“Life is often just an interim between
nightmares.”
The
comment from the young woman named Martha, no older than 20, took Joyce Butler, 32-year old retail office worker, by surprise as only routine small
talk about life, in general, had preceded it. Yes, it being after midnight made it Oct.
31, Halloween, with the office decorated accordingly, but that didn’t mean glumness need be the prevailing mood. It
made work more difficult and that’s why they were in the office at 1:45 AM on
Halloween. They were there for work
because it wasn’t 1950 anymore. It was
1984 and computers were the wave of the future and she, Joyce, being the
youngest office worker with any real tenure, was the senior most employee stuck
with learning about the damn things. She
normally worked first shift but was appointed the sacrificial lamb stuck in a
week-long third shift course learning about the computers so she could teach
the other office workers what she’d learned when she resumed her place on first
shift. Martha was a newly hired employee
who would be trained more thoroughly. Computers
and young women were apparently both waves of the future. Joyce had been making small talk with Martha
but the perplexing comment threw her enough that she struck an incorrect key on her keyboard.
“No,
that’s not right,” the young man, also no older than 20, mumbled
impatiently. Her company had hired him
to teach the two women the “ins and outs” of creating things like spreadsheets on the computer for better office efficiency. He
appealed to Joyce as a cold, logical type, the kind of technology person she had little use for, the kind of man that ignored the sunshine of the
outside world and all its sensory wonders to spend all his time cooped up with
computers and television sets. She
didn’t resent or feel superior to such people; they just weren’t her cup of
tea.
“You have to press this key
here, see?” he said, blandly, leaning over her shoulder and pointing. He felt icy, like the smell of the
wintergreen gum he was chewing. Joyce repressed a sarcastic reply and pressed the key as the man went to help the young woman
a few seats over. Joyce looked around
the office. Fake spider webs hung from
the ceiling with fake spiders intermixed.
Paper Jack O’Lantern, ghost and witch cut outs adorned the walls. It reeked to her of corporate
commonality.
“I can’t
wait to go home,” she thought.
Suddenly,
the lights flickered, came back on fully then dimmed nearly to darkness. The young man, afraid of losing the progress
of the software download, scrambled to Joyce’s computer. Before he could press a key, the lights went
out. Though they were in an enclosed, familiar space, the darkness combined with the surroundings made Joyce shudder. The decorations now moved in her mind. The spiders crept along the cobwebs and the witches and ghosts took flight. The young man swore and the young girl held
her breath. The only exit was via
elevator. If the power stayed off, what
would they do?
A minute passed. Lost in darkness, none of them
spoke. The sound of machinery coming to life was then heard and the lights came back on. Joyce breathed a sigh of relief. Martha seemed very afraid, the young man very
irritated. Moving to the young woman’s
computer, he grunted in frustration as it rebooted.
“What kind
of place is this?” he growled. “What
kind of business is this?”
“I’ve never
seen the power go out here,” Joyce said.
“He hates the
electricity,” a man’s voice said behind them.
Startled, Joyce swung her head to see a janitor who had come in from
the warehouse the office was connected to.
He wore a typical janitor’s uniform and was holding a mop resting in a
wheeled bucket full of dirty water. The
young man moved towards him and put his hand out to shake.
“Hi,” he
said. “I’m George.”
The janitor,
a man with a wizened face and awkwardly groomed white hair held up his hands
and said, “Oh, no. Look. You wouldn’t want to get your hands dirty,
would you?”
The man felt very odd. Though she’d never seen him before, Joyce, lost in the moment, laughed to herself.
“A man comes
out of the dark,” she thought. “Has a
ghost visited us on Halloween?”
“I’m sorry
if I scared you,” the man said with a chuckle. “My name is Alfred. I’ve been here for a time but my shift is
almost over. Well, I guess everything is
okay now.”
As he turned
to reenter the warehouse, the young man called him back.
“Whoa, whoa
there. What did you mean by ‘He likes to
play with the electricity?’ Who
does?”
“The Electrical
Man,” the janitor replied matter-of-factly, as if it were common knowledge. “Surely you
know of him?”
The three
employees all said they hadn’t. Joyce felt goosebumps. The young lady, clearly very sensitive, shivered.
