The Cipher on the Fourth Floor

It happened during my third month at the Convergys site in Makati, back in 2010. The building was a converted warehouse that still smelled of diesel and old cardboard. We worked the graveyard shift, 11 p.m. to 8 a.m., and the fluorescent lights hummed like trapped bees. Most of the time, the place buzzed with the chatter of agents on headsets, the clatter of keyboards, the occasional laugh from the break room. But there were stories.

Everyone had their own. The tech support guy swore he saw a man in a gray suit sitting at the far end of the training room, staring at the wall. The janitor refused to clean the fourth floor storage closet after midnight, said he heard a typewriter going off down there. And there was the one about the elevator that would go to the basement on its own, even though the basement had been sealed for years.

I didn’t put much stock in any of it until one night in late September. I was working as a billing specialist, and my shift had been brutal—customer after customer, all angry, all the same script. Around 2 a.m., I got a call from a number that showed up as ‘UNKNOWN.’ I answered with my standard greeting, but instead of a voice, I heard a slow, deliberate typing. Click-clack, click-clack. Like someone was typing on an old mechanical keyboard, one key at a time. I asked if anyone was there, but the typing just continued. After about thirty seconds, the line went dead. I shrugged it off, logged the call, and moved on.

But it happened again the next night. Same time, same ‘UNKNOWN.’ This time the typing was faster, more urgent. I tried to interrupt, but the sound grew louder, drowning out the noise of the call center. I finally hung up, my heart pounding. I asked my coworkers if they had ever experienced this. One of them, an older agent named Manuel, went pale. He pulled me aside and told me about the ‘Cipher.’

According to Manuel, back in the early 2000s, when the building still housed a printing press, there was a man who worked in the basement—a typesetter named Edgar. He was obsessed with codes and ciphers, used to write secret messages in the margins of his work. One night, he was working alone when a press malfunction crushed him. They found his body the next morning, but they never found the notebook he always carried. Some said he was still down there, typing out his final message.

I didn’t want to believe it. But the calls kept coming. Every night, at exactly 2:15 a.m., I’d get the ‘UNKNOWN’ call. The typing would last longer each time. By the end of the week, it was going on for five full minutes. I started to dread it. I tried to transfer the calls, but they’d always come back. I tried to block the number, but it was as if the system itself was being controlled.

Then, on the seventh night, the typing stopped. There was silence, a long, heavy silence. Then a voice, low and garbled, as if speaking through layers of static, said, ‘I found the last one.’ And then the call ended. I sat there, frozen. The voice hadn’t sounded human.

The next day, I decided to investigate the basement. I had never seen it; the stairwell was locked with a chain. But I found a janitor’s key in the break room. That night, during my break, I slipped away. The stairs were dark, the concrete walls slick with moisture. The air got colder as I descended. At the bottom, there was a heavy metal door with a keypad. I typed in the code from the janitor’s keychain, and it clicked open.

The room was small, filled with old printing equipment covered in dust. There was a desk in the corner, and on it sat a vintage typewriter. I walked over, my hands shaking. The paper in the carriage had been typed on, but the letters didn’t form words—they were gibberish, a string of numbers and symbols. I pulled the paper out. On the back, scrawled in handwriting that was barely legible, was a message: ‘You were chosen.’

I heard a sound behind me. I spun around, but there was nothing. Just the hum of a flickering fluorescent light. Then the typewriter started moving on its own. The keys depressed in a frantic rhythm, the carriage slammed back and forth, and out of the roller slid a fresh sheet of paper, covered in new typing. I grabbed it. It read: ‘Tell my story. Or I’ll tell yours.’

I ran. I didn’t stop until I was back on the production floor, my heart racing. My supervisor yelled at me for being late, but I couldn’t hear her. I was staring at the sheet of paper still clutched in my hand. The typing had changed. It now read: ‘You have 24 hours.’

I didn’t tell anyone. I went home that morning, exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. The next night, I was back at my desk, dreading the call. It came at exactly 2:15. This time, there was no typing, no voice. Just a single, clear phrase, spoken in a voice that was almost a whisper, but I heard it perfectly: ‘I am in the walls.’

I looked around. The call center was huge, with cubicles lining the walls. On the wall behind me, there was a faint tapping sound, like something scratching from inside. I put my hand against the drywall. It was vibrating. Then, a small section of the wall slid open, revealing a dark cavity. Inside, propped up against the studs, was a leather-bound notebook. I reached in and pulled it out.

The notebook was filled with pages and pages of ciphers, but on the last page, written in English, was a confession. Edgar had not been crushed by a malfunction. He was murdered—a coworker pushed him into the press after he discovered they had been embezzling money. The notebook contained the proof, but it had been hidden here, sealed in the wall, for years.

I brought the notebook to my supervisor the next day. She initially dismissed it, but when she saw the names and the numbers, she called security. The police were involved. It turned out Edgar’s old coworker, now a high-level manager at the company, was still alive. He was arrested, and the case was reopened.

After that, I never received another call from ‘UNKNOWN.’ But sometimes, late at night, when the call center is quiet, I swear I hear a faint clicking sound, almost like typing, coming from inside the walls. And on my desk, someone has left a small piece of paper. It’s typed, with just two words: ‘Thank you.’