ANNE HIGHTOWER, WRITER

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Anne Hightower is (under another name) a published academic author of five books and many essays. She is also a life-long lover and reader of mystery novels. Starting with the Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mysteries, she was hooked!   Her first novel, The Mall of Lost Souls, draws from her experience working in a haunted mall--embellished just a wee bit.  She currently lives in Virginia, where, when she’s not writing, she hunts ghosts and takes photos of her family in period costume.  She is eager to partner with the right agent to turn her talent and hard work into book sales. You can get the flavor of her writing in published gothic non-fiction essay, “The Murder, the Flood, and Stories of Trauma” in North American Review’s “Open Space”: https://northamericanreview.org/open-space/murder-flood-and-stories-trauma. 

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Here is the first chapter of
The Mall of Lost Souls

Chapter 1: Worst Birthday Ever

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Alice Eliot couldn’t see the ghosts, but she sensed them. And though she tried her best to act like they didn’t scare her, they did.

She was standing behind the counter in House of Cards, the mall card shop where she worked, taking notes in her small writing notebook on how to poison someone with household chemicals—for the mystery novel she was writing, of course—when the store's fluorescent lights flickered off and then on again.

“Come on,” she said aloud. “I’m trying to work!” She was hoping that her spirit awareness was off this time and that the flicker meant a wiring problem or thunderstorm. August in South Carolina, with the 95/95 (degrees and percent humidity) days made afternoon thunderstorms frequent. But, then again, she knew from experience that the sputtering lights might be something else. Something ghostly.  

The tubes buzzed on and off in sequence across the store’s ceiling, as seamless as fans doing the wave at a football game. She cocked an ear to check for thunder but heard a light jazz version of ACDC’s “Back in Black” wafting from speakers in the mall’s fake foliage. And then a distant rumble of thunder followed by another “bzzpt” of the lights.  She sighed with relief. Just a storm.  

So, she turned back to the page where she had been taking notes. But her eyes were drawn from the page, to her hand, and then up to her arm, where she saw her arm hairs standing erect, a tiny forest of blond trees that she knew were her body’s way of telling her what her mind didn’t want to accept. Someone—or something—was standing right behind her. She could feel it. And then she felt a double tap on her shoulder. 

In panic, she wrenched her head around.  But all she saw was a wall of shelves crowded with tiny bean bag animals glaring at her through inert black plastic eyes. Again, the thunder boomed, closer this time.

Her heart pounding, Alice turned again to her writing notebook. But she had only picked up her pencil when again behind her she heard a soft thud. Again in panic she wrenched around, this time to see on the floor a grey stuffed wolf lying on its back, as if it had done a flip off of a diving board. 

Alice bent to pick it up and replaced it on the shelf amidst its mates. “Stop it,” she ordered the stuffed animals, trying to sound authoritative.  But they only stared at her, unblinking eyes pretending to be innocent. A louder boom overhead told her the storm was nearing.

Again she turned back to the counter to resume her note-taking. But now the spot where she had left her small writing notebook was empty. “Damnit,” she said. She was never without her notebook, since one never knew when inspiration would strike. And on cue, as if mother nature had heard her think the word “strike,” came a crack of lightening.  

Alice flinched. “Can I have my notebook back please?” she said to the echoing store, hoping her voice sounded annoyed, not shaking with fear. This was not the first time the ghosts had played this game.

In answer, Alice heard a series of thuds behind her. She turned slowly towards the wall. All of the bean bag animals were now on the floor, some staring up at her, some showing their tiny bean bag behinds. 

“Thanks,” she said to the animals, as if they had moved themselves.  She bent over to pick up the menagerie, replacing each animal on its shelf with a little more force than necessary. 

The bean bag zoo restored, Alice checked her watch. Almost closing time.  She let out a breath of relief that was one part fatigue and two parts nerves.

“Alice,” said a voice behind her just before another lightning strike echoed through the mall.

She jumped, her heart racing again as she spun back towards the counter, even though she knew from the deep voice with the slight Southern accent who she would find. 

