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Speaker 1: You never really know a place until you've seen it

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in the unfinished dires, when everything familiar takes on a

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harder edge and there's nobody left but eter echo the

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odd noises down empty holes. That's what I told myself.

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My first night is a new janitor for Saintown, some

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moral hospital. I arrived at ten fifty eight, two minutes

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before my shift. My sneak is squeaking nervously on the

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linoleum outside the service entrance. The double glass dorsis when

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I pushed them, exhaling the sterrell recycled. There of long

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days and long nights lived in the same rooms. I

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barely had time to get my bearings before someone pressed

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ring heavy hand into my nearring of keys, jingleling, not

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a handshake. That was my handover from the dish of

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Supervisor Marsher. She'd been almost apologetic for how little introduction

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she was giving. It's the night, you get used to it,

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she muttered, while handing off a battered clipboard. Her eyes

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never quite met mine, instead darting up and down the

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main corridor toward the distance squeak of an elevator. The

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buckets in supply in the closet by nurse Adam and

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marked the waiting areas. Then work your way through those wings,

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she said, gesturing vaguely at the maze of corridors behind her.

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You keep out of B block after midnight alarm one

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shot off. Otherwise, don't bother with level three. We never

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do at night. Any questions, I wanted to ask a

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dozen things, whils stay out of Bee Block? Why the rush?

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Why did everyone look so exhausted even at the start

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of a shift. Instead, I just shook my head, He'll

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do fine. Nobody wants the shift, but it's steady. With that,

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she was gone. He square's shoulders vanished into an elevator.

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When the door was slid shut, the building fell silent

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in a way that was immediately oppressive. I stood under

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the buzz of the main lights for a moment, but

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even that shallow hum couldn't quite drown out the sense

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of being iyed from just a run the next corner.

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I blinked, adjusted my backpack and forced myself forward into

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this muffled hive of corridors and half lit room's wholly

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mine for the night. The first thing I noticed was

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how close the ceilings felt. The hospital looked normal in

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the day wide atriums busy with fluorescent light. But after

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IROs the hole shrank. The overhead bulbs flickered, each casting

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a narrow circle that didn't quite meet the next. The

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air staled quickly, and even just a few yards away

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the nurse's station blurred into shadow. Marsha had pointed out

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my territory, but I needed to see it for myself.

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I started with the slow, secured as walk through trash

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bins lined the snake of narrow holes, most overflowing with

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the debris of the day. I picked them up, set

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them on my flat beit cart, tried to make mental

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maps of the terns and supply closets. Anxiety sharpened my senses.

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Every distant knock or elevator beat felt too crisp, too

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laud My mop buckets queaked whenever I moved in more

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than one place. A SoLIT corner's harbored not only dust,

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but evidence of age. Few wanted to claim. A stair

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will no longer use A paint peeled in long walnot curls.

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I wouldn't have noticed anything odd except at one spot,

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right behind a fire hose cabinet. The chip pilaster gave

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way to a strange bowl of faded marker and cheap

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spray paint. I moved closer, phone light in my hand.

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Underneath the topmost flake, scrawled and nearly invisible black, was

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a list of letters in numbers m K fourteen slash ten,

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slash thirteen, I'll beat his last six slush twenty d

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T four slash eleven slash twenty two. The most recent

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was just last week a CE seventeen slash four slashed

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twenty three. The edges of the oldest letters were smudged, waterwarped,

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but that last one sharp dark, with only half the

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initials visible. It was as if some one had tried

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to scribe the names and failed. A tug at my

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gut said it was probably nothing, old staff with a

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weird sense of humor, maybe tally marks for late night dares.

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But the longer I looked, the more my mind gnawed

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at the strange coincidence. It looked deliberate and out of place,

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and far too recent for a forgotten corner. Either way,

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the graffiti was quickly eclipsed by the volume of mundane

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tasks that followed. The mess of my first night left

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scant room for idle reflection and bolting stub and trash

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liners cacked with a need and fruit mopping sticky waiting

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room floors, while the late night newstrown from a TV

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with the greenish warp display. Trying not to make eye

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contact with the few blaue patients, he wandered in and

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out of the er. Still, that sense of being absorbd

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slipped through behind the ordinary, specially when I cut through

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the back halls. Time stretched in a way it never

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had during my old job at the high school, and

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I swept by and left behind only a surf, a

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sheen on tile, and the echo of my own footsteps.

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Each time I passed the stairwell, I glanced at the initials,

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telling myself I'd look up the last one, Essie, when

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I got a minute. I didn't know who to ask,

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or even if I wanted to know. I pressed on

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through the small ey I was telling myself that every

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building had a spirit at night, and it just took

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getting used to the Next several nights did little to

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ease the knowing sense that I was part of some

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into half hidden mechanism, one that worked best when no

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one looked too closely. Normal routine built up like sediment

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clocking in at ten fifty five, nodding to the guard

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who never left the security glass, collecting my cart from storage,

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and cycling through the endless mop and bucket rischels. The

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holes were almost clear of staff by one a m.

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On the floors, the only recurring regulars were an orderly

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named Gibril, who always looked like he was half way

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through a nap, and a nurse called Dorian, who had

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the droop of someone who'd given up on ever getting

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a proper night's sleep. Conversations, when they happened, were perfunctory.

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How's the new shift, Dorian would say, barely pausing as

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she wiped her hands on a surgical green apron same

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as the old one. I might joke, even though this

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was nothing like my life before. She wouldn't laugh, only

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nod faintly in drift off, trailing the tart smell of

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hand sanitizer. Gibil sometimes gave me a brief rundown of

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which words to avoid. Don't go past pediatrics to night

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fuse boks, wet again, or don't leave the bin in

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the whole way. They'll skin you. Always quick, always a

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little nervous, as if lingering too long in conversation might

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attract the wrong kind of attention. Nobody ever talked much

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about their own shifts, while the pass of the hospital

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that felt somehow off limits even to night staff. After

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a week, I almost stopped thinking anything about it. Loneliness

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will do that, making you simplify, except what are told

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Gord numbsa that I was doubts brawl and tolerably long.

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Once in a while, though, there was a look passed

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between two noses as a gurney rolled by, or a

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hasty murmur when a certain door would stick and needed

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a badge to open. At first, I choked it up

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to gossip with the compressed secret of hospital life. But

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it felt thicker than that, as if everyone was worried

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about the wrong eyes being present, the wrong ears, overhearing

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the wrong words. The days blurred together, my body acclimated

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to the elastic eye. As of midnight routine. I became

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the background to everyone else's face until my fifth night alone,

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when something finally pierced the surface calm and the night

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shifted irrevocably beneath my feet. It started in the corridor

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that snakes down passed the more arguably the loneliest part

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of any hospital at night, The fullorescent tubes there were

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always the first to flicker and the last to be replaced.

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Shadows bunch behind the empty gurners and shuddered with each

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cold draft that snuck in from under rusted emergency doors.

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I was half way through mopping a sticky corner, one

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that always took extra effort to feel clean, though it

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never quite did. When the light studded, it wasn't just

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a flicker. They dipped, impulsed in time with the compressive

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size from the nearer by ventilator room. I kept moving,

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focused on the swirling grave of dirty water, until something

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tickled at my ears, a whisper thin neither male nor female,

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almost a hiss. The words melted into each other, impossible

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to grab hold of. I paused, listening nothing but my

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own breath and the echo of water slapping linoleum. I

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told myself it was a vent or static from the

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calm system. Still, I found myself moving faster, almost abandoning protocol,

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to make it out of that corridor and into brighter

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bizo wings. Later, as I re stopped to supply closet,

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something crackled from beneath a loose mob handle. A torn

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piece of paper, half slid under a floor buffer blade

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caught my eye. I'd almost let it be God knows.

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The place was full of discarded notes and random forms,

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but the words ghosted across the page in dark, frantic strokes.

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Don't trust them, they know when you see. I ran

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my thumb along the edge, hesitated, then folded the paper

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into my pocket. Rational explanations swarmed, disgruntled, patient bored, orderly,

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even some good playing a prank on apparent shift with access.

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Yet the warning begged me to look at the hospital itself,

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at who or what that they could be. It was

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easier to slip the page and with my sandwich wrappers

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at the end of my shift, and to tell any

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one about it. Night's following that incident stretched out with suspicion.

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I started noticing more than I wanted to Praffiti. At first,

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invisible or ignored revealed itself when I lingered in the

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empty wings, or poke my mop behind rolling equipment. Sharp

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initials behind the baseboard in an abandoned patient room, names

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carved sloppy, fearful on the inside belly of a linen cat,

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even in a closet where I've found the note inside

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the low door, a patch bell two twelve slash eighteen

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b D one slash four. My skin crawled. They won't

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random delays or just kid's jokes. There was a pattern.

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I started making a list on my phone, matching the

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initials and dates where I found them. I noticed, too,

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an odd correlation. The dates kept lining up, not with

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silly staff rituals, but with recent patient deaths or with

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the last days. A certain worker's name was still on

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the duty board in the break room. I tried bringing

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it up a door enduring her break almost as a

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joke to hide my nerves. Hey, you've noticed all the

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weird taggings around the place at night, names and dates,

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I asked. She furrows fingers tightly, gripping a coffee cup.

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Just board kids from the day shift, she said, too quickly.

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She placed her hand of a mind for a moment,

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locking the name I've written on a napkin. Don't worry

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about that, Alex, it's nothing you need to bother with

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her nails dug in even through glove and tissue. Similarly,

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when I asked your bill careful, just a little too casual,

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he gave me a sidelong glare. Just ignore it. Yeah,

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old stuff, place got painted a dozen times. Don't start digging.

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Then he busied himself with a cascade of Phile's conversation

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over the tension grew heavier every night routine maintenance started

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to unravel. Mop pandles bent in my grip. Once a

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bucket of water I had left at the top of

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a stairwell had turned up empty, bone dry just ten

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minutes later, though no one had passed me in the way.

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Whenever I went to mop a particular corridor that should

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have been locked until morning, I'd find a door wide open.

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The crass bar hanging loose equipment squealed, rolled by its

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own weight into corners you couldn't quite see unless you

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looked over at your shoulder. Puddles appeared that couldn't be traced,

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leading to places like the sealed elevator bank near cardiac On,

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under the door to the old surgical theater's ruins no

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one used or spoke about. Paranoia seeped him at every shift.

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I started keeping mental talers. How many times had the

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supply closets lam nutter I entered had a shadow across

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the nurse's pattern glass, even though the staff were all

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account of forro upstairs. Once I thought I saw a reflection,

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not mine, not anyone smiling from behind a closed fire door.

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I refused to look back to convince myself I wasn't

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inventing things. I went to the security desk. I made

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up of reason. Abmin called, said the ben order was

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off in d wing. Could you run footage for yesterday?

