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Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The Last One in the Office
I’d always been a skeptic when it came to the supernatural… I guess that would translate to: I tended to be an asshole. Growing up, I’d scoff at ghost stories and dismiss them as flights of fancy, indigestion, hallucinations, pretty much anything they weren’t. But that all changed after I started working at Welch. Whatever transpired within those walls would turn even the most ardent skeptic into a believer.
The office itself was unassuming. It was downright boring and typical. Welch occupied space in the six-story Leland Building, nestled in the heart of the city. For the first few weeks, everything was utterly typical. My workdays were filled with meetings, coffee breaks, and mundane tasks. The usual office drudgery.
But then, one fateful afternoon, I was left alone at my desk.
It was on a Friday. Most of my colleagues had already headed home for the weekend. I stayed back and tried to get ahead on a project due the next week. The clock on the wall steadily ticked away the minutes. The office grew eerily quiet.
That’s when it began.
I could ignore the noise at first. It was subtle, like a faint whisper. It sounded a lot like the soft rustling of papers. I assumed someone, somewhere else, was working. I remember I went to the vending machine to get a drink and tried to find the source of the sounds.
There wasn’t anyone else on that floor.
Then, I attributed the noises to the old building settling, the kind of creaks and groans you’d expect from a place with a century of history. It might’ve even been some debris in the air-conditioning ducts. When the whispers grew clearer, distinct, as if someone talked in hushed tones right behind me, I began to get anxious.
I turned. I expected to see a colleague playing a prank, or someone talking on their phone. But my cubicle was empty, as were the neighboring ones. No one was on their phone, either.
A strange feeling of unease crept over me as I turned my attention back to my work. I pushed myself to focus, but that only worked for a short time.
The whispers persisted. They grew louder, more insistent. I strained my ears to catch what they were saying, but it was gibberish, like a multitude of voices speaking at once. My skin prickled with goosebumps, and I realized the voices were coming from the air vent above my desk.
As the whispering continued, I began to question my sanity. Perhaps it was just the product of a tired mind, overworked or stressed. But I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that there was something unnatural about those whispers, as if they held some dark secret.
I abruptly decided to leave my desk and seek refuge in the safety of the office lobby, but the whispers shifted.
I was too stunned to move.
They coalesced into a single, sibilant voice, clear and distinctly malicious.
“Leave this place…”
The hiss sent shivers down my spine.
I was taken aback, my heart racing. The voice didn’t sound human. It was otherworldly, like the whispered warnings of a vengeful spirit.
“What do you want?” I whispered. I tried to hide the tremor in my voice.
The speaker responded with a chilling laugh that echoed through the empty office. It mocked my fear.
I backed away from my desk. My eyes darted around the cubicle, searching for any sign of the sinister being. But there was no one there.
As I turned to leave, my computer monitor flickered to life, casting an eerie blue glow over the cubicle. The screen displayed a jumble of letters and numbers, forming words that made no sense. But then, those indecipherable characters began to rearrange themselves, spelling out a single word:
RUN.
I hesitated a moment, and then bolted out into the hallway. The voices followed, reverberating through the corridor like a chorus of tormented souls. I reached the elevator, but the moment I pressed the button, it opened with a sinister creak.
The doors slowly opened to reveal the dark, empty shaft beyond.
I backed away. My heart pounded.
I didn’t take the elevator because there was no car there to get inside. I had no choice but to flee down the stairwell. The farther I descended, the more the whispers receded, as if the building itself wanted me gone.
Finally, I burst out onto the street, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I didn’t think I’d ever get out of that place. My hands trembled as I fumbled for my phone to call for help, but as soon as I dialed 911, a voice on the other end spoke in the same chilling tone I had heard in the office.
“We warned you.”
I looked back at the Leland Building with a growing sense of dread. The windows glowed with an eerie, malevolent light. Shadows moved behind the glass, shapes that should not have existed.
I knew the voices had followed me.
They were no longer confined to the building.
I vaguely remember peeling out of the parking lot and coming to a screeching halt in my driveway. I tried for days to convince myself that I had experienced a hallucination. It was just a temporary lapse into madness. But the nightmares that plagued my sleep, the whispers that persisted at the edge of my hearing, told me otherwise.
Somehow, I don’t know how… something malevolent attached itself to me that day.
I went back to the office that Monday. I hoped to find answers, to confront whatever had spoken to me that afternoon. The building seemed different, colder, as if a darkness had seeped into its very walls. I made my way to my cubicle, but it was empty, just as it had been when I fled.
I started to go get my coffee when I noticed a small, leather-bound book sitting on my desk. Its pages were filled with the same gibberish I had seen on my computer screen, but there was one page that stood out.
It was a drawing, a crude representation of a figure with elongated limbs. Its eyes glowed with malevolence.
I stared at the drawing.
It shouldn’t be familiar.
Why was it familiar?
I’d seen that figure before… somewhere.
The whispering began anew, the same voice I had heard that day in my cubicle. It spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, but the meaning was clear: it was a warning, a threat. I had trespassed into something beyond my understanding, and there was no escape.
I started back out toward my car, but the moment I stepped outside the office, I found myself back inside.
I tried it several more times. Stepping across the threshold just brought me back in. It was like the building refused to let me go. I tried to exit again and again, but the same thing happened. It was as if the office had become a prison, a place where time and space were twisted.
Days turned into weeks. I remained trapped in that accursed office building. The whispers grew louder, more sinister, as if they fed off my fear and despair. Shadows danced on the walls, and the air grew heavy with an oppressive darkness. I could feel the sinister presence closing in on me, and I knew there was no escape.
Sometime later, I don’t know how long… maybe weeks or months… the voice whispered to me once more.
It was no longer a threat, but a command.
It told me to embrace the darkness, to become one with it.
I hesitated… I fled… but all my running brought me back to the same spot. I was so exhausted.
With a sense of dreadful resignation, I did.
I opened myself to the darkness there. I allowed it to consume me. What choice was there? The whispers became a cacophony of voices, and the shadows enveloped me in their inky embrace. I felt myself drawn into the very walls of the building, becoming a part of its twisted, supernatural existence.
As I merged with the entity… I realized the somber truth: I was not the first drawn into this malevolent force, nor would I be the last. I had become a part of the haunting, a place where the boundaries between the living and the dead frequently crossed. The malevolent spirits here exact their vengeance on any hapless person who finds themselves alone in that place.
I remain within the confines of the Leland Building, a part of its cursed history. I’m a prisoner of the supernatural forces that lurk within its walls.
So, as you’ve probably guessed, I am no longer a skeptic, and I try not to be an asshole.
Now, I’m just a testament to the horrors that befall those who challenge the unknown, no matter how inadvertent.
The twisted ending of my story is that the presence living in the building only continues to grow stronger. It feeds off the fear, the treachery, and the despair of those who enter its domain. It has claimed me, and I now serve as a harbinger of doom. I warn others to stay far away from that cursed place.
For those who dare to enter the Leland Building, there is no escape, no respite if the evil wants you. Those creatures are relentless and will stop at nothing to ensure that their presence is known. The office has always been a place of darkness and despair, a twisted, supernatural realm that defies all reason and explanation to those sensitive to its whims.
It’s a place where the boundaries between the living and the dead don’t often exist, and where the malevolent spirits exact their revenge on those who dare draw their consuming attention.