“Damn it, Dimples!” she said, a grateful smile coming to her face.  “You scared the snot outta me!” 

“I see that!” The big security guard feigned wiping his nose and then smiled, showing off the divots in his cheeks that inspired his nickname. Stocky with broad shoulders, a shaved head, and milk chocolate skin, Dimples reminded Alice of a grizzly bear—but a fatherly, sweet one.  Not the rip-you-to-shreds kind. 

Alice knew that people thought it strange that she was friends with the older security guard, especially since she didn’t socialize with other workers. But she didn’t care. Dimples was her only friend in this mall, where she had spent every waking hour of the last six months. She was what her mother called “socially awkward,” a terminal condition in the South, and Dimples had been the only one persistent enough to break through her barriers. And if she was honest with herself, which she typically wasn’t, Dimples was like the father Alice had never had. 

“Al?” Dimples asked, breaking her introspection. 

She smiled at him, her relief at not being alone flooding through her body. “So, how long you been there?” She wondered if Dimples had seen her notebook move, or been moved. 

“Just this second walked in,” Dimples protested, holding up hands the size of baseball mitts in innocence.  “Seriously. Didn’t mean to scare you.”  

“Yeah, well” Alice muttered, pretending to straighten the counter’s office supplies while really looking for her notebook, “it’s not so hard to be scary around here.” A boom of thunder emphasized her statement.

The mall where they worked was called “The Old Mill Mall” after the century-old brick building comprising one quarter of the current mall. She and Dimples shared inside jokes about the historic mall’s decorating—the skylights that sunlit the cavernous space during the day but filled it with shadows at night, the restored carousel in the food court that scared off children instead of attracting them, the indoor historic lampposts that enhanced, according to Dimples, that “Jack-the-Ripper feel.” 

Alice had been looking under the counter and through drawers, searching for her notebook. Catching his quizzical look, she turned Dimples’ attention back to himself. “So, how’s your night going?”

Dimples smiled again and shrugged his large shoulders. “Same old.  You know, keeping everyone safe.” Alice smiled. She loved how seriously he took his job.  

Abandoning her search of the circular counter, Alice decided she would have to look for her missing notebook elsewhere in the store.  “Talk to me while I close?” she asked, knowing that the answer was “yes.”  

She started the computer running the day’s sales report and grabbed the duster to flick the more obvious grime from the Cherished Moments religious figurines lining glass shelves at the front of the store—while she really looked for her notebook. Following her while she dusted, Dimples told her about the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer he had watched the night before, one Alice had missed because her mom was passed out in front of the TV. 

“So, they’re at this frat party,” Dimples explained, “and Buffy finds out that the boys are sacrificing college girls to this giant-snake demon they have in their basement!”

Only half paying attention to what Dimples was saying while she desperately searched behind shelves of cards for her notebook, Alice answered “Cool.”  

“No, no. Not cool,” Dimples corrected. “The snake demon was giving these boys and their families all kinds of luck in business and life because they were sacrificing these young women.  Not cool at all.”

“Ok, then: gross,” Alice said, still only half-listening. Where was her damned notebook? 

Alice and Dimples had originally bonded over a shared love of late-night TV. Neither slept well—Alice because of nightmares, and Dimples because of pain from an old football injury. So, the two unlikely friends habitually stayed up late in their separate apartments watching the same reruns to be discussed the next night at work. 

“That’s better,” Dimples said. “So, Buffy kills it,” he continued, “and rescues Cordelia and this other girl and then the frat boys are arrested.  And all of their family businesses fail after the demon dies.”  Dimples looked satisfied and proud, as if he had stopped the frat boys and rescued the girls instead of watching it on tv. After a pause and with a serious turn to his voice, he said “I wish I could do that.

You know… solve mysteries and crimes.” 

Alice looked up from the “back to school” display of binders and pencils she had been searching to look over at him. “You’re serious,” she said, after reading the look on his face. She knew that Dimples had left the police force, since his “bum hip” (as he called it) made him unable to run, apparently an essential skill for police work. “But you stop crime all the time,” Alice reassured him. “And solve mysteries.” 

