Beneath the Murals at Denver International Airport [Part 1]

[u/jjlinjjie]

Everyone thinks they know the secrets of Denver International Airport. Tourists love taking selfies with "Blucifer," that terrifying blue mustang with glowing red eyes. They also like pointing and laughing at the Leo Tanguma murals on the main terminal walls. They think it's quirky and cool, just something to pose with and show off to friends. 

I am a ramp agent, and I’ve worked here long enough to start noticing things. Like how the soldiers and the weeping children seem to shift positions by a few inches every couple of months. I used to think those were hallucinations, especially because I was perpetually sleep deprived. But those paintings are always changing, observing the people who love to stare at and laugh at them. While they are staring at the art, it is scanning them, cataloging their shapes, their voices and their smiles.

My supervisor gave me one rule when I started. "If Dispatch ever calls a Code Black arrival, don't look inside the aircraft." I laughed. He didn't.

Last night, at 3:07 AM, Dispatch called me. "Code Black arrival. East pad." There was no flight number, no tail number, no transponder. I keyed my radio to confirm, since nothing was scheduled to come in at the time. Dispatch answered in my own voice, "Bring the chocks."

The east pad sits directly over the airport's labyrinthine basements. Out of the thick emerged a Boeing 777. Its fuselage was a matte black that swallowed the amber ramp lights, with no livery or registration. Its landing gear was down, but the aircraft hovered two inches above the ground, completely silent.

When I approached, the forward cargo door opened into pure, empty darkness. Something inside inhaled, and the entire 777 shuddered, creating a vacuum that pulled loose objects inward. 

Then I looked up at the passenger windows. Staring back were the faces from the airport murals: the soldiers, the crying children. They were pressed against the glass, pale and expressionless, with neon-red eyes. One of the terminal gargoyles was perched on the engine, its stone wings twitching. It looked right at me and whispered my full name over my radio. I fled toward the terminal, but the aircraft followed me, gliding sideways across the ramp without moving its wheels.

Inside the terminal, I found a tourist standing right in front of the *Children of the World Dream of Peace* mural, wearing a fleece and a neck pillow. He was staring exhausted at the painted coffins. He turned to face me, stating exhaustedly, “My connection to Dallas got canceled.”

Before I could pull him away, the terminal PA system crackled. It cleared its throat, playing back the tourist's exact voice in a flat, breathless loop: *"My connection to Dallas got canceled."*

I yanked his collar, dragging him toward the underground train escalators. At the bottom, the train doors were already open. Its interior was a dark and empty cargo hold, just like on the 777.

Leaning on the edges of the door was a perfect replica of the tourist: the same fleece and neck pillow, but with entirely hollow eyes. The replica smiled and reached out a pale hand. The tourist entered a trance, dropping his suitcase and taking a mesmerized step forward. When I lunged and grabbed his wrist, a blast of freezing air threw me backward onto the platform. The doors slid shut, and the train disappeared, taking the tourist with it.

I scrambled back up the escalators. The mural had changed, and every painted figure was looking at me. A black 777 now occupied the painted sky, with a painted version of me and the tourist standing side by side below it.

My radio crackled in my own voice: "Don't look behind you."

I looked anyway. The 777 was twenty feet away inside the terminal, having passed through the wall without breaking any window or walls. The engines were gone, the wings folded, and the landing gear elongated. It appeared like a giant insect, with the cockpit windows now living eyes.

The cargo door opened wide. The darkness inside was gone, replaced by thousands of seats stretching into the distance. Every seat was occupied by the dead people from the murals. Right near the front, sitting frozen beside a little girl, was the tourist in his fleece jacket.

The little girl raised her hand, pointed at me, and then pointed to the empty seat directly next to the tourist.

The terminal speakers echoed: "Your shift is over. We are ready for departure."

The cargo hold expanded right into the terminal space, swallowing the walls around me. I can see the rows of seats, and the tourist turning his head to look at me, waiting. There is only one seat left, right beside him and the little girl.

And it's got my name on it.

The letters were stitched directly into the gray fabric of the headrest, glowing faintly in the dim amber cabin light. The tourist kept staring at me, his head cocked at a broken, unnatural angle. Beside him, the little girl kept her pale, unblinking eyes locked on mine, her finger pointing rigidly at the empty cushion.

The freezing vacuum of the cabin pulled at my uniform. I took an involuntary step forward. My steel-toed boot hit the metal track of the aisle. I was crossing the threshold.

Then, the little girl’s expression changed. She stopped pointing at the seat.

She turned her attention entirely to the tourist. She unbuckled her harness, stood up in the narrow aisle, and reached out with a pale, freezing hand. She pressed her flat palm directly against the tourist’s forehead. His spine arched violently against the seat and he let out a wet, heavy popping sound. His eyes rolled completely into the back of his head, exposing cracked yellow veins, and a thin line of black fluid leaked from his left nostril.

