Some of you may have read the story I posted last week about my Snow Camping experience and I appreciate your support and hope that you all may be a little safer in the woods going forward. But you may have noticed I gave no real personal information about myself in that story. That was intentional. The feedback on the story was so overwhelmingly accepting, I’ve decided to come clean with you all. Since the life-changing incident in the forest, I was prompted to start my own business, in a field that is readily mocked by the straight-laced community. I was so terrified after our camping attack that I became obsessed, and immersed in the supernatural. And I started my own business as a private investigator of the paranormal. It is a legitimate business and I do have a private investigator’s license. I do not, however, promote myself publicly. For the better part of the last year, following some initial message board postings, my client list has grown exponentially, only through word-of-mouth. Now, my point here is not to bore you with my background details. My point is to let you know I’ve decided to divulge here on Nosleep some of the most disturbing and memorable cases I’ve dealt with to date. Not all have been successfully closed. Or solved. And names have all been changed to protect both my clients and myself (from legal action). I will post these stories as readily as I have time to write them. With my caseload being full right now, hopefully I’ll be able to polish up the notes and finish a new one every week or two. If you care to read them at all. And I do apologize to those of you who complained about an abundance of flowery words in the Snow Camping post. In full disclosure, I am a failed novelist, and descriptive writing tends to die hard. But I have found my true calling now. And without further ado, I present to you the first of numerous case files.
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Vincent “Vinny” Salvatore –
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File #009
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Denver, CO (Five Points Neighborhood)
-April 06, 2015
I first received a call in the afternoon of April 6th from Vincent Salvatore, regional manager of the Resolution Cleaning Company, a major laundry warehouse located in an industrial section of Denver’s rough-and-tumble Five Points neighborhood. I set an appointment and met Vincent at the warehouse a couple hours later.
When I met the man he seemed sincere, though clearly he was kind of an asshole and not thrilled about parting with the money to start the clock on my hourly rate. However, he said he needed help.
The first facts surrounding the case, as relayed to me by Vinny, are that the commercial laundromat, in its sixteenth year of business, had relocated from across town approximately seven months prior. The new warehouse location sits within view of Interstate 25, in a rundown alcove surrounded by ten-foot, chain-link fence. Following the move, the first incident occurred almost immediately. Once the warehouse was equipped and all of Resolution’s machinery had been properly installed, the labor force employees were brought in to resume normal operations in the new facility. In the first week, on the morning of October 01, a female employee by the name of Marta Guzman went missing. Along with all the other laundry workers, Marta was supposed to clock in at 5:30 a.m. to begin the first shift of the day. She never arrived, which was unusual because not only was the forty-seven-year-old woman a nine-year employee of Resolution with an impeccable attendance record, but following the warehouse move, her apartment was less than a half mile away. Fellow employees said she had been thrilled to be able to walk and not need a ride to work anymore. Police investigated the disappearance, now seven months old, and found nothing of use for evidence. A week after Marta’s disappearance, one of the main washing machines backed up, flooding the work floor. When the plumber was called in, it did not take him long to find the blockage. A set of house keys had jammed up the massive drain line, catching a giant wad of hair and dirt and eventually plugging up the drain. The keys were identified as Marta’s by her coworkers. The woman was a widow without children, and being a Mexican citizen with an expired visa, it was eventually determined she had returned to her birth country to be with her sister, who was (previously rumored among Marta’s coworkers) dying of cancer.
The second incident occurred almost two months later. December 04 there was a major snow storm in Denver, closing not only public schools, but also many of the city’s major thoroughfares. Many businesses also shut down. Resolution cleaners was not one of those businesses. This was at the discretion of Vinny, and there was disgust in his voice when he told me that over half of the eighteen laborers called in sick, unable to make the journey in the weather. That day the warehouse ran a skeleton crew, with few more than a half dozen people (mostly women) sorting, operating the laundry and dry-cleaning machines, and pressing clothes.
“It absolutely killed our turnaround that week,” Vinny told me, shaking his head. He then explained to me the following: on that frosty December morning, three dead coyotes were found in the break room. Their bodies were stiff and rank with mange, and the woman who discovered them fainted, hitting her head so hard on the floor that she bruised her cheek.
Vinny was notified immediately, but explained he was not at the warehouse that day. He cited road closures and told his assistant manager to remove the bodies and throw them in the dumpster.
“Listen,” he told me as I stood there writing on my notepad, “It was the middle of the goddamn winter and it was pretty obvious those coyotes had broken in for warmth. I mean, we’re right on the edge of the city here, you know? It wasn’t that big of a deal. It took more convincing than it should have, but I was finally able to make Raymond agree to throw those things in the dumpster before they started stinking the place up. And I still don’t buy that it has anything to do with our…uh, problem, but the ladies, they insisted on it.”
