Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. It was nearly one serio am,
three hours left in my night shift, when the wheels
of my cart announced my presence with their tired, uneven screech.
The vassess of the old library fell siland as I moved,
save for the unobtrusive hammer, fluorescent lights overhead, each tube
slightly backlit in a blue darkness, buzzing faintly with the
effort of staying alive through another midnight. My keys jangled
from my hip whenever I turned, sharply, mingling with the
unreliable wine from the cart whenever its out de toorn
section of the Fredber carpet down in the dimmolit south basement.
There carried a trace of meldew and forgotten tone of
sharp and chemical, overlaying the perpetual residue of dust. I
moved quietly through the narrow aisles, cart half filled with
rochelve monograss and a stack of magazines nobody would ever
have read again. Despite having walked this wrote so often
I could map it blindfolded, something that knight pressed me
to linger in certain spots A feeble flicker from the
lights above made and familiar shadows out of familiar obstacle
supporting columns, the squad lock, fire cabinet, the slouching mob bucket,
abandoned in a coroner to night path, ended in the
archive's low axis section as own, rarely visited as shells
warp for the age and cool to the touch. I
rounded the last band, and there it was something out
of place. A thick black spine volume opened, not to
the front or even a crisp page mid story, but
oddly balanced atop the shelf, dis blade open, the inner
margin pressed upward as if begging to be examined. The
light nearest it was choking in and up, turning the
pages into shifting canvas, wordswamen and out of focus. Even
as a reach for the book, my pulse betrayed me.
I wasn't sure why, except that the placement was all wrong.
Books are not left like that, especially not here above
the dust line page adge as clean as bum. I hesitated,
but curiosity pressed me forward. Each page I turned crackled
in the thick silence, marginal notes, dance and precise float
in hand. I didn't recognize lacking fast but not heard,
claimed every available and shoutside of the printed text. The
notes started off interesting, almost harmless, details about return dates,
about the shelvy order, about the misplacedon's cyclopedia. But then
the words shifted. An A froze a humming. The ninth
bar see major one note read plain as a spotlet sign.
I had, in fact been quietly humming to myself, an
aram left over from a radio jinglelight held earlier in
the restroom. Lower down, the margin said, the chapter heading said,
straightens the crooked sign. I'd done exactly that moments before
gently aligning the slanting closed for inventory plaque by the
elevator with the palm of my hand, I flipped more
pages breath height the detail shopping descriptions of a night
shift subject to menace two inspects overhead panel A minis
two was my employee number, but I knew the entry
was me. And then the impossible patron three men A
six B will drop mugge at one eight a m
followed by another A minus two catches leave on three
tier shelf aisle thirty nine. I drew my hand back.
How could there be notes about future events? And how
could any one have seen me in this far corner,
when I'd been damn instraably alone. The silence now felt
close and sticky above me, the light gutter, the shadow
of the spine collapsing across my fingers. The book was
suddenly too heavy. I closed it gently, scanning the spine.
No call number, no catalog mark, not even a publisher's name.
There was an old, barely legible silver stamping on the cover,
some sort of bird wings outspread, talons clutching nothing. MUSHes
squeaked against the towel as I backed up, hot galloping,
I returned the book as close as I could to
where I've found it, and walked quickly away. As I
retraced my steps into the safer world of the main floor,
my mind itched with impossible details. How buck could witness
what I'd just done, and what else it might know.
I tried to distract myself by pacing the usual beat,
checking the glass door locks in the angle of the
hallway cameras, measuring my steps. I forced a list of
tasks into my mind, wiping down the staff, breakrim counter
locking the last return bin. But something in the soft
scattered dust of the UK had lingered. If the book
had already written down my next move. What was left
for me to do except follow Daylight in this part
of the city's thin always caught between glass office towers
and the scotchberckclick of last centuries dreams. But the library,
in its bulk and breadth, is a survivor. I work
here for that reason. I think the structure lives those
who moved through it, just quietly under their feet. My
name's Julian. Most people never learn it, and that's fine.
My job officially is collection shift coordinator. Are all very
few want, especially after dark. I arrange schedules, supervise a
team of schovers that never stays the same for lawn
pushed to barquards through the central system. But at midnight
I am alone. By design, most staff is leave by dinner.
The day team, the well to of students, retirees, researchers,
and the everlice's head of reference, all vanished by nine.
People bustle in clusters during daylight, complaining about heat or
drop ceilings or budgets. But I prefer the hush that
descends as net swallows. A last patron moving in an
empty building appeals to something methodical in me. Out there
conversation is a net. You can't escape in here, just
me my list, and the gentle form of the eighth track.
The library is a contradiction. His public spaces are all
sharply kept fos gleam signage reads clearly. It airs faintly,
perfumed with whatever chemical cleaner is currently in vogue. But
if you wander beyond the glass implaster facade, the building
turns inward and strange. Behind the main stacks, a wedge
of old beaux Art's marble ceilings meet sincient ducktork. The
old city events roar beneath, never quiet. Sometimes in a
back room you'll find a four inch gap where mismatched
marble pillow meets an impossible metal Lindell, and no one
can explain what was removed or why. The carpet is
often newer on one side than the other. Tiles sometimes
sag away from their grout, specially along the forgotten corridors
and the sub basement floors. Some evenings I like to
make on scheduled rounds map out Vanish short cuts and
air croads that the new Hires never learn. In the
southern annex, there's a little book drop slot next to
a locked door label to w PC staff only, but
nobody recalls who w PC is or what the room contains.
Now the west wing dead ends in temporary maintenance, always
under review, but the sign hasn't moved in two years.
My badge only opens about half the doors. The rest
I document on my phone quietly, as a kind of
running inventory of the unsolvable. My nightly rituals are small,
but they matter. I check the bins. Someone's always returned
to batted magazine or late dvdfter ayres I reset displays,
flipping the dust jackets just so. I silence the alarm
that beats on the rabor croom door, even though there's
nothing valuable inside worth the cost of insurance. Every night,
chairs are rearranged oddly in the reading room. Nobody admits
to moving them, but they are always off, measured in
just wrong, so I nudge them back quietly, a small
order imposed on entropy. Most weeks, I see the same
faces during brief crossovers. The maintenance guy, helmet headed and
always eating sunflower seeds. The plump day manager who never
learns my name. Two gruff gods who walk the external perimeter.
They don't often talk about what I see, nor do
they see the same things. Their focus is data Meyer's
log books, getting the next rays for me. The piece
of the stacks at three M is enough, or was
until the recent turnover. There has been lately a loath
bromovanis among the skeleton staff quiet meetings. Ostensibly, safety briefings
involve clip mentions of missing patients who we believe. It's
just routine confusion folks. The supervisors say, eyes down. The
number of replacements shuffling through the HR pipeline is high,
higher than I recall, but explanations are always on hand.
To jobs are tough. Graduate students transfer people, wander off.
No one uses the word van, but I track things.
My email archives are thick with forwarded procedural concerns. The
most recent missing person, a bookish retiree who came a
nightly to read biographies, was explained away as transferred membership.
His lost scanned location. Cryptically, the dewies even hundreds, never
mind that wing has been closed for US best dis
abatement for months. My notes, cross checked with security locks
find casual discrepances. Doors marked as out of service, lot
it is open on the wrong dates. Meeting summaries, referencing
wings closed ten years ago. I've spent a couple of
anxious evenings with my coffee, rereading the notes, finding that
doors on level two our reference by now removed numbers,
and sometimes a name will appear in two places, impossibly
at once. Every time I bring one up gently without accusation,
supervisors wave it off, all paperwork, account and paced error.
Not to worry Julian. Still, when I'm alone, the burden
of the blank spaces is mine. Even the main break
room has a staff foto from a decade ago, faces
half remembered names. I can no longer attach to the images.
