The Bitches in #366

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The Unraveling of a Winner’s Tale

(Author’s note: During a recent dinner party, one of the guests arrived late. She was abuzz with that afternoon’s acquisition of eighteen female mannequins for her boutique. She shared a picture of them in a storage unit, Unit #366.) 

Decisions are easy to make; sometimes they’re hard to live with. 

Imagine one of those TV mysteries that starts with a young woman walking a stream-side path during a misty night. Trees heavy with moss drip from a recent storm. Gravel crunches underfoot. She’s alone. The score is tense, the deep tones pounding, prickling your fight-or-flight responses. Her path is lit in a weak, sepia-orange light. She comes to a junction and pauses. To one side is a narrow dirt track leading into an ominous passage, as overgrown as a neglected greenhouse. She turns and enters the dark. 

And with the scent of popcorn burning in your microwave, your shouts of, “No, not that way!” reverberate off your flat screen, ignored. Much like the idiot part of my story. 

In contrast to recent drought years, Northern California had seen powerful storms and heavy rains since that late October. The Valentine’s Day tempest made the previous squalls seem like weak infants in comparison. The electricity in our small town and throughout the valley had been out for several hours. My phone and computer were dead. And I would need some sort of light in my apartment to keep me from huddling under a quilt in a corner all night. Yeah, maybe I watch too many horror films. 

During a decent lull in Mother Nature’s fury, I decided to act.

I headed across town to my storage unit. The quest, a small power cell I’d won at a local fundraiser. In those days, my friends called me a “contest queen.” Pre-pandemic, I pulled in a comfortable six-figure income by participating in and winning many of the contests, sweepstakes, and giveaways I entered. From radio station call-ins to online raffles and quirky, tailor-made promotional competitions—you name it, I entered. To win.

One such friend, LD, once asked, baffled, “Girl, how on earth do you do it?” 

“Persistence,” I replied. 

I stored my winnings, which included an array of physical items, such as home decor, electronic gadgets, and even the occasional car, in a large, well-organized rental storage unit not far from home. I usually enjoyed the walk. But rainfall had doubled since I left the apartment above the old boutique. The place I had inherited from my grandmother several years ago.

Punching in my code, I entered the storage facility through a side gate. A flash of lightning in the distance, then the rumble of thunder, introduced an impending deluge. Rushing down the paved alleys between lengthy buildings with an array of garage doors, and using the weak light of a dying flashlight, I found Unit #366. My unit. 

The padlock I’d borrowed from an old boyfriend was as rusty as his work ethic. Holding the flashlight in my teeth, I squatted to the lock’s level. As rainwater found sneaky ways around my raincoat and streamed down my arms and back, I went to battle with the lock. Damn thing nearly won, too. I was having none of that.

When the padlock finally yielded to my efforts, it clattered onto the dark asphalt. Flashlight now dripping with slobber, I toggled the door latch sideways, lifted the rollup, and let it noisily curl above me, sounding like a freight train on uneven rails as it rose. The musty smell of damp concrete, cardboard, and the sterile scent of new plastics assaulted my senses. I choked, gasped, and spit, before regaining self-control.

With the flashlight now in hand, I pointed it into the storage unit. My breath hitched again. 

I take pride in keeping my things in order. I wouldn’t say I’m anal, exactly. I just prefer finding what I need when I need it. Now, though, items had been toppled from shelves. The aisles were strewn with hair products, electronics still new in their boxes, porcelain ware, you name it. 

And among the chaos, well, a sight I’d never hoped to see: Headless female mannequins, gleaming white, naked as their manufacturing date. They stood and sat in random places around the rented space. Rain pounded the metal rooftop and blew inside and around my legs. In a jumbled pile in the center of the room lay detached arms. 

And I had the unnerving feeling they were coming to life, accompanied by a low, electric hum and a sudden, chilly tingling sensation etching my skin. Whether real or imagined, this scared the bejeezus out of me.

* * *

I remember a slight, rasping screech. From me? I don’t know. But I recall yanking the door down, the metallic clatter as it careened down from its coil, and the earth-shaking slam as it hit the floor. I tried to sprint away on wobbly legs. Of that rushed journey home, I can’t remember much at all. Except that I didn’t have the power cell I’d gone for, and my flashlight was down to its last remaining lumens.

