Chapter 3: Jumping at Shadows

West greeted Ethan at the door as he made his way into the lobby of the Abbott and Schutzman with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder, walking beside him as he headed for the elevator at the back of the room. Their footsteps echoed in the great, empty space, the amber glow of the lighting strips in the red marble pillars reflecting off the polished floor.

“You don’t look very well rested,” the towering security guard commented. Ethan very nearly did a double-take. It was the first time that he had heard the man speak. His voice was deep and gravelly, befitting his imposing stature.

“It’s true, Mister West,” Ethan replied with a dry chuckle. “I had some trouble sleeping last night.”

“Nightmares?” the security guard asked, Ethan raising an eyebrow.

“Yes ... how did you guess?”

“Don’t let them bother you, we all get them,” he replied cryptically. He saw Ethan over to the elevator, watching as the doors closed on him.

As the car began to rise, Ethan felt a pang of dread. Everyone gets nightmares? What was that supposed to mean? It was becoming increasingly obvious that the problems that plagued the Abbott and Schutzman were more a result of its terrorized staff than its advanced age. Entire floors of the building were being neglected because the cleaners feared that they were haunted, elevator shafts were collapsing due to a lack of maintenance because the engineers thought that they would encounter monsters in them. The constant tension and stress were even starting to affect him, as much of a staunch skeptic as he was. The working environment needed an overhaul if he was going to stand any chance of getting this place into ship shape.

The staff filed into the room one after another, perhaps fifty in all, their eyes darting about as they entered the dining hall. The expressions on their faces ranged from nervous, perhaps expecting to be reprimanded, to irritated at being called away from their work.

This had once been a grand ballroom, entertaining guests with Jazz and later Swing music from an elevated stage. It was situated on the East Wing of the ground floor, an area of the building that saw little use these days. The same Art Deco style that had characterized the building’s early history was present here. The walls, floor, and ceiling were styled in dark browns and reds that were crisscrossed by geometric patterns in shining gold. They radiated outwards from a crystal chandelier, which served as the room’s centerpiece. Ornate pillars hewn from the same red marble that was present in the lobby held up the roof, each one artfully decorated with more patterns, and the stage was framed by a giant sunburst that brought to mind the flared feathers of a peacock.

The kitchens were no longer operating, and the bar was long closed, but the furniture remained. The dozens of tables that were strewn about the space were carved from dark mahogany that blended seamlessly with the mellow environment, the chairs padded with comfortable cushions made from red silk. It was the perfect venue for what Ethan had in mind.

“Please, take a seat,” he said as he addressed them from the elevated stage. Confused, everyone dispersed and sat down, the three department heads included. Spencer and West were attending too, at his request, of course. He couldn’t compel them to do anything that they didn’t want to do, and he wouldn’t dare try.

“I’m sure that you’re all wondering why I brought you here,” Ethan began, starting to pace back and forth as they watched. “My job as the facility manager isn’t merely to maintain the building, but also to maintain ... you,” he said as he gestured to his skeptical audience. “I’ve only been here for a short time, but what stands out to me right now is a profound lack of morale. But what does morale mean?” he continued, steepling his fingers. “Confidence, enthusiasm, discipline. Recent events have created a culture of fear and stress, and that isn’t conducive to a productive workplace or a happy staff. The happier and more at ease you are, the more you enjoy spending time in the workplace, the more work will get done.”

He could see a few of them sagging in their chairs, having just figured out that they had been duped into attending a motivational seminar.

“This morning, we’re going to be addressing a few points that I think can help raise spirits and get everyone in the mood to be at their best again,” he continued cheerfully. “We’re going to explore what it means to build confidence, to destroy fear, ways that we can all help each other to beat stress and depression. It’s my position that positive thinking produces positive results.”

There was a chorus of groans that were soon silenced by Spencer’s angry stare.

“We have to learn how to recognize when we’re reacting emotionally,” he continued, undeterred. “We have to identify the negative thought processes that stop us from performing at our best, find ways to minimize unwanted thoughts and emotions, and we need to work on a roadmap for resolving our anxieties.”

