Night of the Mannequins: A Tor.com Original

By Stephen Graham Jones

Award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones returns with Night of the Mannequins, a contemporary horror story where a teen prank goes very wrong and all hell breaks loose: is there a supernatural cause, a psychopath on the loose, or both?

We thought we'd play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead.

One last laugh for the summer as it winds down. One last prank just to scare a friend. Bringing a mannequin into a theater is just some harmless fun, right? Until it wakes up. Until it starts killing.

Luckily, Sawyer has a plan. He’ll be a hero. He'll save everyone to the best of his ability. He'll do whatever he needs to so he can save the day. That's the thing about heroes—sometimes you have to become a monster first.

"Suffused with questions about the nature of change and friendship, “Night of the Mannequins” is a fairy tale of impermanence showcasing Graham Jones’s signature style of smart, irreverent horror." —The New York Times

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781250752062

Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones is the author of fifteen novels and six story collections. He has received numerous awards, including the NEA Literature Fellowship in fiction, the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction, the Independent Publisher Book Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the This Is Horror Award, as well as making Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Horror Novels of the Year. Stephen was raised in West Texas. He now lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and children.

Book preview

1

SO SHANNA GOT A new job at the movie theater, we thought we’d play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead, and I’m really starting to feel kind of guilty about it all.

I’d like to say it wasn’t my idea, that we all thought of it spontaneously, just started saying parts of the prank out loud that jigsawed together in the air, one quarter my plan, a quarter Danielle’s, Tim and JR competing to finish out the rest.

It was kind of only me, though.

Let me explain.

First, Shanna’s job at the movie theater, the big one down by the lake. Her mom was making her do it. Not work—Shanna’s had jobs since she was in junior high—but working there specifically, her checks going straight home to pay for what happened to their side lawn, which is a whole different thing and not my fault at all, not completely. The reason it was that movie theater and not the dollar show or the drive-in or the even bigger cineplex farther down 30 toward Dallas was, first, it was that that one’s the main one in Rockwall, and closest, but, second, and probably the real reason, Shanna’s mom had dated that theater’s main security guard in high school, and he could keep an eye on his long-ago ex-girlfriend’s daughter. He thought.

Two weekends in, Shanna used her usher powers to sneak us in the emergency exit at the back of theater 14, the last one on that side, and the farthest from the manager’s offices, which is where security was. It was less because we wanted to see a movie than that we wanted the thrill of not paying for a movie. You know. Anyway, with assigned seating, we were having to move the four of us to a new place with about every third clump of people who came in. It was kind of a giveaway, ended up with the assistant manager coming in to count heads, and us claiming we’d thrown our ticket stubs away already, who keeps ticket stubs? The only problem was we couldn’t remember where our seats had been.

It probably would have worked, or, it could have worked, but then the assistant manager asked us what movie this even was, surely we knew that, right?

Not really.

Worse, it turned out to be a senior citizen kind of movie—four old dudes escaping their nursing homes and doting children and county jail situations to have one last golf game—which was when we all kind of shrugged and gave up. Better to get busted than claim having wanted to see that.

Because we were sophomores the same as Shanna, it didn’t take long before they were asking her questions about did she maybe know us. Of course we all temp-unfriended her while being perp-walked out, but that didn’t erase snapshots, and there were a lot of those. Even under the filters and markups, it was kind of obviously the five of us, from elementary on up until this very night, including one group selfie from our stolen seats, posted right on her timeline.

So, the result of us sneaking in and not knowing to sit in the very front row until the show started was (A) Shanna would now work in tandem with a more trusted experience provider, and (B) there would be random head counts of all movies she was in charge of.

It was bullshit, especially since she could be making more in tips at the car wash with Danielle—because of the Porta-Potty situation, girls didn’t work there so much, so they pulled tens and even twenties sometimes—but she still had six hundred to go in paying her mom’s landscaping tab, so she was stuck.

Anyway, the prank.

JR lives kind of out in the sticks, right? Way out on Rabbit Ridge, technically in Heath? Back behind his fence, there’s this big hill we used to always roll down in boxes. Stupid kid stuff, pretty much turned us into instant chigger-bait, so we were looking like we had pimples before we even really had them. Anyway, in sixth grade Tim was going for the record in his box, and it crashed him through the trees, into the dark stinky muck of the creek that had never been actual water, had always been just mud.

None of us went in there anymore since Danielle had gotten poison oak or ivy or we didn’t know, so we were all standing there waiting when Tim came back limping, bleeding from the forehead, and carrying a pale white arm kind of bent in cheery fashion at the elbow.

