The Custodian’s Rounds

I never believed in ghosts until I started working the night shift at the old Meridian County Records Annex, a squat, brutalist building from the 1970s that smelled of industrial cleaner and decaying paper. I’m not in the Air Force like the original teller, just a lowly contractor tasked with digitizing court records from the Vietnam era, boxes and boxes of them. The annex was a windowless fortress, its corridors lit by buzzing fluorescents that flickered with a nervous energy, and the only other living soul on my shift was the security guard, a wiry old woman named Gertie who chain-smoked in her booth and told me stories about the building’s past.

Gertie was the one who first mentioned him. ‘The Colonel,’ she called him. ‘He was a records officer here in the late sixties, before they moved the base archives. He liked to work late, just like you.’ She described him as tall and wiry, with gray-sand hair clipped short, and wearing a faded olive-drab fatigue uniform with a silver oak leaf on his collar. ‘You won’t see him if he doesn’t want you to,’ she said, tapping her cigarette ash into a coffee can. ‘But you’ll hear him. He’s not mean, mind you, just a creature of habit. He does his rounds.’ I laughed it off, chalking it up to an old woman’s imagination.

Work was monotonous: scanning brittle pages, logging names, dates, case numbers. The only sounds were the hum of the scanner and the occasional clunk of the HVAC system. Then, after about a week, I started to notice things. The faint, rhythmic squeak of a chair on the floor above, even though I knew the upper level was a sealed storage area. Footsteps in the corridor beyond my office, a steady, measured pace, like someone walking with a purpose. One night, I left my desk to get a coffee and found the door to the archives wing open, the one that was supposed to be locked. Inside, the air was cold and still, and I saw, for just a split second, a tall silhouette at the end of the aisle, gray-haired, in a uniform. I blinked, and it was gone. I told myself it was a trick of the light, a shadow thrown by the emergency exit sign.

By the third week, I had gotten used to the noise. I started to almost find it comforting, a sign that I wasn’t alone after all. I would even greet him when I heard his footsteps. ‘Evening, Colonel,’ I’d say, and for a moment, the pacing would stop. Then it would resume, as if he appreciated the acknowledgment. One night, I was working on a particularly tedious set of discharge papers when I realized I had left a file in the copying room across the hall. I got up, and as I crossed the threshold, I distinctly heard a typewriter clacking in the next room. But the room was empty, save for the photocopier and a stack of blank paper. The clacking stopped abruptly, as if the typist had been interrupted. I stood there, my heart pounding, and I swear I felt a cold draft brush past me.

Weeks turned into months. I learned the Colonel’s routines: he would walk the perimeter of the main floor at 2 a.m., pause at the windowless wall that faced the old parade ground, and then climb an invisible staircase to the sealed wing. I even started leaving out a cup of instant coffee on the corner of my desk as an offering. It was always empty by morning, though I never saw him drink it. My coworkers thought I was losing it, but I didn’t care. There was something gentle about his presence, a sense of duty that permeated the building.

Then came the night of the big storm. The power flickered, plunging the entire annex into darkness. I fumbled for my flashlight, casting its beam down the hallway. And there he was, finally visible in the flesh, or whatever it is that ghosts are made of. He was tall and skinny, as Gertie said, with gray-sand hair and a weathered face, his fatigues immaculate, his boots polished. He stood at the end of the corridor, and instead of the terror I expected, I felt a wave of calm. He didn’t speak, but he pointed down the hall, toward the stairwell that led to the exit. I took the hint and left the building, just as a transformer blew outside, sending sparks cascading from the power lines. As I stood shivering under the awning, I looked back through the glass doors and saw his silhouette standing at the window, watching over me. When the sun rose, he was gone.

The storm passed, and I returned to my job. But now, whenever I hear his measured footsteps, I no longer say a word. I just nod, and he continues his rounds. The records are almost fully digitized, and I’ll be moving on soon, but a part of me will always be here with him, the silent guardian of a dead archive. In the silence of the long nights, I think I understand now: he isn’t haunting this place because he’s lost or angry. He’s just watching over the files, the stories, the memories of a war that ended long ago, and perhaps he’s watching over me too, a lonely custodian whose rounds will never truly end.