My mother died recently. Murdered, in fact. We just received her things from the police. A big fuss was made over something that was found on her phone, and while they decided to hold onto it for the purposes of their investigation, they hadn’t anticipated that many of the things tied to her phone were uploaded to our family’s cloud storage. I’m posting this here, not to glorify or exonerate her murderer, but to give myself some sort of closure. Attempt to, anyway. What follows is the message in its entirety, and I’ve also taken the liberty to transcribe an excerpt from the local nightly news that aired that evening, in the hopes it will provide further context to exactly what happened. My mother was a good woman who didn’t deserve what happened to her, and I know she would want the truth of what happened out there.
The message on her phone:
Have you ever had a bad day at work? I’m not just talking about a day where little to nothing goes your way, or you get passed over for that promotion that comes with that sweet sweet pay raise that you so desperately need. Or even a day where you messed up so bad you’re sure to be unemployed by the end of it. No, I mean a bad day as in all of those things, with the addition of the S.W.A.T teams sitting outside in the parking lot with several heavily armored vehicles. Many of your favorite customers are dead, most of the regulars now that I think about it, their vehicles abandoned in the parking lot. One of them is upside down and burning. They are trying to get you to exit the building, but you know the moment you do, you’re dead.
It started not long after my shift began. I work part time at a gas station down the road. It’s my second job, my first being a maintenance man at the apartments where I live. I share many clients between the two, most of my regulars at the gas station also happen to live at the apartments where I spend most of my days, 8am to 5pm. I took the second job at the gas station a few months ago because my pay at the apartments hasn’t been enough to cut it, I have a wife and three kids to support, after all. Most of my shifts at the gas station are weekdays in the evenings, after I get off work from my first job, and every Sunday morning to Sunday evening I work here by myself, covering the shift alone. Sunday mornings here at the store are usually pretty relaxed, I say usually because this Sunday’s shift has been everything but.
It started like it always does. I got here slightly before my shift began to open everything up, flip on lights, make coffee, and get everything ready to flip the sign from closed to open. Upon arriving, I noticed a couple of utility trucks parked at the far end of the parking lot, and several workers wearing bright neon work vests all standing around a fairly large hole in the ground. One fat old man was inside of a small backhoe, excavating some utility line I assumed. It’s not an odd sight, even for a bright and early Sunday morning, and seeing a half a dozen workers standing around watching one person work is a fairly common sight. Our tax dollars, hard at work. One of the men noticed me arriving and walked over.
“Good morning, what’re you fellas working on?” I asked when he got close enough to hear me over the diesel powered machine doing all the work behind him.
“Morning. Trying to replace a water valve, the crew that was working on it yesterday accidentally cut the internet while digging it up. Hopefully they’ll have it fixed and back up sometime today. No water or internet in the meantime.”
“No worries, if you fellas get hungry or thirsty, or just need to use the restroom, come over and see me.” I replied.
He thanked me, and I went on about my duties. The gas station is on a road that can get pretty busy during the weekdays, but on weekends we usually don’t have many customers, especially early on a Sunday morning, and this Sunday was no exception. Going about my Sunday morning routine with almost no interruptions, as usual, it was about an hour and a half in that I took my first smoke break, a nasty habit I know, and one I was still having trouble trying to kick. I stepped outside and was about halfway into my smoke when I noticed all of the utility workers were gone. I didn’t think this too odd, the only odd part being that all of their equipment and both of their work trucks were still there, parked on the far side of the parking lot. I finished my cigarette and went about my shift, thinking no more about it.
I made a mistake, one that if I had been thinking properly I would have gone “Duh” and prevented, but the odd circumstance of having no running water conflicted with my ingrained routine. Forgetting that the coffee machine ran off of the now defunct water line, the glass coffee pot had shattered from being empty and on a burner for too long without any liquid inside of it. “My bad” I thought as I swept up the shards that littered the floor. Some had shattered and flew as far as behind the counter, even. I guess no coffee for any of my regulars, they’d get over it.
