Chapter One
Cole Schultz raced home. He drove so fast that if he had been pulled over for speeding, he would have been arrested. He parked his cherry-red BMW sloppily in the driveway and juggled the bags of groceries as he fished in his pocket for the keys to the front door. Then he remembered he could voice activate the unlock. The sun was on its way to setting, it looked orange. He stepped over the mail laying on the floor, there were more letters from the Red Cross and their blood-drives.
In the kitchen he shoved the bags on the counter, then ran upstairs to get out of his suit and tie. Running down the stairs he made the crystal chandelier above the gold rimmed banister tinkle from his vibrations.
He is quite wealthy. His latest patent from his law firm awarded him another million per year. This was news he couldn’t wait to share with his wife. His daughter would be excited, but she was 3 years old, you turn on SpongeBob and she got excited.
He told his digital assistant to start playing Frank Sinatra to get himself in the mood. He had bought snow crab, Tiramisu, his wife’s favorite, and noodles, his daughter’s favorite. Turning on the burner to the stove he began making dinner. He had thought they might be home already, but somehow, he had managed to beat them, and now dinner was on its way.
Cole set flowers on the table, a dozen roses for each end. He used the fancy silverware, the best China plates. The best bottle from the wine cellar in the basement. He even poured a glass for his wife so she could head straight for it. Here’s a secret: (His wife has told him if he made more money, they could have another child.) And with that in mind he got back to making dinner.
Cole got home at 6pm, his wife should have been home already. At 7pm he started checking his phone. By 8pm he got worried and started calling around. At 9pm there was a knock at the door, he opened it and was greeted by the police. They stood there, blue hats in hand and gave him the sad news.
As they explained to him what had happened, a 10-car pile-up on the freeway, he understood what it was to be crushed. He didn’t let them see him cry.
The next two weeks were a blur. He put his wife and daughter in the ground, then prayed for them. His parents came and went but he mostly just wanted to be alone. The best thing about having a family is they end up being the only ones you want to be with. Then his died. Now what?
His dad tried talking sense into him. Before they left his dad told him it was going to be alright, he didn’t know how, but it would. He then held out his fatherly hand, pinky extended and said, “Pinky swears,” as he left.
Inside his house the pizza boxes started to pile up. He stopped shaving. He drank the wine cellar. He showered but wasn’t into it. He cried a lot. Cole pulled the shades shut and disappeared for weeks.
As the days passed, his job said, “Take all the time you need.” The letters from the Red Cross blood drives started to pile up. Having a rare blood type causes a need, but he didn’t care about that. Or anything. Why bother.
Holly Markham had been fired from her job as a librarian the day Cole’s wife and daughter died. She had been caught stealing little kid lunches on their field trips to the library. The manager had found out about sixty of them, but she knew it to be more. But on the bright side they never saw her spitting into the books the small children checked out, nope, that she got away with. Did it like a hundred times.
As she sat at home, she wondered why she had been targeting children. Very seldom did she eat the lunches, she just liked taking them. She liked to watch the reactions on the kids’ faces when they found out they wouldn’t be eating lunch. It was mean, it was sick, and even worse, she found it to be funny. Now she was jobless.
Fired, then a day later a letter came in the mail. Underneath the letter was a box marked with a company name she had never heard of before, Async. The letter was in a yellow envelope, the paper the letter was printed on was also yellow, fresh lemon yellow. It looked like it had been printed from a stack of thousands, the letter read:
Dear Holly,
We are sorry to hear about your recent termination. We would like to offer you a job through your branch of Async’s financier, BA Facilities. You will be in charge; you call the shots. Enclosed is your first good faith paycheck of $1,085.32 per week. Your first and only assignment ever, will be Cole Shultz. Instructions are included with your uniform and at your doorway. Congratulations employee number 3,111,111!
Sincerely,
All of You at Async
Confused from the paycheck and having done no work, Holly opened the box marked Async. The box was professionally taped up, USPS style, it looked expensive. She pulled out a fresh, lemon-yellow-colored, collared shirt, Async monogramed on the breast. The lemon-yellow matched the paper of her letter and paycheck.