By the time the echoes of that night, the book
in the basement, the impossible margin alia had faded. For
my ears, I'd convinced myself it was sleep deprivation, a
trick of my brain adapting old notes to new anxieties.
But by the next shift, something kept nudging me back
to the archive. Curiosity gives wit compulsion. Soon I found
myself slotting shelving Audit into my list, a perfect excuse.
I returned caught light, this time, all too aware of
each squeal from the wheels. But when I reached the
stretch of archou shelving. The book was not where I'd
left it. I spent a minute searching. I almost missed
it janned behind a set of outdated references. I clopidas
flushed to the wall, hard to access without moving a
heavy chemistry set. It was open again, this time to
a new set of pages. The marginalia had grown. The
script remained the same, but was more urgent less. Even
the first notes tracked the routine nine hundred seventy eight
point four hundred twelve three transferred journals backdated six slash fourteen. Then,
as I read further, patron subject six p last seen
corridor beam in A seventeen A twenty three ten A
nominally no reemergence exit subject p read Enters periodicals one
thirty two m no subsequent registry staffers on duty a
minis two one minutes ninety observer three minutes too, wrecker's
shelf in take Witness Partial. They weren't names, but designations,
codd and clinical, with precise timings and locations. Every disappearance mapped.
I now realized, on to library sections, most would never connect.
Not sequential, not linear, but scattered. I fished up my
own battered noteplicant as quietly as possible, started sketching a
rough map, section by section noted in the annotations. As
I did, it formed a rough arc and unintentional spiral,
coming to rest under the original dome of the old library,
the part that revelapped on, certainly with the most ancient
sealed off foundation. As chever caught my shoulders, my eyes
returned to the new marginalia sandwich between faded exclamation points.
I A note subject A minis two notices only what
is lost? That implied without question that the observer was
being watched, or water watched. Just then, a faint, unplaceable
sound drifted down from above, the soft scrape of something
shifting just out of view. I looked up. One of
the old ceiling tiles, long wapped and water stained, had
slipped half an inchut of place, admitting a smudge of
shadow that had not existed moments earlier. I considered writing
it down. Instead, I closed the book, returning it to
its concealed location, already uneasy. How easily it had moved
on its own, there was no mistaking it. Now. Someone
or something was cataloging not just books, but actions, perhaps
even thoughts and if he could track what was missing,
was it already tracking me? Sleep that week arrived late
in shallow my dreams, within full flickering numbers and the
sensation of being watched while turning endless corners. By the
third night, my determination had solidified into a need for answers.
The corridors of administration are not made for the likes
of me, but I kept to the margin's polite, persistent,
and generally ignored, so long as I didn't interrupt real business.
It took a letter weeding to get the night technician
and facilities lie hourly sixties or vests and conspiracy talk
to grant me access to the security logs. I said
truthfully that a shelv and trolley had gun missing, and
I needed to know where it ended up. Larry Grinned
shuffled the monitors on his battered desk and played the
requested feeds, logging infinite snack time. As he was watched,
the screen flickered with footage town stumped to the night
of the most recent disappearance. I watched as a familiar regular,
the tall be spectacled missupeits from circulation, wandering into the
reference aisle a mug balanced precariously in his hand. A
clock in the cornery twelve forty seven a m for
three minutes. The feet looked normal on broken shelves, the
usual lamp glow my own sallow reflection from an early sweep.
Then in the next frame, the world had shifted. The
patron was gone behind where he had just stood. The
shoving was misaligned to two rows of traded places. A
sign pointed the wrong direction. The digital clock in the
wall flickered wildly, then showed seven fourteen, a time that
made no sense. Larry snorted, Probably a glitch, he pronounced.
I left the booth more rattled than before. The official
record could be manipulated when I probe my coworkers over
coffee about odd building changes or shifting aisles. Only Nadine,
the late evening librarian, hazarded anything construction all the time. Right,
they are always closing things off, She shrugged. Honestly, I
just followed the signage gets whigsquicikest. In the old wings,
every explanation came ready made, but the building plans didn't allign.
No old blueprints in the archive file rooms showed closed
and reupriant stamps. For the same reading room across a
dozen different years. Contractor's logs sometimes mentioned hidden aggress or
listed restricted for renovations, so often it lost meaning more disturbing.
My searches in the digital catalog yielded nothing for the
annotator book, not even close keyword matches, some g call
numbers reference in the margin Alia want in the current
system at all sections cited in Nottzile thirty nine wing
by Minis seventeen either didn't exist or weren't accessible anymore. Then,
midway through my shift, the news arrived another misplacement. This
time it was Miranda, the ever present Genealgy enthusiasts. Supposedly
she wondered past the art journals and simply failed to
accept no charge to her library card, no digital trace.
I checked her last known area against my own map.
My breathing quickening is the call number match to third
strange note feeding in toward that central dunblind spot I
traced before. Too many coincidences clustered around abandoned z owns.
Tucer workers pressed for details, gave contradicting stores. One claimed
to have seen Morando leave at eleven ear or the
other at eleven thirty The time stamps on the keeap ads, however,
gave entirely different times, neither of which lined up. When
I noted this, both brushed it off. People forget, one said,
scrubbing at a coffee ring on the reference desk. Staying
behind later than usual, I started obsessively marking the accumulating contradictions,
scribbling time stamps next to the swelling where patents spreading
across my map. That sense of drift of the ground
shifting subtly beneath my routines grew stronger. Then came a
new sensation, A tiny, persistent melody drifting from the old
wing is so as impossible to place. At first, I
thought I'd imagined it. The tomborust haunt and I familiar
are Reliclola Bay from my own childhood, twisted now in
echoing tamber through the steel and stone. When I moved closer,
it faded. I left the wing, and it returned fainter.
When I stopped moving, it vanished completely. A code or
a warning or a lore. Something in the air felt taut,
stretched thin. As I woked the lower stacks, mapping and
remapping the pass and of vanishings in the cryptic notations.
Each night the details deepened. It was on an evening
heavy with threat, the corridor light stuttering with every voltage fluctuation,
that the real change happened. I entered the North Annex
following a gut urage, cross checking a list of vanished
coal numbers. The usual spatial lodger failed. Where a corridor
had always turned left, it now went right. The inter
coompox flashed nonsense, the column blinking and an even rhythm.
With each step. I realized the symmetry of the stacks
had collapsed, rose, folding into one another, signing it spinning
round on itself. I tried not to panic, but every
door well led back on itself. In the thick of
this disorientation, something watched. The sense was distinct, pungent, like
static pressed against my skin. My feet carried me half
on purpose toward a part of the library cordon for
a renovation of forbidden zone, always dismissed as being cleared
of asbestos. Against the west wall, behind a limp curtain
of yellow caution tape, and a marked door caught my eye.
It had been painted over solon ago, with the brush
stroke shined through in daylight, but it was unmistakably a
working door. From beyond it, beneath the drawer roone of ventilation,
I detected a rhythic scratching pen to paper or maybe
something sharper foises, just audible mumbling, overlapping and then subsiding.
I hesitated. The light overhead flickered violently, threatening total darkness.
With a sudden, frantic shell, I pressed my shoulder to
the brittle paint, feeling its splinter. The latch gave, and
the door swan inwred with a groan. Inside, silence reigned.
