I Work at a 24 Hour Storage Facility. These Are My SCARIEST Stories.

My name is Dave and for the past four years I've worked at a 24-hour storage facility on the edge of a small town. The place is called Worthington Storage. Although Mr. Warthington himself is almost never there. In fact, I've only met him once. That was the afternoon I started. I'd been looking for a quiet job. Not an exciting job. Not a job with a lot of room to move up. And definitely not one where I had to spend all day dealing with angry customers. I wanted something low stress. When I saw an advertisement for a resident night manager at a storage facility, it sounded almost perfect. The job came with a small apartment connected to the office. It was nothing fancy, but it had a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen that was larger than the one in my old place. In exchange, I watched the property at night. I checked the gate, walked the rows a few times, answered the emergency phone, and made sure nobody tried to live inside one of the units. Most customers paid online, and there were cameras covering the entrances in the main lanes. On a normal night, there was very little for me to do. Mr. Worththington showed me around himself. He was a tall, narrow man in his late 60s who wore a dark suit, even though it was a hot afternoon. He spoke politely, but there was something strange about him. Every time I asked him a question, he waited several seconds before answering as though he needed to decide how much he wanted to tell me. The facility had opened in 1963. Some of the outdoor units had been added later, but the original building was still there. It was a long brick structure containing the office, my apartment, and three indoor hallways lined with metal doors. Behind it were six rows of outdoor units, two larger garages for cars and boats, and a rear lot surrounded by a high fence. Near the end of the tour, an enormous St. Bernard came walking out from behind the office. He stopped in front of me, looked me over, and leaned his full weight against my leg. "That's Chance," Mr. Warthington began. "He stays with the property." "Does he belong to you?" I asked. Mr. Worthington took a little too long to answer. He belongs here, he said. Chance came with his own bed, two metal bowls, and several large bags of dog food stored in a closet behind the front desk. He slept in the office or in my apartment, depending on where I was. He was quiet, friendly, and lazy enough that I sometimes had to bribe him with food to get him through an entire patrol. Within a week, he was following me everywhere. After the tour, Mr. Warthington gave me a ring of keys and a folder containing the emergency numbers. Then he stood beside his car and looked across the property for a long moment. Well, I trust you have everything you need. Then do ring me if you must, but I'll be on a long drive. I have some matters to attend to. Okay, I said I think I'll be good. He nodded, got into his car, and drove away. He didn't say where he was going. Didn't say how long the drive would be either. 4 years later, I still have not seen him again. We speak on the phone when something truly requires his attention, but I avoid calling him unless I have no other choice. Part of that is because he always sounds as though I've interrupted him in the middle of something important. The other part is that talking to him leaves me feeling less certain than I was before I called. He answers questions without really answering them. You ever met anyone like that? Sometimes he seems to know what I'm calling about before I tell him. Luckily, most nights at Worthington Storage are exactly what I wanted. They're quiet. I make coffee, do paperwork, feed chance, and walk the property. Then I sleep in my apartment with the emergency phone beside my bed. But quiet does not always mean peaceful. The following are the eight experiences that changed the way I see this place. A few were explained, most were not. Through all of them, I learned one thing I trust more than any lock, camera, or alarm on the property. If chance does not want to go near a storage unit, neither do I. The black garbage bags. Now, this first incident happened less than 2 months after I started. It was also the only one that ended with someone being arrested. It was a little after 2:00 in the morning when the buzzer at the front gate woke me. Customers with active accounts could enter at any hour, but new runners needed me to approve their identification before the system issued a gate code. I pulled on a sweatshirt, walked into the office, and found Chance already standing beside the front door. A white cargo van was waiting outside the gate. The driver had stepped out and was pressing the call button again. He looked to be in his 30s. He wore work pants and a stained gray shirt and he kept glancing back at the road. I spoke through the intercom and told him the office was closed. "Yeah, already running online," he began. "The code ain't working." That happened occasionally when a customer entered information incorrectly, so I asked him to hold his identification against the glass. The name matched the online account. The photograph looked enough like him, although the card was scratched and kind of hard to read. I opened the office door, but kept the counter between us. Chance walked out beside me. The man took one look at him, then stopped. "Has that dog bite?" "No," I began. He He mostly sleeps. "That was normally true." Chance liked