Memories of the Graveyard Shift

I was eighteen at the time. I’d just graduated high school, and what was probably a really exciting and memorable time for most people was a stressful race against time for me. You see, my dad was very traditional; if I were going to be living in his house after high school, even just over the summer between graduation and college, I needed a job. If not, I was “freeloading”, and he swore with an adamance I certainly didn’t care to test that I’d be out on the street if I was unemployed for long. I’d had months of preparation; hell, years, really. This entire time I could’ve been looking; he certainly hadn’t waited until now to clue me in on the terms of living with him after high school. But I just wasn’t the type to care that much about anything until I was days from a deadline.

Finding a job back then wasn’t easy. I’d dyed my hair green, and my nose and lips were pierced, not to mention the gauges and the shitty stick and poke snake on my forearm that my sixteen-year-old self had afflicted upon me. Case in point, I wasn’t getting hired most places. And being that I had about a week at the time left to figure it all out, like usual, I was in a mad scramble to line something up before facing the consequences. But then, as if some morbid miracle, a cop got shot and killed on 84th Avenue pretty close to the Pass & Go out there, and an opening for the night shift position appeared not long after.

The Pass & Go, and 84th Avenue as a whole, had a pretty bad reputation. See, 84th was one of the only roads in town still unpaved at parts, namely the north end shortly after the Pass & Go. And it wound along a pretty deep drainage ditch where no guardrails had ever been built, even after decades of complaints. There was a particularly tight bend up the road where a lot of drunk drivers and speeding teens learned that they were not in fact invincible, some of them even taking that lesson to the grave with them, and the lack of streetlights just made it all the more dangerous.

But those were just the logical concerns. In a tiny town like mine, people are bored enough to run with sensational bullshit, and so 84th could never just be a dangerous road with poor construction and lack of safety measures to blame, but was instead cursed and haunted. People died there so often not because it was just a hazardous roadway, but because it was bloodthirsty, evil. People’s reception went out on the road not because it was essentially the furthest you could be from town, but because some malicious entity wanted you isolated.

You get it.

The woods beyond the ditch were even worse. On three occasions since the turn of the century, bodies were found out there, one a suicide, and two in shallow graves. And in a town as small as mine had been, that’s a pretty sizeable number. For a criminal, though, it only made sense to bury them there; again, this place was basically abandoned, and totally secluded. Really the only other people that far northwest of town were the wagies at the Pass & Go, and they weren’t getting paid enough to be on the lookout for anything. Not to mention, they had their own weirdness to deal with. All sorts of strange and illegal activities happened in that pothole-ridden parking lot, and why wouldn’t it? That place was the last beacon of humanity’s presence in the town for miles, until you got to 90th Street, the main road shooting off from the highway. So anybody working there had enough going on at their own doorstep, and wouldn’t be paying any attention to cars pulled off on the side of the road with mysteriously heavy duffle bags in the trunk. Suffice it to say, once the position opened, I was the only person in town out of options enough to drop off an application. And wouldn’t you know it, I was scheduled to start two days later.

I picked it up quick. The job was easy, and though at first I was shadowing a guy that by all accounts could have been undead, I was left to my own devices a week later. To be honest, I actually kind of liked the job at first. Ten p.m. to six a.m. were pretty standard hours of consciousness for me anyway, and working the graveyard shift finally gave me an excuse to sleep in until three. It was dead most nights; sometimes, and I’m not exaggerating, I literally didn’t see a single customer. And other nights, the goofiness of my interactions with various druggies kept things interesting. But those kinds of nights aren’t what this story is about.

The first time I remember being pretty confused was only two weeks after I’d started the job. I was pretty stoned at the time, so I tensed up when I saw a cop walking toward the door, but I wasn’t complacent enough to blaze it before work without eyedrops for fear of these exact situations, not so much worried about getting arrested, but about what my dad would do to me. I also had a little bit of a heads-up in the form of a faulty “open” sign in the window. The neon would pretty often flicker or dim for some reason when people were coming up to the door. Really couldn’t tell you why it happened, but when I was totally fucking off behind the counter, it was my cue to act natural for a minute. And since a bunch of random bullshit was stacked up on the side of the counter to my left facing the parking lot and the pumps, I couldn’t ever see out the windows unless I was actively looking over it, so needless to say, whatever was wrong with that sign certainly wasn’t something I was going to try and get fixed.

When the cop walked in, I sort of leaned back as casually as possible, and tried to make small talk with him so his mind wouldn’t wander anywhere else.

“See any crazies?” I inquired.

“Not yet,” he answered, perusing the energy drinks like a selection of fine wines. He sounded pretty bored, and I hoped that that wasn’t an indication that he was looking for something to do.