We braved the woods to see the rest of this.

There in the black slime of the creek bed was a naked white mannequin, this giant Ken Doll reaching for the sky with the one arm he had left.

You better believe he was our toy for that whole summer.

We traded him between our houses, carrying him a piece at a time bungee-corded to skateboards and bikes, or stuffed halfway into a camping backpack. We stole our dads’ clothes to dress him up, leave him here and there. He had so many names, but he was finally just Manny, for, you know, mannequin. Real clever, I know.

When we finally got bored with him, he ended up in my garage, straddling the Kawasaki 750 my dad had laid over, the motorcycle forbidden by my mom from ever being ridden again, but that didn’t mean Dad had to sell it, which is a whole thing with them, but never mind.

So, Manny was a joke from when we’d been kids, before life had gotten all serious and SAT. Me having the idea to bring him back for this perfect prank was a way of honoring the kids we’d been, I figured. And it would be one last blast for Manny. Better, Shanna would get the joke right off. That was very important. It was kind of how we’d be telling her we were sorry for the hot water at her new job. Well, and for the landscaping she was paying off with that job too. For a lot of stuff, okay? I mean, she’d always been the toughest of us, the meanest when she needed to be, the least likely to cry or complain about cuts or scrapes, the best at earning WoodScouts badges, but that didn’t mean she didn’t like nice things too, we figured. Like being included in the prank to end all pranks, the one that could, someday, summarize our whole high school experience and, right now, blast us off into the future in the most fitting way.

So, we raided our dads’ closets again, and dug into the costume trunk in our old fort that nobody’d found yet, way back in the trees behind Holy Trinity. We were needing clothes for Manny, but for us as well.

We were going nineties-baggy for that Friday night.

Danielle shoved a whole mannequin arm down the leg of the pants she was wearing, which kind of made us all . . . look away but not look away? I mean, okay, Danielle was always just one of us, a girl, yeah, whatever, but she’d never been like a dating prospect, right? Mostly because none of us were dating, didn’t need boyfriends or girlfriends since we had each other. Or maybe we just didn’t have the nerve, were hiding in the safety of friendship, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. And Shanna was like my third cousin on my mom’s side anyway. But, Danielle, the thing with her, why she’d never been in the realm of possibility—it was probably that we’d all seen each other with snotty noses in elementary, we’d all ridden the acne highway of junior high together, and now we were telling each other horror stories about the swarm of college questions constantly spewing up from the mouths of grandparents and family friends. It’s like we were too close for anything romantic, if that makes sense? Any of us going out with any of the rest of us had never been a real consideration, or even a distant

Reviews for Night of the Mannequins

[Tony Ross Jr. · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The plot was interesting but this book was filled with inconsistency, I found myself annoyed with both the beginning and the ending, with slight enjoyment in the middle. None of the characters were likable and the story felt rushed.

However, there was funny dialogue and some brutal descriptions that genuinely got a visceral reaction out of me.

[Laura Vasile · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A masterfully written look into the mind of a killer who'd actually qualify for the insanity defense.

[whatalicesaw · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I wish I’d liked this better. After a second, you know what will happen & unfortunately, it was exactly the way you thought it would be. There was no suspense, no surprise, no horror, no gore. Not even a sense of dread. The only reason I’m rating it as high as I am is because the writing was good.

[andy5185 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Maybe I'm just really twisted from all the horror I read, but I thought this was hilarious. Not scary at all. I laughed out loud at this narrator's snarky voice and Manny was funny!

[mutantpudding · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Interesting concept and execution, but in the end there was too much ableism, not enough mannequins.

Also like, I get that its from the perspective of a teenage boy but the objectification of women was gross.

