Storage

Derek first became aware that there might be trouble tonight when the enormous man with pages from the Bible duct-taped to his body armor stuck a rifle barrel under Derek’s nose. The man appeared from the nighttime shadows and poked the weapon through the security hut’s open window.

“Where is it?” The man’s English was heavily accented with some Eastern European dialect.

“Whoa, hey, whoa, I’m not looking for any trouble.” Derek instinctively jerked back and tried to stand up and back away. The cheap plastic lawn chair in the security hut toppled over behind him, and he banged his head on the overhead cabinet with a noise like an obese raccoon falling into a dumpster.

“No games. Where. Is. It?” the burly man with the gun repeated, gesturing with his rifle for emphasis. Moonlight gleamed off gun metal.

Derek held his hands up over his head in a half-crouch in a way that he hoped looked suitably pathetic and non-threatening.

“Where is what? I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Derek’s voice cracked.

The gunman, his eyes wild from above a bushy, dark beard, grunted and tried to open the door to the security hut. The door was locked, but the shed had been constructed with the sort of precision care and meticulous thoroughness typically reserved for drunken vandals. The door rattled violently in its frame, and the big man simply lowered his shoulder and shoved it open.

Two more men appeared from the darkness, materializing from the shadows the buzzing fluorescent lights couldn’t pierce. They were similarly outfitted with surplus military fatigues, bulletproof vests covered with a papier-mâché of religious texts, and very large guns. The smaller of the two men was bald and had “Psalm 23:4” Sharpied onto his forehead. The second man had his hair greased severely back and no fewer than five religious medallions dangling around his neck.

When his life wasn’t being threatened by crazed gunmen, Derek quite liked working the nighttime security shift at the Copperfield Storage Center. It was better than most of the other odd jobs he’d stumbled into. Night clerk at the Copperfield Motel & Reptile Zoo. Summer custodian at Rivershore Community College, where Derek had once earned a princely twelve credits before dropping out.

Most nights he never saw a soul. He just had to patrol the four-acre lot several times per night, armed with an undersized windbreaker and a flashlight, and make sure that no one was trying to break into the storage units. He could read a library book or play games on his phone, just so long as he kept the security camera feeds in the corner of his eye.

But it most certainly wasn’t a job worth dying for. No, sir.

Derek made his most pitiful squealing noise as the huge man took two lumbering steps forward and towered directly over him. He poked the gun at Derek’s head.

“Look, there’s keys to the storage units right over there. Take whatever you want. This place is insured. This doesn’t need to go any further.”

“Gregor, you sure this is the place?” Medallions asked. He had a nasally Midwest accent.

“It is here. I know it. I can almost smell it,” Gregor said.

“I’ve checked and rechecked everything. News articles going back years. Internet sites. The lot of it all points here,” Psalm said.

Medallions looked at Derek and shrugged. He dug into a pocket and lit up a cigarette, glancing around the room like a bored parent trapped in yet another Chuck E. Cheese birthday party purgatory.

Derek looked around. It was black as pitch outside, except for the few patches of light illuminating the perimeter of the storage facility. In the distance, Derek could see the lights of what passed as downtown Copperfield. The town’s police force might meander out to the storage center if a giant neon sign reading LIVE NUDE CRIME HERE suddenly lit up the night sky with a convenient arrow pointing at the trio of armed men, but otherwise, they wouldn’t bother to venture to the ass-edge of town to check on a guarded facility. Derek was entirely on his own.

“I will not ask again,” Gregor said. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Derek said. He squatted on the floor, as if making himself smaller would somehow cause the men to forget he was here.

“Just tie him up. We’re wasting time,” Psalm said.

“With what? Did you bring rope, like I told you?”

“It’s back at the car,” Psalm said.

Medallions grabbed the oversized ring of keys off the wall where they hung and jangled them. “He can open the storage units for us. One at a time. All three of us can have our hands free so we’re locked and loaded when the doors open.”

Medallions tossed the key ring toward Derek. The keys hit him in the chest and then fell to the floor with a noise that seemed loud enough to wake the dead in the otherwise silent night.

Gregor seemed to consider this and then nodded, apparently satisfied with this plan.

“Please just let me go,” Derek said.

“Sorry, kid. We’ve got business to attend to, and we can’t have you running off and calling the cops on us. Not before we’re finished here. This is too important,” Psalm said.

With four men packed in the tiny, poorly ventilated security hut, Derek could actually smell the tension in the air. It smelled like boiled Brussels sprouts and old batteries and hot pennies and sweat all mixed together into a stew of anxiety, fear, and dreadful purpose. It was that smell more than anything that convinced Derek that the best way forward was to cooperate with these men. They smelled like a plate of persistence that had been left under a heat lamp so long it had calcified into obsession. Possibly madness.

“Okay,” Derek said, picking up the ring of keys off the floor. “But there’s two hundred storage units here. Where do you want to start?”

