Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I crept over Annelie in heavy sways,
wrapping shat amber, street light and crumbling brick into a
kind of wary hush. I set my shoulder against the
weight of the library's main door. The latch stuck, same
as always, and groaned when I finally managed to wrench
it free. On the other side, the rotten to gate,
pale and vast, fluxed and echoing beneath my sneakers. The
echoes followed too loudly for place, men for whispers. But
the library after dark was never as quiet as people
liked to imagine. The old place was supposed to be
in the first stages of a major of a whole
municipal grand full restoration. All that, yet everything felt half waiting,
half forgotten. My own presence was just another inconvenience, wedged
into the budget. Night security, temporary until the locks were upgraded,
and insurance paper what lapsed back into compliance. Not that
I'd expected to find myself here, given my history. They
say librarians always returned to their books in the end.
Now Here are not to shelve or share but to
stand guard in the dark. The above from the second
story balustrade, desmotes fluttered under the sensor, a lazy fluorescence.
I flipped them off, one bank at a time, grateful
for the brief stutter of darkness. The reading tables, neat
and empty, reached out their thin arms and rows. The
scent of old paper faint mildy, and furniture polished, familiar.
As Beth hung in the air. I checked my phone,
lowered by start time, and slum my pouch of keys, notebook,
and batted pocket flash like crosswise over my chest like
a talisman. At the front desk, Habit nudged me to
scan for anything left behind, a plastic cup, a forgotten summary, slip,
a child's breer. Instead, it I found something stranger, A
hardcover children's protucked against the reserved terminals, buying a half
hand's width of the laminated wood astres. The whispering alusters
was the title, the letter's age, bleached silver against mud,
brown cloth, patch tape holding the cornice. Not a book,
I recognized from the current rotation. I thought, for a
moment of all the times I chased missing books in
my last life, my real library days and almost smiled.
I picked it up and flapped the cover open. Several
pages had been thumbed together, revealing a yellowed slip crinkled
hand horn. I expected to see a name, maybe a scold,
returned to lost and found instead, in blocky holding script,
I read, don't trust the list, please help it before
it's too late. The note was addressed and ply you are.
My pulse ticked up. I checked the inside covers for
a barcoed sticker. The one I found was decades old,
with a number in a sequence I had never used,
to nine digits with the prefix that started with the threeed.
The rest of the sticker had bubbled and peeled away,
exposing a faint stamp withdrawn in purple. I set the
book upright, then, almost on impulse, sniffed the brittle paper,
its meld of attic dust, fainted oranges, and something shopper
old glue. Probably I skimmed the copyright page nineteen seventy seven.
This copy looked older even than that. I checked the
check at slip. The last daid MIY ten nineteen eighty
two was stamped in red. No entries. After outside, a
truck backfired bouncing sound along the foundation deeper beneath my feet.
From somewhere in the sub floors, a muted thumping started,
like a distant heart beat to measures for pipes, too
slow for any small animal. The sound faded almost as
quickly as it arrived. I tapped the note and book
under my arm, trying to ignore the crawling sense of
an needs, the sense something was watching, were waiting. It
had taken me years to learn the feeling didn't mean
danger always, but I wrote the disturbance, along with the
odd sound from below, in my log book. Anyway, when
I started the overnight job at Annelie Library, it felt
almost like a dare. I'd convinced myself it was just
a patche I can tell something better came up. But
the truth was I missed libraries with a kind of
hunger that surprised even me. Not just the books, but
the rhythm, the rules, the sense that everything meant something
if you just paid attention. That had been how it
started for me, before boll care and good intentions, before
carelessness and accusation wiped the shells clean. It had happened
so quickly and misplaced file, a rumor about mismanaged records,
and soon enough the whisper spread. I resigned before they
could fire me, after I had walked up past the display.
I'd built a wall's stories about second chances. Fittingly, I
wasn't sure why the board here accepted me, but they did,
provided that I stayed out of sight and worked in darkness.
My love for books drew me back. Even in disgrace,
I told myself I'd do any job to be close
to the stacks again. Overnight security meant walking the old floors,
relishing every step, listening to the deep throbe of silence
between hard covers. Maybe I could make amends by holding
the place together with low level vigilance. A strange penance,
but it gave me something almost like hope. Still, the
place wasn't what I remembered from the handful of visits
I'd made in passing. The library was a mishmoshers central
rotten that with marble floors, fifty zero paneling giving weight
to glass block, and for mica edges. Two new modern
wings shut of the waiting structural repairs. Some shells had
been emptied for restoration, others on the upper floors remain
crammed with untouched periodicals microfilm boxes, stacked and haphazard towers.
The lower level, whispered about but rarely mentioned, has the
archives and the notorious special Collections fault, supposedly built to
withstand tornadoes and atomic blasts. Half the staff avoided the
basement after dark, the ones who didn't quit early anyway. Nightly,
I swept my assigned circuit lobby adult fiction, the falling
children's area, now rarely visited reference desks, and then the
basement holds the stream, which I like least. I checked
to all locks by hand. Somewhere I convinced myself the
anxiety of old guilt would wear fin and become simple routine.
It hadn't yet those first weeks, little oddities started to
lodge in memory like sawdust. One evening, the east reading
room light flickered to full brightness and ire after closing,
despite the shut down routine. Another night, I found a
row of computer monitors blinking a curious error message. Strings
of zeros. Staff doors sometimes scraped open by millimeters between
my rounds cruising the floor, betraying fresh movement. The spot
behind the arch had smelled occasionally of woodsmuck, but no
one could trace its source. The worst was the feeling
in the dark corners, the persistent tickle of being waited
on like a stage hand watching for a miss mark.
If you let it, your mind built goes out of
every creek. I took to writing everything down time anomally
eat possible calls. It lent a sense of order, something
I could understand with little to do. Between rounds, I
strayed into places. Security staff went exactly encouraged to linger
at the break groom bulletin board over on the twenty
year old big Saale flyers, the ancient windows destop in
the staff offers, still running the library's first digital catalog
in a black and ambideous window. Sometimes I'd stick a
thumb drive and control through the backlogs, looking for staff schedules,
incident reports, old photographs, anything to make the IROs feel
less formless. Most of the overnight staff had moved on
during renovations, and no one really checked and accept the
facilities manager who responded to my night email with two
word replies and a kind of professional suspicion. His latest
message read, simply stick the script. Whatever script that was.
It changed depending on which wing was scheduled for his
best disabatement, I started to piece together a private mental
map of the place, entrances and exits, where the old
wiring gave owl, which radiators not most in the deepest hours,
I even mapped which staff came and went, as far
as sign in sheets showed. New phases seemed to arrive,
then were gone by the next week. Occasionally I found
a forgotten ID badge under a desk or wedge, and
a registered draw, some with employee numbers that matched others
that never appeared in the directory. A sense of accumulating
anomalies crept in. It was hard to shake the feeling
that information had been delivered, erased, bend around invisible corners,
and hidden in the fibers of the building's roudines. A
week into the job, I started a double column note,
with one side for nightly rounds, the other for anything
that felt off. Open windows that should have been locked,
otsolit tapped between shelving. Even a data polaroid of a
party in the archives, captioned beneath the stacks now thirteen,
nineteen seventy eight. Nearly everyone in a faded picture was
a stranger to me, their name texts much unreadable by
flush glare. Most odd of all. No matter how many
times I tried to inventory the children's section, there was
always one book missing. A missfell the shelf where I'd
found asters the whispering owl lusters should have held biographers. Instead,
there was nothing but dust and a fine, pale gouge
in the wood, as if someone had dragged the book's
spine back in for three years. After a few nights,
the patents started making itself known. Nor maybe I was
just primed to see meaning in the empty spaces on
the batted staff check and computer, a middle list of
clock ins and passwords that rarely changed. I noticed something
that didn't fit. Step between the previous week's staff clockouts
was a login for our Hlberd timestamp to twelve forty
three am, three nights a go, with no clock cat
line following. There wasn't a single Hulberd on any current staff,
nor anyone who'd worked in the last several months that matched.
