Despite all
of this, Jimmy was still something of an optimist. “Whaddya gonna do?” he
was famous for saying, as he’d shrug off yet another sling or arrow.
“Life’s a bear, and since it’s a protected species – it’s a tough critter to
really take on without getting in trouble, ya know?”
The summer
of ’05 found Jimmy in all too familiar straits. His car had broken down and
he didn’t have the cash to fix it. And as luck would have it, his job
required him to have a job. He got paid
to haul folks with developmental disabilities around town, so the end of his
car ended up meaning the end of his job.
So, as the
summer wore on and the heat began to dampen the backs of people’s shirts, Jimmy
was forced back onto the always tight Duluth
You can
imagine then how big the smile on Jimmy's face was when he got a call back just
two weeks into his job hunt! The call was from Saint Mary's hospital. St.
Mary’s was a unionized shop, which meant good wages and benefits. Determined
to nail his interview, Jimmy primped in the mirror beforehand for must have at
least been two hours! Over and over
again, he practiced his smile, and rattled off confident answers to every
possible interview question he could imagine.
Finally, borrowing a buddy’s pick-up truck, Jimmy got so nervous that he
accidentally drove to and parked at the wrong hospital at the other end of
town, and really had to book it to make it to St. Mary's on time!
The real
life interview didn't go as easy as the one in front of the mirror had. The sweat was practically dripping from Jimmy’s
ever upturned upper lip! But in the end the practiced lines more or less rolled
off his tongue, and he even had a chance to tell a funny story about how he had
once been totally covered in cow manure – a story he told for humorous effect,
and to emphasize that there wasn’t any gory encounter that hospital could dish
out that he couldn't handle. “I’m the man for this job,” Jimmy exclaimed,
mustering all of the fake confidence he could squeeze out of his sweating
little head.
By the end
of the interview, the company man told him he had gotten the job. Jimmy was now the new full time janitor at
St. Mary’s!
To
celebrate Jimmy took all of his friends out to eat at the Country Kitchen Buffet!
They stuffed their faces with cheap chicken, bowlfuls of cottage cheese and all
the soft serve ice cream they could pack in, all while marveling at what a
break this new job would be for Jimmy. “Just think,” he said, “for the
first time in my life I’ll be living ABOVE the poverty line!”
The job
began with two boring days of general orientation where all of the new workers
had to sit through slide show after slide show about the mission statement,
parking policies, the history of the company big wigs and how all around great
St. Mary’s was.
With the
hospital’s mission statement committed to heart, and decked out with a snazzy
new haircut, on Day 3 Jimmy reported to the janitor services department.
The base of operations for the hospital’s janitors was in the bowels of the building.
In fact, it was quite an adventure just finding the place, since none of the
elevators went down to the basement (a precaution to keep patients and visiting
corporate execs from seeing dirty workers, I guess). But once there
everything just seemed to fall into place. Jimmy’s new boss turned out to
be a great guy, and within two days he had fully trained Jimmy in on what was
expected of him.
His job was
to clean an office building, adjacent to the hospital, from top to bottom every
day. The building had four floors, a gazillion garbage cans that needed
emptying, about 20 bathrooms that needed cleaning, a score of big finger print
smudged windows and a whole lot of carpeting that demanded a daily liaison with
an industrial strength vacuum cleaner.
“Bring it
on!” Jimmy thought to himself. His new co-workers warned him how tough
his assigned building was, but being no stranger to hard work, Jimmy tacked it
in no time. On most nights he'd get done
in under six hours, leaving two hours to sit in a bathroom reading magazines
until the end of shift.
It was a
night job – Jimmy’s shift ended at 2am , but it was quiet, and one of those
jobs that allows one plenty of time to daydream. Plus getting to clean so
many offices was quite a satisfaction for the voyeuristic side of Jimmy!
In the fact the only thing that Jimmy wasn’t so keen on about this new job was
that he was all alone in the building. His co-workers had told him that
the building used to be a home for the terminally ill, and a couple of them
related ghost stories that they had heard about the place. Simple
stories, like how janitors had backed into someone, but then when they turned
around nobody was there.
