Creepy - My Very Last Graveyard Shift

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

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My very last graveyard shift. Written by Ningeon. I took a job for the summer at a remote sawmill in the northern forest of the prairies. Uncle Jeff told me they needed someone badly. There's a couple small towns in the only area. there as well, but apparently none of the locals wanted anything to do with this company. Tensions have been bad since the company started logging a shoreline a little too close to protected wildlife habitat.

Whatever the politics of the situation, the truth is that the sawmill wasn't doing well anyway. As soon as oil prices went up, a migration across the border started and left the sawmill struggling to keep workers. The remote side of the lakeside mill didn't help to sit down. situation either. Every season was a risk. And as soon as they ran out of people to dump on site, they had to go into survival mode, which meant they kept one worker to keep the lights on and two more workers to manage site security on rotating 12-hour shifts. Three of us agreed at the start of the summer we'd each take one month doing each job on rotation. We drew from a hat to

determine the order of the rotation that summer. For the first month, I was a care of or fueling the generators, checking supplies and doing pest control in and around the cabins. And at least during the day, I had company with the daytime security guard hired to stay at the site gate and watch for trespassers. Jesse got that job for the first month. She had friends from the local communities and told me they warned her not to take the job. It was mostly because the company wasn't doing right by the land they were cutting trees on, but they also told her that the lake wasn't a good place to be. when she asked for an explanation of why, no one would tell her anything.

She told myself and Paul, since we were the only other people on site that summer, but we didn't give it any weight. They worked with routine and paid well. The company left the mobile internet running just for us. They had a well-stocked kitchen and modular cabins to keep us comfortable, and that was worth the isolation. Paul got stuck with graveyard shift on the first. month and spent a lot of time watching movies online.

He told us he didn't see or hear anything on his shifts, which isn't surprising. Paul's half-deaf and wears very thick glasses. He's middle-aged, slow, and oblivious to anything that isn't on his tablet screen. On the second month, I got the daytime security shift from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., watching the one and only gate and keeping the site locked up. My clipboard had three things to check on every two hours. Make sure the perimeter fence was intact. Make sure the doors and windows of the building were all shut and secure.

And make sure the other two people on site were looked after. Jesse took over the graveyard shift and Paul took over my daytime caretaker job. The second month dragged on a long time. I first noticed the change in my coworkers that month. Paul stopped watching streaming services at sunset. He'd come out of the cabin and come find Jesse before she was settling in for a graveyard shift. They'd talk and share reports from the previous shift. But the whole time, Paul would scan the horizon where the clear-cut trees opened up a view of the shoreline.

He'd watched for disturbances in the water and then look relieved that there were none. Gave Jesse the creeps. Paul was usually an observant, and to see him laser-focused on anything seemed unnerving. I noticed it too, but only after the sixth week did I notice Jesse was doing the same thing at the beginning and end for graveyard shifts. One time I came out of my cabin and saw him both staring out over the lake from right against the site fence. On week eight, Jesse looked upset at the end of her night shifts. It was like she wasn't sleeping. enough during our daytime shifts.

Paul and I noticed her poking her head through the blackout curtains during the day. The disturbing part wasn't that she stared out of her cabin windows while she should have been asleep. It was the way she scanned the fence perimeter on the lakeside, peering into the tree lines and shorelines for 20 minutes at a time. Even if we passed by her windows, she rarely took her eyes away from the landscape to acknowledge us being there. One afternoon, I casually asked Paul if Grave,

yard shift is hard to transition into if it messes with your head. He told me that the shift isn't difficult to get into, but by the end of the night, your last few hours before sunrise drag on longer than you'd believe. It feels like time is pausing, and the clock moves slower and slower the more you stare at it. Then Paul looked me in the eyes through his thick glasses and said, It really messes with your senses. You don't trust what your senses are telling you.

you sometimes. Right after he said it, I started to think about Jesse's insomnia and what it must be doing to her. She kept waking up later and later and emerging from her cabin barely ten minutes before her graveyard shifts. One time, Paul even had to go knock and make sure she was awake. That was the night Paul and I stayed up with her until almost one in the morning. She feverishly sucked down energy drinks and told us we didn't need to hang out with her, especially since we were all working 12-hour shifts for another five weeks straight.

No one was coming to check on us. We emailed our daily reports of some random company email address and never got anything resembling a check-in or contact from the boss. Our only indication that we've been acknowledged in any way was when our paychecks deposited on time every two weeks. Other than that, we were pretty much on our own. It was in the middle of week nine that the rain started. It rained off and on for three days.

