Closing Down

He knew what he’d seen and he knew that it was time to get out.

(Originally posted on Personal Encounters discussion board of HauntedPlaces.net forum by user [REDACTED], 01/19/2005 21:09:44 UTC)

I have a few stories of my own. Most of them aren’t all that interesting. I grew up in an old, haunted house, which sounds a lot cooler than it really was. It was more annoying than anything else. Things went missing and turned up in places they would have never gotten normally. Weird cold spots. Doors slamming by themselves. Strange noises. Creepy, but nothing Amityville Horror levels of scary. I’m also pretty sure I saw a bigfoot once when we were driving through Minnesota on a road trip but, again, it wasn’t really that interesting if you don’t find giant monkeys fascinating or terrifying. There was only one time I ever experienced something that was both definitely paranormal and also piss-your-pants scary. And it happened in K-Mart, of all places.

I was in college at the time and, like most college kids, I was broke and looking to make any money I could in any way that I could that wouldn’t land me in jail. I ended up taking a job with a local moving company that only worked for commercial clients.

We got a lot of work in one specific part of the city that was going through some rough economic times. Businesses were shuttering left and right and we’d get called in by the banks or the property owner to come get all the stuff that the failed company didn’t want to take with them. Aisle dividers, shelves, kiosks, even check-out stands. You never really think about all that junk until the store’s cleaned out of all the liquidated merchandise and there’s nothing left. Since the banks and the property owners wanted everything gone, someone had to move it all. So, we’d show up, carry out what we could, break down the rest, and carry that out, too, until the whole place was hollowed out. It wasn’t much fun, it didn’t pay great, and I got hurt more than a few times, but reason I kept at it for as long as I did was because all the lifting and hauling stuff was a great alternative to a gym, haha. But it was actually because we mostly got to work at night, which didn’t conflict with my morning class schedule. The people who hired us didn’t care when we cleared out the place, just that we did.

Like I said, for a while we were doing gangbusters. We were getting so much business that we didn’t have enough guys to handle all the work. Our boss ended up splitting us up into small groups just to get it all. It worked out perfectly for him, because a job that would have taken two days to complete with a full team would end up taking a week or two, which meant that he could charge more for his services. It worked out great for all of us, too, since he upped our pay to make sure we didn’t bail on him when he needed us the most.

Personally, I liked it better that way. Some of my co-worker’s didn’t like how long it was taking us to finish a job, but I didn’t mind. With smaller crews, there were less people around, which meant I could work at my own pace and not have to worry about anyone hounding me to hurry up or breathing down my neck.

So, one winter, we got assigned to start clearing out a K-Mart. It was in that bad part of town we’d mentioned and was infamous for being one of the worst stores in town. Most big box stores like K-Mart are actually pretty nasty once you begin to dig around the corners of the place that no one ever bothers to clean, but I’d never seen a store quite as disgusting as this one. I could only guess that cleaning was not part of the average K-Mart employee’s job description. By the time we’d gotten there, all the merchandise had been removed, so we could clearly see just how grungy and decrepit it had gotten over the years. All of the shelves and furniture were caked in layers of dust, dirt, and general grime so thick that you could literally see where all the merchandise had been because of the outlines in the filth they left behind. There were dead bugs all over the place, laying belly-up on grimy, discolored tile that had been white at some point. I don’t know if fluorescent lights can rot but a lot of them looked like they had. The plastic sheets laid over them had become warped and turned the light this gross, putrid yellow that cast entire areas of the store in a tint that one of my co-workers described as piss colored. And, yes, the bathrooms were every bit as foul as you’re probably imagining. There such bad mold growth in some of the drywall and ceiling tiles that we were all concerned about working there. It seemed to be to be a legitimate health hazard. Our boss assured us it was fine, but we didn’t really believe him.

That was probably why half the other guys assigned to clean out the K-Mart all conveniently called in sick during that job. No one wanted to be there. Least of all me. That was the only job I can remember where I actually wanted as many other people on site as we could get so we could get it done as quickly as possible. So, of course that wouldn't happen. For most of the job, it was just me and four other guys in that K-Mart. That might sound like a lot, but trust me, in a store that big, with that much shelf space, it doesn't just take a long time to break down. Half the time, it felt like I was the only person in there.