Around 10am, when most of the regulars start staggering by, a couple of them mentioned something about the work trucks across the way. All of them said something about an odd smell. They must be taking an early lunch or something, because they were still gone, or so I thought at the time. As for the smell, I couldn’t smell anything. One customer mentioned something about an odd sucking noise coming from somewhere around the side of the building. I brushed it off, if you’ve ever worked with the public, in particular at a gas station, you know just how odd and random some people can be. One time an older gentleman got into an argument with a woman about the termites on Noah’s Ark. His argument: there had to be at least two of them. Her argument: they would have destroyed the boat. People say weird stuff all the time, I guess is my point.
It was about half an hour and several customers later before I noticed that we had quite a few vehicles in the parking lot, and yet there was currently nobody in the store, it was just me and my lonesome. I hadn’t had a customer in the store for about ten minutes. Upon closer inspection I recognized two of the vehicles as being ones owned by a couple of our regulars, ones who were just in the store not too long ago. It’s not too odd for people to sit in our parking lot, usually on the phone in their vehicles or running into an old friend and shooting the breeze for a while and catching up. I didn’t see anyone though. All of the vehicles were empty as far as I could tell.
It wasn’t until the next customer came in, an old man who usually came every day to play the lottery, that I decided to walk him to the exit and watch him through the glass door as he left, to make SURE that he left. He made it several steps outside the door before a giant tentacle swung down from on top of the building and snatched him up by the throat. It happened so quickly I wasn’t even sure what I had just witnessed. I jumped away from the door out of sheer reflex and knocked over a rack full of potato chips. What in the hell was that? What was going on? I ran back behind the counter and picked up the store phone, it was dead. Of course it was, I said, as I remembered it was hooked up through the internet, and the internet was still down. I had left my cell out in my car, a company policy that I had always disliked. If I walked out that door and tried to get it, that thing might get me too. I didn’t know what to do. Somebody had just been taken, possibly killed right in front of me and I had no way of calling the cops or an ambulance or anyone, really. I felt helpless and stranded, I was about to have a full blown panic attack.
Taking deep controlled breaths and trying to gain some form of precedent of what to do, I saw movement out in the parking lot. Another car had pulled up, and despite my attempts to warn and wave them away, they were snatched up as well. This time it was Mr. Ken, a great guy that lived at the apartments. He was always so considerate and willing to lend a hand when somebody around him was in need. He would give you the shirt off of his back, one only need ask. In a desperate attempt to save even a single human life, I turned the sign from open to closed, doubting that it would make much of a difference. Most people don’t notice small things like that, they would simply see a few vehicles in the parking lot and assume that we were open like we always were at this time of day. I had to do something, though. This was getting out of hand, indeed had started off out of hand, not to mention out of mind. I had personally just witnessed two people get snatched up by a writhing green tentacle, and by counting the empty vehicles in the parking lot could guess that at least three more had probably met a similar fate. That must have been the weird sucking sound I was asked about and also so easily dismissed as the comment of a person being weird. Odd people gonna odd, it’s what they do. Still though, now I wish I wouldn’t have dismissed it so easily as the ramblings of an old man. Live and learn, I guess. As for the odd smell every single customer had complained about, I can only assume that whatever that… thing… up there is, it stinks. I still haven’t smelled anything. I really gotta quit smoking.
A truck came barreling into the parking lot. It belonged to Mike, he was a younger guy with an annoyingly loud truck and no sense of how to park. We had gotten onto him before about pulling into the parking spaces at odd angles, selfishly taking up multiple spots. The kid just didn’t care, he was an entitled little moron, and ever since first meeting him he had just rubbed me the wrong way. Despite the fact that it would have put a smile on my face to watch him get snatched up by whatever the hell was taking our customers, I still tried to warn him as he walked up to the front door. Somehow, for reasons unknown to me, he actually made it into the store without being taken.
“Holy hell, you don’t know how lucky you just were!” I exclaimed.
