The order came through at 11:47 PM, just as Keisha Washington was thinking about calling it a night. Her feet ached in her worn Nikes, and the check engine light on her 2008 Honda Civic had started flickering again, that nervous little orange eye that meant another expensive problem she couldn't afford. But the address was only twelve minutes away, and the tip looked decent—eight dollars on a thirty-dollar order from Thai Palace.
She accepted it.
Marcus would need new school shoes soon. The thought flickered through her mind as she pulled into Thai Palace's parking lot, the same way it did every time she accepted a late-night order. Her seven-year-old was growing so fast that his toes were already pressing against the front of his current pair. Kids' feet were like weeds, her mother always said. Turn your back and they've shot up another size.
The restaurant was nearly empty, just the owner's teenage son manning the register, earbuds in, head bobbing to whatever was pumping through those tiny speakers. He barely looked up when he handed her the bag, already warm and fragrant with pad thai and tom yum soup. The receipt stapled to it read: Chen. 1847 Brennan Street.
Keisha knew every street in this part of Detroit. Had to, if you wanted to make decent money in the delivery game. But Brennan Street? She pulled up her GPS as she walked back to her car, the November wind cutting through her DoorDash jacket like it was made of tissue paper.
The GPS found it immediately, showing a route through the east side, past the abandoned Packard Plant. Not the best neighborhood, but she'd delivered to worse. The money was the money.
She drove through streets that got progressively darker as she moved away from downtown, streetlights becoming suggestions rather than certainties. The radio played that new Drake song everyone was tired of, and she switched to her podcast—true crime stories to keep her alert during the long shifts. Tonight's episode was about a woman who'd disappeared from a gas station in Ohio. Just vanished, they said, like she'd never existed at all.
The GPS announced: "Turn right onto Brennan Street."
The street was narrower than she'd expected, barely wide enough for two cars to pass. The houses hunched close together, most of them dark, their windows black mirrors reflecting nothing. But 1847 was lit up like Christmas, every window glowing warm yellow against the night.
A man answered the door before she could knock. He was maybe forty, average height, wearing a cardigan that looked expensive in that subtle way rich people's clothes always did. His smile was pleasant, forgettable.
"Chen?" Keisha asked, holding up the bag.
"That's me." His voice was oddly flat, like someone reciting lines they'd memorized. "Thank you so much for coming all this way."
He took the bag, and for just a moment, when their hands almost touched, Keisha felt something cold pass through her, like stepping through a pocket of winter air in a warm room. Then he was closing the door, and she was walking back to her car, counting her tips in her head. Eight dollars, just like promised. Not bad for fifteen minutes of work.
It wasn't until she was three blocks away that she realized something: Chen had been white. Definitely white. Which wasn't impossible, people adopted all kinds of names these days, but still. Something about it sat wrong in her stomach, like Thai food that had gone slightly off.
She worked until 2 AM, then drove home to her mother's house in Hamtramck, where they'd been staying since the divorce. Marcus was asleep in the twin bed they shared, curled up like a comma, his breath whistling slightly through his nose. She kissed his forehead, changed into her pajamas, and collapsed beside him, asleep before her head hit the pillow.
The next night, another order to Brennan Street. Different address—2234—but the tip was even better. Ten dollars.
She almost didn't take it. That cold feeling from the night before still lingered in her memory like a bad taste. But Marcus had a field trip coming up, twenty dollars for the bus and admission to the science center. She accepted.
This time the house was a different style, a two-story colonial with a wraparound porch. But when the door opened, Keisha's heart stuttered. It was the same man. Same cardigan. Same forgettable face. Same flat voice saying, "Thank you so much for coming all this way."
"Weren't you at 1847 last night?" The words came out before she could stop them.
His smile never wavered. "I don't think so. This is my first time ordering from this place. Is it good?"
She handed him the food and left, but her hands shook as she started the car. She knew it was the same man. She'd been doing this job for two years, had developed a memory for faces, addresses, the small details that made the difference between a good tip and a great one. It was him.
The next morning, after dropping Marcus at school, she drove back to Brennan Street. She wanted to see it in daylight, to prove to herself she was being paranoid, that the night shifts were finally getting to her.
She found Brennan Street easily enough. But 1847 didn't exist.
The numbers jumped from 1845 to 1849. Where the house should have been, there was just an empty lot, overgrown with Detroit's particular brand of urban wilderness—tall grass, young trees, the scattered debris of a house that had been demolished years ago.
She checked 2234. Same thing. An empty space between 2232 and 2236, like a missing tooth in a smile.