I'm usually okay with being alone. It's never bothered me that much. Even when I was a kid, staying alone at home in a house I knew was haunted, I didn't really care because the resident ghost had never done much more than annoy me. I could sit there and play my NES and know that if I heard something fall or drop or a cabinet door open and shut - yup, that was the ghost. But what else was he gonna do?

That K-Mart, though. It was different.

I found myself looking over my shoulder more than I knew I should. I just always had this feeling that I wasn't alone, even when I was. It was like something was watching me go about my business. When you were a kid, did you ever tried to do something you shouldn't when an adult was watching? And you knew you shouldn't have been doing it, and you knew that they knew you were doing it, but you did it anyways and just hoped they wouldn't say anything? It was a lot like that. I could just feel something there, something watching, and that something did not want us in there.

Lights would flicker. There'd be weird noises. I swear I heard footsteps coming up behind me more than once. This was back before iPods were a thing, so I'd bring a cassette player with me to listen to music. Nowhere else did I have any problems with the thing stopping and starting or getting all weird and distorted like I did there. One of the other guys brought a radio that he'd listen to and he swore up and down it just wouldn't work in there. We all had drill bits and small tools go missing. I swear I turned my back on a screwdriver once for no more than five seconds and when I went back to get it - poof. Gone. You could chalk it all up to the store being in damn near a state of disrepair, but I never heard of a decaying building eating drill bits.

In a lot of ways, it was a lot like the ghost I grew up with. But the thing about the ghost in our house was that I never felt as if he was mad or upset at me. I remember my grandmama told me once that the spirit just wanted to remind us all he was there. He didn't mean to hurt or anything. He was just making a ruckus because he didn't want to be forgotten. I always made it a point to try and talk to him after that and be nice. It didn't stop the noises, but I did notice that the doors stopped slamming so often. The point is that I never got the sense that the ghost in our house ever meant us any harm. It might sound strange to people who didn't grow up in a haunted house, but not me or anyone else in the family ever felt unsafe in our home.

But I got a different feeling in that K-Mart. I felt as if whatever was in there could have hurt me, it would have. And it really wanted to. Two of the other guys on the job got the same feeling. The place gave them the creeps just as bad as it did me. But not Drew. Drew always thought he knew better.

Drew was another college kid that had taken the job for the same reasons I did. He was part of the school's pre-law program. He was alright in small doses, but the more time you spent with him, the less likeable he was. To be blunt, he was a bit of a dick. Arrogant. Know-it-all. Always thought he was the smartest guy in the room. He was also a strict non-believer in anything that science couldn't prove. If it wasn't in a text book, he didn't think it existed. We all probably know someone like that, ha ha.

He thought we were all insane for getting so spooked by the damn K-Mart. I remember him telling us once, “There's black mold in this place and you're worried about frickin’ ghosts?”

Now, personally, I think that ghosts or spirits or demons are a hell of a lot worse than mold since you can treat mold poisoning with medicine. I never met a doctor that could cure paranromal [sic] afflictions. But Drew had an explanation for everything. Yeah, the lights flickered because they were old and crappy. Yeah, the store made weird noises because of the building materials expanding and contracting from temperature changes, or something. Yeah, the damn radio didn't work because it was a piece of junk, just never mind the fact that it worked fine everywhere else we used it. If any of us brought up anything even remotely unusual, he always had a way to explain it.

I didn’t really care why whatever was happening was happening, or what was doing, either, I just wanted to get the job done as fast as we could so I didn’t get mold poisoning. We worked for three, maybe four days on the job before one of the other guys just refused to come back in. The boss thought he was bluffing and said he’d be fired if he didn’t show up the next night. Turns out he wasn’t bluffing. He never came back to work. I met up with him over the weekend because he was one of the guys I liked, and I wanted to know why he’d just up and quit like that. This guy was a hard worker, a real stand-up dude. During one job, I saw him split the palm of his hand wide open, and he just got some duct tape, wrapped it up, and kept working. Didn’t even go to the hospital until after we finished for the night. I knew something had to have happened to get him to throw in the towel like he did.