He looked justifiably confused and only responded with a “Huh? What the hell is that smell?” covering his nose and mouth with a sleeve.
I attempted to fill him in on the situation. I could tell he didn’t believe me when he seemed to dismiss me and head for the cooler to get his obligatory energy drink.
“Are you paying attention? There is some kind of… tentacled thing out there.” I pleaded with him when he set the drink down on the counter.
“Whoa, are you okay?” he asked when he finally got a good look at me.
“Yeah- er I mean no. Didn’t you hear me? There’s a freakin… thing… out there. It’s getting people!” Then I notice him scanning me. The look on his face changed from slightly concerned to terrified as he did. He took a measured step back from the counter I’m standing behind.
“Yeah, whatever you say man. I don’t want any trouble…” He kept looking at something on the floor behind me, behind the counter.
Noticing how he’s acting toward me and the horrible acts he seems to think I’m capable of, I say “I’m not the dangerous one here, buddy, the danger is out there.” I point to the front door and the chaos that awaits beyond it.
“Whatever you say…” He’s holding his hands up, as if I were pointing a gun at him or something. Then, out of nowhere, he bolts for the door and makes it as I stand there dumbfounded by our entire exchange, his energy drink still sitting on the counter in front of the register, starting to sweat with condensation. I leaped the counter and ran after him to the door, not to catch and stop him as much as to witness whatever chaos was about to befall the kid. To his credit, he did glance up as he ran outside, and as the thing attempted to grab him he successfully ducked out of the way. Or had he merely stumbled? The look of sheer panic on his face was priceless, and in a mad dash he did manage to make it to his vehicle. He didn’t make it much further than that, as while he was chaotically backing up, a stream of several bulky tentacles shot from the roof and flipped his truck, then wrapped around and took him as he lay there upside down, the windshield busted. Tires still spinning helplessly pointed at the sky. As bad as I felt, I HAD warned the guy. I didn’t think how odd it was that when I looked again a moment later, his upside down truck was engulfed in flames. The fire was far enough away from the pumps, it probably wouldn’t explode the tanks. I hoped it wouldn’t, anyway.
That damn thing was up there, killing anything that walked into its view. It was getting hot. I turned on the air conditioning at the thermostat on the wall. The unit is located on the roof, with any luck, maybe the sound of the AC unit up there will scare it off. I doubt it, though.
Things started to really escalate when a state trooper showed up. He was probably driving past and noticed the fire. Once again I tried to warn the guy, and after he was taken, the other officer riding shotgun came running, gun drawn. He got dragged up there too. I watched, stunned and horrified from the front glass, and in taking a step back slipped on something in the process. It looked like blood, but it couldn’t be. It was only outside the door that everyone was killed as far as I could remember. And when did those bullet holes in the front glass get there? I don’t remember any shots being fired, even by that last cop that came running with his gun drawn. He got taken before he could even get a shot off, as far as I could tell.
Confusion crippled me on the spot as I attempted to make sense out of anything I had witnessed with my own eyes that day. Nothing made any sense, the blood, the bullet holes, the whole day seemed like a bad dream. Questions, too many questions. What in the hell was that tentacled thing on the roof? Where had it come from? Why did I have a burn on the back of my right hand? Where did I get this gun I just found tucked into my waist, behind my shirt? Had I had it the whole time? Was I going crazy? I needed answers, and as I stood there staring up at the ceiling in hopes to find where the blood was coming from, and wondering if it was from up there somewhere, from that thing killing all of my customers up on the roof, I saw something. Not blood, but something that could perhaps answer some of those questions. I saw one of our surveillance cameras. It was one of many, several positioned in key points around the store and several more outside on the building’s wall.
I bolted to the backroom, heading for the manager’s office. The door was locked and I broke the knob with a fire extinguisher. There on the desk in the corner was the computer that our cameras were routed to. I fumbled with it until I figured out how the security camera program worked. I had never used it before, that was strictly the manager’s job and I was just a low level cashier. It wasn’t too hard to figure out though, and as I browsed through the feeds, selecting the camera I wanted to watch and then rewinding it, something tickled in the back of my brain. A little voice telling me “Don’t do it” wasn’t easy to ignore, but I had been through hell today damnit, and I wanted answers.