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The night guard, a gruff man with a belly the

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size of his desk, crunted and pulled up the night locks.

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Out of boredom. For about two hours after midnight, the

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screen went black. No image is loaded, The times damp vanish.

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Only static shimmered and faded. That's weird, he muttered. Our

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system isn't down, just sometimes the hard drive skips a

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technical thing. Probably, He shrugged, but didn't look me in

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the eye. I left with bile rising in my throat

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and a cold certainty that what I experience wasn't a

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technical glitch, but an absence. Something else ow in desires,

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and no one wanted to admit it. Sometimes I'd look

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at Marsha the day supervised as she came back for

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morning handuff. She looked older every week, her hands trembled

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when counting keys, and she always asked the same questions

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as expecting a different answer, as if wanting me to

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admit something strange before I left for the day. But

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she never said it. None of them did. One morning,

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I trailed her into the admin supply, I rem under

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pretense of returning badge keys. The moment the door shut,

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she stiffened. Don't ask about things you aren't pay to know,

236
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she said, her words clipped, as if she practiced. If

237
00:11:06,960 --> 00:11:10,000
anything happens after midnight, just keep working, don't wander. That's

238
00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:12,600
how people end up in the wrong places. I almost

239
00:11:12,639 --> 00:11:14,840
demanded more, but she left me with silence and the

240
00:11:14,840 --> 00:11:17,799
echo of her warning. Everything tightened until the only thing

241
00:11:17,799 --> 00:11:19,759
that could puncture it was a human voice, willing to

242
00:11:19,759 --> 00:11:22,799
break the unwritten pact. That voice found me a week later,

243
00:11:22,960 --> 00:11:26,279
long before my shifts started, I had arrived early nursing

244
00:11:26,279 --> 00:11:28,960
a vending machine coffee at the back door ireing the

245
00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:31,600
day Janitor let herself in. Her eyes, sunburned, her cover

246
00:11:31,679 --> 00:11:34,840
alls too neat for genuine comfort. She was usually friendly

247
00:11:34,879 --> 00:11:37,679
in passing, but not the kind to linger. This time.

248
00:11:37,799 --> 00:11:40,559
She stopped her hand locking around my wrist. Don't go

249
00:11:40,679 --> 00:11:43,559
below level two at night, she whispered, checking over her shoulder.

250
00:11:44,279 --> 00:11:47,519
Never especially if you hear them whispered or anything. People

251
00:11:47,519 --> 00:11:51,159
who listen, who follow, they disappear, not by accident. My

252
00:11:51,240 --> 00:11:54,679
pulse sudder. What do you mean? I started, trying to

253
00:11:54,720 --> 00:11:57,480
sound incredulous or amused, but she shook her head violently.

254
00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:00,720
I'm not joking, Alex. Every year, if someone new takes

255
00:12:00,720 --> 00:12:03,039
the shift, most of us do. The day was which fast.

256
00:12:03,120 --> 00:12:05,159
Some never come back, Some go my ad. You look

257
00:12:05,200 --> 00:12:07,799
for patterns, forget them, Just show up to your jaw. Leave,

258
00:12:07,919 --> 00:12:10,320
don't try to figure it out. This place change is people.

259
00:12:10,759 --> 00:12:13,879
Her grope loosened. Before I could push further, she turned

260
00:12:13,879 --> 00:12:16,519
and vanished down the hall, her footsteps retreating fast and

261
00:12:16,559 --> 00:12:19,279
acring in the bare concrete. The warning stuck with me.

262
00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:22,039
When I entered the hospital at night, it felt not

263
00:12:22,080 --> 00:12:24,639
like a place of work, but trapped, slowly adjusting its jaws.

264
00:12:25,320 --> 00:12:27,200
By then, the list of initials and dates on my

265
00:12:27,240 --> 00:12:30,399
phone had grown. Others matched recently posted in the morim

266
00:12:30,519 --> 00:12:32,759
notices on the staff bullet. In a quiet passing slip

267
00:12:32,840 --> 00:12:35,919
between lunch menus and shift swaps, I started to cross

268
00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:39,039
reference online local obituaries from the last ten years, news

269
00:12:39,039 --> 00:12:43,879
of missing staff, hushush resignations, unexplained accidents. A pattern emerged.

270
00:12:43,919 --> 00:12:46,480
Areas like the basement archive or the sealed off surgical

271
00:12:46,559 --> 00:12:48,879
wing had more initials, more dates, and more gaps on

272
00:12:48,919 --> 00:12:52,600
shift for rosters immediately after. Some initials belonged to orderly's

273
00:12:52,679 --> 00:12:54,799
or nurses I never met, but whose files popped up

274
00:12:54,840 --> 00:12:56,720
from time to time, and lost of found drawers or

275
00:12:56,759 --> 00:13:00,120
old clipboards. One night, sheepish and shaking, I brave if

276
00:13:00,159 --> 00:13:02,279
the basement wreck was not quite going below level two

277
00:13:02,600 --> 00:13:05,320
not at first half the lights were out, but my

278
00:13:05,399 --> 00:13:08,159
phone's beam was enough. I sifted through a pile of

279
00:13:08,159 --> 00:13:11,039
decades old personnel files in a water warp filing cabinet.

280
00:13:11,559 --> 00:13:13,360
Paper stuck to paper at the ink, bled into tree

281
00:13:13,440 --> 00:13:16,000
rings of Mildy. That's where I found it. A staff

282
00:13:16,039 --> 00:13:18,600
badge photo barely there, name and date, a stin thick

283
00:13:18,600 --> 00:13:21,799
black marker over the plasticoditi four slash eleven slash twenty two,

284
00:13:22,320 --> 00:13:23,960
the same as the name I'd found carve into the

285
00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:26,879
underside of the fourth four break crint table. No one

286
00:13:26,879 --> 00:13:29,840
had mentioned Deety on any current list staff ippressed or

287
00:13:29,919 --> 00:13:32,399
turn STONI and sweared they'd never heard of him. No

288
00:13:32,480 --> 00:13:35,279
one would say where he'd gone. I pocketed the badge,

289
00:13:35,320 --> 00:13:37,840
my hands slick with cold sweat. I could hear every

290
00:13:37,840 --> 00:13:39,879
pulse in my wrist, every take of far off equipment,

291
00:13:40,399 --> 00:13:42,399
fear notes, something else from the back of my mind,

292
00:13:42,399 --> 00:13:44,679
a memory on yidding that I did not want to

293
00:13:44,679 --> 00:13:46,639
test the boundaries of what I ain called the line.

294
00:13:47,080 --> 00:13:49,720
It was the next night that everything bowled over, My

295
00:13:49,840 --> 00:13:52,519
rationalizations crumbled, and whatever lived in the darkness of that

296
00:13:52,559 --> 00:13:56,159
hospital decided I'd paid enough attention. I'd stayed late, hunting

297
00:13:56,200 --> 00:13:58,440
over patient locks in the office supply rooms, quinting at

298
00:13:58,480 --> 00:14:01,759
faint hands, scrolled notes left on top rosters. My shift

299
00:14:01,799 --> 00:14:04,480
was nearly over. Sunrise not far off, but cushions chewed

300
00:14:04,519 --> 00:14:06,480
at me. I woke the wholes lower than usual, keys

301
00:14:06,559 --> 00:14:10,039
dangling carelessly, as though during something to notice me. When

302
00:14:10,039 --> 00:14:12,000
I turned the corner to the fitten stairwall, I saw

303
00:14:12,039 --> 00:14:15,120
the door was unlocked. The hinges creaked, not with age

304
00:14:15,159 --> 00:14:18,279
but use. To my left, the old elevator bank's copper

305
00:14:18,279 --> 00:14:20,480
doors hung slightly, a jaw long out of service. I'd

306
00:14:20,519 --> 00:14:23,799
been told, yet a de morange light flickered inside like

307
00:14:23,840 --> 00:14:27,080
a beacon I remembered Iron's warning, but it was adrenaline

308
00:14:27,200 --> 00:14:29,559
of stubbornness, or the compulsion that comes with knowing a

309
00:14:29,600 --> 00:14:32,399
mystery is too close to turn away from. Step by

310
00:14:32,399 --> 00:14:35,679
slow step, I descended into the underbelly. The air changed

311
00:14:35,720 --> 00:14:38,919
the hospital's order of disinfect and gave way to something damper, metallic,

312
00:14:39,159 --> 00:14:41,879
like work coins or old blood. My fast light beams

313
00:14:41,879 --> 00:14:44,759
scattered against glass, flickered back off warpe sanitch, theater four

314
00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:47,519
nought in use. The lower level was nothing like the

315
00:14:47,559 --> 00:14:51,240
rest of the hospital. Floortas curled at the corners, walls

316
00:14:51,240 --> 00:14:53,519
patched which eats of plywood and strips of peeling paper.

317
00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:57,120
Each step echoed too loud. I heard myself breathing, and

318
00:14:57,200 --> 00:15:00,960
beyond it below steady whisper, not of voise. Hunters layered

319
00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:04,320
overlapping in a coal wine. At first I convinced myself

320
00:15:04,320 --> 00:15:06,519
it was air movement through supplied ducts, or the slow

321
00:15:06,559 --> 00:15:08,919
drip of a busted pipe. But as I turned the

322
00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:11,480
last corner in the corridor, the ambience sound resolved into

323
00:15:11,480 --> 00:15:16,279
something else, desperate pleading words, don't leave, please help. Shap's

324
00:15:16,320 --> 00:15:18,759
blood from the shadows, tall and substantial, almost human, but

325
00:15:18,799 --> 00:15:22,120
stretch on the find I could feel them crowding my periphery.

326
00:15:22,159 --> 00:15:25,039
As I moved the farther I went the louder. The

327
00:15:25,080 --> 00:15:27,919
hush became growing into any scream that pressed itself behind

328
00:15:27,919 --> 00:15:30,480
my eyes. Then, as I reached the center of the

329
00:15:30,480 --> 00:15:33,879
old surgical foy, the temperature dropped to freezing. My flasclets

330
00:15:33,919 --> 00:15:35,960
being caught on something pale at the far wall of face.

331
00:15:36,200 --> 00:15:38,679
Mouth opened in a silent cry, rupling as if under water.

