Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I punched in at eleven fifty
five my new work eyed Swinging or Qwardy, from its lanard.
The staff entrance to the Central City Library gave the
head unmockoming a slate of fluorescent light against the deep
sale cement, shadows of the nearly empty parking lot. Diesel
fumes from an idland garbage truck somewhere near be hung
in the air, made heavier by the faintest rain. Even
the pigeons had abandoned the narrow paths between the library's
gothic stone faces. At this sire, I'd worked plenty of
night shifts before office parks, health clinics, and auto plants
shut down for a cleaning that nobody was cleaning, just
morpled and waiting for the next day's embassies. But libraries
always had a texture, a hush you couldn't find anywhere
industrial or domestic. Inside the tiled floors and high class
ceilings made every sound ricoshet each step briefly his click
or squeak of my new work. Shoes fell exposed fragile.
The security desk was touched just past the staff lockers,
and I caught sight of my reflection in the dented
glare of an old trophy case. Shaved clothes except for
a torn ibro scar. My boss just stiff as I
stray ticketed by the cris poly belen uniform. I needed
this job. Grateful wasn't the word, but there was no other.
To Night was my first reel overnight solo, baring the
cleaning staff and apparently one skeleton cruel librarian uncle. I
logged in at the ancient terminal with a password written
in baalpoint penwrit on the monitor's frame. The digital clock
up a flicker between zero two and twenty three fifty
nine undercided three minutes in the radio crackled base to
front line. New guy, you copy the voicemail flat unwelcoming
scene to struggle through pealing layers of static copy it,
I said, though my throat felt dry on sight. A
click nothing for several seconds. Clock your rounds, stick to
the open floors where light to night. If you find
any issues, log em cleaning cruise off by two, Roger,
I replied, any one else on my voice echoed in
the empty vestibule. Silence then abruptly a burst of static
and one clip word no. The transmission ended, so I
was alone. As close as the library got somewhere above
ancient h trac wine and rattled. The echo of distant
metallic urns ran through the ductwork, sounding too regular to
be entirely building noise. I keyed the checklist into the
half dead console, out of habit lobby, clear stacks one
and two, inspection archive secured. Turns out the city's flagship
branch was more amazed than a municipal oad to enlightenment
past reception. The short marble stack is found out over
three floors, splitting into the lit central atrium and two
narrower half lit anex wings. Even with overheads on timers,
the main stacks looked more like dim canyons than reading rooms.
The shelves black against gray sort over my head. Little
blinking aliedy mart were automated retrieval cats slept their wheels
silent for the night. I finished the first half fire's
patrol with nothing but sudden urge to cough in the
strange dry air. When now approached the main returns desk,
a single white item sat in a bin marked with
a fading red after eyes, but dropsticker. It was an
old city phone directory, not just all out of time,
almost thick as a cinder block bound and crumbling blue
stamped city directory in nineteen eighty three nineteen eighty four.
Its soft cover was stippled with ink and high light
of marks, and some one, probably a board patron from
decades ago, had drawn a mustache and the maize photo.
I checked the days logged again, nothing in returns. I shrugged,
handled the book carefully and shelved it in an alcove
labeled reference city directories. The spot was two shelves down
from the floor, Just below stacks of newer phone books
were fitted tel Co logos. I continued my rounds. The
cock in the main reading room channed two a m
each clang, hanging in the empty air. In the silence
I paused Somewhere below, machinery rattled. The old marked elevator
used by facilities groaned as the summoned of its own accord,
but remained out of sight. On my next walk by
the returns desk, my heart jerked. There again was the
same phone directory, hunched in the bin as if I'd
never touched it. My mark a little scaff I'd left
on the spine was right where I'd put it. I
checked the doors. Security latch is sealed. I checked the logs.
No sign of any one signed in or out. Chiming,
I looked up at the vent above. Impossible for any one,
especially with their directory, to slip through. The sense of
being observed, pressed in, almost physical. I picked up the
phone book, trying to ignore the chill from my palm
at its touch. On the inside back of a pencil
scrip had faded tight and shallow across the blue gray paper. Carefully,
I read Inspected nineteen ninety two l B. I put
the former back in the alcove, this time on the
very top of the shelf, under a stray copy of
the yellow Pages. I weighed down with another directory, just
in case, then finished my patrol as best I could.
Half past three, the building pressed heavy with stillness. I thought.
I glimpsed movement in the reflection of the glass entry.
Another trick of midnight, I told myself. In the east corridor,
my radio chirp to a burst of static. Nobody there.
The sense lingered long after, something about this place and
that book was out of step of time. Before the
clock struck five, I found myself listening unconsciously for the
elevator's rattle and the quiet thought of the book. In
the after iro has been. My alarm went off at six.
Inner room the size of a closet. The day just
crawling through the paper of a window. I've chosen this
place above the pizza parlor because it didn't wreak of grease,
and though the manager kept raising the deposit, it was
better than another week at a hostel that stank of bleach.
