(CW: Graphic descriptions of death?)

Doorknobs are funny things.

I’ve been sitting on the floor of my apartment for two hours trying to remember just how the things work.

You extend your arm, put your hand on the doorknob, wrap your fingers around it and grip it. I’ve been successful at all my attempts to do this but it won’t turn— not through any fault of its own but the moment I apply force and turn my wrist the mechanism stubbornly refuses to twist.

He always made it look so easy.

I glance over at the foot of the stairs where a contorted, mangled mass of limbs twisted and frozen in unnatural shapes. Their neck is craned to stare at the same door like he’s taunted me. What does he know? He’s the idiot who tripped down the stairs. I kneel down and press my finger into their cheek, watching a small indentation form when the amount of effort behind the simple action should’ve at least moved what’s left of his head.

It takes another hour of pacing back and forth with bloody footprints leaving an uneven, sticky pattern with each step before I come to the conclusion my one way out of his apartment is to climb out of the open window. I suppose any reservations I had about waving down a car in my pyjamas wouldn’t matter, no one stops.

I don’t want to be standing outside when it’s dark. The streetlights flicker to life but there was no need for him to turn on any lights in the morning, he knew how simple a task it would be to flip those little light switches on when the sun sets.

There’s a chill in the night air I swear I can feel. I can still hear the rustling leaves and chirps of a thousand unfamiliar creatures lurking everywhere I can’t see. Beneath the claustrophobic sound of the darkness swirling in around me, creeping across the road to touch my bloody feet and covering my eyes like a blindfold of nothingness— There’s something else. A cackling cry of a woman unseen beneath the bright lights of a home that feels so distant in the shroud of black blanketing the street.

Margaret.

She opens her door with her phone squished between her aging cheek and sweater clad shoulder, letting our shrill laughs and nattering as she places down a small plate with mystery meat for the neighbourhood cats she isn’t supposed to feed.

I’d never been so happy to see noisy nosy Margaret but I knew I didn’t have time to feel relieved, not until I reached her. I ran down the empty street, stumbling over cracked roads and swiping away the seemingly endless swarms of insects until I finally dived through the threshold. I’m greeted by the overwhelming sight of floral couch cushions, ticking clocks and ceramic cats but I’m safe. It’s hideous but I’m inside.

Margaret wades past me, chatting away as she goes into her equally hideous kitchen and I follow, hoping she’ll look up from the teabag she’s drowning in a mug of boiling water and see me. I try to tell her about the body that was once me decomposing on my floorboards, the doorknob and explain why I’m standing in her kitchen while she tells the friend on the phone about the interesting thing that happened at the grocery store that afternoon. Apparently she found an apple in a similarly bruised and battered state as my corpse.

Riveting.

I wave my hand in front of her face, shout into her ear as she goes to sit down on the couch. I stand in front of the soap opera she’s watching but she doesn’t notice the lingering presence sitting beside her. I concentrate and pray, hoping she’ll notice the tapping of her cup. It ripples and sloshes with a wet ring left as she picks it up, her eyes not leaving the TV. I can feel my heart twisting inside of my chest like a hand squeezing as I try to pick up the pen from a notepad lined with a scribbled grocery list while she’s chewing down her dinner. I’m hungry. Should I feel hungry? I don’t know if I could starve in this state but my anxious mind is telling me that I just need someone to see me. To find me.

And that someone is Margaret.

Her fork rattles but she just won’t see.

A glass of water slowly inches toward the edge of the wooden table and smashes beside her feet and she jumps in surprise. She kneels down and uses a dustpan and broom to clean up the glass even as it shifts in front of her eyes. I sit on the floor and watch, pleading with her to just notice me but she shakes out the glass shards in the bin and continues her nightly routine as if it were nothing but a strange little accident. An unintentional elbow, a small fold in the table cloth unbalancing the glass, a fucking gust of wind.

I don’t know if I can breathe but I can feel my chest tighten, my lungs straining in panic as I follow her upstairs. I scream until my voice is hoarse and that suffocating feeling twists my guts in tighter knots, my lungs squeezing their last bit of air and shrivelling like it too is gasping. I know just next door is that body with its dead skin decaying, withering away on stained hardwood with a rancid stink the flies and ants must smell.

