About twenty years ago, I used to work for a company in Glasgow that made furniture in an old rundown warehouse by the River Clyde. While I was there, I saw something that has haunted me ever since. I’m still not sure what it was. Maybe you can help me out with that.
The workshop was owned by a man named Bill Miller. I was 17 at the time and hadn’t gotten on well at school. I had almost no qualifications, but Bill gave me a shot at learning how to craft and build wooden furniture.
Initially, I hated the idea. It sounded like something an old man should have been doing, not a 17-year-old. But my parents were over the moon that I had at least found work and even a possible trade.
The workshop was filled with old machinery way past its prime, and the warehouse was far larger than it needed to be. I think at one time Bill’s business had prospered when he had employed a large team for decades, but it looked to me like those days were numbered. He now worked on his own. Still, he took me in. I think more than anything he wanted to pass on skills that were soon going to be lost forever as everything modernised.
Bill must have been in his sixties at the time. He was eccentric and used to wear brightly coloured clothes in his workshop like he thought he was an art teacher. From my first day, I was put off by how happy he always was. I guess I was a bit of an edge lord back then and thought he was passed it. I’m ashamed to say that it took me a while to come around to him and see him for what he was: a sweet guy who just wanted to help a kid who had no prospects.
For the first few weeks, he shadowed me closely and showed me the ropes, teaching me the names of all the tools and what they did. Then he moved me onto some basic tasks I was to repeat over and over.
He was always saying ‘this is how I got my start’ or ‘in three years you won’t believe what you’ll be able to make’.
He had a strange view of the world. The way he taught carpentry and other skills, he talked about it like it was secretly so important, and that we as furniture makers were sharing in that secret. That we were creating something new in the world and were making furniture that would last a hundred years and bring joy and comfort to people.
‘Who knows who’ll own some of these pieces in the generations to come?’ he’d say, a twinkle in his eye and a kind grin behind a bushy greying beard. He was so enthusiastic about it all.
The first time I saw that smile melt away was one day when I headed to the rear of the warehouse during my lunch break. Bill was upfront working on a set of dining chairs. When he was focusing like that, he rarely looked up to see what I was doing.
I guess I was bored having no one else to talk to, so I decided to explore the building a little.
At the rear of the main workshop room, there was a faded, brown wooden door. I had noticed it a few times, though never thought much of it. As I wandered to the back of the large main room, I found myself turning the door handle and going inside.
There was a windowless corridor made of red brick that moved off to the left. It was lit by some dull yellow incandescent bulbs overhead. As I stood there, I thought I heard a noise, though I couldn’t quite make it out. I started walking towards the end of the corridor where it turned to the right at a sharp angle. As I did, the noise got a little louder. But I still couldn’t put together what it was in my mind.
I remember that when I reached the sharp turn, I suddenly realised that Bill was behind me. He nearly made me jump out of my skin.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
I’d never known his voice to be so blank, so lacking in emotion. I turned and saw that all the happiness that so easily flowed from the man had gone. He had a stern expression like one of my old teachers about to chastise me.
‘I was just looking around,’ I think I said.
Then he told me: ‘You don’t need to be in here. I’ve got a problem with a leak and some mould in those back rooms. It’s not good to breathe that stuff in.’
I shrugged my shoulders and walked back into the workshop.
Even though Bill seemed tense in a way I wasn’t used to, I didn’t ask about it, and I spent the rest of the afternoon sweeping up the main area in the warehouse.
I didn’t think much more of it until the following day.
I came into work and Bill was already there. He was whistling away as usual, finishing up on the dining chair set. The air was filled with the strong smell of the varnish he was using.
‘Morning,’ I said.
He looked up from his work and smiled.
But when I walked past him to go and put my bag and coat on its peg on the wall, he cleared his throat like he had something on his mind.
‘I meant to say… I had a good look at those rooms back there after yesterday,’ he said, pointing to the wooden door at the rear of the room. ‘It had been a while since I last checked. It’s worse than I thought. The mould, I mean. Spores in the air, I’m sure of it. So, you don’t be going in there, okay? I want you to promise me that.”
‘Sure,’ I said.
He stared at me. ‘Promise.’
I nodded. ‘Okay. I promise.’
I was a little surprised, annoyed even, by his tone. But it was more than that. The door to the back corridors was now no longer accessible. Bill wasn’t just telling me to not go in there, he had moved an old metal work bench in front of it and then stacked boxes on top of that.
I felt like a child being told not to play with matches.
It’s not like I couldn’t have moved those things if I’d had a few minutes. That wasn’t what bothered me. What got under my skin was that Bill clearly didn’t trust me. He’d told me not to go back there already and that should have been enough, but he had taken the time to stack up things in front of the door like I was going to go down there no matter what he said.
