The Xerox in Ward 4

My first week at the Harlow County Administrative Annex was a lesson in the particular dread of fluorescent lights buzzing over linoleum at seven in the evening. The building, a brutalist concrete slab from the seventies, housed the county’s social services, and its labyrinthine corridors smelled of stale coffee, toner, and a faint, sweet rot that no one could source. On my third day, a senior caseworker named Delia pulled me aside. She was a thin woman with eyes that seemed to look through you, and she spoke in a voice that suggested she’d seen things no one should have to see twice.

‘Do you work late, Mara?’ she asked, her fingers tracing the edge of my desk.

‘Sometimes, if I have case notes to finish.’

She nodded slowly. ‘Just be careful. This building has… habits.’ She told me about a night two years prior when she was alone on the fourth floor, in the records wing, pulling files for an emergency hearing. It was past nine, and the building was silent except for the hum of the ancient HVAC. Then she heard it: a steady, rhythmic thrumming, coming from the copier bay three rows over. She’d checked before—everyone had gone home, and the machines were off. But there it was, the unmistakable sound of a Xerox running, collating, spitting out pages. Then footsteps, soft, deliberate, moving down the aisle toward her.

‘Is anybody there?’ she called out. The footsteps stopped. The copier fell silent. But she could feel a presence, a pressure in the air, like the room was breathing. She called out again, and this time, the footsteps resumed, faster, closer. She fled, her heels clacking on the linoleum, and she didn’t stop until she was in her car in the parking lot, hands shaking. The next day, she asked the custodial staff if anyone had been in the building. No one had. The security logs showed no entries after 5 PM. Delia concluded with a dry laugh. ‘I still can’t use that copier without looking over my shoulder.’

I dismissed it as the fancy of a woman who’d read too many Stephen King novels. I had my own work to do.

It was a rainy Tuesday in November when I found myself alone in the annex, waiting for a fax to come through from a neighboring county’s child services office. The fax machine was in a small alcove near the stairwell, and the rest of the floor was empty. At 6:45 PM, the fax line rang, and I watched the machine feed, but the paper that came out was not the expected document. It was a series of pages, covered in gibberish, but at the bottom, in block letters, it read: ‘DON’T STAY.’ I laughed it off as a prank, but the fax machine had no memory of sending it, and the number was blocked.

I had decided to leave when the lights flickered. That’s when I heard it, the sound Delia had described: the copier. But it wasn’t just the one copier. It was all of them, humming in unison, from every floor. The sound was a low, mechanical drone that seemed to vibrate through the walls. Then came the footsteps, not just in the corridor, but above me, below me, a cacophony of footsteps moving in sync, like a parade of the damned. The air grew cold, and I could see my breath.

I walked toward the exit, but the hallway elongated, the doors receding. I turned a corner and found myself in a part of the building I didn’t recognize, a corridor lined with doors that all had the number 4, but the annex only had three floors. I pushed open a door, and inside was a vast, dimly lit room filled with filing cabinets, thousands of them, all open, their contents spilling onto the floor. In the center of the room, a lone Xerox machine was running, printing page after page, and as each page fell, it showed a date and a name, and my name appeared on the stack: ‘Mara, 11/15.’ That was today.

I heard a sound behind me, a wet, slithering noise, and I turned to see a figure in the shadows, its face obscured, but its posture was wrong, as if it were bending at angles that defied human anatomy. It took a step toward me, and the copier stopped. I ran, but the room seemed to spin, and I found myself back in the corridor, the doors now closed. The footsteps were everywhere, and they were converging on my position. I screamed, but no sound came out.

I woke up on the floor of the lobby, disoriented, my phone in my hand, showing a missed call at 7:03 PM. The time was 3:00 AM. Security found me, and they said I must have fainted. They took me to the nurse’s station, and I spent the rest of the night under a blanket, trying to rationalize it. But I knew what I had seen. The next morning, I went to the records wing, and I found the file cabinet with my name on it. It was empty, but at the back of the drawer was a single sheet of paper: a copy of an incident report, dated 30 years ago, describing the death of a county worker named Edwin, who had been found in the copier room, his body grotesquely mangled, the machine still running. The report noted that the copier had printed a single word on every sheet: ‘AFTER.’ I quit the following week, but sometimes, when I’m in a quiet office, I hear the copier, and I know it’s not finished with me yet.

Now, I work from home, but last night, my printer started on its own, and it printed a single page. It said, ‘WELCOME, MARA.’ I burned it. But the toner smell lingers, and I know, somewhere, that building is still waiting, its corridors echoing with the footsteps of those who can’t leave. And I wonder, who else will stay late tonight?