Night Watch - Part II

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

I returned to work two weeks after the incident. Lia wanted me to find another job, even move to another part of the country to, quote ‘clear my head’.

But I couldn’t bring myself to leave everything behind and run away like a coward. What happened to Henry was an accident, at least that’s what I told myself, and it had nothing to do with me.

Deep down, however, I knew that wasn’t the truth. But who was I to insist on these harrowing thoughts?

I smirked. Even the psychiatrist told me I hallucinated, that I couldn’t have seen those things I did – it took her only a few seconds to deem me as a delusional maniac.

Lia, I figured, must’ve said I was going bonkers or something before the appointment, for the goddamn woman surely did treat me as if I had lost it.

When she told me to take some pills and ‘take it easy’, I stormed out of there and did not return.

Things spiralled out of control between me and Lia after this. Whenever I raised my voice at her, she’d drone on about how I was affecting our unborn child and whatnot.

After a while, I couldn’t take it anymore and asked why she hadn’t done something about the foetus before things got to this stage.

She knew that I wasn’t cut out to be a father, and I told her numerous times I didn’t want to become one either.

Lia left the house the same evening and wouldn’t tell me where she went. I left for work the following night and was too worked up to bother getting in touch with her.

I worked alongside Oli Rams during my first night shift after the incident, a kid in his early twenties whose only job experience was flipping burgers and being polite to rude, self-entitled customers.

He wasn’t cut out for this kind of job; every two hours, he’d get bored to death and ask if I needed something as if I were his customer.

I figured it was some kind of occupational damage and showed some tough love for the kid.

While newcomers weren’t sent on patrol without their partners, I told the kid to search the building one floor at a time every three hours and report back to me.

He wasn’t allowed to do anything, like apprehend a possible intruder, that was my job, but he had to be on the walkie-talkie and report back to me instead.

I wasn’t being an asshole, all right. In this line of work, you never knew what would happen, and I had to prepare Oli for these kinds of unexpected events – just in case.

The kid had to grow up one way or the other, and I only sped up the process for both of our sakes. I didn’t want another unexpected incident to happen.

A few months passed like this. Lia and I got back together shortly after she miscarried; she called me in the middle of a night one day, crying, and told me to pick her up from a friend of hers two towns over.

She gave birth to a stillborn infant 27 weeks into her pregnancy. We had gone on a date just two days earlier and she told me everything was going well.

The loss of our unborn child brought us back together, and although I was relieved this was the case, I knew losing something she carried for such a long time caused Lia trauma.

But my feelings for her were not as strong as they used to be. I pitied her.

Her obstetrician told her that she wouldn’t be able to give birth anymore, her uterus had ruptured and she was past childbearing age at thirty-five.

Then something unexpected happened. The air was crisp and cold as I clocked into work three hours before midnight in late April, and I found my dear friend Henry sitting in his designated seat that now belonged to Oli.

His hollow eyes were detached and cold, his cheeks colourless and wan, and his expression that of a man long since dead and forgotten.

His skeletal frame turned towards me as I came to a standstill in the doorway.

We locked eyes. My blood ran cold and my mind stopped working. For a second, I thought I had lost it and was seeing things that didn’t exist. But the apparition spoke.

“Sup? Not much happening, huh?”

I peeked over my shoulder as if the thing was speaking to someone other than me. But no one or nothing was behind me save the desolate and dark corridor.

I rubbed my dry, sleep-deprived eyes, trying to snap back to reality and make the spectacle before me vanish. Still, it stood there and watched me with a puzzled look on its pallid face, as if I were the one who was acting weird.

Henry repeated his question, bemused, and then added: “Did you see a ghost or somethin’, mate?”

“You’re not real, this… this is…”

“Robb, you don’t look well, man.”

“Henry…?”

The apparition put on his peaked cap, took the keyring with him and headed for the door.

“I’ll go check out that darn noise,” he said, pointing to the monitor that showed the first-floor corridor. “The guys outside keep saying they hear something from the lobby.”

Was this real? The way he spoke, the way he acted… It was too natural – too real – to just be a hallucination.

“Robb? Dude, are you listening?”

“I thought… I thought you were dead.”

A smile crossed his face, and he turned around.

“Look, I’m perfectly fine! I’m not dead, Robb. Now snap out of it and keep your eyes on the screen.”

He left. I slumped into my seat and followed Henry down to the staircase and the first floor through the monitor. He turned around halfway through the corridor, showed me the middle finger and continued to the lobby.

I flicked on another screen with a better view over the main entrance but lost sight of my friend in the process.

Switching on the walkie-talkie, I asked if he was still there. Through the constant static, I heard something I couldn’t quite place. It was something between a laughter and a cry.

Startled, I turned off the walkie-talkie. That’s when an airy voice pierced the settling silence. It came from the walkie-talkie I had just put away.

“Robb? Hey, Robert, are you there?”

“Henry?”

