The Custodian of the Ninth Floor

During my tenure as an amateur paranormal investigator, I encountered many entities, but one class of manifestation never made it into any of my published works. I’ve dubbed them ‘Shynil’ for their almost pathological aversion to being perceived. They are not mere specters; they have substance, and they weave themselves into the mundane world, inhabiting ordinary routines with unnerving precision. Their actions are often petty, but sometimes, they align in ways that suggest a darker purpose, perhaps serving a higher malevolence that corrects glitches in the fabric of fate.

One such encounter occurred in the sprawling department store that occupied the entirety of a downtown block, a labyrinthine edifice known as the Valmont Emporium. It was a relic from the previous century, its floors crammed with goods from trinkets to furniture, and its upper levels were a maze of warehouses and forgotten offices. It was not my usual hunting ground, but I had been drawn there by reports of an anomalous cold spot on the ninth floor, a floor that was officially closed to the public for ‘renovations’ that never seemed to finish.

The elevator had a sign: ‘Out of Order – Use Stairwell.’ I complied, pushing open the heavy metal door to the stairwell. The air was stale, and my footsteps echoed in the concrete shaft. As I climbed, the sounds of the store faded, replaced by a silence that felt unnatural. By the time I reached the third floor, I was already winded, the fluorescent light above flickering in a rhythm that set my teeth on edge. That’s when I noticed the man.

He was standing at the landing between the third and fourth floors, dressed in the drab gray uniform of the store’s maintenance staff. He was polishing the handrail with a cloth, his movements slow and methodical, as if he had been doing it all his life. He didn’t look up as I passed, but I felt a prickle of unease. There was something off about the precision of his strokes, the way his cloth made no noise against the metal, and the fact that he wore no name tag, just a blank patch.

I continued climbing, and at the next landing, there he was again, still polishing the same stretch of railing. I blinked, and he was not there. I heard a soft thump behind me, and I spun around, but the stairwell was empty. My heart hammered. I told myself it was a trick of the light, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.

By the fifth floor, the lights began to stutter, and I thought I saw a shadow flicker at the edge of my vision. But when I turned, there was nothing. I decided to press on, determined to reach the ninth floor. The stairwell became narrower, the paint peeling, and the air grew cold. On the seventh floor landing, I saw a woman in a bright red coat, standing perfectly still, facing the wall. She was humming a tune I vaguely recognized, an old lullaby, but her voice was flat and wrong. I cleared my throat, and she slowly turned her head, but her face was obscured by a cheap red wig, and for some reason, that terrified me more than anything I had ever seen.

I bolted up the next flight of stairs, not caring that my footsteps were now loud and frantic. The door to the ninth floor loomed before me, and I pushed it open, stumbling into a dusty corridor lined with empty shelves. The air was thick with dust and the smell of old paper. And there, in the middle of the corridor, I saw a young boy, no more than six, sitting on the floor, surrounded by scattered books. He had a look of intense concentration, and he was methodically tearing the pages out of a large atlas, one by one, and crumpling them into neat balls.

I called out to him, but he didn’t respond. I walked closer, and he looked up at me with eyes that were too dark, too deep. He smiled, a wide, slow smile that showed too many teeth, and pointed behind me. I turned, and saw nothing. When I looked back, the boy was gone, but the atlas remained, now torn and empty.

I felt a sudden draft, and the lights went out entirely. In the pitch black, I heard a voice, no more than a whisper, but clear as crystal: ‘You should not have come.’ I fumbled for my flashlight, and when I clicked it on, the beam revealed a figure at the far end of the corridor, a man in a gray suit, standing perfectly still. He was not the maintenance worker, nor the woman, nor the boy. He was something else, something that had been awaiting me.

He took a step forward, and the floorboards creaked with an unnatural finality. I backed away, but the door behind me was gone, replaced by a blank wall. He took another step, and I saw that his face was blank, featureless, a smooth expanse of flesh. He spoke again, but his lips did not move. ‘You see me now,’ he said. ‘And that is a mistake.’

The cold swept through me, and I felt a pressure in my chest, as if my heart was being squeezed. I stumbled, and in the next moment, the corridor was empty, and the door was back. I ran down the stairs, not stopping until I burst out onto the street, gasping for air. The store loomed behind me, its windows dark, and I swore I saw a face pressed against the glass, but it was gone in an instant.

I never returned to the Valmont Emporium. But I often think about the Shynil, and how they inhabit the ordinary, waiting for someone like me to take the wrong staircase, to notice them, to intrude upon the rituals they perform to keep some terrible balance. I have come to believe that their actions are not random; they are corrections, adjustments to the world’s hidden machinery, and anyone who witnesses them becomes a variable that must be accounted for, or eliminated.

Now, I write this account in a new city, but the image of the blank-faced man haunts my dreams. Sometimes, when I walk down a crowded street, I catch a glimpse of a figure in a gray suit, standing perfectly still, watching me. And I know I will never be truly safe, because I have seen a Shynil, and it has seen me.

I have not published this story until now. I do not know who will read it, but I warn you: if you ever find yourself in a place where the ordinary feels wrong, where an action is just a little too precise, a smile just a little too wide, do not investigate. Turn back, and never speak of what you saw. Because the Shynil are always there, and they do not like to be seen.