The entire site was sloppy with mud and all the heavy equipment shifted under its own weight as the sandy clay shifted to one side or another. Storms came and went, and Monday was my upcoming start on graveyard shift. Jesse used to stream music all night to keep yourself awake and alert. Paul and I caught her dancing to 90s dance music one morning. We both realized she was just happy to be coming off graveyard shift. There was a loud, flashy thunderstorm on her last graveyard shift that was hard for Paul and I to sleep through. Lightning lit up the night from two to three that morning, with loud cracks and rumbles, shaking the ground soon after each flash. I knew I was taken over graveyard shifts, so I was already staying up later and later those last few days before.

Being up for the storm was just a convenient way to get used to the hours. I wasn't ready for long overnight shifts quite yet, but that didn't matter. It was coming. At a quarter to four that night, the east side diesel generator failed. That entire side of the work site went dark, and I saw Jessie pop out of her chair and get her rain jacket and headlamp on. The emergency light in the guard shack led up dimly in the shack window, where I could see her getting ready to go out. She emerged from the shack and sat towards east fence line to check on the generator. I watched her trudge through thick mud as it clung to her boot bottoms, making her slow and awkward.

The rain and wind wasn't letting up at all. Sudden flashes of lightning occasionally lit up the horizon and made the yard site easy to see for a split second. The far west side yard light didn't offer much for working light, especially since it was facing the opposite fence line. I didn't notice anything weird until 15 minutes later when Jesse didn't find her way back to the shack. It doesn't take long to restart a generator if all the needs is fuel or a filter change. From my cabin window, I couldn't see behind the next cabin where the generator sits. I couldn't even see her headlamp or any indication of where she was.

Nothing was moving out there except trees waving around in the strong winds and the eaves on the cabins gushing water from downspouts. Paul was either sleeping through all this, or he was plugged into a movie in his cabin over to the west of mine. I stuffed my feet into my rubber boots and threw my rain poncho over top my pajamas. I grabbed a brimmed hat off my wall and fixed my headlamp onto the hat. Bright LEDs lit up my cabin as I staggered out into the storm to see what the hell was taking so long. I trudged through the sticky mud and rounded the corner the next cab and where the generator sits.

I got a bit of a shock when I realized what was going on. Jesse was soaked and cursing as she tore mangled branches off the generator one by one. A 30-foot tree was angled right on top of it where it snapped off at the middle and came right over the fence. The trunk had bashed down under the diesel fuel tank and wrecked the line. None of us heard it because the thunder and wind was too loud. Jesse saw me staring like a moron and started to laugh. She made a joke that we're probably not getting this one going anymore. I nodded in bewilderment,

and she stopped trying to clear debris and gathered up the toolbox. I grabbed the fuel can she brought from the shack and we headed back to the front gate. As soon as we emerged into the main yard, we both heard a gunshot. Then two more, right in succession. We hustled toward the front gate and saw Paul there with his rifle, sending one final blast down the main road past the perimeter gate. We called out to let him know we were there, and he barely glanced over his shoulder to see us. He was staring down the road intently and breathing heavy.

He told us he saw a movement on the main road in the lightning flashes. Paul couldn't tell what it was by the size and shape, but he figured a few blasts overhead would scare anything away. I didn't know what to think, and neither did Jesse. We all stood side by side as the storm started to let up. A final flash, a distant lightning lit up the road for a split second, and we struggled to see movement. The tops of bushes split open the way they do

when something's pushing their way through. But the darkness returned too. too quickly. It would be another hour until the clouds broke up enough to see daylight, so we all stayed up and waited for it to get light on. On my first night of graveyard shift, Paul said he'd stay up as long as he could. Jesse stayed in her cabin and only came out long enough to cut and saw the snapped-off tree away from the generator and the perimeter fence.

I remember having trouble sleeping through the chainsaw noise, but I didn't dare go into my first night shift exhausted. I had a feeling I'd need to be fully alert. Earlier that morning, Paul walked down the road with a rifle on his back to see where he'd been aiming. A bullet hole splintered a branch on a tree and a swath of the underbrush had been snapped Jason to the road. He sat down at the shack and smoked two cigarettes back to back before Jesse came to check on

him. She asked if he saw any tracks in the mud, and he didn't answer right away. He said he saw one print, but it was smeared and washed away by the heavy rain. He didn't think it was trespassers. The stride went from the roadside to the middle of the road and back to the other side of the road. It meant the steps were over four feet between each one. And the shots he fired just over the head of the shape hit the tree 12 feet up from the ground. He wasn't visibly shaken or upset, but Paul wasn't the type to be so quiet.

He made small talk with Jesse until she eased into her day. I was informed what he found when I got up for my shift. On the guard chat counter was two extra flashlights and an entire box of rifle cartridges. It seemed overly precocious to me, but I wasn't going to argue. Paul sat with me for four hours and smoked an entire pack of cigarettes before he decided to call it a night. I was on my own for the rest of the time. rest of that shift. Nothing happened.

