Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The building's heartbeat is almost imperceptible
at this ire past midnight. Nose falls away, no distant cars,
no leftover arguments are going up from the lot, nothing
but the gentle mechanical sigh of cooling pipes and the
soft padding of my rubbersoles. The corridor is lown and cracked.
What the landloll calls the stressed charm, but what really
means the left of for a grundur of a better ear,
bracing its shoulders against collapse each night is caretaker. I
sweet those old corridors from the basement, up, testing the locks,
listening to noises in the ducks, pretending you can keep
a building like this under control. It's a private, creaking
kind of world, where every key undering feels heavier than
a secret. My sircuit always brings me round by the
eastern alley bust, the flickering emergency light, little richal before
my break. The city beyond is another dark maze. But
here in the puddle stained shadow of our brick crook,
a linger stretching my back, adjusting the radio on my belt,
there's a place where the old concrete is broken, And
if you look up you can see every level of
the west wing rows of familiar windows, each box with
its own story, its un squalor or hop pressed up
behind fords of curtain. It was at there, leaning against
the cold metal trash hatch for a minute's rest, that
the light first caught me against strange, feebly yellows, shrictangles,
blinking behind the glass of a set of windows that
should not have existed. Let me be precise. Outbuilding has
four floors, at least according to blueprints, the fire department
and the gold numerals on each elevator button four. But
rising above the fourth plane and the missile when you
ankle your head back is a partial row of darkened windows,
a kind of gossly fifth architecturally, another blink in um
missic cork, fossil of a renovation that never quite occurred,
I told myself. May be some window at it with
no proper access or a forgotten crawl space, Except that,
for three nights, running at precisely thirteen minutes past two
in the morning, a thread buryellow light snapped on behind
one window. If fleckers pulses erratically for about seven minutes,
thin eyes as sharply as it came. The first time,
I choked it up to something explainable, a censor miss fire,
a security bowl, a trick of city glow. But the
second night, there was a aculiar rhythm to it, a
series of short and long flashes, almost like it was communicating.
The window next to it, on the same phantom level
remained perpetually black, My radio hisstatic. As I stared for
one stretched instant, I thought I could see a shadow
move behind a glass, tall and gaunt, more suggestion and
body to night, none from routine. I stood below and
watched as the glow began its little performance, right on schedule.
Just a light, I reminded myself. But the fine hair
is on my arms, prickled with something colder than wind.
As quinted up, likkulled with the beginnings of a question
I didn't want to answer. Hadn't that window always been dark?
Had I ever seen another sign in all my years
shadowing these halls that there was anyone up there. By
the time I finished my cigarette and shaken off that
uneasy curiosity, I made my way back toward the service stairs.
Thoughts already drifting to a licorn cup of coffee waiting
in the basement office. My hand was half way to
the doorknob when the InCom by the door faced erupted
in with garbled feedback, a half second wine that made
me WinCE. Something shuddered through the thin walled end. The
battered maintenance request printer lined out of Reuben and patience
trembled into activity. It spat out a slip cheap thermal
paper official letter head, the usual lines for task, location
and signature, but this one read fifth Ifelar Unit five
hundred two bulb replacement. The signature box was filled with
a single skittering initial media J maybe an L being
pressed deeper at the downstroke, almost cutting the page. There
was no listed resident. I glanced back at the windows outside.
The flicker was gone. I stood there a long moment,
slip in hand, debating if I should head upright now
await for daylight. I could already feel the weight of
the key ring against my hip, The knowledge that I
had no property for a fifth fold. It wasn't meant
to exist. Even so, daylight had never answered as many
mysteries as I'd have liked in this place, Eventually I
pocketed the slap, shaking off the sense of trespass, tracing
my path back down to the basement, where another round
of paperwork and coll coffee awaited. By morning, I would
tell myself, surely the answer would be simpler. But even then,
standing in the blue light of the security office, I
sensed I had already crossed over an invisible boundary when
that ran not between the fourth and fifth floors of
the building, but between could comfortably be ignored and what
demanded to be faced. Most days, the job settles into
a pattern, one that's almost meditative in its monotony. There
are only so many scuffed pipes to check, only so
many crack tiles to replace in the lobby, only so
many times in one week that mistood back and off
from one seeking claw of the laundry drain with paint water.
My hands remembered the sequence before I ducee out the ring,
flip the latch, shake, the lever of test for leaks
of scribbler note on the clipboard. In the mornings, bright
and routine driven, the strangeness of the night receeeds like
a bad dream. These days, the city outside is and
spooling itself slow crumbling around the edges. Our block is
a border in between optimism and resignation. New glass and
steel towers loom across streets, lined with pawn shops and
shuttered boutiques. The building itself is a vestige, once handsum
in crimson breck and stone, now pitted and softened by time,
clutching at its dignity. Sometimes you see what it was,
the ornate plaster above the doors, the gleam of old
balustrades and touched by modern replacements. Other times it's the
hum of the water heater on its lust legs, the
grease in the basement walls, the way the ground shifts
imperceptibly underfoot. There are people too, who form an unofficial
map in my mind. The reclusive artist mister Drixlow in three,
if he keeps his door painted dark blue, always slip
requests under the office door. In perfect block capitals. The
elderly sisters and to be Judith and Laurel have lived
here longer than any one can recall. They make strong coffee,
argue constantly about bingo cheats, and wave cheerfully, but always
peer past you, as if some one else might be
coming up the stairs. Then there's Jamal, the new itity
guy in four Ah occasionally blares hip hop from his
window until midnight and tiptoes all the next morning, sheepish
and hangover, but unfailingly polite. Unit four hundred one belongs
to man whose name is never quite caught. He's thin
to the point of vanishing. His mail addressed a different surname.
Every man appearing only in the earliest ears key slipping
quietly in the lock. I know their patterns when they
complain when they check the mail. Who leaves late for
work or leaves lights on after midnight. None of them
ever mentioned the fifth floor directly. But there are boundaries.
The sealed stair will that rises above the fourth landing,
padlocked collecting dust, yet never quite as neglected as it
should be. The door off the landing labeled met r
m slash at it do not enter, which even I
only ever checked once years ago, finding only a draft
on a field of kobebs. Sometimes a tenant will gesture
upward with a nod, asking is just storage up top? Yeah?
I lie in agree, feeling the question hover longer than
the answer, even as habits laying comfort memory snacks weeks
ago or perhaps here as it blurs, there was a
fifth floor resident, wasn't there? I think I remember a
woman with the tart and umbrella, or maybe a man
who always wore a green scarf, pressing the elevator as
non existent fifth button with careful confidence. Yet when I
checked the log book's last time up to date in
meticulous there were no names listed be four hundred one.
