THE PACKAGE ARRIVED FOR A NAME NO ONE AT THE OFFICE RECOGNIZED
The delivery guy shoved a dusty box into my hands asking for a ‘Mr. Elias Finch’ who supposedly worked here at the firm. I blinked at him, then scanned the blank faces across the rows of cubicles behind me; everyone just shrugged dismissively in response, a strange, heavy quiet instantly falling over the normally bustling afternoon office floor. The old cardboard felt rough, brittle, and surprisingly cold under my fingertips as I took hold of the package, its edges and corners significantly worn and soft with age.
“Elias… Finch?” Sarah from Accounting finally whispered nervously from her desk a few feet away, her eyes wide and fixed intensely on the odd package now resting squarely on my desk, dramatically dropping her ceramic coffee cup with a sudden, startling clatter onto the hard floor beside her chair. Hot, dark liquid instantly spread across the linoleum tile, a thin stream of steam rising slowly as its familiar bitter aroma briefly filled the stagnant office air with its acrid scent. “Nobody named Elias has worked here, Emily. Not for *years*. Not for *decades*. Why on earth is that box here now today?”
Mr. Abernathy, our imposing senior partner who usually didn’t seem to notice anything happening beyond the comforting glow of his dual computer monitors, stood up abruptly from his large corner desk at the back of the room, his face pale and set like a stone mask of fear. “Give me that box, Emily. Just hand it over to me right now. Just leave it right here with me and please, for your own sake, walk away from it immediately and don’t look back at it.” His voice was tight, strained, completely unlike his usual booming, jovial tone that normally echoed through the silent office halls.
I hesitated for just a moment, ignoring his desperate plea and Sarah’s increasingly panicked stare fixed intently on me, looking down closely at the faded, almost completely illegible shipping label pasted crookedly on the side; the date, though smudged and worn almost smooth, clearly read late 1998. What could possibly be locked inside a plain package sent to a seemingly nonexistent employee from over two long decades ago, showing up out of nowhere like this after all this time? It smelled faintly of mildew and something else sharp, metallic, like old pennies or perhaps just rust from something decaying inside its walls. As I slowly turned the strange package over in my slightly trembling hands, a small, tarnished brass key suddenly fell out from a carefully taped flap underneath the bottom edge, landing silently with a dull clink on the floor near my waiting feet.
Just as I knelt to pick it up, Mr. Abernathy shouted, “Don’t touch that key!”
👇 Full story continued in the comments…Ignoring Mr. Abernathy’s panicked cry, I scooped the small, cold brass key from the floor. It felt heavy and ancient in my palm, the metal cool against my skin. A strange sense of defiance, mixed with an unnerving curiosity, surged through me. Why were they so afraid of this old box and a key?
“Emily, *please!*” Abernathy pleaded, his voice strained, almost a whimper. He took a step towards my desk, his usual imposing posture replaced by a trembling vulnerability I’d never witnessed. Sarah was openly weeping now, covering her mouth with one hand, her eyes still fixed on the package like it was a venomous serpent.
But I couldn’t stop myself. My fingers found the small, corroded keyhole hidden beneath the damaged shipping label. It was stiff, resistant, as if unwilling to give up its long-held secret. With a quiet click that echoed loudly in the sudden silence of the office, the lock mechanism turned. The smell from the box intensified – mildew, rust, and now something else, faint but undeniably unsettling, like old earth or decay.
Taking a deep, shaky breath, I lifted the brittle cardboard lid.
Inside, packed tight with brittle, yellowed newspaper from 1998, were not documents or tools, but personal effects. A thin, leather wallet, empty and cracked with age. A small, tarnished silver locket, its intricate carving worn smooth, refusing to spring open when I pressed the clasp. And beneath these, wrapped in a piece of faded, stained silk, was a single, small, scuffed leather child’s shoe. It looked like something a toddler might wear, size tiny, the sole worn thin.
A collective gasp filled the air behind me. Abernathy stumbled back, crashing into a filing cabinet, sending a cascade of folders to the floor. Sarah let out a strangled sob.
“No,” Abernathy whispered, his voice a broken rasp. “Not… not the shoe.”
My blood ran cold. The items weren’t just relics of a past employee; they were anchors to a specific, terrible event. The newspaper packing dated to late 1998, the same date on the box. The fear wasn’t just about a forgotten employee; it was about what *happened* to Elias Finch, and what he left behind. The child’s shoe. The empty wallet. The locket that wouldn’t open.
Abernathy slowly pushed himself away from the filing cabinet, his face a mask of abject terror and grief. “Elias Finch didn’t just leave, Emily,” he said, his voice barely audible but carrying immense weight. “He disappeared. Just… vanished. The police found his car, his apartment empty. There were rumors… terrible rumors. About a client, a tragedy. This box… it was supposed to go to his next address. But it was lost somehow, misplaced. It was packed *that week*. Nobody ever heard from him again. And that…” He gestured towards the small shoe in the box, his hand shaking violently. “That belonged to little Lily. The client’s daughter. She disappeared too, the very same day Elias vanished. We… we always suspected… but there was no proof. Until now.”
The air in the office, already thick with dread, felt suddenly suffocating. The package wasn’t just a delivery error from decades past. It was a ghost returning, carrying a silent, horrifying confession in a worn cardboard box. The secret they had buried for over twenty years, the disappearance of Elias Finch and a little girl named Lily in the same chilling incident, was now sitting on my desk, undeniable and terrifying. The package had arrived for a name no one recognized, but it contained the forgotten truth everyone in the office desperately wished had stayed buried.