everyone. Delivery drivers brought him biscuits and he treated most customers as though they'd come to visit him personally. This time though, he lowered his head and growled. It was a deep sound that I felt through the floor. The man stepped backward. "You should really put him away," he said. "Chance," I said quietly. Chance stopped growling, but he didn't move. He watched the man while I checked the account. The address on the identification did not match the address he'd entered online. When I asked about it, he said he'd recently moved. "What are you storing?" I asked. "Clothes. Some household stuff." I reminded him that the facility did not allow food, garbage, chemicals, or anything that could leak. He said he understood. I corrected his access code, opened the gate, and watched him drive toward one of the smaller units near the rear fence. Chance remained at the office door, still watching the van. "You don't like that one, huh?" I asked. He growled again. Now, I should have gone back to bed, but I decided to take a walk. I told myself I was checking that the man had found the correct unit. The truth was that chance had made me nervous. By the time we reached the rear row, the man had opened the side door of his van. There were several large black garbage bags inside. He lifted one by wrapping both arms around it, and even then he struggled with the weight. When he saw me, he dropped it. "Everything all right?" I asked. "Fine." Chance pulled forward, the leash tightened in my hand. "Those aren't clothes?" I said, "Yeah, renovation waste, you know, old carpet and things." He told me they were clothes. Well, some of them are. He tried to lift the bag again. As he dragged it toward the unit, one end scraped across the rough concrete. The plastic stretched and a small tear opened near the bottom. A dark red line appeared on the ground behind it. The man saw me looking. Old meat. Freezer went out. Yeah, you know you can't store that here. I'm not storing it for long, he replied. I told him he needed to load everything back into the van and leave. And his expression changed. Then he didn't raise his voice, but he stepped toward me and asked why I was making this difficult. Chance moved between us. Then the man looked down at him, then then at me, and for several seconds, nobody moved. Finally, he threw the bag fully inside the unit, pulled down the metal door, and snapped a padlock onto it. "I'll come back in the morning," he said. He climbed into his van and drove away so quickly that he nearly struck the gate. I wrote down his license plate before calling the police. I didn't tell them there was definitely a body inside. At that point, I didn't know. I told them about the false address, the leaking bags, the smell of bleach around the van, and the way the man had behaved when I confronted him. And two officers arrived within 15 minutes. One looked at the line on the concrete and told me to take Chance back to the office. They block the unit and call the supervisor. By sunrise, there were police vehicles across the rear lot. I will not describe what they found. The officers told me only what I needed to know. And that was more than enough. The man had killed someone earlier that night. He'd rented the unit because he needed somewhere to hide the body while he decided what to do next. Police found him that afternoon at a motel two towns away. The case received enough attention that some of you may remember seeing it on the news. I won't say his name or say where Worthington Storage is located. For weeks after the police finished with a unit, Chance refused to walk past it. The concrete had been cleaned, the lock had been replaced, and there was nothing left inside. But it didn't matter. Chance would stop at the corner of the building and plant all four paws against the ground. Eventually, Mr. Worthington removed the unit from the rental list, and I did not need to ask him why. The family from 1963. Now, the original indoor building is different from the rest of the facility. The outdoor rows are made from sheet metal and concrete, so every sound carries. The indoor units have brick walls, solid ceilings, and thick doors. Customers pay more for them because they stay dry and cool throughout the year. Well, one night about 6 months after I started, I was walking through the oldest hallway when I heard dishes being placed on a table. I stopped outside unit 12. At first, I assumed someone had left a TV playing and then I heard a chair drag across the floor. Several people were talking inside. I couldn't understand most of the words, but I could easily tell the difference between two adults and at least two children. They sounded relaxed. Every few seconds, one of the children laughed. It didn't sound like people hiding in a storage unit. It sounded like a family sitting down for dinner. Chance sat beside the door. His ears lifted, but he didn't growl. I checked the latch. A thick brass padlock secured it from the outside. It was old enough that the metal had turned dark around the keyhole. I knocked on the door. Hey, this is the night manager. Somebody in there? The conversation stopped? I waited. Nobody answered and the door never moved. I went back to the office and checked the access system. No customer had entered the property in almost 3 hours. The account for unit 12 was active, but the record looked different from the others. There was no telephone number or email address. The mailing address was a post office box that no longer