For a long time, I thought there was no greater feeling of dread than clocking into a job you hate. Three days a week after school and every other weekend, there I was, standing in front of the time clock at Sunset Grove. By the time I was sixteen, my parents told me that I had to find a job and start working. Unfortunately, there weren’t many options for a sixteen-year-old looking for work in Driftwood. It was either fast food, retail, or a retirement home. For whatever reason, I chose the retirement home.
It’s not that I had a problem with starting work at that age, it’s just that scrubbing pureed vegetables and mashed potatoes off fifty plates a night, with the cook yelling over my shoulder to pick up the pace, wasn’t exactly fulfilling work. The pocket money was nice, though. There’s nothing better than being a teenager with almost nothing but disposable income.
I watched the digital clock tick over from 3:59 to 4:00, begrudgingly typed in my employee ID, and made my way to the kitchen. As always, there was a stack of dishes left over from the shift before mine that would leave me playing catch-up for the rest of the night.
Becca, a thirty-something waitress with pale skin and a slim figure, swept through the doors as I was working through my stack. She was the only member of the wait staff I knew who could manage to keep a sunny disposition no matter how bad the day got.
Her shoulders seemed to relax a little when she saw me. “Hey, Arty, I need glasses.”
“Got it,” I replied.
“Thank you!” she said in a sing-song voice as she picked up a tub of silverware and rushed back out the doors. The wait staff was always in a rush this time of day. They only had about a half-hour to set the tables before some of the early-birds started showing up for dinner.
I loaded a tray with glasses and sent them through the commercial steam washer to my left, pulling the hood down with a heavy metal clunk. Once they were done, Becca came through and took the tray out to the dining room.
Before long, the cook began setting out room service trays. I never understood why it was the dishwasher’s job to deliver room service, but nevertheless, I began loading the trays into my cart. Most room service orders came from the same residents, which meant I’d long since worked out the most efficient way to load the cart. As I was loading, I noticed one of my regulars, room 2H, was missing. It could have been that she just decided to have dinner in the dining room today, but as long as I’d been working at Sunset Grove, I’d never known 2H to have dinner anywhere but her room.
As I walked down the hallway past 2H, I realized why. There on the door was a small laminated sign with a photo of the woman who’d lived in 2H.
Lilith Holmes
1928 - 2014
That was it. Just a name and a pair of dates. Not even a “Rest in Peace.” But it got the point across. I felt a tinge of guilt at the fact that I hadn’t known the woman’s name. I’d been working at Sunset Grove for a year, and I still referred to most of the residents by their room numbers.
This wasn’t the first of these types of signs I’d seen. There had been two or three deaths in the past year, each one memorialized with a cheap laminated sign that would be taken down after a week or two. It may sound callous, but I was never bothered by the deaths. They were simply a fact of life working in a place full of people entering the final phase of their lives. It helped that I didn’t make much effort to get close to the residents. I never wanted this place to bleed into what I considered to be my real life, so whenever I was at Sunset Grove, I was in “work mode.” I would put on a kind face, greet coworkers and residents with a smile, and otherwise speak only when spoken to. It was easier that way.
Room 2H stayed empty for a month. The sign, as they always do, disappeared after a while. I wondered if that meant they’d already cleaned out all of Mrs. Holmes’s belongings or if they were still entombed behind that locked door.
Eventually, the day came that I had a room service tray for room 2H again. It seemed so sudden. I hadn’t heard anything about a new resident moving in. I shrugged it off and loaded the tray onto my cart, thinking it must have happened on one of my days off. I hoped the new tenant wouldn’t be a handful. I may not have known Mrs. Holmes well, but she was always nice and courteous to me when I brought her her food. It’s more than I could say for some of the other residents.
I rode the elevator up to the second floor. Room 2H was my second stop from there. I knocked and pushed open the door into the dimly lit room. The blinds were all drawn, and there was only a single table lamp turned on in the corner across the room. I could see the new tenant sitting in a recliner on the opposite wall. It was a woman, with curled white hair that fell to her hunched shoulders. In the dark, I couldn’t make out her face, but her form was familiar. As I got closer, I realized it was Mrs. Holmes sitting in the chair.
I faltered. “I… have your dinner here for you, ma’am,” I stammered.
“Oh, good,” she said. “Set it on the table here, dear.” Her tone was jovial like always, though it felt strained. As if she were forcing it.
I set the tray down on the end table beside her. As she turned to look at it, her eyes seemed to catch the tiny amount of light in the room and glowed for a split second.
“Thank you,” she chimed.