Now Jimmy
wasn’t the superstitious type. In fact our good fellow as an atheist, who
thought that all claims of ghosts, aliens, Santa Clauses and other such things
were just hoo-hah. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a little chilled by
those stories. Growing up out in the country with a very conservative
family, Jimmy had never been allowed to watch scary movies or TV
programs. Being sheltered from that stuff though had resulted in Jimmy
being kind of edgy about scary things. A mere commercial for a rather
mediocre show like the Twilight Zone was all it took to keep him up for hours
at night as a child, afraid to close his eyes for fear of what might sneak up
on him.
Once in his
20s, and living on his own, Jimmy had tried to get a handle on his fears by
renting a whole bunch of scary movies, trying to desensitize himself to such
stuff. It had kinda of worked though.
In any
event, his first two days on the job went fine, since he was accompanied by his
boss the whole time. Things got a little harrier on day 3, his first day
on his own. As much as he tried to think
about other things, Jimmy kept thinking about the ghost stories his co-workers
had told him. That old building really lent itself well to notions of
ghosts! It was dark, full of dimly lit narrow hallways, and it had a
bewildering staircase arrangement that made it real easy to get lost and feel
like you were going in circles.
By week two
Jimmy pretty much had his new work routine down pat. Unfortunately, though, that meant it was
becoming harder and harder to keep his thoughts focused on the job, rather than
those silly stories. Then, one night,
there was more than just the thought of some scary stories to content with.
The night
in question started out innocently enough. When Jimmy got to the hospital
his co-workers teased him about biking to work, as usual. Next, after
exchanging a few jokes and pats on the back, Jimmy went over to his office
building. There was a woman working late in one of the offices. She said "hi" but barely looked up
from her work. After an hour or so she left, just as it was starting to
get dark outside. Having finished the first and second floor already,
Jimmy started to climb the stairs to the 3rd floor. As he got to the
top of the stairs, he saw that all of the ceiling lights were off except for
that of an exit sign at the far end. Goosebumps ran up and down Jimmy’s
back in waves as you looked down that ominously long, dark, narrow hallway.
Suddenly,
there was a flash of white light, immediately followed by a loud "Bhroooommm!" The sound caused Jimmy to jump at least three
inches into the air. He swallowed hard
and let out a barely audible, “Huh?” That "huh" was a poor cover for
the terror Jimmy was feeling though. But
as he slowly turned around, he was able to see that the noise was coming from
an air duct. The air conditioner had simply
kicked on.
Letting out
a sigh of relief, and deliberately not looking back down the hallway, Jimmy
started turning on the lights and began vacuuming the offices on that end of
the floor.
Eventually he
came to the other end of the hallway though, where the flash of white light had
come from. He nervously turned on all of the lights he could find, and opened
all of the doors to the offices so that he could clean them. Coming to a
bathroom, Jimmy did his usual routine of cleaning the sink, mirror and
toilet.
Turning to leave
the room, he noticed that there was a small closet on the far wall of the
bathroom, the door to which was slightly ajar. He walked over to it and
pushed it shut. To his wide eyed horror though, it opened back up –
slowly creaking back to where it was before! Jimmy backed out of
the room and high tailed it out of there, glad that he wasn’t one of those
types who loose control of their bowels when startled!
“What the
hell?!” he mouthed to himself as he quickly rolled up the vacuum cord and
clumsily, but hurriedly, made for the next floor. “It’s just a stiff
hinge,” he said to himself, “it’s just a stiff hinge!”
He forced
himself to go on cleaning. Luckily
someone had left all of the lights on up on the next floor. Halfway
through cleaning it though Jimmy came across another bathroom. It was out of toilet paper. Cursing, he
made his way back down to the janitor supply closet on the first floor.
Now, that
supply closet had always given Jimmy the creeps. Not only were there
several small metal doors along the wall, but they seemed to only open up to
nothing but black empty space. They
reminded him of what he imagined crematoriums were like. There was also a big rusted drain on the
floor, under which you could make out standing, brackish water. The water
was always about half an inch below the drain, probably the result of a decades
old clog. It had an awful stench to it.
And for some reason, from time to time, gurgling bubbles would come to the
surface.
