Chapter 2: Ghost Stories

The first day passed by without any noteworthy holdups or problems. The staff were experienced, and the heads of the departments knew how to coordinate them. Rodriguez delivered his list of suggested repairs, and it was extensive. Just as Spencer had said, many of the building’s old systems were nearing the point of failure. The ventilation system wasn’t operating on several levels, the water treatment plant needed urgent attention, and the elevator required special contractors to get it running again. There was a litany of other small, less critical repairs that were required too. Under normal circumstances, even Ethan might have advised simply tearing out the old systems and installing modern equivalents, but the owners were particular about preserving the building’s character. He had to respect their dedication, as much as it made his job more difficult.

The first real bump in the road happened when some of the janitorial staff were tasked with cleaning the higher floors. They were refusing to go beyond the fiftieth level, and it seemed as though Miss Nelson couldn’t handle the situation. That was surprising to Ethan, she had looked like a tough woman. Why was she not able to keep her staff under control?

He rode the working elevator up to the fiftieth floor, stepping out into an open-plan area that differed a lot from the hotel-like environment that he had just left. Each level was like an entirely different building, trapped in a different decade. This one was packed with office cubicles, and all of the walls that weren’t structural had been knocked out to make room for them. A few yellowed keyboards and CRT monitors remained on the desks, putting the time period around the late eighties or early nineties. There was no carpet, and the prohibition era Art Deco had been replaced with clean and spartan furnishings. Even the lamps and chandeliers were gone, replaced with strips of halogen lighting. The windows here weren’t boarded up, and Ethan could see clear across the city’s skyline.

There was a gaggle of janitors wearing grey jumpsuits, wielding mops and vacuum cleaners, standing around as Miss Nelson appeared to argue with them. They stopped, turning to glance at Ethan as he made his way over to them.

“Miss Nelson,” he began, stopping beside them and crossing his arms over his dress shirt. “What’s the problem here?”

“I’m just trying to explain to them that cleaning the upper floors is part of their contract,” she grumbled.

“They’re refusing to do the work that’s been assigned to them?” Ethan asked, his brow furrowing as he looked to the janitors. “Why?”

Many of these people looked like immigrant workers, they couldn’t be making more than ten dollars an hour or thereabouts. Why on Earth would they jeopardize their jobs like this?

“They’re afraid,” Nelson replied. She wasn’t being dismissive, she said it with a certain gravitas, as though their fears might not be totally unfounded. He had to stop himself from rolling his eyes in exasperation. Was this more nonsense about Fairfax and his mental breakdown?

“What on Earth do they have to be afraid of?” Ethan demanded, planting his hands on his hips.

“We hear noises on the higher floors,” one of the janitors explained. She was a short woman with long, curly hair, her accent perhaps Cuban or Puerto Rican.

“This is a very old building,” Ethan explained, “it’s bound to make noises. Creaking floors, rattling vents, gurgling pipes. Some of the systems are nearly a hundred years old. High-rises like this one are actually designed to sway a little in the wind,” he added, holding up a hand to mime the motion. “They have a certain amount of flexibility because if they were as rigid as most people assume, they would collapse under the stress.”

“We know that,” one of her colleagues added. He was in his mid-twenties, sporting a ragged baseball cap, his accent that of a Brooklyn native. “She’s sayin’ that we hear ‘other’ things when we’re up there. Spooky shit happens on the floors above this one, Sir,” he added as he gestured to the ceiling with the handle of his mop. “We’ve all seen things, heard things, and after what happened to Mister Fairfax ... we don’t wanna go up there anymore.”

“Listen,” Ethan sighed, “I’m new around here. I don’t know anything about what happened to my predecessor, and I’ve avoided asking about him because it seemed to make everyone uncomfortable. But now, it looks like I need to know, so is somebody going to fill me in?”

He waited as the janitors exchanged nervous looks, then the Brooklynite spoke up again, removing his cap and holding it against his chest as though paying his respects to someone who had passed away.

“Mister Fairfax was a good guy, he’d worked here for a long time, knew the old place like the back of his hand. We all liked him, he never gave us any crap. When people started complainin’ about hearin’ things, he took it real serious. He knew us, you see, knew we wouldn’t make stuff up to get out of work. We thought it was rats at first, maybe pigeons gettin’ in, or the building makin’ weird noises like you said. But there’s somethin’ up there, Sir. He saw it.”

“I was told that Mister Fairfax’s mental state was deteriorating,” Ethan replied, “that he was hallucinating. Why would you take anything that he said at face value?”

“You got it backwards,” the man added ominously, “it was what he saw that drove him crazy.”

“That’s enough, Jeff,” Miss Nelson grumbled. “You know that Mister Spencer doesn’t like you spreading rumors while you’re on the job.”

“And what was he supposed to have seen?” Ethan asked skeptically.

The janitor looked to Nelson as if asking for permission, one of the women covering her ears preemptively. It was ridiculous, these people were terrified. It was no wonder that they weren’t getting anything done.

“He didn’t get a good look at it, but he said that it was big,” Jeff began. “He was inspectin’ the elevator shaft up on the seventieth floor, just beneath the area of the building that’s off-limits. Mister Rodriguez probably didn’t tell you, but the elevator ain’t just broken, it was ‘damaged’. While he was in there, somethin’ came after him, chased him outta the shaft. One of the engineers could hear him screamin’ from a couple of floors down, and when he finally arrived, Fairfax was rantin’ about a monster. The guy said that he’d never seen someone so pale, like all the blood had drained from his face. When they asked him what he saw in the shaft, all that he could remember was a pair of red eyes that glowed in the dark, and wings like a giant bat.”