The seminar went about as well as a seminar with a disinterested, irritated audience could go. As the staff filed out of the room to return to their posts, Ethan could only hope that he had imparted some useful information, that his two-hour talk about positive thinking and motivation had rubbed off on at least a handful of the employees. The alternative was firing people, but that wasn’t the kind of thing one announces at a seminar intended to alleviate stress and depression in the workplace. He was confident that the ghost stories were the source of the staff’s ills, as working conditions were otherwise very good, and the department heads all had amicable relationships with their charges.

He rode the elevator back up to the floor where his office was, giving the door from his dream a wide berth as he walked past it. There was still a cold draft coming in from the gap beneath it, perhaps there was a broken window in that room.

As he entered his office, movement on one of the CRTs caught his eye. The black and white feeds cycled randomly through cameras spread throughout the building, as there were far more of them than even the bank of sixteen monitors could display at once. He marched over to the control board and switched the view back to the previous camera, watching as the figure of a woman entered one of the rooms, closing the door behind her. The number in the corner of the display indicated that she was in a corridor on the sixty-third floor, the stenciled door number large enough to be visible even at such low fidelity.

Nobody could have gone from the dining room to the sixty-third floor in such a short amount of time, as Ethan had just got off the only working elevator. One of the employees must have decided to skip the seminar. Fuming, Ethan wheeled around, heading back to the elevator. He grumbled to himself as he turned the lever and pushed the button a little harder than was necessary, the car rumbling as it began to climb. Who the hell did she think she was, ignoring a mandatory summons from the facility manager? Perhaps she had a male employee in there with her, and they had decided to have a little honeymoon on their employer’s dime. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had broken up an affair while on the job.

These old cars were slow, and it took a good minute before he reached the right floor, stepping off into another strange area of the building. This one had also been leased out as a hotel, but the style was different from that of the prior floor. Instead of twenties era décor, this one looked like something straight out of the seventies. Everything was an ugly shade of beige or brown. The carpet that lined the hallway was brown with red and gold patterns, the wallpaper striped with brown and white lines, the lights casting everything in an unpleasant shade of yellow.

He located the correct door, turning the handle and finding that it was unlocked. It creaked open as he stepped inside, the hinges squeaking as though they hadn’t seen any use in a great deal of time. The lights were currently off, so he located a switch on the nearby wall, flicking it on. The hotel room was just like the hallway, a throwback to the seventies, the moody lighting illuminating a modest suite with an attached bathroom.

The walls were a shade of cream, skirted with dark, wood paneling. The carpet was brown, and the spread on the double bed was patterned with a suitably garish plaid in matching tones. There was a wooden dresser upon which an aged black and white television set was perched, along with a couple of leather chairs that were situated beside a reading lamp.

The bed was unoccupied, the sheets undisturbed, there was no sign of his fugitive. The air had a musty quality, and there was a layer of dust on every surface. If he’d had to guess, Ethan would have assumed that nobody had set foot in this room for a long period of time. It was clear that this floor had been neglected by the cleaning staff, who had previously refused to work above the fiftieth level. That said, someone had the keys, because the door was unlocked. The culprit must be in the bathroom on the far side of the suite.

He made his way over there, the room becoming colder as he went, the sound of rushing wind reaching his ears.

“I know there’s someone in there,” he announced, rapping his knuckles on the door. “You’re going to have to explain to your department head why you thought it was necessary to skip a mandatory staff meeting.”

After waiting a moment for a reply, none came, so he knocked more loudly.

“Hello?”

Screw it. Finding the door unlocked, he pulled it open and was hit by a blast of wind such that he had to grip the frame to stop himself from stumbling. The large window between the bathtub and the sink was open, providing just enough room for a woman to crouch on the sill no more than six feet away from him. The gale was blowing the long, tangled strands of her black hair, whipping at the frilly hem of the silk nightgown that she was wearing.

“What the-”

The woman turned her head to look back at him, her eyes red and puffy, her mascara running down her cheeks. She looked like she had been crying for hours. He didn’t know what to do, she was obviously about to jump, but he feared that he might alarm her if he made to grab her. Was the morale among the staff truly this bad?

“I can’t stay here,” she moaned, the strain in her voice setting him on edge.

“C-come down from there,” he stammered, extending a hand towards her. “Whatever’s going on, this isn’t the solution.”