The next entry jumped forward nearly twelve hours. Sharp As
a cleaver, I scanned through ARKAEV rosters, comparing names and
badged numbers. AH Halberd never appeared even on the old
retirement sheets that sometimes listed clerks who died in service,
yet in the digital logs, that same user popped up
again at odd interval sporadic, always late at night, and
for years back. If the time stamps could be trusted stranger. Still,
several staff numbers appeared for chickens, but were missing in
every person al file I could find at one hundred
twenty seven sixty nine or one hundred fifty five. Many
were flagged as retired or inactive, but some look newly added.
There were gaps, blackouts, blocks of time where logs simply ceased.
A cold curiosity settled in my stomach. I returned to
the lone Children's but con cracked it open again, checking
the inn pepers, smoothing the fragile note with its now
familiar plea for help. I skyured the catalog system for
art in any form. Zero results, not even in our
halberd in the donor listings or old bend registrations. On
a hunch, I searched for astors the whispering our lusters
in the library's online catalog. The result came upgrade out
a single entry, marked item lost nineteen eighty two. The
database list died. No more details if anyone at the
circulation death had seen this book, since they'd never said
a word. Night after night I turned these details in
my mind while making rounds. The stranger signal came from
the basement. The next evening, taking side stairs down to
the arcast check for leaks, I spotted something that had
not been there during my previous circuit. The handrail kicked
with a film of dust that never seemed to clear,
sured a single fresh streak, as though someone had steadied
themselves descending in the last hour. Reflexively, I checked all
storage doors. None were forced. It felt less and less
like I was alone, and certainty turned to resolve. The
next night, clenching my flashlight and starring my nerves, I
mapped my entire sweep of the older sections with meticulous care.
In the self Furst basement, I sloshed for an inch
of standing water, But that wasn't what caught my attention.
It was the series of muddy shoe shaped and princes
beginning at a fire exit. They didn't fit my shread
over those of staff boots. I knew next to the
door frame a chalk mark, small circular overlapping lines in
a pattern I'd never seen caught the beam of My
Life up in special collections. The cage seemed and touched
the padlocks craped against my glove. I ease it back
into place, handshaking as I turned to lock the check.
I scanned the glass shelves. One slot, though from the
bottom labeled Asterisk City Maps from nineteen fifty two. Asterisk
was empty. The coal slip used to track which laborian
handled Each ray book had been meticulously peeled out of
its envelope and shredded back in the office a dug
for security footage. There were four cameras per floor, most
with blind spots wide enough to lose A grown adult.
Files from the previous night archived and password protected studdard
and jerked tom playback A two weelve a m. A
ghostly figure, tall, bundled in a dark cook glided past
the north stacks a s quinnd it, trying to make
out their face, but the angle was wrong in the
resolution law. They paused at the edge of the shot
and seemed to unfold something, perhaps the missing books. Wide
brown cover or chot. A sudden flicker, white hot stroke
crossed the frame, and then the feet cut out For
almost three full minutes. Facility logs showed a pause bike
in that window, Voltage readings off by just enough to
trigger the backup generator, but not enough to allow the
fire panel. No alarm sounded, nothing in the lock, but
recorded anything out of place except my own scribbled uncertainty.
I hesitated, then compose a carefull email to the facilities manitor.
I described the missing map, the odd lock ins, the
chalk marks, and finally the log arrows. The reply arrived
an hour later. Nothing stolen, only records in error. Stick
to break in checks if the lights go out. Coal
building services do not enter restricted ocave rooms, CISI admin.
The command may my skin crawl, but I tooke it
a face valley on the surface at least that night,
near the rare book's room, I decided to bug the
security routine. I hidden shadowed nook behind a brass ber cart,
breathing a shallowly as possible for a full forty minutes.
Nothing happened. Then, from deeper in the walls, a faint,
rivery thumping echoed surprisingly regular, stopping only when I moved.
I wait, then heard a metallic screel, just barely audible.
Chasing The sound led me unexpectedly to the staff break room.
The vent cover near the baseboard rattling every few seconds.
When I got close, it stopped. I crouched and surprised
myself by finding a strip of electrical tape pasted to
the under side of the staff table. It took me
a moment to work it free. A small battered key,
its metal tag to beat you with a scrap of
Basian Dick's guard My pulse hammered. I pressed the key
between my fingers and checked the rest of the room.
Everything seemed in order, except for a half crumpled page
at the bottom of the arcas trash bin. Most of
it was a routine withdrow shee foot alawn. The margin
was a scold note the old list lake chet beneath
the blackwall shelf. No one called out, but I felt
a clarity settling over me. Some one was using the
lists the logs to send warnings or to cover up
something deeper than a missing map. Armed with the tag
and the story in my veins, I could not help myself.
I followed the bread crumbs as though I had always
been meant to trailing the clues. I worked my way
to the low sub basement of corridor I had always
found curiously mismatched. One door brushed aluminum with a battered
lock that never quite lined up with the striker plate
limbed at the end, marked custodial authorized access only. Nobody
ever mentioned a B two storage. I pressed the new
key to the lock. It fit, though it took effort
to this. The bolt climbed stubbornly before yielding with a
faint gron. The air beyond the threshold was viciously called
redolent of old ware, concrete sirrel like dust, and crumbling glue.
The corridor was barely wider than my shoulders, pat tight
with shells on each wall, coroning under the weight of
binders clearly untouched for decades. Each binder was labeled in
sharp dry pen special access restricted. Many had entire pages
blotted out black eyelighter over thin type. Over half referenced
only a subasemen operations and vaulted storage. The phrase of
subbistmen repeated, often, usually ringed with a red x I
thumnd the page at random names, some half remembered from
old staff photos, others completely unfamiliar, were paired with coats,
most ending in dasiro or dash five. My own breath
sounded too loud in the close hallway. It was clear
now or in the note the staff idea that made
no sense. The missing books alverd comes pointing relentlessly down
towards something not registered in any public building plan. I
followed the instructions from the trasspin, not fiercely, all at
every CeNSE, crackling. The black or shelf, as it turned out,
was tucked into a reco's lock over the very far end,
half buried in supply boxes and bundled newsprint. I almost
missed the trap bow beneath, ringed by brass inlid flush
with chip tile, the hinges painted over decades ago. I
said the beaty key into the lock and twisted. It
gave slightly, but the heavy lid refused to budge further.
Rousted shut by age and neglect, I pressed my ear
to the join. Nothing only the syrupy, subterranean silence of
a deeply buried chamber. That stillness was shadowed when scuffing
footstup scratched overhead. I ducked behind a column just a
shadow across through the weak spill of the emergency stair
alight muffled voices two maybe three. I rest a glance
two men in Gray City as she coveralls with hard
hats and orange vests, muttering about duck runs and the
old vent maps. Their flashlights panned lazily, never once aimed
down the Tai corridor where I was pressed tight as
a nail. One of them was the facility's manager. The
other looked familiar, but I could not place his face.