332
00:15:39,320 --> 00:15:41,240
I felt a heavy grip clamp onto my arm, the

333
00:15:41,279 --> 00:15:44,960
sensation of freezing special fingers digging into my flesh. I

334
00:15:44,960 --> 00:15:48,440
stabbered backward, vision blurring at the edges. I screamed, but

335
00:15:48,519 --> 00:15:51,159
my voice vanished under the uproar, thunderous, impossible flood of

336
00:15:51,200 --> 00:15:55,759
voices peeling through my skull. Shadows broke and swam around me. Desperate,

337
00:15:55,840 --> 00:15:58,279
I yank free and ran, stumbling upstairs. Had seemed to

338
00:15:58,320 --> 00:16:00,679
fold in on themselves through doors that lacked and locked

339
00:16:00,679 --> 00:16:03,000
behind me. The last thing I felt was the grasp

340
00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:04,759
of coldness at my back in the whisper. You know

341
00:16:04,840 --> 00:16:08,840
now you've seen then darkness. When next day opened my eyes,

342
00:16:08,919 --> 00:16:11,519
I was somewhere else entirely, and nothing felt safe any more.

343
00:16:12,080 --> 00:16:13,759
I woke on a hard final couch with a draw

344
00:16:13,799 --> 00:16:15,960
stiff patch beneath my cheek and the two bright lights

345
00:16:15,960 --> 00:16:18,759
of the staff lounge starping straight through my eyelids. For

346
00:16:18,799 --> 00:16:21,320
a minute, I just lay still, the emergency blanket prickling

347
00:16:21,320 --> 00:16:23,039
hot on my chest despite the chill in the air,

348
00:16:23,120 --> 00:16:25,759
and let the confusions warm me. I didn't remember walking here.

349
00:16:26,399 --> 00:16:28,559
The last I could recall was the echoing stairwell, the

350
00:16:28,600 --> 00:16:31,120
clutching hand, and the chorus of voices. Then a hole

351
00:16:31,120 --> 00:16:34,080
in memory, as abrupt and perfect as a power outage.

352
00:16:34,080 --> 00:16:37,120
Somebody was standing by the vending machine, half concealed by

353
00:16:37,120 --> 00:16:41,480
the cheap plastic rack of outdated magazines. Doreen. Her back

354
00:16:41,559 --> 00:16:43,399
was turned, but she glanced at me in the reflection

355
00:16:43,440 --> 00:16:45,080
of the window, tight leaped. I was read for more

356
00:16:45,120 --> 00:16:47,919
than lack of sleep. That was some episode, she muttered,

357
00:16:47,960 --> 00:16:50,720
voice flat. You're lucky you didn't break your head on

358
00:16:50,799 --> 00:16:54,039
anything down there. I sat up too fast, dizziness pitching

359
00:16:54,039 --> 00:16:56,840
me sideways. My arm mate. When I rolled up the sleeve,

360
00:16:56,919 --> 00:16:59,480
the skin was bruised in five precise ovals, like someone

361
00:16:59,519 --> 00:17:01,080
with the hand the size of a shovel, and tried

362
00:17:01,080 --> 00:17:04,119
to leave fingerprints I rubbed at them, trying not to shake.

363
00:17:04,839 --> 00:17:07,400
Did did some one carry me? I forced the words

364
00:17:07,400 --> 00:17:10,319
pass a fractured, dry mouth. My voice didn't sound like

365
00:17:10,319 --> 00:17:13,799
it belonged here, higher and thinner than I remembered. Dorin shrugged,

366
00:17:14,400 --> 00:17:16,839
he were out cold in the amin corridor. Gibbil spotted

367
00:17:16,920 --> 00:17:19,640
you said he heard a scream. She glanced down at

368
00:17:19,640 --> 00:17:21,960
her hands, fidgeted with the wedding ring she never wore

369
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:25,160
at work. She didn't look up. You look like you've

370
00:17:25,160 --> 00:17:28,240
seen a ghos. Someone else passed behind the frosted panel

371
00:17:28,279 --> 00:17:30,799
of the lanch door, whispering urgently to a second shadow.

372
00:17:31,400 --> 00:17:33,480
There was a crackle of static from the wall into calm,

373
00:17:33,519 --> 00:17:36,680
then silence. I tried to stand, swaying as the room

374
00:17:36,720 --> 00:17:39,720
double before resolving. I needed to get to the bath room,

375
00:17:39,799 --> 00:17:42,920
but couldn't force myself to leave the light. Dorian's attention

376
00:17:43,039 --> 00:17:45,359
was fixed in the bruises that painted my arm. You

377
00:17:45,440 --> 00:17:49,160
said the stairs right, she whispered words, barely from my ears.

378
00:17:49,640 --> 00:17:52,759
Don't go looking, don't ask any more. My tongue wanted

379
00:17:52,759 --> 00:17:54,480
to ask what, why, how? But the air in the

380
00:17:54,480 --> 00:17:57,319
break room was getting thick. I pushed past her into

381
00:17:57,359 --> 00:17:59,680
the corridor and caught the eyes of Gibber. He was

382
00:17:59,720 --> 00:18:02,519
waiting there, apparently on some invented errand studying me with

383
00:18:02,559 --> 00:18:05,680
careful suspicion. You want me to grab anyone from Edmund,

384
00:18:06,079 --> 00:18:10,119
Shibbil asked, fiddling with his ide lanyard. Nervous, No, I

385
00:18:10,160 --> 00:18:12,960
just I think I fainted. I heard how hollow it sounded,

386
00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:16,839
even as the light humbled are He didn't argue. Behind him,

387
00:18:16,880 --> 00:18:18,759
a pair of voidallies held up a small gurney with

388
00:18:18,799 --> 00:18:21,279
the plastic wrap bundle soaked with crimson. At one corner,

389
00:18:21,920 --> 00:18:24,920
someone's bad night. I watched them avoid the stairwell as

390
00:18:24,920 --> 00:18:26,799
if its dank, as if the dark could crawl out

391
00:18:26,839 --> 00:18:30,799
and wrap around their ankles. My stomach twisted. A nurse

392
00:18:30,799 --> 00:18:33,400
peered through the glass, said something clipped to Doreen, and

393
00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:35,640
the two of them stepped away to conference in low voices,

394
00:18:36,319 --> 00:18:38,559
I evesdropped what I could again three this year. We

395
00:18:38,680 --> 00:18:40,920
need to request it before the hum of conversation slid

396
00:18:40,960 --> 00:18:43,599
to a stop as I approached. No one blamed me

397
00:18:43,599 --> 00:18:46,160
for collapsing, not out loud, but the looks lingered and

398
00:18:46,200 --> 00:18:49,039
then spoken rule was reinforced. If you saw something past midnight,

399
00:18:49,119 --> 00:18:52,279
you kept it to yourself. Anything else was asking for trouble.

400
00:18:52,880 --> 00:18:55,119
I stumbled to the locker room, half to collect myself,

401
00:18:55,319 --> 00:18:58,319
have to run from the scrutiny. Splashing icy water on

402
00:18:58,400 --> 00:19:00,359
my face did little to clear the memories, but the

403
00:19:00,400 --> 00:19:02,720
bruises pulsing on my arm broad it all back anyway.

404
00:19:03,359 --> 00:19:05,200
I tried to prop my phone against the locker to

405
00:19:05,240 --> 00:19:07,680
snap a photo of the marks, but my hands were unsteady.

406
00:19:07,759 --> 00:19:10,799
The image blurry in wrong. I told myself it would fade,

407
00:19:10,839 --> 00:19:13,039
that I'd checked the photos later, but even then, now

408
00:19:13,079 --> 00:19:15,440
ready since i'd find the image corrupted or missing, alfgether.

409
00:19:16,119 --> 00:19:18,440
By afternoon, I managed to grab a few eye was

410
00:19:18,440 --> 00:19:20,599
an easy sleep, full of dreams I couldn't quite shake.

411
00:19:21,200 --> 00:19:24,359
I wondered hospital corridors and pitch dark my stets, echoing

412
00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:28,440
anonymous voices, chanting names and dates. Sometimes in the dream

413
00:19:28,480 --> 00:19:31,200
the faces were close enough to touch skin, waxy miles,

414
00:19:31,240 --> 00:19:34,119
moving soundlessly. One whispered my name in a voice that

415
00:19:34,160 --> 00:19:37,759
whisom was mine. I worked, shivering so violently my teeth ached.

416
00:19:38,480 --> 00:19:41,759
The cycle went on night after night. I returned because

417
00:19:41,839 --> 00:19:44,240
routine is its own kind of armor. An absence would

418
00:19:44,279 --> 00:19:46,640
only mean facing whichevern nightmare would chase me outside the

419
00:19:46,640 --> 00:19:50,960
hospital's walls. Sleep became a trickle ration. Carefully I stopped

420
00:19:50,960 --> 00:19:54,039
trying to engage the others. Each night shift was lonelier

421
00:19:54,079 --> 00:19:56,680
assignment shifted, sticking me with trush runs out in the

422
00:19:56,720 --> 00:19:58,599
tact on palllet of wing where no one else was

423
00:19:58,599 --> 00:20:00,799
ever sent, or endless moll butt by the generator room

424
00:20:00,799 --> 00:20:03,599
where only the old boilers made any sound. People gave

425
00:20:03,640 --> 00:20:07,160
me space like I carried a disease. Emails for management

426
00:20:07,200 --> 00:20:10,200
started arriving curt and formal Please restrict rooming outside of

427
00:20:10,240 --> 00:20:14,200
assigned wings, report all maintenance issues to supervisor, no exceptions,

428
00:20:14,279 --> 00:20:17,079
and after three nights of final warnings, spreading rumors cause

429
00:20:17,119 --> 00:20:20,680
for termination. Rumors had never started, but the implication was clear.

430
00:20:21,440 --> 00:20:24,000
I tried once to catch the whispers on my phone.

431
00:20:24,400 --> 00:20:26,640
I left the recorder running, tucked in a scrub pocket,

432
00:20:26,720 --> 00:20:29,160
hit record when the corridor went quiet, when the light

433
00:20:29,200 --> 00:20:32,400
in the fast air well puddled sickly orange in the floor. Later,

434
00:20:32,559 --> 00:20:34,680
when I played the file back, all I caught was

435
00:20:34,720 --> 00:20:36,799
the thunder of my own heart and a stat key distortion.