I didn’t express this, though. I got on with the rest of my work, but throughout the day, I kept looking back at the door with the bench in front of it. It reminded me of worse times.
Two years before, when I was still at school, I had been suspended because a teacher did not believe my side of a story after a fight with another kid, and that sort of thing always stuck in my throat ever since. Not being believed or trusted, well, I took that as a personal insult.
I know it sounds ridiculous now, but I kept thinking that day that Bill was just like the rest.
He seemed to notice me looking back over my shoulder a couple of times throughout the day, and he grumbled to himself about not being able to put a lock on the door, which I didn’t really understand.
Despite feeling like I should go back there just to ‘show him’, I wasn’t going to do that. My parents would have made my life hell if I had lost my apprenticeship, and besides, now a few weeks into the job, I was enjoying some of it. There was no hassle. I got a little money out of it, and I even started to think about what it would be like to open my own place like Bill one day.
I let the whole thing go.
But Bill didn’t.
Later that afternoon, I was sweeping up again when I heard a loud bang. There was no doubt about where it had come from. I watched as Bill turned and looked at the door. He stared at it for longer than necessary. All the blood had drained from his face, and he looked ill, much older than he usually did.
He didn’t say anything, he simply walked up to the door and put his hands on the metal bench and boxes, almost as if to see if it was sturdy enough.
‘You can go home early,’ he said without looking at me.
I was okay with that - who doesn’t like to clock off early? - but when I grabbed my things and said goodbye to Bill, he seemed completely preoccupied, like he was mulling something gravely serious over and over in his mind.
The next morning, I was getting ready to go to work when my mum got a phone call from Bill. He said that I wasn’t to go in. Some problem with the building that he had to sort.
So, I took the day off and enjoyed having a bit of spare time to myself.
But the next day, I was getting ready again, and we got another call from Bill. He told my mum that everything was fine, but that I should take the day off again while he fixed whatever was going on. He kept saying something about the air being bad.
This went on for two weeks, and eventually, my dad grew frustrated. He thought Bill wanted to get rid of me for some reason but didn’t have the heart to come out and say it.
My dad had been in the army when he was younger, and he always had that same hardened air about him that you sometimes see in veterans, but he also had anger issues boiling away underneath. We rarely got on.
I could always tell when he was going to intervene in something because he would get out the black suit that he almost never wore and would spend the evening pressing it and shining his shoes like he was going on a military drill the next day.
As sure as clockwork, I woke up in the morning and Bill phoned again to say that I still couldn’t come in. My dad got dressed in his suit, told me to put my work clothes on, and then we drove down to Bill’s warehouse. During the drive, my dad was gritting his teeth, his jaw clenched and talking bad about Bill.
He hated when people weren’t forthright. And he felt I was getting the runaround. One thing my dad had was a temper, and it could come at any time. I had gotten used to seeing when it was winding up, ready to explode. I was genuinely worried about what he was going to say to Bill. Sometimes I wished my dad would stay out of things, but I knew when it was pointless to argue. He was going to let out whatever stress was burning a hole in his stomach no matter what.
When we turned up at the warehouse, I could hear one of the circular saws running inside. That meant Bill was working.
Dad opened the door to the warehouse and we stepped inside.
Bill didn’t notice us at first, he was cutting large sections of timber on the circular saw. My eyes were drawn immediately to the rear of the room. I couldn’t believe it. There, in front of the door that led to the back rooms, was now a huge wooden frame. I knew what it was immediately. Bill was constructing some sort of wall. He was literally blocking off the door and the corridors and rooms beyond it, though he hadn’t gotten much further than the large frame.
‘Bill!’ I remember my dad shouting over the noise.
Well, it all went to pot then. For the first time that I had seen, Bill grew angry. He questioned why we were there and was short with my dad.
‘You need to go!’ he said, walking over to us, waving his hands about trying to usher us out of the door.
This was like a red rag to a bull for my dad. He hated anyone trying to tell him what to do, even more so than me. He started shouting over Bill. And I was kind of ashamed of my dad then. He puffed his chest out and towered over him, and I could see that Dad was basically trying to physically intimidate the old guy into backing down.
‘Dad, let’s just go,’ I remember saying.
But he wasn’t having any of it.
‘You agreed to train my son,’ he said in a booming voice. ‘It’s been two weeks without work or pay. Two weeks he could have been out there looking for another job! Now you disrespect him and me by cutting him off without even telling us!? Why!?”
Bill hesitated then. ‘I’m not cutting him off… I never said that. There’s bad air in the building. It isn’t safe. I can’t have him working here until it is.’
My dad looked around. ‘I don’t see you wearing a mask to protect you from this so-called bad air. There’s no smell of any mould or anything. What are you doing here?’