existed. The rental date was June 3rd, 1963. At first, I assumed somebody had entered the date incorrectly when the old paper records were transferred into the computer. The next morning, I opened the filing cabinet containing the original contracts. The agreement for unit 12 was right where it should have been. The paper was yellow and brittle. A husband and wife had rented the unit during the facility's first week in business. Beneath their names, somebody had written that they had two children. Every payment had been recorded by hand until the company changed to computers. The account had never been late. Not once. I called Mr. Worthington. I didn't want to, but there was no chance I was opening an occupied unit without speaking to the owner. That account is paid, >> he said after I gave him the number. Yet I know I I can hear people inside. There was a long pause. Then I suggest you allow them their privacy. >> Well, the the doors locked from the outside. >> Yes. >> They can't get out. >> They have never asked to. >> I waited for him to explain. He did not. But who sends the payments? I asked. They arrive by mail. Mr. Worththington, that family rented the unit in 1963. I am aware of when my facility opened, Dave. And that was the end of the conversation. Over the next few weeks, I learned more without opening the door. A framed photograph in the office showed Mr. for Warthingington's father cutting a ribbon on opening day. A family stood off to one side smiling beside a hand paid in sign for unit 12. The two children in the photograph appeared to be about 6 and 9 years old. I searched the names from the rental agreement at the public library. It said that all four family members had died decades earlier. The parents' names appeared in the same cemetery record as their children. There were no surviving relatives listed, and nothing I found explained who continued paying for the unit. Well, the next payment arrived 3 days later. It was a cashier's check inside a plain envelope with no return address. The amount was correct down to the scent, and I put it with the others. I still hear the family several times a year. Sometimes them seem to be eating. Other times I hear footsteps moving around, covered doors opening, and children playing on the floor. I have never heard anyone crying or calling for help. Whatever is happening inside unit 12, they do not seem unhappy. Chance always sits outside and listens. Once I remain there for nearly 20 minutes, when the family finished whatever they were doing, a chair moved close to the door. Chance stood and wagged his tail as though somebody he knew had approached from the other side. The padlock didn't move. I thought about opening the unit that night. I had the bolt cutters with me. I could have removed the lock in less than a minute, but instead I walked away. The rent is still always paid. The door still never opens. As far as I'm concerned, unit 12 belongs to that family for as long as they want it. The empty cages. Not every old unit at Worththington Storage has a complete account attached to it. Some were rented long before computers, and a few records were damaged when a pipe burst in the office during the 1980s. Mr. Worththington normally told me to leave those units alone unless their payment stopped. One of them had not been opened in at least 15 years. The rent had arrived every January until it suddenly failed to appear. Mr. Warthington waited six more months before sending me a short email asking me to inspect the contents. There was no customer name in the message, only the unit number. The unit stood at the end of the oldest outdoor row. Dust cover the door and the lock was orange with rust. There were no marks on the ground suggesting that anyone had visited recently. Chance followed me until I cut the lock. When I lifted the door, he stopped several feet behind me. The unit was filled with cages. There were small wire cages stacked near the entrance. Behind them were wooden crates with barred doors, plastic animal carriers, heavy kennel cages, and tall steel enclosures. that almost reached the ceiling. Some were small enough for a mouse. One near the back was large enough that I could have stood inside it without lowering my head. Every cage was empty. I stood there for several minutes waiting to notice something that would explain it. There were no labels. There were no food bowls, blankets, tools, or cleaning supplies. I saw no fur caught in the wire and no marks on the concrete floor. The cages were different ages and came from different manufacturers, but all of them had been arranged carefully with a clear aisle down the middle. Come on, Chance, I said. He would not enter. I stepped inside alone and walked only far enough to see the cages near the back. Some of the largest ones had extra latches added to their doors. One had three separate padlocks hanging open from a chain. Another was made from steel bars much thicker than anything used for an ordinary animal. I took two photographs for the inventory and called Mr. Worththington. The unit's full of cages. I told him, "Are they empty?" >> The speed of his question surprised me. Yes. >> Then close the door. >> Well, you know what was kept in them? >> Just close the door, Dave. >> I never liked how he said my name. Well, I lowered the metal door, put on a new company lock, and returned to the office. Mr. Worthington never asked me to inventory the unit again. He never auctioned the cages or tried to contact their