They disappear into another room, but I heard one say,
clear and cold, if anything turns up down here to night,
don't sign out until it's gone. My heart thuttered and
my knees ache from crouching. But the truth rud to
me deeper. This wasn't just about missing materials. It was
ongoing active. The search was stopped, only moving in ways
no official would ever admit. I retreated carefully, waiting five
whole minutes, ears prickling, breath shallow in the whole. I
thumbed the now iconic items, the strange, but her children's book,
a plea for help. I could not ignore the chill
iron of Vibituki, the only proof I had that whatever
ancient wound the library hid, it was not merely closed
or caulterized, but still bleeding, I wait, fear against study.
If I left now, I could pretend I had only
seen the dust and shadows, and could let the buildings
swallow its secrets for another generation. But I could not
make myself walk out alone, Pressed between the past and
a door that dared me to test its memory, and
knew the listed light, but not to me alone. Turning
my collar up against the chill, I understood whatever lived
here had been protected to hidden by design. If I
was going to find the truth, it meant ascending further
past what was recorded, where the official stories had run
out and the shadows had written their own. So there
I was standing at the threshold of what felt like
the library's spinal cord, a tunnel of brittlebinders and stale
a recycled air, my hand gritty from gripping the key,
A single light bulcuming somewhere back at the far end,
the scato of shoe princedust, disturbed not enough to be recent,
criscross the paint flake floor in half moons, my eyes adjusted,
picking out details that earlier would have seemed dull, the
careful predigital labeling on the shelves, chemulonimbus clusters of mildy
around the edges of the vent, piping some loose thread
of heat. For it was suggesting someone may be the
city workers had recently passed close by. The sensation didn't
leave me watch, not by cameras, but by walls and
the grain of rot soft wood. I tucked the'd be
two key into my fist, not trusting my jacket pocket,
and stepped as softly as I could back up the corridor,
back to the ouchavel alcove and its enigmatic sill trap door.
I crouched, scanning the edges for further clues, and brushed
away a few dozen brutal flakes of paint and dust.
Fitted just beneath the trap door's frame was a coin
American worn to near invisibility. The face was scratched into
a smooth abstractable no liberty, no date. My heart tapped
roughly against the inside of my roofs. Some one had
left it there as a marker or a warning. I
set it on my knuckle and pocketed it. Maybe it
would mean something. Later, voices echoed again overhead, this time
closer to panic. Boots studded. A portable radio crackled. I
pressed myself into the alcove's shadow, holding my breath wandering absurdly.
If I'd be able to pass as a forgotten piece
of shoving, if someone turned their light into my corner.
A beam sliced the corridor, briefly, stuttering over brown metal
rack and the batter toe of my right shoe. I
sewed the children's but quietly into my shirt, the corners
biting into my skin, and waded. One of the men
younger voice brittle, mutter, you just see the door stick
be too, The older replied, nothing in there worth the
dust lead it. Their footsteps, slow and discouraged, trailed up
the stairs in quick succession. I risked a count to twenty.
When nothing else stirred, I uncoiled the chingly, my life
prickling with half numbness. No arm sounded, no sign that
anyone had expected me there at all. Yet, as I straightened,
one detail state with me, the older worker, the one
with the clipped coal voice he'd called the space, beat
you out loud, as if it were as plain as
storage or archives. The phrase door stick was another language,
one passed down three years of late night shifts. I
followed their voices as far as I dared back up
a twisting service hall, past the nest of cable runs
and what must have once been a break area, now
stat with brittle city hall newsletters and the six sweet
room of machine oil and stale pastry. I kept my
flashlight low. The risk became evident. Permission had never actually
been granted for these wanderings, and it was purely the
inerte of the crumbling bureaucracy that let me move as
widely as I did. Most security people would have missed
these anomalies, kept their head down, the mind on their
own clock out time. But there, at the far edge
of the old break room, on an outdated cork board,
I noticed a pin stack of overdue maintenance lips. The
top reed in red pencil ventury a acxis denied until
further notice, report only to be cast in facilities that
was not the manager's name registered in the email chains.
I took out my note book, wrote the initials B Coss,
and copy down the phone numbers scrolled at the top,
though I had no intention of dialing it from any
traceable device. Retracing steps, I felt for the pressure and
the four heading back to the children section, hoping to recalibrate,
maybe fine sense in the daylight order of millistas, but
everything to night scene slanted off balance. It wasn't just
the fact that the whispering owl was there again on
the desk when I returned, as though I'd never hid
in it at all. It was the fact the checkout's
slip no longer match now cap with three lines, the
last one day to a Matehn nineteen eighty two, but
the one above that struck thor and blue Birer returned
six slush eleven slash seventy seven art Halbert. I ran
my thumb over the paper, feeling not just the ink
but a faint depression in the slip the after image
of names were written and erased. There was a low
pock of thunder outside, blunt and humid in the night's
residual heat, shaking dust from the window sills. In defiance,
I returned the book to the exact spot I'd found.
It was between the lost shelf and desk co a closed,
but the note press between the first pages like a
terrible seed. I took a polar road with my phone.
The flash too harsh, bleaching out half the details. I
em eild the image to myself and for good measure
to the address listed on the city's main facilities page.
ANOM alert at annoy GARV. No reply ping back in
the next hour. Maybe it was a dead link, maybe
someone else was watching. My second circuit of the stacks
was slower. If anything, the library seemed to breathe as
I walked, as though anticipating every step. I checked the
finger prints smudge glass of the Special Collection's cage, and
this time sow caught for just a frame in the
flask light spill. A low hand print reversed, small, maybe
a child's, maybe just a careless indentation for years passed,
but it was pawned down, pressed with a purpose, not
the shape carelessness made. I allowed myself a whispered curse,
then checked a case padlock. It was closed, but not dead. Bolted.
With a firm twist, I locked it, hands shaking again.
It felt increasingly as if I were walking a perimeter,
always shifting, rules rewritten as I advanced. By three seventeen
a m I was back at the basement corridor, compelled
pass all reason toward the trap door. I reasoned, if
the be tu key fit the first lock made me
another tool would persuade the rest. I I ducked into
the staff maintenance cause it by the back stair, and
selected with the gambler's prigmatism about her cheet a bar
and a tub of graphite lubricant. Kneeling at the threshold,
I woke the graphite into the lock, sweat cold in
the back of my hands despite the weight of the
airless hall. A metallic shriek teeth inside the mechanism finally
shifting under my efforts, and the lock gave by a
slender margin. I let out half a breath, nerves crackling.
The hinge produced a shivering echo, old iron singing to
itself as I levered the trap door in jepwoot, but
it refused to yield further. Another quick examination revealed a
second bold, cleverly masked by years of a crude dust
no lock, merely a sly daring myself, I jabbed the
cheeter bar at the catch, harder, then harder still, until
it loosened, giving way. With the glassy pop. The edge
of the trap door lifted, and I nearly lost my
grip as the smell got me something stale and metaland faintly.
The after taste of frozen, like an X ray room,
long abandoned movement, a voice, a child's light and sibilant,
or perhaps the scrape of wind funnel through decades of
neglects trickled up from the dark below. Liszt help help,
I froze. Had I heard it in my head? Was
it the pulse of my own blood? Syllables hidden in
the rhythm. I paused, breath like knives. Nothing followed, no serge,
no footsteps, only the throb of my own fear, confirmed
by the beating of my pulse in slow increments. I
lowered the trap door, trying not to slamish at Thereby,
on the black wall shelf six from the right, just
as the note suggested, I found something else, A small latch,
nearly invisible, worked into the under side. Flicking it, I
discovered a slender glass tube captain wax, which contained a
tightly rolled slip of onion skin paper. I fished it out,
hands trembling. I carried it back to the staff room,
and then scrawled in the table, smoothing the creases. The
script was minute, a spidery hand, but distinct and deliberate.
