The Blue Line of Mothra Hall

In the guts of the old city, where the river stank of diesel and the buildings leaned like tired mourners, stood Mothra Hall. Its brick face was chipped, its windows fogged with decades of grime, and its single elevator groaned like a dying animal. The people who worked there—clerks, auditors, the quiet souls who filed paper in the basement—knew better than to linger after dark. They spoke of the boy in the blue-striped shirt, the one who skipped along the sixth floor corridors, his white sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. No one remembered when he first appeared. He was simply there, like the leak in the ceiling or the flickering fluorescent light.

Marlon, a junior data processor, had only been at Mothra Hall for three weeks. He kept to himself, ate lunch alone in the stairwell, and studied the patterns of the building’s moods—the creaks, the rattling pipes, the way the elevator sometimes stopped on the sixth floor even when no one pressed the button. He’d heard the stories, of course. The other workers whispered about the boy named Jun-Jun, but in their new version, he was called Paddy, and he wore a faded striped shirt, shorts, and white shoes that left wet footprints on the tile. Paddy pulled pranks: he’d move your stapler, hide your coffee mug, leave a single button on your desk. Harmless, they said. Just a mischievous kid. But Marlon noticed that no one ever stayed late. Always left before the cleaning crew arrived, always glanced over their shoulders as they punched out.

One Saturday, the office was eerily quiet. A mandatory audit had forced them to come in on a weekend, and Marlon was the only one there from his team. The ventilation system hummed a monotone dirge. He typed numbers into a spreadsheet, the glow of the monitor painting his face a sickly green. At around 4 p.m., the elevator dinged—a sound that made his heart skip. He’d told no one he was here. He walked to the lobby, but the elevator doors were already closing, revealing a flash of blue and white. He called out, but the doors sealed with a whisper. Curious, he checked the floor indicator. It stopped at the sixth floor, which was abandoned—used for storage, sealed off years ago.

Marlon took the stairs. The stairwell was cold, each step echoing like a drum. He pushed open the heavy door to the sixth floor. The air was thick with dust and the smell of old paper. Rows of filing cabinets stretched into dimness, their handles like dead eyes. And there, at the far end, he saw a small figure—a child’s silhouette, shoulders narrow, head tilted. The boy was pointing at a cabinet. Marlon froze. The boy turned, and for a moment, he had no face—just a smooth, pale void. Then Marlon blinked, and the face was there: wide eyes, a crooked smile, but too pale, too rigid, like a mask. The boy beckoned.

Marlon’s legs moved against his will. He stepped closer, the dust swirling around his shoes. The boy pointed again to the cabinet, then faded, dissolving into the gloom. Marlon’s hand trembled as he pulled the drawer. It was stuck, rusted. He yanked hard, and it flew open with a screech. Inside were not files, but child’s drawings. Crayon scribbles of a family, a house, a dog. But every drawing had a black handprint over it, and the eyes of the figures were red holes. The last drawing showed a stick figure falling from a tall building, labeled ‘ME’ in shaky letters. Beneath that, a name: PADDY.

Marlon shoved the drawer shut. He staggered backward, his heart pounding. The sixth floor seemed to close in, the cabinets groaning as if shifting. He turned to run, but the exit door was gone—replaced by a wall of rusted shelving. He heard a giggle, high and childish, bouncing off the metal. Then the lights flickered and died. In the black, he felt tiny hands brush his leg. He screamed, but no sound came. The hands pressed harder, and he was shoved hard against the cabinets, the metal cold against his back. The giggling grew louder, a chorus of laughter, and then a voice, soft and hollow: ‘You found my hiding spot. Now you have to stay for tea.’

Marlon fumbled for his phone and turned on its flashlight. The light revealed the room empty, the exit door right where it had been. He scrambled for it, nearly tripping over his own feet. He threw the door open and bolted down the stairs, not stopping until he burst into the lobby, gasping. He stood there, shaking, the elevator dinged again. The doors slid open. Inside was a small blue-striped sneaker, abandoned on the floor, still wet as if just worn. Marlon didn’t wait. He ran out of Mothra Hall, into the rain, and never came back.

The next Monday, his desk was empty. The other workers said nothing, just exchanged glances. One of them, an older woman, sighed and said, ‘Paddy got him.’ She then pulled out a paper from her bag—a crayon drawing of a man falling from a building, the face scribbled out. ‘This was on my desk this morning. It’s starting again.’ She crumpled it, but a drop of red ink fell from the paper, staining her fingers. She wiped it on her skirt, leaving a smear. And high above, on the sixth floor, a light flickered on, and tiny footsteps were heard, shuffling across the linoleum, as if waiting for the next person to come and play.