“His name is William Place. His physical body left this world decades
ago when the building down the street was a prison.
He was the first man electrocuted.
Three tries but he wouldn’t die.
Each time the generator had to recharge.
His skin had melted by the fourth attempt. The generator exploded and all the lights on
the block went out. Some reports said William
Place had disappeared when they came back on.
So, he hates the electricity, you see? When he comes back, he makes
all the lights go out.”
“When he
comes back?” the young man asked rhetorically.
“Are you saying the ghost of William Place haunts this building?”
Alfred
smiled. “When the lights flicker, I
always think, ‘He's come back to visit.'"
The air in
the room felt leaden. A small clock on
one of the work stations pinged twice.
“Ooh, that’s
for me,” Alfred said. “My time is over
now. Goodbye.” With a smile, he steered the wheeled bucket by
the mop handle back into the warehouse.
The office stayed silent for several seconds before the young man
spoke.
“Like I was
saying, ‘What kind of business is this?’
How many weirdos do you have around here?”
The question
snapped Joyce out of a kind of trance.
“I’ve never seen that man
before,” she replied, her voice trailing. Her sense of her frightened mood made her
angry. She continued:
“We don’t have ‘weirdos’
around here, George. I’ve never seen the
man before but I normally don’t work third shift. He’s just a man that cleans up around here,
obviously.”
“I don’t like people with
those kinds of stories,” George said with irritation. “I don’t like creeps or creep stories. Life is logical and real. There aren’t any ghosts in it.”
Joyce looked to Martha and saw her trembling.
“Did the man
scare you, dear?” Joyce asked.
“I don’t
think I’m supposed to be here,” Martha whispered.
“I still
wonder what kind of place this is,” George said with contempt.
Joyce angrily brushed off his comment, dug some change out of her purse, rose and
approached the young woman, who looked up at her with dancing eyes.
“Here,
sweetheart,” Joyce said. “Why don’t you go
to the cafeteria and get us some sodas.
George, what would you like?”
“Nothing. I don’t drink soda,” he said dryly, staring
at her computer screen as he pressed buttons on her keyboard.
“I’ll take a
Coca-Cola,” Joyce said tenderly to the young woman. “You get whatever you want.”
With a disconcerted
nod, the girl rose and left the room for the cafeteria.
“You could
be nice, you know,” Joyce said to George rhetorically. "The man clearly unnerved her,”
“I have no
time for nonsense,” he said, still looking at her computer screen and pressing
keys. “If she has no nerve, that’s her
problem.”
Joyce had
had enough of George the computer expert but she resolved to get along until
the shift was over. The clock read 2:15
AM. Three hours and forty-five minutes
and she would meet the 6 AM morning crew before going home. It couldn’t come fast enough. She looked at the fake spiders. Did one of them just move? The lights began to flicker again.
An ear
shattering scream from the cafeteria made her jump. She looked at George, who had also jumped and
seemed very irritated he had. Joyce ran towards the cafeteria and froze when she saw Martha sprinting towards her,
bathed in a sea of lights flickering like an electrical storm. She barely dodged in time as the girl
ran past towards the office and into the warehouse as Joyce followed.
“Martha! Stop!” she shouted uselessly. The warehouse was between the office and the
elevator which is where the girl, who proved too fast for Joyce, was
running towards. She had nearly reached her
destination when the lights went out. Joyce froze again. Largely
unfamiliar with the warehouse’s layout, she quickly convinced herself it was
folly to run around with the lights off.
Deep down, she was terrified.
What was happening? Why had the girl
screamed?
The lights
came back on and Joyce saw she was alone.
She whipped her head around looking for the girl then jogged lightly
towards the elevator. Nothing. The elevator made a ping sound when
opening. Joyce had heard no
sound. The warehouse was cavernous. Had Martha gotten confused in the dark? Was she still in the warehouse? Joyce walked back to the office and found
George still working at her computer.
“Did Martha
come back in here?” she asked. He didn’t
answer, as if she wasn’t there.
“Hey, George!”
she said, snapping her fingers impatiently.
“Did Martha come back through here?”