To those who find this. If you read the list
you are in. It entries a promise. Exit is only
a room that missus Blackwell said the door would hold,
but nothing holds for ever. If you find the book,
return it to the vault. If you find me, I
was a halberd please help. That was all a name
or write O warning. I sank onto the vinyl chair,
aware again that my own own hands were visibly shaking
the decision. The impulse really came quick. I thunded the
bee too key, over and over, feeling for any detail
I might have missed. Eventually, I slaid the key onto
my own fob, hanging it between my work badge and
the loop pass I had kept from my lost city job,
as though making it official. Whatever was hiding, whatever entry
meant it already included me. Was soon moored. Later in
the staff rest room, A splash water on my face
and caught my reflection in the security mirror. I looked
older than I remembered, more tired, but my eyes were
sharp and unwilling. On the way out, then after thought
sent me back to the faded party, polaroid and the
staff room corpor this time with my phone there ready
I seemed in there at the table's edge stood some
one a half head taller, the most hand and shoulder
of a woman with the department pen labeled simply are.
It wasn't a face I recognized even in the grain
of age, but the shape of the hand and the
tilt of the head match may hunch some one who
had left their mark below, or perhaps had never left
it all For once, I rode a long email to
my supervisor of subject unexplained activity, Immediate attention needed. Found
children's materials misfiled, an omalous staffed check ins, evidence of
building breach safety concern have discovered vulnerabilities in old subbasement
access points urgent. Can we discuss emergency protocols or historical
incent reports to clarified request access to historic staff directories
and involve inventory. Also, please confirm if anyone is authorized
to audit maintenance logs outside schedule for invasions. I attached
him Mitch's door key polaroid, the handprints mirrored on the
cage glass scent, then deleted the draft from my sent folder.
An old habit I couldn't quite kill the reply cane
twenty six minutes later, timestamped four eight a m where
viewed investigation will proceed at admin level only. No further
action required regard in sab basement focus on visible security,
report unusual behavior, but do not pursue catalog and consistencies
all other inquiries close. My skin prickled, I locked my
phone away in my locker and retreated to the front desk,
the place where, for a precious half iro each morning
daylight filtered and through the ancient bubble glass windows. I
took the batted al book, the halbowed letter in its
file and set them precisely where they'd been left every
night before. As the city creaked into wakefulness, it considered
clocking out, feigning sleep and indifference. There some one else
inherit the burden. Instead, I made a list of real list,
not the list whispered about an old anxious scrolls, but
a column of what was known and what was left
to find none. A whispering owl moved capacity to appear,
slash disappear. Ah Halbert a ghost in assistant last trace
nineteen eighty two Archive corridor Betoo had secondary egress and
a vault unknown to current administration map from nineteen fifty two,
missing at least one employee currently and on the cover
upper by carson facilities. Unknown, what's behind or under the
trap door, why the logs are changed, what or whom
they're protecting? Identities in the staff photo full link to
present staff. They'll list what it catalogs, how one leaves it.
I thought about what are had written. If you read
the list, you're in it. I wondered how many other
names had been silently added and erased over the decades.
I rove a robe of glided down the children's owl,
carrying stack of and processed returns, squealing softly as it
misatturn and clipped the biographical shelf. I felt a sore amusement.
Even the machinery didn't know its place here Chiff's end.
I walked slowly through the lobby, keys jostling at my belt,
the faint headache of too long vigilance settling behind my eyes.
The morning clik arrived you and distracted, face pale above
a windbreaker. I resisted the urge to warn him to
pass the hall mess off. Instead, I offered a curt
nod and left without another word. The cities had carried
the scent of rain and a promise of new construction.
I waited at the corner for the bus, uncertain whether
to return or let the mysteries steep them without me.
But in the lint trap of my jacket pocket, the
coin from the trap dooor winked against my knuckle, refusing
to be discarded. The book was the only thing that
always came back, and near there, apparently was I. My
fingers worked the coin over and over as I rode
the city bus home, the metal warming and cooling again
in my palm, an anchor of sorts in the morning
chirin of commuters and groaning hydraulics. Every turn in the
cities grew pressed together, the hush of stacks, the rattle
of pipes, a fac and a photograph whose name might
once have weighed more than mine. Out the street window,
the pale eye municipal towers hunched over the library roof,
glinting in a way that reminded me of the trap
door's tarnished latch. I traced the law lies between things,
unwilling to lose the thread. When I got to my apartment,
the conds still pressed between my fingers, I found myself
unable to sleep. My mind circled the day before like
a restless beast. The objects had pocketed to the B
two key the Brettel slip. A print out of my
list sat found out on my kitchen table, precisely where
I'd left them, no matter how many times I glanced
up expecting to see them. Bone. After coffee and two
half arted calls to job notices, I had no intention
of pursuing, opened my laptop and returned to the only
engine I still trusted research. The city's public arcats were
famously and complete digitalized, with gaps like marth eatoncloth, but
with enough patience some interest yielded more than their keepers intended.
I scrolled through City Council minutes old blueprints, faded PD
effortly is barely visible to the eye. One entry snaiaged
sub Basement Modification's architect report from nineteen fifty nine reference
programmer and program B. The document scanned margin held several
penciled editions, cross reference later by city inspectors. I know
line twice was a phrase all new access record under
custodial storage B two block that would not quite fit
with the public plan, but promise more below. The following night,
exhaustion hugging me like a wet coat at Wilpartaut arrived
early on shift. I reached the staff corridors before anyone else.
The morning clerk Benny, finally named in my head, soft fist,
lingered at the book drop patch, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
I was half way passed him when he called out, hey,
you ever seed this one, and held up a battered
index cart the sought circulation used to label lost items.
Across as front. Someone had written where reviled to see
restricted lock are at the bottom blackwell. I scoled my voice,
where did you find that? He shrugged. Laundry room floor
must have stuck to my shoe, he smiled, not knowing
how brittle my reply became. I'll handle it, card in hand.
As slipped into the narrow hallway by the janitor's closet,
my breath shallow, not quite sure why the familiar corners
seen stretched now like rooms seen only at midnight. I
pressed the carp with my other close key, corner trinity
growing heavier in my pocket. My rounds that evening were crisp,
briskeno delaying, no hestant loitering, no hope that anything would
write itself off when left alone. The echoes of measured
footsteps rang differently, a little off, almost answering my own
woud each passed by the children's desk, I checked the books,
still in place, the slip pressed within, not yet snatched
back by unseen hands. At one thirty seven a m.
As I returned to the ground floor reading room, I
caught a flicker motion at the corner of vision, a
shape fleeting crouched by the microfilm cabinets. My flashlight danced
over file drawers, catching only the ripple of dust motes
disturbed in the air. I advanced every instinct, prickling fitsteff
soft as I could manage, pin tight against the old wood.
I breathed in the air, sharp, now punctuated by something
electric ascent, almost a cyinge plastic anyone here I called
soft but clear. The silence swelled, something brushed against the
fog cabinet, the sye of movement. Nothing more I found
instead of a person, a glove periwinkle blue, the cheeb
late ex kind hospital staff used inside the faint and
print of ink, a reverse stamp property of sc nineteen
seventy nine. I scanned the initials, thinking of the special collections,
thinking of staff, God and quit. Was someone else combing
through the old archevs, hunting the same trails as me.
