The sun had set and taken the residents of 3450 Maple Ln., Suite #350 with it over the horizon. Two hours into his shift, like every shift at 7 p.m. on the dot, Mark Theadeford found himself the sole inhabitant of the Golden Gazette Journal offices.
Just the way he liked it.
The constant chitter-chatter of Margo Lisdale, Mark’s new cubicle-mate, in the early hours of his shift (early to him, anyway) had quickly grown on his nerves over the past two weeks. Mark didn’t necessarily deify solitude, but he certainly did embrace the quiet once Margo left. Listening to her drone on and on and on over her phone to Floyd “Stick-Up-His-Ass” Malone was enough for Mark to envy those hermits who live high in the Himalayas that he’d read about once in an old magazine at his dentist’s office.
Lucky bastards, he thought, before realizing that he could voice any personal quip as loudly as he liked in the now vacant sea of cubicles.
“Lucky bastards,” he said aloud, though his voice was still low enough to not elicit an echo from the cavernous office.
Mark scanned his surroundings. These first few moments of peaceful twilight privacy, when the glow of overhead lights first gained control of the room from the last slants of sunlight that gleamed through the windows behind him at sharper and sharper angles, were always a nebulous stage for Mark’s isolated solemnity. He felt alone, but there was always the possibility of one of his daywalking coworkers to make a hasty return in order to grab a pair of keys or purse or laptop or blah, blah, blah. Always something, he thought, then whispered, slightly louder, than before: “Always something.”
A faint echo of his own voice broke like a ripple over the many empty cubicles around him: “..omethin…”
He smiled.
Alone.
He cracked his knuckles, clutched his mouse (positioned pertly on his “I Hate Weekdays” mousepad) and sent his cursor flying across the screen of his Dell computer. His job was a simple one: monitor news. In his mind he envisioned himself in glimmering polished armor, a stalwart paragon that braved the depths of dark ignorance to wrestle the wriggling, scaly beasts of truth to the light of day. In reality, however, he was a man of 32 with poor posture and a growing paunch, clicking through the same five websites with one hand while the other was busy either rummaging through whatever bag of salty treats was the night’s du jour or running greasy fingers through even greasier hair.
Mark glugged down a mouthful of Coke (Diet Coke — his paunch was big enough as it is) and sent his cursor speeding across his screen to click on a tab labeled simply, “Latest News.” He clicked and was greeted with a variety of headlines:
“Hundreds Protest Removal of Statue”
Old, he thought and scrolled to the next.
“Water Quality Remains Below Recommended Levels”
Old. Scroll.
“Marches on Washington Continue in Light of Recent Campaign Revelations”
Old. Scroll.
“Carnage Erupts in Bolivia-”
Old. Scroll.
A sharp click echoed down the corridor from his left. Mark looked up from his screen, seeing only the clunky shadows of desks on that side of his office. The lights down there were off, of course, their bulbs resting after a long day now that there was no movement to trigger their motion sensors. Mark heard a soft rumble over his head and suddenly felt a soft rush of cool air buffet his shoulders. The A.C. had kicked on. Naturally, his company ran it at night when Mark and a handful of custodial workers were the only occupants of the building. They could give me that moneyinstead. I’d happily wear shorts and flip-flops to the office.
He sloshed his can of Diet Coke, ruminating briefly on how quickly it had grown light, then finished the remainder of the sticky brown liquid with a gulp. He followed it up with a deep belch that, like every other noise at this hour, elicited a faint echo. The sound brought a quiet chuckle up from his paunch.
Mark slid the now empty can away from him. As he did so, his fingers brushed lightly against the neon yellow stress ball he that he kept on his desk. Mark had bought the squishy little ball when he first got the job two months ago, anticipating a need for it in the fast-paced environment of bustling newsroom. He quickly learned that “bustling” was the wrong word for the Journal’s newsroom, however, and rarely, if ever, used his ball for its advertised purpose. What he did use it for was to pass the time with his favorite activity (other than munching savory snacks dropped from the sharp metallic claws of a vending machine): bouncing the ball against Margo Friggin’ Lisdale’s cubicle wall.
