Speaker 1: I arrived from my first night on shift at quarter
past eleven, hunched against the chill as rain pounded the
stained glass windows of the old Municipal Library. Beneath the
city's steady hum, The world of a felt distant, muffled
by stone. In storm, I lapped myself inward the after
IROs key mister Gorsky had provided, stepping from the puddled
street into the foyer's yellow light. The door drew close
behind me, with the gentle reluctance I would soon recognize
as characteristic of the building itself. It was quiet, but
not silent. A few late lamp lights still glowed in alcoves,
and a single bulb flickered uncertainly in the lobby. My
shoes squeaked on ancient marble as I passed the empty
circulation desk and descended the broad wall, stepped toward the
archiveal basement. Every shadow seemed lightly stirred by the inclement weather,
the feeling of the wind testing a joy in here
and a framed there, as if the building was a sleeper,
shifting uneasily in their blankets. Down the final flight, pass
staff lockers and a lock gate, where the basement split
off the ark of proper began. I fumbled for the
light switch above the filing cabinets and watched the fluorescent
stutter to life, revealing rows of endless shelving carts waited
with returned books, and the glass wall room where I'd
spend most of my shift digitizing ledges and handling records
no one else wanted to touch. I scanned the inventory list,
sliding my bag under the table. My escape from the
upstairs well felt complete. No chatter, no emails pinging angrily
at my piece, no obligations, but to the slow hum
of the machines in the precise sequence of shelving, scanning, logging.
That illusion lasted precisely twenty minutes. The books had been
dropped off earlier by day's staffer, left on a creaking
with ten cart. My job a simple sort. Inspect were
shelve and log Each one most bore the marks of decades,
with peeling spines and brown edge pages. Then there was
a battered hardbacket's cover warped and title faded to legibility,
distinct among the others. About smell a sharp ancient tang
of cedar and das. As soon as I picked it up,
something beneath its jacket shifted out, fluttered a dew warped
checkup card, pale yellow and heavily creased. The grid showed
years of dates. But what caught my eye was the
last checked out title, written in ink, that had run
and smudged into the pace. Weave assorted correspondence and on
the column for accession, number bore swirling, marked more like
a partial fingerprint than a number, and the signature field
had at best a scribbled curve, almost as if the
writer's hand had caught at the end. Uncertain the date
was written as nineteen, the rest had faded into a
trail of ink. I traced the listing with my thumbnail.
This title wasn't in any catalog, not in the paper
locks stacked near by, nor in the digital database I
had glanced through before. It should have felt reveal a
clerical blit, Yet my pulse quickened. The book's interior was
plank saved for a library stamp decades out of use,
and its barcode had been robbed nearly raw, leaving only
faint lines. When I tilted the car toward the light,
the residue showed the ghost of other titles beneath the
paper surface vanished press faint with repetition. There was a
cold current in the stacks to night, an eginier beyond
the climate controls reselving. I moved between rose, and the
silence took on an odd cadence, the ticking of fluorescent ballast,
the occasional drip from ancient pipes, the softness of my
own breathing. Then some were ahead, a lingering offt of perfume,
not floral exactly, but reminiscent of old paper, and the
dry sweetness of will to violets. I shivered, pausing between
g decimal rose eight hundred and nine hundred, glancing over
my shoulder at the dark behind the return shelf. No
footsteps soldible. Yet something suggested pause, as censored the nape
of my neck, that I was not entirely alone. The
hair is on my arms, pricked. Surely no patron was locking.
The security alarm sealed all doors at nine, and the
last colleiaque had clocked out lawn before. But then came
the footsteps, deliberate, un heard, too slow for coincidence, spaced
earily close together, then vanishing altogether, as if absorbed by
the paper. And brick. I returned to the main workroom,
trying and failing to shake off a coil of anxiety.
The overhead lights began to flicker, cycling between soft glow
and abrupt darkness. Within one such interval, as all fell
to shadow, I caught, brief as a flash of movement
between the fast acts, a silhouette, tall shifting, not quite
fitting the geometry of the shelves, too flute and faint
to grasp. My breath fogged before my eyes, just as
swiftly the lights streaded nothing in sight, only my own
heart beat, loud and inexplicably. Embarrassed, I picked up the
bat of volume again and filed it behind a work desk,
promising myself I'd ask about it later. The catalog card
remained in my shirt pocket, pulsing warmth, as if it
had acquired a breath of its own. Few know why
someone applies to work the night shift, but I doubt
many reasons are ever as simple as needing the money.
Mine was no different. Crushing student loans, a second attempt
at thesis gone, called the persistent ach of not quite
belonging in my previous life. Nights at the library offered
peace from all that, A contract for solitude escaped touch
between rows of AMERD books in day light. I tusured
on and off, making do, but it never struck. The
interviews for this job had gone quick. Mister Gorsky, the
head archivist, barely made I contact, flipping through my application
and asking two questions about digital preservation. He seemed less
worried about my experience than confirming I didn't mind being alone.
I assured him I'd grown up around libraries and that
was that. Only later, as I woked the winding holes
on a brief tour tid I noticed the hest in
the afternoon staff's good bows. Be sure you don't stay
pasture shift. There's not always someone here after midnight. The
the circulation assistant, had whispered as we passed the main
reading room, her eyes flicking to the statue in its alcove,
as if checking its position in dusty daylight. She seemed
worn down by routine, a hint of anxiety in her movements,
her hands restlessly smoothing the returned slips on her desk.
Strange acoustics down here at night. You'll see what I mean.
If I pressed mister Gorsky about rumors, disappearances, stories of
former workers. He dismissed them worily, stating, every old pile
of brick in the city gets at share of urban legend.
Libraries just attract a certain strangeness. That's all those first shifts,
drifted by a measured repetition. After clocking in, I'd win
through the locked hallways, keys jangling, not all marked, some
unnecessarily heavy um, misplaced passing, yellow light, filtering over banister
as once moved by centuries of use. The reading rooms
upstairs became foreign enough to iowa stock, with pockets of
darkness hiding between busts of writers and faded portraits staring
from the walls. At night, my sole companions with the
hummer servers in the digitization room, the glow from security
m monitors lined beside my station, and the echo of
my own movements. Over time, I mapped the library's geography
by footsteps, the quiet tap along the north stacks, the
minor resonance were flooring had been replaced, and the dualisticity
of sound behind shut doors. My job was methodical but satisfying.
Most nights I digitized lodges or index neglected quisition logs,
coaxing Brital pages toward the scan as gold light Edith
Warden's letters, early city directories. Even circulation slips yellowed almost
to translucence. Each became pixels under my careful hands. There
was a sort of comfort in the routine, a sense
of usefulness in saving the ephemeral for another century. Yet
here and there peculiarities revealed themselves, with the persistence of
water through stone. In certain corridors, my keys failed to
fit the locks, some doors ostensibly unremarkable, and the architectural
plant remain sealed no matter which Kia had tried. Sometimes,
from beneath grates in the hallway floors, a hollow whisper
would bleed upwards, echoing and indistinct, as if a conversation
continued below my level. That I had caught too late
to understand. What are stains too became a motif. Faint
shapes had gathered at the scene of plaster sealings and
wound like ghostly fingerprints across the paint. I couldn't name
what disturbed me in those first days. The feeling pressed
less is fear than as on anees that left my
mind drifting into wakefulness. Long after my shift. My first
sleep as night after a late evening in the stacks
was marked by a restless stream, corridor after corridor, all
like corridors stack within each other, like Russian dolls, each
with their own endless files of blank index cards. Every
morning I'd catch a cab home. The library sent half cold,
half sire, the rescue of paper and ozen still on
my clothes. Even as I tried to forget the nice peculiarities,
my mind returned again and again to that first batted volume,
the odd old card with its insmuch title and undecipherable mark.
