@Arthur P. Higgins

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Their stories

Night Shift

The Ghost in the Warehouse

I have worked security at this warehouse for twenty years, and in all that time, I have prided myself on being the most reliable set of eyes on the payroll. This place is a massive beast of a building, filled with endless rows of stacked crates, rusted forklifts, and the kind of industrial silence that presses against your eardrums. During the day, it is a hive of activity, loud with the roar of engines and the shouts of workers. But at night, the warehouse transforms into something entirely different. The darkness stretches into every corner, making the familiar aisles look like long, shadowed tunnels. I have never been one for ghost stories or folklore. I am a practical man, a man of locks, keys, and security cameras. I trust what I can see and touch. My life has been built on logic and procedure. But six months ago, everything I understood about this job—and perhaps reality itself—shifted under my feet. It was exactly 2:00 a.m. on a that day. The clock on the wall of my booth hummed with a steady, rhythmic ticking that usually comforted me. I grabbed my flashlight and began my standard sweep of Sector Four, the furthest part of the warehouse where we keep the old inventory. The air in there is always cold, a bone-chilling dampness that sinks right through my uniform, but that night, it felt different. It felt heavy. As I turned the sharp corner between rows twelve and thirteen, my flashlight beam cut through the dark and landed on a figure standing at the very end of the aisle. My heart skipped a beat, not out of fear, but out of frustration. I figured it was just some local kid who had broken in for a prank, or maybe a new hire lost in the dark. I raised my voice, the sound booming unexpectedly loud in the hollow space. Hey! You cannot be here! I shouted, my hand firm on my flashlight. The figure did not flinch. He was looking at a stack of wooden crates, his head tilted slightly as if reading a label. He did not turn around, and he did not respond to my demand. I started walking toward him, my boots clattering on the concrete floor, echoing like gunshots in the quiet. As I got closer, the temperature plummeted. It wasn't just a cold draft; it was the kind of freezing sensation that makes your skin crawl and your breath hitch. My hand began to tremble, though I tried to keep my grip steady. When I was ten feet away, I called out again, firmer this time. I am the security guard here, I said, trying to project authority. The man started walking toward the back wall. He moved with a strange, fluid grace, his feet barely seeming to touch the ground. I picked up my pace, clicking my light to its brightest setting to get a better look at him. I followed him into the far corner, a dead end with no exits, just solid brick and mortar. He stepped right into the corner, and before I could even blink, he was simply gone. I stood there in the middle of that dead end, gasping for air. I shone my light frantically against every inch of the walls, looking for a hidden door, a crack, or a shadow that might have fooled me, but there was nothing. No windows, no openings, just solid walls. My hand shook so violently that I had to drop the flashlight to the floor, where it rolled and flickered, casting long, dancing shadows. I stood there for a long time, frozen. I eventually made my way back to my desk and sat in the dark for an hour, my heart pounding in my chest. I tried to rationalize it. I told myself I was tired, that the lack of sleep had caused a hallucination, or perhaps it was just a strange reflection of the floor markings catching the light. But deep down, I knew what I saw. He looked like a real person, wearing clothes that belonged in this decade, not a ghost from a movie. Since that night, things are fundamentally different. I do not feel scared anymore, but I feel watched. Every time I walk the aisles, I get the sensation that someone is trailing a few steps behind me. Sometimes I see a quick flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. I turn to look, but there is never anything there. It sounds crazy, but I have started saying evening when I walk into a room, just to acknowledge that I am not alone. It makes the silence feel a little less heavy. My wife tells me it is time to retire, that I have spent too many years in the dark, but I cannot bring myself to walk away. I feel tied to this warehouse now. I feel like I am protecting something more than just crates and machinery. I am protecting a memory, or perhaps a secret that needs a witness. The day shift guards tease me about the weird looks I give the empty aisles, but they do not work at night. They do not see the way the shadows lean into the light. People can call me crazy if they want; it does not matter to me. I know what I saw, and I know the world is much bigger and stranger than what we see in the bright, busy hours of the day. I have become a guardian of the night. As long as I keep my shift, I know the warehouse is safe. It is a strange way to spend a life, watching over a place that seems to belong to someone else, but it gives me a strange kind of peace. I no longer fear the dark, because I know that when I walk these floors, I am never truly alone.