The directories, dusted and updated every quarter, skipped directly from
four hundred one to the attic. The confusion prickles a
flaw in the map. After the usual morning rushed out
mops streaking the lobby exchange of small grievances, I scanned
paperwork in the office, seeking solace in order. While searching
for spare batteries in the junk drawer, my fingers brushed
something rough and papery wedge. Far to the back. I
pulled for a half burned envelope, seal broken cinched along
one edge as though rescued from a fire. It was
postmark nineteen seventy two, addressed in flowing scrit fifth floor residence,
meeting attendants, mandatory odd freezing. Ought to find it, even
now after I told myself the fifth floor was just
a structural left over. Without thinking, I pocketed the relic,
feeling a solitary responsibility attach itself around my shoulders. Truthfully,
it is the little moments that shape a kettika as
much as the mysteries. At lunch, I share banter with Rick,
the night shift security guard, about the nuances of gentle
eviction threats. Outside in the back alley, a bumded a
cigarette from Assis Reavers and two d who laughed about
my inability to keep a peace lowly alive, but paused
awkwardly with a thump rattled high above all pipes, she said,
or pigeons in the attic has to be We all
learned to let silences fill with easy answers. Still, as
sunlight angled through the grimy fourth floor window at lun
in dust like old lace, the burned envelope pressed against
my side felt heavy than it should. The logic of
normal routine is to let anomally drift past, to papert
the over with one more call to maintenance. But that night,
when the building quieted again, there was a new slip
in the basket work order upper corridor fifth a slash
sea noise signature, the same cryptic initial tremulous and still fresh.
My job as repeats and repairs, but always for people,
for units, for places that officially exist. My own signature
is height and knee, written in block letters. This, by
contrasts crawled across the page and hesitating loops. I took
out the old envelope and laid it next to the slip.
The handwriting was simply not modern, looping with a force
behind it that could have belonged to an aging pension,
except perhaps for the odd way the lines quivered, as
if the author were riding with gloved hands or in
a moving elevator. To calm my nerves, I retreated to
the maintenance office. The old security system is a patchwork job.
Records kept on tapes at wine and skip for no
reason but habit. I scrolled through the previous net cameras
at the precise interval to thirty none. The feed from
the fourth floors landing warble then snapped back. For four minutes.
There was nothing but static just as the picture returned,
as sliver of movements gated through a shapeless blair darker
than shadow, drifting rapidly along the liminal stretch by the
uppermost stairwell. There was no corresponding door to vy locked,
no explanation for that flicker. Later, as I bent a
paper clip ap surmindedly annexing the new slips to my
steadily growing accident file, and knock at the office door
startled me. Not a hard rap, but a soft, uncertain tap.
Mess Reevas stood in the gap, a hair up in
loose clips, knuckles wide around the mark. Other pipes acting
up upstairs again, she asked, voice too casual upstairs, she
stopped herself. I mean the attic, the water. It's probably nothing.
She looked over her shoulder as if someone might be listening,
lips pressed together in careful calculation. I'll check it out
to night, I told her, But she just shook her
head and ducked away, almost colliding with the shadows down
the hall. By eight third of pem that I did
one last inspection. The corridor by the padlock stowel was
colder than usual, rung in a way hard to name.
Voices brushed past the walls. First, a muttered conversation tow
or maybe three people quarreling in muffled short hand. A
metallic clang punctuated the silence, echoing up through the concrete.
I traced my steps, seeking the source, but at every
corner sound faded to nothing. Only the padlock and the
upper sterile scene changed. It sat more loose than before,
a metal warm of fresh scratches, as if someone had
fumbled with a key or crobaugh, desperate to get an
eye out. Resisting the urge to tell myself I was
making something out of nothing, I returned to the office
and opened a battered notebook. Flipping to the first clean page,
I dated the entry work order two thirty none security
camera block out, Strange requested mess brief as padlock on
fifth four stair, new scratches, voices, metallic drag underneath. I
scrawled a deliberate or sleep deprivation. It was safer to
treat it as procedure. Sunday requiring management investigation, not fear,
but uneas persisted, settling deeper than I cared to admit.
Routine in the following days was interrupted more and more
by the anomalous. Each morning, another slip appeared in the
basket door, curiously tucked into my own clipboard of detail
I could not explain. Sometimes a slip would be crumpled deliberately,
then neatly pressed flat again, as though someone had written
it under duress. The requests remained the same, light buzzing,
fifth horror place handle, fifth corridor closet, always the same
looping initial, the infairying in color and age. No other
staff member admitted to penning them. Tenants grew nervous. More
than one found occasion to complain footsteps overhead at oddire's
surges in water pressure, something dropping with a thud, and
the dead of night above the fourth floor ceiling. Miss
s Calter usually sanguine corner me by the mail boxes
for shop. Someone's moving furniture up there at one in
the morning, and none of us can sleep. When I
asked what she meant, she flushed and shook her head.
Pipes then must just be the pikes that old building sound.
Don't go chasing shadows, dear. She shuffled away without meeting
my eyes. At one point I resolved to put the
matter to rest. During a late round, I reached the
top of the main staircase and stood before the padlock door.
The lock itself looked battered, more deeply scored, but it
still held. I wiggled it, found it reluctant, but not imine.
Flakes of pain fell, exposing bay metal. Were hands, perhaps
many hands had scraped before. Not only had the mechanical
room door recently shifted on lazy hinges, but knew where
marked the wap would below footprint veined and scuff running
through the accumulated dust, the trail toward the never used corner,
curving against the expectation of gravity. Next the blueprints, I
unrolled them in the office, kneeling on the stains and
alium under the humming fluorescence. The official plans were stamped
nineteen forty nine, neatly showing four floors. The top labeled
attic storage with a blank field rising above. But wedge
between the layers was a supplemental page holder with faded
notes and new lines. Here a fifth flour was penciled
in rectangles for units half legible numbers, staircases redirected. The
ink was tentative added after the fact, A nod of
anxiety pushed up my throat. I found my phone, called
the local record's office and asked for tenant ledgers and
lease lists. After a pause and some clattering on their end,
I was told administrative arer nineteen seventy two, nineteen seventy
five no records sorry in a building's utility closet a
aong the stark safety reports. I turned up a nod
at his note from the it is fifth for security
feed or OH knees repair. But cross checking the recent
logs showed that the feed, always labeled to disconnected, flickered
to life or a handful of minutes every night, though
I hadn't noticed it before. Not long after, when I
opened my locker to change out of coveralls, a slip
of folded paper fell from the shelf. Don't ask about
the fifth lest sleeping ghostly. The handwriting felt haardily familiar, scratched,
and determined. That night, as the rain thickened in the
building's tempered grew fiers, every corner of my job seemed
to radiate with covert pressure. Residence doors were slower to answer,
cold drafts culled under door frames apart. Time doorman, usually chatty,
wouldn't meet my gaze. Fueled by dread more than curiosity,
I slipped upstairs with my flashlight and a set of
old miss match keys. The time was two twelveing. As
I reached the fourth floor landing, the overhead bulb sputtered
and died. I felt out the familiar padlock, surprised to
find it already unclasped, hanging loosely, as though left deliberately open.
I hesitated behind dutch rushle. The air changed quality, a heavier,
old dust, rich with the scent of mildew and ancient varnish.
I pushed open the door I expected were in exposed
rafters firmine cobbled, but the corridor beyond was intact. The
wallpaper yellowed by decade, but otherwise undisturbed. Old gas light sconces,
and all the hush struck me as preserved from another ear.
