Speaker 1: It's raining more heavily than I expected. When I step
out of the ride share and hurry up the shallow
concrete steps towards Saint Mark's Public Library, street lights glimmer
against puddles. Even the robins hunched under the U headgees
seem reluctant to venture out. I catch my shoulder bag tighter,
feeling my heartbeat quick with the strange excitement of first assignments,
or maybe just unfamiliarity. The iron framed double doors, blind
and swirling decomotives look inviting enough, even in this light.
The gold leaf over the transom reads Knowledge is Light.
Condensation beats along the frosted windows. I stand for a moment,
collect in my thoughts, and then push through inside for
recent lights cast odd shadows on the vestibule. There's a
strange hush. A few footsteps echo somewhere behind the stacks.
I wait a moment, nearly alone, until a gray haired
woman in a midnight blue card again appears, jangling a
ring of keys. Ye must be a mess tranch, she says.
Her voice is low, almost matter of fact, Marina and
the night's supervisor, at least until June. She glances up
at the sound of thunder, then shakes her head. Bad
night for your first run. But we're glad to have
some one mind the locks for once. She leads me
behind the circulation desk toward the administrative corridor, pointing out
motion senses, the fire panel, and, without much pause, the
row of ancient radiators. They hiss and clank and sometimes grow,
and don't mind them, she says. People fuss about the
staff elevator too, but that's just because it's old. You'll
hear thing shift. There's a nervous quality to the way.
She says it, as if trying to convince herself as
much as me superstitious nonsense. If you ask me, places
perfectly safe, only goes here a budget ghosts. She laughs,
and I nod, tucking away the odd vicar in her eyes.
After giving me a brief tourtor of succession of Lowlythiel's
yellowed reading rooms and staff only doors, she gestures to
the returns car, its wheels, losing silver old nonfiction Tonight
long shelflest anything before nineteen ninety can go down for reevaluation.
She pulls a sheaf of loose locks from a battered
ledger and pushes the cart toward me. He'll be alone
down here on Fridays. But that should be all right.
If you need anything, hit twenty two on the phone.
If you hear rattling, probably pipes, if you hear voices,
she pauses, shrugs and sighs, Well you won't, efhenka. When
Marina leaves her footstepsicko back down the corridor, and the
us seems to deepen. I will the old cart beside
a bat of a purpose death that smells faintly of
lemon oil and ink from years before. The overhead light
flicker in fitful patterns, and the library's ambient sounds settling boards.
The distant creak of radiator pipes seems sharper, more insistent.
I select the first return for registration, a heavy coff
bond volume at green spine, flaking gold, local histories of Mecklenburg.
I flip to the front matter in piles. The checkout
sleeve is faded, the old blue dotted grid listing only
two borers. The latest date is nineteen seventy seven, scrolled
in white arm cursive. There's no evidence it's been handled
since yet Here it is logged in for return A
fran thumbing the slip an anomaly, maybe forgotten in a
closet before finally returned and make a note, not really
expecting answers. Shift in a book to survey its spine.
My pencil knocks against something inside. I open it, expecting
for opressly for loss receipt. Instead, a slip of yelled paper,
tattered at the edges, wedged between pages one hundred seventy
three and one hundred seventy four. The graphite write in
is dark, a hand oddly delicate, full of elongated loops.
It reaes Gine nineteen seventy eight s headline, see you
who Remain. It is not only stories that go missing.
There's an urge in mere cautious archivists, curiosity to glance
back through the book, leaving past close written historical anecdotes,
half wondering if I'll find more annotated clues. A quick
flick of recollection tells me I'd seen similar handwriting to
day in a volume of civic architecture, in a battered
history of the Public Works Department. I'd mark them as
possible donor notations. But maybe that was hasty. The room's
temperature seems to drop. The overhead fluorescent shivering as if
on cue my skin prickles. I'm suddenly aware of the
weight of the silent wings behind me, the vast rows
of books. The wafer steps don't quite echo in stacks alone.
Now now rain beating hard or against the lee glass window.
I slide the strange note beside my open look and
keep working. But a nascent threads form tugging at the
edges of routine and pulling me already one step further
in than I intended. A catalog local histories, and not
its odd discrepancy. Even as I do, another question blooms.
What kind of story begins like this? Half in the margins,
with the first words left behind for someone willing to
find them. There's a certain stillness I've always found in archives,
the muffle piece of ricos sleeping beneath dust and catalog cards.
It was that same piece I sought after my last
roll full time at the County Records Office was downside
out of existence. For a few months, I drifted attending
the threads of resumes, clocking iyres at Low Lake Community Library,
and picking up private catalog in jobs where I could
find them. This short term contract at Saint Mark's isn't
what I planned, but there's a certain catharsis and order,
mending chaos by talay labeling, making things fit back into place.
Saint Mark's itself feels suspended, somewhere between grandeur and decay.
Its main entrance, a throw back to grandeur ages, opens
onto a lobby of battered wood, deck of flourishes, and
the sealings survive better than the carpet, faded in busy
sections and patched with whatever the city could buster. But
in its heart, the library hordess treasures fall you assigned
by vanished mais, brittle patents, obscure volumes of regional poetry.
