When she’d assigned everyone tasks, she excused herself to go to the bathroom. She just needed a moment. She needed a second away from the group to process what had happened and collect her thoughts. It was one thing to be the strong one on whom everyone relied, but it wore a person down. And she was feeling a little worn.
They’d been going so hard and steady the last three weeks that this was a major slap in the face. She wasn’t even sure what to make of it.
She leaned against the bathroom counter and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her face was paler than usual and it made the dark bruises from lack of sleep stand out more prominently underneath her eyes. She was glad that her mother hadn’t seen her in good lighting over the last few days, or she wouldn’t have been let out of the house.
She gave a heavy sigh and drew in a calming breath. They were going to get past this small hiccup. They would get their stuff back in order and move on.
Was she worried that it would happen again? She wasn’t letting herself entertain the possibility. Whatever or whoever had done this had made their point. There was no reason for a repeat performance.
Still, she couldn’t help the feeling of unease that crept up her spine as she stood in the bathroom. She felt the hair on her arms rise and goose bumps spread across her skin.
She looked into the mirror reflecting the bathroom, empty but for her. Still, she felt as though she was being watched. She felt as if something was looming behind her, peering over her shoulder.
Rachel turned around to stare at the three bathroom stalls, the doors all partially ajar and each one empty. She drew in another deep breath, hoping to calm herself but she found no calm.
The sense of unease spread through her and it seemed to be persisting. She left the bathroom and returned to the main room, but the feeling remained with her. As the bathroom door closed behind her, she failed to notice the figure that filled the mirror. She didn’t notice the eyes that watched her departure, eyes filled with hate.
Chapter 4
A Presence
* * *
Rachel never mentioned her strange moment in the bathroom to anyone. She simply left the room and continued with the clean-up effort. She was writing it off as lack of sleep and nerves. That was all that it had been. There was no need to worry.
But she wasn’t alone in her experiences in the bathroom on the fifth floor. That evening, Jessica stayed late to finish up organising the files that had been destroyed. She waved off offers of assistance from the other members of the group and told them to go home and sleep. There really wasn’t much they could do anyway, and by the time ten o’clock rolled around everyone was looking rather exhausted.
So, Jessica shooed them out of the building and set to work on her filing. She found it oddly relaxing to put everything back in its proper place. She knew that Rachel would laugh at her for it, but there was something about filing that Jessica saw as her happy place.
When there was order, things ran smoothly, and she wanted this project to run smoothly. She wanted this project to be successful, and if the one way she could make that happen was by filing things properly, then she would do just that.
It was close to midnight when she made her way to the bathroom. She’d completely lost track of time, as often happened when she was engrossed in work, and she knew that she should probably go home soon. She figured she would use the bathroom, finish what she was working on, and then close up.
She’d just closed herself in a bathroom stall when she heard footsteps in the bathroom. Her brow furrowed in confusion. She didn’t think anyone else was working on the floor, and there was no reason for anyone from the other floors to use their bathroom.
She heard the door to the stall next to her creak open and then click shut. Jessica felt the unease creep up her spine and the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She wasn’t sure where the feeling was coming from but she didn’t like it in the least.
She finished up in her stall and quickly left it, but as she stood at the sink, she noticed that the door to the stall next to hers was still closed. It wasn’t partially open like the other two stalls.
Her heart was racing in her chest and her hands were shaking now. The hair on her arms was raised and she was covered in goose bumps. She rubbed her wet hands on her pants and stared at the closed stall door.
There was no reason for it to be closed. There was no reason for anyone else to be on the floor. She should be completely alone. But then, why was the door closed? They doors never stayed closed on their own accord.
Jessica drew in a deep breath and crouched down to peak underneath the stall door for the tell-tale sign of the occupant’s feet. Perhaps someone had just felt like using their bathroom. Perhaps something had happened in one of the other bathrooms. There had to be a perfectly logical explanation for this.
But as she glanced under the door, she saw nothing. There were no shoes. There were no feet. The stall was, for all intent and purposes, completely empty.
Jessica swallowed the little scream that wanted to rise in her throat. She knew that she’d heard the footsteps. She knew that the door had been latched closed. But she couldn’t bring herself to push on the door to make sure that it was latched.
Instead, she slowly backed out of the bathroom and left whatever had happened in there behind. She packed up her things and left the building as quickly as she could.
Maybe she’d imagined it. Maybe she was over caffeinated and hadn’t slept enough. There was always a logical reason for things and after a good night’s sleep, she was certain that she would come up with hers.
She knew one thing for sure. She wasn’t going to mention it to the others. She didn’t need to be laughed at. She didn’t need them accusing her of being frightened of an old building. They hazed her enough for things not to fan the fire.