“You’re welcome,” I said, turning on my heel and heading for the door.
I stopped by the second floor nurse’s station on my way down the hall and found Ted inside. He was a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, known around the facility for his eccentric taste in scrubs. Today’s were navy blue with a messy pattern of stars. Ted was the only nurse I knew by name, mostly because he gave me no other choice. It was common knowledge at Sunset Grove that if Ted wanted to chat you up, there was nothing you could do to stop it.
“Hey, Ted,” I said, poking my head around the door.
“Arthur!” he called, sitting back in his chair. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I saw Mrs. Holmes is back,” I said. “What happened? Why was she gone?”
“Sorry, bud, I shouldn’t really be gossiping about that.”
“I understand. It’s just… there was that sign on her door a while ago. I thought she died.”
“Oh, that,” Ted laughed. “That was a little misunderstanding. But as you saw, she’s alive and well.”
“Right,” I said. “I should go. I’ve still got a cart full of meals to deliver.”
“Best not keep ‘em waiting!” Ted joked as I left the nurse’s station.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Mrs. Holmes for the remainder of my shift that night. How could the nurses make such a drastic mistake, confusing a resident for dead? And where exactly had Mrs. Holmes been for the past month? At the hospital? With family? The whole thing irked me more than it probably should have. I didn’t like thinking about this place during my time off, but thoughts of Mrs. Holmes stuck with me all week.
I delivered room service to her the rest of the week. Each time I entered 2H, the blinds were drawn, the room kept dark. As always, I set her tray down on the end table next to the recliner, she thanked me, and I moved on to the next room.
The next stop on my route was 2K, Ms. Ganz, whose name I only knew because she had a reputation around the building for being very outwardly spoken. There was rarely a week that went by where I wasn’t overhearing the nurses laughing about something Ms. Ganz had said that day.
Most days, Ms. Ganz left her door open. I knocked anyway and passed through the open frame. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, rubbing her temples before she looked up and saw me.
“Set it down right there,” she instructed, pointing to the rolling TV stand where she took her dinner every day.
I did as she said and set the food down on the stand, forcing a smile for good measure. She scooted off the bed and hobbled over to the chair to sit down. I pushed the stand closer to her and lowered it down so she could reach. She examined the tray, then picked up the pudding cup and handed it to me.
“You take that,” she said. “I don’t need it.”
“That’s alright,” I protested. “I don’t need it either.”
Ms. Ganz pawning her desserts off on me was beginning to become a habit. As I tried to set the pudding cup back on the tray, she pushed it back toward me. It clearly wasn’t a fight I was going to win, so I relented and accepted the pudding.
Ms. Ganz got to work preparing her coffee, which she had with every meal. I always loaded her tray with three creams and three sugars, but I’d learned in time to wait until she finished mixing before I left because, more often than not, she’d ask for more.
“Is this decaf?” she asked.
“That’s right,” I said.
She grumbled. “I need caffeine. People keeping me up all night. Knocking on my door.”
“Knocking on your door?”
“Middle of the night,” Ms. Ganz exclaimed. “They come, they knock, I open the door, and they’re gone. My family doesn’t pay $2000 a month for me to get pranked all night long.”
“Have you talked to the nurses about it?” I asked.
She snorted. “They’re probably the ones doing it.” Ms. Ganz winced and reached for her forehead. “Now, I’ve had this headache all day thanks to them.”
“Sorry about that. I hope you feel better,” I said as I made my way out of the room.
It became apparent very quickly Ms. Ganz wasn’t the only resident dealing with these problems. I overheard the nurses talking about multiple residents on the second floor complaining about someone knocking on their door at night. It only got worse throughout the week, with even more residents complaining. There were more complaints of headaches, too. Some residents even started exhibiting symptoms of fever.
When I came to serve Ms. Ganz her dinner a week later, her door was shut. I knocked and turned the handle. It wasn’t locked, so I went inside. Ms. Ganz was lying in bed, a fresh sheen of sweat shimmering in the light across her forehead. She hadn’t even touched her lunch. I quietly swapped the trays, trying not to disturb her and tip-toed out of the room, stopping by the nurses’ station before I got back to work. Ted was there again, wearing a loud, floral-patterned set of scrubs this time.
“Hey, Ted, is Ms. Ganz alright?” I asked.
“She’s just a little under the weather,” he said. “She’s not the only one. There’s some kind of bug going around.”
Ted scooted his chair across the room and pulled something out of a box. He tossed me a medical mask.
“You should probably wear one of these while you’re goin’ into rooms,” he said.