Even the statewide census for goth existed. The welcome to
her on my first full day involved Missess Carson, a
woman capable of fixing any disorder with a single stare,
clipping through circulation schedules and minor emergencies with her mouth
pinched in. We value continuity, she said, carefully, This collection
has uplated generations. Your position is to ensure another winter
does not scatter further. No smile, but a nod of
professional solidarity, as though we shared the knowledge that collections
survive while jobs. Do not tame at the desk in
the evenings, bounds the libraries fading gravities with the ceaseless
stream of commentary. You really think you'll solve the shoving conundrum,
he asked me, grinning as he slid reserve of books
through the slot for pickup. That's optimism, i envied. Wait
until you get to the f two hundred eighteens. Those
are haunted. We'll see. I never quite understood if it
was a joke or a habit. Staffius seemed to take
comfort in their superstitions. Playful on Nia, younger than I expected,
moved through the stacks with uncanny purpose, transferring books and
greeting each by name. Let me know if you find
any bo books, she said one afternoon, pausing to tap
the base of a shelf. That's what we call the
ones that reappear on their own, like their haunting, as
happens more than you'd think. Later, she rattled off the
library's infamous ghost stories. A spectrol janitor, a recurrent scent
of violets in the reference room. Lights they flickered without
electrical calls. Don't worry the gas sminy keep their own eyrs.
My days began to slip into routine. The task of
entangling which titles really belonged were running cross Chicks and
the battered software logging call numbers. In times with careful neatness,
I spent lunch breaks looking over backlocks, sipping tea in
the staff break room. The conversations there were strangely intimate,
mid level complaints about the heater, traditions of swapin bake goots,
gossip about which council member wanted to get the library's
historical win next. Through all of it, I watched Missess
Carlson's brisk efficiency, time's perpetual grins, Nia's stories tumbling out
over paperbacks. The Old Earth staff occasionally cast glances toward
the East stacks and muttered about the Old curt I
chalked it up to local color still even from the
beginning details and settled me a pattern of oddities that
never fit the expected order. Cold drafts would snake between
aisles even on warm days, originating from Vince. Nobody could
find the service elevator, ancient and rarely used, seemed to
clatter at intervals and tethered from schedule or sense. And
the books, sometimes a classic or technical volume found resolved
in not a leological clusters. Once I found electrical engineering
for beginning snuggle beside a regency romance in the aisles.
It wasn't just error or carelessness. The misfillings almost seemed
deliberate and intent to bury or hide. In the break
room there was laughter, dark joking, haunted. Returned shelf again,
tim wood in tone as he placed yet another bad
donation on my cart. Give it a week and we'll
see Meckenberg histories again. Mark my words. He was wrong,
and then right high returned about myself, and three days
later there it was quietly reappearing as if it had
never left circulation. That closing shift, everything felt sharper, my
mind restless. I found myself true, Racing a finger across
the return shelf, noting each anomaly. Ten books, a mix
of memoir, local drama, and esoteric guides, all from wings
barely touched by current patrons, all boorhandret and annotations in
the back, sometimes cramped, sometimes elaborate, hence observations, names and
dates that seemed familiar, as if retrieved from some drifting
recollection of local gossip or crime. Each note faintly, chilling,
felt stitched into the very bones of the building. I
told myself, I tracked them just for curiosity's sake. After all,
who else would the piece had found in restoring order
harbored another thrill, the challenge of entangling the story others
had missed. What began as job and routine began almost
imperceptibly to shift into an obsession, one I feared likely
to lead places. The collection itself might not wish me
to go a Thursday evening alone at my desk with
only the hiss of far off radiators for company. I
said about processing an overdue volume entitled Lost Districts of
the Carolinas. When I cracked the spine for inspection, a
slip of paper slides loose a marginal note, this one
less critic intone, but more deliberately structured. It reads box
fifteen B six slash two slast seventeen nine m B
at nine ten p m C. Checked item two hundred
eighteen slash seven hundred forty three. Not a coincidence? I
puzzle over it to our reference in our cavel box.
And why would checked item use a d number not
a title? There's no patron record or reason check out
for this book at all. The slip itself is indeded,
being faded. My curiosity is sharpened by the detail initials,
time numbers. Not just a stray thought or opinion, but
what looks like an attempt to trace or encode something
meant for another set of eyes. I recall the return
log from earlier five other books, all bearing annotations in
similar graphite calcues. Each references dates a lawn, a ten
year window between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen eighty, the
year's the library quietly changed its leadership when the east
wind closed. For structure or bears. Searching for patterns, I
lay all the slips side by side. The handwriting clicks
is the same, and many mention local events. A vanished teacher,
the abrupt resignation of a beloved children's librarian, a city
council scandal. Left out of the official histories. It becomes
a habit over the next days. When shelving books from
the haunted returned shelf, I check for notes, then chart
where they return. My hand scrawls a map of the
library's wings. Each found book appears in or's return to obscure,
always called corners near the locked archives. Beneath the flickering overhead,
inside the crumbling law reviews section few staff of our patrol.
One afternoon, Nigh hovers near the reading room as I
sow at a misfouled volume. You see the pattern, Yet
she asks, very slower than her usual tempo. The books
come back where you'd least expect, Always the same ones,
always with those notes. Old staff used to make bets
about it, She confided, half laughing, half serious, that sometimes
she'd find a title she was sure had been sent
to deccession months before, tucked back into place, the closest
thing to a supernatural trick she's ever seen. I nearly
convinced myself some one was sending messages, she grins. But
but then, what woul ghosts have to say? I reply
with a smile, feigning more skepticism than I feel, but
later confirming one off Nigh's observations. I pull half a
dozen marked volumes, all chouting back to moments in city
memory that arenown but barely discussed. Each note in the
argent's acts as a kind of an official footnote pointing
to something missing, something left and said. More than coincidence,
they're forming a record. Otherwise last, I sense the weight
of something deliberate, a communication chain stitch beneath the skin
of the collection. The building's reputation for oddity, for loss
and found books begins to feel more alike warning than whimsy.
