Late late August short story (part 1)

Bill worked in Accounting. Bill had always worked in Accounting; no one at GiantCorp could remember a time when he hadn't, somehow. Bill was a model of efficiency: any email sent to Bill between the hours of 8 am and 5 pm would be answered within 15 minutes (even during lunch), any action item assigned to Bill in a meeting would be completed impeccably well ahead of the imposed deadline, and any file left in Bill's inbox would appear, almost as if by magic, in his outbox or filing cabinet, with every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed.

One morning, as he stuck his head into Bill's office to say "hi" (as he had every morning for at least 8 years), Tom stopped dead in his tracks. It was 8:17 am, Bill's desk was empty, and the light in his office had not been turned on. Tom took a tentative step into the office, subconsciously torn between being unable to believe that Bill was in the office and unable to believe that he wasn't, and said (in a half-whisper that surprised even him with the raw fear that pervaded it), "Bill?"

There was no answer, but as Tom took another step into the office, he was struck by a wave of intense cold such as nothing he had ever experienced. Every hair on his arms and neck immediately stood straight up, and he felt goosebumps run the length of his arms and legs. This cold was the cold of the grave, the cold of planes crashed in the Alps, the cold of camps set up by early explorers on their way to the North Pole who had abandoned them, never been seen again.

Without quite knowing why, Tom repeated (a little more loudly), "Bill?", and as he did so he felt the cold probing his mind, as if it almost understood him but could not quite piece together what he meant by whatever he had said. Tom took one step backward, instinctively, and he immediately felt the cold withdraw and retreat (if that were possible) to the area behind the desk.

Tom left the office in a state of complete mental gridlock. He couldn't tell anyone about what he'd just experienced, but he couldn't bring any other single thing about his normal workday into his mind to displace it. He sat at his desk until lunch time, missing one staff meeting and making absolutely no progress on the deliverables he owed to his boss's boss by COB.

As he made his way to the employee cafeteria, he noticed a sibilant hush that pervaded all the hallways and stairwells. He overheard snatches of conversation as he passed groups of 2 or 3 people walking closely bunched, all wide-eyed and almost giddy with disbelief, and all with one name on their lips: Bill. Bill wasn't here, Bill had called in sick for the first time ever, Bill had secretly been stealing from the company for years and was in Aruba by now, Bill had passed away last night quietly in his bed from pancreatic cancer. Stories about Bill were ubiquitous and completely disparate; the only common element they contained was that Bill was not at work today.