The Night Shift
by Catie Koch
Six empty soda cans littered the desk when the phone rang. It was a strange hour for a call, going on four a.m., but Corey popped the tab of a seventh can and swiped the phone from its stand. “Y’ello, this is the Museum of Modern Antiquities. You’re speaking to Corey, night receptionist-slash-security manager-slash-janitor. How can I help you?”
“Buongiorno, questo è il museo dei prosciutto stagionati?” The foreign language rattled on its way through the speaker. Corey hazarded a guess that it was Italian, and wondered if the difference in time zones made it a more reasonable hour to make a call in Italy.
“Apologies, signora, but I believe you have the wrong number,” he replied.
“But, sir, I have already bought a plane ticket to the address on your website…”
Corey listened as the woman waxed poetic about her passion for cured meats. He propped his legs up on the side of his swivel chair and spun around, forgetting that the phone was attached to a cord. He twisted backwards to check the security camera feed. When she finished rambling, he had just managed to untangle himself.
“Much as we would welcome your patronage, I advise you to travel elsewhere,” he replied. “Meat in this town is usually consumed raw. Whatever you do, don’t come here at night.”
“Giovanotto, did you say raw—?”
Corey hung up on her, feeling that he had completed his nightly quota of customer service. He turned instead to the security footage. Prank calls to the museum weren’t unheard of, and Corey could think of a few young gremlins in town who might come up with such a scheme to distract him. His eyes darted from one cathode screen to another, fixating briefly on any points of movement. Nothing but static distortion.
Still, it was better to be safe, and Corey had pins and needles in his legs from sitting down for so long. He dragged himself up from the chair and grabbed a flashlight. In the doorway of the security room, he hesitated and picked up a broom from where it leaned against the wall.
He traversed the rooms one by one. The building, an old converted warehouse, had a fairly straightforward floor plan. Each rectangular room is connected to the hall with one or two doors. The exhibits themselves had only ever been updated twice in Corey’s five years of working here, and a lingering smell of dust permeated the air that no vacuum could disperse.
Corey strode through the Hall of Historical Inventions, a perennially unpopular exhibit. He walked all the way through human history, from the first wheel (it was square-shaped) to a mail-order DVD (stolen, and still accumulating late fees). The hall ended abruptly after the early twenty-first century, with no room for future updates.
Next, he visited the Supernatural History Room, which was kept under lock and key. Corey let himself in and swung his flashlight to check in all the dark corners, even the smallest ones that a human couldn’t conceivably fit into. He scraped a wad of gum from the case of the silver pistol, where it had apparently been gathering dust for some time. A display of wooden stakes on the wall was all in order, and the Invisible Man’s glass coffin was as empty as ever. He left and locked the door behind him.
Corey’s favorite exhibit was the Cleverly Crafted Counterfeits Room, so he saved it for last. It was the most likely room to be broken into, with huge windows that rattled in their frames when the wind howled outside. He poked his head through the arched door, broom held in a defensive position.
But everything seemed to be in place. Corey snapped a selfie with a life-sized Easter Island moai, made of cardboard but surprisingly realistic. Then he struck a few poses with his broom, mimicking a row of sword-fighter statues. After nearly beheading a plasticine jade elephant, he lowered the broom guiltily and glanced up at the security camera.
He resolved to scrub his misdeeds from the footage later. The museum owner was a stickler against photographing exhibits. Something about ruining the surprise for future patrons, and then why will they even want to come?
An autumn chill had crept into the room, although all of the windows looked to be secure. Corey shone his flashlight at each of their locks, passing a crayon drawing of The Starry Night as he did. Regular silver duct tape held it to the wall. It wasn’t actually an exhibit, but an artwork by the daytime receptionist, Cindy, made over long hours of boredom. He and Cindy had a running bet to see how long until Eoghan, the owner, would notice and tear it down.
Nothing, then. Corey sighed and realized that he was actually disappointed. His job as a security manager had been almost dull for the past five years. Duller than he could have expected, in a place like this.
