The First Day
She was dismayed that it was a decaying building on the edge of town, from the application she had expected more. The guardrail that hung across the parking lot was dented and the card scanner used to open it was broken. She climbed out of her compact and walked across the nearly deserted parking lot in front of the building.
The window was dirty. She picked the cleanest spot and rapped on it with a single knuckle. The man behind the smeared glass looked at her and then down to a notepad beside the paper he was reading. He took so long reading it that she rapped at the glass again.
“Hello?” She called, unsure if he had seen her, even though she had seen his eyes meet her own. Unhurriedly the man stood and walked around the desk. It took him almost a minute before getting to the door to tap a large button beside it.
The door opened a few inches, paused, and then opened further. The mechanism that served the door was old and she had to resist a powerful urge to grab the door and force it open.
The security guard’s eyes moved over her as they both waited. He was as cadaver-like as a cat’s corpse left to dry in the sun, but he had an impressive mop of hair that was mostly grey but sported a faded strip of pale ginger like a Mohawk across the middle of his scalp. His examination of her came through suspicious, hostile eyes and she knew that if she encountered any trouble at her new workplace, she would not seek him out for any help.
“Yes?” He asked, the word coming out as a hiss.
“Chalmers, April,” she said as if addressing a commanding officer, “reporting for duty,” she continued and nearly saluted at the end but thought it might be too much. The man’s face demanded ridicule, and April obliged.
He glared at her and then over to her car.
“I’ll buzz you in,” he said, the four words rolling into one, ‘illbuzzyouin.’
April nodded and then walked back to her car. She had intended to be good on her first day in her new office. She had promised herself that she would be polite and not make fun of anyone or anything, but she had already ruined it.
Inside the building, she could smell mould and burned toast. The security guard, Ted Matthews, always Ted and never anything else, led her to the third floor. She paused at the elevator, which gleamed and looked far more new than anything else she’d seen, or smelt, in the office. Ted shook his head and pointed towards the stairs.
“S’out ‘o order,” he said.
“It looks new,” April replied.
“Still out ‘o order,” he said leading her up the stairs.
The third floor was slightly better, but April thought it was probably because there were so many windows open and so few people. There was enough room for a hundred people to sit comfortably, but she counted no more than a dozen. Ted led her halfway down the room and to the right where a woman about the same age as April’s mother sat.
He grunted to her quietly, and the woman looked over to April and smiled.
“Thank you, Ted,” she said in a musical voice that made April think she probably told exceptional fairy tales to her grandchildren and then patted the security guard on the arm, “I’ll look after her.”
Ted nodded at her as he passed, and April thought she may have misread the man.
“That is Ted Matthews,” the lady said, “He’s lovely really, just a bit gruff since his wife died,” they watched the man shuffle down the room to the door, and April suddenly realised how old the man was, “He misses her dearly. When you pass his desk next, look at the photo, she was a model in the fifties and was offered work in Hollywood, but she stayed with him instead.”
The old man let the door close behind him and April suddenly felt terrible.
“I think I might have been a bit rude to him,” she said, and she felt the woman’s hand on her arm.
“Most of us have been rude to him at some point,” she said kindly, “he brings that out in you.” She moved back to her desk and sat, pointing to a desk beside it, “That’s your desk. I know you could sit anywhere,” she added as an explanation, “but it’s best you stay close for a little while as you learn the work. Is that okay, dear?”
“That would be wonderful,” April replied, suddenly feeling as meek as a mouse.
She sat on the old office chair that shifted under her as if it were unaccustomed to holding a person’s weight. April tried not to take it personally. She used to be the smallest person she knew, until she met the woman next to her, and her ex used to brag to his friends that he could lift her over his head without effort.
He could, and at first, it gave her the warm fuzzies but that hadn’t lasted long.
“So, my name is Gertie Russell,” the lady said, “Gertie is short for Gertrude, but I like Gertie. I heard it used for the first time in that movie ET., do you remember that? And I was upset that no one had ever called me it, so after I just insisted.”
April smiled and introduced herself. The old lady looked like a Gertie. She had a pretty, warm face and an easy smile, and though she must have been sixty April could easily see the twenty-year-old just under the skin. Gertie began explaining the work, littering her lesson with a commentary on office politics and the people she would meet in an average week. April thought she could work unsupervised but enjoyed the old lady’s company.