The air was cold and noddley stale. I squinted my
eyes traced a low ceilinged, perfectly preserved staff room, the
contents impossibly archaic. The green based table was lined with
old ledgers, their pages turned outward in a weak, forgotten
gesture toward order. Heavy porcelain cup sat beside an empty teapot,
there inside, still faintly glowing from a visible heat. In
the filt of gloom, motes of dust outline a shifting
path through the room, dust that seemed to move against
the currents of my breath. On the center table lay
the annotated book, open and glimmering in the broken light
next to it. More volumes, a dozen at least, each
marked with a different color of ink, each filled with tight,
distinct hand writing, every margin crowded with frantic notes. I bent,
hand shaking, and read the next observer's arrival expected twenty
three forty eight, see belover confirmation. I flaked to the
next page. Nearly all the entries ended minute ahead of
my own step, shillingly next to the most recent times
dam a notewaited and cramped careful print. When minutes two
enters at twenty three fifty two record continuation, advised hand
over pendin my nose tightened Luca Snaire, I could barely
restrain panic. The implication was as clear as it was
inescapable observers were anticipated, watched, trapped, perhaps selected noise, chase, thought,
an abrupt gust, or something heavy moving through the corridor
outside the map in my head, that confusing web of
omitted sections and shadow corridors seemed alive, redrawing itself with
every passing moment. I could not would not stay to
see what are whom I follow? I bolted, each step,
echoing in a corridor that had it existed five minutes ago.
The impulse to ruan overwhelming everything else behind me imagined en.
I sensed absolutely the sound of shelving grinding into new
formations though a ceiling, the familiar library re arranging itself
in a silent, predatory ffe. I didn't stop moving until
the air change, the temperature shifting up a degree, the
overhead lighting returning to its usual sickly blue. My own breath,
harsh in my ears, was the only sound I'd brought
nothing with me. The annotated book, the ledgers, all stayed behind,
as if refusing to be carried past the threshold. The
age of compulsion now flared into something like obsession. I
could not explain the shifting spaces, the anticipation in the notes,
the unknoving sense that the catalog was more than a
list of volumes and coal numbers. I started sleeping at
the library, my cot squeeze behind, the old process in desk,
my dreams full of impossible directions, and the scrape of
pen on parchment in waking arrows. I start at drawing
time lines, comparing every disappearance against the pattern from the books.
Marginalia filled my own note books, each cryptic code of
reference dissected cross indexed with pay All Records personnel files,
and would have a scatter of architectural plants survived in
the Brittel Administrative archive files. The evidence pointed to one thing.
Disappearances coincided with structural changes, with coal numbers that later
vanished from the database. Entirely more disturbing, it seemed that
some or something actively engineered these transitional zones, physically herding
subjects by redrawing the map and placing the right clues
at the right time. Haronoi took root. I searched for
any staffer who would survived the library's endless churn. Only
one name returned over and over. Necessadaire. She'd been here
since time out of mind, had cataloged obscure books by hand,
long after most tasks when digital, and her presence lingered
in the margins of every off wreckered event, a perennial
staffer who always knew where the od schalf or short
cut a hid in itself. The melody returned again, now
layered with the new sound whispers and spooling between verses.
The tunes rhythm shifted depending on my location, sometimes swelling
in one corridor, sometimes receding in another, always returning to
the periphery when I least expected it. It felt coded,
a signal that something was about to happen or already had.
My last night in the cart, I compiled what I
hope as a complete account, accrude hand drawn map in
one pocket, my phone fully charged, a portable light clip
to my collar and the dictaphone, ready to capture any
messes the holes might let slip. I disabled the tracking
on my badge and placed call to the security desk,
a pretext to ensure I wasn't watched directly. As I
scrolled absently to staff rossers, the same gaps appeared time
and again, resigned, transferred or no wreckors listed by long
departed HR personnel. The margin notes, too, formed a pattern,
a webbed chest pointing to the same handful of staffers,
to rooms that shifted and a floplund depending on the air,
to objects that went always their a chair, a missing
wall clock, a teak up and touched by dust. Sleep
eluded me entirely, and in the silence, the library felt
poisoned above some bottomless spiral waiting for a final reversible turn.
The strange logic of the stacks, the anticipation, the repetition,
the carefully written marginalia was circling back on me. Every
piece of the puzzle pointed toward a conclusion I could
not yet reach, an answer waiting just beyond the final
closed door. I lingered in the maintenance stairwell that night,
neees pressed my chest on the freezing concrete beneath the
single eternally damp ball below. The city thundered with rain,
water slapping the stone lintels and streaming between panes, the
rhythm out of sync with my own pulse. My pencil
maps played on my thigh edge, torn stained with the
grease of old reference ledges, the little loops and crosshatches
mapping out what I was certain now were intentional blind allys,
every dilsted call number, every misfelled patron, funneled toward the interior,
at the oldest most labyrinthine center of the stacks, directly
under the bricked up skylight of the dome. I'd read
and reread the notes amidst who observes subject lost observer cataloged.
The pattern was relentless, as if eatur round of MARGINALI
had redrafted the event in preparation for the next. There
were even faint traces, erasures or overwritten phrases, hinting that
these recordings had cycled again and again, the observer changing number,
perhaps even name. Fea scoffed overhead a jet of Janitor's
cats and low mutterings, the iris silence broken. I unfolded myself,
tucking the notebook into my waistband and straining to listen
for the melody to night. It was absent, as though
the walls themselves had plugged their ears. I passed through
the eight hundreds, the literature wing, trying to act casual
as I ran my hand over Saudi cows, each numbered
badge on the end caps gleaned wildly in the sec
halogen glare. No sign of any one else but paper
scraps stuck out of return volume's cryptic lopy hand, but
not at airs. These I pocketed, uncrinkling them in secret
while I moved, piecing short fractured sentences together in dress.
At twenty four, when unscheduled alert section V re indexing needed,
I made my way to the main desk into the
thin pretense of checking the next day's scheduled holds on
the sticky printet above the normal cluster of last names
Smith Lee, Albright was an entry that shouldn't be there.
A dais Ero beeman As ninety two ex hold for
collect no contact information, no email. No one in the
building had, to my knowledge, ever placed an item for
a dare. I pressed the staff computer, tried to open
the record, but a flash no item found. The screen
froze the silent dare. I wiped at the disk with
my sleeve and turned away. On a hunch, I checked
the return slot's wedged beside the maintenance entry. There, stuck
deep in the mouth of the metal flap was an
envelope no dress or postmark. My name scrolled in the
slanting librarian's print, but the jay exaggerated, swipping below the line.
Inside was a single sheet torn from the rolled note
by the supervisors used if you can read this, try
the old index's room. After two thirty I checked the
wall clock two dwelf. Every gut instinct screened at me
to ignore it, but the internal logic of the marginalia
beat louder with them. I doubts if the book track
my actions, and some one or something was pushing pieces
into place ignoring the invitation was unlikely to mean safety.
I waited at the minutes pacing between the mythology stacks
and local history alcove, alert for the faintest note of
the lullaby, but the air held only the steady bubble
of the heat fence and the polyphonic wobble of distant pipes.
I slipped into the old indexed room on the stroke
of two thirty one, walking carefully, notebook in pocket, fond
squeezed tight in hand. The room was smaller than memory carpet,
mashed by decades of staff traffic. The thick rubber stoppers
on the old card catalog draws swelling and cracking with age.
The farthest bank was open, draws gape dividers yanked free
on the table top. The annrotated book again propped open
to a menacing section titled Transit Margined Observer Rotation. I
didn't touch it, not at first. On the page opposite,
a new rash of margin notes bloomed Julian enters at
two thirty two brings notebook pauses concealing tiles. My skin prickled.
Without thinking, I looked up. Sure in off there were
seven visible worn with a water stained the color of
dried blood. A footstep sounded outside. I snapped the notebookshut
and slept it under my arm. In the hallway, A
cleaning cock passed the attendant, soil wet, wavering behind the
fogged window pane. I exhaled shallowly, counting to seven again,
another recushion, but the tension and my jawl wouldn't release.
I tore a blank index card loose from a nearby tray,
scribbling a question and sliding it discreetly into the book.
Who writes these notes? I stepped away, counted to fifteen,
returned The answer appeared below in the same black fluid
ink ominous two. Under observation, I wave A vertigo swept
through me. For a moment, I considered leaving colling off
my experiment, letting my badge drift in a desk drawer
until another rotation cycle. But the fact of being expected
prepared for bus someone capable of the slight of hand
at its own momentum. I flitted through the rest of
my shift, torn between tasks, struggling to act normal. Each
time I found myself distracted by a crooked display, a
misplaced card, a dam patch on the south Fristram's wall.
