Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Rain was coming down so hard
when I unlocked the front doors that the side walk
out front was already flooding, reflecting the sharp yellow of
the buzzing street lantam broad rippling pools. My shoes squelched,
turned the sout mat as I shouldered in my duffel,
careful to wipe the water from my face before and
sipping my jacket. It was only my second week working nights,
and I decided, may be out of unspoken nerves. Maybe
to help me stay, I love to record occasional your
memos on and old pat a digital recorder clip to
my collar. The red light blinked up at me. I
found it on and spoke softly, half listening for the echo.
This is night too, I said my voice. Then in
the empty museum entrance hall, I arrived sixteen minutes early.
No sign of the day staff, key coat accepted in
a panel. I let the wards trail off, feeling their
smallness against the building's enormous silence. Behind me. The rains
like the glass and battered the door, but inside quiet.
That's how most people imagine museums after ires, I guess
quiet and dead. Truth is it felt nothing like dead,
not in the sense of empty. The place was spread out,
a winding maze of wings, added in spurs and overgrown
annexes as the city upgrew itself, corridor after corridor filled
with melancholy exhibits from me as lovely Ohweda ironworks, old
telegraph gear, record ledges, high wall displays of silk cuts
and miner's boots. The ceilings stretched up into blackness in
the corner rooms, and the dim emergency lights did nothing
to chase out the darkness between exhibits. I clicked my
flask light on and watched dust fries swelling up and
slow lazy spirals through the cone of sterile blue light.
I started my rounds, letting the little recorder pick up
the creak of the old floor boards and the way
my keys rattled on my belt. There was something odd
about hearing my own footful ze echo back so loud,
as if the museum were both fast and tightly wrap
round me every step, pursing deeper. The animal room was first,
as always, bleached a moving glass eyes and rouse. The
taxiderms never made me jump, not really, but I hurried
through them anyway. The disaster wing near the back had
its own charge ray made the boards and windows shutterer.
Every so often in between my steps, I thought I
heard something else, the teeth of rain of place for
an instant. By tapping three times as I passed along
the cordoned hallway, I paused to listen. It sounded like
someone impatient with the pen on a tabletop, abrupt and irregular,
hard enough to carry a few feet, but always fading.
More than once. I swung my light a round corners
or into the old stowa no one. I found myself
lingering longer than usual, near a dusty glass case sealed
off with plastic chains. This area Meamor realized the central
factory collapsed in nineteen twenty five. Her room filled with
seepior photographs, cracked helmets, and bent rescue equipment to night.
There was an extra cordon above covered ledge, half tucked
behind a broken lantern. It looked out of place even
before I reached it. The paper badly faded and ragged
at one edge. I bent down, quinting and thund more
light on it, letting the recorder catch the sound of
static as I shifted, the crowd showed a tall man
in a black suit beside a rowstone faced city leaders.
The caption RhE g R most civic Benefactor, but the
face had been violently scratched out, the emulsion torn so
deep the surface had ruptured. The edges of the image
were blowed in a way that felt unnatural, as if
not faded by time and san but by hands using
something corrosive or deliberate. For a moment, my breath caught deuse.
First prickled across my arms. Something flickered at the edge
of the display case. I jerked my light that way,
a trick of shadow, I told myself, a reflection, But
for an instant I was almost certain some one had
withdrawn a hand from the glass. Something boned wide in
the gloom. I rocked back and straightened, heart beat loud
in my ears. I reached for the card again, but
the surface seemed greasy, as though it exhaled a thin,
cool breath into my palm. It dawned on me that
it shouldn't have been here. Mercia's photograph belonged, if anywhere,
to the old City Council display. Somebody from staff messing
about or a prank from the night custodians who always
eyed me with a little suspicion. Yet the unpleasant chill
wouldn't leave. As I replaced the card, its faded surface
caught the light just so, almost pulsing for an instant
round the ruined image. I shivered, muttered a curse, and
turned away, voiced barely more than a whisper for the
recorder logging anomaly, exhibit card, misplace, unlabeled, face damaged, or
report tomorrow. But the words sounded inadequate. As I moved on,
far back in the darkness, that regular tapping started up again, closer.
At this time, I quickened my pace, not looking back,
repeating to myself that old buildings settle and things get misplaced.
At least I tried to believe it. For the rest
of the shift, the museum fell colder and less than empty,
a place haunted not vagos, but by the thing some one,
some time meant to hide. The following afternoon, the building
looked almost cheerful, with sunlight pouring across as stone steps
and the fretted doorsy only opened for the skull groups
and retired couples that shuffled through daily I had been
up late filing my incident report to misplaced artifact, potential vandalism,
no evidence of entries. So I arrived at Hackard and
I'm thick from my mid afternoon check in, eager for
coffee and hoping to blend with the living insight. The
assistant curator was sorting pamphlets at the front disk, humming
off key through a mufful of plastic pens. Morning Chiff,
he greeted me, voiced nasal shirts potted with cream cheese.
You're the night fellow, right, Jake, I confirm, letting him
see my ID saw something odd lastnight in the disaster wing.
Thought you should know a photocod misplaced. He barely looked up,
pushing thick glasses up his nose, probably one at the custodians,
sure in the nubies around or the wind. He grinned
faintly at his own joke, but there was a catch
in his smile. Don't worry too much about it all
place like this sometimes exhibits move on their own. He
flinched as a child, shriek down the corridor. Just log everything,
keep to your patrol. Did the alarm panels go off?
I shook my head. All clear, but someone taped over
one of the security cameras in the textile hallway. The
assistant curator smile vanished. That can't happen, not with our
new system. I'll mention it. He clipped several keys back
onto his waistband. Seriously, though, don't sweat it. The janitors
love a good scare. Just last month, they set up
a fake can in a coal shoot nearly gave Missess
Donner a heart attack. He moved off, leaving me to
scan and and start my shift. Most of the staff
passed me by with quick nods. The two day cstodians
s Fitlana and Ouksana exchanged a word in Ukrainian and
carried their mop buckets towards the basement stairs, never meeting
my eyes. The tension was strung tight enough in the
building since mister Pruitt, the former head curator, left abruptly.
Rumor had it he'd locked himself in the okav room
for three hours before announcing his departure detail. No one
would explain. Even when I poked around for gossip. My
routines sprawled in neat patterns. Every hour I made my
patrol circuit flashlight in one hand, radio on the other.
I'd scribble in the paper, look book at the main desk,
checking off north when clear, artifact room secure, working my
way through the entire place before heading back to our
kranstaff kitchen, dinner for me men my co wave lift
overs coffee grounds burned into muddy sludge, and an old
paperback carrying spy and broken by the vending machine. Some
nights lasted forever, I drift orsi. I'd throw the echoing corridors.
Most of the building was safe enough, faded pennants having
over empty eyemoks, displays, the solemn deskate telegraph room lined
with silent equipment, old ledges, and a glass with faded
blue and culing like vines. Yet the lock dock have
rooms nagged at me. Three all windowless doors reinforced. They
are oddly called in their alcoves only per wit and
the assist and curator of arquaf Keys Osnic grunted one
afternoon stacking robic gloves in the utility car. She raised
her eyebrows, meaningfully, you just keep the doors locked, eh.
