Cthulhu's Car Park: Third Shift, #1

By D.S. Ritter

There's something creeping around in the parking structure. And this time it's not one of Sam's nightmare customers.

 

Sam's job as a parking attendant has always been a drag. Until now.

 

A hole straight to hell has opened up and evil lurks in the shadows of the garage. When management fails to help and her trainee gets possessed, Sam turns to her friends and coworkers.

 

But, can a handful of burned out employees save a city? Especially when a tall handsome stranger is thrown into the mix who may know more than he's letting on?

 

If you're brave enough to find out whether Sam will discover the secret of the parking garage without dying—or getting fired—get your copy of Cthulhu's Car Park today.

 

Just so you know, this horror novella contains strong language and some violence. And, slime. Lots of slime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D.S. Ritter
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393131090

D.S. Ritter

Writes fantasy novels

Book preview

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It’s not working.

Sam looked down at the customer from her post beside the automatic parking machine and assessed the situation. It was a woman, driving a red sports car, Sam didn’t know the model. The look of contempt on the woman’s face made her suspect it was expensive. She held a blue parking ticket.

Ignoring that the woman had not even tried to put her ticket into the machine, Sam took it and slid it into the slot.

You need to put it with the stripe up and to the right, she explained for the millionth time, unsurprised when the screen showed the woman had not paid for her ticket yet. There were a number of signs posted suggesting she prepay in the elevator lobby, but many customers seemed to think those signs were for other people. It’s going to be a dollar and fifty cents.

Following instructions did not seem to be this lady’s strong suit; she dug through her purse and withdrew two crumpled dollar bills.

I’m sorry, ma’am, said Sam, using her best customer-service tone and pointing to a big sign posted right on the machine, we only accept debit or credit cards at the gate.

The woman’s frown turned into a grimace. That’s ridiculous! It’s two dollars!

I’m sorry, that’s just how our system works, ma’am. This machine isn’t built to handle cash.

With long, manicured nails the customer plucked a card from her purse and thrust it toward Sam, who inserted it into the slot and waited for the transaction to clear.

The payment machine was a sleek looking device, sort of resembling an ATM, with one slot, two buttons and a screen. One might think a machine that simple would be easy for people to use, particularly with a big board of instructions right in front of them.

Sam’s job was to stand beside it, putting people’s tickets in correctly, assuring them that yes, their credit card did go there, and clearing mechanical jams. This time, she could hear the machinations inside working, and out popped the credit card. She handed it back to the customer.

Would you like a receipt?

The gate had gone up and the sports car was already wheeling onto the street, so she plucked the piece of paper out of the machine and put on the small pile on top of the nearby garbage can.

The job wasn’t a hard one in terms of skill level. Be polite. Help people operate a system designed to be completely automated. No cash register to mess around with. Very little handling of cash at all, assuming the machine in the lobby was working. But, sometimes easy or hard didn’t have to do with skill.

An idling engine drew Sam's attention to the entrance. Two men sat in a black sedan, staring at her. At eleven o’clock at night on a Wednesday, the parking structure was close to empty, so Sam prepared herself for a hassle. Can I help you?

The driver had an expression of slack-jawed determination. Yeah, uh, where’s a spot?

Sam disliked this question, for a couple of reasons, the first being it was a reminder that management expected her to stay by the gates at all times, so there was no way to know which spots were available. The second was the question’s lazy nature. Drive around for two seconds and find it yourself, she thought.

What she said, politely, was, It’s pretty empty right now, I’m sure there’s one just up that ramp. To be clear, she pointed out the ramp to the next level.

When the customer had driven off, not saying much other than cool, Sam stood there for a moment and enjoyed the quiet. The night was winding down, the electronic sign in front of the garage said there were almost two-hundred spaces available, and in a few hours, she’d be able to go home.

It was summer in the college town of Ann Arbor, and the night, a pleasant, balmy one, so she wore her uniform polo, khaki shorts and tennis shoes, because sandals went against the dress code. A breeze tickled the sad little urban trees, pushing a receipt across the concrete floor of the structure, and the only sound was radio traffic on her walkie-talkie. Cashiers and maintenance workers checked in with the home office from all over the city, clearing transactions and reporting problems. In a few weeks, the university would be starting up again, and then the calm nights would be a memory until around Christmas.

As her mind really started to wander, the sound of puking echoed over the concrete from somewhere within the structure. Already imagining the smell, Sam unclipped her radio from her belt. Seven-One to HQ.

HQ, crackled the radio, go ahead, Seven-One.

I think I’ve got someone throwing up somewhere in the structure. Permission to check it out?

Okay, Seven-One, go check it out. Let us know if you need any back up.

Ten-four.

Returning the radio to her belt, Sam looked around for any customers. Seeing none, she made her way to the up-ramp.

Seven-One was a small structure, with eight split-levels containing only about thirty spaces each. It didn’t take her long to locate where the sick person had been. There was nobody on 3b, but a pool of vomit beside the black sedan that had just entered gave her an idea of who the culprit might have been. Sam almost gagged, smelling the alcohol from ten feet away. She informed HQ what she’d found.

You got sawdust over there, Seven-One? asked Marcus, the night manager.

Should be some in the basement hold, replied Dave, one of the maintenance workers.

Just spread some of that sawdust and we’ll send someone over to deal with it later, said Marcus, who sounded distracted. What’s this guy doing? Hey, Seven-Six, you got that guy’s license plate?

Her part of the conversation over, Sam went back to ignoring the radio traffic and took the elevator to the bottom floor of the structure. It had three half levels underground, besides the eight split levels above.

The basement levels creeped Sam out. Their ceilings were lower than the upper levels and there were no windows, giving them a claustrophobic feel. And worse, the lights were motion activated. This wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that they took a second to register, leaving you in pitch-blackness for longer than Sam was really comfortable, and once they came on, they had a tendency to flicker, like in a low budget slasher movie. Every time she had to go down for a car count or whatever, she found herself imagining the lights coming on, and seeing someone waiting, perfectly still.

Today, she was too annoyed at the prospect of cleaning up a puddle of sick to be scared, and made her way to the supply hold, closed off with a chain-link fence. She shoved her electronic key into the lock. It chirped merrily.

The fluorescent lights were still flickering when she heard another chirp.

It didn't sound electronic.

She glanced down behind her and jumped. Mice were not unheard of in the structure. They ate garbage, and nobody cared since they mainly stayed out of sight. But this was not a mouse.

First of all, it was green. Not lizard-green, with scales. This was booger-green and looked like one of those disgusting oozy toys that were popular in the nineties.

The thing had smooth, glistening skin, too many legs and far, far too many eyes. And they all looked up at her. It chirped again though she couldn’t spot any sort of a mouth or nose.

Um, hello, she said, and immediately felt stupid. But really, she could either talk to the thing, or let panic overtake her, so she said, Where did you come from?

It chirped again, which would have been cute if a large, fang-filled mouth hadn't emerged from the slimy thing like an angry suction cup. The chirp lowered in tone as the teeth extended. Before it finished its transformation, Sam had picked up the heavy snow shovel they kept next to the bag of sawdust. She slammed it down on the creature with as much force as she could. It made a disgusting, stomach-turning squash-clang!

Gingerly, she lifted the metal shovel head and peered at what was left. The corpse was totally smashed and bright green goop seeped out of it like the insides of a rotten melon. And the smell! It was something like burned hair mixed with old garbage.

One of the thing’s arms twitched, and Sam threw the shovel down and ran back upstairs and into the staff bathroom. With the door locked behind her, she got on the radio.

If she hadn’t been working for Empire Parking for years,