Black Windows

So, in the break room in this library I worked at, one wall was completely covered with blinds that were always closed. One day, me and all the other teens working there are in this room, because we all took our breaks at the same time. I get the urge to see some sunlight, so I open the blinds.
The windows behind them were pitch black. As if they were painted. It's 3PM in June, the sun is shining, and the break room shares a wall with the kids book room, which has windows that see outside no problem. I point this out to everybody and we all realize that no one has ever opened those blinds, despite the fact that more than one person in the room had been there for 3+ years.
We all get just a little creeped out. Just a little; we work in this building, we're in a big group of people, and we've been in this room like a million times before. A girl (we can call her Becky) suggests that maybe the windows are just painted for some reason, and if we open them, we'll see the beautiful day outside.
So, this other coworker of mine (let's call him Chris) was the big man in the room. He says, "Yeah, I'll open it," walks right up, and does so. And we did not see a beautiful day. We saw an old, old room that none of us were aware of. It was so dusty, I doubt it'd seen a human touch in 40 years. Like, the whole room was grey it was so dusty.
And the room was, get this, filled with toys.
There was a big, ladybug-shaped sandbox. There was a bicycle. There was a pile of assorted train toys. There was a small stack of thin books, like kids books, that gave me one of those nasty, creepy feelings just looking at it. I was reminded of every eerie child I had ever seen in every movie. And I think everyone else was too, because we all looked at each other, either scared and confused or just scared.
Becky looks in, looks around in there, and says, "Hey, there's no door in this room." I remember her saying that distinctly. It's like a tape recording in my head, because everything so far was just weird, but that sentence is where it got creepy. The break room was separated from this creepy room by a wall with windows on it. Why on Earth would anybody wall off a bunch of kids toys and install windows that looked into the walled-off room?
It occurred to me at about this time that the light from the break room made it really easy to see into the toy room. Like it wasn't dark in there at all; it was perfectly lit. So why were the goddamned windows pitch black? Shouldn't the light have gone through them, and I should've been able to see the other room when I moved the blinds?
So I put my hand on one side of an open window and my head on the other side. Sure enough, I could see through it plain as day. I closed the window, and it was pitch black again. I pointed this out to everyone else, and they were completely baffled.
About that time, we realized our break had been over a few minutes ago, so we went back to the library proper. When we got there, our boss, who was a bit of a slave driver, got mad and asked why we were all late. Another co-worker, Rob, told her we found the weird room behind the windows in the break room.
Her response was, "Oh. That." and she dropped it. This was a woman who would lecture a roomful of people about the littlest thing, like if somebody left without writing on their sign-out sheet (never mind that our shifts were all predetermined, and she had the master document with all of them on it on her desk at all times). But when the whole building was at DEFCON 1, THAT woman didn't wanna talk about the room.
Some time later, we're all in the break room again, and someone who wasn't there last time wants to see it. I'm still creeped out, but it's one of those 'creeped outs' where you want to expose someone else to it, to make sure that fear is the proper response and you're not just crazy. So I say sure and open the blinds, and open an impossibly dark window.
And this guy looks around, and he's just having a normal, "We found a weird thing" reaction. You know, "Whoa." "Why is this here?" "This is cool." Stuff like that.
A minute or two later, Chris opens up another one, looks into it for a few minutes, then turns to me and goes: "Hey, this room... i-it was dusty as hell last time, right?"
I say, "Yeah?", because it was, and I see what he's getting at. So I open a window and look through myself.
The room is CLEAN. Like, spick-and-span. Perfectly clean. Mrs. Brady and Alice had been through this room.
When I say the room was 'cleaned', it was really just dusted. The dust was gone and everything was shiny and new, but the toys and that book pile were left in their haphazard positions. That's why it frightened us so bad; human beings organize when they clean, especially when what you're cleaning is a public building that you work at, which is the only way I could see that room being cleaned having a rational explanation.
I say so, and all the people who were there last time open windows and look through and have, again, minor freakouts. Chris shuts his window and goes, "I think I'm gonna end my break early today." Everyone in the room decides that's a good idea. We shut our windows, shut the blinds, and leave, all in a silence that no one wants to break.
On the way back, we pass a maintenance guy. Becky asks him, "Hey, what's with that walled-off room in the break room?" and he just stares at us with this expression on his face that's either shock or fear. Either way, it was strong. I guess Becky thought he was confused, because she then said, "The one with all the old toys and-" and he cut her off. "Don't- don't go in there, kids," he says and walks off.
I didn't work the next day, but I did the Monday after. Chris came up to me that Monday and said, "We're not allowed to all take breaks at the same time anymore." A few days had passed and I'd convinced myself that the toy room was just some kind of crazy set of coincidences that didn't matter, so I only respond to the news of a boss taking away an employee privilege. I probably said something like, "Man, that's lame." I don't even remember what I said, because it's that unimportant.
But that same day, me and Chris and two other people were slacking off in one of the aisles. We'd been talking about this change all day, so I say, "Hey... why did you guys all start taking your breaks at the same time in the first place?"
And Chris says, visibly afraid, "Because we always felt creeped out in the break room alone. Like we were being watched."
Source
Category:Places
Category:Weird