“But there’s more,” I prodded.
Vinny nodded, wiping a meaty hand across his sweaty forehead. “Yeah, the last thing. The thing from last week. It’s the reason I called.”
“What happened?”
Vinny looked both ways. The parking lot was empty, save for a few ramshackle, broken down cars and the whizzing of the highway in the distance.
“One of the girls had…an incident, in the bathroom.”
I waited for him to continue and after a moment of hesitation he finally did. “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I’m even saying this. The ladies, they think…they think there’s some thing living here. That it wants to harm them. It’s complete hoodoo bullshit, if you ask me. You know how superstitious those south-of-the-border types are, right?”
I kept scribbling notes, but paused to look up at Vinny, who seemed to be expecting some kind of answer from that.
“Hoodoo is an African American folk spirituality,” I said simply. “It is not from Mexico. Please, tell me more about what happened to the woman in the restroom.”
Vinny grunted, straightening the collar of his sweat-stained shirt. “She says that she saw it, that it tried to make her vanish.”
“Is there any way I can speak to this woman?”
Vinny shook his head. “They’re gone. They’re all gone. After Carmen saw whatever the hell it is she says she saw, almost half the rest of the crew refused to come back to work.”
“And that’s why I’m here,” I reasoned. “They won’t come back until this thing is gone.”
Vinny snorted. “No, they won’t be coming back because I fired each and every one of their superstitious asses for insubordination and purposefully sabotaging the corporation. All those idiots were replaced within a day. No, the reason I called you was a favor to my assistant manager, Raymond, who’s been opening and closing up shop for the last week and insists that there’s truth to what those idiot women were saying. For the most part he’s loyal, and he’s sharp, so I’m humoring him.”
“You don’t care if this gets solved, do you?” I asked. The repulsion was probably evident in my voice.
Vinny snorted, offering me a half-cocked grin. “You’re getting paid for your minimum service charge of eight hours, at the end of which my ass will be legally covered for having hired a licensed P.I. to address the safety concerns of my senior-most employee. I don’t give a shit what you do around here in the meantime, but if you’re not going to be helpful, just be sure to stay out of the way. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do. This place doesn’t run itself.”
It was a ludicrous thing to say, given that it was Sunday, the only day the warehouse was closed completely.
He never did expound on what his former employee witnessed in the restroom.
I spent the next hour exploring the building. Without going into abundant detail, I will say that the structure was older, and had a dated feel. Lots of concrete floors and walls made of glazed concrete brick. It reminded me of my elementary school and according to the real estate site I pulled up on my phone, it was built in 1962. There were no employees available because, again, it was Sunday, and I lamented the fact that that prick of a regional manager had chosen today specifically for me to do an investigation. I desperately wished I could speak with Raymond the assistant manager. But that wasn’t in the cards.
For all Vinny cared, I could have just sat in my car and napped the whole time. Maybe if I was as much of a dickhead as him I’d have even done it. But I wasn’t. And besides that, my curiosity was piqued. So I poked around.
The place was well-lit, at least. Halogen lights hung suspended from the ceiling, casting their sickly yellow glow to the concrete below. It bleached the life out of my skin, like all halogens do, and gave me a sickly pallor.
A long conveyor belt ran the length of the central floor, and on it hung hundreds and hundreds of items of clean, pressed clothing, each bagged and marked with a piece of paper with big bold numbers on it. It bisected the huge space into two halves: one that led to tall, rolling doors and the loading docks where delivery trucks came, and the other, where the heavy machinery and the work stations resided. In terms of machinery, I’d be lying if I could name half of the things I was looking at, other than three massive, stainless steel washing machines that made my own washer at home look like a midget (Or little person. Whatever.), and two more industrial dryers around the corner. There was a whole mess of water pipes and drain lines snaking across the walls. Copper and plastic ran both up to the ceiling and down into drains on the floor. There were gauges and switches and a whole row of wheeled laundry baskets, like the kind you’d see old movie gangsters making their big break from The Big House in.
There was an office area, which I quickly identified as a break room. It was a recent addition, with flimsy carpet and shoddily textured walls, but there were two microwaves and a meeting table so big I wondered how in the hell they’d fit it in the door. Back out in the central warehouse area, there were two restroom doors, each marked with their gender appropriate tags. The restrooms were unremarkable, closet-sized rooms with nothing more than a porcelain throne and a standard sink surrounded by a scuffed and chipped countertop. The lights were the sensor kind that came on automatically, though the place didn’t get any better with the lights on.
