‘Condos of the Damned’

At some point, amidst the drudgery of a life defined by the hours of 9am to 5pm, ill-fitting suits and lavish lunches on the company credit card, the middle-aged East Coast dweller sweeps a hand through his thinning hair, wipes up the rope of drool that has pooled onto the brochure he’s been pouring over, and makes the executive decision that many before him — and after him — will make.

“Honey, we’re moving to Florida.”

Hello, sea-view condo. Sayo-fucking-nara Northeast winters.

That’s how I always thought it went anyhow. My grandparents, their parents, my best friend’s grandparents and a myriad other folks, white of hair and carrying a hefty share of the national wealth in their back pocket, all grabbed themselves a cushty condominium on the white sands of Destin, blowing New York state a half-hearted kiss on their way to business class.

I sound bitter, I know, and that’s largely because I wear my bitterness on my sleeve like a bad tattoo — one that says ‘fuck of’ in stupid block lettering, or something — every time I stare down the emotionless gun barrel stare of one of the many over 65s I’ve been serving shrimp cocktail and screwdrivers to since September. Of course, this bitterness tends to be expressed in no uncertain terms once I carry myself out of the restaurant with a forced smile and into the welcoming anarchy of the kitchen, but it’s almost slipped out a handful of times on the restaurant floor in the form of a clenched fist or furrowed brow.

This is where deferred entry to college has got me. Deferred entry to college on Long Island, sure, but I’m starting to think that even getting fucked up on Long Island is preferable to the loneliness of Ocean Vista Court and its surroundings. Located on the jagged but suspiciously clean toenail of Destin, my grandparents’ retiree haven feels like a model city, like if you look too hard, you’ll find out that all the shops are fake, complete with plastic food and monopoly money in the cash registers, and animated mannequins in place of people, complete with wires and cogs for guts and viscous white gunk for blood, like Alien.

What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that I don’t feel at home here, and I don’t have friends the way I do up in Saratoga. It’s not like I’m a square peg in a round hole, not like I’m a dark and disturbed misfit who no one understands; quite the contrary. I see people wandering around who I might get on with, in theory: kids playing beach volleyball, teens milling about the streets and strip malls, but all they do is stare with an expression somewhere between boredom and judgement, as if their nostrils are stinging from the scent of “outsider” that I like to think I’ve adequately masked by now with an off-gold tan and too much cologne. I get the most conversation from the kitchen staff at work; none of whom I’ll ever know closely enough to consider “friends” before I finally step on a plane back to New York, thank God, but it’s something to stave off the effects of this freakshow of mundanity. A place so boring that it’s creepy. What a concept.

I leave the spotless white tile halls of Ocean Vista Court a few minutes after 11am, calling out a swift goodbye to my grandparents, who sit idly on the veranda and don’t turn around at the sound of my voice, and don’t respond. There will be food when I come back in the evening; maybe Salisbury steak or something, stuffed into a tinted blue Tupperware container and adorned with a one-word instruction written in jittery handwriting on a post it note, reading “Microwave”. I’ll tear through a burger in the back of the kitchen once my shift’s over though, like usual, and I’ll manage a couple of bites of dry steak or plasticky mac and cheese once I’m back in the condo, then cast it into a trash bag grave. I know, I know, horrible manners, but trust me when I say you’d do the same. My grandparents seem to be none the wiser, and they aren’t much for conversation.

It’s the end of June, which gives me roughly a month and a half before I run into the wide-open embrace of college life, far from this airbrushed paradise.

I promise you, Long Island, that I shall kiss the asphalt of your poorly maintained roads as an apology for blowing you off.

The walk from Ocean Vista Court to Kathy B’s Bar and Grill (what, did you think I worked in a Michelin starred restaurant?) is a short one, involving a couple games of crosswalk chicken if I’m feeling impatient, and then it’s a heel drag across the parking lot and into the shadow of the restaurant’s gaudy typography. I wander in and eyeball the “celebrity wall” that’s adorned with a staggering two photos, blown up to A2 size, depicting a pixelated Rudy Giuliani and Jeff Foxworthy posing awkwardly next to a server. Chris, the bar manager, grunts a semblance of a “hello” before returning to stocking mason jars with dehydrated fruit. I assume he enjoys being a mixologist, or whatever the title is. We’ve never discussed it. I punch in, and then I’m out on the restaurant floor as a fistful of Saturday regulars saunter in.

