The escalators are on a timer and stop at close, and the motor logs its running hours because the service is on them. The up escalator from the ground floor runs at night. Not at speed. Slowly, a step at a time, the drive turning over as if something heavy were on it and the motor were straining. The safety sensor on the handrail reads a hand on it, gripped hard, all the way up. It takes an hour to reach the first floor. There is nobody on it.
I am the store's maintenance lead and the escalators are the thing that breaks most, and the ground floor up is the one that runs when it is broken.
The escalator.
Ground to first, forty two steps, on a timer that stops it at close and starts it at open. The motor logs hours. The handrail has a sensor for the safety system that reads whether a hand is on it and how hard, because a child's hand caught is the thing the sensor is for.
At night it runs.
The running.
Not at speed. The drive turns a step and stops. A step and stops. As if there were a great weight on the treads and the motor were only just moving it. The hours meter goes up by one an hour, which is right, because the escalator is running for an hour, and in an hour it moves forty two steps, which in the day it does in thirty seconds.
The handrail sensor reads a hand. Gripped. At the strength the sensor calls an adult, at the top of its range, the grip of somebody frightened, and the hand moves with the rail, up, a step at a time, for an hour, and at the top, when the rail goes under the comb plate, the grip lets go, because it has to.
There is nobody on it.
What has been checked.
The motor, the controller, the timer. Replaced. It runs at night, a step at a time.
The escalator, at midnight, by me, standing on the bottom step. It moved. Under me. One step. And stopped. And I felt, on the tread beside mine, a weight that was not mine, and on the handrail beside my hand, the rubber pulled down where a hand was gripping it, and I stood on an escalator going up one step a minute with somebody beside me holding on to the rail as if it were the edge of a cliff, and I did not look at them, because there was nobody there, and I could hear breathing, and it was the breathing of somebody being taken somewhere they did not want to go.
I got off at step ten. I could not do the hour. The rail beside where my hand had been was still pulled down, going up, alone.
Who.
The store has had one death on an escalator. Not a fall. A man, in the seventies, who had taken ill on the ground floor, a heart, and had been put on the up escalator by the staff who found him because the first aid room was on the first floor and the lift was out, and he had been conscious, the record says, and frightened, and had held the rail, and had not been alive at the top.
They took him up. He did not want to go. He held on.
He is going up. Every night. And it takes an hour because that is how long it felt.
What is done about it.
The motor hours are on the service schedule and the escalator is serviced twice as often and the engineer has asked why the ground floor up does an hour a night, and I have said it carries somebody, and he has looked at the handrail sensor log and said, that is a lot of grip, and I have said, yes.
What I do.
I maintain the building.
The first aid room is on the first floor. It was then, and it is now, because the store has never moved it. And the record of that night says the staff put him on the escalator and went up ahead to get the room ready, which is what you would do, and it meant that for the ride he was alone.
So I ride with him. At midnight I get on the bottom step and I put my hand on the rail beside the place his is, and I do the hour. Step, stop. Step, stop. Forty two. And I do what the record says nobody did, which is talk. Nothing much. What you say to somebody on a stretcher. Nearly there. You're all right. They're getting the room ready. And at the top, when the comb plate takes the rail and the grip has to let go, I say, here we are, and I step off, and I walk to the first aid room, which I have unlocked, and I stand in the door with the light on.
The handrail sensor reads the grip lighter each night. I have the graph. From the top of its range in the first week to something that, last night, was a hand resting on a rail, as a hand rests when its owner is being taken somewhere and has decided to let them.