He hefted the silky, gelatinous globe in the air. It rotated slowly like a fat trapeze artist then descended quickly toward his hand where it made a soft thock noise as it connected with his palm. Lackadaisically, Mark leaned back in his chair, brought his elbow to his ear, and tossed the ball lightly across the small carpeted area between his desk and Margo’s. The bright yellow projectile thock-ed once against Margo’s desktop, took a sharp angle into her cubicle wall, thock-ed again there, then lobbed skyward back towards Mark. He caught it deftly just as the second thock’s echo quietly faded down the hallway behind him.
“One out,” he said aloud, before bringing his elbow back up to his ear and repeating the process. He continued this routine for a few minutes, enjoying the resonant thocks that filled the office almost as much as watching the gaudy, pastel colored frames containing pictures of Margo’s cats (Felix, Buster and Mistress Mittens, he knew — and hated himself for having that information at the ready in his mind) jostle on her desk with each impact of the flashy yellow ball.
Just as he was pulling his arm taut for an eighth throw, a loud ping issued forth from the speakers of his computer. Startled, Mark released the ball with forward momentum, sending it whizzing errantly toward Margo’s computer where it smashed into her keyboard, phone and small, flower-painted pen jockey before dribbling lazily to the ground and rolling across the carpet. Mark paid it no mind. His attention was drawn to the message on his computer screen.
“I hope this isn’t a bother to you, but are we on this?” the message in small black text blinked on his screen. Underneath the query was a link with the headline: “Statue Removal Attracts Opposing Protests, Violence”
Friggin’ Floyd. The man had an uncanny ability to interrupt Mark at the worst possible times, always with some asinine question that a quick Internet search would produce the answer to.
Mark groaned (as did the walls across the hallway as they volleyed back their echoed response) and set his fingers to work on his keyboard. As he expected, within seconds he found the Journal’s earlier coverage of “Statue-Gate,” an exhaustively long report that covered everything on the subject from the mayor’s comments to the ancestors of the statues themselves. He copied and pasted the link into his messenger box, typed “Y-e-s” in response to Floyd’s question with slow, punctuated deliberation and mashed the RETURN key with his ring and middle finger forcefully. That hard work done, Mark collapsed backward into his chair with a heavy sigh.
If there was anyone in this office that wore on Mark’s last nerve half as much as Margo Friggin’ Lisdale, it was Floyd Malone, the prim, sanctimonious editor who had a penchant for bow ties (pretentious ass), strong cologne, and nagging demands framed loosely as requests. What was worse — if that were possible — was that Floyd was perhaps the most head-in-the-clouds, forgetful know-nothing that Mark had ever had the displeasure of meeting. He constantly made requests for stories that had been written and published hours, if not days, before, and rather than look them up himself, he would force Mark to do it for him while positing his demand as a put-upon “bother” he wished he didn’t have to pass on. Naturally, Floyd and Margo were fast friends. Of friggin’ course. The two were constantly found chatting in the kitchen commons or over the phones at their desks, with Margo braying her hideous donkey laughter so loud that Mark had to bury his ear in his shoulder. Peas in a pod, those two — and Mark hated peas. Luckily, one of the perks of the night shift was that he only had to deal with their insipid repertoire for two hours before they left him in peace, though to Mark that brief window of time seemed to stretch an eternity, filled with cackling snorts and daily updates regarding the feline residents of the Lisdale home.
Mark waited for a response from Floyd, realized it was a futile exercise (he only cared if you didn’t have the story, after all), then reached for his can of Diet Coke only to remember he had finished it some time ago.
“Hope I’m not bothering you,” Mark said as he pinched his nose, mocking Floyd’s nasally, irritating, piss-ant voice.
“..bawwth...ringg..huuu..” the echo called back, similarly high-pitched, yet slightly distorted from his own.