Agherny, a small town nestled among some hills near the coast, was unremarkable by all outsider accounts. The residents liked it that way. But dig a little deeper into its history — or stroll through its streets at night — and you would find any number of paranormal oddities. A cryptozoologist’s waking dream, really. By mutual agreement, the human and supernatural inhabitants kept quiet about their coexistence. Humans lived their normal lives by day, and the supernatural beings came out at night. There weren’t many exceptions.
Corey was an exception, a human with a night job, purely by coincidence. A midnight flat tire some five years ago, on a road trip that was more of an escape attempt, escape from the monotony that had been the story of his life — and now he lived in a town full of werewolves and vampires and gremlins and ghosts, so he couldn’t really complain about boring.
And yet.
Corey marched back to the security room and commandeered a spare television screen to pass the time. The Crawling Dead, his favorite TV show, was always playing at odd hours on Channel 83. Every time someone on the show got infected, he did a quick scan of the security screens. It worked out well, since another character got zombified every minute.
The last few hours of Corey’s shift passed in a kind of stupor. A few minutes before six, he packed his bag and wrote a quick note to Cindy: All’s well in dreamland. You should draw The Scream next. This he left on the front desk, and shut off the lights and locked the door behind him as he walked out.
The hour between six and seven a.m. was a kind of in-between time. Technically, it belonged to the supernatural creatures, since most humans couldn’t be bothered to go outside so early. Depending on the season, though, the sun had already started to rise, driving the supernatural inside to their nocturnal slumber.
Now, in autumn, it was still mostly dark. The hazy light of dawn was just beginning to show on the horizon as Corey walked home. A full moon was shining, which meant that Indira would be out tonight. Corey kept an eye out for a familiar flash of golden fur, but the streets in this suburb were empty. He made it two blocks without seeing anyone.
The feeling came first: a prickling on the back of Corey’s neck, the hairs on his arms raising. Then a silhouette stepped out from between two buildings, walking with a purpose. There was no doubt that it was moving to intercept Corey.
The figure was almost certainly a vampire. She looked younger than Corey, but that didn’t mean much. More telling were her clothes, an odd mismatch of Victorian frock coat and 1960s bell-bottoms. Her skin was pale in an unnatural, translucent sort of way, and her short hair was spiked.
A kid who dressed like that at school would probably get made fun of, but Corey couldn’t bring himself to laugh. He pictured families inside their houses, cozy and oblivious, not fifty feet away. Would they do anything if he screamed? Probably not, and he couldn’t blame them. He stuck his hands into his pockets and walked faster, trying to give the vampire a wide berth.
She grimaced and sped up her own pace, seeming to grow larger and spikier as she did. But maybe that was just Corey’s imagination. “Bad night to take a stroll,” she hissed.
The confrontation was unavoidable, then.
“Save yourself the trouble and hunt somewhere else,” Corey said. He began to dig through his pocket in earnest, cursing the accumulated detritus of spare change and gum wrappers.
“Why’s that? Have a silver bullet in there?” she asked, practically sneering now.
“No, but I do have…” Corey pulled out his wallet and thumbed through it. “Driver’s license, gift card, library card, credit card…”
“Sadly for us both, they don’t sell blood at gas stations.”
“True, but I’ve heard there’s a bar around here. Aha, here it is!” Corey said with sudden cheer. “By joint order of the daytime mayor, Dana Burgess, and nighttime mayor, the Harlequin Queen, I get a pass.” He flashed the pass, a gold rectangle the size of his credit card.
The vampire leaned forward and squinted at it. She didn’t look suitably impressed. Maybe she was new to town — Corey’s protection wasn’t challenged often. The Harlequin Queen inspired a certain respectful fear among her constituents — one that was well-deserved, if the stories were to be believed.
Of course, retroactive retribution wouldn’t help if Corey were dead.
But the vampire backed off. “Never an easy meal these days,” she muttered.
Corey returned his wallet to his pocket. “Seriously, though, I have heard about a bar that serves blood. Ethically sourced and, uh, organic. Right off the town square.”
“Ha, I’d like to see that.” Within the span of a second, the vampire transformed. Now a bat, she winged away in what looked like the right direction.
Corey had just allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief when he spotted a second interloper. Fortunately, this one was familiar.
