The Elevator’s Last Call

Old Zhou had repaired elevators for twenty-seven years, and nothing irritated him more than hearing that one was haunted.

Elevators were not haunted. Doors failed to close because the light curtain was dirty. A car went downstairs by itself because unstable voltage had driven a contactor mad. Footprints appearing from nowhere usually meant the cleaner had mopped and someone had stepped in water.

His final work order before retirement came from Magnolia Apartments on Changning Road: Elevator No. 2 stopped at the seventh floor every night at 2:17, opened for ten seconds, then closed.

The complainant, a Mr. Ge on the twelfth floor, insisted no one pressed the button. The camera showed an empty car.

Magnolia Apartments was more than thirty years old. Its lobby had dark-red terrazzo floors, and only half the mailboxes still had locks. The night receptionist, a plump young woman named Luo, yawned as she led Zhou to the machine room.

“Mr. Ge is a light sleeper,” she said. “Last year he complained about the water pump. Turned out to be his own refrigerator.”

“What about the cameras?”

“The one on seven is broken. The car camera works. No one’s inside.”

Zhou checked the contactors, controller, and brake until midnight. All were normal. Then he rode the elevator floor by floor, stopping finally at seven.

The doors opened on the smell of stewed radish. A dusty stroller stood at the far end of the corridor. Two pairs of men’s leather shoes sat outside 702. Apartment 704 had a cartoon doormat. A strip of red cloth was tied around the handle of 706.

As the doors began to close, something thudded inside 704, like a chair falling. A man swore, quietly but viciously.

Zhou held the door-open button.

The apartment went silent.

At 2:17 the following night, Zhou stood inside the car. The display climbed from one to seven. Right on time, the elevator stopped. No button had been pressed; the hall-call light was dark. The doors opened onto an empty corridor.

Ten seconds. Then they closed.

Zhou removed the seventh-floor call panel. The conduit was clean—no water, no chewed insulation. As he was about to replace it, he noticed an almost invisible fishing line tucked into a crack in the wall. It looped behind the panel and ran along the baseboard to the fire-hose cabinet.

On the cabinet’s side was a tiny copper ring. A gentle pull would short the call button for an instant.

The line did not lead to any apartment. It passed through a stairwell window and hung down toward the landing below.

At 2:17, a girl in a school uniform peered up from the half-landing. She was thin, her cuffs bleached from washing, the line clenched in one hand. When she saw Zhou, she turned to run.

“Don’t,” he said. “That line will cut your hand.”

She stopped.

Her name was Chen Xiaoman. She lived in 704. Every night after drinking, her father smashed things—sometimes the television, sometimes her mother. At 2:17, the convenience-store clerk downstairs came out to empty the rubbish. When the elevator opened, its chime rang through the corridor. Her father feared a neighbor might look out or call the police. At the sound of that single ding, he usually stopped.

“Why not call the police yourself?” Zhou asked.

Xiaoman looked at him. It was not the look of a sixteen-year-old, but of the cleaners in the property office who had gone six months without wages.

“We did,” she said.

Zhou asked nothing more.

He replaced the panel and hid the line again. Xiaoman crouched beside him as he tightened the final screw.

“This won’t last,” he said. “What if the line snaps?”

“I’ll reconnect it.”

“What if the elevator is shut down for maintenance?”

She had no answer.

The next morning, Zhou left the fishing line out of his report. He wrote: “Intermittent sticking in seventh-floor call circuit; corrected.” Then, claiming it was part of a fire-access inspection, he replaced the broken corridor camera. Luo complained about the trouble, so he charged it to maintenance.

That afternoon he visited the local police station. The officer asked whether he had photographs, a recording, evidence of injury. Zhou had none. The officer handed him a card for the neighborhood women’s service office and promised that a community policeman would visit.

“Don’t say the child told me,” Zhou said.

The officer looked up. “We know.”

That night, Zhou sat in the seventh-floor stairwell until half past two. At 2:09, glass shattered inside 704. At 2:11, someone cried. At 2:12, Zhou knocked.

The door opened a few inches. A shirtless man stood inside, the smell of liquor rolling through the gap.

“The elevator repairman?” The man recognized him.

“Yes.”

“Then why are you knocking on my door?”

Behind him, a woman bent to pick up glass. A fresh red mark crossed her cheekbone. Xiaoman stood by the kitchen, her right hand hidden behind her back, perhaps still gripping the line.

“Electrical leakage on this floor,” Zhou said. “I need to know if anyone here has had a shock.”

The man stared, then laughed. “Are you sick in the head?”

“Leakage kills.” Zhou put his toolbox down loudly. “I need to inspect the apartment now.”

A lock turned across the corridor. An old woman in 702 showed half her face. Another door opened at the far end. Zhou did not turn around. He kept his eyes on the shirtless man.

The elevator chimed.

Two police officers stepped out.

What followed was not satisfying. The man was held for only one night. The woman initially refused a medical examination. Relatives came one after another, saying the girl was in her second year of high school and the family must not break apart. After the father returned, he cursed in the corridor for three days.

In Zhou’s second month of retirement, Luo called. The mother and daughter from 704 had moved to Suzhou; no one knew the address. The man had smashed the hall-call panel, and the property office planned to report him.

“Does Elevator Two still stop at seven at night?” Zhou asked.

“No. You fixed it, didn’t you?”

“Oh. Right.”

After the call, Zhou watered the plants on his balcony. His toolbox still sat beneath the shoe cabinet under a thin layer of dust. While sorting his old uniform, he found a tiny copper ring in the pocket.

It was the old ring he had replaced when repairing the line. Its edge had been polished bright. He could not know how many times one small hand had pulled it.

He placed it in a drawer beside twenty-seven years’ worth of work permits.

Near the end of winter, he received an unsigned postcard. On the front stood a row of bare trees beside a river in Suzhou. The back held one sentence:

The elevator here is old, but it is quiet at night.

Zhou studied it for a long time, then tucked it beneath a flowerpot.

He still did not believe elevators could be haunted.

But some elevators knew exactly where they needed to stop.