On paper. My job was clear, monitor through the graveyard, shift,
check for brick ins, make sure rowdy teens didn't jump
the exterior fence and tag the old brickcrook again. All
the real work, the staff told me, happened in the daylight.
Exhibit changes donor tour school groups. Yet even in daylight,
something about the disaster exhibit and settled me more than
the brick, a brack of helmet lights and ruined boots.
It was the way the curatorial team skirted discussing it,
hurrying past when conversation turned each evening, the farthest wings
were always dimmer, rope set up tight across the threshold.
Twice a week the city's security company came by to
check the panels. The texts surly and meticulous, never found alarms, tripped, falls, hits,
one moderate. As he signed his clipboor old circuits, just
dust I noticed his irritation at the lock dock have wing.
He never tried his own key, just glared at the
bolts and banged his fist ones hard. Still, not everything
was tension. The brick room had its rhythms. Someone always
left peanut butter crackers in the fridge. There was always
a crosswood with half the clues filled in, and the
radiocycle between tinney static, and a man's for his solemnly
reciting local weather reports. I felt lonelier than I expected,
half expecting to be included in s staffrigil. Instead, my
presence remained peripheral, anchored by the ritual of clocks and
listless nights. On the third day, the assistant curator caught
me about to clock out. Listen, he said, voice pitchedlow.
Don't worry if you hear something weird at night. Pipe's moaned.
Building like this, it's always settling. Don't let your imagination
run off. His eyes flickered. He patted my shoulder, then
disappeared toward the lock storage. I watched him go uneasy,
the fluorescent lights behind him humming in the stale air.
The trolls stayed mostly and ventful those first nights. Once
I responded to a false fire alarm, a while shorted
out no trace of smoke. Twice I found a scuff
she mark dusty and loaned by the annex window, well
out of place for any detantur route. Every time I
returned to the break room, the radio crackle through half
a sun then faded, as if the signals themselves shied
away from this job. I always finished my shift with
the paws in the disaster wing, shining my light across
the glass displays. Each time the animal rooms rose of
fixed glass, I seemed to follow me out. Sometimes a
single tap rang from the far hall, just as the
door locked behind me. Most nights, the dust in the
hush felt beara below weight you could carry if you
kept your pace up in your nose blank, I convinced
myself that the only things moving in these holes belonged
to rodents, wind and forgetful hands. Still, every now and then,
as I flicked through my audio locks, the tape seemed
to pick up something else, the bare scrape or a
vos murmuring to softer resolve into words. I filed it
away as quirk, but the thought lingered harder to sweep
away than the ancient dust and the window sills. Before long, though,
anomaly slid from the edge of perception into something I
couldn't quite more. Toward the end of my first full week,
the pattern shifted. Small things slipped out of place, and
not in the expected ways. A knee core door, a
brass telegraph key usually under glass, had been set on
top of the display case, label absent, as if mid repair.
Next to the eyemook's display, I found a minor landscape
painting that had been hung upside down. The hanging while
looped or quardly said the label belly clung to the frame.
The plackard and name I didn't recognize, and might got
said it shouldn't have been there. When I checked the
inventory print out in the break room, it was clear
the painting belonged in the textile wing. Things started to repeat.
Two nights later, as I made my circuit, I found
the display card left propped against a glass loom in
the textile room. The paper was water stained, listing some
obscure city judge from the nineteen tens important for local
governance according to the text. When I leaned closer, a
cold prickle crept up my arm. The photograph was the
same as before. The cart from the disasser wing ge
r mercer face gouged away, not only hidden but violently
obliterated a rugged hole where I should be. The name
had changed, but the image underneath hadn't. Something was being written,
and clumsily so. The building felt off that night, charged
with a brittle energy. As I passed the locked archives,
a chill seemed to loose up beyond the door, colder
than the rest of the air, my foot caught on something.
An open file drawer had been left a jar in
the work alcove papers found loosely across the table. The
ledger looked more modern, but among them I saw a
stack of yellow forms, most dated early autumn nineteen twenty five.
I hurriedly shut the drawer and made a note for
the morning, checking over both's shoulders before moving on. After midnight,
the he custodians appeared on my monitor, pushing their supplies
through the west hallway, eyes flicking nervously at the corners.
The interim curator was trailing behind them, her back stiff.
She caught me watching and paused, brushing a stray lock
of hair from her brew. I saw the archives open earlier,
I offered quietly. It's nothing, she replied, too quickly, just
cross referencing. We're doing inventory and a couple in turns
mixed things up. Her accent was clipped, her smell drawn tite.
Some new staff just don't know the system yet. I
tried to press further, but she glanced over her shoulder
and repeated, don't get involved with the archives. Really, it's
all sensitive material, old lawsuits, that kind of thing. Best
just stick to your patrol. As she left, she exchanged
a long look with the custodians. He murmured together in Ukrainian,
barely glancing at me. The pattern kept deepening every shift.
Some object appeared somewhere it shouldn't where, some label was
rest as if the exhibits were being subtly written or erased.
Each mall deliberate change felt more pressing than the last.
By the third night in a row, I began to
wonder if this was sabotage. Someone angry, perhaps a former
employee cut out by mister Pruitt's abrupt resignation, or someone
fighting with new management. Staff became even more tense, less friendly,
whispering in corners or vanishing the moment entered the room.
By then I couldn't shake the sense that a careful,
ongoing reorganization was at work, someone putting effort into not
just moving things, but subverting the very story the museum
told about itself. I started jotting my own notes after
each If handwriting nervous, I send the door. If this
was a prank, it was the most coordinated I'd ever
seen with all that it grew more systematic. After at
every uncomfortable patrol, I took to double checking the external
security locks, cupping the digital feet onto a flashtick. All
VHS tapes, a leftover from the nine to security system,
rotated in battered slots alone. The monitor wole a tiny
room with dust coating every cable. One night, after another misplacement,
the ironmucks exhibits old lunch Paale putched on a text
Armanicquin's lapi KEI yed up the security camelots with the
iron in question. The tape flicker then began to loop
in its plickably on these passage feed a minute footage
repeated every seven seconds the time stump frozen figures jumping
in and out of existence. I attempted to toggle to
a different feed, but that reel was blacked out from
three two to three forty three a m. The period
when I should have been making round in that hall.
I clicked through the audio logs on my recorder, finding
one sigment from the previous night, almost inaudible, A smear
of static with the faintest threads of whispering tangled in
the hiss my own voice entered crisp. This is Jake
disaster when clear and underneath Impossibly, someone must put my
name through the distortion. I rewound and replayed it, but
each time the whisper warped, as if the recorder only
offered it up when I let my guard drop. Another
time I caught a snippet of old tape that should
have captured me walking past the archaves, but instead the
only thing audible was wet noise and a rhythmic tapping
that grew in volume, as if someone must tapping directly
in the lens, crowing so loud it began to hurt.
That next night, feeling more rattled than ever, I took
my dinner break at the usual time, sitting half asleep
by the vending machine in the ling at a packet
of dry fruit around the corner. I heard the custodians
in hot argument, voices pitched low and hurried, but I
couldn't make out the words. The cadence was sharp, anxious,
with the occasional phrase piercing the hush words I recognized
from my college Slavac linguistic requirement, urgency, pushing through the
language barrier. Not again, it's too much to heal find out.