If the pattern is real, then someone who some group
has spent decades quietly document in the secrets this library
would otherwise in case, by a week's end, fascination overtakes
mere curiosity. I starvespridsheet mapping each returned title, time and location,
quietly without clearing it with missus Carlson, a slider colored
tab onto the spines of books with suspicious notes, half invisible,
barely noticeable in the darkened stacks. My system grows quickly.
One column for books turned up with marginalia, another for
notations referencing archief boxes, initials, or coded times. Pattens emerge.
There is a heavy clustering in the late seventies and
early It is just when the library supposedly suffered a
rash of retirements and sudden staff turnover. Almost all Ford
noted incidents reference library employees, not just patrons or public figures.
I sif the lending records those books sometimes out for
forty years have had no check outs since the Reagan administration.
Why then, do the notes become denser, more urgent near
the end of their recorded time in circulation puzzle and
disturb A request access to recent security footage inventory loss prevention,
I explained to Marina, crossing my fingers behind my back.
She nods, distracted and lets me lob in. At first,
the file seem unremarkable, but Bepper threw only in the
wings where the marked books of pierrobes or gaps and glitches.
The video compresses time, whole sections looping faster than possibility allows.
On one tape, a blurry distortion glides through an aisle.
These movements, both fluid and oddly purposeful, no human shape,
or perhaps more than one, A shadow less gast than implied. Tim,
always willing to talk, offers up his own special till
during mid morning, with shelving id books thumped to the
four once, he tells me over in three hundreds, but
there wasn't any one there when I checked. Almost sounded
like some one walking behind me, but he shrugs, Maybe
I was just tired. I pry deeper, digging through decades
old memos in the archaevil office I stumble on the
series of administrative warnings unauthorized access to secure stacks noted
after Ayre's review schedule, another night staff till work compairs
incidents logged by a shower, vague, unhelpful, but suggesting long
standing awareness. Searching the staff files with caution, I begin
seeing a different kind of pattern. Resignations listed not only
as voluntary, but accompanied by cryptic notes sea file medical
per h R only. Copies of these records are hard
to find. Most are redacted, gutted for detail, but the
dates cluster around the incident's referenced in the annotated books.
The marginally itself gets stranger as I cross reference from
personal at first, simple names or dates to in later years,
lines of warning and accusation or you next, it's bigger
than me thought. Names begin to repeat. M b is everywhere, careful,
persist in hand leaping messages of urgency or despair. Walking
the closed stacks, I feel the sense of surveillance. Shadows
flicker out of sync with my movement. More than once,
I send a figure just beyond my lamp, light of
the chill, brush of a draft against my ankle, hence
roll off my desk. Clattering onto tile, individual words and
a margin seam sharper, almost legible from across an aisle.
Each for note leads to another volume, another form of staff,
for another unresolved incident. The more I collect, the more
the voice in the notes changes. Early years are formal,
just records times. Borrowers through the eight is a desperation,
creeps in, not safe after dark, It covered up, at risk,
betill no one Unease grows, and so does my certain
deed as wasn't an accident of coincidence or urban legend.
Somebody with some groups spend decades using the librari's own
books as a means to communicate, worn or record over time.
The chain of annotations stitched our web of secrets through
the libraries, hidden parts of web by. Now find myself inside,
unable to step clear the eighth night of my contract.
Then often calculation breaks the surface and coding another marginal note,
this one disguised amid references to shelving guides. The pattern
of numbers matches the due system, but the sequences two
point six hundred fifty one point fi thirty seven a
staff code cross referencing old floor plans. I realize there
was numbers mapped directly to personnel files. Its line matches
the cabinet index of staff by year. A connection sharpens.
At last the trail points me to a lock steal
cabinet in the administrative wing marked if I head only
file nineteen eighty two four. The label is half torn
and dusty, but the lock bless. Old fashioned officers are
simple enough to slip with a gentle nodge of my
laminated id. Inside are four folders. The center marked Boyd
m Barchive is bulging with brittle correspondence and insative reports
filed out inco date stamp order. The first sheet is
a faded letter addressed to the head librarian for Marjorie
Boyd to herself to the head there is a poisoned
air here, not merely in conduct, but an intention. I
fear for my safety. Threats have been left for me
within margins. They are coded, but I know their source.
I have seen the shadow again, always behind me. Unrounds.
Please review incidents Locked nineteen seventy eight. There is no
one else I can trust. The city shore loops to
have flourished nearly identical to the earlier margin area. These
aren't after the fact, additions or patron scruples. They are
surviving communications from someone who saw danger and tried to
leave a record. There's a packet of further notes. Marjorie
writes of subtle intimidation, unexpected warnings, and the persistent sense
of being watched. She details the others who left abruptly,
citing pressure and forced resignations. Though the file is in complete,
pages missing or perhaps removed, its clear this is more
than just a personality clash or a lone anxiety. Marjorie
notes laid in her correspondence that after she left, the
notes continued but grew last nee more desperate. She feared
the effort to record was, if anything, becoming more urgent
as official channels failed to intervene. I stare at the note,
then at the chronology of the Marginalia's handwriting style over
the years, Realizing after Marjorie left, others took up the chain.
