Speaker 1: Hollo. I welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The storm rattled north. Will it
be public library? Down to its very bones? Sheets of
rain lashed the windows, sharp as handfuls of gravel thrown
from the cherning street outside. The wind knife along the eaves,
and endless scream over the faded brickwork in the bowels
of the building, below the endless groaning stacks, in the
muddy fragrance of thoin soil. I sat hunched in the
glow of a single desk lamp, deep within the librarian's cage.
It was the end of my first week on the
solitary night shift, and to be honest, no amount of
training or shadowing of daytime staff had prepared me for
the isolation of those hours. The fluorescent lights overhead stammered
between fits of buzzing silver a light and trembling silence
piped creaked in a sleep. My small portable record of
blinked red work crouched beside the box, I was inventorying
the little early d stubbornly hopeful in the gloom. Company
policy was clear. Staff working between midnight and six a m.
Meslog audio memos for notable anomalies. I half wondered if
the policy wasn't a joke instiated by the aging supervisors
who haunted the committee room. The druidary of cataloging was
broken up only by the occasional oddity. Boxes of in
complete returns, battered card files, the batter green thermist left
by my predecessor, the comforting curl of the tea left inside,
long since gone to rust. A thunderclap shook the room.
My index finger jerked, smudging the tidy line I just
made on the ledger locked missweldt sea returns bindfort. I
finished jotting the remaining note, dusted my hands, and pulled
the next box closer. As contents ruttling alarmingly inside. The
air around me tasted of dust and something metallic, like
the echo left after biting Ereton. I inhaled, searching the
corners of my mind for something soothing but all the familiar.
Once home, sunlight laughter semed far away inside the cart,
and I found the usual two novels on into library alone,
a government pamphlet with torn pages and a gray far
marked special reference, pending that label wasn't unusual in the archives,
pending covered a multitude of bureaucratic sins, but touched between
two battered books was a battered index, carved soft and
yellowed at the edges, laminated long ago in cheap plastic
that had gone cloudy. It was a patron card, the
kind used for decades before the digital checkout system, all
handritch and black fountain pen blue ballpoint, even a thin
scratch of green pencil in the margins, name Leno Frame
block letters a little crooked but purposeful. Below it the
book number of forty two s reference. The first entry
was dated seventeen May nineteen fifty six, then again in
sixty one sixty seven seventy one, the same steady interval
of three to five years, like clockwork, but the final
entry chilled me. Board eight March nineteen seventy four, pending
return that year shimmered in my mind until I recalled.
Nineteen seventy four was when I rumor Leonard Frame had
been found dead after vanishing into the akhouse for three days.
He'd been a koutika, though the story went that he'd
rarely spoken to staff or patrons, except to collect over
due ledgers or shuffle musty bins back into order. The
notations get the formal returned line, replace simply by slantid
penning and unfamiliar, maybe trembling script. I held the card
under my lamp, noting the signatures, some elegant and old fashioned,
some size, some findy bureaucratic, some blockie in novus, But
through them all pulls a kind of echo, as if
mimicking the original hand that had started the documentation ritual.
I thought, not just record keeping, a habit or a
compulsion for the same few staff members over decades. My
own heartbeat seemed to stagger slightly on impulse. Arose clutching
the cot and scanned the raws of reference shelves. A
forty two was supposed to reside behind glass in the
special section, a row of locked cabinets half forgotten, behind
the genealogy microfilms. I checked the computer inventory. A forty
two last seen, not in returns nothing more. Thunder rolled
overhead rough as bowling balls dropped on the roof. The
cagedin meshrattled on the heels of the thunder Cayman he
noise faint but distinct. Upstairs, somewhere near the main desk,
something heavy, scraped or shifted, as though someone was shiving
furniture out of their way. I found myself holding the
recorder tightly, the white on the power switch. I spoke
into it, low and fast. Memmo two eleven a m
no trace of a forty two patre record for Lenard
frame shows repeated chickouts, final entry, pending book missing, sore
intintsifying possible movement upstairs. Conclude lock for now, will follow
up tomorrow. My words fell brittle. The library seemed to
draw in its breath and hold it, waiting for what
might happen next. Our first light, the rain gave up,
leaving only the hush of wet streets and the shot
call of blackbirds outside the front doors. I changed out
of my library sweater dam at the cuffs as always,
hung my badge on the peg, and tut the batted
frame card into folder. As I left the night entrance,
a wave of fatigue swept over me. The candlows deep
in the edges of your bones when sleep's been fitful,
and where we were is just under the surface. Daylight
did little to lift the building's dignity. North Willoughby Public
Library had been the city's pride when it opened in
the forties. All marble columns, decorative molding, and high slit
ceilings that once hosted organ concerts and readings now decades
of shotful and rough winters carved away illigants, leaving taped
strip marble where heating colls split, and cheap plywood where
pipes had boast. Some wings were boarded over, some simply
blocked by cut stack with yellowing city directories. Still the
air held possibility of fragile sense that somewhere meaning lingered
the clock at the main desktate toward eight when I
checked out, hand scanning my badge while Missus farber head
archivist reviewed the logs behind the thick glass of her office.
She was in her late sixties, small, with movements both
bird like and abrupt. Her isolid over each new page,
as if waiting for errors to multiply. Behind me, Ethan,
the security god, patrolled with his usual quiet efficiency. He
nodded at me a tiny jerking motion, eclipped his walkie
at the belt, and whispered into the mic interior secure
all clear. Ethan was neither friendly nor rude, simply blank
and impassive as the surface of the old reading tables.
After a long day. As I waited for father to
sign off my log, Marrable passed through the lobby. She
was sly, always tucking a stray lock of hair behind
her ear, and wore cleaners aprindusted with gray from the mop.
Her smile was uncertain and her eyes quick to dart away. Still,
she looked up, voice barely above a whisper. Mayuan used
to work here, you know. She never came back from
the archhous in seventy nine. Her tongue was like casual
leave and play, but her fingers fidgeted with the edge
of her badge. I glanced to her lost track of time,
I asked, trying to make a joke. She shook her
head or gazed drop into the floor. No lost, really,
people talk places. You shouldn't go past the second basement.
Before I could ask what she meant, Old Frank, the
night porter, shuffled pass, pushing the mop as if it
were a shield. He was the oldest staff member by far,
war knuckles, deep set eyes, a slow hunched walk. Frank
rarely spoke, but carried about a black notebook that he
tapped almost unconsciously, and the metal cut You hear the
pipes down there, he asked, voice thick with sleep. He
didn't wait for an answer. Every noise is a wrecker,
every silence too. He drifted away, mop squeaking, the words
echoing more meaning than sense. Paperwork at the library was
a daily siege thick yellow charts, some dating back to
the city's founding, all mounted, map stained and warped, their
lines never matching the reality of the twisting corridors and
block stacks. Every week, some room would quietly vanish from
the key, reappearing days later with new tape and cardboard reinforce.
On paper, the library was a simple grid. In practice,
it was amaze, clinging to the age of irrelevance. After
logging my IROs and prep in the microfiche machine for
the next researcher, I updated the staff's daily logs. Missus
Farber reviewed my work with a brief, satisfied glance. Her words, however,
stopped me cold. Log books are for official gaps only, Tom,
don't go looking for stories, just fill the holes. The
warning run in my mind as I moved among the
stacks that afternoon, peering into cartons of un cataloged donation books,
dodging brittle spider words, and i'dly test in drawer handles.
The pipes arebof, hissed, and knocked like a conversation. I
could almost tune into the air, thick with dust, and
the odd whiff of cleaning agent blurred the difference between
now and then. Every so often I would pass the
rotten dat where a line of city directories listed all
residents living as of nineteen seventy one. My hand drifted
to the age of one, thinking of Fram's patron card
and the rumors the Clanton names in red ink. But
routine was routine, whether haunted or not. On my break,
I sat in the staff kitchen, stale doughnuts in a
greasy box, radio tuned to low jazz, the wooden floor
warped from decades of leeks, and a logged a daily
audio memo. Nothing to report, only anomaly. So far are
mostly clerical, though there's an odd pattern in the basement.