As they chatted and worked through the backlog of forms April let her eyes wander over the office. She could see people with their heads down and their faces illuminated by computer monitors, but she could find no young faces among them.
“Ah, they just don’t stay,” Gertie replied when she asked, “I expect you won’t either. Sorry, dear, I’m not trying to be negative, but I think young people need young people, you know?”
April nodded, but she wasn’t sure.
The first time he had hit her was after his cousin’s birthday party, the last time was the same night when she turned him away at her dorm door. Both times were feeble attempts to hurt her. They both had hurt, but she was a girl who had two brothers and had taken more than a knock or two growing up, so she had felt worse. The first had been to her shoulder, and she had explained it away as a playful slap by someone who didn’t know his strength, but the second was across her face, and there was no mistake.
Her purse was just large enough for a few essentials and had been bought her by her mother who had chosen it not for its size but its construction. The shoulder strap was made of a gold chain. She had wrapped around the fist that she swung at him. She had left blood on the wall, and the chain had broken by the time his shouts had drawn people out into the hallway. She had been told a few months later that he still had a scar under his right eye. He told people that it was because of a biking accident, but people at the university still whispered about it. On the night April had only seen about six people in the hallway, but apparently, she had been mistaken because every girl in the university said they were there at the time.
“No,” April said to Gertie, “I don’t think you’re right on that one Gertie. I think the young need experience and the best way of getting it without risking themselves is to talk to those who have it, am I right?”
Gertie sat back in her seat, and April saw a newfound respect for herself in the old lady’s eyes.
“Well, that is very refreshing,” Gertie said, “Very refreshing indeed.”
After that, the tone of the conversation changed, and though Gertie still had a sing-song lilt to her voice April heard a hardness there too.
They had broken for lunch when she noticed the icon in the corner of her computer desktop. It was a stylised “S” wrapped around what might have been an “L” or an “I.”
“Oh, I’m not sure that works anymore,” Gertie had told her, “It was a little experiment that the management tried a few years ago. They called it the “Social Intranet” and the idea was to let people post things like they do on Facebook, but I think the idea was too big for them back then.”
April clicked on it and an internet browser opened to a blank screen.
They watched as the cursor turned into an hourglass.
“Sometimes it’ll open, other times it’ll lock up the computer and you have to run it off,” Gertie offered and then she stood, “I’ll be back in half an hour. I have to get a birthday card for my youngest. If I forget, it’ll be all drama tonight, I can tell you!”
She pulled a black jacket from the back of her chair and patted April on the shoulder as she passed. The white browser window turned grey on April’s screen, and the stylised “S” logo appeared in the top corner. A moment later, the site flickered into life and April began to browse its early internet charms.
April found the first post a few minutes before Gertie returned to work. It was short so she had enough time to read it before the old lady sat down and began settling into the evening’s work. April minimised the browser and started processing the lists of numbers she had been given to work on. She understood what she had to do clearly, but if asked she would not be able to say why, or what the work she was doing meant.
Within a few days, things would start to slot into place, so her ignorance didn’t matter. If Gertie were pleased with what she was doing that would be good enough for April.
While she worked, she thought of what she’d read.
“Do you know a man called Theodore Beckett?” April asked as they approached the evening break and Gertie shook her head, then paused. The old lady thought for a moment then looked over to April with her brow furrowed in concentration.
“Theo,” She said slowly, “Yes, Theo worked here a few years ago.”
“I found something he wrote on the intranet,” April said.
“That’s not surprising,” Gertie replied, “I think that might have been what got him fired.”
“Oh, he was fired?”
“Or he left,” Gertie said quickly, her brow still creased in thought, “I remember he left one day, so we all assumed he’d gotten into trouble and was escorted off the premises. He was always writing silly things on that,” she nodded at the computer on which April worked, “He was told off about it a few times I remember. I couldn’t see why though, I read a few of the things he wrote, it was mostly sad poems and stories about ghosts,” Gertie smiled, “Did you like what you found there, April dear?”
“It was… strange,” April said, unable to describe it.