Like I said, no one here is particularly bubbly, but I can always tell when we’ve seated a resident of one of the nearby condos, because they all wear this look like they’re expecting bad news. Tourists and out-of-towners in the area sit and murmur to one another quietly, discussing family or politics or tutting about the vape shop two doors down, but tenants of Ocean Vista Court, Sanibel Towers and the like? Well, they may as well be dead. Catatonic, anyway.

I’ve been here long enough to turn in a stack of evidence for my little hypothesis. Any time I’ve been faced with a near-silent pair of patrons, chances are I’ve seen them wandering the halls of Ocean Vista Court or passing in and out of the other condos in the area.
Mr. Wainwright’s the first of the Ocean Vista crowd to come in for lunch on this particular Saturday, clad in his usual outfit; white shorts, short-sleeved blue polo, deck shoes. I watch as he pulls out a seat at the table in the right-hand corner of the restaurant, the one facing away from the window, like always. From the close-to a years’ worth of Saturdays I’d been serving him, he’d always amble in with Mrs. Wainwright in tow. Sally, I think her name is.

I wait, wait and wait some more, expecting her to appear at the entrance of the restaurant in the floral dress and extravagant old lady shades she always wears, but she doesn’t show. Mr. Wainwright just stares ahead, doesn’t look around expectantly. Like always, he’s at one of my tables, so I head over, notepad and pen in hand.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Wainwright. Can I get you some water for the table?” Wise to his indifference, I don’t make small talk about the glaring lack of Mrs. Wainwright.

Almost immediately, he launches into his order, retaining a monotone that matches his eyes.

“The ribeye steak, and a Mahi sandwich. Side of fries and onion rings. Glass of Coors.”

Well, shit. Mr. Wainwright’s just ordered a spread that’s enough to make his wife’s eyes pop out of her skull. Having taken their order nearly every Saturday since September, I’ve witnessed a multitude of glowers and grunts of disapproval from Sally Wainwright as her husband tried to order himself a blood pressure-spiking meal, only to resign himself to a shrimp scampi. Now I kind of have to ask.

“The Mahi sandwich…is that for Mrs. Wainwright?” Asking is like passing a kidney stone.

Mr. Wainwright just looks ahead, doesn’t answer.

“Alright. Ribeye steak, Mahi sandwich…side of fries, onion rings. Glass of Coors. You got it, Mr. Wainwright. Anything else I can get you?”

“Water,” he practically growls.

“Yes sir.” I head swiftly towards the bar, grab a freshly iced pitcher of water that Chris has prepared, and loop back, place it in the middle of the table with a kind of half-bow.

I tend to some other tables, picking up a bit of slack in the absence of one of the other servers. I’m not exactly distracted, but I catch myself glancing at Mr. Wainwright every couple minutes or so, expecting to see a change in his blank expression, expecting to see that Mrs. Wainwright has suddenly materialised, expecting… I don’t know, really.

He still doesn’t look up when Chris brings his tall glass of beer over, or when Ally runs his food out from the kitchen. I catch a glimpse of him as he digs into the bulky steak, savouring the mouth-watering amalgamation of medium rare meat and garlic rosemary compound butter. Not to mention that the lack of judgement is probably refreshing.

Observing his five-foot-six frame tucking into two meals at once is quite something. To this carefree gentleman, the only thing that exists right now is a decadent steak, sides fried to perfection, a hefty fish sandwich, and an ice-cold beer to wash it down. Damn. Roll on retirement, I guess.

I must have been staring a little too long, because all of a sudden, he motions for me to come over to him, mouth swelling with Mahi and half an onion ring, steak knife clutched in one greasy hand. I walk over, back straight.

“Key lime pie. New York cheesecake. Americano.”

“You want that for right now… or…?” Another painful exchange.

Once again, no response. Just a doll-eyed stare.

“Coming right up, sir!” I chirp with faux enthusiasm, chicken scratching his order onto my notepad. He’s soaking up an indulgent meal while he can. I can’t really blame him.

