Chapter 6
“As Human Resources employees, it’s your job to strengthen your Wardens’ performance, foster professional growth, and ultimately contribute to a more fulfilling and rewarding work environment for everyone at Entity.”
Entity Employee Handbook: HR Edition
Evening settled in, and the empty house waiting for her held little appeal.
It wasn’t a bad house. A little on the small side, sure, but decent for a single professional living alone. It had a cute garden and quiet neighbors which was always a plus, and the commute to work was fairly quick, too.
But the quiet threatened to eat Alexys alive if she was there on her own for too long. It was why she always agreed to stay late at work, or why she was always the first one through the door in the morning. Alexys hated being at home.
Alone.
After dark.
She dropped her bag and her keys by the door, turned on all the lights and trudged straight to her bedroom at the back of the house. Collapsing onto the mattress, Alexys pulled out her phone and video-called her mom. Seconds later, her screen lit up with what appeared to be a close-up of a chin.
“Mama, you have to pull it away from your face. I can’t see you.”
Her mom grumbled at her phone, the video swaying this way and that as she tried to adjust. Eventually, Alexys settled in for a wonderful conversation with her mom’s left nostril. Carol Keane was great at so many things, but a tech aficionado she was not.
“Are you at home?”
“I’m home, just got back from work.” Alexys rolled onto her side and turned on the small television cattycorner to her bed.
Carol huffed. “Why on earth are you working so late?” she demanded.
“Monsters don’t typically stick to a nine to five, Mama.”
Alexys knew exactly what her mom was going to say before she said it. They had the same conversation every time she called, without fail. No matter the topic, no matter the day, her mom always managed to bring it back round to …
“You should move back home.”
Alexys sighed in response.
“I mean it, Lexie. You’d easily get a job here—a nice, simple job. Nothing to do with that monster nonsense.”
“I like my job,” Alexys argued, but her conviction was half-hearted at best.
“You know I hate that you’re working for them, after everything that happened.” Carol shook her head and the camera swayed.
“Mama, we’ve been through this. I like the work I do. I like my friends here.”
“But you could do a job like that somewhere else, you know. Maybe even a little closer to home?”
“I know, but I like it here.”
“I don’t see what there is to like.” Carol’s words stung a little. “You spend all your time with those coworkers of yours. Don’t you want to meet a nice boy?”
Alexys screwed up her face. Of course I’d like to meet someone, Alexys thought. But that would mean telling someone other than Zach and Natalie about her nightmares, and admitting that much would mean also admitting it to her mother—which she wasn’t prepared to do.
Alexys fished around for something to say in her own defense. “It’s tough out there, I’m doing my best.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Carol breathed. “I know you are, I just worry because I love you, you know that.”
“I know, Mom.” Alexys flipped through the channels, settling at last on a favorite reality show. “And I like working for Entity. You know it makes me feel like I’m closer to Dad.”
“Uh huh,” Carol mused. “And that’s all well and good so long as you keep that behind of yours at your desk. I will not allow that place to take anybody else away from me.”
It didn’t matter that the official report confirmed that a Wampus Cat was responsible for Michael’s death.
It also didn’t matter that it was a freak accident and that he’d put his life on the line every day for 15 years before he was killed.
Carol would blame Entity for what happened until the world stopped spinning. She’d never forgive them.
So when Alexys told her she too would be working for Entity, the two had stopped talking for the better part of a year. Even now, things weren’t quite the same as they had been before, but they were trying. Alexys was really trying.
“Don’t worry, you know I’m not athletic enough for running after things that go bump in the night.”
“Good girl,” she said, rearranging the phone. Alexys caught a glimpse of a brown eye surrounded by well-earned crow’s feet. “You know, your brother is looking to get his own place, just down the road.”
Alexys tipped her head back in exasperation.
“Of course he is,” Alexys groaned.
Garrett was a mama’s boy and couldn’t stand to be more than a block away from home.
He’d gone to a state school right after graduation and only managed to live on campus for one semester before moving back in with their mom.
He’d been “moving out” for years. How the two of them managed to live together for so long without killing each other was beyond her, but she also understood that Carol wasn’t made for an empty nest.
“There will be room for you now, that is, if you wanted to come back. See how you feel about it.”
Alexys dropped the phone on the mattress. “Alright, Mama. I gotta go, it’s getting late.”
“Alright, honey. Make sure you lock up all your doors and windows. And make sure you’re getting enough rest!”
“I will, and I always am,” Alexys lied.
“I love you, Lexi Lou.”
“I love you too, Mama.”
Later that night, Alexys lay awake in bed. The TV blared in the background, and the overhead ceiling van whirred in that familiar rhythmic clicking. But she couldn’t get comfortable. The pillow was too warm, the sheet wouldn’t lay right, her legs were restless.
She needed to invest in a new mattress and one of those fancy sound machines. It was mentally added to the list of things to buy after she finally manifested a promotion.
Sighing in defeat, Alexys rolled over onto her back and gazed up at the ceiling.
She spent hours tracing the shape of the ceiling fan’s blades with her eyes and begging for peaceful, restful sleep to take her—just this once.
Most nights, if she drained herself enough, she could slip into a fairly innocuous sleep.