When I stepped into the hallway, both fell silent. Oxana
smiled a little too wide. Esitlnana adjusted her bucket and
asked if I needed them up. I hesitated in the doorway,
heart thudding. What were you talking about just now? Both
shook their heads in unison. Oxana answered, just schedules, who
handles which wing? Everybody confused. Her eyes flickered nervously to
esfit Lhana, who looked pointedly at the floor. I nodded,
stepping back, pretending not to notice how fast They rolled
away their cart and vanished downstairs. With the staff offering
nothing but stone face dismissal. I decided the only way
to get real answers might be to dig into the
public records. The next day, claiming a family emergency, I
left town early and drove to the City Records office,
little more than a converted library ring with microfiche cabinets
and ancient computers. I spent two fruit the Siyur's skimming
property registers and donal logs. Each list was incomplete, chopped
off abruptly in late nineteen twenty five. Eventually I uncovered
a faded set of pamphlet referencing grants and benefactors who
helped establish the museum out of the disaster. Oddly, after
nineteen twenty five, nearly every mention of the original donors
stopped cold, replaced by new civic leaders with unfamiliar names,
most attached to city council or relief organizations that appeared
from nowhere. I tried the newspaper microfilm, but half the
relevant issues were missing or badly redacted. Margins blacked out
a hand in the surviving Coppers, though photos of board
members no explanations. By the time I returned to my car,
evening was creeping in, and I felt less like a
guard and more like a conspirator. I couldn't shake the
sense that some one had been actively revising the city's
public memory. The next evening, when I arrived from my shift,
my hands still stained with dust from old records, I
found my locker door. I hesitated, scanning for signs of
tampering or forced century, but the lock mechanism was unbroken.
Inside at top my spare jacket sat a Plaine folder,
yellowed at the edges, no mockings in the cover. I
lifted it out inside a handful of documents and clippings,
most clear effort copies, but all connected to the nineteen
twenty five disaster, casualty lists, se of memos regarding unim contributors,
and two photos. Both featured the same man from the
scratched card, once proudly titled mercer, once relabled for a jarge,
both faces mutilated beyond recognition. A step of page carried
a single sentence in nervous slanting handwriting, leave dust to dust.
I stared at the folder, knuckles white as I flipped it. Hut.
The message was clear, as someone in the museum wanted
me to stop digging, to let whatever had rooted itself
into the buildings. Fabric remain in disturbed, but with evidence mounting,
strange photos, falsified exhibit cars, the staff's growing agitation, I
knew I wouldn't be able to pretend there was nothing wrong.
This was no longer simple mischief of staff gourdges. The
pattern was deliberate orchestrated, pushing me deeper, whether I wanted
to go or not. By midweek, I resolved to catch
the culprit in the act. On my next night shift,
I drank extra coffee and MAP had a hiding spot
to which behind the old climate control unit, barely a
dozen feet from the disaster winged central cases. I killed
my flashlight and checked the battery on my digital recorder,
holding my breath as outside the clock struck one. The
building breathed, sighing in the wind's bell ache and the
distant squall of rain and the glass. For over an hour,
there was nothing but the background hush, until faint shuffling
rose from the arc of corridor a hunched figure, face
distorted by shadow materialized by the heavy arcave door. They
produced a key, one I'd never seen, that unlocked the
bolt with a quiet thunk. The figure slipped inside and
through the cracked doorway began to rifle the stacks, muttering
in a low, strangely cadenced tone. I caught a few
snatches names, must clear, let silence settle, forget the marks.
A chow ran down my backers through the gloom. I
watched them extract of folder display papers across the table.
Gripped in long, dirty fingers, the figure took an exuded
card and with something sharp, scratched furiously at a printed
face until the image buckled. The sound of paper yielding
echoed across the hall. Next the figure, I'm through an
old guest register dated nineteen twenty five, each page thirquck
with penmarks and nuns. One by one, the figure tore
out pages, then, in a slow, sickening gesture, ripped them
to shreds and jammed the fragments into their coat pocket.
I could hear the frantic breath, the hurried movements. This
wasn't casual, it was frantic new ritual. I caught a
glint of a badge swinging on the intruders Courtetanish version
of the old museum's staff. I d the print, barely
visible from the spill of emergency light. Whoever this was,
they went on the present payrol. I ducked down as
the shadow passed, clutching the mutilated files, heading toward an
Oxsuley record or that, according to every official building map,
was sealed off at the time per Wit left. The
key scraped again, and then the figure melted into the darkness,
the colds closing in behind. My knees ached as I rose,
darting back from my flashlight. My hands shook as I
checked the recorder's red light, still blinking everything captured. I
hoped and slid from my hiding place. I barely made
it to the stuff break room before riymic footsteps approached
from behind the archives, sharp and out of place. I
clicked off my recorder, duffed behind the door, and forced
myself to breathe in slow, shallow bursts. Whoever was coming
post just outside breathing, then disappeared back into the labyrinth
the dread to change. This was no longer a puzzle
about city history or a straying of staff pranks. Some who,
maybe several people, were invested in erasing more than just
the museum's wreckers, a history that, if discovered, could append
everything for those inside, and maybe for the whole city.
I stared at my own hands, dust from yellowed paper
and grained deep in the cracks of my skin, and
understood I had wandered into something I might not be
able to walk out of. The museum grew colder, settling
heavily on its foundations. Out in the dark, faint tapping
sounded again, joined by distant, urgent footfalls, marking the iron
not with time but with absence. The taffing receded along
the worst hallway, fading to a shuddering hush. That slipped
beneath doors and died away among the high rafters. When
I was sure the corridor was empty, I wiped my
palms on my jeans and tried to compose myself, pressing
the recorder flushed in my collumb on, just to feel
the prickle of old currents still running through its circuits.
I opened the break room fridge, let the stale cold
set on my nerves, and blinked at my own reflection
in the foggy glass bowl. There was something worrying in
my own eyes, uneasy, the fees of someone who'd seen
too much and still doubted what part of it could
possibly be real. I left a terrace line in the
lock book, suspicious Activity around Archives, recommend additional review, underlining
it twice so the next reader couldn't miss the tremor
in my script. I locked the entryway behind me, checked
my own badge with clumsy nun fingers, and circled back
to the disaster wing in a framing pattern that felt
safe for them. Wandering without structure, the disaster rooms there
felt use up and sire, as if too many exhalations
had accumulated there before me. The glass reflected my flashlight
and skewed lapro squares, and every so often I paused
to check, really checked, that nothing else was shifting in
the displays. The same cracked helmet were in miner's lamp,
and a fresh cord with another face scored into oblivion.
The surface still flaked with curls of black, bitter smelling emulsion.
I stouted the fragments pressed behind a pane, as if
I could recover a lost meaning. Why so many cards white?