At least nothing that I noticed. Every two hours at first night, the cabin curtains on Paul and Jesse's windows would wrestle. They kept checking on me, and I felt way better about what these last two weeks would be like. As much as I wanted to report everything I saw and heard over those last weeks, I kept most of it to myself. My coworkers were nervous enough as it was. and telling them what my imagination was telling me seemed problematic. By the last 12 days, everything was back to normal.

We were still short the one generator, but we managed to transfer the last of the diesel to keep the one side of the sawmill site powered up and lit up at night. I don't know if it was fear or convenience, but Paul and Jesse decided to stay together in the far-west cabin right next to our only working generator. I stayed in my original cabin by myself because I knew I'd still be day sleeping until the end of this stretch. We knew a float plane would land a week from this Sunday to take us back to civilization.

After being silent for over seven weeks, we all received the same email from the company, that they were still on schedule to fly in with the seasonal crew to start the sawmill back up. They offered us extended contracts to stay in the camp and keep it ready for the work. crew's they were sending, but none of us took them up on the offer. Paul Jesse and I just wanted to leave. The isolation had gotten to all of us. The email ended by informing us that the main access road had been cut off by dozens of fallen trees a couple days ago, which made us feel trapped and insecure.

Trees falling over logging roads isn't overly concerning in this region because it's a common occurrence. But the fact that the trees fell over the road at the beginning of the sawmill site access road, and again less than two miles from the main gate, seemed too random to be random. My co-workers coasted through their days, and I managed to keep my nerves in check for most of the remaining graveyard shifts. I had four shifts left when the noises started again. Four or five times each night a noise would emerge from the direction of the lake.

A muffled huff or snort would echo across the still waters of the lake. They're always distant and hard to hear over the background noise of buzzing insects and the hum with the last working yard light. I didn't leave movies or music playing during graveyard shifts anymore. The second I had anything making background noise going, my mind would tell me I heard something else. About an hour before first light on those lonely paranoid shifts, I'd hear the ripple of water and audible splashes coming from the lake. Whenever the beavers on the north side of the lake would drop trees into the water, my heart would skip a beat.

There were noisily most nights, but on certain nights, beavers wouldn't even stir or leave its lodge. Paul would check in every morning and ask about things I'd heard or seen. He began to sound agitated when there's nothing to report. Jesse simply counted down the hours and did her best to keep the camp in good shape. It was on our final half week that Jesse came and found us at the guard shack, where Paul was leaning on the gate smoking and I was sipping the last of my water. She yelled for both of us, which was instantly our cue to come outside and pay attention.

Jesse didn't waste any breath letting us know that we were on the last of the diesel. It was a bit of a shock since we could. kept three tanks full at camp at all times. The first two had always been filled, but the third tank echoed with a hollow clang when we tapped on it. Even on a strict ration, we'd be out of diesel in a day or less. As a group, we decided to shut the power down during daylight, seeing as I had two nights left.

I moved into the Far West cabin for those days, and we simply barricaded the main gate with heavy logs and didn't bother with staying out in the guard shack overnight. I could see it clearly from the cabin window. I'd watch and listen from the cabin porch with the flashlights and rifle close by. There were louder splashes and muffled noises from the shoreline that I didn't have to strain to hear at all. It was almost like something wanted to be heard by us.

Bugs didn't buzz around. Beaver didn't make a peep. Birds didn't chirp and even though. the wind and the tree branches seemed like suppressed whispers. The silence of the night was interrupted when I heard the windows smash on Paul's cabin to the east. The noise scared the living shit out of me. I had the rifle on my hands and both flashlights on in a split second.

Jesse and Paul woke up from the commotion I was making. They were panicked and asking what happened. I wasn't sure myself, but I told them what my instincts were telling me. Something was inside the perimeter fence and was scavenging inside the Far East cabin. Paul had a fire axe in his hands and Jesse was too scared to leave the corner of the cabin. She almost wept and trembled. Her eyes scanned the windows expecting to see something rush through the door or come smashing through the windows. She told us not to leave the cabin, but we were already shoulder to shoulder crossing the cabin

porch to get a look at the East cabin. Moonlight didn't show us much. It wasn't until we heard the crush of broken window glass on the far side that shadows revealed anything. Something was moving from the far side of the cabin slowly towards the corner facing the main yard. It was moving carefully. I tried to stay low despite its size.