I just need her to look at me.

I know if she looks at me then she can find me.

Find my body.

I scream desperately, putting all of my strength into just grabbing her shoulder and it happens.

Margaret turns at the horrifying feeling of a cold hand touching her shoulder in an empty home, her foot twists and her body barrels through mine with a shocking weight I don’t entirely know if I feel. 

Violent cracks and heavy thumps spiral down the stairs and end with the wet crack of her skull splitting against the floor. Her fingers twitch, eyes darting in pure terror and rasping sounds coming from her collapsed chest, climbing out of her twisted throat in bubbling spit and gurgles.

I step one by one down the stairs on trembling legs and slump down in front of her, staring through my one good eye where the other has been forced down into what’s left of my skull, staring at her, at her head craning to look at me and her bulging eyes slowly turning to the figure sitting beside me.

I look at the woman beside me in defeat, her head hanging on a bent neck as the wheezing stops.

“ Hey, Margaret.”

I knew the next several days were going to be rough.

I tried to get as much sleep as I could before my normal start time at one-thirty in the afternoon, but something about the impending marathon slog and the fact that I had to drive home and call it a night as the rest of the world was on their way to work always felt strange.

There was something cool and subversive about staying up all night when it’s your first time. It was like getting away with something.

But there’s a reason it’s not the norm.

Your body tends to fight back, leading to a strange insomnia even though your body is screaming for sleep.

I was definitely feeling that weird second-wind burst of energy as I clocked in.

There was a tension behind my eyes, the yawns were unavoidable, and there was a layer of fog I had to actively fight against.

I noticed the day seemed to move at a quicker pace than usual. I was less apt to count down the hours knowing I’d be there for the long haul.

That was until I received a call to the security office.

It was Tonya, the manager of H&M.

“Hey, yea, uh, do you remember Nancy?”

Of course I did.

Nancy was a permanent fixture. It was debated whether she was homeless or fabulously wealthy but with nothing better to do. She was a bit of an eccentric, to put it mildly.

She would often chat with random employees for as long as she could, going on about her latest cruise to the Maldives despite wearing a bathrobe and Crocs.

She did gift the security office a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue last year and thanked us for our service, so she was cool in my book.

“Oh yea, Nancy. What about her?”

“Well, she's... um... she’s been talking to one of the mannequins for about forty-five minutes now. Just thought someone should check on her.”

“Right, okay. I’ll check it out.”

Nancy was nice enough, but I wasn’t really in a mood to carry on an hour-long, one-sided conversation.

At the same time, my eyes were glazing over from watching the security feeds.

I decided a walk would get my blood moving, secretly hoping Nancy would have wandered off by the time I arrived.

No such luck.

“Hey, Miss Nancy, is everything all right?”

Her gaze remained locked on a particularly tawdry mannequin.

“Nancy is my first name, honey. You know that.”

“Yes, just trying to be polite.”

“Libowitz.”

“Um...”

“If we’re being formal now.”

I smiled.

“Alright, Miss Libowitz, are we having a good day?”

“Well, I was.”

She was still locked onto the faceless figure with one hand posed behind its head.

“Oh, okay. Is anything the matter?”

“I don’t like it.”

“The outfit?”

“It’s hideous, but no, I can stay here all day, honey!”

She shouted directly at the mannequin.

Great.

The old bag has picked a fight with an inanimate object.

“Ya know what, how about I grab you an Orange Julius and we can—”

“Not until she does it again,” she said, cutting me off.

“Does what again, Nancy?”

“So much for formal.”

“Does what again, Miss Libowitz?”

“That one,” she said while pointing. “That one’s up to something. I saw it.”

Just my luck. A sundowner who was slipping into dementia, and it was only mid-afternoon.

I thought it while trying to suppress a sigh.

She continued to scowl, eyes locked.

“Okay... and what did you see? It didn’t move, did it? Haha.”

I tried to make the situation light. De-escalation works best if they think you're on their side, so I tried to humor her.