I recall how relieved I felt when I locked the door to Nana’s old place. I’d called this place home since moving there after college. In the dark, I crossed through the dusty space and rounded the sales counter. I shone the weak beam into the office spaces in the back, around dusty tables, empty clothes racks and shelves, and up the staircase. Satisfied I was alone, I sprinted up the stairs, the creaks of the aged wooden treads driving nails into my heart then locked myself in my dank apartment. 

During that horrid night, more rain fell, the strongest yet. The power stayed off for another three days. It felt as if the sun had forsaken us. Mold edged its way up the old mopboards in my galley kitchen.

Still, those mysterious mannequins filled my mind. Where had they come from? Who did they belong to? Who made a mess of my things?

That first day of the outage, I borrowed a friend’s phone at the coffee shop down the street and called the police department. But the cops were all tied up. A recording had said to call 911 if this was an emergency. Though I thought it was a crisis, I knew they’d disagree.

By that Friday evening, the rain finally stopped, and the lights eventually came on.

With my phone on the charger, I could have asked someone to go with me to investigate what had happened in #366. But my friends were busy with their own storm-rated troubles. Trees had cut through homes or rested on car tops. Plugged gutters, basements flooded, dogs frightened off by the storm now lost. The latest storm had washed out roads and bridges. Our hamlet of a city sat isolated from the rest of the world.

Oh, sure, I could have waited. But patient I am not. I’ll spend hours plowing through a ten-mile Terms & Conditions document looking for an angle to win a contest but wait on a person bent over with age as they use a shaky hand to write a check in the grocery line—kill me now.

Off I went again to the storage complex.

By then, I’d packed a few things in a daypack. A kitchen knife as long as my forearm, an eighteen-inch chunk of closet rod, and a can of pepper spray that had an expiration date from before I was born. I also worried that, in my earlier haste, I hadn’t relocked Unit #366. 

* * *

The padlock lay where I’d dropped it, open, in a gnarled twist. The roll-up door was closed. And, yes, another storm rippled overhead; foreboding, roiling black beast-like clouds. 

Not a single other person graced the storage complex, and I hadn’t seen the manager in weeks. As I slowly lifted the door, it caught on its springs and rolled up on its own. Its clatter, the memories it invoked, set my nerves on edge.

And they were still there. As well as the mess.

Though I made a good living with this gig, the last few months had been slow. And the power outages had kept me offline for far too long.

I had a threefold plan that morning: Reorganize my stuff, find out all I could about the mannequins and where they’d come from, and compile a list of things I could sell on eBay to keep the heat and lights on at home.

As a peg in a hole, my grandmother’s and my mother’s preachings about saving money finally sank into my pea brain.

They’d said, “If you buy a $50 chair for $40, you didn’t save ten dollars, you spent forty. Saving is saving, putting it away to earn interest, going to work for you.”

I never listened. Yet maybe I had. Just enough to remember their sage advice, too late.

Wandering the jumbled aisles, sweeping broken glass aside, righting toppled chairs, and giving a wide berth to the pile of artificial arms, a few lucrative seasonal items presented themselves for my sell list. 

Among these goods, spread out as if elegant—albeit naked and headless—shoppers, eighteen busty mannequins. Some stood on stands, others in permanent seated poses, and still others were merely shapely torsos on chrome-plated stands.

On my third pass through my things, my footfalls echoing from the metal walls, and coming up an aisle beside a pinball machine I hadn’t yet priced, I noticed two of the models had arms on them. Had they been that way when I first discovered them? I didn’t think so. I eased around them and grabbed one by the waist to spin her around, making her face the back wall. Its metal stand scraped across the concrete floor, sending a shiver up my spine. 

Low on her back—like a tramp stamp—printed in black ink, a name: Madeline.

Rounding the aisle and returning to the pile of arms, my cold, damp hands lifted one of the rigid arms for inspection. On the inside, where the arm attached to a torso, another name: Adeline. After a few brief moments, I found Adeline’s body. I popped the arm’s connector into place and twisted the appendage down and into a locked position. Her long, slim fingers splayed delicately, as free as a beauty contestant’s pose.

Soon enough, I had my sell list. Outside, I kicked the old padlock aside—just as I had that old boyfriend, I thought. I placed a new one in the mechanism and locked my new… I certainly wouldn’t have called them friends… behind the metal door.

* * *

I went back the next day and the next. By now, I had sold a few things and needed to ship them to their new owners. During our first sunny day in weeks, a UPS driver met me there. About my age, late twenties, he was stocky and tan. He seemed as jovial as always—until he spotted my naked pals. He turned nearly as pale as they. And he couldn’t leave the storage complex fast enough to suit himself.