Sighing, Mark flicked his cursor back to life and brought up his browser, burying his correspondence with Floyd. The same list of headlines on the “Latest News” greeted him like old friends. He dragged his cursor indolently up the page to where it hovered over the “refresh” icon like some fat, black fly.
He clicked. The screen flashed white, then reappeared with the fresh page:
“Hundreds Protest Removal of Statue”
Old. Scroll.
“Water Quality Remains Below-”
Older. Scroll.
“March-”
OLD.
“Gah!” barked Mark, annoyed. The echo returned with muted harshness and, for a moment, he thought it sounded slightly modulated, as if some other voice had repeated his call in its best attempt to imitate him. He shook that thought away and reached for his Diet Coke.
It’s empty, idiot, an irritated voice poked from inside his brain. Mark blew a hot gust of air through his nostrils and snatched up the empty can. He slammed it into his wastebasket with a hollow, uneventful clink. The sound bounced back, as if in ridicule.
“Oh shut up,” Mark said aloud.
“..shhh...taahhh...pppp…” a ghastly rasp responded from the far side of the office.
Mark felt a prick on his spine. It was an echo, of course, the soundwaves of his own voice bouncing off the wall and breaking over the row of cubicles across from him, nothing more. Yet, like before, it had sounded false somehow, a cheap mask or coat of rough paint on the low pitch of his own voice.
“Hello?” he asked hesitantly, knowing full-well that he was alone yet still feeling faintly anxious that some hungry, demonic beast would growl back a response.
“O-o-o,” came the reply. This time, the sound was right. It was the familiar echo of his own voice returning from across the -
“..elll...uhh…” the rasp croaked.
Mark shot up from his chair, sending the seat scurrying on its wheels to collide with the desk behind him. The clattering sound reverberated back to him from the dark side of the office. He ignored it and scanned the dim area with squinted eyes. Chairs, desks, computers, family photos, coffee mugs and more similarly dull office accoutrements all sat quietly in the shadows.
Mark squinted harder. Shadows melded and congealed, dancing on the edge of his vision, prompting his attention, only to then reveal themselves as a desktop or cubicle wall.
There’s nothing there, moron, the prickly voice in his brain offered. Of course, he had known that. Hadn’t he? Of course, the prickly voice assured him.
Sighing, Mark ran his now-sweat-glossed fingers through his unkempt hair and turned to grab his seat. He rolled the chair gently (as not to make too much sound and produce another round of damnable echoing) back to his desk. He bent his knees, hovering for a brief moment as he scanned the dark side of the office one last time, then sat heavily on the polyester cushion.
Mark rubbed his palms on his jeans purposefully, ashamed at how sweaty they had managed to get. It wasn’t like him to jump at shadows. He had, after all, willingly signed up for this night shift, enjoying the prospect of peace, quiet and, above all else, a limited workload.
Back to work, the incessant prick in his brain nagged. Back to work, scaredy-cat.
Mark reached his hand out for his mouse and the computer screen blinked awake from its darkened sleep mode. On the screen was a message notification. Mark cursed under his breath and clicked it, afraid that he had missed an urgent note while he was searching for phantoms in a vacant office building haunted only by the abandoned dreams of once-ambitious 9-to-5ers.
“So sorry to bother, but do we have this?” the message asked, presumptively. Beneath the irritatingly saccharine inquiry was a link to the headline: “Descendants of Controversial Statue Figures Quarrel Over Future of Monuments”
Frigg. In’. Floyd.
Of course.
Mark pushed two fingers into each temple and breathed heavily, his gut rising and falling in time. Clicking his jaw, he clacked the response, “As a matter of fact, yes. It was included in my previous link” then slammed the exclamation point key empathetically six or seven times. Mark’s finger hovered over the RETURN key, wanting more than anything to depress that smooth, white rectangle and send his passive aggressive (is it passive with that many exclamation points?) response to Floyd’s stupid eyeballs. Every tendon, muscle and molecule in his body longed for it, but in the end the only key he pressed was labeled DELETE. Before he could finish erasing any evidence of his insubordination, however, Floyd chimed in again with another message: “You there? Sorry to bother!”