“That was our Theo,” Gertie laughed, “As strange as the day is long.”
Gertie finished work a little before four o’clock and April asked if it was okay if she stayed behind a little while to read through the note she had made during the day. Gertie had assured her that it was fine.
“Pretty girls still needed their beauty sleep,” she said, “Else they wouldn’t be pretty for long.”
April laughed, saying she would only be half an hour, and Gertie left.
People were still on the floor, but no one noticed when she walked to the hallway. The stairs were through a door to her left, and on the right were the bathrooms and a small canteen that had been unused for years.
April ignored them all and walked to the elevator.
The doors were a flawless metal with an almost mirror sheen to them. Reflected was an image of herself as seen through frosted glass. The panel beside the door was unlit, but she pressed the call button anyway. There was no sound, and she could not feel the movement of motors through the metal door when she touched it, but as she withdrew her hand the doors opened.
The elevator car was dark, the lights inside it unlit.
April stepped inside and pressed the button for the ground floor. After a moment’s hesitation, the doors slid closed.
The Second Day
April sat in her car for almost an hour the following morning. She hadn’t slept the night before and was in a strange state of eagerness and fear concerning the following day. She lay watching the shadows cast on the ceiling from the cars moving along the road outside. It was a busy road, even well into the night and tonight, rather than be annoyed by the irregular stream of traffic she found herself comforted by it. She rose before daybreak and set about her morning chores, which she completed far earlier than usual. She then sat and stared at her open novel, the page remaining unread until the time came when she could leave the house for work.
She sat in the car park unsure of herself and her surroundings. She knew that what she had read and experienced the evening before could be nothing more than imagination. She also knew it was not her imagination and entirely and frighteningly real. The old building was unremarkable. Nothing more than a hunk of decayed brick and rain-streaked glass. One day in the not-too-distant future the land beneath it would be reclaimed for something grander, and the building would meet an ignominious fate. The bulldozers might not have their work this year, or the year after but eventually they would, and something miraculous inside would be lost.
April climbed from her car and locked it, walking to the entrance. She rapped on the door and saw Old Ted glance up. She should receive her pass today and would not need to disturb the man again. He hit the large button to release the door and stepped aside as she entered.
“Hello Ted,” she said, and he nodded in reply, “I’m sorry if I was rude to you yesterday. I was nervous,” she continued, glancing at the photograph on his desk as she passed, “And when I’m nervous I sometimes talk too much.”
The woman in the photograph was no older than April but was far more beautiful. The old picture had been professionally shot and April wondered if it was a publicity picture for some old movie.
“Though as much,” Ted replied, and April was momentarily confused. The woman’s face had robbed her of her memory of speaking first. Her eyes looked through the photo at April from a time long gone, and April felt a cold shiver run along her spine.
Time was not the straight line she had always thought it to be.
“Well, I wanted to say that I was sorry Ted,” April said, tearing her eyes from the photo.
“S’okay,” he said. His voice was surprisingly soft, and he smiled a quick smile as she made her way into the hallway to the stairs. She stopped, checking over her shoulder to be certain she was out of Ted’s line of sight. In front of her was the doorway leading to the stairwell, and beside that was the gleaming door of the elevator.
She lifted her index finger to the call button, brushing it gently. She felt the tiny ridges that gave the metal its brushed look, and she thought she felt a spark of energy leap from it to her finger.
April left the elevator alone and made for the stairs. She could hear the footsteps of people on the floor above as they hurried to their desks, and within a few minutes, she had joined them.
“Well, I wasn’t sure we’d be seeing you for another day,” Gertie laughed, “I didn’t scare you off then dear?”
“You wouldn’t scare me off,” April replied but the words felt flat on her tongue.
Gertie glanced at her, and the women shared an uncertain look.
“No, I wouldn’t,” Gertie said, and April expected her to continue with ‘but something might.’ Instead, Gertie said, “I checked your work from yesterday, I hope you don’t mind, I’m just being cautious.”
“How much of a mess did I make of it, Gertie?” April asked.