I had my suspicions, and the first thing I wanted to confirm was about that damn creature. Those utility workers that were outside digging, they must have unearthed that monstrosity. I had read enough Lovecraft to know that when you dig into the earth deep enough, sometimes you can awaken ancient things that lay dormant, slumbering. Those fools must have done it, and it just so happened that we have a camera on that side of the building pointing right at them. The tape showed them all standing around the hole, then they all climbed down into it and were out of frame for the most part. Lastly, the old heavyset man in the backhoe climbs out and slowly descends into the hole. Then nothing. I fast forward. Still nothing, they never climbed back out. No monster emerges from it either. There was nothing in the grainy video up to the current moment. The camera must have glitched out at some point in the day, perhaps the mere sight of the ancient old one broke the camera itself, they’ve been known to break mens sanity by merely glancing upon them. Or maybe they just don’t show up on camera, like vampires? Yeah, it had to be one of those explanations.
I was in the process of looking through another camera feed, one pointed at the front entrance, when I heard a rustling noise behind me. I turn, barely fast enough to see something large and dark swinging at my head, then an explosion of white stars fills my vision as it struck hard. I hit the ground, disoriented and groaning in pain. A warm wet sensation starts where whatever made contact with my head had struck, then trickles down my forehead. Blood. Knocked to the floor, I feel something trying to subdue my arms. “It’s found a way inside the store!” I thought through the daze, and in a moment of panic I fought back, thrashing and lashing out at whatever was trying to kill me. Still half blind from the pain, my fists sail through the air above me, flailing about and hitting nothing, until finally one of them connects with something solid, and strikes it hard. I hear something crash into the stacks of boxes on the other side of the room, along with shattering glass, then it’s quiet.
I lay there for at least a minute, trying desperately to regain some of the equilibrium knocked out of me by that blow to the side of my skull, and gradually as the pain subsides and the stars recede from my vision, I look around to see a person crumpled into a heap on the other side of the room, a pool of blood growing around their head and their arms in awkward angles. Slowly and shakily, I make it back up on my feet. Dazed, I realize that I recognize the body lying limp in the corner, it’s my manager. Her pulse is weak, and as the pool of blood is growing alarmingly large at my feet, I take a step away from it before it can lick the toe of my shoes. It looked like she had landed onto a pile of boxes, ones that had contained liquor bottles. The impact broke several of them, and now their broken jagged necks jutted into her soft vulnerable neck.
How? When had she gotten here? Why did she attack me? The confusion, all of the unanswered mysteries that had flooded my day with their accompanying shittiness, I was done, just done. I definitely wouldn’t be getting that raise anytime soon, though honestly by that point, I was done with this job anyway. I mean, who wants to work at a place built on top of ancient creatures and elder gods? No amount of pay raise or benefits could have kept me working there, not in a thousand years, not even dental.
Resigned that there wasn’t much I could do for my manager at this point, I went back to the cameras. She had lost too much blood, I didn’t think any person had that much blood inside their body. Nobody could bleed that much and have a chance of survival. So much crimson spreading across the cheap linoleum tiles. That damn monster on the roof must have driven her insane, I thought.
Back on the cameras, I saw that there were now quite a few police and law enforcement vehicles in the parking lot outside, their flashing lights looking odd in the black and white achromatic computer monitor. It seemed they were keeping a healthy distance from the front of the store. “That’s good”, I thought. I wished them luck with their battle against the thing on the roof, and continued to browse through the camera feeds. I wish we had one up on the roof, then I could at least get a look at the monstrosity that was perched atop the gas station.