Also enclosed were Cole’s address, instructions for entering her building and where her office was located, and an ID card for swiping. Then there was a map.
I get an office? she thought, For what? She got in her car and started it, then saw she was almost out of gas, but considering her paycheck, she started to feel optimistic. She stopped at the bank on the way to her new job, just to see if the check was legit, it was. Holly Markham smiled. In the drive-thru at the bank, she saw a kid in the car next to hers licking a red sucker. If she could’ve, she would have stolen it and tossed it in the bushes.
When she arrived, the building was enormous, there were no company markings, no ‘Async or BA Facilities’ signs anywhere. It spanned an entire block in the Kansas City, business district. She had been this way a time or two, but she couldn’t remember seeing this building. Not one as grand as this, she thought. The building was fifteen stories high. It was modern, dull grey concrete and glass windows as far as the eye could see, it all looked lifeless.
She parked right in front. There were not any handicapped parking spots. She would have liked to have taken one if she could: she liked pissing off the disabled. Once, she laughed for 15 minutes watching a guy struggle to retrieve his crutches out of his car after stealing his handicapped spot.
The building was dark from the outside. She did not see anyone walking past a window, lights on, and there was no one coming or going from the entrance. The parking lot was also empty. It being a Tuesday before noon, she expected to see a car or two, especially from a building as big as this. It must cost a fortune just to sit here, property taxes, power, water, it would have to be expensive, she thought.
She approached the doors. There were eight sets of them, all locked with little scanners next to each door handle. She scanned her Async ID card and it opened for her immediately. All the scanners looked brand new. Some were still covered in manufacturers protective plastic.
She wanted to take a step forward but hesitated when she looked at the floor. There was dust. Lots of it. She remembered when her grandmother had died, she had gone into her garage to steal her jewelry her family had stored there when grandma had gotten sick. No one had been in that garage for at least 5 years, the dust was an inch thick on the floor. Here, however, the dust was ten times what it was in her grandmothers’ garage.
She did not like the way the building made her feel, Holly felt it was staring at her. She didn’t see any cameras, but it wasn’t a camera kind of feeling, it was more organic. Like eyes are watching me, she thought. Scared or not, when she saw what was on the other side of the next set of doors, most of her fear left her.
Tip toeing through the dust, she scanned her ID card to get through the second set of doors. Once through, she saw movement. A little Roomba Automatic Vacuum was scooting around on the floor. Either it didn’t do a decent job, or it had just started because everything was still filthy.
There were a few, dull white colored ceiling tiles missing. Wires were hanging down from the ceiling, there was a reception desk with many computer screens. None of them were on and it looked like they never had been. A chair was tipped over. Some of the florescent lights did not turn on either when she entered. There was a giant white marble fountain, depicting heavenly angels, but it looked like it had never held water. It was coated in dust. Another Roomba appeared out of nowhere.
Looking up at the ceiling was what brought her to this point, it had been what had given her the courage to enter this scary place. There were 3 strips on the floor, one was purple, one was lemon-yellow, and one was pink. The purple one was on Holly’s right, the yellow one in the middle and pink on the left.
Above those lines on the floor, on a sign hanging down from the ceiling, were three names. Holly Markham’s name was in the middle, written in lemon-yellow, the same color as her shirt. The purple color was written Tad Merkley, for the pink was Kaitlin Bently. But what was most curious to Holly, were the years written underneath hers and the two other’s names.
For Tad Merkley, the years were 1984-2016.
For Holly Markham, 2016-2040, and for Kaitlin Bently was 2040-2101.
Tad Merkley’s purple floor strip went down a dark corridor to the right of Holly. Neither Roomba were attempting to clean down there. Down Kaitlin Bentley’s pink line to the right was also a dark hallway, also no Roomba.
But Holly Markham’s yellow line went straight ahead, just like the Yellow Brick Road. It was all lit up and being cleaned by a third Roomba that had just whirred to life. A type of Roomba she had never seen before was climbing up and down the walls and doing an excellent job. She would not be able to find that wall climbing Roomba online, nor in any store she would ever go to, it will bother her for years.