The first
time when it happened, Jimmy had been filling up the mop bucket, and it scared
him half to death! Ever since then he
went into that closet only when absolutely necessary, and was sure not linger
in there for long. Fortunately, there were no gurgling bubbled tonight,
so Jimmy scooped up the rolls of toilet paper and was on his way.
Break time finally
came, and Jimmy spent it in the hospital break room pleasantly lost in a book
he was reading. The book was “Indian Country” by Peter Matthiessen. Half way through a fascinating chapter about
a band of Seminole Indians in the Florida Everglades who never surrendered to
the U.S.
When Jimmy
got back to the office building, he decided to take the elevator up to the 4th
floor, the one he had been working on before he went on break. The
elevator went up to the 4th floor, but once it got there, the door wouldn't
open. He pushed the button again and again. The elevator jerked up an inch – but that was
all. The door still would not open. Not knowing what else to do,
Jimmy tried pushing the button for the ground floor. Slowly the elevator descended, and once it
got the bottom the door, fortunately, opened.
So it was
back to the stairs. They seemed to go on
forever, higher and higher, but eventually Jimmy got up to the fourth
floor. Looking around, he noticed that the mop bucket and vacuum weren’t
where he left them. With a furrowed brow Jimmy looked all over the floor,
but there was no mop bucket, and no vacuum to be found.
Trying to
retrace his steps Jimmy proceeded to walk back down through every floor.
Nothing. Finally, reaching the end of the line – that stinky, creepy
supply closet on the ground floor, he found them. The vacuum was upside
down and the mop bucket was plum empty. Jimmy just stood there, his mouth
agape. A whole minute must have gone by, but he just continued to stand
there, staring at the mop and vacuum.
Then, all
of a sudden, the door to the closet suddenly swung open! Luke, a co-worker of Jimmy's, stepped out
with an arm full of toilet paper that he was stealing. You should
have seen the look of relief of Jimmy’s face! Smiling from ear to ear he
wiped the perspiration from his brow and shot the bull with Luke till their
shift was over.
The next
night came and went without a hitch. There were goose bumps a plenty on
Jimmy’s back, but no bursts of white light or vanishing mop buckets this time
around. As it turned out though, that quiet night though proved to the
calm before the storm.
The next
night it was raining cats and dogs. By the time Jimmy pedaled into the
St. Mary’s parking ramp, he was soaked from head to foot. Embarrassingly,
when Jimmy changed into his uniform the butt of his pants got wet from his
water soaked boxer briefs. This triggered some ribbing from his
co-workers. Red faced, he quickly made
his way over to the solitary of his office building.
Upon opening
the door to the building though, Jimmy tripped and fell onto the floor.
He banged his elbow pretty hard in the fall, and just laid there for a minute
trying to figure what in the heck had caused him to trip. He scratched
his head, rubbed his elbow, but couldn’t figure out what had made him fall.
Standing
back up, he walked over to the supply closet and tried to open the door.
He turned the knob and tugged, but it refused to budge. He gave it a
mighty jerk, causing it to suddenly fly open, which in turn caused Jimmy to fall back against the wall.
Looking
inside, he saw that the closet was empty. There was no vacuum, no mop
bucket, nothing – just those small metal doors and that nasty backed up
brackish water.
Annoyed and
confused, Jimmy started to walk around looking for his gear. He looked
all over the ground floor but he couldn’t find what he was looking for.
After walking over to the hospital he paged his boss. “I can’t find the
mop bucket or the vacuum over at the Shoreview Building
“Nope,
you’re the only guy who uses that stuff over there. Did you forget to put
it away last night?”
“I don’t
think so, but I’ll go double check.” Jimmy said.
For the
second time he walked from one end of the ground floor to the other. Then
he did the same on the 2nd floor, then the 3rd floor, and then the
4th. There, laying at the end of the hall on the top floor, was
the mop bucket and vacuum. Oddly, the vacuum was upside down, and the mop
bucket was plum empty, just like the night before.
A really
creepy feeling came over our friend as he took the gear back downstairs and
started to work. He tried humming music to himself to calm his
nerves. It didn’t work.
With his
nerves still frayed, Jimmy started vacuuming the carpet on the 1st floor. He looked up at the ceiling, and just as he
did so the light overhead suddenly went out. Jimmy just stared, wide-eyed.
