Speaker 1: Fast Food Horror is an Abbi normal production.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Food Horror. This episode is chapter three
of the Shaft.
Speaker 1: My wife was good to her word. She took me
directly to the emergency room. I went without complaining. I've
been married twenty five years and have learned not to
do so when she is in such a mood. There
they gave me a complete physical minus the prostrate exam,
thank god, hooked me up to an IV to make
sure I wasn't dehydrated, gave me an EKG and an MRI,
and just to be thorough, gave me a complete blood
work up testing my glucose and some other big words
I couldn't understand and didn't know how to pronounce, all
to come to the conclusion that they had no idea
why I lost consciousness, but told my wife that I
was completely healthy. I was released and told to rest
for a few days before I returned to work. I
had called my boss between tests at the hospital and
told her what happened and where I was. She actually
felt bad and told me to take off as much
time as I needed. I was not going to argue
with a few days off, after all, today was Friday,
so I could start the weekend early. Out of pure exhaustion,
I managed a few hours of sleep after coming home
from the hospital. I then crept downstairs and found my
wife creating lesson plans for her class at the kitchen table,
as she had taken the day off to care for me.
I snuck my way past her to the computer in
the basement, coffee in hand. I had some work to do.
I was still very curious about the shaft. First was
the mystery of the door and the verses. I sat
at the computer and downloaded the picks of the various
verses etched into the door's face from my phone, English, Latin, French,
and something else. My eyes walked over the English verse,
taketh heed a serpent here dwells in the darkness. The
demon of scales here to its slumbers. Hereto confined, lest
it feeds and its masion regained. Angels stand resolute, winged,
centuries on guard, disturb not its tomb Panandoro's boss remain
Melolo whom for if it feeds, its fortitude regained? Doomed?
Are we all to suffer its rain? I looked to
the three other etched languages, all had three verses just
like the English. But were they the same and what
did they mean? I took the picks to Google Translate.
Apparently the photo quality and the etching of the words
were making it hard for the programs to translate. I'll
admit that the images turned out darker and had a
grain equality that made reading a bit challenging. I thought
about typing in each first, but I'll be honest, my
typing skills are not the greatest. I am like a
hen in the yard in the dark, hunt and peck.
I did not have the patience to do all of that,
so I called someone that could not say no. Our daughter,
Live was away at college obtaining her law degree with
a minor in Spanish. Live was in her fifth year
and I knew she had a very good understanding of
Latin because of her law endeavors. She also had many
other uber smart friends in various programs at college. So
if Live couldn't help her old man, she knew someone
that could. And since her mom and I were helping
with tuition, Live really couldn't say no. I looked at
the clock, almost eleven. She'd probably still be sleeping, so
I shot her a text with some of the pictures
of the door in a way only a dad with
a dead sense of humor could under these circumstances. In
the vein of the Great Marlon Brando, I am in
need of a favor, I typed, and if you will
do this for me, I will be most pleased, followed
by a gift of as the Godfather. I read it
over seriously, reconsidered whether it was funny, then hit send anyways,
and moved to my next task. I may not be
a very good typer, but I can navigate myself around
the interweb. I went to the county property records database
and put in the address for the parking lot and
waited as the hits populated. I found that the state
dot was in fact leasing the property. The property was
owned by the area diocese. I continued flipping through various
documents and found that the property had been owned by
the diocese in some such form for as long as
they had records dating to eighteen oh eight, the county's founding.
I then found that the county had been established from
Genesee County, the neighboring county, and opened a tab to
their page. I again did the same search for the
property and found the property listed, whose ownership was again
the diocese, all the way back to eighteen oh two.
Why would the Catholic Diocese own property in what, as
long as I could remember, was the industrial section of
the city. And even more intriguing is the ownership dates
all the way back to eighteen oh two. I found
the help request icon and put in a neatly worded
request for historical records concerning the property under the Freedom
of Information Act, with my daughter working on the translation
as soon as she woke up, and now some anonymous
government employees searching the historical records on the property. I
had only one thing left, one stone left unturned, the
video on my phone. Maybe it showed nothing, or maybe
there was something something to give me any semblance of
a clue as to what was down there. I uploaded
the video to my computers so I could have a
bigger screen, and opened up the video on the media player,
then had play. I immediately saw myself on the screen
and watched as I walked my phone over to the shaft.
I could see my breath puff in front of my
mouth with each exhalation. Lips chapped, cheeks are ruddy red.
I increased the speed on the player. No one likes
watching themselves on the camera anyways. Besides, I had eight
hours to get through. I could pause it if I
actually got to anything good Besides the walls and darkness.
I watched as the phone was lowered. The shaft wall
changed from cinderblock to concrete, to cobblestone, then finally a
carved wall of rock and earth as it made its
way through the darkness of the shaft. Lower and lower
it went. After twenty minutes, not quite sure how long
it was in real time, I started to get more
than just the wall on my screen. As the phone's
light shone down the beginning of a hallway, and as
it lowered the floor, I saw the hallway was occupied.
On either side of the hall for as far as
the light would reach. A person stood, No, not a person,
A winged figure, an angel, unmoving and steadfast, with its
back to the camera, facing down the hall. Row upon row,
I studied the screen. Each figure seemed to be carved
out of alabaster or marble. Each figure faced down the hallway,
a sword raised in its right hand, wings ready to
launch it into the air, as if ready to charge
in that direction. On guard for the attack that they
felt was eminent. These must be what the verse described
winged centuries on guard. So where is the serpent? Where
is Pandora's box? And then the phone began to shake,
and as it shook, their perspective changed. Slowly. The camera
view panned up until it faced the shaft and the
sky above, and then filling the screen was the movement
of something, something that moved over the shaft and the
moon above, and then all that was there was black,
shiny and obsidian black reflecting the phone back at me,
filling the entire screen with the shiny, inky blackness, and
then it blinked. I stared in horror, staring at this
eye that was staring at me. My phone's alert bell
broke my concentration. I had a voicemail. Apparently the call
went directly to it. I reached for the phone and
saw it was live, hit the message and pressed play
as I stared at the black eye staring back at me,
studying me. I swear it was looking right at me me.
My daughter's voice filled the void of the silence.
Speaker 3: Dad, I don't know where you got these pictures, but
you found something huge. Everyone here is so excited. You
need to call me now, and whatever you do, do
not go in the shaft.
Speaker 4: Dad, Don't go in that shaft.
Speaker 2: Itzt.