No one seemed willing to discuss it directly, and for
a while I told myself it was nothing, just a
library quirk, the detritus of a century's mistakes. Still, I
made a note beside my desk and careful pencil, ask
about this sort of correspondence, Anne, I should have let
it fade. Instead, I'll let curiosity carry me further. A
week passed, routine settled, and I believed had begun to
climate to the library's peculiar but anomalies became habits of
their own, gnawing at the back of my mind like
a pebble. Lodged in issue. The batted volume, which had
set aside in my first shift, found its twin on
a Tuesday, and interlibrary alone came, and later a leather
band copy of something called Parallax Letters Beyond. As I
scanned it, a familiar yellowing slip fell out, different title,
yet again unregistered. The signature field bore the same hestoned loop.
The ink was faded, but this time the pemanship leaned
left instead of right. The date suggested one hundred ninety six,
though the last number was impossible to decipher. Two nights
later another book arrived, this time within anonymous treat his
on Astronomical dials. Tucked in its back cover. The same
style of index carded title crossed out were placed with
something in feigned blue pencil signature nearly matching but not
at integal yere listed as nineteen seventeen nine, with the
second nine heavily overwritten. A pattern emerged. Over seven days,
six such cards, always attached to return books, and then cataloged,
all with variations on the unnerving signature and implausible dates.
Each time the inventory number wavered, as though the digits
erode themselves. Some of the older slits bore water damage
as a fish from a puddle one had oppressed violet
stuck in it, squashed and colorless. I brought up the
oddity tode, hoping for a mundane explanation. She paled lips tight,
asked mister Gorseky. But maybe don't dig, okay, some things
are better left lost down here. Later, confronting mister Gorski
at the security monitor room, I watched his demeanor shift
from board professionalism to an awkward, forced chiffilus. The card
systems agent. Folks used to have fun with fake books,
you know, the Scrundle's staff, probably library prank. His eyes
didn't meet mine, instead, dart into Binder's labeled incident reports,
stacked hardily by his elbow. I tried to accept this,
yet the way he and the exchanged glances suggested an
answered question hanging between them. I wait and addressed. Initially,
I'd consider the anomalies logistic, perhaps arkiving errors or pranksters,
as Gorsky suggested, But there was no entry for any
of the titles. And when I tried to scan the
barcodes on these books, the scanner spats static into the speakers,
a high wavering note that caused the monitor to flicker.
They did his return far not found blinking abruptly resetting
itself after each failed entry. I attempted to enter the
mysterious titles manually, and the software froze unresponsive until a
hard rebucleared the screen. Nice dragged longer, my attention increasingly
consumed by the odd cards. I kept them in a
drawer by the scanner, sometimes taking them out to compare
the handwriting by lamplight. Why then the library's atmosphere It
shifted from me e shou and explained sound. Every overlooked
volume now carried the reference point of the anonymous books
in their haunting bureaucratic signatures. Some knights anxiety stole most
of the ires. My focus blurred, trailing off into a
list of potential explanations that never satisfied. The desk lamp
flickered more often now, and the mechanical humos the scanners
occasionally gave way to soft, almost imperceptible murmurs. I convinced
myself it was tiredness, the kind only the lonely night
ca and birth, but an insistent sense of being tested
observed grew impossible to disregard. One Thursday, while shelving folios.
In the deepest stack, a glimpse movement in the reflection
off a brasquese the impression of a figure standing between
the rows are moving. By the time I turned, no
echo of presents remained. Only the still dare, heavy with
the scent of cellulose and ancient furniture polish kept me company.
Determination overtook caution. I set out to discover what, if anything,
these anomally signified. It began with a stroke of luck.
During a routine scan. A bottom drawer, half forgotten beneath
the digitization desk refused to open fully. When I finally
waged it free, I found a cash of old staff
Loprick's volumes from the nineteen seventies through the late nineteen nineties,
and touched save for a fine coating of dust and
a single folded slip of paper marked property of Archives.
These ledgers were not for public eyes. Each page charted
the ordinary taskless project updates attendant. Yet the margins held
their own language. Spose notes in colored pencil crept between
the rule lines. Arrays of view, no code symbols, faint
cross hatched grouts arose. Meeting at coda junctions, dates out
of sequence with the entries themselves. Several log entries began
or and ad mid thought, trailed by notations that didn't
match the script of the archive's standard forms two fortyen
omnois below see code DSLAST seventy ten horror and blue
ink do not return book to L three B file.
A special O video in Maine, more cryptic yet in red.
A series of single word enterers echoes a looping sealed.
Were they warnings or just the biproducts of boord Night's staff.
The more I read, the less accidental they seemed. Bundled
Within one log, I found a hand drawn floor pan,
unmistakably familiar, but with its own disquieting details. The building's
main levels were rendered in herred pencil, but at the
basin new corridor had been added Level three B. No
such shop basement appeared in any official plan. Tiny circles
had been inked in one corner, each marked seal, while
another entry read simply no accession. Armed with these clues
and emboldened by my rapidly spiraling curiosity, I ventured deeper
during the next light shift, below the main stacks, behind
a periodical's room, a service CORRIDORLA to break depoll, I
ran my palm over the painted brick, solid cold, no
hint of recent patchrook. Yet something in the stonework's texture
felt off, as if the underlying wall had not always
been there. I tried the nearest doors, one pad locked,
the other seemingly fused with its frame, and matt them
against the hand drum plan. Every ROUTUW Level three be
led to a dead end. And yet the buildings for
print measured in steps and remembered distances suggested otherwise. The
third night, I tried to drawn by compulsion, I could
not describe. Phantom steps sounded from behind the brick wall muffled.
I strained to listen. When I pressed my ear to
the cold mortar, I could hear barely a quiet a
hifmctapping like finger nails, or a pencil drumm cuick against wood.
Seeking clarity, I turned to the library's digital system, checking
the security feeds. The cameras cover in the lower levels
as they should show. The brick corridor, the padlocked utility hall,
the locked elevator lobby was stuck in a loop. No
matter the ire they replayed. The same five minutes, empty holes,
someone wheeling a cock past and grainy footage, and at
the loop's edge, the smallest suggestion of movement disappearing into shadow.
I checked the safe logs. My own recent trips to
those stacks left no record. The digital timestamp never progressed
beyond the frozen statements. That night, I left the library
with the sense of having peeled the first layer off
an onion, revealing only more tight, unyielding wings. Straation and
doubt grew in tandem. Desperate for outside confirmation, I called
up the city's directory and tracked down a retired librarian,
Missus Fallow, whose name appeared repeatedly in decades old lopocks.
By pro arrangement, we met in a chilly, down town cafe,
her hands wrapped protectively at random ug. They never told
you about the rooms you are not meant to remember today,
she asked to after listening to my halting summary. There
are quiet agreements, rooms, names, cattle of numbers. Long ago
the city and its tenants made peace. I want say more.