A fury in each cratch, I caught the faintest tend
to steel dust on the air, the room of old ink,
and something less easy to name, the dry, flat perfume
of a place repeatedly lovingly erased. A door banged in
the server's hall. I flinched, hot, pinching my throat, but
it was just destelon as mot clattering too the tile
as she angrily chased a drop bucket. She glared when
she saw me watching, but made no move to come closer,
instead stooping, grumbling to herself. Her motions clipped and weary.
I skirted around the perimeter and checked the windows, each
one vibrating lightly with the wind mesh, greens pitted with
tiny holes that drew patterns in the dust in one
of the small hiddens, really nothing more than a kerticer's
Okovy found a cluster of newspaper bituaries loosely stacked in
bristling with red crayon lines under certain names, all from
the disaster era. Some notes appeared in leaping, childish handwriting,
others were severely neat, city wrecoats, death roll updates, more
things crossed at than preserved. For the third time that week,
I heard the same voice in my head, as tired
and inevitable as the rhythm of my steps. Erase, erase, erase. Eventually,
patrol time forced me back into motion. I set through
the eyemwork's passage, past the textile room, eyes drifting over
those stands where objects seemed to move each night by
hands other than my own. No sign of forced entry,
no broken glass, no fresh tracks of any kind, only
the faint finger prints on the glass, and an odd
crawl of dust in certain patches, as if something staticky
had passed and drawn it in ridges like fine dry dunes.
I tried the doors to the archives gently, not expecting anything.
All locked. Three dead boats, polished and recent compared to
the battered brass outside, I bent down, running a finger
tip toward the crack at the base of the frame,
and for a moment thought I saw a faint gray powder,
the kind that clings to glove after handling old negatives,
leaking very slightly around the scene. The radio in my
pocket burbled, static, surged, and sputtered. Someone was trying to
check in avouse from the front desk, maybe the assistant curator.
But the words broke into odd syllables, twice repeating a
phrase that sounded like skip this, ignore that, do not
write it, before settling into silence again. Tension seasoned the
hall is long after, when the eye was dragged toward dawn,
I found myself counting footsteps and sets of three, marking
each turn an intersection, just in case I had to
double back. The Animal room watched me as always, its
glassy stairs, sharper, subtle glint behind the glashes of dust.
Even the min lobby, usually the most moindanes in the
whole place, fell ron the marble floor faintly called, as
if the building's core had called overnight, something just above freezing.
My next lock book entry, shortly before daybreak, was even
terser archive activity persists, visual evidence pending. I considered noting
the folder in my locker, the threats, the recurring faces,
but couldn't bring myself to write the words. Not yet,
too much chance they disappear or I be called up
for paranoia. I shoved the folder deeper into my duffel,
next to the batter paperback and un touched packet of
peanut butter crackers that had become my talismans. They staff arrived,
bleary and silent, parting around me like a tide as
I waited for the assistant your reader in the cramped
and to room before the staff offices. His hair stuck
out in greasy clumps, and he wore the same checked shirts,
still bearing faint traces of old ink and brighter indelible
stains along one cuff. He seemed not to recognize me
at first, but when I offered my good morning, he
started and squared his gases as too large behind the
thick lenses. I took a shot. The archives were open
last night. Someone got in using Akidat's not in the
standard rain. They had an old badge too. His face
went then pinched, as if he'd tasted something sire you're
sure you weren't seeing custodian. Sometimes they not custodian at breast,
wrong coat, wrong walk. Besides, I saw the badge, older design,
like the one Peruit War, and there were papers they
were shedding, guest logs, old exhibit cards. Deliberate, almost like
a richel. The room breathed uneasily between us. His jaw worked.
We'll add another camera to that corridor, maybe two. He
kite depends on a notepad before pushing outside. You look
exhausted at Jake. Get some west, all right. There was
a flat finality to his tone, one that invited no argument. Still,
as I gathered my things, he leaned in and almost whispered.
Some things here happened before we got these jobs. Lots
of old secrets. Don't trouble yourself about the families. Let
them be. Then he straightened, nodded curtly, and swept away,
as if the admission had never slipped free. I walked
out onto the street, sun scraping through low clouds, and
let the city's noise wash the silence out of my ears.
The world beyond the museum was too bright, too simple.
Delivery trock sideling pigeons, scattering, a busker tuning his battle
the guitar near the bust of a long forgotten mare.
For a moment, I wished I'd taken a job anyway.
But this place, a library, a classroom, even the graveyard
shifted the water plant. But when I closed my eyes,
every pattern of the stone, glass and willing, wintry ruined
corridors pressed back, drawing me into the undertow. I tried
and failed to not imagine the archives, the whispering voice
encoded in the static of my recorder, the hands scratching
names out of memory and into oblivion. The shift that
followed was marred by an dissipation. I arrived even earlier,
stationed myself with a better vantage near the disaster wing.
This time I set my phone to record as well,
doubling my chances to catch more than ghosts in the margins.
My heart stammered as sunset poured pale light through the
exterior windows, lengthening every shadow, giving the buildings all burns
a skeletal clarity. I precisely midnight, the museum seemed to exhale.
The usual crooks and size fell away, replaced by a
hollow resonance, tapping resumed sharper, now echoing in pairs and
triplets like coded pulses. I swallowed, clicked both the corders on,
and pressed flat against the wainscoting. My fingers drummed, unconsciously,
echoing the rhythm in the walls through a sliver in
the panelane. I watched as someone or something ceased its
silent rounds at the far end of the wing. This
time I saw the face, not that I could recognize it,
but because it had none to see. The intruder's badge gleamed, tarnished,
and the reflected exit signed a patch of ancient linen
sow and rugged to a faded lapel. They moved with
the hunch determination hovering close to the arcavel shelving, fingers
blade twitching as the leaf. Three yellow gas books and
newspaper list alike. The purpose wasn't theft, it was obliteration.
A sheaf of names was blacked out under oily thumperns
another fort Oc card, at this one recent. The color
print received the same relentless scoring. My foot slipped and
sent a pencil clattering off the molding. For a breathless stretch,
the figure went utterly still. I could hear only their
jagged breath and the lawn dangerous silence that seemed to
drag every sound forward. Then, seeming satisfied they had not
been seen, the figure pocketed the mutilated artifacts and inexorably
vanished down the staff only staircase, the locked door swinging
shut behind. After several minutes had passed and I heard
nothing but my own pulse, I stood and coarsely approached
the arquevol corner. I traced the cold with a hand
had rested, seemed to linger like a patch of night
at lasting dawn. I peered through the crack in the
staff stair will nothing but deep shadow and the smell
of scorched dust. Back in the break room, I reaply
both recordings. The pahne gave me the reedy well of
wind and little more. The old digital record A wailed static,
but then fretting the noise, that same voice, lower and
more gutterl than ever, out spoke a sequence of syllables
that might have been my own name, then lapsed into
a strain of unintelligible muttering, repeating the same phrase three
times before to solvent into a rush of breath. Tat
dabt dap. The cold was settling into my bones. I
scrawled notes through the rest of the shift, going back
over the shredded guest list in my memory. How the
city declared its disaster told to be seventy two, not seventy,
and how several standing donors in the city registry abruptly
ceased to exist on every record after October nineteen twenty five.