Cards might look further. I wasn't trying to rebel, but
I wanted to be thorough, a trait that got me
the job but also perhaps placed me in the path
of whatever lived in the library's solitude. Even then, part
of me relished the challenge amid the monotony. In the
next days, curiosity nagged at me like an inch. The
more I thought about the frame wrecker, the more the
word pending rattled round inside, unsettled and inquiet. After ires
cataloging over due returns, I wondered if pendum was just
a lazy way to mark it unresolvable, or signpost for
something no one wanted to resolve. So when the time came,
I decided to go hunting, quietly, cautiously, and with more
method than purpose. During my next night shift, I carried
to set of fresh indix cards and a pencil with
the Chutuiso, determined to cross reference the missing of fortitude
with the card catalog. The paper catalogs free immens with
drawers heavy as cuffins were supposed to have been replaced
by the computed years ago. Instead they lingered, filled with
dusty cards handwritten in spider ink, representing every book matt
toy and out of fact eversheldt I started with the
forty two the drawer stock potway out listing special reference,
restricted access. His card bore the tidy script of a
staff member called Margaredess, but in the margin several other
hands had squeezed in updates over time, loan to patron,
pending return see ledger, and sometimes only initials and j
k l f s, but it was never clear whether
the initials represented approval, denial or something else. Oddly, the
return dates ran in odd intervals, sometimes three years, sometimes five,
but always marked off by a handful of recurrent names.
I didn't recognize any of them. I compared the other
pending items, maps of old railway projects by neighborhood guides,
even a children's song book from the nineteen forties, and
found the same pattern. Borrows records pending for decades, always
the same staff names in the margin. Sometimes the return
book signature looked so much like the previous entry as
to seem forged. They struck me that not only did
these wrecords suggest rituals or habits, but they seemed to
actively avoid closure. Why would a pending persist regenerations of
librarians even after borrowers died or moved away. I carried
a batch of the cards to Marrable, who was wiping
down reading lamps at the front desk. She glanced at
the stack, hair escaping her ponytail. I keep seeing these
same staff names. Did you ever know Margaret s four
k hel. She pressed her lips together, considering no only stores,
and tolda said there was a head archivist, Margaret always
in the late watch. Her expression grew distant. My aunt
had a friend who got moved to a room that's
not on any maps, supposedly had to love books there
away from others. Said she saw some one hiding behind
the stacks, but no one else ever saw her again.
The last sentence hung in the air. What do you
mean hiding, I asked Marrable shrugged, flicking a piece of
lint from her apron Aunt always called the Arkaus a
living thing, She said, their places, it remembers, even if
no one goes there after that, I never wanted to
go down by myself. Her final glance suggested the conversation
was over. I spin my break exploring an unused hallway
by the old City Council office, pushing past a broken
book CT and brushing cobbebs from my sleeve. The court
or angled then narrowed suddenly, and as I raised my flashlight,
I heard it small, high pitched whispers just beyond the
sealed metal door. Their meaning eluded me. Half words sauches
of laughter, but the voices stopped abruptly when the overhead
light flickered. I recorded another memo as I headed back
to the bright foyet, voice low and uncertain. Notice odd
margins and forged dates and cut carbs, stuff signatures repeat
even decades apart. Mirrable recalls a lost friend. Hidden brooms
whispers from the closed corridor. There's a living memory here.
The library remembers, maybe more than the city above. That night,
Liebo shallow. My mind repled the top of the index
cars and the sense of being observed from unseen corners.
By morning, I woke with a start, fingers cold and
tied around the covers, a faint take in my chest,
as if something in the stacks were still waiting for me.
My suspicion about records deep. In the following afternoon, I
pulled old ledges from a high shelf in the basement cage,
surrounded by the hum of the building's dormant ires. As
I leafed through the thick, red bound volumes, the ones
with cold lattering nearly rubbed away. I saw precisely cut
gaps in the older pages decades to sign out some
returns had been sliced out as if by a razor.
Some one had inserted replacement sheets crafted to mimick the originals,
but the tiniest details betrayed them. Date shifted slightly, Signatures
of Margarettas in one entry, Margaretess in another, both written
with different pens and inconsistent slat hurious. I checked the ink,
some blood violet, others call black. In one spot the
ink was so fresh at its marge. With my thumb
on a hunch, I made Ford coppers and compared them.
Swoops in the m a curl in the s inconsistent
every few years. Why would someone take the trouble to
forge decades of staff signatures only to have most records
marked pendingt As I worked hold Frank's strolled by, rolling
his mop bucket slowly across the tiles. He hesitated when
he noticed the ledgers just dead paper. He rumbled, some
of those records wont to stay lost. I pressed him,
you've seen these gaps before, write. He eyed the razor cuts,
then thumbed open his little black noteok, revealing nothing but
empty lines. Recas limbo of Frank said, with things that
shouldn't found. O' let to rest were all dust in stacks,
some more than others. Why the forgeries? Frank replaced the
note book, as if shrouding a secret. The systems old.
Can't trust what you see, only what the stacks allows.
Sometimes the room shifts, always did. He left wheels of
the bucket rattling, the darkness closing around what he refused
to explain. Frustrated a cold city hall, aiming to check
staff registers and confirm the employment dates of the signatures
had found perhaps Margaret, s, K L and m J
were still alive or at least traceable. My call connected
rang once and then hissed into static for a second.
Impossible as it was. I felt the static pulse the
faintest impression of words forming behind it, as though a
voice was just out of reach before the lion snap dead.
When I asked missus Farber if she'd ever heard of
Margaret est although forbidden catalog, her response was brisk let
sleeping files lie, Tom. Some gaps are intentional. That's why
we keep looks, so no one goes looking for ghost. Yet,
late that evening, before leaving for the night, she left
to note that my staff mail box, written in looping
blue pan the note read final catalog draw thirty nine
Pasky eight thousand, one hundred forty six only for official gaps.
It was paper clip to an old metal key. Dull
Wi Tom. I made a half hearted attempt to ask
Eton a guard about the odd rooms and forbidden shelves.
He only frowned. Basement does odd things to your sense
of time, he said, his voice flat. Don't let it
trap you. Most people go through six eyes down there
and think it was thirty minutes. That night, I fell
into dreams of labyrinthine corridors lined with gaping empty drawers.
Something waited at the farthest threshold of flicker, sometimes animals,
sometimes mine shaped. It never crossed toward me, but I
felt the edge of its attention as they staggered away,
heart slamming inside my chest. The following day gave me
little choice. The storm returned, piling on the windows and
rattling the loose glass behind the basement reference counter. Farber's key,
cool and sharpen my pum seemed to draw me downward,
past the ordinary chaos of the lower reading rooms into
his own that was quieter, dancer beyond the staff only
doors passed the yellow caution tape and the broken clock
that always read twelve for the library's old section began
in earnest footstepsuchered differently down here, muted, as though the
concrete itself absorbed sound, and held it at the far
end against appealing wall painted with a faded miual of
children reading. I found a bank of un touched my
coroffiche drawers, most had not been opened in years. Their
handles gave way with a creak that drew out dust
and seemed to me colder air draw a thirty nine
boer taped label of forty two pending official use only.
I slid in Farber's pasky. It turned too smoothly. The
drawer rolled out inside not the extected microffiche cars, but
a chaos of torn and yellowed index cars, each bearing
a different library hand and a scattering of faded polaroids.
The color leached out with age. The first polaroid showed
a line of staff arm in arm at a pinnic table,
faces half smiling, paper hats cocked at odd angles. I
recognized Marrable's features in a younger woman, and my heart jolted.