It was the only way she could really manage the nightmares. But tonight, it wasn’t working.
Finally deciding her mental pleas were futile, Alexys went to the bathroom to surrender herself to whatever melatonin supplement was in her medicine cabinet.
The bathroom was cramped and dimly lit—she made a mental note to add lightbulbs to her shopping list. Alexys opened the mirrored medicine cabinet, grabbed the melatonin, closed the door, and froze.
The bottle clattered into the sink and her cup of makeup brushes fell to the floor, but she didn’t flinch.
“No, no, no,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “You’re dreaming, that’s all, it’s just a dream.” She took a deep breath, then opened her eyes.
She gasped.
Written in streaky, dark letters was a message: Elliot Harman is dead.
Alexys stood perfectly still, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her side. The letters began to wiggle and sway, as though she was looking at them through water. They rearranged themselves into new words, the message even more sinister.
You’re next, Lexie Lou.
She screamed. And then she woke up.
Alexys sat upright in bed, hand clutched to her chest and a second scream caught in her throat. She reached frantically for her phone and nearly ripped the charger out of the wall. She dialed Natalie’s number with shaking fingers and held her breath.
It rang twice before she heard Natalie’s groggy greeting, “Girl, this better be good.”
Alexys looked at her bedside clock, its black digital letters read out 2:35 a.m. “Oh, gosh, Nat, I’m so sorry! I didn’t even check the time before I called. I should have, but I …” Alexys took a deep breath.
“Had another one?” Alexys could hear Natalie’s attempt to shush someone, no doubt her latest paramour. “Hang on, I’m getting up.”
Alexys turned the TV off and rose to her feet. She shrugged into her bathrobe and padded out to the kitchen. The bloody letters were running a loop through her brain, rearranging over and over again, and she was fighting the urge to check the bathroom mirror to see if they were still there.
“Alright.” Natalie sounded more awake but no less perturbed. “What was it this time? A corpse in your closet? The hands under the bed? Or maybe the red-eyed ghoul at the window?”
Natalie tried to lighten the mood but Alexys knew that her friend was all too familiar with her sleeping troubles.
“I’d have welcomed a ghoul, honestly,” Alexys said.
“This was different.” Alexys fished for the words to explain it, but she wasn’t even really sure herself.
Her nightmares were usually horrifying, but they tended to err on the side of hazy—strong enough for her subconscious to be fully convinced of their realism but hard to remember after waking.
This one, though, this one was something else entirely. “It was so specific, and it felt so real. I think they’re getting worse, Nat.”
“Alright, Lex,” Natalie exhaled. “Tell me what you saw.”
She sighed and rubbed a hand over her face. “There was a message on the bathroom mirror written in blood.”
Natalie cursed. “Why can’t you have these dreams before I drink?”
Alexys’s laugh was weak. She wished she didn’t dream at all.
“What was the message?”
Alexys didn’t want to say it out loud. Saying things out loud always felt like it made them come true.
Like if they stayed in her head, there was still a chance the universe hadn’t heard her yet, and it might just forget the whole thing ever happened.
But she couldn’t call Natalie at two in the damn morning and not tell her what the dream was about. Someone else needed to know.
“Elliot Harman is dead.”
“Who?”
Alexys barked out a manic laugh. Of course Natalie didn’t know all of her Wardens by name. She felt delirious.
“Elliot,” she repeated. “He’s my new Third Quadrant Warden, young guy.”
Natalie racked her brain for a second before it clicked “Wait, the one with the cookie-baking grandma?”
“That’s the one.”
“Oh shit,” she whispered. “He’s dead?”
“Well, according to my nightmares, he is.” Alexys put a kettle on the stove, hoping some chamomile might help.
“I haven’t heard from him in almost a week, but his weekly check-in isn’t until Friday.
” Alexys propped herself up onto the kitchen counter.
“Maybe I should call him and do an early check-in—not right now, but when I get into work. It couldn’t hurt, right? ”
“Sure,” Natalie drawled. “Heaven forbid you call someone at this ungodly hour. That would be ridiculous. Cruel, even.”
“Hey, I said I was sorry! You’re the one who said to call you any time of the day or night.”
Natalie let out a dry laugh. “That’s a phrase nobody ever means, babe. But for you, I do mean it.”
“Thanks, Nat.” Alexys let a long breath. “You should probably get some sleep. At least one of us deserves to be well-rested for work.”
“True. And hey, you can watch your trashy housewives show without my commentary,” Natalie teased. “But if you finish the next season before work, I’m going to judge you so hard.”
Alexys grinned because she knew it was true. “Whatever. You judge me for even watching them in the first place.”
“Somebody has to. Try to relax, and I know—easier said than done. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Alexys hung up the phone just as the kettle let out a sharp cry. She took it off the heat and crept down toward the bathroom. Anxiety crawled under her skin, but she needed a distraction. Pronto. As for the bathroom, she’d make it quick.
She flung the door open to find the light already on, the mirror free of any message. She felt the slow release of tension ripple through her.
She turned on the faucet to splash some cold water on her face. She didn’t think twice about the melatonin bottle that sat lopsided in the basin.