“Are you sure you’re up for this?”
I nodded at my boss, trying to hide my irritation. Yes, I was still only two months in, and yes, this was my first time pulling a night shift, but I’d caught on very quickly to the few rules and duties of the job.
You went into the guard station (what the guards called “the ticket booth” because of how small it was) at the beginning of your shift, and except for a bathroom break at the portapotty set up at the edge of the parking lot (no more than one per shift and for no more than five minutes, put up the sign on the window and text into dispatch that you’re on break) you didn’t leave the booth again until your shift was done eight hours later. What did we do during those eight hours? Well, usually not much.
We were called “security guards”, but that was a joke. The ticket booth was set up at the edge of the rear parking lot of some kind of research lab. I’d never been in the lab itself and had no idea what they did there, but since our entire job was in the booth, it didn’t really matter. We were there purely to record when small deliveries were deposited in the metal drawer on the outside of the booth and to give clearance and directions for delivery trucks going on up to the lab. We never even touched the things going into the deposit drawer—someone came down as needed from the lab itself to collect those. The only other “job” we had was watching four cameras set up in the lab’s lobby—a long, bleak concrete space that had its own security station with what looked like real security guards from an entirely different company than ours. Not that I blamed them.
Looking up at my boss, I tried to give Eddie a cheerful smile. “I’ll be fine. I know what to do. And I have my phone if anything comes up.”
The man ran a hand through his long, greasy hair as he looked at me uncertainly. “Yeah, okay sure. Just…kid, you’ve been doing good, but night jobs are different, okay? I don’t want you to get spooked or…” His eyes widened. “Not saying that because you’re a girl…a female. Um, hell, when I was a guard, back before I started this company, I’d get spooked up good sometimes. Part of it is being alone, part of it is the dark. And some of it…well, you get more crazies wandering by a place in the middle of the night.” He glanced around at the quiet back street that led to the rear parking lot of the laboratory. “Not that we ever get too much of that back here, but it does happen.”
I nodded again. “I get it. But I’ve worked night jobs other places before, and like I said, I’ve got my phone if something comes up.”
Eddie’s eyes scanned the booth distractedly before landing on me again. “Good, that’s good. You know the phone number for dispatch? And you have my cell too? And the pin to get into the security station door is different at night than during the day, remember. It’s…” He glanced around as though someone might be listening. Apparently satisfied, he went on in a voice barely above a whisper. “1934. Got it?”
I laughed a little. “Yeah…I have it. Honestly, it’ll be fine.”
He nodded, still looking unhappy, but at least temporarily satisfied. “Okay. I’ll get out of your hair then. Just…” Eddie looked up at the big building behind us. “This is an important contract for us. That’s the only reason I’m fretting like a mother hen. We can’t mess up with these people.” He looked back at me with a small smile. “But you’ll do great. Just call if you need anything.”
With that he was gone, and I settled down for a boring night of doing nothing other than reading and playing on my phone. The ticket booth was essentially a ten by ten cube made of painted cinderblock and bulletproof glass that was uninterrupted except for the metal security door on the back side away from the street and the two reception windows that faced the incoming and outgoing lanes of parking lot traffic respectively. Inside, there were two chairs, a water cooler, a phone and the four monitors. On the desk with the phone and monitors was a cup of pens and a log book, but not much else. Super boring, but still, it was decent pay for a very easy job.
And the night shift version wasn’t that different. Sure, it was slightly creepier as it got dark—you felt isolated sitting alone in your little island of light. It wasn’t hard to start down the road of thinking about someone watching you from the darkness—they could see you clearly but you’d never see them. But then that was the trick. It was a road you didn’t let yourself go down to begin with. And if you started wandering down it anyway, you reminded yourself that you were in a locked and very secure room with phones and literally no evidence of anything weird or sinister actually going on. You were just spooking yourself like a little kid.
And that worked, for the most part. Occasionally I’d look up from reading, expecting to see a sunlit street before I remembered it was close to midnight. The empty field across the street was still there, but I couldn’t see it. And sure, not being able to see out made it more boring, but that was all. There wasn’t anything out there. No one looking at me. Hell, if it was like most shifts, I might not see anyone at all other than the occasional person on the security monitors inside the main building.
And I didn’t for the first three hours.