I had the gun aimed at the front corner of the cabin in case I got a clear shot at it. He would need peek around the corner if it wanted to see the dart shack at all. Paul dug the lights out of my hand and switched him off. Paul took slow, shallow breaths and whispered that I needed to shoot if it poked out at all. He used the moonlight to aim because the flashlights would give us away. I was so terrified that I had trouble keeping my legs beneath me. We stood frozen with a rifle aimed where we knew it would emerge. A flicker light and shadow crept forth. I could only guess what we both saw was light shined from the moon on eyes or an open mouth. Paul clenched his hand on my shoulder and told me to wait for a shot. As soon as he said it,

I had one. A broad shadow like a thick cheekbone poked out four or five inches from cover, and I took the shot. The rifle bucked into my shoulder and we heard an otherworldly screech and panicked squeal. Whatever it was, spun on massive legs and jumped the seven-foot perimeter fence like it was nothing. I stood there in shock for brief seconds as the thrash of heavy strides across falling debris

and marshy shoreline echoed out of year shot. It ran to the lake shore and was gone in less than half a minute. We imagined it had covered a quarter mile in that short amount of time, but we could never know for sure. The shock of it all had us vibrating with adrenaline. Jesse was still in the cabin freaking out and basically bawling into her hands. She had a lanterns lit and was asking if it was dead.

Paul and I knew it wasn't. But we did know it was wounded, and it was way bigger than any creature we knew lived out here. Immediately, Jesse spent the remainder of the night trying to contact anyone she could on her phone. But we all knew since day one that mobile phone signal didn't exist in this part of the prairies. It was only an hour earlier that the last of the diesel sputtered through the generator and the last of our electricity evaporated. It sunk in fast that there was no way to fire up the mobile internet or the main shop radio now. There would also be no yard lighting for our last night.

If we weren't already feeling trapped and scared before, It sure sunk in now. At first light, we decided to inspect the Far East cabin. I went first with the rifle at the ready, but it was obvious nothing was there. None of us were sure what to expect, but we put it together pretty fast. The other half of the snapped tree had been mashed down into the perimeter fence, making it low enough to climb over with ease. Across the broad side of the failed generator was a splash of dark red blood and tissue.

Paul scraped his knife against the largest piece of it, showed it to me and Jesse. As near as we could tell, it used to be an eye, but the horrifying part was that the eye was probably the size of a cue ball. Nothing natural has eyes that big. I felt sick. There was also a putrid smell in the air.

We spent the rest of the day trying to find some way to reach the outside world and get rescued. Out behind the sawmill, we came across a shop truck full of gear, but nothing we could use to communicate with. Paul scraped together every battery on site and tried to rig the mobile internet into powering on. Jesse and I built a large scrap wood pile near the main gate and set it on fire. If the local fire crews were watched and they'd send someone to investigate. These were all long shots.

but they were worth trying. We'd run out ideas by late afternoon and panic was starting to creep in. In our desperation, we spent the last of our daylight raking a row of old lumber saws around the cabin perimeter, even though we had no idea if it would help us. We had just over 11 hours before anyone was scheduled to show up, and it would be dark for most of it.

Every chunk of split log and dry wood, we had went onto the fire. The pile of firewood would last through the night, but we had no idea if we'd be alone for it. Our fear told us this wasn't over. The nightfall only confirmed our worst suspicions. The muffled snorts and audible whoops started at 9.30. Again, the noise came from the lake side of the site.

Jesse was a nervous wreck and cowered on the cabin floor. Paul had two 10-foot pike poles at the ready in case he needed to use them for spears. We gave Jesse the fire axe in case she had to defend herself. I offered Paul his rifle, but he smirked and said something about being too blind to make good use of it at this point, waiting in the dark for what might be coming rattle us all to our core. Jittery doesn't even come close to describing it. Every reflection in the dim moonlight or snap from the signal fire made us twitch. What none of us were expecting was when the noises from the woods suddenly stopped.

No grunts, no snorts, no muffled, raspy whoops of any kind. We listened to the lack of sounds and managed to take a few easy breaths. Jesse said it was too quiet, and she was right. It didn't last. A resounding rhythm of heavy steps could be heard from the fence line behind the cabins. We made our neck hair stand up as soon as we realized we hadn't blockaded the south gate the same way we did the main one. The crash that echoed into the dark made us jump. We felt the impact of it in the cabin floor even though it hit the roof.

A half-filled propane tank was bounced off the roof and rolled out in front of the cabin towards the main yard. Another one followed and smashed a large hole into the wall and collided with the cabin door shaking right inside its frame. Moonlight shone into the cabin from the massive roofhole that left us all feeling exposed. Noises outside made us twist and turn to see where it was coming from. Paul had a sharp pike pole ready to jab at anything on the roof. Jesse was crumpled on the floor, gripping our axe so hard it shook. The rifle in my hands trembled as I tried to train out of anything. that moved outside.

