To her relief, Lindsy opens the door to her new office and finds that Morgan is still there, seemingly organizing the contents of a file folder. She lets her eyes shut for a moment and forms a thin-lipped circle as she exhales. Morgan looks up from her work to see Lindsy's expression before it expires.
"Everything okay?" Lindsy nods and lets her lips twitch into the vague shape of a smile before shutting the door and walking over to her own desk. "See anything of interest out there?"
"No, but I suppose that's the problem." Morgan raises a trimmed, black eyebrow in Lindsy's direction. Lindsy sits in the creaky office chair behind her desk and tosses the pretzels on it. "An older woman was looking for her husband, who I guess she hasn't seen in quite a while." Lindsy folds her fingers and rests them against her inner thighs.
"Ah." Morgan looks back at her folder and raises the butt of a pen to her lips as she examines the contents. Lindsy watches her as she waits for a more elaborate response. Morgan sighs and puts the pen into a metal grated cup at the far left of her desk before facing Lindsy once more. "You know, everywhere you go, there will always be some kind of story surrounding the place."
"So, what's the story here?" Morgan remains still in her seat, peering back into Lindsy's eyes as she speaks.
"Well," Morgan clears her throat and presses herself further back into her seat, "if you look at it from the perspective of a guard, with a long record of strange events happening in their day, you start to see it as a chain of coincidences." Lindsy shifts her eyes from the other guard to the monitor over her shoulder, then back at her partner. "Though- without that history- you'll see it as something entirely different."
"What is it?" Morgan forces her lips to one side as she looks back at the now-closed folder. She then runs a few clear and polished nails over the surface of it, pulling it away from herself and off the desk. Lindsy accepts the folder as it is passed to her, but keeps her curious sapphires on the storyteller. Silence briefly fills the room before Morgan takes in a long breath.
"Over the years, Derad has had several missing person cases opened and closed with no conclusions or findings. No cases of human trafficking and no cases of serial murderers have ever come about either." Morgan glides her bright pink tongue against dark lips before running her eyes along the far wall. Lindsy tilts her head to look in the same direction and sees several similar folders pinned neatly to the wall. "The rational side believes that these people just get lost within the building and eventually find their way out, but fail to inform anybody that they were alright."
"And the others?" Lindsy presses the buttons over her stomach against the knuckles of her thumbs as an interest in the words fills her mind.
"The others," Morgan starts, "hear voices." She scoffs as she gives Lindsy a look of seriousness. "They often say that they see a little girl, moments- if not hours- before someone seemingly disappears. If they don't see her, they damn near always hear her." Lindsy's eyelids grow further apart as Morgan tells her story, exposing more and more of the marbles within. She looks away from the wall and studies the surface of the folder before her.
"This is his folder, isn't it?" Morgan nods. "How did you know before he was even reported?" Lindsy's trainer stands and stuffs the base of her gray uniform shirt beneath her belt buckle before walking toward the office door.
"I hear voices too." She then steps outside the room. Lindsy examines Morgan's pen pocket as the door shuts, making out the obvious rectangular package within. "I'll be back in a couple." The black curly hair above Morgan's neck is the last thing Lindsy sees before she is all alone once more.
She turns to face the monitor, watching as Morgan leaves the office and starts walking in the opposite direction of the lobby. She sees the larger woman pull out the package and open it, removing a single, thin, white stick from it before rounding a corner. Lindsy takes the time she is given to learn her way around the cameras and follows Morgan across the floor.
YOU ARE READING
OddityVille: Ground Floor (Book One)
Horror★Completed Story★ With several years of being a nightguard under her belt, Lindsy finds herself working for the Derad Hotel in the higher end of her hometown, OddityVille. Being accustomed to what can be found in the dark, she doesn't concern he...
