The Nightshift

Featured in the Mystery Newsletter - 04/23/09
Featured in the Mystery Newsletter - 06/17/09


Jewel Black had been working at the local 24-hour SuperMart, a super-sized combination of department store, grocery store and garden center, for only a few months when she was moved to the nightshift.  She was proud of her new place of employment.  The variety seller was a welcome addition to her small community and she'd known all her regular customers since childhood. The store was cheerful and brightly lighted; but, best of all, everything smelled so new.  Working nights would give her the opportunity to demonstrate her sense of responsibility to her employers and perhaps increase her chances for promotion.

It didn't take long for Jewel to realize the nightshift was much quieter than the dayshift had been.  There were not nearly as many customers to be helped, so much of her time was spent restocking the shelves and relocating items that had been left at various locations throughout the store.  She took pride in leaving her area neat and ready for a horde of customers, when she left it each morning.

One evening she was restocking boxes of cereal, dutifully moving existing items forward and replacing new ones on the shelves behind them, when she heard a loud crash from one of the neighboring aisles. 

Jewel stopped what she was doing and hurried down the aisle where she had been working, turned the corner and looked down the next one, expecting to see the shocked face of a shopper staring down at the mess at her feet.  However, the aisle was empty.  Moving on to the next, Jewel saw a broken bottle lying on the floor, but no one was in sight.  Slowly, she walked toward the place of the accident. 

A large bottle of wine vinegar lay shattered upon the tile, its contents splattered all over the shelf and the floor.  She looked up to the top shelf from which it had fallen and frowned.  The front row of bottles remained intact.  Standing on tiptoe, she noted that the only empty space was right in the middle of the shelf.  How, she wondered, could a bottle literally jump from the middle of the shelf to the floor?  Had it exploded from some internal chemical reaction?

Jewel reached up and withdrew one bottle after another, inspecting each for a sign of any reaction.  Finding nothing, she replaced the bottles and went to the internal phone at the end of the aisle.  When the cleanup crew had been notified, she returned to her restocking and soon forgot the incident.

As the weeks passed, Jewel was proud of the neatness of her area's well-stocked shelves.  She often surveyed her domain with pleasure, on her way to clock out.

One morning as she stood in line at the time clock, her supervisor appeared and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Don't clock out just yet," she said with a smile.  "I'd like to talk to you for a minute."

Have I done something wrong? Jewel worried as she followed her boss to the office.  When she was seated across the desk from her, she asked, "Is something wrong, Ms Bates?"

Her supervisor laughed.  "No, no, and call me Carol, please.  Actually, it's quite the contrary.  I just wanted to let you know that I'm very happy with the job you've been doing on the nightshift.  I've frequently received comments from the day supervisor about the well-stocked neatness of your area."

Jewel felt herself blush.  "Thank you," she murmured.  Should I tell her about that bottle?  "Uh, Ms Bates . . . Carol, we've had some breakage, you know, I . . ."

Carol waved her comment away.  "Don't worry about it.  Customers occasionally drop something or knock it off the shelves.  It happens all of the time.  It's no big deal."

Jewel considered her comment and then nodded.  "Is there anything else?"

Carol rose with a smile.  "No, nothing else.  You'd better run along home now and get some sleep."

Jewel stood up.  "I'll do that.  Thank you."  Smiling with pleasure, she left the office and proceeded to the time clock.

As time went on, a random bottle would occasionally come crashing off of the shelves with no vandalistic culprit in sight.  When Jewel mentioned the phenomenon to her co-workers, they would casually attribute it the ground settling beneath the new foundation.  Not having any better explanation, Jewel accepted this idea and routinely took care of the resulting mess.

Before long, the damage escalated.  The long shelves would occasionally buckle in the middle, the strong steel braces that supported them simply pulling apart, allowing the shelf to collapse.  Sometimes the damage would be minimal, boxes spilling down, denting a corner here and there allowing small leaks, and packages being scattered all over the aisle ways.  Other times the collapsing shelf would contain bottles and jars and a conglomerated mess of their contents would have to be cleaned up.

