The Old Blog in the Desert

No one at the manufacturing company could recall the last time the lock had been removed or why it was there in the first place. And the one person who did, had died nearly thirty years before.

It had been old man Martini who had warned that Number 6 should never be opened. However, in the small hours of a crisp Fall morning, a company maintenance man appeared with bolt cutters, removing the ancient and half-rusted padlock.

Aside from the usual heavier sounds of industrial machinery, came the sporadic report of an odd whisper, a queer chant or a strange gurgling from inside the walls and pipes, which were given to imagination or fatigue. However, on this night the newer sounds of rattling, scraping and rapping began from some deeper place within the factory’s wall.

Thayne sat alone, eating in the lunchroom, when he heard beyond the nearby wall, what he believed to be a body, either being dragged or dragging itself. Suddenly a woman screamed as a greenish arm with a wretched clawed hand, bigger than any man’s head, shot-out from the now unlocked locker and grabbed Thayne tightly by his right calf.

With a monstrous yank, it jerked Thayne off-balance, causing him to fall. And once down, the hapless man was quickly pulled into the locker’s darkened opening.

As he yelled, the others unsuccessfully battled to free him from the horror violently drawing him into the small opening and the greater depth of the locker.  Eventually, all the would-be rescuers could do was listen to the cacophony of Thayne’s pain-filled screams, amid shattering bones, tearing sinew, tendons and muscles, as he abruptly disappeared into the unknown recess of locker number six.

In the following minutes of shocked and unsettling quietude came the infrequently reported and often ignored, “Voq’u’u-lo Zaa-q’ran.”