“Well lucky you,” I chuckled. “Can’t say the same myself.”

“Yeah?”

He settled on a sugar-free Monster. He walked over to the counter, and I remember thinking he was either a new guy or one of those officers that just never stopped being motivated, going off his short hair and fresh fade. Though judging off how young he looked, definitely early twenties, I was going with the former. These were the worst types of cops from my experience; they’re always looking for a way to stand out to their higherups.

“Yeah,” I continued. “Saw a lady sleeping in a shopping cart out back. Asked her why the shopping cart and she said she learned from a TV show that you should never sleep on the bare ground. You learn something new every day,” I smirked.

That actually happened last week, but who’s counting.

“Pfft,” he actually smiled slightly. “Weirdos, man.”

“Yeah. Will that be all?”

“Yeah.”

“$3.29.”

He tapped his card on the reader, and while the sale processed, I remember actually feeling slightly concerned for the guy. I wasn’t a big fan of cops, but one of them had died around here recently after all, and just talking with this guy face-to-face sort of humanized him to me.

As he cupped the top of the drink and slid it off the counter, I said, “Stay safe out there.”
He glanced at me and raised an eyebrow.

“You know something I don’t?”

“Nah. Just, you know. That cop that got shot out here a couple weeks ago.”

“Huh?”

I just stared at him.

“Listen,” he peered at my nametag for a second, “Carter, you can’t believe everything you hear about this place. 84th Avenue. It’s just a street, man. Most of what you hear about this place is embellished or even totally made-up.”

“Uh, yeah, all right. Well, have a good night, Officer,” I paused, squinting at his nametag back. “Brady.”

He walked off into the night, his energy drink in his hand. At the time, I didn’t give that interaction a whole lot of thought. I learned most of my news from memes, and it was definitely possible I’d been wrong. Unlikely, but possible.

But over time, stranger things began to occur. And I’m not talking about druggies sleeping in shopping carts. I began to pick up on an anomaly with the neon sign. See, it actually didn’t flicker very often. It seemed to at first, but after getting caught off guard multiple times by random people coming in, I realized I couldn’t trust it as much as I thought I could. Yet strangely, though it seemed inconsistent, I realized it always blinked and dimmed for certain people. There was this lady that would come in about once a week and buy a scratch-off ticket. I figured she had to be pretty depressed, cause she was always wearing the same clothes, and was coming to this dingy ass place with relative frequency. Every time she’d ask for the same ticket, Cash Keyser, and every time I’d slide it to her, she’d smile at me and say, “Maybe tonight’s the night.”

Even in her voice, I could hear how much she needed a break. But I guess tonight was never the night, cause a week or two later, she’d always be back, always dressed the same, always buying a colorful strip of false hope that things would suddenly change for her. I tried to chat with her the more she came in, but she wasn’t keen on giving away details about her life. She was mostly unresponsive, just nodding or giving me one-word answers, and then she’d head out in kind of a hurry. But her clothes weren’t the only thing that stayed the same every time.

Every single time she came into the Pass & Go, that sign would flicker.

Now, I could’ve just been reading into things too much. I wondered if the sign was ultimately connected to a wire through the ground maybe, and maybe certain people were stepping over it, and those people just kind of came in the same way every time. I didn’t really know; I’m not an electrician. But the sort of Groundhog Day that transpired every time she stopped by really did intrigue me.

Then, one night in early July, I had another curious experience. I was listening to some podcast about ayahuasca and contemplating if I’d ever take the plunge when the green flicker of my inconsistent early-warning system caught my attention. And when my eyes trailed from the neon sign and over the merchandise on the counter to the pumps out in the dark beyond, I saw a guy pumping gas into his truck, probably in his mid-thirties. He had this really gruff look on his face, but I wouldn’t have paid it much mind except for the fact someone was with him, a girl about my age.

While he was by the pump, she was heading into the store. She had black hair down to about her shoulders, and these big brown eyes. Her skin was kind of pale, like she probably didn’t get out much, and she wore skinny jeans and a grey top. As soon as I noticed her approaching, I stepped back from the window; I definitely didn’t want to creep her out by being seen peeking over the counter through the glass. She came in, and as the chime above the door rang, I couldn’t help but glance at her as she beelined to the snacks. She was cute, and I was considering flirting with her at first, but then I glanced over the counter again at the guy in the parking lot, presuming him to be her big brother or dad or something. I didn’t want to piss him off, so I decided to keep it casual.

She was over by the coolers on the back wall the next time I found her, not looking my direction while she scanned our selection of sports drinks. Then she grabbed a red Gatorade and came walking up to the front. She put the drink and a bag of classic Lays on the counter, and when I noticed it was almost four in the morning, I couldn’t help but inquire, “What’s got you out so late?”

