It was my first night shift. Working extra at a gas station is pretty far from every boy’s dream, but it pays the bills. I was hell-bent on not having another opportunity slip out of my hands because of money. One small investment and a move to Minneapolis, and I would’ve had a six-figure salary; but I just couldn’t find the funds. So there I was, stocking the shelves at a gas station. Money is money, and there’s plenty of future to go around, I figured.
I’d worked a few day shifts before, so I knew the place well enough. However, I’d never been left alone for the night shift before. This was the first time I’d be completely unsupervised. Jada, my supervisor, was about to take off for the night. She kept repeating the same instructions over and over. Then again, this place had huge turnover; maybe she honestly forgot I wasn’t that new.
“No phones,” she urged. “If you got a slow night, make yourself useful.”
Nod and smile.
I decided to get the worst tasks out of the way early. Cleaning the bathroom, restocking the freezers, taking out the trash, checking the receipt rolls, watering the plants. Took me about an hour. It wasn’t even midnight yet, and I was pretty much done for the night. I considered mopping the floor, but I figured I could save that for later.
I’d been useful enough.
I was on my fourth game of Teamfight Tactics when I realized I’d forgotten my name tag. No big deal, really, but figured I might as well fetch it. The manager’s office was usually locked, but tonight I had the keys to it. I opened the door and started going through the drawers.
Didn’t take long to find the name tags.
There was an entire box of them.
At first I thought they were all blanks, but as I started going through them, I realized they were all previous employees. Sure, this place had high turnover, but this? We were talking a hundred people, easy. This was ridiculous.
I admit, this is where I started asking myself some questions. During the day shift there was always someone new. Someone being trained or interviewed. I had only been there for about a week, and I was already feeling like a veteran. The only people who seemed to be regulars where the managers. Jada, Kennedy, and Alicia. They seemed decent enough. So why were so many people quitting?
As I got back behind the register, I realized there was a customer outside.
Literally just outside the door.
I waved at them. There was something off. They were just standing there, but they were so close that the automated doors should’ve opened. And yet, the door remained closed.
It was a man. Late 30’s, scraggly beard, rough red shirt. Bit of a chunky look with sunken bloodshot eyes and a natural frown. He just stared at me.
I waved at him again, but I got no response.
“Can I help you?” I called out.
Nothing. Not a blink.
I pulled out a chair and sat down. The man stayed outside, looking in. I tried not to think about it, but it was bothering me. I couldn’t see his car anywhere on the cameras, and he didn’t seem to want anything. I couldn’t tell if he was on drugs or just… being weird. I gave him a few minutes, but he just stood there. Finally, I got up from my chair.
“Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”
He didn’t seem to listen. He was a bit shorter than me, but he had a good 50 pounds on me. He’d be trouble in a brawl.
“I don’t want to call the police,” I said. “Can I help you, sir?”
I pulled out my phone and held it up for him to see. I dialed the number and held it up for him to see, but still, nothing.
Then, my phone rang.
Unknown caller. It was just past midnight. Without letting the unnerving man out of my sight, I took the call.
“Yeah?” I answered.
“Please don’t hang up,” a voice on the other end said. “You’re in danger, and I can help.”
I was getting nervous. I wandered back and forth, watching those bloodshot eyes follow me.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“I’m Angie,” the voice responded. “I used to work there. Same shift, same managers. I wanted to warn you.”
I’d seen an Angie-tag in the box earlier. Maybe even several. She sounded young, and nervous as all hell.
“In a few hours, something terrible is gonna happen,” she continued. “And if you’re not out by then, you might as well be dead.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look outside!”
I’d been looking outside this entire time, but I’d been entirely focused on this one man outside the front door. From across the road, I could see more people. About a dozen, lumbering out of the woods.
“I need you to leave,” she said. “Just walk out. Nothing will happen if you just walk away. Nothing will come for you.”
“Who… who are these people? What’s gonna happen? I-I… I don’t know what-“
“Look!” she interrupted. “It is perfectly simple! Just walk out the door!”
Something in me screamed for me not to do it. That I shouldn’t step outside and walk past these people. They felt malicious, and I couldn’t put my finger on why.
Still, I stepped up to the door. Leaving seemed like the obvious choice.
Strangely, it didn’t open.
“It won’t open,” I said. “Hold on.”
“They… they want to keep you in there. They don’t want you to leave. They want you to stay and die.”
“Die?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
I stopped my pacing. Something was wrong. Was I locked in?
“Tell me exactly what is about to happen,” I demanded.
“Something is in there with you,” Angie sighed. “It could be five minutes. It could be a few hours. But that thing, in there, is coming for you.”
“And what thing are we talking about?”
The man with the bloodshot eyes had two people joining him. A young man with a grotesque overbite, and a young woman who could easily be mistaken for a child. All of them stared at me with the same broken eyes and rough clothes. They stopped, inches short of the front door.