What could frighten a family to such a degree? What
needed so thoroughly to be wiped away? Near the end
of the night, Oxana passed through the lobby, not making
eye contact, her bucketsqualing and the tile. I caught a
phrase in her mutterings, are too much, too far, We
paid on something heavier crept over me and knowledge that
simply bearing witness was already dangerous. I left her to
her circuit, mindful of her warning, if that's what it was.
Just before sunrise, as I left by the staff side Vestibule,
I saw again the main disaster wing store, roped off,
now by too thick braided cords, acting the usual temporarily
close sign. Instead a fresh flock out lean crooked against
the glass. City names unreveled, faded into dust until only
the word remembers struggle to remain legible beneath a blur
of frantic kenstrokes. I snapped a photo with my phone,
feeling as though I was trying to catch the lost
breath of a museum that had outlived even its own bones.
The city outside was waking again, indifferent as they stuffed
my notes and surreptitious recordings deeper into my pockets. I
headed home, not daring to replay the tapes just yet,
knowing some absences could not be full, only acknowledged by
the end of that mouth on shift, I understood, couldn't
twindn't let this draw, no matter how many faces in
the glass glared back, erased. Some histories, even those scrape,
cruel and raw, insisted on persistence, And so did I
sleep escape me. The morning after, I lay across my
narrow bed, blind slaughter, the city's watery summise inching up
the walls, and every time I close my eyes the
museums labyrinth nfolded behind them, endless holes, iron tanned air,
the echo of panic footsteps, cut short pins and needles
tingled in my hands, the sensation left from gripping that
fold or two tightly eyos before despied exhaustion. My mind
replayed events on a leap, preached cratch upon the photocrds,
voices distorted to static, the shadowy figure moving through locked
places with old rituals and shredded names, the line between
fear and deety blood, And I caught myself reaching twice
for the digital recorder on my night stand, as if
my own voice trapped on its circus, might be proof
I still existed. I rose long before dusk and rechecked everything,
my badge, phone, battery packs, flashlight, that battered recorder, even
the disposable camide started carrying on a whim. I typed
a list on my phone and answered questions, staff names,
artifacts moved, who held our cavacxis. But the neatness of
the bullets gave me little comfort. At noon, I forced
myself to eat, keeping to simple physical routines just to
ground myself, washing dishes, sorting laundry, making coffee I would
never finish. They steaded my pulls but failed to erase
the image of the mutilated photo, of the certainty that
every piece of order inside the museum was dissolving. I
replayed my last recording in full press in a tiny
speaker to my ear, muffled static, then a whispering voice.
This time it was almost clear, the cadence of a
half remembered nurse re rhine, punctuated by my own breath hitching.
During the stick hut. Lying beside the folder, I poured
over the copies of disaster era of papers, searching for patents.
I compared the casualty lists and spotted absences that seemed purposeful,
Civic leaders whose names vanished after a certain date, entire
sections of the guest register tone or heavily redacted. I
tried matching these to the names scratched out on the placards,
only to realize there was a consistent gap. Always someone
was missing, quietly deleted. As the afternoon faded, a dreadful
anticipation crept over me. It was no longer a matter
of uncovering theft or sabotage. Something else was unwinding at
deliberate corrosive revision of memory. I tried to remind myself
this was a job, not a quest, But the silence
hollowing out the disaster wing felt like a force trying
to feed on the very idea of truth. A drizzle
beatd the windows as I gathered my back, hands trembling
more from tension than cold. The city outside looked in
different buses, swallowing commuters, taxis slouching between puddles, the same
tired faces rising to judge to day and you, my
fawn buzz are bland. All staff group text night, staff
on judy reminder, alarm systems done for recalibration, use manual logs,
report technical issues to management. There was nothing in it
about the recent break ins or the deepening mystery within.
I made my way to the museum under swollen skies.
The stone facade, which had lived almost welcoming by sun night,
now pressed back in shadow. My footsteps up the slick
stairs echoed off the broad arches and a hypnck counterpoint
to the drizzle. As I presented my badge at the
staff entrance, a sense of being watch prickled along my neck.
The electronic reader blinked and hes stated before grunting entry.
The lobby was deserted. There was no reception volunteer, no
clatter of voices from the wings, just the hush of
the building settling for night. A flip lights on in
the security alcove finding the monitors a bristle of static,
some feeds dead, others running loops, blowing or RepA eating
the same few seconds, over and over. Ox on hiss
cot sat abandoned near the stairwell. Mopskew, a little puddle
of soapy water spready on the tile. No sign of
Eslaana or the indium curator tension hung in the air
THI can close by muscle memory. I began my patrol
flashlight beam skitching from hardwood floor to velvet rope. At
every third display case. I stopped, checked, and scribbled a
note on my clipboard. The folder with its warnings remained
in my bag a heavis ballast. I paused longest in
the disaster wing. The ropes across the entrance felt stiff,
are freshly wound. The sign on the pillar had been
changed overnight to a terse under restoration staff only still,
I ducked beneath it and shown my light along the glass.
The tablets and helmets appeared and disturbed, but I caught
sight of two new exhibit cars placed sideways at the
front edge. Both bore the same figure, the same savage
erasure of the face, the black flakes of emulsion dusted
over the felt told me the scratching was recent. Tucked
behind the nearest case was a folded slip of yellow paper,
this time no written threat, just a single deliberate fingerprint
and darking pressed over the date my skin as I
realized it matched the print left on several torn guests
but pages. When I returned to the brick room, the
assistant curator smocked, balanced precariously on the draining rack, and
toushed coffee steaming faintly. I skimmed the staff sign in
sheep blank. No one else had logged in that day.
The place was emptier than usual, a drain of people,
as if everyone had been quietly routed out. Their absence
was proof itself. Something was coming to a head, and
no one wanted to be caught in its wake. I sat,
unwrapped the sandwich and checked my messages. The only knew
one was a patch and sent draft from the assistant
curator shutting down North Archives for lead dust cleaning, stay
clear until further notice. It was addressed only to me
save the one nine a m Dirois after I'd last
seen them. My thumb hovered over reply, but I closed
the message decided not to draw attention to myself quite yet.
I spent the next eyes pacing the holes, listening for
a regular noise, watching the feeds, and making field notes.
It struck me that this was less a job now
and more siege the museum's story, against my determination to
see it through. Each leaped through the building, The disaster
wings hushed, pressing from all sides at every return. The
rope barrier seemed freshly taught, the rooms more confined. Tension rose,
ratcheting tight. Shortly before Minette, as I was scribbling in
my private notebook, the brake room's wall phone rang ajaring
a natural sound and the otherwise dead quiet. I led it,
ring twice three times before lifting the receiver. No voice,
no breath, just as steady, soft, almost wetten the clicking
that soundedly like typing on ancient keys. I murmured hello twice.
There was no reply. Then, just as I was about
to hang up, a thin voice crackled through, so feagint
that I almost missed. It is not finished. Don't take
the archives, not yet. There was no acent, discernible, nothing
to pin to any staff. I knew abruptly the line
clicked oad replaced by a dial tone. My heart thought
it as they hung up behind me, the vending machines
light buzzed and went out. The air seemed to congeal.
Every nerve tuned to alert. I locked down the brake room,
did another patrol and double check every exterior door, all secure.