The books themselves became assistant, partly memorial, partly warning, an
act of literary resistance. A shiver goes through me. If
this shadow persisted long after Marjorie's retirement, then the problem
didn't leave with her. I wonder is the presence a
person a secret network or something altogether stranger, and how
many generations have picked up the pen in the decades
since I start name references, foot copies, annotated page numbers
while enters onto a makeshift timeline taped to my office
wall as I plot them on map forms, every coded
whisper trucks to persist in trouble spots in the library,
the seal darkoves, the wrecker's room off the east ACKs
a certain reading look near the silent elevator. More scraps
merge coded notations tucked into the staff procedural guides. An
Astors phrase buried in the check in lock, A mocking
hand drawn eye in the corner of an interoffice member
from nineteen ninety one honor forgarden copy of the staff Orientation.
I uncover the phrase if you take notes after dark,
take care where you leave them. Even the periodical's desk,
rarely used, houses a crease in the margin, and nightmas
persist see Log thirty a day. A story emerges in
fragments staff who leave quickly, citing exhaustion or family emergencies.
Notes allude to underground rumors of nervous collapses, insomnia, inexplicable
illnesses and dreams shot through with the libraries endless corridors.
The term the watcher surfaces along sight the quiet one,
implied to be people possibly connected, yet never clearly named.
We're reading the trail of our notations. I recognize what's
been created, a living, ever updating system. Staff communicate through
the detritus of work, marginalia notes, footnotes scribbled where they
won't be erased by accident. Call it folk communication or
covert record keeping itself perpetuating, and in its way, a
collaborative effort at bearing witness. Each newscribe picks up the pattern,
responds as details, or tries to warn off new staff.
Some warnings seem like bleakin' jokes. Try not to stay
alone in the six hundreds. Others hint at something more.
Box twenty D has everything you'd need, but don't look
until you must. Sometimes the warnings turn to accusation. Not
all the disappearances were accidents. One loot message reads. Some
crimes never made the paper, Some were made to vanish.
Searching for motives, I build two plausible theories. The first
per saic a ring of staff involved the blackmail or worse,
using the book system as dead drops. The References to
scandal in a debt's paid suggest as much, but the
language turn stocker in the ATIS, and again around two
thousand three, hinting at a cover at possible abuse of practices,
missing funds, even the disap appearance alluded to in that
first note of the June nineteen seventy eight headline. A
pattern emerges in the security camera review. The shadow appears
only with the marginalia clusters, often at times when reference
logs show only one staffer on gudy, almost as if
it's drawn to the seeking answers or simply those work alone.
Its timing matches periods when ominous notes reappear. What remains
unclear is intent. Was the watcher person or something that
haunted the institution by virtue of old secrets in inertia.
Each clue draws me deeper, but certainty I lose me,
and I feel a growing urgency, as if the record
wants company or closure or both. I sleep little as
the days grow shorter. Intent now on following the final clues.
The web of notes, names and books is led unmistakably
to patent, repeating every few weeks, a new batch of
titles reappearing of fresher notation or warning. I resolved to
try and inter set the next cycle in person on
the next Friday, Close and shift. I leave the breakrim
early in station myself behind a rolling cottnear the reference.
When close to where the most marked books are richeld,
the library empties out. Tim locks up, now gathers her
things and Marina's waistened. The intercolm signals closing. By eight fifteen,
only the hush of compressed air remains, along with the
rain tapping out the same staccato is on my first night.
The overheads dim one by one. I catch a soft
rhymic with spring in distinct syllables just above the breath
of the building's nay. I try to work, but my
focus splendors. By eight twenty two, I notice surveillance monitor
blurring at intervals, signals stuttering. When I dance up, a
shadow edges into my peripheral vision, elongated where the shelf bends.
Need a holy person nor trick of the light. I
rise careful and follows quietly as my shoes lap, heart
pounding against ropes. The figure ahead is slight movements weigh
down an elderly woman. If ship can be believed her
gay tentative, her cardigan fluttering slightly, though no air moves.
Sometimes she glides almost unearthly, but always remains just far
enough ahead that I cannot glimpse her face. The stacks,
so familiar by day, take on a new geometry I'll
seem longer, their orders shifting with each turn. We arrive
at the main Arcoza heavy steel visage door stands a
job where I know it should be bolted within a
fresh pile of footnoted books wait to top, a reading
table beside it, and on cat pencil and a single
slip of old rule paper, I dare to pick it up,
hands trembling. The annotation is knew, my name, softly penned
at the top, The rest in that same inimitable looping
hand to who comes after the truth is not for silence.
They must not erase ustains without reading. Not every story
leaves in the daylight, finish what was started, or be
another margin lost. My throat goes dry. The air in
the room feels charged, as if every layer of dust
has been replaced by static. I sense, more than hear
the cracking of a shelf, book stumbling down in a flurry,
as though startled by an unseen presence. The figure stands
across the table, face obscured by shadow, but the silhouette
is unmistakable. Marjory boid or what remains of her, whether
goes memory or living into loper, I cannot say. It
was always about records, not letting them. When her voice
rasps the sound both in the room and inside me,
as if a book'svoice could echo and bone. Storys don't
die unless you let them. But everyone gets tired of carrying.