I returned to my private mental taally searching for the
pattern's next forward move. Engchin built with small, accumulating anomalies.
Just after four, passing the climate control vault never used,
I heard whistling a snatch of that melody again, bouncing
ridiculy down the stone towel corridor, then freezing. As I
drew close, I called softly as someone there silence minutes
later was in the doors for the open and cleaning team.
I saw the records for by Jack's shift in real time.
My own ide was marked out before I swiped it,
then in again. For a time I hadn't moved each
night time was folding in on itself, slots filled with
the ghosts of alternate actions. The day manager arrived early
for once and did not meet my eyes long night.
She asked, rolling her hips over the log into her station,
same as always. She flipped her pocket calendar pent tapping
her lip. You ever find a booky shelf ferdir, I froze, now,
why a shruck? She left word something about old returns
out of cycle. She's the only one who tracks those
any more, she paused, then nodded thoughtfully. Strange about all
those new pages missing from the attendant's lock. Maybe ATEE
doing maintenance on impulse. I asked, who's the collector? She blinked,
stimid hum, Not a patron, must be a system glitch.
You'd no more than me. The conversation derailed into coffee talk,
and by then the morning staff swarmed in, their bright voices,
cutting through the vulnerable silence. The night's shift becrewed them.
I went home, but not really. The ache in my eyelids,
the scratch of recelessness crawling beneath my skin, kept me
pacing my thread for rug and circles until the margins
had dawned. Even there, the pattern followed. I'd left the
annotated index card in my jean's pocket, and when I
went to flip it over, I found a fresh scroll
on the blank back. Returned before loss, the door was
opened to night. I returned to the library before dusk,
drifting through the easter tens as rain slackened and sunset
ignored the city's glassy towers. Security paid no heed. After all,
a hand quite clocked out. All day, I thought about
that room, the shifting books, the sense that by obeying
the instructions I was both forging and following the path
prescribed for me. The library's mood at twilight is peculiar,
houp draining, AT's families collect final stacks for checkout, shadows lentening,
the sense of sheer purpose replaced by something thinner, more private.
By night alone, a different world asserts itself the distant
pup's cough out rhythms, and you remember the building is
older than its records, older than you, older even than
its most hidden secrets. Instead of my normal beat, I
went to the corridor above the dome, using my badge
for access. Doors swung wide that by rights should have
held fast. I press upward through thick heat, the sterteroids
creaking uneasily. The entire library seemed to be holding its breath,
gaps forming between books on the shelves, small enough not
to alarm, large enough to pulse. At the corner of
my eye. On the landing sat a battered wooden chair,
the seat curve by countless staff meetings and midnight meals
on it. Arranged with eery precision, was the annotated book,
the black ledger from the staff room, and a battered
cloth bound visitor's look. The log was opened to the
last few tures promenous to arrival transit hand over scheduled,
I flipped through the visitor's log in a sudden, a
cold burst of bravada. The earliest item was day to
decades back then every year a new signature, a changing
roster of Obsova's librarians, and one recurring mark, a looping
almost parodique hay Adair's initials I supposed, appearing again and
again next to cryptic notes, cattle oged subjects unstable, returned
within parameters. Far from being a passive observer, I realized
the library cattle loved its own keepers, observers who rolled
the system forward then handed off their records to the
next unlucky successor. A noise in the adjacent corridor jabbed
me alert. I dropped the love book its corner, catching
on the uneven boards, and snatched the annotated book. As
I did, a draft washed over me, carrying the faint
but unmistakable tang of ink and ancient adhesives, some combination
of years of forgotten repogloe and leather bindings. Warned then
by worry, I turned, expecting at Air or someone claiming
her authority, but saw only the tail end of a
pell sleeve whisking around the corner. I followed impulsively, boots
studding too lovely. My own Beth ragged in the call
a moving air around the bend. The corridor stretched at
least twice as long as they'd measured the doors on
either side. Some ajar non familiar. At the FAD's end,
a narrow beam of gold like glimmered beneath the door, which,
from the plans simply couldn't exist. All sense and logic
ward with my own to stop, breathe and retreat. But curiosity,
sharpened by days of following the Marginelli's cold logic, spurred
me on. The door was lighter than expected, and it
opened without the tiniest protest. The room beyond felt less
like an office, more like a chap larched ceiling shells
founding out in radio symmetry ran the single high reading table. There,
silhouetted against the far wall, sat missus adair. His spectacles
clung to her nose, tip hair readed, and a scoff
the color of cracked parchment. Her hands clasped in front
of her held a battered fountain pen, the nip gleaming
wickedly in the lamp light. Julian, she said, her voice
so quiet, at mede to shelves themselves. Lean in. You're
right on schedule. I hesitated in the doorway, the annotated
book pressed to my chest. You know about I started,
but the words stuck, she smiled, patient, as only the
deeply whar we can be. So you made the circuit.
The catalog is never contend unless someone maps the wild spaces.
Tell me what is it you want to know? I swallowed.
Who writes the margin notes? She set the pen carefully down.
We all do, she said, simply. But some notes bursist,
lipping endlessly seeking a reader, some vanish, Some are men
only for the next observer. A flicker of re crossed
her face. You've written them to you just haven't noticed.
The room seemed to shrink, walls pressing closer. I forced
myself forward, compelled as much by fear as by hunger
for cents. People are disappearing, I said, my control stretched
thin patron staff, Ye know about it. How does it work?
A dare glanced at the circle of books on the table,
her hands sliding over their covers, as if to bless
or bind them. What is the point of a library.
She mused the catalog to Arkau. But every arcas at
Shadower Court, Juliana Eliger, of those who look too closely,
The library must reorder itself from time to time. Spaces
open where attention strays, people go missing, where the record
demands it. I step closer, acutely, aware of the labyrinth
behind me, the way every shelf cast lines back to
the core of this room. It isn't just chance. The
pattern's call numbers the book. It draws them in a
dair's eyes glistened behind her lenses. The library is alive
to its own needs. Those cataloging anomalies, the odd rotations,
Some are accidents, some nests sssory. He followed the clues.
Because you are the kind to keep a record, You
maunt the blind spots, because it is part of your
role in the system. My hand shook, and what now?
She stood, carefully, stacking the annotated book upon all the others,
pressing the heavy ledger down. You must decide to keep
the record as a kind of pact, one you can
hand off or not to enter too deeply. She trailed off,
gaze hardening the library claims what is left an attender.
Be wary what you leave out of sight. A resonance
filled my ears, the lullaby now distinctly in the air,
ghostly and circular. For an instant I almost recalled the
lyric my mother used to hum. Lost now in the
rush of blood and panic, Why tell me, I asked,
voice a rasp. Why not let me vanish and write
new margins for the next A dare's head drooped weariness
and feigned some one must remember the way out of
the stacks would only multiply. I would prefer not to
be the only one who knows. From below, a heavy
sliding sound to the floor, itself, shifting, reconfiguring the boundaries
of the dome. I backed away. Is this what happened
to all the others? She nodded. The sum of us
endured longer. Some do not return. I wanted to ask more,
but the sound of moving beyond the threshold, the crisp
shuffle of page against page, warned me the door behind
me was half opened. Through it, the lights flickered, and
the corridors beyond glimmered with a thousand half formed passageways,
each receding into a not a shadder. Take the record
if you wish a dare called softly, or burn it
and forget. Either way, the next is always coming. I
fled without taking any book, map pressed my chest, the
annotated volumes, weight still imprinted on my palm. My last
sight before threshold and logic collapse. Behind me was a
dare seated in her circle of books, pimp poised above
the margin, recording, always recording for whoever still trace the
edges of the light. The library spat me out in
the airlist ires, street lights pale and cold, the dome
behind me glimmering like an eye half lidded with exhaustion.