missing renderer. The unit remained locked, and the account is now marked as unavailable. Once or twice, I have seen Chance stop at the end of that row and look toward it. Never growls. He simply watches the door for a few seconds and then just turns around. I have no idea what those cages once held, and I'm comfortable leaving it that way. The 7-foot safe. The safe arrived on a flatbed truck one rainy afternoon. It stood about 7 ft tall and was wide enough that the delivery crew needed a powered pallet jack to move it. The steel door had a wheel in the center and three hinges as thick as my wrist. The customer had rented one of our vehicle units, which gave the crew enough room to move it inside. He watched the entire process, but did not help. When I asked what he planned to store in a safe that large, he smiled without looking at me and said it was something that needed to stay where he put it. I assumed he meant valuable equipment. People store stranger things than most of us realize, and asking questions is usually a good way to lose customers. Once the delivery crew left, the man closed the unit, attached his own padlock, and drove away. I never saw him again. 3 weeks later, a tremendous crash woke me shortly before 4:00 in the morning. The sound was so loud that a framed notice fell from my office wall. Chance jumped from his bed and ran to the door. He stood perfectly still, staring through the glass toward the vehicle units. I took the heavy flashlight and the emergency keys. Chance followed me across the lot, but slowed as we approached the customer's row. The storage door was still closed. The padlock remained attached and there were no marks around the latch. I couldn't see smoke or smell fuel, but something heavy had struck metal hard enough to shake the building. I called out to ask whether anyone was inside, but there was no answer. Chance looked over his shoulder toward the dark lane behind us. Then he moved closer to me. I called Mr. Warthington and explained what had happened. He reminded me that the customer had not authorized us to open the unit, but I told him the crash had been strong enough to shake the office. After a long pause, he told me to do what I felt I must and ended the call. I contacted the fire department and police, and when they got there about 20 minutes later, we found something very strange. The 7-ft safe stood exactly where the delivery crew had placed it, but its door was open. The upper hinge had torn away from the frame. The thick steel around the locking bolts had folded outward, and the wheel in the center hung in an angle. It looked as though something inside had struck the door with enough force to bend it outward. The safe was completely empty. Chance growled behind me. I turned, expecting to see him looking at the safe. Instead, he was staring down the lane between the units. Nothing was moving. The lane ended in darkness at the rear fence, and the gate was still closed. Chance took two careful steps backward. I backed away with him. Well, they searched the unit and the property. One officer suggested that it might have been pressure inside the safe. Another officer looked at the bent steel and quietly said that whatever happened, the force had come from within. The customer's telephone number had been disconnected. The address on his account led to an empty lot. Even the name on his identification turned out to be false. Mr. Worthington arranged for the safe to be removed a week later, and that was the last I've heard of it. The photographs. Now, the photographs were found inside another one of the original indoor units. Unlike unit 12, this one had changed renters several times over the years. The most recent customer had paid by automatic withdrawal for nearly a decade. Then the payment suddenly stopped. Well, we sent letters, made telephone calls, and waited the amount of time required by law. Nobody responded. When Mr. Worthington finally approved the unit for inspection, I expected to find ordinary household property that would eventually be sold at auction. Chance followed me into the old hallway. The unit had a newer combination lock, so I cut it off and raised the door. At first, I thought the walls were covered with newspaper. Almost every inch of the metal had been hidden behind photographs. More photographs were stacked inside plastic containers on the floor. There were thousands of them. The oldest were black and white pictures of the facility being built. They showed workers laying concrete, raising the first brick walls and attaching the Worthington storage sign above the office. Someone had written dates along the white borders. The first photograph was from January 1963, 5 months before the facility opened, and the pictures continued yearbyear. There were photographs of customers unloading furniture in the 1960s, employees sweeping the halls in the 1970s, and delivery trucks passing through the gate during the 1980s. Later photographs showed the new outdoor rows being built. Several included old night managers standing behind the office counter were walking the property alone. None of the people appeared aware that they were being photographed. I moved farther inside. The pictures became newer as I went. I recognized the current front gate, the office computer, and the faded red vending machine that had been installed a few years before I arrived. And then I found myself. The first photograph showed me carrying boxes into the apartment on my first afternoon. Mr. Worthington's