WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:08.119 Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. The lad you 2 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:11.839 are here, Let's get into it. Volunteering in retirement at 3 00:00:11.839 --> 00:00:14.199 the old Benning Lane branch isn't so different from working there, 4 00:00:14.240 --> 00:00:16.920 except the clock ticks lower, the uniforms have vanished, and 5 00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:19.079 I'm the only one who ever volunteers for the late 6 00:00:19.079 --> 00:00:22.640 shift for shelving. I don't mind. I like being among 7 00:00:22.679 --> 00:00:24.879 books as the winter dust seeps in the blue glass 8 00:00:24.879 --> 00:00:27.079 beneath the reading lamps, making the aisles look under water. 9 00:00:27.719 --> 00:00:30.320 On Friday evenings, the library is all small sands caught 10 00:00:30.359 --> 00:00:32.759 wheels at tap. At the returns desk, Alice humming as 11 00:00:32.759 --> 00:00:35.079 she stacks the whole shelf, the eratic clutter from junior 12 00:00:35.079 --> 00:00:38.439 troubleshooting the ancient public printer. That's when I found the card. 13 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.600 It was a battered rectangle, the color of old postcards, 14 00:00:41.799 --> 00:00:44.320 blue and cream, marble together and curved with age, shoved 15 00:00:44.320 --> 00:00:46.640 like a bookmark deep inside Astois spirits of the lower 16 00:00:46.719 --> 00:00:49.560 Estuary asterisk. I'd noticed the book as I saw did 17 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:51.719 the day's returns, the kind of utkuo at a print 18 00:00:51.719 --> 00:00:54.479 local field guide on the are most loyal regulars ever borrow? 19 00:00:55.159 --> 00:00:57.240 When I found through its pages, A slip of faded 20 00:00:57.240 --> 00:01:00.439 plastic fluttered out and landed at my feet. First, I 21 00:01:00.439 --> 00:01:03.119 almost tossed it into the lost card bin, but there, 22 00:01:03.159 --> 00:01:05.439 above the faded logo, a branch name surrounded by a 23 00:01:05.439 --> 00:01:08.000 halo of seagulls discontinued. What I was a teenager was 24 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:11.159 a name h Morrow. The serial number two, ending with 25 00:01:11.200 --> 00:01:14.239 an enormous hand printedy, caught my eye. I couldn't recall 26 00:01:14.280 --> 00:01:16.719 the font, and the back was stamped with an address panel 27 00:01:16.760 --> 00:01:20.599 nobody's filled out in decades. Curiosity flickered quick as the 28 00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:23.239 lamp light. I carried the card to the terminal at 29 00:01:23.239 --> 00:01:26.079 the reference desk, nudged aside Junior's laptop and pulled a 30 00:01:26.120 --> 00:01:29.560 borrowed database up fingers itching. Most cards from that period 31 00:01:29.560 --> 00:01:31.680 are usually starting with eight, two or five had been 32 00:01:31.719 --> 00:01:34.040 long retired, phased out in the eighties when the city 33 00:01:34.079 --> 00:01:37.280 were fully digital. But this number eight hundred thousand eight 34 00:01:37.319 --> 00:01:41.040 seemed an outlayer. I'd have remembered card numbered ZO, but 35 00:01:41.079 --> 00:01:43.000 when I tried to scan it with the bar coded reader, 36 00:01:43.120 --> 00:01:46.319 it pined red. No such a caount. How in the 37 00:01:46.359 --> 00:01:48.599 reference tune I used to souve nose on. Over two weeks, 38 00:01:48.680 --> 00:01:51.319 I switched to the ancient microfiche catalog. Nobody touched but 39 00:01:51.400 --> 00:01:54.680 me or alice there Faint and green phosphor was an 40 00:01:54.799 --> 00:01:57.680 entry for H. Morrow's card Live and Active as Anything 41 00:01:58.239 --> 00:02:00.760 loans going back to the sixties. Two to three books 42 00:02:00.840 --> 00:02:04.239 checked out every month, never a final lost item. According 43 00:02:04.319 --> 00:02:06.959 to the record, H. Marrow had borrowed Astors Burds of 44 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.879 the Lower Estuary Asteris before and returned it every time 45 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:13.039 within two weeks. A model patron if a not only 46 00:02:13.039 --> 00:02:17.360 invisible one. I scrolled through the recent loans, all ordinary 47 00:02:17.400 --> 00:02:20.840 sounding astors, Carbassans, forgotten astors, gaster As, Assault Churches of 48 00:02:20.879 --> 00:02:23.479 the Western Bay, asteriskasters four of the show lyin as 49 00:02:23.879 --> 00:02:27.840 Asterus Mariners Almanac nineteen seventy five, assk Asterisk gold games. 