Fatima has worked the night security shift at Larkspur Tower for two years, long enough to know every hallway, every creaking pipe, every quirk of the old building. The elevator panel has thirteen buttons. The building directory, official records, and every floor plan she’s ever seen all agree the tower has exactly twelve floors.
Table of Contents
Part 1: The Night Shift
Fatima had worked the overnight security shift at Larkspur Tower for two years now, long enough that the building’s quiet, empty hallways no longer bothered her the way they once had during her first nervous weeks on the job.
Her rounds followed the same pattern every night: check each floor’s entrance, confirm the doors were properly locked, note anything unusual in her log, then return to the security desk in the main lobby until her replacement arrived at dawn.
“Quiet again tonight?” her supervisor, Mr. Costa, asked during his brief check-in call around midnight, as he did most evenings.
“Same as always,” Fatima confirmed, glancing at the bank of elevators across the empty lobby. “Nothing to report.”
She’d noticed the elevator’s extra button during her very first week, back when she was still learning the building’s layout carefully. Thirteen floors listed on the panel, despite every official document, every fire evacuation map, every floor directory clearly showing only twelve. She’d mentioned it once to a coworker, who’d simply shrugged.
“Old buildings sometimes skip labeling floor thirteen,” he’d said. “Unlucky number, historically. Maybe this one just left the button in by mistake instead.”
Part 2: The Extra Button
It was nearly two years before Fatima’s curiosity finally outweighed her caution, on an unusually slow Tuesday night when the building felt more silent than usual, even by its normal empty standards.
She stood in the elevator, finishing her scheduled rounds, staring at that thirteenth button, a small, unlabeled circle above the clearly marked twelfth floor. If it truly was simply a leftover mistake from the building’s original construction, pressing it should do nothing at all, surely.
Fatima pressed it before she’d fully decided to.
The elevator hummed exactly as it always did, ascending steadily, the numbers above the door counting upward in their usual sequence. Then, just past twelve, the display flickered oddly, and the elevator continued rising for what felt like several seconds too long before finally, smoothly, coming to a stop.
The doors opened onto a floor that looked, at first glance, almost identical to the building’s ground level lobby, the same marble flooring, the same reception desk positioned in exactly the same spot. Except the lighting here flickered unevenly, casting long, shifting shadows across dusty, clearly unused furniture, and the air held a stale, closed-up quality that suggested nobody had properly used this space in a very long time.
Part 3: What Was Waiting
Fatima stood frozen at the elevator’s threshold, one hand pressed firmly against the door to prevent it closing, staring into the strange, dim replica of the lobby she knew so well two floors below.
An old rotary telephone sat on the reception desk, the kind Fatima hadn’t seen in actual use anywhere in years, its cord coiled neatly beside it. As she watched, it began to ring, a sharp, old-fashioned bell that echoed unnaturally loud through the dusty, empty space.
Every instinct told her clearly not to answer it. She’d worked security long enough to trust instincts like that without needing to fully explain them.
The phone continued ringing, insistent and increasingly loud, as Fatima remained frozen, unable to step forward, unwilling to let the elevator door close behind her either.
Then, abruptly, the ringing stopped.
The silence that followed felt somehow worse, heavier, pressing against her ears in a way the ringing hadn’t. Fatima stepped back into the elevator immediately, pressing the button for the lobby with a slightly unsteady hand.
The doors closed, and the elevator descended normally, the display numbers counting down in perfectly ordinary sequence, twelve, eleven, all the way to one, as though nothing unusual had happened at all.
Part 4: The Last Time
Fatima didn’t mention what she’d seen to Mr. Costa, uncertain how to explain something she barely understood herself, worried it would sound like exhaustion or imagination rather than something she’d genuinely witnessed.
For several weeks afterward, she avoided that thirteenth button entirely, taking the stairs on nights when curiosity threatened to override caution again.
Then, one particularly quiet night nearly a month later, working alone as always, she noticed the elevator’s display already showing “13” as it descended toward her, doors opening on an empty car that she hadn’t called.
Fatima stood very still in the lobby, staring at the open doors, the same dusty, flickering floor visible in her memory though the elevator itself currently sat empty, patiently waiting.
She thought about the two years she’d already spent in this building, about the phone that had rung and then simply stopped, about instincts she’d learned to trust without needing full explanations.
Carefully, deliberately, Fatima walked over and pressed the button to close the elevator’s doors, without stepping inside.
The next morning, she submitted her formal two weeks’ notice to Mr. Costa, citing simply a decision to pursue a different opportunity elsewhere. She never fully explained the actual reason, not even to herself in any way she could easily put into words.
On her final night, packing up her small desk area, she noticed the elevator arrive automatically, doors opening onto an empty car, well before her replacement’s scheduled shift began. Fatima didn’t look twice. She simply gathered her things, walked out through the main entrance, and didn’t glance back at the elevator panel even once.
Some questions, she’d decided, were better left permanently unanswered.
The End
Key Vocabulary
| Word | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Overnight | happening or working during the night | “She works the overnight shift at the hospital.” |
| Ascending | moving or rising upward | “The plane was slowly ascending into the clouds.” |
| Threshold | the entrance or doorway of a room or building | “He paused at the threshold before stepping inside.” |
| Insistent | continuing firmly and refusing to stop | “The insistent knocking finally woke her up.” |
| Override | to take control over or ignore something, like a feeling or instinct | “His excitement began to override his usual caution.” |
| Notice | (here) a formal statement announcing you will leave a job soon | “She gave her employer two weeks’ notice before quitting.” |
Quick Check
- What strange detail does Fatima notice about the elevator panel from her very first week on the job?
- What happens the first time Fatima finally presses the thirteenth button?
- What does Fatima see and hear on the mysterious floor?
- What does Fatima decide to do after the elevator arrives on its own, weeks later?
- Why do you think Fatima never fully explains her reason for quitting, even to herself? Would you have investigated further, or left it alone like she did?
Enjoyed this eerie night shift? Continue with another chilling read: The Door at 3:03 AM: A B1 Horror Story.