He didn’t want to talk about it, but once he had a few Coors in him, I pried the answer out of him. The guy’s face was white as a sheet of clean paper and his hands were shaking when he did. He told me that he’d been dismantling some shelves on a wall when he got the feeling he was being watched. He’d felt it before, but this time, he said it was different. It was stronger. He tried to ignore it and kept taking the screws out of the wall when he said he felt someone pull on the leg of his jeans. Not anything hard or violent, but enough to get his attention. He looked down so quick he nearly dropped his drill. Didn’t see anything. He was spooked, but he wasn’t thinking about leaving. Until he saw someone looking at him. Just a sliver of a face - that’s how he said it - peeking around the corner of one of the aisle dividers. It ducked away before he had a chance to get a good look, but he didn’t need one. He knew what he’d seen and he knew that it was time to get out.

I wasn’t too hot about going back to the K-Mart after hearing that, but the boss told us the next day that he’d kick us some extra money if we did, and if we got it done quick. By that point, we were already over schedule, the client wasn’t happy, and now we were down a man, so the three of us had to work double-time to get the job finished. Like I said, I don’t like to be rushed, but this time, I wasn’t complaining. We’d gotten about half the store emptied out but there was plenty left to do. It got to the point where we stopped breaking things down completely and instead just started tearing them into pieces we could carry, hauling them out, and throwing them in the truck. It wasn’t like we were gonna save anything we took out of the place since it was all so gross, anyways.

We just wanted to be done with it before the mold poisoning or something worse got us.

It all came to a head two nights later. We weren’t close to done, but I think we all felt as if the end was finally in sight. That night, I was working on breaking down one of the last bits of aisle dividers left, by myself, while Drew and the other guy did… something. I don’t even remember. I just know I was alone, tearing shelves down without disassembling them, throwing them all in a pile I would haul out later. I threw out one armful of crap into my heap, I turned around to unscrew another shelf from the aisle divider, and that’s when I felt it.

I knew as soon as I felt it exactly what my co-worker had been talking about. It came over me as fast as a switch flipping. One second, I was fine. The next, I could literally feel a pair of eyes on my back. Staring and watching. I was as certain of it as if I’d seen whoever was looking at me before I turned around.

I stopped what I was doing. I just froze in the middle of what I was doing. The whir of the drill went silent and all I could hear was the hum of the lights over head and the sound of my lungs and heart in my ears. I didn’t want to turn around. I was afraid of what I’d see. I knew that, whatever was looking at me, I wouldn’t like it. And that was assuming I could even see it. In my head, I could see some pale-faced, dark-haired demon watching me from around the corner of the aisle, eyes wide and bloodshot.

Then I heard my name.

I turned around. For the first time ever, I felt glad to see Drew. He was standing at the end of the aisle, staring at me as if I’d just asked him a stupid question with his hands on his hips. He asked me what was wrong with me. I was honestly too dumbstruck to even reply, which only pissed him off even more than he already was. I could tell he was mad, because his face got red as a ripe beefsteak tomato when he was upset. He started bellyaching about something he needed help with. Moving shit to the truck, I think. It all kind of went out one ear and out the other because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

I swear on my life, what I’m about to say is true. You don’t have to believe it. It won’t change my life, any. But, for what it’s worth, I would stake my life on what I’m about to say.

Drew wasn’t alone. Behind him, there was a little girl. And she had to be the strangest little girl I’ve ever seen in my whole life.

She looked like she was ten or twelve. Somewhere around there. Wearing this black leather trench coat that was too big for her. The sleeves were way too long for her arms, and the ends folded over her hands. I knew from the way the coattails were flat on the ground behind her that she was wearing an adult’s coat. Underneath that, she was wearing a little skirt with straps that came over her shoulders. Overalls, kinda. Pink like cotton candy over a white shirt. And it was all filthy. Stained with dust and dirt, just like her face. Her complexion was damn near white but streaked with grime, like she’d just gotten finished playing in the mud. Even her straw blonde hair, tied up in pig-tails, was dirty. The weirdest bit of all, though? That was her hat. It was like a military uniform cap. I had to look it up just to know the right word, but it was a peaked cap. There wasn’t any decorations on it. No gold emblem or trim like you see on the hats generals wear. It was just a black peaked cap, plain in every way except for the fact that nobody wears hats like that for fun, so far as I know. Especially ten year old girls.