“It doesn’t have a name,” Angie said. “But it’ll leave you empty. It’ll leave you like the people out front.”
“But if I leave, I’ll be okay?”
“Yes! That’s what I’m telling you!”
“Hold on, I’ll check the back.”
I hurried out back to the employee entrance. I pressed down the cold handle, and the door swung open.
Outside were another group of four people. Two young men, an older woman, and a girl no more than 16 years old. They all stared at me. I couldn’t tell if they were drawn to me, or the store. I stopped short of stepping through the door.
“Why do… do they come here?” I asked Angie.
“They serve their master. They want the spoils.”
“What spoils? What-“
I thought about it. She was talking about me.
“Right,” I said, nodding to myself. “I see.”
“Are you at the back door? Are you there yet?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m here.”
“Just walk out,” she whispered. “It’s not too late.”
I was just about to walk out, when a thought hit me. Why would they lock the front door, but not the back? That didn’t make any sense. If the purpose was to keep me here, they could easily barricade the back as well.
Something didn’t add up.
“The door is open,” I said.
“Great! You can still make it!”
“Why wouldn’t they lock the back door, Angie?”
She hesitated, and there was a brief pause.
“If they’re locking me in here to hurt me, why wouldn’t they lock the back door?” I repeated.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But you have to trust me.”
“They gave me the keys, Angie. They go everywhere. I can lock and unlock this door a hundred times. What’s going on?”
“They… they don’t usually do that.”
I closed the door and stepped back. Four less pairs of eyes staring at me.
“Look,” said Angie. “I was the last person to leave. They fucked up. I found a spare key and got out before it was too late. Maybe… maybe they figured I’d warn you. Maybe they’re trying to trick you.”
“Sure, yeah,” I chuckled. “Convenient.”
“I’m trying to help you!” she cried out. “Those things out there are to discourage you from going outside! They’re harmless, but they’re there to scare you! Can’t you see it is all just a way for them to keep you in there?!”
“I got one person screaming at me to go outside, and no one telling me to stay! No locked doors, just plenty of… fucking creeps staring at me! What am I supposed to believe?!”
“Fine, you want more proof? Call the police. Hang up and call them.”
I ended the call.
There were eight people out front by now. All gathering outside the front door. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to get in, or if they were waiting for me to step out. I called the emergency services, only to be met with silence. Not even a dial tone, just a blank nothing.
I tried a few more numbers. My mom, my friends. I tried going online, but all I got was cached copies of sites I’d been to before. My background picture had changed to a black screen.
But there was something else. Something had started to smell. The freshly stocked frozen goods had suddenly gone bad, and a stench was oozing out of the freezers. Our flowers by the counter had withered and died. All except the sunflowers, which’d turned a sickly blue.
I wasn’t getting through to anyone. Being inside was awful. The single serving frozen meals were making me gag. I figured I’d go for the landline.
As I got in the manager’s office I got another call on my phone. Unknown caller. Looking back and forth between my phone and the landline, I weighed my options.
I chose Angie.
“How are you getting through?” I asked her. “How do you know my number?”
“I still got the e-mail password. I just checked your application.”
“But how come your number works? Everything else is down.”
“I’m calling from a private network,” she said. “They don’t know there’s a way in.”
“They?” I asked. “I thought it was just one thing.”
“No, they’re working together. People don’t just go missing without someone noticing.”
“So there’s like a… an intelligence behind it. A conspiracy.”
“Yeah. People come and go in these places all the time. Are they paying you under the table?”
“They figured, uh… it was sort of a trial, and-“
“No paperwork. No missing people. No records. Just a box of name tags.”
It made sense, in a way. But I needed more. I needed proof. There had to be something.
“Why didn’t you call me earlier?” I asked. “You could’ve called me as soon as I got the job, or… or as soon as my shift started.”
“I had to make sure Jada wasn’t around,” she said. “She would’ve tried to trick you.”
“I’m not sure you’re not trying to trick me.”
“Why would I spend my time calling you from across the country just to have you fail?!” she screamed. “If I was part of this, I would’ve just let you sit there with your goddamn Teamfight Tactics and die!”
She went quiet. So did I. I counted my breaths as I looked outside. There were more of them now.
“How did you know what I was playing?” I asked.
She didn’t respond. The silence hung in the air.
“I’m asking you, how did you know what I was playing?!”
She was just as quiet as the man with the bloodshot eyes, still waiting for me outside the door.
“You’re watching. You knew I was alone. You knew I was getting antsy about the guy showing up outside.”
“Yeah,” she sighed.
“You tried to get me out as soon as he showed up. You tried to trick me before there were too many of them to scare me off.”
“That’s… that’s not…”
She sighed. I could hear heavy breathing.
As I paced back and forth, I was getting ready to hang up. This was a trick. She was the one tricking me, clearly. Trying to get me outside, to… join those things.