Keisha sat in her car for a long time, staring at that empty lot. Her rational mind offered explanations: she'd gotten the address wrong, GPS glitches were common, she was exhausted. But her gut, that deeper knowing that had kept her safe through night shifts and bad neighborhoods, knew better.
She started documenting everything.
Every delivery to a Brennan Street address—and they came regularly now, three or four times a week—she took photos. The houses that blazed with light at night. The man who was always different but always the same: sometimes Asian, sometimes Black, sometimes old, sometimes young, but always with that same flat voice, that same forgettable face that slipped from memory the moment she turned away.
She tried showing the photos to Thao, the only other driver she regularly talked to, when they crossed paths at Thai Palace.
"You ever deliver to Brennan Street?" she asked, pulling up the images on her phone.
Thao, who'd been in the delivery game for fifteen years, who knew every shortcut and every dangerous corner in the city, went very still. He looked at the photos for a long moment, then handed her phone back.
"No," he said quietly. "And neither do you."
"But I have the pictures—"
"No." His voice was firm. "You don't. You never went there. You don't know that street."
He started to walk away, then stopped, not turning around. "And Keisha? Stop taking those orders. Find another app, another zone, whatever. Just stop."
But she couldn't stop. Not just because of the money—though the tips kept getting better, fifteen dollars, twenty, once an incredible fifty—but because she needed to understand. The not-knowing was eating at her like acid.
Marcus started having the nightmares two weeks later.
She'd wake to find him thrashing in the bed beside her, whimpering in his sleep. When she woke him, he'd cling to her, sobbing about the man at the door.
"What man, baby?"
"The man who comes to our door. He keeps knocking and knocking, and his face keeps changing, but his voice is always the same. He says you invited him, Mama. He says you've been bringing him food, so now he gets to come eat with us."
The cold that went through her then was worse than any November wind.
She stopped taking the Brennan Street orders. Downloaded Uber Eats, started working different zones. For three nights, everything was normal. Marcus slept peacefully. The world felt solid again.
Then, on the fourth night, every single order that came through was for Brennan Street. Different apps, different restaurants, different names, but all going to those addresses that didn't exist in daylight. The tips were astronomical—hundred-dollar tips on twenty-dollar orders.
She declined them all, sat in her car in an empty McDonald's parking lot, and watched them pop up again and again, like a slot machine stuck on the same combination.
Her phone rang. Her mother.
"Keisha, there's a man at the door."
The blood in her veins turned to ice water. "Don't answer it."
"He says he's from your work. Says you forgot to deliver his food. He knows your name, baby. Knows Marcus's name too."
Keisha was already driving, speeding through red lights, the engine screaming. "Do not open that door, Mama. Go to Marcus's room, lock the door, and push the dresser against it."
"Keisha, what's going on?"
"Just do it!"
She could hear her mother moving, heard Marcus's sleepy voice asking what was wrong, heard the bedroom door slam and lock. Then she heard the knocking. Steady, patient, like someone who had all the time in the world.
"He's walking around the house," her mother whispered. "I can see him through the window. Keisha, his face... it keeps changing."
Keisha was five minutes away. Three if she kept running reds. "Pray, Mama. Whatever you believe in, pray to it now."
The knocking stopped.
The silence was worse.
Then her phone buzzed. A new order. The pickup was from her mother's house. The delivery address was 1847 Brennan Street. The customer name was Marcus Washington. The tip was her son's life.
She accepted it.
The drive to Brennan Street had never felt longer or shorter, time stretching and compressing like taffy. The houses that didn't exist in daylight blazed with impossible light, and she could see shapes moving behind the windows, shadows that weren't quite human, weren't quite anything.
1847 looked different tonight. Bigger. The door was already open, darkness pouring out like smoke.
She got out of the car, legs shaking, and walked to the threshold. The man was there, all of them were there, every face he'd worn, overlapping like a multiple exposure photograph. His voice, when he spoke, was a chorus.
"We're so hungry," they said. "We've been hungry for so long. The old ways of feeding are gone—no one comes to crossroads at midnight anymore, no one walks the empty paths. But this..." They gestured at her phone. "This brings you to us. Brings us our meals. We eat the time you lose, the life you spend driving through the dark. Each delivery feeds us a little more."
"You can't have my son."
"We already do. He ate food you delivered. The connection is made. Unless..."
"Unless?"
"You feed us fully. One last delivery. Yourself."
Keisha thought of Marcus, of his small hand in hers, of the new shoes he needed, of all the field trips and birthdays and graduations stretching into a future that might not exist if she said no.
"If I do this, you leave him alone. Forever. You leave my mother alone. You never come near them again."