No sound traveled in from below, as if the stairwell
and all the world beyond melted away. Behind the lintel,
halfway down a door stood a jarge unit five hundred five.
A pale yellow light poles within, casting a faint, shifting
glow on to the warped floorboards. My footsteps sounded both
muffled and resonant at once, as though feet were moving
in two times at once. I raised my light, but
another glow danced ahead against the far wall. Turn away,
and nearly lost in silhouette, stood a figure, tall and thin,
shoulder stooped, hands moving in a gentle, ringing arc. I
heard a humming, ancient and tuineless, drifting back to me,
and ow that might once have been a lulla by
her dirge a froze, calling out the only word that
came to mine, hello. For an instant, the humming stopped,
the figure turned slightly, not enough for me to catch
a face, and the motion trembled slow as molasses. Before
I could move, a childraft swept past where the figure
had stood. There was now nothing but a torn page
on the flour, faded rent slip stated September nineteen seventy four.
I bent legs and steady to retrieve it. The room
seemed to warp, the corridor's kle slipping the pattern, and
the wallpaper buckling, impulsing afoice, distant, urgent frows in my head.
Get out, fire any one and before get up now.
But there were no alarms, no smoke, just echoes and
a sudden terror forgetting who and where I was. My
hand on the door found it warm, the brass almost pulsing.
In a panic, I stumbled back to the stairwell, the
door wide open. Minutes before had sworn shot and latched itself.
My first clumsy push found at lock tight. I fumbled
in the din light, trying old keys at random, each
one scraping with a metallic wine, until at last a
bat of bronze key from the envelope in my pocket
turned in the correct direction, releasing the catch. I ducked
into the stairwell, breath rattling, and darted down what looked
like the familiar stebts, except with each turning the landings
didn't match my memory. When I finally pushed through, I
emerged off at the fourth at the basement corridor, the
door closing with the soft deliver a thud behind me.
By the time I blinked into the weak gleam of
the back corridor, I could hear only my hobbyed and
the distant war of the laundry machines. It took ires
to calm my trembling hands, to convince myself that what
I had seen was an encounter anchored in the place,
not in my mind. I ran water, changed into clean clothes,
scrubbed the worst of the fifth four or dust from
my hands, But the rent slip hold paper redolent assoot,
stamped with the name I half remembered sat indisputable in
my palm. I did not sleep that morning. Instead, I
read the evidence in the office desk, every slip, every
rent or the old envelope, the bone blueprint, innonymous warning,
and began to blot the details on a line page.
My writing was jagged, vision blowed by fatigue and the
blust residue of fear. There was a pattern, if only
I could see it. Each lip, each security blackout, each
cryptic request occurred within the same week, always in late September,
always a two thirteen knarm, always accompanied by some other
ripple in the building's habit I traced the dates, matching
them to complaints in old love books, leaks, fuse failures,
missing items, well, fox failed memory stepped in. I remembered
an elderly tenant gone since nineteen ninety three, whose rooms
were cleared by men in the marked uniforms. A younger
couple in the late nineties who left in a sudden
midnight move, never picking up their last packages. Each had
occupied the fourth floor their windows. Looking up at that
unexplained docrow, I lingered over the signatures, those lupy initials.
What if I thought they were not random requests, but
a message arranging the slip chromologically, first by first letter
of the complaint, then by initial of the signature. Or
worry began to emerge. I read the MBT and b
E F R T H E L I g h
T S. Remember the lights impossible, yet they're on the page,
A message written in small desperate increments across the years
or decade or both. I tempted once more to call
the building's management dial in the after IRA's line was
served for maintenance emergencies. The property manager M. S. Hugh
answered briskly, her tongue clipped when I explained the issues
vague but insistent, focusing on structure, not the supernatural. Her
patience war then staff, files and supplies and none. O.
Your concern focus on your own repair work were not
responsible for ancient histories. I tried to press. Her irritation increased,
but don't contact me about this again, or you'll be
reassigned anything else. No matter which way I pushed, I
was stumbolled at eleven fifteen POUM a formal notes lit
under my office store type stamped unsigned. It stated that
there were complaints regarding your recent conduct and inquiries The
implication and ambiguous was that further incidents might precipitate disciplinary action,
including immediate transfer. I stared at the note, the threat
running in my mind, and wondered what the building feared
more that someone would remember what was lost, but that
someone would refuse to forget. When I finally forced myself
back into routine, testing, locks, noting down scarfs, replacing a
kitchen faucet for the sisters, and to be there was
no escape in the new reality. The puzzle of the
fifth floor was not the result of happenstance or drunk
contenant spinning rumors. It was unmistakably a deliberate construction, maintained
over decades, reinforced at every level. Paper trails, arraate, locks, redacted,
camas selectively broken. I returned to my notes, drawing lines
between names request dates at the center. A clear fact
persisted each time the fifth four appeared in the records.
Each time the lights flickered in the darkness, someone's staff, management,
maybe even attendant, work swiftly to scribe the slate, and always,
always the warnings don't stir old ghosts. When I sat
at my desk, piecing together the fragments, the sense of
being watched by the building, by history, by whatever force
lingered in the upper shadows, settled as a dull, gnawing
ache in my chest. What I still needed to know
out wait what I'd learned, But I had crossed the boundary,
now beyond comfort, beyond the unspoken rules. I could hear
the echo of a voice in distinct in memory, droning
just out of earshot, the fifth floor's best forgotten. Yet
it was far too late for that. As I pressed
the rinselet flat on the desk, preparing to dig deeper,
I could almost swear I heard a muffled sound above
my head, a chair dragged across ancient floorboards, A brief
harmony of voices, someone softly consistently humming a song I
did not know. With a final look around the dim
lit office, I reached from my notebook, turned to a
fresh page, and again again. With a final look around
the dimlit office, I reached for my notebook, turned to
a fresh page, and began again. September twenty eighth, two
forty two patent light requests Blackout's signature, all within the
same window, always at the edge of waking. Physical evidence
burned rensolate envelope, slips, blueprints, security tape, next step, pressure points,
who benefits, who raises, who remembers. As the pen settled
in my grip, I forced my mind to slow down.
It would be easy to chase ideas into cold de sac,
to let paranoia braid itself into the ordinary. I shut
my eyes for a count of five, focusing on the
steady thunk of the water heater at the distant elevator,
really catching at the far end of the building. The
wall below was still above. In the forbidden arab of
the fourth floor, some other world carried on an instinct
surface to question not only the building but the people
who circled it daily. In the morning, I made excuses
to linger near attendants who'd washed this structure, durre its
little transformations. Most offered only small talk, were hoarse pleasanters.
In the hazy morning light, Judith and Laurel and two
be pressed in apple pastry on me as I fiddled
with their thermostat trading pointed jokes that always screeched to
a halt whenever a heavy tread echoed on the landing above. Later,
I caught up with Jamal under the awning as he
started his back for the afternoon. For off week, he offered,
peering up at the windows, feels like people on edge.