Still, the night crew attributed the accidents to settling of the foundation.  Jewel, while inspecting one of the fallen shelves, began to have her doubts.  She looked at the braces on intact shelves.  There was no way that any vibration or even tilting of the floor could cause them to pull apart like that one did.

The lights around the store would sometimes flicker off and then back on.  One evening Jewel stood watching them as they did their little dance.  It's almost like someone is standing at the breaker box flipping one breaker after another.  Shaking her head over the anomaly, she went back to work.

Late one night, she heard a loud crash that startled her so badly she nearly dropped the items she was placing on the shelves.  What in the world was that?  She wondered, as the sound reverberated through the store.

When she went for her break, she sat down in the break-room, picked up a dog-eared magazine and began flipping through the pages.  A woman, whom she knew worked in housewares, came in and took a seat across the small room.

"Did you hear that crash a little while ago?" she asked.

Jewel smiled.  "You'd have to be deaf to have missed it," she answered.  "I wonder what it was."

"I can tell you what it was!  A whole shelf of pots and pans just suddenly collapsed." 

"What could've happened?"

The woman shrugged.  "I haven't a clue.  I hadn't noticed anything wrong with it before it fell.  Fortunately, there wasn't too much damage.  Maintenance is fixing the shelf right now."  She sighed.  "I'll have to put everything back up as soon as they get finished.  That'll probably take me the rest of my shift."

Jewel nodded.  "I've been getting a bit of that too.  It's not much fun."  I've got to talk to Carol.  If we've got a bunch of defective shelving, management needs to do something about it.

As quitting time neared, Jewel left the floor a few minutes early and went to the office.  She knocked on the open door of the supervisor's office. 

When Carol looked up from the papers on the desk, she said, "Carol, do you have a minute?"

"Come in and have a seat.  Is something wrong?"

"I don't know, but that's what I wanted to talk to you about.  There have been several shelves lately that have just come crashing down, spilling a lot of the stuff that was on them.  It's not just in my department.  Tonight one came down in housewares, you should have heard the crash."

"I did hear that.  I understand it's now been fixed."

"Well . . . I was wondering if there might be something wrong with the shelving, you know a defect or something."

Carol frowned.  "I suppose there might be.  I can have someone check into it."

"Thanks.  I'd appreciate that."

Carol chuckled.  "But then, maybe we're just being haunted."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing, really.  I just remembered my grandfather telling me that this area was once an Indian burial ground.  Maybe those Indians don't appreciate the store being built here."

Jewel smiled.  "And they're going on the warpath."

"Something like that.  Don't worry, I'll have someone check on the shelving."

That day Jewel slept restlessly while she dreamed of a frightening tribe of whooping, painted Indians rampaging through the store.  Some gleefully grabbed bottles off the shelves and tossed them, while others attacked the shelving with their tomahawks.  When her alarm sounded, she wearily climbed out of bed and prepared to begin another night.

She was just returning from her lunch break when she heard the crash of a fallen bottle.  As she hurried toward the sound, she rushed through a spot of chilling air.  She stopped and slowly turned to face the area where she had felt it.  Closing her eyes, she focused her concentration on attempting to send a telepathic message.

Look, I'm sorry the Company built its store here and disturbed your sacred ground.  But those of us who work here had nothing to do with that decision.  We are just trying to make a living.  Won't you please leave us alone?  The Company is not going to abandon or move this store regardless of what you do.  Please, go, rest in peace and allow us to get on with our jobs.

Opening her eyes she moved to where she'd felt the cold, but encountered nothing.  "Wonder if that'll do any good," she murmured as she moved on toward where she thought she'd heard the crash.


Over the weeks that followed Jewel frequently heard crashes in various areas of the store, however her area, on the nightshift, remained quiet and peaceful.