“Well let’s go through it together, shall we?” Gertie replied, “You didn’t do anything wrong, but there are a few things you should keep in mind…”
The rest of the day was more of the same for April Chalmers. They reviewed the previous day’s work, correcting the errors that she had made, and then they moved on to today’s list of numbers. Through it all April felt distracted. Her attention was pulled to a box of chrome and steel that sat unused in its concrete shaft. The only things that travelled along that vertical tunnel were insects and the spiders that hunted them, nothing else living set foot in that elevator car.
When dinnertime came April read Theodore Beckett’s post on the ancient social intranet again. Then she searched the page for other entries by the same author. There were many, but none were written later. The first one she had read was the last he had posted. She printed out the post and slipped it into her purse. She wasn’t sure why she did such a thing. She wondered if it were to have something she could hold in her hand. When those bulldozers pulled the building down, the last remaining trace of Theodore Beckett would be torn apart with it. The thought made her think of the photograph on Ted’s desk on the floor below. There were far too many people who were now no more than memories. Old photos and posts on decrepit systems were all that remained of them.
“That and the occasional ghost,” she said to herself. The words cut through the air with such bitterness that she was alarmed by the depth of her feelings. So, was that what she had seen? A ghost? It had been a moment, a flicker of something half-seen that may have been no more than a distorted reflection. Ghosts didn’t exist. The dead were nothing more than memories, and there came a time when even those faded.
Though April doubted her memory would fade so fast.
She wandered into the hallway with fifteen minutes of her dinner left to take. She examined the metal door, comparing it to the description in Theo’s post. Where he had described something distorted by time these doors appeared new. There were no dents or scratches, and the metal was perfectly smooth to her touch.
Her index finger caressed the call button, and then she pressed it.
The Third Day
April was eager for the following morning, and though she had not slept the night before it was due to anticipation and not fear. When she pulled into the car park it was empty, and she passed her identification card over the reader at the door to let herself in. Ted wasn’t there, and the building carried the silence of a mortuary between its crumbling walls.
She walked past Ted’s desk and glanced at the picture. The smiling woman looked back at her from across time and April wondered if the present was all that there was. Did the woman still live somewhere or when? Was all that has ever been still there, disconnected from the moment April inhabited?
The silver doors faced her, and she saw a shadowy version of herself staring back at her. It followed her movements, but it wasn’t her. April thought of those mythical people who believed that cameras could capture the soul, and she wondered if they were as foolish as modern man presumed.
She could call the elevator here, and now, but instead, she turned to the stairs.
She took them slowly, following them to her floor.
Her mother had always said that April had seen strange things as a child. The story was that as a toddler she had spoken to people that only she could see. April remembered none of it, and she had always thought of them as nothing more than stories. She had spoken to enough people to know that many families had them.
April paused before the elevator doors, then walked to her desk where she put her things. The room was empty the wall clock told her she was an hour early. She switched on her computer and then walked back into the hallway.
She could not keep herself away from it. The thought of it had consumed her.
She slid her fingers over the brushed metal door. The light set in the metal over the call button was dark, the elevator powerless, but she knew that pushing the button would bring the elevator to her and the doors to another world would open to receive her, and only her. She knew that no one else could call the elevator. She had spoken to Gertie about it and the old lady had laughed at the thought of it working. It had broken years before, and it was left unrepaired.
“The management can barely keep the toilets unblocked,” She said with a laugh, “They’ll never get that old thing working again.”
But I can, she had thought, it will work for me.
She pressed the button to call the elevator, and the doors slid silently open.
She stepped inside. The far wall was half covered in a mirror. The reflection of the small woman walked towards her, then turned as she turned. To the right of the door was a small panel with a single column of buttons. She pressed the lowest and turned to face the mirror. The carpet felt thick, and the air smelt of oil. The hair on the back of April’s neck bristled with the energy that rippled through the air.
The light flickered, then flickered again. There was a moment of still silence. Then the light flickered a third time and she saw his face.
The Forth Day
April knew. She had spent the previous evening writing it all down. She knew people would read it and think she had become delusional, but she was an honest person and couldn’t lie even if the truth hurt her.
Again, she had arrived early for work, though this time she had managed a good night’s sleep and had woken with the plan for the day already formulated in her mind. When she had gotten into the office early, so she had time to print out what she needed for Gertie. She had only spent four days with the woman, but she had grown to care for her. There were no hidden depths to Gertie, what you saw is what you got, and April rarely met someone with the same childlike love.
