The Man in the Stockroom

I don’t know why I’m thinking about this now, decades later, but the memory is as vivid as if it happened yesterday. I was four, almost five, and my mother and Aunt Rita worked in the same building, a squat, brick structure on the edge of town that housed a printing company, a tailor, and a few small offices. On Saturdays, when there was no school, my mother would bring me along, and Aunt Rita would take me and my best friend, Maya, to her boss’s office—a cramped space at the end of a hallway lined with cardboard boxes and old filing cabinets. The office itself was small, but at the back was a stockroom, a cavernous place filled with shelves of paper, ink, and forgotten office supplies. Maya and I would dart between the aisles, our laughter echoing off the concrete walls, while Aunt Rita talked with Mr. Harrison, her boss, about invoices and deadlines.

I saw him the first time we played in there. He was standing at the far end, near the elevator that was rarely used, half-hidden in the shadows cast by a flickering fluorescent light. He was tall, thin, with a gray suit that seemed too formal for the dusty room, and his face was not quite clear—like a photograph smudged with water. He wasn’t moving, just watching us with a stillness that made my skin prickle. I tugged at Maya’s sleeve and pointed. ‘Who’s that?’ I whispered. Maya looked where I pointed, but her brow furrowed. ‘I don’t see anybody,’ she said, and she laughed, pulling me toward a stack of empty boxes. ‘You’re being silly.’ I glanced back, and the man was gone.

But he came back. Over the next few months, every time Aunt Rita brought us to that office, he was there, in the stockroom, in one of a handful of positions: standing by the shelves with a box in his hands, or inside the elevator with the doors open, or just watching from the darkest corner. Sometimes he was closer, sometimes he was farther, but he was always present, and always I was the only one who saw him. I asked Maya again and again, and she would only giggle and say, ‘You’re making it up to scare me!’ Once, I even asked Aunt Rita, but she was absorbed in her paperwork and just said, ‘Don’t wander off, dear.’ So I stopped asking. But I couldn’t stop looking at him.

There was something wrong with the way he moved—or rather, the way he didn’t move. He was like a statue, but one that shifted imperceptibly. When I blinked, he might be a foot closer. When I turned my back, I could feel his gaze on me, but when I spun around, he was exactly where he had been, motionless. One Saturday, I decided to approach him. Maya was playing with a toy car near the entrance, and I took a few steps toward the elevator. The man was standing inside, his hand on the button panel, but he wasn’t pressing anything. As I got within ten feet, he tilted his head, and for the first time, I saw his eyes—not the whites or irises, but dark hollows, like empty sockets. A cold dread filled my stomach, and I turned and ran back to Maya.

The last time I saw him was a week before my fifth birthday. Aunt Rita had taken us to the same office, but this time, the stockroom had been emptied, the shelves bare, the elevator doors sealed with a chain. Maya and I stood in the middle of the empty room, and I felt a profound loneliness. The man was nowhere to be seen. I asked Maya, ‘Do you think he’s gone?’ She looked at me with a puzzled expression. ‘Who?’ I couldn’t explain it. I felt tears welling up, not from fear, but from a strange sense of loss, as if something important had been taken from me. I never saw him again. We moved away not long after, and I grew up, and the memory faded into a child’s fancy.

But now, all these years later, I’m not so sure. I’ve read about childhood imaginary friends, about the way children perceive things adults can’t, but this was different. He was never friendly. He was never a companion. He was just a watcher, and he terrified me. And there’s one detail I’ve never been able to shake: the day before we moved, I overheard my mother on the phone with Aunt Rita. She said, ‘Did you hear about Mr. Harrison? The police found him in his office. He’d been dead for three days. A heart attack, they think.’ Mr. Harrison. My aunt’s boss. The office where we played. And I remembered, with a jolt, that the man in the stockroom wore a gray suit, and that Mr. Harrison always wore a gray suit when he came out to greet us. I never saw Mr. Harrison’s face clearly—he was always in the front of the office, and I was always in the back. But I wonder now: was the man in the stockroom Mr. Harrison, even after he was dead? And what did he want with me? I’ll never know. But sometimes, when I’m in a dimly lit room, I feel that gaze on my skin, and I turn, expecting to see him there, standing in the shadows, waiting.