I nodded and put the mask on, leaving Ted to his work. There were four more residents laid up in bed on the second floor. Weirdly, no one on the first or third floor seemed to be affected.
Things only seemed to get worse as the days went on. More and more residents were laid up with fevers. Soon enough, no one on the second floor was healthy enough to go to the dining room, which meant my room service runs were getting longer by the day. Now that I had to deliver trays to every room on the second floor, there was no way I could get it done on my own, but even with Becca helping me with runs, I was still clocking out of work an hour late most nights.
As we rolled the cart up to room 2H, Becca hesitated.
“Do you mind getting this one?” she asked.
I raised an eyebrow. “Sure.”
I had no problem bringing Mrs. Holmes her food. What caught me off guard was the way Becca seemed to give the room a wide berth as we passed and the trepidation in her voice as she spoke.
“Thanks, Arty,” Becca said. “Something about her just creeps me out. Don’t you feel that?”
“It’s a little weird how she sits in the dark all the time,” I admitted, “but I wouldn’t call it creepy.”
“So brave,” Becca teased. “I’ll bring Ms. Ganz her tray and meet you down the hall.”
“Sounds good.”
I knocked on the door and went into 2H. As expected, Mrs. Holmes was seated in her recliner with the blinds drawn and the single lamp on in the corner. Sometimes I wondered if she ever even moved from that spot.
“How are you feeling, Mrs. Holmes?” I asked through the medical mask I was now required to wear at all times while on the second floor.
“Are you a nurse now?” She asked. Her tone seemed intended to be joking, but it came across more accusatory.
“No, it’s just that we can’t seem to get rid of this bug going around. I was just curious if you were still feeling alright.”
“I’m fine,” she said flatly.
Mrs. Holmes was the only resident on the second floor who wasn’t sick. The bug hadn’t spread to any of the staff members either. A thought occurred to me.
“Have you heard anyone knocking on your door at night?” I asked.
Mrs. Holmes’s eyes shot to mine, momentarily glowing in the light as they had once before. She stared at me with wide eyes that seemed to be studying me.
Finally, her tight lips peeled apart and she simply said, “I have not.”
Suddenly, I understood why Becca hadn’t wanted to come in here. I could feel the goose flesh spreading across my arm and a shiver run down my spine. I didn’t want to linger here any longer than I had to.
“Have a good night,” I said, mimicking my usual tone, before hustling out of the room.
I grabbed the cart and pushed it quickly down the hall toward Ms. Ganz’s room where I would find Becca, but as I rounded the corner, I saw a crowd of nurses surrounding the door. Becca was standing off to the side, a distraught look on her face.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I went in to give her her food,” Becca choked out. “Her eyes were open, so I thought she was awake. So, I asked her if she had enough cream and sugar for her coffee, but she didn’t respond.”
“Oh no,” I realized.
“That’s never happened to me before,” Becca said. “I’ve never seen one of them after… after they died. Sorry, Arty, I need to take five. Do you think you can finish this yourself today?”
“That’s fine. I’ve got it.”
Becca laid her hand on my shoulder as she walked away, her other hand combing through her hair.
Becca didn’t come in the next day. With the wait staff being short handed, I had to do the room service deliveries myself. I hesitated before going into 2H, but when I reached for the handle, I was relieved to find that it was locked. Some of the nurses must have been inside, so I left the tray by the door and went on my way.
As I passed by Ms. Ganz’s room, I saw the sign.
Mallory Ganz
1939 - 2014
She was about ten years younger in the photo, smiling next to her daughter. I felt a tug inside my gut and suddenly realized I wanted to know what was happening. Where was this sickness coming from? Why wasn’t it affecting the residents on the first or third floors or the staff? And why was Mrs. Holmes the only resident on the second floor who was still healthy?
I finished delivering trays and stashed the cart in the corner. I figured I had at least ten more minutes before my boss would start wondering where I was, so I found Ted in the nurse’s station.
“Hey, Ted, are you busy?” I asked.
“Never not busy, Arthur,” he grinned. “What can I do for you?”
“You’ve heard the residents complaining about someone knocking on their doors at night, right? Do you have any idea what that might be about?”
He sighed. “Yeah, I’ve heard all about it. Best I can figure, it’s someone screwin’ around on the night shift.”
“Well, there are cameras, right? Couldn’t we find out who’s doing it?”
Ted’s brow furled. “Why are you so interested?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. “I guess it’s just that, whoever it was, they were bothering Ms. Ganz. I thought maybe we could find them and get them to stop to, like, honor her in a way.”