Even as the rage gurgled up Mark’s chest another message bobbed on his screen: “Helloooooooo???”
“Shut up!! ” Mark yelled thunderously, then hammered the Y, E and S keys with rigid fingers and mashed the RETURN key with his thumb. “Sorry to bother, my ass!” he added, and in his rage Mark only marginally registered the familiar, rasping echo that responded: “saahh … reee … toooo...bawwthh...urrr...”
He paid it no mind (bigger fish at the moment) and pulled up the same “Statue Gate” link he had dropped to Floyd earlier. Once more, Mark mashed the RETURN key. The link blipped on screen in his messenger and Mark flourished his arms upwards with a frustrated, “There! Happy?” and glowered at the screen.
“thuuu...airrr...haaahhh...pppeeee…,” the echo responded, clearer and louder than before. Undeniable.
A rod of frosted iron shot up Mark’s spine. This time, try though he might, he could not ignore the response. It was not his own voice bouncing back to him. It was someone (something) else hiding in the shadows, imitating him.
He chanced a peek over his computer monitor, rising slightly from his seat to peer across the office to where the shadows lay in muted silence. Nothing there but empty desks and chairs. Mark rose an inch or two higher, now propped up on his white-knuckled hands, grasping his armrests. He squinted, trying to distinguish anything out of the ordinary, but could discern only banal office furniture. There are lights on that side of the office, you idiot, the prickly voice posited in its typical, chiding tone. There were, of course, but they were motion-activated and he’d be damned if he was going to saunter over into that foreboding darkness.
He waved his hands over his head in an attempt to activate the lights. Other than raising his already accelerated heart rate another two ticks, the action produced no results. He quickly withdrew his hands to his sides, wary of signaling whatever might be hiding in the shadows of the abandoned desks over yonder. Absent-mindedly, Mark reached for his can of Diet Coke. His fingers dumbly groped the empty air that the can once occupied as he stared into the dimly lit alcoves between the desks. Something jostled at the fringe of his vision to the right. Quickly, he snapped his head in that direction. An empty desk with two staplers (who needs two staplers!?) and a poster of some lounging heartthrob on a motorcycle were all that met his gaze.
“It’s too damn dark,” he whispered, only half-aware that he was speaking aloud.
“tooo...darr-kuhh” the rasping imitator echoed back.
“Shit!” exclaimed Mark as he fell heavily back into his chair, sending it swiftly backwards, with him, a quivering, sweating heap, along for the ride. It jostled to an abrupt stop, an unseen obstacle caught below one of its four wheels.
Mark hardly noticed. His heartbeat was thundering loudly in his ears and reverberating up the back of his throat. He had retracted into a fetal ball on his chair, eyes cinched tightly shut to block out the horror that was certain to descend on him at any moment…
But nothing came.
Overhead, the air conditioner clicked to life, whirring steadily with a low thrum that bounced harmlessly off the walls and corners of the room. He flinched and drew himself into an even tighter ball.
Eventually, Mark gathered the courage to peel one of his eyelids open. The office was much the same as he had left it before his wild ride in the desk chair: quiet, dark, and empty. He was alone.
Just the way you like it, the prickly voice quipped.
Slowly, very slowly, Mark unfurled from his protective ball, much like that most puckish of insects, the rolly-polly, which incidentally was a nickname bestowed upon Mark when he was but a chubby child in elementary school. As his feet slowly descended toward the floor, Mark raised his guard. His eyes searched the dark side of the office again, sure they would produce some ghastly phantasm emerging from the gloom. They saw nothing, however, but the familiar sights of the Journal offices.
Without taking his eyes off the far side of the room, Mark shifted his chair forward — or rather, he attempted to. One of his wheels had caught on something. Slowly, very slowly, and with his eyes never dropping, Mark reached his hand behind him to grope for the obstruction. His fingers brushed the hard plastic of the chair’s leg, ran down the smooth curvature of the wheel, and sunk into something soft and mushy.