Was this herrent? The photos were indeeded, but several people
were circled in red ink initious groll beside their faces.
Below the photos a crack sign out sheet, yellowed but
oddly crisp. This was what stunned me. The sheet was
dated with to day's date, and below the list of
signatures space for another. There written in the careful, leaping
hand that I'd used on my daily logs. My own
name stared up at me, the same curve of my ear,
unmistakable at the time, entered as twenty one, forty eight.
But I hadn't signed anything that night, not yet. A
sound crept through the stacks, slow dragging footsteps, impossibly soft
mivy across the old floor, passed the forbidden shelves. The
hairs along my neck quivered and lifted. I glanced toward
the aisle, saw only the shifting shadow of my own
lamp flicking. As the storm sent another shudder through the building.
I rifled once more through the drawer. Between two torn clouds.
A single clean sheet gleamed, its surface bright in the
slick news, a fresh cut. The date at the top tomorrow,
my own name already filled in alongside the phrase special
reference of forty two, penning a bulb above me popped,
shower in the desk and glass dust. The last of
the drawers, loose cows, rattled as I set them down,
somewhere in the stacks, just beyond where my light could reach,
where its emerged from the darkness, not spoken, but somehow
ssemble from the nearly silent shivering of the air. But
when the catalog is finished, it you'll stay too. My
hand clamped tightly around the drawer's handle. The storm battered
at the windows, the building groaned, and I stood caught
between them in the weight of stor as a city
above had chosen to forget. The drawer refused to slide
back in. My fingers trembled, slick with sweat as I
tried to force it, but it stuck fast, as if
the wood had expanded to trap the strange collection, those
ancient index cards, the polaroids, the page bearing my name
in in still glossy with ninas. A chill ran up
my wrist, across my arm, burrowing beneath the skin, already
clummy from the basement's dampness. My breath came shallow. I
flicked the lamp switch off and back on. Nothing the
overhead fluorescence had surrendered, plunging the arkav alcove into a
patchwork of gray and savored light. Only the reflected glimmer
from my flask, light half drained, kept the darkness from
swallowing me upright. I muted that echoed from deeper within
the arch of all stacks. I froze, every muscle strained.
The old tiled floor, usually so muffled under my sneakers,
suddenly felt treacherous. Each step, each sand doubled in that gloom.
I could just make out beyond the row of dental cabinets,
the vague outline of the mural, where a patch had
peeled away, exposing concrete beneath. I ducked down, pressing myself
to the cool metal of the catalog drawer, compelling my
lungs to slow. Must be ethan, I whisper, But the
words didn't sound convincing, even to me. My mind scramble
for a plan, for something practical. Should I call out?
But the wild edge to the earlier whisper when the
catalog is finished, you'll stay two stop me an irrational
conviction sees much ass What if calling out would confirm
my presence to whatever was out there, I remembered Frank's advice.
The motter half lost in his shuffle, reckless limbo were
all dust in the stacks, some more than others. I
reached for my recorder, thumbing it on with a snap
that felt loud as a door closing memmo. I mild,
nearly silent, found draw thirty nine contents old staff photos,
index cause sign out log with to days and to
morrow's date. My name appears, though I never signed. Someone
or something in stacks fits that's not match in known
staff lights fail, requesting further investigation. The fifth's entry is
heard to confirm I faltered a confirmed date and location,
ending lock. A shadow flickered in the periphery, dissolving when
I focussed, as if my attention did it. That sense
of being observed of heatless eyes waiting for acknowledgment prickled
my scalp from somewhere behind the forbidding shoving. A familiar
cough marrowbles, but it was wrung, raspy dragging, stripped of
its previous shye melody. Scraping sound followed something solid scraping
across tile. I forced myself to edge around the far
end of the cabinet flasklight in hand. The beamstruck on
pock marksment, a spill of crumpled paper, the hem of
a faded cleaning apron, and there it cursed. At the
interjection of two aisles, Marrable herself hugging her knees, face pinched.
She didn't see me at first. They don't come closer,
she whispered, gaze locked on something I couldn't see. I
heard them again, I thought, Frank, said, her voice snapped out,
cut by a shudder. They only hunt when someone takes
what's not supposed to move. It's just me, Marrable, I said,
in a voice that wobbled more than night intended. I
found something, these records, and I lifted a handful of
the battered cod as proof, as if evidence could shield us.
She nodded, still not looking at me. My hands pressed
so tightly to her knees, I could see bloodless crescents
beneath her nails. The records, they grow every time someone disappears.
There is a card. There was one from my aunt
before she went missing. Her lips twitched. I saw it well,
I thought I did that summer, But the next day
no one believed me, not even farber thundercreased the silence
the library's very beams. Wincing, I crouched to our level.
The dry paper, smell of lost decades crowded in. Suddenly
an object rolled out from the darkness. I scrambled backward reflexively,
my knees colliding with the open drawer. It was a pencil,
the cheap kind, with the library's initials stamped in foil.
Its raiser was chewed to a step, just like the
one I always gnawed on during lown inventory nights. Marrable
reached from my arm, her grip urgent. Did you put
that there? She muttered, I searching mine for some denial.
I shook my head, lips numb. I just got here
the drawer someone's changed, filled it with forgeries, photos, cards.
There is a pattern. Every pending case is never truly closed.
Just moved copet rewritten. Her breathing slowed, grew steadier. Then
it's real, she said, quietly, not only me the fluorescent
bulb above us, butter rallying to live for a few seconds.
For those few hot beats, I saw dustmer swirling in
a strong but unseen draft beyond Marble's shoulder on the
side wall. The faded mural flickered into visibility, a painted
librarian holding opened a book on its spine, A four
V two special reff the detail invisible under normal light,
pulsed in the brief elimination. We scrambled uparate something in
both of us responding to the sudden and spoken need
to move to escape the encroaching feeling that the library
silent watchers were drawing closer. A door banged overhead, heavy
hollow metal on frame. Both of us jerked to a stop,
listening for movement, for the teltale stomp of Ethan with
the snapping shuffle of old Frank. Instead, nothing but the
dull after echo and faint and uneasy, the slow scrape
of something heavy being dragged just out of sight. Marrable
tugged at my sleeve. I want to find my aunt's entry,
she said, fiercely. This should be a card. She always
marked everything, never lost a single catalog, not once in
twenty years. We have to look, I agreed, But if
things here change, we need to stick together. I led
us back to the main microfiche bay, the open draw
gate as contents askew or Fisher in the library's accumulated order.
I handed Marrable my half dead flashlight and began shuffling
for card's fingers, fumbling in my urgency. There were dozens,
maybe hundreds, some crisp, some melded and soft, all with
the surreal similarity of repending signature echoed the last, as
if written by some one desperately imitating their predecessor. Finally,
Marrable gasped, Here told e Kashmir nineteen seventeen nine, special
ref a forty two pending. The signature at the bottom
was not her answer matched none of the others. In
horrord almost trembling script, the mark was unmistakable Margaret as
but the g twisted backward, incestating, as if the writer
had forgotten how to finish the name. Half Way through,
I exhaled here Aunt checked out forty two, the last
year she was here, just like glennar frame before her.
The interests I leafed through others, tracing the same intervals.
It's always this book, always after ires, always vanished staff
or patron. After a final pending entry, Marrable pressed a
card to her heart. I want to see the book.
A surge of rickles resolve ice man certainty. We penned
the flasklight along the shelves, ignoring the printed labor, in
search of anything out of place on the bottom shelf,
wherein dear nothing should have rested since a flood decades ago.
The shape of a book's absence revealed itself, a clean space,
slightly wider than the others, with a faint impression in
the dust. We're missing it, I whispered, only the cod
left behind, never the volume. Her free hand found mine.
The friendliness was sharp, desperate, less, try the next row.
