It is completely normal and not at all unreasonable to be afraid of ghosts when you’re alone in a bathroom in an empty building at night. I’m pretty sure there was a Stephen King story about that. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a normal human instinct, like saying ‘hi howyadooin?’ to people when you don’t care about the answer, or being unable to gracefully accept unexpected gifts, or make new friends in your thirties. This is completely fine and I am not a lesser woman for feeling this sensation. It’s just instincts, and the way I’m slowly hiking my feet up so anyone entering the bathroom will be unable to see my feet inside the stall is a rational stress response.
Besides, it’s not like there’s anyone here to judge me for it. It’s just me. Alone. In a large building. And that’s fine and normal because I’m the night custodian, that’s something I signed up for and I am an adult in control of myself who can and will do this because my paycheck is riding on it and that’s the only thing that matters when you’re a mature adult: money. Not the urge to scream and run.
Not that anyone would judge me if I chose to scream and run, right? Because I’m alone. Nobody else around.
That’s why that creaking out in the hallway is just my imagination, just the plumbing making sounds, just a squirrel running across the roof, and my holding my breath right now is purely out of ironic self-indulgence because the noise is going away soon and then I will relax and breathe again and it will all be a good-natured chuckle or jape.
See? It stopped.
And the door’s just swinging open because it’s broken and I didn’t notice that must be it that must be it that must be it oh fuck who’m I kidding SHIT.
***
You don’t really appreciate how hard it is to keep your feet hoisted off the ground in a sitting position until you’ve held it under the tension of some anonymous ghost/monster/mass murderer/stranger discovering your hidden presence in a bathroom stall. Muscles that I haven’t heard from in YEARS are singing lamentations at me that grow louder by the second. Meanwhile I’m sitting here just trying to listen for the sound of departing footsteps. God, what if I never hear them leave? What if I just have to sit here holding this position all night until daybreak JUST IN CASE? I think I’d take hearing them actually walking into the bathroom over thaoh no there they’re doing it I didn’t mean that I didn’t want that shit shit fuck shit piss piss piiiiiiiiiiisSHIT.
They aren’t walking past my stall. That’s good. They’re going into the stall next to me. That’s not so good. They’re now between me and the exit. That’s bad. And I can’t move my hands from the stall wall or it might creak so now I have to hold this pose EVEN HARDER. That’s hell.
Shuffling, barely audible over my pulse. I think that’s clothing. Ghosts don’t wear clothing – well, not audibly, right? But some monsters do. Like Frankenstein. Or Frankenstein’s monster, Adam. Everyone knows Frankenstein is the real monster in that story though. Shitty parent.
Maybe this unannounced, unasked for, inexplicable presence in this building with me after midnight isn’t a monster or a ghost or a ghoul, just someone’s shitty parent! And a serial murderer!
Well, that’s killed the desire to get up and run for it. Not that I’m sure I could at this point. My legs are numb from lack of blood flow and from experience I know that running like this is a great way to break my nose.
Porcelain creaks next to me. My nightmarish hallucination appears to have a bladder and or bowels. I’m still not in a hurry to find out further details; even this feels a little much. You never have to worry about this in most horror stories unless they’re written by Clive Barker; Dracula doesn’t have any sequences where they find out the bathroom capabilities of vampires; Jason never gets interrupted while he’s tinkling on a tree; pretty sure there’s never been a Godzilla flick where he scent-marks a building.
Thunk. What is going thunk?
A toilet paper roll slides under the stall wall softly, almost shyly. I’m biting my tongue and don’t know why, and then the hand comes.
No glove. Nice nails. Maybe it isn’t a serial killer, or at least it isn’t a Freddy wannabe. It clutches, it grasps, and then it reaches out and blindly misses the roll and grabs my ankle and both of us stop moving along with the rest of the universe for three seconds.
“Hello?”
I’m not moving.
“Hello?!” this time quivering.
I’m really not moving at all.
The scream is louder, piercing, and not at all like you hear in movies because it’s a WORKING scream, it’s the air escaping someone’s lungs while they’re using the rest of it to get somewhere else in a hurry so it’s wobbling up and down and modulating and a lot of other things while its owner leaves as fast as possible, slamming open the bathroom door and heading down the hall with her hair on fire.
I put my legs back down and sign in relief, try to stand up, and fall over. While I’m trying to get blood back into them, something catches my eye down there – a lost artifact from my erstwhile haunt, a jacket collapsed from its coathook, ID badge still attached.
SHAUNA MCKENZIE
NIGHT CUSTODIAN
Weird. I thought I was the night custodian.
And it’s around then that I notice I haven’t actually stopped holding my breath since I heard that first noise and I don’t actually feel uncomfortable about it.
***
It’s completely normal and not at all unreasonable to be a ghost in a bathroom in an empty building at night. I’m pretty sure the Harry Potter lady wrote about that sort of thing before she became a fascist.