The Third Floor Sign

The call center was a hive of fluorescent light and murmured voices, a place where the hum of computers and the static of headsets bled into a single, droning note. I was new, still learning the rhythm of the place, and the night shift was brutal. My name is Jenna, and I was paired with a veteran named Carl for training. He was a wiry man with a nervous habit of tapping his pen, and he claimed to know every corner of the building, including the spots where the Wi-Fi was strongest and the spots where you could catch a few minutes of sleep without being caught.

We were hunting for a free station, and the fourth floor was packed. ‘Let’s try the third,’ Carl said, his voice a low rasp. We descended the metal stairs, the echo of our footsteps swallowed by the concrete walls. The third floor was emptier, nearly abandoned. At the far end of the aisle, there was a single station with a flickering sign that read ‘OUT OF ORDER’ and a dusty monitor. But Carl grunted and said, ‘This one’s fine, the sign’s wrong.’ We settled in, put on our headsets, and began taking calls.

I was exhausted. The calls blurred into a stream of complaints and tech help, and my eyelids grew heavy. I decided to rest my eyes for just a minute, to shut the world out. I wasn’t asleep, I swear. I could still hear Carl’s muffled voice, the click of his keyboard, the distant ring of incoming calls. And then, behind my closed lids, a face appeared. A boy’s face, pale and gaunt, with dark hollows for eyes. It was so vivid, so sudden, that I gasped and snapped my eyes open. The face vanished. I shook my head, rubbed my eyes, and took a sip of cold coffee. ‘Just a daydream,’ I told myself.

But it wasn’t. The boy came back the next night, and the night after. Every time I closed my eyes, even for a second, there he was, his mouth moving without sound, as if he was trying to tell me something. I began to avoid closing my eyes altogether, but the sleep deprivation made me see him even in my peripheral vision, always at the edge of sight, a flicker of shadow that disappeared when I turned.

Then things started to follow me home. My son, Tommy, was not quite two, and he was at the age where he babbled to himself and pointed at things I couldn’t see. I tried to brush it off as a normal toddler’s imagination. But one evening, as we were playing with his blocks, he stopped, his tiny body going rigid. He pointed to the corner of the room and said, clear as a bell, ‘Mommy, boy.’ A chill ran down my spine. I turned, but there was nothing there. I scooped him up and held him tight, trying to calm my racing heart.

That night, I finally told my husband, Mike, about the boy at work. He laughed it off, said I was stressed and needed a break. But the haunting continued. I would wake in the middle of the night, sure that someone was standing at the foot of the bed, a small, dark form. One night, I saw a face pressed against the window in the nursery, and I screamed, but when Mike ran in, there was nothing.

I went back to the third floor, determined to uncover the truth. I searched the station, looking for clues. Under the desk, I found a child’s drawing, crumpled and yellowed. It showed a boy standing alone in a field, with the sun and the moon in the same sky. On the back, scratched in childish handwriting, were the words, ‘I’m sorry.’ I showed it to Carl, who paled. ‘That was Ryan’s spot,’ he said, his voice faltering. ‘He was a temp, maybe two years ago. He was found dead in the bathroom, a heart condition or something. They never fully explained it. They said he was asleep at his station, and he never woke up.’

I couldn’t let it go. I needed to know more. I found an old newspaper article online about a nameless boy who had died in the building, but the details were sparse. The only thing that stood out was a correction: ‘The victim’s name is withheld pending family notification.’ I started to put the pieces together. The boy was trying to tell me something, to communicate from beyond. But what? And why me?

I decided to confront the boy directly. I stayed late one night, alone on the third floor. I dimmed the lights, sat at the station, and closed my eyes. There he was, waiting. His mouth started to move, and this time, I could almost hear his voice, like a whisper on a broken radio. He was saying, ‘The sign, the sign.’ I opened my eyes and looked at the ‘OUT OF ORDER’ sign above the station. It was still flickering. I reached up and rattled it. The plastic casing came loose, and behind it, I found a piece of paper wedged between the sign and the wall. It was a note, soaked in something dark that had dried to a rusty brown.

It read: ‘They told me not to stay. They said the third floor was bad luck. But I was too tired. I fell asleep. I woke to see a man in a white coat. He had a needle. I never told anyone. I never told. He told me to be quiet. So I am quiet.’

My blood ran cold. There was a murderer among the staff, and I had been sitting in the victim’s chair for weeks. I looked around, terrified, half-expecting to see a white-coated figure in the shadows. But I was alone. I pocketed the note, intending to go to the police, but as I turned, I saw the boy again, not in my mind, but standing at the end of the aisle, his form hazy and flickering. He pointed upward, toward the stairwell.

And then I understood. The third floor was a secret graveyard, and the boy was not haunting me. He was trying to protect me, to warn me. I ran out of the building, never to return. I went to the police, but when they investigated, they found nothing. The paper was blank. The sign was clean. The boy, it seemed, had vanished.

But I knew the truth. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I still see his face, but now it’s different. It’s calm. And I hear his voice, faint but clearer, saying, ‘Thank you. Now go.’