April printed out Theo’s tale and read it through. She knew what it lacked as a fulfilling tale, but he couldn’t have finished it the way he wanted, it had no ending and there was no way he could have supplied one.
She knew that it had waited for her to do that.
She made a note at the bottom of the final printed page. She hoped it would be enough. She thought that it would be. Then she placed the three sheets of paper on Gertie’s desk.
It would have to do.
April had left her things at home. All she had brought with her was her keys. These she dropped in the top drawer of her desk before she walked into the hallway.
She pressed the button and the doors retreated into their metal pockets.
April Chalmers stepped into the small elevator car and the doors closed behind her.
The Broken Elevator
Gertie had just walked in when she heard the noise from the hallway leading to the stairs. Curiously, she walked over and looked through in time to see the elevator doors open, pause a moment, then close.
She stood puzzled for a moment. She knew that there should be no power running to the apparatus. She had watched Ted isolate the electricity from it herself. She waited to see if the doors would open again, and after a few minutes, she decided to tell Ted when he arrived for work.
Gertie walked up the stairs. She was getting too old to navigate them, but she wondered if she would use the elevator if it worked. She felt uncomfortable about the idea. Enclosed spaces filled her with dread, but that particular elevator filled her with something more.
When she got to her desk, she discovered that April Chalmers had left something on her desk. The typeset of the printed pages had been made larger and Gertie had to smile in appreciation. Gertie had told April that her eyesight was failing her, but she had assumed the girl hadn’t heard or would forget, as the young often did.
She unfolded the paper and put it on her desk while she made tea to start her day. The girl wouldn’t arrive for half an hour, so Gertie had the time to read through what had been left and then consider how to arrange their day.
Gertie took the cup to her desk and settled back into her chair.
She read the three sheets of paper while her tea was forgotten.
The Elevator Girl
By
Theodore Beckett
The basket was on wheels, and you’d think that would make the job easier. It didn’t, the obligatory twisted wheel pulled the whole post basket to the right and Theo had torn a horizontal gash into the wall of the second floor before he could force the thing into the elevator. It hit the chromed wall, and he averted his eyes before he saw the dent he had caused there. He hit the button for the ground floor and waited. The doors hung open for a few uncomfortable moments, and he was about to hit the button again before the sterile recorded voice announced, “doors closing.”
Theo let out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. Hoping that he could get back into the relative safety of the post room before anyone noticed the damage, he had left behind him. He caught sight of himself in the mirror that lined the right-hand wall of the elevator. He always thought it was a strange place to put a mirror. Someone had once told him it was to make the four-foot-by-five cubicle appear larger and reduce a claustrophobic reaction. He wasn’t sure he bought the explanation, but it seemed feasible that a designer might believe it would help. He had dated a girl who had wanted to be an interior decorator, and she never failed to surprise him with her odd ideas about the world. She would explain at length about form and function as she showed him her drawings of chairs that took up far too much room and tables that looked too weak to use. He had nodded in all the right places and waxed lyrical on the wonders of effective design, but she had left him anyway.
The elevator’s digital readout rolled from two to one and he willed the doors not to open. Someone must have been listening because they didn’t, and the one rolled over to a capital ‘G.’ The elevator car shuddered and jerked to a stop. There was a second of stillness, the silence a veil over him, and then the lights embedded into the ceiling flickered. With the first flicker, there was no change, then in the second he saw her, and in the third, she was gone again.
As the door’s opened Theo was still staring at the spot where the girl had been stood. He could see her in his mind’s eye. Her head reached the top of the panel where the elevator buttons were embedded. If she had leaned back, she could have easily rested her elbows on the rail that ran around the entire elevator, protecting the mirror from damage.
The bell pinged and the doors began moving closed. Theo pushed the basket out without looking and the doors hit it and retreated into their pockets on either side of the car. A moment later they tried closing again, then retreated when they found the basket still between them.