I slid the glove into a fresh evidence bag, pocketed it,
and made another note to myself. By the time the
eyes curved toward dawn, no other trespaser had made themselves visible,
but the rooms felt watched, measure breast pacing mine. I
returned to the children's section, knelt by the lowest shelf,
and ran my hand inside the back panel, feeling for scenes,
gaps or catches, a desperate hope for hidden things. My
fingers found only dust in the splinter of olt wood.
I straightened, stretching not stiff shoulders, and caught sight of
myself reflected in the glass by the puppet theater gaunt hay,
pressed loot by old sweat, as hollowed by worry. Still,
I nodded at myself confirmation and battle flag. As I
replicated my clothing sweep. I looked one last time at
the batted slip Benny had given me. Something new shimmered
in the cut beneath the harsh fluorescence and indentation, the
ghost of old graphite. Entryless Complete six slash eighty two
Halbert S. C. Blackhaw names that wouldn't quit. Names now tied,
and shop grapha shadow to every corridor, in every closed
fault and ANNELI library. I press the cart to my
chest briefly, fiercely, before locking it away with my other
tokens in the drawer under a stack of unread inventory sheets.
Whatever way to blow the black wall shelf, whatever business
tide are. When dawn came that day, it felt like
an intrusion. I barely registered the new light as I
gathered my jacket, badge and a transfigured sense of a
knee that now stuck to me unstintingly. I walked home
through the shadowy hush of a city not quite awaken,
undertow of tension, clinging to my clothes, to my mind,
I slept fitfully, if at all, my thoughts circling the
index card Benny had handed over the glove, the photo
of the string of NaN's Halbert s c blackhaw. They
move in and out of each other like dancers joined
by waltz. No one else could hear. Some time in
the late afternoon, with some light crowling low over my
kitchen table a brew coffee, but my hands, when ignored, absent,
while my eyes reeled. Three years of news clippings on
my battled laptop. Annelee Library's public history was mostly dollar's
milk dedications, reading drives, a photo in the city newsletter
when the mayor's kid donated a set of encyclopedias in
nineteen seventy one, but now with their every year from
nineteen fifty six through the late nineteen eighties, I searched
for anything that might mention subbasemen, blackwell a containment, or
even just unexplained city expenditures. Most reports offered only thin pickings,
but old newspapers had their quirks. A sentence dropped carelessly
in a council meeting summary as sidebury about bond drills
when the library claimed to be a designated shelter but
never used for its intended purpose. Then a sliver of
gold bird in a nineteen sixty one feature work on
Anneley Library's secondary storage to be expedited due to civil needs.
In a grainy photograph, three city engineers presided near a
huge great stamped Federal defense one. A woman with sharp
cheap bones wore pin marks jas see. I compared it
to the staff photo from the potipolar Road to Telled
of Virchen. It could have been blackwell herself, though the
print was that before I could be sure that evening,
on my way in for chef, my gate was brisker.
My sense of resolved less oppose more function of accumulated
dread ringglayzed the sidewalk, the cities light glittered, shop and
hostel in the puddles. I was at the first one
through the doors. A line of contractors was checking out
tools from the front desk. Two men carted in boxes
labeled planning and cothes. There a laughter echoing thinny at
the marble stairwell. I kept well clear until the night
crew had dwindled. No one spoke to me at my
assigned time. I collected my keys and double checked the pouch,
the bitiu key, a coin, the index card, the glove,
and now print out of the nineteen sixty one article.
I lobd in and out of the staff computer, looking
for new signs for reassuring myself. Sometimes routines are there
to anchor sometimes to warn. At my first sweep, I
did not go immediately to the beastment. Instead, I mapped
mentally and on paper every place where last night's disturbances
had occurred. The chalk symbol the finger smash bookshelf. For
the glass tube. I built a lattice out of the
staff locks, the old event rosters. The vanished nineteen fifty
two map A shape was emerging behind the libraries, so
sawt one of corridors. Sub corridors concealed air gresses and
unlisted doors, Nearly all of them converged at the point
called BETU. I made a second, even more careful circuit
of the building, comparing emergency panels and h acrates to
odd notes I copied from staff minutes here and there,
small scenes betrayed attempted patch jobs in the ultra quiet
special collections. The faint bozo static barely perceptible seat beneath
the flooring appeared to old wiring. Spot Checks of the
perumtive turned up no other living soul. Even the overnight
cleaning bought program I realized was scheduled to avoid the
southernmost hallway between two zero and four zero am. At
one nineteen am, I passed the black shelf. The traploor,
as ever, looked inert and terminally rusted, but in the
glare of my flask light, the dust ringed out A
recent disturbance a half moonarch near the hinch, someone steadying
themselves there within irs. I knelt, impressed, my ear low
for a scant instant, A chill vibrooding was persifted through,
not a voice, but the suggestion of one, like sentences
remembered from dreams. The exit is only a rumor. I
forced myself to breathe, to focus inventory, not imagination. At
home earlier charting arcavil logs and city permits, I have
marked three addresses, all staff directories, cross referenced by what
little was still legible to home addresses. Most when nedfunct,
buildings demolished, lots converted. Yet Halbert had been listed for
several years. An apartment block only two streets away from
the library. I made a private note, Should I walk
by to morrow in broad daylight? Should I go knock
and ask about a name? RaSE from nearly every record.
The thought was both comfort and threat Instead to night.
I finished my round and steeled myself for what i'd
none was coming since I first found the key. I
returned to Beachyu, pausing only to check the side corridor.
Though event three eight note was gone from the bulletin board,
removed or deliberately concealed by someone with a stake and
keeping things quiet. Once more, A crouched at the block
hole shelf, eyeing the trap door under the pretense of
her routine inspection. I held my batterity to barready slipped
the falk key into the lock, and tapped the graph
out along the stockge, this time with force. It shifted
more full with the last attempt. The hush of air
from below was sharp, mineral, A rushed determination, numb, hard
edge propelled me. I wedged the door open, scraped with
a noise that made my skin call metallicovstone. The dark
inside the gap seemed almost viscous. I clicked on my flashlight.
The beam fell away against an old wood lad of
b altered into a concrete shaft. The walls were slick,
the rungs flicking but intact. I tested one gingerly, then too,
and began to descend. The crawl space was narrower than
I liked. The air pressed heavy against my chest, laced
with a blend of damp, broad and exhaust only sixty
year old basements possess at the bottom. After maybe twelve steps,
I emerged into a low chamber that defied my every expectation,
concrete block walls, slate tiled floor, and along one side
a motley row of steel cabinets marked central scripts classified,
the labels crackled in yellow with age. Old office chair
stood in semaphore circles, a handful of typewriters, and the
stained brown covers. Beyond all this, just to the right
of a dim red bulb stirred a single metal strong box.
The top edge gleamed faintly till under the dust. But
before I could approach, I registered a more immediate threat
of shivering echo of footsteps from the opposite side of
the subbasement, the thint scrape of shoes over dial. I
stepped behind a pillar, slowing, breathing, clutching my flasklight tight
from the corridor. Voices drifted low and careful. One was
gravelly accidented with bureaucratic exhaustion. Another shop female altered a
voice that vibrated with bad panic. I can't let it out, No,
not again, cousin, you know what's down here. We can't
just leave it, replied the first the protocol. A third
voice broke in, steadier, almost eerily calm. The last time
its surface. People vanished This time. It must be finished.
I gathered myself, peered around the pillar. Four figgas in
city labeled windbricks clustered near the strom Bucks. Two at
a vaguely recognized from late night facility foto I d.
But the other two were strangers except when it was
bearing even bent with age, carried weightiful, lost authority. Beside
her white hair crop tight stood a woman whose profile
sent an electric jolt of memory through me. The face
from the old party photo hang on a colleague's shoulder.