Like Judy Garland, as Holly began her yellow brick road journey down the hall, she jumped as the Greek fountain started gushing water behind her. She found the room her yellow line led to. It was a conference room. There was a long clean table with cards and pens and pencils, and a TV on wheels sitting at the end, just like kids would in elementary school. The lights turned on as she entered. The Roomba had already been here because it wasn’t dusty.
Below the TV was a box with three color coded buttons. Purple to the right, lemon in the middle and pink on the left. She pushed the lemon-colored button and nearly had a heart attack when she herself appeared on the TV wearing a white collared shirt:
“Hey, you, and welcome! I am Holly Markham and I’ll be introducing you to your new job today.” On the TV she looked to be in the same conference room as this. The Holly on the TV almost looked bored.
Yellow Shirt Holly pulled out a chair and collapsed into it. She was shocked to see herself. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember having recorded this video. On the TV, White Shirt Holly continued, “It might come as a shock to see yourself in this way, believe me, I felt the same as you do now.”
Behind Yellow Shirt Holly, in the corner of the conference room a coffee maker was attempting to turn on. The smell of burnt coffee crept through the room. White Shirt Holly continued,
“You’re the newest member of BA Facilities. For the time being, you will be telling anyone who asks who you work for. Remember, you work at Async, not BA Facilities, but if you forget, look down at your shirt.”
Yellow Shirt Holly looked down at the Async logo printed on her shirt, Easy enough to remember, she thought.
The training video continued, “This whole building is on the border of the Backrooms. The Backrooms are in the basement and down the halls and will call out to you. BA Facilities, in cooperation with Async, can only protect you if you stay on your designated yellow line. If you follow Tad Merkley’s purple line, you will be lost, same goes with the pink line.”
White Shirt Holly then straightened herself and produced a picture from off screen, she said, “If you are smelling coffee, consider yourself lucky. Some conference rooms do not have any coffee at all. Some don’t even have coffee pots. One conference room had a coffee pot full of molten gold every morning. That Holly dipped a pen in it every day and got to keep it, she died a rich woman.”
The picture produced earlier was a picture of Cole. He had tears in his eyes and needed a shave. “This is your one and only assignment. His name is Cole Schultz and here is how you will withdraw his blood.” She pulled out some plastic tubes and syringes, then one of those blood bags the Red Cross uses for their blood drives. She walked Yellow Shirted Holly through the process of drawing blood. Once done, she opened a panel on the wall and pulled out one of those tubes bank tellers have for drive-up customers. She clicked it in and pushed the SEND button, away it went.
White Shirt Holly continued, “If you are wondering where the blood goes, I have no idea. I only know Cole Schultz has a 1-in-10 billion type of blood. Across the multi-verse he also has a curse of losing his family, sometimes a wife and child dies. Sometimes his parents die. The point is we want his blood, and he wants his family back. BA Facilities gets his blood, we can give him his family back.”
Yellow Shirt Holly watched for a while, using the blank 3 by 5-inch cards on the table, she took notes.
It had been 3 weeks since his wife and daughter died. Around two in the afternoon, Cole woke up on the kitchen floor. When he sat up, he vomited on himself. The house was a disgusting mess and he wasn’t so hot either. There was a rotten sour smell in the air, the shades were pulled down, garbage was everywhere. He had awoken because of the knocking at the door, pulling himself together he stood.
Staggering down the hall in his underwear he opened the front door after stepping/slipping on a lemon-yellow letter on the floor. Outside a car was pulling away, Cole scratched his head and shut the door. On his way back to the kitchen, he kicked the yellow letter by accident, then picked it up. It read:
Dearest Cole Schultz,
I am sorry to hear about the deaths in your family, your wife and daughter. On behalf of Async, we would like to offer you an alternative to their deaths. Please visit us when you are ready to see them both again. Seriously.
Holly Markham
185274 East 9th St. and Locust
Kansas City, MS 64106
Cole did not hesitate, he showered, got dressed and started his car. He forgot to lock the house he was in such a hurry. The way he saw it, either he did get to see his wife and daughter again, or that Holly Markham was lying, and he was going to beat the shit out of her, win/win.