“Let’s just go down the rows, kid. Show us everything,” Psalm said.

Derek stood up, his knees popping as he did so. He babbled with nervous energy. “So, let’s see. We have seven rows of twenty-five units each. Those are our standard units. About eight-by-ten. Concrete walls. Very secure. Very nice. Guaranteed rat-free. We also have twenty-five extra large units. Very spacious. People store all sorts of things. A lot of it’s junk, obviously. You know how people are. Some nice stuff, too.

“We ain’t looking to go shopping, kid,” Psalm said.

“Right, right. So, uh, what are you looking for?” Derek asked.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” Medallions said.

Derek took his little tour group toward the oversized storage units first. The space between his shoulder blades itched where he could imagine their rifles pointed at his back. He snuck a glance over his shoulder, and to his relief, none of the men were aiming directly at him. They were glancing around the rows of storage units as if they expected something to jump out at them. Gregor held his weapon in one hand, but he held a Bible aloft in the other. It clearly had pages torn out where they’d decorated their body armor like badly equipped medieval crusaders.

Stopping at the first unit, Derek bent down and nearly fumbled the key ring. After a couple of tries, he fitted the correct key to the padlock.

“Open the door. Slowly,” Gregor said.

Derek did as instructed, gripping the door by its handle near the ground and lifting it upward. Psalm shone a flashlight inside the unit, revealing a stained cement floor, a handful of boxes with piles of filthy-looking clothes poking out the top, and a single, desiccated mouse carcass. The unit was mostly empty. The flashlight clicked off.

“Do you guys need to poke around inside?” Derek asked.

“No,” Medallions said. “Next.”

Derek went to the unit next door and repeated the process. That unit revealed an old, wood-paneled minivan with one flat tire and a sun-beaten sedan with a rental car company license plate frame partially obscuring long-expired tags.

The process repeated several more times, like some sort of sad game show. Battered hunting and fishing gear, complete with boxes of musty-looking ammo and a torn net. Piles of poorly maintained tools. Greasy chainsaws, shovels with cracked shafts, and battered tarps. Piles of books on topics as diverse as biology, theology, and cheap fiction. Despite what the storage center advertised, rats had definitely nibbled the books at some point. A couple of the units were empty and unused.

Derek was nearly to the end of the row of oversized units when he opened another door, and the men behind him gasped. Derek scuttled away from the door, half-expecting gunfire to ring out. But silence fell over the night once again.

Somewhere in the distance, a coyote screamed.

At first glance, the unit appeared to be empty. But the flashlight beam drifted across the floor, revealing a hole.

The hole was roughly circular, and wide enough to swallow a cow. It led straight down through the cement. A burp of foul air wafted up from the pit, and Derek caught the briefest hint of decay and putrefaction.

“I was right. It was here all along,” Psalm said, as if even he didn’t quite believe what he was looking at. Gregor slapped the man on the back but said nothing. Medallions took a step forward and tossed a pebble into the hole.

Derek waited, but he didn’t hear the pebble land.

No one said anything for a few seconds. Then, Medallions shuffled up to the edge of the hole and shone the flashlight down, illuminating a crude ladder bolted to the side of the shaft.

“You guys, uh, hunting really big rabbits or something?” Derek gave his best nervous laugh. Like the others, he didn’t take his eyes off the hole.

No one answered him.

“This ain’t part of some construction project?” Medallions asked. “Nobody’s got a permit to build a subway stop at the corner of Fifth and Storage Unit Number 17?”

Derek shook his head.

“It’s down there,” Gregor said, his voice flat. “We’ve got it cornered in its lair. It’s nearly sunrise. It will be hiding down in the darkness.”

“Who’s going down first?” Psalm asked.

Silence fell over the storage unit again. Even the coyote had gone quiet.

“What about our friend?” Medallions gestured toward Derek.

“I’d rather not,” Derek said, taking a step back.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Psalm said.

“I don’t have a way to protect myself,” Derek protested, holding up his empty hands.

“Yeah, but if you go down first, you’ll have us covering you from up here,” Medallions said.

“I’d really prefer to stay up here.”

“It’s decided,” Gregor said, taking a step toward Derek and swinging his rifle around. The weapon wasn’t quite pointing at Derek, but the message was unmistakable. “You may take this, if you want. It will protect you.” Gregor offered the battered Bible.

“I…” Derek gulped. “I think I’d rather have both hands free to climb. It’s a long way down.” He wiped his palms on his jeans, trying to dry the sweat that had broken out.

Gregor grunted and stepped aside. Positioning himself, Derek swung one foot over the hole and found a rung. Gregor spoke something that might have been a blessing in a foreign language over Derek’s head.

Derek moaned softly as he forced his feet to begin the descent downward into the darkness. The ladder’s metal rungs grew colder as he went deeper into the pit. The rancid smell below grew steadily stronger. He focused on keeping his eyes fixed on the rungs. He looked up once and was temporarily dazzled by the flashlight directed down at him.