You're best served by forgetting what doesn't want to come
to light. Her gaze lingered on me. Folks wander off
in big places dear. Sometimes upstairs keeps their own secrets.
Sometimes the basement does a strange laughed, memories flickering behind
her expression. If you hear your name somewhere in the dark,
don't haz her. Just keep walking forward. She refused further questions,
eyes bright with warning, they swelled with unease, each revelation,
driving the sense of encroachment deeper. Returning to the archives,
I began to notice faces flickering behind glass case's eyes
gone when I blinked. Their shapes were building in the brush,
tricks of old portraits. Wook's one shell be misplaced. The
next night, the temperature dropped inexplicably, even as I shivered
within my coat. Whispers always at the edge of hearing,
coiled through empty corridors when no living thing was inside.
The details grew sharper with each uncovering. Oddities became pattens.
Pattens became points on a map whose lines only bent inward.
I then I could barely recall the comfort with which
I had once passed. Each night, a hush settled not
only among the shelves, but to me as well, a
faltering heartbeat waiting for the next card to fall on
a wet When torn Saturday evening, the tension reached its
first break. I derived, as usual keedin descended into the
hush between returning a rare volume and locking another late edition.
Deappeared in the corridor, unusual as her shifts typically ended
by six. Her hair, usually tucked behind her ear, fell
wild and loose. Her voice quivered on the edge of confession.
I've seen that handwriting before, she whispered, barely meeting my gaze.
Not in a book, on a letter tiped above the
old mail chute years ago, the signature that person never
checked her something in her manner. Her eyes shining with ecopops,
fear and pity, told me she believed that, though she
would not say more, I think some people who work
here don't really go home, she added, after a pause,
all the disappearances may be not gone, maybe still here. Then,
face drained, she vanished up the stairs, refusing to look back,
her words trapped in my ears. I could no longer
ignore the poll. Impelled by the unease, I returned that
night to the neglected corners mapped on the cryptocandorn floor plan.
I counted basis past the periodicals pressed against a rolling shelf,
and by accident or some subtle guidance, felt the shelving
shift beneath my palm. An unmarked door, previously hidden, materialized
from the gloomer's framework and pain peeling, the faintest tom
radiating from within. When I touched the batted card in
my pocket, if vibrated faintly as of call toward that door.
Using these warning as imbitus, I examined the cards near you,
overlaying them atop attendants records and personnel files scavenged from
the inner archive. The namesnk to the bottom of siph
as fragments of initials in hiring dates twisted through color
graphic pattern every one tied in some way to the
roster of vanished stuff, those who had stopped coming in
borer connection, visible only when the cards were studded as
a whole. It was a pattern of loss, a lattice
of initials and impossible dates that mirrored the course of disappearance,
attract by urban legend and by me. Now with mounting
dread in the brick corpor was darkness at that door,
which breathed fink hold onto my palm, A decision crystallized.
There was no more space for doubt. Either I would
walk through a redrawer in the boundaries of what I
accepted as real, or I would remain a mote circling
the library's belly, always just outside the truth. I left
the hidden door sealed that night, only to find on
my return to the digitization desk a fresh card is
still damp and just curled, waiting precisely where my hand
usually fell. This one bore in the same hazard to
sink my own name written in a mistakable handwriting. If
I'd believe myself an observer, the library silent machinery now
threatened to include me in its cycle, accession inventoried, waiting
to be shelved in its never sleeping heart. The card
seemed to pulse at something almost like hunger, and so,
having gazed down corridors both literal and secret, having seen
my own reflection flicker through the archive's glass, I made
a decision. Tomorrows shift would bring me back to the
sub basements hidden door, armed with every clue, each note,
each name, each fading card. If my own catalog number
now waited somewhere among them, perhaps it was simply time
to see what precisely the library had been archiving all
these years, certainly continuing from the last sentence, I brought
little with me on that next year, thumb willing to
ten feet with a necessary baggage, my notebook and pen,
two folders containing all the cards I had collected, the
coppice of low book pages with their coated scribbles, and
a flashlight that by late appetite kept tucked in my
pockets since the first night's atage. The city was momentarily dry,
only a briny wind whistling as I made my way
to the library's entrance. The calm before dawn made the
building appear softer, as though it drew into itself. I
hesitated on the threshold, felt for the cold bump of
the After IROs key and slid into the foy Each
foot full echoed with a clarity I hadn't noticed before,
as though the library itself paused listening. The echo followed
me around the marble column, then passed the silent reading rooms,
with only the distant hum of a street cart, the
city's aid to tell me to the world above. On
the way to the basement, I checked for d something
in her warning calon to me stubbornly, her coat was
on its usual hook. Her coffee mark, always half drained
and lipsic marked, was gone from the desk. I peered
at the sign and sheet hanging on its clipboard. Her
name stopped appearing. Two days before, only Gorsky had signed,
and since his blocky script daringly, steady, suspiciously, sir. I
fell to tightening in my chest. The corridor to the
arcous as unoccupied, a breathless silence filling the small lobby
outside the digitization room. The lamp on my desk cast
an oval of gold over the folders, illuminating the most
recent card, the one bearing my name. I touched it lightly,
my hand trembling and certain if it would warm or
repel my palm. The sensation was subtler than I feared.
A faint pickling tingle radiated up my arm, as if
some current lap from card stuff to skin. I turned
on the monitors, out of effex, scanning each camera for anomalies.
The feats for the main stacks seemed normal this time,
miles of sleeping books, the occasional spider drifting from shelf
to shelf in epixelated imness. The basement feeds, however, told
a different story. Camera ate aimed at the corridor where
I discovered the hidden door, displayed only a blank wall
punctuated by shifting shadows at tooms a minute intervals, a
small distortion would slide across the footage, as if something
just out of sight pressed against the lens. No time
could advanced, and the footage, ever reaply began again at
one fourteen a m. I gathered my materials out of
old habit I traced the coated plan of level three
B with my finger, the pencil lines now pressed into
memory as firmly as any corridors feel beneath my shoes.
The plant promised to turn just past the periodical's cut,
a stretch of wall where the echo of my steps muted,
even though visually nothing suggested a passage to night. As
I moved, I sensed a mild resistant in the air,
a static that ruffled my shirt and made the hairs
on my arm bristle. The books along the sector leanin
or quote angles like a listener's craning, and their gold
flecked letters shone dully under the lamp, bolted to the
low ceiling. The rolling shelf near the plan's marked turn
was not in its usual place. Some one or something
had shunted it aside half a meter. A distinct groove
in the dust and grittle on the floor mapped its
recent journey. I slid of father, hot galloping, and there
at the door, half in shadow, revealed itself where Blankmay's
memory had posed the night before. Its knob was old brass,
worn to a dull sheen in the center, almost warm.
The humming that radiated from behind the door seemed to
pulse in time with my heart irregular and alive. I
fumbled through the ring of Kiskorski had assigned me. None
seemed me for this lock, but one heavier, distinctly older,
with B three stamped faintly on its stemin essel. At
the bottom of the ring, its creator had carved deep
groves along its edges, as if by a hurried hand Lonigo.