50 00:02:27.879 --> 00:02:32.800 We played Asterisk, not one overdue of flat does problem stock. Yet, 51 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:35.360 running through my mental list of regulars, I couldn't imagine 52 00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:39.000 who H Morrow might be. Every familiar facing outwindling Glentil 53 00:02:39.080 --> 00:02:41.719 sidled along in my minds. I missed her Forbes with 54 00:02:41.759 --> 00:02:44.560 his cane and tote, miss Essilwell and clutching her garden mysteries. 55 00:02:44.639 --> 00:02:48.039 The after school students praying up the tablet chargers. None 56 00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:50.639 were morrow or had ever been. I set the car 57 00:02:50.759 --> 00:02:53.120 to one side, sliding it in a pencil envelope marked 58 00:02:53.159 --> 00:02:56.520 exceptions for privacy. For reasons I couldn't name, I decided 59 00:02:56.520 --> 00:02:59.439 not to mention it just yet. Instead, I scribbled down 60 00:02:59.439 --> 00:03:00.960 the list of books checked out in the past yere 61 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:03.159 on a sticky note folded in the pocket of my jacket, 62 00:03:03.199 --> 00:03:05.840 and went to help Alice lock up. There was no sign, 63 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:08.319 walking home in the fog that I'd begun something larger 64 00:03:08.319 --> 00:03:11.280 than a cattalogging oddity, only an insistent urge to know 65 00:03:11.319 --> 00:03:13.319 who was using an eight car to borrow from a collection. 66 00:03:13.400 --> 00:03:16.960 There By, all evidence shouldn't even allow it. Retirement, every 67 00:03:16.960 --> 00:03:19.560 one told me, would be simpler than working life, and 68 00:03:19.639 --> 00:03:22.520 yet old habits die hard. The next morning, I work 69 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:25.599 before dawn as usual, a kettle screeching against the silent house, 70 00:03:25.719 --> 00:03:27.520 and sat with tea by the window while low cloud 71 00:03:27.520 --> 00:03:30.400 trailed over the roof. Ups For a moment, I watched 72 00:03:30.400 --> 00:03:32.319 for birds outside, thinking of the field guide to what 73 00:03:32.439 --> 00:03:34.319 small life was moving between the alley us and the 74 00:03:34.360 --> 00:03:37.319 muddy gutter at the kerbe. There's a comfort in cycles 75 00:03:37.319 --> 00:03:39.840 in pattern. My walk to the library took me down 76 00:03:39.919 --> 00:03:42.120 lanes littered with luster shells and over the stubborn roots 77 00:03:42.159 --> 00:03:45.240 lift in the paving stones. I love the sense of history, 78 00:03:45.240 --> 00:03:47.759 and the foot houses laid into old storefronts. A few 79 00:03:47.800 --> 00:03:50.520 hand painted numbers on doorphrains, a marine smell you couldn't 80 00:03:50.560 --> 00:03:54.199 quite wash out. This branch marble, trimmed and a bit neglected. 81 00:03:54.240 --> 00:03:56.240 Built in nineteen twelve, and as much a relic as 82 00:03:56.240 --> 00:03:58.479 a resource clawn on. Even as the city bled staff 83 00:03:58.520 --> 00:04:01.599 to the new community resource hubbed ten blocks inland, our 84 00:04:01.639 --> 00:04:03.719 regulars came for the piece, the view of the stuary, 85 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:06.520 the big windows that let in the evening tide. We'd 86 00:04:06.560 --> 00:04:10.479 grown small, but not silent. Alice, three years from full retirement, 87 00:04:10.599 --> 00:04:13.479 ran the circulation desk with a precision encoded in her bones. 88 00:04:14.159 --> 00:04:16.839 She'd worked here decades longer than I had, through storms 89 00:04:16.879 --> 00:04:19.720 and renovations, and did everything with an efficiency that belied 90 00:04:19.759 --> 00:04:23.680 her dry Weit Junior, the latest desk assistant, mostly wanted 91 00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:26.079 ours for tuition and spent his gaps on the staff WiFi, 92 00:04:26.199 --> 00:04:28.240 but could fix a misbehaving scan of faster than I 93 00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:30.720 could blink, and always greeted the after school students with 94 00:04:30.759 --> 00:04:35.000 unruly warm our crowd was odd in its routines. Missesilwellan 95 00:04:35.040 --> 00:04:37.199 had been using the reading room since the carpet was blue, 96 00:04:37.279 --> 00:04:39.920 and would arrive each Friday demanding the new mysteries, not 97 00:04:40.040 --> 00:04:43.199 the ones with recipes. Mister Forbes always asked for the 98 00:04:43.240 --> 00:04:46.480 same battered copy of Astis Dictionary of British Lighthouses Astros, 99 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:49.279 but now needed help carrying at home. The kids arrived 100 00:04:49.319 --> 00:04:51.560 in a noisy cloud at four, peeled off the coats 