car was still parked beside the office. The picture had been taken from somewhere beyond the rear fence. The next showed me asleep at the office desk several weeks later. Another showed me changing a light over one of the outdoor units. There were pictures of me making coffee, collecting payments, and walking through the snow with Chance. Chance appeared in dozens of them. In almost every photograph, he was looking directly toward the camera. Chance sniffed one of the plastic containers and moved closer to me. From the way he'd faced the camera in every photograph, I had the uncomfortable feeling that he'd always known someone was watching us. I wanted to leave, but I also wanted to know when the last picture had been taken. The final container held photographs from the current year. I flipped through them until I found one from the previous night. It showed me standing at the gate while a customer entered her code. The next picture showed me feeding Chance that morning. And then I reached the final photograph. It showed Chance and me standing outside the unit. I had the bolt cutters in my hands and Chance was looking through the raised door. The picture had been taken only a few minutes earlier. The angle made my stomach tighten. Whoever held the camera had been standing inside the unit across the hallway. I left the photographs where they were and I crossed to the opposite door. Its padlock was secure. According to the account, the renter had not entered the property in 9 days. I knocked, received no answer, and opened it with the emergency key after confirming that the customer used a company lock. The unit held a couch, several sealed boxes, and a wooden dresser, but nobody was inside. There was no camera, no opening in the ceiling, and nowhere for a person to hide. A layer of dust on the floor showed only my footprints. Chance remained in the hallway. He wasn't looking at the unit I'd opened. He was looking back at the photographs. I called Mr. Worthington, and as soon as I described the pictures, he told me to put everything back exactly as I'd found it. I tried to explain that there were photographs of me sleeping and that the newest one had been taken only minutes earlier, but he did not seem surprised. In the background, I could hear his turn signal and the steady noise of a car moving along the road. It sounded as though he was still on the same long drive he'd mentioned 4 years earlier. Before I could ask him where he was, he said, "Just do it, Dave. I really hated the way he said that. Well, I returned the final photograph to its container, lowered the door, and attached a company lock. Before leaving the hallway, I looked over my shoulder one last time, and a photograph was lying on the floor outside the unit. It showed me fastening the new padlock. The camera had been directly behind me when the picture was taken. I didn't bring that photograph back to the office. I slid it underneath the door, finished locking the unit, and removed its number from the list of upcoming auctions. The Monster Hunters unit. About a year after I found the photographs, another long-term customer disappeared. I'd spoken with him only twice. He was a quiet man. He usually entered after dark, stayed for 15 or 20 minutes, and left carrying a different bag from the one he brought in. When his rent became overdue, I expected him to correct it quickly. He didn't. His telephone went directly to a recorded message, and every letter we sent was returned. Mr. Warthington delayed the inspection for nearly 3 months. When he finally gave permission, he told me not to remove anything. The unit looked like a workshop belonging to someone from another century. Heavy crosses hung from hooks along one wall. Some were wood and others were iron. Several had been repaired where the arms had broken. A cabinet contained silver chains, silver knives, and boxes of ammunition with silver colored tips. Wooden stakes of different lengths were arranged on a shelf beside large flashlights, coils of rope, work gloves, and an old medical kit. The books were the strangest part. There were modern books about vampires and werewolves, but there were also older volumes with cracked covers and handwritten notes filling their margins. None contained spells or instructions for calling anything. They read more like field guides written by people who believed these creatures were animals that could be studied and hunted. A map on the wall had dozens of towns circled in red pencil. Newspaper clippings were pinned around it. Most described missing livestock, unexplained attacks, or people vanishing near isolated roads. A date had been written beside each circle. I opened a notebook on the desk. It contained short entries about trips the renter had taken. He recorded the weather, the location, what equipment he carried, and whether he found what he was looking for. He rarely wrote more than half a page. The final entry ended in the middle of a sentence. Beside the desk sat a packed canvas bag. A coat had been laid across it and a pair of boots waited underneath. Everything suggested that the renter had planned to return. Put on the coat, pick up the bag, and leave again. Chance walked as far as the doorway. He sniffed the air, then sat down. He was not afraid of the unit, but he wouldn't come inside. Instead, he looked away from the equipment and down the empty hallway. Now, I could have dismissed the entire collection as the property of an obsessed fan. People spend money on