After a ten-minute wait, two generous slices of key lime pie and New York cheesecake are delivered to Mr. Wainwright’s corner table. He’s still devouring his combination of entrees; a quarter of his Mahi sandwich in one hand and a fork in the other, skewering the last bite of ribeye. It’s an enviable spread of food. It’s almost like…like a final meal request? Y’know. Like some extravagant culinary mishmash someone on death row would ask for.

As I glide by to clear the table some fifteen minutes later, the banquet is demolished, a sprinkling of biscuit crumbs and fried batter the only evidence that any food had been there to begin with. Knowing Mr. Wainwright’s habits — mostly — I return swiftly with the check, setting it down without a word and making silent bets with myself on whether or not today will be the day that he tips the lowest he’s ever tipped.

For the first time since he came in, he looks over his shoulder, out across the sun smothered parking lot. From my spot at the host stand, I squint, seeing if I can make out a Sally Wainwright shaped figure hovering impatiently on the curb or the asphalt, but she’s not there. He is looking at something, though.

There’s an SUV parked about twenty feet from the restaurant. Black Chevy Tahoe. At the open driver’s door is a man in custodian’s coveralls, standing like a nightclub bouncer and wearing a poker face to match. Any semblance of contentment, amusement, irritation or anger is obscured by a pair of wraparound shades, but one thing is clear enough: he’s looking right at Mr. Wainwright, and Mr. Wainwright’s looking right at him.

The passenger door opens, and another imposing man in a custodian’s outfit steps out, sporting the same wraparound shades and a crewcut. The two buddy cop janitors stand rigid and stare wordlessly at Mr. Wainwright. The one by the passenger door nods solemnly.

Mr. Wainwright turns back to the table and slips some money into the check-holder. I can’t guess how much it is, but I’m at least slightly surprised that he’s pulled out more than one bill. The peaceful expression he wore as he consumed his meal is gone now, and he’s defaulted back into his vacant stare.

Except, as he stands up and tucks in his chair, I swear I see two little beading droplets of water forming in his eyes. He doesn’t look back out at the parking lot as he wanders to the door, just keeps his head down. Some of the other old couples in the place cast their eyes to him, betraying glimmers of…pity? The custodians two don’t move until Mr. Wainwright is next to the left-most passenger door at the rear of the car, which Mr. Crewcut opens for him. The seventy-something steps inside, and the two men slink back into the tinted depths of the SUV.

It pulls away, and I watch it crawl out of the parking lot like a big black bug. Instead of taking off down the street to the beach, or the country club, or wherever else the elderly Florida transplants like to frequent, it takes a left turn across the street, right back to Ocean Vista Court’s parking lot.

Okay, so he booked himself a taxi. Just to get across the street, in a vehicle with no branding, occupied by not one, but two stone-faced men dressed in fucking janitorial get-up, who were clearly waiting for him, not the other way around. Sure, he booked the world’s most bizarre taxi service to take him roughly three-hundred feet back to his condo. I’m sure that’s what’s happening here.

I walk over to the now unoccupied table to wipe it down and grab the check-holder, and my jaw nearly unhinges itself when I see that Mr. Wainwright has left a two-hundred-dollar tip. Ever the traditionalist, Mr. Wainwright was always the one to foot the bill when he and his wife would eat here, and was also the one to dole out the tips. A few weeks back, he coughed up a record-breaking — and bank breaking, no doubt — tip of seventy-five cents. His lowest ever. I’m not one to chase any customer down the street for a bad tip, but I might just have power-walked for that transgression if it wouldn’t have created a spectacle.

But here I am now, holding a two-hundred-dollar tip issued by the Duke of Stingy himself, after he devoured a spread of food fit for a king. Or a convict hours away from facing the electric chair.

I’m a robot for the rest of the day, even through the evening service. I’m sort of half there, taking orders and punching them through to the kitchen, but mostly keeping an eye on the elderly folks, wondering if one will hobble in without their spouse, order half of our stock of seafood, or get scooped up by two men in a Chevy Tahoe on their way out. Nothing like that happens.

The double cheeseburger that I wolf down by the dish pit at 10pm — Kathy B’s Big Cheese, if you will — is probably delicious, but I can’t taste a thing. I feel nervous, numb, like the feeling you’d get when you were scolded by a teacher you liked as a kid. I’m consumed by what I saw, and I don’t know if that’s because it really was that weird, or if it’s a testament to how stale life gets in this place. By now, I’ve run through just about every scenario my mind can sketch; some taxi service I’ve never heard of, CIA operatives, some kind of…sex thing? Who knows what people here are into.