101 00:04:51.560 --> 00:04:53.839 in a puddle by the bean big chairs, and scrounged 102 00:04:53.839 --> 00:04:56.959 for comics. We even had a little monthly mystery book 103 00:04:56.959 --> 00:04:59.720 club some local teachers, and every quarter a few newcomers 104 00:04:59.720 --> 00:05:02.399 lost the half falls of the stacks. But the heart 105 00:05:02.439 --> 00:05:05.160 of the place was in its rituals. As sunset, Alice 106 00:05:05.199 --> 00:05:07.519 would flick off the porch lights and we'd walk the aisles, 107 00:05:07.519 --> 00:05:10.360 taking off returns in the handreton ledger. There were recent 108 00:05:10.399 --> 00:05:12.839 returned snowbook was a stubborn holdover from before my time. 109 00:05:12.879 --> 00:05:15.480 Alice wore it solved more confusions than the online catalog, 110 00:05:15.560 --> 00:05:19.360 ever could. Some routines were strangers still. After big coastal storms, 111 00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:22.160 we'd fine chair shuffold of paintings hung backward as if 112 00:05:22.199 --> 00:05:25.399 the building had, in Alice's words, stretched us back. No 113 00:05:25.480 --> 00:05:28.000 one took the stories seriously, but everyone claimed once to 114 00:05:28.079 --> 00:05:29.720 have got lost in the hallway or found the clock 115 00:05:29.759 --> 00:05:31.759 over the returns desk had begun for a day to 116 00:05:31.800 --> 00:05:35.040 run backward. The building's layout also changed, if only in 117 00:05:35.160 --> 00:05:37.600 rumor there was a half staircase rising too. What the 118 00:05:37.639 --> 00:05:40.439 blueprints call reading alcot now paint a plain white and 119 00:05:40.519 --> 00:05:43.040 used for storage ploss a mysterious pained to shut door 120 00:05:43.079 --> 00:05:45.879 behind the staff kitchen. Some years, the lower level, with 121 00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:48.319 its windowless arches, felt larger than it should be in 122 00:05:48.360 --> 00:05:50.759 every so often, the city's Facilities department would send a 123 00:05:50.800 --> 00:05:53.920 teen to once again verify fire code compliance. To me, 124 00:05:54.079 --> 00:05:56.240 these quirks were merely flavored proof of a place at 125 00:05:56.319 --> 00:05:58.720 lasting itself, and a staff too few and too devoted 126 00:05:58.759 --> 00:06:02.160 to be bothered by the small absurd. If h Morrow 127 00:06:02.279 --> 00:06:04.480 was another regular, they'd have had some story tangled up 128 00:06:04.519 --> 00:06:07.759 in these routines. Yet nobody in thirty years had ever 129 00:06:07.800 --> 00:06:10.720 spoken the name. My next step was simple enough, try 130 00:06:10.759 --> 00:06:12.759 to log the EPH card into the checkout system and 131 00:06:12.759 --> 00:06:15.879 see where its record led. After closing, I waited for 132 00:06:15.920 --> 00:06:17.879 the last patron to drift past the reference desk and 133 00:06:17.879 --> 00:06:21.040 tapped in the serial number. As expected, the modern system 134 00:06:21.079 --> 00:06:23.079 spatted out. There were no cards in the eight hundred 135 00:06:23.120 --> 00:06:25.319 thousand range in the books, and no way to overwrite 136 00:06:25.439 --> 00:06:29.879 manual entry, but are a microfiche there. The pattern was robust, 137 00:06:30.519 --> 00:06:33.399 dozens of checkouts every year from nineteen sixty two to 138 00:06:33.399 --> 00:06:35.120 the present, a span soo steady you could set a 139 00:06:35.120 --> 00:06:37.399 tied chart by it. I flipped first to the most 140 00:06:37.399 --> 00:06:41.560 recent titles. Some Astors Carbore Songs Forgotten asterisk I vaguely 141 00:06:41.600 --> 00:06:44.839 recalled seeing on the shelves. Others asterisk for Or of 142 00:06:44.879 --> 00:06:47.480 the Shoreline asterisk appeared in the catalog, but the borrowing 143 00:06:47.480 --> 00:06:49.759 slips code stamped with an initial, showed no sign of 144 00:06:49.800 --> 00:06:52.879 Morrow's hand. Most odd was Asterisks Soul Churches of the 145 00:06:52.879 --> 00:06:55.839 Western Bay asterisk. The microfiche said H. Morrow had checked 146 00:06:55.879 --> 00:06:58.160 it out three times in the last six years. Yet 147 00:06:58.160 --> 00:07:00.519 when I searched the master index, the blackbye under Alice 148 00:07:00.560 --> 00:07:02.439 still kept up by hand. There was no record of 149 00:07:02.439 --> 00:07:05.240 our ever having owned such a title. This was stranger 150 00:07:05.279 --> 00:07:08.040 than a missing card. I walked back into the stacks, 151 00:07:08.079 --> 00:07:12.600 scanning for Astros Salt Churches asterisk. It wasn't there the shelves. 