When you work in security, you might get moved around a lot.
Normally I work nights, and I’m a regular in one building. I’ve recently been put in charge of reading over the site logs for other buildings too. It’s pretty boring most of the time, but I got a dollar per hour payrise out of it, so I can hardly complain.
All a site log is is a registry of everything that happened on a particular shift. It’s normally just patrols, maybe a bit of damage a guard has noticed, a kid hanging about here or there. Nothing too exciting.
A few things make a log more difficult to get through. Fucking terrible penmanship is the worst one. But another issue is that many guards don’t speak or write great English, and it’s difficult for them to concisely explain events. You learn to get by with guesswork.
One guy was always hard to understand. His name was Saa. He was African, and a good guard, but even in person it was a struggle to understand him- and forget about reading his reports. They were always a headache but I liked the bloke and managed them as well as I could.
Saa mostly worked the night at one particular city office building, nowhere special. Just a regular place with cubicles and drinking fountains and people who hated their jobs. It was pretty cushy though. He had a booth office all to himself with heating and a radio and cameras of high enough quality that patrols were not necessary. He just had to chill in the booth and keep one eye on the monitors.
About a four days ago, Saa started noting a problem in his reports. Every time I read through them it said the same thing.
2000- onsite all ok
2200- meal break
2300- speak button scratch scratch again
0205- hallway again
0300- hallway gone
0800-Saa offsite off duty
After seeing this in the reports a few times, I called Saa to get some clarification.
First I asked him about “speak button scratch scratch”
He told me that ‘every night, scratch scratch on the speak button back door.’
I asked him if he meant the intercom round the back of the building
'Yes, every night scratch noise. Very bad'
I figured he meant that the intercom was playing up, probably picking up some kind of static. I made a note to report it and get it fixed.
I asked him about ‘hallway again’
He was quiet for some time.
"What’s wrong with the hallway, Saa?"
"Hallway camera. Every night something same time"
"What something? What do you mean?"
"Camera getting big black spot, it’s moving up camera hallway"
"Like, dirt on the camera"
"No. Moving spot. Arms and legs. Something inside."
"Ok, it sounds like some kind of distortion. It could be messing up when people walk down the hallway. I’ll report it"
"No people. Just me. First day one camera. Now one two camera a closer hallway"
Saa was starting to confuse me and I was tired. I decided to just request a tech to look at all the cameras. I told him I would get it sorted.
I’m pretty sure the tech went out the next day, but when I got the night report it said the same. “Speak button scratch scratch” “hallway again”
This went on for a couple more days, until my night off- about 6pm. My boss calls me. Saa didn’t rock up for work. He needs me to go in and cover.
I’m relatively familiar with that particular building and I could use the money, so I go in.
I start the night off by looking over the night before’ report, I hadn’t seen at yet and it would save me doing it later. Saa had been working.
2000- Saa onsite
2200- meal break
2300- speak button scratch scratch whisper
0205- Hallway again three camera closer
0800- no more. Saa off duty
The log book is spotted with drops of water, and Saa has dug the pen in so hard on the last few sentences that it’s ripped the paper. I’m concerned and call his mobile
He answers.
"No shift" he says immediately
"No more work. Another building"
"We can move you Saa. I can handle this place for a bit"
Saa is quiet again.
"You are there tonight?’
"Yes, Saa. I can cover your shifts"
He hangs up.
I try to call back, baffled and thinking his phone must have cut out.
He doesn’t answer.
I decide to just talk to the boss about it tomorrow. I settle in with my snacks, a book and all of Reddit to browse over the long shift.
My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Saa.
Go Home.
That’s it. Nothing else. I try to call him again but he doesn’t pick up. I’m a little concerned for his health, thinking he’s had some kind of breakdown, or maybe is sleep deprived (it happens a lot when you do such long late shifts, we try to be vigilant about it)
Again, I decide it’s just best to bother the boss with it tomorrow and settle in.
It’s been a few easy hours. Nothing much had happened, the building has emptied out. The cleaners had finished and the under-appreciated cubicle staff have finally done enough unpaid overtime. I get to be chill as I want now.
The intercom rings. It won’t be staff at this hour. The building is right in the city so it’s probably just stupid teenagers out late and playing silly buggers.
I click the ‘speak’ button.
"Can I help you?"
Nothing
"Hello"
Scratching. Soft scratching like somebody running their nails lightly over the speaker. It sounds nothing like static.
I figure it’s just some weird fault and hang up. When I log it I notice it’s 11pm. The exact same Saa experienced the issue.
This actually reassures me, everything in the booth is connected and on a timer system- so that the system knows when to auto lock doors and arm alarms etc. if it always happens at the same time it’s probably just a technical glitch.
