by Andrew Peed
He smacked the side of the flashlight a few times, but nothing happened. In a rush, he snatched up his bag and blew out of the room. He slammed the door closed and locked it. With hesitation, he ran down the hallway toward the elevator. The feeling that something was right behind him overwhelmed him.
Skidding to a halt at the end of the hallway he smashed the call button repeatedly. Heaving heavy breaths, he tried not to turn around. That was when he heard a growl.
Slowly, against his better judgment, he turned toward the shadow. A pair of red eyes appeared down the hallway a few yards away from where he stood. Only seconds later, another pair of red eyes appeared, then another, and then another. Before long, there were a dozen pairs of red eyes staring back at him.
“Hello?” Waylon yelled into the darkness at the many eyes.
“WAYLON!” A deep foreboding voice echoed slowly a dozen times over, all around him.
“Yeah, no, I’m out!” He turned around and jammed the elevator button. He moved over to the doors of the good elevator and leaned his back into the doors.
“YOUR TIME IS NOW!” the voice growled.
“Sure thing! Yeah!” The elevator opened. He fell back into the car. He jumped up and slammed the floor fifteen button as hard as he could. He started to pound on the “close door” button. The doors started to close, and the lights on the landing began to flicker. The lights cut off. The eyes moved closer, and for a moment Waylon thought that he could see teeth.
Finally, the doors came to a complete close.
Chapter 02: No Job, Free Meal
Waylon rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t the slightest clue what the hell he had just seen. His mind was running a million miles a minute but standing still at the same time, like a powerful diesel engine that suddenly stalled.
The doors to the elevator opened when he arrived on the fifteenth floor. Mr. Hicks was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest. He looked down at Waylon with a condescending expression on his face, his voice filled with anger and hatred.
“Where have you been?” he practically yelled.
“I had to run down to the subbasement and replace a cable,” Waylon said.
“You have been gone for over ten hours. Where have you been ducking your work?” he demanded, taking a step back so that Waylon could exit the elevator.
“That’s not possible,” Waylon said, shaking his head.
“Turn in your badge and get the hell off the property,” Mr. Hicks said with a snarl, almost as if he had gone feral.
“But I was doing the work,” Waylon said as he stepped forward.
“I will get security to remove you from the property if it comes to that.” He took half a step back toward Waylon.
The two looked at each other for a long moment. One was confused and the other furious. Waylon didn’t know what to say or how to argue about what he was being accused of. He had no excuse for his absence, and he wasn’t about to tell him what he had seen in the subbasement. There was no way that he was going to believe what Waylon had experienced. The best he could hope for was that he ended up in a loony bin, and that wasn’t on his list of places he wanted to visit anytime soon.
“I’m sorry, sir. I just need to drop these tools off and get my phone,” Waylon said with a deep sigh, and he hung his head.
“Fine, but I’m not going to take my eyes off of you,” Mr. Hicks said, moving out of the path to the IT closet. Waylon was sure that with Mr. Hicks’s build that he could snap him in half, and the man didn’t need security to help him.
Waylon walked past the giant of a man and quick-walked to the closet where Blake was working. He opened the door and tried to close it, but Mr. Hicks put his hand in the way so that he could push it closed. Waylon walked inside and dropped the tools on the floor. He walked to where he had left his phone plugged in and picked it up. It was completely charged. This was the first clue that Mr. Hicks may not have been lying. There was no way that in the short time that he thought he was gone that his phone would have fully charged.
“I’m so sorry, Blake,” Waylon said.
Blake turned and looked at Waylon. He gave him a half smile that vanished in less time than a heartbeat. He shook his head and looked back at his work. Not only had Waylon lost his job, but it looked like he had pissed off his best friend.
Waylon walked out of the closet and headed to the elevator. Mr. Hicks followed every step of the way. Waylon felt like a horrible person while he rode the elevator down to the garage breezeway with an escort.
Ten hours lost. What was going on?
~//~
The first thing that he did when he exited the building was text Blake. Waylon wasn’t that upset about losing his job, but he did not want to lose his friend. He apologized again for what happened, even though he had no clue what was going on with the missing time. He had to own up to what had happened.
Looking at his phone, he was astonished to find that it was after nine o’clock at night. The sun was down, and the streets around him were full of headlights. Some of those people were trying to get home from work, while some of them were trying to get into the city to have some fun. Waylon knew where he needed to go, and it was just late enough.
He drove downtown to an area that scared him a little to a restaurant called Sum Ting Wong Bar and Grill, a twenty-four-hour hibachi grill. It was Waylon’s favorite restaurant for a couple of reasons. First, he loved the people who worked there, and they loved him. Second, due to a spot of bad luck a few years back, he had been stabbed in the arm by one of those two-pronged forks that the cooks used when they were flinging things around. Due to that incident, and the fact that the restaurant couldn’t have any other occurrences on their record, he now got to eat for free. Losing his job meant that the arrangement would be all the more important.
Waylon found a parking spot out front. Rain started to mist as he climbed out of the car and walked inside. He tripped over a bunched-up rug as he walked in the front door. The night bus boy caught Waylon before he fell. He was already sporting a black eye. He didn’t really need more damage to his body.