“Dude, I’ve been calling your ass for hours! You couldn’t hear me or what?”

“Did something happen?” I turned on the screen that showed the lobby. “I can’t see you.”

“It’s coming from the basement. Someone’s been down here I think and got rid of the security camera.”

“The basement?”

I tried to switch on the camera, but an error message showed up instead. He was right. How could we have missed something like this?

“Listen, I think someone’s down here. I’ll go down and see if I can lure this mother—”

“We- we must follow the Protocols.”

“I’mma just take a look, Robb! Like I always do. Why do you sound like I’m gonna die?”

“I… do? Hey, I know I’m acting strange, but I don’t think—Henry? Henry?”

The line went dead right after I heard a scream. Fearing the worst, I rose to my feet and headed for the door. That’s when I came face to face with Oli. His youthful expression gave way to a startled look.

“Hey, man. You look… under the weather.”

I peeked at the monitor that showed the lobby. Why hadn’t I seen Oli on the screen?

“Robert?”

I snapped back to reality. “I- I need to go, I—”

He glanced at his watch.

“Right now? We still have three hours or something’ left, man.”

“No, I mean—Henry, I need to… I need to make sure he’s okay.”

Oli stopped me as I tried to move past him in the doorway.

“Hold up. What’d you just say?”

I glanced at him, panicking. “Henry, he’s in the basement and I need to—”

“Yo, Robert, are you okay? Maybe you should, I dunno, go home or somethin’?”

“No, I- I’m okay. I just need to… need to find Henry.” I pointed at the monitor. “He’s in the basement. He- he said he saw something down there.”

“Henry’s not here, Robert.”

“No. No, you don’t understand. I- I just saw him with my own eyes! He was here! I swear! Right here just a moment ago—you must’ve seen him, he… Don’t look at me like I’ve lost it, kid!”

“That’s impossible. He’s dead.”

“He- he’s in the basement!”

I tried to shove him aside and get out, but he wouldn’t let me.

“I’m not crazy.”

“I know you’re not.”

“Then move!”

He hesitated.

“Can’t do that. I promised Lia to keep an eye on you.”

I frowned. “Lia? How do you—”

“What’s that?”

I followed Oli’s bewildered eyes and noticed that the security camera overseeing the lobby, which was working just moments ago, now showed an error message. The screen was black.

But this wasn’t what had surprised Oli.

He took a seat and zoomed in on the third-floor corridor. As he did that, I saw the fleeting image of a dark figure hiding in the storage room, and a chill ran down my spine.

It couldn’t be Henry. He couldn’t have gone up four flights of stairs in such a short time. But if it wasn’t him, then who the hell was this?

“It’s code 141, isn’t it?”

“Not quite,” I said. “We don’t even know what we saw. What are we going to tell the police when they arrive? That we saw a ghost and got scared?”

“But—”

“You stay here and I’ll go check out what’s going on. And if I ever disappear on you, kid, you keep to the protocols. Is that clear? Oli… is that clear?”

He nodded.

There was no one inside the storage room – no trace of any intruder or life. I told the kiddo that everything was under control and that no one was there but didn’t get a reply over the walkie-talkie.

As I locked the storage room and returned to the drafty corridor, my eyes instinctively shifted to the ceiling where the pungent liquid dropped on my head the day Henry drowned.

This time, however, nothing out of the ordinary happened. As I was making my way to the staircase on the other side of the corridor, exhaling, I couldn’t help but think of what had just happened.

I tried to reach out to Oli again at the staircase landing, asking if everything was all right when a scream came through instead.

Instinctively, I rushed down the stairs to the basement floor and unlocked the metal door in front of me.

Someone had already been down here and switched on the lights, so I put away my flashlight and called out to Henry repeatedly.

This part of the basement was for the maintenance guys and was hardly ever used or visited by the other staff members.

As security guards, both Henry and I had a spare key to the basement, but the guys outside did not have access to it.

Also, to unlock the basement door from the staircase, you had to have a special keycard, so not just anyone could enter this place.

But someone was here – or had been here. My heart told me it was Henry, that no one else but him had a keycard. But my mind was telling me something else.

While I had deliberately tried to avoid any mention of my former friend and colleague to Oli or the other workers, I did hear from the management that his family put him to rest back in his hometown.

I hadn’t been invited to the funeral, I don’t think Henry ever told his family of me. But I didn’t have to see the guy get covered with dirt to figure that he was no longer alive.

As I was having these macabre thoughts, the lights switched off. I fetched my flashlight and looked around myself, my shallow breath came in short gasps.

A hand fell on my shoulder. I flinched and turned around.

“Robert? What are you doing here, dude?”

I heaved a sigh of relief. It was Oli.

“I should be the one asking that.”

“The guys outside called me over while you were away. They found some footprints outside the wire fence leading into the building. I followed the footprints all the way here.”

