FICTION BY KARA HODO

Kara Hodo has been writing stories from an early age and hopes people will read them before they rot in a drawer! She has been published in the student/faculty journals of East Central University and Southeastern Oklahoma State University (two small regional colleges in Oklahoma) during her time there as a student. She has also delved into the self-publishing space and has a short, Christian speculative fiction story available on Amazon. In addition to short stories, her writing projects include poetry, flash fiction, novellas, and full-length novels.

Kara was raised in a small town in Oklahoma and is a member by blood of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a federally recognized Native American tribe.

THE FILE ROOM
by Kara Hodo

My supervisor gave me a pocket-sized flashlight on my first day in the file room. There was an occasional power failure down there in the basement—happened just last week, he said—and I might need the light.

“We’ve been meanin’ to get the electricity upgraded, but the economy bein’ what it is…”

He let his voice trail off meaningfully in the way most people do when they don’t know much about the economy but talk about it anyway. I nodded in pretended sympathy.

I looked at my new boss. Everything about him seemed to be average. He was middle age, average height, and with a paunch that suggested indulgence in fast food. If I were to describe him to a police sketch artist, the finished drawing could be just about anybody.

And then he handed me my first stack of files.

“There’ll be more down there, in the corner, young man,” he told me. “But you can add these.”

He shoved the new files into my arms without further preamble, and I staggered a little under their weight. I am not exactly buff, but what I lack in strength, I make up for in spunk. Still, if there were more where these came from, I would be really earning my paycheck.

That was fine with me. I needed the distraction, and who knew? Maybe if I worked hard enough in the basement file room over my summer internship, the company would remember me favorably and decide to offer me a job after graduation. That was my hope, anyway. But for now, at least, my supervisor didn’t seem concerned about my hopes.

“Stairs are through there.” He waved a careless hand toward a door at the back of the room. “We’ll see about getting’ you a key, but until then, you’ll have to come to me for it.”

I expressed my understanding.

He glanced again at the stack of files in my arms, up to my chin, and suddenly seemed to have pity on me. “Leave those here for today. You can come back for them later. There’s plenty down there to work on in the meantime.”

I gratefully put the heavy files back where he had gotten them.

The supervisor took a ring of keys out of his pocket that jangled against each other as he unlocked the door. Then he reached into a pocket of his shirt and drew out his own undersized flashlight. He smiled and shone it into my eyes, as if it were a joke we were both in on. I blinked rapidly.

“Bright for a little thing, ain’t it, son? Try yours.”

He flashed me what may have been meant to be another joking smile, though with the glare of the concentrated beam of the flashlight between us and with the even harsher glare of the fluorescent lights overhead, it somehow translated more as a devilish sneer.

I fumbled in my own shirt pocket for the flashlight that he had given me and hit the switch. It flickered for a second but shone out brightly after that.

Through for now with his little joke, the supervisor tucked his flashlight away again and held the door open for me. We descended together toward the basement floor. The stairs were metal and clanged under our feet, and he warned me to hang onto the rail. “They’re a little steep, and there’s a good few of ‘em. You’ll always want to watch your step.”

The basement floor was as industrial-feeling and neglected as the stairs leading down to it. The walls and floor were concrete, and I was reminded of a warehouse or airplane hangar, though in reality, it only housed filing cabinets. They lined the walls and marched down the center of the room, forming a maze. Lights high up in the ceiling cast everything in a too-bright glare.

My supervisor showed me the ladder I could use to reach the highest drawers. “You’ll always want to watch your step,” he reminded me a second time.

He showed me the piles of loose files on the basement floor. They were heaped together in numerous stacks—the highest one being at least as tall as me—and I figured they were in no particular order. I had the odd feeling that they resembled crouching monsters.

The boss gave me a few more instructions and said his goodbyes. “You should be fine down here. I changed the batteries on your flashlight just this morning, so if anything were to happen, you’d not be lost. I’ll be back in an hour to check on you, but if you get to needin’ anything, don’t be afraid to come back up.”

He smiled an encouraging smile, though when he flicked the flashlight on again and held it under his chin—another stupid joke, apparently—his face seemed twisted into something more clownish than human. I turned away because the chill that felt like fingers caressing my spine was uncomfortable when I looked at him.

*****

For the next two days, I worked steadily. I had been right that the files stacked in the corner weren’t in any kind of order, and the ones I found already filed away were often out of order themselves. It was a big job, but I didn’t mind it too much…at first.

I needed time to think, and the file room was the perfect place for that. It was silent except for the echo of my footsteps when I walked and the constant ticking of a clock somewhere in the cavernous space, though I hadn’t found where it was yet. The only other sound was the frequent clang of the opening and shutting of the file drawers.

It wasn’t until the third day that things went south.