“Come on, Alice,” Dimples said, still looking uncharacteristically serious. “Not really.  The only real detective around here is you.”  

Alice cringed. When she had worked in this mall back in high school, she had solved a couple of minor mysteries: found a lost child who had climbed into the trunk of a parked car, stopped a thief stealing from the toy store. But how could she tell Dimples that those were flukes? That a voice she sometimes heard in her mind directed her to where the child was hiding? That the same voice led her to hide behind a fichus tree to see Bethany Wilde carrying out bags of stuffed animals to her cousin in the parking lot? Sometimes Alice knew things. But that didn’t mean she was a detective; she thought of herself as more as a freak.

“Well… I’m no Buffy,” she said, changing the subject. “But I will watch the next episode tonight so we can discuss it tomorrow. Promise.  I’m just a little… distracted right now.” As she spoke, Alice noticed Dimples staring over her shoulder, an uncharacteristic frown creasing his broad face. “Speaking of distracted…” she said, turning to look in the same direction.

She saw the card shop’s party section over against one wall, where plates, cups, napkins, favors, and other supplies were displayed on shelves.  Recently a standing rack of rubber party masks had been added.  The masks were cartoon characters and farm animals meant for kids’ parties, but Alice found them disturbing. Perhaps it was the empty eyeholes, or the way they slackly hung from the rack, looking like the face in Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream.”  

Against another thunder boom, Dimples stumbled past Alice towards the party section and took one of the masks from the rack. It was a horse mask with bulging eyes and tiny pinholes in its dark pupils, through which the wearer could presumably see. The horse’s mouth was formed open, as if it were in mid whinny. 

“How long have you had these?” Dimples asked, as Alice joined him.

“I don’t know.”  She searched her memory.  “A month?  Maybe longer?  They used to be in the back corner, but they weren’t selling, so Carmen moved them up here. Honestly, these things give me the creeps.” 

While she spoke, Dimples stared at the horse mask in his hands. 

“But I don’t remember seeing that one before,” Alice said, peering at the mask herself before her eye caught something small and teal balanced between two of the metal hangers of the mask rack. 

“There you are!” she said, reaching over to grab her missing notebook. “How did you get here?” 

She looked back at Dimples, who was giving her a quizzical look. 

“I mean,” she corrected, “I must have left it here when I was…” She tried to think of an explanation of why she would perch her notebook on that rack. “…dusting,” she finished lamely.  Luckily, Dimples wasn’t really paying attention to her. He was still fixated on the horse mask. 

They stood for a minute, and then silently both walked across the store towards the front.  Alice moved again behind the circular counter, while Dimples resumed his place on its outside, still carrying the horse mask hanging limply from one hand. His eyes narrowed in worry.  

Alice had never seen that look on his face. He took his job seriously, but this was a mall in a suburban Southern town. Dimples’ main problem, as far as she knew, was keeping away from the food court so as to not stretch his uniform’s buttons any further. 

“I’ve seen this before,” Dimples said, gesturing with the mask towards her. He looked like he wanted to tell her something but struggled to form the words. He looked down at the mask and shook his head. When he looked up again, he was smiling, the worried look slipping from his face like a ripple dissipating on a pond. 

And then Dimples asked the one question that would make Alice forget her impulse to press him for more information. His slight Southern drawl making him curve his vowels and slow down his speech just a tiny bit, he asked, “So, how’s your mom doin’?”  

Alice froze, the smile on her own face getting a little wider as she panicked. “She’s…um… fine,” she answered, averting her eyes. Alice’s mother, Colleen, had just recently begun working at the mall, too, and Dimples had started also visiting her on his nightly rounds. He had asked Alice if Colleen would be interested in dinner with him one night, which had caught Alice totally by surprise. 

Alice knew that her mother would be interested, but she did not want her mom and Dimples dating. Dimples would learn too much if he got close to her mother. And she couldn’t trust her mother not to hurt him like she had every other man. No, it was definitely safer to keep those two apart. So Alice had not passed on Dimples’ invitation.

