The Third Floor Window

During my sophomore year at Meridian State, our Communications professor assigned a group project: create a short film. Each group had to pick a unique theme, and my team, Team Vertex, was stuck. We wanted romance, but Group B had already claimed it. So, I pitched horror. Everyone agreed, but the script was a problem. They all wanted doppelgangers, but I argued it was overdone. After a heated debate over stale pizza, we settled on a plot we all half-liked: a group of friends, isolated in an abandoned building, discover that one of them is not who they seem.

We planned to shoot at my friend Leo’s house, but his backyard was too sunny and suburban for a horror vibe. Then Leo’s neighbor, an old guy named Mr. Hargrove, mentioned an abandoned clinic two blocks away. It was a two-story brick building with boarded windows and a rusted sign that read ‘MARSHALL CLINIC.’ We thought it perfect. We asked a barangay tanod, a local security guard named Al, to accompany us. He was a wiry man in his fifties with a nervous twitch. As we walked, he told us, ‘My father used to be the janitor here back in the ’80s. He said a patient died in the waiting room and they never found the body. The clinic closed soon after, but sometimes, if you walk past late at night, you can see a figure in the third floor window.’

We laughed it off until we reached the building. The front door was locked, but Al had a key from the barangay. The inside smelled of mildew and ammonia. The paint peeled like dead skin, and the floor was littered with broken glass and syringes. We set up in what used to be the reception area. Our mics and camera looked out of place among the overturned chairs and a dusty reception desk with a cracked rotary phone. We started shooting a scene where the main character, played by my friend Jess, hears someone call her name from the hallway.

We were about to shoot the second scene when we heard it: a faint, rhythmic thumping from upstairs. Al froze, his brown face pale. ‘That’s the third floor,’ he whispered. ‘But the building only has two floors,’ I said. Al shook his head, his eyes wide. ‘My father always said there was a third floor that was sealed off.’ We all exchanged nervous glances, but our producer, a practical guy named Marcus, said, ‘It’s probably just a stray cat. Let’s keep going.’ We did, but the thumping grew louder, synchronized with Jess’s heartbeat in the climactic scene.

Then, during a break, we noticed that our footage had an extra shot we didn’t take: a blurry image of a figure standing at the end of the hallway where we had set up the camera. The figure was tall, and it had no face. We were all shaken, but we decided to finish filming because our grade depended on it. We adjusted the lights and started the final scene where the friends realize the doppelganger is among them.

As we filmed, the lights flickered. The thumping stopped, replaced by a low, guttural hum from the ventilation system. We heard the sound of footsteps on the floor above, but they were slow and heavy. Al grabbed his flashlight and shone it up the stairwell. The beam caught a pair of bare feet just above the second-floor landing. They were pale and had long, blackened toenails. Then they moved up, out of sight.

We all froze, but our friend Denise, who was behind the camera, zoomed in and captured the feet. She whispered, ‘There’s something up there.’ Then the hum stopped, and we heard a voice—old and raspy—coming from the rotary phone on the desk. It said, ‘You have reached the Marshall Clinic. All our patients are gone, but we still have room for you.’ The phone clicked, and the dial tone buzzed.

That was enough. We packed our equipment in a frenzy. As we rushed out, Al turned the key in the lock, but the door wouldn’t budge. We were trapped. The lights went out completely, and the humming resumed, louder, echoing in our skulls. We lit our phones, huddled together. Then, from the stairwell, we heard footsteps coming down. Slow, deliberate, dragging. We saw the silhouette of a tall, gaunt figure at the edge of our light. It had no face, just a smooth, wet surface. But it had a voice, and it said, ‘I’ve been waiting for a new cast.’

We huddled in the corner, screaming. The figure reached out a hand that seemed to stretch. But just as it was about to touch Jess, the sun broke through the boarded windows—a shaft of light that hit the figure. It recoiled, hissing, and dissolved into a black puddle that seeped into the cracks of the floor. The door unlocked with a click. We burst out into the sunlight, gasping.

We never finished the film. We told our professor we had technical difficulties and made a comedic short instead. But that night, when we checked the footage, the last shot we took showed the figure standing behind us, its featureless face tilted as if staring at the lens. And in the background, on the wall behind the desk, we noticed a faded door that we hadn’t seen before—a door marked ‘Third Floor – Authorized Personnel Only.’

We all moved on, graduated, and tried to forget. But I still have nightmares. And last week, I read in the local news that the Marshall Clinic has been scheduled for demolition. But demolition crews have refused to work there after three workers quit claiming they heard a thumping from the third floor—a floor that, according to the blueprints, doesn’t exist.

And yet, when I drove by the building last night, I saw a light on in the upper window. Not the second floor, but higher. And in that window, I saw my own face staring back at me. It smiled, and mouthed the words: ‘The film never ended.’