436
00:20:36,920 --> 00:20:39,759
Some one weeping in of was warped beyond recognition. Other

437
00:20:39,759 --> 00:20:43,039
recordings came out worse, corrupted by jagged electronic shrieks, the

438
00:20:43,039 --> 00:20:45,119
sound of a wind that never blew inside the buildings,

439
00:20:45,119 --> 00:20:47,960
out at windows. More than once I wondered if I

440
00:20:48,039 --> 00:20:51,640
was losing my mind. But then in empty cafeteria, another

441
00:20:51,720 --> 00:20:54,319
note turned up, folded inside an overturned chair. It read,

442
00:20:54,599 --> 00:20:58,640
is real, They're hungry. The handwriting was careful blockie below

443
00:20:58,680 --> 00:21:01,039
it and old initials and disks roll be dy one

444
00:21:01,039 --> 00:21:03,880
slash four that one match to missing nurse whose locker

445
00:21:03,960 --> 00:21:07,160
still bore a heart shipped sticker faded and intended. I

446
00:21:07,200 --> 00:21:09,359
began to keep all the notes, each one growing a

447
00:21:09,359 --> 00:21:12,000
heavier weight in the pockets of my coveralls. If it

448
00:21:12,039 --> 00:21:14,559
was a jerk or shad madness as persistence, ground dam

449
00:21:14,599 --> 00:21:17,759
whatever hope I had of ignoring it. Desperate to understand,

450
00:21:17,880 --> 00:21:20,119
I forced myself into the nearly forgott knock. I've room

451
00:21:20,119 --> 00:21:23,039
on three and old section wedge between admin officers, always locked,

452
00:21:23,079 --> 00:21:25,640
earth thick with dust and slow decay. I pried the

453
00:21:25,640 --> 00:21:28,039
door open one afternoon after a long shif, using a

454
00:21:28,079 --> 00:21:30,960
key that Marsha habitually forgot to reclaim in her morning haste.

455
00:21:31,480 --> 00:21:35,279
Inside box, files and ledges towered and tilted stacks. The

456
00:21:35,319 --> 00:21:37,559
walls blared with ghost out lines where framed degrees or

457
00:21:37,559 --> 00:21:40,759
certificates had once hung, now long remove. There were a

458
00:21:40,759 --> 00:21:44,559
list of patient names, coded diagnoses, staff rosters from decades past.

459
00:21:45,279 --> 00:21:47,559
I found a thick, leather bound volume in a milk crate.

460
00:21:47,599 --> 00:21:50,200
At the back, the paper was warped and sticky at

461
00:21:50,240 --> 00:21:54,240
the edges Incidents nineteen eighty two, two thousand two. I

462
00:21:54,279 --> 00:21:57,880
thumbed through it slower first, then faster, hands trembling. The

463
00:21:58,039 --> 00:22:01,039
entries were methodical, clinical, but the content chill me nerors

464
00:22:01,079 --> 00:22:03,519
I'll be missing after over night shift. Last seen in

465
00:22:03,599 --> 00:22:07,240
theater corridor, no trace, orderly dity, founds oriented in subbasement,

466
00:22:07,279 --> 00:22:10,400
committed suicide four days later. Dozens of entries each early.

467
00:22:10,480 --> 00:22:12,880
Matter of fact, every name one I'd seen scolled somewhere

468
00:22:12,880 --> 00:22:16,319
in graffiti, which inside the back cover, almost invisible against

469
00:22:16,359 --> 00:22:18,920
the binding, was a memo un faded hospital let ahead

470
00:22:19,079 --> 00:22:21,319
all night staff never work alone in B block or

471
00:22:21,359 --> 00:22:24,839
lower theaters after midnight. Management is aware. Report incidents only

472
00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:29,279
to admin, no date, no signature. My heart hammered the

473
00:22:29,319 --> 00:22:32,880
next folder. I rifled through health staff evaluations, termination paperwork

474
00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:35,640
typed with the same phrases over and over, failure to just,

475
00:22:35,799 --> 00:22:39,559
unable to respect boundaries, disruptive to t morrel, always dated

476
00:22:39,559 --> 00:22:42,480
within days of the incidents below. It all tuck flat

477
00:22:42,519 --> 00:22:45,240
between far di viders lay an envelope marked personal return

478
00:22:45,279 --> 00:22:49,279
to Irene. It wasn't sealed. I hesitated, then slid out,

479
00:22:49,279 --> 00:22:52,200
a batted polaroid. Young Irene twenty years younger at least,

480
00:22:52,279 --> 00:22:54,640
in her blue coveralls, serious and and smiling, next to

481
00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:56,359
a man whose name I didn't know except for the

482
00:22:56,400 --> 00:22:59,039
scribbled initials on his badge m K fourteen slash ten

483
00:22:59,119 --> 00:23:01,880
slash thirteen, one of the oldest names from the wall.

484
00:23:02,400 --> 00:23:04,440
Foot tip scuffed behind me, and I nearly dropped the

485
00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:07,640
lot iron herself stepped into the thin band of hallway light,

486
00:23:07,759 --> 00:23:09,920
stopping at the doorway in looking for the first time,

487
00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:13,079
truly haunted. She shut the door with a careful thought.

488
00:23:13,799 --> 00:23:16,359
You weren't supposed to see those, she said, But she

489
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:18,599
didn't sound angry, more like she was treading a raise

490
00:23:18,599 --> 00:23:21,799
of thin hope. I handed her the poor lord. Why

491
00:23:21,839 --> 00:23:24,200
are the same names on everything? What happened to them?

492
00:23:24,759 --> 00:23:26,880
Irene's hand shook as she tucked the photo back into

493
00:23:26,880 --> 00:23:30,200
her breast pocket. It's not just accidents. You know that now,

494
00:23:30,920 --> 00:23:34,599
I weeded. She gripped the edge of the battered desk, knuckled, blanched,

495
00:23:34,599 --> 00:23:37,799
ghost white. This play seats people, not every one, just

496
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:39,799
the ones who start to notice. When I first took

497
00:23:39,839 --> 00:23:41,759
the night's shift, I thought it was just old stores,

498
00:23:41,799 --> 00:23:43,720
the way you primed the new hires. But they're true.

499
00:23:43,799 --> 00:23:45,960
This building wasn't always a hospital. It was built in

500
00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:47,960
the stone of an old po house, then turned into

501
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:50,559
a teebee sanatorium. Too many a marked graves, too many

502
00:23:50,599 --> 00:23:53,720
who died alone the walls. Remember the kiway hunger. Her

503
00:23:53,759 --> 00:23:57,160
lips twisted, searching for a word that wouldn't come. I

504
00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:00,160
almost didn't make it, she said finally, vorge raw I

505
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:01,880
saw more than I should have. I only got away

506
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:04,440
because she tapped the polaroid, because someone else took my place.

507
00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:06,839
They say it's random luck, but it's not. Every time

508
00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:09,279
someone has taken play sleeps for a while, as long

509
00:24:09,319 --> 00:24:11,720
as no one else starts digging. What can I do,

510
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:14,640
I asked, helpless, anger and fear of vining inside me.

511
00:24:15,279 --> 00:24:19,440
One people leave, She shook her head grimly. Nobody listens

512
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:22,160
until it's too late. By then it's inside you. She

513
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:25,359
stepped close, her face inches from mine. Forget what you saw,

514
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:27,680
leave to night before it knows your name. Some people

515
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:29,720
get out if they run, most don't. I go Now

516
00:24:29,839 --> 00:24:32,319
if I were you, for a moment, I considered it.

517
00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:36,039
Every animal instinct screamed to flee, but my blood thuttered

518
00:24:36,039 --> 00:24:39,079
with a heavier obligation. I couldn't forget the voices, the

519
00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:41,799
desperate ones in the darkness, not the ones that wanted

520
00:24:41,799 --> 00:24:44,640
to consume. BUTO was begging to be remembered, every note,

521
00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:46,519
every carving hitten, be hands that had tried to at

522
00:24:46,559 --> 00:24:50,279
last the dark. Irene turned to go, pausing at the doorway.

523
00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:52,960
Don't go back down there. The next person at once

524
00:24:53,039 --> 00:24:55,920
might be you. Please. Then she was gone, a clop

525
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:58,799
of her step, swallowed by the archavel dast I stood

526
00:24:58,799 --> 00:25:02,359
in the sudden silence mind. I could quit, walk out

527
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:05,319
into the prodomed blue and promise myself nothing followed. Or

528
00:25:05,319 --> 00:25:07,400
I could try to do something, anything for the invisible,

529
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:09,680
pleading rennants in the walls and deep under the tile.

530
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:13,599
Instead of leaving, I gathered everything, the file of personnel records,

531
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:16,039
the notes i'd hoarded, copied my own list of initials

532
00:25:16,039 --> 00:25:19,440
and dates. I photographed the graffiti wherever I could find it,

533
00:25:19,559 --> 00:25:22,799
compiling a private catalog. Then I spent three hours in

534
00:25:22,839 --> 00:25:25,480
a fever of panic, emailing everything to an encrypted back up,

535
00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:28,519
wrouting it through burner accounts. If I didn't make it out,

536
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:31,839
someone would have proof. I half believed nothing would transmit,

537
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:33,759
that the files would vanish into static, the way my

538
00:25:33,799 --> 00:25:37,400
recordings had, But the scent folder stayed blinking green. That night,

539
00:25:37,559 --> 00:25:39,599
when I walked in for my final shift, the hospital

540
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,839
felt different, thicker, the lights already dull, my badge stuttering

541
00:25:42,839 --> 00:25:45,240
when I swiped through the main door. The other staff

542
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:48,720
were shadows, their faces turned away. Marsha avoided my eyes

543
00:25:48,759 --> 00:25:51,720
as she handed over the keys during deviate to night,

544
00:25:51,839 --> 00:25:53,680
she said, but her voice broke at the end, as

545
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:55,200
if she feared the words might be the last she

546
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:58,599
ever said to me. I started my routine with mechanical precision,

547
00:25:58,680 --> 00:26:02,279
cleaning toilets and ying bin swaving fingerprints from glass doors,

548
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:05,000
but I kept my eyes open for the hidden cameras

549
00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:07,839
in my pocket file zipped in my bag, I texted

550
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:09,799
the last of the evidence to the local union, rep

551
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:13,079
using the break room's half dead desktop. When midnight ticked

552
00:26:13,079 --> 00:26:15,319
over and the holes fell silent, I made my decision.

553
00:26:15,759 --> 00:26:18,960
Whatever Irene had warned, I couldn't stop, not when the

554
00:26:19,039 --> 00:26:21,160
names in the walls burned in my memory, not when

555
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:23,920
the dark places under the tile hammed with forces. I

556
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:25,839
locked up my cleaning cart in the wrong closet so

557
00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:28,240
it would not be found by morning, pocketed a spare badge,

558
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:30,599
and headed for the forbidden stairwell for the last time.

559
00:26:31,119 --> 00:26:34,160
The elevator bank was colder than usual. Night air pulled

560
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:36,759
round my shoes. The cold, slick and oily leaking from

561
00:26:36,759 --> 00:26:39,279
the stairwell like a thing alive. I pressed my palm

562
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:41,720
to the chipped wall, felt it vibrating, not with machinery,

563
00:26:41,759 --> 00:26:45,680
but with something deeper, like a heartbeat. Understone. Lights overhead

564
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:48,359
blinked once twice, then stared into a sickly but soul

565
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:51,920
white nobody else in the wing. With effort, I forced

566
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:54,960
my feet down the steps. Every tread groaned with my weight.