He turned
his attention towards her and said, eyes rolling towards the ceiling, “I think
I do know what kind of place this is now.”
He nodded to himself and went back to work.
For the first time, Joyce felt the surreal nature of the
situation. She opened her mouth to speak again but no
words formed in her mind. She felt the
need to walk up and touch George but didn’t.
Where was that janitor? He must
have left. He did say his time was over. Surely...surely, she would have heard the elevator ping for him, too...
Rousing her
courage, she resolved to search the warehouse.
She took care of the easy things first, a quick look behind the
cardboard box crusher and a scan of the assembly lines calling "Martha" at various intervals. An unidentified sound at the other end of the warehouse nearly made her scream. The resulting silence felt like a panic. After a minute, she began breathing deeply again.
"Just something slipping off a shelf," she convinced herself. "Probably happens all the time."
Regathering her nerve, she continued with the search. Next was the large area with the metal merchandise
trees, a dead forest of steel barely visible in the darkness. In the
distance, a small light crackled next to an old, dusty unused storage room. She couldn't stop her mind from spinning. How many monsters have come out of those kinds of places in movies? How many people that meet them are never seen again? The size of the place pressed down upon
her, the large swaths of darkness weighing heavily. She stepped towards the storeroom. The light barely shone, almost imperceptible. Too frightened to speak, she quickly backpedaled, fast walking to the center of the warehouse where the large, industrial
lights on the ceiling still shone. No, the girl wasn't there. She clearly wasn't there. Joyce crossed to the design staff’s office.
Pausing at the entrance way, she saw the white outline of store mannequins. She tried to call Martha’s name but her
throat could only reflexively spasm with no words. A rustle. One mannequin head seemed to turn. Another smiled. Another took a step…
No! Stumbling back, angered by her imagination playing tricks, she committed to searching the last hidden place. Maybe Martha was hurt and couldn’t
speak. Maybe Joyce just wanted to
prove to herself nothing supernatural was happening. Maybe she should call for Alfred, too...
Two rows of storage materials, tucked away
and dark even when the lights in the rest of the warehouse were on, were last. Used to the office activity of the
day shift, the silence and the darkness seemed a tomb, like she’d reached the
end of her life and all that awaited was the grave. She took small steps down the first row. Different sizes of merchandise bags stuffed
the shelves. A moldy smell caused her to
recoil slightly. Yet another rustle in
the next row made her freeze. Her heart
thudded and her eyes bulged. Her body leaned
slightly forward. The industrial lights seemed to groan then one exploded. Joyce screamed. She ran out of the warehouse to the light of the office.
In a near whisper, she called for George but got no reply.
The room was empty. With desperate energy, she did a running search of the the cafeteria and bathroom. Nothing. George had vanished. They'd all vanished. The horror that
she was all alone seized her like a shower of freezing water. Her stomach plunged as she resisted the strong urge to fall to the floor. The lights flickered on and off in the same electrical storm that had consumed Martha. It was him! The Electrical Man! He was coming!
With the energy of pure terror, she ran as
fast as she could through the office, knocking over two chairs in her path, into the warehouse and then to the lit elevator room. In the distance, she saw the flickering office lights go out. The warehouse lights began flickering like mad then went out one
by one. Now crying uncontrollably, she slammed her hand against
the elevator button then pounded on the closed doors.
“Help! Help!” she shrieked. The light in the elevator room began to flicker, all
around nearly pitch black. The light dimmed to its lowest level…
Joyce heard
the ping sound and the elevator doors opened.
She tumbled in and frantically pushed the button to close the doors. The light in the room went out, only the light in the elevator staying on. The darkness reached for her...
As if by a miracle, the doors shut
and the elevator began it’s descent. She
grabbed her head with both hands as hard as she could and slumped to the ground. The elevator reached the first floor but the doors didn’t open. The ping didn't sound. The light in the elevator flickered…then went
out.
At 6 AM, two
of Joyce’s first shift co-workers, surprised she hadn’t met them at the door
as planned, turned off the outside alarm and entered the building. They turned on the hallway lights, which
shone without a glitch. Walking to the elevator, one of the women pressed the button. The
doors opened with a ping. Into the empty
elevator they stepped.