I looked in the mirror. All I saw was my usual boring self: a faded Colorado Avalanche cap and a beard that was a few days past the point where my wife started complaining about it. I took a deep breath and unslung the backpack from my shoulder.
Out of it I pulled my electromagnetic field meter and set it on the counter. I turned the EMF on and the light sat anticlimactically on red. I stared at it for a moment, looking back to myself in the mirror and then again at the meter. It did not change.
With my backpack in tow, I made my way once again through the warehouse with the meter in hand. The next fifteen minutes proved fruitless and I started to feel angry. Part of me seriously considered marching around to the front of the building and telling that fat asshole to stick his job up his ass. But the truth was, I needed the money. While my bills were getting paid, thanks to the Langston job a couple weeks back, I wasn’t exactly flush with cash. And there were the people who worked at the laundry. I got the feeling that whatever this presence was, specter or otherwise, things would not improve in this place without some sort of direct intervention. And people had already been hurt, at the very least.
I needed to cool down before I really dug into things. The break room seemed an appropriate place for that. I made my way back there, set my bag on the table, and settled into a surprisingly cushioned office chair. I looked over at the refrigerator beside the table and decided to try my luck. It was a bust. There were a few Tupperware containers and a couple off-brand cans of cola. I sat back down, yawned, and rubbed my eyes.
I must have dozed, because when I woke it was with a start. My neck was sore and it took me a moment to recall where I was. I blinked a few times, remembered what the hell I was doing, and scanned the room cautiously. Everything looked alright at first glance, but my eyes were drawn to the ceiling, where a wide brown stain had spread from the corner. It was a giant water stain and I wondered if it was something I would have missed seeing before. I didn’t think so. I tugged my backpack into my lap and removed the EMF, along with my pen-size infrared thermometer. I switched the EMF on and the red light held steady. The infrared monitor didn’t register anything either, but something was certainly amiss in the air. I could feel it in my bones, like a soft current of electricity that caused the hair on my arms to stand on end. I stuffed my tools back into my bag. Whatever this was, it wasn’t ghost activity. It didn’t feel right. I tried to stand, and the slide of my concealed Smith and Wesson pistol caught the underside of the chair armrest. It jerked down on my belt and pulled me back into the seat by my right hip. This time, I stood up more carefully, shouldering my bag.
The room felt dark. Not in the sense that the lighting had changed, but that some malignant force had filled the airspace, like some kind of palpable radio signal. This was it. This was the presence that had been reported by the terrified employees. It was unlike anything I’d felt before, that looming essence, deep and sinister.
I stared at the water stain and as I watched it continued to grow, turning half the ceiling into an expanding sore. I rifled through my bag until I found my electronic voice recorder. I clicked the thing on and tucked it into the front pocket of my jeans. There was no audible sound in the room, but just because I couldn’t hear it with my ears didn’t mean it wasn’t there. I watched as the stain trailed down the adjoining wall: the wall shared with the women’s restroom.
“Hello,” I said, hearing my own voice sound unnatural and distant. I breathed deeply, fully aware that my heart was beating faster, but remaining in control of my wits. I had seen and survived scarier shit than this before. At least so far.
I exited the break room and rounded the corner to face the door of the women’s restroom. I turned the knob and swung the flimsy, hollow-core door inward. The light did not come on automatically and I fumbled with the switch. It wouldn’t go manually either so I had to pull my penlight out of my pocket. Once the bathroom was bathed in the glow of white LED light, I saw water dribbling down from the ceiling light fixture. The round globe was full to the brim and water trickled out of the bowl to splash down on the chipped porcelain floor tiles.
I shined the light around the room and found nothing out of place. Clearly there was some sort of burst water pipe that needed to be addressed, but somehow that wasn’t at the top of my priorities right then. I was on the cusp of my golden opportunity.
I looked to myself in the mirror. My features were unsurprising, though brightly lit by the flashlight. Water dripped to the floor just behind my shoulders and the reflection showed a pure white wall behind me with my shadow cut onto it.
“Reveal yourself,” I commanded.
I was met with still silence.
“I command you to reveal yourself to me,” I said. “I am unintimidated and demand that you show your true form. Whatever the fuck you are.”
It happened slowly at first.
In the reflection of the mirror, a piece of my shadow began to stretch up behind me, lengthening until it separated from the rest of me and grew into a long lizard-like shape that crawled along the wall and disappeared into the ceiling. I did not dare turn to look, because I suspected the thing would be invisible to the naked eye. Its medium was the reflection.
I watched the wall behind me for any sign of the creature but now saw only my own shadow again, as it should have been. Then, a claw made of pure shadow clasped itself around my shoulder. I could see it in the reflection but could not actually feel it and I watched as a slender, black, serpentine head rose over my shoulder. A narrow tongue flicked in and out of its mouth.