152 00:07:12.600 --> 00:07:14.839 Call numbers jumped from travel Guard's nine hundred ten to 153 00:07:14.920 --> 00:07:18.360 Architecture seven hundred twenty, with nothing in between, no maroon spines, 154 00:07:18.519 --> 00:07:21.360 no sign the shelf had been squeezed recently. The absence 155 00:07:21.399 --> 00:07:24.279 felt deliberate. I wheeled my cart to the circ desk, 156 00:07:24.480 --> 00:07:27.639 where Alice had just begun taling the day's fines. Alice, 157 00:07:27.879 --> 00:07:30.399 I said, do you remember a book called Baster's Salt 158 00:07:30.439 --> 00:07:33.920 Churches of the Western b Asterisk Mauron Spine, probably local history. 159 00:07:33.959 --> 00:07:36.600 I can't find it in the catalog. She didn't look up, 160 00:07:36.839 --> 00:07:39.800 just squinted at her ledger. No such book. We might 161 00:07:39.800 --> 00:07:42.000 have had something about Salt Mine's old industries, but that 162 00:07:42.079 --> 00:07:44.839 was before your time. Card indixes from the eightiestone shirt. 163 00:07:44.879 --> 00:07:46.800 All the old blue cards like that she caught sight 164 00:07:46.800 --> 00:07:49.079 of the eighth card were recycled when the city went digital. 165 00:07:49.639 --> 00:07:54.560 Why nothing, I said, too quickly, just thought I'd seen 166 00:07:54.600 --> 00:07:58.439 the title before. She raised anybra. Maybe one of those 167 00:07:58.439 --> 00:08:00.360 books that gets mentioned but not born. But there are 168 00:08:00.360 --> 00:08:02.480 a few old timers who do that make up lost 169 00:08:02.519 --> 00:08:05.240 volume to tell a good story. I forced to laugh, 170 00:08:05.360 --> 00:08:07.160 even as my hands said to it car deeper into 171 00:08:07.199 --> 00:08:09.519 my pocket. It would have been easier to believe it 172 00:08:09.560 --> 00:08:12.240 was a glitch, someone duplicating old barkerds, or a middle 173 00:08:12.279 --> 00:08:15.800 manager transposing titles during the migration from paper. But the 174 00:08:15.879 --> 00:08:18.879 dates were too precise, the intervals too regular. I made 175 00:08:18.879 --> 00:08:21.240 a private note check who had catalog at which titles, 176 00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:24.639 when and how H. Mara's loans aligned with library closures, 177 00:08:24.680 --> 00:08:28.040 floods or city events. If a fandom card could plug 178 00:08:28.079 --> 00:08:30.680 itself into the microfiche, what else might have slotted in 179 00:08:30.800 --> 00:08:34.480 enow undetected? That night at home, my sleep came and 180 00:08:34.519 --> 00:08:36.600 fits scenes from the Return's Death, slipping in and out 181 00:08:36.600 --> 00:08:38.720 between half dreamt catalog entries. In the tap of rain 182 00:08:38.759 --> 00:08:41.320 at my window. I kept seeing the maroon spine, the 183 00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:43.639 sand dusty title, the faded gull stamped on the card. 184 00:08:44.320 --> 00:08:46.480 In the morning, I woked tngled in a single question. 185 00:08:46.559 --> 00:08:49.000 If H. Morrow's records are real, how could the books 186 00:08:49.080 --> 00:08:52.840 vanish and the borrower remain a ghost? I started it methodically. 187 00:08:53.720 --> 00:08:56.639 H Morrow, according to the cards, never borrowed more than 188 00:08:56.679 --> 00:08:59.480 three books at once. Every check out. The curd exactly 189 00:08:59.519 --> 00:09:02.360 two weeks part like clockwork, always a Tuesday or a Thursday, 190 00:09:02.519 --> 00:09:05.440 never a Monday or Saturday, and never coinciding with a holiday. 191 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:08.240 The aps in the record sometimes stretched months but didn't 192 00:09:08.279 --> 00:09:11.840 line with no enclosures or strikes. The pattern looked intentional. 193 00:09:12.399 --> 00:09:14.879 A search for H. Marrow in the city's digital sensus 194 00:09:14.919 --> 00:09:18.559 turned up nothing, no listing, no obituary, no property records. 195 00:09:19.120 --> 00:09:22.080 I tried city directories and came up black. But in 196 00:09:22.080 --> 00:09:25.000 the basement, exuming the dusty binders of old yellowing newsletters, 197 00:09:25.039 --> 00:09:27.720 I spotted a single clue. The nineteen sixty two yearboo 198 00:09:27.720 --> 00:09:31.320 of Westside Junior High shurda stone photograph labeled Henry Morrow faculty, 199 00:09:31.559 --> 00:09:34.759 underneath which no subject or further information was given. The 200 00:09:34.799 --> 00:09:38.240 staff roll Typerton skipped his name entirely. The old card 201 00:09:38.279 --> 00:09:41.919 catalog draw two hundred nine loan titles nineteen sixty nineteen 202 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:45.840 seventy nine should have carried lending slits for the Morrow checkouts. Instead, 203 00:09:46.080 --> 00:09:49.559 several cards were missing. Of those remaining lending slips for 204 00:09:49.639 --> 00:09:52.039 dates when Morrow had borrowed asterisk four of the shoreline 205 00:09:52.080 --> 00:09:54.440 asterisk well there, but checker to some one else entirely. 