That morning, rain drummed on the glass. I had a
day to kill before my next night shift, and wandered
down to the corner shop for a stale Danish and
caffeine bones soar from cheap bedding. My phone blinked with
a single reminder work Central City Library shift to I
scrolled through job listings just in case, but the market
was empty every week. When I arrived for my second
shift that night, the day guard, ANSS Harrington, frowned at
my badge. She'd been with the library for nearly two decades, tall,
even a faint pattern of faded raven tattoo peeking from
her wrist. When she pointed out the time clock. Glad
to see a new face stick around, she muttered, barely
making eye contact. Most last two maybe three days working nights,
something about the IROs. I guess. We stepped into the
ornate man lobby, freezing beneath a barrel vaulted skylight. The
brass lamp globes flickered uncertainly above us. If you want
to last, stay off the west annex aft. At one,
Harrington advised that she showed me through the security doors,
and for God's sake, if you drop her keys in
the lower archives, just leave him. I tried to joke
about haunted stacks. God a grundhim response. She pointed toward
closed tuble doors, a flow below painted an institutional gray.
That's the basement. You'll see maintenance signs up now and then.
If so, don't go down, no matter what. The first
two knights settled into a pattern arrivals in Depatu's time
with the bureaucratic precision. The after iires crowed during the day,
elderly chess players, teams making lude jokes, haired mother's growling strollers.
Neune was chaos, Paper's rustling laughter bouncing off the marble.
Night drew the building down to its bones. The vast
reading rooms emptied but for the hum of old circulation
computers and the intermittent rattling of pipes. Every self is
at a slightly sticky gloss to it, like steam, never quite
dry from the walls. The lock staff rooms collected dust
and a scratch glass, and neglected trophy here at Dusty
City Awards. There the staff wasn't unfriendly, but weren't inviting.
The night crew three in the roster, but rarely more
than two actually there removed like ghosts. The cleaning woman Carmello,
rarely spoken, less pressed Mike, the other part timer, kept
earwards in, bobbing his head and whistling off key until
his shift was up. Mess Harrington presided silently, eyes everywhere.
The West Annex I learned had been officially closed for
a refitting two years ago, but nobody had touched the
drop pass or replacement insulation. A heavy iron hasp padlocked
and tag bard entry. Sometimes drifting nearby, I caught a
whiff of old water and something metallic like a rail
line after rain. Between rounds, I tried to break the monotony.
At the hand of desk Carmellus slid her badge behind
the counter one night, and I ventured, hey, we'd question.
You'll see anything odd with return to that old former
keeps lying around. She avoided my eyes. Maybe kits, maybe
not Arkeve's a mess. Don't ask eh an note. I
turned to Mike. He shrugged, people dump weird stuff. Jobs.
Not to ask, he mumbled through a mouthful of chips.
Clock and clock out. After a week, Ms Harrington cornered
me for the formal safety run down. Her eyes narrowed,
voice soft but hard edged. Where not insured for after
Io's accidents in the basement, archout to stick to pupic
areas un Less maintenance is listed. If you must go
in radio me and only go with some one else.
I nodded, hart pounding as if I'd been called to
the principal's office. She leaned in, there's maintenance happening soon.
It could be electrical flooding or just inventory. They'll call
it early, or you'll see tape across the door. If
the elevator is not for you, don't use it. I
wanted to protest, push for details, but her expression shut
me down. Desperation settled in his routine. The rent was
due soon. I promise myself, keep my head low, handle
what they give me, and don't tangle with loco mythology.
This was just another job. I would not start all
the shadows at perhaps hundred phone books. I would be
stay nights. She passed, then night three crept in. By
my third consecutive night, exhaustion left me raw. I swiped in,
found my usual circuit through the stacks, and spotted a
flash of blue at the return slot. Just after midnight,
the city directory again, same edition, my scuff on the spine,
and now with a torn co owner folded over a
page two hundred twelve, as if some invisible hand had
studdied it recently and lost interest. I scooped it up,
check camelogs carefully, no motion, just the pixelated grave. After
iro of snapshots, I shelved it, setting my work glove
under it for good measure. An hour later, as I
swept past the reference alcove to check the north reading room,
book waited for me again at the front counter. His
cover was faintly damp, as if newly returned from a storm.
I replaced it, a shill running thin and cold behind
my ears, and heard her footsteps carmel at earlier than usual,
was collecting her cart. She gripped her cut so tightly
her knuckles blanched. Did you need help with the I started,
No help, she snapped, A voice muffled. She gathered her
bag and left behind a scent of bleach and lemon peel.
I reviewed the digital returns look the directory had not
been checked out in months, not even back to last
winter's storms. Curious, I tried to work around, digging out
the handred and lock book in the slot under the desk,
blue lines recorded the month's transfers. The last entry, three
nights ago read unusual return not on list, and then
broke off mid sentence, as if interrupted. I pocketed the pen,
my own handwriting shaky as they tried to mark the
night's details. The corridor outside grew colder. I low ecobuts
from floor to ceiling, footsteps but distant, irregular, like some
one limping. I swept my flask light across every aisle.
Nothing in this ify section. A shadow appeared between the
bookcases fleckoat, then vanished into the referenced ACKs when I
moved to investigate. When I reached the intersection with the
main corridor, only my own reflection peered back from the
heavy glass. The desk phone rang trill and unexpected stat
accounts at my hello, just crackling his in a fragment
of breath long, irregular, like some one hiding there at
the edge of sound. I yanked the cord from the receiver.
On impulse and needing something solid to ground me. I
tried to match the phone books artifact trail to the
security locks. The directory's digital record sured no rativity. It
simply didn't exist in a system after the summer of
two thousand one. The page numbers folded were random, never
the same place twice that night, stifling dread fueled my circuit.