I was scanning the items with muscle memory, my eyes meeting hers after she glanced at the counter for a second as if considering a response.

“Nothing really.”

“Big bro?” I flicked my eyes to the guy in the parking lot, and at this, her nose wrinkled.

“Eww. No.”

I thought that was a strange response.

“Eww?” I asked as the total popped up on the screen. “It’s gross to have a brother?”

“It’s gross to kiss your brother,” she smiled flatly, and I didn’t want to seem creepy, but I couldn’t help but get on the tip of my toes for a second and peek at him again. No doubt the guy was in his thirties, and if I had to be more specific, I’d be leaning more toward late thirties than early. He was wearing boots, jeans, and a blue and brown flannel, and had a five o’clock shadow I could see from the store. The more I looked at him, the more weirded out I felt. But then again, none of this was my business, and I didn’t want to pry. She definitely didn’t seem to be with him against her will.

“Ah, gotcha’,” I smiled, but the whole thing felt unignorably off to me as she handed me a ten. “You guys going on a road trip or something?”

“Something like that,” there was this turbulent mix of emotions in her eyes, and while she looked excited, definitely thrilled about something, she also kind of seemed to be longing too. I only got a glimpse of it though, as she unexpectedly asked, “You ever just do something totally crazy? Like, overnight?”

“I mean, I took a heroic dose of shrooms once on a whim without a trip sitter,” I smirked, and she chuckled too, but shook her head.

“I didn’t mean something like that.” She paused. “Anyway, have a good rest of your night.”

“You too,” I remarked, but as she turned and walked away, I felt a steadily increasing urge to say something. To ask her why she was with this guy that looked like he could be her dad. To inquire more about this crazy, overnight thing she was hinting at, or this road trip-esque adventure she was on that had her at this infamous gas station at four in the morning.

But I was just too immature at the time, and selfish. Even feeling like I should probably investigate what was happening, probably pay more attention to what was going on, I also felt like I really couldn’t be bothered. I told myself that it wasn’t my business, that I shouldn’t be nosey, but really, I just didn’t want to get involved. Though, a moment after she left the store, my curiosity got the better of me again and I peered over the cigarettes at the truck in the parking lot.

She was already inside, and at first, it looked pretty unassuming. It was old and kind of a faded red, with two-by-fours in the back under a blue tarp. All in all, nothing suspicious. But when he got to the turnoff onto 84th, and he took a right, I noticed the passenger-side window was broken, like it’d been punched out. I couldn’t see the girl well this far away, but her being in this older guy’s truck with the right window shattered made me feel even stranger about the whole ordeal.

Something was definitely off.

But at the time, my lazy ass just didn’t care enough.

It was mid-July, though, when the veneer of eccentric late-night patrons was shattered forever, and I was forced to see what was really going on. It began with a loud rumbling from the parking lot. I got immediately uncomfortable as some biker douche rolled up, revving his engine like if it were loud enough I’d give him a discount. Then he climbed off the bike and came stumbling toward the door, the green neon flickering onto him from the window. I could tell just from the counter that he was totally hammered; he could barely even make it inside. He came right to the counter, and absolutely reeked of alcohol.

“Give me a pack of menthols—Camel,” he slurred, leaning onto the counter with his right hand.

“You okay, man?” I grabbed it.

“The fuck do you mean?”

His hostility freaked me out just as much as it annoyed me.

“You’re obviously drunk off your ass,” I replied. “You just drove here on a motorcycle. Seems like a bad idea.”

“Shut the fuck up and sell me the cigarettes, man.”

He was glaring at me like he was ready to swing. And though he was so fucked up I don’t doubt I could’ve taken him, he was still a big guy, and it really wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Your funeral,” I muttered, grabbing the cigarettes and noting it was the last pack. Normally I would’ve made some quip about that, but with this guy, I just wanted him to leave.

When I slid him the cigarettes, he flung his cash at me, and almost walked away without his change. Then he stumbled off back out the door, shoving it open so hard I wondered if he broke it.

And then, without any warning, as he stumbled along the window toward his bike, his entire body changed. My breathing stifled as I noticed his head was dented in. Multiple of his teeth were missing, and blood ran down his face and soaked his jacket. He was covered from head-to-toe in cuts and scrapes, and his right arm was broken, the bone jutting out slightly. I stumbled back and tripped, knocking over the vape pens, then almost slipped on them as I scrambled to my feet and chased him out the door, staring in horrified bewilderment as he climbed onto a waterlogged motorcycle, the front of it totally wrecked.

“Hey!” I screamed. “Man, are you all right?!”

He just looked at me.

And as he stared into my eyes, his look was totally different than before.

