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Recently, you’ve taken up a new job as a janitor at the local wax museum to help pay for your schooling. It’s not ideal, but it’s close, and it’s overnight, so you’re alone, which is a massive plus when you’re not much of a people person. The listing had appeared to have been up for a while, but you received a phone call and interview almost immediately after applying. It can’t be too desirable of a job, you figure, stalking around a creepy wax museum at night, cleaning up after inconsiderate guests and overzealous tourists, but it pays, and that’s what matters. The day you interviewed, you noted how empty the place was, which, in theory, is good for your work-load, but maybe not job stability.
On your first night, the manager walked you through the building, noting storage spaces and bathrooms where cleaning supplies could be found, then confided in you that 'the place could feel quite creepy from time to time, but try not to let it get into your head'. As if it needed saying.
‘Quite creepy’ was a bit of an understatement, though, because, on top of everything else, much like a horror movie cliche, their eyes seem to follow you around. What the movies don’t convey well is the deep sense of unwellness that seeps into your bones, the maddening paranoia, the creeping dread, the anxiety clouding your judgment. It’s more than just hairs raising on your neck, it’s a primal, visceral fear, and with so many of them, it feels like the walls are closing in on you. Like they are closing in on you. You’ve been here two nights and are beginning to understand why the last sucker quit. This is psychological warfare.
Maybe you’ll get used to it, you try to reason with yourself, but it doesn’t really work, because as the nights progress, so, too, do the off-putting antics. The first few nights were more paranoia than justified fear, but by night three, the museum feels significantly more hostile. The building itself seems to want you out. There’s an uncomfortable feeling hanging in the air as you enter and lock the massive, two-story double-doors behind you, stepping into the museum, pulling in stiff, stale breaths, like the building hadn’t aired out in decades. It occurs to you that, aside from the manager (the same one interviewed, hired, and onboarded you), you had only seen maybe two other living beings in this place. Given, you arrived after close and left before open, but even on the day of your interview, when you ducked into the gift shop afterwards, it was completely dead, without even a cashier in sight, and the selection of goods was more akin to a small-town drug store than a museum gift shop. The building isn’t huge, but there’s a distinct feeling of emptiness that engulfs you. After emptiness, a palpable sense of being watched, and after that, a disconcerting feeling of overcrowding, where the air feels ever stiffer and the figures themselves seem to be sucking it in and forcing it out.
Night four is when things really begin to test you. On the first floor, past the bathrooms, cramped janitor’s closet, and, opposite them, the shitty excuse for a gift shop, the main attraction is the elevated display of celebrity wax figures. Their risers are roped off and each figure encased in an individual plastic display case, which you have to assume was done after one too many people tried to mess with them. Beside that, in a large, half-room, with arching entryways taking up half the space of the outer walls, is a cove of information, placards, brochures, booklets, and interactive displays about the figures. The displays, about the only things in this place that make noise, do go off unprompted at times, which is jarring, and boy, tonight, do they go off. Six times–once every hour of your shift–like clockwork.
With a perturbed sigh, you hurriedly exit the cove, assuring yourself that they’re clearly on a timer, except they’ve never done that any of the previous nights, which is upsetting, though not as upsetting as the shattering of glass that comes seconds later. It nearly makes you jump out of your skin, until the displays grow louder, which is enough to pull a terrified yelp from you as you make your way upstairs as fast as possible, legs beginning to tremble, clutching your phone tightly in your hand, flashlight turned up to full brightness. Something you hadn’t noticed until about now is just how poorly lit this place is. The lighting is dismal, low backup lighting, which they must use to protect the wax from harsher light, relying mostly on sunlight during business hours.
Shining your flashlight across the dark landing, you scan the scene slowly, but no broken glass to be found. Was it here? Much like the figures below, the wax figures upstairs, these ones historical, are encased in a plastic display case, though these ones share one large, against-the-wall display spanning most of the museum’s wall. Nothing you’d seen in the museum so far was made of glass, but the sound was so distinct. The trek across is not one you’ve got the nerves to travel, so you turn and hurry back downstairs.