When the clock hit four, I slipped into the back
office for air and privacy. I told myself the book
would not wake another appearance at night art. I've felt
doubt ratcheting up in my cart as I watched the
faint green return of the after ires light. In a
moment born of both boredom and desperation, I started come
in the records room for an explanation. The libraries file
stretched from floor to head height, procurement forms, waste manifests,
endless memo copies. At the back of the records. Just
above the sticky linoleum, I found a rattybanker's box marked
renovation Receeats nineteen eighty nine ninety one, out of place
for a shelf of personnel files. Lifting the lid, I
found not receipts, but a rugged stack of VHS tapes,
the kind used for old school surveillance. Each was carefully
labeled in block capitals, staff and t gen of eighty
nine sec cam b Mar ninety one, Archive Waltaebra ninety two.
The dust told me nobody'd open this in years. I
wheeled the wobbling avy cat into the unlit brick room
and threaded the first tape into the ancient VCR. The
static settled to a flickering black and white tableau. The
recording wobble curtains drawn time stumbling king one forty a
m people gathered at a folding table deep below the stacks,
among metal racks and concrete columns. Most faces were turned
away from the camera, but three men in suits held
nervous whispered conversation. The glance repeatedly towards something in the
wall behind them, a marking shark. It changed from tape
to tape, now a roughex, now a looping arrow, never
in quite the same place. One year's meeting cut abruptly,
followed by several minutes of erace tracking lines. Another showed
a solitary figure female with close cropped hair, dubbling back
constantly between shelves, as if ensure of the path. Anxious groupings,
some faces seen multiple times, a few always together. After
half an hour of slow, eerie footage across reference staff
attendance with internal directories, almost allers pictured on tape had departed,
either frans foot or on permanent leave. Within a year
or two of the footage. One alt becker had disappeared
from city personnel lists entirely matching names. Took print out
of city employee records, as spotted another connection. Half the
staff attending those late night meetings at their names listed
on city council leave logs for medical absence ongoing investigation.
The floor in the break room creaked behind me. Startled,
I hurriedly replaced the tape, shut down the ancient monitor,
and stood the box under a blanket of car catalogs.
On a hunch, I grabbed my flash light and headed
for the basement. The buildings re elevated opened slowly. The
metal shaft groaned and refused to close for several seconds.
After I pressed BE two, my flashlight swept past the
usual pipes and supply boxes in the main arch of
fold rows of shelving, the air five degrees colder than above.
I found it a chalk arrow, fresh and bright and
ntinted by dust, pointing deep against the wall. It matched
something I had seen on the first VHS. The building's
ere seemed to thin, My breath clouded for a second
art with the night outside a muggy fifty. A faint
shudder ran up my back. The radio at my belt's
bat static, and the battery indicator went red just above
the hiss. A few strained syllables formed check ledger, don't
let them abrupt silence. My flashlight flickered wildly, hot, thumping
a group for the stairs. Half Way up, I nearly
collided with Carmella fa face pinched and pale, was drawn
with regret and fear barely hidden. She shook her head, mumbling,
leave it be for your own good, before shuffling to
her cart and vanishing up the stowell. I climbed back
to the main floor sweat mixing was cold. The sense
of being followed marked grew undeniable. I didn't sleep when
my shift ended. Instead, I laid out everything on my
battered kitchen table, security notes, pages torn from staff locks,
the odd marks and erased enters. My stomach ached at
the tangled implications over the coming nights. A cross checked
old missing persons reports against the regression of name seen
on tip and directories left marked in high lighter red
pan or inexplicably scratched at Altogether. The more I mapped,
the more pattern emerged. Names vanished from city records just
after major news breaks, mostly tied to bribery, embezzment, or
land sales. Maintenance closures, I learned, always coincided with front
page scandals, as if tined for maximum and attention. The
phone book was a ledger in a way. Flipping through
the copy in the staff lands now obviously not the
same as the phantom one. Returning after iurs, I found
that almos most half the entries in certain neighborhoods were
either faintly circled, raised, or faintly annotated with single letters x,
L or z. After one tense morning, I found a
small note tape to my locker. This place seats those
who dig too deep. It showed me more than I
could admit. I pressed it back into the seam of
the metal and locked the door. That evening, as I
clocked in, M. S. Harrington intercepted me, voice low and tight,
with barely constrained panic. Let it go, She hissed, eyes
darting passed mine too. The shadows over my shoulder. This
place remembers history repeats for the unwise. She didn't need
to add what she meant, Job fifty possibly more. You
leave the book and the tap shallow, and if you
want to keep either. I stared, unable to answer. She
didn't wait for my protest. Moving down the corridor with
the clip precision of an officer on a battlefield, I
went to the staff desk, tens and sleepless, and near
the directory, sat waiting. Its cover was cracked, now one
page torn clean out. It opened neatly to a blank entry,
only a brittle stain remaining where something had once been.
Sunlight began bleeding and through the attrium, dull and heavy.
