The Night Locker

By Tyler Grant

The Night Locker is a dark place where good and bad people are punished alike. Tyler Grant leads readers down the path of insanity in this mind-warping tale of innocence lost to corruption by a talented entity.
Martin Blevins is an unsuspecting, inoffensive man who likes to eat at the EveryDay Diner. He orders specific meals for each day of the week. He has a routine, and has organized his life around the work schedule of his favorite waitress. On a stormy October night, Martin is assaulted by a man he calls the ogre. Embarrassed in front of the woman he loves, he goes to great lengths to prove to her that he can fend for himself, and protect her. What does this mean? Murder? Perhaps. How’s he going to do it? He’ll need a little help... and he’ll get it too. Martin is opened up to something that’s been knocking at his mental backdoor since he was an abused child. As a wave of change overtakes him, he begins to lose what makes him Martin Blevins. He becomes someone... or something... else in entirely.
Be wary of the thoughts you allow to entire your mind. Once they’re in, they can never be sent away. They live there, always waiting for the first crack in your resolve... and they worm their way into control...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tyler Grant
• Release date: May 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463791967

Tyler Grant

Tyler Grant is the author of dozens of comedy, suspense, and horror stories, including the popular “Tyler Grant’s Series of Voices”. He holds a Master’s in English and worked as a news journalist for six years prior to writing short fiction and novels. You can follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Tyler-Grant-Books. Be sure to like his page, and follow for updates regarding his latest work. Grant lives in Washington State.

Book preview

The Night Locker

A picture containing drawing, food Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Copyright © 2020 Tyler Grant

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

To all my friends at our favorite roadside hangout. Especially Al, who is the life of the party.

Author’s note

The Night Locker was originally conceived as a hack slasher concept. Thankfully, years of maturity opened my eyes to an infinite plethora of options to make this book so much better. While there are still some very uncomfortable scenes written in this work, please keep in mind that it is a commentary on the fragility of the human mind. We are all subject to the stressful changes that life throws our way. We must always be diligent in our mental battle to remain in control, and keep the steady balance of good vs. evil. Martin Blevins  registers on the autism spectrum, but make no mistake in thinking this work is denoting people who are similar in a negative way. Martin is only an example of what happens to people when they are pushed past their breaking point. The reason I wrote him as a man who has autism is because he presented himself that way in my mind. Very seldom do my characters have traits that I give to them. More often, they tell me their story, and I, like a dutiful recorder, provide you with the account of what happens next. Enough from me. Let’s hear from Martin. I hope you enjoy The Night Locker.

PART ONE

The Diner

Raindrops dotted, then streaked the glass of the EveryDay Diner on the busy Lacey Boulevard in Washington State. A lonely man, wearing faded 501 jeans and a flannel shirt, frayed around the cuffs, sat by himself in his usual booth. He was drinking what he considered to be good coffee, if only for the company it allowed him to keep. He was there on this night, like any night, for an ordinary evening out. He had no expectation for what was to become of his innocent plans.

His name was Martin Blevins, and on this particular evening, he waited on a chicken fried steak because it was Tuesday. Martin ate seven different items off the EveryDay Diner menu, a specified meal for each day of the week. It was more than routine or habit— it had become ritual, and any disruption held, believe it or not, psychological consequences. Martin was easily overwhelmed and tended to hyper-focus on what many average people might consider trivial details.

In the third grade, a counselor at Martin’s school suggested he was on the autism spectrum. Martin’s mother fought the diagnosis, and Martin continued his education in a traditional capacity until middle school, though he struggled to form meaningful friendships. His— as the uninformed folks of that time liked to say— oddities prevented him from developing good social skills. He was often bullied, or ignored completely by classmates, and on a regular basis, Martin was told that he was weird or stupid. But he was not stupid. Martin observed everything, filing away details in a computer-like fashion, maintaining a memory like an elephant.

Unfortunately, due to isolation, Martin’s only friend became his mother, and following a brutal incident on the playground in which Martin was badly beaten by a group of popular boys, she pulled him from the public school system in an outrage. With the help of an 83-year-old former math instructor named Gene, she homeschooled Martin. They read lots of books together, and Martin developed a passion for stories. Martin’s mother loved daytime T.V., and he became addicted to the storylines and plots of the characters on screen. Things went okay for a while, but Martin’s father, who spent much of Martin’s early childhood deployed with the army, returned to find that his only son was nothing like him. He did little to hide his displeasure, often vocalizing his disappointment in Martin’s uniqueness.

The colonel was forced to retire early when the army found a murmur during one of his physicals. His powerful personality and cynical perception of the world dominated Martin growing up, and it only worsened when he was liberated of his duties, all his attention focused on home.

The summer before Martin turned fourteen, the colonel made his only significant attempt at connecting with his son, believing the boy needed to toughen up. He thought daytime T.V. and too much time at home with his mother was the cause of Martin’s strange behavior. In an effort to correct this, he took his son hunting. Martin cried when his father shot the elk. He sobbed uncontrollably when he was forced to disembowel the animal, his father’s strong grip collapsing Martin’s hand around the hilt of the buck knife. For weeks afterward, his father didn’t speak to him. If they were in the same room, he ignored his existence. Martin was dead to the colonel.

In an effort to rectify the situation and end the silent punishment, Martin lifted his father’s shotgun from the unlocked gun safe upstairs, knowing what he had to do. He walked outside and, with tears streaming down his face, unloaded the twelve gauge on the neighbor’s cat. He cradled the animal in the crook of his elbows, leaving the shotgun on the sidewalk, and took it inside, blood dripping off the animal’s matted fur, to show his father. Martin received the first real beating of his life, and he was never able to look his father in the eye again.

His parents divorced over this encounter, and Martin lived with his mother until she died of lung cancer, who smoked passionately, even while she’d been pregnant with Martin.

At sixteen, court ordered, Martin again moved in with his father. If he was spoken to, it was roughly. He was not loved. He was fed and housed, and occasionally beaten. Martin didn’t know a lot, but he knew he missed his mother, and he hated his father.

Martin endured the cruelty for two long years, getting no schooling, spending his days alone in his room upstairs. With every hour that passed, he crawled a little deeper inside himself, filling his voids with hatred and self-loathing. At eighteen, unable to take the abuse any longer, Martin opened the front door of their house, located outside Joint Base Fort Lewis McChord, and started walking with no belongings