The last of the propane tanks rocketed through the rough hole and ripped a hole in front of the cabin as it bounced out towards the main yard. We all screamed as the debris splintered around us, and our shelter got turned into Swiss cheese. A gap in the saw as we sat outside was visible from the wallhole, and we knew there was no way we were going to survive multiple hours of this. A ranted stink started filling the cabin like rotten eggs. and leaking propane. The first one to make a move was Paul.

He grabbed the one propane tank that didn't fly all the way through the cabin and told me to open the front door when he sat. I grabbed the bolts and got ready to slide them open while he forced the propane valve open. I had no idea what his plan was, but I'm just grateful he was still thinking of ways

to get us all out of there. He grabbed Jesse by the arm and got her to her feet. He gestured at the guard shack and I realized we needed to get there where we could hide behind a brick foundation and a reinforced steel door. It was 60 yards away and took us right past the giant signal fire where we'd be seen plain as day. The risk was hard to accept, but staying in the cabin seemed way worse at this point. Paul nodded at the door, and I swung it open as fast as I could. Paul had a pike pole in one hand and a spewing propane tank in the other.

I ran out and drake Jesse behind me as fast as our legs could move. Paul followed us and as soon as we got close to the shack, he rolled a propane tank alongside the fire and ran for all he was worth. A fountain in the propane lit up the night's skies as we got close to the guard shack. The door swung open and we tucked ourselves behind it while Paul made a panic scramble to get in. He spiraled downwards as he got close and flailed to his knees ten feet from the guard shack door. The pike pole clattered into the guard shack landing as he tried to get up and grab it at the same time. A massive shape came up behind him faster than I could react to.

It stretched out a long limb and closed its hand onto his ankle hard. The panic in Paul's face was awful. He stared up at me and he had no color. in his face. I jabbed the rifle in front of me and started firing at the shape as best I could with my rattled nerves. A splash of blood erupted upwards from the shoulder of the giant things that spun sideways, releasing Paul's leg.

The same agonizing screech echoed across the sight. Paul threw himself forward and I dragged him inside the door and slammed it shut. As soon as it was bolted, an enormous impact hit the door. and the tip of the pike pole jutted through a hole where the no trespassing sign used to be. The miracle we needed finally happened.

A high-pitched whistle and a loud pop signaled the demise of the valve on the propane tank. A deafening blast and a flash of light let us know the tank blew up where Paul left it.

The signal fire was almost blown right out and the burning debris would have been showered all over the main yard. All we could do is hope it was enough of an impact and knocked the thing out or scare back into the woods, it got quiet for five minutes. Burning splinters crackled and snap. Then it stayed quiet for another 15 minutes. We breathed deep and held on to hope as to wait for any noise stretched a half an hour.

A rancid stink of burnt hair began to come in from the shuttered windows and under the door. Jesse peeked through the gap where the window shuttered was back. and stared at the ugly mass sprawled between the guard shack and what used to be our signal fire. Flames flickered off its torso, and moonlight lit up the rest. It was built like an enormous, lanky gorilla. Long forearms and thick legs stuck out from the burning carcass, and it had very obvious hands and feet at the end of the limbs. As near as we could tell, there was shrass.

Kna lodged in its back, an ugly pools of blood darkened the ground underneath it. A thick brow and burnt jaw pointed towards main gate as the flames licked at what was left with its thick, dangling fur. Paul was pretty sure it was dead. He also seemed pretty sure folks in the nearest town would have heard that explosion. It was something to hope for as more time went by and we got closer and closer to sunrise. Jesse nodded off, and Paul tried not to do the same. Being on the graveyard shift meant I was the only one still used to being up all night.

Our adrenaline ran out. We realized we hadn't slept in almost 28 hours. I got to my feet and looked over at Paul. We both wanted to open the door and see it, but neither of us wanted to take the chance that it wasn't actually dead. We compromised and quietly unlatched the door. to get a fast peek. Any movement would mean shutting the door for the rest of the night, no matter what.

Between the three of us, we had one working flashlight and one useless phone with battery life left. I cracked the door, and Paul held the light. We shone it on the body as smoke smoldered across the charred skin and fur. I held the phone up and took a picture realizing no one would ever believe this. As soon as the flash lit up the darkness, the head of the thing flopped to one side and thudded flatly against the ground. We got spooked and slammed the door immediately.

We almost wanted to laugh at our reaction, but we didn't dare. Then there was a hum in the distance. It got louder and easier to hear for what it was. It was helicopter rotors ringing out into the night. Paul and I looked at each other and we unbolted the door and cracked it open again. Aircraft lights were getting closer and closer to our sight, but moving painfully slow. Jesse suddenly seemed wide awake and frantic. No more signal fire meant they wouldn't be able to find us right away in the dark.