567
00:26:55,720 --> 00:26:57,680
As I passed the third landing, the air grew thick.

568
00:26:57,759 --> 00:26:59,559
My own breath fogged out in front of my face.

569
00:26:59,599 --> 00:27:02,319
The chill lighting straight to bone. The bottom corridor was

570
00:27:02,359 --> 00:27:05,480
black as a crypt. My flasklight guttered, flickered, then failed,

571
00:27:05,519 --> 00:27:07,559
leaving only the twitching glow of the knot a new sign,

572
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:10,759
illuminating nothing but the knoll doorway to theater four. That's

573
00:27:10,759 --> 00:27:13,200
when the whispering started up, with new purpose, different this time,

574
00:27:13,839 --> 00:27:17,200
not random, knows names, particular and hungry. Alex Alex Alex.

575
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:20,319
I ran a trembling hand against my chest, feeling the

576
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:22,920
matettu of my heart. I wanted to turn, to race

577
00:27:22,960 --> 00:27:26,200
back up, to pretend nothing had happened. Instead, driven by

578
00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:28,599
compulsion or dem I cross the threshold into the condemned theater.

579
00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:33,200
Inside the world warped. The room's vast old dome, pressed down,

580
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:36,720
darker for being almost familiar, ghostly shaped surfaced at the

581
00:27:36,799 --> 00:27:39,880
edge of the circle. Orderlies with washed out faces, nurses

582
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:42,440
with badge four doors for eyes, patients in old hospital

583
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:44,960
gowns still clutching their chests, hands pressed to wounds that

584
00:27:45,039 --> 00:27:48,440
never healed. The numbers grew crowding closer, until the air

585
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:52,160
thickened with electricity and soarer. The voices resolved to some pleading,

586
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:55,200
others bitter, some shrieking out broken bargains. Help us free

587
00:27:55,279 --> 00:27:57,279
us one more, just one more, and will be allowed

588
00:27:57,319 --> 00:28:00,640
to go. I crumpled knee, slamming the sticky tipe, one

589
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:03,559
hand out to fend off the darkness. Then a pressure,

590
00:28:03,640 --> 00:28:07,079
physical as any hand, seize my shoulder. Ye see us

591
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:09,720
something hiss, cold breath pouring through my urn, into my skull.

592
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:12,960
You must stay, It's the way ye know. Now go

593
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:16,519
See hands prowed at my skin, pulling, insistent, My mouth

594
00:28:16,559 --> 00:28:20,559
filled with ice. Behind me, footsteps reel, solid, rapid, A

595
00:28:20,559 --> 00:28:22,599
figure bursten with a wild edge to her voice. Get

596
00:28:22,599 --> 00:28:25,519
away from him. It was Irene. I could see the

597
00:28:25,599 --> 00:28:27,319
edge of her blue cover rolls in the sickly light,

598
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:30,119
see the flush of something fierce in her eyes. She

599
00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:33,680
reached dan browed my arm, Nor take me. I've seen enough.

600
00:28:33,759 --> 00:28:36,960
Leave him alone. A dozen voices wailed, the coarse, shuddering

601
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:40,720
with rage. The cold tightened, then broke. Irene shoved me backward,

602
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:43,119
sending me sprawl into the doors of silent lightning lit

603
00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:45,400
up the room. The last I saw before the dark

604
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:48,039
rose again was ironed, mouth set brave or terrified her

605
00:28:48,039 --> 00:28:50,640
both as the shape surged over her, swallowing her in

606
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:53,400
gray light. Hand shoved me hard and a tumble through

607
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:56,279
the doors, the world tilting the corridor, swallowing me whole.

608
00:28:56,880 --> 00:28:59,839
My last impression was of her standing defiant, then gone,

609
00:29:00,039 --> 00:29:03,240
and the repeated echoing message pounding inside my skull. Remember us,

610
00:29:03,279 --> 00:29:06,240
Remember I walked sprawled on the asphalt outside the hospital

611
00:29:06,279 --> 00:29:08,039
under a sky cart, on the edge of dawn, every

612
00:29:08,119 --> 00:29:11,759
muscle shaking, bruised to my core. Police lights flickered reblue

613
00:29:11,759 --> 00:29:14,920
and the smoky glass Someone talked into a radio face

614
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:18,559
ashen I staggered, aupright, reeling as medics tried to shepherd

615
00:29:18,559 --> 00:29:21,240
me toward an ambulance. My bag of files was half

616
00:29:21,279 --> 00:29:23,039
open at my feet, print out spilling out under the

617
00:29:23,039 --> 00:29:27,039
head lights. The hospital loomed all its windows back as

618
00:29:27,039 --> 00:29:29,200
they bundled me away. I saw men in hard hats

619
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:32,119
setting up barriers, official looking people arguing with news crews,

620
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:35,759
evidence bags filled with battered folders. The world at last

621
00:29:35,799 --> 00:29:37,400
had come to take a hard look at Saint Ans

622
00:29:37,359 --> 00:29:40,079
some memorial. I glanced back once to the spot where

623
00:29:40,079 --> 00:29:42,279
I had first entered, where the night air still shimmered,

624
00:29:42,279 --> 00:29:43,960
and caught a glimpse of a pale faced frimed by

625
00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:47,200
blue coverls between the blinds. It smiled, sad and proud

626
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:50,119
and resigned. I was alive outside it, but I had

627
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:52,880
left something vital behind in those endless hundry Holsen would

628
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:54,559
have ever followed me out. I couldn't shake the ghost

629
00:29:54,559 --> 00:29:57,200
of Irene's sacrifice, or the whispered names that would echo

630
00:29:57,240 --> 00:30:00,000
through every silence the rest of my days. Light press

631
00:30:00,039 --> 00:30:02,640
against my eyes like a cruel interrogator, sharp and hot,

632
00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:05,279
in a soft flush beneath my brows. The scent of

633
00:30:05,279 --> 00:30:08,559
antiseptic and melted asshot filled my nose, first strange, then familiar,

634
00:30:08,599 --> 00:30:11,799
then revolting. Somewhere voices argued in a strained tone that

635
00:30:11,839 --> 00:30:13,480
seemed to buzz at the edges of my hearing, and

636
00:30:13,519 --> 00:30:16,519
the were of a generators pulled out in endless, jittering drone.

637
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:19,240
There was no sense of peace in waking, no comfort

638
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:22,119
that the previous eros had been a dream, something painful

639
00:30:22,119 --> 00:30:23,680
had been torn out of me and tossed into the

640
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:26,920
morning air. I sat up slowly, tentatively in the world

641
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:28,960
world and pale streaks of blue and orange, the smeared

642
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,160
colors of police light bouncing off the battered sign that

643
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:34,799
reed Saint ants. Some memorial visitors welcome. One of the paramedics,

644
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:36,880
a young man with shell shocked eyes and a blanket

645
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:40,200
throne haphazardly over his shoulders glanced over, startled to see

646
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:43,079
me moving. You should lie back, sir, he said, his

647
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:46,200
voice attired monotone of someone who'd forgotten how to care exactly,

648
00:30:46,359 --> 00:30:49,480
but still clung to the scripts. We're doing, ah intake,

649
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:52,359
medics'll check you in a sack. I shook my head,

650
00:30:52,599 --> 00:30:54,160
feeling the ache and my joints in the weight of

651
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:57,799
everything I hadn't done. No I have to I didn't

652
00:30:57,799 --> 00:31:01,839
know what I had to do. One scream, flee into

653
00:31:01,839 --> 00:31:05,039
the sunrise and hope nothing followed. Some response is never

654
00:31:05,079 --> 00:31:08,319
fully formed. I only managed to ask, did it? Did

655
00:31:08,359 --> 00:31:10,759
you find any one else? He gave me a look

656
00:31:10,799 --> 00:31:12,880
as if he thought I might bowlt into traffic, then

657
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:16,079
shook his head wearily. Just your place was empty, like

658
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:18,799
nobody's worked the graveyard in ears. But a neighver reported,

659
00:31:18,799 --> 00:31:21,039
seeing you come out, stumbling like he been shot, said

660
00:31:21,079 --> 00:31:24,079
you collapse here on the curb. That true. I tried

661
00:31:24,079 --> 00:31:26,480
to wol my voice steady. There was some one else,

662
00:31:26,519 --> 00:31:30,000
a woman iron she I saw her again in memory,

663
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:32,519
standing in the grip of those shadows, brave and doomed.

664
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:35,839
She worked here with me. The Middeck's fram pulled his

665
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:39,160
face into a deeper mask of concern. He jotted a note,

666
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:42,640
if she's in there, they'll find her. Another responder, in

667
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,039
a yellow wed aproof jacket, was shining a flashlight into

668
00:31:45,039 --> 00:31:47,960
the empty lobby through the thick glass. The entrance looked

669
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:50,079
the same as always, a sickly green glow, a potted

670
00:31:50,079 --> 00:31:52,319
tree dying in silence, the rob of mat culling by

671
00:31:52,319 --> 00:31:54,240
the door. But behind it, I could sense the air,

672
00:31:54,319 --> 00:31:56,160
see awareness of those who had not yet learned to

673
00:31:56,160 --> 00:31:59,119
shield themselves from what waited in the dark. Police moved

674
00:31:59,119 --> 00:32:02,960
nervously around the press. One detective, more rumpled than the rest,

675
00:32:03,079 --> 00:32:05,400
not next to my bag and began methodically removing its

676
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:08,359
battered contents, my keys, my phone, sheaves of notes, the

677
00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:10,880
envelope of photos, even the half melted sand which I'd

678
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:13,880
carried all night. He pulled on evidence gloves and leafed

679
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:15,880
through them one at a time. He was at least

680
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:18,359
ten years my senior, hollow eyed and weary, but with

681
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:20,720
the air of someone determined to ring sins from the senseless.

682
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:24,920
He met my gaze. You are alex right, I nodded,

683
00:32:25,079 --> 00:32:28,079
or tried to the muscles in my neck spasmd looks

684
00:32:28,119 --> 00:32:30,000
like you've been TRUELL will need you to come inside

685
00:32:30,039 --> 00:32:32,440
for a statement when you feel steady. But he held

686
00:32:32,519 --> 00:32:35,039
up his hand before I could interrupt. A first things first,

687
00:32:35,079 --> 00:32:37,960
we you involved in whatever happened in there, arsin burglary,

688
00:32:38,039 --> 00:32:40,720
anything that could explain what we're dealing with. The question

689
00:32:40,839 --> 00:32:43,519
surprised me. Part of me wanted to laugh. What would

690
00:32:43,519 --> 00:32:45,160
they do if I told them the truth that Saint

691
00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:47,559
Ansome Memorial Hospital was a predator, that it chose its

692
00:32:47,599 --> 00:32:49,519
prey and hunted. When the corridors emptied and no one

693
00:32:49,559 --> 00:32:53,279
remembered the names on the walls, lock me up, sedate meat. Maybe.