Ted pushed an office chair toward me with his foot. “Sit down a minute. I’ll pull up the footage.”
“Thank you.”
I sat down and watched Ted scrub through last night’s security footage. It was strange seeing the hallway so empty. During the daytime hours, there were constantly nurses or housekeepers coming up and down the halls, but at night, they were dead.
Suddenly, there was a flash of movement on the screen. Ted let go of the mouse and let the footage play out in real-time. I felt my chest tighten as I recognized the figure on the screen. Mrs. Holmes. I watched her walk down the hall, moving with an unnatural weightlessness for her age. She stopped in front of Ms. Ganz’s room and knocked on the door. Then, all of a sudden, she just faded away.
I leaned in closer to the screen. Ted sat upright in his chair.
“Was that a glitch?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The timecode looks normal, but it must’ve been. Either way, I guess we know who’s been causin’ trouble at night. I’ll have a word with Mrs. Holmes.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I blurted out.
Ted looked at me quizzically. I didn’t know how to explain it, but I knew something was off about Mrs. Holmes. There was no telling what would happen if someone confronted her, but how was I supposed to convince Ted of that?
“Sorry,” I said. “Thanks for the help, Ted.”
I left the nurse’s station without saying another word. I could only hope that my initial warning would be enough to make Ted hesitate until I could figure out what to do next.
My heart dropped when I couldn’t find Ted the next day. He was always there. Every single weekday, he was there.
None of the other nurses had seen him either. Apparently, he hadn’t called out sick or anything. As far as anyone knew, he simply hadn’t shown up for work. But I knew better. I knew he’d gone and talked to Mrs. Holmes, and she’d done something to him. Could he still be there, inside room 2H? Was he still alive? Had he mentioned me?
I worked the first hour of my shift constantly looking over my shoulder. By 5:00, the cook started lining up room service trays. I was on my own again. Apparently, Becca was taking some time off after what she’d been through. I couldn’t blame her, but I found myself desperately wishing I didn’t have to be alone.
My heart thumped with dread every step I took toward room 2H. I prayed the door would be locked again, but no such luck. I pushed the door open slowly and let the light from the hall flood into the dim room. Mrs. Holmes was in her recliner, but as I got closer, I noticed her eyes were shut. She was asleep.
I set the tray down quietly and made for the door, but before I left, I felt curiosity tug me back. I wanted to know what happened to Ted. If there was any trace of him in the room, this might be my only chance to find it.
I inched heel-toe back through the entryway and into the bedroom. I found an antique lamp on the nightstand and flipped it on, bathing the room in a hazy yellow light. The room was pristine, not even a crease in the bedding. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Blood? A body? Just anything that would confirm the insane thoughts that were running through my mind.
I moved to the bathroom, but, like the bedroom, it was spotless. I checked every inch of it, even getting down on my hands and knees to inspect the bath mat for blood stains. I was starting to feel like a lunatic. Maybe everything that was happening was exactly what it seemed, and the rest of it was all just in my head.
Feeling a little ridiculous, I stepped out of the bathroom, gently closing the door behind me.
“What were you doing in there?” Mrs. Holmes’s voice was sharp and sent a jolt of fear through my body.
I turned and saw her standing in the corner by her recliner. She looked tall—her shoulders not slumped like usual, and her eyes were glowing in the light again.
I didn’t know what to say. “S-sorry,” I spat out, then hurried for the door. Mrs. Holmes stood motionless, watching me go.
Thanks to my little investigation, dinner was nearly over by the time I got back to the kitchen, and there was a mountain of dishes waiting for me by the sink. I shook off the unsettling thoughts plaguing my mind and got to work. It was going to be another late night, and it only got worse when the cook brought over a stack of burnt pans that would take ages of scrubbing to get clean.
It was nearly an hour past the end of my shift by the time I’d finally finished all the dishes. The wait staff had clocked out thirty minutes ago. That was fine. I was used to being the last one in the kitchen. It was the dishwasher’s job to clean the floors at the end of the night after everyone else had gone home. That night, though, I should have been scared, but the weight of being alone hadn’t hit me yet. My mind was too preoccupied with work.
I finished mopping the floor, meaning all that was left was to take the trash out to the dumpster. I gathered up all the bags and took them out into the hallway, then out the back door. I set the bags down and propped the door open with a pen. After 8:00, the building locked down, and I would need a keycard to get back in, something the facility didn’t grant to dishwashers.