And then he came.
Hello. I am a deaf mute. Please do not take my silence as discourtesy. If you know sign language, please let me know. Otherwise, I am quite good at reading lips if you go slowly.
I looked back up at the man who had given me the laminated yellow card through the outgoing lane reception window. He’d been at the booth before I’d realized it, standing there staring at me when I looked up from my phone with a yelp. After a moment of flustered embarrassment, I’d asked him how I could help him. He had no car or truck I could see, and I didn’t see any package. Besides, this man, with his long silver hair and purple windbreaker, didn’t look like the delivery guys we normally got. He seemed too well-kempt and composed to be homeless or a wandering drunk, but I did wonder if he was lost or possibly confused. He looked a bit too young and focused for Alzheimer’s, but my sister knew a guy in his forties that got it, so who could say for sure? Why else would he just stand there silently staring at me like that?
That’s when he’d first produced the yellow card.
I felt myself blush as I handed it back to him. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t realize.” Remembering about the reading lips thing, I slowed down my speech a little, nervous I was either going too fast or too slow, not wanting to confuse or offend him. “How can I help you tonight?”
The man smiled as he shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. Think nothing of it. Tucking the card back into the pocket of his jacket, he pointed at his wrist and then at me. What did he want? It was like he was pointing at a watch he didn’t have, so maybe…
“Do you want to know the time?” He just stared at me, so I glanced at my phone to see the clock. “Um, it’s 12:13.” When I looked back up, he was silently laughing and shaking his head. “I…can you write down what you want?” Suppressing my growing irritation, I tried again. “Um, can you write down how I can help you?”
He didn’t offer to write anything down, but he did go back to gesticulating. He held up two fingers. Then four. Then one. This was followed by him pointing again to the back of his wrist and then to me. What the fuck? I wasn’t trying to be rude to him, but this was both frustrating and creepy. Maybe if I gave him something to write with, he’d tell me what he needed and then go away. Glancing around for the logbook, I tore a sheet out of the back and grabbed a pen. “Sir, if you can just write down what it is you’re asking, I’d be hap…”
He was gone.
I looked through all the windows, but I saw no sign of him anywhere. Feeling foolish, I even looked down to make sure he wasn’t crouching underneath a window and through the peephole in the security door to make sure he wasn’t hiding back there. But no, he was just gone.
I let out a shaky laugh as I picked up my phone. Should I text Eddie and ask him if they’d ever got that guy coming up to the booth before? I discarded the thought and put my phone down. No. There was no point and it would just freak Eddie out. Give him an excuse to say I couldn’t work the night shift, which would just mean less hours for me in the long run. Plus, the dude was gone now anyway, so what did it matter? Hell, maybe he went up to the lab and was bugging the guards there instead. If so, good riddance.
I tried to go back to reading, but my eyes kept drifting back to the windows and the night pressing against them. He’d just popped up and then away so fast. Not that it wasn’t possible—I couldn’t see more than fifteen feet out from the booth, with the nearest outside light being a dimly flickering sodium lamp in the middle of the rear parking lot. Even that light was largely obscured by distance and hedges, giving an orangey glow to the space between the booth and the main building more than any real illumination. And either way, it did nothing for the darkness pressing in from the street and the field beyond.
But no, I had to stop being stupid. I was scaring myself over…
Motion in a security camera caught my eye. It was from one of the two cameras in the short hall off the main lobby. Each of the two cameras were trained on a side of the hallway as well as the twin elevators that opened on that side. On the one camera the left elevator was open, blocked ajar by the person sitting in the doorway.
The cameras were color and of good resolution, and even at that distance and angle, it was easy to see the person had been gutted, their intestines trailing around their legs like red and glistening snakes trying to find a home. I felt my brain wanting to shut down at what I was seeing, but I wouldn’t let it. I needed to keep control of myself. Make sure of what I was seeing and then call it in.
The man…it was a man in his early thirties…the man’s head was turned toward the camera, his dead-eyed stare seeming to bore into me as I reached to pick my phone back up. I needed to call 911 and then…wait, what was that on his face?
Squinting at the camera, I could barely make out the bloody mark that had been cut into his forehead. It looked like a number. The number one.