I looked right past Drew and met this girl’s eyes. She looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see her. Almost like she wasn’t expecting to be seen. We stood there staring at each other like a pair of morons while Drew just stood in the middle, confused as all Hell. After a minute, he realized I wasn’t looking at him, but rather something behind him. He turned around. I knew the girl wasn’t just a hallucination or figment of my imagination by the way he forze [sic] up. He saw her, too. I know he did. And she knew that he saw her.

That little girl’s lips split with a smile a mile wide. Maybe she wasn’t planning on being seen, but it was plain as day that she was amused that she was. That smile… I don’t ever mean to ascribe malice to ignorance, but this little girl was trouble, man. I could just tell from the look on her face she was up to no good… whatever the Hell she was.

Drew didn’t cue into that, though. Like I said - he was a skeptic. He was someone who believed only in what science textbooks told him to believe. Nothing else existed. And to him, this little girl was just some random human kid, maybe homeless, that’d snuck in and was playing us for fools. A little hobo kid or a runaway who'd been hiding in the store to keep warm while it was snowing outside, or something like that.

I knew better. He didn’t.

I remember him shouting, “Hey!”

The little girl flinched. She looked worried, but only for a second. Then, she was grinning again that awful smile of hers. She met my eyes one last time, and I swear - I’d swear this on a stack of bibles, man - it was like she was telling me, I know you know.

But Drew just didn’t. He wouldn’t have bought it, even if I told him.

The girl darted away. Rounded the corner and dipped down the next aisle. Drew followed. He turned the corner and disappeared.

I never did see him again.

I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t see anything. It was completely quiet. I heard his footsteps one second. Then I didn’t. I ran to the end of the aisle and looked down the other, where the girl had run off to. There was nothing. Nobody. He just blinked right out of reality. Poof. Gone.

I left the K-Mart, right then and there. When I stepped out the back door, the other guy working with us was taking a smoke break by the truck. I just told him that we had to leave, and we had to leave right then. He didn’t argue. The next day, we didn’t have to worry about talking to the boss - the police were already on the case after Drew’s girlfriend called them when he didn’t come home.

I don’t know what happened to Drew. I wish I did, but I reckon I’ll never know. Maybe it’s best that way. Maybe it’s one of those things I’m better off not knowing. But I do wish I’d had something better to tell the police. Obviously, his parents were as upset as they were terrified that their son just went missing on the job and no one knew why or how or even saw him go. They were people with money. The kind of money that got the fuzz to actually do their jobs.

The cops grilled me several times, and every time, I just told them the honest truth - I don’t know.

I don’t know what that girl was, either. Honestly, I’m not sure I want to know. I don’t think I need to know. Whatever happened that night, happened. I don’t know what I saw. I don’t know what it did to Drew. Whatever it was, got him. It took him somewhere, I think.

The only thing I know for sure is that I say a prayer every night, thanking God that whatever it was didn’t get me, too.

B.O.A.P. ADDENDUM: Upon further research, the K-Mart in question was discovered to be located in [REDACTED], Michigan. The location was demolished in [REDACTED], 1998, which aligns with the sequence of events provided by user [REDACTED] (legal name [REDACTED]). Field research has confirmed that a man named Andrew [REDACTED] was reported as missing in the area shortly before this date. According to the [REDACTED] Police Department records, the case remains unsolved as of present.

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In this piece, I tried to do something a little different and keep the language simple and relatively uncomplicated to mimic the way many very real people report their paranormal experiences online. Not everyone is an author. Most people don't write prosaically. I tried to mimic this effect, while also striking a careful balance with presenting a legitimate story. In short, I wanted this to come off as more of a legitimate “creepy post I just found on the internet” than the others, replete with the necessary diction and layman writing style.

Also, have you ever been in a dying K-Mart? Fucking awful. One of the worst experiences you’ll ever have. I remember they had a pet section. There were fish tanks just full of dead fish, floating belly up in the water. Just dreadful.