He wasn’t angry, or confrontational, or even drunk.

He just had this totally sober look of regret.

He stared at me a moment longer, then he revved his engine, and somehow he and his obliterated bike sped off into the night, leaving me totally alone in the flickering neon. And then as soon as he disappeared up the road, the sign stopped blinking, steadily shining like usual. I sprinted over to the doors, yanking them open and almost collapsing as I barreled into the backroom and landed in the seat at the computer. I pulled up the security camera footage and rewound it a couple minutes, desperate to see if somehow, some inconceivable way, I’d just been seeing things.

But though I was willing to believe he wasn’t actually injured and it was somehow all in my head, I wasn’t at all prepared for the sight of me just talking to the empty air.

That’s right.

The guy never even came in at all.

I rewatched my harsh reaction to the absent revving of his engine, my eyes following nothing walking along the window to the door that never opened. Then I realized that I’d never actually grabbed the pack of menthols; my hand stopped over it, and handed nothing to no one. It was the same thing for the cash register. And then at last, I watched myself stumble back and fall, flinging shit everywhere in a panic. I ran out the door, screaming into the night, but only I was there.

It filled me with a terror so paralyzing I almost just left right then and there.

I sat there at the desk for a moment, shaking.

Was I hallucinating?

I’d heard you can get permanent, schizophrenia-like psychosis from psilocybin, but this was the first, and only time, I’d ever hallucinated when not on the shit. And as I just stared at the monitor unblinkingly, shaking in place, I really couldn’t tell what was more horrific.

If I hadn’t really seen that.

Or if I had.

But then, my eyes gravitated to the one part of my memory that was corroborated by the cameras.

The neon.

It was dim, and as I unpaused the video, I watched it continue to flicker, all the way until my eyes turned to the end of 84th that I could see. And as soon as they did, it shined like normal again. I rewound the footage again, and sure enough, as soon as I began to react to the phantom motorcycle, the sign started flickering. It flickered the whole time, throughout that whole interaction, until the biker was gone.

So I wasn’t crazy.

Something suggested there was more going on than me just losing my shit.

But then, what the hell had just happened?

I didn’t even go back to the front as I began racking my mind for all the other times the sign had flickered. And instantly, I recalled the scratch-off lady. I quickly Googled, “84th Avenue deaths”, thinking that maybe I could identify some of these people, but the first thing that came up was the police officer shooting.

Then my jaw dropped as I stared into the memorialized eyes of Officer Brady.

I could barely sit still as his eyes looked back at me from the computer screen, the same officer I had spoken to just a month ago who didn’t know about any officer shootings in the area.

Because he was the officer that would be shot.

I kept looking, and before long, I found the scratch-off lady. She was some lonely, divorced woman that committed suicide in the woods a couple miles north of here in 2011. And the biker had crashed into the ditch right off the bend three years ago, one of many drunk drivers that didn’t react to the turn in time and went face-first into the canal.

I screamed as the chime above the door sounded, and I heard someone spin around at the front of the store, startled by my reaction. I scrambled to my feet and walked up front, freezing as my eyes met those of Officer Brady’s, glinting in the flickering neon.

“You good?” he seemed to be both concerned and frustrated.

I just stared at him, totally unable to speak.

“Yeah.”

“You on something?” he peered.

“No.”

He looked at me a little longer, but then he walked his immortalized path through the gas station, his gaze drifting over the cooler of energy drinks. I couldn’t help but stare right at him, utterly wordless as he moved in almost the exact same way as he had back in June, at last grabbing that same sugar-free Monster. Then he walked to the counter, and my hands were shaking as I took the drink from him.

“Hey,” he looked at me, “you all right?”

I stared into the eyes of the dead man.

“Personal stuff.”

“Is something going on? Looked like you were looking at the security camera footage when I came in,” he noted, and I listened in silence. “If someone’s prowling around here, I could investigate.”

I wanted to address what was really happening, to pick his mind and see if he was really unaware that he was dead, or if he was just haunting this place, and all of this was an act. Then I began to wonder if maybe this was some kind of time machine, if I could warn him about what was bound to happen to him and prevent him from dying in the first place. But as I recalled the biker’s corpse mounting his waterlogged Harley, I came to the conclusion that nothing I said to this visage of the officer was going to save his life.

And, I further waged, as soon as he walked out that door, he’d be a corpse too.

“You there?” he waved his hand in front of my face. “Talk to me, kid. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I almost laughed.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

I slid him his drink.

“You gonna’ tell me the total…?”

“It’s free tonight. On me. Have a good one, Officer Brady.”

