Chills, page 4
Savoring the momentary escape for a while, he did his business at the urinal and then walked over to the sink to wash his hands. He was trying to calm down and accept that he had to work with Phil, but he was still fuming. Of course, it made sense that Jared would work with Bessie’s niece. He’d noticed the way he kept looking at her slyly, like she didn’t notice, too. No doubt by the end of the night they’d “hook up.” It also made sense that Ashley would work with her mother so Bessie could keep an eye on her, and Kimberly would be counting the front desk merchandise, a tedious job that didn’t require two people. That left him stuck with Phil.
Tyson ran the water until it was warm and then squirted some liquid soap into the palm of his hand and started scrubbing. Steam rose from the sink, misting the mirror. He was staring blankly at the wall behind him, reflected in the mirror, trying to empty his mind when an unaccountable chill ran up his back until it felt like icy fingers were gripping the back of his neck.
He turned to see if someone had opened the bathroom door, but he could see that it was locked.
“Weird,” he said softly as he shifted his gaze to the warm water that was gushing over his hands as he rinsed them.
He couldn’t shake the sudden, intense feeling that someone was standing right behind him, watching his every move even though the wall was less than six feet away. He turned and looked around, confused. The chill might have been from a draft of cold air slipping under the closed door, but usually, even during the winter months, the bathroom was the warmest place in the store.
The water was still running hot, and steam rose, filling the room like it was a mini-sauna. The mirror was completely covered with moisture now. Using the edge of his hand, Tyson wiped away a circle and, bracing both hands on the edge of the sink, leaned forward and stared at his reflection.
It was, of course, distorted from the moisture on the glass, but even so, he thought his reflection looked…odd. He frowned as he studied his face and was filled with the sudden unnerving thought that he wasn’t looking at himself…that the face staring back at him from the mirror was independent of him. He blinked and was mildly surprised when the reflection blinked at the same time. He ran his fingers through his hair, fascinated when he saw the face in the mirror do the same thing.
“This is fucking trippy,” he whispered, thinking maybe the warmth in the bathroom, the closeness and the moisture were all getting to him and making him feel strange.
Or maybe it was the coffee.
He’d been noticing lately how, if he had more than one cup a day, he felt jittery all day and couldn’t sleep at night.
Maybe he’d had too much, preparing for the overnight.
“Gotta watch it,” he whispered to himself in the mirror, watching carefully in the mirror as his lips moved, forming the words.
He turned the faucet so the water was running cooler and then, cupping his hands until they were filled with water, splashed his face a few times, sputtering and blubbering.
While his head was down, he didn’t see the figures…there were three of them…that appeared in the mirror above his bowed head. They resolved slowly, like a developing photograph. But even though he couldn’t see them, they had an effect on him. He could feel them. The chill on the back of his neck got stronger as one of the figures—the one in the middle—reached out to him. The mirror offered a barrier, but not a solid one. The glass bulged out like a shiny, translucent bubble, and the hands that reached for him hooked into glassy claws that strained to clasp him around the neck.
The chill grew worse, and finally Tyson snapped his head up and looked around. Instantly, the figures in the mirror faded like figures glimpsed and then lost in a dense fog…
Or a raging snowstorm.
Tyson snapped a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and wiped his face vigorously. If anything, his wound-up nerves were getting tighter, but he shook his head, took a deep breath, and after slapping himself on the cheeks a few times, got ready to go back out onto the sales floor and get to work.
As he was exiting the bathroom, he flicked off the overhead light, plunging the bathroom into darkness. If he had been able to see in the dark, he would have seen that someone—certainly not him—had scrawled something in the fog on the mirror. The words were written backwards, as if whoever had written it had been standing on the other side of the mirror.
WE DON’T LIKE IT HERE
~ 8 ~
“You okay there?” Phil asked when he looked up and saw Tyson walking back to the video section. He moved stiffly, like his legs were made of balsa wood. His face looked gray, and his eyes were wide and staring. He looked for all the world like he’d just gotten out of bed and was momentarily confused as to where he was and what he was doing.
“Huh, wha—?” Tyson said.
When he blinked, he reminded Phil of what a mole must look like when it suddenly bursts from underground into the bright sunlight. Usually, Phil couldn’t give two shits about how Tyson was feeling, but there was something in his bearing that he found disturbing.
“You look like crap, to be honest,” Phil said.
“Thanks. And fuck you, too,” Tyson said, adopting an attitude that seemed much more normal. Still, there was a far-away look in his eyes that genuinely spooked Phil, and he had to wonder if something happened in the backroom that had freaked him out.
Or maybe Bessie had told him some devastating news, like that the new owner of Mystery Train had decided to hire an all-new staff instead of keeping on any of the regulars.
Phil kept watching Tyson from the corner of his eye as he got back to work. He noticed how Tyson moved much slower than usual, as if every motion was laborious. When he jotted something down on his clipboard, his eyes appeared unfocused as though he wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to be doing.
“You sure you’re all right?” Phil asked.