For as hungover, or perhaps drunk as he still was, Cole feared being pulled over, he wasn’t. The address Holly listed was in a part of town he had been to before. Cole’s law firm was just 4 blocks from here, Has this building always been here? How have I missed it? He wondered.
There were plenty of open parking spots. The front doors were open. He had put the lemon-yellow letter in his pocket in case he needed it. Walking in the front door was very impressive. Everything was immaculate. There was a marble Greek fountain that was flowing water, it looked beautiful and sparkled. The only thing that was weird to him was the yellow line on the floor.
After watching the training video, Holly was still surprised to see Cole in the flesh. It was like meeting a celebrity.
“Hi Cole, I am pleased to meet you.” Holly said while indicating he was to follow her. She didn’t bother to shake his hand or introduce herself; she didn’t see the point.
Cole had a frown on his face, while the young, yellow shirted chick began walking away from him, she waved for him to follow. He stated, “It said I could see my wife and daughter again.”
Holly nodded yes and said, “I wouldn’t joke about that. Not having a family of my own I can’t relate, but I know better. I’ve only ever walked in my own shoes.”
Cole persisted, “How can I see my wife and daughter again?”
Holly stopped and turned to him, “I can only show you; I didn’t build any of this so I can’t explain it.” She started shuffling through her 3 by 5-inch cards for a moment, then continued walking. She said, “Ah, BA Facilities, a subsidiary and financier of Async, and thus the Backrooms, can provide a doorway to them.”
Cole was firm, “What are Backrooms? A doorway?”
They made their way down a dark hallway to a door marked BASEMENT. Using her keycard she swiped it, it beeped red. She swiped it a second time, also red. The third time was the charm, the little green light gave them permission, inside the swiper there was a ‘click’ sound.
Cole’s first thought was that there was no way he was going down into a basement with some lady. She went first and did not ask him to follow. At first the stairs did not look like much. There was a yellow mop bucket at the bottom with a smelly mop handle sticking out, a janitor’s sink, assorted cleaners. She gripped the mop handle and pulled; the wall slid with her. It was like one of those airports, air-hangar doors that slide from the top.
Pulling it to the side, behind the mop handle wall, showed a giant empty warehouse that looked like it went on for miles. There were a few flickering lights along the way, but the open space went so far back he couldn’t see the end.
But they didn’t enter the warehouse. She instead pointed to a small hole in the wall to the side of where the janitor’s sink used to sit. It looked like a TV screen was built into the wall. The hole almost looked like pure static.
Holly got down on her hands and knees and read from her 3 by 5-inch cards, “This section of the Backrooms cannot be changed, only this small part we have to crawl through.”
He looked at the dark part of the wall that looked like static. Cole scoffed and said, “I’m not crawling in there.”
Without stopping as she entered the static hole, Holly said, “If you want to see your daughter and wife again, you certainly will.” As she entered, she added, “There will be a man who sees you. He’s trapped there. He always spots you the first time you crawl through, just ignore him. He can’t be helped. Follow the black line, it’s only a 9-foot crawl. Stay on the line.” As she disappeared, the bottoms of her feet were the last he saw of her.
He noticed after she disappeared through the static there was a dripping sound. He looked around the warehouse and wondered what this building was used for, and why he did not know more about it. Then, as usual, he started thinking about his family. He got down on all fours and entered the static hole.
When he first put his head in, he felt sick in his stomach for a moment. Then his hand found squishy wet carpet. It was a brown carpet, the water that crept up around his fingers was clear, but had little black bits in it. Like sand. Following the yellow and black line on the floor as he crawled, his right shoulder brushed against the wall.
To his right was a wall covered in yellow wallpaper. To his left was a grand room with yellow wallpapered pillars. It was well lit, there was a hum-buzz coming down from the lights on the ceiling; it was almost hypnotic. So hypnotic, Cole hadn’t realized he had stood up and was mysteriously staring towards the lights above.
