Auction

Peter had been a custodian for nearly 25 years. It wasn’t that he particularly liked the work, but it was steady and reliable. He already had so much time building up that resume, and working with people was exhausting. He liked coming to work and listening to his music while he cleaned up. Peter had worked for the storage company for about six years. He was the oldest member of the team, technically. The turnover rate was something he didn’t envy.

One of the best times for Peter was during the middle of winter. Because of the cold weather, fewer people bothered to get into their storage units. Because there weren't as many people, he didn’t have to work around them to get his job done. It was during this chillier weather when Peter noticed strange things happening. It began with things that were easily explained. A broom or rag would get misplaced, but he was sure it was either one of his coworkers using his things and not putting them back in the proper place or his own mind making him more forgetful.

After a few weeks, Peter started to notice cold spots. He would pass through the hallway and suddenly feel a chill. It was most common around Unit 1703. Probably a draft, he thought. He told his boss in case it was faulty air conditioning or perhaps even a hole in the wall somewhere.

Peter made the mistake of telling his friend Sue about it. Sue smirked. “Oh, you know what that sounds like? Sounds like you’ve got yourself a haunting.”

“A haunting, you say,” Peter laughed. “I don’t think so, Sue. Ghosts aren’t real.”

“They sure are. I told you about what happened to Pauline, right?”

“Whether you did or didn’t I’m still not going to believe you. Those ghost stories are nothing but, well, stories.”

Sue rolled her eyes. “You never know, Pete. Some things you just can’t explain.”

“I can explain it. It’s that I’m getting old, Sue. My memory is gettin’ bad and my body is gettin’ random shivers ‘cause of the cold. What would be haunting a storage facility, anyway? Seems like a pretty boring place to haunt.”

Sue shrugged. “People store all sorts of things in storage units. Maybe someone left some sort of cursed thing in their unit. You said you feel mostly cold around a specific unit, right?”

“Uh, yeah, 1703.”

“Did you see who moved into that unit?”

Peter shook his head. “I really don’t pay any attention to anyone moving around. If I make eye contact that means I’d have to talk to them.”

Sue laughed. “Or you could just nod.”

“No, it’s all just too awkward. I would rather listen to my music and keep to myself.”

“Well, just let me know how the haunting goes, okay?”

“It’s not a haunting,” Peter smirked and Sue laughed in response.

A few days later, Peter started waxing the floors. Mid-way through, his headphones ran out of battery. “Oh no,” Peter cursed and took his headphones off. There was a light ‘bang.’ Then another. The repetitive banging was happening down one of the hallways. Peter wandered over to find the source.

As Peter got closer, the banging got louder. It was almost as though the noise was beckoning him. Peter turned the corner and saw the culprit. The door to unit 1703 kept moving, as though something was banging it from the inside. “Hello?” He called.

The banging stopped.

Peter walked closer to the door, suddenly feeling uneasy being in the same space as the unit. Instead of investigating further, Peter went back to finish waxing the floors.

For the next few days, Peter would run a test. He would put his headphones on but not any sound and see if the banging persisted. He realized how every day there was a period of time where the banging began. One day, as he was throwing out garbage from the cans, the banging began.

Peter felt the hair on his back stand on end. Was there an animal in the unit? Could there be a person living in it? They could be dangerous. Peter went to his boss Mrs. Stork to tell her about it.

“I always thought that was just you banging around.”

“That’s not me, I swear. I think there’s an animal or something in the unit.”

Mrs. Stork followed him to the building where the unit was. There was no sound, but there was a chill that Peter felt. “It could be a rodent or something. Could you call the renter of the storage room?”

“I might have to. Now that I look at this, I think this unit belongs to the crazy person Jacqueline helped. Did she tell you about that person?”

“No, I haven’t really spoken with her much,” Peter admitted.

“A lot of it was the usual annoying. He wouldn’t give her his picture I.D., no phone numbers, no address, the guy expected to just give us money and no information. Then he started saying some very weird things to her. He asked her about the security of the units, which isn’t too strange of a question, but then he wanted to know where the closest church was, if she knew how to get Holy Water, and if she knew how much life she had left. He was acting quite threatening. The whole thing made her uneasy.”

“Wow,” Peter mused. “I’m even more glad now that I do the cleaning and I don’t mess with the people.”

Later that evening, after Mrs. Stork promised to call the owner of the unit, Peter felt better about the whole ordeal. He thought Sue would really enjoy this new information he had and he was eager to finish work and call her. Peter passed the hallway and saw a man standing in front of the unit. Peter turned to ask the man if he was the renter of the unit, just out of curiosity, but once Peter had his head turned straight to the guy he disappeared completely. It halted Peter in his tracks.