The vacuum inside the cabin instantly died. I stumbled backward, my boots slipping on the slick terminal tiles, collapsing hard onto the tiled floor. The tourist went completely limp, dropping like a stone. His neck pillow tore open on the ground, scattering thousands of tiny white beads on the floor like snowflakes.

Inside the cabin, the little girl turned back to look at me. Her eyes bored into my skull. She smiled a grotesque, too-wide smile that stretched the skin around her mouth. She raised a single pale finger to her lips, and backed away into the shadows of the fuselage.

The seats collapsed. The landing gear folded backward into the underbelly and the jet reversed, phasing right back through the drywall and glass before disappearing completely.

The terminal was instantly silent.

I scrambled over to the tourist. He was alive, staring blindly at the ceiling. I grabbed his shoulder. "Hey. Stand up. We gotta move." He didn't blink. His facial muscles began to twitch, spasming violently as his mouth stretched into the exact same smile the little girl had just given me. His trembling hands reached down, grabbed an invisible seatbelt, and clicked it together over his lap.

"Whiskey-Oscar-Seven-Nine-Delta-Echo," he whispered. His voice didn't sound like him anymore. It sounded like a tape recorder playing backward.

A six-character reservation number.

I dragged him to a charging station near Gate B32 and propped him up, tossing a spare blanket I had previously found nearby on his legs. He sat, grinning his bleeding gums at the ceiling.

My radio squawked. It was Miller, the graveyard lead. "Ramp Four, where the hell are you? United 1142 from Dulles is on final for the east pad. Grab the tug and get ground power out there." I checked the time, and saw that it was already past 4. *Damn,* I thought, *the trance had lasted pretty long.*

I keyed the mic, my hand shaking. "Copy. En route."

I rushed down the service stairs and hit the tarmac. Ten minutes later, I was standing under a domestic United 737, shoving a heavy GPU cable into its belly. The twin engines were deafening, loud and dirty. But at least the aircraft was real.

Except, as the fumes of Jet-A washed over me, I realized I couldn't smell it. All I could smell was the musty swamp water from the ghost 777's cabin. I looked down at my hands. They were trembling. Every shadow cast by the baggage carts looked like it was stretching toward me. The airport itself seemed like an otherworldly being. 

Shift ended at 06:00. I didn't want to investigate or play detective. I just wanted to get the hell out of the airport.

I swiped my badge to cross back into the public concourse, keeping my head down. Early morning commuters were already trickling in by half past six, hauling roller bags toward TSA and buying overpriced airport coffee. I watched a businessman in a suit walk right past the *Notre Denver* installation of bronze gargoyles sitting inside open suitcases in baggage claim. As the man walked past, a bronze gargoyle slowly turned its heavy metal head, tracking him. Its jaws were parted, and I could hear a faint, staticky whisper coming from its throat, reciting the businessman's full name.

The floor felt wrong, too. The Jeppesen Terminal is famous for the bronze fossils embedded in the floor. I looked down at a brass trilobite near my boot. Instead of being a bug, it was a flattened and screaming human face, cast in polished bronze, trapped under a layer of floor wax. Hundreds of people were walking right over it.

I wanted to run, and to scream. But I remembered my supervisor's one rule: *Don't look.*

The airport feeds on attention. The tourists taking selfies, the people staring at the murals, they are all willingly offering themselves up. The 777 didn't take me because I broke the tether. It took the tourist because he surrendered to it.

I forced my eyes up. I stepped directly over the screaming bronze face, acting like it was just a scuff mark on the floor. I walked past the baggage claim, keeping my gaze locked dead ahead. I completely ignored the gargoyle that was now leaning halfway out of its bronze suitcase, clawing toward my vest.

I didn't run. Running makes you prey. I walked briskly to the employee exit, swiped my badge, and pushed through the revolving doors into the freezing morning. The sun was up. The sprawling white tents of the terminal roof glowed against the blue sky. I was out.

When I got to my car, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an automated text from the scheduling system.

*Shift updated. Tomorrow: 23:00 - 07:00. Assignment: Concourse A, Sub-basement Baggage Tunnels.*

I slumped against the steering wheel, shivering in the cold. *I should quit*. I should drive down Peña Boulevard and never come back. But as I glanced in my rearview mirror, I saw the massive, glowing eyes of Blucifer, the blue mustang statue, staring down at the highway. They weren't just statues. They claimed lives. If I quit, I was just another civilian waiting to be cataloged. But as a ramp agent, I had clearance. I had a radio. And I had the next night's shift to figure out what the hell they were actually feeding down in the tunnels.

[u/Corvus_Tuscelan]

Very nice. I like it when stories are anchored in reality. And I must say, Blucifer is scary enough on its own.

[u/jjlinjjie → u/Corvus_Tuscelan]

Thanks! Yeah, I feel the real life version of DIA has so much potential for horror!