As you reach the relative safety of the gift shop, which is probably the furthest you can get from the second floor without leaving the building, you back yourself into the corner and sink to your knees. That’s enough. Your adrenaline eases down and your breathing evens out, so you chance getting back up, but notably, your limbs feel very stiff.
The fifth night starts bad and gets worse. Something about this place makes the stiffness worse, and the figures are beginning to shift. Taking new positions, inching closer together.
You’re starting to get it, you think. It’s like a game. It’s creepy as hell, though. Your shifts are mostly about observing them now, anyway, because this place is never any dirtier than you leave it, solidifying the suspicion that no one actually comes here. Tonight, in addition to the movements, you’ve also seen things outside of their cases knocked around somehow. Both terrified and intrigued, too afraid to find out, having such a bad feeling about this, but something kept you tied to the creepy place. Something called you to it.
It’s hard to get the keys secured in the lock when you leave tonight, fingers stiff despite attempting to pop them, but you manage.
By the sixth night, you’re awfully suspicious that your manager never comes in, either. Greeting you as you enter is every wax figure, out of their cases, standing in the centre of the floor, all looking up at the tinted panes of glass that make up the sunroof. There was glass, of course. In your terror, you had forgotten about the glass roofing. There was no glass on the floor, though. You want to check it out, but are extremely hesitant to go anywhere near the free-range wax figures. Between multiple long-range angle techniques and a flashlight, you manage to deduce that there are several holes in the glass, though how this happened and why, you’re unsure.
Out of curiosity, you move to check upstairs where more than half of the figures had previously been displayed, shocked to find that the doorway and staircase are both blocked by makeshift barriers of broken display pieces, desks, and plastic casings. There’s an energy radiating off the figures as they huddle together. It’s like some art installation from a fever dream.
You almost feel stiffer when you look at them, so prefer not to, but there’s not much else to look at right now. As far as you’re concerned, you don’t have a real job anymore, you’re just being paid to survive. There’s a hushed tone falling across them as you step closer. No way. They are not talking. This isn’t possible.
“Fire,” you’re able to make out, only faintly. What? You begin to second-guess yourself before you hear it again, louder, in a different voice. “Fire.”
You make the mistake of looking at them, and oh, god, they’re all looking right at you, eyes fixed intensely on otherwise expressionless faces. Their gaze is literally chilling, or numbing, or something, because looking at them is absolutely spreading the stiffness in your limbs, your fingertips, your neck. You want to look away, but you physically can’t pull yourself, so you attempt instead to squeeze your eyes shut, and that’s the last thing you remember from that night.
Night seven. End of the week. This is it, if you can get yourself out. Something feels unfinished. Tonight, they’re not all standing in the middle of the floor. Some are in the gift shop, some are in the information cove, seemingly watching the displays, which blare at full volume. A few of the ones still lingering and staring up at the holes are pointing to it now. There seem to be more holes, too, but just like last time, no glass. It’s not crazy, at this point, to believe that the figures themselves are cleaning up after themselves as they strip apart the ceiling. Maybe today, there will be enough holes to let the sunshine in directly. That seems to be what they’re trying to do, but maybe sunlight isn’t enough, and maybe that’s why, even now, increasingly, you’ve been hearing single utterances in a unison of voices, urgently whispering, pleading, “fire!”
There might be matches in the janitor’s closet, you think, heading that way before you can figure out quite why you’re trying to help them. The door is hanging open, which you’re thankful for given how difficult it is getting to move around, and you’re almost inside before the figure standing against the door manages a muffled groan, and you begrudgingly turn to look. At first, you’re not sure, because you really hadn’t seen him much, but you swear that it’s your manager. How long had he been like this? His eyes are begging, and you nod before turning into the closet and quickly rummaging through for a box of matches.
It’s growing ever harder to stoop and bend, to grasp things with your fingers, turn your head. This isn’t just for them, you realize. It’s for you, too. You’re one of them now. After you’ve finally got them in your hands, you shuffle to the centre of the floor, fear diminishing as it is replaced with understanding, and, standing over the rug spanning the length of the display as the other wax figures shuffle on, with stiff but trembling hands and great difficulty, you manage to light the match, hold it out in front of you, and, as you squeeze your eyes shut, you drop it.