With my breath held tight in my chest, I eased
the key into the lock. The fit was poor. I
had to twist with effort. A click echoed low and strange,
the sound vibrating up my bones. The door resisted, then
released A draft, cold and sweet, with decaying paper and
an edge of something almost metallic, poured out a breath
ex hail from darkness, lawn unbroken inside a short flight
of stone, stepped spy rolled away. I flicked on my
flashlight and the beam fell onto ancient tazands that with
tiny geometric patterns. Dirt gathered heavily in the corners. The
air grew colder as I descended. The temperature drop was
immediate and absolute. Every sound seemed trapped here, banncing and
flat indcas that had nowhere to dissipate below. The passage widened.
My steps sounded wet in the stone, and I realized
the walls calt and concentrated. Every faint sound of my
own pulse, amplified the whisper of court fabric, the minute
grasp of the folders. I clutched Mark's alon. The wall
suggested ears of maintenance and neglect, Ragged paint jobs over
deep cracks, the remnants of caution tip half painted out
of sight. Overhead, the remnants of electrical wiringly twisted and dead,
as if the whole space had been systematically cut off.
To my left, another door, charcoal gray, emblazoned at I
level with a hand painted plaque catalog room restricted. I
ram my hand near the surface fold defied. But as
I pressed my ear against the word, I heard what
was unmistakably a faint, ongoing flutter, like the riffle of cards,
or the brief commotion when hundreds of pages turned together
in a gale. A sudden memory insisted itself of Missess
Vallow's voice. Rooms who were not men to remember. My
hand shook, but I set the folders on the floor,
leaf through the catalog cards and began matching their faded
accession numbers to the code scrawled in the margins of
the recovered look pages. The patterns overlapped, each set of
an initials. Each cipher corresponded to a catalog crowd apparently
tied to a missing person. I wrote history in my
notebook G. N. Nineteen seventy one, D. Carwardine, L. F.
Nineteen eighty S. B. Mailer, T. S. Nineteen ninety three, E. H. Fellow.
My own name nearly meant the duo H. Twenty twenty four.
The door at that moment vibrated beneath my palm. I
snatched a flashlight, held it above, and saw in the
old plaque a newer scratch, a rough outline of the
same looping signature that had haunted every card so far.
I pushed The door opened easily. Now the catalog room
lay beyond a fast windowless a vault that extended past
the reach of artificial light. My flashlight beam swung over
shelving arranged and grud formation, more tighty pack than the
upstairs stacks. Each shelf held not simply books, but artifacts,
embossed document boxes, bundles tied with brittle twine, and every
few paces catalog draws labeled with numbers and names. Below,
a murmur trickled through the air. It was need a
music nor voice. It was the sound of riffles, library cards,
of dry paper, sighing with the passage of time. The
air was cooler still, yet electrically charged. Half Way across
the room, under the icy glow of a forgotten ball,
a desk sat embedded between thick glass cabinets. One cabinet
contained only index cards, each with a tag pinned accession, number, date,
a harry scull of name. Almost all faded, some rewritten.
When names bled through the paper as a think was living,
my heart thumped some of the names I recognized, the missing,
the retired. A few regular patrons whose faces washed through
the holes in rumor. Only D's full name was pinned
in careful skirt's current year, no draw date. Suddenly a
shuffling at the room's far end, my flashlight being danced wildly.
Shells magnified, shadows warped them across jars of unknown contents.
The odd personal object, a broken pair of gases on
a fel tray, a leather watch pancinge tight around nothing.
The shoffing grew louder, paced more evenly. Figure emerged, neither
tall nor shot, dripped in fashionable neutral clothes, their face
partly concealed in a cone of darkness. Even in this
half light, their outline seemed uncertain. Tracing the after image
of six of different people at once. Each time I
strained for detail, the face subtly shifted to missus VAL's chin,
perhaps Gorski's nose, dese frightened eyes. When my gaze finally still,
the figure became quite simply an ass image of past
staff and aggregate of lost memory. The person entity spoke,
voice resonating in layered timbers. You've come for a record
of yourself. Then paralyzed, I managed only to nod. They
gestured at the cabinets. All memories here outlived the keepers.
Each must be tended, were called shelved. Some never borrowed,
some return too late. It becomes an obligation. You see
a cycle not easily left behind. I try to find
the right question. My mouth dry as cotton. What what
are you? Who are you? A thin smile goes to
their lips, stretching across so many faces. A custodian a memory,
as some of all remembered here who failed to depart?
We hold titles forbidden, forbidden titles hold us. The library
did not always keep such records, but time grows teeth
the catalog must remain intact. The sun behind the voice
was unmistakably the riffle of cards and the faint slum
of a closing drawer. My own card clutched at my chest,
aimed to react, warming, almost burning, as if on the
cusp of erasure or transmutation. The custodian drifted in a
semicircle under the boltanemic low, flickering in and out of focus,
some trick of light or a property of the room itself.
I looked beyond every drawer held a card for someone
I had researched details crisp were the person in good
in memory, but smudged and sallow, where all lingering trace
of a person are title faded. Why me a stammeric,
distorted by the reverberant air. I only wanted nothing. I
just wanted to work and not I didn't intend. They
waved the hand. Curiosity builds bridges. Those who cross sometimes
find only a void. You came with questions. Few dare
keep asking. That's all it takes. The room changed quality,
The temperature fell further, the cabinet's shadows lengthening and detaching
from their sources. I retreated a step back toward the entry,
but the way I've felt farther than before. The custodian's
form grew sharper, fixing on me with a gaze that
was not impolite, but unbearably steady. They spoke with a
gravit as that rang of finality. What you learn now
cannot be unknown. You may leave, but something will go missing.
Memory clarity, names of those you love. Three may remain whole, remembered,
keeping forbidden for those who will not carry it further.
The choice is always given, not always honored. I backed
into a cabinet knocking loose. Several cards each fluttered downward
and slow gravity to find spirals settling around my feet.
I looked toward the exit, index cards crunching faintly beneath
my shoe. Why would you want to keep me, I whispered.
The Custodian's eyes brightened with actual sadness, because all memory
will be lost unless tended. Each card, each artifact, is
a tumidor in the lock. When there are no more cattaloders,
the room empties, and the libery's heart dissolves. Static trembled
in the room's corners. Something, some deep, purposeful force, strew
me nearer to the catalog desk, the cards vibrating with expectation. Suddenly,
the lights flickered, as they had on that first night,
the staccado anxious rhythm in the darkness between pulses. The
custodians seemed to multiply their outlines, crowding every aisle. Annex
seized me. The custodian made no move to restrain me,
but each step toward the door felt as though I
was pushing through heavy water. My chest burned. The folder
of lockbrook notes clutched in my ear larms felt heavier,
dried downward by invisible hooks, then a sudden guston opening
of vacumenere behind me. My hand, gripping a fistful of cards,
found a new catalog card with my name. For just
an instant, the paper was cold enough to inspire pain
that unbeerbly hot, then simply blank. I stumbled running, scrambling
up the stone steps, ducking under the reanimated wiring through thresholds,
half recovering their brick patterns, as if erasing the ruck
behind me. The humming of the lower air doubled, pressing
the pulse in my ears until every other sound evaporated. Upstairs.