I stumbled home, pocket heavy with unexplainable cords and maps,
mind racing ahead to the secrets yet and cataloged. The
stacks were not finished with me, and as the city
bled gray into mourning, I knew the pattern waited patient
for my return. Rain pressed a slick, insistent to chew
on my apartment windows when I find only let myself
collapse into bed. But sleep was a shallow refuge, full
of flickering lights and an endless echoing refrain, the margins looping,
I half dreamed, the desk lamp humming at c major
Adare's words, clinging to every threshold, a catalog or forget,
but either way the stacks wanted de do. By noon,
gray light clawed through the curtains, with coffee cooling beside
my battered notebook. I laid out the evidence again, my
hand drawn map, the annotated cards, the index sheet someone
or something had managed to fill just ahead up behind
my every move, I marked the intersections, drawing heavier lines
where vanishing points costed, and pigasus swing scribbles glimmered in
my memory. By evening, resolve pulled at the base of
my throat, as heavy as dread. Every attempt to rationalize,
to paced over the cracks. Tidus coincidence, architectural rounding error
had collapsed. It air was right. The game existed, whether
I played or not. I called off, sick from my shift,
then found myself drawn to the library anyway, arriving just
as the dust buzzers sounded and the lost students faded
into the drizzle. Rainwoader bladed and over the marble at
the main entrance, making strain dark trails. I was careful
to step over. Security gave me a distracted nod, little
more than a shadow now behind the sweep of her
phone's blue glow. I'd been compiling the possible points of disappearance,
finally settling on one cluster, Section nine hundred ten point two.
Travel history is ironic. An archive of movement may be
more fitting than I wished. The io was nearly midnight.
As I settled in with my notebook, flashlight and a
bat of voice recorder. Crouched low between shaving units, smelling
of oiled paper and cold dust, minace crawled. The only
sound was my own heart beat, insistently loud in my ears.
I counted off the routines of the night and muffled
clang as the elevator cable's tents, the low rumble of
the north fence system, the creaking protests of the returns
beIN being collected down the hall. Over it all, silence pulled,
deepening every minute past closing. The moment of divergence was
so sharp I felt it physically. The lights got at
once twice, then steaded. A distant, wavering melody ghosted down
the corridor. I kept my breathing shallow and listened. It
was the lull by shaped anew spiraling through the stacks,
but this time it became entangled with soft and certain humming.
My legs prickled. I pressed further back among the books,
bracing myself behind a rolling display. Steps, light slowed too
measure to be accidental, echoed nearby. I anchored myself, listening
as those deepsolid sideways halting in a corridor. I knew
she dead end at a wall. I peered through the
gap between shelves, floor tiles blurred at the edges of
the lamp, light aslow, liquid movement, as though the ground
itself had been oiled and was mountain, sticking itself, shifting
lanes like a chessboard with its pieces re arranged above
the harsh metal grates of the ductork pulse did a
tune of the lulla by soft and low, and then
impossibly drawing near the corridor along it, new doors dotting
the stretch, their placards either blank or bearing gibberish. In
the haze of warp geometry. A faint figure passed across
an open patch of light, a swirl of scarf, a
familiar land and gleam spectacle, flashing messsadare, her steps unheard
faced the far end of the stacks, she moved silently,
yet each of her footfalls clicked with an almost ceremonial weight.
I pressed closer, feeling the floor pulse beneath me with
invisible change. A Dare didn't turn, didn't have estate. She
reached the far wallware I would have sworn days before,
a shelf of Russian fiction had braced a dead corner.
Now that wall is should have fain okaglow. The edge wavered.
A Dare passed her hand across the split, and it
folded open in black Beyond. She stepped through soundlessly, lantern
bobbing the threshold ceiling seamlessly in her wake, as if
she had been absorbed. My lips parted around the protests,
but the air itself smothered sound. I leaped to follow,
sprinting across the newly made space, tell slippery. I barely
caught the edge of the shelving before I too, pressed
through what now felt unnaturally soft, like shadow. Passing through shadow,
time thinned as I entered. The stacks and sides spun
out in a spiral book, spilling from fore to ceiling,
the category nambos twisting upwards and inwards, called numbers, dissolving
into mathematical symbols and ruins. My flashlights buttered, then failed
at the batteries which should have lasted. IROs gave a brief,
sulfurous flicker than darkness. Shapes blurred at the corner of
my eye. Shelves shifted, sometimes folding in on themselves, sometimes splitting,
forming dead ends or open lanes and ways that did
not come form to the rules I'd learned since adolescence.
Here and there forms flickered between the book's pale shapes,
their hands moving in routines of cattalogging or reading, or
simply stirring. Their faces, I realized, were familiar and yet off,
as if the memory of a hundred of missing patrons
had stitched itself together, recreating the vanished and endless leaps
the act of reaching shelving searching. I stumbled forward, following
the echo of a dowstep and the lullabuzzer shaping tune.
It now seemed to be both everywhere and nowhere, shifting
key echoing backward at the next turning, A display table
burst into being from the glimmer reel solid desk. Its
corn is battered by decades of cuts upon it. A
thick familiar book splayed open towards me as though it
had been waiting. The margin swam with ink, scribble violently,
and the central line of ticks pulsed. I read, but
Minnace two leans forward, hands clenching, intense straining. He reads
these words. Every step noted, margin filling fills above. A
new line blossomed as I watched. He shivers. The margin
records even if realizing the words, or updating as he thinks.
Another scroll woven under the main text, jagged with urgency.
Do not look behind, of course I did. The isle
behind me had narrowed to a slate filled with a
growing density of books, binding squeeze tight edges so raw,
and knew they seemed painful to touch. The path through
was gone only forward, it seemed to existed. Now I
reached for the book. My name Chilin emerged on the
next line. Then my private question, what is the purpose?
The margin replied, instantly, matching my mental credence. To count
the counters, to keep the watcher busy, to ensure o'er
the gaps of fill, lest the silence prey too many shadows.
A chill that felt somehow older than the cold stall
through me. I pressed my hand against the book, forcing
myself not to close my eyes. A sudden hush fell,
heavier than silence. The spectral forms and the aisles froze.
The repetitive tasks interrupted my own movements slow. Each action
felt both willed and externally recorded, the distinction between observing
and being observed, blurring at the border a footstep Sunday,
dry and measured necessity. I materialized in the sickly glow
of a non directional light. Her face bell bege eath
the drooping lamp. She regarded me, her eyes, reflecting and
dim radiance, seemed at once ancient and sad. Juliane, she
said quietly, and the melody shrink into a single, glossy note.
He needn't be afraid. It is always strange the first
time one sees with both eyes. I tried to speak,
but my tongue stuck, glued by the heavy air. She
walked a slow arc around the table. Lanton held a
chest height the book between us, glowing dully. The catalog,
she said, is never what it appears. It houses stories,
but it also houses that keep as the people who
notice patterns, who poke at the margins. Her expression was
a mix of pride and pain. We keep them so
the world outside can forget some One must hold the
transitions until the next time reaches for the ledger. What
about the others? I manage, finally, voice onning tiney against
the velvet, Hush, patrons, staff, those who disappear, Why have
they been taken? Adire folded her arms the pen she
always carried now and capped, nimble listening. Some are drawn
by curiosity, some by carelessness. Otho stray too long and
gaps those which need to be closed for order's sake.
Most never know the system arranges it, moving people in
a nut of the hollowed spaces, her gaze locked to mine.
The marginalia isn't just record, its invitation, its warning. For
every observer there must be a collector. He yours is
the first foot across the new map. Anger flash through me,
fear returning in its wake. You let them vanish? If
I accused, feeling heat in my jaw, he this library
looks after itself, not the people. What gives you the right?
