The Shadow in Aisle 9
Four hours into my night shift, my eyes were already starting to play tricks on me. That is the golden rule of working the graveyard shift: never, ever trust what you see out of the corner of your eye. The store felt different at three in the morning. It was not just quiet; it was heavy. The silence seemed to press against my eardrums like water at the bottom of a deep pool. We were in the back stocking shelves, but the store felt empty and cold, like a graveyard. I was exhausted. Dave had called in sick again, leaving me to cover his shift right after my own. I had worked two shifts in a row, sixteen hours of dragging heavy pallets and tearing open cardboard boxes until my fingers were raw and my muscles ached. I felt like a ghost haunting my own life. I was staring at a row of cereal boxes, trying to focus on the price stickers, when I saw him. A man in a gray hoodie was standing at the very end of Aisle 9. He was facing away from me, staring down at the floor as if he had lost something important. The lighting in that part of the store was bad; the fluorescent tubes overhead were flickering, casting long, jagged shadows that danced across the linoleum floor. I stood up straight and called out, thinking he was a lost customer who had somehow wandered in past the locked doors. We are closed, I said, my voice sounding raspy and strange in the cavernous silence. He did not move. He did not even flinch. I rubbed my eyes hard, digging my palms into my sockets until bright stars bloomed in my vision. When I blinked and looked again, he was ten feet closer. My heart gave a painful thud against my ribs. It made no sense. How could he have moved that quickly without making a single sound? I waited, my breath hitching in my chest, watching him. This happened three more times. Every time I looked away or blinked, the man moved forward. His movement was not natural; it was jerky and stiff, like a stop-motion film or a glitch in a video game. He just popped into a new position, closer and closer to where I stood. When he was finally right next to me, I felt a sudden drop in temperature. I looked up at his face, expecting to see a customer or maybe a coworker playing a joke, but my lungs froze. He had no face. Where his eyes, nose, and mouth should have been, there was just smooth, pale skin, stretched tight like a mask. The air around him felt charged with static. I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my throat. It felt as if someone had stuffed my mouth with cotton. I stumbled backward, my boots catching on a stack of soup cans I had been stocking. I went down hard, the metal cans clattering across the floor in a chaotic, deafening roar. The noise was violent in the silence, echoing off the high ceilings and vibrating through the shelves. I scrambled backward on my hands and knees, gasping for air, my heart hammering like a trapped bird. When I finally found my footing and looked up, the man was gone. There was nothing there. Just the empty aisle, the rows of brightly colored cereal boxes, and those cursed flickering lights. I felt sick. I stood up, trembling so hard my teeth were clicking together. I rushed to the breakroom and splashed cold water on my face, splashing it all over my uniform. I told myself it was just sleep deprivation. I told myself I was hallucinating because I had been awake for too long. I spent ten minutes in that chair, staring at the wall, waiting for my nerves to settle. But when I finally walked back out onto the sales floor to finish my shift, I saw something that made my blood run cold. Resting on the middle shelf, right where the man had been standing, was a gray hoodie. It was slumped over, looking exactly like the one he had been wearing, but it was completely empty. It lay there on the plastic display rack, arms dangling uselessly, hood drooping down. There was no one inside it. My common sense told me it was just a misplaced item, something a customer had dropped, but my gut knew better. I didn't even pack up my things. I walked to the front counter, left my store badge and my keys on the counter, and just kept walking. I pushed through the heavy glass doors and stepped out into the cool night air of the parking lot. I didn't look back once. I never went to that store again, and I swore off night shifts for the rest of my life. I found a new job in a bright office during the day, where there are always people around and the lights never flicker. But sometimes, when I drift off to sleep, I see that gray hoodie again. I see him standing at the end of a long, dark hallway. Every night, in my dreams, he gets a little bit closer. I know one day I will wake up and find him right next to my bed.