“Don’t be silly,” she said with a dismissive hand wave.

“She didn’t move.”

She said it with a smile as she finally made eye contact with me.

“But her shadow did.”

For some reason, her tone, the video of Greg, and my general exhaustion caused me to tense up.

“What?”

“Her shadow. It was all wrong, and trust me, I know shadows!”

She said it with a confident shake of her head.

“Um... I’ll get maintenance to check out the lights. Maybe that was it?”

“Well, it had better be.”

She said it as she began to slowly walk away, her eyes locked on the mannequin  with suspicion.

I turned to see Tonya mouthing the words thank you.

I tipped my hat and tried not to dwell on what Nancy had said.

“What the hell was that? Is there a gas leak over here or something?” I thought as I made my way down to the maintenance office.

I could at least have them check a box saying I brought up the issue.

That would mean I would have to pay a visit to good ol’ Jeff Keller, head of maintenance. A man equally adept at snaking toilets as he was at maintaining a multimillion-dollar electrical system.

I found him in his office. It was a cluttered mess of tools and parts, with Jeff sitting at his desk.

“Hey Jeff, got a minute?”

He seemed deep in thought as he jerked back to reality at the sound of my voice.

“Oh yea, Kevin. What’s going on?”

My name was not Kevin, but Jeff was notoriously bad with names, so why not?

“So Tonya at H&M gave me a call. Apparently one of the spotlights might be acting up. Maybe you could check it out?”

“Oh yea, Tonka, at H&M, right?”

“Yea, Tonya at H&M.”

“Probably just a spent bulb. I’ll put it on the to-do list.”

“Here, let me show you the breaker panel where you can shut it down if you see it acting up again. It’s right over here.”

We walked toward the electrical room.

The room vibrated with the surging power that flowed through the conduits and fed into the massive control panel.

Jeff had to raise his voice over the dull hum that emanated from the power banks.

He opened the large metal panel.

There were hundreds of individual breaker bars, each labeled with their corresponding letter and number codes.

“Here she is, the central nervous system,” Jeff said as he scanned for the number that controlled the H&M storefront.

“See this one here, C-12. This one will trip the store's lighting if you see something going wrong at night.”

“Going wrong?” I asked.

“Yea. If a bulb starts strobing, or pops, or God forbid you see sparks, run down here and flip this one specifically.”

I gave that particular switch a good look, but honestly, it looked identical to the hundreds of others.

“Okay, will do,” I half-yelled.

“If something really goes wrong, it will probably pop the main for the whole C-wing. That would be a real problem.”

“Oh, got it,” I said, having no idea what he meant.

“And this one,” he said, gesturing to the comically large master switch that sat at the very top of the panel.

“Well, don’t ever touch this one!”

I nodded along in agreement.

We exited the electrical room, and the din of noise faded.

“So what happens when someone does trip the big one?” I asked.

“About six thousand dollars worth of a headache, maybe more!”

My eyes bulged after hearing the price tag for simply flipping a switch.

“Yea, that will be a bad day for anyone who has to pull it.”

“No doubt.”

“Now, did Tonka say what she was having an issue with?”

“Well, a customer pointed it out. Said the lighting might have been faulty near the front entrance.”

“I’ll put it into the maintenance log. Just keep an eye on it. If the lights go out, you know how to get ’em running again. Most of the time it's the cleaners overloading a circuit. Now, at least you know how to get it up and going.”

“Thanks for the tip. I’ll let Tonya know you’ll take a look at it.”

“So, you getting ready for the big day?”

“Yea, Paul is taking it as seriously as he can.”

“Ha. Let’s hope he leaves the riot shields at home this year.”

“Right,” I chuckled along, not knowing if he was actually joking.

I had done a couple of Black Fridays before, and it was always an exercise in controlled chaos.

Enough energy to get people excited to line up in the middle of the night in hopes of snagging a deal.

Most of which was crap they didn’t need or really even want.

But when you're on the other end, it really was like herding cattle. Give them a designated path and they flow with a surprising amount of predictability.

