept them all in his peripheral.
Counting bodies.
Keeping score.

The emergency exit hallway narrowed, and Max pulled up short.

Benji stopped a second after her, flashlight cutting sideways and catching it—the grate.
Heavy iron.
Sick with rust.

He didn’t need Max to say it.
He could feel it, thrumming low and wrong in his gut.

Max dropped to a crouch without hesitation, her hands skimming the edges of the grate like she was waking something up just by touching it.
The others slowed, pulled closer like gravity had shifted around her.

Benji planted himself nearby, knees bent slightly, flashlight aimed steady at the hatch even when his heart kicked harder against his ribs.

Max pressed her hand flat against the metal.

“This is it,” she said, voice low and sure, almost too sure.

Benji swallowed hard.

Max shifted, leaning closer, her breath fogging the iron.

“You wanted proof?” she muttered. “Here it is.”

Benji exhaled through his teeth, voice breaking out rougher than he meant.

“Not the kind I was hoping for, Max,” he muttered.

Heather edged closer, her sleeve brushing against his without meaning to.
He didn’t move away.
Didn’t want to.

Max let her head hang forward, breathing like she was steeling herself against something she couldn’t dodge.

“We’re not supposed to open this,” she whispered.

Benji shifted his weight, glancing once at the others, at Heather—at the way her fists curled inside her jacket sleeves like she was trying to hide how bad she was shaking.

He forced his voice out low, grim.

“Doesn’t mean it’s gonna stay closed.”

Max laughed then—a short, splintered sound—and finished it:

“Which means we have to.”

Benji tightened his grip on the flashlight until his knuckles ached, watching as Max dug her fingers under the edge of the grate and started to pull.

The floor under them seemed to hum with it—
with the weight of every bad decision that ever got made in Shadyside.

And somewhere deep below, something old and furious and not quite dead was waiting for them to crack the world open again.