In a dilapidated office building somewhere in Connecticut is one of the few elevators in the Western world that has a button labeled ‘13′ amongst its choices of floors. If you enter after midnight, crawling through the loosely boarded up window on the South side of the building, you will find the elevator doors standing open, with soft florescent lighting and muzak spilling from it, even though nothing else in the whole of the building seems to have power.

You can, if you choose, pick through the debris of raucous teenaged parties and office meetings past. The path seems to be mostly cleared through the broken, dirty, stained and vintage office furniture and burned out joints, cigarettes and crushed beer cans, all the way to the light in the door.

All of the buttons work in the elevator, and will take you to its designated floor–despite the creaking of the cables–though there seems to be a layer of grime on their plastic covers. All but the button labeled ‘13′, which seems to glow brightly.

No one’s quite sure if that one goes to the thirteenth floor. But there’s a story about a group of high school teenagers who had a party after their prom there, in the early nineties. A dare was made, and four of them piled into the rickety elevator, taking it to the thirteenth floor. When they came back down again, they were pale and shaking, but all of them swore they’d seen nothing more than a normal office floor, covered in dust and shadows. Two of them died in an accident on the car ride home that night. Another, three weeks later, took a bottle of pills from the medicine cabinet, climbed into a hot bath, slit her wrists and dropped her hair dryer into the water with her. The fourth disappeared from the face of the planet two months later. None of them said anything of what they’d seen on the thirteenth level of the building, and when asked, would only ascertain (loudly, if necessary) that nothing had happened.

If you’re lucky, you’ll never know about it. Your life will be spent in the bliss that can only come from the ignorance of the dark horrors that scratch and gnaw at the edges of reality. You’ll never hear the dark whispers coming from the closet; never feel the cold chill creeping along your spine. You’ll never pause at a turn in the hallway because you know that if you look down it, you’ll see something that shouldn’t be there. Something that creeps, stalks, and skulks in the shadows. Something that, once it sees you, will never stop coming for you. It won’t come for you when you are sleeping. It wants you to know it’s there. It wants you to hear the relentless sound of its footsteps, the panting of its breath. It wants to smell your fear, to hear your whimper, and to see the horror on your face as it approaches.

If you’ve any sense at all, you won’t try to find it. You’ll never pay attention to the sounds. You won’t try to catch sight of those things that flit by the corner of your eye. Your ignorance will be your shield and your protection. Do not be overly curious; discount the sounds as the quirks of an old house, or the heating system, or any other excuse you can think of. Whatever you do, don’t believe. Because once you believe, they’ll become real. Once you inquire into their existence, they will solidify. And once you finally uncover them for what they are…

They’ll come for you.