She points to the books. Some names you'll never know,
some pain you can set free. I reach for another book,
flipping to the margin. There of fresh annotation, the writing
shaky but clear. She saw this too, She knew she
was next. The room crackles, light, stuttering, plates of glass
groaning in their frames. The figure Marjory regards me once more,
eyes hollow, imploring, and then fades, with drawing into shadows
of gradually erased from the scene on the table. A
final slip remains. My name is grout, this time with
a new plea, don't let the footnotes disappear. Record what
you know, or run with that that She'll seems to
lift the lights steady, the books, some open seem to
breathe alone and yaka, I've shaken. I realize I've been
both warned and accepted into a silent order, entrusted, perhaps
steamed to either continue the chain or be the last
to read it. At daybreak, I type my report, a
careful summary of the anotated book phenomenon, including time lines,
anonymized details, and a professional recommendation further review of the
collection consideration for possible stuff counseling. I submitted to Missess Carlson,
who purses her lips, nods with up comment and slides
the print out into a lock drawer. Thanks, she U
m s. Tryan. We appreciate your diligence. This complete your assignment. Yes.
In the following days, the marked books vanished one by one.
When I ask after them, I am informed they were damaged,
lawed out, or sent to storage. Margins a larine are
now checked in a race by a volunteer under collection maintenance.
The whispers among the staff grow half and add half
in fear she saw timor must denia, as if what
I encountered can't quite be spoken aloud. I tidy my workspace,
check the log one final time, and hand in my
keys at home, the sense of movement behind me. Ling
is sometimes only a sensation, sometimes the memory of a
chill air at my nape. Nets are slow to bring sleep.
I pour over my own notes, tracing lines between incidents,
wondering how many more stories the library still holds, how
much of the invisible weby managed to glimpse the option
to speak outright to the press. Let some one with
power flickers at the age of my thoughts, But apprehension
settles in the marginally are warned of those who vanish,
punished for crossing lines. Some chains, I realize, go deeper
than paper in the stacks. When I imagine the old
shadows thus present. New rumors appear among the staff. They've
hired a temp arc overs for next term. Hope she
knows what she's in for. The building quieter now, still groans,
but the network can do as waiting for another diligent
hand and another careful reader to notice hughes missing, whose
storers have been erased. Three weeks passed before I find
the envelope propped against my front door, rain just beginning
to beat across its blank surface, my name written in
the signature, leaping slant of penciled letters, leans gently to
the left, no return address, no stamp inside, a single
slip of letter paper, torn neatly at the margin. The
note is brief, Thursday, eleven, forty five of them. Some
records never check out, and some debts are paid in quiet.
As I turn the paper, I see the handwriting midway
through changes abruptly, just one word day continued, rendered in
my own a mistakably anbulous style. I glance at the
bookshelf across my living room, nestle between a mystery novel
and a battered tech manual. One of the old library
books is just off kilt or spine, tilted, as if
it's been moved recently. I don't recall putting it there.
For a moment, my breath catches, the lamp flickers, a
cold current curling around my ankles. Pages russell opened by themselves,
drawn by some silent invitation. I step forward, drawn and
find the book already pot way open, scold in the margin,
a new footnote, the graph at fresh, I read, knowing
even as I do that the chain continues, each reader,
each archivist, each careful hand drawn in one footnote at
a time. The story is not finish, and neither am
I Thursday eleven forty five of them, the irotics later
and later rins, lighting down the windows, an occasional rattle
behind plaster, as if the bones of my own apartment
act of the distant, restless stacks. I keep telling myself
not to look again at the ledge of slip, but
my resolve splinters with each passing minute, the mystery urging
me onward. Breathless. I gather my coat, the umbrella, the
library's linger, and chills still cling beneath my collar, and
slip out onto the slick street. My steps are slow
at first, but as I turned toward the busy thoroughfares,
the rush of traffic in the city's nighttime hume give
way to a silence that dickens. As I knew Saint
Mark's the building sole whitted again to Bruce's sky limbs
larger than I remember. Every light in the upper floor
is extinguished. Only a faint glare pulses behind a basement's
frosted panes. I hesitated the front of the doors, for
once unlocked, there is no sign of forced entry, only
that strange implicit permission. I enter Hart Pending and find
the vestibule almost pitch dark. The only sound is my
own breathing and a faint staccato ticking, like a clock
or something else deep within the walls. The path ahead
is familiar. I move on instinct flashlight beam bobbing over linoleum,
past the break room, done the administrative corridor, and toward
the heavy bar door of the alcoves. The air is thick, humid,
with the storm's approach laced with a chemical scent, not unpleasant,
but sharper than ink or dust. The archived door stands
ajar just as before. Inside, a single des lamp spills
a golden puddle of light across the batter table. The
room is although I shadow atop the table a ledger
opened in nineteen seventy eight. Three marked books stack beside it,
and a sheaf of folded notes. Some mistake benew the
graphite barely smudged. But it's not the objects that seize
my attention. It's the shape behind the descatant angular man
in a janitor's coveralls krehe are visible at the nape, posture,
curiously fragile, a freeze, half expecting apparition, no threat, yet
his presence is steady, solid, human, exhausted. He doesn't look
up here. You came, he says, his voice gravelly, but
a mistakably real took you long enough. I swallow, crossing
the threshold. The lamplight shifts, darpening his silhouette. I got
your note, He motions me closer, finally lifting his head.
