Liminal Spaces
An ode to the dead mall
“Dear Fairview Square Mall—“
“Wait. You’re serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious.”
“You wrote an actual letter to the dead mall?”
“Yes. What did you think I was talking about?”
“I don’t know— I thought it was a metaphor, I guess? I’m sorry. What are we doing?”
“I wrote a letter to the dead mall because they’re going to tear it down and it makes me really sad.”
“What are you going to do with the letter?”
“I’m going to deliver it.”
“To the dead mall?”
“To the dead mall, before they tear her down.”
“Her?”
“Yeah. I need to say goodbye. I feel like— I don’t know, like something is unfinished for me. Do you want to hear the letter?”
“Not really. Do you want a ride though? I kinda want to see it before they tear it down.”
The Fairview Square mall was a grande dame, rising peach and curvaceous above the flat suburb surrounding it. To Tamara, she looked like hope and optimism sitting on her cracked parking lot plain, patchy grass and weeds whispering from the asphalt.
Tamara’s eyes slid over the mall’s decorative flourishes, a cathedral as much as anything, by far the most deliberately ornate building in town. Even the churches couldn’t match it. She was truly sad to see it go.
“It’s about time they tore this thing down,” came Kimmy’s voice. “It’s hideous.”
Kimmy, nine years younger than Tamara, could only see the failure of the mall, its ugliness and tragedy. She hadn’t spent any formative years in its faux marble halls. Tamara shot her a glare in the burning orange light.
“The mall was a great unifier, Kim. Probably one of the last collective experiences in this town. It let you do things with other people that now you all just do alone. Plus, it was actually nice. It was pretty and clean, before the great enshitification of the world.”
Kimmy raised her eyebrows.
“Right. Well, we’re here. And it looks pretty enshitified. So now what, mall rat?”
“Now I read the letter. I say goodbye to my childhood.” Tamara hesitated, the folded paper in her hand. The mall itself loomed large, a forbidden cavern guarded by an empty asphalt moat.
“Well, at least go up to the door.”
“Don’t record me with your phone or something.”
Kimmy saluted.
Tamara left the car, grateful for the privacy. She turned thoughts over in her mind— was it the fascination of the abandoned building that touched her like a live wire? Or was it pure, sweet nostalgia, a chance to recapture some buried memory she forgot she knew?
Standing in front of the entrance she realized the glass-fronted doors were miraculously intact, boarded up from the inside. The glass was etched with the Fairview Square logo as clear and perfect as it had been the last time she stepped through, twenty years before. She traced the logo with her finger.
A strangled creaking sound came from the door and Tamara drew back her hand as it lurched inwards. Through the opening, she glimpsed the heart of the mall— its central fountain, long dry. The pink tiles were magically pristine, glittering in the sunset light, which poured in through the skylights above. It looked like it could burst into motion at any second.
Looking at the fountain she tasted cherry cola chap stick, a ghost of a memory. She felt the fabric of her jeans— not the jeans she was wearing but the ones from long ago, the jeans she got for her fourteenth Christmas, the perfect baggy jeans that would tell the world who she was.
She looked back at Kimmy’s car in the parking lot. Kimmy flashed her lights, impatient as always. Tamara waved, then ducked inside.
***
Kimmy leaned on the horn. Did her sister just go inside the abandoned mall? What the hell was she doing?
That crazy bitch, Kimmy thought. She’s going to get herself killed. She turned on the ignition and drove straight up to the mall’s grand entrance, her front tires bumping up over the curb. She got out and slammed the door, shouting for her sister before she even reached the front.
“Tamara! Tamara, get the fuck out here. What the Hell are you doing?”
Tamara was older than Kimmy but she was the dreamer in the family, the one who never worried. The who took all the risks.
The glass doors to the mall were completely smashed. All that remained were metal skeletons covered in graffitied plywood. Concrete planters on either side held pools of tea-colored rainwater, cigarette butts, and stray garbage. Kimmy put a hand on the metal frame and pushed, but the door may as well have been a brick wall.
Kimmy took a step back, frowning. She tried the door again, shoving it harder. She called out for her sister, banging her open palm on the plywood.
“Tamara please!”
She pressed her ear to the wood but she could hear nothing. The sun slipped behind the mall’s roof, and the parking lot was suddenly dark.