A Dare's lips thinned, her eyes glinting. Order gives the right,
she replied, softy, just as a gardener, prins, the wild,
the stacks claim their own looking away. Think how many
have haunted the holes with their stories, their absences carrying winds.
No catalog repairs without a pattern, without the system, that
chaos multiplies. We must document, We must curate. Something shifted
behind her and aisle impossibly deep, spun out new rows.
I glimpsed, faces wavering and a complete like memories bound
together with the wire of unfinished business. In some pain, flocked, restless,
in others resignation. Each I sensed was still in the
grip of routine, a circle not yet closed. A dare
turned her lantern, opening a wedge of light toward me.
He may join, she invited the gentlest of frets. He
can step forward a catalog and watch tend the margins
become the next lifeline for the stores trying to be forgotten.
Or you can return to the outer daylight, surrendered your
memory to the natural, forgetting of ordinary life. Both are painful,
Both leave marks, but only one leaves you haul. I
stumbled backward, skin slick, my mind pulsed with the weight
of possibility. If I leave, will I forget? Will the records?
She'll let the pinfall? Some w records remain in the margins,
only ever found when one looks slantwise. Most are a race.
But you will know what you have lost. That is
the price for turning back. I wanted my old order,
my small rituals. I wanted to put away to cart's check.
The locks eat a cold sand which on my lunch
break without the shadow of lost. Airing back, but the
lare of known, of mapping out every head and corridor,
every lodge moment of catalogy, not just the books, but
the silent exchanges at midnight was almost unbearable. Above the
lullabid dissolved into fragmented notes. The faces in the shells
began to fade, cycling through repeters more a half a
dozen other Venice staffers, none entirely themselves, each hailed with
the same ghosting as the marginalia. The shells behind me groaned,
edges drawing tighter. I remember a Dave's final warning, be
wary what you leave out of sight. I hurled a
question row and frightened across the space. What what happens
if no one writes in the margins? What if the
record is left blank? A dare smile was sorrowful. Then
the library grows hungry, more vanish lost at the interval,
and the patent closes, and on all who remain without
a keeper. Even the daylight dissolves into the stacks. The
book on the table fluttered. I lunged, snatching up the
record book as a day's fingers release it, almost as
if she had always known I would. Its pages were warm, vibrating, gently,
filled with loops of my handwriting into leaved with others,
some interstated minutes or years into the past or future.
The room darkened, shells tightening. The faces in the aisles
all turned toward me. Panic sharpened my focus. I bowlded
for the only visible exit, a slend doorway just beyond
the dave, Swinging a book at my side. The wall
stroked my arms as a press through trailing. Thus Mozenich
from behind, a day's voice call, careful, what's not Catalot
will not return. I barely heard. The corridor buckled underfoot,
shells moving in parallax, sometimes leading forward, sometimes looping me back.
A wren voice recorder now rattling in my pocket. It's
red light winking. Books tumbled from the shells as they
pressed on each cover bore, a slip of paper margin notes,
racing to describe my every confused act o minis two
lost or minis two chooses, exit O minus two closes.
I s tight a minas two readable, no longer my
own voice, moment from everywhere at once, a litany of
documented fear. Something raced just behind me, a shadow and
not quite formed, perhaps a patron lost years before, condemned
to repeat the moment of being sought and never found.
I ducked sideways, catching my hip on cold metal, heart
juttering wildly. A sudden wedge of clean, non directional light
split the floor. I dove through, clutching the ledger with
both hands, my breath tearing in my throw. The lullaby
now cacophony pulls through every pipe and vent, hounding me out.
I pitched forward into a fluorescent bright hallway. Behind me,
the stacks inhaled, then sighed, erasing the threshold. The air
newly chill reeked of old plastic, and nozen. I was back,
if back was the right word. In the admon corridor
outside human sources, computers hummed, and the old clock blinked
forth eteen a m in garish digital green. I wiped
the sweat from my palms, knuckles raw. My reflection in
the glass doors looked older, more sunken, my mouth fumble
for words. The morning passed in awaking days. When the
day manager found me at the desk, guy's red hair
plastered to my forehead. I tried to explain the spaces
that shifted, the people who had been lost, the unquiet stecks.
She stiffened, concerns breading across her face, but in her
eyes nothing landed. He sound overworked, she said, voice practiced
and kind. We can't have staff burning out. I have proof,
I stammered, clutching the ledger. Look page twenty seven, The vanishings,
the patterns. She peered, then frowned. These o blank. I
flipped pages, seeing only white. The margin's pale skinned milk.
YE might need a break, Julian, she said, gently, staring
me towards the offer, careful not to touch the ledger,
as if it were radioactive. Why don't you sit down.
I'll call someone in from h R. We'll see about
next week's schedule. The implication was clear, even as I
tried to protest her attention slid away, mind already moving
on to the next task, I watched as the evidence,
my best proof, bled blank before my eyes. Later I
noticed new things. Staffers talked about Miranda and mister Peters
as if they had never existed, For positions had always
been vacant, or maybe filled by someone else. No one
was sure. When I press Nadine, she hesitated, it's a
weird place, Julian. People can't people go? That's libraries. Then
she caught herself staring at the table as if she
just lost the third of her own. Store security record
updated overnight, removing every trace of odd bad times, every
misplaced carp My name, I realized no longer showed in
the night shift lookbooks past the previous Tuesday. I tried
to query the database, but received a prompt no record found.
I drifted during shifts, unable to sleep and able to
let go. My body shrank into its routines, hand shaking
as I sorted returns. But the ledge is still worn.
The cover cold by too many anxious thumbings haunted me
at home. Some nights, pages would fill themselves as I slept.
Scold warnings of pyrene at the margins do not linger
in the isles mind. The temper of the events, the
catalogia will return. Sometimes fresh books would appear in my
mail book's small volumes, nondescript but always annotated. One titled
simply Order and Absence, mapped every moment of a recent
shift to ranging stacks, wiping down the counter, rending ominously
with the note subject of ministry aware while waiting transit
sea entry unfiled. At work, my uneis sharpened. Coworkers averted
their eyes. The break room fell, tense, voices lowering. Whenever
I entered daylight, I was brought no relief. The building's logic,
once my comfort, now felt predatory, as if it sensed
I no longer belond. In time, the administration transferred me
to another branch, a smaller, underfunded outpost across the city,
specializing in children's books, family records, and a meager district history.
Shall no one visited past five. On my last night
in the main building, I found my locker already entered,
badge replaced with a thank you Julian carved unsigned. The
new library was well lit, hundrum, and small enough that
I could see all major exits at a glance from
the sculation desk. I tried to convince myself This was
safety that the old routines would hold. But every time
my shelve periodicals are into the crampdock, I've room a
barely four shelves deep, a cold world of dreadling good
beneath my collar. Sometimes delivery envelopes appeared in the morning post,
unmarked and sealed with faint glue. Inside more unnotated books,
the margins were increasingly bold, big, dark, looping letters, reminding
me to check the vents for tunes, two, watch for
gaps in the shelving, and most unsettlingly, to beware the
moment when time shortens. Each warning carried the same signature
of the initials looping wide and nate eh eh. I've
reached out to Nadine once a hopeful email, asking had
she heard from it her, did she remember Miranda or Peter's.
The response was polite, clipped, I'm not sure who you mean.
Are you sleeping, Julian? Please take care? She signed it
all bess, which she had never done before. The world
outside the stacks turned on week by week, but I
noticed it thinning. Friend's emails arrived less frequently, then stopped.
My paychecks were direct Toppulse. It no need to see hr,
but the deductions never a lined up with my eros.
The ledge's pages remained blank until a moment's in attention.
Their new margin notes bloomed at pacing my memory. Some
described phrases I had never spoken. Others mapped tasks I
hadn't yet performed. One evening closed closing, I found myself
staring at the children's section exit. The dull brass doorn
awarped in the twilight. A phantom melody whiped through events.