Cw warning for suicide

[viragoreads · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This was an absolute disappointment. Night of the Mannequins?! More like night of the psychopathic teenager!Spoilers abound.This follows Sawyer, a teenager with four best friends, Danielle, Shanna, JR, and Tim, who have been besties pretty much their whole lives. They have been through thick and thin and are always doing things together. After the group caused a huge mess at Shanna's house, she was forced to work at a small, not-so-awesome movie theater where her mother's old boyfriend could keep an eye on her. The gang convinces her to sneak them in, and of course they were all too stupid not to get caught; causing more trouble for Shanna and getting them all banned from the theater.Sawyer, the ringleader and main protagonist, came up with a prank to get back at the Assistant Manager for giving Shanna crap and banning them. They actually paid for tickets and sneaked in the mannequin they found in middleschool and played with for an entire summer. They dressed it in their fathers' clothes and bought it a ticket so that when the manager checked for tickets, it would have one, but also scare the pants off of him.Needless to say, their plan did not work, and Sawyer was positive that Manny, the mannequin, got up and walked out of the theater. Of course, his friends did not believe him. Then Shanna and her whole family died in a freak accident, and Sawyer immediately assumed that Manny was responsible.The boy then spiraled. His suppositions and "what-ifs" were ludicrous and downright stupid. He used those imaginings as an excuse to murder all of his friends. His thought process was that Manny was angry at them for forgetting him for years after that one amazing summer and was now picking them off. Sawyer assumed that Manny would inadvertently kill a lot of other innocents unless he killed everyone himself.This was so stupid, and the only time the mannequin was mentioned was when remembering the summer they found and played with it, and when they sneaked it into the theater. Thank goodness this was a novella because it was already too long, and a full-length novdl would have been a DNF. It was three hours of my life that I will never get back. UGH!!!

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a chilling story about a pyschopath--like a slasher movie only in book form, and told from the slasher's point of view.

[jjbooklvr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I already thought mannequins were creepy before I read this. I don't get the fixation some have with them. Yes, I am talking to you Number 5. Then throw in a prank gone wrong and a totally whacked response to rectifying it and we get a twisted horror story that if I tried to tell you the plot you would never believe it. But then we get the ending that totally...yeah just read it!

[jannes_16 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

 Decent enough. Doesn't overstay it's welcome, as it unflinchingly drives to story home to it's inevitable conclusion that manages to be unsettling even if it's not really a twist in the real sense.

[tuusannuuska-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

To be fair, I didn't really know much else about this, going in, than the fact it was shelved as a slasher and as such fit a reading prompt for Summerween. My rating is solely based on my enjoyment level, which wasn't all that high. However, this was a very short book, and I listened to it on audio, so basically I got through it during a single walk.

I'm not going to comment on the plot, because I honestly don't know what the norm for this genre is. If you enjoy the genre, I'm sure you'd enjoy this too. For me, it was mostly very boring, but I'm sure I could have enjoyed it as a horror movie told from a different point of view (so essentially keeping the identity of the killer a mystery to the end.)

I'm sure I'll try a full length novel from the author at some point.

[librolindsay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

That was utterly ridiculous and fun to read. I felt like I was back reading my R.L. Stine Super Chillers.

[mstrust · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A few summers ago, Sawyer and his group of friends discovered a discarded mannequin in a creek. Naming it Manny, they dressed it up and pranked each other all summer. When they outgrew Manny he was left in Sawyer's garage. Now that they're in high school a couple of them decide to use Manny again to prank Shanna at her new job at the movie theater. What was supposed to be harmless fun turns into something else when Manny gets up at the end of the movie and walks out on his own. Making things worse, Sawyer decides that Manny must be angry and vengeful, and Sawyer doesn't blame him.A short book that begins looking like it will be one type of horror, then changes to another kind. Because it's written in the voice of a high schooler sometimes the cadence can seem confusing or backwards.

[angelajmaher · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'd heard good things about this novella. I thought it would be a good way to fill an afternoon, but it took me much longer to read it than I thought. Why? I couldn't handle it. I read a lot of horror but this after a certain point had me filled with anxiety. Very few books have that effect on me. In other words, this is very good horror.

[punkypower · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Scream + Weekend at Bernies + American PsychoHere’s the part where I usually do my own synopsis. However, for maximum impact when you read, I want to avoid spoilers as much as I can for you. The first line of the book is “So, Shannah got a new job at the most vie theater, we thought we’d play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead, and I’m really starting to feel kind of guilty about it all.” That, coupled with the title, is all you need to know going in.I don’t get why it’s fine for a movie to be a fun, mindless slasher film, and not a book. That’s the best way to describe this book. Towards the beginning I was getting a headache from trying to dive deep and figure out what the book was really about. After I just let go, it became so much more enjoyable (although I still can’t really say I understood)!Buy this for yourself or anyone looking for something different. If you’re twisted, get it for someone who grew up watching the Canadian kids’ show, “Today’s Special.”

[veronica.sparrow · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones is a tricky and misleading little novella that starts off with a group of friends and a mannequin then ends up going in a completely different direction. It has the air of a B movie with all the gore and satire that you expect, and is told from the perspective of the main character.It is short, fun, and sassy and I (almost) wish it had been a bit longer but it works so very well as a novella.