We grabbed handfuls and newspaper and rushed outside where the smoldering ashes were still glowing faintly. I dumped paper on top and blew into it while Paul and Jesse started moving. sticks and firewood over top the resurging flames. In minutes, we had a very obvious bonfire going again, and the helicopter's searchlight beamed down on us like some miracle beacon from heaven. We hopped up and waved flaming sticks screaming like crazy people until we were sure they were moving down to us. We hugged and waved and smiled as the firefighter aircraft gently touched down at the far end of the main yard.

Someone in a flight suit ran out to us. We told them we needed to leave right now. The crew person looked around at the devastation and the state of us and didn't bother asking any more questions at the time. The three of us followed them into the open door. The helicopter began to strap ourselves in. We were told to leave the rifle behind, but Paul outright refused. He set it down into the gear on the floor and told the pilot we needed to leave right away.

No waiting, no delay. As we left the ground, I looked back one last time, but the dark ground as morning lights started to glow on the horizon. Paul noticed me staring for what I wanted to see, but then told me not to bother. I was confused until he told me two things that made my blood go cold. Paul put his head down and said it plainly. The creature's body was already gone by the time we had the signal fire going again. He noticed it too late to say anything. Then he said the other part.

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My name is Katja. and I have had a very hard life. I grew up in the Ukraine, and at 14 I was abducted by the mafia. They originally came for my older sister, but she struggled against them and was murdered for her efforts. I witnessed the bloody affair and was trafficked in the sex trade for many years. I never forgot what they did to my beautiful sister.

With her dying breath, she cursed those men. And it took eight long years for it to happen. One night, they let their guard down and I took it upon myself to carry out my sister's curse. I crept from room to room with a kitchen knife and butchered everyone in the building. Thirty-five men and women died in quiet shock as I slit their throats, leaving them to choke on their own blood. Only one man had been absent. the one who took my sister's life.

I took everything of value from that place and fled to the United States. In order to do it, I had to pay for a new identity. But I would be long away from the place of my tortured past. Learning to be a new person was difficult, but I built on the hardness I was forced to develop. No longer would I be the victim. After a few years of wandering the country, I settled in this moderately large city and began building my hotel. Using the money I stole for my abusers, it quickly became more than a hotel.

I created the onyx membership originally to fuel the hotel's growth, and it flourished. People with money don't like to be told no, and I knew that there was a way to make their entitlement work for me. My first onyx member came to me with an unusual request. At the time the top floor was under construction, and plastic tarps were everywhere, making it the perfect location. Her son had been bullied mercilessly at school, to the point where he tried to take his own life. The poor boy wasn't successful. In his failed attempt, we'll see him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. there had been one main bully, the self-entitled son of a corrupt politician.

He targeted my client's son because he was smarter, smaller, and without many friends. Had the boy given in to his tormentor's demand that he do all of his schoolwork, things would have gotten better for him. Each time he refused, the torments got worse. The administration did nothing about it because of who the bullies' friends. father was. My client came to me with a specific request. She wanted the boy discreetly brought to the hotel and to be punished with one stipulation. My client wanted to keep her hands clean, but still wanted to be present for the punishment. After half an hour with a ballpene hammer, the 18-year-old

begged for mercy. My client smiled with satisfaction as he pleased. with her. Giving me the nod, I caved his head in with one final blow. Disposing of the body was easy enough, and the cleanup took no time at all. That floor is now several down from the top, having expanded higher with the passing years. Not all my onyx members require such specific services, but a good deal of them do. The world is full of bad people that deserve to see the inside of the upper floors. And people with means pay handsomely for what goes on there. It didn't take long for an onyx member to request something I found distasteful.

These services were bound to find a client who wanted someone dead for the wrong reason sooner or later. I don't kill just anyone, and he failed to see what difference it made, why he wanted his wife dead. He was paying me a lot of money, and according to him, I would do as I was told. This is not the sort of client I wished to have in my hotel. While he was enjoying a mud treatment in the spa, I had a sit-down with his wife. I knew from the background check that the money was his, and the wife would receive nothing if he died under questionable circumstances. She became the onyx cardholder that day,

and her loathsome husband had an unfortunate encounter with a bee. He was very allergic, and an accident was easily arranged, outside the hotel, of course. My business model for this service is quite clear nowadays to avoid such unpleasantness. I am in the revenge business, not the taking, innocent life business. Only after an extensive background check do we start taking steps to acquire a client's desired target.

