Through The Lense

Parked on the side of a cheerful and innocent suburban street, Gregory glanced up to the roof of his Google Streetview van and his hand stuck straight over his eyes, straining to see through the bright day while attempting to identify the cause of the camera malfunction.

 Despite his attempt to block the sun, he was blinded by it when the bright rays spilled over from behind the misbehaving camera. Gregory squeezed his burning eyes and slammed both hands square on the side of the van and huffed, irritated. He snapped back to reality when he noticed an older couple taking a morning stroll with their tiny, graying poodle, who had stopped to glare at him as their small dog began barking accusingly.

Quickly realizing his mistake, Gregory removed his hands and waved at the couple with a small smile and they turned on their way. Well that was unprofessional he thought, running his hands through his shaggy, dark hair. Not one to easily lose his temper, Gregory shook his head slowly and tilted his head back, closing his eyes and counting several deep breaths. The day had been weighing on him. The sun was hot and heavy and often felt like it was actually sitting on top of his back, riding him like a camel through the day, while he did all the work.

Gregory opened the driver side door of the van and pulled out the blue-tinted aviator sunglasses that were perched atop the consol. He closed the door gently in a conscious effort to keep his frustration at bay. He put on the glasses and took one more deep inhale, allowing the breath to fill him all the way up, settling in his belly, before he pushed it out. 

He felt slightly calmer and let a gentle smile settle on his face while he shifted his thoughts to optimistic determination. This will not ruin my day, let’s solve the problem and move on. Gregory thought, giving himself a short pep talk, as he often did on tough days. He climbed up the ladder to bring himself to the top of the van and have a better look at what was causing the distortion on the camera feed.  

Gregory had started this job just two weeks ago, and although at the time he felt lucky to get hired at a job that paid so well with so little experience, he was now questioning if this was really a good fit for him. Gregory’s camera did not seem to work like everyone else’s. It was constantly taking terrible photos, with blurry images, or large dots spots were appearing on the image like a giant storm cloud that was just there to rain on him. 

Every single day since the Monday he started, he had to bring the camera in at the end of the day for repair. And every morning, they gave him a shiny new, still-wrapped-in-packaging camera. Gregory would mount and install on the top of his van and within the hour, it would be blurring the images on his screen once again. He had very little usable footage to turn in at the end of the day and he began to think possibly that he was just plain bad at his job.

While a top the van roof, with the sun beating down mercilessly, it seemed hopeless, and the sun on rays almost seemed to have a rhythmic glare, dimming into narrow sunlight slices and then brightening in a quick pattern that, in Gregory’s imagination, was saying “ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”. Gregory rolled his eyes at his own thoughts. No, that's impossible. It’s just pessimism talking, don’t be such a self-centered grouch. He tried to push the negative thoughts out of his head.

Gregory started rotating the camera manually to search for issues, but as he did, the right lense of his sunglasses, unprovoked, went flying out of the frame, blinding Gregory once again with sunshine and causing him to lose his balance and topple off the van roof and into a large hedge adjacent to the van’s parking spot on the bustling residential street. 

He heard a group of several teenagers laughing at him from a short distance away and he popped out of the bush like a frightened weasel, blushing and fighting his way out of the bush, back to his van. Embarrassed and unwilling to save his mood with positive thinking this time, he quickly tried to yank the driver’s side door open, but it held fast, locked. His hand slipped off the handle and he fell backwards again, his foot sliding off the curb and rolling his ankle beneath the van. He held in a yelp of pain, and ground his teeth together in lieu, hearing the still entertained teenagers roaring with laughter. Gregory dug deep in his pockets, still sitting on the ground behind the hedge and found the van keys. He didn’t remember locking the van, but he must have, right?

Gregory knew his face had to be red as a squashed tomato and didn’t dare turn and look at the teens as he pressed a button on the key fob. He heard the click of the doors unlatching and scrambled up ignoring the “Dude, is that guy drinking at work?” and the escalating laughter of the already hysterical group of kids.

Gregory quickly turned the keys into the ignition and the van sprung to life, screens brightened with the video image of the road and the motor roared, sounding as anxious as he was to leave the area. The poor Google worker swiftly shifted into drive and sped out of the neighbourhood. 

The van bumbled along quickly and Gregory steered onto the highway and headed west, back to his home office where he would usually go at the end of the day to input the footage he had collected. He technically still had five more hours of work but with his camera malfunctioning and his ankle throbbing, he was at the end of his rope.