"Agreed."
She stepped across the threshold.
The darkness swallowed her like water, cold and complete. She felt herself fragmenting, becoming the thousand moments of exhaustion, the accumulated weight of every late-night drive, every declined break, every sacrifice made for a child she'd never see grow up.
But then—
Light. Harsh and electric and real.
Thao stood in the doorway, holding something that looked like a restaurant delivery bag but felt older, heavier, sewn with symbols that hurt to perceive directly.
"Special delivery," he said to the things that had been wearing faces. "From the old country. From the old agreements."
The things screamed, a sound like apps crashing, like GPS recalculating, like the modern world glitching at its seams. They released Keisha, and she fell gasping to the floor that was suddenly just a floor, in a house that was suddenly just an abandoned house.
"The first rule of night delivery," Thao said, helping her to her feet, "is that some customers you don't serve. The second rule is that when you find someone who doesn't know the first rule, you help them."
They left the house, which was already beginning to fade, becoming the empty lot it had always been in daylight. In the car, Thao explained: his grandfather had been a delivery man too, back in Vietnam, carrying messages and packages between villages. Some of those villages didn't exist in daylight either.
"There are protections," he said. "Old ones. Older than apps, older than cars. Salt and iron and the right words at the right time. I've been watching you, waiting to see if you'd figure it out yourself or if I'd need to intervene."
"Why didn't you warn me clearly?"
"Because they listen. They're always listening through the phones, through the apps. Direct warnings bring them faster. But now you know. Now you're protected."
He gave her a small bag, sewn with the same symbols. "Keep this in your car. They won't come near you again. Won't come near your family."
Keisha drove home to find her mother and Marcus safe, asleep in the locked bedroom. Marcus never had another nightmare. The Brennan Street orders stopped coming through.
She still delivers food, still works the night shift. The money is still tight, but it's honest money from real customers at real addresses. Sometimes she sees Thao, and they nod to each other, two people who know that the gig economy has its own hungers, its own darkness.
And sometimes, on the really late shifts, when she's driving through the empty streets and her GPS starts to glitch, suggesting turns onto streets she knows don't exist, she touches the small bag on her dashboard and keeps driving straight, delivering only to the living, only to addresses that exist in daylight.
Because some hungers should never be fed, no matter how good the tip.
Marcus got his new shoes. They're nothing special, just regular kids' sneakers from Target, but they fit perfectly. When he runs in them, he looks like he could take flight, like he could outrun anything, even the darkness that once tried to claim him through his mother's desperate love.
That's enough. In this economy, in this life, sometimes enough is everything.
But she keeps Thao's number saved under "Emergency Only." Because Detroit is full of empty lots that weren't always empty, full of addresses that only exist when you're desperate enough to see them. And somewhere out there, another single parent is accepting their first order to Brennan Street, seeing that impossible tip, and thinking it's exactly what they need.
The apps are always hungry. The night is always waiting. And somewhere between the living city and the digital ghost that overlays it, things that have learned to adapt are placing orders, patient as death, knowing that someone always needs the money badly enough to deliver.
Keisha drives through the night, protected now but not unaware. She knows what watches from the empty lots. She knows what waits behind the doors that shouldn't exist.
And she knows that in a city full of people barely surviving, working jobs that barely pay, there will always be someone desperate enough to take that order, to drive to that address, to knock on that door.
All she can do is what Thao did for her: watch, wait, and be ready to intervene when the darkness gets too hungry, when the tips get too good, when the addresses stop making sense.
It's not much of a calling, but it's hers now. Guardian of the night shift, protector of the desperate, keeper of the knowledge that some customers should never be served.
The check engine light still flickers on her dashboard, orange and insistent. But next to it sits the small bag, sewn with symbols older than Detroit, older than America, older than any app or algorithm.
Between them, she navigates the night, delivering food to the living, avoiding the addresses that hunger for more than pad thai and pizza, keeping the darkness fed just enough to leave the desperate alone.
It's not the life she planned. But in this economy, in this haunted city where the digital and the ancient have learned to hunt together, it's the life that chose her.
And tonight, like every night, she'll drive until dawn, when all the ghost addresses fade back into empty lots, when the morning shift drivers take over, oblivious to what lurks in the margins of their apps, waiting for darkness and desperation to align.
Tomorrow, Marcus will need help with his homework. Her mother will need her medication picked up. The car will need gas, and the rent will come due.
But tonight, she drives, guardian of the thin line between the gig economy and the things that have learned to feed through it, protector of those who, like her, are just trying to survive in a world where even the darkness has learned to tip.