Until they used to say, if you can't find it,
it's not in the stacks, it's somewhay that wants to
be remembered. That phrase wants to be remembered. A needled
at me. What if the book itself moved, or was
moved by whatever consciousness the library secreted. I scanned the shelves,
searching for any evidence of recent movement. As we turned,
a low, whistling breeze erupted from a wall vent curling
between stacks, rattling the cards in their box. They're just visible.
A slip of paper caught the edge of a shelf.
I snatched it up. The handrton sled different from the others,
marked with the day's date and a message in block letters.
Finished the entry nothing more. A sudden static crackled in
my pocket. My recorder left runnings bit out, harsh, half
garbled sound, rising, then suddenly clarifying into voices. I played
it back, at first only the murmur of my own lock,
But as the background hiss rose something else, the overlapping,
distorted tambos of maybe half a dozen people, voices of
a lapping and fighting the tape. I must finish the book,
don't forget, never pending. The wind sawed through the arquaz
once more. Marble shivered, pulling her arms around herself. Let's go,
she said, her voice pleading, I don't want to hear
any more. At the main steps, the silence gathered behind us,
as if nutting us to leave. Her wrist a backward
glance in thought for an instant that her face twisted, hollowed,
barely more than the suggestion of bone and void peered
up from between the racks. When I blinked, it was gone,
only darkness in the stale odor of old glue. In
the staff lounge, we found Frank's seated riding in his
battered notebook. The sound of our entrance dartled him, and
for the first time he looked afraid. You two shouldn't
be poking after midnight, he muttered, tucking the notebook away. Frank,
how did you know, I blurted, Did you forge the
antress or the cards? Moving? He shook his head, grave
and deliberate. Not forge, Steward some record to want a
life of their own. I'd just give them a place
to rest. Catalog keeps them here until someone's willing to
remember them. That's what the pending means. Can't be ended,
not by rolls, not by shutting a drawer. Marrable's face stiffened.
Tell us what happens if the catalog gets finished, Frank
offered a weary, haunted smile. Never's happened, that last entry
never gets made. Something always interrupts, always has, always will
unless it's somebody desperate enough to see it through. My
mind reeled. Was the library itself refusing closure, luring staff
and patrons into a recursive cycle of custody and loss.
The metaphor of record Limbo took on a literal wait.
Faber gave me a key. I pressed to drawer thirty nine.
She must know. Frank's eyes flickered. She keeps the tradition.
She knows more than she says, part of her job,
part of mine too, I could tell the conversation was over.
Frank rose, dashing his notebook and tubed open the launch door.
In the corridor. Ethan shadow passed. He must have finished
the upstairs rounds. Did either of you try calling out
to night, I asked the group, realizing only then how
strange it was that the building felt so seal, so
isolated from the city outside. Ethan overhearing paused at the threshold.
His wide set eyes registered a flicker of uncertainty. Phones
don't always work after ires, he said quietly, And if
they do, it's never to who you think you're calling.
Bestment interferes with things. Sometimes ye get scraps that don't
belong to this place are this time. A long, uneasy
silence followed. Frank in the shadows murmured, don't stay later
than you have to. Tom. The more you look, the
more you'll find, and that's not always good. Not when
it's time to close. The suggestion linger to close? What
exactly the catalogs ourselves? I pocketed the card with my
own name stamped on to to morrow's date. Vound to
keep it as insurance. Maybe in some way it would
serve as witness proof to some one who might one
day stumble onto another unfinished drawer. The rest of the
shift crawled by each tick of the wall clock, stretching
seconds in two minutes. I busied myself stapling reports, logging
minor returns, but the echo of what we do. Seeing
the catalog cards, the twisted signatures marrables found entry clung
to me like spilt in call my skin. At dawn,
I filed up past the locked reading room. Farborough's office
light was on, though she must have stayed past policy.
I hesitated there, unsure whether to speak, to seek answers
or simply to confess. She looked up as I hovered
in her doorway. Her eyes assessed me, calm and shrewd.
Found the drawer, she asked, with a faint lift of
one eyebrow. I nodded. It has my name and others
pending for decades, some records, she said, almost gently, mustlinger.
The City of Wone acknowledged them, so we do. You
can close the file, but the gap will always show.
That's what keeps the place unsettled and keeped people here.
Catalogs unfinished stores half we told, I swallowed. If I
finish it, if someone finally closes it, it matters who
finishes and how honest they are. She considered me, lit
pressing into a flat proudate line. Not all stores want
the same ending tom. A second of silence passed between us,
saturated with every unspoken warning. Marble caught up with me
in the parking lot the morning, some pressing low against
the clouds, She wore her coat loosely, face pale with exhaustion.
Are you coming in tonight? She asked? Wouldn't miss it,
I replied, trying to sound confident. She glanced away. Meet
me before your shift. If you find more, let me
know right away, not afterward. My nerves froned. I spent
the day pace in my apartment, fields of panic thought
cycling through my mind. What if I simply didn't return?
What if I handed over everything to the city archives?
Would it matter at all? Or would the gaps simply
redraw themselves as if nothing had ever threatened to be fixed.
The curiosity, habit and something like obligation pressed me on
with the evening, as dust bled into night, the wind
time of the library's fas odd rain chined on the roof,
and the sense of anticipation, the electric oppressive kind that
houses itself in thunderheads filled the lobby as I clocked in.
No one else lingered near the front desk. As I
passed through. Ethan was seated inside the security booth, gaze
in the dim screens, where grainy camoa feeds cycled endlessly.
Old Frank drifted by, already shooking on his coat. Not tonight, kid,
Sometimes you have to let the shell saddle. Even missus
Barbara had vacated the upper floors, her office window dark.
Only Marrable waited, notebook in hand, nervous as a bird
of the feeder. We exchanged a wordless look, each understanding
more than could be said aloud. There is a part
of the building the plans don't show, she whispered, passing clothes,
a room nobody supposed to find. But the old map
in the reference alcovefu of volat against the foundation shot.
There's a gap right where the forbidden alcove lies. My
heart stumbled, picking up speed. Let's look, I said, unreasonable
resolve finding me if we know what we're up against.
Maybe I let the sentence trail off uncertain, Maybe we'd
find clover, Maybe just more questions. Together, we navigated the
main stacks, slipped past the staff one barrier, and descended
a narrow spiral say that felt older than the rest
of the building. At the lowest landing, the light grew eager,
just the faint flow of air and the echo far
away of storm water shitting and pipes. At the corridor's end,
a warp door blocked by an institutional bookshelf. The shelves
bulged with cast off encyclopedias, spines, watch and flake. Shoulder
by shoulder. We shifted them aside, breezing our feet on
the cracklinoleum. Behind the shelf, a wood paneled door with
a faded insignia the old city seal, but also distaff
twined with an open book. I'll line through the middle,
almost invisible unless I flashly caught it exactly right. I
touched the handle. It came away, sticky, marked with the
reddest ding. I hook was only rusted. The door didn't
budge at first, so marrable and now leaned into it
together until suddenly, fingers bruising, breath held it, grudged open,
stale coffin swede air poured out. The darkness inside felt thick, laid.
Our flash lights pulled weekly on our rooms, rich and
far wider than the walls outside should permit. Shells lined
the far wall and sordered no dew numbers were electronic tags,
holding a host of art facts, battered purses, a watch
and grave decay, fragments of children's art, a stack of
postcards written in crabscript, and opened letters addressed to pigeons
and staff long vanished. There On a heavy wooden desk
at the center of the room sat a single book
with a spy nearly cracked in a half tidl block
letter and faded gold special reference of forty two Marrable
reached from a hand. Her grip was electric. My own
hand hovered over the book, not quite daring to touch
the mystery at the center of too many vanished lives.
The library outside grown as the storm found its dry
Within the forbidden room, we could almost hear a convergence
of stories, over lapping voices, footsteps never resolved, the longing
within every pending card for an ending for remembrance, offered
just one more night to linger in the memory of
this place. We stepped toward the desk, breath held, hearts
knocking against the silence, the bitter promise of the storm
swelling the summer, known and finished thing waiting in the
turning of the final page. The desk in the forbidden
room was the kind handed down through generations, monolithic, battered
with shallow grooves tracing out the absent names of all coworkers.