“Yeah,” Alice said, trying to keep her tone neutral and avoid eye contact. “She’s fine. She’s been, you know…busy.” Which was a complete lie.

Alice looked up to find Dimples studying her, the horse mask he still held momentarily forgotten.

“You know, you don’t really look like her?” he sort of asked, sort of stated.  

Alice tried not to take offense.  Her mother was a petite, dark-haired, green-eyed, peach-skinned beauty.  In her late 50’s, she still turned heads, male and female.  She had been a beauty queen in her youth and had even done a little local modeling. 

“Yeah, I know,” Alice answered, a slight edge of bitterness in her voice.  Taller, with her absent father’s pale skin and wavy blond hair that tended towards frizz in the summer humidity, Alice had heard her whole life that she didn’t look like her mother. She wasn’t hideous or anything, but she was no stunner, not like her mother. 

“Wait.  That didn’t come out right,” Dimples rushed.  “I didn’t mean for that to be an insult or anything.  Just… you know how it is.”  He gave her one of his best smiles, full dimples engaged.  

Alice cut him off, smiling herself. “I know,” she said. 

She was checking the computer to see if it had finished running its report, when Dimples began his nightly teasing.

“So,” he began, “should I call Wes and have him come over to pick up the keys?” he said. “Wes would love to see you.” Dimples pulled out his phone and pantomimed pushing the numbers. Wes Easley (known around the mall as “Weasel,” his name matching his tall skinny body) was the security guard who worked the closing shift after Dimples. Dimples needed to give him the master keys before leaving, but not where Weasel would see Alice. Except that Dimples knew Weasel had a thing for her. 

Alice crossed her arms and gave Dimples a withering glare.  

“You know,” he teased, “you can’t be too choosy.  You’re 29.  You’d be an old maid in some cultures.” 

Actually, Alice thought with a sigh, I’m not 29. I’m 30. That day, August 9, was her birthday, her 30th birthday, but she had decided not to tell anyone. So, her reply was, “Whatever Dimples,” as she pulled the night’s report from the printer. 

“Ok,” Dimples surrendered. “I’ll bring Wes the keys in a few minutes. But you know, you do need to make some friends besides an old man like me. You need to open yourself up a little. You know, to other young folks.”

Alice sighed. She was not back in Brattonsville—the town where she grew up, in the mall where she used to work—to stay. She didn’t want to make or restart connections just to sever them in a few months when her mom got back on her feet and Alice went back to her “real” life in Atlanta. 

A boom of thunder interrupted Alice’s thoughts, and both she and Dimples involuntarily looked up, pausing for the flash of lightening they couldn’t see in the windowless store.

“Sounds close,” Dimples said. “Did you remember to bring an umbrella?” he asked, finally setting the wild-eyed horse mask down on the counter  

“Of course not,” Alice answered.  

“Let me go get mine,” he offered “and I’ll walk you and your mom to your car.”

“Awesome,” Alice answered, and then backtracked.  “Oh! Actually, no, I meant ‘That’s ok’ But we’re good. No need.” 

Dimples gave her a quizzical look. 

“Um,” What was a plausible lie for why he couldn’t walk them to their car, flirt with Colleen, and figure out Alice hadn’t passed on his dinner invitation? “One of the, um… the kiosk guys is going to walk us out… Cellvis,” she added, using another nickname—this one for a perfectly nice older man named “Bob” who worked at the cell phone kiosk next to her mom’s and who also happened to have a stiff, black (certainly died) pompadour with sideburns and a thick Tennessee accent. 

“Oh, ok” Dimples said, looking disappointed.  “Maybe tomorrow night?”

“Sure,” she said. Alice gave him a reassuring smile and wave as he left the store, not knowing that this lie would be the last words she’d ever say to her only friend before he was murdered. 

I'm looking for just the right agent, editor, or press.  
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anne.hightower.writer@gmail.com

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Longer synopsis