Mark retracted his hand quickly with a squealing yelp and once more curled into his defensive rolly-polly formation. What the hell was that? The prickly voice asked, all of its former antagonism momentarily burnt away by white-hot fear.
Reluctantly, Mark turned his gaze downwards towards the unknown thing that grasped his chair. What he saw made him wheeze.
The stress ball!
You stupid, colossal imbecile, the prickly voice said, sounding much more itself than it had just a moment before.
Sucking in air through his teeth (idiot!), Mark reached for the ball and pried it from beneath the wheel of his chair. He gripped the ball tightly, his fingers sinking into its squishy mass, flattening it against his palm. The process was calming and, for at least a moment, the runaway train of obsessive worry in his mind lost a bit of its steam.
Mark closed his eyes, squeezed the ball even tighter, and listened.
The office was quiet. Not eerily so, as the low hum of the air conditioner chugged on above him, but still he remained on edge, expecting a scurry of movement or rasping breath to present itself. None came.
He sighed and opened his eyes. The office was the same, empty and quiet. His back straightened and a tentative calm slowly spread out from his chest. Mark tossed the ball lightly and shook his head. This place is getting to you, that prick in his head said, and he knew it was true. Maybe it’s not great for someone to be alone, night after night, regardless of the solace it provided from the endless tittering of Margo Friggin’ Lisdale...
Margo!
Mark whirled toward her desk, squeezing the ball so tightly in his right hand that globular protrusions escaped through the tight spaces between his fingers like putty. Margo’s (that shrew) desk was strewn with pens and upended picture frames of her “children” — Felix, Buster and Mistress Mittens. All these disturbances were glossed over without a thought by Mark. His eyes were drawn downwards where, an inch from the carpeted floor, the gray plastic receiver of Margo’s phone spun lazily from its coiled, rubber cord. Mark looked from the phone to the ball in his hand and back to the phone, deducing what had transpired like the world’s slowest detective.
Following the cord upwards to Margo’s desk, Mark saw the row of small plastic buttons on the phone’s base that, with a simple push, would connect you with any other worker’s desk in the office. One of those buttons shone bright red, staring at him like a Cylon eye.
“Are you kidding me?” Mark said aloud.
“arr-huu-kee-deeng-may” the imitator answered.
Mark quickly knelt to grab Margo’s handset. He spun the phone upside down, so that its mouthpiece was inverted over his head while the earpiece was pushed firmly against the tangled mess of greasy hair that surrounded his ear like a nest.
“Hello?” Mark called out across the office. There was a short delay of tense silence in his ear before the distorted replay came through the line: “..hell...ohh?”
Well, there’s your monster, scaredy-cat, the prickly voice poked. But whose phone was on the other line? Who would leave the office without hanging up their receiver? Who, who, who? Mark had a pretty damned good idea, and it bothered him a great goddamn deal.
“I hope this doesn’t bother you, Floyd!” Mark roared as he slammed Margo’s phone down against her desk. From its earpiece came a reedy echo of “ho-puh-thiss-duh-shint-bawth-urr-hu,” but Mark was too busy making a hard, fast line across the office to notice. With long, quick strides he worked his way over to that weaselly little prick’s desk. Overhead the lights blinked on, activated by his motion. He rounded the corner to Floyd’s workstation in a dark, frenzied rage and was greeted by the familiar sight of an unset receiver, laying lazily next to Floyd’s own blocky office phone with one red light shining out like the eye of a rabbit mocking a would-be predator.
Mark wished he was shocked. He wished he was surprised. He wished he felt anything other than a hot lump of anger in the pit of his paunch, but his discovery that Floyd Malone was in such a hurry to be done with whatever little work he did that he would simply drop his phone and walk out the door with the receiver off its hook was so in line with Mark’s perceptions of the lazy little bastard that he actually laughed. Loudly, deeply, madly he bellowed a rumbling guffaw that swirled around him like a hurricane.
