American Storage
American Storage is here for your everyday storage needs.
It’s also a chain. Across the continental United States, patriotic packrats of our fine republic can shut away their unnecessary gizmos and gadgets in one of American Storage’s 193 nationwide facilities. They accept all manner of furniture, decorations, and, of course, cursed objects.
The number of cursed objects per storage facility varies. In most, you can find one haunted item per 20 units. This average is consistent across most of the Western and Northern United States, with a sharp supernatural spike in the South. When the Southern Gothic tradition fell out of vogue in the late 60’s, children of Southern ghouls, gorgons, and gormory found themselves with more murderous boudoirs and possessed four-poster beds than they knew what to do with. What they couldn’t sell, they stored. And they always stored with American Storage.
At the epicenter of this hoarding hoodoo is an American Storage facility at the intersection of U.S. Highway 64 and Mt. Gilead Church Road, just before the highway crosses North Carolina’s Haw River. From within his cramped bureau, Igor Makorov keeps watch over the community of storage units. At night, he listens to Rachmaninoff’s The Isle of the Dead and sucks contemplatively upon his old wooden pipe. He knows his patrons’ faces, but he has never spoken to them.
There’s Diana Kugler, the German baker, who owns the only bakery in NC that sold authentic strudel and kougelhopf. That is, until the day her baking drove half the town of Cary mad. It was a day like any other day:
At 3 o’clock AM, she rose to get ready for work. On her bakery’s doorstep, a new bag of flour had been delivered. As she inspected the bag, she noticed that it was not of the usual stock and mark. Wary though she was that this new flour might change the taste of her pastries, she did not have time to buy another bag. And so she baked her famous Kugler kougelhopf for the day, without sparing a second thought for the mystery bag of flour.
But by 6 o’clock PM, as she watched the last, crazed patron of her shop plummet to their death from the plaza’s balcony, and she witnessed the west wing of Waverly Place burn to the ground, Diana realized what a horrible mistake she had made.
Her storage unit is filled with a bad bag of flour, 4 pots, and a blood-stained roller.
Then there’s Samuel Tarris, the psychologist, who fell in love with Archie Ferris, the exorcist. One spent his days quietly listening and gently prodding his patients in what he hoped to be the right direction. The other spent his days strapping members of his congregation to the bed, sprinkling water on their foreheads, and yelling in off-brand Latin.
Neither of them were making any headway.
On and on it went, until one day the two of them decided to trade places. Samuel had always suspected, though he would never say it aloud, that his husband’s profession was a bit silly at best and deeply problematic at its worst. Despite his own failure to improve the lives of his patients in any meaningful way, Dr. Tarris still thought that those parishioners could benefit from a little CBT. Coincidentally, Archie felt the same way about his husband’s practice. So, for one day, the priest exorcised the patients, and the psychologist went to church and set up shop in the annex.
By day’s end, none of the patients or churchgoers admitted to feeling any better, but all agreed that the exercise was pleasantly diverting.
“The shouting didn’t help my nerves,” Reported recently exorcised Cathy Sullivan, “But the lavender candles were nice.”
“I still think I’ve got the Devil in me,” Admitted Miranda Dalton, “But after talking to that nice man for 30 minutes, my husband was so relaxed and attentive. Bless his heart, 15 years of marriage and that night was the first time he found my clitoris!”
Their storage box is filled with one complete set of human teeth, a prayer book, and some nebulous fluid ostensibly labeled “Holy Water.”
American Storage is here for all your everyday storage needs, living or otherwise. D’Andre Smith works in the Triangle by day, but twice a week he makes the drive down Highway 64 to American Storage, stopping only once by the local meat market. Igor buzzes him in and silently turns over a key. Every Monday and Thursday, the door of box twenty-three cracks open and D’Andre swings a slab of meat inside. On Thursday’s D’Andre waves a bloody hand at Mary-Belle Louis, who sits apparently alone in her storage unit, rocking back and forth in her antique rocker. A flickering light casts a dim glow across the woven carpet, and a book, Le loup-Garou de chateau Branaire-Ducru, sits open in her lap.
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Louis!”
The hustle and bustle round the old storage facility reaches a fever pitch once a month during the full moon. As the clouds part and the pale light radiates off the white panels, Genie Black pulls her unit’s door shut behind her. The last thing her daughter, Tabitha Black, sees before locking the door is her mother’s furry wrists and black claws tearing back the vinyl bottom. When Tabitha and her fiancé withdraw their key from the iron lock, they help the Abernathy children put their fathers in storage. Tabitha’s hand holds the youngest Abernathy’s face, and her finger — the painted nail chipped on the concrete — wipes a tear from his face.
The Blacks and the Abernathys join the Solomons and drive down to the Devil’s Tramping Ground by Harper’s Crossing. The Friends and Family of Lycanthropes Association (FFLA) are permitted use of the tramping grounds once a month, where the renowned Alberto Lucifero entertains on his fiddle made of gold.
As the embers of Igor’s pipe release a final ashy puff into the night, the solemn tones of Danse Macabre rings out from his record player. The mournful cry of the violin drowns out the howls from units 45 through 54.
American Storage is here for your everyday storage needs.