My si was due to end. I paused at the door,
feeling every eye in the building seen and unseen, pressing
at my back and inside me a certainty whatever had
started here was unfinished, Whatever had been a RaSE would
find another page to fill. I lingered near the vestibule,
letting the slow hush of traffic barely perceptible through the
thick front doors, remind me The weld outside continued on
some normal, predictable track, like crap lazily and making grime
irks along the tile. I told myself, I just fetched
my jacket from the locker room. Instead, my steps took
me unconsciously back toward the public desk. The directory still waited,
solid Ajar, somehow more present than any other object in
the room. On impulse, I snapped a quick photo with
my phone flash ats the book's cover stock against the
desk's stole lamb mate. As the retinal after image faded,
I noticed something odd, that fresh ty on the open
page paper, clean edged, as if deliberately sliced, and like
the crumpling you'd expect from a hasty grab. I pressed closer,
inspecting the remnants along the tier. There was graphite, the
faintest suggestion of some irritation. Now I'm mostly gone, ear buzzed,
my radio left at my hip, fizzing softly, then cutting out.
I'd be off shift in ten lest if. I took
the long route through the stacks and kept my head low.
But I stood in that ring of pale sunlight, heart panding,
and decided again sense and against employment. I was to
check just one thing more. I went to the reference section,
finding the slot where I'd last shelved the book. Space
slightly gaped between the other directories, but no sign of
the book, or even of the heavy yellow pages I
remembered placing above it. I scanned for dis disturbance, hoping
for some ordinary misplacement, but the shelf glimmered clean as
a mirror. Half Way back to the desk, I ran
into Mike Badge, swinging, yawning, and fumbling with earbuds. He
paused when he saw me, braw for Rod. You are
still here, Morning's yours man. He dropped his messenger bag
and leaned over the counter, catching sight of the phone book.
Why are you always fussing over that old thing? Anyway?
Before I could form a reply, Mike shrugged. I chuck it,
Stuff gets shuffled. Staff keeps half a memory at night. Anyway,
My cars double park'd see you to morrow. His tone
made it clearer there was no further converse to be
had his footsteps I could away, leaving me in what
now felt like a vacuum. I thumbed through the book's pages,
fixating on the empty spot where a name or number
have once lived. The indentation suggested numbers the shape of skirt,
maybe a longer surname, but which I couldn't guess. I'd
some one else come after me hunting for that entry,
or had the book itself somehow found a way to revert.
The idea was absurd, but I couldn't dislodge it. Outside
a garbage truck beaped and rumbled off. That sounds so
normal it grounded me for a moment. I stashed the
directory in my messenger bag on a whim, unlikely to
sett off any alarms. Maybe I'd look at it later
in daylight, with enough caffeine and less lurking dread. I
convinced myself that was enough. As I left the library's
old clock chimed six. I signed out on the dusty
walk sheet, scribbling my name beneath the neat block a
print of some one Becker, maybe another el surname. A
fraying slip of yellow paper caught in the binder Archives
nineteen ninety two, scrolled in rapid shorthand. It looked familiar,
but I let it flutter to the floor, nose too
tautic care. The walk home in Dawn's bruce blue was
nearly pleasant compared to the Steifen Library. I felt the
weight of the directory in my back, occasionally brushing against
my thigh, and almost talismanic presents. My mind refused to settle,
replaying fragments of conversation, sign edge tape labels, maintenance never detailed,
always looming, warnings of accidents, of things better left and
moved that evening, unable to sleep, id spread out the
directory on my kitchen table under a sickly yellow bulb.
I set about copying the surrounding entry's addresses, numbers, names
on to scratch paper. Two adjacent names were underlined in
faded ballpoint Harland G. And Simmons TEA. Neither entry rang
a bell, but Harland's number trailed off, bluntly cut by
the page tier. I tried searching city property databases, even
alsocial media mentions. Harland had once worked for the Urban
Planning Commission, last listed in the mid nineties, vanished from
municipal files. Shortly after, Simmons came up on a report
as a temporary assistant librarian for just one fiscal year
with no further record. A hollow of feeling called up
my throat. Why were these mundane details, just names, its
numbers scrubbed so thoroughly. A rattle drew my attention back
to the door. I half expected some staffer or city
official to be waiting there, but it was only a
shifting branch scraping against glass. I forced myself to laugh,
close the blinds and stapped my notes under the directory.
Before going to bed, I flipped back through my phone,
reviewing the photo I had taken of the book that morning.
The image was cress, every grin of dust visible, but
the tear in the page looked different, as if it
ran deeper in the photo than it had in person,
like a crease cutting further into the heart of the book.
I stared for a long minute, then dropped the phone,
un settled by the trick of the eye of the camera,
and climbed under the covers, determined to get at least
a few hours sleep. Dreams came disturbed and scattered a
stitch together from chalk arrows, elevator shafts, voices on radios
just out of reach. When my alarm sounded in the
gray blankness before dusk, I felt as if I'd barely
left the halls at all. I knew the moment I
crossed back into the library one night later, that the
illusion of ordinary work had slept for gourd Metro's forescent
spill pulled in watery puddles around the base of the building,
but the library itself loomed darker than before, a beach
ship where no tide would ever reach. My key card
hesitated at the lock, blinking red, before finally yielding inside.
The lights along the security desk flickered half on, some panels,
burning bright, others dull as old pearl. My own face,
caught in faint glass, looked grayer, drawn and tight at
the jaw, as if even the air had changed routine
barely mattered. I felt watched as I made the first
circuit past the stacks, my every movement parallel by reflected
slivers in the gloss doors and the stainless elevator. Nobody
unshift but me and so the schedule claimed it fell
in for the cleaning crew. But as I loaded in
the new name in the log booquet rays appear written
over a smudge, as though someone had erased then ridden
the entry. I didn't see Rai's all night new issue.