While swapping through the camera footage from earlier this morning, something impossible caught my eye. The footage was from the camera right above the register, and standing behind it wasn’t me, it was my manager. She wasn’t here earlier, Sundays are MY shift. I glanced over at her body growing cold in the corner of the room in confusion. I swapped to another camera and from a little later in the morning, her again. And again, and again. I wiped the still trickling blood from my eyes in confusion. Thinking I had accidentally switched and was viewing footage from the wrong day I checked, the timestamp still said it was from today. I… I don’t know what’s going on. I explicitly remember this morning, I remember driving to the store, I remember talking with the utility worker, I remember sweeping up the broken coffee pot, everything.
Despite all of the craziness that had been happening all day, this was the first time I truly felt like I was losing my mind. The camera had to be wrong, the cameras were liars. They were liars when they failed to produce an image of the monster coming from its hole, they were liars when they showed my manager manning the register all morning. They were liars when they showed me coming into the store visibly upset, and they were liars when they showed me smashing the coffee pot over her head! They lied when they showed me tying her up and shoving her behind the counter, out of sight! They lied when they showed me murdering every customer that walked through the door then dragging their bodies to the cooler, and they lied when they showed me stepping outside, lighting and throwing a molotov cocktail at Mike when he was trying to escape! I don’t know how I burned my hand but that wasn’t it! That thing, that monster up on the roof, it’s got a hold of my mind, my memories! Somehow it’s the cause of this, of all of this!
The S.W.A.T. teams are here now, I can see. The big boys brought the big guns and I hope they are able to kill that damned thing. I’m writing this on my manager’s phone. She always was a hypocrite, not letting us have our phones, yet she doesn’t have to follow her own rules. In an effort to help destroy this abomination that has caused this, the shittiest of all days, I lit the back half of the store on fire using lighter fluid and boxes of paper towels. The flames are growing larger and larger by the second, and once it spreads to the liquor section I expect it will all be over. I just hope my family can forgive me. If somehow this thing were to escape, well my family is less than a mile down the road and I can’t take the chance of this thing getting close to them. I just hope they know that I do this, as everything I do, for them…
That ends the message that was on my mother’s phone. The man was obviously unhinged and upset at losing his job. I still can’t shake the feeling that even though he killed my mom and all of those people, that somehow he was a victim too. I hate him, and a large part of me is glad that he’s dead, but there’s a sliver that wishes he weren’t. I wish I could hear from his own lips what exactly happened, and why he did what he did. So he could look me and my family in the eye and see exactly what he’s done to us.
There was no monster. HE was the monster. He wasn’t mentally there, and I think something in the news helps explain why.
The following is from the local news segment that aired later that evening. I took the liberty of withholding certain information in order to protect the identities of all those involved. My mom wouldn’t have wanted a big fuss to be made.
BREAKING NEWS REPORT
Shocking news earlier in the day as a man in the ********* area kills twelve in a gas station, and while in a standoff with police, takes his own life. ****** ***** was reportedly let go from his job at the gas station earlier in the week, and in a gruesome turn of events returned and killed a dozen people, his ex-manager and several customers, as well as two *PD officers being counted amongst the deceased. This tragic event culminated when he decided to take his own life by setting the building on fire. *FD were quickly able to extinguish the fire, but not before ****** succumbed to the smoke and the flames. In an ongoing investigation, law enforcement are still trying to determine exactly what happened, and the recovered surveillance footage is reported to tell a shockingly gruesome tale.
In a somewhat related story, workers for the City of ********* were rescued right next to the gas station after accidentally digging into a natural gas line, releasing deadly fumes into the surrounding area. The workers hit the line and were knocked unconscious from inhalation of the fumes, and were discovered when police were setting up a perimeter for the deadly standoff that was occurring right next door. Workers thankfully were able to shut the flow of gas off before the intentional fire took the life of ****** *****, and in all likelihood saved many more lives from the impending explosion that could have occurred in the immediate area. They were rushed to ********* Memorial Hospital and their condition is currently stable. City officials have asked that if you live in the immediate area and smell fumes, to call and report it to the utility company. Adverse health effects can occur as a result of unknowingly breathing too much in. More on this story at 9.