I asked if anything upstairs kept him up at night. Unah,
you can hear the pipes right, and sometimes the wind
gets in the walls. Freaks my dog out, but he shrugged,
already easy away, gaze flicking to the upper stories. On
some level, the tenants needed the mystery as much as
I did. A boundary to frame complaint and awlike an
explanation for minor daily dissatisfactions, a sinkhole for the anxieties
that come with communal living in a structure committed to
secrecy by none. I'd made my way back into the
labyrinthine maintenance rooms, less to fix anything, more to let
my thoughts were overn disturbed. The basement's lighting was dull
at best, fluorescence hissing a pale blue over shelves lined
with old air filters, dented pink hands, and a moldering
stack of utility ledgers. Every so often, the hum of
the building vibrated down here in odd harmonic notes, somewhere
amidst the stacks, as spotted the service directory from the
late seventies called pages Bertle a register of named supers
porters nightmen, each cross off in red market after a
year or two. Next to the column for nineteen seventy four,
a neat row of signatures bled through the page, one
of them a looping jay with an exaggerated tail that
matched the peculiar mark from the work requests J. Lowell,
I read aloud, tracing the letters maintenance night shift. A
shock of recognition snapped through me. Had this Sloll been
one of the last to serve before the floor was
wiped away? Or had he simply inherited a chain of
headed's cryptic missus and broken bulbs in a building already
haunted by denial. I tried to conjure any story, any
old gossip from the current staff. No one had ever
mentioned a Lowell. My phone buzzed text from Rick, the
security guard check out whasterwokamp to night's tape two ten
two pwent a m were blip a tat was a
grainy screenshot, gray gradient so low resid barely showed much,
but at the top a faint, abrupt ubin for an
instant a saut stood at the very edge of the
fifth window then dissolved. I reply anything else. His response
was quick and measured, just odd voices in the lobby
mic you down there. By lunch time, the buzz in
the building had changed. Timber residents ap peered a little
longer before locking their doors for me, and the regular
rattle of daily routines felt pointed brittle in the whole.
Outside four A, I found myself standing before the upper storeroom,
staring at its battered hinge. Here at the boundary was physical,
a blank wall behind which an entire floor's physics history
a memory, might operate, separate from the world below. In
my little closet office, after lunch, I called the facility
supervisor Sin on the predixs of needing new bulbs for
the attic fixtures. His voice, usually raucous, sounded strained. You
sure you need access up there, corporate prefers, We leave
that level untouched, just storage, nothing worth your time. Stick
to tenant units please. I prodded a small lie about
an insurance inspection, only to be met with a brick wall.
You go poking around, You're on your own, don't drag
me into it. Before dinner, I took the envelope retree
from my desk drawer, and, feeling half foolish, sniffed scorched edge.
The scent was desperate and oull half chemical, with a
hint of something herble lavender, perhaps gount to mold. I
tucked it into a file alarm with the slips and blueprints,
as the ritual of preservation seemed suddenly urgent. Routine jobs
accumulated through the remainder of the afternoon, but none gave
me the mindless satisfaction they usually did. I replaced a
ceiling tile in the laundry room, fished a loss set
of keys up from behind. Judith and Laurel's radiator helped
him ask Rereeva's hold bag of groceries up the stairs.
As I navigated between these tasks, I measured the glances,
the lulls in conversation, the undercurrent of disquiet, all of
it feeding the growing sense that the building's usual rules
had shifted. Shortly after dusk, I returned to the maintenance
office to find my room exactly as I left. A
foremost my personal mug, kept behind the shelf, was now
sitting shadowed in the trash can. A single a ridescent
triangle of porcelain was balanced on top of the heat,
the mug's chip handle lying beside it. Some one had
come in while I was away. There were no cameras
inside the office itself, but I checked the hallway feet
ten seconds of static at five nine of them, no
movement visible before or after. For a moment I thought
about reporting the intrusion. Instead, I picked up the porcelain,
balancing the handle in my palm, and set it next
to the rent slip, my little archeological dick of recent history, broken, enigmatic,
refusing to resolve into anything simple. When I left the
office for my final patrol, I noticed that the rear
fire door, locked every night at seven, stood a hero
a jar. I swung it close, then checked the alarm censor,
which showed a disconnected for the IRO between two zero
and three serum. Nothing else was obviously disturbed, but the
air clung to my neck and clammy insistent pressure. The
rest of the building felt different, charged, as if every
stair creaked a little ladder, every shadow stretched a little
farther At the edge of my hearing paint. Scraps of
music drifted from the upper landing. It might have been
a radio left on by neighbor. But the melody was strange,
old fashioned, uneven, carried in fits and snatches, like someone
leafing through memories instead of psalms. I was halfway past
two sea when Assess cauled to cought my sleeve. You
ever hear anyone walking above us at night? She whispered,
face pale and drawn. I swear I can't sleep for
the creaking, like some one pacing in big, angry circles.
I tried a reassuring tone. It's an old building. Everything echoes.
There's nothing above this line except piping and storage. She nodded, unconvinced.
Just so, if you go up there, be careful. Not
everything that walks comes back down. That's what my mother
used to say about this place. Her eyes seemed to
reflect something beyond the lobbies, faint, golden marsh. I returned
to my notebook after the round, layering new details atop bold.
My list of questions bulged, My list of answer shrank.
By eleven PM, after most tenants had likely retreated behind
dead bolts and headphones. I arose from my desk, intent
on one final sweep. The plan was simple, checked the
apostowo or two tenem armed with an old flashlight, my
ring of skeleton keys, and a wavering but focused determination.
I ran the last systems, check boiler, steady locks, and
tat mostly security fees, humming, and recording, then sat back
to the file cabinet, prepping myself for whatever came next.
I tried to eat stale granola bar and nearly choked
on its sword of sweetness. To fill the time, I
browsed again through building records, now with a finer fevered
ivor inconsistencies here, a patch of white out there, a
telltale section were page numbering dave feels were typed month
after month of attic only no resident activity notations, all
buckling under a single stacatto entry, tenant complained fourth floor
and noise two thirty none, no names, no resolution. I
searched online for mentions of the building, old message boards,
property listings, scanning past bland agent talk of elegant pro
wore detail and move in ready. A handful of city
code violation reports, board updated fire alarm failures, illegal modifications,
all clustered around September, then signed off and corrected in
the same tiny hand. Somewhere around midnight, I heard a
quiet laughter, soft rising up through the structure, carrying the
cadence of a memory add ind on, I found myself
muttering the rent slips words under my breath, letting the
phrase attendant's mandatory take on a new oppressors shape. If
the fifth four once required, roll call, who called the names?
Who listened? For the silence that followed an absence. By
the time the lobby clock slid to two eight m,
I stood on the lowes step of the main staircase,
breathing through a clammy band of tension. The building's mood
changed yet again in the earth and the thump of
distant pipes faded. Even the flicker from the owl is
distantly unsigned, stoled entirely. I reached the fourth landing at
two eleven, key ring ready, flashlight steady in my palm.
The brass padlock, so stubborn only the day before, now
hung open, swinging slightly, as if brushbann and seen hand.
