Debt Paid

Kaia knew her job was boring. It was intended to be. Secretary at a midsize law-firm wasn’t exactly anyone’s dream job. Most of her job was sitting. And waiting. And every so often, fetching coffee for the people that actually did work in the building, as they loved to remind her. Still, despite the jeers of her colleagues and the increased risk of death by boredom, Kaia liked her job. The law offices were in an old building, so old the whole building shook whenever the wind blew, and sometimes she liked to wander the halls on her break. After about a year of working there, she had found an old associates office that had been boarded up, up on the third floor, set a ways apart from the rest of offices, even on the third floor. Trying to peer behind the boards became an impossible endeavor and soon she had abandoned her search in favor of returning to her afternoon shift at the desk of death.

Not long after, when one of the partners, who’s name she could never remember, had asked her about where she got off to on her breaks, she had shared. Told him about the old floors, the dusty rafters, and most of the all, the mysterious boarded up room on the third floor. His reaction had been the most peculiar thing about the whole affair thus far. When she mentioned the room with all the boards, he’d gone white. His hands had started to shake and his faced lost color faster than she could blink. She inquired about his strange reaction, but he dismissed her, waving it off with a gesture and simply warning her - stay away.

As it usually goes with that phrase, the apparent fear and warning only increased her curiosity but, for a while, she was content to sit at her desk, pick at her lunch, and wonder about what was behind the door. It wasn’t until months later, amidst a storm of chaos and misery, did the curiosity come back. And it came back with a vengeance.

The morning of January 27th had started like any other. The morning walk was the same, down the same streets, with the same traffic. Her morning breakfast, two eggs scrambled and shoved in a travel container, went the same as it always did with her same morning coffee, black with two sugars. The day at the desk began the same, getting there early and unlocking the old building, having to jam the ridiculously small key into a unnecessarily enormous lock and shoving down to push past the rust. Sweeping away the old, dusty floors and attempting to bring light into the ancient entryway. As associates trickled in, they gave her the same obligatory wave or hello, none really noticing her there, but that was okay. She organized schedules a bit in the morning and then proceeded to her lunch break.

The salad she’d thrown together the night before was, per usual, saturated with dressing and practically inedible but she set about poking around anyway, hoping to overturn maybe one dry piece of lettuce or a non-drenched carrot. It was then when her mind, from some forgotten depth, reminded her of the mysterious third floor room. She’s not sure what brought it on. Perhaps it was the wind, rattling through the high rafters and shaking the floors of the raised levels. Perhaps it was the biter tang of the dressing from her salad, reminding her of the smell of mildew that permeated the entire upper level. Perhaps it was nothing, just a passing thought she became fixated on. Nonetheless, fixated she was, but for the moment content to do what she’d been doing for the last four months. Sitting and thinking. It was only when she heard a crash that she bothered to look up from her lunch at all, and when she did, she knew it was going to be a long day.

The last time Clare, Michigan had seen a blizzard, had been 1992. It had snowed for three days, and when the wind had finally settled, half the town was in ruins. But, then, no one had been prepared. As soon as those sirens went off, every person in the whole town knew exactly what to do. Kaia sighed. Rising from her seat to go corral the oh so busy lawyers away from their computers and into the basement was never an easy task but once or twice a year when they ran the drills, it was obligatory. So, all together they’d crowd. Packed together in a old concrete closet wasn’t comfortable for anyone, but it did give Kaia more time to ponder the third floor. She wondered briefly how the building had survived the last blizzard, and it occurred to her that perhaps the boards were just poor-man’s scaffolding. That wouldn’t explain the reaction though. Why be terrified of old scaffolding?

The concrete closet offered little answers. And she had a feeling the associates she was in with wouldn’t have many either. Sighing, she resigned herself to waiting out the sirens, praying for whatever passed for structural integrity in the building to survive.

Hours passed, crammed into the small space, imagination the only thing keeping her company as the associates worked on their phones or laptops. By the time the storm had passed, and the sirens had died down, she had convinced herself there must be a dead body behind the boards, or something even more terrifying. She couldn’t help her thoughts, sporadic and crazed, the hours in the small room going to her brain. Thus, as the associates filed back to their offices, readying to pack up and brave the storm, she decided. Her short walk home clearly wouldn’t be feasible until the sidewalks were clearer and it was the first time she’d really cursed her decision to not ever buy a car. She could have called her parents, or her best friend, who worked a few miles away, but the empty building felt relaxing. And more than that, it fueled her curiosity.

Watching the last suit file out the door with a customary good night, doing her regular rounds of lock-up, and gathering what menial things she brought to work, the staircase was calling her name. There was no way it was safe to climb, the replacement staircase on the other side of the building had been built with good reason. But, it remained the only way to access the old third floor and so she set about it, watching her step, careful not to fall through the many cracks in the old wood.

