Chapter 6: The Janitor's Warning

Chapter 6: The Janitor's Warning

The hunt for Neil Croft became Alex’s single, burning obsession. He had to corner the man, had to shake the truth out of his terrified, skeletal frame. But Neil moved through the town like a ghost, a wraith of bleach and despair, always seeming to vanish the moment Alex got close.

Jason was fading. It was the only word for it. The day before, he’d forgotten his own address, standing on the corner of his street with a look of utter, childlike confusion until Alex gently steered him home. He was a photograph left out in the sun, the vibrant colors of his personality bleaching away into a muted, unrecognizable grey. The guilt was a physical weight in Alex’s chest, a constant pressure behind his eyes. He had led his friend to the slaughterhouse, and now he could hear the grinding of the gears.

Alex stopped going into the gym. Instead, he watched it. For two days, he lurked across the street, hiding behind a thick, overgrown hedge, learning the building’s rhythms. He saw Louis Alistair arrive in the morning and leave late at night, a constant, cheerful sentinel at his post. He saw the grim-faced men shuffle in and out, their shoulders slumped as if carrying more than just gym bags. And he saw Neil.

The janitor was a creature of routine. He’d arrive an hour after Louis, slipping in through a side door. He’d emerge once in the late afternoon, pushing a large, rattling dumpster into the back alley before retreating back into the shadows. That was his chance. The alley was narrow, walled in by brick, and shielded from the street. It was a trap.

On the third day, Alex was ready. He waited, his heart a frantic, unsteady beat against his ribs. The afternoon sun beat down, making the air thick and wavy. Finally, the metal side door screeched open and Neil shuffled out, wrestling with the heavy bin. He looked even thinner than Alex remembered, his uniform hanging off his bony frame. His eyes, as always, were darting, scanning the empty alley for threats that weren't there. Or perhaps, for threats that were.

Alex stepped out from behind a stack of rotting pallets. “Neil.”

The janitor froze, his entire body going rigid. A low, strangled gasp escaped his lips. He looked at Alex, and his face, already a mask of perpetual fear, seemed to collapse in on itself. He dropped the handle of the dumpster and took a half-step back towards the door.

“Stay away from me, kid,” he rasped, his voice thin and ragged. “I don’t know nothing.”

“You do,” Alex said, his own voice sounding harder than he expected. He walked forward, closing the distance between them, blocking Neil’s escape route to the door. “You knew the second you saw me. That first day. You looked at me like I was already dead.”

Neil shook his head, a frantic, bird-like motion. “You don’t understand. You need to leave. You and your friend. Get out of this town and don’t ever come back.”

“It’s too late for that,” Alex said, his voice cracking with a sudden surge of desperation. “It’s got him. It’s eating him. He’s forgetting everything, Neil. Everything.”

“I told you,” Neil whispered, his eyes wide with a remembered horror. “I tried to warn you. When you brought him in… I shook my head. Didn’t you see me? I tried to warn you!”

“A headshake isn’t enough!” Alex shouted, the sound echoing off the grimy brick walls. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Polaroid. He shoved it into Neil’s face. “What about this? What is this?”

Neil flinched as if Alex had swung a fist at him. His gaze fell upon the faded, terrifying image, and a sound tore from his throat—a choked, guttural sob of pure agony. He stumbled back, pressing himself against the brick wall as if trying to merge with it. His face was ashen. He wasn't just looking at a picture of a scared kid; he was looking at a ghost.

“Where did you get this?” he whimpered, his eyes locked on the photo.

“You know where,” Alex pressed, his voice dropping to a low, intense growl. “It came out of the locker. After it took his card. It gave us this. Why does he look exactly like Jason? Why is it erasing him?”

The questions, sharp and desperate, seemed to break something inside the janitor. The fear that held him perpetually rigid seemed to drain away, replaced by a wave of crushing, ancient guilt. He slumped against the wall, sliding down a few inches, his whole body trembling.

“It’s not a locker,” Neil whispered, his gaze darting nervously toward the gym. “It’s a mouth. And the gym… the whole gym is a trap to feed it.” He swallowed, his throat clicking. “It’s a debt. An old, old debt that Louis pays.”

“What debt?” Alex demanded.

“To the town. To himself.” Neil’s eyes were unfocused, looking back into a past Alex couldn’t imagine. “It has a… a hunger. And as long as it’s fed, the town survives. The plant stays open. No one gets sick. We just… go on. But the hunger is always there.” He finally looked at Alex, his eyes filled with a terrible clarity. “We’re not members, kid. We’re not a ‘community.’ We’re offerings. Fodder. Louis finds the lonely ones, the new ones, the ones no one will miss too much right away.”

A cold, sickening understanding washed over Alex. The grim-faced men lifting weights, Louis’s booming welcome, the whole charade. It was all a lie, a carefully constructed farm to fatten up souls for the slaughter.

“The initiation…” Alex breathed.

“When he ‘welcomed’ you,” Neil said, his voice trembling, “when you touched the handle… it took a piece of you. Just a little piece. A taste. To see what you were made of. To mark you as its own.” He shuddered. “It’s been tasting you ever since, through the whispers in the steam, through the air in that place. It’s been learning you.”

Alex felt a phantom chill spread through the hand that had touched the latch. The locker hadn’t just scared him; it had tagged him. It had sampled his loneliness, his resentment, his fierce, desperate need for a friend. And then it had found one.

“So it’s my fault,” Alex whispered, the guilt in his chest becoming a physical pain. “It went after Jason because of me.”

Neil looked at him with that same expression of profound, soul-deep pity from their very first meeting. It was a look that confirmed Alex’s worst fear.

“It’s clever,” the janitor rasped, leaning in as if sharing a sacred, terrible secret. “It’s old, and it knows what hurts. It doesn’t just take you. That’s too quick, not enough flavor. It likes to savor things. It likes despair.”

He took a shaky breath, his eyes locking with Alex’s, delivering the final, devastating truth.

“It always takes what you love most… before it takes you.”