CHAPTER ONE

JACK

Halloween. My favorite time of the year. You bet everything is decorated to the nines. I’ve got my skulls, my pumpkins, and all the best music blasting at all times.

Even on the floor. Well, it’s not blasting, but you can bet it’s playing from my office when I’m on shift.

If you don’t know already, I love the Halloween shift, even when it’s slow.

Especially when it’s slow, it’s the only night of the year when the building leans into what it really is—an asylum. There’s an energy that pulses in the air, seeps right into the bones, and makes you feel alive in ways you didn’t expect.

I understand that not everyone loves Halloween as much as I do, but if you’ve picked up this book, I think you share my enthusiasm for it.

The day-shifters all treat the place like a chore, like something someone else already half-finished, but on Halloween, the night staff knows better. We, on the night staff, understand the building best.

Ike and I came down to the break room. I was told it looks like a haunted house, so of course we had to come look. Whoever decorated down here gets an A+ for trying at least. It looks more like a morbid autopsy room covered in skulls and plastic pumpkins full of candy, but hey, at least they tried.

The break room is quiet. We’re the only two in here. The vending machine hums like a tired choir, and my thermos sits between us, still steaming. I grind my own beans at home and brew them as dark as my mood and twice as strong. There’s no way I’m drinking the garbage they make in this place. Whomever orders the supplies cheaps out on the coffee, that’s for damn sure. 

The lid unscrews with a soft sigh. As I pour, Ike eyes it like it I’m offering him a sip from the goblet of eternal youth.

I know how he feels.

Here’s a thing about Ike that I appreciate. He has a way of holding the air still, like he’s waiting for a punchline that’s always on the tip of someone else’s tongue. We sit together in silence long enough that I can hear the old clock in the hall, the kind with hands that scrape over invisible numbers. Everything about Ike is deliberate: the way he stacks his half-used sugar packets in a neat little row, the way his ID badge is always clipped dead-center, the way he wears his wedding ring like a trophy.

“You hear about Storage?” he asks, finally, tapping the table with a sugar packet he won’t use. He doesn’t look at me when he’s nervous. He looks at habits.

I give him a side glance, see the furrow forming above his nose. “Storage is always noisy,” I say, sliding him my spare enamel cup. “That’s where we store noise.”

Storage in this case is an actual noun.

He gives a single, hollow snort, takes a careful sip, and exhales. “Warden says keep it quiet.”

“Warden says keep everything quiet. He’d whisper a fire alarm if he could.”

Ike’s eyes flick to mine, then back to the cup. He’s been on nights almost as long as I have, and still lives the family dream, complete with a ring on his finger and texts from his wife at midnight asking if he’s eaten. He’s good at being a man who goes home in the morning and forgets what the building told him overnight.

I envy that. My own phone is a fossil, vibrating only when the system wants to remind me of a shift change or a new procedure for something we both know will never happen.

“Don’t go up there alone,” he says. There’s something in his voice I can’t quite put a pin in. What isn’t he saying?

“There is no ‘up there,’” I say. “We don’t have a thirteenth floor.” I don’t even believe it, even though I’ve never found access to the floor. And trust me, I’ve looked.

He chuckles, then shakes his head. “Button jumps from twelve to fourteen, yeah. But the floor exists. It always does. You can pretend all you want that a number doesn’t count, but I know better. I’ve been there.”

Well, shit.