It still bothers me as I walk back to the condo; bothers me more, actually. The parking lot is empty save for a few cars dotted here and there, but I make sure to scrutinise each one just to make sure there’s no expressionless, boilersuit wearing spook lurking behind the wheel. My nerves are at their most electric as I approach Ocean Vista Court, and my eyes settle on the sea of Kias and Subarus, trying to pick out the sleek black Chevy that I am convinced is settled snugly amongst them, its driver and passenger lying in wait to nab the nosy server who couldn’t stop gawking at them earlier.

One-hundred steps later, though, I’m at the door, and no rough hands are seizing my skinny arms or pulling a burlap sack over my head. No footsteps thunder up behind me. I’m safe.

The lobby’s veterinary clinic white isn’t as headache inducing as it is during the day, and most of the overhead lights have been mercifully shut off, leaving much of the illumination to the rows of lamps that line the walls. Rubbing my eyes, I prepare myself to give a vigorous, rehearsed nod to Nathaniel, the burly night shift security guard, who…isn’t there. Huh.

The one constant after every evening shift was Nathaniel, reclining at the front desk on the verge of sleep, or wired on energy drinks, I could never tell which. We seldom exchanged words, but a nod of the head was enough for the both of us. In a place like this, such a simple, friendly gesture is a precious commodity, and I’m missing it a whole lot right about now. Everyone takes bathroom breaks though, I suppose.

I take the elevator up to the ninth floor, the ever so slight hum of the hydraulics making for a suitable break from the lonely quiet of the sleeping condominium. Some muzak would be welcome, that being said.

Unlike the soothing glow of the lobby, the squeaky-clean hallway is bathed in obnoxious white light that explodes from the overhead fixtures, as it does at all hours of the day. Having spent the last ten hours in the ambient lighting of Kathy B’s, it’s an eye sore to say the least, but I’m only twenty paces from my grandparents’ front door. Time to pretend to eat whatever leftovers are waiting on the counter, and make a call back home — by which I mean a FaceTime session with Ryan Allister, who will be an enviable level of stoned, and reclining in the comfort of a dorm room that I decided to forsake last year. A wiser man than I.

I’m five feet from the door when the squawk of a hinge reaches my ear. Being the misanthrope I am, I’m in no mood to acknowledge whoever this may be, but my curiosity pulls my attention from excavating my keys when two pronounced footfalls drum loudly on the tile floor. My head snaps in the direction of the sound almost involuntarily, and then I’m right back on the paranoia train.

Standing in front of what I know to be Room 201, rigid and golem-like, is a man dressed in a terribly familiar looking boilersuit. It’s not either of the two men from the parking lot — this one is wearing a greasy salt and pepper skullet — but that muted expression and those grey custodian’s overalls are cut and paste.

I freeze, cringing as the jangle of my keys is thrown down the reverberant hallway for anyone and everyone to hear. The man turns his head ninety-degrees, and his unshielded eyes meet my deer on the railroad tracks stare. The overhead lights do nothing to dig an ounce of feeling out of those eyes, simply pass through them like glass panes. His arms rest at his sides, stiff as the rest of his mannequin stature. My eyes drop to his thick-soled boots, and I wait for him to open his mouth, march towards me, whatever the hell he’s going to do. Fuck. I won’t make it into the condo before he gets to me; I mean, he’ll be breathing down my neck and I’ll still be fumbling with my fucking key, then he’ll…he’ll…

He gives me a slow nod. The kind Nathaniel might give me as he peers over a Bernard Cornwell paperback. I can’t find it in me to swallow — what with my heart having found its way into my throat and all — so I stand there gormlessly for the most agonising five seconds of my life. Then, slow as he did, I return the nod. Just a brief exchange of pleasantries. That’s all. A silent “good evening” between me and a janitor I’ve never seen before.

He turns and walks down the hallway, carrying himself as if he really is an animated department store mannequin. My eyes are fixed to him until the door to the stairwell closes behind him. The silence rushes back like seawater into the hull of a sinking boat, and then I’m jamming my key into the lock and practically throwing myself onto the cool tile floor.