all kinds of hobbies. What prevented me from doing that was the condition of the equipment. The blades had been sharpened many times. The gloves were worn through at the palms. several links on the silver chains had been replaced. Dark stains covered the bottom of the canvas bag. None of it looked decorative. I completed the inventory without opening any more books. Mr. Worthington told me to lock the unit and leave everything inside. He refused to approve an auction and said we would hold the contents until the customer returned. The customer had now been gone for almost 2 years. His gear remains exactly where he left it. The rent is no longer being paid, but Mr. Warthington refuses to sell or clear the unit. I do not know whether the man truly hunted monsters. I do not know whether he found one or simply disappeared for an ordinary reason. I only know that he left nearly everything behind, including his wallet, his truck keys, and the coat he wore in the account photograph. Whatever he went looking for that night, I think he expected to be back before morning. The upside down unit. Now, not everything at Worthington Storage has frightened me. One unit was so strange that after the first few minutes, it became difficult not to laugh. A woman rented it while moving between houses. Two days later, she came into the office and asked whether anyone had entered after she left. The gate records showed that nobody had. She sounded serious, so I brought Chance and followed her to her unit. Her padlock was undamaged. When she opened the door, I understood why she was upset. Everything was upside down. Four dining chairs rested on their backs with their legs pointing upward. Cardboard boxes stood on their lids. A small table had been placed perfectly flat on its top. Even a plastic laundry basket had been turned over. Nothing had been thrown around. Nothing was broken or missing. Every item had simply been flipped upside down and returned to the exact same place. She made it clear that her movers had not left the unit that way. We turned several lighter objects upright. I searched the corners, checked the ceiling, and made sure there was no second entrance. Then we closed the door. She attached her padlock and clicked it shut. And the moment the lock closed, everything inside crashed at once. The woman jumped backward. Chance barked once. I removed the lock and raised the door, and every object we had corrected was upside down again. The woman stared at me as though I had arranged the whole thing myself and I assured her that I had not. She moved her belongings to another unit that afternoon. After she left, I decided to conduct a smaller test. I placed a folding chair, an empty waste basket, and one of Chance's metal bowls in the center of the floor. Chance watched from the hallway while I lowered the door and put on a company lock. And boom, another crash came from inside. When I opened the door, the chair was balanced upside down on its back rest. The waist basket rested evenly on its rim. The metal bowl had been placed upside down in the same spot. That was interesting, but I wanted to know whether loose objects would also turn over. I poured a small handful of dog food into the bowl, returned everything upright, and locked the door again. The crash sounded exactly the same. When I reopened the unit, the bowl was upside down. Every piece of dog food was trapped neatly underneath it. Chance looked at the bowl, then looked up at me with an expression of complete confusion. I lifted the bowl and let him eat the food. And that was the end of my experiments. The unit has remained empty ever since. Anything left inside stays where it was placed until the door closes and the lock clicks. Then there is one loud crash and every loose object turns upside down. I have wondered what would happen if someone remained inside when the door locked. Would the person be flipped under their head? Would the whole room turned over around them? Would nothing happen until they left? part of me would really like to find out the stored car. Now, the final incident is the one that frightened Chance the most, and for that reason, it frightened me the most as well. The car was an old dark blue sedan with a long hood and a wide back seat. It arrived on a tow truck near the end of winter. The customer met the driver at the facility and directed him into one of the vehicle units. I helped open the wide door and moved a stack of wooden blocks out of the way. While the driver lowered the car from the truck, the customer explained that it hadn't run in years. He planned to restore it eventually, but needed somewhere dry to keep it. Once the car was inside, he opened the hood and removed the battery. He said old wiring could cause a fire, and he didn't want to take any chances. I watched him place the battery in the trunk of his own vehicle. Chance stood near the office during the delivery. He normally inspected every new car that entered the property, especially if someone had left food inside, but he did not approach this one. The customer paid 6 months in advance and left. During the next few weeks, he returned only once. He stayed less than 10 minutes and drove away without taking anything. And after that visit, Chance began reacting to the unit. He would stop halfway down the row and stare at the closed door. If I tried to lead him closer, he moved behind me. He didn't bark or pull at his leash. He simply refused to pass it. I checked the account and called the customer. He