As the echoes of his lunatic laughter enveloped him, pulsing in his ears like a heartbeat, he curled his fingers into fists and raised them above his head. They thundered down onto Floyd Malone’s desk so violently that the reverberations of the impact shuddered up his arms like a rumbling train. There was a sharp crack, and Mark at once thought it must’ve been a bone snapping somewhere in his forearm, but no such pain radiated from the area. Looking down, he saw that his right fist had landed squarely in the middle of Floyd’s keyboard, splitting it in half like a brittle cracker. The wave of relief that it was not his arm which had splintered did nothing to douse the fires of his rage, however. He unfolded his fist like a rabid dog waking from a delirium and the appendage found Floyd’s handset. It gripped the hard plastic receiver with a hideous strength, the phone’s casing cracking and squealing under the strain, then brought it up in a violent arc and pummeled it heavily downward onto its base, severing the connection to its twin across the office in Margo’s cubicle.
The heavy thud of plastic on plastic slammed his laughter shut like an oaken door, leaving him with only his silent, simmering anger. Had he not been so preoccupied with hating Floyd Malone and Margo FRIGGIN’ Lisdale with every cell in his body, Mark likely would have noted, with some trepidation, how bizarre it was that the slamming of Floyd’s phone had produced no echo throughout the office. Instead, he marched back to his desk, his mind still adrift in a hazy fog of fury. The lights overhead followed him, spotlighting his trek like an actor in the third act of some tragic play, gearing up for his final, revelatory monologue. And Mark was ready to deliver his ultimate paean of rage to an audience of two — via email, of course, the modern man’s pulpit.
“Sorry to bother you. So, so sorry to be a bother,” Mark grumbled as he went. For once, there was no answer from the walls around him.
He reached his desk quickly, rounding the corner of his cubicle with purposeful strides and setting off the halogen bulbs above him which cast long shadows across the office floor to be devoured by the darkness that had settled over the area he had just returned from. He was already composing the fiery opus which he planned to send to Tweedle Dee (..Margo, I guess?) and Tweedle Dum (Oh, yes. That’s Floyd. Dum. Dum, Dum, Dum.). Mark reached his computer, still muttering, and flicked his mouse. The screen flashed to life and there, waiting like a coiled snake, was a message from none other than the illustrious Floyd Malone.
“Sorry to be such a bother, but do we have this?”
The link that followed sported the headline: “Mayor Responds to Statue Debacle”
“GAHHH!” Mark bellowed, the beast of fury that he had harbored in his gut now untethered and consuming him like some righteous divine fire. His barking ululations once more produced no echos, instead dropping like stones into the dark waters of silence, heavy and oppressive around him, though only the smallest part of his mind registered this anomaly through the red haze of his anger.
Mark’s fingers flew to his keyboard and pounded in his reply, voicing the words aloud as he did so: “Yes, Floyd!! If you bothered to pay attention to ANYTHING, YOU’D HAVE NOTICED WE COVERED THIS EXHAUSTIVELY! MEANWHILE I’VE SPENT THE LAST HOUR CHASING MY OWN SHADOW -”
“chay-seeng-mai-ow-un-shah-doh...”
Mark froze.
He had heard that, clear as day. That same rasping voice, imitating his speech. And it’s clearer.
“Wh-Who’s there?” Mark asked, his teeth chattering slightly.
“Hoose-thair,” the rasp answered, far too quickly. Mark noted with a grim certainty that it also did not share his stutter.
It’s just an echo, he tried to tell himself. The office is empty and that’s how sound works in open spaces. You know that’s not true, the prick said, though even it seemed to want to be wrong on the subject. Maybe it’s coming from Margo’s phone again, he thought...But he had hung up Floyd’s phone — emphatically, as he recalled. He had terminated the connection between the lines. Hadn’t he?
His eyes shot to Margo’s phone. It sat on her desk, unmoved from where he had left it shortly before his trek across the office. He inched his slowly way over to it, chancing darting glances over his shoulder to the dark side of the office. After what seemed like ages, he managed to reach his neighbor’s desk, a trek of no more than seven feet in total. He stared dumbly at the dormant phone and with clumsy, leaden fingers he groped the handset and brought it slowly up to his ear, trembling.