I burst into the archived proper, the humming fading, breathless,
the forder clutch to my chest. For a moment, everything
was as it should have been, monitor cycling, yellow desk,
glamp burning steadily, not a hint of other presents, not
a cardile of place. I sat against the table, catalog sliped,
spinning loose across the polished surface. For a heartbeat, I
almost believed I'd never left the main basement, that the
door had been a dream. The encounter hallucinated, but the
card I had taken below. The one now nestled in
my sweaty palm was blank but warm, The airges curled
as a freshly drd. The silence pressed around me, boundering
and dare cross. I sat for a long time, contemplating
the folder of coated notes, the arrangement on my desk,
the neat stack of index cards, one for each name,
waiting for a fate I could only half comprehend. Outside,
the first hints of dawn were rising behind the thick
glass the library. Patient and unhurried, seemed to exhale a
seekert to press back into the tangle of old stone,
waiting to see if I might muscle the nerve to
return again. But my presence was now indeliblying somewhere in
the architecture, one more accession in a catalog that would
never allow me to forget, nor allow forgetting to be complete.
And with each page I touched afterward, some small part
of me waited for the faintest flutter beneath the paper,
the call to de end again. I stood for what
felt like an iro but could have been only seconds,
pressed against the edge of the old desk. In the archive,
the warm, blant cards still tight in my fist. Each
breast shook the folders that had spilled from my arms,
and my scape still lay scattered near my feet, a
thick hush port from the bricks, not silent, exactly, but full,
a kind of dense quiet that rests in mortuaries and
deep cellows. I waited for movement or return, a conferring
sign that what I just seen merely the product of
lawn night's stress and a mind buckling under the weight
of old secrets. But nothing came up those stone steps
behind me, not a footfall, not even the suggestion of
breath down the chilled corridor, just me, the echo of
my pulse and the unnealing gaze of a thousand bucks.
The desk lamp, steady and unforgiving cash, sharp shadows, now
rendering my meager workspas into cliffs and ravines. I surveyed
the immediate damage. Cords everywhere, some upside down, low per coppice, jumbled,
old accession numbers exposed. I knelt and began picking them
upon not a pilot, my mind sliding in and out
of focus in the ordinary, just to avoid what waited
outside its boundaries only minutes ago, I'd believe the following
the clues was the final defining act. Now having actually
opened the forbidden door, gazed into the room of records
and shifting faces, I felt both smaller and rower than
I ever had before. Worse, I sensed my own absence
from what should have been my life's call, my routines
comforts to fauld explanations. It was as if the regular world,
the upper floors, the streets above, had grown thin and unreliable,
as easily punctured as eaching paper. Part of me, proud
to have navigated the real, the verifiable, now seen childish,
briefly indulged outside the lamp above. The digitization desk was
louder than usual. My shakes receded as I forced myself
to order the cards on the table, just as I
always did. As I gathered them, I called second wavering.
The names so neat minutes earlier, now seemed to change
at the periphery of my sie. Some faded until the
cards were almost blank. Others bloomed, fresh and cralling under
the fluorescent light, as though ridden in you. It was
a battle to keep my eyes on any one place
for long. I shut the drawer, refusing to be cornered
by the wrong details. A distance scrape from the upstairs
hallway reminded me of the buildings. Day rhythm would soon resume.
The stack of fresh books by the entry. The computer
clock ticking and helpfully toward five forty a m promised
that time at least still moved forward in some measurable way.
On a whim, heart hammering, I returned to the surveillance monitors.
The basement feed, normally reliable on the main level, showed
only the frozen looping image corridor, vacant time stamp, blinking
that familiar warp, ever so slowly calling from left edge
to right every cycle. No sign of my other rye,
my presence, or even the door I'd just broken through.
On a lesser used monitor, I cycled back through arcad
footage framed by patient frame and caught a ghost of
my own shadow flicker near the brick wall, a double
image smudged against a shelf gone. The very next moment,
coal prickled at my scalp. Before I could dwell on this,
the main elevator wind into service. Dawn arrival of daystaff
to demon dane safety inducing routine compressed me back into
a single night worker sleeves rolled full distacked coffee, brewing
away the jails. If Gorsky was due, I'd need to
decide whether to tell him anything, and what if anything
could be told. No one else had seen the room,
but the library itself seemed subtly changed. There was a
smell now to thee a less of paper, more metallic,
a hint of ozen. After a storm, I caught myself
glancing at the cracks in the walls for any fresh
sign of moisture or movement. But nothing obvious greeted me,
only a faint indentation in the dust where the rolling
shelf had been shunned at Aside returning to his place
by morning, with almost no trace left behind, I resolved
to send myself home, telling the inventory log a simple
datified lie power fluck or checked the stacks, nothing unusual,
No mention of rooms or shifting faces, no explanation for
cards or doors. Just to burst most bureaucratic details. I
placed the blank card, the one with my name, deep
in my back, somewhere it might not find its way
out again. The outside world greeted me with empty, wreen
washed streets. I rode home in a half stupor, coffee
burning the roof of my mouth, head against taxi glass,
and beneath it all a single, steady thought something had
been opened, some contract unwitnessed, then wordless, now hung between
me and the library's hidden belly. Sleep when it came,
was shopped into useless segments. Every dream circle returned me
to the stone steps, and the endless rows of drawers
forced me to retrace my eggs at forty different ways
until I wore heart, racing to oat roar, I steeled
myself for the worst. Upon next returning to work, evening's
edge brought a foreign caution. I have it on the
stoop outside the library for ten long minutes, hands and
coat pockets, peering up at the true shadowed facad and
its gloomy stained glass windows. Light trickled from a single
lamp in the upper office. Inside, I found a place
in a state of face, in disarray, caught overturned by
the rear stairs, the security door slightly ajar and most
unnerving of all Dee's despaired of all her personal clutter,
no mug, no scarf, not even a pencil stuck behind
a form in the signing book. Her name was absent
since that lost anxious conversation. Instead, mister Gorsky had scrolled
his initials lodge and abrupt every morning, as if to
drawn out any preceding name. Without the comfort of D's presence,
the night was forced into new patterns. The minor oddities intensified.
Freshly shelved books out of order. Seconds later, the cluttering
returned draw yanked open by unseen hands, the scanner refusing
to read even standard barcodes I linger by the catalog
for a moment, half open for an accidental reversal, but
the digital system swallowed every queery engineeric errors. The old
card drawer, which attacked every shift out of compulsion, hung
slightly open contents tidier than ever. It was as if
every trace of the early phenomenon had been sanded down
or filed away, made invisible by some silent, rigorous hand.
Yet evidence outlasted rasia. If you looked at scouts, these
familiar handwritings, so careful and looping on intakes slips still
turned and up in random margins. In return books, I
sometimes found the faded center of for tobacco gum persisting
against the ghosts of old paper. At intervals I sensed
a presents just outside camera view, a trailing warmth that
hugged me, especially during the twilight. Irows between official end
and reluctant beginning. The ambient temperation never quite returned to
its formal norm. Even with the furnace laboring, pockets of
icy air pressed back against me. Whenever I won the
tunure of the old rolling shelf, the catalog cards in
order my periphery, sometimes showing unfamiliar names, sometimes just date
and accession numbers, and sharpened pencil awaiting question marks. I
dare not write. Every new shift brought its own whispering consequence.