He walked over by the door to look up at the burned out light from a different
angle, but as he did so the light above the door suddenly went out too.
Jimmy froze, fear tightening up his throat as if he were being choked.
Not knowing what to do, and afraid of what might come next, he crouched down
and quietly leaned back against the wall.
His
thoughts were racing with possible explanations. Five, then ten minutes
passed. Jimmy’s knees were getting sore from crouching, but it still took
another several minutes for him to muster the courage to stand back up and try
to go back to his vacuuming. He stared straight down at the carpet while
he vacuumed, refusing every impulse to look up again at the ceiling.
Skipping
the dusting, he hauled his gear up to the second floor, trying to think about
anything and everything except what had just happened.
About a
quarter of the way down the hall he stopped in front of one of the
offices. It was one of a couple of offices that had button combo locks on
them that Jimmy didn’t have the combination for. These were the offices
of big shots, and Jimmy didn’t have clearance to enter them. When they
needed their trash emptied they just set it outside their door in the hallway
for him to pick up. As Jimmy stood in front of the locked door, he heard
what sounded like a low humming sound coming from inside. It wasn’t a
constant hum. It seemed to flicker with intensity, and sometimes it
sounded like certain words, but it was too faint to make out. Pressing
his ear hard against the door didn’t help. Jimmy gave the door three good
knocks and yelled out “Hello, is anyone in there?” There was no reply,
and at first it seemed like the humming stopped. But then it suddenly
started up again.
The goose
bumps pulsated up and down Jimmy’s back. Clumsily he plugged in the
vacuum cord into a wall socket and hit the on button to drown out the
hum. Just to make sure he started singing aloud a Guns ‘N’ Roses song as
he vacuumed, singing the few lines he knew over and over again, determined to
hear nothing but the sound of his own voice and the whirring of his nomadic
industrial strength vacuum cleaner.
The next
couple of hours were almost unbearable for Jimmy. His muscles were so
tense that by half way through his shift he felt physically exhausted.
His head, neck and shoulders started to ache and his body took to trembling in
a sudden shudder every now and then.
It wasn’t
until the 4th floor that Jimmy began to look up and around again, instead
of just staring at the floor, or whatever else it was that he was cleaning.
Off to his left, in one of the offices, he saw a clock flashing. It read 3:33am . Looking at his watch he saw
that it was only 1am . Looking back in the direction of the clock, Jimmy’s
attention was momentarily distracted by a branch that was scratching the
outside of the office window. It had apparently stopped raining finally, but
the wind looked to be picking up.
Jimmy
closed up the office and quickly got back to vacuuming the hallway. At
the end of the hall though Jimmy saw another clock, sitting on a worker’s
desk. It too was flashing 3:33 ! It was the same part of the
building where he had earlier found the mop bucket and vacuum cleaner.
Frightened
and perplexed at the same time, he walked over towards the clock and reached to
turn on the light next to the desk. But nothing happened when he flipped
the switch. He flipped it up and down a few more times before giving
up. Turning to look at the clock he squinted to make out a little object
that was laying next to it. He picked it up. It was a broken piece
of bone!
Jimmy stepped
back, and then grabbed the vacuum and hurried down the stairs. He threw
the vacuum back in the supply closet and booked it out of the building.
Rushing over to the hospital he found a one-stall bathroom, He quickly went inside, locked the door and
slumped down to the floor. There he would stay until 2am , the end of his shift.
After punching
out, Jimmy quickly changed out of his uniform and trudged out of the hospital
without giving any of his co-workers more than a nod. As he unchained his
bike in the parking ramp Luke came over to see what he had planned for the
weekend.
“Uh . . .
what? Uh, yeah, nothing much Luke, nothing much,” he muttered.
“Are you
okay?” Luke asked, “You look kind of pale.”
“Yeah . . .
yeah I’m good. I'm just feeling a little bit under the weather,” Jimmy
replied.
“Well have
a nice bike ride home, I hope the wind doesn’t give you to much trouble or . .
.” Luke’s voice trailed off as Jimmy biked past him onto the street, not
even waiting for him to finish his sentence.