“You’ve got to be more careful, Mr. Dalton,” the bus boy said, shaking his head.
“How many times do I have to tell you? Call me Waylon, Alex.” Waylon righted himself and patted Alex on the shoulder.
Alex shook his head and knelt down to fix the rug so the next person didn’t trip. Waylon walked into the dinging area, where an older woman walked over and smiled when she realized who Waylon was. She didn’t have to ask him any questions about where he wanted to eat or what he wanted to drink. She motioned him over to the spot on the grill where he always sat.
“The chef will be out in a few moments.” She nodded.
“Thanks.” Waylon smiled. He made himself comfortable and crossed his arms on the table in front of him. She would be out shortly with a plate of sushi. Waylon had asked a few times about the name of the restaurant. He wondered why it had a Chinese name, but it was clearly a Japanese restaurant. Mr. Wong’s answer was something along the lines of how many Americans open up Mexican restaurants. He liked to say that America was the land of the free.
Waylon always came to the restaurant late at night because there was usually no one else there, and the chef was always the same guy: Bobby Wong. He listened to Waylon’s problems, and he had the best advice. Sometimes it was a little weird, but it usually panned out for the best for him.
He watched sports on the TV, but he had no clue what was going on, nor did he really care. It was about ten minutes before Wong came from the back area pushing a cart with food and cooking supplies piled on it. He smiled when he saw Waylon and moved a little faster.
“It been like three days. Where you been?” he asked. He had a heavy Asian accent, but Waylon suspected that it was a fake, nothing but a show.
“I’ve had a long week.” Waylon chuckled. He leaned back in his chair while Mr. Wong got started with the food.
“
Tell old Wong what’s wrong.” He reached up and turned the overhead fan on. He started to flip his cooking utensils, and for a moment Waylon suffered a flashback. There had been a great deal of blood that night, and Waylon wasn’t really ready for a repeat.
“Well, the worst thing, getting right down to it—I lost my job today.” Waylon sighed.
“Well, it’s good thing you don’t pay here,” Mr. Wong said, ribbing him with a wide smile.
“Yeah, isn’t that the truth.” Waylon chuckled.
“What else bother you? There are many other jobs.” He flung an egg up into the air and cracked it perfectly on his spatula.
Waylon hesitated. “It was how I lost my job.”
“You can tell me. I no judge.” Mr. Wong shook his head. He started to flip rice aggressively around the grill.
“Well, I had to go down into the subbasement to do some work.” Waylon sighed. “That place always gives me the willies, but it was different this time. I saw some things. Anyways, when I got back upstairs, I could have sworn that I was only gone for twenty minutes, but it had been ten hours.” He hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about the weird event, but he knew that he needed to get it out there to someone.
“What you see?” Mr. Wong started to flip some chicken around.
“You’re not going to believe me.” Waylon shook his head, leaning back in his chair.
“Try me, you be surprised.” He smiled.
“Dozens of pairs of red eyes in the shadows,” Waylon said.
Mr. Wong stopped what he was doing and looked at Waylon. He only paused for a moment before he went right back to cooking the food. And then he tried to play it off like he hadn’t. He scooped up the chicken and dropped it on Waylon’s plate. He then moved the rice over.
“I told you that you would think I was crazy,” Waylon said, picking up a pair of chopsticks.
“That look no mean that I don’t believe you. It mean I do.” Mr. Wong tapped the spatula on the grill.
“You believe me?” Waylon asked. He struggled to pick up a piece of chicken. His fingers didn’t want to do as his brain was instructing.
“Sound like you find yourself an osueco,” he said as he shook his head.
“What in heaven’s name is an osueco?” Waylon asked. He stabbed the chicken with the end of the chopstick and put it in his mouth. It tasted amazing. He considered the food at the grill to be the best in the city.
“Dark dream eater.” Mr. Wong clicked his tongue.
“Dark dream eater?” Waylon asked. He was fairly certain that Mr. Wong was just screwing with him.
“Several heads, red eyes, follow frightened people in the dark.” He caught a knife that Waylon hadn’t even realized that he had thrown.
“Good, good.” Waylon cleared his throat.
“I no worry about him.” Mr. Wong shook his head.
“Why is that?” Waylon asked.
“If he old enough to kill you, you be dead already,” he said, smoothly sliding his knife into the holster on his hip.
“Oh, fantastic!” Waylon threw his arms up over his head.
“About you money problem, have you thought about getting a roommate? Your grandfather house is very big, and you there all alone,” Mr. Wong said while he started to clean the grill.
“No, I guess I haven’t really thought about that. It would halve the bills.” Waylon nodded. He was trying to shift his focus from the fact that the man was crazy, but he’d known that going into the meal.
“Start there. Worry about osueco later,” he said, reaching up to turn off the overhead fan.
“Sure thing. I still need to find a job,” Waylon said, shaking his head.
“You good boy, job will find you,” Mr. Wong said, pushing his cart out of the way so that he could push it back to the kitchen.
“I don’t need a generic fortune,” Waylon said with a long sigh.