The navy hue of the July dusk spills in through the doors to the veranda like it always does, rendering the shapes of chairs and household ornaments obscure and half-formed. My eyes rest on the near amorphous contour of the big white armchair in the furthest corner of the living room, and for ten long seconds, I’m sure there’s another brute in custodian’s garb reclining in it, just savouring the tension before leaning forward with a big “gotcha now” smirk on his face. Once I’m eighty-percent sure there’s no one there, I scramble to my feet and throw the dimmer switch all the way clockwise to let the hideous ceiling lights weed out any intruders. Nothing.

Letting out a sigh, I head towards the kitchen and prepare myself for the impending guilt of wasting the food that my grandparents will have left out for me before retiring to bed. I’m almost stopped in my tracks when I see that the marbled granite countertop is completely clear. No Tupperware stuffed with near-tasteless leftovers. No one word note.

A stinging odour of bleach hangs in the air, growing stronger as I wander over the fridge to check if the leftovers have been stored there. The door swings open, and out spills the gentle LED glow, revealing completely spotless, empty shelves. Huh.

The fridge looks brand new, like it had been carted in here on a hand truck moments before I arrived. I close the fridge and wander to the veranda doors, the nauseating stink of bleach still tailing me as I walk, not weakening or dissipating. Most condo owners here paid for cleaners, and my grandparents were no different, but I’d never known their cleaner to drown the place in a bathtub’s worth of chemicals. It smelled like someone had been sterilising a crime scene.

I open the veranda doors and call out into the tiny space for my grandparents, as though they’ll suddenly materialise in those ugly grey chairs, but of course, they aren’t there.

Wandering back inside, I begin to trudge down the hallway to my room. The apartment is silent like usual, but it’s that kind of ringing, heavy silence that tells you that no one is home. The bleach smell persists all the way down the hall, strong as it had been in the kitchen and the living room, yielding only to the all-consuming lemon air freshener scent that spills from my room as I crack open the door.

What the fuck, I mouth over and over.

The double bed in my guest abode is neatly made up as if by the hands of a veteran hotel housekeeper, and my suitcase and rucksack are perched on its edge like concerned parents preparing for an intervention. To my left, I find the source of the citrus aroma; an ovular air freshener, sitting atop the dresser.

Still murmuring “whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck” at a pace to rival an auctioneer, I swipe up the piece of paper that has been clearly laid out for me to see on top of my suitcase.

It’s a printed booking confirmation for a flight. Spirit Airlines. Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport. 5:15am tomorrow. My name is on it, and stuck to the top is a lime green post-it note covered with my grandmother’s familiar arthritic scrawl.

“Go home. You are not meant to be here.”

My heart is beating in my ears, and a hot flush cascades from the nape of my neck to the small of my back. Whatever this is, it isn’t funny. If it’s even meant to be funny.

Without giving myself even a moment to prepare for what might end up being the longest exchange of words I’ll ever have with my grandparents, I march down the hallway and throw open their door.

Their room is a catalogue perfect showroom, just like mine. The bed linen is creaseless, the duvet tucked into the frame. The slippers that were once a permanent fixture at the foot of the Olympic queen are gone, and even the irritating, ceaseless drip of the showerhead in their ensuite is noticeably absent. My grandparents are also noticeably absent.

I’m back out in the hallway less than ten seconds after I enter the bedroom, unwilling to let the horrible silence cling to me any longer. Five minutes rush by in thirty seconds; I’m grabbing my bags, checking the veranda again to see if my grandparents have suddenly appeared, checking the living room, checking closets, cupboards, and then finally, I’m at back at the apartment door, 911 locked and loaded on my phone so I can vomit a choked up missing person’s report at the operator. My shoulders are heaving, bile is rising up and lapping at the back of my throat, my quaking thumb is hovering over the phone, and then, just as I’m about to home in on the call button, there’s a flurry of noise outside.

A door slams, and a series of heavy, slow, rhythmic footfalls resound in unison, as though produced by a marching military troop. My eye shoots up to the peephole, and I spy two faux custodians wandering past, staring straight ahead, their expressions dull. Shuffling in tow is an elderly gentleman I recognise all too well. It’s Mr. Wainwright, still dressed like he’s about to hit the beach. Taking up the rear are two more burly custodians, their attire and visage identical. It’s the same men who drove Mr. Wainwright away in that black SUV.

