The Stationary Floor

In my early days at Meridian Mutual, I worked the graveyard shift in the customer service wing, a cavernous space on the seventeenth floor of the Meridian Tower. The building was a relic of the ’80s, all smoked glass and steel, but it had a certain oppressive grandeur. My first two months were spent in the basement training rooms, so I never had reason to go above the main floors. When I was finally assigned to the night team, I had to take the elevator to the seventeenth floor—a vertical journey I dreaded not for the height, but for the tales that clung to the upper stories. Specifically, the thirteenth floor. Not because of the number, but because everyone swore it was cursed. The floor had been sealed off for years, after a former tenant—a reclusive clockmaker named Mr. Barlow—had thrown himself from its windows. The story went that if you were alone in the elevator and it stopped at thirteen, you’d see his reflection in the polished doors, waiting for you to get off. Most of the staff used the stairs to avoid it, especially at night.

My first elevator ride up was uneventful. I pressed ’17’, the car hummed, and the numbers flickered past. When it passed thirteen, I held my breath, but it didn’t stop. I laughed at my own foolishness. But over the following weeks, I noticed odd things. The elevator would sometimes slow as it passed thirteen, as if hesitating. Once, the lights flickered, and I could have sworn I saw a figure in the mirrored doors—a tall, gaunt man with a stooped posture. But it was gone before I could focus. I chalked it up to exhaustion and the dim lighting.

Then came the night of the audit. I was alone on my floor, the rest of my team having left at midnight. I had to return to the lobby to sign out a file. The clock read 2:47 AM. The building was silent, save for the hum of the elevator. I stepped in, pressed ‘L’, and waited. The car went down. When it reached thirteen, it shuddered to a halt. The doors slid open, revealing the dark, empty corridor beyond. The air that wafted in was cold and smelled of old wood and dust. My heart hammered. I jabbed the ‘Close Door’ button, but nothing happened. The doors remained wide open. I felt a presence, a weight, pressing down on the elevator. A voice, dry as old paper, said from behind me, ‘You shouldn’t have come this way.’ I spun around. No one was there. The doors began to close on their own, slowly. As they slid shut, I saw a faint reflection in the polished metal—a face, gaunt, with hollow eyes, staring at me from the corner of the car. I blinked, and it was gone. The elevator descended, and I didn’t breathe again until the doors opened at the lobby.

I took the stairs from that night on. But it didn’t matter. The presence followed me. It would appear at the edge of my vision, in the corner of my eye, always in the shape of a man with a crooked neck. My colleagues noticed my jumpiness and started joking that I’d seen ‘Mr. Barlow.’ They told me the full story: that Mr. Barlow had been a recluse who repaired antique clocks in his apartment on the thirteenth floor. He was obsessed with stopping time, the story went, and after his business failed, he spent his days staring at a grandfather clock that no longer worked. One day, he simply opened the window and stepped out, leaving a note that said, ‘Finally, the hands are still.’

My final night at Meridian Mutual was the quarterly inventory. I was on the thirteenth floor, in the sealed corridor, looking for a box of old records that had been misplaced. I found the records in a room at the end of the hall. As I turned to leave, the door slammed shut behind me. I was plunged into darkness. I fumbled for my phone, but the screen flickered and died. I heard a ticking sound, like a clock, but it was slow, uneven, as if the mechanism was broken. Then I heard breathing, shallow and labored, right behind me. I spun around, but saw nothing. The breathing grew louder. I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and a voice rasped in my ear: ‘You broke my silence.’ I screamed and ran. I threw myself against the door, and it burst open. I ran down the corridor, not looking back, and took the stairs all the way down, my legs shaking.

I quit the next morning. I never set foot in that building again. But sometimes, late at night, I hear that tick-tock sound in my own home, and I see a shadow in the corner of my bedroom. And I know that the thirteenth floor isn’t just a place in that building. It’s a state of mind that follows you, a loop you can’t stop. And the hands are always moving, even when you think they’re still.