This time nothing resisted. The stairwell door swung out with
a wheeze. I head stretched. The familiar and familiar corridor faded,
yellow wallpaper sconcile as long dead but still dustless. The
air bit at my nose sharp with mildyage by something
both acrid and sweet. A draft pressed out from under
a door at the end five hundred five. Again, without pausing,
a tray stepped forward, adjusting the light toward the meeting room,
long flattened in blue prints, but alive here tangible music,
the same tune filted from under one battered door, a
reel of half remembered melody, looping on itself. My gut
seized the pass present improbable, coiled there in the dim
fifth story hash I crouched near the door, listening beyond
appealing paint. The floor grown softly with a shifting burden
of weight, then a hum, and moderate exchange forces stacking
over each other. Urgent but indistinct, I left the flask.
I trained on the threshold. A cold tap, gentle as
a farewell, grazed my shoulder. Against every better instinct, I
turned nothing but the press of air left in the corridor.
In need of evidence more substantial than moot, I pressed
an old key to the lock the door, gripped it
for a moment, then turned inside. Darkness rained refracted by
a thin line of yellow waving across the craft floor.
In the instant before the bulbuba spotted into life, a
stumpede of memory smacked through faces, caught in mid fair left,
a snapping off into shrieks, old rooms warping in amber firelight.
The fifth floor, for that heart peat existed as both
ruined and habitat. Then the present rushed in the room
was empty. The shine on the floor did not come
from a lamp lamchord, but the glow from a hallway window.
I saw my own reflection wavering in the old wat glass,
made double by some layer of grim outside beyond a
far off streak of city knee unblinked red then blank,
then yellowed, then gone. On the ground lay coppice themistakably
more rent slips, old and new, scattered as if dropped
in a rush, signs of a horrid undament. No bodies,
no furniture, just the chronicle of occupacy, gone suddenly void.
I thumbed through the slips, stacking them in my pocket,
half expecting then to crumble. The familiar warmth of adrenaline faded,
replaced by a lopsided sense of anti climax. No ghost,
no final confrontation, just the dust and residue of ordinary vanishings.
As I stepped back into the corridor. The voices halted,
the corridor's proportions seemed to contract, A deep cold rising
from below. I stumbled back toward the stairwell, nose quivering.
The open door behind me whispered close before I touched it,
exhaling a brief cust of sound. The entire journey back
down felt different to geometry ron, the railings tilting at
new angles, each floor whirling passed in a blow. I
emerged one floor lower than expected, Blinking at the sudden
harshness of maintenance room fluorescence. I clutched the new slips
raught nose from a vanished gear. The evidence was growing physical, impossible,
undeniable by any rational standard, and in my chest a
mounting urge. Next time I would not go up alone.
A hush lay over the building, as if the verya
had thickened overnight. I I kept to my rounds, hands
and pockets. Every sense rubbed raw with adrenaline and fatigue.
What was left of sleep had thinned to a memory,
and the pale blow of down through the basement's high
windows seemed foreign, as if light itself might have trouble
finding safe passage here. Thus, modes drifted through the office.
I watched them methodical as I tried to force my
heart into a steady rhythm. On the desk, the rent
slips and burned envelopes sat arranged in a loose fan,
coroners curling like petals, browning on an old priguat. I
stared at those odd facts, confirmation of something I'd failed
to keep theoretical. The tangible evidence now weighed heavier than
any hunch. A rent slip, a signature, and a touched room,
A corridor preserved in a time that should have collapsed. Dash.
I ran my hand over the rough edges. Something in
the movement reminded me of the jill off the fifth
floor routine had slipped its leash. I was no longer
sure if I was preserving the building or if the
building was carefully arranging me. Every gesture felt watched. An
hour after sunrise, I found a notice, folded neatly and
placed on my work bench. Now envelope just one line, tight,
centered on the paper, Please see management. My skin brooked.
The message was unsigned, but beneath it and printed barely
visible was the looping shadow over jay and the sloping
arc of an air It made the flesh along my
arms pucker. I debated tearing it up and benning the pieces,
but instead I tucked it into my notebook, then forced
myself up and out into the world above the basement.
I scrubbed my face at the janitorial sinks, plus water
on the back of my neck, and studded the lions
beside my eyes in the mirror, Shocked at how much
old I looked in this icy light, out sigh. The
hum of traffic was subdued, minimized by the layers of
brick and weather glass. The first people I saw that
morning were the sisters and two be Laurel was already
at her door, hair comb, waiting for me before I'd
even reached the end of the corridor. Trouble with the
pipes again, she asked, as if we hadn't spoken only
the day before. Judith, seated in a patch of sunlight, called,
you're not yourself, honorable. You look like you've seen a ghost.
I've lashed a short smile late night, that's all. Judith
reached up and patted my shoulder. Upon was cool and
lightly trembling. If you need an ear, you know where
we are. We see more than our share of oddness
here know. I thanked her, meaning it, and drifted on
in the corridor. The hush returned only the elevators grind
broke the quiet. The doors opened, then closed without stopping
on my floor. I tried to lean into work, forcing
myself through zablished tasks, tightening a loose banister, cocking a window,
change in for reescin bulbs. Each movement, though, was overlaid
with an electrical knees. Tenants moved through their routines, some
of them cautious, others watching me sidelong as if hoping
to see something confirmed or disproved in my behavior. Even
the felt charged. My hand buzzed when I trailed it
along the metal banister, and the hum of the building
was pitched higher, like a radio station not quite tuned.
Sometime mid morning, I passed a mess Reaves by the
mail boxes and asked if she'd been hearing noises again.
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Not
since last week, but she trailed off, eyes fixed upward
at the invisible ceiling. Never mind ignore me. I pushed
through the mail room and found Rick, the security guard,
punched over a paper coffee cup, eyes red rimmed and bleary.
You on again already, I asked. He nodded. Suppose to
rotate to Saathan next to day, but the system flagged
au Dactor's courtier last night, Regional sending an auditor. What
kind of odd rick rub at his temple doors opening
and closing on the fourth and on the sealed stairs.
Cam was blacking out then working fine hull building seems unsaddled.
A knoting might get twisted tighter if any one else
was noticing the anomalies. The cover could slip or snap
in my hands. Let me know if anything goes off
in the log again, please, he grunted, a rocked in
agreement that tasted of fear. For the rest of the morning,
I worked mostly in silence. Fixed in the back door.
I heard the echo of a soft click behind me,
the sound of keys turning in a lock that should
have been untouched. When I glanced behind, nothing marked the
corridor but a faint trail of dust, the kind laid
fresh by feet that no, they should not be seen.
In the staff lounge, the micro we've blinked too thirteen,
when I stepped in for a mug of coffee. Though
I knew it had to be coincidence, just and uncared
for clock frozen by a power surge. The number hit
me as a warning. Returning to my office, I noticed
my notebook had been moved, just two inches, not enough
for any one else I cared, or perhaps even notice,
But I glanced at the rent slips. So he turned
over tiny greasy thumb print on the reverse, a print
that was not mine. Even my most familiar spaces had
been disturbed. Why threepum, the sense of intrusion amplify. Jimal
stopped me in the hallway. Someone's been in my closet.
