By mid-afternoon, the sky was such an unnatural darkness that Edward caught himself taking a furtive look at the clock on his phone, convinced that the clocks were wrong. 2:13 PM. The high street outside felt more like night—black clouds, a grey mist hanging over the town. It wasn't raining yet, but air battered windows as if it was about to blow in at any moment.
The van pulled up at half past. The driver did not get out right away.
Edward was in the back, eyes scrunched up but more than passing glances over the top of a stack of scratch cards. The cab driver did not stir for a moment before he eventually opened the door and slid out. His movements were stiff, as if his joints did not wish to work. His hand stayed on the side mirror a second longer than it had to, grasping for balance. He didn't look up at the shop, but walked around to the back of the lorry.
Edward opened the front door and stepped out, the bell behind him. The air was denser than it had been—damp, keen.
"Evening," he said, his voice slightly hoarser in his throat. "You okay, mate?
The driver didn't stir at first. Pale, his greasier face sweated more than was possible in the cold. Trembling in his hands as he fought to open the back of the truck. The crates shoved to the front within—four or five plastic bins of shelf items, taped and marked. Tipped off the floor with a crash by the man.
Then he just nodded at the other two. "You'll have to take those," he grunted. "Behind schedule."
Edward hesitated. "You sure? You're—" He caught himself.
The driver did not even slow down to drop him off. He turned around once again in silence, got back into the cab once again, and slammed the door shut with a clang of metal. The engine sputtered, coughed once—like Sam, Edward recalled—and then roared back to life.
Edward waited a minute or two, observing the man get into his truck and drive off without glancing back over his shoulder. The truck clung too close to the turn, destroying a curb before the corner was out of view.
He waited again in front of the crates.
No one came and helped him.
Darren hadn't been spotted anywhere since morning, and Sam's coat still hung, unworn, on the hook near the freezers. Edward glanced down the street for a few seconds in the hopes someone would straggle along and assist him. But no one straggled along. The street was empty.
He bent, grunted to lift the first crate, and hauled it in, sore arms against stubborn plastic ridges. Then another. Then another. It was quiet the whole time—no shoppers, no vehicles, not even birds. Just the sound of his shoes on tile and the muted screech of the crates scraping over the counter floor.
At the counter corner, Edward read the delivery slip, his forehead creasing. Most of the codes were okay, but one sloppy line had been crossed out and rewritten in script. A saw-tooth line—barely legible. The box it came in wasn't marked, wasn't bar-coded. It was blank. That wasn't usual. They weren't supposed to take anything that wasn't in original packaging, but he didn't feel like messing with it either. He placed the things on the floor behind the counter to return to. And forgot all about them.
At 3:03, a young woman came in. College student age. Pulled hoodie and sunglasses over her face even though it was dark outside.
She had her arms wrapped around her waist, like she was scared of getting near anything. Her lips were dry—parched, with flaking skin at the nape of her neck. She stood in front of the cleaning supplies for a minute or two before she picked up a bottle of disinfectant and a box of latex gloves. She paid cash. Her hands shook so hard she dropped a coin and did not even stop to pick it up.
"Long week?" Edward mocked, his voice husky.
She didn't reply. Just turned and walked away.
He palmed the fallen 50p and rubbed it before secreting it in the till. It was warm. Unnaturally warm. As if it had been in her hand too long. As if her body couldn't let it go.
By four, Darren was nowhere to be found. Edward had tried the staff room twice and found it locked from the inside. No sound. Not even a cough.
He didn't knock for the third time.
The oddest thing was not the silence—it was the smell.
The storeroom had also begun to smell stale and sweet. Like mold that's been covered up with air freshener. Or fruit rotting. The scent didn't waft or linger. It just kind of hung there, like a body in the air.
The clients that did show up were also getting stranger.
A man stood for nearly a full twenty minutes near the bread, staring at one of those seeded via wholemeal bread loaves. A schoolgirl in uniform edged along holding a bloodied tissue in her hand, whispering half-sensible rubbish, incoherent words under her breath unnoticed by everyone.
Nobody waited. Nobody bought anything of value. Nobody made eye contact with anyone.
Edward sneezed once at 4:23 PM.
But it was the kind of sneeze that had been suppressed. A shudder of his body that burned his nose and misted his eyes momentarily. He sniffed, wiped his face on the cuff of his sleeve, and steeled himself.
His fingertips were pink. Not pink-red. Just. tinged.
"No," he whispered, his head shaking. "Just dry air. It's nothing.".
Yet the horror was already insidiously creeping into his veins. He couldn't shake from his mind the drivers' gasping for breath. Or the look Sam's eyes had carried yesterday. Or the disinfectant woman with teeth too tightly gritted into her jaw.
At 5:07 PM, the lights fluttered once again—and remained off.
The store dropped into sudden, artificial darkness. Not dark, but so that the edges of the shelves seemed to melt into black. The emergency lights did not come on right away. Edward's breath caught.
Something in the storeroom.
Not a bang. Not a cough.
A scratching sound.
Long. Low. Something scratching the floor. Or something scraping itself along.
Edward stared at the storeroom door, throat closed off.
He could not move. Could not.
Then, quietly—so quietly it could have been a dream—there was a voice beyond the door.
"Help me."
It was Darren's voice. But distorted. As if his voice had spilled a glass of water on its way to Edward's ears.
And then silence again.
The lights abruptly roared on. Harsh. Too bright.
Everything was where it should have been.
But Edward wasn't. His hands were trembling.
The pink smudge on his cuff had spread.