He knew he saw someone there. Were his eyes going too? “I can’t believe this,” Peter groaned. Was he losing his mind? He knew that he was going to tell Sue, and he knew she was going to say ‘ghosts,’ but Peter had no other friends to talk about this with. That was how he liked it, anyway. He had a few buds at the bar but they didn’t really talk much. They just drank and played darts and billiards and sang awful karaoke. Sue was his only real friend, and that’s just because they’ve known each other since they were college roommates. Peter was there for Sue’s journey to find herself and she was there for Peter to make sure he wouldn’t die of starvation because he literally spoke to no one. Now that he had something wild to talk about, this was one of those few moments where he wished he wasn’t as much of a shut-in.

“Sounds like a ghost,” Sue told him.

“I knew you were going to say that,” Peter muttered. “I’m pretty sure it was just a hallucination.”

“What did the guy look like?” She asked.

Peter shrugged. “Blonde hair, full beard, a little rugged. He looked like he hadn’t showered in a while.”

Sue laughed, “You just described yourself.”

“I’m a lot cleaner than that, thank you very much,” Peter crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Besides, I’m more stout than he was. Gangly fella. Probably starving.”

“Demons can take on the form of other people, maybe it was a demon mimicking you as best it could.”

“It was just a hallucination, Sue. No demon’s gonna haunt a storage unit.”

A few days later at work, Mrs. Stork went up to talk to Peter. “I just wanted to let you know, the guy in unit 1703? He’s a month late paying up his storage. If we can’t get a hold of him before the next month then his unit will be up for auction. If that happens, we can check that unit for holes or anything that could be causing the banging and the breeze you keep feeling.”

“He hasn’t talked to you?” Peter asked.

Mrs. Stork let her arms fall to her sides. “All three numbers we got from him are disconnected. Seems like he really didn’t want to be found. I doubt that we’ll hear from him anytime soon. His stuff is going to be auctioned off, I guarantee it.”

She had been right. In the following month, there was no sight of the man that rented the unit. Peter got the hallucination more often and the banging became more severe, though Peter figured it was because of the harsher winter weather during that month. Another job Peter had, which he had to do only once a month, was to follow the auctioneer the week before the auctions so they could cut the locks and take photos of the unit for people to see online before they made their bids. Because it was winter, there weren’t many units up for auction that month. There was one that seemed to belong to a hoarder and unit 1703.

Peter walked with the auctioneer to the unit. Peter took the bolt cutters to the unit and they opened the door.

“What in the world,” The auctioneer mumbled as he looked inside. There was only one item in the unit and it was surrounded by something white. Powder? Sugar? The auctioneer took a photo. “Well, maybe someone will want it.” Peter took a closer look in the dark to ascertain what the thing was. It looked like a box. A jewelry box, maybe? It had a lot of carvings and some parts seemed moveable.

“It’s a demon box,” Sue told him matter-of-factly when he went to go see her.

Peter laughed, “A what?”

“It’s a real thing, Pete,” Sue insisted. You’ve got yourself a bone-ified legitimate real-life demon box. You said it had stuff around it?”

“Sugar, it looked like.”

“I’m willing to bet it’s salt. The loser probably opened the box, got himself cursed, and is now trying to get rid of it by anonymously having it auctioned to some poor sap willing to buy it.”

“Well, it will be out of my hair in a week regardless.”

“Just whatever you do, don’t clean up that salt before it’s bought. If the demon in that box is strong enough to bang the door and move things and make you hallucinate with the salt around it, which from what I read is supposed to keep it from doing just that, then without the salt, it might actually try to kill you or take your soul or whatever.”

“Whatever is right. Look, Sue, I know you think this is all coming together, but there is nothing going on with this demon box.”

“Did you see any holes or cracks or anything when you looked into the unit? Anything else that would have caused the banging?”

“To be fair, I didn’t give it much of a look.”

“I bet there’s nothing there.”

“You’re betting a lot on this,” Peter mused.

“Are there photos?” Sue asked. Peter took her to the website where the auctioning units were. They got to the photo of the box.

“... Peter, this isn’t a normal demon box.”

Peter chuckled, “Demon boxes aren’t normal in the first place, right?”

“No, Peter, listen, my friend Pauline told me about this box. Here…” Sue took the reins on Peter’s phone to take him to some other photos. “See? It’s the Dybbuk Puzzle Box of Abela Shulman. There’s a movie about it and everything.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Abela. That’s a girl’s name. How do my hallucinations fit if the demon isn't a woman?”