Theo was still staring at the place she had stood, trying to decide if the apparition was just a figure drawn from his imagination. She had been exactly his type. Her hair had been a messy blonde bob that hadn’t seen a comb in some time, and her face was set in a look of curious interest. From what he remembered of his brief glimpse of her she was exactly the kind of girl his imagination would put together. She was slight in height and figure, but she looked like neither would deter her from throwing herself into conflict if the need arose.
Imagination then, he thought, pushing the basket out of the elevator, sparing one last look at the first place he had glimpsed what he thought of as the Elevator Girl. There was no way he could have seen such an apparition. He simply never had that kind of luck.
Thirteen minutes later he saw her again. He had emptied the basket of outgoing posts from after the last post the previous evening and was carting up the incoming post that had come in that morning. Before he had filled the basket, he had overturned it and hammered the wheel back into an approximation of the right place with the base of a desk fan. He broke the desk fan in the process, but so far it had been a cold month, so he’d worry about that when things started to heat up.
A little under thirteen minutes later things did heat up, but not in the way he had been thinking.
The Elevator Girl appeared after the lights flickered above him. This time she was there for three flickers, long enough for him to look her in the eye, and long enough for him to see her eyes move to meet his own.
“Hi,” he said, and the moment before she blinked out of existence, he saw her eyes widen in surprise. Then she was gone with the fourth flicker of light from the fluorescent tubes above.
Theo reached for the panel and pressed every button found there. The elevator lurched upward, stopping at every floor. When it reached the top, Theo stabbed every button again and the elevator slowly descended. It was between the first and ground floor that the lights above blinked.
“Hi,” he said again when he saw her. This time he caught her as she came into existence. His words were the first thing she experienced as she popped into this realm from wherever she usually resided.
“Hi,” she replied and then was gone on the third flicker.
Theo rolled out the post basket and delivered the mail. He would have been surprised if a single item ended up in the right place. He had walked the length of the second floor and thrown a handful of letters into every tray he could find before returning to the elevator. He raised his hand to open the doors and stood there like a statue as the idea formed in his mind. He dropped his hand and went into the small staff kitchen opposite, where he grabbed a butter knife before returning to the elevator.
He opened the door and went in, wedging the door apart with the post basket as he examined the elevator panel. Four screws secured it closed, he unscrewed each and let them fall to the thin carpet. The panel swung open, the rear of the buttons snaking wires onto a circuit board that looked as if it had been installed in the seventies. He peered inside.
Theo knew nothing about elevators. He knew nothing about electronics either. Most people would say that Theo knew exceedingly little about anything useful to anyone. Theo would agree with them. He had wasted his life in menial jobs for minimum wage because he didn’t want to become more than what he was. He had not encountered anything that had made him want to make more of himself, and he had never met anyone who inspired him to be a better man.
He dropped the knife and swung the panel around to see the buttons. There was a chance he was going to get electrocuted; he was smart enough to know this was a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood, but he was also smart enough to be aware that if he was careful and quick, he might get away with it.
He hit the button for the ground floor and opened the panel to get his hand inside. He could feel two thicker cables running up along the side of the car, he grasped them tightly and waited. Above him the light flickered once, then it flickered again and as he saw the ghostly image appear he pulled at the cables with all his might.
Theo had never met anyone who made him want to become more than what he was, but he thought he had just met someone who made him want to give up anything he had become to be with them.
The lights flickered, then flickered again. On the third Theo reached inside and ripped the cables from the circuit board.
The Old Lady
Along the bottom of the last page was a handwritten note, which read; “He never wrote tales to entertain, he wrote a diary in disguise.”
Gertie had noticed April’s car in the car park on her way in and had expected her to be here waiting. At first, Gertie had thought the young girl had taken a trip to the bathroom or was exploring the old building, but now she thought otherwise.
The elevator door had opened, and no one was inside.
Gertie wondered if the security cameras still worked and if she would see the elevator doors. If she checked the tape, would she see April walk in, but not walk out?
Gertie felt old and it wasn’t just the stairs that made her feel that way. She thought of the young man April had shown such an interest in. They all believed he had walked out of work one day and never returned, but would an old tape also show him walking into the elevator and never walking out?
Gertie read the three pages until she arrived at the first encounter. Theo’s description of what he believed was a ghost was a description of April Chalmers. A young woman he had never met in this world, but perhaps knew very well in what could be the next.