They can be involved as intimately with the services they want, or they can choose to be kept in the dark. I've been in the business for more than 30 years, and things started going stale about halfway through. Punishment can come in many forms, but after a while, I found myself doing the same things over and over again. It started feeling mundane to break every bone in an abusive husband's body. And you can only bash so many heads in before it gets boring.

I decided to start looking for other means to punish these loathsome people. And much to my surprise, I found exactly what I was looking for in my very own hotel. While dining in one of my restaurants, I met a lovely, couple celebrating their 35th anniversary, the Martins. Catherine was a homemaker and Lucas ran a shop on the other side of town. They were new gold members, and I comped their meal and ordered a bottle of our finest for a toast. I had a book on medieval torture devices with me, and Lucas noticed. He'd recently come into possession of a Brinks at his shop if I was interested. A Brinks is commonly known as a scolds bridle, which is an iron cage for the head, and something I was very

interested in. Later that week I visited his shop, a quaint little place with so many unique treasures. The Brinks was an excellent condition, for as old as it was, and I didn't bat an eye at the four-figure cost. Something else caught my eye as he was ringing me up. Considering all his inventory, so few items were in glass cases. A black crystal ball made of obsidian seemed to call out to me. Lucas took notice of my interest and cautioned me not to stare too hard.

I was unable to contain my curiosity and inquired about the orb. I don't think you'd be too interested in that one. It has a way of capturing things not meant to be taken. He would elaborate. and after wrapping up my purchase, I decided not to press him any further. However, the orb had already captured something. My interest. The Brinks didn't have to wait long for my next Onyx members' request.

At that point, I was having such requests once a month in total. This one was unlike most of the others. Even today, I rarely accept requests targeting a woman. But once in a great while, I hear such horrors that even I can't abide. Simply being an adulteress isn't enough for me to agree, but this particular woman was far more than that. Not only was she abusive with her husband, but their two children as well. One night she took it too far and drowned their twins while giving them a bath. She held their heads under the water until the bubble stopped while he was away on business.

and immediately called 911 afterward. The authorities wrote it off as an accident, but the husband knew better. My intention was to put the brinks on her and slowly tighten the harness, giving it a quarter turn every few minutes to dry out the crushing pressure on her head. There were plenty of things I could do to her between turns,

things that would have her begging for mercy that wouldn't come. However, once I had the brinks in place, things took an unexpected turn. The deplorable woman began confessing all of her sins, words pouring out of her like a faucet. Not only did she cheat on her husband, but she would kiss him and her children with the taste of the man Seaman still on her lips.

She claimed it was because her so-called family spent all their time judging her. But how could three-year-old twins look at her with judgment? They were children and only looked at her with love, believing she was their protector. She didn't see it that way, and killed them for ruining her life. With each confession, the Brinks tightened itself, and the woman became crazed. She started scratching herself so deeply that she was cutting out huge gashes of her flesh, causing her to bleed all over.

Every so often she'd come back to herself, resuming. the woman she had been before. In a fit of self-preservation, she started ripping off her own nails, only getting a few at a time before the brinks took over her mind. She was down to only having her index and thumbnails, then proceeded to pluck out her own eyeballs. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen up to that point. It took three hours for the brinks to completely crush her head. When she finally died. The medieval device loosened itself and fell off. Not so much as a drop of blood remaining on the iron. I felt like I had underpaid for it, especially since I used it exclusively the next few years. Each experience was a little different, but in the end, they all died screaming

as the iron got tighter and tighter. Eventually I went back to Lucas's shop, and he was quite surprised to see me. I believe it was because he assumed I'd be the one who ended up dead from the Brinks. Before he could introduce me to a new item in his inventory, I inquired about the obsidian orb, which was exactly in the same place as before. The day before I came into possession of another wretch, and for some reason, I believed the orb would be more fitting than the Brinks. Lucas sighed heavily but went into a card catalog on the wall behind the counter and produced a card. I caught a glimpse of the script, but even though I can recognize Latin when I see it, I can't read it. The Harvester's orb can be quite dangerous. Are you sure you want to get involved

with it? I nodded and he proceeded to tell me what the orb did. Upon his completion, I placed $10,000 in cash on the counter and politely asked him to wrap it up for me. I don't know how I knew this item was perfect for me, but his explanation proved it. As Lucas wrapped the orb, I gasped loudly at the sudden appearance of a disembodied hand on the counter. It was a small thing. Black cracked leather with old fur at the cuff. He glanced over and said, Pay that no attention. The monkey paw does that sometimes. I didn't bother asking and made sure not to touch it. It has been nearly twelve years since I use the Harvester's Orb.