I had just finished another stack of files and had begun reorganizing an entire section of the cabinets, letters A-E. I was on the ladder thumbing through a drawer that would have been just out of my reach without it.

That was when the electricity went off. No warning. No flicker. A sense of panic gripped me for a moment until I remembered the small flashlight I still had in my pocket. With one hand still holding the ladder, I reached for the flashlight with the other. I turned it on, and it was indeed bright, but the darkness still seemed to press down on me. The light only succeeded in illuminating the space in some nightmarish way, to make shadows dance and the files on the floor seem even more like monsters than before.

I dropped the file I had been holding indiscriminately into the drawer and stepped carefully down off the ladder. Before, I had thought I had developed a good sense of this subterranean space. Now, though, in the darkness, it was like a different and unfamiliar world. The size and dimensions of the place seemed strange to me, and I suddenly wasn’t sure which direction I had come from. I put one hand against the wall for a point of reference and groped toward what I hoped was the stairs.

My boss had been right that first day when he said it would be dark in the event of a power outage. Bright as it had seemed upstairs, the beam of my flashlight barely cut through the gloom.

Suddenly, I heard a noise.

I was distracted and probably wouldn’t have heard it at all except that the room was so quiet, and in the dark, my hearing was sharpened. I was so startled that I nearly dropped the flashlight but managed to maintain my grip on it. I swung the beam around wildly as I turned toward the noise.

“Hello?” I shouted, but the only answer was the echo of my own voice thrown back at me. Nonetheless, I was certain that I was not alone in that creepy basement.

I couldn’t tell from which direction the noise had come. In this concrete box of a room with all its open spaces, sound bounced like a rubber ball. Still, it wasn’t really as big down here as it sometimes seemed, and I felt confident that whoever made that sound, I would find them. It was probably just my boss playing yet another stupid prank. Yes, that was it. The thought made me more angry than scared. He seemed to delight in making me uncomfortable.

There! Another sound. My heart felt like it was trying to jump out of my chest.

Any doubt I’d had of where the sound was coming from was alleviated.  It came from a little alcove formed by two low and oddly shaped filing cabinets. I hadn’t been back there much because it housed letters T-Z and was so far from the section I’d been working on that I’d left it for later. The place wasn’t untended now, though.

I stopped in my tracks as I rounded the corner and shined my flashlight before me. I was shocked by what I saw in the light.

 A little girl was crouched on the filthy, dusty floor, surrounded by stacks of loose files. She looked to be about eight and wore a full-skirted, baby-blue dress—a Cinderella dress—concealing all but the silvery tips of her shoes. She had a wan, pale face and white-blonde hair curled around her ears. She was strangely doll-like, as if her skin were made of porcelain and her hair were spun wax. She didn’t seem to notice me but plucked another dusty file off a stack and turned as if to reach for one of the cabinet drawers.

“Who let you down here?” I demanded. “This is not a safe place for little girls. Not for anybody, actually. I’ll take you back upstairs. Do your parents work there?”

She startled at first, falling back from the drawer she’d been about to open like it was a cookie jar and she’d been caught eyeing it before dinner. But when she looked at me, there was no surprise written on her face. Her eyes were calm and knowing, like she’d been expecting me for a while.

“Here, take my hand,” I said as I held my arm out in front of me. “You shouldn’t be down here. Let me take you back where you belong.”

If my exasperation had any effect on her, she didn’t show it. She tilted her head, with that knowing look again, and answered just as sweetly as if I had been complimenting her dress on Sunday morning. “I’m here to help you.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t need your help.” I reached down and snatched the file in her hands away from her. “You’re just making a mess. I’m pretty sure they didn’t hire you to do this job. How old are you, anyway?”

I turned to the closest cabinet with the file in hand. I wasn’t sure if it was the correct cabinet but felt like finding something to slam. I didn’t get the chance because, in a flash, the little girl was between me and the drawer. The slit I had opened clanged shut.

“Don’t do that!” She stood with her arms out like I’d been headed for the edge of a cliff, and her blue eyes were wide and earnest. The smell of roses clung to her skin, tickling my nose.

“How did you move so fast?” I asked, and suddenly a fear gripped me.

Ignoring that, she said, “You can’t open that drawer. These ones are mine.” She made a motion to encompass the entire alcove.

I pushed aside my uneasiness about her and narrowed my eyes. “I want to know who you are and who sent you here. Tell me.”

“These ones aren’t yours. You wouldn’t like them.”

“What are you talking about? Are you talking about this file cabinet? Fine, it’s yours. Now let’s get you out of here.”

I frowned. This didn’t make sense. There was no way anyone let this kid down here knowingly and that left me with a million questions, but we could only seem to talk at cross-purposes. If this was my boss’s idea of a joke, it was a very bad one. Yet somehow I had the feeling that this was something more…something…strange.