“I told you already, demons can take on other forms. Maybe it really was trying to copy you.”

Peter rested his chin on his palm. “So what would this mean for me?”

“Well first of all it means she could possess your soul if she ever gets her hands on you. She despises men most of all.”

“So that means you would be safe, right?”

Sue hesitated. “Yes? I think. I’m pretty sure.”

“Then why don’t you buy it?”

“Oh no no no no, nope, never, no.” Sue waved her hands, physically repulsed by the idea. “But maybe I’ll tell Pauline. She might know what to do with it. Just, Pete, please don’t go near that box.”

Peter didn’t buy the story for a second. Ghosts and demons meant nothing to him. Sue, however, seemed very concerned and he wasn’t about to make light of her opinions or feelings. She kept him alive for this long, anyway. Peter trusted her more than he trusted himself. “Alright, alright. I won’t go near it. Shouldn’t have any reason to, anyway.”

On the last day before Peter’s two days off, he found a dead squirrel in the hallway. “Probably got into the poison. Poor bastard.” He wasn’t sure how a squirrel got inside unless it snuck through the doors when a customer came through. He found it odd only because he had never known a squirrel to rummage around before. Rats and field mice maybe, but the squirrel was new. After his two days off, Mrs. Stork came up to him the second he clocked in. “I have a question for you, Pete. Is it true there’s salt in unit 1703?”

Peter blinked. “Uh, yeah, I think so.”

“Okay, I’m going to need you to clean that up today. Apparently, the salt is attracting squirrels and there has been a lot of complaints.”

“Isn’t the auction tomorrow though? It can’t wait until then for me to clean it?”

Mrs. Stork crossed her arms. “Are you refusing to do your job?”

“I’m just making sure,” Peter held up his hands. “I thought it was illegal to tamper with units being auctioned until after the stuff is out.”

“No, it’s fine. You’re just sweeping up salt. If it were needles or anything like that I’d have to have you clean that up too for the customer’s safety. Just don’t touch the stuff inside and sweep up the salt before I have a rodent infestation.”

Peter had no choice. He wasn’t worried about the box, really. He just didn’t like breaking his word, especially to his best friend. Peter took his time getting to it. During his normal cleaning, he came across six dead squirrels. While disposing of the carcasses, he also came upon a dead gopher. Strange, a squirrel could probably sneak into a unit but there was no way a gopher would be small enough to make it through to a unit where the rat poison was. The gopher had to have died some other way, but Peter saw no wounds on it. “Had to have died from natural causes,” Peter decided.

Close to the end of his shift, Peter got the key to open up unit 1703. “Oh-!” Peter reeled back the second he saw that the floor of the unit was filled with dead squirrels. Countless bodies lie unmoving, eyes clouded over, mouths agape. Before he could react, he heard chattering.

Peter leaned in only a little before something jumped at him from the darkness. He hopped out of the way just in time and started to run. A squirrel, pupils clouded over, teeth gnashing, body twitching, ran after him dizzily. It ran against the wall a few times in its chase. After a few seconds down the hallway, it slowed, twitching, stumbling, gurgling until it fell over to its side and its little body relaxed before laying dormant completely.

Peter was visibly shivering. He didn’t want to get anywhere near the squirrel. “Holy fuck,” He exclaimed a few times before falling to a sitting position to try and work on composing himself. This time, he had no excuse. He had no logical reasoning to explain what had happened. He tried, but everything seemed like a stretch. Were they diseased? Did the box have some sort of chemical that drove the squirrels mad? Maybe the salt was laced with something, but why did they come to the unit only after he and the auctioneer opened the unit? It had been there for two months before that. Maybe it took time for whatever it was to activate? What sort of chemical needed activation by opening a door?

Mrs. Stork already went home. There was only one girl at work besides him. He didn’t really know what the other girl could possibly do. Peter had to clean up the mess, but now…

Peter grabbed a large trash bag and a broom. First, he took a photo of the room. Sue would want to know about this, for sure. He used the handle of the broom to poke and lift the squirrels from their resting places and toss them in the bag. Some were hard to get up since their mouths and noses dried and stuck to the concrete. Peter tossed the nearly full garbage bag and the broom into the dumpster. He mopped the floor and washed his hands three times before grabbing another broom and a dustpan to take care of the salt.

The squirrels seemed to have scattered the circle lightly. It wasn’t really much of a circle anymore. Peter didn’t dare touch the box, but he swept up the circle around it. He looked at his phone for the time. “Ten more minutes.” He sighed; home free. The box would be auctioned and taken away first thing in the morning and Peter would never have to worry about it ever again. All he had to do was put everything away and clock out.