Its surface bore the marks of use and dismissal, inkstains
scabbed over decades. An old library stamp with the metal
prongs warped and a single green blott a pad. The
corners curled and yellowed. The battered book at the center
seemed to resist both light and shadow, spy and split,
and covers fraying. The faded gold of Special Reference of
forty two, almost ef faced by time. Amersa's touching my
breath felt shallow, every inhale, thick with the scent of
muston dust, powdered minerals, as if we stepped down, not
a few feet, but through a threshold that the rest
of the library had forgotten how to acknowledge I could
hear Marrable's breeding quick puffs beside me, and the low
hiss of the overhead vent. Yet all those sounds felt distant,
maufful is, if insulated by unscene layers between us and
the storm outside. Neither of us spoke at first. The
room seemed unwilling to permit noise. Even the shuffle of
my boots against the linnoleau registered faint, like a recollection
of a noise more than the thing itself. I lowered
my hand to the badder cover. The surface was cool,
not just the chill of a law neglected library, but
the strange, biting cold that warned me I was trespassing
on something not intended to be physically resolved. Marrable watch
my hesitation, eyes wide. Wait before you open it, she murmured,
her hands stopping just short of mine. Let be careful before,
Frank said, is right? Closure isn't always what it seems.
I nodded, forcing myself to steady my pulse, and lifted
the cover. The first pages crinkled, brittle, but still amcot.
The book was handriton, each new entry of fresh variation,
some list of names that he had district neat column's day, patron,
staff initial purpose, Others ran umbled into margins, covered over
Razio's corrections, inclosures, pisted in with cellophane so old it
had pebbled, and withdrawn from the paper. Each cycle repeated
a forty two, signed out, usually by a staffer Margaret
asked sometimes or m J occasionally a patron. Next a
string of checking dates that a longer stretch of pending
enters allowed to linger in these formation. Finally a gap there,
a return in a different hand. Some entranes coincided with
known events a major fire in nineteen sixty eight, the
cities blackout in seventy five, the basement flood in eighty six,
and always adjacent to the dates, a signature that echoed
the staff members, sometimes perfect, sometimes subtly off. I flipped
toward the back, searching for the most recent entest. My
own heart pounded as I saw a black page, then
tuck there the same sheet I had found in the
drawer of my name tom to day's date time left blank.
Thunder rolled through the pipes above, a slow shifting of
pressure that pressed on my ears and forced a shudder
along my lens. Marble drew closer, leaning into peer. At
the last few entries, she sucked in a small, short breath.
There's my aunt, she whispered, toldy Gasbire October nineteen seventy nine.
A forty two wrath section status pending, then nothing, no
return date, just a gap until this page for a you.
She reached for the book, then withdrew her hand, as
if the air itself had resisted her. The whisper of
movement from the stacks behind us made us both stiffen.
Yet the room, for all its press identsity, seemed heston
to swallow us completely, as though it waited for a
single or a final gesture before acting. I turned the
recorder in my pocket on, letting its faint read led
throw a dot of color into the two still air.
This is tom Wick, I spoke softly, but clearly, cataloging
in the sealed archived room reference item of forty two
pound last entry pending dated from over four decade ago,
physical object present, patron reco's pattern of repeated pended status
never returned intervals of three to five years between borrowings.
My voice sounded small, compressed by the room's hush. I
forced myself onward further investigation needed to determine outcome of
prior staff and patrons listed as last borrows. As I finished,
Marrable reached for her notebook, jotting down her aunt's entry
by hand. Her pencil stuttered as she tried copying the
signature style. Do you hear that? She murmured, like pages turning.
I strained my ears from deeper within, maybe budding the
forbidden room's far wall. They did seem to be the
faintest paper shuffle, like anxious hands leaping through files. I
flashed my light along the shells clustered against the far end.
No sign of movement yet the mild draft, suggestive of
a whole way open to blackness just beyond our reach,
carried the sound. Suddenly, the doornill behind us rattled, then stilled.
I stiffened, searching the room for anything we could use
to block the entrance. Marrable's eyes flashed wide and panic,
But before either of us moved, a voice came from
the other side. Don't alarm yourself, I'm coming in. It
was Missess Farber. Unmistakably, her words were brisk, hollowed by fatigue,
lacking the warmth or sharp as I had come to expect.
The door clicked open. She stepped inside, shutting it with
careful determination. Under the fluorescent wash of her office. By day,
her hair was a practical career, her gaze sharp as
dental tools. Here in the dusty half light, her face
looked into the streaks of exhaustion covering her features, as
though she was herself a figure wavering at the edge
of the catalog's forgotten pages. He've both gone further than
any staff in years, she said, no preamble, no snapping orders.
It was only a matter of time. And I suppose
he found the drawer. We both nodded, neither able to
summon words immediately. She regarded us with the brutal patience.
Ye should understand this room, this catalog. They are not
just evidence of mistakes. What's kept pending isn't simple record keeping.
The library is a kind of memory. So does the city.
For that matter, The things people wish of race this door.
As the city prefers left and resolved to someone must
bear witness, or those stores come back hungry for closure.
Marrable's voice, dry as chalk, cut through the haze. My
aunt never came home. Her entry was left open. Does
that mean Farber showed us dipped. Not everything can be
returned marrable. Sometimes a pattern must be completed, a final entry,
an official stamp, before anything can let go. I stepped forward,
holding out the book. But if we fill in the
last entry, will the others be free? Or will we
be trapped? Farber didn't move the CATALOG'SSS twofold. It binds
stores here. Yes, keeps the city from suffering. They lost directly,
But it also means those souls, those memories, can't rest
until officially recorded. The ambiguity makes them linger. She stepped closer,
glancing at the index card, burying my name at the
catalog's empty next line. Every time someone disappears, every time
truth is delayed, the catalog grows. Staff tried to keep
gaps hidden so the public never has to faced the truth.
But if the catalog is ever completed, the room might
finally empty, perhaps at a cost none of us can predict.
A shudder passed through the library's structure. The weak white
overhead tremble then stadded. I felt for a single knifing instant,
as if the shadows pulled and the forbidden shoving were
poised to spill over and surge into every corridor. If
I so much is blinked. Then from within those shadows
a new figure emerged. Marble drew back, half flying to
her mouth. Her voice fractured, A thread of recognition caught
inside and it The shape resolved with each hessidence step,
her aunt's face unchanged by decades older only by fear ice,
hollow cheeks drawn but mystically belonging to Marrable's remembered stores.
Her hand reached out, pausing mid air, as if halted
at the edge between two realities. Marrable stumbled forward, voice
breaking you you're here or you trap? Her aunt had bowed,
The movement, uncanny in its slowness. She pointed not at
Marrable but at the book, then slowly at the pencil,
marrable clutch, and the blank line in the catalog where
a final entry had never been made. A rising wind
press at the windows. Loose paper skittered along the floor
toward the desk, as of summoned by intention. The temperature dropped,
the cold intensifying until it dried my eyes and drew tears.
I looked at Farber, What happens if I write the
truth above? Frame about Marrable's aunt about myself. Farber's words
came heavily. Then you end the pattern. He forced an answer,
but he closed the books on both the gun and
the remaining You allow memory to become history. Some part
of the city's forgetting becomes permanent, and some part of
yourself is claimed by what you admit to the ricker.
Marrable shook her head, voice trembling but defiant. I have
to know what happened to Tilda, or I'll be pending
my whole life. I can't let this eat at me
forever and certain I glanced down at the catalog of
the battered half mythic book. All its pages waited with
a strange density of and possed grief and bureaucratic obsession.
