Chapter 1
Our eyes met across the dim room.
My breath caught in my throat as his pupils expanded to take the barely visible brown iris to near invisibility. The hunger in those eyes was undeniable and unquestionably alluring. I took a slow breath as I fought back the wave of need that washed over me when his lips twisted into a deceptively sweet smile.
I slowly brought the walkie talkie from my belt to my mouth and pressed the button, not blinking as he began to approach me. “Barry… I need a sonic disruption in the kitchen and the name of the asshole who borrowed the Withering Man’s scissors.”
Seconds later the speakers in the corners blared the godawful dissonant tones that were all too familiar. The man who had so briefly taken on a solid appearance lost cohesion, breaking eye contact first and releasing me from those dangerous feelings that made it a struggle to stay still. I backed out of the kitchen and slammed the door shut, then flipped the sign from the yellow side with block letters proclaiming the room ‘SAFE’ to the red side warning ‘NO ENTRY UNTIL DAWN’.
“Jeremy said to tell you he’s sorry and he’ll be back tomorrow after a research field trip.” Barry responded after a couple of minutes.
“That son of a bitch.” I grumbled into the handset. I should have known. It was good luck on his part to be well away from me after that. “He was cooking again, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah, he had hell with the packaging. They’re the sharpest scissors on the premises, you know.”
“I’m going to chain the fucking things to the shelf tomorrow.” I swore and meant every word. After last time I even had the chain ready and it wouldn’t take much to talk Kate into dragging her welder up to the Archive. The disruption only works for a few minutes so until sunrise it would be too dangerous to go in there. The Withering Man would steal the vitality of anyone he touched and leave nothing but a shriveled, dry husk behind. This was the third time that idiot used the scissors to make lunch then forgot to put them back in the vault where they would be properly contained.
Just as well, I thought to myself around a growl in my stomach. It’s 4am on a full moon and there’s no way I would have gotten to enjoy my lunch in peace. An early breakfast would likely be the solution. For now we had the Withering Man getting free run of the kitchen and who knows what else running around.
“The Black Eye Shift? That sounds like fun!” I mocked myself from four months ago as I resumed walking my usual route through the compound. The collection kept growing and as it did things tended to get unpredictable around the full and new moons. “That’s when things get interesting! I’m So BoReD! Idiot.”
The first full moon working the Midnight to 8am shift had been hell. Jeremy had left a teacup out after cleaning it. He says he was called away to help someone else and absolutely intended to come back and put the cup away. I had a false feeling of confidence that night as I arrived to peace and quiet.
For a while. As I was clocking in, that damn cup began to fill with tea. Then overflow. By the time I got there I was wading ankle deep through Oolong. It’s not a small room, that cup is just really enthusiastic about good tea. Luckily the idiot left it on the long, narrow table running the length of the aisle so it just took a moment to pop back into its heavily inscribed and warded cubbyhole to nullify the effects of its curse. That hadn’t even been all that bad, just annoying and messy. It’s when the more dangerous items start feeling froggy you understand why they nicknamed this the ‘black eye’ shift. Some days you go home feeling like you got beat to shit.
The rows of heavy old wooden shelves looked like absolute overkill at first but when the Tallowson Archive was first created there were a lot of questions about the best way to handle and store things. The bickering researchers finally settled on using multiple forms of protection everywhere just to be on the safe side. Thank God for that because it was bad enough with this much work put into keeping things under control.
Still, it’s not advised to go in the Archive vaults with any form of ill intention. Whether you’re mad at an asshole ex or thinking about stealing anything, something may notice you. Might use your weakness against you. Might kill you. Or it might leave you alone in thanks for inadvertently helping as you watch everyone around you suffer. I’d heard some pretty freaky stories about past idiots while being asked to avoid becoming one of the stars of the many cautionary tales.
For all the protection, dropping a cursed item on the shelves is not like hitting an off switch. It’s more like tossing them bound and gagged into a closet and hoping they don’t have a knife you didn’t see. A lot of them go dormant but some will struggle to be free. My job was mostly to make sure no one tried to break in and steal stuff, but mostly it was to flag anything unexpected in case there was something the researchers missed in all their testing.
On the bright side the health insurance is top notch and the life insurance will put half your extended family through college if you die. Not that I had any family I knew of. Honestly, I figured that’s probably what tipped things in my favor for this job. Just because they will shell out as per the agreement it doesn’t mean they want to. Jokes on them, though. I went drinking with a lawyer friend of mine and I was just sober enough to remember some joking suggestions he made. I hired a different lawyer and set up an estate to collect any available money then donate all of it to the local animal shelter if I kick the bucket.
“Something feels off today.” Barry mused through the handset. “Be careful.”
“There’s always something off on the night of a full moon.” I pointed out, trying and failing to keep the impatience from my voice. One close call was enough and I was already paranoid about anything else happening. Security work at a place like this meant keeping on your toes, always alert, and always up to date on new arrivals. Some items were more concerning than others, some more insidious than others. It didn’t matter whether something was natural, man-made, or a complete mystery - there’s no telling how it will manifest or react until the researchers figured it out. Only once they understood an item did it get filed away somewhere in the Archive.
“Stow the attitude and just be careful, Sylvia.” He snapped with all the indignation of a clumsy cat at the foot of a staircase.
“Yeah, yeah.” I sighed. “Sorry.”
He really did mean well and I was fully aware I was just hangry. There was no response and I focused on watching for any change as I went through each vault in turn.
I had wanted an interesting job and loved a good adrenaline rush as much as the next person but I hadn’t realized how much it would affect my paranoia. The only thing worse than the wobbly shadows, indecipherable whispers and occasional hallucinations caused by properly contained junk was when it invaded my dreams. Dreaming about work used to be annoying, now it was outright stressful.
The first few weeks had been the worst but now I was accustomed to hearing certain sounds in certain places, specific movements or illusions as I pass the sphere of influence of certain objects. The warding only goes so far and limits the range of the objects but some can still get to you if you get too close. I usually walked against the long tables in each aisle. The tables are intended as a useful location to look over or otherwise interact with items so they don’t end up forgotten on the damn break room counter to ambush the next shift.
I hated to admit it, but Barry was right. Something felt off today but I couldn’t put my finger on it. So far the routine was exactly as expected, a veritable Simon Says gauntlet of stepping in the right places, avoiding eye contact with certain items, covering ears to avoid hearing certain things. Nothing unusual. Aside from the empty cubby where a certain pair of scissors would soon be bolted down.
There were currently eight vaults in the Archive, each sealed away from the others to keep the number of item interactions to a minimum. The research department was in charge of inventory organization, all security had to do was remember what was where and make sure it stayed there.
It was in the fifth vault that feeling of something wrong peaked. There was an unexpected shadow in the corner to the right of the door. I drew the pulse gun that would disrupt as well as the tone without affecting every other item in the room and took a step toward it as I tried to remember what in the room might cast a shadow. Before I could get a good look at it, I saw stars. Pain exploded in the back of my head then there was darkness.
