The Stairwell That Stayed Wet

My floor at the Marwick Hotel was quiet until conference season, and even then the worst damage was usually coffee in the lifts and someone sick in an ice bucket. So when I found a hand-sized puddle in the north stairwell on Tuesday morning, I mopped it without thinking.

By noon, the same puddle had reappeared on the landing above.

I checked for leaks. The ceiling was dry. No burst pipe, no dripping sprinkler, no guest hauling pool towels upstairs. The water had no smell, no color, no temperature. It soaked into the mop head and disappeared, then returned two flights up as if promoted.

On Wednesday, it climbed from the sixth floor to the eighth. On Thursday, it reached the tenth and spread just enough for me to notice a shape at its edge: five small indentations, like the print of a child's bare foot.

I told reception. They told maintenance. Maintenance put up a yellow sign and then refused to go into the stairwell after dark because one of them had heard splashing above him while the cameras showed empty steps.

That evening, the general manager asked me to handle one last check before I left. He said it casually, but his tie was crooked and he kept glancing at the service corridor behind me.

The puddle was waiting on the roof access landing. The steel door above it stood slightly open, beating once every few seconds in the wind. Beyond it the rooftop was slick with fresh rain, air units humming like trapped insects.

A little girl in a yellow swim cap stood at the far parapet with both hands on the ledge.

I called out before sense caught up. She turned. Water streamed from her hair, her sleeves, the cuffs of a blue floral dress old enough to have belonged in a family photo rather than a hotel. Her face was grey with the softness of something left underwater too long.

"They still use my room," she said. "But nobody tells them where the pool used to be."

The roof access door slammed shut behind me. When I spun around, the wet footprints were already crossing toward it from the other side, as if someone inside the stairwell had begun climbing down.