206 00:09:54.440 --> 00:09:57.799 At G. Shaughnessy in tight black pen, I photo copied 207 00:09:57.799 --> 00:10:00.320 a few for comparison, then sat with the stack, muzzling 208 00:10:00.360 --> 00:10:04.320 the contradiction. Who then had actually taken the books? Oh? 209 00:10:04.480 --> 00:10:07.279 Was there an event? Unusual? Collective forgotten well ending records 210 00:10:07.279 --> 00:10:10.399 got scrambled, the slips mismatched with borrowers, and titles shifted 211 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:13.919 scruvably between who checked what A'm When my doubts grew 212 00:10:13.960 --> 00:10:16.519 pricking at the base of my skull, I decided to 213 00:10:16.519 --> 00:10:20.080 soft the canvas of regulars. Miss Ccilwillan, perched beside the 214 00:10:20.159 --> 00:10:23.240 dusty radiator under the window, surprised me when I asked 215 00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:25.679 off handedly whether she'd ever read aster Assault Churches of 216 00:10:25.720 --> 00:10:28.639 the Western Bay asterisk. A face lit with immediate recognition. 217 00:10:29.200 --> 00:10:32.320 Though the maroon one, she said, gall on the spine. 218 00:10:32.399 --> 00:10:35.200 I got it out before they redecorated, maybe nineteen ninety six. 219 00:10:35.279 --> 00:10:37.120 There was a story in there, I'm sure, But the 220 00:10:37.159 --> 00:10:39.399 old lighthouse after the big storm. My cousin used to 221 00:10:39.440 --> 00:10:42.159 say her neighbor's bother build it. There's no record of 222 00:10:42.159 --> 00:10:44.759 a story like that. I said gently, you were not 223 00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:48.240 confusing it with asterisk light Houses of Inlet asterisk. She 224 00:10:48.279 --> 00:10:51.000 shook her head. No, this was different. There was a 225 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:53.000 whole chapter about the church that used to stand where 226 00:10:53.039 --> 00:10:55.200 the playground is now tall with a weathered bell. Nobody 227 00:10:55.200 --> 00:10:57.759 else remembers it. But the book had a church, I'm certain. 228 00:10:58.399 --> 00:11:00.639 I pressed for more, but her story began to drift. 229 00:11:00.679 --> 00:11:03.039 A cousin remembered but died in the eighties. Maybe the 230 00:11:03.039 --> 00:11:05.360 book was actually in her church's library at not Os, 231 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:08.679 but the certainty of the maroon'spine beguldis were too vivid 232 00:11:08.720 --> 00:11:12.000 to invent. Back at the sort desk, Junior overheard and 233 00:11:12.039 --> 00:11:15.159 offered a more modern solution. I could ask my booksmooth group. 234 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:17.840 He grinned. They dig up rare editions all the time. 235 00:11:17.960 --> 00:11:21.159 There's a whole discord for out of Prince Staff. He posted, 236 00:11:21.559 --> 00:11:24.840 returned in a day with a dry shrug. Nothing read it. 237 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:27.840 Library thing even world cupt no asterisks, ault church as 238 00:11:27.879 --> 00:11:30.639 asterisk in any language, closest as a magazine article about 239 00:11:30.679 --> 00:11:34.559 salt domes in Norway. So a pattern emerged. The deeper 240 00:11:34.759 --> 00:11:38.480 dug the shaky my understand and became physical. Books supposedly 241 00:11:38.559 --> 00:11:41.279 checked out were not on the shelf or had never existed. 242 00:11:41.840 --> 00:11:45.440 The lending slips overlap but didn't align. All stories gained 243 00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:47.440 detail but lost for it in the more I pressed, 244 00:11:48.039 --> 00:11:51.080 what was I seeing? A borrower from an adjacent collection. 245 00:11:51.639 --> 00:11:54.320 A disruption, a slip between two versions of our city's record. 246 00:11:54.919 --> 00:11:58.000 I began noting every address ever attached to h Mara's record. 247 00:11:58.679 --> 00:12:01.639 Each over decades, its mapped to a recognizable spot in 248 00:12:01.639 --> 00:12:05.559 the neighborhood, but none were valid now. The nineteen seventy 249 00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:07.799 eight entry thirty one Benning Lane was now the city's 250 00:12:07.840 --> 00:12:10.960 largest playground, at gleaming clause of steel and plastic, recently 251 00:12:10.960 --> 00:12:14.000 built atop the site of two vanished houses, The nineteen 252 00:12:14.080 --> 00:12:17.399 ninety one address, seventeen Harbor Court had become a yoga studio. 