“Yes! Jesus! I’m fine!”
“I thought…I dunno, maybe when you went to the bathroom, the shock of seeing how small your really dick is might have, you know, freaked you out.”
He expected that flinging another insult at Tyson would snap him back to his old self, but his vacant gaze didn’t alter. It was starting to freak Phil out.
“I can ask Jared to put on some different music, if you like.”
Tyson seemed not even to consider the offer. He shook his head, pointedly focusing on his work, but the haunted look in his eyes didn’t go away. Finally, Phil decided to let it ride and shifted his attention back on the counts he was doing. Like everyone else, he wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.
~ 9 ~
Kimberly was scowling the whole time she was counting the buttons on the spinner racks on the front counter. Neil Young was getting on her nerves, too, and she was upset that all of the donuts were gone, except for a couple of coconut donuts. She hated coconut. The coffee was running low, too, and it was looking to be a long night when she’d rather be home cuddling somewhere with her boyfriend, Marty.
After about ten or fifteen minutes, she couldn’t take it any longer, and she marched up behind the cash register and ejected the Neil Young disc.
“Hey!” Jared shouted from the other side of the store, but her only response was to raise her right hand and extend her middle finger.
She opened the top drawer of CDs and rifled through it until she found an Ani DiFranco disc and popped it into the player. When the opening chords of the first song came over the speakers, Jared let out an audible groan.
“Think of her as a female Neil Young, you damned hippie,” she shouted at him before going back down to the sales floor and getting to work.
Ashley, who was working at the front of the store, smiled to herself. It amused her to see the staff behaving like children, and she wondered when her mother would come out of the backroom and say something to them about how if they couldn’t agree on what music to play, they could work with no music at all, if that’s what they wanted.
But Ani hadn’t gotten through her first song before something odd happened to the CD player. It wasn’t the usual glitch where the digital track started skipping, and it certainly wasn’t like when an old-fashioned vinyl record jumped its track. The music started warping and fading, and then it got suddenly louder with a strange, bubbly effect.
“Is that on the disc?” Jared shouted out.
“Duh,” Meg answered softly.
Before anyone could get to the cash register platform to see what was wrong, the music blended from the weird distortion to a faint, tinny rendition of what sounded like the opening chords of a song from the Fifties. Jared recognized it. “Endless Sleep” by Jody Reynolds.
“What the fuck are you playing?” Tyson called out from the back of the store.
“Seriously…take it off,” Jared said, but even as Kimberly made a move toward the front desk, he dashed over to it, elbowing her out of the way.
“I’ll pick something,” he said.
“Just no AC/DC,” Kimberly said with a snarl. “You gotta promise me.”
Jared hit the reject button, but—oddly—the Fifties’ song continued for a few seconds even after the disc had ejected. Then it cut off with a whirring sound as if the machine that had recorded it had suddenly sped up before shutting off.
“Okay, boys and girls,” Jared said, rubbing his hands together. “We have to come to an agreement here or else we’ll be arguing all night. What can we all listen to? How about some Beatles?”
At the back of the store, Tyson groaned at that suggestion, and Jared got a negative reaction from someone in the store—all except Meg—no matter who he mentioned. He tried everything from the Rolling Stones to Ben Folds, from Antony and the Johnsons to Fleetwood Mac, and Beethoven to Nat King Cole, but he couldn’t get a consensus. At last, totally frustrated, he said, “All right, then. Since Meg’s our guest here, let’s let her decide.”
Blushing at the suggestion. She looked down at the floor, knowing that all eyes in the store had now turned to her. She shook her head and said, “Gee, thanks,” so softly no one—not even Ashley who was closest to her—heard her.
“Meg?” Jared said, louder.
Her face was flushed as she looked up, still shaking her head.
“I’d rather not get into the middle of all this,” she said.
“Either you pick, or we don’t have anything on,” Jared said officiously.
“Who died and made you boss?” Kimberly snapped, but Jared ignored her.
“Come on, Meg,” he said, urging her to the front of the store. “We’ve got piles of stuff to choose from.”
Reluctantly, Meg walked up to the register platform. Jared stepped aside to allow her to get close to the cabinet with three drawers filled with sample CDs. She pulled the top drawer open, confused and flustered by the variety. Every title and every artist she saw instantly made her think that someone in the store would object, but she realized that Jared was right. She was the visitor here, and no one was going to give her crap about her selection. She smiled when she saw an ELO compilation disc. She took it out of its case and slid it into the disc player drawer. The first song that came on was “Fire on High.”
“Yeah, I can live with that,” Jared said, smiling at her as she walked back to the section she’d been working on.
Kimberly muttered something about how this song reminded her of the Astro-Sphere ride at Fun Town, but everyone else seemed to accept her choice and settled in to work. Even so, from time to time, Meg kept glancing around and then looked at the storm raging outside the store window. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on her work, being careful not to make any mistakes, she couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere out there in the storm…someone…maybe more than one person…was lost…wandering and drifting behind the curtain of snow…and watching her just as intently as she was looking at the discs she was trying to tally.
