The Night the Monitors Sang

It was the tail end of February 2011, and I was pulling another graveyard shift at Meridian Logistics, a sprawling distribution hub on the outskirts of a town that had seen better days. My name is Dan, and I was the night security guard, the lone sentinel in a vast, humming warehouse of cardboard and machinery. The control room was my domain, a claustrophobic box of flickering monitors, each one showing a different angle of the same empty space: the cavernous aisles of pallets, the silent conveyors, the loading docks with their steel doors sealed tight. The only company I had was the hum of servers and the occasional crackle of the intercom, which was meant for emergency callouts but more often than not brought me the voice of the on-site canteen staff, a cheerful but weary group who were the last to leave before the night shift took over.

On this particular night, the canteen staff, led by a woman named Rosie, had stopped by the control room just before heading out. Rosie was a stout, motherly figure with a laugh that could fill a room, but tonight her face was drawn, and she kept glancing over her shoulder. She said, ‘Dan, I don’t want to alarm you, but the monitors were glitching again in the break room. I saw something… odd.’ I asked her what she meant, but she just shook her head. ‘It was like the shape of a person, but it moved wrong. It went from the vending machines to the corner in a second, like it was skipping frames.’ I waved it off as a camera hiccup, standard for old CCTV, but Rosie insisted. ‘I know what I saw, Dan. It didn’t have a face. And it was holding a mop.’ She laughed nervously, then left with the others, their footsteps echoing down the corridor until they faded into the static of the building.

After they were gone, the silence was oppressive. I made my usual rounds, checking the perimeter doors, the loading bays, the quiet aisles. Everything was in order, but a creeping unease settled in my stomach. I returned to the control room and settled into my chair, the glow of the monitors painting the room in a cold, blue light. Hours crawled by as I cycled through the feeds, my eyelids heavy, when I noticed something on the camera overlooking the break room. There was a figure standing by the far wall, near the industrial mop sink. It was tall and gaunt, wearing what looked like a grey uniform, and it was just standing there, face angled toward the floor. I leaned closer, my heart picking up. The camera had a slight lag, and the image was grainy, but I could see it wasn’t moving. I hit the intercom to the break room, but got only static. I grabbed my walkie and called out, ‘Anyone in the break room? This is security. Identify yourself.’ Nothing.

I knew the protocol: I should have stayed put and contacted the control center, but the figure started to move. It walked with an odd, shuffling gait, each step slightly too long, and it headed toward the door that led to the control room corridor. I quickly switched cameras to track it, and sure enough, it appeared in the corridor, still shuffling, its face still obscured by the low angle of its head. Cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I keyed the intercom again, more desperate now. ‘Hey, you! Hold it right there!’ The figure stopped, and slowly, its head lifted. And what I saw made me clamp my mouth shut. There was a face, but it was wrong — the eyes were not set evenly, the mouth was a gash that stretched too wide, and the skin looked like it had been scrubbed raw. It stared directly into the camera, and then it smiled, a slow, stretching smile that showed no teeth. Then it spoke, but not through the intercom. Its voice came from the speakers in the control room itself, a low, guttural sound that seemed to come from all around me. It said, ‘The canteen is closed, but the kitchen is always open.’

I fumbled for my phone to call the office, but the signal was dead. The landline on the desk gave only a dial tone buzz of interference. I looked back at the screen, and the figure was gone. In its place, the break room feed showed a mop leaning against the sink, as if nothing had happened. I tried to laugh it off, blaming my tired eyes and the flickering fluorescent lights. But then the monitors started to act up. On every camera, I saw the same thing: the canteen staff, Rosie and her crew, standing in different parts of the warehouse, all facing the cameras, all frozen, their faces blank. It was like a skewed tableau. I tried to recall if they had said they were going out for a smoke, but no, they had left the building. And yet, here they were on my screens, not moving, not blinking. I tapped the screens, but the images remained, and then all at once, they turned their heads in perfect synchronization, and their mouths opened wide, and from the speakers came the sound of a high-pitched, harmonic shriek that made me cover my ears. It lasted only a second, but in that moment, my vision swam, and I thought I saw the figure behind me reflected in the glass of the monitor.

I spun around, but there was nothing. The shriek died, and the monitors went back to their normal feeds. My heart was racing. I grabbed my flashlight and made a decision: I was not staying in that control room. I stepped out into the corridor, the door swinging shut behind me with a click that echoed too long. The warehouse was vast and cold, the blackness of the aisles pierced only by my flashlight beam. I had to check on the canteen staff, make sure they were okay. I made my way to the break room, my footsteps muffled by the grimy tiles. The door was ajar, which was odd, because I always kept them locked after the canteen closed. I pushed it open with my finger, and the room was bathed in the weak light from the vending machines. There, by the sink, was the mop, but propped against the wall next to it was a pair of shoes. Men’s work boots, worn and cracked. They were facing the wall, as if someone had been standing there and vanished, leaving only their shoes. The air was thick with the smell of bleach and something else, something sweet and sickly, like rotting fruit.

I backed out of the room, my mind racing. I retraced my steps to the control room, but the door was now locked. I fumbled for my keys, but they were on the desk inside. I rattled the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Then, from the intercom speaker above the door, a voice, not mine, not any human voice, said, ‘You left the door open, Dan. We say it should stay closed.’ I turned and ran down the corridor, past the warehouse bays, toward the loading dock, the exit. But when I reached the steel door, it was sealed, and the release button seemed to have no effect. The lights flickered, and then went out entirely. In the pitch black, I heard the shuffle of feet approaches, many pairs, echoing around me. I fumbled for my flashlight, but it slipped from my grip and clattered away. The shuffling grew closer, and I could feel the cold breath of many mouths on my skin.

When the lights came back, I was on the floor, my back against the door, shaking. The warehouse was empty, but the air was cold, and the monitors in the control room were now showing the canteen staff, all of them smiling, their faces pressed against the camera lens, as if they had been waiting for me to look. I managed to crawl back to the control room, the door now unlocked, and I found my keys lying on the floor just outside. I grabbed them, locked myself inside, and called the office using my personal phone, which miraculously had signal. The police arrived an hour later, but they found nothing out of the ordinary. They wrote it off as a prank by the canteen staff, who had returned to ‘retrieve a forgotten bag’ and admit to leaving the shoes as a joke. But I knew they were lying. I could see it in their eyes.

I quit that job the next day. I couldn’t shake the image of that faceless figure, and the way the monitors seemed to sing with a voice that wasn’t human. I moved to a different town, but sometimes, in my new apartment, before the TV goes to sleep, I see a figure standing in the static, holding a mop, its head tilted, as if it’s waiting for me to make a move. And I swear, I hear a voice not far away, telling me that the kitchen is always open, and that I should come in for dinner. I’ve never told anyone the full story until now, because I’m afraid they won’t believe me. But I know what I saw. And I know that the nights at Meridian Logistics were never just about watching boxes move. There was always something else, something that danced at the edge of the cameras, something that wanted to be seen. And now, it has seen me. It has seen all of us.

If you’re reading this, and you work nights, and you watch the monitors, just remember: when the canteen staff leave, and the building goes quiet, don’t linger in the break room. And whatever you do, don’t look into the camera when it calls your name. Because the kitchen is always open, and it’s been waiting for guests for a very long time.