assured me there was nothing dangerous in the car and reminded me that the battery had been removed. When I mentioned that Chance behaved as though someone were sitting inside it, the customer became quiet. He told me not to open the unit and hung up. For almost a month, nothing happened. And then shortly after 1:00 in the morning, a car engine started inside the vehicle building. The sound woke me immediately. It was not a recording or a machine from a neighboring property. The engine coughed twice, turned over, and settled into a rough idle that vibrated through the office windows. Chance was already awake. He stood at the apartment door with his body pressed against it, preventing me from opening it. "Move," I told him. He looked up at me and remained where he was. I clipped on his leash and pulled the door inward. He followed me outside, but only as far as the edge of the office lights. The engine continued running. By the time I reached the vehicle row, I could smell exhaust. A thin stream rolled from beneath the customer's door. The pavlock remained fastened and the metal door did not appear damaged. I called emergency services. A running car inside a closed building could fill the neighboring units with fumes. The dispatcher told me the fire department was on its way. I explained that the car had no battery, but saying it aloud only made the situation sound crazy. I brought the company bolt cutters from the office. A chance followed until I reached the unit, then pulled backwards so hard that the leash slipped through my hand. He didn't run away. He stood in the center of the lane and growled at the door. I cut the padlock and pulled it free. Then I stood to one side and raised the door several feet. The dark blue sedan was running. Its headlights were off, but the dashboard gave off a weak green light. Exhaust drifted behind it. The hood remained closed, and the car had not moved from the wooden blocks placed beneath its tires. And I could barely see someone sitting in the back seat. The windows were covered with dust, so I couldn't make out a face or clothing. I could only see the solid shape of a head and shoulders above the seat. The person sat right in the middle, facing straight ahead. I called out that the fire department was coming and told the person to open the door, but they didn't move. Chance's growl became louder then. I'd never heard that sound from him before. Well, we remained outside the unit just watching and then the engine stopped. The dashboard went dark. The shape in the back seat lowered out of sight so smoothly that for one confused second I thought the person had simply laid down. Chance barked and rushed forward. I grabbed his leash before he reached the door. The fire department arrived first, followed by two police officers. They opened the building for ventilation and searched the car. The doors were still locked, but an officer used a tool to reach the interior handle. The back seat was completely empty. There was no blanket, coat, or headrest that I could have mistaken for a person. The seat belt in the middle had been buckled around nothing. The cushion beneath it remained pressed down as though someone were still sitting there. An officer opened the hood. The battery tray was empty and the loose cables were exactly where the customer had left them, but the engine was warm. There was fuel in the tank, but nobody could explain how the car had started while locked inside the unit and not having a battery. I called the customer three times. He didn't answer. And the following morning, his number was disconnected. Mr. Worthington instructed me to terminate the lease and have the car removed. When I asked whether he knew anything about it, he only said that the car did not belong at his facility. A towing company arrived that afternoon. I told the driver everything that had happened. He treated it like a story meant to frighten him, but he still checked the back seat before touching that car, and it was empty. He attached the car to his truck and pulled it onto the flatbed. Chance watched from beside the office. As soon as the car began moving, he started growling again. The tow truck passed us slowly on its way to the gate and someone was sitting in the back seat again. This time, the figure was turned toward me and he was smiling. I shouted to the driver. He couldn't hear me over the truck's diesel engine. I ran toward the gate, but the truck had already entered the road. The figure lifted one hand and placed it flat against the inside of the rear window. Then the tow truck turned and the car disappeared from view. As far as I heard, the car was taken to a secured yard. The customer never claimed it and nobody ever contacted Worthington Storage about it again. Well, I still work here. Most nights remain quiet, which is exactly what I wanted when I accepted the job. I complete the paperwork, feed Chance more dog food than Mr. Warthington proudly intended, and when the weather is good, Chance and I walk every row before going to bed. I have stopped trying to explain everything kept inside those units. People use storage facilities because they have belongings they cannot keep at home. And sometimes they use storage facilities to keep very strange things. Chance understands that better than I do. If he raises his head during the night and begins watching something beyond the office window, I do not investigate quite as much anymore. I just lock the door, sit beside him, and wait for daylight.