Ethan had to stop himself from laughing. What was it supposed to be, a vampire? Mothman?

“So ... you’re telling me that the upper floors are haunted by a giant bat?” he asked.

“More like a demon,” another of the janitors suggested. “Lotta people died here in bad ways over the years, that kinda thing attracts them, like sharks smellin’ blood in the water. We’ve all heard noises, some of us have seen things. Sometimes it’s just a shadow out of the corner of your eye when you’re cleanin’ a room on your own. Sometimes you can just ... feel it, y’know? Eyes on your back, makes the hairs on your arms stand on end, like there’s somethin’ watchin’ you.”

“And this only happens on floors fifty-one and up?” Ethan added, the janitors nodding their heads. “I want to clarify, nobody is asking you to go into the sealed-off sections of the building. The seven top floors are off-limits because they’re dangerous and poorly maintained. But if you’re going to work here, then you can’t just ignore twenty whole floors and pretend they don’t exist. They need to be cleaned and maintained, or they’ll fall into disrepair just as the top seven did.”

“He means he’s gonna fire us if we don’t go up there,” Jeff grumbled, addressing his fellow workers.

“I didn’t say that I was going to fire anybody,” Ethan clarified, “but you have to do your jobs. If you can’t find a way to perform your duties that makes you feel comfortable, then I’m afraid that yes, I will have to replace you. Work in pairs, maybe, groups of three.”

Call the goddamned Ghost Busters if it makes you happy, he neglected to add. The janitors looked to Miss Nelson, and she nodded her head.

“Mister Lewis is the new facility manager, he makes the rules now. We’ll work in groups of two. It will reduce the area that we can cover, but nobody will be left alone. Alright?”

There was a series of very unenthusiastic nods, but the janitors began to disperse all the same, some continuing their work on this floor while the others moved to the elevator. Ethan sidled up beside Nelson, keeping his voice low.

“Do you buy any of this?” he asked.

“Like he said, we’ve all heard things,” she replied cryptically. “What happened to Mister Fairfax spooked everyone.”

“It’s important to have a good relationship with one’s colleagues, I don’t want to give them the impression that I’m a hardass who’s going to drive them like slaves, but this can’t continue. I want you to start reprimanding people who spread these rumors, they’re working everyone up into a frenzy. Worst case scenario, we’ll have to start letting people go. My job is to get this place in working order as quickly as possible, and I don’t have time for ghost stories.”

“Yes, Sir,” she replied. “I’ll see to it that the job gets done.”

“Great, I’m counting on you, Miss Nelson.”

Before turning back to the elevator, he wandered over to the large windows that looked out over the city. It was a warm summer’s day, and there was a heat haze on the horizon that made the towering buildings seem to waver. He never got tired of seeing the Manhattan skyline, the clusters of jutting skyscrapers in the nearby financial district rising into the air, their many windows gleaming as they caught the sun. In the distance, he could make out the East River, its surface reflecting the light in a way that made it seem to glisten. The spire of the One World Trade Center rose above it all like a silver needle, the marvel of modern engineering near twice the height of the Abbott and Schutzman.

Even now, it still gave him a kind of vertigo, knowing that there was only a pane of glass protecting him from the near thousand-foot drop to the streets below.

After a minute of sightseeing, he made his way back to the elevator, lamenting that the windows in his converted office were boarded up.

It wasn’t long before Ethan was once again called out of his office. He rode the elevator up to the seventieth level, the doors opening to reveal one of the building’s machine floors. It was another open-plan space, with only structural walls made from naked brickwork, the polished concrete beneath his feet reflecting the harsh glare from the naked bulbs above. The ceiling was exposed, revealing hundreds of snaking tubes and pipes. He recognized the silver, segmented ventilation tubes, and the bunches of copper wires that wound their way through the mess like vines through a jungle canopy. The plumbing system that carried water throughout the building like lifeblood was comprised of matte white tubes, the bends all right-angles, more copper pipes from the ancient central heating system crisscrossing alongside them. It reminded him of that old screensaver that would draw networks of colorful pipes on his computer monitor.

More color-coded tubes extended from the floor to the ceiling like pillars, along with networks of electrical cables that ran along the walls in bafflingly complex patterns. Some of them led to large breaker boxes, others to round canisters that he knew to be boilers. It was such an odd blend of modern and nineteen-twenties technology. The noise of nondescript machinery and the whine of electronics were deafening.

He weaved his way through the maze of pipes and machinery, finally locating Rodriguez. The head engineer was standing beside a colleague clad in similar attire as they examined what looked like some kind of industrial machinery mounted on raised supports. They resembled cylindrical turbines made from green metal, but Ethan soon realized that these were the motors that drove the elevators, the lengths of spooled cable visible inside the housing.

“Mister Rodriguez,” Ethan yelled over the noise, “what’s the problem?”

He waved Ethan over to a side-room that was a little quieter, packed with more electrical equipment, closing the door so that they could hear themselves think.

“Is there a problem with the elevator repair?” Ethan asked again, the two men glancing at each other before Rodriguez replied.

“Elevator number two is mis-leveled, which means that it’s not stopping level with the floors in the way that it should. These are AC brake-controlled elevators that were installed in the thirties, antique Otis Signal Control models, they depend on a braking system to make sure that the elevator car lines up with the hallway. The modern ones use hydraulic braking, puts a lot less strain on the system. We upgraded them to bring them up to code a while back, they’re supposed to stop within one-eighth of an inch of the floor, but this one is almost two feet off. We’ve checked the brake linings, the springs, and the brake drums. They all show signs of stress, along with the cables themselves, so we’re going to need to pull out and replace all of those components to be on the safe side. It’s going to be a big job.”