Fulcrum

There's something funny about the little strip mall out on Route 4. Something isn't right. It's been vacant and forgotten for over a year. No one has set foot onto the neglected property since the doors were bolted shut. Sometimes at night, though, passersby would swear there were lights on in there. That's impossible because the power was cut off when the last flailing business, brave enough to take up occupancy inside of It, eventually moved out like all the rest that had come before it.

It's just another empty building that has been left behind to wither in another outcrop of woods swallowing another abandoned parking lot. Only, The Dannerman Strip Mall has many secrets. This wouldn't come as a surprise to some. It's one of those places that children know to stay away from. Children know about things that grown-ups have forgotten how to believe. There are quite a few stories about a lot of funny things that have happened inside of the strip mall's partitioned confines. They are the kind of stories that seem fun while you're telling them, but they are also the ones that can be mean and sinister once you find yourself alone, again.

Ed Berrington isn't a child, anymore. He hasn't heard all of the secrets and the stories that have been told about the Dannerman Strip Mall. He doesn't see anything wrong with paying it a late-night visit for a bite to eat. You can't really blame him because Ed isn't familiar with this side of town. He has no idea that something isn't right about the quaint little pizza parlor that once served the neighborhood proudly - or that the man he has just ordered his dinner from has been dead for a year. And he's about to learn a hard lesson in generosity.