694
00:32:53,799 --> 00:32:55,920
I looked at my hands, noticing for the first time

695
00:32:55,920 --> 00:32:57,960
that my fingers were bruised, and that there was blood

696
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:00,799
under my nails, not mine, but someone's, dark and sticky.

697
00:33:01,440 --> 00:33:04,319
I tucked my hands under the blanket. I just worked here.

698
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,680
They tried to get help. The detective tilted his head quietly,

699
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:09,680
studying me, and for a moment I saw the ghost

700
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:12,279
of skepticism in his face give way to weary resignation.

701
00:33:12,880 --> 00:33:16,400
He did not pursue the accusation. Look, you're obviously shaken.

702
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:19,200
We got the tip about strange things in this building, anonymous,

703
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:22,200
He melt with files attached staff desks, missing persons, or

704
00:33:22,240 --> 00:33:24,440
a schiff log, even a photo of that badge. Duty

705
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:28,440
know anything about him? I swallowed hard. He worked nights

706
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:31,519
a long time ago. He he vanished an irene. I

707
00:33:31,559 --> 00:33:34,880
nodded again. It was all I could manage. He picked

708
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:37,559
up the staff badge had found, scrutinizing the worn writing,

709
00:33:38,119 --> 00:33:40,720
we'll run a search. If anything in your file's pans out,

710
00:33:40,839 --> 00:33:44,240
we'll want to talk again. More officers trickled in. It

711
00:33:44,359 --> 00:33:46,839
exloaded me on to a stretcher before I could object further,

712
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:50,039
insisting I let them check my injuries. The ordeal of

713
00:33:50,079 --> 00:33:53,519
answering questions stretched friars, name job, how long I'd been

714
00:33:53,519 --> 00:33:56,079
a saint, down some whether I'd taken drugs, whether I'd

715
00:33:56,079 --> 00:33:58,119
seen any one else? Did I know what happened to

716
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:01,039
the missing staff? Why had I emailed? Were complaints? Weeks before?

717
00:34:01,599 --> 00:34:04,319
I answered as honestly as I dared, Still steering around

718
00:34:04,359 --> 00:34:07,319
the edges of the unspeakable. Eventually they'll let me go.

719
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:10,159
No hospital bed on earth felt any safer. I wrote

720
00:34:10,199 --> 00:34:12,440
down everything in block capital letters as soon as I

721
00:34:12,519 --> 00:34:16,400
was able. The names for messages irene, sacrifice. I tried

722
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:18,719
to describe the theater, the way, the darkness pulse, but

723
00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:21,559
on paper it all read like feverish invention rather than memory.

724
00:34:22,199 --> 00:34:24,840
They closed the hospital that same day, rolling out battered

725
00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:28,719
fencing and plastic barriers, marking it closed for renovations. News

726
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:32,079
fans came, then left. My witness statement was taken, but

727
00:34:32,119 --> 00:34:34,920
not televised. The files I sent to the media turned

728
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:37,159
up in a few sketchy blog post before being scruped.

729
00:34:37,719 --> 00:34:40,079
Two days later. An ector left me a voicemail, we

730
00:34:40,119 --> 00:34:43,360
won't run this. There's nothing verifiable, no evidence of any crimes.

731
00:34:44,079 --> 00:34:47,159
No one contacted me above Irene. The files didn't list

732
00:34:47,159 --> 00:34:49,599
her staff, not in any official capacity for the past

733
00:34:49,639 --> 00:34:53,039
ten years. As far as Peril was concerned, she designed

734
00:34:53,039 --> 00:34:55,760
long ago. Every attempt I made to get follow up

735
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:58,320
from local papers, the Union, even the city's cold case

736
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:00,960
squad hit the same more plausible deny ability in sincere

737
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:04,199
regret or just empty silence. The memory of what I'd

738
00:35:04,199 --> 00:35:06,559
lived through pressed at the boundaries of my mind, eroding

739
00:35:06,559 --> 00:35:09,320
what little resolve I had left. I moved into a

740
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:12,400
cramped basement rental on the far edge of town. Each night,

741
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:14,360
I double and triple locked the doors and plugged my

742
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:17,119
phone and lay awake long after midnight, staring at the

743
00:35:17,119 --> 00:35:19,519
swirling plaster on the ceiling and praying for dream asleep.

744
00:35:20,039 --> 00:35:24,199
The dreams, when they came, were vile and recursive. Hospital corridors,

745
00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:26,719
every one the same length, looping endlessly back to their

746
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:30,119
own beginnings. Doors sagged open, each one whispering my name,

747
00:35:30,199 --> 00:35:33,199
hinting at ships moving just out of sight. Irene was

748
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:35,119
always there at the end, caught in the spill of

749
00:35:35,159 --> 00:35:38,360
orange light from a single working bulb. Sometimes she wept,

750
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:40,360
sometimes she glared at me, as if I had betrayed her.

751
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:43,400
Always her voice ended in a chorus not her own.

752
00:35:43,639 --> 00:35:46,559
Remember us. I tried to hold down a new job,

753
00:35:46,599 --> 00:35:49,719
factory custodial, supermarket stockroom, But each time the pattern of

754
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:52,119
night shift returned, I found myself flinching at the sound

755
00:35:52,159 --> 00:35:55,360
of soft voices on empty floors, the smell of meldew,

756
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:57,320
the sharp town of cleaner, even the hum of ancient

757
00:35:57,360 --> 00:35:59,760
fluorescent tubes. All it could send me kreening into a

758
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:02,559
pas nicka could not shake. I told myself it would

759
00:36:02,559 --> 00:36:05,320
pass in time. It never did. On the fear, I

760
00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:08,480
whispered by the fear on me several weeks after my

761
00:36:08,559 --> 00:36:10,840
release from Saint Hansem, a letter arrived at the drop

762
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:13,840
books I'd rented when paranoia was at its worst. It

763
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:15,800
was brown with age stamp with a postmark for a

764
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:18,880
town I'd never heard of, inside a single slip of

765
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:21,679
blue paper, creased at the corners. It was my old

766
00:36:21,679 --> 00:36:24,199
staff badge, the one i'd lost the night Irene vanished

767
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:27,639
my name. Beneath the mortary polished plastic glimmerd and failed

768
00:36:27,679 --> 00:36:30,880
sunlight from the basement window. Beneath it was a noting, careful,

769
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:34,800
leaping handwriting I recognized immediately, remember us. I sat there

770
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:37,239
for a long time, trace of rouzabetchall creeping up my arms.

771
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:40,440
I flipped the badge in my hand. On the reverse

772
00:36:40,519 --> 00:36:42,599
was a set of initials I hadn't noticed before Enka

773
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:45,760
dtty ILB and written lust and lowest I AH two

774
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:49,480
slush five. My hands began to shake. I jammed the

775
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:51,320
badge into the back of a kitchen drawer and yanked

776
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:53,639
it shut so hard that silver were jangled against the wood.

777
00:36:54,159 --> 00:36:56,719
The note fluttered to the floor, landing near my bare toes.

778
00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:00,000
For a moment I considered burning both, purging any connect

779
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:03,440
to that place. The thought festered, never breaking the surface.

780
00:37:04,199 --> 00:37:07,079
I was afraid not of the building, now boarded and empty,

781
00:37:07,119 --> 00:37:09,199
but of the invitation. It still whispered in the dark,

782
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:13,760
an unfinished bargain. The ladder haunted me. The badge felt radioactive.

783
00:37:14,400 --> 00:37:16,239
Every day I opened the drawer to grab a fork,

784
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:19,000
I half expected to see the initials had multiplied. I

785
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:22,239
didn't let myself look too closely or too long. I

786
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:24,199
tried to move on, to make routine my cage to

787
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:26,960
live in the bland patterns of quiet work after shift hamlets.

788
00:37:27,039 --> 00:37:28,960
An old sitcomer runs, but the chill of Saint nan

789
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:32,199
Son's followed me. Then is a shadow. Twice I found

790
00:37:32,199 --> 00:37:35,159
myself sleep walking, shoe scofferer from crossing the crack's eye

791
00:37:35,159 --> 00:37:38,079
while in front of the old hospital gates. Neighbors stared

792
00:37:38,079 --> 00:37:40,800
as I stumbled, eyes blank, toward the keep out signs,

793
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:43,199
pausing always at the threshold where electric light never quite

794
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:45,880
held the dark at bay. Both times I woke with

795
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:48,239
my wounded arm thwarbing, and the sense that voice, quiet

796
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:51,119
and coal was urging me. On those days blurred with

797
00:37:51,159 --> 00:37:54,239
the kind of exhausted horror. I stopped answering my phone

798
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:58,639
friend's messages dried up. The Union never called back. He

799
00:37:58,639 --> 00:38:00,800
even my mother's voicemails, her jet or checking in her

800
00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:04,039
distinconcern began to sound hollow, like a transmission from another world.

801
00:38:04,639 --> 00:38:06,840
I wanted to run, to start fresh in a new city,

802
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:09,639
even as I knew something would only follow. It wasn't

803
00:38:09,639 --> 00:38:12,400
the hospital's location that method. It was memory, or warning,

804
00:38:12,559 --> 00:38:14,840
or a kind of curse had inherited by knowing too much.

805
00:38:15,559 --> 00:38:17,840
What truly undid me was the sense that my part

806
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:20,199
in it could never really be over, that I hadn't

807
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:22,400
escaped so much as been spared for now a witness

808
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:25,760
and a vessel. Sometimes in the dull crackle of bad wiring,

809
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:29,000
I hear them again, soft and distinct voices swelling out

810
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:31,280
of static as the minihan creeps past one a m.

811
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:36,119
Sometimes I answer, sometimes I had. But one night, a

812
00:38:36,159 --> 00:38:38,400
month or so after the badge arrived, I couldn't sleep.

813
00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:42,039
I got up, pacing my tiny kitchen hands restless. There

814
00:38:42,079 --> 00:38:44,079
was an old plastic radio in a corner, one of

815
00:38:44,079 --> 00:38:46,679
those hand cracked models that barely picked up anything postatic

816
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:50,280
and the evangelical an channel on impulse. I twisted the knob,

817
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:53,000
the antenna cracked, the radio bust to life, and there

818
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:55,079
in between the hiss and pop, I heard it a voice,

819
00:38:55,159 --> 00:38:57,920
not quite male, not quite female, whispering a string of names,

820
00:38:58,519 --> 00:39:03,039
first softly, then louder M, gay, L, B, D T,

821
00:39:04,039 --> 00:39:08,039
S C, then my own name, Alex. On the edge

822
00:39:08,039 --> 00:39:09,800
of the transmission, beneath the click of the f M

823
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:13,519
DAL won more word help. The radio went dead. My

824
00:39:13,559 --> 00:39:15,840
flat shilled by at least ten degrees, as if an

825
00:39:15,840 --> 00:39:18,679
old freezer door had flung open, flooding everything with the past.