What the fuck is going on?

As if responding to my unspoken panic, the fish-eye view of the peephole is suddenly filled with the clean shaven, TV cop mug of the crewcut-wearing custodian. Instinctively, I recoil, making just enough noise that he’s definitely heard me. His breathing, gravelly and laboured, wafts underneath the door like the panting of a slavering hound.

“Go…home. You…are not…meant…to…be…here.”

I hit call, and it’s barely rung twice before the door nearly comes flying off its hinges.

Oh man why the FUCK didn’t you take it off speaker you-

The custodian stomps forward in his steel-tipped combat boots, advancing towards me. This is it. Curb stomped at nineteen years old in a quaint little beachside condominium. If only I had decided to go to college a year ago this wouldn’t’ve-

The seven-foot man snatches the phone from my hand and glares at the numbers I’ve punched into the keypad. It’s still ringing, and every ring is like the sharp, alien chitter of an insect, going on and on, until finally, a sombre female voice pipes up through the speaker.

“Okaloosa County 911, what’s your emergency?”

A momentary flood of relief. There is someone who can help me after all, if I can just get away from this golem that stands before me.

Suddenly, he speaks into the receiver, his words coming out as though he’s relaying a coded message in pig latin or something.

“Can’t…undo…what has…always…been done.”

A sharp gasp punches through the speaker. A gasp of realisation, as if the 911 operator knows the man’s voice, or knows exactly what’s being said, or… I don’t know.

Slowly, with a slight tremor in her voice, she repeats it back to him. It sounds like a greeting shared between religious acolytes. There’s a kind of finality to it, like defeated acceptance.

“Can’t undo what has always been done.”

That’s it. The operator hangs up, and the custodian looks at me through his wraparound shades.

“Should…not have…pried. Now…behold…what’s to…come.”

In a motion both violent and confusingly gentle, he steps forward, raises one giant arm, and strikes me across the face. My heart ceases drumming a speed metal song in my ears, and my world goes black.

I awake in the kind of choking humidity that makes you feel like you’re breathing soup. Like a rainforest, like the hottest Floridian day bundled up in a parka and thrown into a sauna. I’m at the back of a long, wide room, my back resting uncomfortably against a wall. It’s a basement.

Yes, somehow, it’s a basement, though it’s bigger than any I’ve ever seen. It’s like an empty multi-storey without the pillars. The floor, walls and ceiling are plain old cement. The whole thing is lit with an ugly hue of unnatural red light like a neon exit sign, though I can’t see where it’s coming from; there’s no fixtures, no lamps to be seen. It hangs in the air, a hazy crimson mist. As my eyes adjust, I gradually gain an awareness of what’s around me. I sit up painfully, noting that thankfully, I haven’t been restrained at all.

In the middle of the room are fifty or so custodians, standing shoulder to shoulder in what seems to be some kind of military formation, like a phalanx or something. Their backs are to me, and they’re completely unmoving, staring straight ahead at a set of double doors at the other end of the vast room. Even now, having been knocked out and then dragged down here into this concrete box with a rainforest climate, only one thought reigns in my mind.

Who the fuck builds a basement in Florida?

I become aware of a low humming sound. Bassey, like the purring of a generator. I look up to see if it’s bleeding through a vent or something or if there’s a stereo system somewhere, but then it occurs to me that the noise is coming from the custodians. They’re…singing? Groaning? I don’t know my Gregorian chants so well, but it’s somewhere between a rumbling water pipe and a religious canticle. Some ten feet to my left, a single door opens, and more custodians begin to file in one by one, slowly joining the unit in the centre of the room.

The moaning swells in volume, and just as it plateaus, the formation splits down the middle like the parting of the red sea. Standing sentinel on my left are two more custodians, apparently guarding the single door, staring straight ahead like the Queen’s guard. The one closest to me turns to look at me, and while I’m too groggy to really react, my breath catches in my throat. I recognise the man; a bald fade haircut, dark skin, tall. It’s Nathaniel, the night security guard. I guess I should be afraid of getting another palm to the face right now, but the look in his eye is somewhere between apologetic and pitying. Apologetic and pitying for what, exactly?

