The Carbon Paper

The building I manage is a squat, beige concrete block that squats beside the interstate as it bends away from town. Once, this was the edge of a respectable neighborhood, full of clapboard Victorians and neatly trimmed elms. Now, the only remnants are a cracked walkway leading to our front door and a vacant lot on our left, where a hedge of overgrown lilacs still struggles to bloom among the rubble of a foundation. On our right, a funeral home with a black awning and a perpetually empty parking lot. The building itself is fifty years old, erected on the bones of a hundred-year-old house that was torn down, they say, because of a fire.

I never felt watched. That’s what I always told myself. It’s not a sense of a presence, not a creepy-crawly feeling on my neck. It’s more like the air itself is wrong. The colors are slightly off, the hum of the fluorescent lights is too low, and the corners of rooms seem to hold a greyness that shifts when you’re not looking directly at it. I work here, I manage the place, and I’ve grown accustomed to the oddness. It’s just a job.

The office is arranged like most: a front reception area with a few chairs and a counter, a bullpen of cubicles, and my private office at the back, right next to the back door which opens onto a narrow alley. We’re a service business, processing paperwork and fielding calls, so the front office is the hub. Even on weekdays, the bustle is contained. I usually come in on weekends to catch up on the backlog of files that accumulate like dead leaves.

Last Saturday, under the flat, indifferent sky, I let myself in with my key. The building was cool, the air still. I made my way to my office, flicking on the lights as I went, the fluorescents buzzing to life with a hesitant flicker. I settled in with a pot of coffee and a mountain of forms, the only sound the scratch of my pen and the distant hum of the refrigerator in the break room. Then, from the front office, came a clatter.

I froze. It wasn’t the modern tapping of keyboards—that soft, nearly silent patter. This was a staccato, metallic racket, a determined and rhythmic thumping that seemed to vibrate through the floor. I set my pen down, my heart suddenly thudding in a way I didn’t appreciate. I walked out of my office, past the cubicles, toward the glass-paned door that separated the bullpen from the reception area. The clatter grew louder, a furious assault of keys. I pushed the door open.

The front office was empty. The chairs were vacant, the counter clear. The sound stopped dead. I stood there, listening, my own breathing loud in my ears. A draft of cold air slithered past my ankles, and I noticed the back door I’d come through was now ajar, swinging slightly. I hadn’t opened that door. I always come in through the front. But I decided not to dwell on it—perhaps I’d left it unlocked, and the wind had pushed it open. I closed it firmly, walked back to my office, and tried to shake the feeling that the silence in the main space was now almost accusatory.

The next morning, I returned, determined to finish my work. The building had that same uneasy stillness, but I resolved to ignore it. At around 11:00, I heard the clatter again. This time, I didn’t hesitate. I marched toward the source, my footsteps echoing on the linoleum. The sound was unmistakable now: a typewriter, an old mechanical one, with its carriage return bell. I burst through the door to the reception area.

No one was there. But on the counter, at the spot where our sign-in sheet sits during business hours, lay a single sheet of paper. It was old, yellowed, the kind that comes from a manual typewriter, with ragged edges and the faint smell of smoke. On it, typed in a scratchy, uneven font, was a single sentence: ‘Why did you stop? The Carbon Paper is missing.’

I stared at it. My mouth went dry. Carbon paper? We don’t use it. Everything is digital. I crumpled the note and threw it in the trash, telling myself it was a prank, a desperate attempt at office humor. But my hands were shaking.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The sentence replayed in my mind. I started investigating the building’s history. I asked around, did some research. The building was built in the early 1970s, on the site of a house that burned down in 1965. The fire took the life of an elderly woman named Edith Harlow. She was a recluse, and rumors said she hoarded things. The fire started in her basement, and she was trapped. They never found her body, only the charred frame of a wheelchair.

I also learned that the funeral home on our right had been there since the 1920s, and that before the house was built, the land had been a cemetery for a forgotten church. The stones had been moved, but perhaps not all of them. I began to piece together a picture: a woman burned alive, a cemetery desecrated, and now, in my office, something was trying to communicate.

I started leaving paper out, just to see. A blank sheet on the counter. The next day, it was covered in a frantic scrawl, paragraphs of gibberish, but with one phrase repeated: ‘The Carbon Paper is the Key.’ I couldn’t make sense of it. I felt a growing dread that I was being pulled into something I couldn’t escape.

On Monday, I came in early, before the staff. I stood in the reception area, waiting. The typewriter clattered to life, startling me. I turned around slowly. There, on the counter, was a fresh sheet of paper, and on it was a single word: ‘Hello.’ I picked it up, and as I did, the pen I held fell from my hand. It rolled under the counter, and I knelt to retrieve it. There, tucked in the dust and shadows, was a small, blackened box. I pulled it out. It was a box of carbon paper, the coating worn and peeling, but the word ‘Harlow’ printed on one side.

The typewriter stopped. The office was silent, but I could feel a presence now, a pressure in the air. A cold breath on my neck. I clutched the box, my palms sweating, and a voice, thin and dry as dust, breathed into my ear: ‘You found them. Now finish the letter.’ I spun around. No one was there.

I know I should leave. I know that. But I can’t. Every time I try to walk out the front door, the typewriter starts again, a furious clatter, and I feel something pulling me back, demanding that I sit down and type. I’ve started typing, and the words pour out of me without thought, a letter to someone I don’t know, signed ‘Edith Harlow.’ And as I write, the carbon paper grows darker, the blue ink seeping through the layers, and I realize that I am not writing to someone—I am writing to the dead, and the dead are writing back with my hands. The building isn’t haunted. It’s a conduit. And I am now part of the machine.

Last night, I finished the letter. I placed it on the counter, a neat stack of carbon-smeared pages. The typewriter clattered one final time, then fell silent. I stood there, waiting, and from the direction of the funeral home, I heard a faint, muffled bell. Then, a sound like a click, and the back door swung open. I walked out into the alley, and the sun was rising. I didn’t feel afraid. I felt like I had done what was asked. But as I turned to look back at the building, I saw a figure in my office window, an old woman in a wheelchair, watching me. She nodded once, and then the blinds closed. I went home and slept for the first time in days.

Today, I’m back at work, but I no longer fight it. I’ve cleared my personal effects from my desk. Now, I sit at the old typewriter in the reception area, my fingers hovering over the keys, waiting for instructions. The carbon paper is always fresh, the box never empties. I know that this is the price of my curiosity. I’ve become the secretary for the silence between worlds. And sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see a faint, black smudge on my cheek, like a fingerprint of ash, and I know it’s from her. She never left. She just needed someone to type for her.

The building is still there, utilitarian and grey. People come and go, never noticing the slight chill in the air, or the way the typewriter in the back office keys softly to itself. But I know. I’m the one who now hears the click of the carriage return in my dreams, and I fear that one day, I will pick up the phone, and Edith’s voice will ask, ‘Why did you stop? The letter isn’t finished.’ And I will sit down, and I will type again, because that’s all I can do. I am part of the story now, a ghost in the machine, and the carbon paper will never run out.