I hoisted the garbage bags into the dumpster and turned back toward the building. Before I could even take a step back toward the door, though, I heard it clunk into place. I ran over and tugged on the handle. Locked. I’d have to walk all the way around the building and come in the front entrance, probably scaring the hell out of the secretary at the reception desk, who certainly wouldn’t be expecting anyone to come in at this hour.
Crickets chirped loudly in the fields around the parking lot as I rounded the building. There was no one at the reception desk when I walked in. The secretary was probably out having a cigarette somewhere. I walked through the dining room and back into the kitchen, letting the door swing freely behind me. I heard it brush across the frame once, twice, then suddenly stop. I didn’t think much of it until I heard a knock on the door.
My heart froze, fear tightening an ice-cold grip around my throat. I turned and, through the window, saw a pair of glowing eyes on the other side of the door. Ever so slowly, the door started to push inward as Mrs. Holmes crept inside. I felt like I should have screamed in that moment, but nothing came to me. It felt as though my lungs had completely deflated at the sight of her.
She stepped toward me. I stepped back until I felt my back press against the counter behind me. I wanted to run, but something told me I couldn’t outrun whatever was standing in front of me. My hands reached onto the counter and felt for anything I could use to defend myself. I felt the lukewarm touch of the porcelain plates and wrapped my fingers around the rim of one. I waited as Mrs. Holmes inched closer until, finally, I whipped my arm around and smashed the plate against her head.
She wailed and faltered a few steps, buying me enough time to run deeper into the kitchen, toward the knives. She was on me again before I could reach them. I felt a wet sting on my calf and looked down to see her there, latched on with her teeth sinking deep into my flesh.
I fell onto the concrete floor, my left shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. I tried to crawl away but couldn’t break free of her inhuman weight. With my free leg, I kicked at her head as hard as I could until she released me. Her bloodstained mouth hissed at me as I scrambled to my feet.
I ripped the largest knife I could find out of the block and spun around, ready to drive it into Mrs. Holmes’s chest, but she was gone. My eyes flicked frantically around the room, looking for any sign of her. Then I felt something drip onto my cheek. In the reflection of the knife blade, I could see the drop of blood rolling down my cheek. I looked up, and there she was.
She wasn’t suspended from the ceiling; she was floating. As soon as I laid eyes on her, she dropped, falling right on top of me. I managed to raise the knife high enough and felt it pierce her gut as she landed on me. I think that was the only thing that saved me from her teeth sinking into my neck.
Mrs. Holmes reeled from the knife wound. She swung her arm out, and I felt the tremendous weight and strength behind it as it crashed into my side and threw me across the room. Pain shot through my back as I collided with the stainless steel of the dishwasher. I knew I couldn’t afford to waste time licking my wounds. I pulled myself up to my feet just as Mrs. Holmes ripped the knife free of her gut. Coagulated blood seeped out of the gaping wound like thick mud.
Mrs. Holmes hunched over like a predator waiting to pounce. My heart raced, waiting for the moment. Like a bolt of lighting, it came. She leapt across the room at me. My instincts kicked in, and I ducked to the right. I heard a loud metallic crash as Mrs. Holmes’s body slammed into the dishwasher. I looked up and saw her top half lodged in the machine. Without even thinking about it, I yanked the lever, sending the hood down just far enough over Mrs. Holmes’s thin body to activate the machine.
She howled and screeched as the steam inside the dishwasher boiled her skin. I didn’t wait around for the cycle to finish. I saddled the pain in my back and my leg and ran out of the kitchen before she had a chance to escape. I didn’t dare look back.
Sunset Grove closed down last year, three years after I left for good that night. I never found out what became of Mrs. Holmes, but I don’t think she ever left. The article detailing Sunset Grove’s closure cites financial difficulty after a spike in mortality rates, and there had been more than one story about staff members going missing over the years. Ted was the first of them. I would have been the second.
For a long time, Sunset Grove haunted me. I would dream about being back in room 2H, cowering under Mrs. Holmes’s impossibly tall form, her skin blistered and rubbery from the burns I gave her. In time, those dreams faded. It hadn’t seemed possible, but my life started to return to a sense of normalcy.
Reading the article on Sunset Grove brought those memories crashing back. I tried to tell myself that I was safe, but… I don’t think I am anymore. Not since I heard a knock on my door the other night. I wanted so badly to believe it was nothing, just neighborhood kids messing around, but my head has been pounding ever since I heard it, my stomach twisted in knots, my breath short. I can’t sleep through the night anymore. I find myself staring out the window, watching. Sometimes, among the twinkling fireflies at the edge of the woods, I could swear I see a pair of glowing eyes watching me in the dark.