@Arthur P. Higgins

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Night Shift

The Watchman at the Gate

I work as a night watchman at a construction site that feels like it has been forgotten by time. Three months ago, the machinery stopped, the workers packed up their tools, and the site went silent. A legal fight tied everything up, leaving me as the only soul left to patrol this concrete graveyard. I spend my entire shift in a tiny, crowded trailer parked right by the front gate. The space is cramped, smelling faintly of stale coffee and old upholstery, and it is where I live for ten hours at a time. My workspace is dominated by a wall of monitors that show nothing but static and darkness. The cameras are still wired, but they clearly stopped functioning properly when the power grid was cut back for the legal hold. I stare at those screens, watching the flickering snow, wondering if I am actually watching anything at all. It is the loneliest job I have ever held. My only companion is an old, scratched-up transistor radio that I found in the back of the trailer. It barely works, emitting more hiss and crackle than music, but I keep it on just to have a voice in the room. I listen to the wind howling through the gaps in the half-built buildings. The sound is mournful, like a low whistle echoing through a tunnel. At night, the construction site looks less like a future skyscraper and more like a graveyard of rusted steel and gray concrete. The cranes, which were once the pride of the project, now look like giant, hollow skeletons frozen against the dark, starless sky. They loom over the site, casting long, jagged shadows that seem to stretch toward me whenever the moon breaks through the clouds. I make my rounds twice a night. I grab my heavy, metal flashlight, which is cold to the touch even through my gloves, and I step out into the gravel yard. The beam is weak and yellow, barely cutting through the thick, damp dark. My footsteps on the loose gravel are the loudest sound for miles. In the silence, every crunch of my boots sounds like a gunshot, echoing off the unfinished walls. Sometimes, when the solitude gets too heavy, I find myself talking to the buildings. I stop in front of the main steel frame and ask them simple questions. When will you be finished? Do you miss the workers? Will you ever reach the height they planned for you? I know they will never answer, but the silence back in the trailer is worse than the sound of my own voice echoing against the cold steel. It is a strange, hollow life. I am technically guarding a project that has completely stopped, a place where nobody works, where nothing is moving, and where there is absolutely nothing left to steal. The loneliness feels thick, almost like it has a weight I can feel on my shoulders. I find myself looking up at the stars as they move slowly across the velvet expanse above. Sometimes I feel like a ghost haunting this place, a spirit attached to a project that died before it could be born. No cameras watch me anymore, only the empty, indifferent night. There are moments when the silence is broken. Sometimes a car drives slowly past the perimeter fence. The headlights sweep across the front of my trailer, briefly illuminating the faded company logo on the glass and the mess of papers on my desk. For that split second, I feel a surge of hope. I sit up straighter, adjusting my jacket, and I watch the light. I think maybe, just maybe, someone will stop. Maybe they will pull over, roll down their window, and ask me what I am doing here. I imagine a conversation, someone to tell me how the weather is or to ask why a site like this still needs a watchman. But they never do. They just drive by, their tires humming on the distant road, and I am left alone again in the deepening silence. I watch the red glow of their taillights fade into the darkness until they vanish entirely. The hope leaves me as quickly as it came, and I am back to being the only living thing in a forest of dead steel. I return to my trailer to wait out the hours. I spend a long time drinking lukewarm tea from a thermos that never seems to stay hot for more than an hour. The tea is bitter and the cup is worn, but the warmth helps me stay awake. I wait for the sun to rise because the daylight is the only company I truly enjoy. When the gray light finally bleeds into the sky, it makes the site look slightly less intimidating. The shadows lose their sharp edges, and the cranes look like industrial tools again rather than monsters. I am like a ghost in a place full of unfinished work, trapped between the past when the site was busy and a future that may never arrive. I spend my shifts waiting for time to pass, and it seems to move slower the older I get. Every hour is an endurance test, a slow slide toward a dawn that feels perpetually out of reach.

@Arthur P. Higgins

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