I could not feel the thing, but I was not at all comfortable with it being in direct contact with me like that. From all accounts that I’ve read, direct physical contact with malignant spirits, demons, etc. is never a good thing. And I had no idea what this thing was.
“I demand to know your name,” I said.
The tongue flicked again; the head cocked sideways to regard me with eyes of pure shadow.
“Come with me, child,” a soft voice whispered into my ear. “Into the glass.”
I could feel the pull of its will, urging me toward the mirror. The glass was a cool, still pool of water and the voice assured me with its tone that I would be so very happy there. All the problems in my life would be washed away. And I would not be alone. There were others, many others, their shadows falling into place behind me where the wall opened up into a cavernous black hallway. The closest of those figures in the shade was a squat, dark-skinned woman in reading glasses and a workers’ apron.
“Marta?” I said automatically.
The woman looked up at me and frowned. It was a pitiful sight. I knew without having even met her that this was the woman who had recently vanished before making it to her shift. And there were others beyond her, shadows stretching long and twisted in the corridor that had opened up in the reflection behind me.
“Come, child,” the voice urged. “Quickly now.”
“Tell me, spirit,” I said. “Do you embody this mirror?”
This was met with silence. The shadow creature slithered down behind me and reappeared in the reflection on the countertop, standing to stare at itself in front of me. It leaped over the sink and directly into the mirror, as if it were a portal into another world. The room around me suddenly became cooler and I realized that I had been sweating in what must have been a fairly elevated temperature.
“Yess,” it hissed. “Come within.”
All of a sudden my face twisted in pain. Except, I felt no pain, and saw that it was purely a reaction of my reflected self. My free hand shot up to my actual face, purely out of reaction, but nothing was wrong. The same was not true for my reflected image. I watched as my jaw unhinged and separated, pulling downward toward my chest like an anaconda awaiting a meal. Long, taloned fingers protruded from the sides of my cheeks, clawing and digging to pull the skin out of the way to make room for the thing that wanted out. The shadow creature wrenched my jaw clear down, skin complying with unreal rubbery torsion. It pried itself out of my skin, unrolled itself, and stood upon the countertop looking down at me, well over three feet tall. My lifeless reflection collapsed to the ground behind it. With scales of charcoal, and eyes full of cold, dark fury it stared back at me. Its body shifted and flickered where it stood, like a candlelight shadow.
“Come,” it whispered. “Come to us.”
I reached my free hand out and touched the surface of the mirror. It was like touching a piece of steel that’s been in a deep freezer. It was so cold that it hurt. I had a feeling that if I’d turned my will over to the monster at that moment I could probably have slipped right through the plane and into whatever hellish world it inhabited.
Instead, I rapped firmly on the glass with my knuckles.
“I condemn thee, demon,” I said. I’m an amateur demonologist at very best, but it was really all I knew to say. “I condemn thee to this prison, and should it ever be destroyed, so too shall you be destroyed.”
At this, the shadow beast lunged. It grew to three times its size in midair and a split second later it hit the barrier of the mirror with a solid, resounding thump. It screeched furiously, a high-pitched cry that was nearly deafening.
“You will never hurt another,” I said, feeling rage well up inside my chest.
I flipped my flashlight around so that when I made a hammer-fist and smashed it against the glass, the mirror spider-webbed dead-center. I was careful not to let my hand actually hit the mirror and I didn’t catch any stray shards when a hundred broken pieces fell, shattered, to the floor.
The overhead light clicked to life and illuminated a bathroom floor that was completely dry, but covered in a mosaic of glass shards. Nothing stirred in their reflection.
Vinny the asshole manager was furious that company property had been destroyed. Refusing to be bested by that prick, I blamed shoddy workmanship and upkeep and explained that the mirror had fallen during my inspection and broken itself. There was no point in telling the truth to that man, much less assuring him that his problem was resolved. His employees would know. They would be able to sense it. And that was all that mattered. Well, that and the fact that my check cleared.
“Sorry,” Vinny said with a sneer, “we don’t do C.O.D. for contractors. You’ll go through corporate billing like everybody else.”
So, no check for two weeks. At least the rent was already taken care of for the month.
I kept a sizable shard of the shattered mirror for myself, as a sort of catalogue reminder. It sits on the top shelf in my study, wrapped in an old tee shirt beside the rest of my eerie trophies. I check it every few weeks, but so far I only see my hairy mug looking back at me.
They’re not all wins, but in this case, even if it went unappreciated and without respect, it was definitely a win.
CASE CLOSED - INACTIVE
Submitted September 18, 2015 at 02:46AM by brandonmeyers http://ift.tt/1W5NACH nosleep
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