His face is familiar, one of the part timer's, maybe
or a name from year's back recognition pins me a
staff photo from an old bulletin board. The night janitor Frank,
who supposedly retired in twenty twelve, except he's never appeared
at daytime shifts, always just a rumor. Frank keeps to Night's,
hates paperwork. He doesn't smile. Someone always comes. We call
you follow. I started making the footnotes in eighty nine
when nobody else wanted to rest the open record near
the first in a long time. Who listens. Awareness flickers
in me, the marginalia, always blending hands all, always an
urgent dialog whose we a slow shrug. He pulls a
notebook from his breast pocket and slides across any one
who decided not to let it disappear. There was always
something here, dark, quiet. It's not just ghosts, its memory
and secrets, and the kind of pain bureaucracy wants to
bury deep. It started with blackmail staff whispering about fowls
that needed burning. People went missing, some got reridden out
of history, some stay too long. He looks away. I
tried to shine a lecturer, at least keep the shadow
from swallowing up the rest he opens when mocked volume
at random. The inside cover bear is not only his writing,
but too earlier annotations in unfamiliar hands, warnings, catalog suspicions,
places to search. I left the chain for you to
pick up, Frank says, but it won't stop. Every time
someone new finds the trail, the building wakes up again.
I ask, is there really something here? Or is it
just trauma being recirculated, laired and growing each time someone notices.
Frank takes a lawn shaking breath. Both abuse threats of
real crimes gone from the Ladger's but never gone from here.
He gestures at the walls. The watch is not just
a legend. There was a man on staff, a volunteer,
always in the background, who used the darkness, the chaos
of underfunding, to hide things. Some say he's long dead.
Some say he's in every shadow where the physics are
just wrong. I've felt him behind me. He tried to
silence us, still tries in his way. In every silence,
every erased file, every erase note, a cold shiver trickles
down my spine. I remember the administrative memo's warnings, resignations,
cryptic references to staff health interventions that arrive too late.
What now, I ask, not sure if I want the answer.
Frank stands, all bones creaking. Careful. Now you keep the record.
Do what I did, Copy every note, aduam, hide and
weave them. Tell the city. One day, when it's safer.
He leans in, or maybe finish what Marjorie started to
open the archive, make it public, risk for shadows, come
in with the story. Just know his eyes settle on me,
tired and knowing that the more you draw the truth,
the more it'll draw you back. He moves past me,
one lingering hand, gentle on my shoulder. I tend to
ask another question, but the corridor is empty. His coat's
just brushing the coroner, and then he's gone. The only
sign of his is the fluttering of paper and the
faint echo of slow footsteps. I stare at the ledger,
the marked books, and the hundreds, maybe thousands of footprints
that have wandered these stacks, chasing the same uncertain story
through the margins. Maybe the chain never ends, Maybe is
not meant to. I spend the night my last official
one and the clock routed at the table, reading, transcribing,
piecing together as much as I can. The records are mixed,
whispers of financial fraud, for silence, someone vanishing in the
lates of unduspected dead, officially labeled missing, later reports of
staff seeing things, intimidation, lingering, ROMs, fear mask or reading
a superstition, but always the urge to document, to resist
the silence. At dawn, I packed my bag with recent notes,
coppet pages, and a bat of volume with my own
pencil footnotes. I slip a single unsigned warning into book,
waiting for reshoving, a quiet way of marking my place
in the record. Outside, the rain has stopped. Across the street.
Don presses up against the city, peach and gold, promising
quite that will be gone by noon. I glance back
at the library silhouette, at the guildt cross of transit.
Knowledge is light. For a moment, I wonder if I
might return some day to continue the chain or break it.
For now, I am simply the latest witness, my own
voice buried in graphite, waiting for another careful archivist or
skeptical nucomer to follow the thread. Because some chains are
forged to protect, not bind. Some gherts are kept alive
by memory, not as warnings, but as resisters against forgetting.
And as I walk away, a single word fresh in
my own hand, hidden newly, and the margins waits for
the next to find it. Continue. But as wintereers and
the clouds settle, I wrestle with the choice between closure
and complicity. The whispers of the library have followed me,
coloring even mundane days with a sense of unfinished business.
Weeks go by, but I keep checking local news, bulletins,
library committee minutes, survivor's forms. Anywhere sliver of Marjorie story
or of those ones listed in the margin might re emerge,
but the silence holds. One Sunday nigh, texts of photo
bad of volume ID flagged in the margin beside my
own need author ill hand, an unfamiliar notation appears. If
you want the rest, ask for the violet ledge of reference.
After midnight my chest tightens. I text back. She never responds.
The risk is familiar, but so is the draw By
weeks then the polls are resistible. So I wait, wandering
the city in restless anticipation, until the night of the
new moon. The sky is black glass. I returned to
Saint Mark's with nothing but a notebook and a flashlight.
The main entrance is guarded, but side doors. Those old
service entries Missus Cowson had glossed over yield easily to
a practiced hand. In a locky coat hanner, I slip
inside boots, leaving faint wet prints. The hush now a
living thing. The building breeze around me, were groaning and
glass ticking in the cold air. The reference desk is dark,
but a slend of violet ruben is tied to the
pole of drawer thirteen. It eases open up my touch.