It most definitely was going to be a long night.
~ 10 ~
Bessie was shivering as she sat at her desk in her cramped office, shuffling through a stack of invoices that went back more than a year. The overhead lights were on, and the desk lamp she used focused a glaring spot of white light on her work. A half-filled cup of coffee, now gone cold, was on the desk at her elbow. The office door was partway open, and through it, she could see the darkened stockroom.
Odd, she thought. I don’t remember anyone turning out the lights before they all went out onto the floor?
She should have been feeling cozy in her bubble of light, but her hands were clenched into fists in her lap as she looked around, suddenly feeling isolated.
This was far from the first time Bessie regretted giving up smoking. She was pretty sure there was an old pack of filtered Camels in her top desk drawer, and she was tempted to dig it out and light one up just to calm her nerves.
And why not? she asked herself. What would be the harm?
She was going on vacation the day after tomorrow with Ashley and Meg. Cigarettes were cheap in the islands, and why shouldn’t she indulge her habit for a week or two? It might not set the best example for Ashley, but—damnit!—she had worked hard all her life, and now that she was cashing in and getting out from under the financial burden of the store, maybe she should reward herself.
“And get cancer…some reward,” she whispered to herself.
She focused on the stack of invoices, sorting them carefully, but now that the old, familiar craving had come over her, she paused again and sat back in her chair, staring at the top desk drawer.
They might not even be there anymore, she told herself. And even if they are, they still were…how many years old? For sure, they’d be stale and rank by now.
“But ohh, so good,” she muttered to herself, feeling her resolve slipping away with each passing second.
Once again, she tried to get back to work, but once the idea was planted, it took root fast. She told herself, even if the cigarettes were still there, did she have a lighter or book of matches?
Highly unlikely.
Why get all worked up about it only to be disappointed?
But maybe…
Heaving a deep sigh, she slid her chair back, curled the fingers of her left hand into the slot on the top drawer, and pulled it out. The wood made a loud scraping sound that set her teeth on edge.
But there they were, right on top of an assortment of pens, pencils, paper clips, and memo pads, lying there for her to find them as if they had been waiting for this moment after…how many years?
Feeling as guilty as she had when she was a teenager and used to sneak cigarettes from her parents, she shifted her gaze to the partially opened office door and the darkness beyond to see if anyone was looking.
Why are the lights out? she wondered again, but that thought was secondary to the more pressing issue of, now that she had decided to have a smoke—and she had decided that much!—all she needed was a light.
She shuffled through the accumulated junk in the desk drawer until—amazingly—she found a book of matches in the very back corner of the drawer.
Just my luck, it’ll be empty, she thought as she flipped it open, but lo and behold, there were five matches still in the pack.
What luck!
Okay, then, Bessie thought. Now all you have to do is decide if you really want to do this.
With a quick flick of her hand, she shook the pack so a couple of cigarettes popped up above the foil. Her hand was visibly shaking as she grabbed one between her thumb and forefinger and pulled it all the way out.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
She rolled the cigarette between her thumb and forefinger, reveling in the tactile experience…so familiar…so soothing…like meeting an old friend after too many years.
“And so deadly,” she whispered.
But without a second thought, she kicked her chair back, stood up, and walked to her office door.
The backroom was in pitch darkness, and again this struck Bessie as odd. They had finished inventorying the backroom merchandise during the week, but she assumed they would leave the lights on so they could come back for more coffee and donuts. The light switch was over by the door that led out onto the store floor, but Bessie was leery of walking over to it in the darkness. There was some ambient light from her office, but she was concerned that she might trip over something in the dark.
Her eyes shifted to the back door that opened out onto the mall parking lot where they took deliveries, and came and went during store hours. The red light of the EXIT sign gave some illumination, but it wasn’t bright enough for her to see clearly.
Still, it might be enough, Bessie thought as she walked down the aisle, dodging between stacks of merchandise and return boxes to ship out. She was about halfway to the door when she sensed as much as saw something moving in the shadows behind the storage shelves off to her left.
She stopped and turned her head quickly, sure she had seen the faint motion as if someone had ducked quickly out of sight.
The cigarette and matches in her hand were all but forgotten as she leaned forward and peered into the darkness, trying to peel it away. She wished, now, that she had bothered to walk over to the switch and turn on the overhead lights. It was foolish to stumble around in the darkness and let herself get unnerved like this.
Then she remembered there was also a light switch by the back exit door, too. But even as she was turning her head to walk to it, she detected motion behind the storage shelves again, and this time she heard a faint rustling sound.
“Jared?” she called out, her voice tight with tension. “That you?”
No reply came, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear it above the music blasting from the front of the store and her own heartbeat. Below that, though, she could hear another sound…a sound with which she was quite familiar from all her years of working here. Outside, the hissing wind sent a shiver through her, and she jumped when a sudden gust rushed against and around the building. Something on the roof rattled as if it was about to be blown off.