“I know this looks bad,” she said. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m honestly just trying to help you.”
This time I was the one keeping quiet. I walked up to the door, studying the people outside. Blank stares, following my every move. I felt like a snake charmer, like they could snap out of it and tear me apart in the blink of an eye.
“As I said, I-I… I have the passwords for everything. I’m the only one who knows them. I just wanted to give you the best shot at getting out of there. I hoped they wouldn’t come tonight, but as soon as they did, I just… I had to do something.”
“You’re not being honest with me.”
“I’m not lying, I’m just… just having a hard time explaining it. There’s a lot of shit about this that all sounds completely insane. I don’t want to throw you off the deep end.”
“Give it to me straight,” I demanded. “Tell me what the fuck is coming for me.”
“It’s not a… thing. Like, not real. It’s there, but it’s just… I don’t know how to explain it. It just steps through.”
“Steps through what?”
“The world. The air. A ripple in time or… or something. It just steps in, and it’s there.”
“And then?”
“Then it shoves some kind of mouth spike into your head and gargles up something inside.”
“A mouth spike? What the hell are you-“
“Yes, a spike. And no, I mean… it goes into your mouth. It doesn’t have a mouth of it’s own. It just goes into you and… gone. Game over.”
I didn’t know what to think. My mind was a jumbled mess, and I felt my pulse rising and falling. There were over 18 people outside in various states of disarray. All of them just staring at me. If I just stepped outside, I’d know for sure.
“What does it look like? Does it-“
The lights flickered. There was a loud hum, a buzz, and then an electric failure. One of the fluorescent lights burned out, while the others just slowly dimmed to nothing. This was real. It was make or break by this point. Something was happening.
“The lights went out,” I whispered. “Is this-“
“Now!” Angie screamed. “Get out, now!”
I ran.
I tripped and tumbled my way into the back room in complete darkness. I almost twisted my ankle as I bumped into the lunch table. I could barely hear my thoughts, and I had to remind myself to breathe. The roof of my mouth ached, as if anticipating a piercing pain. I could feel my head filling with blood and adrenaline, as my dry eyes refused to blink.
As I put my hand on the back door, I did the mistake of pulling instead of pushing. It took me three tries before a thought hit me.
I couldn’t see the sign on the door because of the darkness.
In fact, I couldn’t see anything.
Nothing.
“A-Angie?” I wheezed, putting my phone to my ear. “You there?”
“Hurry!” she screamed. “You can make it!”
“How did you see it?”
“The thing was huge, it just-“
“No, how did you… you see it in… in complete darkness? Y-You said the lights went out.”
“It was right there!”
“I can’t even see the sign on the back door, how the hell did you see a spike?!”
“Look, I-“
“And to add to that, how the hell do you know what it does with that spike?! You’ve never seen the thing kill, you said you were the last one to work this shift! And the thing sure as hell didn’t kill you!”
“You’re missing the point, I-“
“It doesn’t add up, Angie! None of this adds up! You couldn’t have seen it, and there’s no way for you to know how it kills!”
I stood there in the dark. I heard Angie panting on the other side, matching my breathing.
“You’re lying to me Angie! You’re not trying to save me!”
She stopped breathing. For about a minute, it was just quiet. The call ended.
A wave washed over me. I was either dead or saved, there was no in-between. I was moments from finding out. Every little sound shook me. A breeze just outside. A crackling wire. Ventilation struggling to turn back on.
I hadn’t even noticed my hand was on the door handle.
“You lied to me,” I said out loud. “You… you did. I caught you.”
There was a sound coming from the other side of the door. A shuffling of feet.
“Yes,” said Angie.
From the other side of the door.
I must’ve stood there for an hour until the power came back on. The people outside were gone. Angie was gone. My phone worked just fine, so I called everyone and just cried for help. The police found me locked in the bathroom in a full panic, and I barely even remember being escorted out.
Cameras had picked up a mob gathering outside, but that was pretty much it. They couldn’t be identified from the back of their heads. Jada and the other managers were called in, and they seemed genuinely surprised.
I’ve since looked it up. A hundred people starting and quitting their job in a place like that isn’t uncommon. People come and go all the time. The managers honestly didn’t know why people disappeared, it seems. Maybe this is just how things work. Or maybe there’s more than one Angie out there, preying on short-term workers.
And the front door? There was no conspiracy there. The thing just jams sometimes, some kind of trouble with the wiring. If I’d messed with it just a bit more, the thing could’ve kicked wide open.
That broken door was the only thing that saved me from joining them that night. I would’ve walked right out as soon as Angie asked me to.
I worked there for another four months, but just day shifts and weekends. The night shifts seemed to go off without a hitch though. Maybe Angie and her friends moved on from an easy meal.
I’ve saved up enough money for my move to Minneapolis, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t put this into writing. Looking back at it, it feels surreal.
There are things out there.
Things that want us to join them.