The girl spoke again. “I know all about filing. You leave this part to me, and I’ll get it done just the way you want it. But don’t open these drawers. Whatever you do, never, ever open them!”

I sighed loudly. She wanted to play games; well, what could one expect from a kid. “At least tell me your name.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

I wanted to ask more, but she must have heard something I didn’t because she pushed past me and bolted away into the darkness where even the beam of my flashlight couldn’t reach. Nothing remained of her but the lingering scent of roses.

And then I realized why she ran. I heard the voice of my supervisor calling me. I went forward slowly to meet him, his voice guiding me through what had felt before like an impenetrable maze.

He stood near the foot of the stairs with his flashlight in hand. “Got dark fast, didn’t it?” he said, in his usual, half-joking way.

I decided that enough was enough. “Listen. I know you like to play jokes but this one isn’t funny. And it isn’t safe for the girl.”

“Son, I think the dark addled your brain. No idea what you’re babbling on about. Come back upstairs and we’ll find you something else besides filing to do for now.”

I glanced back down the long, shadowy rows of filing cabinets nervously. “I don’t know. I think maybe we should check around first. Make sure it’s all clear.”

The supervisor looked at me strangely. “Clear of what? Ain’t nobody down here but you.”

Was it true that he really didn’t know about the little girl down in the basement? Could his reaction really be an honest one?

I could have told him about the girl. I should have. But the words stuck in my throat. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to mention her. She scared me in some very real way. But I had the odd premonition that all was not as it seemed.

I decided I would never return to that basement.
I worked upstairs for a few hours. The electricity wouldn’t be fixed until the following day, so I was free to go home until tomorrow.

At home, I thought long and hard about the situation. I checked the mail and found more bills to add to my already large pile. I sat on the couch, opening envelopes and feeling tense. I knew I had even more bills that would automatically be deducted from my checking account.

I thought some more.

It came down to this: which was I more afraid of? The strange girl—who perhaps only existed in my mind—or getting evicted and winding up on the street? I needed money.

In the end, practical matters overrode superstitious ones. I would go back to work in the morning. The electricity would be back on by then so the basement would be well-lit.

Everyone knew that things were always safer in the light.

*****

The little girl was true to her word. She was there again the next morning, standing at the mouth of the alcove with her arms crossed like a dedicated watchdog. When I peeked behind her, the stacks of files that had been on the floor were all gone.

She frowned at me.

I frowned back at her. “So we’re going to be co-workers, is that it?”

It was by far the weirdest coworker situation I had ever been in, but it continued that way for days, and I kept my mouth shut about it. I never saw the girl enter or leave the file room and I mostly avoided the T-Z alcove, but anytime I did venture back there, she was there, too, either crouching on the floor amidst a stack of files like the first time or standing on guard with her little arms crossed, watchdog-style. Her strangely formal dress never deviated. The drawers were always tightly closed.

Sometimes I tried to make conversation with her. To ask her all the same questions I did when we first met, but I got all the same answers. She was there to help me, she said, and never, ever open the drawers that were hers. “Don’t even think about it!”

But it was hard to push the thought from my mind when I could hear the drawers in her territory clanging throughout the day. Even when the file room was silent, I was acutely aware of her presence there with me, like the hard concrete walls were unable to absorb her memory and bounced it back at me in a never-ending echo.

At other times, I turned around thinking I smelled her roses, only to find nothing there at all. Even at night in my own bed, when I closed my eyes to sleep, that doll-like little girl was still there, deep in that concrete box under the office building, with those cabinets she guarded so carefully.

I wanted to try out an idea, but it wasn’t until Friday of the next week that I got the opportunity.  
It was an hour before closing time, and I hadn’t heard the clang of the little girl working in the alcove all day. And if she wasn’t there…

I glanced both ways before slipping from my post.

The route to the back alcove had become familiar to me, and I traced my way there as easily as if my feet acted of their own accord. Just as I’d thought, the girl was nowhere in sight. I sniffed the musty basement air and detected no hint of roses.

I stood there for a minute, eyeing the cabinets. They looked so innocuous that it felt ridiculous. These cabinets were no different from the others, besides being shaped a little oddly and being lower to the ground, where the kid could reach them all. Letting a child scare me away from such a regular, everyday thing was beyond stupid. She probably got a kick out of knowing she’d made me such a coward.

Even so, my neck prickled as I stepped closer—closer than I’d ever been to those odd cabinets. I could feel my pulse in my temple.

I reached out with a rebellious hand and grasped the handle. There was no jolt of electricity, no warning voice to order me away. It was cold, lifeless metal and nothing more.

Nothing to be afraid of. It gave me a burst of bravado. Wouldn’t that little brat be mad when she found out I’d discovered her ‘secret drawers’ were full of nothing but moldering papers?

