THE DAILY NUBB

Title not related, sorry.

By Bigs

I have written short stories, randomly, across the length of my life. Sometimes I get inspired or eager to write and I will write 4 of them in a day, and then it may be 4 months before I write another one.

I wanted to share a spooky one, and one of my favorites, that I wrote back in 2023 (it’s 2026 now, by the way). The title doesn’t really relate to the story of it all the much, given the title is “The Brickyard”, but I do think you will like the story.

Have fun, and maybe I will post some more in the future!

Alright, here we go.

It was getting late on Saturday, April 19th, 2023. 

The shift started like any other weekend shift started: clock in at 8 PM, post up behind the front desk, let in the maintenance people around 10, and flutter my eyes back and forth between the plethora of screens corresponding to the many cameras spanning all the way up to the 87th floor, and the front door that most likely wouldn’t be opened again until 6:30 the following morning. 

‘Oh look, there’s Harry. He’s a bit earlier tonight than usual,’ I thought to myself.

“Hey Harry, how’s Margie?” I asked.
“Ah, you know man, still trying to get over that cold, but she’s in good spirits at least,” he responded.

Patricia comes in a few minutes later, then Ulysses, and finally Opal.

“Opal! How have you been? Done anything fun since last Saturday?” I asked.
“Well, I did get a new puppy this past Wednesday! I named her Kira” she exclaimed.
“Wow, that is exciting! I would love to meet her one day!”

Opal headed into her office on the 8th floor. She was recently appointed as the head of maintenance, much to the chagrin of Ulysses who has been here since the year I was born, quite literally. Management said they needed someone with ‘bright, new ideas’ to run maintenance, all but eliminating Ulysses from contention. I personally think that’s a load of crap and they gave the job to Opal because she’s cute, but it wasn’t my place to make assumptions and it still isn’t.

I guess I should give you some backstory on this situation I am setting up, right?

My name is Miles. I am a 24-year-old man working a ‘security’ gig in the Lower East Side. We all start somewhere, I guess.  I moved to New York when I was 21, hoping to get into writing and have the fluorescent city lights and aroma of street food and cigarette smoke inspire me. Maybe I should have moved to the woods like Thoreau. 

None of that matters really now though, because this is the story of how I saw something that I really shouldn’t have, and now I am running from it. 
Like I said, it was getting late. All the maintenance people had come and gone, and it was just me with the front lobby lights on and dark hallways and stairwells adjacent to my desk shaped prison. Dramatic, I know, but that job was SO boring. I was watching Blue Planet on my phone with one Airpod in and the charger juicing up my only source of entertainment for the evening when I heard it. A faint voice somewhere up the stairwell. It was so, so quiet, but I had the volume low on the video in case of a break-in.

For situations just like this. I knew everyone’s voice that was there (It’s only the 5 of us after all). This wasn’t a voice I recognized.

I was petrified, obviously. Everyone had gone to the maintenance office, as per usual, and the door was shut tight. I mean, I had been alone from 8 PM to 6:30 AM in the lobby of this building for the past 8 ½ months, silence abounding, until that night. Part of me was also excited, however, for the very same reasons. It was SOMETHING other than that silence. I took out my headphones, pulled my phone off the charger (fully juiced up, good job Miles), and began heading up the stairs. I turned each light switch on that I passed for two reasons: 1) I was scared, duh, and 2) Maybe the person that had broken in noticed someone was coming and would scare whoever was up there away. 

I got to the 39th floor and the voice was closer than ever at that point. Now you may be wondering, “Miles, how did you hear a voice from 39 stories up? Do you have super hearing?” and as cool as that would be, no. The short answer is big, empty building = echo. 

I began heading down the hall to the room with a voice and a bit of fragmented light casting shadows across the piece of wall that I could see through the slit in the door. As I got closer, I realized it sounded akin to a news reading. Talking head type voice where everything sounds like a question with a raised voice pitch at the end of every sentence. 

I walked into the office with my flashlight shining worried squiggles into the wall due to my incessant shaking. I was right, it was a voice, and as soon as I looked at the TV it was playing on, I was transported back to elementary school. I kid you not, this was an old, box TV on top of a rolling cart with a VCR on the tray below it, JUST like the ones teachers used to roll into the classroom on days that they were hungover to play you Bill Nye or School House Rock. 

Nostalgia, baby. Everyone loves it. 

I began loosely watching the pre-recorded news cast while also rummaging around the office to see what I could find. I found the box that the tape that was currently in the VCR came from and on the side, it said:
HUDSON RIVER 1976 *REDACTED*

I shut the office door behind me and pulled the overly broken-in swivel chair from under the desk into the empty space in front of the TV.

“Why is this playing right now, and who left their damn TV on in the first place?” I thought to myself. 
“No matter, I didn’t do anything wrong so let’s check it out” I said out loud, entirely unprepared for what I was about to witness.

Upon giving my full attention to the TV from 1996 playing this mysterious tape, I realized that the man talking was not a newscaster but instead a scientist of some sorts. He wore an outlandish looking HAZMAT suit and was talking directly into the camera on the edge of some body of water. 

“Good evening, everyone. Today is March 7th, 1976. Today is the day we break ground. My name is Dr. Michael Huntley, and I am the head researcher for the HRSEC. Over the past 12 years we have been studying a mysterious tone that can be heard exactly once a year on November 18th at approximately 9:15 PM. It cannot be heard by the human ear, but instead is ‘heard’ by seismic centers in the HRSEC. Whatever is making this sound is big. Too big to be unfindable. Today, we will find it” he said.