Not the cheerful tunes of store time, but that same
winding minichy lullaby. The air stilled as the staff left,
their footfuls echoing down the short, straight corridor. I could
not resist. I made a circuit of the room, noting
the positions of each shelf, every exit, the exact configuration
of the display table facing the north window. I pulled
a random book from a forgarden cape, its dust almost
gleaming in the shop artificial light. The book felt heavier
than a shot, its spine resisting. I opened to find
fresh annotation in a hand I recognized instantly as mine,
at the top of the page. On minus two present,
seven fifty three p m. Tuesday, then as my eyes darted,
more notes and spoiled, accurately describing every detail. As I
stowed my bent nepst to the bottom shelf, the static
pop from the fluorescent filament overhead, my coffee cooling three
feet away. A line farther down read rain, impending windows
streaked outside puddle. I closed the book in a panic,
but the urge to read clawed at me, more powerful
than fear. I forced myself to look once more. The
final note, chilling in its disinterested precision, ran down the
margin in a slanting, almost mechanical script. Subject of minus
two has loned nothing. The stacks will always claim their due.
A creek behind me, something almost like a footstep, drew
my gaze to the corner. A fleeting shadow, thin, familiar,
briefly human, then gone twisted alawn as shelf. I tried
to trace its source, but found only a patch of
gloom that clung to the awkward angle between encup and wall.
The architecture, ought only mundane just minutes ago, no longer fit.
The map had held in my head for an instant.
I recognized the impossible symmetry of the pattern, the story
circling the stacks, rowing closed, The lights flickered just enough
to strove the room's edge, and I felt with bone
clarity the shape of the library and folding once more.
The lullaby rang out high and feigned almost benevolent, and
I realized escape had never really been on offer. A
single annotated book sat at my elbow, no call number,
no sign, not stamp, but my name clear on the spine.
I set it gently back atop the shelf and turned,
not sure if I was crossing a threshold, was stepping
into shadow. Behind me, the air shifted, heavy with potential,
the unsteady promise of record and loss, and somewhere, just
out of sight, the stacks stretched on and broken, eternal,
always waiting for someone to notice what had gun missing.
A streak of motion caught my left eye, the faintest triple,
as if the shells themselves sigh, pushing the dust toward me.
The air cold by degrees enough that I could taste
the difference in the back of my tongue. Old starch
mingled with a sway town of neglected upholstery. My hands
hovered over the book's bouted cover, nerves prickling. The annotated
notes almost vibrated in the fluorescent hash still fresh, as
if the ink might smudge if I brushed a finger
over the margin. I waited, hoping a sense of pressure
would break. Maybe if I stayed entirely stell, the spell
would fault and the room would snap back to its modest,
worn geometry. But the silence sharpened instead, resolving into a
keen absence, as if the shelf strained to hear my
next move. My shoes gripped the mottled carpet that toes
out of alignment with the border. Another faint clicker, really
in the heating system was something else, sent a shiver
crawling along my forearm. Julian a voice said behind me.
It was unmistakable, low and precise Messsadare stood in the
alcove where the children's biographers ended, arms folded tightly around
an antique date stamping pad. Her silhouette seemed impossibly at
home against the book line back drop, like a figure
clip from an old staff foot and pasted back in
with a trembling hand. I wasn't expecting you here, she said,
soft but not unkind. Her glasses glinted, reflecting the corridors
when light. But I shouldn't be surprised. The margins have
ways of calling back there, observers. I closed the book
and stood slowly, weary of every miner detail, the shuffle
of dust beneath my souls, the rubbery pol as, my
jacket plucked at the corner of a shelf. In retreat.
This room was no more than twenty feet by ten,
but it felt wider now, every shadow stretching in a
day's presence. You followed me, I said, not quite a question.
My words sounded brittle, half dreamed, How did you? I
stopped short. Of course, the book had already recorded my
actions before I made them. Why not her arrivals as well?
She advanced her own STEP's measured, deliberate. Wherever there's a record,
I have a right to walk, she said, And I
felt her gaze move with the methodical intensity of some
one counting ledger lines. This place needed someone to step
back into the spiral. It's always waiting for the right pattern,
A watcher, a caretaker, some one attend the deep corners.
She smiles. By the tiredness underneath had grown. The tension
between us threttened topple. The neat stack of objects had
arranged on the table. The return bin lists, the overgee slip.
I'd meant to leave for the morning staff and offer
in pencil. I kept my fingers well clear, unwilling to
disturb a surface that might trigger some new tactic from
the building. I don't want this, I said, voice croaking,
betraying my exhaustion. I didn't ask to be catalogged. I
searched a Dare's expression for pity or even understanding, but
her eyes flickered and stead with a kind of gentle resignation.
No one ever chooses our right, she replied. In all
my years of record keeping, I've never seen an observer
take in the role whole heartedly. It's the questions, the
need to reconcile what's missing that make you the right fit.
The details most ignore the ones. You can't leave alone.
But there must be a way out. I press, hearing
my own desperation. How do I break it? How do
I truly leave? Without this following me, without the book,
the letters, the notes, my handcovered near the annotated text,
without you, without the stacks reaching through every place I
tried to hide. I dare side and move closer to
a low reading stool. Lowering herself with care, she set
her dates stamp on her lap, a fidgeting habit. You
misunderstand it, she said gently. Escape isn't about leaving, not really.
Even I tried once, another branch, another city. The pattern
doesn't vanish. It finds cracks, old memories, sudden silences, odd
voices in the event were not meant to exit, Julian,
only to pass along the duty. I swallowed a bit
of rush of dread washing through me. The line between
choice and Faye had become a gray modal. You'll see
it soon enough, she added, her voice thinning to a whisper.
How the record keeps itself. The true account is only
partly written by any of us. Margins fell faster than
the main text. You chase to patch them, but there
are always more. Do you think I want it out last?
She gave a dry, weary chuckle. I stayed because I
knew what happens when there's a gap. I've seen the hunger.
She straightened, voice firm again. But you are not wholly
snared yet. You can choose, My mind reeled, as if
sensing my panic. The overhead light flickered again, briefly dazzling,
then dimming further, casting a Dare's shadow across the perimeter
of the room in wild, distended ovals. I realized suddenly
something missing. Why does branch? I asked, why now? You
never worked here? Or did you A? Dare's answer was reluctant.
This building's bones, knew, though they look was scavenged from
a much older sight, foundations, architectures, even whole safe sim
wall panels. Our tasks travel with us, almost like ascent.
I followed you so the record wouldn't unravel from the outside.
She gestured to the annotated volume on my desk, now
glinting dully. There's always a weak spot left in the ledger,
and the stacks don't like to wait for accidents. I
drew in a shaky breath. What she offered wasn't comfort,
and yet there was no malice. There, no gloating in
her acceptance of the role, just the grim certainty of
someone who had lived a long time with the burden.
No one else could left. An urge sees me to
help the ledger out the nearest window to break the cycle.
Dared the silence to sweep me away, But I had
already learned. The denial only shunted the pattern sideways forced
it deeper on the surfaces and antinue invisible crevices. Instead,
I fixed my eyes on Ada's hands, youngest, seeming in
the harsh light, frail and determined, as she turned the
pages of the pocket diary at her hip. What happens
if I refuse? I asked, voice law, if I ignore
the notes, leave the records alone, tell no one. She
stood at me, sorrow in her eyes. The building eats
its own in silence, she breathed, Others notice the gaps.
Eventually another pattern forms. He become a name in a ledger,
or you're forgotten entirely. She turned a page, finger trailing
down a list of initials and dates, pausing at each summer,
released briefly when the next observer picks up the pen,
but never for long. The hunger never leaves Julian, and
it only disperses for a generation or two. Then shoppens.
