iRunStories / Season 1, Episode 2
Night Shift
The Westfield Galleria had been dead for three years, but nobody had told the lights.
Derek Okonkwo stood in the security booth at 11:47 PM, watching the fluorescent panels flicker to life one by one across the food court. Each light buzzed and hummed as it warmed up, illuminating empty tables, overturned chairs, and the dusty corpses of fast food restaurants that would never serve another meal.
"Motion sensors," he muttered to himself, though he hadn't moved in five minutes. "Just motion sensors."
The lights agreed with him by clicking off again, plunging the food court back into darkness.
Derek was twenty-three years old, six months out of his associate's degree in criminal justice, and exactly $47,000 in debt. When the security company had offered him $22 an hour to walk empty halls from midnight to 8 AM, he'd said yes before they finished the sentence. Easy money. Eight hours of podcasts and phone games. The only catch was that he had to actually walk the building every hour, checkpoint to checkpoint, proving he wasn't just sleeping in the booth.
The orientation had been brief. "Mall closed three years ago when the anchor stores pulled out. We patrol it until the new developers start demolition next month. Don't let anyone in. Don't take anything out. Don't go into the basement—it's flooded and structurally unsound. Clock in, walk your rounds, clock out. Questions?"
Derek had one question: "Why does an empty mall need security?"
His supervisor had looked at him with the dead eyes of a man who'd stopped asking questions years ago. "Liability. Now sign here."
That was two weeks ago. Fourteen nights of the same routine: arrive at 11:30, walk the perimeter, check the doors, do hourly rounds, leave at 8 AM. Nothing had happened. Nothing ever happened.
Until tonight.
[CHAPTER 2]
The first round was always the worst.
Derek clipped the heavy flashlight to his belt, grabbed the checkpoint scanner, and stepped out of the booth. The main corridor stretched ahead of him—a quarter-mile tunnel of dead storefronts, roll-down gates, and mannequins that always seemed to be watching from just beyond the glass.
He walked past a children's clothing store where tiny headless forms modeled outfits no one would ever buy. Past a jewelry kiosk still displaying engagement rings under dusty glass. Past a fountain that had been drained years ago, its concrete basin now home to coins that would never grant wishes.
The checkpoint stations were marked with small metal plates—thirty-two in total, scattered throughout the mall's three floors. Derek scanned each one, the device beeping confirmation that yes, a warm body had passed through here at this exact time.
Checkpoint 4: JCPenney entrance, sealed. Checkpoint 5: Escalator bank, motors off but still creaking in the silence. Checkpoint 6: Electronics wing, screens all dark.
He was passing the old movie theater when he heard it.
Footsteps.
Not his footsteps—those were the steady crunch of boots on tile. These were different. Softer. Faster. And they were above him.
Derek stopped walking. The soft footsteps stopped too.
"Hello?" His voice echoed through the empty corridor.
No answer. The silence in the mall was the kind of silence that had weight to it. Three years of emptiness had compressed it into something almost solid.
He looked up at the ceiling, at the second-floor balcony overlooking the corridor. Nothing moved. The stores up there were just as dead as the ones down here.
"Security," he called out, feeling immediately stupid. "Building is closed."
The footsteps started again. Not running, just... walking. Keeping pace with him from somewhere above.
Derek's hand went to his radio. His supervisor had made it clear: if there was trouble, call it in. Don't be a hero. Don't confront anyone. The mall wasn't worth dying for.
But the footsteps weren't threatening, exactly. They were just... there. Like an echo that didn't quite match his movements.
He pulled out his phone and opened the camera, using the flash to illuminate the second floor. Empty stores. Dusty railings. No one.
The footsteps stopped.
Derek stood there for a long moment, heart pounding, phone raised like a weapon. When nothing happened, he laughed nervously and kept walking.
"Motion sensors," he said again. "Or rats. Big rats."
He didn't believe himself, but he kept walking anyway.
[CHAPTER 3]
By the time Derek reached the third floor, he'd convinced himself it was nothing. Old buildings made noises. That was just a fact. Steel expanded and contracted. Water moved through dead pipes. The wind found its way through cracks and made sounds that could fool anyone.
He scanned checkpoint 18 and checked his watch: 1:34 AM. A little ahead of schedule. The food court was next, then the anchor stores, then back down to the booth for the two-hour break before round two.
