Horrors of Working Late

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Those who work when most are asleep know of things that only come out at night. My name is Edwin, and here is a scary story. I was walking toward the microwave when he came out of the break room with a stinky egg sandwich. You're not supposed to microwave those things, at least I don't think you are. But believe it or not, it was normal for people to do even weirder things. When I stepped in. Kate was blushing and sort of looking at the frame of the door where he had just left. When her eyes met she looked away and turned an even brighter red. I tried to ignore it. Up until this point, we had been sort of friends. She knew I was into her, and she was kind of leading me on. Honestly, we talked about whatever, but I only remember hoping for the microwave to hurry up, and instead shut it off with a minute and thirty seconds left, just so I could leave. Me and that guy, the one she had blushed at, talked a couple of times in passing. After a certain amount of weeks seeing each other around the office, it's sort of bound to happen. I swear I didn't notice this until one of my friends from deliveries told me that everyone could tell that I hated this guy. They tried to reassure me that it was cool because the guy was married, and that Kate had talked to another friend about me and such. I hated being part of the office drama and conversation. But when you work the late shift like that, in the middle of the night to be ready once we get the nighttime deliveries, you spend a lot of time with your mind just wandering. One thing I noticed right away was that this guy would get up and walk around the office a little before midnight, and then he would come back, but instead of going to the bathroom on our floor, go down to the basement. I had gone down there for some reason on a Thursday, the last day before my two day break, and because I didn't know what to say, I casually asked when I saw him, scared of the one on our floor, huh? His eyes opened wide. He sort of stuttered saying no, but then he changed the topic to something about the weekend, and it worked. I couldn't wait to get out of there, and I told him about some of my plans and all that. Before I knew it, he was walking up the stairs and I was standing there by myself, smiling like a weirdo. What I did next was something that to this day I don't understand. You see, to scare ourselves, you would talk about how the second floor bathroom was haunted, the men's one, and I kind of believed it. There was a man, Bill Corrigan, who had been found there on a Monday morning in the winter of nineteen eighty eight. His body was draped over the bathroom stall, completely bent ill. How did he get up there? Nobody knows. I looked up the story when one of the old timers told me and some of the other guys about it. When we started back then, you had newspapers to look up, and it was true there was a guy that was found there. But over the years, more and more talk about this man started circulating. It started with one of the other people in the inventory department. I wasn't there, but it was recent enough so that everyone's details matched. When they told me, Jason, one of the guys who had gotten transferred in from downtown, went to the bathroom sometime around one in the morning and he came out screaming no lie. With his pants still down, he tripped and bumped into the water cooler so hard that it tipped over and he had to get stitches on his eyebrows. An incident report was written, and just a few days later he was gone. Some say he quit, another say that he got a compensation package to stay quiet, but either way, the rumors were circulating. Those that were there said that he kept screaming about the face, the face, and the hanging man on the stall. Even the janitor who happened to be on our floor agreed, and he only spoke Portuguese and understood very little of what everyone else was saying, And yet his story matched. I think this new guy had heard the story and was afraid of that bathroom. One night, I saw him going to the basement and coming back up. He was at two staircases at the opposite ends of the building. I just kept doing that. It was working. Finally I saw him walked over the hallway next to the breakroom of our floor. My plan up until that point was to lock that basement bathroom and see what he did. I followed behind him, and I saw him reluctantly go into the bathroom, and about thirty seconds later, I sped, walked over the door and banged on it as hard as I I could. I saw my co workers peek their heads out of their cubicles for an instant before going back to their calls. I ran away like a kid, back to the desk, hearing him scream in there. But after a few minutes, the bathroom was dead quiet. At the time, it was me and two other co workers on the entire floor. Everyone else was taking care of the new delivery. Starting to get worried, I walked over to the bathroom again. I knocked on the door and I heard movement in there. I opened it and found him sitting on the floor by the sink. He was grabbing a shirt tightly by his chest, unable to speak, but he kept pointing at the bathroom stall. He was able to crawl out of the bathroom, and I followed right behind him, sitting on the carpet, trying to call him down. He stayed real quiet until he finally stood up and went to his cube. The rest of the office started whispering about what had happened, and they kept talking for days after that, because the next night we found out that he had quit, or that he had