The door opens once more, and two people — definitely not custodians — are ushered into the room. Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright, still dressed up like they’re about to hit the country club, looking forlorn but somehow expectant too, like they know what’s happening.

Shit, maybe they do know.

Their presence catalyses a sudden and violent reaction from something behind the double doors on the far side of the room. Howling. Like the scream of an eagle smothered by the crashing of Atlantic waves. It’s louder than the custodian’s song, which has now evolved into chanting and gravelly babbling, as if they’re one big rowdy, drunken church choir. The double doors tremble as something slams into them, and another banshee shriek rings out, hardly muffled by the closed doors.

With two custodians taking up the rear and two more at the front, the Wainwrights are led down the claustrophobic path between the janitorial congregation, the heads of the crowd following them as the chant-babble-dirge-scream-song becomes even rowdier. If I had to imagine the atmosphere in the gladiator rings of ancient Rome, this would be it. It was like they were baying for blood.

The two custodians at the front walk forward like legionaries and take hold of opposite ends of a large metal bar that braces the door. It looks like it’s about to buckle under the sheer force of whatever’s behind it, whatever’s slamming into it, but it holds fast, somehow. Conducting themselves as stoically as ever, the two men lift the bar, hurriedly discard it by the wall, and re-join the congregation. The resigned old-timers are moved up to the front, not five feet from the doors.

Any and all sound is momentarily sucked out of the room as the Wainwrights stand rigid before the double doors, which, in this darkroom scarlet, have become something much more than a dingy storage room entrance.

They fly open with a ferocity that should rend them from their hinges, and the mad choral screams of the custodian congregation begin again. They do away with their stoic pretence and let fucking loose, pushing each other and flailing and jumping like they’re throwing down at a thrash show with a five-band bill. The thing in the vacuum beyond the door screams its horrible, strangled gull shriek, and suddenly that inky black void isn’t so inky black anymore.

With each scream comes an explosion of colour: pinks, violets, greens, blues, like bold flashes of lightning threatening to slice open the clouds that struggle to conceal them. Each lasts for a fraction longer than the one before, allowing me to not so mercifully behold more and more details.

Protruding from the kaleidoscopic vapour are what appear to be hundreds of tangled arms, all impossibly thin and sickly, clawing outward, but not clawing at Mr and Mrs Wainwright. No, they’re clawing to get out, to get unstuck from whatever this place is beyond that doorway, something made all the clearer by agonised cries and moans that follow in the wake of that inhuman squealing.

Another flash of colour reveals a new image, grainy and misty like a silent film; a procession of emaciated figures, shuffling in twos through an alien landscape, eyes cast to the ground, their anguished wails surging in volume the longer I look.

*Flash* once more. More skeletal human shapes, dragging their heels as they are forced by giant men in druidic cloaks to descend into a vast, foul lake of viscous black fluid.

This is hell. This is a slideshow of hell. A nice preview of damnation, right at the gates.

The light show ceases as if an unseen technician is readying a new cue, and then something actually erupts through the doorway, ripping a hole right through the veil, so to speak. Pockets of light pop and flash like phosphorescent firecrackers all around the room, providing strobe light glimpses of something fleshy and cylindrical protruding through the door; a mouth like a deep black silo lined with hundreds of clacking teeth and tendril like protrusions that twist violently and wetly. The custodians holler and howl and jump about the room in a near simian display of apparent praise for the thing.

The Wainwrights, powerless to prevent their fate, are pulled into the creature’s endless gullet like it’s one of those fairground G-force rides. It screams in what I can only define as overwhelming pleasure as they are ensnared by its teeth and tentacles, and just when I really think that all of this shit is truly going to send me over the edge, I feel rough hands pulling me to my feet and hurrying me to the single door. It’s Nathaniel. Saving my ass.