253 00:12:17.519 --> 00:12:21.120 Its original clap was lost under modern glass. Each location, 254 00:12:21.279 --> 00:12:23.480 when I passed by, hinted at prior life a metal 255 00:12:23.559 --> 00:12:25.919 number sunken into acove. A stone slab inscribed with an 256 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:28.240 upside down B beside the new cafe, a fragment of 257 00:12:28.279 --> 00:12:32.360 weathered vents. The traces were subtle, but undeniably there. A 258 00:12:32.440 --> 00:12:36.000 pat informed the card holder whoever were whatever they were 259 00:12:36.200 --> 00:12:38.639 kept moving to addresses a line precisely with sits about 260 00:12:38.639 --> 00:12:42.080 to change. Skulls closed at consolidation store frons demolished for retail, 261 00:12:42.200 --> 00:12:45.399 home storn out for parks, as if Age Morrow was 262 00:12:45.399 --> 00:12:48.799 always living where the city forgot itself fastest, Almost not 263 00:12:48.879 --> 00:12:50.960 a person but a presence, were a pattern, moving in 264 00:12:51.000 --> 00:12:54.039 step with the city's vanishing history. What if the library 265 00:12:54.039 --> 00:12:56.799 record didn't reflect an individual, but captured the shape of 266 00:12:56.799 --> 00:12:59.279 the city as it drifted. What if my hand had 267 00:12:59.279 --> 00:13:01.200 become the act of reading a hidden web of stories, 268 00:13:01.240 --> 00:13:04.159 some private, some collective, fetch weakly into our records, then 269 00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:07.559 lost the question busst inside me, I stopped thinking of 270 00:13:07.759 --> 00:13:09.480 h Morrow as a ghost or a glitch, and more 271 00:13:09.519 --> 00:13:11.000 as a kind of shud or an emanation of the 272 00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:14.360 library's quite continuity, stitching together the seams of a shifting city. 273 00:13:14.919 --> 00:13:18.720 One blustery Wednesday, I decided to search further. The sub basement, 274 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:21.480 rarely visited except during city wide rills or the kind 275 00:13:21.519 --> 00:13:24.279 of routine inventory that Alice avoided, offered the best hope 276 00:13:24.279 --> 00:13:27.960 of stumbling upon Bret evidence. The oldest PLU print suggested 277 00:13:27.960 --> 00:13:30.399 a half level used a century ago as a staff 278 00:13:30.440 --> 00:13:34.120 cork croom and auxiliary book storage, now largely sealed. Armed 279 00:13:34.120 --> 00:13:36.960 with a flashlight, spe keys, and my battered notebook, I 280 00:13:37.000 --> 00:13:39.159 made my way past the collapsible chair stacks so high 281 00:13:39.200 --> 00:13:42.159 they nearly blocked the landing. The air was musty tinged 282 00:13:42.159 --> 00:13:44.840 with the sweet rot of leather bindings. An all card 283 00:13:44.840 --> 00:13:47.440 catalog draw broken as woodswollen from a flood years ago, 284 00:13:47.559 --> 00:13:50.519 leaned against a wall, lined without a circulation Encyclopedia sets 285 00:13:51.200 --> 00:13:54.399 oox'es stout chest high contained circulation reports before nineteen eighty 286 00:13:54.480 --> 00:13:57.320 discarded puzzles, A faded poster for a nineteen seventy one 287 00:13:57.360 --> 00:14:00.000 protein night but in a very back corner behind me 288 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:01.879 and a rolling file cabinet that barely feed the width 289 00:14:01.879 --> 00:14:03.879 of the hallway, and noticed it tight gap just wide 290 00:14:03.919 --> 00:14:06.720 enough fur shell thus choke drop box disguised as part 291 00:14:06.759 --> 00:14:09.679 of the cabinetry. Its brass loot was itch within number, 292 00:14:09.799 --> 00:14:12.440 almost invisible until the light cut across eight hundred thousand 293 00:14:12.440 --> 00:14:16.039 eight the eight cards number. I felt a shiver, not 294 00:14:16.120 --> 00:14:17.879 of fear, but of a question about to be answered 295 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:20.720 or deepened. The key from the lost property drawer long 296 00:14:20.759 --> 00:14:23.720 forgotten fit. After a few tense moments of coaxing, the 297 00:14:23.759 --> 00:14:27.879 lock turned with a protesting squeal. Inside, stacked edgewise were 298 00:14:27.879 --> 00:14:30.480 three or maybe four slim books, thick covers, battered and 299 00:14:30.519 --> 00:14:32.720 their pages called in unfamiliar script to nothing like the 300 00:14:32.759 --> 00:14:37.399 standard locks or guest registers. Each volume was unique. The nearest, 301 00:14:37.559 --> 00:14:40.759 the thickest bore the title behnd in an evening Castoriskincident 302 00:14:40.879 --> 00:14:44.960 Nights nineteen seventy two seventy nine asterisk. The next was smaller, 