Story #114 - Murder By Numbers

Murder By Numbers

As the doors slammed closed on the fleshy skin of my neck, I couldn’t help but think that I’d known better – been warned, in fact – but went ahead anyway.

Vengeance took time, it seemed.

***

I’d never been all that bold by nature, but there was something about the locally unknown, the scary and yet familiar that drew me in. So it was with old elevator #6, the only one in the building no one used anymore. It was funny; we were an office tower of insurance agents and lawyers, brokers and the occasional shyster – all apparently “professionals”, but not one of us would go near #6.

It wasn’t like we were in the area very often, as it was a service elevator near the janitor’s office on the main floor, but legend had it that at one time it was the “go to” elevator choice when the front five were too busy. In 1952, that all changed.

A murder in the elevator just as it passed the first floor put the fear into everyone in the building, and rumors flew. The best I could find out, the killing had been of a socialite by her jealous boyfriend, and had been pretty damn gruesome. Even the library records were sketchy, but I’d made a study of it because I thought it was “neat” that our building had something interesting happen in it.

I’d worked there a year before I ever got the nerve up to even walk by the machine, and I remember feeling a palpable chill as I breezed through the hallway. I was spooked until I realized that the janitor was throwing out some boxes with the outside door open and that it was the middle of January, and then I felt down right stupid.

After that, it became an obsession for me to know as much about #6 as I could. I went back to the library and dug deeper, and came across a number of things that I found hard to believe. The first was that there had been more than one murder in the elevator, and the second was that they seemed to follow a pattern. Not by date – the second one was in 1956, then ’59, then ’71, but by number. Each body was found on a successively higher floor, and each one had been killed the same way – neck crushed in the doors.

That was the oddest thing. Back in the ‘50s, safeguards didn’t exist to keep the doors from closing hard on a person’s limbs, body or neck. By 1970, elevator code was such that those kinds of things shouldn’t have been possible, and yet they kept occurring. Four deaths in twenty years, each one a decapitation and each one covered up – but why?

Delicate inquiries with friends in the police service were met with roadblocks. They didn’t mind looking into it for me, but after one or two stabs at getting me some information, firmly told me to stop asking, and I knew that was the best choice.

That didn’t stop me from thinking about it, though, and digging deeper. By the time I’d run out of material to look at, I’d found eight murders in total, all of which had the same MO. The oddest thing – aside from their gruesome nature – was that no killer was ever arrested, and no suspects were ever sought. Even newspaper articles in the city didn’t mention the killings, and there seemed to be a general understanding that there was “nothing to be done”.

I was determined to find out – somehow, that made my days worthwhile. Selling insurance wasn’t floating my boat, and it wasn’t like I had much to go home to. A plan was my next step, something that had a logical progression and would result in my solving the mystery, or so I thought.

It started with me taking the time to walk by #6 every day when I came to work. After a month I started to feel comfortable, and I jammed the call button once a week, just to see if the thing still worked, though it took me a month to stand around and wait for the gears to start grinding.

After seven months, I actually managed to wait until the elevator arrived at the bottom floor and the door opened, and then I ran away like I was a scared rabbit. The thing looked normal enough – dark paneled and old – but I wasn’t about to take any chances. A year after I’d started my plan I got inside and stood there for a moment, looking at the buttons and feeling a sense of rising dread in my stomach. Jabbing the “9”, I slipped out side before the doors closed and then went up to my office and panted for a few minutes.

I was almost there; I had to do it.

It was a September day, I remember that much, but I couldn’t tell you the exact day in the month. I’d had a bad week, one of the worst since I’d started at the job, and I needed something, anything to make me feel like I was alive.

Oddly, getting in a death trap did the trick.

I was inside and the doors had closed before I really thought it through, and as the car went up, I found myself holding my breath, too scared to cry out, and just hoping it had all been a large, unfortunate set of circumstances that had led to the deaths of eight other people.

At floor 8 and a half, I felt the car slow down. The “9” light went out a moment a later, followed by the cabin light.

I’d always wondered what facing a specter would look like; I think we all have, at some level. I can tell you its nothing like you’d imagine, nothing like you’d think. It’s a whorl of sounds and sensations as you’re ripped out of the world you know and crammed into one you don’t belong. Those from the other side don’t belong here, and we don’t belong there. Existing together for a moment is possible, but painful for both.

The elevator doors coming were the next thing my conscious mind processed, and then blackness took me. My next awakening came above the floor of the elevator car, peering down at a twitching figure at the threshold.

Was it worth it to learn the secret? Perhaps. There is a great deal I know now that I have never known before.

Come find it for yourself – floor ten is waiting.

-D