The third floor was the worst part of the Galleria. Most of the stores up here had never been occupied—the mall had started dying before they could even fill all the spaces. Empty storefronts with no gates, no mannequins, no indication that anyone had ever intended to do business there.
Just darkness behind glass.
Derek was passing one of these empty spaces when he saw movement in the reflection.
He spun around, flashlight up.
Nothing.
But the reflection had been clear: someone walking past, just behind him. A shape. A person.
"Who's there?"
His voice came out steadier than he felt. Twenty-two dollars an hour, he reminded himself. That's a mortgage payment. That's paying off the loans faster. That's not living with Mom until thirty.
He scanned the corridor behind him. Emergency lights cast red pools on the floor every fifty feet. Between them, darkness. Anything could be standing in that darkness.
Anything was.
Derek's flashlight found it: a figure standing motionless at the far end of the corridor, maybe a hundred feet away. It was too far to make out details, just a shape. Human-shaped. Standing perfectly still.
"Security," Derek called, and his voice cracked on the word. "Building is closed. You need to leave immediately."
The figure didn't move.
Derek's hand found his radio. His thumb found the button. One press and he'd have backup in fifteen minutes. But something stopped him—some stubbornness, some need to prove he could handle this himself.
He started walking toward the figure.
Fifty feet. The shape didn't move.
Thirty feet. He could make out more detail now. It was tall. Thin. Its arms hung at its sides.
Twenty feet. The figure was wearing—
Derek's flashlight flickered.
When it came back on, the figure was gone.
[CHAPTER 4]
"The mall is empty," Derek said into his phone. His supervisor's voicemail was the only thing that answered at 2 AM. "I thought I saw someone on three, but there's no one here. Continuing rounds. Just... logging it, I guess."
He hung up and stared at the empty corridor where the figure had been.
There was nowhere it could have gone. No doors within fifty feet. No stairwells. No hiding spots. Just empty storefronts and locked gates.
The rational part of Derek's brain offered explanations: a mannequin he hadn't noticed, moved by his own flashlight beam. A trick of shadows. Exhaustion playing games with his perception.
The other part of his brain—the part that had made his ancestors survive long enough to have children—screamed at him to leave. Right now. Don't finish the round, don't clock out, just go.
He compromised by picking up his pace.
Checkpoint 19. Checkpoint 20. The food court again, lights flickering on as he approached and off as he passed. The escalators groaning under some phantom weight.
He was almost back to the booth when he saw the door.
It shouldn't have been open. Derek knew every door in this mall by now—which ones were sealed, which ones were locked, which ones had been welded shut by the demolition prep team. This door, the one that led to the basement, was always locked. Always.
Tonight, it was open.
Just a crack. Just enough to show darkness beyond.
And from that darkness, Derek heard something that made his blood turn to ice.
Singing.
A child's voice, high and clear, singing a song he almost recognized. Something about rain. Something about sunshine. The melody drifted up from the flooded basement like smoke from a fire.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine..."
Derek backed away from the door.
His radio crackled: "Unit 7, come in. This is dispatch."
He fumbled with the radio, eyes still on the basement door. "This is Unit 7. Go ahead."
"Unit 7, we're showing a checkpoint alarm in your sector. Checkpoint 28. Can you investigate?"
Derek checked his scanner. He hadn't been to checkpoint 28 yet—it was in the east wing, near the old department store.
"I haven't reached 28 yet," he said.
"The alarm shows someone scanned it. Two minutes ago."
Derek's scanner showed exactly three scans tonight. All by him. All logged with his ID.
"That's... that's not possible," he said. "I'm the only one here."
The singing from the basement got louder.
"You make me happy when skies are gray..."
"Dispatch, I need backup," Derek said. "I've got—"
The lights went out.
[CHAPTER 5]
Not just the emergency lights. Everything. The mall was designed with backup generators, battery systems, redundancies on redundancies. None of it mattered. The darkness that fell was absolute.
Derek's flashlight was still working. That was something. The small beam cut through the black, illuminating a circle of tile floor around his feet.
"Dispatch?" Static. "Dispatch, come in."
The radio was dead too.
He turned slowly, sweeping the light across the corridor. The basement door was still there. Still open. But the singing had stopped.