The wind
was blowing pretty hard as our jittery janitor made his way through downtown Duluth
By the time
he got to the bridge that would take him over the bay to Wisconsin
Finally he get
to the downside of the bridge. By then his
legs were burning from prolonged, steady exertion. He started coasting
down towards the other side of the bay.
Once there
he began peddling again, as fast he could, even though his legs felt like
jelly. Then, turning a corner on the bike trail he came to a screeching
halt. In front of him, right on the side of the trail was a towering
shadow, which was making a rustling noise. A deer darted out from behind
a large bush.
Giving out
a sigh of relief, Jimmy collected his shattered nerves and finally made it home
around 3am .
That
weekend Jimmy spent a lot of time sitting in his beat up old easy chair
pondering what to do. Part of him just wanted to quit. But then
again good jobs like that don’t come along very often. This was the best
job he had ever had. What kind of atheist quits a job because of a silly
fear of ghosts?
It would
prove easy to pooh-pooh the things that had happened the past week from the
comfort and safety of his home, but as the end of the weekend rolled around
Jimmy started to get a painful knot in his stomach. He knew he had to do
something.
Taking a
long walk Sunday evening, he thought through all of the things that had
happened at St. Mary's. He thought about all of the creepy things that
had happened in that cursed old office building. He thought about the
paychecks he was getting.
When he got
home from his walk he plopped back down in his chair and stared up at the
ceiling for a good half an hour. Then he got up, petted Izzy the cat
goodbye, got on his bike, and headed back over the bridge to Duluth
By the time
he got to St. Mary’s it was already getting dark. There weren’t hardly
any lights on at the hospital since practically nobody worked there on Sunday,
not even any janitors.
Jimmy made
his way to his locker, grabbed his keys and started walking towards the back door.
He looked out through the door window at the Shoreview
Swallowing
hard, Jimmy opened the door and walked over to Shoreview
Stepping
carefully he walked over the threshold and stood just inside the door for a
couple of minutes. Thoughts of regret raced around his head, and he
realized that he hadn’t really thought through what exactly he was going to do
here. “Gotta face your fears,” he had told himself back at the house,
“but now here I am, and what the heck am I suppose to do?”
Jimmy sat
down against the wall. He made sure that he was far enough away from the
glass windowed door so that if security walked by they wouldn’t see him. He
tried thinking up an excuse for it he got caught there on his off night. Not being able to come up with anything
convincing, he gave up, and just sat there.
An hour
went by, then second. And apart from repositioning his legs every once in
a while Jimmy just sat there against the wall, holding his knees close to his
chest and thinking about anything and everything. He thought about his
family back on the farm, about the pattern of the carpet, about what groceries
he had to get that week at the store . . . about what he would do if he really
did come upon something in that building that wasn’t of this world. . .
Jimmy
looked over in the direction of the supply closet. He started crawling
towards it. He wasn’t sure why he was crawling, but there he was, making
his way down the hall on his hands and knees. He stopped in front of the
door and just stared at it. A couple minutes passed with nothing but the
clicking of a distant clock and the sound of an occasional car driving by.
Then he heard a gurgling noise. Taking a deep breath, he slowly stood up
and opened the closet door.
A dim light
was coming through the window from an outside street light, shedding just
enough light into the closet to illuminate where the drain was. Jimmy stared
at the drain for the longest time, waiting to see if it would make that
gurgling noise again. When nothing happened, he walked into the closet
and stood directly over the drain. He then slowly unzipped his pants and pulled
out his penis. Lifting his head back, he put his hands on his hips and let
the urine flow! Smiling, he zipped his pants back up, stepped out of the
closet and closed the door. A feeling of
confidence and determination welled up inside of Jimmy.
Making his
way upstairs, Jimmy walked over to the office with the button combo lock.
Putting his ear to the door, he could hear the humming faintly coming from
inside. Pounding loudly on the door, Jimmy starting shouting for whoever
was in there to open up. At one point he even shouted, “This is the
police!” As angry as he was afraid, Jimmy started punching in random
number sequences into the lock. 4529, 3207, 0168. The code turned
out to be 1234. A small green light flashed on top of the lock and the
door clicked open.