Things moved. He held up a crack photo frame, the
glass replaced with a jagged piece of plastic. He used
to keep old stuff up there, photo albums. Now everything's
out of order, I asked Ustaff, expecting the usual guess,
a moving mistake or a partner's clumsiness, but he lowered
his voice. Those albums were my grandma's from the seventies.
She lived in the fourth here swore there were stories
she couldn't tell. A small, sharp chill ran down my spine.
Did she ever talk about the fifth? Jimal shook his
head and certain if I was joking, no such thing,
not really, just stores about doors that opened once, then
never again. Down in the utility room, I noticed another anomaly.
The padlock for the fifth fourth sterable despair, identical to
the one up stairs, was missing from the equipment pegboard.
The empty hook stood out, accusing. Back in the office,
the rent slips now felt like relics at an ongoing
crime scene. My notes were scattered, the burned envelope moved
from the center of the pile. If some one had
been here, they had handled everything, but left no finger prints.
The sense of being nudged as seared even tight in
its grip. At dusk, as the sun vanished behind the
high rises, the new presses laid itself over the building.
The rhythms of the residents slowed. Doors that often stayed
open forrey are now clicked tightly shut. The buildings fluorescent
lights flickered with their own out of sink pulse. The
radiator climbed as if un settled, and down the holes
floated a smell of old burned wiring. In my head,
the pattern repeated slit, blackout, voice, object, displaced signature, and
always the time two thirtyne It was coming again soon
there was only one real direction, now, one logical rute
left to take. Every nerve in my body bristled with
the knowledge. I waited as long as I could. When
the iro came, I dressed in an old jacket and
stuffed my pockets with everything I had collected, slips, keys,
the burned envelope, my battered notebook, and the decrepit tape
or colder I found in the supply drawer. Just one
last safety net out in the hall. Every thing foreseen
to echo twice. I hesitated at the fourth four landing,
then climbed the last visible flight, watching the numbers fade
from the wall and the familiar world fall away behind.
If I looked over my shoulder, i'd have seen nothing.
The stair wall bellow shimmered as though under water. The
buildings hush had clarified, turning as absolute as the press
of a hand over the mouth. This time I didn't
stop at the padlock door. The lock fell open at
a touch. The air beyond was close and thick perfume
of mildew, scorched dust, an ancient sweat. Somewhere far down
the tail corridor, A light played along the boards. I
stepped forward, forcing myself toward whatever weighted in the glow.
With each dride, I sensed not only intrusion but invitation
for the first time and days, the boundaries had shifted.
They were letting me in or lighting something out. That
was when everything truly began to change. Emergence into the
upper corridor sharpened every sense. The wallpaper, ochre and water stained,
curled away from the plaster, but the pattern was hidden
beneath the shimmer, as though behind each flower petal moved
the suggestion of faces, the hint of fingers pressed from
the other side. My shoes scraped the wark boards, the
only sound until I heard my own name whispered with
false calm from far At the end of the passage,
A single bulb close to burned out, swung in the
draft above the five hundred five door. Beneath it, as
if in mockery. A slip of paper trembled, another work
order replaced philammont A s a p the signature bleeding
off the margin. I coached beside it, feeling something in
my knee, not old age, but resistance, as if the
floor itself disliked my presence. A figure emerged from the doorway,
wavering not quite distinct. I'd have thought it was a hallucination,
were it not for the clean lines of a blue uniform,
a style not to shewed any as a small brass
named a twisted half off the fabric lowell. It read
the letter Jay, almost swallowed by corrosion. The man's posture
was expectant, yet exhausted. For a moment, nothing moved but
the breath between us. His mouth opened, no sound came out,
but behind the faint echo of humming began again. I
opened my mouth to call up, to apologize, or demand
of simply verify. Reality would cold pin me where I stood.
It was a chill, not of season or weather, but
of anticipation, the sense that this encounter had been rehearsed
a thousand times times before. My mind flashed with images
not my own. Flames crawling along molding faces, reded in smoke,
the stairwell consumed by wailing alarms. I fumbled with the
tape recorder, turning it on the red euvelink to life,
blinking in tandem, almost with a faulty bulb above. I
tried to speak, but the words were stolen by the hush.
Drowned at the building's own resonant frequency. The man lowal
or whoever wore that body, stepped backward without bending his knees,
vanishing into five hundred five in his wake. The door
swung open, wider, inside only a window showing a world
that no longer existed. Its view lay with ancient cinders
and sun loss to decades. I pressed forward a step, too,
to be compelled by something equal parts dread and duty.
Within the room's geometry buckled walls leaning inward forwards, warping
under invisible pressure. Scentered in the room's far side, a
table had been set as for a meeting, five chairs,
every seat draped with a duscillate and jacket patterns from
previous ears, each a unique color. Each seat occupied by
the abline of wirwarmth had once pressed down and been erased.
The windows close stuttered erratic bursts, now yellow, now white,
now a deep sickly orange. Shadows danced against the walls,
minnicking loads in the flicker of childish pantomime. Something behind
me shifted or creaked, a cold draft and frolt, carrying
a scent of burning feathers. My own hand on the
edge of the table trembled. Suddenly, a swarm of voices,
none quite synchronized with the other, began speaking in snatches.
Must take roll, whose absence? Who remains? Fifth floor mandatory,
each syllable pulse in and out of focus, threading through
the wallpaper, the boards, the air in my lungs. It
was the disaster being relived, not a haunting of a moment,
but the moment replayed forever, seeking some missing answer, some acknowledgment.
One by one, the light in each jacket glimmered, then faded.
The room turned colder. I backed away, I stinging long sight,
the images spawn men and women in panic, doorways blocked
by flame, and old manager screaming orders from the stairwell.
The voices crestened out, and then, as abruptly as a
drop curtain, the scene collapsed. I blinked, and the room
was empty once more. The tape or corder word the
only proof a sound of some sort had occur. Word.
I found myself on my knees, covered in cold sweat,
n slips scattered at my feet. Moments like that have
a way of fragmenting memory. I remember standing, then finding
the room Goune hallway locked, darkness, pressing from every angle.
I pressed the rwind button, desperate for confirmation, but only
stut it buzz from the tiny speaker. Somewhere beyond the
seal door. The humming re started a son that threatened
to drag me out of myself entirely. I exited as
quickly as my legs would move, not stopping to check
if any one or anything trailt me. My foot cattiless
boored on the thresholds, I stumbled, rided myself and ran
for the stowwell. As I turned the funnel landing, the
building's lights flickered in synchrony, every bulb below spinning out
of brief, urgent morse code short, short, lawn, over and over.
I burst onto the fourth floor, hard in my throat.
Every door along the whole stood ajar slivers of faces
peered through, lit by the sick yellow of the whollway lights.
Not a single person stepped out to help or to hinder.
When I finally staggered into the safety of the basement,
the I felt temporary thin at the night ever known.
I locked myself in the maintenance office and made a
hasty inventoryo's lips, notebook, keys, all present, but my hand
shook so badly that minutes passed before I could hold
a pen. It was then that I resolved to find
someone with as much to lose as I did, someone
with roots that ran as deep as the building's unreconciled secrets.