Twenty-two dollars an hour, Derek thought. Not worth it. Not even close.
He started moving toward the booth. Toward his phone, his car keys, his way out of this nightmare. The flashlight beam bounced with each step, creating dancing shadows on every surface.
The mannequins were watching him now. He was sure of it. Their eyeless faces turned to follow his light, their frozen poses somehow different than they'd been before.
He passed the jewelry kiosk and something glinted in his peripheral vision. He looked—just for a second—and saw a ring that hadn't been there before. A simple gold band, sitting on the dusty glass case like someone had just set it down.
Keep moving. Don't stop. Don't look.
The food court was ahead. He could see the edges of tables in his flashlight beam, the shapes of chairs. And something else.
Someone sitting in one of the chairs.
Derek stopped. The figure was thirty feet away, seated at a table like a customer waiting for food that would never come. It wasn't moving. It wasn't looking at him.
But it was there.
"Who are you?" Derek's voice came out as a whisper.
The figure raised one hand and pointed. Not at Derek. Past him. Behind him.
He didn't want to turn around. Every survival instinct he had screamed at him not to turn around. But he was already turning, the flashlight swinging in an arc—
There was no one behind him.
When he turned back to the food court, the figure at the table was gone.
[CHAPTER 6]
Derek ran.
He didn't care about checkpoints anymore, didn't care about the job, didn't care about anything except getting to the exit. His boots pounded on the tile, the flashlight beam swinging wildly, illuminating nightmare glimpses of the mall around him.
Mannequins that had definitely moved. Storefronts with handprints on the inside of the glass. The fountain, which was somehow full of water again—dark water that rippled as if something had just passed through.
The booth was ahead. He could see it, a small island of familiarity in this ocean of wrong.
He was twenty feet away when the lights came back on.
All of them. Every fluorescent panel in the entire mall, blazing to life at once. The sudden brightness was blinding after so long in darkness. Derek threw up an arm, stumbled, and crashed into a bench.
When his vision cleared, he saw them.
Dozens of figures standing throughout the mall. On every floor. In every corridor. Some were in store entrances. Some were on the escalators. Some were pressed against the glass of empty storefronts, staring out at him.
They weren't moving. None of them were moving.
But they were all looking at him.
Derek scrambled to his feet and made for the booth. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely key in the code. The door opened, he threw himself inside, and he slammed it shut behind him.
Through the window, he could see them. Still standing. Still watching.
His phone was on the desk. He grabbed it, dialed 911.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"I'm at the Westfield Galleria on Route 9. There are—there are people in the building. Dozens of them. I don't know how they got in—"
"Sir, the Westfield Galleria has been closed for three years."
"I know! I'm the security guard! I'm telling you there are people—"
He looked up at the window.
The figures were gone.
The mall was empty again. Just dead stores and dusty floors and lights that were now, somehow, working perfectly.
"Sir? Are you still there?"
"I... yeah. I'm here." He stared at the empty corridors. "False alarm. I'm sorry. False alarm."
He hung up.
[CHAPTER 7]
Derek should have left. He knew that. Anyone sane would have walked out the door and never looked back.
But somewhere between terror and exhaustion, something else had taken hold of him. Curiosity, maybe. Or stubbornness. Or the simple fact that if he left now, he'd never know what he'd actually seen.
His phone showed 4:17 AM. Less than four hours until his shift ended. Four hours to either figure this out or confirm he was losing his mind.
He pulled up the security camera feeds.
The mall had cameras everywhere—a relic from its operating days. Most didn't work anymore, but a few still recorded. Derek scrolled through the feeds, looking for anything that might explain what he'd seen.
Camera 7: Food court. Empty. Camera 12: Main entrance. Empty. Camera 23: Third floor corridor. Empty.
He was about to give up when he checked Camera 31: Basement access.
The door was still open. And standing in the doorway, illuminated by the emergency light that shouldn't be working, was a child.
A little girl, maybe six or seven years old. She was wearing a dress that looked like it was from decades ago—frilly and formal, the kind of thing you'd see in old photographs. Her hair was dark and wet, hanging in strings around her pale face.
She was looking directly at the camera.
As Derek watched, she raised one hand and beckoned.
Come down.
The feed went to static.
[CHAPTER 8]
The basement stairs were flooded. Derek stood at the top, flashlight pointed down into the black water that began at the fifth step and continued into darkness.