He wasn’t sure what he expected to hear: Satan himself on the other end of the line, rasping incantations that would drive Mark’s soul out through his mouth in a gout of ectoplasm or bile or blood or whatever it was that held one’s soul in place? A voice so chillingly macabre that he would claw his own eyes from their sockets in madness and fall to his knees weeping? He expected many such bad things, some named and some unnamed, waiting for him to pick up that phone and seal his fate with a grim finality. What he finally did hear when he pressed that cold, plastic receiver to his ear, however, was…
Silence.
Of course. What else would there be? The line was no longer connected, he had seen to that personally.
Then what had caused that echo? His own voice in the empty office? Yes. That’s how sound worked.
But it isn’t. That wasn’t your voice and you know it. There’s someone else here waiting-
As if given a cue from his inner monologue, a soft scuffling sound came from the darkness across the office. Mark clutched Margo’s handset against his shoulder with a yelp. Something was out there.
“Wh-who’s th-there,” he asked again, surprised that his constricted vocal chords would even allow for speech. He braced for a response, dreading another rasping, monstrous answer, but none came. Only silence, and that was worse. Much worse.
“This isn’t funny!” he cried helplessly. His mind was truly racing now and his heart was trying to keep pace, whirring wildly in his chest like a moth caught in a lampshade.
“Thisss...issintfunnee,” the thing hissed back instantly, its last few syllables running together in an eerie jumble that still somehow managed to imitate Mark’s timbre convincingly.
It’s mocking you, the voice in his head said, no longer prickly. Now, it simply sounded frightened. Just like him.
It’s here. It’s in here with you.
Margo’s phone clattered to the floor as Mark cringed, attempting to draw all of his extremities inward to his core in a vain show of defense — his patented rolly-polly defense. His mind was swimming in a sea of flashing red alarm, screaming at every cell in his body to flee; flee quickly!, yet he remained firmly planted, frozen.
It was in this state of extreme panic that Mark finally saw.
Somewhere in that deep darkness before him, nestled between the small area of shadow between Floyd’s desk and that woman who always seemed to be chewing gum but never had fresh breath, Mark saw a dark bundle pulsing on the ground. It was large, perhaps the size of a dog or one of Margo’s stupid goddamn cats. He didn’t understand how he had not seen it before. It was if it had risen out of the floor.
As if it were summoned.
Mark’s mouth worked absently, dry lips rubbing against one another in a mute’s vain attempt to formulate a scream. He watched with horror as the pulsating blob of shadow heaved deeply, sucking into itself before redoubling in size, again and again. It rose, uncoiling like a black, lethal snake, and began to spread outward in three distinct growths from the main mass of its “body.” To right and left, long slender tubes shot out, breaking out into five shorter and even more slender cylinders at their ends, forming rudimentary arms and fingers. Below, its base split in two, making a mimicry of legs. Then, atop its central mass, the shadow figure sprouted a head from a stocky neck that connected it to the newly-made torso. The process took less than a minute, with Mark fixated, slack-jawed and wide-eyed for the duration. The shadowman stood some 40 yards across the office, at six feet tall, the exact height of Mark, facing him.
Suddenly, two dull blue portals opened within its “face”. They were shockingly, unmistakably blue — the same as Mark’s eyes. Mark, still in a state of semi-paralysis, drew back his head instinctively, revolted by the display he had just witnessed. The shadowman similarly retracted its freshly sprouted head and Mark felt its eyes drinking in the sight of him in. He yelped quietly, and the shadowman did the same.
It’s...mimicking you.
Mark, as if to test the theory, raised a trembling hand. The shadowman did the same, mirroring Mark’s movement.
“H-h-hello?” Mark managed to squeak out, his tongue a fat, dry lump in his mouth.
“Hell-oh,” the shadowman rasped, its voice some perverse, bizarro duplicate of Mark’s. He saw no mouth under its icy blue eyes, but its reply was undeniable. It had spoken.