Inside a ledger is cover pale as pages with dozens,
maybe hundreds, of hundretten entries and a dozen skirts and incs.
Each note is a fragment of testimony, rumor threats, missing inventory,
late night sightings, peculiar aiments, and patterns of absence, but
in a leave between standard records, the script of MP.
Marjorie returns. One passage near the ledger's center is marked
with a careful star. I kept notes because the silence
would not If you read this, the chain is not broken.
The watchers no longer a person. It's desperation become a
shadow of its own. Take cautions. If you pursue, do
so together. If you speak with them, record everything the
truth wants witnesses, not martyrs. Next to this, someone frank
shaky hand, this penciled. We tried to get her, wont
failed alone. Don't repeat that cycle behind me. I hear footsteps, gautious, helpsful.
A flashlight clicks on. Nine steps forward, her eyes searching,
more fearful than I've ever seen her. I saw you
on the camera, Tran. It's real, isn't it? She whispers.
I nod, passing the ledger over. We scan the pages
in silence, her finger tracing lines of pain, resolve, subdued horror,
tips of names. She recognizes my aunt work night here
in the nineties. She left. Wouldn't say why. I thought
she was just tired, but her name's here. She glances up, understanding,
dawning a flicker of fear. Then resolve what happens if
we go public, she asks, I hestate will be threatened, discredited,
may be worse. The fate of the vanish written in
the margins is prove enough. But the chain's there for
a reason, she says, defines growing in her voice. If
we stay silent, it wins. We agree to act quietly.
Document kolate scan perhaps not a whistle blow, but knarkav headen,
but robust, divided in montrusted hands, fragments of the ledger
coded into a knockous research notes, passwords scattered to those
who care enough to look. Each day we linger, another
marked book appears assigned. The chain stretches behind and ahead
at once. Sometimes on video feeds, a slow shadow glides
lingering by the recorded room, then slips away. There are
still secrets in the dark and the violence the archive
describes as not all called the old patterns. Frank's writings
caution us will return as long as darkness is easier
than the truth. On the night we complete the digital index,
a final flurry of activity, A shadow, bigger, less distinct,
passes through the east wing light stutter, and every ledger
in the lockcase rattles at once, nigh clings to my shoulder.
We both tremble. The moment passes, but we know where
reckoning is overdue. The next morning, half the shelves are
quietly reordered. Several problem of volumes are gone, but the
index exists. False sight and in code. Naire and I
both give notice to Saint Mark's citing better offers elsewhere.
There is pressure from above, softa first than firmer. But
the record lives, and we have begun to distribute whispers
in the margins a scholarship, cryptic footnotes and crossing references
in university essays, podcasts, and articles wherever margins exist. Months later,
a journalist emails with questions about a natural loss rates
furnishing staff, persistent stores of a knees. I hestate before replying,
but add a reference oblique but unmistakable to an official
staff istriies a library or two removed. It is the
work of years now, of gentle, persistent light shining. I
write a closing note in one bat of volume, before
mailing it to newly hired archivist elsewhere. If you're reading this,
you are now the memory keeper. You are not alone.
The truth possists what we do, I hope as the
next hand reads. They will not be alone, will be
the last, and that Marjory and all the other vanished names.
Final lines cut off in graphyte are not finally silent,
but remembered, their warning, woven into story. In the end,
not all stories want to rest. Some ghosts the stacks
scribbling freedom with silence, tried to bind and still beside.
A name at the edge of any page, in a
hand not quite your own. The single word waits continue
because endings are for stores. The world is ready to
set down, and this one loves in the tight rope
between memory and warning, always unresolved when spring comes. I'm
living miles away catalog and smaller sunlit library, where staff
greet each other by first name, and the worse threat
is a jam photocup here here the shelves whole, few secrets.
The dusk is gentle. But sometimes when I fall into
the old habit, checking a margin for stray notes, pousing
at an odd gap in the stacks, I feel a
trimmer in my hands. Reef explawn from habit and fear
what was left behind At Saint Mark's, I tell myself
is sleeping now, except on nights when I cannot sleep.
My laptop and touched on the table, and an anonymous
tip arize in my in box. Sometimes it's a scan
of an old staff photo at date circle, a request
for recos from a vanished decade. Sometimes it's simpler, a name,
a dewy number, a warning. Each carror is the flavor
of marginalia, each proof. The chain isn't just persistent, It spreading.
Naigh and I maintain careful distance, But every few months
a coded message is the index safe any more shadows.
Her replies are brisk, but beneath them the same loneliness,
the same val I tell her, I think there are
more of us. The new archivist, Louis State just asked
about stuff to potches from the seventies. She was sent
a box of footnoted local histories, no Sandor's name. One
June evening, at a thunderstorm blows the city, I stop
by my old apartment to collect a final box. The
landlord says, a package arrived from the regionals outside the
wind howls. I opened the paper rap pucel to find
about a volume of poems spine broken inside Covenioli eras
by time and handling. There beneath two lines in Marjorie script.
A slanting note appears different graphite, unmistakably contemporary. I work
the night desk in two thousand seven. That's all what
walked in the dark or clattered in the glass. The
watchers not gone. But maybe we're a crowd now. Maybe
the margins are stronger than the silent below. It another
slip shop and tiny in a different script. No single keeper,
no easy cure, but together we deny erasure. It's signed
only with initials names. I don't recognize. The book I
now see is part of the same collection, as are
those in the chain passed from hand to hand, Each
footnote a life boat, each warning a pimproke of hope.