It wasn’t the most remarkable floor ever, just a row of old offices, long abandoned due to safety concerns and cleared of any importance. The floorboards creaked with every step, warning her of the next. Unperturbed, Kaia continued on. Determination and curiosity overwhelmed any fear she might have normally felt, adrenaline pushing her forward. It was quite the trek to the old boarded up door, set ostensibly apart from the rest of the floor, clearly designed to not be disturbed. Turning to look for something to tear the boards down with, a glint of metal caught her eye.

Shifting her gaze, a dusty plaque hung next to the mess of boards. Brushing aside the dust, a golden embossed name shone back at her, bold letters proudly declaring The Office of C.Tan, Executive. Weird. Maybe it hadn’t always been law offices, or at least whoever was in this office. More convinced now than before of her dead body theory, she began to tear at the boards with her bare hands. The wood was surprisingly finished and, despite her desperate tearing, she didn’t get a single splinter. The boards cracked under the force and soon the first had been stripped away, revealing a small hole in the door. Someone had already been here. Why did they board back up the door? It didn’t matter. It only strengthened her resolve and setting upon the next board, it only took a few moments for it to break apart, and like the last it showed another section of hole in the door. The next two boards fell easy and by now the hole was big enough for her to crawl through. Sitting back, she took a moment to examine what she had done. It was her last chance to turn back. Her last chance to keep the room in her imagination, keep it just out of reach. Last chance to escape the fear of the associate.

The room was dark. It shouldn’t have surprised her. The building was old, and there probably wasn’t electricity up in the oldest sections. Pulling her phone from her pocket, the flashlight clicked on in a burst of light. The light didn’t make the room any more impressive. Inside was just a single table, set in the middle of the floor, with what looked like an old box of files on top of it. She was a little disappointed. She probably shouldn’t have read so much into the fear of that one suit. It was probably just about the terrible conditions of the building.

Disappointment coursing through her, she resigned to open the box nonetheless. Perhaps there would be a dead body in it. The let-downs continued as the box was just full of cases, just like the ones that the associates worked everyday. Opening one of the files, she was surprised to find it written in a language she didn’t recognize. She set it aside, opening another to find it written in the same weird script. File after file joined a small stack as she looked for anything that she would be able to read, to understand.

It felt like forever before she hit the bottom of the box. The last file was piled behind her, hands covered in paper-cuts from her hopeless digging. Wiping her hands on her pants, the bloodstains bleeding in with the natural black, she sat back with a sigh, frustration coursing through her veins. She wished that she had thought this through better, not gotten her hopes up so high about what would be behind the door. Lifting a pile of files and meaning to drop them back into the box, the writing caught her eyes. The same old script, but transcribed next to it was what looked like English, fancy calligraphic English, but English nonetheless. Excited, the files in her hand fell to the ground with a thud, shaking the worn boards at her feet, but doing nothing to deter her excitement.

Opening the first file to her right, she pulled a pen from her hair and set about translating. It was certainly time consuming. She could have sat there for five minutes or five hours, the difference was nigh. The pages began to appear to her, shifting from unreadable nonsense to words, names, places, crimes, it was endless. The first file she made a sense of seemed to be an old case file. Must have been a law office, she thought, wry smile creeping across her lips. That would certainly explain the unintelligible script and secret language.

The file in front of her was a simple larceny case. Some men had broken into an old house down the street and stolen old jewelry from the owner. Some diamonds were the most valuable thing stolen but they were quickly recovered, apparently the thieves hadn’t been the sharpest knives and tried to pawn the stolen goods to an undercover cop. Real lucky break for those cops. The only really interesting thing about the file was the writing at the bottom. Written larger than the rest of the file, in bright red ink, were the words Creditum: Una Anima.

Flicking through the rest of the files, they all had the bright red writing at the bottom, although not all the words were the same. Where some said Una Anima, others read Duae Animae, but only one that she found read creditum expensum in plenus. These words were strange, even with the English characters they didn’t make sense. Something tugged at the back of her brain and she realized, they were in Latin. A quick translation app search provided her with more questions than answers. What kind of person demands debts paid in souls. Even more peculiar, what kind of person pays back that kind of debt.

Resolving to table her thoughts for another day, she went to close the files, all but the one labeled in plenus. She wished to look further into the case, hoping that the details would provide her with some clarity when the name on the front caught her eye. She had previously been ignoring the actual facts of the case but now there was a reason to indulge her curiosity. The name of the suit, the one who had warned her of the room, was displayed in proud letters on the front, his ID badge photo staring back at her.

She nearly dropped the file in surprise, quickly flipping it open, the ominous red words glaring at her. A murder case, how strange. As far as she knew, the suit had only been on the job for a couple of months, but according to the file, he’d worked this case a full six years ago. The murder was cut and dry, a jealous wife and cheating husband, although much like the larceny case, the police seemed to have caught a break. The gun, hidden in a dumpster two blocks from the wife’s apartment, still had her prints on it when they found it. Her conviction had been a slam dunk, the prosecutor should have been lauded, promoted, hell been a celebrity, yet this was the first she was hearing of his involvement. Perhaps the strangest thing was a sticky note someone had attached to the file after the fact. It read simply Defendant died March 17th 2014: Debt paid.