Bradley

When Sophie arrived, accompanied by the early morning light, Bradley was waiting for her at the door. He’d been there for hours, getting the footage ready and doing his best not to alarm Tom. Tom had always been nosy, but he was on fire lately. He’d tell the little shit off, but it was risky, given that the kid was on the right track.

“Morning boss,” Bradley said, opening the door for her.

Sophie yawned.

“It’s barely morning, and hardly good,” Sophie said as she looked over the aisles. “Morning, Tom.”

Bradley turned to see Tom slowly stocking a display. He hadn’t noticed him there. The last thing Bradley needed was more rumors to squash.

“Hey,” Tom said, smiling awkwardly. “What brings the bosses in today?”

Bradley had to think on his feet.

“Nothing,” Bradley said, turning to Sophie. “Let’s go to the office…I have some HR stuff to run by you.”

HR stuff? Pathetic.

It was too late to come up with something better. He ushered his grumbling superior into the back room before letting out a heavy sigh.

Bradley locked the door behind them. Tom always seemed to be eavesdropping, and if he told his little goth friend, everyone would find out he’d found something.

“That kid knows something’s up.”

“Nothing is up,” Sophie said, taking a long drink from her travel mug. “Kids just love spooky stories.”

“I wish it was just the normal rumors.”

Bradley unlocked the computer, displaying his security system and a video editing application.

“Are you cutting something together for Youtube?” Sophie scoffed. “The team might have issues with that.”

“Look at this,” Bradley said, ignoring her jokes and pressing play.

Roughly five minutes of gritty security footage ran, showing clips from various angles of the convenience store at night.

Sophie squinted at it, as if she wasn’t seeing what he could. As the video ended, she let out a long tired sigh.

“Brad, if this just spooky images of the team moving around in the dark…”

He paused the video on the image of the front entrance exterior.

“Do you see that shadow?” he asked pointing at the monitor. “That’s not the staff.”

Sophie rolled her eyes.

“How do you know that?”

Bradley rolled the footage back thirty seconds to show Kat looking out the front window.

“Because that is obviously your niece.”

He let the video play out. Kat sauntered over to the center shelves, stopping in front of the mirrored sunglasses display.

With the shadow watching on, Kat tried them on, posing with each.

She looks just like Soph at that age. Brad shook his head, he had to focus.

“Now watch this.”

Bradley switched to a different clip showing Kat inside the store, sweeping the floors from the window to the back room.

“What am I looking at here?” Sophie asked.

“She moves from the window to storage, checks over her shoulder that no one is coming before going to the restroom… Or maybe she was getting stock, I don’t know,” Bradley flicked back to the original footage. “Look what happens after she leaves frame?”

After Kat left the frame, the shadow appeared in the window, seemingly following her movements as she walked through the store.

Sophie wasn’t smirking anymore.

“So, someone else was there… watching her?”

Bradley shook his head.

“No, I don’t think you’re getting it. The hauntings are getting worse.”

Sophie sighed.

“Will you just stop with this supernatural bullshit? Maybe we should focus on the actual danger here.”

“Soph, I have loads more examples of this. There is movement on the cameras that I can’t account for. It can’t be a person.”

Sophie shook her head.

“Not unless they know where the cameras are. And how to get in and out without us noticing so they can stalk our staff.”

Bradley shook his head.

“It’s not possible.”

“It’s time to address the elephant in the room,” Sophie said, finally sitting down at the desk with Bradley. “Have you found out anything about Rodney?”

“No. He had no family, no real friends. No one outside of our staff has noticed he’s missing.”

“And the police?”

“They don’t have anything. They think he left the island, and since we aren’t pressing charges…”

“Yeah, they’re ready to let him become a statistic.”

“Young people go missing all the time, but that’s not what I was going to say. We aren’t pressing charges, so they aren’t keeping us in the loop anymore. They haven’t stopped looking for him.” Bradley said looking down. “We might never see him again.”

“Oh, we will. And we need to find him before someone else does.”