The disaster wing doors, when I tried them, were resisted
as if flavered from the inside. That was when the
first real escalation began. An hour or later, I returned
to the monitoring alcove, noticing at once that the feed
for the AKAFT corridor was once again out of sequence.
The digital clock take forward then blinked in reverse spolls
of cameras playing seconds out of order. On a hunch,
I reached under the console shelf, peeling up the tape
that secured yesterday's backup purest be done. In its place
was a scrap of Nwsprient from nineteen twenty six, a
story about the museum's original benefactors. The print half burned
away a message clear as any someone knew I was
watching and they wanted me off the trail. I called
up the newest camera logs, topping through static against Cotto images.
Midnight the eye of the coals and mutterings had peaked.
This time I spotted a movement flicker frames of a
figure slipping through the shadow at the periphery. No clear face,
no readable badge, but therein gone a speck of anger
cut through my mounting dread. I fetched my recoorder and camera,
tucked both deep into my jacket, and reviewed my handwritten
roster of exhibit discrepances, marking every spot where artvaks had
moved our cards had been altered over the last week.
At two a m. I found the storm door wedged open,
a cracker place usually locked except for the curator and
day staff. I nozzed it open and stepped inside, nerves taut.
The air was thick, tinged with chemicals, cleaning solvents, ald glue,
and the sickly sweet decay. In place of the usual
clean supply racks, there were two flat boxes stacked atop
a broken step ludder. Each bore the city seal and
faded ink, but the addressed labels looked recent. I opened
the top when a faint rustle of paper brittle at
the corners. Inside dozens of exhibit cards, each with a
name and photograph, All faces scratched out somewhat new names
scrolled shake alib of the old dates cycled through the
nineteen twenties up through the nineteen nineties, the labeling styles changing,
but the arasia constant. The further I flipped, the more
the pattern leapt out. Every card belonged to a local
donor or public official who vanished from museum rolls after
some disaster or controversy. Some were marked with an X,
others underlined in red, but all described as a benefactor,
a donor, or a VIP. It was as if new
history had been painstakingly built on top of the erase,
their faced, serving its foundation a footstead out in the
whole snap. My attention up the corridor was empty, but
the sense of being watched pressed harder. I closed the box,
hands trembling, and snuck back to the brick room. My
phone buzzed a new group text, this one from an
enlisted number. Staff be advised disregard unusual activity over night's
scheduled exhibit preparation. Do not approach Jarquev's disaster or textile
wings between one minus five a m. The message was
unsigned A knees and danger had shifted from settle to avert.
If before the conspiracy was shadowed and half invisible, now
it was alive. Tightening at crip, risking open exposure. Just
to continue feeling exposed, I resolved to see Kelp. My
options were limited police with laugh me off, management was complicit,
and the custodians, though more tense than before, at least
seemed reachable. I waited for us Fittlana, catching her at
the end of her brick near the freight elevator, steam
from her teeth swirling in the half light. She tense
but didn't run. I pressed, who is doing this? It
isn't just pranks, These names, the cards, the files being shredded.
It's not normal. She glanced at the elevator door, of voice,
dropping to a whisper. You don't understand, not safe to talk.
Some families always watching. They changed names, faces, pictures so
so old. Things don't come back, come back. How Esselna's
eyes darted to the shadow corners, then at the camera
bubble overhead. My grandmother worked here, she said. Years passed
after the collapse, people disappeared, not all that had just gone.
The museum was made like a grave for paper, for memory.
They say, if you don't keep the names covered, raise them.
The dead have to come back, not ghosts, Just and
finish things. My grandmother tried to warn Bruit before you
left too late his family. She sopped abruptly, breath shallow.
The interim curator. I pressed, She shook her head. A cousin,
the old ones. They all knew. Every so often someone
has to scrape out faces, burn the papers otherwise otherwise
linger between us, thouderf he not being spoken. I let
her go. Every word confirmed what I'd begun to fear.
Some one, maybe many, were actively maintaining this rasure, patching
over the wreckers, like her, building a dam that constantly
threatened to give way back In the break room, I
shot quick photos of the documents, silently nothing the names
for my recorder. The list of erase grew longer. Every
year or two, one or two new names removed, records doctored,
disappeared for good. A half hour later, an email a
lot was my phone. I t notification to vault admin
password abate. My stomach nodded. Whoever was tampering with surveillance
wanted no eyes on their work, not even staff. I
checked the camp feats. Most were dead only static in
looping frames. Rain intensified outside, pattering erratically. The wind forced
a low moan from the north window panes. My own
anxiety spiked. I left the comfort of the break room
to check exterior locks again, phone in hand, campuswinging from
my wrist, every step sounding like an air. At the
far end of the disaster corridor, near the old plaques,
I found the exterior access doora jar, the security chain
lip but not latched. That door was really touched, the
bolts all ways stiff, freshcuff marks on the threshold tract
in pale dust. I knew then that to night some
one else was very much inside with me. Returning to
the archive, I found the main door closed and double bolted.
I pressed my ear to the wood. Distant barely odd
of was a rhythmic tapping, pausing and picking up again,
a pattern running through the grain, never quite regular. The
custodians hovered near the far east wing, too nervous for
casual talk. Everything all right, I asked, voice stadded, said
Lorn appealed, stay with lights, don't follow sounds. Not now.
She hurried off, oxonotite behind her, leaving her mop and
bucket standing abandoned in the hallway to puddle forming beneath. Suddenly,
the alarm panel at the front desk began emitting a high,
short chime, then stuttered and died. All power flickered. Lights
in the main whole dropped dim back up, plunging most
of the building into a murky glimb. My heart hammered.
Somebody or something was making its move. I dashed the
security alcove and rebooted the computer. Only black squares were fifteen.
Camera feed should have been an air flashed on screen.
File not found. A location does not exist. The time
stamp flickered three one a m, the same iron that
had gone missing over and over in the suspect tapes.
The behind the static laden hum a sound started together.
It was not quite a voice, not quite a moment,
layered britle with spurring, like dozens of people mumbling over
one another, filtered and faint. It grew, threading through the walls,
overtaking the persistent tapping. I fought against panic. Checking the
break room radio only static. I checked my recorder, red
light steady. I began speaking, voiced barely above a whisper,
looking everything I could see and hear just to keep
my mind rooted in reality. As I turned to the
staff wing, something flickered past the window, a blurry movement
vanishing on the edge of sight. I almost convinced myself
it was a tree limb shifting in the wind, until
I saw the ripple as it passed, sucking addes of
dust up into twisting streams along the baseboard. I rounded
the corner into the disaster exhibiit barely breathing. The glass
of every display case was fog over, as if reecent
exhalation had clouded the panels. Through the haze, I made
out new smear's finger length parallel all around the edges,
converging with the scratch cards were displayed. More disturbing, several
cases had shifted not just back, but sideways, as if
nudged by invisible hands. In the largest case, a single
helmet nalay on its side, exposing its inner. Leaning inside,
someone had scrolled a name in thick blue ink, one
from the disassterless, crossed once, twice the third time until
it was nearly illegible. There changed then from the archives.