“You still think it’s code 141?” I said, looking around with my flashlight. “Don’t you think it’s too quiet considering someone’s here with us?”

Oli let his flashlight roam around the basement floor as well, before uttering something unexpected, something I did not see coming.

“I heard that’s how your partner died.”

“What?”

“They said you insisted on not following the Protocols back then as well, and then—”

I grabbed the kid by his collar.

“You think I did something to Henry, huh? Is that what people are saying behind my back? That I’m a murderer!”

“But they all saw you, Robert!”

I softened my grip on him, confused.

“Saw me? What are you talking about?”

“At that guy’s funeral,” he said, as I gradually let go. “They all saw you!”

“That’s impossible. I never—”

“You spit on his grave and told everyone you murdered him! You even threatened to kill them all if they ever snitched to the police!”

I lifted my eyes off the ground as he said this, staring him right through his soul, bewildered more than anything.

“Why are you telling me this?” I said. “If you really believe in all this, then why…?”

“Because I don’t think you did it, Robb. Something else did. Something supernatural.”

I turned my face away momentarily, but the kiddo kept talking, unbothered by my detached demeanour and avoidant nature.

“You saw it, didn’t you? That day and today as well. You can tell me, Robert, it’s okay. I… I believe you.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I investigate the paranormal. I heard about your friend’s case from a friend of mine who owns a website dedicated to paranormal sightings. Someone from that funeral, possibly a staff member, posted about what happened to his site.”

I smirked, more out of disbelief than anything else. I couldn’t believe what nonsense I was hearing.

“Then how did you come to the conclusion I was innocent? That I didn’t do anything to my friend.”

“Because,” he said, taking his sweet time, “something similar happened to my dad.”

I blinked. “Your dad?”

“He used to work as a construction worker when one of his colleagues fell to his death in broad daylight. Something about my dad changed after that accident and he became increasingly paranoid. He was afraid, constantly, and kept talking to himself. Just like you, Robert.”

“What happened to him? I mean, your dad. Did he… did he ever recover?”

Oli paused for a short while.

“He threw himself off the building he built.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know if I was supposed to say something, but something about the way he looked at me told me he pitied me. Just like how Lia looked at me after the incident.

“You don’t have to feel sorry for me, Robert. Honestly, I saw it coming. Especially after what I heard him do two days before his friend died.”

I raised my eyes off the floor as I heard this, unsure if I had heard the kid right.

“Robert…” he said, inching closer. “You did something you shouldn’t have, right? Just like my dad. What… what was it?”

“What? I didn’t—why would I—”

“I won’t be able to help you if you don’t tell me the truth, Robert. You’re seeing things, things that no one else can see. And these things will keep happening, more frequently than they already are and they’ll drive you crazy.”

“I- I didn’t do anything! Henry was like a friend to me and I would never—”

“Is it The Woe? What did he tell you about that place?”

I was stunned into silence, unable to continue for what felt like several minutes.

“How do you know about that place?”

“I know more than you think. I’ve watched you for several months, followed your every step. But I can’t find it.”

“It?”

“The thing that connects you and Henry to The Woe.”

“There’s… there’s no such thing, kid. You’re mistaken.”

He was about to say something when the lights switched on again. One of the patrolling guards outside entered the basement and asked if everything was under control.

I took a gander at Oli before squeezing my way out the door and ascending the stairs to our office.

Feeling under the weather, I called our boss and clocked out not long after. I didn’t see Oli anywhere on my way out and figured he was keeping his distance from me after confronting me moments earlier.

His words kept ringing in my ears the entire time I was driving. People saw me – me – at Henry’s funeral making a scene? I hardly even knew Henry, let alone where he lived or where his hometown was, and yet people claimed they had seen me spit on his grave? What in the world was happening?

Was I losing my mind or did someone disguise themselves as me? But why would anyone do that? And why had Henry appeared today of all days, messing with my mind, only for that kid to bring up that damn lake?

I hadn’t heard of The Woe ever since Henry passed away, and never thought I would hear about it again, either.

I smirked. What did that kid say again? The connection between me, Henry, and The Woe.

There was no such link – no connection I could think of. Henry was the one obsessed with it and I had only heard rumours about it through his obsession.

But why would Oli assume I had anything to do with that place? That kid even compared me to his own crazy dad, who killed himself like a madman.

I wasn’t crazy. I knew that my mind played games with me, making me see things that didn’t exist. So how could he compare me to his obviously ailed dad?

As I parked the car and let my head rest on the steering wheel, another thought crossed my mind. Henry’s hometown.

I vividly recall him say it was a few towns over the mysterious lake in a remote part of the country riddled with ghost towns.

Of course, I had no way of knowing where to find it on my own, but I knew our boss knew the exact location.

Determined to find out what was going on, I asked him to send the address, lying that I wanted to pay my friend a visit over the weekend and apologise to his bereaved family.

Read part I HERE!

Read part III HERE!