The elevator in Creston Residences was slow. Not charming-old-building slow. More like I-might-die-in-here slow.
I shifted my weight, arms wrapped around the cardboard box labeled FRAGILE (which really just meant "the mug my mom gave me that I refused to pack in bubble wrap like an adult"). It was past eleven. The lobby had been dead quiet. The building super had handed me my keys that afternoon with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes and said, "You'll love it here." Then nothing else. Which, okay, fine.
I pressed 7 and watched the panel light up.
The elevator groaned. Moved. And I exhaled, tipping my head back against the wall.
1…
2…
3…
Then — nothing.
The elevator shuddered. A sound like a held breath. Then the panel above the doors blinked once, twice, and settled on a single number.
4.
I stared at it.
"What the—"
The doors slid open.
I didn't move. Because I knew — I was almost certain — there was no fourth floor in this building. The lobby directory had said so. Floors 1, 2, 3, then 5 through 12. The building had been renovated in the nineties, and whatever happened during that renovation, the fourth floor just… wasn't listed. Wasn't accessible. Wasn't supposed to exist.
And yet.
The hallway ahead was dim. Not dark, exactly — there were lights, but half of them flickered like they couldn't commit to being on. The walls were the same beige as the rest of the building but somehow colder-looking, like no one had touched them in years. The carpet was a deep navy, slightly worn down the center. A draft crept into the elevator and raised every hair on my arms.
"Okay," I said out loud, to no one. "Definitely not getting out."
I reached for the 7 button again. Pressed it. Nothing happened. Pressed it again. The panel didn't respond.
"Are you serious right now?"
The doors started to close.
And then a hand shot through the gap and stopped them.
I screamed. Not a full scream — more like a sharp, mortifying yelp — and nearly dropped my box.
A guy stepped in.
Dark hoodie. Dark jeans. Messy hair like he'd been running his hands through it all night. He was tall, broader than he first seemed, and he moved the way people do when they're used to occupying space without apology. He didn't look at me right away. He just let the doors close behind him and stood there, facing forward.
I pressed myself against the back wall.
"You — you just came from—" My voice was embarrassingly unsteady. "There's no fourth floor."
He turned his head slightly. Just enough to look at me from the corner of his eye.
"I know."
"That's — okay, that's not an answer."
"You're right. It's not."
He pressed L. The lobby button. And the elevator started moving again — perfectly, smoothly, like nothing had happened.
I stared at the side of his face. He had sharp features. A jaw that looked like it had been carved out of something expensive. A small scar near his left brow. His eyes, when he finally looked at me directly, were dark — not dramatically dark, just the kind of brown that gave nothing away.
"You shouldn't ask questions about things that don't exist," he said. His voice was low. Calm. Like he was reading off a grocery list.
"Excuse me?" I blinked. "I live here. I have every right to ask why the elevator stopped on a floor that — according to the building directory — is literally not a floor."
He looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted in his expression — not amusement, exactly. More like he was deciding something.
"You just moved in," he said. Not a question.
"Tonight. Yeah." I tightened my grip on the box. "Unit 704."
He nodded once, slow. "Don't take the elevator past midnight."
"What? Why?"
"Because it tends to stop at the fourth floor."
"That's — you can't just say that and leave it at—"
The doors opened. Lobby. He stepped out, and I was still mid-sentence, still holding my box, still breathing like someone who'd just been told a casual horror fact over coffee.
He paused just outside the elevator. Didn't look back. But he said, quietly, like it was an afterthought:
"You didn't see anything tonight."
Then he was gone. Down the hallway, around the corner, without a sound.
The elevator doors closed.
I stood there, alone, heart slamming against my ribs.
"That," I breathed, "was absolutely not nothing."
***
The morning light did a good job of making everything look normal.
My apartment was a disaster — boxes stacked against every wall, my suitcase open on the floor spilling clothes like a yard sale, my nursing manuals still in their tote bags because I'd run out of shelf space. The coffee maker was the only thing I'd unpacked with any real urgency.
My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.
I already knew who it was.
Bea: okay so how's the new place? 👀 any hot neighbors? any ghosts? ideal situation = both
I typed back one-handed while pouring coffee.
Me: it's fine. normal. extremely normal. nothing weird happened at all
Bea: you're typing like that's a lie
Me: good morning to you too
Bea: ARIA.
Me: i'll tell you later. maybe. probably not
I set my phone face-down and took a long sip of coffee.
The thing about nursing school is that it trains you to be rational. You see something alarming — a weird rash, an odd reading on a monitor, a patient who just feels off — and your brain doesn't go to worst-case immediately. It goes to: what's the most likely explanation? What do I know? What can I verify?
So. What did I know?
The elevator had malfunctioned. It stopped on a floor that was unlisted — which happened in older buildings, renovation weirdness, electrical issues, whatever. The guy had probably been doing something perfectly mundane up there. Storage unit. Maintenance access. Something boring.
And he'd been weird about it because people were weird. That was allowed.
"Okay," I said to my coffee. "Fine. Explained."
My coffee said nothing back, which I respected.
I pulled up the building's tenant info app on my phone — the super had sent the link with my lease — and scrolled through the building directory. Floors one through twelve. Amenities on the first floor. Rooftop access on twelve. The fourth floor wasn't mentioned anywhere. Not as storage. Not as under renovation. Not as anything. Just… absent. Like it had been quietly erased.
I set my phone down.
Picked it up again.
Googled: Creston Residences fourth floor.
Nothing useful. An old Yelp review that said the elevator was slow. A Reddit thread about parking. A photo from 2019 of the lobby that looked exactly the same as now, just with different plants.
I closed the browser.
"You're spiraling before your first clinical rotation," I told myself. "That's impressive, actually. Not great, but impressive."
I got dressed, pulled my hair into a bun that could generously be described as intentional, and grabbed my bag. My schedule today: seven AM lab, afternoon lecture on patient assessment, and at some point I needed to call my mom back before she assumed I'd been kidnapped.
I had no time for mysterious elevators. I had no time for guys with scars above their eyebrows who said cryptic things and disappeared around corners. I had a life that was structured and demanding and full of actual, measurable things to worry about.
I stepped out into the hallway.
The elevator was right there. Its doors were closed, the little panel above it dark.
I looked at it for exactly three seconds.
Then I took the stairs.
The thing was — and I'd never admit this to Bea, not yet, not without more evidence — the guy hadn't seemed scared of whatever was on that floor. He'd seemed like he owned it. Like the flickering lights and the cold draft and the hallway stretching into dim quiet were all completely, utterly normal to him.
Which meant one of two things.
Either he was used to something I wasn't supposed to know about.
Or he was the thing I wasn't supposed to know about.
My sneakers squeaked on the stairwell steps as I pushed out into the lobby, blinking in the morning light.
I told myself I was done thinking about it.
I was not done thinking about it.