Before he could utter another word, she leaned out of the window, Ethan’s eyes widening in horror as he watched her drop out of sight. He raced across the bathroom, his shoes slipping on the brown tiles, planting his hands on the sill. He leaned over the edge, expecting to see her ruined body crumpled on the sidewalk below, but he couldn’t make out a thing. From this high up, even a bus was scarcely visible.

He wheeled around and raced to the elevator, his cellphone already to his ear as he darted out of the hotel room. By the time he was pressing the ground floor button, Mister West was answering his frantic call.

“Slow down, speak clearly,” the security guard complained. “What happened?”

“A woman!” Ethan gasped, out of breath from his sprint. “A woman has fallen out of a window on the sixty-third floor, North face!”

“What?” West replied incredulously, “who was it?”

“I don’t know all of the staff by name yet,” Ethan continued hurriedly. “I saw someone on the security cameras, so I came up here to check. They must have skipped the seminar. I watched them jump, there was nothing I could do to stop them!”

“But-”

“Just call a damned ambulance!” Ethan snapped.

A minute later, he was racing through the lobby, pushing through one of the revolving glass doors to find West and Spencer waiting for him on the sidewalk. They seemed confused, and the other pedestrians showed no sign of panic or distress, a passing woman giving him a strange look as he doubled over to catch his breath.

“Where is she?” Ethan demanded. West’s brow furrowed with concern, and he shared a glance with Spencer before the old concierge gave a hesitant reply.

“There’s nobody here.”

“That’s impossible,” Ethan muttered, looking left and right along the street beneath the building. She had fallen from the North face, she must have landed somewhere nearby. Yet there was nothing, no screaming onlookers, no body lying ruined upon the asphalt. He jogged along the sidewalk, trying to locate the window from which the woman had plunged, but he couldn’t make anything out from this angle.

“Damn it, maybe I got turned around in there,” he yelled as he waved for West and Spencer to follow him. “She must have fallen on the other side!”

He weaved through the crowds of pedestrians as he ran around the corner of the building, but no matter where he looked, there was no indication that anything was wrong. There was nothing on the sidewalks, nothing on the roads, no sign of an accident whatsoever.

“Could she have landed on a terrace, or on top of one of the wings?” he wondered aloud. “That has to be it. Damn it, West, where’s that ambulance?”

The security guard sidled up beside him, Ethan lurching as he felt the man’s heavy hand on his shoulder, a gesture that he had probably intended to be reassuring.

“You alright?” he asked. “When you arrived this morning, you told me that you hadn’t slept much.”

“Maybe your mind was playing tricks on you,” Spencer suggested as he finally caught up with them, “that happens a lot around here.”

“I didn’t hallucinate,” Ethan said, brushing the hand off his shoulder and turning to glare at the pair. “I saw her as plain as I see you, I watched her fall. She just ... dropped. God, I’ve never seen anything so horrible. How can you be so calm?”

“Come back inside and collect your thoughts,” Spencer insisted, “calm your nerves.”

It wasn’t a suggestion, West steering him back in the direction of the lobby. Once he was inside and seated on one of the padded benches, he started to mull over the events of the last few minutes, trying to slow the racing of his heart. The adrenaline was wearing off now, leaving him feeling drained.

“I saw her,” he insisted, West and Spencer watching him with that same expression of concern. “Sixty-third floor, room seventeen, North face. I’m not hallucinating, damn it! Come with me, I’ll show you the open window.”

“Mister Lewis,” Spencer began, his tone apologetic. “The windows don’t open.”

“What do you mean?” Ethan asked, glancing up at him.

“The windows in this building don’t open, they haven’t done for years. It’s for liability reasons, you see. We had to seal them up to bring them up to code, to prevent precisely what you describe from happening. The only way to get through them now would be to break them.”

“She got it open somehow,” Ethan replied, “I was just there. Come on, I’ll show you.”

He rose from his seat unsteadily, still in a state of shock, the two men following him over to the elevator. The ride up was quiet and tense. Ethan wasn’t stupid, it was obvious that they thought he was losing his marbles, but he knew what he had seen. When they arrived at the correct floor, he led his skeptical companions to the right door, gesturing to it.

“In here,” he said, reaching down to grip the handle. When he turned it, he met resistance, a mechanical clunk informing him that the door was now locked. He looked down at it in disbelief, then back at West, who was standing behind him with his arms crossed.