He blinked. He stood there for a moment as if considering investigating the gas station regardless of my cooperation, trying to get to the bottom of my unusual behavior. And maybe in life, he would have. But his fateful march to the street where his life would be taken from him seemed programmed to resume as he suddenly turned and walked out the door, just like he had the last time back in June, taking his energy drink with him. I followed him outside, standing beneath the fluctuating sign as my eyes fell onto the exit wounds in his back, the red streaks oozing from the holes in his uniform.

I felt like I could cry at the sight of it.

I walked back inside, and had made my mind up to quit then and there.

I wrote up a note and left it in the manager’s office, then I locked the place up and left the key under the propane cylinder exchange out front, about to text my morning relief where the key was when I froze.

I remembered the girl.

The girl, with black hair, and big brown eyes.

The neon sign that I had once thought of as my early-warning customer alert, and now understood to be some kind of paranormal detection radar, had flickered with her entrance too, just like it had for the biker, and the scratch-off lady, and Officer Brady.

In that moment, I became weirdly consumed with this desire to know what had happened to her. Maybe it was because I found her cute, or maybe it was because even in the moment that night, something felt horribly off. But for some reason or another, I became totally invested in figuring out what had happened to her, to the point that I decided to unlock the store and stick around. I went back to the computer, but for some reason, though I was able to find information about other people that had died in the area, some of whom I’d even seen walk into this gas station’s very doors in the middle of the night, I was completely unable to find her. And it really ate at me.

I went back to the front at some point around five a.m., but still, I was just searching on my phone for the girl. Though by the time my relief came in at six a.m., I still hadn’t found shit. And that was my obsession for the next couple days. When I’d exhausted every article about deaths on 84th, I began to wonder if anyone even knew she was dead. So I searched local missing persons, and I looked into all of them, but still, none of them were this girl.

It haunted me for days.

I began reliving as much of that night as I could, trying to recall every single detail. I could remember her hinting that the guy she was with was her boyfriend, which even then was a red flag, but now, as I remembered that older guy in the parking lot pumping gas in the dark, it filled me with dread. I didn’t get that good of a look at him; I could tell he had some stubble and was wearing a flannel, jeans, and boots, but what good was that? As for his truck, I wasn’t sure exactly what make or model it was, just that it was red and looked old. I could only assume the punched-out glass was like the biker’s motorcycle, something that had taken place after the girl’s death, or more likely during.

Then I remembered her asking me if I had ever done something crazy and overnight. And as I mulled over the words for hours, sitting on the back porch smoking a bowl as the sun set before my shift, I ruminated on all the possibilities such a vague statement could mean. But then, when I remembered her saying she was on something like a road trip, it started to click.

The guy she was with, her “boyfriend”, must’ve been taking her off somewhere, probably far from her home. Maybe they’d been talking online, probably in secret, cause no parent would let their kid date a grown ass man like that, and she seemed to be about eighteen like myself. Maybe he’d driven to where she lived, and this big, crazy, overnight decision she made was climbing into this stranger’s vehicle that she’d been tricked into thinking was safe, driving with him for God knows how long as he took her to God knows where.

And then they stopped at the Pass & Go on 84th Avenue for gas.

At first, that part didn’t make sense to me. Yeah, this place was a couple miles south of 90th Street, which came right off the highway, but why wouldn’t he stop for gas at one of the many gas stations out there closer to the interstate? Though, the more I thought about it, the more I started to piece it together. If this guy really was from out of state, and was trying to get her back to his place undetected, it made sense he didn’t pull right off the highway to the nearest gas station where cops could be combing through camera footage. Instead, he drove off to the most secluded road in the whole town: 84th Avenue.

I started to feel overwhelmed.

I had nothing to go off of to narrow my search really, and for all I knew, I’d have to look at missing persons listings for people in every surrounding state, and maybe even farther than that. I mean, it was just impossible. But at last, saying a prayer to whoever was listening, I typed in the vaguest string of clues I had: “Missing girl brown eyes black hair red truck”.

And then I scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled.

I searched it first in various counties in Iowa; maybe she was just from a lower part of the state. But when that didn’t yield anything, I searched the same sentence with counties in Missouri at the end, and then Kansas, and then Nebraska.

And then, after over an hour of looking, my heart skipped a beat.

I saw those big brown eyes looking back at me through my cellphone screen. I clicked on the news article, and there, in her missing persons listing, was unmistakably the girl’s face, just like the one in the gas station. I immediately read the article, like it was some sort of divine revelation.

Her name was Amber Wicker. She would have just turned eighteen; in fact, her birthday was only two months ago, but her disappearance was four months ago, which meant that on the night that she’d actually stepped into the gas station and not the memory I had cohabitated, she was only seventeen, making the whole thing even more disturbing to me. She was last seen on her front door’s Ring camera climbing into a red truck parked across the street almost totally out of frame, but even in the glimpse of it available in the video, I could tell it was the same one when I saw the two-by-fours and blue tarp.