I tried over the radio once, voiced barely above a whisper,
recalling the way Ms Harrington had narrowed her gaze when
she warned me off crackle, silence, no reply. At first,
I convinced myself to act as if the routine would
shield me. I did the rounds, checked every floor, all doors,
locked stacks in order, Yet at each turn, some small
sign nor its absence eroded my confidence. A car that
had been parked by catalog returned itself to the spot
I had last seen it two nights ago, though I
was certain i'd left it upstairs. The evening press of
whind seen to gather against the glass rather than outside it.
Each time I knew the reference alcove, that blue directory
prickled my nerves, even through the messenger back I brought
at home. Inn I left it in my locker at
the start of the shift, irrationally treating it as dangerous cargo. Still,
the tide mark left behind in the locker's base suggested
that something had been with me all along. The building
was entery than usual. No sign of Mike, his initials
signed before mine with a double underline and a tiny
and familiar check mark beside them. Now Carmella. All told
a hush grater than the sum of the io oor,
lack of patrons, a kind of potential in the air,
as if everything weighed. I spent my bricks, hunched over
staff computers, using what little access had gleaned to prel
city digital records, every property scandal'll transfer or layer off
listed in dull, careful copy. More than a few stores
ended with a leave of absence after the library had
a maintenance closure, eight shrack up grades asbestis, mitigation, security, refitting,
and never with any detail, never in public reports. The
more I dug, the more seam opened in the story
the council Wreckers. For the years surrounding those mysterious enters
clusted tightly, whistleblower events, anonymous leaks, upset bates, sudden retirements,
flared briefly, then vanished from mention, always two or three
days later. Closure from maintenance, library wing x Arquhav's wing y.
I traced the chalp marks had seen both on the
surveillance footage and on the real walls two subasements down
onto a sheet of scratch paper. In context, the positions
mapped a path through the older part of the basement,
one terminated section of which was never mentioned in the
reno blueprint I could find, but caught in a fuzzy
old blueprint posted to the city's planning board site. Dodgy
hand written amendments ran along on its bottom in faint pencil.
Old hub do not disturb key held at base. When
I poked at older building records, I discovered two blueprints,
one from nineteen sixty eight, one reissued in nineteen eighty nine,
with subtle differences. The earlier version included a windowless annex
record surveillance niche co O R directory. The newer plan
penciled it out, the text scraped away with an erasis
so hard you could see the faint scars in the paper.
If you were looking for a piece to hide, you'd
want it somewhere like that, where only staff could see.
Where historical inches were so jumbled. A catalog misplace raced
and then hastily replaced that no patron could ever guessed
the difference. It wasn't just all blueprints and council minutes
that clued me in. As I reviewed the phone book
still tapped in my locker and mashed highlighted numbers with
the dresses that had cropped up in the city reports
and tape sade society leaders, small contractors blacklisted for compliance issues,
and at least one city at any quietly reassigned upstate
two inches. In particular, harl And G and Simmon's tea
lined up to the years one. Tapes in the box
most often appeared disrupted, showing frames that seem spliced in
odd places, as if someone had stopped and restarted the
camera without warning, or had tried clumsily to raise a
record that anything had happened at all. CCTV locks proved
confounding but revealing in their own way. Most cameras in
public areas blinked the correct night, but one in a
main reading room I noticed showed a time stamp and
scene repeated every two eyos. Looping as a frozen, slightly
jittery at the ages, I returned to the office security
interface and dug deeper, matching a handful of incident locks.
With all vhsrecos, I found interest for nights that didn't
square with official opening eyros or scheduled staff special project,
always with a supervisor's signature, harringonly sometimes Becker elpena handskulled
cleared under a location secured. I slid the VHS box
out from beneath the brick room catalogs, handling it with
growing awareness. My own name was there, not yet, but
in the bundle tapes I'd missed before ventures for arc
I've reviewed Deshift only A handful of faces flickered in
and out of darkness. One looked like a younger Mike.
Another car of a flash of Carmello's features, half in profile,
both speaking to a blank wall beside a choke mark
that was unmistakably to Pat and I had seen in
the real basement. When I rose to make a round,
I found my keys on the wrong clip of my belt,
not where I'd settled them earlier, and newly greasy, as
if someone else's hand had held them not long before.
My locker combination seemed off. Had I written it down
somewhere wrong, or had someone been through the phone book
was angled half out and a new scuff mark the cover,
probably my fault, but I couldn't say when it had happened.
The night fell stripped to privacy, passing the off as
corridornia tree, a cut two stuff as day shift. I
guess their uniform sharp, talking inergent whispers, before falling abruptly
silent as I neared, stiffening and turning their faces to
the screens. The atmosphere had congealed into something dense and yielding.