So she would just go home, get some rest, and get back to work in the morning. It was the smart thing to do and Jessica always did the smart thing.
True to her conviction, Jessica never mentioned what had happened in the bathroom that evening. She came in for work the next day after a fitful night’s sleep and went straight back to work on her filing.
But she wasn’t alone in the late-night experiences at the Dark Hallow Building. Although Jessica refused to stay there alone any longer, the others weren’t quite so put off. And the more frequently they stayed late at the building, the more often strange things seemed to happen.
Rachel stayed late a few days after the first incident and, while working at her computer, she felt a strange presence behind her. She turned around several times to make sure that no one was there, but the floor was empty.
As the familiar sense of unease crept over her, she felt hands caress her shoulders. It was a feathery touch at first, but it persisted. Every time she would shrug or turn around, it would stop, but when she began to work it would start up again.
She was thoroughly creeped out by the sensation and only managed to stay a half-hour longer before packing up and going home. She was getting to the point where she no longer believed that she was imagining these things. She didn’t think that she could blame this on caffeine overdose or lack of sleep.
There had been something there on the fifth floor. She had sensed it. She had felt it touching her. And she didn’t know what she could do about it. She didn’t know if she could, or should, tell the others. There was no proper etiquette for something like this.
All she had to go on was her own gut feeling and the fact that she simply knew, deep down, that something was very wrong about the building. She didn’t think the others would believe her on that. She doubted very much that they would buy her “I sense something” theory.
They were a logical group and there was nothing logical about phantom touches and strange feelings of being watched. There was nothing logical about someone trashing all their paperwork and cameras not working. But she knew that there was definitely something wrong about it.
Marc w
as the next one to have unexplained experiences when he stayed late at the building to work on lines of code. He was debating running down the street to the 24-hour coffee shop when he began to hear a soft sobbing coming from somewhere on the floor.
“Hello?” He called out to the room that he’d believed to be empty. “Is anyone there?”
The sobbing continued and the overhead lights began to flicker.
Marc glanced at his computer screen, wondering if they were experiencing a sort of power surge, but his screen held steady. The lights continued to flicker.
He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly as he counted to ten. He’d seen enough horror movies in his life to know that flickering lights were never a good sign.
Still, this was real life. This wasn’t a horror movie. Ghosts didn’t exist. He glanced around the fifth floor and couldn’t see anything obviously amiss. He couldn’t see anyone.
But he still heard the sobbing and the lights continued to flicker.
It didn’t take him long to decide that it was time to pack up his things and get out of the building for the night. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the place when things escalated, if they escalated.
He tossed his laptop into this bag and headed towards the door. As he walked towards the exit, he could feel a presence behind him. But when he turned around, no one was there. only the flickering lights.
He hurried into the stair well and out of the building, leaving the sound of sobbing behind him.
Standing on the street outside the building, he glanced back up at the fifth floor. The lights shone steady through the windows. He knew that Rachel would give him crap for leaving them on, but he had bigger worries.
He was fairly certain that their building was haunted and he had to figure out a way to convince the others.
Chapter 5
Apparitions
* * *
“This building is haunted,” Marc announced at the morning meeting the next day and got the response he expected. Everyone stared at him wide eyed and Jake even choked on his coffee.
“Where the hell do you get a notion like that, Marc?” Jake inquired when he’d regained the ability to breath.
“Haven’t you all felt it? Haven’t you felt like we’ve been watched? Haven’t you noticed the strange things?” Marc looked from one face to the next.
Jake looked sceptical but he could tell by the expressions on the girls’ faces that they’d had some sort of experience.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” He nodded to Jessica and Rachel.
Rachel shrugged and sipped at her tea. “We’ve been working really hard and not getting much sleep. It’s likely just our imagination or sleep deprivation playing tricks on us.”
“Oh yeah?” Marc looked at Jessica. “Are you so sure of that as well?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure of anything but it makes sense. Ghosts aren’t real, Marc. It’s just an older building. Older buildings have quirks.”
“Ah, like flickering lights and sobbing late at night; those kinds of quirks?” He raised a brow and saw her eyes go wide.
“Oh, stop it with this nonsense.” Rachel rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry you had a bad night, Marc, but that doesn’t mean we’re all as paranoid as you are. It’s just a building. Buildings can’t hurt anyone.”
That closed the subject for the day, but it didn’t mean that strange things stopped happening. If anything, they escalated after Marc made his claim about the building being haunted. It was almost as though he had opened some form of door to make it okay for the madness to progress.
Jessica was the first to suffer through one of these incidents. She was headed down the stairs on her way home that evening when the lights in the stairwell began to flicker. She stopped in her tracks and grabbed onto the railing for support.