“M-my name is M-M-Mark.”
“Marr. K-uh. Mar. Kuh,” it sounded out with its non-existent mouth. “Marrkuh. Mark. Mark.”
“Y-yes, th-that’s it. Wha-, I m-mean, who a-are you?”
“Mark,” it repeated.
“N-no,” Mark said, shaking his head, causing the shadowman to follow suit. “I’m Mark. I am M-Mark.” He tapped his chest with his fingers to emphasis the point and, naturally, so did the shadowman.
“Mark,” it said again. “Mark. Mark. Mark. I. Am. Mark.”
Mark was shaking his head, trying to get it to understand, when suddenly he saw a thin line spread across the smooth black surface of the shadowman’s face just beneath its blue, blue eyes that never broke from Mark’s. Slowly, the fissure widened, revealing a row of glistening vulpine teeth that danced dazzingly against the lights above Mark.
“Mark. Mark. Mark. Markmarkmarkmarkmark,” it repeated over and over again with an increasing fervor that built into a howling frenzy. It laughed hideously and Mark felt hot urine spread across the front of his pants. He screamed, incensed by fear, consumed by it, and the shadowman’s laughs became louder and shriller.
Then the lights above Mark went out and he was engulfed in darkness.
***
“The man is an absolute beast,” Margo Lisdale said into her office phone, twirling her favorite pink gel pen in one hand as she thumbed a crack in the frame of Mistress Mittens’ portrait with the other.
“I simply don’t know how you put up with being so close to him. He’s a neanderthal,” Floyd answered, his lilting tone made ever so slightly deeper through the phone line. “I already reported him to HR. I just hate bothering them with these things, but this keyboard should come out of his paycheck. I’m sorry, but it just should.”
“He crossed the line. I swear, these nightshifters always think they can treat this place like a playground just because they’re here alone.” Margo tsked as she evaluated the damage to her picture frame. “He will be paying for another frame. Frankly, he should finance another photoshoot for poor Mittens. The man is a beast, I tell y - Oh, speak of the devil. One second, Floyd.”
Margo sat up in her chair, her ample bottom causing it to squeak quietly beneath her. “Mark! Excuse me, Mark.”
It was 5:15 p.m. as Mark Theadeford strolled casually past Margo Lisdale’s desk. She was propped up in her chair and waving a loose arm at him eagerly. He stopped and smiled an uncharacteristic smile at her. “Hello,” said Mark.
Margo was taken aback momentarily, both by Mark’s quick grin (he never grinned) and, even more out of character, the fact that he was early for his shift.
“Yes, um, hello, Mark. You may have noticed, but Floyd and I have been trying to reach you all day. It seems...someone...broke Floyd’s keyboard last night and I arrived this morning to find poor Mistress Mittens’ picture frame cracked. See?” She held the frame up for him to see. A plump gray tabby in a red bow and sunhat stared back at him. Mark blinked, but remained smiling.
Gotchared-handed, Margo thought. Nothing gets past detective Lisdale. She raised an inquisitive eyebrow, awaiting some half-baked excuse, but Mark only smiled broadly and continued to his desk.
“Excuse me! Mark, I asked you a question. I know you know what happened to my picture. What have you got to say for yourself?” She had spun in her chair to face him, her arms crossed sternly across her bosom.
Mark sat gracefully in his chair and placed his hands flat on the desk before him, smiling.
“Excuse me,” Margo yelled. She was beet red around her ears and cheeks, completely shaken by Mark’s disrespect. “Mark, you owe me a picture frame and apology. Don’t you ignore me! Look at Mistress Mittens’ frame! What do you have to say for yourself, you...you...beast!?”
He turned to her slowly, with an alien elegance that she had never seen him display before. His eyes, bluer than they had ever been, shone like crystals above his sparkling smile. Something about that porcelain grin caused Margo to recoil, then cold ice snapped through her veins as Mark replied, his voice familiar yet somehow diminished, almost like an echo...
“I’m sorry to be a bother.”