Not ice, not water, not fog, but awake in the
air that pressed me away from my ordinary deaties. Short
marks grew in number. Each night, A new one appeared
at stairwell's base or long ductwork at the first basement
landing always pointing down, or a sigh never up. I
stopped pretending not to see them. The pattern sharpened as
I traced them on scratch paper, leading not directly to
the public archive, but to a crumbling walk case behind
the bulk of the old stacks, one I'd never thought
to check before. Colleagues avoided me, passing in sudden clots
of silence, a verdic gaze's cold murmurs. Once my keys
disappeared for twenty minutes, then reappeared where I checked before
another shift. The brake room fridge was unplugged in the
door jar water pulling over the towels of petty sabotage
propotent in its message you do not belong here. Every
one of those markers drew me back to the archives,
each new arrow tugging at my nerves and curiosity. The
basement air thickened, no longer chilled in neutral, but growing stale,
as if sialed from within. I gave up the last
frags of pretense after midnight, three nights after the sabotage began,
when I found a chalk spiral on the bottom step
leading to the sub basement, fresh pristine, as though just
drawn with a tiny crosset center. It was a call
to descend. I waited until all signs of other staff
aided my own shifts hand off, arranged to leave the
building mostly empty for two hours. The gap documented on
a print out of to night's duty roster on a
Thursday morning, just passed two. Following the sharp trail, I
thumbed the emergency over right and let the cold, metallic
groan of the service elevator guide me down. The panel
buttons required a key one eyed filch from a ring
in s. Harrington's office when nobody was looking, acting casual,
hardest to cotto drumbeat. The lowest level was marked, but
the key slid home until the doors sailed behind and
darkest swallowed the cab. The air descended with me sire
and faintly electric, as if the old wiring in the
wall sweated out all the secrets it had ever carried.
At BTU, those potted into a short corridor of raw
concrete and exposed condurates. Here at the temperature dropped to
meet lockerchaill, my breath fogged and lingered. I skated through
a narrow hole stack with out of date city directories,
cardboard boxes labeled surveillance nineteen ninety s, and file cabinets
bolted shut by rusted padlocks. No cameras down here, no
light except for my beam. The chalk marks grew in
certainty as I followed them, looping left past the stacks,
then a sudden loach into the real dead, into a
wall with a panel mismatched in it seems beside a
Corroda's old fire hose box. I pressed the crack of
the panel. Pushing searching, it shifted not as a door
but as a fun a pivot. Something snapped and gave,
and the whole case whil swung open a foot, crushing
dust and grip behind it. Inside a narrow brick chamber
stretched away, the air staticky smelled of aged paper, ozone
and gussy old cologne shells slumped under the weight of
reel to reel tapes, rotary phones with grease darkened handsets,
and paper ledges fat with the cities in calculable details.
On the near wall hung a string of polaroid photographs,
their faces turned inward as if too precious or dam
into leaf free below mugshot's life and up late nineteen eightters,
every name blacked out as half shadowed in the room's
dim light, I made out the jagged scrip of a
city at drissbook, nearly identical to the directory upstairs, but
lined in red ink entry savagely crossed and re cataloged
in another hand. I passed my flas flight over squash
cardboard boxes, each labeled with initials L B, E, H, S, T,
and still more old staff, all link to my own
bent trail of research, a sense of collatse pressed in
all of a teetering on the edge of erasure, were revelation.
Every surface told the story in fragments. Ledgers told me,
page tape, reel's label for years, bracketing the city scandals
sword at night a June eighty nine, clean discarded members
bore dates, stance matching the exact day's key witnesses. When silent,
a city news flickered with word of yet another deferred trial.
A shiver ran through the floor above. Footsteps muffled slow.
I switched off my light, crouched behind a pile of
ruined bounders in the niche between shelves. The ceiling above
vibrated with the rhythm of walker's cross in them pausing,
someone unlocked the hidden door behind me with a series
of clinks and a pop. I suppressed my b death,
staying as far in the shadow as possible. What if
whoever entered was merely checking? I waited, knees, aching for
a sign. Voices leaked in older men the weight of
age and authority in their muttered exchanges, Two in city
issue suits, a third in a navy windbreaker with them
A staff member, an older woman hunch, but familiar from
the break room, her hair frazzled and dressed notably clean.
So this is the last suit. Number one whisper voice
and anxious lolt. Harrington wasn't seen, muttered another lower with
an age of certainty that reminded me uncomfortably of the
tone she took on her worse nights. Admo comes next week,
Burn everything, dockets Leger's the whole lot, same as lest time.
A third voice, his nervous phone books missing again, he
marked the list. None of them noticed me, hunch silent
and shivering behind a pillar. They moved in Rituel, stacking
tapriels on her trolley, sweeping polaroids into a battered fold out,
closing ledgers that looked ancient enough to belong to the
city founders. Among the artifacts, one object linted, a battered
phone book, blue and worn but definitely not my copy.
Spine snapped up into a page bearing both a red
ex and something newly erase, the outline of an intrigon
the woman in the wind breck oppressed her hand over
her eyes. If it comes out, we're all gone with it.
There watching now, Fe's press can't risk another becker An
argument crested, muffled by the files. Burn it tonight, when
were all in print by morning? A phone on the
wall rang, shrill and sudden. They froze as the rotary
dial ground down, each digit rattling in the stillness. Nobody answered.
A flash of movement, one of them knocked into the shelf.
The stack of technical manuals thudded to the linoleum, skiing
across toward my foot. My phone, silent for ires, chose
that instant to blurt out its own digital alarm, a
calendar notification, as benign as possible, bringing stroll and quick.
Before I could kill it, every eye fixed on my
corner of darkness. The city man lunged an armine, some
stubby metal bar raised in his fist. I ducked adrenaline screening.