826
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:22,000
I reeled, searching for meaning, but already knew what it

827
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:26,400
would be. Not the hospital, Nay, the bargain had shifted.

828
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:29,480
I was part of the chain now. Dispress wept the

829
00:39:29,519 --> 00:39:32,000
lust of the numbous aside and left me frantic with resolve.

830
00:39:32,559 --> 00:39:34,519
I rifled through the drawer from my badge, gripped it

831
00:39:34,599 --> 00:39:37,639
until the coroners bit deep into my flesh. I pulled

832
00:39:37,639 --> 00:39:41,880
out Irene's note. I unfolded the hospital directory, battered and

833
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:45,400
faded that I'd never managed to throw away, and I wrote.

834
00:39:46,039 --> 00:39:48,719
I wrote copies of every name, every date, every warning,

835
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:53,440
everything I'd seen, the email, journalists, union contacts, old supervisors,

836
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:55,719
even distant relatives who had never worked a single night

837
00:39:55,719 --> 00:39:58,599
shift in their lives. I printed pages and left them

838
00:39:58,599 --> 00:40:02,920
in public libraries, launder mats, supermarkets. I slept fires under

839
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:06,400
doors and interbus station benches, cryptic, desperate, everywhere at Saint Down,

840
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:10,079
some memorial remember us, don't go alone. Sometimes I included

841
00:40:10,079 --> 00:40:13,679
the initials, sometimes just blank spaces that anyone could fill.

842
00:40:14,239 --> 00:40:17,920
People called me crazy, People threatened me. A man in

843
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:20,199
a suit from some regulatory board threatened to sue if

844
00:40:20,199 --> 00:40:23,159
I didn't stop spreading libel. My landlord asked how long

845
00:40:23,199 --> 00:40:25,679
I planned to stay. The police warned me to mind

846
00:40:25,679 --> 00:40:28,280
my business. But every time I heard or read some

847
00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:30,480
new name in scattered news report, a missing nurse in

848
00:40:30,519 --> 00:40:32,800
another state, a janitor vanished from a shelter, a patient

849
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:35,000
on a forgotten world, initials carved into the wood of

850
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:37,679
an abandoned building. I felt less alone, though not less afraid.

851
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:42,079
The chain was nationwide. Maybe older may be endless. I

852
00:40:42,159 --> 00:40:45,039
lived like that for six months, not quite awake, not asleep,

853
00:40:45,119 --> 00:40:48,920
haunted by coltman, by inevitability. Nothing supernatural seemed to happen

854
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:51,840
in those months. Not in the surface, no more bruises,

855
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:55,440
no more missing time. But sometimes on still nights, scraps

856
00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:58,079
of hospital smell pressed into my nose, harsh and metallic,

857
00:40:58,159 --> 00:41:00,239
and my skin would call, as if some one's hand

858
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:03,639
just above my arm, the weight of old debts. Then

859
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:07,760
one final time, something came. It was deep winter, mooinless air, brittle.

860
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:10,880
I lay in bed, roused to consciousness, not by sound,

861
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:12,920
but by a darkness that felt too thick. Hovering low

862
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:15,719
above my sheets, I reached for the lamp. The bulb

863
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:19,039
exploded with the pop of ancient class In total blackness,

864
00:41:19,159 --> 00:41:21,960
I listened to my unwraket, breathing until unmistakably I heard

865
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:24,400
footsteps in the kitchen and saw the faintest blue glow

866
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:28,239
sifting under the door. Heart hammering, I stumbled upright. The

867
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:31,599
radio crackled, burst a life on the counter, sat my

868
00:41:31,679 --> 00:41:35,679
badge next to it, the familiar battered staffolder from the hospital.

869
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:38,559
When I was sure I'd left behind or destroyed, and

870
00:41:38,880 --> 00:41:41,800
rising to meet me, the soft, unmistakable outline of Irene

871
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:44,519
blew a cigarette smoke shimmering only with the kitchen light

872
00:41:44,559 --> 00:41:47,679
would never reach. She didn't smile, but her eyes, deep

873
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:50,559
and old and full of sorrow, held mine. I heard,

874
00:41:50,679 --> 00:41:52,599
not with my ears, but in the decoil of my mind.

875
00:41:52,679 --> 00:41:57,679
Her words, it's not finished, the names, don't forget, don't

876
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:00,199
let it feed. She pressed the badge and to my

877
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:02,880
palm ice, reading through my veins, I ran us. The

878
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:04,880
kitchen window steamed with the midst of a hundred winter

879
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:07,800
nights gone wrong. For just an instant, I tasted copper

880
00:42:07,840 --> 00:42:10,079
on my tongue, the acrid metallic tan of hospital blood

881
00:42:10,119 --> 00:42:14,000
and ancient fear. Then, without drama, without lighting or thunder,

882
00:42:14,079 --> 00:42:17,880
she faded. The radio fell silent. My apartment returned to

883
00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:20,639
still an ordinary cold. But the badge in my hand

884
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:24,000
was different. The names on its back shimmered below my

885
00:42:24,039 --> 00:42:27,559
own initials. Another had appeared overnight, I are. My mouth worked,

886
00:42:27,559 --> 00:42:30,119
but no words came. There was only a pulse through

887
00:42:30,119 --> 00:42:32,960
my fingers and a deep sense of certainty. My task

888
00:42:33,079 --> 00:42:34,760
was not to end the chain, but to hold a

889
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:36,719
clothes for a while, to fend off the forgetting up

890
00:42:36,719 --> 00:42:40,360
bred hunger. The next morning, I packed a bag. I

891
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:43,079
traveled to the address on the anonymous envelope, a crematorium

892
00:42:43,119 --> 00:42:46,119
turned arcave outside the city border. I left the badge

893
00:42:46,119 --> 00:42:48,719
and Irene's note with an envelope full of every photocopid

894
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:51,880
record had salvaged, marked with two words, remember U S.

895
00:42:52,599 --> 00:42:55,119
Then I walked away, letting the light creep over my shoulders,

896
00:42:55,159 --> 00:42:58,039
swallowing the fatigue, the horror, jagged gap where blonding used

897
00:42:58,039 --> 00:43:01,800
to be Saint ansel memorial reopen. They always did, a

898
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:04,400
new staff, new shift, locks, new laughter, echoing in the

899
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:07,880
bright morning halls. But some things changed to a plaque

900
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:09,880
with a row of initials hidden in a quiet cornered,

901
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:12,480
a set of stuff. Instructions explicit and strange, do not

902
00:43:12,559 --> 00:43:16,360
work alone, do not listen to the whispers, And somewhere

903
00:43:16,400 --> 00:43:18,400
at the back of every new badge, a faint trace,

904
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:20,800
barely visible except in the half light, of the old names,

905
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:24,719
still galloping forward, waiting, pleading remember us. In the end,

906
00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:26,960
I could never be free of what I'd seen. But

907
00:43:27,039 --> 00:43:29,280
so long as the chain was not broken, as long

908
00:43:29,320 --> 00:43:31,519
as one person, any person, kept the names alive and

909
00:43:31,559 --> 00:43:33,679
the story is circulating, some part of the hunger could

910
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:36,239
be held at bay. I keep the last four covered.

911
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:38,159
No clip to My nights are now a warning and

912
00:43:38,199 --> 00:43:41,360
a burden, both. Never trust the silence between midnight and dawn.

913
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:46,639
Never ignore old names, Never let the hospital forget. Even now,

914
00:43:46,679 --> 00:43:48,760
when the wind rises and the light flicker, I press

915
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:51,039
my hand flat to the trembling plaster and whisper back

916
00:43:51,079 --> 00:43:53,719
every name I know, because the knight belongs to the

917
00:43:53,719 --> 00:43:56,800
ones who remember, and the walls are always listening. I

918
00:43:56,880 --> 00:43:59,000
kept the promises to my marrow, though there were nights

919
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:00,960
it felt like the old hosse, But old shadow followed

920
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:03,079
me through the waking world, growing tallers, the sun ed,

921
00:44:03,159 --> 00:44:05,800
and the city's lights below beyond my window. Life did

922
00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:08,039
not return to normal, because the notion itself had become

923
00:44:08,039 --> 00:44:09,960
strange to me. But I learned the contours of my

924
00:44:10,039 --> 00:44:12,719
new world, fragmented sleep, the taste of cold metal lingering

925
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:15,280
behind every cup of instant coffee, vigilance that never quite

926
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:18,039
relaxed when to loose in its grip on my neighborhood,

927
00:44:18,079 --> 00:44:21,440
Yielding to a queer Maritha, I developed a ritual climbing

928
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:23,559
the stairs to the roof just before dawn, badge in

929
00:44:23,599 --> 00:44:26,400
my palm, whispering the same names, letting my breath haze

930
00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:29,119
out in the pale chill. Some mornings I imagined that

931
00:44:29,159 --> 00:44:31,119
I saw Irene silhouette in the pattern of fog on

932
00:44:31,159 --> 00:44:33,519
the next building, never quite close enough to convince me

933
00:44:33,559 --> 00:44:36,079
of anything, but always there at the edge teaded by memory.

934
00:44:36,679 --> 00:44:39,440
I come to order where I could. Every week I

935
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:43,239
sent letters. Sometimes I addressed in to old janitors, unions,

936
00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:47,039
to city offices, to health inspectors. Sometimes I didn't address

937
00:44:47,039 --> 00:44:48,519
them at all, just drop them in a blue post

938
00:44:48,519 --> 00:44:50,920
books marked only with initials and dates and the plea

939
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:54,360
to remember. I filled out online forums, submitted its to

940
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:57,760
local ghosts, her guides, posted warnings and forgotten form threads.

941
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:00,440
An old custodium from a hospital at sat even wrote

942
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:02,679
me back once as note only said I've seen things

943
00:45:02,679 --> 00:45:05,920
to stay shop. It didn't help, but it didn't hurt either.

944
00:45:06,559 --> 00:45:08,039
For a while it seemed this was to be my

945
00:45:08,119 --> 00:45:11,360
life guardian of names, student of sleeplessness, half crazy towny

946
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:13,760
in a rental with a door rattling full of cursed artifacts.

947
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:17,840
But every chain, however carefully tended, must be tested. It

948
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:20,840
started smaller rerun of the same old dread simmering gently.

