The scrape of the chair on the tile floor, then the dull thud of the mop bucket hitting the linoleum. I knew those sounds, knew the rhythm they kept, even blindfolded. But tonight, they were off-key. Skittering. Like someone was dragging their feet, or maybe a child, small hands fumbling with something they couldn’t quite grip. But I was alone. Always alone, after the last customer left and the fluorescent lights hummed their tired song. Then the unmistakable click from the front entrance, a sound that always meant the door was locked, bolted, secure. Only tonight, it wasn’t me who’d flicked the deadbolt. And I hadn’t heard it open.
It starts with the small things, always. The way the light, weak and yellow through the grimy window, pooled on the worn tiles at precisely 4:17 p.m. every afternoon, making the grease stains dance like disturbed spirits. The scent, a faint, sickly-sweet tang of old cooking oil and something else, something I couldn’t quite place until one day I realized it was the cloying perfume of faded ambition, clinging to the grates and the stained plastic. I remember the pride, a foolish, warm flush, when I first took over. This wasn’t just a fast-food joint; it was a structure, a history. I’d run my hand over the chipped counter, tracing the ghost of countless hands, imagined the laughter, the hurried conversations, the quiet sighs of the graveyard shift. There was comfort in its worn familiarity, a strange sense of ownership that settled deep in my bones. I’d spent hours scrubbing away layers of accumulated grime, not just dirt, but an almost physical weight of forgotten moments, hoping to find the gleam of something new beneath.
The first twitch of unease was a whisper, easily dismissed. A gust of wind, I told myself, when a stack of mustard packets went tumbling from the counter, scattering like panicked mice. A clumsy hand, when a fresh tub of straws lay overturned, their contents spilling across the pristine floor I’d just swept. But then, the whispers grew louder. The dreams began, not nightmares, not exactly, but tangled visions of hurried feet and hushed words, always ending with the oppressive feeling of something closing in. I’d wake with the taste of old coffee on my tongue, the phantom scent of cheap antiseptic hanging heavy in the air.
And then, the devil. Or what they called the devil. In the men’s room, on the very last stall, etched into the wood grain, was a face. Not carved, not drawn, but somehow there. A trick of the eye, I’d argued, for months, even as patrons would ask, would point, would whisper. A craggy forehead, eyes that seemed to burn with a dull, knowing malice, and a twisted, mirthless grin. It wasn’t there when I first came. Or maybe I just hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t let myself see it. But it was impossible to deny now, a chilling silent sentinel in the dim glow of the restroom. Customers would make pilgrimages, sneaking in cell phones, snapping photos. It became a morbid attraction, drawing a different kind of clientele. I’d tried to sand it away, to varnish over it, but the face, always, somehow, slowly bled back through. It was as if the wood itself had simply… remembered.
They replaced the door eventually, the management, bowing to the strange tide of curiosity. They thought that would be an end to it, a fresh slate. But I knew better. The devil, you see, was just a focal point, a signpost. It was the presence itself that mattered. The cold spot that settled in the managers’ office, raising gooseflesh even in the height of summer. The faint, high-pitched giggle that sometimes echoed from the empty play place after midnight, where no child had been for hours. The sudden, inexplicable feeling of someone standing just behind me, breathing down my neck, only to turn and find nothing but the sterile hum of the refrigerators.
I’ve stopped arguing with it. Stopped trying to make sense of what can’t be reasoned with. This place isn’t merely old; it holds. It drinks in the misery, the petty frustrations, the hurried joys, and sometimes, it coughs up a piece of the past. The lost child, perhaps, still playing in the dark corners. The defeated worker, whose spirit clung to the stale air of drudgery. Or perhaps someone older, someone who walked this land before it was ever paved and lit by fluorescents, their sadness a deep well that continues to overflow. The new stall door gleams, blank and innocent. But in the dead of night, when the last employee has gone and I’m alone with the echoing quiet, I still hear the rustle of straw wrappers, the faint thud of an unseen bucket. And I know. Some things aren’t meant to leave. They simply become, woven into the very fabric of the place, waiting to be seen. Or, more accurately, to see you.