The oldest staffer, perhaps recognizing me, yelled no, let him,
Let him speak for himself. The second suited figure, unsteady
in the shadows, pointed his phone's flashlight at me. Who
told you to come here? You city press? Just staff,
just curious. My voice was steadied in my legs as
I forced myself to my feet, hands open, What are
you burning cases? Or a people? The group exchange looks
pregnant with the history. I could only imagine the head cleaner,
her eyes wild and suddenly sorrowful, whispered, you don't want
what you'll find here. Just leave the books, please. The
city man stepped forward. He published one word, one hint
about this place where its records. Your name would join NAO's.
He nodded toward the black doubt mugshots. But it already is,
I said, it's in the files, in that book, page
torn out. You're not just erasing evidence, You're erasing people
and the building. It remembers something broke in the group.
The cleaner wept, hand shaking. The other city officials bawn,
sweeping tapes off the table. We have orders you, he
jabbed a finger toward me. Leave the script. You walk now,
and you get to keep your shift, your job, your life.
A moment shoving and steady. In the confusion, my elbow
hit the bright blue phem book. It fell open, and
a page rip louseell list of names, addresses mostly faded out,
but one black through ink. Bleeding, breathing ragged. The senior
staffer reached for the spilled ledges, clutching them together. A
box burst open in the struggle city, records sliding across
the floor, A caught of folder as it landed, its
label Fresh and hand letter twenty twenty four suppression candidates. There,
A penciled at the bottom was my name, last verse,
with an empty day beside it. Who decided this? I
asked for small. The man in the wind breker shivered
none of us. But once a building nose, it keeps
the habit a silence. Then the shriek of the war
phone again, the suits grasp their piles of records. The
cleaner slip passed me toward the door, sobbing softly muttering
it never ends, never ends, Ledgers always open, always comes back.
I let the ledges fall, the evidence muddled now on
the tiles and shelves, A back toward the door, adrenaline
mixing rancid with triumphinit terror, no further words, no for it.
The confrontation dissolved into each party's frantic, solitary work of hiding, erasing,
or simply pretending I was never there. It took all
my effort to leave without running. The foamber press flat
against my roads, as if it might vanish if I rushed.
Sunshine The next morning felt sharp or blade through my
vision rather than warmth. I arrived mid afternoon at the library,
met at the door by two city officials. They wore
the same cheap suits as last night's confrontation. Here being reassigned,
one said, matter of fact, as part of planned staff
are structuring. The paper slid across the desk. Termination of employment,
Central City Library effective immediately. Do I get a reason,
I asked, Shiki, trying for bravado. The branch is under review.
The second replied, smooth as gas, no further comment. Inside
a glimpse de mess, Harrington shoulders rigid over a clipboard,
her eyes never meeting mine. Other staff simply slipped away
into their corners, avoiding every glance. I didn't protest. I
let the city men lead me out the side door,
passiolo tape now wrapping half the West annex in the
stairwell to be to days blowed. After that, I tried
appealing for my job, hunting post's on line for m
A co workers no longer responded. Mike's number was disconnected.
Carmelod if it was even the same. Cammel and ever
returned to her post. According to the new judy, schedule,
which I managed to see online before access was revoked.
Occasionally I'd catch a glimpse of a familiar shape in
the corner of my eye on the bus, or passing
the glass to dry cleaners a suit, a lightning flash
of recognition, now turning away before I could focus. At
the grocery checkout, my receipt poor clipp see cloak inert
when I asked, the clerk just shrug and replaced it
with a shrink rat apology gift card, eyes never meeting mine.
News coverage about the library's interior demolition trickled out minor
fire in records area and no injuries reported. Lost records
not significant for city functions, Repeating the same sanitizing language
of a rasure I had seen in the ledgers and tapes.
The west Wind never reopened. The council denied all claims
about missing personnel files, saying all information is up to
date pro state mandate. One line in the city paper's
opinion section wandered about her o volay in records management and
whether it signaled deeper corruption. The article vanished within IROs
replaced with a recipe for potato salad. I rarely left
my room in the weeks have followed, even the city's
normal bustle took on a filtered aspect. Once two men
strangers lingered in the lobby for too long, leaving only
when I came down the stairwell, silent as race. I
felt watch, then forgotten, then watched again, as if a
camera reeled me back into some one's digital tape, and
then erased the segment. Days later, just as fear began having,
I received a parcel left outside my apartment door, heavy
wrapped in thick brown paper, no return address. Inside nestle
to top a layer of yellowed newsprint was the phone.
Because my scoff still present, but now with a burry
mark running down its side, blacking several pages. Inside its
spine was a polaroid. I unfolded it with care. The
image was blurry, its colors oversaturated as a teenage's film,
doves corners curled. It showed a tight space, walls canted
in at odd angles, the clothed surveil and cell with
its bins and ledgers reflected in the mirror. Above one
shelf stood a figure my own shape, plain as the
day jacket badge scarbrow. But I had never taken that proto,
nor stowed in the cell with any camera. Below the
image a graphites me spelled out three words. A letter
is a little broken as a written by a shaking hand.
Every page counts. The directory, now half incinerated, slumped open
of its own accord. A single leaf, crisp, still white,
drifted out and tumbled to the floor. On one side,
a faint new list of names. Some I remembered Holland Simmonds,
now cross up with heavy black lines. Others familiar or not,
remain blank waiting. I stared at that page or registrate,
a tally, a thread, or a reminder. I couldn't decide.