“Peter.”

Peter locked unit 1703 back up again. The door creaked and he thought it sounded like his name. “You’re just stressed out, Pete. You had quite a day.” He told himself.

As he made his way down the hallway, the door to unit 1703 started to knock. Then it started to rattle. Then the doors nearby started to rattle. Peter felt cold hands slide up his spine and his legs started running before he knew he was running. The lights started to flicker. At first, Peter tried to get to the janitor’s closet so he could put everything away, but once he heard the air around him whisper his name in a high-pitched, girlish voice, he abandoned the task and tried to make it to the other side of the room to the door of the showroom where he could clock out and leave with the girl closing up the store.

Gradually, all the doors to the units were rattling. Peter turned to head down the hallway, the door to the showroom on the other side, but halted in his tracks. Standing on the other side, in the flickering light, there was a figure of a teenage girl. She had short, brown hair, a long green and blue dress and a gangly, starved body. She twitched her head up. Peter tensed at the sight of her eyeless face. Mouth agape. With each flicker of the light, she got closer.

Peter turned and ran, screaming for help. He ran to another hallway to try and make it around, but she was standing at the end of that one, too, getting closer as the lights flickered. He turned back, she was there. He tried another hallway. She was there. The doors banged deafeningly. Peter’s legs gave way and he fell. He scooted up until his back hit the wall. She got closer and closer. In desperation, Peter cried, “Abela, please. You don’t have to do this.”

The lights stopped flickering. The doors stopped clanging. There was dead silence except for Peter’s ragged breathing and sobbing as his wide eyes looked down to the girl looking up at him, practically in his lap. He was paralyzed, her eye sockets had cinders as though she were slowly burning from the inside. Ash surrounded the air around her. Abela’s expression was filled with so much grief and rage that Peter could feel it burning his skin. He felt almost as though he were the one on fire. She seemed to be waiting for something, and the more she waited, the angrier her expression became, but Peter didn’t know what she wanted. He was too choked up to speak. Her rage piqued, and she screamed in his face. Ash escaped from her mouth, forcing Peter to inhale it. It burned, like smoking, but then it ignited in his chest. He screamed in agony. He writhed against the wall, struggling to escape but there was nowhere to run. He began to lose consciousness.

“Peter.”

Visions of the remaining cinders of a bonfire came to mind. He felt like he was the kindling.

“Peter.”

A repulsive smell hit his nose. It filled him with dread. Somehow, he knew this to be the smell of burning corpses.

“Peter for Almighty’s sake, wake up. Please.”

He recognized that voice. “Sue,” He tried to say, but only a faint, ‘S’ came from his lips. It was so hard to breathe. He licked the inside of his mouth, his teeth, and his lips. He tried to open his eyes. He could hear beeping and whirring. Most importantly, he heard Sue’s voice. He managed to crack an eye open but he couldn’t see anything. He closed his eye again. “Bright,” He whispered. There was a click and everything went darker. He tried again.

After the blur went away, Peter could tell he was in the hospital. Sue sat by his side, face wet with tears. Even in the dim light where the only source was peeking through the curtained window, he could tell Sue had been crying for a while. “What happened?” Peter whispered.

“You had a seizure,” Sue explained through ragged breaths. Your coworker Jacqueline found you and called an ambulance. You’ve been under for over a week, they thought you wouldn’t make it.” Sue put her forehead against the hand she was holding. Her shoulders shuddered. “I came as fast as I could since you don’t have any family they were considering me your spouse, they were already talking about what to do with your things and getting papers signed, they were so sure you were a goner but I couldn’t let them take you. I couldn’t let you go.”

Peter blinked, registering little of the information. He kept replaying the night over and over again in his mind. His eyes darted around the room but there was just him and Sue. “The box,” He tried to ask. Sue answered for him. “It was auctioned off to Pauline. Five dollars. No one wanted it, but she knew someone who could take care of it. It’s gone now, far away.”

Peter relaxed. So it was over.

He had to stay in the hospital for a few more days. The doctors found nothing wrong with his body and they couldn’t find any cause for the seizure. Per their suggestion, Sue moved in with him to take care of him. Though his body made a full recovery, there were certain things that would instill fear and panic and he had to go to therapy and take medication for anxiety. One day, Sue caught his phone unlocked. Out of curiosity, she went through his photos. When she got to the picture of the squirrels, she cried out. Sue looked around to make sure Peter didn’t hear her, then out of fear that he may uncover the photo and have a relapse, she deleted the picture. The Dybbuk Puzzle Box was somewhere safe now. The demon was gone. There was no need for such a reminder anymore.