A sharp snapped, the kind that might be made by
a splindid lock or san drawpunctured to silence. The smell
of overheated us turn metallic coin sharp My nerves trying
to everything went too tight. An emergency light flickered on,
only partially illuminating a figure at the far end of
the disaster wing. This was no flickering trick of reflection.
A person stood there, hunch edges wavering as if not
quite solid. I froze the badger. Therefolt caught the light,
and in a fleeting gleam I read the washed out
name on the antique tac prewitt. He stepped forward, slow
and deliberate, not bothering to mask his movements. With each stride,
the wreckers and fragments in his arms shifted, guest ledgers,
tredded cards, a folder with my own handwriting on its cover.
Our eyes met, he spoke in a low sounded voice,
the tenor unmistakably that of the ex curator resigned, but defined.
This place was supposed to how's history not become its accompass?
He said? Which word coming clipt and heavy? But it
feeds on erasure? If the old name's wake, if too
many signs remain, the gospels out every ten years, every
stolen memory demands balance. He reached into his bundle, pulled
free stack of visitor registers and tore a page after page.
Face impassive. They made scapegoats. I tried, God help me
to warn the others. But the ones who rebuilt the
museum used tragedy to bury their own. Guileless faces raised
and replaced. If you let them return, the old feud revives,
the cities lie cracks, and no one survives. In the end,
we pay an absence. He stopped, shreading, face drawn. You
were touching too much. You need to forget. I held
out my evidence, the batter, her corridor camera folder. People
deserve truth. You are destroying what's left. He hesitated, The
worry in his eyes briefly eclips in the ritual. If
you document the dust, you breathe that. If you say
the names, you add yours to the debt. This place
is a wound that never scars over because no one
let silence lie. A tremor ran through the building, sudden
and unmistakable. The glass in the disaster wind cases shivered,
and from every corridor, arising causorus, the brushing of countless papers,
names being whispered with. Hell demanded fruit looked at me, earnest, frightened, deflated.
Either you turn away, or you help me finish the
job the museum wants for getting. If we stop, the
names come back, unfinished business, tangling through every wall. Somewhere
above us, a panel crashed loose, then the tap, and
raged through the air. No longer patient but furious, demanding,
the exhibit lights flustered and faded, plunging us into near darkness,
punctuated only by the blue stand by glow of the
alarm panel at the far end of the hall. Prewit
stackered back, face wrenching in pain, the shirted papers fluttering
from his hands. There coming, he rasped, the debt. It
isn't just names, so photos, it's it. He never finished,
with a sound like tearing silk, the ear thick, and
shadows pulling around his legs. He seized up, mouth bent
and rictus, and an unseen force wrenched him backward at
dragging his rigid body to the dust, toward the gaping
black beyond the disaster wing's last case. His badge fell oos,
spinning near my feet as a wind rose inside the room,
flashing the files and scattering torn photos in mad whirls.
Shocked into motion, I grabbed the nearest displaced stand for balance.
From within the fluttering paper storm, dozens of half scratched
faces seemed to stare at me, pleading, accusing, whispering, fretted
the air, entreaties and threats, named half formed and lost.
I snatched up his staff, badge, and folder, stumbling through
the exhibits as glass rattled violently and the cases strummed
under unseen blows. A lunge for the exit, every step
dragging heavy through grit and swirling paper. The building grown
doors shuddering. My visions won with dust motes, faint forms
pressing at the boundaries of cycle in shadow, faces, ash pale,
all contorted in the act of rasure, somewhere behind a
final crush through it's voice, howling a name I could
neither understand nor forget. I hurdled the velvet rope, fled
up the corridor, keys slashing with I through my jacket pocket.
The meuseum warped as I ran a camped alcoves, doubling
back stairs, folding behind me, some hole stretching on endlessly,
walls breathing like lungs, expelling centuries of stagnant air, all
bearings disappeared until by blind lock whor dogged routine, I
emerged in the lobby as staticy dawn blared in through
the street windows. The mir ers faded, replaced by a
dense clothing hush, A stachoed to the doors, badge and
fold clutched so tightly my fingers burned. The front stats
weeded slick and glinting, and as I stepped into the
pale morning, the city's noise rushed immediate, distored it almost unreal.
I kept moving, not daring to look back. Whichever storm
had been gathering, it had burst, now sweeping away every
margin of safety. I half ran, halflint to my car,
no thoughts left by scape in survival. Four hours later,
after fruitless efforts to sleep through the non headache and
clenched jaw afield of the call from HR, the vise
was clipped. Neutral were restructuring overnight staff. Your services are
no longer required. You'll be compensated through the end of
the month. Entry badge is now deactivated to please return
all museum property. No comment about my report, no question
about the night's chaos, not even a perfunctory thank you word.
Moved quickly in the city. The local news webs had
carried a short item the same day, the early morning
break in at the city's oldest museum. Police investigating no
evidence of theft, only damage to exhibits. The Arcove's Museum
closed to the public for renovations rooming pending news management.
There was no photo of the damaged wings, no mention
of staff names or the disaster exhibit. I checked the
staff roster one last time. Several familiar names, ass Ilana, Ousana,
even the assistant curator were listed as von leave or
scrubbed altogether. An email bounced back addrissen Ballad. When I
tried the house line for the custodial office, I got
a churning, busy signal on every extension. At home, I
stacked my evidence, the photocards, the battered badge, my folders.
I set up my recorder and laptop, intent on making
new audio coppae before anything else vanished. Each time I
tried to play or transfer the disaster wing footage, the
file returned only his static or blank silence. Even fresh
recordings captured nothing but white snow from that corner of
the building, as if the dead air itself was contagious.
Weeks blurred past. I called and left messages for heritage groups,
email fragments to a local colonists, mostly polite, poor brush
offs in reply without corroboration. It's just rumor, said one.
Maybe interview former staff from another. But every time I
track someone else down, they declined comment or asked me
not to call again. Meanwhile, the city announced plans to
transfer the museum to a private trust. The new board,
as far as I could find out, included a direct
descendant of one of those missing benefactor of families from
the disaster era. From my windows, I watched the city
move on. Yellow tape frilled the museum's iron fence, contractors
and fresh uniforms pacing the grounds. A new security system
was being fitted to promise the city site said of
modern stewardship and community renewal. But the stores in the
paper never mentioned the erased names, the shredded documents, or
the years of hidden maintenance, only improvements and efficiencies in progress.
One day, afternoon, a small, unmarked parcel appeared in my mailbox,
no return address. I carried it inside, peeled the paper
away with unsteady fingers. Inside carefully wrapped in tissue was
one of the original exibit cats of photo freshly scratched out.
But this time, when I squntierd at the label beneath
the gouged face, I read my own name, typed in
uneven keystrikes. A second package slid out and undeveloped roll
of black and white film. Shaking but determined, I drove
to the outer photoshop and paid for ex but ied developing.
The clerk didn't look twice at me, only slid the
envelope across the counter, her expression closed. That evening, I
lined up each print on my kitchen table. Most were blurries,
streaked or wa as if the negatives had caught a fever.
Only one showed any clarity, my own pale shape standing
in the disaster wing. A dark figure looming just behind
features white utterly blank. Thus, most danced in the flash
as cunlike faint ghosts, settling once the camera's light faded.