Kimmy shook her head. This could not be happening. She got back in the car and locked all the doors, searching the weedy parking lot for any sign of movement.
Inside, the mall’s corridors were shadowy caves. Only the fountain was still bathed in the warmth of the sunset. But the floors beneath Tamara’s feet were intact and smooth, and the air smelled vaguely like air freshener and sweet, doughy pretzels. Her mouth watered. She couldn’t believe how strong her memories were— walking in the mall was like swimming in nostalgia.
She made her way to the fountain, her sneakers hardly making a sound in the great empty building. There was just enough light to get there, read her letter, and then make her way back out before the sun set.
She remembered tossing so many pennies in that fountain, wishing to be noticed or forgotten, depending on the day. She remembered the liquid sadness of her adolescence, the yearning, the feeling she was never quite enough.
She took a breath.
“Dear Fairview Square Mall—” Her voice sounded big and deep in the empty corridors. And it summoned someone with a flashlight.
The dim glow made its way toward her. An oval shape, like a spotlight. Of course there’s a guard, she thought. But there was something odd about the light. It shimmered and it drifted. Not a light of authority, but of curiosity.
As she watched, she saw a person step into the oval. A young girl, her dark ponytail low at the back of her neck, an oversized flannel shirt and baggy jeans hiding her body like a tent. The hem of the pants was frayed from dragging the ground, and the sneakers it revealed were bright red— a detail begging to be seen in an outfit designed to be forgotten.
Tamara brought a shaking hand to her mouth, and felt the heat of tears behind her eyes. She recognized that girl from the back, even though it was an angle she had never seen before. She knew by the hairs on her own arms standing up, the acid feeling in her chest, and her sudden shortness of breath. She knew because she felt nervous, a stone in the pit of her guts and a fluttering excitement just above that: the hope that something good could happen to you and the certainty that it wouldn’t.
The physical sensation of being fourteen.
The girl was her. And around her, in the faint circle of light, the mall was not dead but alive.
As she moved past a storefront, staring into its window, Tamara saw mannequins in bright outfits, track lighting, and the reflection of other shoppers in the glass. The spotlight was a telescope into her past. She moved slowly behind herself, peering through this viewfinder at a film of her younger self.
She watched her own ghost— the limp ponytail, the aimless walk— with tears streaming down her face. The feeling was of uncovering a hidden tomb.
Tamara desperately wanted to scoop up her younger self, to tell her she was perfect, smart, beautiful, to protect her from what would be, but she was mesmerized. Her teenage self, all pain and angles, shuffling through this capitalist cathedral, stuck in here after all these years.
But why? Why would the ghost of her adolescence be stuck in Fairview? Tamara wasn’t dead– she touched her own arms at this thought, chilled.
But there she was, slight and wavering, and as far as Tamara could tell, she was the only ghost in the place.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“My sister is trapped inside an abandoned building.”
“Is she injured?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“How old is she?”
“Um thirty-something. Thirty-four, I think?”
“How do you know she’s trapped?”
“She went inside the mall, she walked up to the door and went inside. And when I tried to follow her, the door was stuck. I couldn’t open it.”
The operator sighed.
“The abandoned mall?”
“Yes, the Fairview Square Mall.”
“And your name is?”
“Kimmy– Kim Chapman.”
“Right. It’s ok, Kimmy. We’re going to send someone to help you. Just stay where you are.”
Tamara watched as her ghost made her way toward the center of the mall. She stopped every couple steps to look into a store, or to talk to someone just out of frame. But she always faced away from her.
Tamara’s thoughts of leaving the mall — like how she was going to find the door now that the place was in total darkness— drifted away.
She watched her ghost circle the fountain, and realized she was finally going to come face to face with her. She held her breath. Would she see herself through the wormhole? Would she recognize herself?
The parking lot lit up blue and red. One single police car pulled slowly up to Kimmy, lights flashing, sirens quiet. An officer got out and strolled to her car. Behind the cruiser, another car raced in, a beat-up old Subaru. Kimmy’s mother’s.
An officer tapped on Kimmy’s window with his knuckle.
“Ms. Chapman?”
“Yes, thank you for coming. My sister went in there and when I tried to go get her the door wouldn’t open. She could be hurt or stuck. Can you break it down? Don’t we need the fire department?”
Her mother ran up to the car window. Her white hair had come loose from its bun and her face was shiny with tears.