303 00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:47.240 a plain blue nowebok embossed faintly with an outline of 304 00:14:47.279 --> 00:14:49.600 the city's main street. But the namers and above salt 305 00:14:49.600 --> 00:14:52.000 bindels sent a spark through me. The very word misss 306 00:14:52.080 --> 00:14:56.000 Lewellyn had mentioned, I knelt him. Flipped through pages. These 307 00:14:56.039 --> 00:14:59.440 were not the official minutes of any municipal event. Instead, 308 00:14:59.639 --> 00:15:01.799 one was a colage of stories. Some ones called the 309 00:15:01.840 --> 00:15:03.600 day that I had left all the shells upside down, 310 00:15:03.679 --> 00:15:05.519 and children run the lane giggling in the red light. 311 00:15:05.600 --> 00:15:09.480 Others more pointed out nineteen seventy eight sirens, all houses emptied. 312 00:15:09.559 --> 00:15:11.799 Families lined the cricket ground in the hot dusk, waiting 313 00:15:11.840 --> 00:15:13.519 for the mayor to turn the lights back on. Mother 314 00:15:13.559 --> 00:15:16.159 packed a salt bindell for supper, lamonade wrapped in oskin. 315 00:15:16.279 --> 00:15:18.240 No one gone missing, but nothing felt the same. The 316 00:15:18.279 --> 00:15:19.879 red tide and sit into the words I could in 317 00:15:19.960 --> 00:15:22.679 my mind. No one had ever reported a city wide 318 00:15:22.720 --> 00:15:25.039 of evacuation in any year I could remember, let alone 319 00:15:25.039 --> 00:15:27.320 in the seventies. The next book was written in a 320 00:15:27.320 --> 00:15:30.080 playful dialect, a blend of our local English childhood's line 321 00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:33.000 and words not quite right whistle deek for front porch, 322 00:15:33.279 --> 00:15:35.759 salt bindell for packed lunch, sind a slap for a 323 00:15:35.759 --> 00:15:38.840 type of wind. Some words were close enough to guess, 324 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:42.039 while others seemed to shift, meaning chameleon like. Line by line. 325 00:15:42.440 --> 00:15:45.440 My hands went cold, but my excitement burned. If these 326 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:48.720 were Morrow's books, then he'd written in overlapping, slightly impossible city, 327 00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:51.159 one where stories grew as extensions of local memory and 328 00:15:51.240 --> 00:15:54.559 disaster were celebration, left of faint mark, even when unrecorded elsewhere. 329 00:15:55.159 --> 00:15:57.519 But what if they weren't his? Had the books been 330 00:15:57.559 --> 00:15:59.679 written by civil hands or by a collect of that 331 00:15:59.679 --> 00:16:01.759 path The eighth card along at a kind of talisman. 332 00:16:02.240 --> 00:16:04.799 I carried the books upstairs in a canvas back, promising 333 00:16:04.799 --> 00:16:07.120 myself not to mention the discovery until I'd read them 334 00:16:07.120 --> 00:16:09.679 through in private. My sense of the library and my 335 00:16:09.720 --> 00:16:12.279 place in it had shifted again. No longer was I 336 00:16:12.320 --> 00:16:14.960 merely hunting a missing patron. I was rough in the 337 00:16:15.039 --> 00:16:18.279 edges of two histories intertwined, and only half legible preserved, 338 00:16:18.320 --> 00:16:20.759 not in marble minutes, but in fragile stories left behind, 339 00:16:20.799 --> 00:16:23.200 whether the city would soon forget on a night of 340 00:16:23.240 --> 00:16:25.360 driving rain. As at hunched at the kitchen table, the 341 00:16:25.360 --> 00:16:28.519 sub basement books splay open before me. At first glance, 342 00:16:28.679 --> 00:16:31.679 they seemed mestates crossed out in jokes, darting between accounts 343 00:16:31.679 --> 00:16:35.039 of storms, festivals, and municipal decisions that almost but not 344 00:16:35.120 --> 00:16:38.919 quite matched the records in city hall volumes, margin nearly abounded. 345 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:41.440 Asked miss Essie about the night the benches vanished. Check 346 00:16:41.480 --> 00:16:45.159 against Baylight incident is its same mirrors, first mural snippets 347 00:16:45.200 --> 00:16:48.879 of poetry, riddles, shopping lists. Yet the tone was never grand, 348 00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:51.200 nor did I feel like someone was writing for history, 349 00:16:51.759 --> 00:16:55.519 but buried among the stories details leapt up Astorisk incident, 350 00:16:55.600 --> 00:16:58.960 knights Asterrois, reference to Tid Sirens nineteen seventy eight, mapping 351 00:16:58.960 --> 00:17:01.399 the event on to real stre t Reetarborreau now by 352 00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:04.680 Glynda had never in my experience been evacuated for any reason. 