Short Horror Stories

The Vanishing Musolli

Aminah, a woman in her mid-twenties, hurried through the polished halls of the World Trade Center Kuala Lumpur. She was late for an important conference and cursed her inability to navigate the labyrinthine building. The floor she needed seemed deserted, the sleek, modern architecture suddenly feeling cold and oppressive.

Lost and frustrated, Aminah rounded a corner and nearly bumped into an elderly woman. The woman was small and frail, her face etched with wrinkles, and she wore a traditional baju kurung. She looked out of place amidst the corporate surroundings.

"Excuse me, dear," the old woman said, her voice a dry rasp. "Could you tell me where the musolla is?"

Aminah, though flustered, felt a pang of sympathy for the woman. A musolla was a prayer room, and this woman clearly needed to find it. Unfortunately, Aminah was just as lost.

"I'm sorry, I don't know," she replied. "I'm actually quite lost myself. Perhaps we could go down to the information center and ask?"

The old woman nodded, a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes.

They walked together to the bank of elevators, the silence punctuated only by the click of the old woman's walking stick against the polished floor. Aminah pressed the button for the ground floor, and they stepped into the lift. As the doors slid closed, a strange sense of unease prickled at Aminah's skin. The air in the elevator seemed to have grown colder, and the old woman's gaze, fixed on her, felt strangely intense.

The elevator hummed downwards, and with each passing floor, Aminah's anxiety grew. She couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, that she had made a mistake getting into the elevator with this woman.

Finally, the elevator reached the ground floor with a gentle ding. Aminah, eager to escape the confined space, gestured for the old woman to exit first.

"After you," she said, stepping back.

The old woman shuffled past her, and Aminah followed close behind. But as she stepped out of the elevator, her heart lurched into her throat. The old woman was gone. Vanished.

Aminah spun around, frantically searching the lobby. There was no sign of the woman. Had she somehow slipped away so quickly? It seemed impossible.

Confused and shaken, Aminah approached the information desk.

"Excuse me," she said to the young woman behind the counter. "I was just with an elderly lady... she was looking for the musolla..."

The woman gave her a puzzled look. "I'm sorry, I haven't seen anyone matching that description."

Aminah frowned. "But she was just here... we came down in the elevator together."

The woman's expression turned from puzzlement to concern. "Miss, are you feeling alright? 

There hasn't been anyone else here for the past hour. This entire floor was closed for a private function."

A chill ran down Aminah's spine. Closed? But she had just walked through the deserted floor... hadn't she?

"But... the conference..." she stammered, her mind reeling.

"The conference you're looking for is on the 3rd floor," the woman said gently. "This is the ground floor. Perhaps you took the wrong elevator?"

Aminah felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. Wrong elevator? But she had pressed the button for the ground floor... hadn't she?

With trembling legs, Aminah thanked the woman and made her way to the correct elevator. As she ascended, the encounter with the old woman replayed in her mind. Who was she? And how had she disappeared so completely?

The conference was well underway when Aminah finally arrived. Slipping into a vacant seat, she tried to focus on the speaker, but her mind was a whirlwind of confusion and fear.

Later that evening, as Aminah recounted the strange events to a friend, a chilling thought occurred to her. She remembered that the old woman had been looking for the musolla, a prayer room. But there was no musolla on the ground floor of the World Trade Center. In fact, the only prayer room in the entire building was located on the very floor where Aminah had encountered the old woman – the closed floor.

The realization sent a shiver down her spine. She had been alone on that floor, hadn't she? Alone with an old woman who had vanished into thin air. An old woman who was looking for a prayer room that didn't exist.

Aminah never forgot her encounter in the World Trade Center. The memory lingered, a chilling reminder of the unseen world that might exist just beyond our perception, a world where the lines between the living and the departed blur, and where a simple question about a prayer room could lead to a terrifying encounter with the unknown.