I reached for the pencil, My hand hovered. The air
in the room changed. It was as if time buckled,
Every motion slowed, the yellowed lamp light blurring into Ollie Halo's.
For the briefest of moments, I felt as if the
entire building was swaying, as if gravity was of wind
sided by some one outside. A drop of cold rolled
down the back of my neck. The specter that had
been till depressed nearer, her face contorted with hope and
fear and exhaustion. Almost smiling, she nodded once meaningfully. Another voice,
a man's, whispered from nowhere and everywhere at once. It
sounded nothing like the earlier. Wass's accent was odd, wavering
through the vowels. He finished the story. But the person
finishing it is always changed, it murmured. Some stay forever
on the page, some slip away or pay something. I
stead of my breeding and began to write. I tried
to keep my hand from shaking as I filled in
the catalog's final gap. Return recorded forty two Special reference
all prie pending now closed. Staff witnessed Tom Wick Patron,
Leonard Frame Patron Tilda E. Casmir, status complete. Beside me,
Marrable clutched the edge of the desk, her body wrapped
by silence sobs. As my pencil traced the last letter.
The lights above us brightened in a sudden flare, and
then dimmed, flickering but steady. The silence settled, thick but
no longer suffocating, till the step backward, her form fading,
not dissolving, but losing the frantic energy that had mpered
her Here, her lips moved. I thought I heard a
whisper of thank you, and then she was gone. After
a second, even the cold she brought with her began
to subside. The forbidden room breathed easier, as if relieved
of expectation. Farber's eyed water, her cheeks shining with something
more vulnerable than exhaustion. It's over for them, then, she murmured,
so softly I had to lean forward to catch it.
We're left with the remainder. Something in near and plugged
a feeling I'd never even noticed until it vanished. The
back of my neck grew warm. I glanced at the book,
every appending note for forty two, at a new map
beside it, my handwriting the same meat slant, and the
words closed and witnessed. I staggered back, letting the pencil
drop to the blotterer, the lingering dread, the prickling fear
that had accompanied every approach to this mystery. It ebbed
only sannus immense, and plane remained mingled with the numb
as that follows a true conclusion. Marrable, squeeze my hand,
thank you, thank you. Her voice was barely a whisper,
but the gratitude in it was full and bottomless. We
turned as one ready to retreat from the forbidden room.
Fob was stayed behind, running her hand over the batted cover,
as if saying farewell to a long time adversary or companion.
Some rooms forget on purpose, she told us, by way
of benediction. But it's better to carry a true ending
than a thousand pendings in your heart. The whole way
outside had changed. The edge of dread that had marked
our entrance was diminished. Even the feeble light seemed to
flicker with less menace, more fatigue. Marrabel walked ahead, guiding
me through the winding corridors to where the night porter
or stairways ended. We didn't speak. The silence was no
longer crushing, It was just human and deep. When we
emerged on to the ground floor, the air was cooler,
almost fresh. The boars and clutter that blocked old wings
seemed less to barricade now and more remanent to breed
obstacles not warnings. We passed the reading room, its glass
doors shut and secure, and slipped into the staff lounge.
There old Frank was waiting, perched on the edge of
a battered office chair. He looked up, his face more
relief than I'd ever seen. It's done, so, he asked.
I nodded, feeling fatigue onn spable through my body, every nerve,
registering the exhaustion. I defer for days. Frank smiled, a
pale echo of early Grimace. Good. Some things want closure,
others just want to fade. Glad it wasn't me who
had to do it. Marrable slumped at the table, eyes closed,
died you. I ventured, searching for the right question. Did
you ever try to finish it yourself? Frank patted his
note book. I was a coward some nights I marked
interest as lost and transfer and hoped the problem would
solve itself. But the stor is never stopped. Lost, staff
always pending, always cycling back. The objects left behind grow
heavier each year. He crossed the kitchenette, poured himself a
cup of stale coffee. They'll review the records now. It
box up That room made he even lock the access stair.
But truth is, the library always finds our way to
remember what's important to someone. Somewhere. We sat in weary camaraderie.
The burdens we'd lifted, exacting their toll, and yet strangely
I fell cleaner than at any time since it stepped
into North will Lubby's dark embrace. By morning, Marrable hugged
me quickly and took her leave. I'm going home to
let the store settle, she said, for steady, but red
ran by grief. Thank you for letting me know, She esitated,
and then added, if you need to talk about it, honestly,
really talk about it, call me. Frank two packed up
his few personal items. Time for this old fool to
move on. Someone new will take my place, But with
a little luck, the next gap won't be quite so heavy,
he mused. I returned to my regular shift the following week.
The change was subtle but unmistakable. Some blocked rooms had
been re purpose small maintenance notices posted on doors that
previously bore only faded warnings. The microfeast draws seemed to
have reorganized, rofiled the nothing over it, but a ninas
that was unfamiliar nearest staff came and went ignorant of
the undercurrents that still swirled in the building's foundations. The administrators,
when presented with my comple leaded locks in the battered
catalog acknowledged the materials with all the bureaucratic remove of
people handling any routine paperwork. Many old buildings have their secrets,
mister Wick, thank you for your their cataloging. They wrote,
the tone curiously blanned in a wash of minor reforms
and shuffled job assignments. Missus Farbour herself quietly faded one morning,
words bread that she had retired overnight. Her death swept clean,
but for a single line slip of paper in her
looping hand, she'd written, not all can be remembered. There
was no forwarding address, no ceremony. She was simply gone.
The main stacks, though brighter and free from dread, for
now felt immense. In a little enter, I settled into
a new rhythm, submitting locks, dutifully entering the occasional inquiry
about a missing card or an od drawer that refused
to close. But I kept one thing private, a duplicate
of the audio recording from the forbidden room. Late at night,
I'd replay it, listening to the voices of those lost,
and then briefly return the truth had chosen to cement
in the library's memory. One evening, months after a city
inspector arrived to inventory archevil abilities for potential renovations. He
was polite, efficient and entirely incurious. Together we flipped through forms,
never touching the real heart of what had happened. I
watched him walk out clipboard under one arm, never knowing
the names or stores laid to rest in secret. The
final weight of what we'd witness belonged to no one
but us, and the room that could finally breed. Momentarily
free of unfinished stores, the season turned spring, tipping into
early summer. My own routine since solidified, reviewing new returns,
training the occasional replacement, sipping throin coffee in half occupied
staff meetings. There were moments I sense absurdly that some old,
forgotten intelligence still slept in the deepest corners. But the
malice was gone, any uneas belonged only to memory. Now
time went by, weeks, perhaps months. The library spent on
gathering the humdrum, the ordinary, the hopeful end, the aim us.
No new store seemed to press, no shadow of gaps
threatened to open in the catalogs. I believed, truly that
the cycle might have been broken, if only for this generation.
By those entries, those final trembling lines. It was late
approaching closing when I wandered back to the main staff
cage for a final review, and unheard, I moved through
the new order until the faint screech of an uncreased
drawer caught my ear. Drawer thirty nine, its old tape
peeled away. Furious, I slid it open inside. The contents
had been reorganized. No more polaroids, no spattered Indick's cards,
only a single pristine card, its edges crisp and new,
almost radiant in the low lamp light. My hands went down.
I drew out the cart and turned it over. The
handwriting was unmistakable, my own, every cowl of the be
the taut tension of the caden wick. It was dated
to not with to day, but with tomorrow's date. The
field marked book borrowed simply re still missing status pening.
I stared at it, forehad prickling with sweat despite the
coaless of the air conditioning. I turned the card this
way and that, seeking smudged inkor the ghosts of another hand,
But no, it was perfect, precise. Mine footsteps sounded faintly
from a hole as low unhurried, tread, as though some
one was walking the last circus before the building closed
for the night. The overhead lies shifted their soft tremor familiar.
I listened for the murmur of vorses, the spectral shuffle
behind the stacks, but heard on in my own fierce breath.