Dad marched past Bill. He always had a way of going overboard and sticking his nose into other people’s business. I guess it’s where I get my fiery side.
I remember Dad walking up to the wooden frame at the back of the room, and Bill jumped in front of him like he was trying to stop something terrible from happening.
I won’t give you a blow-by-blow account, but things escalated. Bill pushed my dad in the chest, and then dad started to yell, saying that he was sure Bill was up to something bad. Dad yelled that he was going to look in the back and find out just what the old man was hiding.
I know exactly why he did that. Whenever my dad would get into a confrontation like that, he’d always try to find something to get under the other person’s skin. It was like whatever the argument was about no longer mattered. Now, it was only about getting the other person more and more upset.
Dad pushed Bill aside and walked up to the wooden frame and climbed through it. Then, he put his shoulder into the door and it opened.
‘There’s no bad air in here,’ he said, looking into the red-bricked corridor before turning back to Bill. ‘You’re hiding something, aren’t you? What is it?’
‘Please don’t go in there,’ Bill said, his voice wavering. I’ll never forget the fear in his eyes.
But dad went inside anyway. Bill tried to stop me, but I felt I had to follow my dad, he’d have accused me of being a turncoat otherwise, so I went in, too.
Dad marched along the hallway and turned at the corner. I was close behind him and noticed that a couple of the light bulbs on the ceiling seemed to flicker as we passed. There must have been four or five doors to various storage rooms around the corner and what was probably an old office, going by the faded sign on one of the doors.
But there was only one door that we headed for, and it was because there was a sound coming from beyond it. The same sound I had heard, but now, closer to it, I could tell what it was. We could hear a sort of muffled voice, like a woman’s.
‘He’s got someone locked up in there!’ my dad said loudly. ‘The old pervert!’
I didn’t know what to say. He was right. There was definitely someone in that room, talking like they were gagged or something. It was like the woman couldn’t quite get out her words.
Dad wasn’t going to hang around. He went to the door and opened it. I was behind and looking over his shoulder. My dad was taller than me, so I stretched up to see inside.
It was a dusty storeroom made from the same red brick as the corridor, but with shelves and cardboard boxes strewn around. A single yellow light bulb glistened above it, casting shadows all around. In the middle of the floor was a space, and occupying part of it was a large old wooden chest with what looked like a closed, hinged top.
I was taken aback by how tall and wide it was, the top of it almost as high as my chest.
‘Please leave me alone!’ I remember Bill shouting from back at the workshop. I guess he was too frightened to go all the way in to where we were.
Dad stepped into the room and I quickly followed.
The woman’s voice was coming from inside the chest.
It was muffled and it sounded almost like she was choking on water as she tried to speak.
There was something about the chest that added to the apprehension building inside of me. I had seen enough of Bill’s workmanship to know that he was the one who had made the chest, though it looked to be decades old.
Have you ever had a fear that stopped you from doing something? I have, and it was at that moment. I wanted to open the lid, but somehow I knew I shouldn’t.
My dad had no such hesitation. He reached forward to the chest.
I shouted ‘No!’
But it was too late, he pulled up on the lid and it creaked open. There was a horrible stench like sewage, and I could see that the chest was filled to the brim with a viscous, black liquid. On the surface was a thick film which looked like congealed wax or fat. This bobbed around on the top as the liquid quivered.
My dad stopped and stared at the water as if he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was looking at.
Something then sprung out of the chest, almost like a jack in a box. It was covered in white cloth, and I remember the arms reaching out and grabbing my dad by the throat and hair. It yanked him forward into the chest so that his head and shoulders disappeared into the inky, black liquid contained within.
I could hear my dad drowning and screaming under the liquid, his legs and body still dangling out of the chest. I leapt forward and grabbed hold of him, but whatever was in the chest had him in a vice-like grip. It wasn’t going to let go any time soon.
I realised in that moment that my dad was going to die if I didn’t do something about it. Panicked and feeling helpless, I looked around the room for anything that could save him, but nothing jumped out at me. Then, I finally thought of something.
I rushed out of the room and along the red-bricked corridor, turned left and then I was through the door back into the dusty workshop.
Bill was standing there, white as a sheet.
‘It’s got him!’ I said. ‘It’s got my dad!’
He didn’t say anything, he just stood there like a rabbit caught in headlights.
I ran and grabbed a heavy rubber mallet we used for knocking large dowels into wood, and then I was off again, down the corridor and back into that room.
Dad had stopped moving. His body was limp. All that I could hear now was the sound of the black liquid lapping up against him as cloth-covered hands started to pull the rest of his body inside the chest.
I rushed forward and lifted the mallet as high as I could and brought it smashing into the side of the chest. The wood was too thick. I smacked it again and again, hoping I could crack the damned thing open. But it was no use.