Currently it sits inside a glass dome on my desk, acting as a decorative bobble for my office. All the employees who are permitted to visit my office know better than to ask about or touch the orb. On really bad days I'll remove the protective dome and place my bare hand on the oddly warm surface. When I do, my mind is temporarily transported to another place. It's a desolate wasteland of fire and red dirt from blood that is spilled over every inch of it.

I can't go exploring because the orb only brings me to this one spot. And truth be told, it's the only place I wish to be. A pale naked figure is strapped to a table or rack, and his screams are never ending. Round the clock he is being tortured in ways I never imagined. mostly because this place isn't subjected to the same laws as Earth. And I don't mean man's laws. The demons are capable of such horrible things,

like peeling off the man's skin and wearing it like clothes while they pour lemon juice over his exposed muscles. And that's one of their less creative tortures. What amazes me is that after they're done doing whatever unspeakable act on him that they've decided on, his body heals the damage. They can torture him to death over and over, only for his body to reform so they can do it again. While I touch the orb,

I act as a spectator for this man's never-ending punishment. As long as I keep a vial of his blood on the orb stand, I can come back here as often as I'd like. The demons won't ever try to torture me, not that they can even touch me. I'm not really physically there, only as a projection that can be seen. Not only that, but the demons actually like me. After all, I did give them this person to play with.

There's more to it than that. Each of the three demons has their own body style and unique characteristics. One has orange skin and three sharp horns on its head. Another is purple-skinned and has bat wings. The last is yellow, with bulking muscles and a horsecock it sometimes forces the man to take. However, there is one similarity they share. They all have a beautiful woman's face. A face I never thought to see again.

I know none of them are my sister. But they wield her face like another torture. not for me, but for the man that killed her, the one that they are constantly punishing. In the real world, his death had been instantaneous and uneventful. After drawing his blood, I placed it in the vial and put it back on the orb stand, all while wearing gloves. From there it was just a matter of making him touch the orb with his bare flesh,

easily accomplished because he was strapped to a chair at the time. As soon as he touched it, he was gone. His wretched soul whisked into a welcoming arms of the three demons. Oh, yes, the Harvester's Orb was exactly what I wanted for him. I didn't go back to Lucas's shop for many years. Not until he died and left it to his granddaughter. It's not that he didn't want my repeat business. but I sensed that he was aware of what I did with his antiques, and it made him uneasy.

In the last several months, I have spent nearly a hundred thousand at Pandora's, and am even on a first-name basis with the new owner, Leanna. I invited her to lunch at my hotel one day and had a very candid conversation with her. She was surprisingly open to a business arrangement, and I discovered she had a fondness for revenge like I do. Only she helps the lower class while I cater to the upper. I don't look down on her for it. In fact, I find it commendable.

I even pay her well above asking prices for items, as long as she notifies me when she gets something truly nasty in. Leanna reached out to me a few days ago, but not because of something new in her inventory. She wanted to discuss a somewhat private matter, so I invited her to lunch at the hotel. A potential client of hers suffered a rather unfortunate accident at his assisted living facility. Only it hadn't been an accident.

She said a male nurse at the facility was stealing from the tenants and abusing them. The loathsome bastard even caused the poor man's wife to die before her time. And that's why he'd come to Leanna in the first place. I didn't need to hear more. But I let her tell me everything. Honestly, she had me the moment she mentioned the nurse was stealing from and abusing the elder patients. Finding out he was murdered only made my icy rage burn colder. A plan was already forming in my head.

I only had one question for Leanna. Would you like to watch? She was not opposed to the idea. Jordan Mitchell was easy enough to find and my people took him without incident. He's now sitting unconscious in a gray room, three items on the table in front of him. Leanna stands next to me, behind a one-way mirror, her own rage causing her to tremble. I am aware of her past, and no abusers of any kind are a hot button. Another thing we have in common.

For a moment I fear she will lose her nerve and call the whole thing off. But then she looks at me. and nods. Reaching over to the intercom, I press the button and say, and the man jolts awake in the chair looking around in a panic. From the table in front of you.

After trying to find a way out of the room and failing miserably, I repeat myself in just as calm a tone as I had before. He finally picks up the magic eight ball, one of the first made back in 1946. Jordan shakes the ball and asks in a pathetically,

trembling voice if he's going to die. He turns the ball over, reads the answer, and the ball flies out of his hand to smash him in the face three times before returning to the table. Leanna looks at me in confusion not knowing what the answer was. I know. And say, don't ask stupid questions. The magic eight ball hates stupid questions and bludgeon's anyone who asks it one. I once saw it beat a man so hard that his brains began leaking out of his ears.

Just wait for him to try to hear the ocean with that conch shell. Now that's entertainment. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube, All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative common share-a-like licensing, or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.