A cold druft curled along my ankle's insisting, bringing the
scent of cardboard and old dust somewhere deeper. I could
feel the press of anticipation as sent of the library
not quite finished with its most recent story or with me.
My fist closed around the card, I slid the drawer shut,
the mechanism grown in as if protesting its enforced order.
I turned my key, locked it with a click, and
listened as the footsteps retreated into silence. The sky outside
flashed with distant lightning. The stacks seemed to breathe and
out the rhythm of the building, stretching itself into its
next night of quiet, watchful sleep. And as I left
for home, walking out into the humid dark, though appending
card burning coal in my pocket, I knew one thing,
more surely than ever before. The final catalog was never
truly complete, and some stores would always be waiting between
the lines for someone willing to read them, and one
day to finish the record. One last time. I left
the library with the new pending card, burning coal and
unreal in my pocket. Rain shivered down from a sky
the color of worn coins and twilight after taste clon
to the city stonework. On the walk home, each step
fell so lightly out of sync with gravity, as if
the earth assisted my every effort to leave behind the
and finish business of Room thirty nine. I fingered the card,
tracing the need familiar lips of my handwriting one I
hadn't put to the card. The building's facade slipped behind me,
each window darkening as if blinking closed one by one.
Sleeve turned out to be little more than a polite fiction.
I lay in the half light of my apartment, sheets
tangled at my ankles, the old radiator cleaning, how slow
erratic measures. I kept expecting footsteps in the hallway, at
the scrape of foul drawers, but it was only the wind.
When I finally did fade out. I dreamed in catalogs.
Pages shuffled endlessly, voices blurring together, each one reciting pieces
of stores half remembered and then cut off mid sentence.
At breakfast, the card sat propped against the sugar bowl.
I had no memory of placing it there. A handwriting
seemed to warp and shimmer until I blinked and it
was once again only mine. For a moment, I considered
calling Marrable. I pictured her pale, steady gaze, her voice determined,
but row from loss. But what could I say? The
catalogs finish, but not from me in I said, I
pocketed the card and resolved to return to the library
ahead of my shift, reasoning that daylight that activity might
lend some protection. Are at the least perspective. The building
loomed massive and inert as ever, but in the sharp sun,
its spattered marble looked less funereal. Only the crows on
the roof, hunched together like philosophers awake, seemed to know
what the day held. I let myself in with my
staff fab feeling the trembling anticipation that always accompanied forbidden knowledge.
Frank's old notebooks sat and touched inside the staff cage,
a parallel to the card in my pocket. Before starting
any official work, I leave through the pages blank, except
for one new line. I didn't recall the unfinished entry
finds its author. I felt certain he slide coldly into
my gut before I could talk myself out of it.
I walked down to the basement, the corridor stretching and narrowing,
as if refusing to yield its true dimensions. The half
sealed doors and dead bulb alcoves had returned to their
usual arrangement. But when I checked the staff only stare,
I found the forbidden room locked. There was no evidence
the door had ever scraped open, Yet the memory of
that place pressed against my temples above fluorescent lights pined
and guttered. I made a circuit of the public floor,
returning books, checking in with Ethan, who merely grunted acknowledgment.
It all felt ordinary, perfumptory, as if the previous weeks
had been no waking dream. I set up at the
reference desk, car tupped firmly in the breast pocket of
my shirt, and tried to lose myself in routine. It failed.
Each time I locked an overdue item, the word pending
seemed to leap out more than once. I caught myself
writing it, where no such status was warrened. I checked
the staff schedule Marble's name was absent. I called hersel
no answer, but the voicemail picked up immediately. If your
calling about my end is done, I'm safe. Please don't
leave new messages. I hid in, unsettled by her finality.
Just before noon, I wandered into the stacks to check
in the microffish drawers. Nothing unusual, the same scuffed handles,
the same faint library mask. But drawer thirty nine was
jammed halfway open. I pulled it out, only the single
card still waiting, still mark of tomorrow's day. I sounded
very soft, very near, distowed the security of the silence
behind me. I turned. There was nothing, no figure, no movement,
only the rouse and rows of an accustomed order. I
set the car back in the drawer, half expecting it
to resist, but it slid into place without prudence. As
I locked the drawer, my phone vibrated. It was an
e mail from myself, but not from my current address,
rather from the university account I hadn't used in ears.
The subject lined pending the body a single sentence. You
can't archive what's still happening. The rational part of my
mind whispered about Nebuk errors of some clever fishing scheme,
but I knew better. Someone or something wanted to underline
the point. The cycle wasn't broken. My name, my story
had become the latest entry, the unfinished thought. My attempts
at closure had only sparked a new rhythm in hissauceless sequence.
That afternoon, on my break, I found Ethan just inside
the foy. He was standing with his back to the glass,
arms folded, blinking at something only he could see. I
took a chance. Do you remember when you started here?
I asked quietly. Did you ever get involved with appending books?
The missing staff? He turned the movement, slow, deliberate. I
don't answer questions about the records. Nobody does. It's safer
that way, he said, voice gutter, all with warning. You
want advice. If it starts over with you, best write
your own ending. Don't let someone else fall it. As
he walked away, I caught the glint of something on
his security badgets, just below his name in microscopic print,
custodian temporary. I remembered Frank's words, Everyone's just dust in
the stacks, some more than others. The rest of the
shift passed in a state of suspended reality. Each new task.
Shoving books, up dating dona lucks, replacing spentNA carried a
feint impossibility, as though I had already completed these same
actions in another time. I forced myself to focus on
the practical fix. The flickering light in the cage prepless
for new accessions, so at the latest returns. No matter
how I tried, my hand drifted always back to the
drawer in a single perfect card. When the evening librarian
arrived to relieve me, I lingoed at my station, unwilling
to leave, but also unable to construct an excuse for staying. Instead,
I found myself drawn involuntarily toward the history alcove. There,
I studied the city's old blue prints, overlaying them with
the libraries as built diagrams. The room where all this
had culminated to the forbidden room, now didn't exist, not
by any measure. According to the documents. The main building's
foundation simply stopped, untroubled and solid ground. Yet as I
scanned the faint cross sections, a new element drifted to
the surface. Schematic initials scrolled into the lower right corners
in dark blue pencil, consistent through decades of plans, sometimes
m s, sometimes Kael even once c W. I blinked,
rubbing my eyes, e w my own initials in a
script iirily like my natural handwriting, only more formal, more archaic.
Beneath that, written in the finest, most secret margin, the
phrase the final catalog is never closed, only delayed. My
breath became ragged. Someone or something was scripting my participation,
whether or not I'd agreed. An old feeling crept in dread,
mingled with anticipation. I checked my phone. It was only
five forty four, not yet dark, but the building's silence
thickened impulsives me. I pulled my staff keys and slept
down the stairs to the basement again. Half Way along
the arching main hall, I paused. It was the only
shadows that conspired this time. A figure detached itself from
the gloomy of the old fire exit. Astuped familiar silhouette.
It was Missus Farber. She looked older now, thinner eyes
bruised deep into their sockets, but her composure was unbroken.
She held a sheaf of yellowed papers. You shouldn't have
to face this alone, she said, Her voice struck a
note between sympathy and warning. We asked too, much of
people like you always half. But there is something I
want to show you before you act. She motioned for
me to follow her. We passed down a side hall
seldom used any more, and at its end reached a door,
nearly pinted city issue beaige, but with the old steel
plaques stole affixed cattle loogging private. Without a word, Farber
gestured me in sigh. The room was square, plain and
nearly empty, but in its solitary cent await at another
desk twined to the one in the forbidden room. This one, however,
was impossibly clean, knowing blot or engravings, only a simple
glass cover case displaying a Typerton page behind the glass
and not fact no one seemed willing to touch. Farbara
approached and lifted the glass with careful hands. This is
the founding inventory, the first catalog sheet, she explained, When
the library opened, every item, every stuff member, even every
maintenance request was painstakingney locked by hand. I started the page.
