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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/APCleriot on 2024-09-22 16:36:24+00:00.

So the end had come. A hundred bucks and a quarter, my cut of the tips for Thursday night. Not even close to what I needed to pay rent and get some food - actual food, not pretzels and chips - for Sam, my brother.

His care cost a lot. He needed to be watched at all times. Mrs. George from the lower apartment would have done it for free but she needed to survive too. Taking care of kids in the building, and Sam, was her income.

“Need an advance, Charlie?” Jack, owner of The Cat and Cathedral, offered.

I smiled. “You’ve already advanced me a month.” I sighed and rested my chin on the bar. “It’s just not enough these days. I can’t keep up. Can you?”

He shrugged. “It’s been slow. Times are tough all around.”

“Can you remember a time when they weren’t? I asked.

“Early 90s maybe?”

“So, last century,” I observed.

He chuckled. “Guess so. Wanna drink?”

“Yes.”

He poured out two pints. Jack didn’t know I had little taste for beer. I drank it for the calories. Without these nightly freebies, I’d waste away.

“Cheers.”

We drank a few. It tasted like coppery piss, but the alcohol dulled the anxiety or at least delayed it a little. Sober me could deal with the crushing responsibilities of life later.

He indulged my prolonged loitering till just after three.

“I’m off, Charlie,” he said.

“Mind if I stick around for one more? I can lock up.” Jack caught my straying glance toward the old office under the stairs.

His eyes fixed on the locked door. By his order, no one was allowed in there. Only me and one other bartender had been told what it contained. And the other bartender - Tyler - was dead.

“You stay out of there,” Jack said.

“What? I know.”

“It’s only trouble. Tyler-”

“Died from an overdose, Jack.”

“But if he hadn’t messed with the drawer,” Jack said, still watching the forbidden door, his expression pained, “he never would have-”

“I don’t buy that, Jack, which is why I would never bother putting anything in there. There’d be no point. I stopped believing in magic at ten.”

He nodded and looked a bit teary eyed. I wondered if I’d been too blunt. Tired and stressed 24/7, I rarely made good company. Jack had always been a friend.

“I won’t go in there,” I said. “I promise. Now go home. Shannon’s gotta be wondering where you are, and tell her to come by every once in a while. I haven’t seen her in years.”

Jack smiled at the mention of his wife. “She’s probably been asleep since nine.” He said one more goodbye, spared another uneasy check of the old office door before reluctantly leaving.

Like most days, this would be my only time alone. I loved Sam. He waa my heart and my world. But the energy of my youth had been spent on him.

Our parents were old when they had us, and not healthy. They died within a year of one another. I was nineteen. Sam was twelve. Jack gave me a job and more than a decade flew by.

I helped myself to the house red, and ate a bag of chips in a dark booth. Mrs. George had texted that Sam had fallen asleep around eight. He’d be up by six am again. I had three hours. Sleep didn’t call because it never did.

“I’m going to die if this goes on,” I said to the bar, and thought of the drawer in the old office. The Cat and Cathedral had the honour of being one of the oldest piles of bricks and mortar in Bridal Veil Lake. It predated the War of 1812.

And had once served as an apothecary and barbershop. Dark iron brackets for lanterns were still embedded in the beams. The fireplace was original too, though rarely lit, except on Christmas Eve for the lonely, the lost.

Despite the heat of a mid September night, I wished to build a fire so I could smell the ashes, and think of better days. Tips were plentiful around the holidays. Sam and I ate well and the rent would be paid.

“I don’t know if I can make it to Christmas,” I said. “I’m tired. God, I am tired.” While I cried, I poured out more wine and began to really feel the alcohol seize control.

With so little food in my stomach, the beer alone had pushed me beyond a buzz. Wine gently guided me the resy of the way to totally fucked.

“Shit,” I said. “I’m drunk.” Then I laughed because it didn’t matter. Drunk. Sober. Sleep deprived. I’d been so long past exhausted, it couldn’t get worse. You can’t kill what’s dead.

“Oh, god, please help me.”

I thought he answered with the soft scraping of wood on wood. The noise came from the old office, and I could have convinced myself I’d imagined it if I weren’t so desperate for something to go my way.

“Don’t mess with the old office,” Jack told Tyler and I years ago. I think I was twenty-two. Tyler and I had gone in there out of curiosity. The small room didn’t hold much but a broken chair, and a drawer in the wall. Jack caught us as Tyler opened the drawer.