Slowly opening
the door, Jimmy suddenly hesitated. Bracing himself, he forcefully swung
the door wide open. He looked straight ahead into the big shot's office -
but there was nothing to be seen. His hand groped for a light switch
before he stopped himself. Standing there, he waited for his eyes to
adjust to the darkness. As they adjusted, he slowly began to recognize pieces
of the office furniture and a computer. Standing still he listened intently
for the humming. Sure enough, after a pause it began again, only now he
could tell it was definitely words that were being uttered – sports
scores! Walking over to the computer he nudged the mouse. The
screen flickered to life. O the screen a web page for an internet sports
radio station. Jimmy snorted a relieved gust of breath out of his
nostrils, and started to chuckle. He flopped down on the desk chair in
front of the computer, held his head in his hands, and laughed!
Wiping his
face with his hands, he shook his head back and forth a couple of times, and
with a smile on his face headed back out into the hallway.
Jimmy spent
the next two hours walking through the halls of the 2nd and 3rd floor
opening every door and closet. He went into the bathroom with the
self-opening door and pushed the door shut. When it creaked back open, he
shut it again. It re-opened and he pushed it shut a second time.
Again it slowly re-opened. Opening the door all the way Jimmy looked into
the closet. Shelves full of plates, cups and office supplies looked back
at him. “Stiff hinge,” he said to himself, "it really is just a stiff
hinge.”
Walking
over to the two burned out lights he took the plastic covers off, unscrewed the
darkened bulbs, and chucked them into the trash. Jimmy then walked back
to the supply closet, curled up his nose at the smell of the brackish water
mixed with urine, and got out some new light bulbs. After screwing them
in, they both worked just fine.
Arms
crossed, Jimmy nodded his head in smug approval. But he knew there was
something else yet that he had to figure out.
With some hesitation, he made his way up to the 4th floor.
Once he got
there, he looked down to the far end, and slowly started walking. It felt
like it was the longest walk of Jimmy’s life. No hallway ever seemed more
narrow, more dark, more eerie than that hallway. When he got to the
workstation that was at the end of the hall Jimmy looked at the clock that had
been flashing 3:33am last Friday night. The broken piece of bone was still
sitting there. Only now Jimmy noticed the piece of chicken meat stuck on
one end of it. It was KFC! Following another relieved snort of the
nostrils, Jimmy plopped down on a chair.
Then
suddenly there was a flash of white light! Yet again, confidence was
replaced with fear. The flash had come from
the window. Jimmy slowly got up and looked out – all the while the hair
on the back of his neck was standing straight up.
There was
another flash of light, and Jimmy peered out the window. There in the distance, down the hill, was the
harbor lighthouse. A slowly turning
white light sat on top, piercing the foggy night. As Jimmy continued looking outside though, he
saw more than the source of the mysterious white light. There, down in the parking lot below a dark
figure was pushing something noisily over the asphalt.
Ducking
down so as not to be seen, our janitor friend peered over the ledge of the
window. Down below was Chip, one of
Jimmy’s co-workers. He was walking in circles, pushing a mop bucket around
the parking lot.
“What the
heck is he doing here tonight?” Jimmy thought. Chip wasn't suppose to be
there on a Sunday night any more than Jimmy.
Jimmy
didn’t know Chip that well, in fact he had avoided him after his boss warned
him on his first day that Chip was a bit of an odd bird. This warning had
been confirmed when one day Jimmy walked into the recycling shed and founds Chip
standing there, arguing with himself.
Now,
looking down at Chip walking around in circles, who had inexplicably turned
around and was pushing the mop bucket the other way, back into the hospital,
Jimmy smiled and understood how it was that his mop bucket and vacuum ended up
in weird places some nights.
Relieved,
Jimmy went and started turning off all of the lights in the building. He also sprayed some Lysol into the supply
closet drain. Then he walked back over
the hospital and put his keys in his locker.
Jumping on
his bike, he pedaled past the Shoreview
Reaching
into the bag that hung from his handle bars, Jimmy pulled out a piece of
sidewalk chalk that he carried for making graffiti. He knelt down on the
sidewalk in front of the building, and there, for all of the world to see, he
wrote in big, bold letter: “NO GHOSTS HERE, NO GHOSTS ANYWHERE.”
Then, with
a big, content smile on his face, Jimmy climbed back on his bike and pedaled
off into what was left of the night. THE
END!
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