353 00:17:05.279 --> 00:17:07.880 Rituals were described that nearly matched those lingering in the 354 00:17:07.880 --> 00:17:10.400 library's current foc or closing at sunset, the way the 355 00:17:10.440 --> 00:17:13.000 side door jam during spring, even a big sale council 356 00:17:13.079 --> 00:17:15.680 by Red Light warnings. None of our cities minutes were called. 357 00:17:16.240 --> 00:17:19.640 The dialect book was even stranger. The introduction, scrawled in 358 00:17:19.680 --> 00:17:22.680 pale blue pen, read for the keepers, the blinkers, the 359 00:17:22.680 --> 00:17:26.519 ones who shuff their stories twice, terms like parlor, glee men, salt. 360 00:17:26.519 --> 00:17:30.240 Bindel repeated the mutated. Some words I lady remembered hearing 361 00:17:30.240 --> 00:17:33.039 in childhood, phrases used by grandparents or out of jokingly 362 00:17:33.079 --> 00:17:36.440 in the schoolyard, never written down. Others I realized I'd 363 00:17:36.480 --> 00:17:40.279 simply never christened before. For hours, I compared the handritten books, 364 00:17:40.319 --> 00:17:43.839 events and diction to the citied official timeline. Again and again. 365 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:46.880 Contradictions arose, events that didn't quite fit, tales that seemed 366 00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:51.000 to explain half joking what official records avoided. Sometimes I 367 00:17:51.039 --> 00:17:53.960 even found annotations in the margins not the real year, 368 00:17:54.039 --> 00:17:56.920 double check bakery ledger or matches Forbes fishing story, ask 369 00:17:57.000 --> 00:17:59.799 about colored landon. Whoever kept these books was not just 370 00:17:59.839 --> 00:18:02.960 for recording a hidden history, but testing it against community memory, 371 00:18:03.039 --> 00:18:06.480 cross referencing every substantial oddity. The pattern that had only 372 00:18:06.559 --> 00:18:08.519 bothered at the edges of my mind now sprang full, 373 00:18:08.599 --> 00:18:11.440 growing The card, the books, the addresses, even the stories 374 00:18:11.480 --> 00:18:14.240 told half constantly by our regulars, all belonged to a shadow, 375 00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:16.799 where by an alternate time line, perhaps or meurely the 376 00:18:16.799 --> 00:18:18.680 sum of what people thought could have once been true. 377 00:18:19.119 --> 00:18:21.319 I searched for a passage that might tie it altogether. 378 00:18:21.400 --> 00:18:24.480 Cross referencing the red Tied incident with city council records. 379 00:18:25.119 --> 00:18:28.160 Our town's official documents from nineteen seventy eight said only 380 00:18:28.200 --> 00:18:30.759 that its scheduled power interruption had occurred, with no mention 381 00:18:30.839 --> 00:18:34.759 of city wide evacuation, feuge shortages, or sirens. Yet here 382 00:18:34.799 --> 00:18:37.880 in this abasement spatteredly book was a crowd gathered at dusk. 383 00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:40.160 The bench is ringed by lemonade jugs and soft talk, 384 00:18:40.799 --> 00:18:44.200 an exaggeration or slippage, a place where two memories met 385 00:18:44.200 --> 00:18:47.519 in blended. By now my sense of calm had transformed utterly, 386 00:18:47.559 --> 00:18:51.279 not inter fear, but robust, burning curiosity. I couldn't see 387 00:18:51.279 --> 00:18:54.559 myself in these margins, but my neighborhood, my routines, even 388 00:18:54.559 --> 00:18:57.240 my silly faith in the library's completeness began to refract. 389 00:18:57.920 --> 00:19:00.279 I had always thought of the library as witness and reser. 390 00:19:00.359 --> 00:19:02.559 But what if it was something stranger and murmuring and 391 00:19:02.599 --> 00:19:06.400 complete bridge between plausible pass between the stories people wish 392 00:19:06.440 --> 00:19:09.079 it happened and those that actually did. It was past 393 00:19:09.079 --> 00:19:11.119 two in the morning when I leaned back, pinched the 394 00:19:11.119 --> 00:19:14.400 bridge of my nose, and realized something both exhilerting and terrifying. 395 00:19:14.440 --> 00:19:16.640 The IT card was not a relic, not merely a 396 00:19:16.720 --> 00:19:20.000 leftover from half forgotten bureaucracy. It was a passport to 397 00:19:20.079 --> 00:19:23.799 through line, threaded through two overlapping narratives, one my own, 398 00:19:23.880 --> 00:19:26.200 the branch I knew and could touch, the other of 399 00:19:26.319 --> 00:19:29.799 library not fully seen, where wild evacuations and lost books survived, 400 00:19:29.839 --> 00:19:32.559 and where stories might slip from almost true intil never happened, 401 00:19:32.640 --> 00:19:36.160