Amy is living paycheck to paycheck in suburban Ohio, while working at the Ikea knockoff store Orsk. When the store manager, Basil, asks her to work an overnight shift to see who is sneaking in the store and messing with merchandise at night, she takes the opportunity to make some extra pay in cash. Amy is working retail as “just a job” but Basil fully believes in the teamwork and pride of working there. Amy is dreading her night shift, but there is no way she could predict how the night would end up. As she is working the shift with Ruth Anne, a loyal employee who treats everyone like family, they notice fellow team members Trinity and Matt have snuck in the store overnight to do some ghost hunting. They join up and at first, the mysterious things happening in the store are attributed to a homeless man named Carl, but the group finds that things are not as they seem.
The layout of such a mega store is meant to be disorienting to customers to get them stuck in a shopping loop, but several characters start to get stuck and turned around more often than not in the familiar-to-them store layout. As the creepy factor turns up, it’s hard for the employees to determine if it’s a person or a ghost. The plot thickens as we find out that Orsk is built on the site of a former prison, where the warden was convinced that he could cure criminal minds with forced labor. The amount of terrifying things happening dramatically increases as the “warden” takes control of the store and the inmate ghosts are torturing the Orsk employees. The warden strikes a psychological chord with Amy as he calls out her troubled spirit and aimless life. As the frightening night goes on, she starts to see why Basil values the teamwork of Orsk and learns leadership from him. She fights her way out, but Orsk corporate is determined to keep what happened under wraps. The book is left open for a follow up, which will no doubt be another great story
TL:DR- A quick to read, yet exciting horror book with a deep look at the retail world, purpose, teamwork, and leadership.
Publication Date: September 23, 2014 Page Count: 248
ISBN: 1594745269 Publisher: Quirk