None of the other custodians notice that I’m being hurried out; they’re all too busy moshing, even the other man who was with Nathaniel. We’re in a stairwell, hurrying upwards past what seems to be hundreds of pairs of people. Fleeting glances tell me that they’re all residents of Ocean Vista Court, but not one of them looks at us, or pleads, or even reacts. About halfway up — I assume it’s halfway up — I pass by two people I recognise. My grandparents. My eyes meet theirs, and for a second, I find myself hoping that there will be some kind of emotion or recognition conveyed, but there’s just that same “nobody’s home” expression that all the residents here seem to share between them. I don’t even get a moment to reach for a thread of sentimentality; Nathaniel just keeps pushing me along, up further and further, further and —

How deep does this basement go? Can’t they at least have dry heat in hell?

After what feels like hours of climbing, we erupt into a familiar room; one filled with eyesore light and mercifully, air conditioning. It’s the lobby, standing silent as ever.

I barely have a moment to catch my breath before Nathaniel thrusts my bags into my arms, his eyes wide, his face somewhere between sympathetic, urgent and furious.

He speaks. It’s the most I’ve ever heard him speak. His accent sits in a confusing middle ground between Atlanta and Trinidad.

“There’s a taxi outside. You get in there and you get gone, you hear me?”

I don’t really have the words to respond, and I’m outside before I know it, watching from the other side of the glass as Nathaniel locks the doors and hurries out of sight.

Dazed, I stumble over to the taxi, which already has its trunk open for me to throw my bags in. It all seems choreographed, somehow. I pull myself into the backseat and mumble something resembling “Destin Fort Walton Airport”, though it’s fairly clear from the speed at which the mute driver takes off that he already knows where I’m going. The movie set buildings and empty lots blur past in smudges of orange, making it out to be the ghost town I always thought it to be, its mannequin inhabitants put away for the night. At one point, the amber streetlights illuminate the inside of the vehicle just as I cast my eyes to the rear-view mirror, and I notice that the driver is, in fact, one of the custodians. My heart doesn’t leap out of my chest as it had done when I’d seen the custodians in the hallway; I’m clearly not in the right age bracket to qualify for ritual sacrifice.

He drops me off at the airport wordlessly, and I go through check-in, security, and boarding just as wordlessly. A TSA agent gives me some lip about hurrying up at one point, but I hardly notice, can’t find it in me to care.

When I eventually find it in myself to call my mom to tell her I’m on the way home, she doesn’t sound surprised, confused, or even particularly upset. If anything, there’s a tinge of relief to her voice, and when she picks me up at arrivals, she hugs me tighter than she’s ever hugged me before. I don’t find myself wanting to know why she’s not in hysterics or frantically calling my grandparents, and I don’t pry.

I go off to college a month later, joining the perpetually stoned Ryan Allister in a crappy but wholesome one storey five minutes from campus. I settle on Economics as a major fairly quickly, and in spite of my partaking in semi-regular inebriated antics with our friends, I don’t exactly test out of any of my classes. I go through all the usual motions; attempted commitment to extra-curricular activities in freshman year, a couple girlfriends spanning my sophomore and junior years, contentions about cleanliness and home security with roommates, and then graduation hits us all like a bullet train before we even have time to drag all of our mess off of the tracks. Memories of that hazy summer spent at Ocean Vista Court, of the strange people, of everything I saw in that basement, are like trying to put together pieces of a surreal nightmare. I don’t try to arrange those pieces often.

After I’ve said goodbye to that one storey house, my friends, and college life, I find myself — as plenty of post-grads do — wallowing in “what ifs” and “where next’s” at my parents’ place back in Saratoga.

One scorching Tuesday, after working a particularly droll eight hours of admin at an insurance broker’s, I come home to find my elderly neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Hankshaw, hobbling down their driveway towards a big black taxi, with several hefty suitcases in tow. I throw out a casual “Where they headed?” to my mom, who says “Destin. They’re moving,” without looking up from the salad she’s making, like she’s deliberately trying to stub out the conversation before it’s really started. She doesn’t look up to the window, keeps her eyes locked on the work surface like she’s afraid of seeing something that she really, really doesn’t want to.

With burgeoning curiosity and disregard for my mom’s coldness, I find myself staring out of the kitchen window and over towards the black taxi, just in time to see a man of imposing stature walking from the back of the vehicle to the driver’s side door. He wears stomach-churningly familiar wraparound sunglasses and is dressed in a deep blue coloured boiler suit; one a custodian might wear. The engine of the taxi grumbles to life, and he drives down the street and out of sight, carrying two fresh offerings down to sunny, balmy old Destin.