Morning arrived in a muddle of exhaustion and jangling nerves.
I watched the slip of sunlight call up the cabinet,
had the building's rhythms, resumement, staggered pulses deliver him in
a mess. Breever's laughter, Judith arguing with Laurel behind the
safety of a chain locked door. By mid morning and
unfamiliar tention suffused every hallway, Residents approached with something close
to accusation or avoidance. A folded note was shoved through
my office, swat onside, don't go up again, you're making
it worse. The elevator failed three times in two hours,
always at the fourth floor. Each time I walked the
emergency stairwall, passed the padlocked door. Hearing against lodge, a
cafeine shuffle and impatient tap scrape of a chair on
the floor above. The sounds radiated disapproval more than threat,
as if some one were sent to my attempts to
solve anything. Something had shifted, and the building's social surface
as sire undertow, pulling at every interrection. Enantce greeted me
less easily one snap when I double checked her lock,
slamming the door in my face. In the lunge, staff
had grown quieter, the usual jerks cut short by glances
toward the upper ceiling. Down in the janitor's closet, I
found my own set of keys scattered, not quite where
I left them. The combound maintenance log was flipped up
into a blank page with fresh ballpoint and ents, illegible,
as if some one had pressed a note then ripped
it away in a hurry. The sabotage spread. Light bulbs
in the mechanical room failed in succession. The service elevator
jammed between one and two, requiring a full hour of rewiring.
Even tools vanished. My favorite wrench lost, the spare crober,
replaced by a russet bar whose age exceeded its usefulness.
The building's little betrayals were mounting, each one stripping away
a safety net I hadn't known out depended upon. Worse
than the physical breakdowns were the latteres in memory I
misplaced my badge three times in one day. I re
entered the same tenant email into the log twice. I'm
sure of what I had already answered the complaint. At
one point I found myself standing on the third floor,
with no clear idea why I was there, holding a
key I didn't recognize. Faces haunted my peripheral vision. A
child dragging a faded plush animal behind, a woman in
a tartan scar vanishing around the bend of a corridor,
an older man with a mustache resting his hand on
a brass banister I had replaced years ago. None of
these were living tenants. I blinked and they vanished. Desperate
for traction at them through the old ledger again, looking
for repeats for accidental clues. There between the entrants from
nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy four were numbers that
did not add up additional apartments with an accounted rent.
When I tried to check these units against the physical layout,
I found myself tracing circles on a fore plan that
alternately agreed and disagreed with my memory. Late afternoon, AT
passed a mess thou on her way up from the bisement.
She seldom lingered near staff, preferring the anonymity of routine
and a good pair of headphones. But now, eyes darting,
she grabbed my arm just outside the laundry. Do you
want to know what happened up there? She whispered so
soft I could barely make out the words I told her.
I did. My father was the original super back before
this healed the fifth, she said, voice halting measure he
kept while somewhay, no one else was supposed to look
sub basement. If they haven't pulled it out and dumped
it by now, you'll see, I hesitated, then agreed, without
debating the risk. She led me out of the public
corridors into the oldest utility stair. Will so narrow my
shoulder brush the cold concrete at every turn. The light
here was dim and laid with cobwebs. Behind an old
battered water heater, she crouched lifting a loose cinder block.
The smell was terrible, muled russ, the sharp hand of
something once burned together. We heft it out a strong box,
its once polished surface blackened by time and water stains.
The lock had rusted open from some long agot ampering
inside letters, folders, photos curled and scorched at the corners,
slips marked I fIF four compensation payments, a faded group fuoto,
every face scrushed up with a furious hand mess. Thou
picked up the photo stair. He never talked about these people,
she said, laying a flat, never said the names that
I think he was told not to. One envelope was
black with such a city housing inspection letter dated October two,
nineteen seventy two. Another, a yellow newspaper clipping detailed the
tragedy fire on upper floor, five dead and renovation misst
building closed for days. Nowhere did the article mention names
in the margins penciled in move fast foundless to be
compensated in cash, no press. There were ledgers as well,
typed lines between nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy seven,
listing tenants on floors one through four, but every so
often a new name surfaced initials only, no forwarding address marked, removed,
no notice. Did you ever hear your father mention these,
I asked, indicating the slips and ledgers, No, she said,
catching her breath. He was always afraid, never walked the
upper stairwells loon after that fire, not even for double pay.
The records showed an official erasure at every level where
names had been there were dashes where incidents had been locked.
Pages were torn away each month a payment labeled quiet
campaign and on one brittle letter of the clear firm
hand of our current property manager signature dated not dect
but only years before authorized removal of extra records. On
four or five transfer all associated rents into hold account.
We sat in silence. The distant were of the mechanical
found the only noise. As we packed up the box,
I noted one more item at the bottom of my
crooksett unmarked, its tape wrinkled from repeated use. I have
an old player, I told her. Together we carried the
evidence up into my maintenance office and shut the door. Tied.
We surrounded the cassette into the player, the tape wine
skipping every few seconds. The first sounds were familiar, at
the take of pipes, the whine of elevator relays, but
over that voices some matched those from last night's vision.
Anxious pleading, interrupted now and then by man's voice, clipped
and strict. A single statement chilled my blood at seventeen
minutes in a chant more felt than heard. Lights out
Corridor five. Make sure the doors are all marked, Never
let them gather in the dark. Then the Tapeskip began
breaking up in a burst of electronic shrillness. Do those
voices sound recent, immess, thou ast, rubbing her forehead. I
played the segment again, noting inflections. Half memories danced around
the edges of recognition. They belonged to people I glimpsed
on tapes only days ago. The voices were not all
from the past. Our task was no longer recovery, but exposure,
an unbroken chain stretch from the original disaster, through decades
of bureaucratic deceit to the present day management. The fifth
floor had always existed, if not in matter, then in debt,
and the cost was paid by memory and fear alike.
There was now a need for confrontation. I gathered every
piece of evidence, packed it into my bat of back
and called up to management using the emergency only contact card.
Mess she with The manager answered with a tone shop
and clipped I have material you need to see. I
told her. There was a long silence, then a measured sigh.
This building has a long memory. You know not every
story needs to be examined. I think this one does.
Fifth floor fire, payment, false slips, the removal of names.
Another heavy silence, A mess, she replied, voice suddenly gentler,
more menacing for the effort. Some debt, stone, stay barret.
Why to get the ones that keep you fed. I'm
not the only one noticing. Even your own logs showed
the breaks. A final, brittle pause. He could lose your job,
she said, or more. That night, all my axi's coats
were evoked. Peacot stopped working. My runs were cut short
by locked doors, even ones I'd unlocked a dozen times before.
