The Security Feed That Never Ends
I have worked the night shift at a big data center for six years now. The building is made of thick gray concrete, and it does not have a single window. Not one. When I started this job, that bothered me a lot. I used to wonder what the sky looked like at three in the morning. Now I barely think about it, because the cameras are my whole world once the sun goes down. My job is simple to explain but hard to really get used to. I sit in a small control room and watch forty-two security cameras all night long. The screens are stacked in a wall in front of me, each one showing a different hallway, door, or room. Most nights, nothing happens at all. I watch empty hallways, locked doors, and the blinking lights of server racks. The building hums all night, a low buzzing sound from all the machines working inside. It used to put me to sleep if I was not careful. I never thought this job would scare me. I was wrong. Three weeks ago, everything changed. It was around two in the morning, the quietest part of the night. I was drinking my coffee, half watching the screens, when something on camera fourteen caught my eye. A thin man in a gray jumpsuit was walking down the hallway. His walk was wrong. It was stiff, like his knees did not bend the way knees are supposed to bend. He moved like a puppet being pulled by strings. I sat up straight and put my coffee down. I watched him walk halfway down the hall, and then he stepped behind a thick concrete pillar and did not come back out. I waited. Thirty seconds. A minute. Nothing. My hands felt cold. I grabbed the radio and called my partner, Dave. "Dave, you still by the east hall?" I asked. "Yeah, why?" he said. "I just saw a guy on camera fourteen. Gray jumpsuit. He went behind the pillar by the server room door." Dave did not sound worried. He said, "Give me a second," and I heard his footsteps through the radio. A minute later he came back on. "Hallway's empty, man. Fire doors are locked, both of them. Nobody here but me." I told him thanks and set the radio down, but my stomach still felt tight. I rewound the recording and watched it again, slower this time. The man came out from behind the pillar. He stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned his head, slow and smooth, like he knew exactly where the camera was. Then he looked right into the lens. He had no eyes. Just smooth skin where his eyes should have been, like someone had sanded them away. My whole body went cold. Then he smiled. It was not a normal smile. His mouth kept stretching, wider and wider, way past where a mouth should stop. I turned the monitor off right then. I did not want to see any more. I told myself it was a bad recording, maybe a glitch, maybe some kid messing with the system. But deep down, I did not believe that. Not really. After that night, I started seeing him everywhere. Not every hour, but every night, at least once. He would show up in the lobby, standing by the front desk like he was waiting for someone. He would appear in the breakroom, just sitting in one of the plastic chairs like he worked there. One night, he was right outside my control room door. I watched him on the hallway camera for almost ten minutes. He did not move. He just stood there, facing the door, like he knew I was watching. That was the night the scratching started. A slow, rhythmic sound on my metal door. Scratch... scratch... scratch. Always the same speed, like a clock ticking. It was not loud, but it was enough to make my ears hurt after a while, like the sound was getting inside my skull. I checked the hallway camera every time it happened. The hallway was always empty. No one was there. But the scratching never stopped until I stopped looking. I tried talking to Dave about it. He did not want to hear it at first. He said I was working too many nights in a row and needed sleep. But then, about a week ago, something happened to him too. He called me from his car, and his voice sounded shaky in a way I had never heard before. "I saw someone on my roof," he said. "I was driving home, just pulled onto my street, and I looked up, and there was someone standing on the edge of my roof. Just standing there. No ladder. Nothing. I blinked and he was gone." Two days after that, Dave quit. He did not give a long explanation. He just said he could not do the night shift anymore, that something about this place felt wrong now, and he was sorry to leave me short-staffed. I understood. I almost quit too, that same night, but I needed the paycheck, and I told myself I could handle it. I was wrong about that too. Tonight, I am the only one here. The building feels bigger when you are alone in it, like the hallways stretch out longer than they should. The hum of the servers sounds different too, almost like breathing. I keep telling myself that is just my imagination working overtime. I stopped watching the cameras about an hour ago. I could not make myself look at camera fourteen one more time. Right now I am staring at my desk, my hands flat on the cold metal surface, trying to breathe slow and steady. But the scratching will not stop. It has not stopped all night. And now it is coming from somewhere new. The air vent above my head. I can hear him breathing through the metal grate, slow and wet, like he has sand stuck deep in his throat. Every breath sounds rough, almost like gravel being dragged over skin. My chest feels tight just listening to it. I know, somewhere deep in my gut, that if I look up at that vent, I will see his face looking back down at me. That smooth skin where eyes should be. That smile stretching too wide, wider than any human mouth could ever go. I do not want to see that face again. Not ever. So I keep my eyes locked on the dark screens in front of me, even though I am not really watching them anymore. I just stare at the gray static light they give off, and I wait. I wait for the sun to come up, even though I know I will not be able to see it from in here. There are no windows in this building. There never have been. But somehow, knowing the sun is up, even if I cannot see it, feels like the only thing that might save me tonight. The scratching continues. The breathing continues. And I just sit here, waiting, counting the minutes until my shift finally ends.