Okay, enough gathering information. Time to call the cops and get the fuck out of here. I tapped out 911 and hit send. Nothing. No dial tone or ringing, no sign of anything at all. I looked at my phone. It showed I had three bars, so what the fuck? Trying again, I was still greeted with silence. Throwing down my phone in disgust, I picked up the land line in the booth.
Silence.
I tried three times on the land line before a small sound to my right made me whirl around. I half-expected to see the strange man back at the window, but there was no sign of anyone. No trace of who had left the laminated orange card at the window.
Heart hammering, I went cautiously to the window and slid the card in. It was identical to the first card the man had shown me other than the color and the words themselves. I felt my mouth go dry as I read it.
Phones aren’t working, are they? Maybe you should just come outside with me.
I looked through the windows again, but still saw no sign of the man or anything else. My eyes landed on the light switch next to the door and I flipped it off. I was suddenly engulfed in partial darkness, only the soft glow of the security monitors giving any form or definition to my surroundings. I looked back at the monitor with the body.
It was gone now. There was no sign or trace of the man having been there at all, and as I looked into one of the other monitors, I saw the pair of inner security guards sitting stoic at the front desk. I couldn’t say for sure, but I’d definitely always had the impression those elevators were right off from where their desk was. Surely they’d know if someone had been murdered and then moved just a few feet away from them.
So what was going on then? Was it all a prank or something? I didn’t see how or why. And if so…
I let out a small scream as the fourth monitor caught my eye. This was of the far end of the lobby where the inner guard station was. I was pretty certain it was in the same room because you could see some of the same furniture and pattern to the tile in both cameras. And on the end wall of that lobby, a woman had been nailed upside down in some form of makeshift crucifixion. Stripped from the waist up, her pale skin was painted with rivulets of red that trickled down from her torn ankles and wrists before dripping onto the floor below. Cut into the middle of her chest and blazing like a crimson brand, was another number.
Six.
I almost bolted for the door then, but I stopped myself. I needed to think. How was any of this possible? Hadn’t I been watching those monitors just a moment before? How could all that have happened to her and me not see it? Someone could be messing with the feeds, of course, but how and why? Or maybe the weird lab had decided to start fucking with their workers too?
Taking a breath, I felt around on the desk and found my phone. I’d try texting Eddie or my sister or someone until I got through. Worst case scenario, if I couldn’t call or text, I’d stay here until someone came or it got light enough for me to see and reach my car.
Text failed.
Text failed.
Text failed.
FUCK! I resisted the urge to throw my phone, stuffing it back into my pocket instead. Calls still weren’t working on it or the land line either, and when I looked at the security feeds again, the woman’s body was gone too. There wasn’t even any sign of the blood that had pooled on the floor beneath her. What the fuck was going on? And why weren’t the guards in there seeing anything?
I kept the light off and sat with my back against the metal door, eyes occasionally flicking up to the monitors as my stomach twisted in knots. I was afraid of what it might show me, but I still needed to look. Need to know. I didn’t know what the numbers meant, if it was a message for me or not, or if any of it was even real. Maybe I was having some kind of mental break. But if it was real, I needed to pay attention to everything. Even things that seemed impossible.
I pulled out my phone again to try calls and texts. Still no luck. And it was only 2:40, meaning I had hours left before anyone was likely to come or it got light enough for me to risk running to the car.
Suddenly, the man in the elevator was back. The woman on the wall too. And the two guards were no longer guarding. They were a bloody pile stacked up on the front desk like so much butchered meat. Amid all the pink and red horror, a man’s large thigh had been set on top—dismembered, but otherwise unblemished except for the mark carved into it.
Three.
I screamed as I heard a sound to my right. Standing up, I flipped on the light so I could see. Maybe if someone was out there, the light would blind them for a moment, disorient them enough that I could make a run for it. But there was no one there. Just a laminated red card waiting at the window.
I considered not going to it. It could be a trick. Someone could try and grab me through the window when I reached for it. But still, I needed to see. Reaching into the desk cup, I grabbed a pen and used it to slide the card closer before I picked it up. I stared at it a moment before saying what was written aloud.
“Four.”
Understanding scuttled up my spine, burying its teeth in my neck as I sucked in a breath. I was already beginning to turn when I heard the four beeps outside. The knob began to twist before I could reach it, and then it was too late.
The door had been opened.
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