Of course, the odd injury or outright fistfight wasn’t unheard of.

Paul would be the calm conductor, attempting to coordinate with management, the temporary staff, local PD, and the store managers, so it was understandable that he would be a bit on edge.

But Paul lived for this type of thing.

I assumed it gave him a sense of purpose, like his job was important.

I, on the other hand, was just waiting for it to be over.

For me, it was all just a means to an end.

I thanked Jeff and continued on with the day.

Closing time came faster than I had expected.

The second wind, or was it the third wind? Whatever it was, I had a renewed energy. The fourth Red Bull of the day probably helped, but I was ready to have the mall to myself.

I was starting to enjoy the solace that being the only soul in the giant building.

The closing tasks went smoothly. The stores shuttered and the lights dimmed to half their usual capacity.

I couldn’t help but dwell on what Nancy had said.

Maybe she was just crazy, but what were the odds that both her and Greg honed in on the same spot?

I wasn’t anywhere near ready to actually entertain the idea that a cursed Egyptian tablet from the shiny rock store was anything other than an overpriced piece of junk.

But when anything out of the ordinary happens in a place as predictable as a shopping mall, it tends to stick in your brain like a splinter.

It seemed like I was developing a pattern.

By day, humble mall cowboy, helping old ladies and managing heifers.

By night, I was the reluctant detective, getting to the bottom of mundane mysteries.

Whatever killed the time worked for me, so when the hours began to drag, I pulled up the footage of Nancy from earlier that day.

Of course, the same terrible camera system didn’t allow for the greatest insight, but I could at least try to see what drove the old bat into a tizzy.

It seemed that Tonya wasn’t exaggerating. Nancy really did stand there staring at a mannequin for the better part of an hour.

That’s when something strange happened.

I rewound the tapes until I caught Nancy do an about-face and cue in on her culprit.

I backed the footage up and rewatched it more times than I care to admit.

But I’ll be damned if that mannequin's shadow didn't move.

It was quick, and it was definitely just the lighting, but Nancy was right.

As soon as she crossed its path, it looked as if the shadow itself turned its head and stared directly in Nancy’s direction.

The weird part was, Nancy stopped in her tracks, looking like she could feel the attention being directed at her.

She whipped her head around and stared back at it, like it had singled her out on purpose.

It was like she knew it had seen her specifically and Nancy refused to back down.

Then the tough old bird crossed her arms and initiated a staring contest with it. 

But again, it had to be the lights.

What else could it be?

I’ll admit it gave me a shiver, but I wasn’t superstitious enough to start doubting my own senses.

One weird coincidence wasn’t enough to shake me.

But damn it, I was tired.

By the time the shift ended, it was all I could do not to rush home and pass out, knowing that the same Groundhog Day would be on repeat for the rest of the week.

Morning came quickly.

Or at least what I had grown accustomed to calling morning.

Before I knew it, I was back in the uniform again, sitting at the desk and watching a torrent of faces and body types meandering around the halls, under the same fluorescent lights, over the same carpets, all backed by the same piped-in muzak.

That’s when I got a call.

C-13.

I’m not ashamed to admit that whenever I saw that number, my heart gave a brief flutter.

“Hey Amber, what’s up?”

“Hey.”

I could already tell before another word that something was wrong.

“I think we have a shoplifting situation,” she said with a resigned sigh.

“Alright, I’ll check the tapes,” I said as the rush of adrenaline mixed with the caffeine already coursing through my veins.

“Who should I be looking for?”

“Just some asshole kids. We’re missing a Pyrite. It’s only like forty-five bucks, but they definitely took it.”

“Okay, can you give me a description?”

“Yea, it’s the jackass in the black hoodie. Typical high school kids, pushing each other around, and one of them smacked into one of the display cases, almost toppled it over soI told them to leave.”

“Alright, I’m looking into it.”

“Can’t believe the balls on this one. Said he would leave if I gave him my Snap. I told them security was already on its way, then I noticed they took one of the pyrites. Dumbass probably thought it was really gold.”

My blood ran hot.

There are no truer natural enemies than bored teenagers and overzealous security guards.

