The elevator doors slid open with their usual slow, stuttering grace, revealing the bland beige corridor of my floor—six, marked in brass. I stepped out, still frowning at the crumpled delivery receipt in my hand. "Parcel signed for: 7th floor," it read, in looping blue ink that looked exactly like my signature. But there were only six stories in this building, at least as far as the tenants or the elevator were concerned. Six buttons, six buzzing fluorescent lights on the directory. No seventh.
I turned the paper over, searching for a clue—anything in the fine print. The time stamp claimed the delivery happened yesterday, mid-afternoon. I remembered yesterday: a lunch meeting at the café down the street, an afternoon thunderstorm, nothing out of place except for a missing package that never arrived. Certainly not one delivered to a floor that didn’t exist.
I pressed the intercom for the manager’s office. After a moment, Mr. Keller’s voice crackled through: clipped, tired, and—when I mentioned the receipt—immediately tense. He asked to see the paper. I found him waiting in the foyer, keys dangling from his belt, glancing over his hornrimmed glasses. He squinted at the signature. His eyes met mine, wary.
“That’s your handwriting,” he said, a little too certain. “This must be a mistake.”
He turned briskly, hustling down the hall toward the records room. I followed, but he slipped in ahead of me, and a heavy lock clicked before I could take another step. “No visitors in here. Policy.”
I caught a glimpse of stacked files and pale cardboard boxes through the window before he yanked down the shade. The manager’s keys jingled as he vanished down the stairs, leaving me seething in the hallway, receipt clenched in my fist.
I stared again at the elevator, at the blank stretch of wall beneath the number six. My signature. A phantom floor. A locked room. I needed to find out where that package had gone—and why someone was so eager to keep me from knowing.
Footsteps echoed distantly. The building buzzed with its usual undertow of secrets, the air thick with the scent of old paint and rain. Somewhere below, a door slammed. I ran my thumb over the pressure of ink on the receipt, determined to dig deeper, one way or another.