“We don’t do fortune cookie here,” Mr. Wong said as he walked away from the grill, leaving Waylon sitting alone to gaze at the huge mound of food on his plate.
Waylon’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out to see that there was a message from Blake.
Bro, sorry that I had to be so cold. I really need my job. Can we talk about what happened?
Waylon typed back a message. Yeah man, I’m eating, give me a sec to wrap things up here and I’ll be right there.
There was a pause, and Blake replied that he would meet Waylon at his house. He flagged down the hostess, who also acted as the waitress at night, and asked for a to-go box.
~//~
Waylon pulled into his driveway. Blake was already sitting on the railing of his front porch. He hopped down when Waylon got out of the car and held out his fist for Waylon, then they both walked inside, out of the chilly air.
“Dude, I am so sorry about what happened today,” Waylon said, dropping his bag by the front door. He walked over and slumped down in an oversized armchair in the sitting room.
“Don’t worry about it. They gave me a promotion,” Blake said with a beaming smile. He dropped down onto the couch and put his legs up on the coffee table.
“They did?” Waylon asked, surprised. “But you don’t have your certifications.” He shook his head.
“They overlooked it because of the two years of hands-on experience. They also said that they are going to pay for me to get certified,” he bragged.
“Good for you, man!” Waylon said, playfully punching Blake in the shoulder.
“So, not that I am making a big deal about this, but what happened today?” he asked. His face lowered, and a shadow moved over his face.
“To be completely honest, I don’t know,” Waylon said, looking down at his hands. “I went down to the subbasement, did the job, and came back up. I have no clue how ten hours passed in the short time that I was down there.” He was still trying to process what happened in the darkness.
“All right, man, if you don’t want to tell me, fine.” Blake crossed his arms and leaned back in the couch. “I just hope she was worth you losing your job.”
“She? I swear I’m not holding anything back,” Waylon said with a sigh.
“All right, whatever. What are you going to do about work?” Blake asked.
“I haven’t the slightest idea, but I do think that I’m going to get a roommate,” Waylon said as he stood up and started to look for the TV remote. He couldn’t find it.
“Not a bad idea, you could have like ten roommates in this house, and you would never run into each other,” Blake said, standing up to join in the search for the remote.
“Oh come on, it’s not that big.” Waylon shook his head. He laughed and gave up on the search.
“Are you kidding me?” Blake said. “I got lost for an hour once and found at least five bathrooms.” He dropped back down on the couch and put his feet back up on the table next to Waylon’s.
“That’s because there are seven bathrooms,” Waylon said with a chuckle. He pulled his phone from his pocket and opened an app that controlled the electronics around the house. He couldn’t change the channel on the TV, but he could turn it on. He wanted to get a new TV that would let him control the whole thing with the app, or at least have an API so that he could program his own app.
He opened up each of the social networks that he was part of and posted the same listing on each for a roommate, deciding he’d charge four hundred dollars for the whole thing—rent and utilities. It sounded like a good deal, but he wasn’t really sure. All he knew was that it would definitely help him get the bills paid.
Blake and Waylon sat on the couch and watched a couple of episodes of a funny sitcom, but they really didn’t pay attention. They mostly talked bullshit about the day and the job. Blake admitted he would have walked out when Waylon was fired if he didn’t have his own bills to pay. He was a man who had to have his own place, and he had a nice apartment in the city.
Dalton Place was just outside of town and sat on its own estate. Waylon’s grandfather had even
set up an account that would pay the property taxes for the next ten years. The catch to the whole deal was that Waylon was not allowed to sell the house before the ten years was up. He wasn’t really in hurry to move, so it didn’t really matter to him.
The house was five bedrooms, but it had several other rooms that could be easily converted into bedrooms. It was a plantation house built in the early 1900s. Over the years, they had sold off pieces of the land and shrank the estate down to just what was directly around the house and a few connected buildings.
“I’m going to head out,” Blake said. “I’ve still got to go to work in the morning.” He looked at the clock and wiped sleep out of his eyes. He hit Waylon in the knee when he stood up to leave.
“I just want to say sorry again about today,” Waylon said, watching him.
“Don’t worry about it. Two hundred dollars a week extra is going to go a long way. And in a couple of days, they are going to be bringing in a noob that will be assisting me.” Blake gave him a weak smile, then left the sitting room and turned the wrong way down the hallway.
Waylon waited for a moment and counted with his fingers until Blake passed by the opening, going in the correct direction the second time.
Waylon unlocked his phone to see if there had been any responses to any of his posts. Nothing. It was only around midnight, and he wasn’t really ready for bed. He decided that he could spend a little time drawing, and now it didn’t matter what time he got up in the morning.
Waylon had one aspiration: to become a comic book artist. There were a few problems. One, he was very good at his current career choice of IT. This meant that there was always decent money in the jobs that he found. Two, he always doubted his artwork.
He went down into the garage level of the house. There he had converted the old parlor into an art room. He spent way too much money on art supplies, and this room reflected this fact. He had a painting area, a drawing area, a computer setup for digital art, and a bar. The bar was just for inspiration. His grandfather had left behind a collection of spirits that numbered in the hundreds of bottles.