“Close that shit up!” Jack had yelled, and I’d never seen him so mad before. I didn’t think he could get mad. He slammed shut the wide, shallow drawer, and physically dragged us from the room by our aprons.

Last call was hours ago that night. I remember a winter storm discouraged the trek home. Jack’s hands were shaking as he struggled with an old key in the ancient lock of the office door.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“What’s the deal with that drawer?” Tyler ventured. “It’s weird.”

Jack said nothing as he searched behind the bar for something strong. He came out with vodka and poured himself a shot. And then another. When he finally started to settle, he spoke quickly.

“Never go in there. Don’t open that drawer, and for the love of fucking Christ almighty, don’t you dare put anything in there.” He stared hard at Tyler as if he knew the far younger man could only be tempted by a warning.

“The drawer goes into the wall,” I said, “but… there’s only the outer lounge on the other side.” I thought of the low ceilings in what seemed like an annex to the main room, and recalled the strange cylindrical stonework tucked into the left corner. It looked like an old timey bread oven without an opening. I figured that’s what it’d been, and that it’d been filled in at some point. “The drawer goes into that bulge in the annex. That’s weird.”

“It’s just big enough for a person to stand in,” Tyler said, “uncomfortably.”

“I don’t know about any of that,” Jack said, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth. “But there’s something in there, and it isn’t good.”

Tyler laughed.

Jack looked embarrassed.

“What are you saying, Jack?” I asked.

He glared at Tyler. “I won’t talk about it anymore except to say whatever goes in that drawer comes back out times three.”

Obviously, we had no idea what he meant, and it took some persuasion and another shot to get an explanation.

“So,” Tyler said, more interested, but no less skeptical, “If I put a loonie in there, when I open the drawer, there’ll be three loonies?”

It felt like a set-up for more ridicule. Jack didn’t take the bait. “You can’t just put money in there. Part of you goes with it. It comes back at you three times as hard.” He leveled a finger at us both. “Promise me you’ll stay out of there. Right now. Or you can pound sand.”

“Whoa, whoa, for real?” Tyler asked, grinning like a child. “You’re gonna fire us? Sounds like a wrongful dismissal lawsuit. Should we get a lawyer?”

“I promise, Jack.” It was important to him, so it was important to me. “So does Tyler.”

“I do?”

I dug my fingernails into his forearm. “Ouch. Fuck,” he expressed calmly. “Fine. I promise not to play with your magic drawers.”

Jack studied our faces before nodding and abruptly leaving for the night.

“That guy’s fucked,” Tyler said.

“That guy,” I said, “is my friend.”

“Okay, okay,” Tyler said. “You heading out?”

“Yes,” I said, “and so are you?”

He grinned again. “Oh come on, I’ve got to check this shit out. It’s a magic drawer? Did you see his face? Dude is scared shitless of it. I can’t not check it out. I. Can’t.”

“You promised him.”

“Under the duress of your finger knives.”

He had a point there. I didn’t believe in superstitious bullshit. Plus, I didn’t see a way into the old office. Jack had the key. Tyler lacked a brain and had zero skills outside of slinging pints and flirting with customers.

“Goodnight,” I told him for the last time. He died from a combination of drugs and exposure that night. On the way home, he passed out in a snowbank and froze to death.

Jack found the old office and the drawer open. That was enough evidence for him. The “trading drawer” he called it, and it had killed Tyler, all of twenty-four.

I’d like to say I felt sad about Tyler’s death. But I didn’t feel much at all. Deep in my own troubles, I had no energy to spare on fools.

Jack took it much harder. He vowed to seal that room, and break the drawer. But he never did. He couldn’t bring himself to go inside, and never stayed long near the old office door even.

If he could have sold the bar or closed it, I think he would have. Instead, he kept his head down and drank more. And didn’t talk about the drawer or Tyler except for this night, this very night I thought about it and nothing else.

I needed money. I had a hundred bucks and a quarter. Three hundred and seventy five cents would be much better. My promise to Jack and what I was about to do stung through the fatigue and withdrew guilt usually reserved for Sam.

I could never do enough for my brother. I was failing him. Jack would be upset, but with a full stomach and a place to live. I owed it to Sam to try every damn thing to help us survive and more.

None of these thoughts…

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