My stomach sank as I watched Amber hurry down the driveway, looking once over her shoulder to the safety of the house she was abandoning, then reaching the truck and climbing into the passenger seat before it took off up the road.

I leaned back in the chair, letting out a beleaguered sigh.

So Amber Wicker was her name, and as far as the police knew, she was missing.

But I knew she was dead.

After all, every customer that had walked in beneath the flickering sign had been a corpse, and as much as I wanted to believe otherwise, I assumed her case wasn’t any different.
So as much as I wanted to stop working at that place, as much as it bothered me to see those ghosts walking the fated paths of their memories through the purgatory that was the Pass & Go off 84th Avenue, I had to stay. I had to wait until Amber came back, so I could gather enough evidence to give to police. After all, though some of the dead only came in once, like the biker, others had come in twice like Officer Brady, and even others had come in on almost a weekly basis like the scratch-off lady.

Eventually, I hoped, she would come back.

And so, the rest of July, I picked up more night shifts, desperately wanting to be there the night she hopefully returned. I also chatted with Justin, the guy who I’d shadowed and who worked nights when I was off, but his brain seemed constantly fried on something, and if he’d had any paranormal experiences, he hadn’t noticed. I asked him about the sign flickering and he said it did that on occasion, so I knew he’d seen at least some ghosts, but when I asked him about Amber, he wasn’t sure if he’d seen her or not. Needless to say, I wasn’t getting anything useful out of him. I asked him to just keep his eyes open for her, and if he saw her, to note the license plate of the truck by the pump. You’d think such a strange request would raise an eyebrow, but he was so zombified on whatever the hell it was he was abusing in his off time that he just said, “sure”.

In the weeks after I’d pinned down Amber’s true identity, I began to research her a bit. I could only find two articles about her; one was the one I first found, which just had the basic details of her disappearance, and the other was an even smaller article in which her parents had given a statement and a number to call if anyone knew anything. I really wanted to call that number. But I knew that right now, I honestly didn’t have shit. I could always say I was at the gas station that night and saw something, but the security camera footage only went back sixty days, so there’d be no proof one way or the other. I didn’t have a license plate, and I was a whole state over. I didn’t have a lot of faith the police would be able to do much with that, and I didn’t want to give her parents false hope.

So I decided I’d just wait until her memory replayed again, and I could piece together some actionable details. In the meantime, the more I searched her, I was at last able to find some of her socials, but her Instagram was private, and her Twitter was inactive for years. Though when I stumbled upon her Facebook, even though it, too, hadn’t had a post uploaded in two years, I felt strangely more connected to her as I scrolled through her photos, this immortal anthology of a dead girl’s time on Earth, floating in cyberspace for anyone to find and sharing her memories from before her life was prematurely snuffed out.

I found pictures of her laughing with her friends, smiling at a dance, blowing out birthday candles. I saw random posts ranging from her excitedly proclaiming she’d gotten her learner’s permit, to complaining about failing some biology test. All these moments of this girl’s life, both significant and insignificant, were here forever, memories accessible to anyone that cared to find them.

And really, her appearance at the gas station wasn’t much different. Though that memory was supernatural, unfolding in real time over a real place, it was, in essence, the same, just some moment of her existence that unaffiliated people such as myself were able to witness. Though whether or not I had been the one to see it for a reason, or my witnessing of it was just as inconsequential and random as me scrolling through her Facebook page, I felt that I was a part of this girl’s story now, and it was my duty to help her however I could.

But by August, she still hadn’t come back. And strangely, neither had Officer Brady, or the biker, or even the scratch-off lady. There was only one other occurrence of the sign flickering, and I guess it was either a no-show ghost or a fuck you from the universe, cause no one ended up coming in. I got worried that whatever supernatural phenomenon had been taking place was over just as suddenly as it had begun, and that I’d never see her again, never be given a chance to atone for my apathetic complacency that night when I could’ve paid more attention to a situation that was obviously suspicious.

And even worse, I was shipping off to college in just a couple of weeks; my remaining days at the Pass & Go were numbered.

So on August 3rd, while sitting behind the counter in the dead of night, waiting for the purgatorial replay of an apparition’s final stop on the drive to her untimely death, I made up my mind.

If she didn’t come in tonight, then tomorrow, I’d take matters into my own hands.

It dawned on me that Amber must have died nearby here. The only ghosts that ever walked into this gas station were those that had died on 84th Avenue, and that was true for Officer Brady who had been shot just down the road, the biker who had crashed into the canal by the bend, the scratch-off lady who had hanged herself in the woods, and all the others I’d seen walk through those doors beneath the flickering green glow. And though I had no idea where to look, I had one thing to go off of: I’d seen the truck turn right at the turnoff.