In what should have been a straightforward, solitary routine, a
deep hanging dread thickened with each ere the impression of
being shadowed not by a single entity, but by the
layered corroboration of dozens of absences, a compounding crowd made
entirely of the people who could no longer leave the
library's orbit. It became impossible to disregard the pattern. One night,
attempted to focus on work, miner malfunctions hired me a
copy that jamned and spread up pages sinct only with
partial accession numbers. A scanner whose beam sometimes it froze
on an empty field, resolving itself into feigned reflections that
almost looked like fevered watching faces. The digital catalog lost
time in great chunks, leaping back to old versions of itself.
For a soaring entries, I knew it had been deleted,
raising new ones as if they had never existed. Sleep
faded to rumor. My nerves started at small sounds. The
familiar thought of the elevator opening transformed into a harbingdure
of new absences. I cycled through the security tates almost obsessively,
now unwilling to let the looping distortions accumulate, and checked.
Yet the familiar static and wart movement, the five unchecked
minutes of the lower level fee came back. Night after night.
I tried different monitor set ups, running all cables to
near by computers in hopes of capturing a real time blitch.
The outcome was always the same, flickering vacuity, a parade
of corridors that emptied as soon as I entered them. Demoralized,
I attempted to take time away, excusing myself with fabricated illness,
but my days filled with the same haunted repetition, library
cards turning up in my mail books at home, blank,
but always in the same old, fading ink. Sometimes it
was only a whiff of dust or that suttle, mistakable
perfume clinging to a jacket I hadn't worn in weeks,
as though the stacks themselves traveled with me. Even laundry,
with its bright and cleansing suckles, never quite extinguished the
smell of old oarcives. I debated with myself alid pace
my apartment, falling into the habit of tracking every miner,
normally in a fresh note book, I recorded times when
the scan of froze, jotted descriptions of every misplaced object,
every vanished staff member. Every time a card with the
name I didn't recognize emerged from the filing drawer. It
was as if I believed the record itself would provide
some protection, as a sheer documentation could grant me a
foothold in the face of the intangible. Yet the place
changed faster than I could track it. The cost mounted
day by day at work, passing staff began to avoid
our contact, as though they sensed something corrosive had attached
itself to me, like a Contagionkorsky became a presence I
saw only at the periphery. He no longer lingered, brushed
past me in the holes with that same heavy ring
of keys, his face blank, perhaps carefully so. He never
mentioned d when I tried. His mouth set in a
line so tight it might have been carved. Once I
found him in the lower stacks during what should have
been his lunch, head bent over a ledger pen move
in frantic, meaningless lines. He startled at my approach and,
for the first time in his tenure, failed to meet
my eyes. You're best off shelving what you're given, he muttered,
voice gravely, All files clear, No need to audit this late,
then softer error, as if for citing a prayer. Just
keep what you find where you found it. After that,
his presence grew thin, almost spectral. The only sign he'd
been around was the freshly initial sign in sheet each
day in his unreliable hand. The workloade thickened as the
consequence has found new footholds. The circulation desk, always messy
and full of return books, now held two paus, one
official checked and logged and one unmarked, a muddle of oddities.
With no recognizable provements. The latter grew every few days,
bokes and folders, gathering in silence, each bearing the marks
of age and neglect, most without slip or any hint
of digital accession, yet occasionally hidden within the stack, I
found a single card bearing nothing but a looping signature,
the same one as before. Familiar and nameless. The artifacts
have vanished, staff multiplied as well. A scarf, and mistakeably
D's turned up draped over the back of a chair
at the end of a shift. Set of keys marked
with initials, rusted almost through, surfaced in the return slot.
When I tried to lock any of these items, the
database glitch, as it had with the forbidden books, freezing
and flashing warnings before brooding. Me back to the login's green.
In confusion, one particularly sleepless night, desperate for any threat,
I returned to the logs I had captured, focusing on
the codes and dates more intently than before. It was
there after ires of slower deciphering, that the real horror
revealed itself. The ciphered initials, which had always seemed like
personal corks, mapped exactly to the dates of staff disappearances.
Those special books and the mysterious card signatures. Each was
a naane, twisted and to shape the library favorite not
the living. I began tracing the payroll files, cross referencing
the names, pulling up lists that had, in theory been
retired years, sometimes decades earlier. Yet there, buried in the
library's oldest pyrol archive were familiar names marked active in
assistant salaries, still paid positions never flagged as vacant. Some
massed the card to my drawer. Others were strangers, their
digital profiles blank except for colndestine phetos, faces blurred bearing
a stump that reader restricted accession. Some bore my own
high date, or at least to high date the system
now scribed to me. Despite all my attempts to correct it,
reality had become porous. Identities, shifting names were writing the
edges between record and person, blurring at the wall of
the catalog itself. It seemed every time I touched a
forbidden object, every time I read a card or type
to name, the presence that governed the lower levels spun
a lever more of myself into its bureaucracy, threading me
toward permanent accession. I then I could no longer convince myself.
I was outside when I ran the old security logs again,
this time cross checking against staff rosters and missing persons
bulletins from the city. The remaining dads collapsed, the same
glitch figures that surfaced at the edges of the Fotish
marshals looping through the brick corridor, patients frozen half way
through a stepware frame by frame matchable to the blurred
photos in apparel file. The crossfait was always abrupt. Someone
would walk through the lower stacks, flickered, then vanish. Next frame,
a signature in the digital catalog would up date, or
card with a matching cipher would appear. Eventually, nothing interrupted me,
not even Gorski, whose own profile, I now realize, bore
the hahollmarks of long term custody and changed higher date.
Appayill always marked in process digital records, impossible to delete
no matter what permissions. I held his hand in the lobos,
his looping g and Kaid appeared again and again in
the sideway's signature at the bottom of many forbidden cards.
It was not a library in the conventional sense I
now accepted, but a living system. The catalog did not
simply record it absorbed, curating its own reality. The library
accepted only what it was told could be known, and
it in false forgetting on all else, eraising those who
had seen too much, transforming memories into reference numbers, faces,
into fading ink, presents into administrative signature. The scale of
this act staggered me. I knew now that in each
case the price was not merely disidential, but physical, a
slippage as real as what were draining from a punctured cup,
a slow transaction by which being, identity, memory, and ultimately
life itself were bartered against the collected detritus of forbidden knowledge.
The cost was always the same. To be cataloged, one
must disappear from every life above. In this mental state,
I began to hont the lower stacks at first, out
of hope of reversing things, finding persuading myself that memory
alone could hold fast against the system. But each night
returned the same results. New blank cards, the old draw
clicking open and shut with invisible force. The temperature and
the basement they are plumbting the only hint of D's
fate cane in the form of another card, her initials
pressed beneath mine in faint blue pencil one accession number
of I placed it among her other things out of respect,
closing the George gingerly, afraid of what might happen if
I left it out in the main catalog. Several formally
forbidden titles now appeared, hidden in the blandness language, marked
only as pending review, a damage, do not loan, or
the most common accession material sea staff. I traced every
one without success. The digital files blanked themselves when clicked,
the system freezing and then restor into an older version.
I tried, out of desperation, printing one card, only to
find on the printed page a single leaping signature, sometimes
my own, as can every security fee left to me,
both for comfort and risk assessment. It showed only what
it wanted to show. In every Luprin segment, the fane
faded figures, half their faces visible beyond the glare wander
corridors they had never own, only to vanish in the
next cycle. When a face occasionally resolved in full, it
was no one I recognized, yet my body responded with
a chill pre recognition, ascertainty that I would know them
in only a few days time. Given the fate that
awaited all curious. The ordinary duties of a night technician
faded to parody. No one asked me to scan new books.