been compensated to leave or to stay quiet. But we never saw him again. Now I can't say I saw anything strange, but I always felt it. Something about that bathroom always made it colder than the outside. Maybe I never paid enough attention. Mariya quickly reached from a headset and put her finger on her mouth, asking me to be quiet. I could hear the wind from the drive through ordering menu. The mic had been activated, signaling that a car had stepped over the censer. When she got one of the cooks to peek out the door at the back of the restaurant by the Tasty Wings sign, came running back to us, laughing and looking surprised. The Wai navie. There's nobody, but the censor was still on. That's how it works at drive throughs, or at least it used to anyway. You have a headset on the whole time you're in there, and when a car comes up to order, you get a beep followed by the sound of a car engine, and if you wait long enough, you get a hello. But this time nothing. Even though Maria was holding the headset, you could just hear the wind from the drive through. In that silence of the kitchen, I looked at Maria with wide eyes. It was my first time working the night shift there, and I figured she suspected I was gonna be a little bit scared, so she asked me to sit down and signal at the cook to go out there again. But he smiled nervously and yelled out for Bethro, the assistant manager, to go out there with him. They both laughed as it made their way outside, putting the track to hold the back door open, and then it got quiet. I was about to ask what was happening when Maria shushed me silently again and waited. She put the headset on and waited some more, and then, like the wind, we heard it. Well, I heard it from the loud speaker from the kitchen got to see hey, I'm sorry. I could feel the tension in the muscles of my face from holding up my eyes so wide. It was the voice of a man sobbing. Is Betho or Omar? I asked Maria in my broken Spanish, Is it Beto or Omar? Madia stayed still looking at me. She was sitting next to me now at the dining area, and then The crying came with sad, desperate cries, the kind you hear at funerals with the small coffins. The cries continued when out of the corner of my eye brought it to two figures, Omar and Betel outside by the window. They were circling the building. They were signaling that there was nobody there. Gotta see you, gotta see you. The voice sounded desperate, and then it got so loud that Madia ripped the heads off her head. She looked out over the guys with both arms and signaled them to come back. And when I tell you that these guys ran, I mean it. They were by the kitchen so fast and shut the door, laughing nervously. But this so did you hear that? They asked us another beat at the drive through, and I waited, hello, Hello, I heard through the speaker, welcome to taste these, I said, how may I help you? In order of the five piece original and a large coke. We all stood still before Madia snapped us out of it. For those few minutes we were okay. Older man in a security guard uniform showed up at the window in his old truck. He paid, asked for more hot sauce. Waited for about a minute to while they packed everything, and then he thanked me and drove away. Later on that night, while we were cleaning, it was oddly quiet until I broke the silence. Who did you think it was? I asked Maria? Who not who? She said what she did, the sign of the cross on herself and then on me. At first I thought it was her English that confused me, but it started making sense. They had all been hearing that strange voice from the drive through for years, every once in a while, and always late at night. Madia had been there the longest and could tell when that thing was there. One of the managers had heard the story and rarely worked nights, but when I asked her, she said she suspected it was the original part of the restaurant, Miguel Garcia and Ibra McAllister. They had a falling out when the restaurant had just started and was gaining traction. When Miguel was found dead in his car outside the house. The whole thing made the news, but no one was charged. Maybe something happened to the other guy, the manager said, looking at me, that's what he gets. She said, would have been. Let's just say for being dumb. The company I worked for started delivering at three thirty am because of the summer rush and people panic spending. Even though it sounds good at first being able to get packages extra fast, it's creepy for us to walk up to a property in the middle of the night. You never know when you're gonna get a crazy dude with a gun or with those big old possums that come out from God knows where those things hiss. I didn't know, but anyway, it was paying the bills for a time after graduating, so I only complained when everyone else did. For a couple of nights already, I noticed that a house wasn't picking up their packages from the porch. A short stack of envelopes and small boxes was gathering on the front, some of them delivered by me. A few sorry we missed you notes on the doors. I thought twice about telling my supervisor, considering the guy was on a power trip most nights, but one of my co workers said, it was cool that you were actually supposed to say something, So I did the meeting. If you want to call it, that went has expected. He said, to deliver, scan it and that it wasn't our business if they never picked it up from the warehouse to the door. You got. That took everything inside of me not to cuss him out, but I kept my cool and walked away from the warehouse to the