One of my master keys fit, but only in a
handful of locks. The buildings will was tightening. My lee
was shrank by the ire mess. Thou found me in
a break room at dusk. You will need help, she said,
pocking the back of keys her father had left her
years ago. We plan we go together at two thirteen,
after the new shift starts. No one will be watching
us on camera. Her voice contained its own kind of dread,
the weight carried in the eyes of those who inherit
secrets we agreed to. Night was the last night we
would let the pass go and spoken. Shortly after one
forty five, AMP bundled for the chill. We made our
way up the east owel. Our tools were nothing more
advanced than old ledgers, a handful of rinse s lips,
the taper corder, and a set of physical keys. The
building's mood was instantly hostile. Every bill pummed, each depth
sounded as if we were being followed by more than
our own shadows. Thunder rumbled outside, but the night inside
was loud with other things, anger, longing Aki's the fifth
floor pulled us up, as if by magnetism. Its gravity
was absolute. On the fourth landing, we paused mess Thou
pulled the old strom books tight against her chests, and
I thumbed the ring of buster keys. The padlock hung, waiting,
open and oily. We stepped through at two thirteen nine.
The change was not just an atmosphere but architecture. The
corridor rippled, not so much in a visible world as
in the relations between things. Angles grew long, then abrupt,
Perspectives doubled back on themselves. Door side opened, then slam
tight without contact. The corridor seemed to stretch in contract,
breathing in time, with the flecker of wheat bulbs. As
we reached the midpoint to cold blim from the wallpaper
twisted into faces, pleading an angry lip shape around names, lawn,
last mess. Thou girt mail bow, tightly muttering prayers under
her breath. At the end, Unit five hundred five blowed
with that sick yellowed light, neither on nor off, but
caught in a flickering limber. The air in the hallway
throbbed with repetition, ascent of catastrophe building to a new crisis.
We pressed our backs to the wall and together pushed
through the door. Within the scene was as before, but
supercharged table chairs or and slipstacked in ruined towers. This
time five spectral figures occupied the seats outline stands as
smoke senses blowed. Faces half retreating from view ness. Thou whispered,
I know your names, deer not forgotten. Her voice drew
their attention. The figures leaned forward, merging and separating, as
if all of time pressed through the same threshold. They
did not speak, but the movements begged for something, an answer,
an apology, some invocation of truth. I recited names from
the oldest folder Gale, Sefton, Lyle, Shankha Menorolana, James, Lowell, Poors, Friddick.
Each name cracked like a whip in the close at time,
looping tighter, narrowing around us. In the same moment, time
flared and wped. The walls melted to reveal the flash
and roar of flames, A corridor alive with panic. The
temperature spiked. I felt my lunsting as if inhaling smoke.
From behind, A heavy tread sounded at the unmistakable clack
of hard soul shoes in the door, we stood a
message manager by dayned by her own confession, enforcer of
the official forgetting. By night, she stood with authority, bearing
a sheaf of thin blue fold as deeds, pyerile, employment files.
You shouldn't have come. This has kept its peace for years.
Behind her, shadows pressed in, reaching for the slips and letters.
Mess thou cried, you signed it all the way, You
let them die twice, Mess who stepped forward for slow
and vibrating between menace in despair, lightning burned out the
future for this floor. My job was to keep the
rest of the building safe. No one could repay what
was lost I opened the recorder, tate spinning red light blinking,
the spectral figures rose, condensing their forms. Now they spoke
voices in course, we remember, you remember, Let it end.
They surged forward, neither malicious nor forgiving, passing through a
chie through us, the memories scading as vision and sound,
the original fire, the panic shuts for help, management orders
to shut down alarms, bags of cash exchanged in offices
behind locked doors. Mess chewed out at the slips, attempting
to tear them in two, but her hands passed through them,
Unable to grasp. She shrieked, voice ragged, No more records,
no more names, Let it be silent. The corridors were old, spasmed,
doors blew open when surging in with a battering of
terrified faces, living and dead, overlain in a tattrey of
unresolved guilt. I forced myself to read from the oldest
ledger present all five accounted, fifth four, roll call complete.
As the last name echoed out, the temperature in the
room crush the fire. Vision flickered and dult, the figures
now clear as the expression shifting from terror to something
like relief. Stilt then faded, drifting out through walls and ceilings.
Ames chew on her knees, now sobbed into her hands.
The ledgers, the rent slips, and the recorder glowed briefly,
then fell heavy and coal to the floor. The building
itself exhaled the sand I felt, as much as heard. Suddenly,
the corridor settled for the first time in my memory.
The fifth floor registered as only itself, abandoned, barren, but
emptied of loops and accusation. The wallpaper lost at Shima,
the er grew still. I nott to pick up the
slips and recorder, tucking them into my jacket. A mess
Thou gathered the ledgers in silence. We left cho where
she wept, following the hallway back down to the waiting
world below. The return was anticlimactic, slow, drained of precious stairs, straightening, light, stabilizing,
the door opening without complaint. Even the basement felt refresh,
as if some ancient air had been flushed out. We
sat in the office, exhausted and speaking until sunrise. The
aftermath moved quickly, as if the building itself had invited closure.
Police arrived, led by quite tip that I never learned
the source of. There was little fuss, just enough to
explain padlock doors and a blockade along the top stairwell.
The management quietly retired from s chew sighting health concerns,
no parade, no scandal, just new locks and warnings painted
over old brick. The fifth floors windows were bricked over
before the weekended. Strict instructions circled through the tenants, no
access of before danger of collapse. Paint crews worked at
all errors, pasting over the pass with deliberate urgency. The
padlock stairs, once sore attempting, now gate behind caution tape
and steel plates. Not haunted, perhaps, but finally respected for
their capacity to foster oblivion. Tenants stripped of details but
not of discomfort, offered more thanks than extra apple tart.
A brief note slid beneath my door, some merely nodded eyes,
wet grievances, once so easy to voice, now faded back
into a general quiet. For the first time, I felt
gratitude nit to something solemn, not perfunctory. As for me,
The consequences followed quickly. I was offered a leave of
absence for your health. The head office insisted. For now.
I kept returning, walking the holes as if I might
still repair what is fundamentally unfixable. I request a transfer,
but found myself unable to fire the paperwork. Instead, I
hung back a witness among altered lampsham, replaced locks, the
fifth floor shadow always somewhere above the evidence. The rents, lips,
burned ledger, cracked housing inspection letter and cosette now sat
in a sealed file box in my locker, A peace
offering or curse, I was not sure which. Once late
at night, as I locked the front doors, I wondered who,
if any one, I should have protected. What truly lingered
was not the objects left, but the instant in the
corridor when the past and present signed in the same register.
Several nights later, after the last contractor's truck pulled away
and every tenant slept behind double locked doors, I made
one final run through the building. I pressed the recorder
to my ear, fairly breathing, repeating the names once more.
Pausing at the brickdover stairwell, I set the rent slip
atop the wooden banister, letting it rest. I waited until
I heard only my own heartbeat slower now to descend
and leave the box in my office. A single glance
upward revealed nothing but a washed up blow of old
stone and new plaster. Stepping outside, the air was sharp
against my face. I crossed the narrow street to where
the city's knee and blinked red and yellow, stirring back
at the building as if it might blink and turn.
In the dark window where no floor should exist, a
threadbare yellow light flickered at two thirty no m I
stood watching, knowing some things had finally changed, and that
some would never leave. And that is the end. Thank
you for listening, and I will see you in the
next one.