As dusk deepened, I caught just once in irregular tapping
from the old closet in my apartment. I switched on
my flashlight, watching the dust spiral through the beam. My
hand hovered over the recorder, preparing one final memor, someone,
please remember what really happened here before I'm erased too, somewhat,
Please remember what really happened here before I'm erased too.
The words lingered in the dark, just above a whisper's edge. Then,
for a moment only the hush of settling apartment dust
filled the room. I lowered the recorder into my lap.
There was nothing left to document to night, only a question,
turning and turning, grinding itself deeper. Would it ever matter
any of it to any one but me? That night's
sleep was a suggestion, not a promise. I walked before dawn, shivering,
the fountain tapping from the closet, leaping through my dreams.
Each time I surfaced consciousness, I half expected to find
more of those packages slept beneath the door, more faces
scratched out, more pieces of myself, blurring into the soft,
unremarkable static of a life no one would bother. Remembering.
The city stirred beyond my window. In the pinkish gloom,
I watched two men in overalls, wheeling scaffolding up to
the museums. Were fine. Something in their movements furative, unusually
quick for such routine labor nabled at my nerves. They
worked along the cornice, pulling down a battered cast iron
crest had never really noticed before as a cresscrast to
the sidewalk. I glimpsed an old family said shell, the
paint nearly obliterated. It looked suspiciously like the scroll decks
that marked so many cards in the archive box. A
van idled beside the curb and marked except for the
faded city parking sticker. New crews now moved in with pripis,
faster buckets, roller carts, crates on hand trucks, yellow tapering
the doors, but no sign indicated a criminals seen only
hazard renovations. From my vantage, the museum looked at it pitclean.
The facade had never seemed so bared or so unfamiliar.
When my phone pinged, it was an automated survey, thank
you for your years of service. Please rate your experience
at the City Historical Museum. One dissatisfied, ified excellent. I
deleted it thum pressed hard enough the screen flexed under
my nail. Some days I pissed. The apartment cycled after cycle,
working through every scenario, I'd miss what it meant. Fresh
in the illusion what happened if the names came back. Anxiety, nodder,
my gat more knowing still was the emptiness for all
my evidence, cause badges, digital files, nothing held stead Every
audio clip from those crucial nights now returned only static
or silence. Visitors faces warped in the furtus. Even my own,
when viewed from servant angles, seemed to shimmer on the
edge of recognition. I started avoiding mirrors. In a rare moments,
I spoke of former staff. Those who answered had all
greeted me in tangle whispers forget it. New management is
cleaning house. Just be glad you're out, a phrase recurred,
strangely precise, keep your head down. After a while, even
those fragments fell away. The numbers disconnected, one after another.
The custodians Ethylana and Oxana is still in the city
made no sign. I watched the mail for months, half
expecting a final letter, a fresh fret, or some scrap
returned and delivered. Nothing further came. The weeks I waited
felt like waiting for a sentence to be passed that
never would be spoken aloud. Then laid in a string
of restless nightsmith phone lit upon the kitchen counter, no number.
The screen flickered between private and strings of question marks.
I let it ring. When the noise finally still, I
checked the voss will. There was nothing but the faint
sound of shuffing paper, a few broken syllables, and a
gentle measure tapping. The quickened sped, then faded. That was all.
Days later, at the museum reopened with little ceremony. Articles
in the local news celebrated renewed vision and responsible curation
for the next century. One small photer showed a new
marble plaque at the base of the main staircase. Every
original donor's name had been chiseled down, replaced by two
family names prominent in the cities. Its the midminute one thousand,
nine hundred thirties. Neither one match in erased roles I'd
found online records too, had been pruned. The old pages
were gone from the silver, overnight cash versions redirected, search
engine link scrupt. The city's digital memory, like its physical archive,
was being re threaded, one careful omission at a time.
I tried more than once to obloid everything. I still
had images, half corrupted audio, my own transcripted notes, social
media post vanish in minutes, accounts locked or flight, depending moderation.
Even emails to all heritage groups bounced, addresses dead. It
was as though the entire city had developed a collective
immunity to its own past. The walls grew thicker, the
silence heavier. Spring arrived, and with it the city's first
major event held at the museum since of renovation. I
stood across the street from the reception, watching guests file
and under portable heaters in the drizzle. Laughter, raised voices, music,
None of it reached me through the glass. Peering through
the lobby doors, I caught the new manager's face only
in profile, backlit features cast in a paywash of expision light.
An echo of something old and and resolved, haunted the
spread of his shoulders. I left without going in, hands
deep in my jacket, the folder of cause weighed hard
against my ribs. I wondered if I had been wrong,
if after enough years, Erasia simply became the shape of survival,
and truth was only whatever history remained after the dust settled.
One late afternoon, back in my apartment, a self rap
sounded at the door, so faint it barely registered. I hesitated,
then opened it to find only an empty hallway and
press flat to the threshold, an envelope inside a single polaroid,
A dim, grainy shot of the new disaster wing at
the far end, barely visible in the gloom. Someone or
something hovered in the frame's edge, face white and indistinguishable.
The mouth was gone, cleanly, cut away, as smooth as
marble written on the back in hand. I didn't recognize
three uneven words name, face, gone, child, but unable to
help myself, attacked it above my desk, half a prayer,
half a warning. That night, the city lights flickered, brownouts
and widening wings, the old iron rook district dimming and
slow pulses. The tapping in my closet returned, no longer gentle,
now sharp, impatient. Thus pulled in the corners, My breath
showed in the room, each exhalation, stretching and breaking in
the lamp color. The old museum key, forgotten in a
bowl of loose change, felt warmer than anything else in
the apartment. I picked it up, weighed it, set it
back down. There would be no going back, I saw
that clearly now. A news item ran the next morning.
Museum achieves record attendants despite ongoing restoration Faumier's praise for
public engagement. The article called to two board members whose
names had surfaced only in the last year, both faint
echoes of the ones erased from every arc e a
card I'd ever held, was anything truly lost or just
shifted elsewhere, waiting in the wings for remembrance or demolition.
I considered packing everything up, cards, badgers, torn newsprint, and
burning it, and some far afield were no memory hung
in the air, But it thus drew in the folder,
remained ensged, its contents as stubborn, as regret. The museum
continues its new stories, bright and bloodless. Yet every so
often and half waking hours were in the stuttering shadows
of early morning. Something immians his sun, listening for the
old rhythms, the tap tap tap, the low murmur of names,
and spoken too long. I carry the badge on my desk,
not as reminder, but as warning. Some debts I now
believe that live both creditor and debtor, looping through years
like echoes, demanding to be tallied in the only currency
that ever surely matters memory. Even as the city rewrites
its script, A part of me stands guard over the dust,
watching waiting, hoving for any voice willing to hear what
was once whispered and almost forgotten. Nothing moves in the
museum shadows any more, at least not while the doors
are open and the crowds pass through in their thousands.
But sometimes, just beyond the edge of sleep, I hear faint,
steady tapping written as a hot, slow terma, and know
I carry a fraction of the building's silence with me
everywhere I go. And that is the end. Thank you
for listening, and I will see you in the next one.