The Salted Field

I’ve spent five winters in the distribution center on the outskirts of Kettleborough, a flat, gray stretch of land that used to be a potato field before they poured concrete and raised steel beams. It’s a boxy building, the size of a small town, with a loading dock that runs along the entire east side like a scar. The office block sits at the front, two stories of glass and cheap paneling that always smells faintly of burnt coffee and stale air. The warehouse floor itself is a maze of tall racks, pallets wrapped in plastic, and forklifts whining through the aisles like restless insects.

I came to the job because the pay was steady and the hours were predictable. But after a few months, I started noticing things that didn’t sit right. The first was the smell. On certain days, usually after rain, the air inside the warehouse would turn strangely metallic, like the scent of a crushed soda can mixed with dust. It came and went, never strong enough to pinpoint, but always lingering at the edge of my nose, especially near the far corner where the old conveyor belt had been dismantled and left to gather rust.

The second thing was the cold. No matter what the thermostat read, there was a strip of floor about ten feet wide that ran from the main entrance to the back wall, parallel to the racking. Crossing that strip always felt like stepping into a different season, a sharp drop in temperature that made my skin prickle. Some of the older guys, like Delroy who had been there since the beginning, said they felt it too. But when I asked maintenance to check the HVAC, they just shrugged and said the system was fine.

The history of the land is what people whisper about during breaks. Before the warehouse, it was farmland owned by a family named Pemberton. The house itself was demolished when the site was leveled, but the land had a reputation. A century ago, there was a scandal—a woman, Hannah Pemberton, who drowned herself in the well near the farmhouse. They say she was pregnant, and the father was a laborer who had been sent away. After her death, the farm fell into decline. The Pembertons sold off parcels of land over the decades, and the fields were rented out for grazing. Locals avoided the place at night, claiming they saw lights bobbing across the fields, but that was dismissed as common superstition. The construction crew had a rough time of it, though. There were at least two incidents that made the local paper: a crane that toppled for no reason one windy afternoon, and a fire in a storage shed that took the fire brigade two hours to contain. No one died, but the project was delayed by months.

My own experiences started with small things. I’d be walking down an aisle, and the pallets I’d just passed would shift on their own, making a groaning sound like settling weight. Sometimes, I’d hear my name called, but when I turned, there would be no one there. More than once, I would find a pallet that I had clearly left in one location now sitting in another, as if someone had moved it while I wasn’t looking. I started keeping a log, noting the date and time, but the pattern eluded me. It wasn’t until the third year that something truly unsettling happened.

It was a late shift, around 2 AM. I was in aisle 14, a dead zone near the back that was mostly storage for obsolete stock. My forklift had a intermittent headlight, so I was working in bursts of light and darkness. As I turned a corner, I saw a figure at the end of the aisle, a tall, thin silhouette that seemed to sway slightly. I called out, expecting a coworker, but the figure didn’t respond. I moved closer, and it disappeared around the next rack. I followed, my heart thumping, and found nothing but a faint, sour smell, like old sweat and decay. I reported it to the night supervisor, but he just told me to take a break and that he’d check the cameras. The cameras showed nothing.

That incident changed how I perceived the warehouse. I began to notice that certain areas felt ‘watched,’ especially the spot where the conveyor belt used to be. There was a grid of bolts in the floor that marked its footprint, and whenever I stood on that patch, my skin would crawl. I started avoiding it, but it was on my route to the break room, so I had to walk across it several times a day.

Then came the incident that finally made me question everything. During a stocktake, I was counting boxes in a high rack. I had the ladder, but my reach was short, so I climbed to the third step. As I counted, I noticed something glinting behind a stack of boxes: a small, tarnished locket, tarnished with age. It was old, Victorian, with a faded picture inside of a woman with dark eyes and a stern mouth. I handed it to my supervisor, who said it was probably lost by a visitor. But the next day, the locket was gone from the lost property bin, and the security log showed no one had signed it out. Also, my copy of the inventory list for that night, which I’d kept in my pocket, was missing, replaced by a torn page of a diary, the handwriting spidery and faded. The entry read: ‘He will not let me leave. He says the child is his. I fear the well is my only way.’

I brought the page to my manager, but he refused to look at it. He said that old site had a history, but it was just a story. He told me to focus on my job. But I couldn’t. Every time I walked past the former conveyor belt, I felt a pull, like something wanted me to stay. I started having dreams of a woman in a long dress, her hair wet, standing in a pool of dark water. She would extend a hand toward me, and I would wake up gasping.

About a month ago, I was working overtime, clearing out the old conveyor belt area to make way for new refrigeration units. The crew had removed the bolts and was cutting the concrete to install new supports. As they cut, they hit something solid—a cast iron pipe, about a foot in diameter, that had been sealed with clay. The crew pried it open, and a gush of black water spilled out, along with a tangle of hair and bone fragments. They quickly sealed it again and called the police, who arrived and cordoned off the area. They dug around and found an old well, sealed with concrete, not even listed on any original blueprints. Inside, they found skeletal remains. The news said they were investigating, but they haven’t released details.

Since then, the warehouse has been quiet. The smell is gone, and the cold has lifted. But I’m not relieved. Last night, as I was leaving, I heard a whisper from that spot, clear as day: ‘You found me. Now you’re mine.’ I ran to my car, but when I looked back, I saw a shape in the window of the office—a silhouette of a woman, her hand pressed against the glass, watching me. I haven’t been back since. I’m writing this, and I’m thinking of that locket, and the diary page. They say the land has been quiet for a hundred years, but I think she was just waiting for someone to listen. And now I have to decide: do I tell them what I know, or do I keep her secret and hope she lets me go?