Approaching the off-ramp he noticed the video feed screen of the van darken, when it fell completely black, two fuzzy white dots appeared, growing slowly in size of intensity until they were the size of quarters. Now on an industrial street, a confused Gregory pulled over in a vacant parking lot, expecting another technical issue. However, as he held fast on the brake pedal, a line was emerging beneath the two fuzzy white circles. The line pulled itself slowly into the shape of a large, crescent. It curved upwards, forming what resembled a smile but with crude dimension. It looked like a mouth of sharp, jagged teeth.

Gregory started, one eyebrow raised. Nope. No. No. This is nothing. The screen just needs to be replaced. Clearly just a technical issue. He tried to reason with himself but the fire hot fear rising in his chest prevented him from believing any of it.

Below the fuzzy teeth, type appeared, letter by letter. “Hello” and Gregory pushed himself backward against the hot glass of the van’s driver window, his mouth now open in shock with a hand covering his mouth, there was no more rationalizing. 

Hyperventilating, Gregory lifted his foot off the brake pedal and the van started rolling forward, finally took his eyes off the screen, he grabbed the steering wheel, slammed his foot back on the brake and pushed the shift stick into park.

Once the van was safely parked, Gregory looked back at the screen. It showed a clear, crisp image of the open lot in front of him. No distortion or blurriness or any of the other issues he had previously. Gregory sat silently for several minutes and then chuckled at himself,  It was all in my head, it must have been the heat or the fall or both. It has been a rough day, I must have imagined everything. He allowed himself to smile as he exhaled and slumped deeply into the van seat, exhausted from the events. 

Gregory rested for a short time, cracking open an ice cold soda from the lunchbox cooler on the passenger seat. He was sipping it, when he noticed the screen was now showing another distortion. A round, black spot directly in the center of the screen. He rolled his eyes, as this had happened to him several times, but then as he watched it, he noticed that the black spot was slowly growing. Getting larger, and blacker and somehow closer to him on the screen. As it grew in size, it also grew appendages. Arms, legs and a head sprouted from the dot like a ghostly black daisy popping out of the spring dirt. 

This time Gregory screamed. Clawing his way backwards towards the window, marking long nail scratches along the van door. The humanoid figure moved closer, Gregory could see him in the video feed, clear as day walking through the parking lot towards the van, but when he looked above the screen and into the real life parking lot, it was empty as could be. Vacant, except for the tall, lonely light posts, patiently waiting for darkness to descend so they could do their job and provide their light to the parking lot. 

Gregory pushed both hands behind his back, searching for the door handle, but not taking his eyes off the screen, entranced and petrified by the shadow figure’s every move as it approached. When the dark figure was only steps from the van, it took over almost the entire screen.

 Gregory screamed again, frantic now in his attempt to grab hold of the door handle, sliding both hands wide behind his back, feeling his way over the entire door until he finally found it. Grabbing on with both hands, he pulled as hard as he could, arching his back forwards to create space for the motion. The door released as he fell backwards onto the hot pavement just as the screen lost the last pieces of picture from the parking lot and was completely black. To Gregory this meant that the figure was now on the top of the van. The frightened man stumbled backward through the empty lot, although he saw nothing on or near the van, he knew now that it was real. I don’t care how much this job pays, I am never getting in that van again. Was the last thought he had before he sprinted out the empty parking lot, leaving the Google Streetview van with it’s driver’s side door all the way open, the keys in the ignition and the motor running. 

Gregory ran until he was so out of breath that he had to stop. He kept walking until he was in the safety of a busy sidewalk by a mall, with plenty of people around. He called his office and gave them a panic-ridden description of what had transpired that day. He said he quit and gave them the van location and apologized but said that under no circumstances would he go and retrieve the van.

 Oddly enough, the woman from the head office that took his call, did not seem at all angry or surprised by this and said that they would send someone to pick up the van. Gregory, however, was surprised when the woman from head office said

“Work van number fifty-six right?” as he had not given her that information. 

“How did you know that?” He asked her in utter confusion.

“This happened six times now. Every week or so when we get a new employee for that van. You were the only person we didn’t inform of the van’s prior incidents so that we could find out if it would still happen if the employee driver was not aware. We will be removing the van from the work fleet now” She said, leaving Gregory awe-struck. He hung up on her without another word and boarded a bus home, trying to forget the sights he had just seen and what he had just learned.

Not far away, in an empty parking lot. A very joyful spirit sat in victory in the front seat of the van he had owned, lived in and died in. The vehicle would be taken off the road and would be free for him to stay in and haunt forever.