The Ninth Floor Archive

I never believed in ghosts. Not really. Not until I started working the night shift at the Meridian Trust Building, a sleek glass tower in the financial district that had been erected just two years ago. I was hired as a file clerk for a high-end law firm, Barlowe & Finch, which occupied the ninth through eleventh floors. The building was modern, with sensor-activated lights and climate control, and I figured the only creepy thing about it would be the silence at 2 AM.

My family had a small cleaning business, and we had a contract to clean the offices after hours. My grandmother, my mother, my brother, and I would split up to cover the floors. I was assigned to the ninth floor, mostly because it was the archival floor, a vast labyrinth of filing cabinets and shelving units that held decades of legal documents. The floor was usually dead quiet, and I had to be careful not to knock over the stacks of boxes that lined the corridors.

That night started like any other. The hum of the fluorescent lights, the distant rumble of the elevator, the occasional creak of the building settling. At about 10 PM, I was in the middle of a long aisle, filing new case files into the metal cabinets. My mother was on the tenth floor, my grandmother on the eleventh, and my brother was in the lobby. I had my earbuds in, listening to a podcast, when I heard something odd beneath the music.

It was the sound of a keyboard clacking. Rapid, rhythmic typing, like someone was hammering out a document at top speed. I paused, pulling out my earbuds. The typing stopped. I listened, holding my breath. Nothing. I shrugged it off, thinking it might have been the HVAC system, and resumed my work.

A few minutes later, a printer hummed to life. The sound came from the far end of the floor, where a large photocopier and a couple of network printers stood. I knew for a fact no one else was there. My mother had a key, and she never left her floor until we were done. I walked toward the source, my heart starting to beat a little faster. The printer was spitting out pages, one after another, each covered in dense legal text. I pulled one out. It was a contract, dated twenty years ago, with a signature line for a client I’d never heard of. I felt a chill run down my spine.

I called my grandmother on the intercom. ‘Abuela, did you send anything to the printer on nine?’ Her voice crackled back, ‘No, mija. I’m on eleven, you know I can’t print down there.’ I told her about the noise, and she laughed, ‘It’s just the building. New buildings settle, you know.’ But I didn’t believe her.

I decided to check the security cameras from the janitorial office, which had a small monitoring station. I had seen the security guard use it before. I went in, logged in with the generic password, and pulled up the feed for floor nine. The black-and-white footage showed me alone, walking through the aisles. But then, about ten minutes before I heard the typing, the camera at the far end of the archive caught a flicker. Not a glitch, but a human-shaped silhouette that passed in front of the lens, just out of frame. I rewound the tape and watched it again. The silhouette was tall, with broad shoulders, and it moved with an unnerving fluidity, like it was gliding.

I rewound further, to the start of my shift, and scanned through. Every few minutes, that same silhouette would appear, always on the edge of the frame, never fully in view. It seemed to be watching me, following me through the floor. I felt sick. I called my brother, who was in the basement, mopping the lobby. He didn’t see anything on his end. I told him to come up, but he told me to stop being a scaredy-cat.

By midnight, I had finished filing the last box. I was exhausted, both from the work and the stress. I sat down at a desk near the exit, planning to wait for my family to finish. That’s when I heard the typing again. This time, it was coming from right behind me. I spun around. The chair at the next desk was pulled out, and there was a faint impression on the cushion, as if someone had just risen from it. The computer screen was on, glowing with a document. It was a letter, addressed to me. It read: ‘You should not have come back.’

I screamed and ran for the elevator. I jabbed the button, but the elevator didn’t come. I heard a soft chuckle from behind me. I turned, and there was a figure, a man in a dark suit, partially translucent, standing in the doorway of the archive. He pointed a finger at me, and his lips moved, but I heard no sound. Then the lights flickered, and he was gone.

I ran to the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. I burst into the lobby, where my brother was reading a magazine. He looked up, startled. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. I was shaking, unable to speak. I told him what I saw. He laughed, ‘You’ve been watching too many horror movies. The building is brand new. There’s nothing there.’ But I knew what I saw.

I didn’t want to go back up, but I had to finish my shift. My grandmother came down, seeing my pale face, and offered to switch floors with me. I agreed, but I was still on edge. As I rode the elevator to the eleventh floor, I noticed that the security camera in the corner had a small red light blinking, and I had the eerie feeling that I was being watched. I got off and started dusting the shelves in the law library. The silence was oppressive. I tried to focus on the work, but my mind kept replaying the image of that figure.

At about 2 AM, my mother called me on the walkie-talkie. ‘Mija, I’m on nine now, and I found something strange. There’s a filing cabinet that’s open, and all the folders are out on the floor. Did you do this?’ I said no. She said, ‘Well, someone did. And the printer is going off again. I’m heading to the security office.’ I heard a clatter, then her voice, strained, ‘Oh, my God.’ I asked what was wrong. She didn’t answer. I raced down to the security office, my heart pounding. I flung open the door. My mother was standing in front of the monitors, her hand over her mouth. I looked at the screen. On the feed for floor nine, I saw myself, from the back, standing in the middle of an aisle, staring at something. But I was not there. I was here.

My mother turned to me, her face white. ‘There’s someone else,’ she whispered. I looked at the screen. The other version of me was raising a hand, pointing to a door I had never noticed before, a steel door at the back of the archive, marked ‘Storage.’ At that moment, the lights in the building went out. Emergency lights kicked in, bathing everything in red. The monitors flickered, then went black. The walkie-talkies crackled, but only static.

We were plunged into silence. And then, from the intercom, came a voice. It was not any of us. It was a low, raspy male voice, saying, ‘You’ve found the archive. Now you must die.’ I grabbed my mother’s hand, and we ran. We scrambled down the stairs, into the basement where my brother was waiting. We told him to run, but he just motioned to a figure behind us. We turned. The translucent man was standing at the foot of the stairs, a file folder in his hand. He opened it, and I saw my name written on the first page. He smiled, and then he faded away.

We didn’t stop until we were outside. We called the police, but they found nothing. The building was checked, and there was no evidence of any break-in. The security footage for the night was blank, as if it had been erased. I never went back to the Meridian Trust Building. But sometimes, at home, I hear the soft clack of a keyboard in the next room, and I know that he is still there, waiting, with a new document for me to sign.