So somewhere north of here, she must have died.

And maybe, just maybe, I could figure out where.

By morning, I still hadn’t seen her, or any ghost for that matter, and after chatting with Teagan, my morning relief, I walked out to my car. But though I’d planned on driving home and getting some sleep, then searching later, I just couldn’t resist the urge to look right then and there. And so, in my Pass & Go uniform and all, I walked over to the turnoff where I’d seen that phantom truck head right, and then did the same, walking north up the road.
The sun was just barely rising over the trees, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d appreciated a sunrise. Usually, I sped home, trying to beat the sunlight to my room where I could shut my blackout curtains and crash as if it were still night, then I’d wake up at three or four in the afternoon. But this morning, moving slowly up the road along the canal and constantly scanning for anything out of the ordinary, I couldn’t help but enjoy the orange glow above the trees.

By the time I’d walked about two miles, the sun was fully above the horizon, and cars were starting to sparingly appear on 84th, though admittedly not many, as this wasn’t the most direct route to anywhere in town except the Pass & Go. I’d already passed the infamous bend, and even felt obligated to pause there a moment before the canal, sort of waiting in reverent silence as I remembered the stare that biker had given me, the regret permeating his eyes. By now, though, it could no longer be considered a canal; it was a drainage ditch at best, a muddy, shallow dip off the road, and beyond it was the forest.

But then, in my steady scan of the ground in front of me, I noticed something twinkling.

I crouched, looking down at small shards of glass on the pavement.

Almost like a vision, my mind seemed to play out this simulation, and I was staring at the man as he and Amber argued. He lost his temper and slammed her head into the window, shattering it. I noticed more twinkling coming from the grass before the ditch, and I could almost hear the sound of his boots scraping the asphalt as he kicked the glass off down the hill, trying to cover up anything that had happened.

Then I noticed something yellow peeking out of the mud.

I stepped down into the ditch, grabbing the corner of the plastic and pulling it out of its muddy tomb.

Sitting in my hand was a faded, dirty bag of Lays classic, mostly empty, with just a few crumbs at the bottom. My heart raced as I recalled her placing the bag on the counter, and again, I could see it before my mind’s eye, the man dragging her body out of the passenger seat, her deadweight foot scraping the bag out with her. He probably didn’t even notice in his panic as he dragged her toward the forest, the bag fluttering off down into the ditch below.

I walked up the hill on the other side.

I stepped into the forest.

My breathing started to become heavy as I walked deeper into the trees, terrified as I anticipated just what nightmarish spectacle I might be about to find. But I wouldn’t turn back now. And as the afterimage of Amber’s conflicted eyes appeared in my mind again, I resolved to find where she was buried so I could finally give her parents peace, maybe even give her peace.

And it didn’t take much more walking to find clues.

I noticed two hardly visibly scrapes in the dirt, where her shoes must have been dragging. I carefully followed them, stepping off toward a cluster of trees as they suddenly turned, at last freezing before what I could immediately ascertain was a shallow grave. The grass all around it was undisturbed, but here, in just this plot, was a clump of uneven earth. Some grass and leaves had been precariously scattered on top in the man’s frantic attempt to conceal it, but it wasn’t convincing.

And as I crouched before the plot, my heart began to thump out of my chest. But I gulped and steeled myself, knowing I had to see this all the way through, for Amber.

I wished I had a shovel, but with nothing else, I just dug with my hands, scraping the dirt away and trying not to consider the possibility of my fingers abruptly touching her corpse.

I jerked as I felt something that wasn’t soil.

Didn’t feel like rotting flesh.

So I brushed the sand away, and my eyes centered upon a filthy blue tarp immured in the ground.

It was all I needed to see. I stayed right there, pulling out my phone and calling the police. And when they arrived within the hour, I told them I’d gone on a morning walk after getting off the graveyard shift, but noticed the broken glass and trash on the side of the road. They applauded me on my intuition, saying they probably wouldn’t have found that suspicious at all.

And hell, I certainly wouldn’t have either, if I hadn’t known the context.

From there, I said I walked into the forest out of curiosity, but when I found what looked to be a trail left by dragging feet, I became convinced I’d actually found something serious. And after a little bit of digging where the ground looked abnormal, I’d seen the tarp and assumed the worst. They were kinder than cops had ever been with me as they thanked me, and in just a couple of days, it was confirmed in a news story that wrapped in that tarp and left to rot in the woods off 84th Avenue for the last half a year was none other than the body of Amber Wicker.