I whispered her name into my sleeve. Blackwell closer behind
the safety of my pillar, I listened. One of the
city men was speaking ters Hanns, trembling if the note's back.
Someone started the chain again, lusaid, if it broke surface
Block called. The older woman replied, voice almost tender. The
list isn't what you think. It doesn't just keep track.
It chooses entry means you're part of the keeping exits
a risk. A heavy silence landed among the group. Then,
in other voice, wheezing and unfamiliar, Halbert tried to end it.
The book wouldn't let them gnaw the rest. Council said,
the shelf could hold, but it's always the circulation that
works the roof. Some one moved toward the strong box,
hand wavering. So what's protocol? Then do we burn out?
Breech Receeal Carson, the only name I distinctly heard among
the faceless bureaucrats, replied, we can't destroy it. City liability
if it gets out in the wild. This place, as
the cork and the bottle always was, My mind went burning,
racing the book asterisk for whispering al l asterisk, whatever
relic in the strong box, the names threaded through disappearing records.
I thought of the warning, if you read the list,
you are in it. Head across some arcane rubkein by
following these clues. The group gestured and bickoed, tempest close
to shattering in the thin reach of the flash like cones.
The strong Books's combination lock was being tried with hestant fingers.
Someone near the back tap furiously at an old security tablet.
With the last twist, the lot popped. The boxes lit stuck.
It took two of them to wrench a loose air
wheezed out to smell like fireworks left up for years
from the depths. Black hole reached with trembling hands and
removed the book. Old, yes, but older than even the
library's curated treasures. It's leather cover bore no title. Stamped
into the high barely perceptible, were leaping script initials. It's
spine quivered in the lamp light, colors shifting like spilled oil.
The woman's fingers burst the pages, and I saw the
text warp, lines that wavered, illustrations that seemed to cull
at the margins. Even as black Hall whispered down to
her warning was too late. One of the men, thin bespectacled,
wearing a La pelpin from the city's Coats division, snatched
the book and began thumbing through. At first, he reads silently,
lips forming strange words, then abruptly, voice croaking over itself,
he muttered, the list. If I just finished the list,
final enters, it says it right here. Black Hall tried
to yank the book from him, shudding, now, you fool,
don't read it aloud. That's how he stumbled back, stammering,
voice and raveling. I can see the names, so many
are how Albert s c Blockwellby Carson l ted. The
more he spoke, the more urgent his tone, as if
deciphering something only he could see. His hands fumbled as
he slammed the book close, knuckles white. It took three
of the group, panic irrupting now to restrain him. The
man shrieked. If I felt the last name, it all stops.
The chain finished the lists, or it starts over and over,
and a black hole, breathing ragged, grabbed the strong box.
Her eyes caught the lomp light. They were wild, desperate,
full of something like horror. We need to reseal it
or destroy. No, that never worked before. Remember the warehouse fire,
the first breach the permissions drawn up. The groups in
fighting reached cacophony. Someone's flashlight tumbled, rolling with a hollow clan.
In that confusion, I bolted from my cover, aiming for
the far wall, hoping to fade to shadow's edge. But midstep,
Carson's voice were plus out, stop, who are you? Their flashlights?
Stead or now hit me square. For a bare moment,
all sound ceased. I held up my hands, no threat,
no script, but the trude scrape raw. I work upstairs
over night, tempt security. I have no idea what you want,
but I know what you're hiding. I want to help
or just understand who is our Halbard? What does the
list keep a beat past? Blackhall's eyes bored and to
me from the edge of exhaustion. If you're in here,
you're a part of this. Now that book. She pointed
a quaking finger at the object on the table. It's
not catalog, not meant to be read. It's a vector,
a story that eats its keepers. Carson barked. We have
to contain protocol, isolation, cealing would draw all names past circulation.
That's how the chain was broken before the bespectacled councilman splottered.
But there's a way out, it says, so a last
entry Blackwall advanced on him. Nobody who's tried to finish
the list of her leaves right the exits rumor. That's
the price. The story survives in fragments, like a virus,
book list vault shelf note. They began to argue, turning
on each other, wondering whether to rebury or Berno, simply
walk away and let the chamber consume and starve. I
thought of the warnings of books that refused to be lost,
of ledgers that eat generations. A new sound derailed the
confrontation and alarm, distant at first, then rising shrill pervasive,
the old five panel screechy. As the faulty system responded
to the disturbance, red strobe lights began to pulse against
the damp walls, casting the scene in staccado. The bespectacle
man broke away, clutching the book cheer's chest. No protocol
says if he finished the listed He turned, fleeing toward
the far passage, knocking over a cart, babbling, it doesn't finish,
It comes back every time, every single The remaining official scattered,
Black Hall, shouting after the man cast and calling for
him to stop, another making for the emergency phone by
the hatch. In the chaos, I docked between two battered
metal cabinets, my mind working ro adrenaline and fear into
a plan. I saw the man's hand wrenches side door
alarm sirens wobbled as he vanished up the stairwell, the
dangerous book flapping in his grip. Blackwall gave Chase the
rest sealed after her. I found myself alone but for
the strom Bucks, its lining scattered with crumbling forms, sindic
slipped fragments of names, brittle onion skin paper that bore
in a dozen hands, please for help and warnings to
stay away. I rifled through hand's numb, collecting what I could.
One document bore halberd in a herd, smeared, scripped it.
I made the list. I kept each name. They told
me this would keep us safe. But every time the
book is reopened, more names appear. I only wanted the
children's shell silent again forgive the line broke off phinc
trailing into a wild living scroll. Another slip, this one
non city latter had read. Council proves restriction. If itemal reappears, contain, isolate,
transfer all responsible staff, and destroy associated list after sealing.
If protocol fails, informed bacal l. None of it made
sense except in the language of fear breaers and experts
making walls of paperwork to box in something fundamentally unspeakable,
and failing, each generation, passing the burden on, thening the
truth to rumour. Sirens wailed a new overhead, A mechanical
clank signaled the sprinklow system's activation. Water hissed, arrangent pipes
raining down in patch called reubens, and then mercifully smoke
began to billow from the hallway false smoke that triggered
the intrusion system, but I did not wait to see
who or what would return. Now that the alarm had
called city response, I gathered a clutch of slips nose
and the small dense tube of glass with Halbert's handwriting.
With care but not much grace, I slid across the
wet tile toward the ladder, hand shaky knees knock into rungs.
As I climbed back to the shelf above trap was
swung shut behind me with a ponderous thud. The book,
the other one astrous the whisper now lusters. I couldn't
find where I'd first hidden it, nor in the disordered shelves,
but I had no time to search for it. Now
it would reappear, I was certain it always did. Smoking.
The shriek of fire alarms covered my tracks as I
scrambled up through the worn of wreck of rooms and
out into the prudormed groy Even as I slid past
the children's section, the lights foockered and died. I saw
movement in the reflection of the puppet theater. A two
tall silou weete coat trailing arms clutching a book to
its chest from the last home before the exit, I
looked over my shoulder, certain that if I lingered, I
would see ah halberd or black hole or corsin, but
only shadows replied. I left the library by side door,
footsteps slipping on siliclinoleum. For the next three days I
slept at Oddire's anxiety worn into my skin like die.
I did not answer when the supervise a cult. Instead,
I composed and then recomposed an anonymous dossiate. Every piece
of evidence I could man uster. Photos of the door,
a coin, the index slips, the notes pulled from the
strom books, my catalog of logan anomalies, attached with a
brief cover letter, There's something wrong in Themley Library. Look
for the names start in the vault under beatty. Do
not trust the official lists. I sent it to three
city reporters, one city archievist, and a former councilwoman roumored
to be collecting stories about the old municipal cold cases.