No one questioned when I wandered upstairs during my shift,
or when I took extended brakes in the stairwell, clutching
lock pages. The lions dancing as my hand shook. The
day staff, thin and distracted, met my gaze with less
and less certainty. The line at the help desk evaporated,
complains dwindled. It was as if the patrons too, had
accepted the library's revised rules. One night, I returned to
the corridor near the brick wall and rolling shelves. The
hidden door had merged back into the paneling, all traced
gun save a faint cold breeze and a single new scratch,
and the near bush shelving looping out in dull, gray pain.
More felt than seen, I found myself unable to leave
the basement. One evening, house key unlocatable the outer doors.
Resisting my badge, I pressed the elevator coal button again
and again, to no effect. I resorted to basing the
law level, using the last battery on my phone to
check for digital escape, a call and email anything. Nothing saved.
The building gent equated with the wind the world, but
reduced to the occasional groan of city plumbing. I was
trapped not by locks, but by an overwhelming exhaustion as
cens that unless they submitted willingly to the Library's rules,
it would merely persist in its passive imprisonment until I did.
I tried once more to force a catalog to recognize
the forbidden cars, taking photos, logging new entries, alerting the
city's overboad and i TA Department by cryptic ticket, and
each time either the records vanished before transmission or remarked
resolve no anomaly. The system stifle Ascent with bureaucratic elegance. Somehow,
beneath this blanket of helplessness, the library pressed me armored.
I developed new rituals, triple check in a catalog each night,
counting the cause as if an odd number might break
the spell, running my fingers along every chunk of missing
wall and brick corridor for a hint of looseness, as
if any physical sign would provide a loophole. The last
time I saw Gorski, it was late a night of
furious when the power flickering on and off, as it
had at the very beginning. I found him crouched in
the periodicals, eyes wild handwriting, trembling over a familiar kind
of card. He looked up as I approached, and for
a long second I did not see recognition in his gaze.
This the blankness that sits on the brink of forgetting
your name. He rasped, It's in the drawer. Now you
know what that means. I nodded, not trusting myself to answer.
He gathered his coat around his frame's dot, and for
a moment the years collapsed. He was not an old man,
not a staffer, but another cord caught in the inexorable machinery.
Even as he went through his nightly paces, he looked
toward the bricked wall, as though expecting an answer, and said,
either you let them have what they want, or you
make them work for it. When he left, it was
forever I never saw him again, or perhaps more accurately,
I saw him each night waiting at the edge of
archivol footage, a flicker in the wrong place, caught in
the lip. The system never resolved. The cost was plain,
But the library was not finished with me, nor was I.
It seemed finished with it. I paced the main cordill
one sleepless afternoon, clutching the fold of curded locks and
forbidden cards, Pausing again outside a hidden shoving with the
door had been just nights before. Half darring, half afraid,
I pressed my hand against the cold panel, and, spoiling
every memory of how the lock had yielded the directory
of names, the faces flickering in glass, It gave but
only a little, just enough for cold air to trickle
from beneath, promising that the room persisted that its contract
could be renewed at any moment. That night, Having exhausted
all avoidance, I resolved faintly to confront the thing at
the heart of it, the custodian. Collect all the evidence,
every cipher page, the new complete logbook, even the forbidden
causemark with my name. I brought them in a battered duffel,
my flashlight and note. I prepared, but my own resignation letter,
sealed in the hope that words could at least memorialize
what facts I could no longer force the world above
to except. As midnight bled into the ire of true darkness,
I approached the brick corridor, knowing what would be there
at a shoved nuche to side, the lock now precisely
fitted by the old B three key, the chill bareley
contained by the warped door frame. Stealing myself, I forced
it open. If the room's arrangement had changed, it was
only contextually. The cabinets and draws stood as before. The
sheets of indexed cards are rayed like bones through the
lightless chamber. The catalog entry shifted when I tried to
read them, sometimes names, sometimes only numbers, sometimes my own
first and last. With every letterg disposed or reversed at
the centered desk, the custodians swam back into view phase,
shifting the legacy of all the missing now bound in
one etennal glare. This time, the entity's greeting was almost friendly.
He came alone, it observed, with your own file. That
makes things easier. I placed the folder on the desk
in their task. Can I return what was borrowed? Can
I set things right for the others amphordy? Or does
the cattle or gully grow longer? Names never crossing out.
It watched me, sympathy and amusement mingling behind its eyes.
Memory wants successioned. Is the property of the collection only
the living mistake returned for rescue. Nothing leaves here without
new devotion, without an offer. At a shelf and attack,
I tried to protest for scraping. These are people, their stores,
not just references and drawers. It raised its hands, palms upward,
fingers and blemish, never quite resolving into a single set
in libraries, the record is the person. What endures here
is all that's left in the world. Above. A cold
rage broke through me. Then let me go, or let
me trade myself Forde, she warned me. She deserved release.
Cause scattered to the floor in a sound like hale shadows,
press close, every name offered as a brick in the
hidden wall. The custodian replied, make your choice. You may
stay and tend what you now know forever in memory,
never in the world, or go and let all you've
gathered fade. The price's presents the price is forgetting. At that,
the earth thickened with palpable dread, the shells groaning, light
recoiling from my face as the custodian waited. Suddenly I
realized the truth. No one left her scape would cost
me more than memory. Staying would cost me eternity. A
length of devotion I had never consented to. The system
was complete, the rules unbreakable. Only my own agency, such
as it was, remained. My breath fogged, my pulse pounding
in my ears. On the desk at the center, the
blank card labeled with my name lay in wait for
my fine lancer. I bent, gathering the folders, the cards,
the log book, the artifacts of my attempt to rescue.
My hand hovered up of my own card, the air
between skin and paper tingling with the promise of closure
or oblivion. Then, as a time warped, the custodian's face softened,
and the cabinet shifted, as though acquiescing to my demand
or responding to my indecision. Cards burst from a nearby
drawer and scaded across the desk in a gliding, continuous motion,
exposing a long row of naane, some crossed oil, some not,
ending with my own. I took a trembling breath, a
decision heavy in my hands. With everything gathered, I turned
on my heel, clutching the evidence to my chest, and
ran for the door. I slammed the folder of records
and forbidden cards onto the archived desk. In the ordinary world,
handshaking as I tore each card, each log page, each
piece of a catalog into shreds. Bits of name, succession numbers,
and signatures fell in a drift cross the keyboard and
on to the tile. When I finished, gasping hotly to
my rout cage, I gathered the scraps and dumped them
into the libraries all locked. Incinerator shoot, an object I
had never used, which yawned open as if it had
always expected me. In a silence, my fingers brushing the
scorched metal. I closed my eyes, feeling only a momentary
exhulation from somewhere deep beneath the floor, as if the
building let itself shrug the burden of those records for
just one breath. Outside the digitization room, the corridor was unchanged,
but lighter summer, the phantom chill had lessened. I stepped
carefully between shelves, listening for further signs, but nothing moved
except the world itself, finching toward dawn for the first
time in weeks. The elevator arrived the moment I pressed
the button, I walked slowly up to the lobby, the
stray scents of paper and lilies, dust and old perfume,
curling and dissipating at my back. Pausing at the exit,
I checked my pocket, no cards, only lint and a coin.