The girl with black hair and big brown eyes, taking her next big step in life.

The last big step she’d ever take.

I was glad I had been able to help her family get some closure, and hell, even lead to the arrest of the bastard that killed her, whose DNA was recovered at the scene of the crime. But even still, at the end of the day, none of that would bring her back. I just felt hollow.
Finding her body, providing her parents whatever relief they could find, and putting that monster in jail, still wouldn’t bring that innocent, naïve girl back to life.

And as I listened to a podcast on the graveyard shift on my last night of work at the Pass & Go, four days before I’d be heading off to college, I found myself constantly distracted thinking about that. But slowly, I got my mind off things, paying more attention to the podcast and starting to stare off into space at last, the shift beginning to fly by.

Until just after four in the morning.

I gasped as the neon sign flickered.

I darted over to the side of the counter and peered over the cigarettes.

I’ll never be able to describe the feeling in my chest at the sight of that old red truck. And though I felt ice in my veins at the afterimage of Amber’s killer pumping gas in the dark, when I found her walking to the front of the store, all that remained in my heart was an overwhelming longing, an inconsolable despair. She walked into the store, the chime on the ceiling ringing as she headed right over to the snacks. I stared at her undamaged body, her clean black hair, her innocent, big brown eyes. I became emotional at the sight of it, trying desperately not to cry.

She grabbed the bag of Lays.

Then she walked over to the sports drinks, and I leaned against the counter, my chin in my palm as I gazed at this specter retracing the final moments of her life, none the wiser to the horrible demise awaiting her two miles away. She grabbed a red Gatorade, then walked over to me, and I felt breathless as she approached, unsure of what I’d even say.

“Whoa, you all right?” she looked at me, and I must’ve been hiding how I felt even worse than I realized.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied, scanning the items like a robot. I cleared my throat. “What brings you out here this late?”

“Nothing really.”

The total came up on the screen.

“Big brother?” I limply asked, nudging my head toward the heartless man in the dark.

“Eww. No.”

“It’s gross to have a brother?”

I must’ve asked the question differently this time, cause she stared deeper at me, asking again, “You sure you’re okay, dude?”

God, I wanted so badly to tell her to run. To just get the fuck out of here, to not ever go near that man again. I wanted to tell her that she was about to die, that he was her murderer, that these were the very final minutes of her life.

But this was not a time machine.

It was no different than that Facebook page from years ago, just a memory inexplicably suspended in time, just a brief expression of her existence that was as ephemeral an experience as her time on Earth.

And nothing more.

“Can I ask you something?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Sure.”

“Have you ever done something totally crazy? Just overnight?”

She blinked wildly, visibly taken aback by the words.

“Yeah, actually,” she murmured. “Yeah, I have. Why do you ask?”

I shrugged.

“No reason.”

“What about you?”

“Yeah, I did, once. I, uh, I had this weird inkling to follow a trail into the woods. And I found a body. Called the police and reported it.”

“Creepy,” she remarked.

I let out a long sigh, handing her the stuff.

“Hey, this is on me tonight. All right?”

“Oh, uh, sure. How come?”

“You just look like a friend of mine,” I smiled hollowly. “A friend I haven’t seen in a while. Anyway, it’s my treat.”

“Well, all right. Um, thanks.”

She took her unceremonious last meal, then turned over to the door, walking toward the oscillating neon.

“Have a good rest of your night, Carter,” she glanced at my nametag, smiling slightly at me.
It broke my heart.

“You too, Amber.”

“Huh?”

“I said you too.”

She stood there a moment, as if debating whether or not she’d heard me right the first time. Then she turned around and walked outside. But I couldn’t just sit there, and before I knew it, I was running around the counter, shoving the doors open and stepping outside.

I bit my tongue at the gash on the back of her head, the blood dripping down her hair and onto the back of her top. I had guessed that that had been the cause of her death, but evidently, I was wrong. Because as she turned back toward me, I found her blue face, and the purplish bruising of a seatbelt around her neck. Her clothes were covered in dirt and blood, and the Lays bag was empty and faded, mud clumped all over it. The bottle of Gatorade was halfway empty.

I trembled as I found her teary gaze, the desperation and regret staining her painfully cognizant big brown eyes, not innocent anymore.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

I couldn’t possibly muster a response.

And then Amber turned, the afterimage of her corpse climbing into the passenger-side door of her murderer’s truck. I remained frozen in place, my eyes following every last fleeting second of Amber’s existence as the taillights glowed, and the engine hummed. Then the truck pulled off, pausing at the turnoff. And then, as it pulled away, turning right on 84th Avenue and heading to her shallow grave, the neon of the sign stopped flickering, leaving me standing there alone again in silence.

Credit: D.D. Howard