The only acknowledgment I received was a message received form
letter Think Comfort. But two days later the news broke.
Renovations at Anneli Library were abuptly and indefinitely suspended. Contractors,
some at any rate, were paid off, others quietly reassigned
city Council's emergency agen deduct library review near the bottom,
just above public safety fence repairs. Walking past the library
that week, I saw apply would go up over the
lower level windows contract as none of whom wore the
lineyard badges had come to no tipped over glass doors,
and what had once been a rear alley for deliverers
was sealed with steel panels. Sir heavy the elerked warsaplus.
Nobody explained the sudden shift. The local news called it
asbestos reevaluation and unexpected subfloor issues, but I knew the
truth for what it was a pattern of hasty containment,
an old story repeating itself, just tidier for the next generation.
My own departure was swift. I've hacked the things I needed,
left a resignation notice in the payil portal, and deleted
all traces of my login ide except when a ghost
signature are left behind in the staff checking system. More
habit than message. I left the city with a battered
suit case and as many notes as were fit in
the shoe books. Destination chosen on a whim. The rest
are mailed by slow posts to my own chain pee
o box, just in case. In the months that followed,
I lay low, drifting between gigs. My own reputation, shredded
and ill served by an old town's memory, was no
less battered, for the events of the library trailed me
like shaken dust on old shoes. I found myself awake
at three zero, a m ever inherited instinct warning me
off new routine. I compulsively counted doors and windows in
every new place I stayed. Yet it was silence that
followed me, hardest silence and a dread Brettel like ice.
Whenever I glimpsed the curve of a dome anywhere, or
the glint of brass hardware that recalled the library's trap door,
I thought sometimes that I'd hear Blackhaw's voice, or gussily
echo of Helber's an even script whispering from just around
the corner. Six months passed in this half shadow. I
moved once more to a smaller city, smaller rooms, smaller libraries,
to shelter in. I stopped checking headlines for Anneline News,
forced myself not to look for robituaries, retirement notices, or
staff transfer lists. I tried to convince myself the story
was closed until in late autumn a package arrived at
my door. Their return address was playing the library's old
zip code, nothing more. The postage stamp was curling. Tucked
inside the Battle of Manilla envelope, wrapped in brown paper,
was an object that dried the blood in my veins
the moment I recognized it, A hard covered children's book
as tape worn corners, familiar as breath Astoris, the whispering
owl asterisk. The book was heavier than I remembered, walked
by water or by something deeper. Inside the front cover,
pressed out against the ancient, boring slip, my hands found
an new note. The handwriting so like Halber's, so liked.
The message left months before, trembled along the upper margin.
It's if not finished, the book always comes back. Don't
trust the lists. The page smelled of attic, distant fear.
I turned it over and found, beneath the brittle end
peeper a slip of city ladder head, torn small, thin
enough to be seen through on it. The names still there,
mine among them now are cold freshening. At the end
of the list, a small dash trailing off instead of
a period, I placed the book in a drawer, I
moved to another apartment, kept the curtains drawn. Still. Some nights,
lying in the silence, I would hear it, a gentle skitter,
the pulseive paper shuffle by unseen hands. No matter how
quiet a cat the sensation would grow, an animal certainty
that somewhere barely out of sight, something was returning, reading
itself quietly back into the world. No matter at the doors,
the locks, the lists, or the vaults, the story was
always looking to be finished. All was waiting, and by
the time you heard it, you were already part of it,
just one more name, quietly cataloged in a volume that
would never quite let itself be shelved. Sometimes at dusk,
the air would dicken with a hush that made me
pause hard in might row, as if waiting for the
scrape of a child's chair over linoleum. But in an
a new apartment miles from Manneley Streets, all was thin
walls and the distant drone of city buses. Even so,
every so often I'd hear the sound fluttering, gentle, a
flick of pages somewhere behind plaster board or leaking up
from the floorboards. I started finding things moved around the room,
a coffee mark slid in inch sidewards, a spare key
knock from a dish. They were small, mundane gestures, but
each time the book weighed heavier in its drawer, vibrant
even through the density of old wood. I thought of
mailing it away, burning it, burying it deep as the
old strong books. But every plan seemed to shrink beside
the simple fact of its return. One evening, with the
northern wind rattling the windows, I set the book out
on the kitchen table and sat staring at its cover.
I made tea, poured half without noticing the steam curling
up and slow, insistent spirals. It felt like a mutelyjgmental guest.
At length, I flipped it open, the note the new
one trembling and urgentry main tuct inside its ink was splotched,
as if some one's rest had trembled at the close.
I took a deep breath at this time, let myself
read the list of names fully, Blackwell, Halberd, Corson, and
all the way at the bottom. Mind the block printed
letter just faint linear than the rest, as if the
page itself had absorbed my story. The moment I touched
the book, My hand trembled as I closed the volume
with a soft clap. The lamp stuttered as I did so,
filament catching for a heartbeat. I waited, expecting a chill,
was some distant knock from the old library's pipes come
to haunt me here? But the silence hell waiting. The
logic of the library, I realized, wasn't merely about containment
or banishment. It was about story, A story that sustained
its helf on attention. Sixies burden, the book that lists
the hiding of names, all whether to keep the cycle unbroken,
to make sure someone was always watching, always responsible, and
able to look away for fear the story might spill outward.
So I did the only thing I felt true and
called my own name aloud to the empty room. My voice,
hoarse from disieuse, surprised me with its steadiness. You have me,
I said, you have my name, What do you want?
The only answer was a breeze shivering in the window seams,
a thin ripple running through my stack of unpaid bills.
I left the lamp on and walked into the small
bedroom before colla my bare feet. I stood by the
aware how easily this could evolve into madness, talking to
gohists and old paper, explaining away the impossible as insamnia strick.
The sleep did not find me. That night, through the
thin wall, I listened to someone playing in old radio,
the volume ebbing and rising oddly. At one moment, when
the station static twisted, I caught what sounded like a
recitation of names, like a roll call, terribly familiar. I
pressed my ear to the wall. It halted, replaced by
the gentle shuffle of newsprint, the host reading library. I
was for a town I'd never heard of. My skin crawled.
I could not quite convince myself that I had misheard.
I tried distractions. I met grocery lists, called my sister
after midnight, just to hear her laughter. I filled out
job applications for night clerk, for copy editor, for bus
schedule of sliding into anonymity. But the weight remained, the
book in the drawer at the slip with my name,
the echo of the trap doors hinge every time a
cabinist squeaked open in the building's hall. After a week,
fatigue carved me out. My hands shook as I reached
for the kettle. One wet morning, heavy with the scent
of distant snow, I found myself at the local branch library,
a squat red gremment built on a triangle lot. Its
shelves were plain to smell, nothing like Annelie's old corridor,
but even so I stopped in the children's section and
ran my fingers along the spines. Each book felt warm, safe, ordinary.
I was about to step away when an elderly man
in a warren green cardigan, a staff lyingard around his neck,
wheeled in a cart of returns. He stacked books in
tidy rows, then glanced up and gave me a careful smile,
looking for anything in particular. His tone was soft to
crook in the brow, gentle stewardship in his voice. I
shook my head, then heard myself asking, do you keep
a list of lost books once you can' quite account for?
He considered me misfouled more often than not. Sometimes, though
they do go missing, nothing fantcy kids pocket them most likely.