I left the library as another new day was beginning,
daylight faint behind gossm rain and the windows. On my
way out, I glanced back at the card catalog one
last time. My own name was filed in its older straw, accession,
tagged and dated, final proof of what the library would
not let me Unknow in the early sunlight, the door
closed behind me, cutting off the last eck of my steps.
I stirred at the curve, oddly relieved to discover the
city's noises, stubbornly unchanged. I stirred at the cur oddly
relieved to discover the city's noises, stubborn and unchanged Harn's
echo to block away trash. Trucks rumbled through empty pre
dawn streets the ampsire when slid under my collar. I
watched tailights to solve into morning fog, feeling for my keys,
half convinced i'd find a catalog card where my metro
card should have been, But my pockets came up only
with the ordinary loose change must pass or receipt for coffee.
Long cold, my legs and steady carried me toward the
crack pavement of my walk up building. I took the
long way home, cautious, as though expecting to see the library,
so wet at every corner. The barrow between inside and out,
after all, had never felt so thin. Inside my apartment,
every object shimmered with recent memory. I peeled off down
clothes and lay in the bed, unfinished books, tilting all
my nightstone. Like mute witnesses, I closed my eyes. Sleep
happened in sharp fragments. Waking, I found light, a change,
but the haunting clarity remained. I stared at the water stains,
blooming slow galaxies above my bed, trying to pin myself
to names mine des Gorsk as before they faded for memory.
I recited street names, old phone numbers, passwords, anything to
weigh myself against the slow rage of the cattalog threatened
outside the window. Children traded shouts beneath the you usual
dull sky, as introubled as if the world had kept
its scene work in the days that followed, was a
muted face. The building carried the same echo, but all
signs of the strangest of d of Gorsky had been
vacuumed from its routines. I saw a flurry of unfamiliar faces,
new hires too, chief of by half walking through territories
had mapped with dread. There was no mention of d
nor of any missing. When asked where the old staff
had gone, inevitably phrased as if referring to someone barely
known as supervisor Shrug transferred, they said, or on leave,
A lie told gently and with practice. The card drawer
had been reorganized. New curse slips waited in tidy banks,
the barcots function, the cataloged enters resolved yet now and
then I glimpsed the tale of a familiar signature sliding
between listings, a digital record flickering, pending for breath, before
settling back into ordinari lifefuseness. Even a corridor to the
Arkas had changed to painted, maybe or simply narrower, as
if the heavy rolling shells and that brick corridor had
never existed at all. But the cause persisted, subtle and stubborn.
The first card arrived three days after my departure, waiting
in my mail box, sandwich between junk fliers and late notices.
It faded into beckoning line blank as before, but bearing
feigned impressions. Where a name mine had once been pressed
hard than robbe nearly smooth. I tore it up and
flushed it. That night, I dreamed of the cattle or groom.
Each drawer opened and closed, with no visible hand, seecret
shifting behind glass. The custodian shifting face hung in the
periphery of my dreams, never quite resolving, never quite lighting
me wakefully. At work, my focus wavered. Patron's names blurred
at the edges when I tried to greet them, my
own hands trembling. As I returned books. The scanner blinked
back at me, occasionally freezing for whole minutes, then blinking
our live as though nothing had happened. Twice my signature
in the staff log appeared not as my own, but
in the lipping sideway skull. I'd come to dread. I
began to afford the cues, took longer, lunches, found excuses
to work from home where possible. Still, the library sent
clung to my jacket and assistant trace of dust and
lilies not found in any cleaner air. It was worse somehow.
At home, each night I checked under my door for
cars of superstition, but not one I could shrug off.
There were new rituals. I'd count the objects on my shelf,
check my phone, fotypos or deleted contacts, wore in over details,
holding tight to what little I could be shown was
still mine. When sleep came, I'd waken, sure if it
was to prison of some vision of endless stacks, corridors,
looping faces retreating behind glass, my own hands caught in
the slow act of cataloging my life away. One morning,
werein veiled the daylight, dulling colors into a faint water color.
Walking past the large front window, I froze A figure
stood on the opposite curve, face blocked by an umbrella,
but familiar imposture, coat too large, holding a canvas bag
heavy at the bottom. For a moment it could have
been de I pressed against the glass, nerves sparking. Then
a bus passed and she vanished, the curb empty except
for filthy water circling the gutter drains. Work called, and
I returned. Its repetition, hateful as it sometimes was, became
my anchor most nights. The catalog seemed tained. Returns processed
as normal, barcodes were readable, the digital indexes scrub of oddities,
Patrons drifted in and out, their faces ordinary. I could almost
believe that I'd left the worse behind, except the same
feelings would call up between midnight and to the eyre.
When the catalog's oldest drawer would creak open softly, like
a throat clewing behind a locked door, returning a book,
I'd see my name reflected in a smudge in the metal,
and never quite moving, never quite still. I tried for
a week to ignore it all. I filed extra shelf reports,
round inventories, sent long emails to no one in particular.
But each time I passed the archives threshold, I chill
grip me. The catalog held steady in its new architecture,
but the memory of the room below, the custodian shifting face,
and the impossibility of real forgetting lingered. Even as my
coworkers forgot, Even as names faded from the logs and
titles reverted to bureaucratic nonsense, I could not leave the
pattern behind, and so inescapably. One night, late in the season,
I found myself thrawn back to the cattalog drawer, not searching,
at least not by choice. It was a compulsion equal
parts dread and longing. I hoped that evidence might have
vanished at last. Instead I found the new card. It
rested in the oldest drawer, on brittle bish stock. The
ink wasslower now older, but I'm mistakable, my name written
clear as day, accession number beside it, date matching the
present shift, no signature, no loan, no check out notation,
just the cold declaration of my presence, now recorded alongside
all the others. I held it for a moment, thumpressed
where I imagined a pulse, and watched the catalog's shadow
lengthen over my hand, as if measuring me for future reference.
I set the card back where I'd found it that night.
Walking past the security monitors, I peered into the feeds
out of habit. The lower level showed nothing out of
the ordinary. Intel at the tale of a looping segment.
A reflection in glass caught my eye. It showed not
the present, but the grainy footage I had watched months before,
A shadow I knew was certain d my own wandering
forbidden stacks hung grazing the closed cabinets the feed were
set in its end, the sloop erasing each movement, replaying
it in silence. Whatever bugain I struck, the wrecord was permanent,
a ghost, not quite belonging to be. The world, cycling
unnoticed among the library's docks corridors beyond the doors, rainstruct
the old stone. My axis badge hung heavy on its lanyard.
In the outside world, my name still answered, filed, stamped, noted.
But I knew now what it cost to be part
of the archive, and what it meant to remain in
the ledger. Even as time above measured nothing at all.
The city pressed on oblivious. I left the library, keys
in my pocket, feeling the shape of that blind card
at my side, waiting. It was not the same life
as before, but at least, for now I had the
comfort of knowing which room, which draw recorded my existence,
And in the evening hush beyond all new paperwork, I
could still hear the flutter of index cards. I promise
that one way or another I would not be alone
in the catalog. Even after turning the final page,