A question rose, then bold and reckless. Who wrote the
first marginalia? I demanded? Who taught the stacks to watch?
To catalog people? The mystery was now as broad as
the room. Pressing in a Dar's gaze darted away her
frame welding. Some things predate even memory her voice was
only a thread. May be a first librarian who feel
lost so deeply she wove the habbit with her own blood.
May be the city itself for record written by the stones.
I can only account for what's happened since I came.
I inherited the chain he inherited. Now if you choose.
She closed her diary with a snap. But your owed
one kindness. You can see the ledger before its next cycle,
some fine solace in context. She slid the antique stamping
pad toward me, its brass corner dulled by decades. I hesitated,
weighing her gesture. Then I opened the pad. Inside the
record of nothing elegant, just a grid of names, dates,
and cryptic remarks stated back almost a century. Observer, reader, curator, absence, collector, relay.
Each roll passed through a handful of staff, founotated with
to's form note steady, completed, unfit lost. There was a
Dare's own name crossed out and then returned, as though
even she had tried once to depart. My own line
lay blank, unremarkable, except for a new entry slanting downward,
candidate field status. I snapped the pack closed. My hands
were as cold as the winter glass at my back.
Just then the lights in the outer houl dimmed black.
A heavy thought echoed through the children's stacks, as though
shelving cot had been dropped. Though I had seen the
last patron out, and I elder and the janitorial staff
had left for the night. A day sat forward, face grave.
In every generation, she murmured, the library tests its bind.
If the observer does not accept it, tries to claim
one in their place, sometimes a patron, sometimes a wandering stranger.
Some one must note the transition. If you care for
even a few, it is better that you remainscribe. A sharp,
fleeting moment of charity hit me. If I walked away,
some one else may be the young assistant librarian, may
be one of the little kids from story Ire, may
be any one else, unable to see the pattern, would
fall into the gap. The library drew open. I felt
suddenly painfully awake. I couldn't let that happen. Good eye
Judy called some way, deep, reluctant but reducible, swallowing. I
squabbed my shoulders and forced myself to speak. Fine, Show me, how,
show me what it means to tend to w reco properly,
but you stay and guide me until the pattern lissens,
or until I find a break. A dar inclined her
head grave, but no longer entirely sad. I hope you
decide this way with surprising steadness, she arose, tucking her
Diwary beneath her arm. First, you must learn to set
the record straight to keep the margin from overtaking the man.
And you must choose which losses are documented in which
I'll let slip. The stacks will test you tonight, and
a nice to come. I followed her back to the
reading table, sensing the library's awareness prickling as we moved.
My heart thought it as at are. Placed her palm
on the annotated book, then slid a blank index card
beside it. To night. The margin wants to record your
next move, she said, quietly, Write or refuse. Either begins
the cycle. I'll be here when you're ready. I took
the pen, feeling its coldness ripple through my palm. In
block letters, I wrote, Julian observer, witness to the loss
is eight three p m. The moment my pen stops scratching,
the air seemed from it wasn't noise precisely, but the
ducks re arrange their music. The lightin blur, a simple act,
but decisive for a beat, the book stopped whispering, as
if satisfaction had briefly replaced hunger. Adeer nodded, her eyes,
no longer sad, but measuring sid enough. The first entry
is always the most difficult. After that, the margin's saddle.
The record will ask you for more, some routine, some impossible.
Remember ye need not answer every call. Learn to choose
the main line and let the extra pages yell owver time.
Who else will know, I asked softly. The scent of
the ordinary world lurking just outside the glass doors felt
impossibly distant. She smiled. When it's your turn to pass
it on, you'll know who can bear the duty. With that.
Adare gathered her things to night. At least the pattern
won't open new gaps via the observer of record. Re ress, work,
forget and remember, as you need, it will come for
you again, but not until it's ready. She touched my arm,
a rare warm. Don't try to confront the hunger alone.
I'm here, at least until the margin's close. En one
last time, she left, as quietly as she'd arrived, steps measured,
folding herself into shadow between the stacks. I stood in
the center of the room for a long time. The
annotated book opened before me, index cards stout neatly beside it.
The feeling of being tested had out, replaced by a heavy,
not unpleasant CARDI the building breathed around me. The then
sang a steady and neutral tune. Later, after I dress,
set the room tide into books, locked the outer doors,
swept the margins of dust from the yellow carpet. I
wrote a final line before leaving for the night, record
and complete further losses possible observer on watch. No immediate
reply came, No fresh marginally appeared. In strange hands. The
ledger held my entries, each word grunded, not an anxiety,
but in a determined stillness. In the weeks that followed,
the paranoil is in its grip, I worked routine shifts,
took careful notes, and made miner entrance in the ledger.
Only when I sensed an awd absence imis place book,
a forgotten court, a moment when a child's laugh stopped
abruptly in the next room, I let rumors slide by,
let silence's ease, trusting that most of the time the
gaps were close themselves if left alone. But now and then,
on silent evenings, I felt the slow culor of the
stacks reached toward me. The lullaby in events returned more distant, now,
sometimes trailing off before the final measures began. I understood
at last that the building's needs were vast, but perhaps
not insatiable, so long as someone kept the map of
losses honest. I still saw ad Air sometimes shrifting the
periphery on nights, when the city's fog pressed low against
the glass. She nod satisfied at a new cards slip
between the pages of a ledger. A clean hand of
her is rare, she told me once, but value Perhaps
in time the hunger will sleep longer between cycles. And
though the annotated book still appeared less frequently now and
often in my own firm clay script, I learned to
let some margins stay blank. Not all stories required a witness,
I told myself. Some silences deserved the dignity of being
left unexplained. When a patron vanished or a section's architecture
shifted over night, I allowed myself a single brief tremor
of fear. Then I'd checked the wrecker pencil, another quiet note,
and returned to the living stacks. One night, near closing,
the young assistant Trina approached hestened. She showed me a
battered paperback with a scribbled edge. Found this in the hall.
Any idea who wrote all these notes? I fought the urge,
snatched it away instead, I smiled, taking the book gently
in hand, glancing at the margin, subjectim in his two
on duty nine wenty tree. The note was mine, or
perhaps when past ten, now doubling back into the present,
Never mine, I told her, just an old habit. Some
things in libraries belonged to every one, some only to
the record. She left, content, not noticing the extra shadow
that drifted after her through the stacks, for shaping itself
into a benign silhouette before winking out. As the main
lights dim to signal close, I seated myself behind the desk.
The world outside was utterly quiet, the echo of the
day's noise stilled. I placed the observer's letter in its drawer,
not locking it, but leaving it precisely with the next
wood note to reach. The clock ticked forward, steady and ordinary,
but I heard faintly the flutter of pages in the
children's stacks, somewhere between viction s and te a brief whisper,
a note of approval or warning, or merely acknowledgment. The
rhythm was different, softer. Somehow, I let the silence stretch.
When I finally turned off the desk lamp, I felt
a lightness I hadn't trusted for months. Standing at the door,
keys cool and heavy against my palm, I imagined, for
just a moment that a glimpse of necessity are seated
in the far alcoh of penpoorst. Or perhaps it was
only the reflection of my own future, another hand ready
to take the burden centures from now. I stepped outside
into the bred street. The rain swept clean, the air
sharp with new potential. Behind me, the windows glowed unreadable
from the darkness. The building rested, if only for a
little while. I walked home with a cautious peace, aware
always but not overtaken. Yes, sometimes deep in the night
I'd wake to the memory of the stackson spiral, the
possibility that one day a line in the ledger might
stop out. Even my own witness. The lullaby's refrained would
return quiet and incomplete, and I'd spend long minutes staring
at the ceiling, counting on sceen tiles, calculating what stores
were left unaccorded. And still the library endured, watchful, patient,
waiting just beyond the margin for the next observer to
step quietly into the glow. And that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.