His supervisor's words echoed: Don't go into the basement. Flooded. Structurally unsound.
The little girl's face echoed louder.
"This is stupid," Derek said out loud. "This is the dumbest thing I've ever done."
He took the first step down. The water was cold—much colder than it should have been for a space that had been sealed for years. By the third step, it was up to his ankles. By the fifth, his knees.
The flashlight beam cut through the dark water, illuminating nothing but murky depths. The basement of the Westfield Galleria had been storage and mechanical—HVAC systems, electrical panels, loading docks. Now it was an underground lake.
He was chest-deep when he heard the singing again.
"You'll never know, dear, how much I love you..."
It was coming from ahead. From somewhere in the flooded darkness.
"Who are you?" Derek called. "How long have you been down here?"
The singing stopped.
And then, from everywhere at once, voices. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
"We've always been here." "The mall keeps us." "Come swim with us." "Come stay with us." "The water is warm." "The water is home."
Derek started backing up, but his feet couldn't find the stairs. The floor had... moved. Or he had moved. Or the basement had changed around him.
The water was up to his chin now.
"You opened the door," the voices said in chorus. "You came down. You're ours now. You're with us now. The mall keeps what the mall takes."
Something brushed against his leg underwater. Something cold and small and grasping.
Derek screamed and thrashed toward where the stairs should be. His flashlight slipped from his grip and sank, its beam spinning as it descended into depths that shouldn't exist. The basement was maybe ten feet deep. The light fell for much, much longer than that.
He found the stairs by accident—his hand catching a railing, his feet finding purchase on solid steps. He hauled himself up, water streaming from his clothes, his lungs burning.
Behind him, the water churned.
[CHAPTER 9]
Dawn came like a fever breaking.
Derek sat in the security booth, wrapped in a shock blanket he'd found in the first aid kit, watching the sun rise through the mall's skylights. The morning light made everything look ordinary again—just an empty building, just dusty stores, just shadows that were only shadows.
His replacement showed up at 7:55 AM. A heavyset guy named Marcus who did the day shift, walking the same corridors, scanning the same checkpoints.
"Rough night?" Marcus asked, eyeing Derek's still-damp clothes, his pale face, his shaking hands.
"Pipe burst in the basement," Derek heard himself say. "Got pretty wet checking it out."
"Basement?" Marcus frowned. "We're not supposed to go down there."
"Yeah. I know that now."
He clocked out. He walked to his car. He drove home as the sun turned the morning gold and beautiful and absolutely ordinary.
He should have told someone. He should have quit. He should have done a lot of things.
Instead, he went home, slept for twelve hours, and came back the next night.
[CHAPTER 10 - FINALE]
They found Derek Okonkwo three weeks later.
The demolition crew had started early, and the foreman was first through the basement door—the door that someone had welded shut again, the door that showed no signs of recent opening despite the security logs showing it had been accessed seventeen times in the past month.
The basement was dry. That was the first strange thing. The flooding that had plagued the space for years had somehow drained, leaving only water stains on the walls and a thick layer of silt on the floor.
Derek was sitting in a chair in the center of the basement. His eyes were open but saw nothing. His hands were folded in his lap like a man waiting for an appointment. He'd been missing for eighteen days.
His security badge was still clipped to his shirt. His checkpoint scanner was in his pocket, showing 847 scans—all from the same checkpoint, the one at the basement entrance, logged every four minutes for eighteen days straight.
The coroner couldn't determine cause of death. There was no trauma, no poison, no disease. His heart had simply stopped, as if someone had turned off a switch. The only unusual finding was the water in his lungs—freshwater, ice-cold, with traces of chlorine and algae consistent with old municipal supply lines.
He'd drowned. Somehow, impossibly, in a dry basement, he'd drowned.
The demolition continued as scheduled. The Westfield Galleria came down in a matter of weeks, reduced to rubble and rebar and dust. The lot sat empty for months, then years. Developers came and went, plans were drawn and discarded.
No one could quite say why, but no one seemed to want to build there.
Some places remember. Some places keep what they take.
And sometimes, late at night, people driving past the empty lot would swear they heard singing. A child's voice, high and clear, drifting up from somewhere underground.
"Please don't take my sunshine away..."
THE END