“Kimmy, get out of the car. Let me take you home.”
Kimmy looked from her mother’s face to the officer’s.
“What about Tamara? We can’t leave her in there!”
The officer stepped back from the car with a shrug and looked up at the building. Kimmy’s mother hooked her hands over the window. Her voice was strained.
“Kimmy, please. You have to stop this. You have to stop coming here. Tamara’s not here. Please, listen.”
Kimmy shook her head and her face cracked. She looked at the doors to the mall.
“Kimmy, Tamara is dead. Remember? You have to remember.” Her mother was sobbing now. “Right here at the mall, she was taken and killed. You know this. You remember. It was twenty years ago. Please, please stop coming here and reliving it.”
Kimmy couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to believe what she was hearing but some seed had been planted. In her mind sprouted a vision of her big sister at fourteen, in a flannel shirt and red sneakers, little Kimmy sitting in the backseat.
She remembered the grand entrance to the mall with its etched glass doors. She remembered watching her sister’s back, her low ponytail bobbing away from them. She remembered what it was like to feel whole.
“Please Kimmy I’m begging you,” her mother said between sobs.
She remembered the police coming to their house that night. She remembered how no one would talk to her or tell her what was happening. At five years old, she was left entirely to her imagination to put together the story.
The mall had swallowed Tamara. Kimmy couldn’t see her face, only her back, walking away for eternity.
“I —I think I’m supposed to read something, before they tear it down,” Kimmy said, quietly, like she was waking up from a dream. Had she written a letter to the mall that took her sister? An obituary to that hungry building?
“I just need a minute, ok?”
She patted her pockets. Where was that piece of paper?
From inside the mall came a howling shriek, heart-stoppingly loud.
The officer startled and put a hand on his gun. Kimmy’s mother gasped. Kimmy looked at them, the spell broken. Her sister was in there, trapped. If they wouldn’t get her out, she would do it herself.
She put the car in drive and pressed the pedal to the floor. Her car growled and lurched, then flew up the curb and closed the short distance to the doors. The plywood splintered, the metal bent and cracked, and Kimmy’s car rolled to a stop.
The little girl stopped, her spotlight only inches from Tamara’s face. The hem of her giant flannel drifted on an air current, and Tamara remembered the softness of that exact shirt. The ghost slowly turned toward her. Tamara was frozen.
The ghost had no face.
Tamara stared into a yawning abyss where her own baby face should have been and she screamed. Then the spotlight blinked out and the girl was gone.
Tamara lunged toward the front door as the air around her started to warp and tear. She grasped for something but it felt like the entire world was crumbling. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. She felt like she was disintegrating.
She was in complete darkness but she tried to remember where the doors were. She flailed in that direction, but the floor was uneven, with cracked and broken tiles tripping her every few steps. Then she heard a crash, saw a flood of bright light.
And then there was nothing.
***
Kimmy kicked her car door open and rushed inside the mall before they could stop her.
Her headlights bored tunnels into the darkness. The inside of the mall was a wreck. Parts of the ceiling had fallen, broken glass crunched underfoot, the beautiful central fountain was a crumbled heap of pink tile and broken pipes. A cloud of bats was disturbed from the rafters and fluttered around.
“Tamara!” She shouted, and her echo came back to her, loud and empty.
“Tamara!” The echo bounced around every corner of the mall, seeking every forgotten corner, every memory too tired to go on, every last gasp of the past. It came back to Kimmy’s ears like a scream of rage. At the sound, the bats poured out of the mall, a panicked exodus, leaving Kimmy alone.
When they tore down this building, Tamara would be gone forever. A little girl in flannel, trapped in amber for all these years, wrapped in the embrace of the mall’s loving corridors. Would she be bulldozed along with the fake palm trees and the fake marble floors and the garish pink tile?
Or could she manage to fly away?
Something bright and clean floated to Kimmy’s feet, glowing in the headlights. Kimmy stooped to pick it up. A piece of white notebook paper.
The others came through the hole in the wall, climbing gingerly over debris as Kimmy unfolded the page and started to read her goodbye.
“Dear Fairview Square Mall–”
The mall stood up proud and solid around them for one last time, her crumbling flourishes as sacred as any mausoleum could ever be.
Loved every inch. Also the personification of the mall at the beginning - her - clever
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