‘Wait, I remember that place. That’s the old Hudson River Science and Engineering Center. I remember the city gave a massive grant to some new branch of a foundation on the mayor’s dime with seemingly no explanation to the people back in 1971’ I thought.

The video cut to the water’s edge. It’s the Hudson. Such a cool river. Now I work in the Lower East Side, but I live in Brooklyn because, you guessed it, it is far too expensive to live in the Lower East Side. I live about 7 blocks from the Lower New York Harbor on the Brooklyn side. It’s a great spot. I have a ramen shop in the basement of my apartment with a good bubble tea shop 100 feet away, and a to-die for diner with some kick-ass orange rolls no more than a block toward the river. 

Anyway, I am getting off topic. Dr. Huntley came back into frame.

“Meet Henrik and Klaus, two German American citizens that also happen to be the best divers we have in New York City. Today, they will be making history,” he says while turning to offer a cheeky smile at the two divers behind him. “Ready when you are, lads.”

The two divers rock back and fall backwards into the shimmering water behind them and the screen cuts to black. For a couple of seconds, I saw my face looking back at me in on the screen of the TV. My eyes were anticipatory, and I realized I had sat up in the seat. Then the feed starts again.
In the top left corner was the name Henrik, and in the top right corner was a time stamp, and an image of a full battery. A flashlight shone downward into the water and the camera turned to face the other diver, Klaus, and Henrik offered a slowed thumbs up due to the water resistance. The screen then quickly cut to Klaus’ camera and the water around them was much darker. Fewer fish were swimming around, and the ground was in view. As the men approached the bottom, they began speaking to each other. 

“Alright, attach your anchor,” Henrik said. “I will attach mine after.”

Having no real working knowledge on the physics of the water at the bottom of the Hudson River, I made wild assumptions based on my one year of AP Physics from high school.

“Yeah, they’re probably doing that because of the water flow and general pressure at the bottom,” I said confidently.

The feed swaps over to Henrik’s camera which showed Klaus pulling out a spring-loaded grapple and shooting it into the floor of the Hudson. Then I heard it. That God awful shriek. Blood-curdling. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It rattled in my inner ear. It sounded like a siren, the way the pitch would drop and rise again, volume constant. 

Henrik’s camera shakes violently, and they both begin flailing. A liquid akin to oil begins coming up from the grapple point. Viscous and black, it begins floating up through the water and dissipating into the surrounding area. A familiar voice comes through the TV.

“Boys! Calm down! The mission is not over yet! You can do this!” Dr. Huntley exclaims. I really wish they had a heart rate monitor attached to these cameras, but I can’t blame them. This video is from back in the 70’s. Now Henrik and Klaus are about 80 yards apart in the video, and they are both looking at each other. Henrik chooses not to hook himself to the ground to avoid hearing that awful sound again. Instead, he swims down further to where his hand can touch the ground.

Once there, he touches the bottom. Expecting sand, he begins to rub his fingers together to feel the grains between them. Instead, he is met with callous material. It almost felt like sandpaper, but not sand. It was joined. All of it was joined. He went 5 yards east, 5 yards west, and all the sandpaper-like material was joined. 

The feed switched back to Klaus’ camera. He is observing some raised, dome type region in that 80 yard gap between himself and Henrik. He also reported the same feeling on this dome, but the material underneath this sandpaper was softer. Almost like a hard casing over Jell-O. 

Now, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t shaking at this point. I have a fear of deep water, and this constitutes that, not even considering what I was watching on the TV.

My fear turned to shock when I saw Klaus’ camera snap around to catch Henrik flying through the water in 4 separate pieces, blood dispersing throughout the water and some giant figure disappearing into the dark, murky waters behind him. Klaus panicked, hyperventilating and trying to rip the grapple out of the ground to swim back to the top.

“What is happening down there?! What was that? Where is Henrik?!” Dr. Huntley exclaims.

Klaus was unable to speak. He finally got his grapple free, much to the irritation of whatever is down there because that horrific scream washed over me again. It was worse this time. Louder, deeper… angrier, somehow. Klaus swam as fast as his mind would let him, inhibited by the weight of the water, the weight of his gear and his lungs collapsing with each breath. He was getting tired, and he was running out of oxygen due to the speed of his breathing. The camera shook and Klaus let out a whimper, turning to look back down.

Then he saw it. A single eye, probably 60 to 70 yards in diameter, looking back at him. It was yellow, and bloodshot, with a pupil the size of a house. The light of the flashlight reflected off the eye enough to annoy whatever that thing was, and Klaus let out a scream of pure terror until the thud and blackening of the TV screen.

I was once again staring at myself in the reflection of that TV, glued to my chair, my face as white as a sheet. I didn’t understand what I had just seen, and I am not sure I want to, even now. I began thinking about what it even is. I know for a fact that scientists haven’t discovered it. To give you a frame of reference as to just how large this… thing is, the diameter of the eyes on a colossal squid are 10 inches. Like I said, this eye nearly filled up the screen. It was MASSIVE, on the scale of something from space. If the eye is to scale, this creature could be the size of the entirety of Brooklyn. Whatever that thing is, it can take out all of New York City in a matter of minutes.

Please, hear me. I don't know what else to do. I don't know when this thing is going to decide to act, but I will not be around for it, and I can promise you that.

Natural horrors beyond human imagination exist at the bottom of the Hudson River. I put in my two-week notice, and I am leaving in 4 days. The finance bros of this tower don’t even get a full two weeks.

To all of you who are NYC residents and choose to stay,
Godspeed.

And, scene. I hope you all enjoyed it, and I am eager to post some more in the future! Either way...

Deuces, and peace.

Bigs out.