I yanked the handle.

The shriek was so sudden and so terrible that I couldn’t have recognized it as my own.

I stumbled backwards from the open drawer and would have kept going until I hit the wall or another filing cabinet, but the little girl was there as if she’d materialized out of the darkness. She grasped my arms with her fingernails.

“Why did you do that?” she sobbed. “I told you not to open them!” Even her tears smelled not like salt but like roses.

“What was that!” I roared. “What is in there?”

“You know what it was! I tried to tell you, but now you know what it was!” She was shouting back at me just as loudly as I had shouted at her.

I tried to fight my way free of her, but either I was weak with shock or she was unnaturally strong, because she held on.

My voice became high with panic. “Who are you? What are you? How long have you known about what’s in that drawer?”

“I’ve always known! You knew, too! Don’t you remember? Don’t you still remember?”

And suddenly, with her pale little porcelain face looking up at me and her too-cold hands gripping my arms, I did remember, just as the electricity went out.

*****

My mom never told me much about what she did for a living. When I asked, her answers were always vague. “I help families,” was her most usual explanation, and I didn’t think to question it much further than that. That was just what grown-ups did, help people. And my mommy must be good at helping people at her job because she always hugged me extra tight when she came home from work.

I don’t remember why she brought me with her that day. I was out of school for some reason and maybe the babysitter couldn’t come. I don’t think I minded. I sat in her office in the front room and played with my plastic handcuffs. Mom didn’t ask much except that I stay where she could see me and didn’t wander around too much. “Especially not in the back,” she said. “That’s just for grown-ups.”

So I sat across from her in a big chair and played. But then a call came in, and she was on the phone for a long time. I tried to say something to her, but she put a finger in her other ear and turned away slightly. That was when I slipped down out of the chair and through the door. I left it open just a little so she could see me.

I wandered around for a while in the front room, bored. The carpet was deep and the walls were dark wood panels. The scent of roses clung to everything, and I sneezed. All the doors to all the other rooms were locked, so I couldn’t tell if they were any more interesting.

But hadn’t Mommy mentioned other rooms, in the back? Rooms just for grown-ups?

I glanced at her office door one last time, but it hadn’t moved.

I’m not sure how long I walked until I found the metal door. A cleaning cart like the one the janitor pushed around at school was parked to one side of it and a ring of keys hung out of the lock, but no one was in sight.

The door was heavy, but I pushed it with all my strength, and it opened wide enough for me to wedge myself through. It closed behind me with a boom.

The room was dark at first, until I moved, and then bright lights clicked on in the ceiling. I found myself blinking in a small, square room. Another door led off into an adjoining room, though that door was closed. The rosy scent that permeated the rest of the building was replaced with a strong chemical smell. There was no furniture except for a long table on wheels with a sheet draped over it. A drain was in the center of the concrete floor so that everything seemed to slope toward it, and lining the walls all around were gray cabinets. They were like the cabinets at school and in Mommy’s office, where adults kept their special papers. That must be why this room was only for grown-ups.

I crossed over to one of the drawers and looked at it curiously. It was on eye-level with me and was really big for a drawer, but when I reached out and pulled the handle, it slid open easily enough. A rush of cold air met me.

For a moment, all I could do was stare. The face in the drawer was pale and crusted with a thin sheen of frost. The shoulders were bare. The lips were pulled back from the teeth and the eyes were open, staring.

I screamed. My foot must have kicked against the drawer as I fell backwards from the cabinet because it slammed shut with a clang. But in falling back from the first cabinet, I collided with another. I looked, and a second cabinet had fallen open beside me. Another cold face. When I tried to stand up straighter, my head banged against a third drawer. They were all around me, cold and screaming and dead.

I bolted for the door that led back to where Mommy was and threw myself against it, but it was too heavy. I was trapped here with the screaming bodies in the drawers, only they were crying now, too, for their mothers. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

I staggered back from the immovable metal door, but my foot caught on something, and I fell yet again into the wheeled table. My fingers curled around the white sheet for balance as the table tipped toward me.

But it didn’t fall all the way, and when it righted itself, I was bent halfway over it. I had thought the table was empty, but now, with the sheet gone, I could see that it bore its own load: A little, doll-like girl my own age, in a blue tulle dress with a full skirt, like a princess. She was fast asleep and pale, but she wasn’t supposed to be here, either, and I fell over her in relief, sobbing. She was the only one not in a drawer.

“Mommy!” I cried into the girl’s hair. “Mommy! Mommy!”

*****

The supervisor found him there after closing time. He was in a heap in a back corner alcove, alone. The electricity had gone out, and his flashlight was in his hand. In the flickering beam, he could be seen curled on the floor around a stack of loose files. His eyes were open and staring, but all he said, over and over, was “Mommy!”