It was only then that someone rushed passed me.
‘That won’t do it, Son,’ Bill said, holding a large wood axe in his hands.
He stepped up and hit the chest on the right side again and again. Each time it splintered and cracked. Black, festering liquid poured out through those cracks onto the floor and I watched as Bill carefully made sure none of it touched him.
Then, there was a garbled scream from the inky water as the surface level now dipped suddenly. I pulled at my dad’s lifeless body in that moment. As Bill cracked the entire Chest in two, I lurched back and I fell to the floor, Dad falling on top of me.
Looking up, I saw nothing but black liquid draining away on the floor, moving under the doorway and then, it was as if none of it had happened. The floor was bone dry.
‘He’s drowned,’ I said, tears in my eyes.
‘No, he hasn’t,’ the old man replied. ‘The water is gone from him, too.’
Bill came over to my dad, turned him on his side and smacked him on the back. Some black fluid spewed from his mouth, and that too seemed to unnaturally run out under the door and into the corridor. Then, Bill rolled my dad back over on the ground and carried out CPR.
Thankfully, Dad coughed a few times and suddenly opened his eyes.
Within a few minutes, we were able to get him onto his feet and bring him back into the workshop without saying a word.
Bill made us some coffee and got an old stove going in the corner of the warehouse to keep my old man warm.
As I draped a blanket around Dad’s shoulders, who now seemed older somehow than he ever had before, Bill told us only enough to make sure we didn’t call the police.
As far as I remember, he said something along the lines of: ‘I don’t know what that thing is. I found it here when I moved into the warehouse. It was kept in an old oil barrel under the floorboards.’
‘How did it end up in the chest?’ I asked, still in shock.
‘I made it for the thing,’ he replied. ‘One of my apprentices, a few years back, opened the oil drum by accident and I had a hell of a time getting him out of it when the thing inside grabbed him. The boy ran out of here immediately. He was never the same, he had a streak of white through his hair after that.’
My dad said nothing. He just stared at the floor as if looking into a pit that could swallow him up at any time.
‘I realised the oil drum was corroded and could leak at any moment,’ Bill continued. ‘I was scared the thing would get out and hurt someone else, so, I got the barrel up with a winch and then drained every last drop into that chest I made.’
‘Why,’ my dad started, finally. ‘Why didn’t you secure it?’
‘I tried,’ Bill said. ‘You see, the thing, it seems to know when it’s locked up. I put a lock on that chest years ago. I even had a lock on the door. But whenever there was a lock, something terrible always followed.’
‘Like what?’ I asked.
Bill looked profoundly sad as if thinking about something he wished he could forget. ‘Just trust me when I say, bad things happened. I took the locks off after that. I won’t go over it anymore.’
‘It’s gone now though, right?’ Dad asked.
Bill shook his head. ‘Whoever put it in that barrel and under the floor meant it to be kept away. Now, it’s drained into the building, into the ground. It’ll be here somewhere… I’ll need to shut the whole place up now. I suppose it’s been coming for a long time. Serves me right for wanting some company around here.’
He smiled at me. I felt sorry for him.
After that, my dad started to get angry. He chewed Bill out for putting me in danger by having me work there. I think that’s something I’ve never really understood. Maybe he wanted the company, as he said, or maybe he was frightened to be alone in that building, but couldn’t bring himself to move on and close down a lifetime of work.
There’s not much more I can say about it. I never went back to the warehouse. After floating around for a while, I got a job working and training in the Merchant Navy as an engineer. Life’s been good for the most part, but I do think about what happened in Bill’s old workshop; quite often, in fact.
I’m not sure that I can give you an exact explanation, but I can tell you some things that followed.
A few years ago, I started to research the history of the warehouse. I discovered that long before Bill owned it, the building was used as a temporary mortuary during the Spanish Flu outbreak, when so many died in the city that they had problems storing people’s remains.
The backlog for cremations and burials was so great, that bodies were decomposing long before they could be embalmed for later funerals. One comment I found in an old newspaper cutting reported about a public outcry when there were rumours that a shortage of the usual chemicals used for preservation resulted in ‘improvised techniques for preserving the dead’.
One such rumour was that the bodies were being kept in barrels of machine oil.
The last thing I’ll say is this: Bill shut his workshop down after the chest was broken open and the liquid poured out. I’ll never forget what he said about that. ‘Now it’s drained into the building, into the ground. It’ll be around here somewhere…’
Bill’s body was found at the workshop two years after that. He had apparently been checking on the building after it had been damaged slightly during a storm.
Though the cause of death was recorded as ‘unknown’, the pathologist left a note that, while Bill Miller’s body presented all the signs of death by drowning, no water was ever found in his lungs.