The White Dress in the Elevator

Hook：

A former elevator repairman turned night-shift security guard keeps seeing his wife—who died in a fire—“coming back from Floor -2” on the cameras and inside the elevator. And every time, the one being dragged away with her… is his only daughter, a little girl on the autism spectrum.

---

Synopsis：

On a rainy night, in an office building near the city ring road.
Former elevator repairman A Jian has switched careers and now works the night shift as a security guard. By day he picks up trash and registers visitors; by night he just tries to get by, raising his daughter Lanlan, who is on the autism spectrum.

Three years ago, an elevator fire took his wife’s life.
From that day on, he has lived with one crushing thought for three whole years:

“If I’d checked the elevator earlier, she wouldn’t have died.”

Until, one early morning—

The elevator in the building where he’s on duty suddenly stops on a floor that doesn’t exist: “-2”.
On the monitors, his daughter, wearing those pink sneakers, walks alone into an elevator marked “Out of Service.”
Inside the elevator car, a woman in a white dress, her face burned beyond recognition, reaches out a hand and beckons to her.

On the building’s live security feed, there is no one.
But on the footage from A Jian’s own home camera, it’s perfectly clear:

— That is his wife.
— That is the “dead soul” who died in the elevator fire three years ago.

To get his daughter back, he steps into the out-of-service maintenance elevator and presses a button that should have stopped working long ago.
The elevator drops on its own, the numbers falling past “1,” all the way down to “-2.”

The doors won’t open. The surroundings dissolve into darkness and sludge.
He is forced to walk through every second of that fire all over again:
the white smoke, the tongues of flame, his wife trapped inside, the elevator doors that wouldn’t close, the endless CPR… and that one sentence he’s repeated in his nightmares a thousand times:

“It’s my fault she’s dead.”

Chapter 1

It was one in the morning, rain coming down outside, when Jian stepped into the easternmost building of the complex in his black security uniform after the night shift.

The building was supposed to have two elevators.
The one on the left had been under maintenance forever, with an “Out of Service” sign standing in front of the doors.

Jian stopped in front of the working elevator on the right and stared at the display, his tired eyes suddenly tense.

The number on the screen was “-2.”

He froze.

As far as he knew, this complex didn’t even have a second basement level.

Maybe the display was glitching.

He was still trying to make sense of it when the “-2” flipped to “1.”
The doors slid open in front of him.

No one was inside.

Jian looked at the empty car, hesitated, took a deep breath, then stepped in.

He hit the button for sixteen. The elevator started to rise smoothly. He kept his eyes on the doors, willing the ride to be over quickly.

Then the car gave a sudden jolt.

It wasn’t violent, but it was enough to send a cold sweat down his back. Before he could steady himself, the light above his head began to flicker.

In that stuttering light, the metal doors turned into a dim mirror. In the reflection, besides his own shape, he caught a blur of white standing right behind him.

Every time the light blinked, the white figure appeared, disappeared, then reappeared. Jian stared at it, heart hammering, breath coming short. He forced himself to turn around, inch by inch.

No one was there.

The light steadied.

With a loud clunk, the doors in front of him suddenly slid open. The sound made him jump, his nerves already strung tight. He glanced at the display.

Sixteenth floor.

He unlocked his front door and stepped inside. At the entryway he crouched down to change into his house slippers.

As soon as he bent over, he saw them.

Dark footprints all over the floor.

They started at the door, trailed across the living room, looped around once, then came back to the entryway and stopped in front of the shoe rack.

Jian followed the trail with his eyes to the rack. Only one pair of shoes was out of place there, a pair of pink sneakers his daughter wore all the time.

He took the sneakers down and checked the soles. They were smeared with black sludge. Judging from the size of the prints on the floor, they could only have come from these shoes.

He pushed open his daughter’s bedroom door and looked toward the bed.

His five-year-old girl was sound asleep, breathing slow and even.

Seeing her safe, Jian finally let himself relax. He was about to back out of the room when he heard her mumbling in her sleep, the words broken and soft.

“Mom… elevator… cold…”

He left her room and pulled the door shut behind him, quiet as he could. When he turned, his eyes landed on a framed family photo on the TV cabinet in the living room.

In the picture, his wife was smiling brightly at the camera, at the man now standing there in silence.

By seven in the morning, Jian had breakfast ready. He woke his daughter, helped her wash her face and brush her teeth, then sat down at the table with her.

“Dad, red, yellow, and blue together, what color is that?”

Lana was on the spectrum, and her words didn’t always come out clearly, but Jian understood her. He took a bite of his breakfast sandwich, thought it over, then shook his head at her.

“No idea.”

“White. Mom’s favorite.”

At her answer, Jian put the food down and let out a quiet sigh. Something glinted at the corners of his eyes.

After breakfast, he dropped Lana off at preschool, then rushed across town to work at the office building near the beltway where he did security.

Besides sitting at the front desk and logging visitors who came into the building, his other main task was doing rounds on every floor.

Close to noon, he finished his morning rounds and waited by the elevator on the top floor, ready to ride down for lunch.

Staring at the doors, Jian couldn’t help thinking about that blurry white figure he’d seen in the elevator the night before. He had no idea if he’d just imagined it, or if something had really been standing behind him.

The elevator doors in front of him slid open, cutting off his thoughts.
The car was empty.

He hesitated for a second, drew a long breath, then stepped inside.

Paid Content

游客，Hello! To view the hidden content of this post, please purchase access from the author.80Coin

立即购买