“You’re doing great, kid,” Psalm said as Derek paused and waited for his vision to return to normal.

Medallions punched Psalm on the shoulder and whispered something that sounded suspiciously like shut up or it’ll hear you.

The light from above grew weak and sickly. The odor of wet earth and foul corruption took its place.

After what felt like ages, Derek’s foot touched solid rock. He rested his weight carefully and turned around. A tunnel, hewn out of the earth and supported by thick wooden beams like an old mine shaft, stretched away into the darkness. Derek looked up at the three figures standing around the hole high above.  

After a few moments, the three followed Derek down one at a time, always covering whoever was descending the ladder.

Gregor showed he was pleased with Derek by slapping him on the back and not pointing his weapon directly in his face. “The first rays of dawn are coming over the horizon up there even now. It will be down here. Stay vigilant,” Gregor said.

“What will be down here?” Derek hissed as Psalm and Medallions both removed large, pointed objects from pouches on their body armor. Wooden stakes.

“Hold the light,” Psalm said, handing the flashlight to Derek so he could hold both his gun and the stake. Derek shone the light around the cold, stone walls.

The little group shuffled down the tunnel. Small rocks lay on the floor in places where the tunnel had settled. There were mice and rat carcasses in places, all of them as dry as crumpled juice boxes. They had been completely exsanguinated. Derek made a little sound of disgust as he nearly stepped on one, and Medallions shushed him.

 Then, a shape revealed itself in the darkness. Calling it a sarcophagus both failed to capture the size of the thing and also overstated its elegance. It was more like a double-wide casket, obviously custom-built for comfort and with little regard for aesthetics.

For one thing, a pair of silicone truck nuts dangled from the lip of the lid. Someone had also applied a decal to the casket’s frame that made it look like it was covered in flames. A bumper sticker along one side was partially obscured so that the only words visible were, “My other ride is your mom.” An ethernet cable snaked down from the shadows and plugged into the side of the casket.

“What the…?” Psalm said as Derek pulled a carefully concealed chain hidden near the wall.

An ear-splitting rumble filled the tunnel as rock and debris tumbled down from the ceiling, smashing on top of the three men. Gregor screamed as a large stone tumbled down and struck his leg, snapping his femur with a sound like someone splitting an old log. Psalm crumpled to the ground, unconscious, a gaping head wound gushing blood. Medallions, who had been standing directly under the trap, simply disappeared under a pile of rubble.

Derek coughed and covered his mouth, trying to protect his lungs from the ensuing dust cloud. He didn’t even notice the casket’s lid creaking open right away. Neither did Gregor, who was rolling on the ground, cursing and crawling toward the rifle he’d dropped.

Nor did Gregor notice the figure rise up from the casket, its bones bowed from centuries of use, its eyes huge and glistening and bulbous, its fangs sharp and glittering in the light. Amid the rattle of unsettled stones, Gregor didn’t hear the padding of bare, leathery feet coming toward him or the tap-tap-tap of those claws on those feet as they moved across the stone. And with all the dust in the air, Gregor didn’t notice the smell of death wafting closer.

But he did notice the strong hands, deceptively powerful for such withered old talons, grab him from behind. Gregor screamed as he was hauled into the darkness. He locked eyes with Derek for just a moment, and then he vanished fully into the shadows, and his scream cut off.

***

Derek finished moving the men’s car into one of the empty storage units before the end of his shift. He fudged the log to make it look like someone had rented that unit months ago and then deposited the appropriate amount of funds into the account to perfect the ruse. He could finish sorting out the hunters’ gear the next night, distributing it to various different units so it was all dispersed.

Next, he logged on to one of the dozens of accounts he used to trawl message boards for would-be monster hunters, amateur paranormal investigators, and other curious ne’er-do-wells. His master was well-fed for now, but it was never too early to start laying out breadcrumbs for the next group.

He typed a short message onto one website. “Guys, something weird is going on in Copperfield.” He logged onto a different website and checked the responses to a post labeled “Vampire Sighting?” that he’d made a few days before. Someone would take the bait, eventually.

As the sun came fully up over the horizon, Derek did a quick patrol of the facility, making sure all the doors were locked again and that the night’s visitors hadn’t left any evidence of their presence behind. Down below, deep down below, the storage center’s owner would be settling in for the day, full and content.

There were dozens of similar storage centers all over the country, clinging to the edges of tiny, obscure towns too small to properly support such ventures. Yet, the storage centers never seemed to go out of business, even though no one ever saw customers there, even though some of the units had been locked tight for years, even though no one ever seemed to know the center’s owner.

No one questioned where the piles of junk inside the units came from. No one questioned where the people who had left behind such items went. And no one questioned why anyone would pay to have such a place guarded all night.

But Derek knew. And one day, the owner would let him have a storage center of his own.