I shrugged and went back to work. I’d have another batch ready to ship out the next day. Tripping over an end table and spilling a stack of cookbooks, I found myself flat on my back, looking up at Caroline and Celine, two of the upright models. They, too, now had their arms in place. I swear I hadn’t put those there. But sure enough, they were ready—should they have some fancy new clothes—for the runway. 

“I guess I’m getting tired.” I picked myself up and stepped outside. “See you ladies tomorrow.” A groan welled up from the back of the room. Maybe it was more of a wheeze? Door in hand, I turned back. No one was there. Well, save for Madeline, who now faced me. Quick as I could, I locked the door and left her and her posse behind.

* * *

My real estate agent friend, Star, called the next morning, waking me. 

“Hey, girlfriend, I’ve got someone interested in renting your grandmother’s shop,” she said into my sleep fog. “They might even be interested in buying the whole place, should you wish to sell.”

Nana’s old shop had been vacant for the better part of my life. The two-story structure had that classic Americana look to it, with a brick façade and thick glass windows in hardwood frames. The apartment on the second floor, my grandmother’s erstwhile home, now mine.

“When do you want to show the place?” I asked Star as I slid my legs from under the covers.

“Later this morning, by the sound of your voice.”

We settled on a time. I showered, gathered my things, and left the apartment. At the coffee shop, I sipped on an extra hot cappuccino and made plans for the day. First, when I returned to the storage unit, I’d check for additional markings on the girls. Yes, curiosity, rather than a plan to rid myself of them, had taken over any common sense I should have had. Sue me.

As I walked toward #366, a beacon of sunlight poked through gray thunderheads, brightening the row of dozens of other storage units. I again lifted the door. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light inside. The girls were still there. But each of them now faced where I stood at the entrance, as if in a choreographed array.

Backing out into the sunlight, I glanced in both directions. No one. Stepping back inside, I extracted a gleaming nine iron from a bag by the door. With the club in hand, I eased up the aisle. Without thought, I had the iron high over my head, its grip firm in both hands.

I saw no one, so returned the club to its bag. I needed to find any information or any other markings on the mannequins. 

I went to Madeline’s corner, only to find Adeline and Celine there. Moving behind one of them, I shone a light on her name, looking for the manufacturer’s details or a model number, anything. Celine is all the print I found. Stood on tippy toes, I checked her neck. Again, nothing.

Adeline, though, had a wrinkled sticker below the printing of her name. I spun her around so her back faced the door and put my phone’s flashlight up close to the sticker. Seen through age, wrinkles, and the checked paper of this sticker, it read:

ORIGIN MANNEQUINS

222 E. Ivy Rd. 

Campstead 03036 NH 

Model# 3498

Oct. 1958

“Well, there’s something.”

Before leaving that day, I used a broken bit of chalk to put markings on the concrete floor around each of the girls’ bases, just to see if I was going crazy the next time I opened the storage unit.

* * *

On the internet, I could only find what I already knew of Origin Mannequins—once there’d been a company by that name in New Hampshire. 

With nothing more to go on, a search of Adeline’s model number turned up something very different: A newspaper article from St. Louis, MO, written in 1976, containing a list of such numbers from mannequins stolen from a department store sometime before the place had burned to the ground. Two men had died in that fire. The journalist who wrote this article had an obvious curiosity as to what one thing might have to do with either of the others. He said as much in his closing sentence, which sent a shiver from my tailbone to the crown of my head: 

Eighteen mannequins don’t simply up and walk away from a fire after leaving two men to die in the conflagration. Or do they?

Holy crap, that’ll get your attention, I thought. I also thought, although fleetingly, What the hell am I doing?

* * *

I had a shipment going out the next day. And more contests to enter. I got up early that morning. At the coffee shop, I went online and entered a variety of games. By late morning, I’d had three cappuccinos and entered a dozen contests. Soon, it would be time to meet the UPS driver at the storage unit. I also needed to decide what to do about my new gal-pals.

Inside the unit, I checked the position of each curvy model. They hadn’t moved. However, with a closer look, I saw markings in the dust collecting on the stand of one mannequin, Pauline. In perfect script, three sixes crossed the front edge of the chrome. Yeah, someone is seriously messing with you, I thought. These bitches had to go.

The UPS driver, a different one this time, found me. The latest storm hadn’t materialized, so I had ten boxes of various sizes outside on the asphalt. We chatted for a few minutes as he logged in and loaded my packages, then he left. He hadn’t remarked or had any kind of reaction to the mannequins.