Cole jumped when Holly yelled his name, he had almost gone off the black line. He ducked down to enter the hole opposite the one he entered when a man screamed behind him, “DUDE, WAIT, PLEASE!”
Cole looked behind him and saw a man in shorts and sandals. He had unkept facial hair and an old video recorder in his hand. His shirt was torn and his feet were covered in something black that looked like it was spreading upwards past his knees, like a fungus.
Despite the guy who had yelled for help, Holly grabbed Cole’s hand and gently pulled him through. The black legged man who also needed a shave screamed louder, then his image got staticky as he screamed, “DUDE, DON’T LEAVE ME HERE, PLEASE I’VE BEEN STUCK HERE FOR WEEKS! PLEASE!” Cole heard sloshing/stomping in the carpet as the guy ran towards him. There was a flickering of his image and Cole stood up out of the Backrooms.
When he stood, he was irritated because his knees and hands were sopping wet. They were back in a basement office hallway. “What are the Backrooms? What’s the deal with that guy?”
Holly shuffled through her 3 by 5-inch cards and said, “9 out of 10 Coles experience the moldy man in sandals. 1 out of 50 Coles cannot resist the lure of the Backrooms and wanders off.” She shuffled the cards for a moment and said, “The Backrooms were created by Async for a needed liminal space. It was funded in part by BA Facilities in agreement with NASA.”
Cole said, “Liminal space? What does BA Facilities do?”
Holly replied, “BA Facilities focuses on transportation and the multi-verse. Right now, here, its only function is the acquisition of the blood of Cole Schultz, in exchange for transport.”
Cole asked, “Transport to where?”
Holly replied, “To a world where your family might live.” She started walking down the hallway, the lights above her were flickering but it didn’t faze her. As he followed, he looked behind at the hole he had crawled out of, it looked like a dark TV screen.
They passed office after office, some closed. They went down a hall so long Cole didn’t believe they were on the same block as before.
Holly finally stopped in front of a door that didn’t look any different from the ones they had passed, it said, “BREAKROOM”.
She opened the door and let him in. There were grey colored lockers sitting against the wall. A few were opened and empty. There was an old-fashioned, glass water cooler with paper cups for drinking on the side, a bubble made its way to the top. There was a single, stand-up shower with glass doors and silver metal lining, the door was shut. A small table with plastic tubes nearby. There was a tube you would see at the bank for the drive-up tellers next to the door. Cole could hear air quietly hissing to it or from it.
Yellow Shirt Holly approached the table and set her 3 by 5-inch cards down. She picked up the plastic tubing and the blood bag. Cole’s law firm sometimes did blood drives for the Red Cross, he gave blood for appearances.
Holly told him, “Please roll up your sleeve and we can begin.”
Cole unbuttoned his shirt cuff on his left hand and approached the table warily, “You want blood? You know how?”
Yellow Shirt Holly smiled, “Somehow, Async knew I used to be a phlebotomist. I worked in a hospital until the nurses found out I was missing blood veins on purpose so I could continue stabbing the little kids with needles.” Holly’s hand shot up to her mouth the moment she said it, her smile disappeared. After that she refused to make eye contact with him. Cole remained silent and let her draw his blood, she got his vein on the first try.
It did not take long; the blood filled the bag. She put a bandage on his arm as he rolled down his shirt and stood up. Holly put the blood in a plastic container and shoved it in the tube on the wall, it shot up like a bullet.
“Where does it go?” Cole asked.
Yellow Shirt Holly shrugged and said, “If I knew I’d tell you.”
She pointed to the shower and said, “If you go in there, you will be somewhere else.”
Cole looked over at the shower and laughed, “That? That’s why I’m here? That crappy shower?” He walked over to it and opened the door, it looked like an old, unused shower. There was an old, dull-orange bar of soap that looked like it was crumbling apart with age, everything was dusty. Cole turned back to Holly, he was irritated by her lemon-yellow shirt, he was losing his smile.
He asked, “Alright, now what?”
She shuffled through her cards again and found the right one, “Just get in and shut the door.”
Cole mocked her by getting in, then he turned to face her and said sarcastically, “You mean like this?” He slid the door closed, then opened it.