For the first time, I understand the profound, stubborn comfort
in such a secret chorus. It's not just the story
of abuse omission. Darkness is how people faceless or forgotten
have refused to leave each other behind in the shadows. Once,
during the early days at Saint Mark's, I asked Marin
if she believed in ghosts, only the ones you can
talk to. She answered, only the ones that never give up.
Now I am, and I am not uncertain if for
stalked those shells for decades, was ever flesh and blood,
or just the institutional shape of harm, made almost sentient
by neglect. But I know now more keenly than ever,
that memory is its own resistance, and each marginal know,
each hidden ledger is a breach, and forgetting he is pass.
Some seasons the chain goes quiet. Other times, fragments of
store rory and caution flood the circuits on library list,
sorts in cryptochat threads, footnoted, and academic writing ghosted into
online catalogs. Each time I add my piece, pass a
warning on support, a new memory, keep over, dickon by shadows,
occasionally a dream of Saint Mark's not as it was,
but as it persists. It stacks me as like old
radiator is groaning, the light diffuse and uncertain. Once I
walk past the archive door and see Frank Marjory even
nigh altogether, quietly shoving each other's stories a line of
weathered hands. They don't speak, not directly, but the message
is clear. You are never truly alone in the margins,
no single keeper, only the ongoing thread. On waking, I
pick up another battered book, careful not to miss what's
written just inside the cover. It is the only way
I know how to honor the chain continue. This is
how the story persists, not in endings, but in the
act of noticing, recording, and refusing the convenience asylums. Over time,
my world fills with these hidden chains. Quietly, I develop
a methodology, a way to seek out, recognize, and amplify
the hidden signals left in public spaces. A misplit footnote,
a page with a peculiar crease, a catalog entry just
off from the standard. The work leads into my day
to day existence. I spend with Ken's pouring of Veruskan
municipal budgets, write articles on narcivil practices that reference the
culture of hidden labor and now, and then slip an
unremarkable pamphlet with marginalia into a donation bin. Sometimes I
find a line in my own scroll, one I can't
remember writing. A slow shifting network forums archivers from across
libraries of Bourbon and Metropolitan, younger than mere graying into retirement.
Shere coded fragments and encrypted emails. Some have never worked
at Saint Mark's, but recognized the signs. A book that
one stay shell of a story that arises from the
edge is rather than the text itself. One night, I
receive a phone call the kind of crackles with distance.
The voice on the other end is uncertain, but determined
ere tran I was told you listen. I found something
in the Lewis State archaus, names of times, a schedule
that no longer matches any staff directory. Whoever wrote as
there's a pattern. Her words tangle with anxiety and hope,
another link in the chain. I gudge you a few
what to do next, Digitize, secure, corroborate, find another to
share it with. Never be alone in knowing, Never give
the silence what it demands. As the years move forward,
small victories emerge. A regional paper begins a multipot feature
on and explained municipal absences. An anonymous report circulates on
library lesserves, we raising questions about the high attrition rate
in certain old buildings and the resources needed for staff
trauma support. Official inquiries begin slow and halting. None get
down to the real marrow of what we know. But
every attempt is a chisel against ome. I speak at
a conference on our Cavil Silence and the Ethics of testimony.
My session draws a standing room crowd and not for
your case study at hand, but for the cuan afterward,
where someone asks, have you ever seen a story that
wouldn't rest? Dozens of knowing glances rouble through the hall.
I do not name Saint Mark's, but I do not
have to now. And then, on lonely evenings, I return
to a batted folder labeled simply margins, is filled with
print outs, scan scrolls, anonymous notes. No formal structure, no narrative,
is just a web of continuing threads, crown, denser, stronger.
I add to it each fragment a promise to those
who came before and those who will follow. One winter,
the city Council votes to renovate Saint Mark's at last,
for the first time in living memory, A budget is
allocated for proper archival review. In staff counseling, the project manager,
new and eager, sends an open call for personal histories.
The letter is bland, bureaucratic, but something in the phrasing
memory is survival, participation is healing, suggests someone who has
read the margins. I reply carefully, sending redactive versions of
Ledger fragments enough to start conversation, not an accusation. I
cite missing names, vanished positions, recurring notes of unneeds. This
building's memory is layered. Every silencing leaves a mark. Be
careful what your race, The manager responds, thank you. We
will honor silence, but not let it be the final word.
Attached a digital scan of a stuff member from nineteen
seventeen nine, marked with a new annotation in blue pen
looping and hopeful. Here is where we kept track, Here
is where you begin. Each spring I get a postcard
from nice, sometimes from cities I've never visited, sometimes with
nothing but a stile, damp violet flower and a date.
Each time my heart lightens, and the chain feels less
like solitary burden and more like a living relay. Sometimes
on a rainy night, when the wind house pass my windows,
I swear I hear the echo of Marjory's voice of
soft presents, asking are you still there? Did you write
it down? I answer always in the way accounts by
passing the story on footnote to footnote, witness to witness,
And so the work continues. Each new archivist becomes a
guardian and her sister. Each library, no matter how modern
or small, holds the possibility of memories revenge on the
convenient lie. Each silence hides a story powerful enough to return,
And wherever those stories gather, the margins wait, growing broader,
more insistent, daring anyone with eyes to see and hands
to write continue