Ghost Employee
I have worked the night shift at the data center for five years now, and you get used to the rhythm. It is a lonely place filled with the constant, low-frequency hum of industrial air conditioners and the blinking lights of a thousand servers. For the last six months, my only companion on the graveyard shift was a guy named Mark. Mark was the kind of person who defined quiet. He kept his head down, wore the same faded gray work shirt every night, and spoke maybe ten words to me over an entire week. He was reliable, though. He always arrived exactly at 10:45 PM, exactly fifteen minutes before our shift officially started. But tonight was different. The clock on the wall above the breakroom ticked past 11:00 PM, then 11:15, and still, there was no sign of him. I stepped out into the main corridor, the motion-sensor lights flickering to life with a buzzing sound that made me jump. I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed his number. It rang once, twice, then went straight to voicemail. I didn't leave a message. I just figured he had finally reached his limit and quit without notice, which happened more often than you would think in this line of work. I sighed, grabbed my heavy flashlight, and decided to start my rounds alone. The facility felt twice as large without his presence. As I walked down the long, industrial hallway that led to the loading docks, I stopped dead in my tracks. A sharp, distinct smell of stale cigarette smoke hit me. It was Mark’s brand—a cheap, mentholated scent that always clung to his clothes. I looked around, my heart rate picking up. The back door was heavy, reinforced steel, and it was locked tight with the alarm system armed. There was no way anyone could have gone outside, and certainly no way they could have snuck back in. I walked to the door and gave it a tug, but it didn't budge. My skin felt tight, like I was being watched from the dark corners of the ceiling rafters. I forced myself to walk back toward the office area, telling myself it was just a draft from the ventilation system pulling old smells from the breakroom. When I reached our workstation area, I froze again. Mark’s computer monitor was glowing, casting a sickly blue light across his desk. I knew for a fact he had shut it down before leaving the night before. I walked closer, my boots squeaking against the polished concrete floor. As I got within ten feet of his station, I saw the mouse cursor. It was jittering across the screen, moving in small, rhythmic motions as if someone were navigating a menu. Then, I heard it—the soft, rapid-fire clicking of mechanical keys. It sounded exactly like someone typing a long paragraph. 'Mark?' I called out, my voice cracking slightly. 'Is that you? You’re late, man.' The only response was the deep, rhythmic hum of the server racks behind me. The typing continued, louder now. I hurried forward, rounding the corner of the cubicle, and the sound cut out instantly. The room went dead silent. The monitor displayed an open email draft. The recipient field was blank, but the date stamp at the top showed a date three weeks into the future. My hands were shaking as I leaned in to read the text. It was a list of complex server codes, followed by a frantic warning: 'The mainframe will fail on the 14th. If you don't dump the cooling logs, the entire grid goes down.' I felt a wave of icy air wash over my back, even though the room temperature was strictly controlled at sixty-five degrees. I didn't wait to see more. I turned and ran toward the security office to check the monitors. I pulled up the log for the hallway and the workstation area for the last three hours. Nothing. The screen showed an empty corridor. No one entered, no one left. It was as if I were the only living thing in the building. At 2:00 AM, I was back in the main server room, staring at the screen again, trying to convince myself it was a glitch. I looked at the security feed for the main entrance. I saw a shadow—a dark, distorted shape—walk right through the center of the heavy, locked security door as if it were nothing more than mist. My blood turned to slush. I felt a sudden, heavy pressure on my right shoulder, like someone had placed a firm hand there to steady me. I spun around, swinging my flashlight wildly, but there was nothing there. Just the empty, humming rows of black cabinets. I quit that morning. I didn't even wait for my supervisor to arrive. I just left my badge on the desk and walked out into the sunlight. The next day, I had to come back to collect my final paycheck, and I spoke to the HR manager. I asked about Mark, wanting to know if I should call his family or if he had simply moved on. The woman looked at me with a blank, confused expression. She checked her computer and told me no one named Mark had ever been employed at that site. When I insisted, she took me down to the office to prove it. I walked to the desk where Mark had sat for months. It was covered in a thick layer of dust. The computer was gone, replaced by a row of empty, abandoned cabinets. It looked like the desk hadn't been touched in years, maybe decades. I walked out of there and never looked back. To this day, I still think about that email and the codes on the screen. Sometimes, I wonder if I should have taken them seriously. But then I remember the feeling of that hand on my shoulder, and I know I made the right choice by never touching that computer again.