Every line was complete save one, the very last, where
a name and staff number sat blank, only pending and
faded incoccupying the cell. She looked at me, and for
the first time I saw tees trapped in the wrinkles
beside her eyes. I never filled it in, Margaretess didn't either.
No one finishes it. Whoever is last, whoever cares most,
ends up as the record's witness, and sometimes more. I
reached for a word, any word, but none came, Faber continued,
voice brittle. I've spent twenty years keeping things open, leaving
the cardum filed so the patter worn't spin tight and
claim anyone whole. But the pending comes for each of
us sooner or later. I wanted to spare you, but
I see now there's no way out except through. She
handed me a key, one o mart smaller than my
own staff fob. This opens room thirty nine till tomorrow.
If you want a future free of this, you've one
chance to write yourself out. Burn the card, assign the entry.
But tell the truth. She blinked, as if something pained
her deeply. But remember what you write were rays becomes
part of the memory of this place. Choose carefully who
you are doing it for, the library, yourself, or the
once who disappear. She brushed past me, a shadow folded
an on itself, drifting toward the exit. At the threshold,
she paused, don't linger Tom Not After midnight, her footsteps
ed into silence, leaving me in the company of ghosts
and decisions. I grouped the key, cold and waitless as
a new hope were final for it. I returned upstairs,
adrenaline rolling through me. My mind circle Farbre's message, burn
the card, do sign the catalog. Both promised consequences, though
which were free and which would bind was murky. Part
of misscreamed to walk away, to stuff the card deep
in a random shelf, found my resignation and vanish into
the city. Another part need it desperately to finish the
unfinished story, not only for the catalog's sake, but for mine.
As the sky bruised into evening and the staff trickled away,
I made my plan. I covered the card, every detail,
every brush of my handwriting, then placed the copy, not
the original, in my pocket. The real pending card I
buried inside an old Referent volume years out of circulation,
hiding it in a crevice where only a deliberate seeker
could ever hoped to find it. I weeded at ten
fifty nine. With the last patron gun and securities rounds locked,
I navigated down to room thirty nine, and locked the
door and slipped inside. The forbidden room felt different this time.
A breath of mild air replaced its former coal dust
and shadow read the shelt, but the oppressive sense of
weighted lessened even about it. A forty two volume on
the desk sat at rest, as if slumbering. I sat
the desk was haunted by previous ghosts, ghostly scratches where
pencils had danced, the smudge of hands too, fold of
longing or fear. I set the duplicate card in the
blotter and drew a match from the old supply drawer below.
The act of striking. The match was ceremonial mechanical. I hesitated,
fire flickered, catching the card's corner. The flames licked higher,
hungry for paper and conclusions. For a second or two,
I felt something shift the ethic and hush inside Room
thirty nine. Crew charged. The temperature plummeted, as if a
cold wind had seeped from the card itself. Smoke rose
in a thin, twisting spiral. I watched the name, then
the word depending dissolved ash. My own reflection wavered in
the death's surface, shuddering with the last glimmer of light,
a pressure built in my skull, the sharp tingle of
wordless voices just out of range, I heard, or imagined,
I heard the voices of Frame, of tilt, Acasmir, of
margaret Ess, layered atop each other. You can finish it,
their echoes urged. But to finish is to close yourself inside.
The last cinder flotted out, and the ear relaxed its grip.
I exhaled, coughing, as the smoke flattened along the ceiling.
I awaited, heart hammering. Would the patterns snap back and
trap me here with the others who never left? Would
burning the card shrewly erase my trace from the library's memory.
The silence spun out. Nothing else happened in no spectral figures,
no rearranging shadows, only the comfort of unhurried emptness. Yet
it was in peace, exactly more, the rest of stillness
and a clearing after the storm, charged with the possibility
of aftershocks. I glance around nothing and no one. I
post back the chair, hands trembling, and stepped out into
the corridor. Lockslid satisfying shot behind me. I checked my pockets,
no card, no token, just the recorder I always carried
I win my way up the stairs and back to
the staff cage. In the final hour before dawn, I
filed the night's audio log, reciting the facts as plainly
as I could. Room thirty nine access catalog called for
tom status previously Penning, now destroyed by author, no other anomalies,
building quiet inventory up to date. With reluctance, I signed off,
submitted the log to the digital archive as the computer's
green chipwalk Winton affirmation. I felt an inexplicable grief. A
door had closed, But whether on danger or on truth,
I couldn't be sure. Did I secure my own release
or simply delay in as his binding. The days that
followed were neither blissful nor cursed. Marrable returned to work
for just one more shift, claiming she only wished to
say goodbye to the stacks. She smiled at me, bright, resilient,
and heartbreakingly imburned. Thank you for what you did, she whispered.
My aunt's voter showed up in an old album at
home for the first time in years. I can remember
her as Hull. She pressed a hand over mine, holding
it a moment longer than convention allowed. Take care of yourself, Tom,
you know more about the gaps in most Frank was
gone the cities. It just staff box up his oddments
in a single afternoon, the battered notebook disappearing into the shuffle.
Farber's retirement went unexplained, our office already commandeered by a
young interim supervisor whose worst nightmare was a misfiled invoice,
not a restless ghost. That week, while shelving returns in
the legal reference corner, I found, wedged between two and
touched volumes, a clip newspaper from nineteen fifty nine, a
tiny article about a missing librarian. The headline read cattle
loger vanishes, only pending card remains. The photo showed a
woman standing beneath the arch of the library's main entrance,
smile tight as weary, margaredess, I presumed on the back
in blue pencil, closure is conditional. After that I carried
a new kind of caution. I answered routine questions, lowered
every regular return, turned out the lights pumptilessly at closing.
But I remained quietly. The building's an official witness, her
role I both resented and honored. It was as if
some knot beneath the library's surface had loosened. Card drawers
opened and closed without complaint. No more coal drafts tangled
at my ankles, No more voices rose in the stacks
after dark. Still, every few nights, my mind circled back
to the catalog in the car had destroying it ended.
The chain freed me from the endless echo of in
complete entreess are merely shifted the burden, sent it into
hibernation until the building's memory chose its next author. One evening,
alone in the empty stacks, I heard a set of
footeps distantly, but no lights flicked to life, and no
door was banged. The building's new supervisor deemed it a
symptom of settling beams, nothing more. Maybe she was right,
But when late on a Friday, I unlocked a forgotten
storage closet off the periodical's room, searching for a misindonation,
sledgeo id sscovered tucked inside a bat of green thermos,
exactly like the one that had sat in the basement
cage on my first night, nestled with them as a
single index card, the edges singed the word depending blurred by,
so my own name just barely ledgible beneath thin layers
of ash. I closed my eyes. I tried to recall
the sound of my own voices had made that last
audio look flat, even methodical. There was no fear in
the recording, only a lowning that had yet to be satisfied.
I checked my watch, one minute to midnight. I stepped
into the main corridor and looked back at the library's
grand clock, now and forever frozen at twelve four. I
remembered Faber's words, memory is a living thing, and sometimes
the best we can do is onward. They absence by
acknowledging it. And so as I switched off the last
light and locked the day's weight behind the steel and outdoors,
I made a silent promise to remember what deserve remembrance,
to permit forgetting where forgiveness was warranted, and to never
ever leave an entry unfinished. Of completion was within human power.
The library, that living palimpsist exhaled as I left, the
sigh rippling through shells and light and sown. There would
always be new enters, new blank cards. Others too would
take my blaze, would trace their own names, and some
inevitability suggests would find themselves pending a hell between stores
half way through the catalog, awaiting the courage or kindness
of the next witness, But for now, for this one cycle,
the final catalog was as close to stillness as a
city shadow memory could ever allow. Outside the city's light,
blinked and beckoned, and that the end. Thank you for listening,
and I will see you in the next one.