door. He shouted as I got in the van. And so the boxes kept piling up for another few days, a thing at a time, then a couple of packages here and there. But one time, during a delivery, I actually got to see this house's neighbor. Thankfully. It was an older gentleman, looked like he was getting ready to go out, coffee in hand and sitting on the porch at four point thirty four forty am, mind you. I told him good morning that I had a question, and he stepped up to the edge of the porch and smiled. That's when I asked him about the house next door, but he didn't seem to understand me. He offered me some coffee that I politely declined, though he mentioned about the family next door kind, all of them, very kind in his hoarse voice. I wasn't getting anywhere, so I said by and hopped back in the van and then drove the next location. I would say that two more nights passed without a delivery to that house, but then finally it came. I was about ready to get out of the van and drop yet another package on the porch when I froze with my hand on the door handle. The porch was empty. A blue light like from a television was on. I stepped up to the house. A light motion censored, blinded me for a second while I scanned the barcode, and then the front door opened. Just a crack. Delivery for mister Bentley, I said, waiting for the door to open a little bit more, and out came a shirtless man. He relaxed his shoulders when he saw my uniform and scanner in hand. Glad to see someone here, I said, relief in my voice. I've been making deliveries for like a few days, and I saw everything was paling on. The guy explained that his daughters kept ordering things while they were on vacation, and apologized about the mountain of boxes they saw when they got home. That neighborhood was generally safe. Otherwise I would have asked if everything had been there, But in the voice of the supervisor, from the warehouse to the door, that's the job. I was freaking out for nothing all those nights. Well until I mentioned to him how I had talked to the neighbor. He said it had been a month since the old man next door had passed away. Could barely believe what I told him. I had described him as best I could. Dark colored shirt, maybe red with white stripes, perfectly iron collar, khaki pants. That's him. That's him, he said, rubbing his arms from the chill we both felt at that moment. He told me a few things about him, and I had told him what he had told me, that all of them were a very kind family. He would always tell us that, he said, smiling, super nice guy. We stayed quiet there for a little bit, thinking nice thoughts about a man who was no longer with us, before I thanked him and got back in the van. I didn't believe in ghosts up until that point, and I can't say I was scared, but man, I hope it doesn't happen again. On the drag back to the city from the airport, I picked up a young woman with the backpack heading for the U Tree bus station. She had missed the last bus, from what she told me as we loaded her bag on the back of the cab. She had a ton of questions about the area and was traveling from somewhere in Europe. I'm not very good with countries, so I can't remember this after all these years, but her accents was pleasant. We drove to the first part of the city, the industrial zone, alongside the meat packing plants, where the smell would creep into the car no matter how much air fresh you used. I remember begging this girl not to open the window, even with hand signals. Right when she took out her an instant camera from her pocket, I was glad she understood. Just as we reached a clearing, there were a set of train tracks that cut perfectly in the path in front of us. Nobody around for as far as those dim orange lights scattered down the road would let us see. When suddenly I saw a figure appear from the left side of the road and rush to the middle of the street right in front of me. The girl in the back seat screamed in a phrase I didn't understand. As I hit the brakes, we stood still in the middle of that dark road, but I didn't waste any time. I got out at the car and looked in front. There was nobody. I reached back in the car for a flashlight, the one that I had in the compartment in the car door, and I shined it all around the car. There was literally only a chain link fence and then enormous parking lots on either side, all lit by the same colored lights. The girl had also gotten out of the car and looked around. She was a little shaken up, but not terribly. Where is she? Her voice quieted by the emptiness around us. As soon as she said it, you saw her too, right? She stared at me, confused, and then her eyes lit up. The girl, Yes, the woman, the thing in front of us. Yes. Yes. We stood out there for just a little bit longer, and then went back in the car. When we started driving again, she had a new story to tell her friends back home about how she saw a ghost in the middle of the road with a weird taxi driver, and I, well, it was just another night on the job. It wasn't the first, It wouldn't be the last. Scary story. Podcast has written and produced by me Edwin Kovarubias. If you're listening while you're working late at night, stay safe out there. We don't know what lingers in the Dark. You can reach me through the comments or by using the information on the description of this episode if you want to get in touch, and if you're following this podcast, I will come back next week to tell you some more stories. Thank you very much for listening and for your support. Keep it scary everyone, see us soon.