He set a slim hard back on the shelf, then pause,
his fingers resting on the book as he met my eyes.
But sometimes the same ones do come back years later.
No one claiming them old habits, I think are his
gaze shop and almost playful, something in the stories that
wants to be found again. I tried to weigh his meaning,
searching for a glimmer of recognition, and inside Joe a test.
Was it only common sense? Or did other librarians keep
their own ghostless doors bray shut against stores too unruly
to shelve Anais interrupted the nervous Shatto school children, the
plain and convenience of the day. He gave me a
nod and trundled away, and I felt the strangest pang
of envy for his simplicity. Was I looking for validation,
for permission to breathe more easily? Or for some one
else already entangled by the library shadow? Back at my apartment,
toilette gathered, pressing against the window. I sat at the
kitchen table, the copy of Astris the Whispering Our Lastus
between my hands. I examined the book more closely, this time,
hunting for change, any sign it wanted to reveal something new.
Under the dust jacket, I found a thread bare patch
where perhaps a label had been torn away. Running my
nail over the edge, a seam lifted slightly, and with
a decisive tug, A folded slip fell out, flatter and
older than the others, A near miraculous survivor. I unfolded it,
heart pounding. The ink was faded almost to invisibility, but
in the hard light words emerged to be kept record
of all terraces to risk. Let the last care to
his name be the verse in the next. If you
inherit tell no one but those who have also seen
versions multiply, lis expand there is always another shelf. A
signature at the bottom, just three loopy initials s, C B,
So the story had always been recursive, filling the empty
spaces left behind. Each failed attempt to bury it only
forced a new care to go, another set of hands,
another attempt at silence. Overwhelmed, I pressed the slip to
my forehead, trying to imagine what would happen if I
simply gave in, Let the story sweep outward, warned no
one left. The name at the bottom acclaimed. Would the
cycle collapse? Or would something far worse bleed up through
a hundred new books. Drifting shelf to shelf, I stared
at the batter cover of asters who whispering al lastrous
convod of Halberd's desperate plea of black holes, stricken eyes
in the subbasement of Cosson's clipped warnings of the forgotten
city workers, coded language, the compulsive thoroughness of all who
had come before me. They'd each believe they could keep
the truth safe, keep the story locked in the vault
with the rest of the restricted debris, but stores clow
their way out. I stood and opened the front door,
breathing a brisk night air. I held the book at
arms length, poised to fling it into the yard, but
found myself unable. I pressed the cover to my chest,
breath shuddering. The memory of the trap board, the subasement stink,
the shift of that other ancient book in the Strom
Book's name, shifting catholog mutating rose up. I saw for
a flash the battered hands of the council when clutching
something unnamable, his force fraying as he tried to finish
the list. Every attempt at refusal was a continuation. A
cough from the stair will startled me. It was only
Missess Loring, the upstairs neighbor with her shopping bags. She
gave me a when smile, reading late, she said, forced gravely,
something like that. I replied, forcing a semblance of calm.
She hesitated at her bower, then, in a backward glance, said,
my father used to say stories, find the teller, keep
yours close, and don't read after midnight. She disappeared with
the clack of her door. I shut my own softly.
The book burning in my hands seemed to tremble with possibility,
the compulsion built by degrees like thirst, mounting slowly to
a desperate and ignorable need. I sat at the table,
took out the battered slip and read aloud the warning,
testing the words in the hush of the night. Don't
tryst the list, Please help before it's too late. The
air in the room shifted. The lamp flickered, once, fled,
then faded for a second. It seemed as if the
stack of unpaid bills in the far counterstowed a single
envelope fluttering over the linoleum. It was enough. I rose
found the envelope that had moved and scanned the handwriting.
It was my own scroll. Too quickly a grocery list
begun and never finished, with my first initial and last
name at the top. That echo of that recursive return.
I joined the story circle without end. I looked back
at the book nearly breathless. What was it hungry for continuity, secrecy,
my defeat, or did it simply urge another caretaker, desperate
for relief, to reach for help when they too realized
the list could not be finished nor safely erased. There
was a single blank line on the oldest boiling slip,
the one with all the names, just beneath my own.
I considered writing in another name, any one, a librarian,
a neighborer, a faceless city official. I imagined the ribble as
the pattern continued, spooling out to draw in. The urge
faded almost as quickly as it had come, replaced by
an ake of responsibility. Instead, I wrote a letter, not
an inheritance of dread, but a confession. I addressed it
to the city's main branch, attention to future staff records.
I described the book as journey what I'd witnessed in
the abasement, and ended with an apology. If you find this,
let the story end with me, for still it so
tightly that not even memory can ship it free. I
bundled the book letter slips every fray bit of evidence,
careful not to leave out the old coin, and wrapped
them into When I found buried at the bottom of
a kitchen drawer, I left the package on my postman's
shell for anonymous return, Knowing with a certainty rooted and
helplessness that the library's address was still memorized in my bones.
I did not leave a return address. The next days
were thick with waiting. I felt for the packag's weight
missing from my life, and watched the mail books with
the kind of grim anticipation. No package returned, not yet,
only junk fires and half hearted bills. Still the hush
hovered at the edges of consciousness. I kept a journal
by my bed, jotting any strange sound, any accidental shift
in routine, trying to capture the story before it followed
me out. I stopped visiting the Little Neighborhood library, afraid
to see the book waiting for me there, or worse,
a name, my name on a list already pinned to
the staff board. The letter the book felt like a
confessions and ahead of her disaster. But at night, as
I tried to rest, I woke down familiar foots sets
in the hallway the flutter of pages against the silence,
no sleep could breach. Sometimes, on the edge of waking,
I seemed to hear a child's voice, as if reading
to itself. Some were just beneath the floor. On the
third night, when the wind drove hard against the building,
I heard someone knock at the door. Three sharp rats, impatient,
then nothing. When I checked, the hall was empty. At
my feet. Slipped under the frame was a plain slip
of card in tiny script. It read, It's not finished.
The book always comes back. Don't trust the lists. I
crushed it in my palm, fighting anger and sadness. Both
the door's need for attention for a new Tello was insatiable.
I did not sleep for the rest of the night.
I waited in my chair until dawn, sweat chilling on
my back, the familiar pane of helples in his settling
in once more. When morning came, all knights slanting across
the kitchen table are resolved not to cower, not to
flee from any library, not to let FURBI the only
outcome I wrote along message to Benny, the clerk from
Anna laid tracing his last known contact, private email I'd
scribbled hastily Before leaving, I told him to be careful,
to watch for the children's books, to ask about the
old names. I signed off with a plea, You're not
alone in this. If you find assers, the whispering Alaster
is comong the shelves, don't read the slip, don't try
to finish the list. Weeks past, the package I'd sent
did not return. No reporter called, no city official knot.
The story for now seen sealed tighter than before, But
the unees never left. I woke the new city's streets,
watching the faces of commuteros for the suspicion, the glint
of someone who knew, someone who had seen the same things.
In the hush before morning, Sometimes late at night, as
had lets trace the ceiling and shadows drifted over the
kitchen tile, I'd hear the unmistakable hiss of paper sliding
against itself, a book somewhere being opened, just out of sight,
just out of mind, biding time. There'd be no final entry,
no true clover. The story weaned on and tighter. I
was only the most recent line in a ledger that
never balanced. If you find this, no, the list is
not finished. The book always finds its way back one
page at a time. Don't trust the list, don't trust
the silence. And if one day you hear the soft
flutter of turning pages in the dark, remember some one
else has already written your name down. Some stores can
only be kept, not ended, and that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.