Earlier, at the coffee shop, I’d also checked the potential value of mannequins. Though they weren’t technically mine, I figured the old saying “Possession is nine-tenths of the law” favored my bank account. 

On the wall opposite the pinball machine, which I’d finally priced and had a buyer for, I lined up the slender models. I put their respective arms in place and organized them in the following order: Standing models in the back, torsos on stands next, and the seated versions last and nearest the door. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment, but there were six of each type.

For good measure, I again placed chalk marks on the floor around their bases or butts. Then I scribbled an inventory, listing their names, style, and any defects they had before leaving for the day.

As I closed the roll-up, I glanced back. “Next, it’s eBay for you girls.”

Heading toward the exit and rounding the corner at the end of my row, I heard a scream from behind. A woman’s loud, penetrating screech. No, it wasn’t a single voice. Women, plural, all in the same timbre, amplified. I ran for the exit.

* * *

That weekend, I went with some real-life girlfriends to Napa Valley for wine tasting. But let’s be honest—it was more like wine drinking. Three days of unseasonably warm weather, lapping up everything from chardonnay to cabernet and all the varietals in between.

Tuesday, I didn’t get up or do much until a Taco Tuesday date with a guy I’d seen once before. The tacos were good.

Wednesday, I figured I’d better get back to work. And, of course, the weather people predicted a new storm coming our way. A nasty one, they’d said. After listing each of the mannequins on my eBay store, I drove my SUV to the storage units. Showers, my weather app said, were less than an hour away.

At #366, my padlock lay on the ground, and the door was open a few inches. Mist peppered the back of my neck. I opened a clip and let my hair down, welcoming the warmth it brought. 

The facility’s manager drove up on his golf cart just then and said he’d noticed my unit open a few minutes before. Said he intended to call me when he returned to his office.

He waited as I opened the door.

I gasped into a sleeve-covered palm.

The manager asked if everything was okay.

Yeah, the girls were gone; I didn’t say. I couldn’t tell him about them, how they’d shown up, and now had left me with auction listings I needed to cancel ASAP. He said I’d better get home before the heavy rains got started and drove away.

I heard him go but kept my eyes on the vacant stretch of wall and the chalk marks I’d made where the models had been. The sense of loss I felt surprised me. I hadn’t won them or even bought them. But an emptiness, an icy ball gnawed at my gut.

* * *

I checked the rest of the unit. Nothing else was missing. I locked up and got into my car to drive into the waning light of evening. I stopped at the grocery store for a few things. Groceries in hand, I rushed through a nascent downpour and jumped into my car. Streetlights were doing their best to ward off another dreadful night.

My wiper blades could barely maintain reasonable visibility. Thankfully, Oak Street and home weren’t far away. I had to park down the block from my place and sprint for its minuscule portico. 

As I fit the worn key into the lock, a flash of lightning lit up the street, followed immediately by a thunderclap that still echoes in my ears. Just as I spun the doorknob, the electricity went off. “Great!” I shouted at the sky.

I dug into a back pocket and retrieved my phone, lit the flashlight, stepped inside the room, and closed and relocked the door. Besides the bloom of light from the phone, it couldn’t have been any darker. Heading toward the stairs, my thoughts went to where I had put those emergency lamps and the camp stove I’d used to warm some soup during the last power outage.

The phone’s light caught the sales counter, staircase, and something else. Dull white streaks appeared in my peripheral vision. Beyond tables and through empty shelves, there they were. Madeline out in front. Adeline and Celine held second ranks; the others grouped loosely behind. Some of their arms lay on the floor in random places. The seated models, Josephine, Angeline, and the others, were closest to the front windows, securing that flank. 

My phone slithered in clammy hands. I stumbled sideways toward the counter, thought better of it, and staggered back toward the front door. I grabbed the deadbolt and tried to twist it free. Immoveable, frozen solid, as if someone had welded the mechanism in place.

I turned back, ready to fight, but hoping I could dash up the stairs and lock myself in the apartment. 

They moved my way, their stands and butts scraping across the oiled oak floor. The scraping was jagged, stuttering, and as grating as nails down a chalkboard. Pale arms wriggled across the floor, winding like snakes, thin, white fingertips digging into the hardwood. I looked about and tried to move, my feet as immovable as the door’s deadbolt. Now, a dull red orb shone in Madeline’s chest. This light pulsed; more like a steady respiration rate than a heartbeat. A retinae-blistering light filled the room, cutting through the frosted panes at the front of the shop. My bowels gurgled, barely contained. Thunder shook the old place, and rolled through the floorboards, pulsating underfoot.