Indira met him at the intersection of two streets in her wolf shape. He only ever saw her during full moons, once a month or so. Years ago, she had been his guide — and first friend, really — in Agherny.
“Hello, Indira. You took your time finding me today.”
“Yes, some of the more inexperienced werewolves needed assistance tonight.” Indira had a deep, resonant voice that Corey found reassuring. “I did see your meeting with the vampire, though. You handled that well.”
“Ah, well. I guess that’s all right, then.” Corey was secretly relieved. If Indira had been nearby, the danger was never as bad as he had thought.
The talk lulled into a companionable silence. Corey was usually content to remain quiet for the duration of their walk.
Tonight, perhaps the leftover adrenaline from his previous encounter was doing strange things to his thoughts. He asked, “Indira, what’s the meaning of life?”
Indira twisted her head in response to the question, looking up at Corey with both green eyes. “Been drinking something stronger than soda, have you?” she asked. And then, more soberly: “No, that’s nothing to joke about. My apologies.”
In the moments that she remained silent, no doubt deciding what to say, Corey tried to elaborate. “I wake up every night just after the sun sets and walk to work. Nothing happens at work, not really. I go home and make a frozen pizza, play video games until I pass out, and then wake up when my alarm goes off and do it all again. Weekends, I don’t work, but I may as well, because I follow basically the same schedule.
“And you have to know that I like doing all of that; I don’t want to get another job or move away, but I feel like maybe I should. Aim for something better, that is.”
Another minute passed, and Indira didn’t reply, still staring upward. Not at Corey, Corey realized, but at the sky. Probably the moon. Werewolves did that a lot.
“I’m no diplomat with words, nor a psychologist,” Indira said at last, “so take or leave my advice as you will. Life is exactly what you make of it. If you don’t like what you have, but don’t know what else you want, try anything new.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Roll down a hill when the grass is wet. Steal sheep from a different farm than usual. You have to figure that part out yourself.”
“You steal sheep?”
“Mm. Sometimes. I’m always overwhelmed by guilt the next morning, so I bike over to the farm at the crack of dawn to pay the farmer back. Those bike rides are cathartic, in a way. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“You’re saying that the answer is crime… no, sorry. You’re saying that making small changes could have a bigger effect than I would expect?”
She nodded. “Maybe that’s a clichê, but I’ve found that it works for me.”
“Well, I’m no psychologist either,” said Corey, imitating Indira’s voice, “but that sounds like some alright advice.”
Indira snorted. “I’ll leave you to try it, then.”
They had come to Corey’s house and stopped walking. It was a narrow two-story row house with a bare patch of grass for a yard. He waved farewell, and Indira left, off to enjoy the last few minutes of darkness.
At home, Corey fell easily into his routine of pizza and video games. Change can start tomorrow, he decided, and fell asleep on a reclining armchair. He dreamed of a four-legged Indira riding a bicycle, somehow, down a country road.
The next evening, Corey walked to work as usual. He glimpsed a pair of banshees in the distance, but had no more supernatural incidents. Instead, he spent the walk deciding what part of his routine to change.
Switching from frozen pizza to microwavable burritos was too small, he decided. As was finding a new TV show. He briefly considered asking Eoghan for a week off, but he wasn’t feeling quite that brave.
Corey was still considering his options when he let himself into the museum and found a note on his desk. Two notes, in fact. One was from Cindy: Found this in the counterfeits room. Is this your idea of a prank, or should I actually be worried?
The second, underneath it, had exceptionally bad handwriting and scorch marks around the edges. It said, Mark your calendar, human. In egzactly 1 week, we are gunna come mess up your museem and your face.
So there were gremlins! Corey thought. This note reeked of them. Of all the strange creatures to wander Agherny at night, none delighted in the wanton destruction of human invention like the gremlins. No others had their aptitude for fire, either.
This was worrying. Worrying, but also something new. Maybe even something exciting. For all of their tough talk and pyromania, gremlins weren’t known to be terribly dangerous. With a week to prepare, Corey could conceivably fend them off. Then next month, he could tell Indira all about it.
Corey grabbed a soda can and the broom and headed to the Supernatural History Room. Ideas were already racing through his head.