I note it all down and go back to looking at pictures of cats. I remind myself to look closely at the cameras at 2am to see if they’re still faulting too.
The time comes. I’m staring at the monitors looking for anything abnormal. I see nothing at first.
Then I catch it, hallway cam 001- it’s in the hallway that leads down from the rear door to the front lobby of the building, where my booth is located. The hallway has three cameras along it because it has several sharp corners. There is also a PTZ (a pan-tilt-zoom- you can control these kinds of cameras with a joystick and look around)
At first it looks like a bug or something on the screen. Just a little dark smudge.
Slowly it starts growing.
Not growing. Moving forward. The black smug he moves closer and closer to the camera. It moves very slowly.
It’s so indistinct, I have no idea what it could be. I watch it get slowly closer to the first turn in the hallway. After an hour it moves out of Hallway 001s field of vision. I look over to hallway camera 002.
Nothing.
I’m not the panicky type. I didn’t hear a thing, no alarms were triggered and cameras do weird shit sometimes, I decide it has to be some kind of fault.
I pull the footage from hallway 001- and rewind back to 0205.
The black smudge is there. I play it back and fourth a few times, but can see nothing else. I extract the footage and put it on the desktop. I figure I can show it to the techs when I call them back to actually fix this shit.
The rest of the night is uneventful. I get some reading done and OD on red bull.
Come 8am my relief shows up. I hang back ten minutes for the building manager to come in too. I tell him we need the techs back out to look at the intercom and the hallway camera.
I pull up the footage to show him.
There’s no smudge. The hallway looks normal. Just an hour long recording of nothing.
I don’t understand. I played back the footage fine that night. It was there only hours ago. I explain a much to the BM. “Maybe you ripped the vision from the wrong date, or maybe you names it wrong. This stuff happens. I’ll still get the techs in and we will sort it”
I decide to blame it on tiredness, and head home to bed. I had another shift that night in the same building.
I slept and came back at 8. Went through all the sane motions.
11pm came.
The intercom buzzed. Scratching again. Louder this time. More insistent.
I was confused and maybe a little scared. The techs were meant to have fixed this for sure.
It occurred to me it might be the work of some dedicated pranksters. I pressed the ‘talk’ button down
"You kids better bigger off. I don’t have a problem calling the police"
The scratching stopped. I figured I had solved that mystery. I went back to killing time.
2am came. I didn’t immediately look at the cameras this time. Why bother staring at a glitch? If it was even still playing up.
A few minutes in, the movement still caught my eye. I looked up at hallway 001. The smudge was back. It seemed to move a bit faster this time. I watched it glide down hallway 001. It left the first cameras line of sight again. I figured that was it for another night.
It wasn’t.
Hallway 002 flickered with motion. The smudge was there. Now I felt uncomfortable.
The PTZs line of sight stretched to hallway 002. I decided to use it. I swung it around in the direction of the smudge.
It was there. A lump formed in my throat and my stomach felt heavy. What the fuck was that?
Part of me wanted to get up. Leave the booth and look down the hallway, try to make sense of this. The other part of me said ‘Fuck That’ I twisted the top of the PTZ joystick, engaging the zoom function. I zoomed into the smudge.
My stomach leapt into my throat. I tasted bile and lost my breath.
The smudge was deep blackness, but it flickered with something… I looked closer. I was shaking like a leaf but I didn’t want to look away from the thing on the screen. It had arms. And legs. And faces. Not in any logical places and not all showing up at any one time. Just flickers of limbs and eyes moving at incredible speed. Almost vibrating.
I couldn’t comprehend it. My brain just emptied itself and rejected what I was looking at. I felt frozen in place, staring at the thing. I don’t know how long I stared as it came closer and closer to the end of hallway 002. Closer to me.
It reached the end of hallway 002. Suddenly I was aware again. I felt movement come back to my limbs and I sprung up and locked the door to my booth. I sat low in a corner, hidden from outside view. I clutched my phone and I stared at hallway 003- I waited for that impossible thing to show up on the screen.
It didn’t.
I looked at the time.
3am. It was gone. I studied every camera. Nothing. I couldn’t bring myself to go over the footage again. I just sat at the desk wondering what to do. Who do you call for something like that? Am I going crazy? Maybe I was sleep deprived now?
It was 8am again before I knew it. I only tore myself away from my thoughts as the sun started shining on my face through the glass front door. It made me feel safe.
Whatever that thing was, whether it’s real or not, it was coming closer. I’m supposed to work again tonight.
What do I do?
—
Credits to: Nightshifter91
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