The s seemed to crackle, as if the weight of
ledges and tapes in Cold City history pressed out from
the book and into my walls, where it would echo
on after my own story was no longer recorded. Even now,
I think about the stacks, the boxes, the entries erased
and smudged and written. A new looped like some library's
recursion tape, looping old secrets for no audience at all,
except perhaps for the building. I must have a force
inside keeps a record, waiting for the next name to
be marked. A faint papery sound on my foot over
the straight directory page broke the hush. I knelt, trembling
and pinched it up between two fingers, feeling them familiar, smooth,
as of fresh paper, is out of place as a
wet stone in a graveyard. There was just enough light
to make out the crossed off names blocky, blacked out Simmons,
Hall and Becker, below pencil lines ash columns of nothing,
as if flyins were reserved for futures not yet decided.
My own name, written small, sanded between two blanks, was
neither stricken nor completed. Instinct jolted through me, half terror,
half the duggared resolved that had gotten me through every
graveyard shift in every city. At huddledon, I looked for
the camera lens. I now felt sure moss be hidden
in every room I'd ever entered, But there was only
my window, reflected gray and empty. As dusk settled behind it,
the directory page shook. In my grip, breath catching, I
caught a smelt char fading glue, an echo of a
colder from the cell beneath the library. It brought a
sharp memory of the confrontation in a hidden room. The
phones ranged the blink of the old ledger, the stack
of files absurdly fresh, with my name in there. I
pressed the page flat against my table, as if I
smoothing paper, I could somehow smooth the way, dread, the
graphitesmere of every page. Counc echoed that half whispered warning
to leave things be, but it was no longer possible.
Forces from the hallway, just my neighbor returning, forced myself
to believe scraped to the age of my attention. I
glanced between the front doors, dead bold and the polaroid
still tight in my left hand. On a whim, I
held the photo beside the open directory and did something
I'd never done in all my nights at the library.
I read aloud from the torn knew less, each name
clear as I could, Harland, Simmons, Becker, I stopped voice fraying.
My own name waited at the end, not yet uttered.
The silence in my apartment thickened from outside. A sirens
snap passed frame madeline. Something in the building, pipes maybe,
or settling wood creaked in a pattern, all too much
like careful footsteps above. I tense, listening to each faint shuffle,
No voices, no explanation, the heaviness of old paper, of smoke,
and the faint buzzed onceeen electrical currents crowding together in
my little room. My phone lit up, notificationless, just the
silent clow. No number called, no new message arrived, and
yet the green poles didned to bright, as if trying
and failing to make itself seen. I shoved it face
down under the polaroid. I told myself to act, to
show the directory, to call the city archives number I'd
found weeks ago, even to pack and vanishes so many
others plainly had. Instead, I picked up the phone book,
part of me craven, the act of defiance, or perhaps resolution.
I flipped open to the torn page, then to the first,
and finally somewhere in the dead center, looking for patterns
or some link I'd missed. More graphite, more fragmented numbers,
all the marginalia that had become an obsession. Suddenly a
phrase leaped out a pencil, the line deep in the back,
index easy to overlook. A fur each ledger closed, another
opens witness log return my skin prickled that were to
return A delf thud from the stairwell. Yank me upry.
I tupped the directory and polary beneath the stove's batter
tray and drifted to my door, peering through the peep
hole and seeing no one whe it just an exhausted
neighbor or something else shuffing down the hall. I returned,
not wanting to leave the room dark. I needed evidence,
leverage anything. I dug into my back for the love
book i'd swipe from the library staff desk. Paging through,
I found the last week's worth of shifts, my own
loops and scribbles, growing more frantic, and then between March's lines,
freshing her neat block capitals. Incidents must be absorbed by
the ricka shelter. No leak permitted new candidate pending. It
wasn't handwriting I recognized, but the lines that followed a
krand in the safe margin left for superiors to sign off,
repeated and address mine. I stopped through rooms, dread, making
my legs wooden. The night air pressed against the window,
abiiting the cold wind for late spring. I resisted the
urge to call anyone who would believe me. I doubted
I'd even believe myself, but my name ridden in multiple
ledgers apolloids, impossible image, and above all, the endless recursion
of the phone book's returned. The evidence was stacked too
high to ignore. For a moment occurred to me to
burn the directory, to raise every hint of my involvement,
as though city men had dry. But I had seen
how that played out, how burning a ledger only brought
its double back. In the scorched version, a new audition
with husher emissions were trembling hands. I wrote my own
name lightly across the bottom of the fallen directory, page
half in challenge, half in resignation. Then I stood at
the window and waited for what I didn't know. The
car's head light swept across the alley, scattering shadows, and
for a heartbeat I saw my own form reflected in
the glass foam clutched against my chest, nameless waiting. The
chill in the room feeded slowly, replaced by a different sensation, expectation,
as if the records themselves needed an action, not just
a witness. I understood finally what was demanded to someone
to mark, someone to record the cycle on ending as
Drgnon pale over the city. The phone maclay opened on
my table, its pages fluttering with each stir of went
through the aging windows, every leaf for spring, threats of promises,
or maybe just the old imperative that had haunted the
library's depths. Return Loch witness continue outside the city, woke
as if nothing had changed. But I knew, with a certainty,
as heavie as the phone begin my lap, that every page,
every ledger, every name, mine most of all, would echo
somewhere in the quiet, obsessive shells of the Central City
Library waiting. And that is the end. Thank you for listening,
and I will see you in the next one.