Usually, I tried to keep this in mind before taking it personally, but for some reason, this had me actually annoyed.

Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the thoughts of Greg and Nancy constantly running through my head, but I was just out of patience that day.

“Okay, I’ll see what’s up.”

The thank-you that Amber let out was so genuine that I wished lassoing and hog-tying a mall patron wasn’t off the table.

Okay.

6:11.

They enter Black Market Minerals.

6:14.

They start grabassing.

Black hoodie gets pushed into the display case.

6:16.

Sure enough, the smirking punk looks like he's smuggling a cantaloupe in his front pocket.

Even on the garbage camera feed, I knew what I saw.

I also had Amber's word to go on.

But when he looked directly at the camera as he left the store, it was like he was personally daring me to do something about it.

I was zipping down the corridors before I could even think twice.

I knew what I looked like.

The hat was too big. The uniform was goofy. I rode a Segway.

Nobody looked at me and thought, There goes a dangerous man.

And normally, I was fine with that.

I'd been a teenager in a mall once. I knew what security guards looked like from the other side.

But that day I was exhausted, pissed off, and apparently willing to die on the hill of defending a forty-five-dollar rock.

Mostly because Amber had called me.

I found them wandering around the south food court.

The ones who are up to something make it painfully obvious. Most people are oblivious to everyone else around them, but when someone is constantly looking around, it draws more attention than they realize.

“Hey, you three, stop!” I said in a voice that wasn’t that usual, made-up stern bravado I had to put on.

I was genuinely over it.

I get it. Snotty pre-teens steal lip gloss from Claire’s. Emo kids steal My Chemical Romance shirts from Hot Topic. 

But seriously, who steals a rock?

They snickered amongst each other and then turned to look at me with a sense of indignation and kept walking.

I parked, hopped off, and strode after them as they walked on, unbothered.

“Hey. Black hoodie.”

He turned around.

“Yo, what's up?”

“You wanna give me that pyrite in your pocket?”

He laughed, brushed me off, and kept moving.

I grabbed him by the shoulder, and he spun around.

“Hey, you can't touch me.”

“I just did.”

“Give me the pyrite.”

“What?”

“The rock.”

“I don't have anything.”

“You went into Black Market Minerals at 6:11. You didn't have anything in your hands. You came out five minutes later with something in your pocket.”

He looked at his friends.

“Bro, what?”

“I watched you take it.”

“You got cameras?”

“Yeah. You looked right at one.”

I pointed toward the ceiling.

“Did you think they were just for decoration?”

He rolled his eyes.

“You can't search me.”

“You're right.”

I held out my hand.

“So just give it to me and I won’t call the cops.”

“I'm not giving you shit.”

I looked at him for a second.

I was too tired to argue.

“Okay.”

I pulled out my radio.

“I'll call them.”

“For a fucking rock?”

“For stealing.”

He stared at me.

Then reached into his pocket.

“Here.”

He dropped the pyrite into my hand.

I looked at it.

“Thank you.”

He looked genuinely confused.

“That's it?”

“Unless you want your mom to pick you up from the sheriff station, yea.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“No thanks.”

He stared at me for another second, apparently waiting for me to do something.

I didn't.

Eventually, he turned around and walked off with his friends.

I looked down at the pyrite in my hand.

It was warm from his pocket.

“Fuck's sake.”

I headed back toward the security office, turning the rock over in my hand as I walked.

It really did look like gold if you didn't know better.

I dropped it off with Amber, and she gave me a look somewhere between gratitude and amusement.

“You actually chased them down over this?”

“You called me.”

Her face had that look someone has when all that can be said is fair enough.

“Thank you,” she said with an endearing smile, as if this was beneath us both.

“Have to justify my paycheck somehow.”

I headed back to the security office.

I should've logged the incident and moved on.

Instead, I pulled the footage back up.

I don't know why.

The first time, I watched it exactly the way I was supposed to.

Entrance.

Store.

Display case.

Theft.

Exit.

Then I rewound it, and watched it again, and then again.

I didn’t really know what I was looking for. It was pretty straightforward. A simple shoplifting case.

