It was a quiet Tuesday afternoon at White Glove Cleaners, the dry-cleaning shop where Eli had worked for nearly six years. He spent most of his days tagging clothes, carefully removing stains, and handling heavy-duty steamers. The routine was predictable, comforting even, but today something felt… off.

Eli had been sorting through a batch of freshly dropped-off suits, pressing them and checking the pockets before cleaning. Every once in a while, he’d find the occasional loose change, forgotten gum wrapper, or stray business card. Once, he even found a hundred-dollar bill tucked away, though he returned it promptly to the customer, as was shop policy.

But today, as he checked the inside pocket of a heavy, dark overcoat, his fingers brushed something cold, metal, and oddly shaped. Curiosity got the better of him, and he slowly pulled it out.

It was a small key, about the size of a locker key, tarnished and slightly rusty. Eli held it up to the light, noting its peculiar shape and the faint marking on its side—a symbol that looked like a coiled serpent. He frowned. Something about it felt… wrong.

As he was about to tuck the key back into the pocket, his finger brushed against something else—a piece of crumpled paper wedged into a different pocket inside the coat. Unfolding it carefully, he found a short, scrawled message in jagged, hurried handwriting:

_“If you find this, turn back. It’s too late for me.”_

Eli’s stomach tightened. He glanced around the shop, suddenly feeling exposed. He was alone; his boss had left early, and the evening sun was beginning to cast long shadows across the linoleum floor. The silence felt dense, like it was pressing in on him.

He turned the note over, hoping for more clues, but found nothing. The chill crept up his spine, and he tucked the note and key back into the coat, intending to call the customer, an older man who’d seemed polite but distant when he’d dropped off his order.

Curiosity, however, gnawed at him, and Eli found himself dialing the man’s number on the phone. It rang… and rang… and rang. No answer. Not even a voicemail greeting.

Later that night, after he locked up, he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling. He wondered if he should take the key to the police. Yet, something about the cryptic message told him they might just dismiss him.

The following day, the man still hadn’t shown up to pick up his coat, and now Eli was feeling a tinge of genuine worry. Against his better judgment, he slipped the key into his own pocket and headed to work, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious.

It wasn’t until that evening, as he was closing up, that he noticed something else strange. As he turned the shop’s sign to “Closed,” he saw a shadowed figure standing just beyond the reach of the streetlight across the road. The figure stood perfectly still, watching. Heart hammering, Eli took a step back, then another, until he could close the door and lock it.

But as he turned to retreat into the shop, a faint scraping sound echoed through the back room—the unmistakable sound of something metallic being dragged across concrete. It was coming from the back door, the one leading into the alleyway.

He wanted to call someone, anyone, but he remembered his phone was out front by the register. Swallowing hard, he grabbed a heavy metal hanger from the rack and crept slowly to the back.

With a shaky hand, he pulled open the door.

Nothing. Only the sound of a faint wind rustling through the alley. He closed the door, bolting it tightly, and resolved to take the key and note to the police first thing in the morning.

But that night, as he lay in bed, he couldn’t shake the image of the symbol—the coiled serpent. In his dreams, it twisted, slithered, until it formed a doorway leading into darkness.

When he arrived at work the next morning, Eli’s heart sank. The coat was gone. The rack where he’d hung it was empty, and no records showed that anyone had picked it up. The only sign it had been there at all was a single piece of fabric caught in the hook—a scrap of dark wool, barely enough to notice.

Eli felt the key in his pocket, its weight oddly heavier than before. When he took it out, he saw the serpent symbol had changed; the once-coiled body was now twisted into an open mouth, the fangs gleaming faintly, almost like a warning.

He never found out who the man was, and the coat was never seen again. But from that day forward, whenever Eli closed the shop, he always checked the shadows.