My phone pinged with an email notification. With my feet still planted solid, what else could I do but look at the phone’s screen? The subject line read, “Kill.”

I tried to pull my feet from my shoes. They, too, were stuck. My knees were rigid, legs growing bitter cold from the floor upward.

Those shapely bitches and their squirming arms kept inching toward me.

“Did you kill those men in St. Louis?” I asked. Madeline and her posse halted. “Did you start the fire too? Burn that place to the ground?” The light in her chest brightened, and its rhythm quickened. “It was you, wasn’t it?” Clipped shrieks filled the room. “What else have you skinny bitches done over the years? Where else have you hidden out?”

Shrill screeches cascaded through their group as if debating their next move. When their tête-à-tête ended, our world fell silent.

Slow as paint drying, a feeling of warmth worked its way down my legs. After a few long moments, my knees buckled slightly. As the cold left my calves, I wriggled my toes. When my feet finally came free from the floor, I bolted for the staircase, and sprinted up the stairs, losing a few of the groceries I’d forgotten remained in my grip. At the top of the stairs, I burst into my apartment and locked the door. Then, as I’ve said I have a knack for doing, and I realized this poor decision. I should have tried that deadbolt downstairs and hurried out into the less horrific darkness and rain.

When I’d caught my breath and thought I might speak coherently, I called 911. Busy. I called the number for the guy I’d had dinner with on Tuesday. His voicemail greeting said he had left on assignment, and that he wouldn’t be back until summer.

* * *

The grocery bag sat on the kitchen table. Beside it, an emergency light. Under a bundle of blankets, I sat in a recliner, my heart still drumming like I’d run a marathon. In the quiet, my world warped into a tiny sphere, as if captured in a snow globe. I would wait out that eternal night, listening for any sign of the mannequins. 

Around 3:00 a.m., my eyes gritty but still open, I heard a noise from the boutique below. A slight wrap of wood on wood, followed by a penetrating metallic click and scrape. Then a window-rattling bang, which knotted my stomach. Then a thud. And another. What the hell were they doing? Why had they been quiet for so long? Could they get up the stairs and through my locked door? Idiot! Of course, they can.

Another extended stretch of quiet, which was almost worse than the racket they’d caused before.

Outside, the rain turned to spits of light showers. Only an occasional roar of thunder rippled through the valley, then nothing. And the grit propping my eyes open gave way.

* * *

When the electricity came back on, it was light outside. I called LD’s number. No answer. I left her a message and called Star. 

“Girl, you okay?” she asked.

“Hmmm.” The word dragged out as I considered my options. “Hmm, well, you won’t believe me. But I’ll tell you anyway.”

It took a few minutes for me to give her the basic details. She murmured in surprise from time to time but let me speak. When I got to the end, she said, “And you are still there? And don’t know if them bitches are still downstairs?”

“I’m still here. What is or isn’t downstairs, I have no idea.”

“Well, two things,” Star said. “One, if you want me to be your real estate agent, I heard none of this about no mannequins. And two, I’m halfway there.”

Star texted me when she arrived out front. From my window, I threw the front door keys to her. She caught them with one hand. 

“Try the lock. But, Star, don’t go through the door. Wait until I say it’s all right, or it isn’t. I’ll call you.”

I unlocked the apartment door and eased it open a crack. With a flashlight, I searched the upstairs landing, opening the door wider as my exploration expanded. I stepped to the top of the stairs and turned on the lights below. Slowly, I edged over and climbed down the stairs, the usual treads squawking as I went. While my heart pounded so hard I could hear it, I reached the boutique. They were gone. I sprinted for the front door.

It opened with ease. Star looked up from her phone. “You were going to call me.”

“I didn’t see them. But I need to take a better look. Come with me?”

“Sure thing.” She stepped inside. “Then you owe me a damn coffee. For worrying me like this.” 

The thought of coffee hadn’t entered my head. There were eighteen other things on my mind. Star followed me around. We searched every inch of the place. They were gone. Neither surprised nor relieved, I told Star I’d buy her a coffee and do anything else she wanted that morning.

* * * 

So, there you have it. I’d lived through the invasion. Each morning for a month or more, I searched the news for anything having to do with mannequins and mayhem. Soon after, my searches were more like a week apart. Now, well, now I guess any news about them will have to find me.