She remembered that Marc had mentioned flickering lights and she could feel her heart begin to race as the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Her eyes searched the stairwell for the cause of the flickering lights. It only took her seconds to locate it.
At the bottom of the flight of stairs stood a man. His clothes were ragged, he was covered in blood, and his mouth was open as though he was screaming. But no sound was to be heard. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, swaying back and forth for a moment before he put one foot on the step in front of him.
Jessica screamed. She was frozen to the spot and couldn’t move, but she had no trouble screaming. The man continued to climb the stairs in jolty and purposeful movements. His eyes were fixed on her and all she could do was continue to scream. She couldn’t make herself move, no matter how hard she tried.
Seconds later, Jake rushed into the stairwell. It felt like hours to Jessica, but the minute he appeared, the man vanished. Jessica let out a sigh of relief and collapsed onto the stairs.
Her hands were shaking, she was pale as a sheet, and she wasn’t sure if she could stand up. Jake rushed to her side and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Are you alright?” His eyes searched her face for any sign of injury.
“It was terrible. He was terrible,” was all she could say before she simply cried.
Jake and Jessica left the building together after that incident and Marc was once again left alone; Rachel had left early to deal with paperwork regarding the property.
Marc wasn’t exactly fond of the idea of being alone in the building, not after the incident the night before, and so he finished up what he was working on quickly and packed up his things. It seemed that the safest option was just to get out of the building. After all, he could continue to work from home. He didn’t need to be on site to do the development stuff.
With his bag slung over his shoulder and his coat on, Marc headed towards the elevator. Usually he’d just take the stairs but he was already feeling tired and he just wanted to get out of the building as quickly as possible.
He pressed the down arrow and waited the few moments it took for the elevator to make it up to the fifth floor. He tapped his foot impatiently as he waited and tried not to glance over his shoulder. He already felt uneasy about being in the building even though it wasn’t particularly late yet.
When the elevator doors pulled open, he hurried inside and turned so that he could press the “door close” button. As the doors slid closed, he noticed the lights begin to flicker on the fifth floor.
Marc felt the fear fill him. He couldn’t explain where it came from but he knew that something was amiss. He knew that something was coming. The chill ran up his spine and his palms began to sweat. His hands began to shake and his breath quickened.
He had made it down two floors, when the elevator came to a jeering halt. He had to brace himself against the side railing in order to avoid falling down. The control panel in the elevator flickered. The lights for every floor lit up. Every button illuminated. The overhead light sizzled out and then came back on with a glaring intensity.
And there she stood. Right in front of Marc and right in front of the elevator doors.
He had to blink twice to make sure he was actually seeing her and that he hadn’t perhaps hit his head. But the dark-haired woman with the blazing eyes stood before him. Her face was filled with anger and her hands were clasped in tight fists at her side.
“GET OUT!” She screamed, and in the small space her scream echoed off of the elevator walls.
Marc opened his mouth to reply but no words came out; he just stood there with his mouth gaping like a fish out of water.
The lights continued to flicker and the woman took a step closer to him. “GET OUT!” she screamed again and he flinched at the sound of her voice.
“I…I…” he stammered but he couldn’t seem to find the words to respond to her.
The next he knew, she had her hands around his neck and she was lifting him off his feet. She had him pushed against the wall of the elevator and held him in the air with exceptional strength.
“LEAVE!” She screamed, her face inches fr
om his.
Marc had no hope of replying. He barely had a hope of breathing. And just as the blackness of unconsciousness began to close in, he felt himself drop to the floor of the elevator.
He hit the floor hard and when he opened his eyes, the light was steady and the elevator had begun to move again. The woman was nowhere in sight. The elevator was completely empty.
He struggled to get to his feet as the elevator made it to the main floor, and he stumbled through the doors as they pulled open.
He couldn’t get out of the building fast enough. He needed fresh air. He needed to be on the street. He needed to put some distance between himself and the Dark Hallow Building.
When he hit the pavement, he simply kept walking. He didn’t bother to look back to see if the lights still flickered on the fifth floor. He didn’t look back to see if anyone was behind him. He simply walked.
He didn’t even pay attention to which direction he was headed. All he knew was he needed to put some distance between himself and the building. And he needed to get himself a stiff drink. He figured he deserved one after the evening he’d just had.
Chapter 6
Nightmares
* * *
The following morning, the four sat around the meeting table staring at each other in shock. Marc had just finished telling about his experience in the lift. He even had the bruises on his neck to prove it. And Jessica had told them what had happened in the stairwell. Jake was backing her story.
Rachel was the only one who seemed to be having an easy go of it, that’s how it seemed to the other three. Still, she sat at the table looking exhausted and hollow-eyed. Something was clearly amiss with her as well, it was just a matter of making her talk about it.
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