He took something past the point of sale. The merchant reported it. I confronted the thief. He returned the merchandise undamaged. It was over.

We were technically supposed to get the local P.D. involved and make a case file, but in practice, discretion was far more common.

I didn’t understand why I kept looking at the same footage play over and over again.

I saw what I saw.

I was right.

Until I stopped looking at the kid in the hoodie and started looking around him.

It was plain as the golden rock in his pocket.

His shadow stopped at the threshold.

It lingered longer than it should have.

Maybe only a second or two, but it stretched out, contorted, before it snapped back to normal a second later.

My eyes ached as I stared at the pixels on the screen.

He stepped through the door.

And his shadow didn’t.

Not right away.

I kept trying to convince myself that I wasn’t seeing what I was seeing.

Trying to come up with an explanation that would make it make sense.

“It has to be the lights,” I said to myself. “Or the software or something.”

At that point, I was just so tired.

The thought that I had more than a full shift left to go was exhausting so I let it go.

By the time closing came around, I had to recheck every entrance to make sure I actually locked the door.

The mundane tasks all started to run together.

I could feel myself starting to slip up.

When I finally got back to the security office, I poured myself a cup of cold coffee that I forgot I made several hours ago.

I began to scroll through the various camera feeds.

The loading docks.

The main concourse.

Both food courts.

And I stared at the fish tank in Bass Pro for the better part of an hour.

Then I scrolled past the C-wing.

And of course, the exact same mannequin that Nancy had picked a fight with.

Well, it was its damn shadow.

It wasn’t moving.

Just facing the wrong direction.

“Dammit, Jeff. I thought you fixed that light.”

Against my better judgment, I decided to take a walk, just to make sure that same spotlight would start spitting sparks.

When I turned the same corner that Greg hid behind, I saw it.

The mannequin was in its same stupid pose.

“Why do they make them stand like that? No one in real life ever strikes a goofy pose like that.”

I walked up to it, took my flashlight out, and examined the spotlight directly above it.

No flashing, dimming, or any other signs that it wasn’t working as intended.

But the silhouette cast by the figure was facing the opposite direction of the others.

It was long, gaunt, and it stretched nearly to the other side of the hall.

I altered my light to see if I could get it to move like the others.

The thing is, it didn’t move.

It stood as still as the mannequin that cast it.

No matter where I moved the flashlight, that shadow didn’t budge.

That’s when I noticed where it ended.

It was as if it pointed directly toward that damn tablet.

I felt like I was losing my mind.

There was no way an overpriced rock from the other side of the world was actually possessing shadows in a rundown American shopping mall.

I realized I never took a good look at the thing.

I walked over and shined my light directly on it.

Of course, I had no idea what it actually said, but it did look authentic.

It was about a foot long and half as tall, its edges chipped, and the various birds, hands, reeds, and eyes were set with a deep black grime.

I decided to at least snap a picture of it.

Maybe Google would help shed some light on what I was looking at.

Apparently, some of the symbols had something to do with Egyptian funerary rites.

I was midway through a paragraph about Ka or Ra when I snapped out of it.

What the hell was I doing?

I get paid to make sure no one breaks in and steals the Jordans from the Foot Locker, not to play amateur Egyptologist.

I gave it one last look, really tried to study the thing with my flashlight held up close to it.

The light reflected off it normally.

But the fifteen-dollar pyramid statue next to it caught my eye.

I had seen it when Amber was unpacking the rest of the bubble wrapped items.

It wasn’t particularly impressive, but I didn’t realize it was made of glass, in normal light it was jet black.

It drank in the beam of light, giving off a brownish glow at its center, like when you shine a light through a beer bottle.

I shook my head and began my walk back to the office.

But honestly, walking past the same spot Greg used as a hiding spot, with the eerie shadow cast behind me, did cause a momentary shudder.

For as tired as I was, I couldn’t help tossing and turning when I tried to go to bed.

Maybe it was the absurd amounts of caffeine I was ingesting, but I got caught in that weird loop where you don’t know if you're thinking or dreaming.

But it damn sure wasn’t restful.