The Brothers from Ohio

George Greig had a face that only a mother could love, ergo he worked at night monitoring a bank of screens. He was the watcher, not the watched. 

George observed the whole detention center from behind his desk; the timing of opened doors, the exit of the occupants and their strolls within floors, rounds of the guards, meals, altercations, returns to the cells, and then nighttime and lockdown when supposedly nothing else happened. The monitors alternated to show empty grey hallways. George prided himself on always staying awake despite the grinding monotony. He knew other security guards could not say the same.

The problem was that while the screens remained uneventful, Officer Greig often felt something watching him. He’d swivel his chair to look behind. He’d even run his hands all over the walls twice, using his moved desk to reach the high points and ceiling, looking for the smallest pinprick to reveal a camera. The feeling persisted to the point he would shrug his shoulders several times during an evening and glance behind him.

He put it down to being jumpy. Who wouldn’t be after all that talk about something being up with this group? They had appeared from nowhere, all the same height, build and coloring, dressed identically in their cheap looking dark blue suits and black knock-off Croc's clogs. Each carried the same type of wallet with $100 in $10 bills but no credit cards or drivers' licenses. Their US passports looked okay but somehow not okay. The numbers, kinegrams, security threads, watermarks and optically variable images all appeared authentic, but they sure did not present like a set of five brothers from Columbus, Ohio. 

When questioned the “brothers” were found to have a slight accent from who knows where, but were able to recount details about landmarks in Columbus including the zoo and botanical gardens. They were less forthcoming about their addresses and places of work, one responding for all of them without expression that they were “between jobs.” The group had accordingly been temporarily detained in unit 51C in the facility set aside from aspiring immigrants and asylum seekers.

His friend Clancy, a guard in that unit, said they never complained and never spoke, not even to each other. They just sat and appeared to be waiting. No-one played on their phones. They didn’t even have phones. Like, who didn’t have phones these days? They gave off a weird vibe. Clancy, a down-to-earth Irishman who’d worked there since before him, complained the men gave him a hinky feeling.

The sound came from behind his chair again as plain as day; the whirring noise a camera makes when being shifted from one position to another. George swiveled in his chair and threw up his flashlight. An oblong of white traversed the blank empty grey walls. While his attention was elsewhere, the cell door to 51C opened, a head appeared, and the five occupants made their way out to the end of the hallway and around the corner. The next time George heard the noise he swiveled around faster and jumped to his feet, allowing the “brothers” to access the next hallway and another blind spot.

The alien snickered. “Look at him, bloody idiot. He keeps falling for the noise when we’re looking right up at him through one of his monitors. Hold on… Yes, he’s still not watching, make your way down that hallway and go right. I’ll tell you when to stop… Yes, right there…”. The group halted and waited. “Okay, next time I tell you to, go in that door to your right. There’s some clothes in there. You want to put them on and then pick up the buckets and mops. Wait a minute…’

This time, the noise sounded like someone was walking up behind him. George momentarily froze but then hearing nothing more, slowly turned. The hairs on his arms rose as he frantically scanned the darkened space.

“Okay now,” The brothers turned the handle and disappeared inside the janitors’ closet. “All right. So far so good. Just take a minute to put on those coveralls. Keep your suits on because you’ll be ditching those clothes soon.” The alien turned to his companion “It’s a good thing we are so much like them; almost identical; almost but not quite. Not big googly heads with bulging eyes and hands like lizards…” he giggled again and pulled a face. “Now if we could only transport ourselves like they do on the television here, we wouldn’t need to be worrying about this border stuff. Landing in the wrong place again… These delays aren’t acceptable. Ah well, not for me to deal with that. Hold on. I’m going to do something different here.”

George wiped his forehead. It was quiet now but he looked behind himself anyway. Then he became overwhelmed with the urge to pee. Usually his bladder held until his break but the need presented itself with such urgency that he was obliged to abandon protocols and exit for the bathroom. He’d not be long anyway, the way this felt.

“Thought that would work,” the alien continued, pressing down on the communication button to observe the group of janitors emerge to make the last length out of the detention center to freedom. The alien congratulated himself for picking a privatized center where profit was the bottom line rather than higher standards of comfort and safety. There would only be one sergeant manning the reception desk while the other was on break.

George returned to the monitors to see everything quiet as per usual except for a group of cleaners talking with the security guard on desk duty. The sergeant had been surprised to see such a large group approaching with their hoods and scarves up to keep out the outside cold. “Big gas spill in the parking lot,” one explained. George watched as the outside gates parted and the backs of the cleaning brigade dressed all in white, disappeared into the dark.

After a while the sergeant began to wonder why the cleaners had not returned, but it was almost time to go off duty and he didn’t want to risk time filling out reports over nothing. These things could take hours. He’d put it in the report anyway, just in case.

When the disturbing sounds finally ended it was mercifully quiet in the surveillance booth. George, his nerves a mess after the repeated interruptions, decided he deserved a bit of a rest and closed his eyes, but just for a few seconds.

When the morning shift came on the door to Unit 51C opened onto no-one let alone no-five. The alarm button was smacked and the building scoured from corner to corner. Unknown to the investigating team, several portions of the night’s tapes had been expertly removed and replaced with film of blank hallways. No time gaps showed. Nothing of note was in the desk sergeant's night report. Moreover, one of their most vigilant, Officer Greig, had been monitoring the facility all evening and had seen nothing out of the ordinary

Staff at the detention center, rather than feeling customary annoyance and frustration when things went sideways, merely felt a palpable sense of relief at the absence of the brothers from Columbus, Ohio.