949
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:23,599
I caught a scrap of news online. Saint Aunt some

950
00:45:23,639 --> 00:45:27,400
memorial to reopen wings for modernization, promises fresh start. There

951
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:29,960
was a photo of smiling executors cutting a ribbon. Not

952
00:45:30,039 --> 00:45:31,960
a one of them local old enough to remember the

953
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:34,679
dozens who had vanished the building in the back round

954
00:45:34,679 --> 00:45:37,119
looked both unchanged and wrong, the windows too bright, the

955
00:45:37,199 --> 00:45:40,280
new sign glinting with the unnatural polish of denial. I

956
00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:43,239
deleted the tab, but couldn't un see it. I doubled

957
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:45,760
my efforts, sent new warnings with more urgency, but there

958
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:48,559
was only so much an anonymous sender could achieve. I

959
00:45:48,559 --> 00:45:52,000
stopped message boards, reading every rumor, the black mold in

960
00:45:52,039 --> 00:45:55,440
the basement, lights flickering on uncondemned wings, security contractors quitting

961
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:59,320
after night shift without giving notice. Patents yes, but dismissed

962
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:01,360
his cheabourban LFE dge, and by any one with authority.

963
00:46:02,039 --> 00:46:04,840
Sometimes an ex nurse would post asking about the initials.

964
00:46:05,039 --> 00:46:07,559
Their thread would vanish by morning, swallowed up by silence,

965
00:46:07,599 --> 00:46:11,000
or admin edits. One morning, the Branston's buzzers startled me

966
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:12,880
out of a half dream in which the hospital's tiled

967
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:15,400
holes and furled beneath my feet. I led it buzz

968
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:18,519
twice three times. I stood at the window, watching a

969
00:46:18,559 --> 00:46:20,960
delivery truck idle by the cob, its hazard lies blinking.

970
00:46:21,480 --> 00:46:24,519
Probably nothing of package for wrong the dress, but I

971
00:46:24,559 --> 00:46:26,960
stayed frozen, fighting a jitter that felt like a trap.

972
00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:32,320
Closing another buzz, insistent. I forced myself downstairs. The man

973
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:34,360
at the door was in plain clothes, but everything about

974
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:37,760
him stank of officialdom. I debadge on a lineard clipboard

975
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:39,800
in one hand, board, suspicion in the lines at the

976
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:42,719
corners of his eyes. He gave my name, my real one,

977
00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:45,639
in a tone that brooked no denial. Alex, need a

978
00:46:45,639 --> 00:46:47,679
minute of your time. City Health is here to follow

979
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:50,159
upon some complaints about saint and some memorial We've had

980
00:46:50,199 --> 00:46:53,400
odd reports, missing persons, weighed files. Do your names come up?

981
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:56,360
My mouth was dry. You here to ask about the

982
00:46:56,360 --> 00:47:00,440
pass for the present? A thin smile, both a little

983
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:04,119
about the future. He shifted his clipboard. He sent in

984
00:47:04,159 --> 00:47:08,000
some pretty wild documentation, staff desks, notes, claims about patterns

985
00:47:08,039 --> 00:47:10,559
in the building, Anonymous tips to media too. Then there's

986
00:47:10,559 --> 00:47:14,559
the recent incident. His eyebrows dipped. You want to elaborate,

987
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:18,599
did I? I didn't know? They urged a fall to

988
00:47:18,639 --> 00:47:20,920
spill everything, to beg for some official hand to close

989
00:47:20,960 --> 00:47:23,599
the wound rush through me. But the deeper urge, the

990
00:47:23,599 --> 00:47:26,360
one that wore my nerves row, was to protect, protect

991
00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:28,599
the names, the dead, even the living. He'd return to

992
00:47:28,639 --> 00:47:31,480
those halls with wide eyes. I sent those, and because

993
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:33,960
I was afraid no one else would listen, I said finally,

994
00:47:34,039 --> 00:47:37,239
my voice, low, steady, out of nowhere. The place is wrong.

995
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:39,840
It doesn't forget and it doesn't forgive. Medding every name

996
00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:43,280
I gave you each when I saw evidence tied to incidents, disappearances,

997
00:47:43,360 --> 00:47:45,599
and explained injuries. He can brush me off as crazy,

998
00:47:45,639 --> 00:47:47,880
but you'll see the pattern if you check records hard enough.

999
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:50,960
Someone always pays for looking. He flicks through his notes.

1000
00:47:51,599 --> 00:47:53,719
That's a lot of accusation for an old building. It's

1001
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:56,239
not the building, it's the will behind it. Something wants company.

1002
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:58,039
If you dig there, do it with someone else in

1003
00:47:58,039 --> 00:48:00,920
the room, never alone, never below two after midnight, and

1004
00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:03,639
do not answer. If it calls. Something in my tone

1005
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:05,880
must have unsettled him. The lines at its jaw tightened.

1006
00:48:06,519 --> 00:48:09,679
We'll take it under advisement, mister Green, Just one more question.

1007
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:12,239
That badger, he gestured vaguely at the outline in my jacket.

1008
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,079
To any chance we can take a look. With reluctance,

1009
00:48:15,159 --> 00:48:17,239
I pulled it out, flashing my thumb over the initials

1010
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:20,639
on the back. He studied it, his eyes narrowing. Odd

1011
00:48:20,679 --> 00:48:23,159
place for those markings usually only the hrcode on the

1012
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:25,960
reverse in your handwriting eye are on the bottom. Was

1013
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:30,400
that one of your supervisors? A cold spot opened? Not exactly,

1014
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:32,800
no one you'd find im paeril records. She stayed after

1015
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:35,079
she shouldn't have to, shouldn't have fasked around. If the

1016
00:48:35,079 --> 00:48:38,440
staff will talk, they won't, but ask anyway. He nodded,

1017
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:41,719
the brisk unseen not of officials everywhere. Thank you for

1018
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:45,440
your co operation. He left, shuffling away in the gray drizzle.

1019
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:48,280
I tucked the badge away, feeling the faint, hastatic jolt

1020
00:48:48,280 --> 00:48:51,039
as it slipped into my pocket. Up Stairs, I closed

1021
00:48:51,039 --> 00:48:53,000
the blinds and waited, listening for the after shock I

1022
00:48:53,079 --> 00:48:56,960
knew would come. Outside, the world did not change. Cross

1023
00:48:57,039 --> 00:48:59,880
the street, a grocery truck and load of crates che

1024
00:49:00,079 --> 00:49:04,159
kids argued over a scooter. Normalsy reasserted itself, loud and indifferent.

1025
00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:06,960
But inside, in a hollow between my heart beats, I

1026
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:09,559
caught the rasp of breath in an empty stirble. That

1027
00:49:09,800 --> 00:49:12,719
night's leap was a lost country. I sat on the couch,

1028
00:49:13,320 --> 00:49:17,280
radiosophstatic blanketing the silence, half expecting Irene's presence flowing blue

1029
00:49:17,320 --> 00:49:20,320
beside me. But nothing appeared to just the endless thin hum.

1030
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:23,000
When the hospital officially reopened, the new snuck in on

1031
00:49:23,079 --> 00:49:26,199
a late segment, reportersgusting about community resources and the fine

1032
00:49:26,239 --> 00:49:28,639
job done on a restoration. I took the train across town.

1033
00:49:29,159 --> 00:49:32,239
Couldn't help myself. I watched from the low concrete wall

1034
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:34,239
beside the parking lot as nurses milled in their new

1035
00:49:34,320 --> 00:49:36,960
uniforms as shiny ambulance is but forth the illusion that

1036
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:39,559
a line had been drawn between old and you. I

1037
00:49:39,599 --> 00:49:41,280
did not enter, though I craved of the way an

1038
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:44,679
attic craze poison. I simply watched, counting how many people

1039
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:46,320
went in groups and who were sent alone to fetch

1040
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:49,199
the plies from the lower levels. There was a janitor, young,

1041
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:51,840
uncallosed hands the same cheap jacket I had worn just

1042
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:54,480
months before, pushing a mock cut for a grand floor doorway.

1043
00:49:55,039 --> 00:49:57,480
A security guard called something after her. The words were

1044
00:49:57,559 --> 00:49:59,559
muffled by the wind, but I heard a joke or

1045
00:49:59,559 --> 00:50:03,039
maybe a wa. She smiled the fragile first week smile

1046
00:50:03,239 --> 00:50:05,400
and vanished around the corner into the old bee block.

1047
00:50:06,079 --> 00:50:10,280
I read it, time crawled. She returned, pale but intact.

1048
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:13,559
I watched every instinct in myself. Fry's gill warn her,

1049
00:50:13,639 --> 00:50:15,760
tell her to run task about graffiti, to pay attention

1050
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:18,639
to the silence. But I stayed on my wall, a ghost,

1051
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:22,519
unable to intervene, waited by my own unfinished business. Maybe

1052
00:50:22,559 --> 00:50:24,599
I thought the chain would break of its own accord.

1053
00:50:25,320 --> 00:50:27,719
Maybe the warnings, if enough of us kept muttering them,

1054
00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:31,559
would hold back the worst. But I knew better. Memory,

1055
00:50:31,639 --> 00:50:34,920
if left intended, always rots from the outside. In Strange

1056
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:37,000
things started to happen in the neighborhood of Spring crept

1057
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:39,639
into the city two blocks from my apartment. A power

1058
00:50:39,679 --> 00:50:42,159
out had struck one night, plunging the street in an opaque,

1059
00:50:42,199 --> 00:50:45,599
inky dark. People howled and bang, Dondors convinced a wind

1060
00:50:45,599 --> 00:50:48,719
carried voice beyond the howling of the downtown trains. The

1061
00:50:48,760 --> 00:50:50,760
next day, dawn't show up and paled the news reporting

1062
00:50:50,760 --> 00:50:53,519
a missing person. A building superintendent come without a trace,

1063
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:56,280
last seen below in the god forsaken tangle of city pipes.

1064
00:50:56,920 --> 00:50:59,079
At night, I found a slip of paper wedge under

1065
00:50:59,119 --> 00:51:01,480
my own entryway. A day at two initials ridden embolb

1066
00:51:01,519 --> 00:51:04,559
went as fierce as a knife. Not from me, not

1067
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:07,760
from any one I knew. I scared the records may

1068
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:10,679
calls pressed myself into the old grooves of compulsion. The

1069
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:12,880
initials matched the missing man. The date was to day.

1070
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:15,599
I felt the world waver was as hel crept forward,

1071
00:51:15,679 --> 00:51:17,840
hopping from nest to nest in the cities under belly,

1072
00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:21,119
finding people too used to being in scene unremarked. I

1073
00:51:21,159 --> 00:51:23,239
broke my own rule and went back to Saint Anseng,

1074
00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:25,320
this time not as a visitor or witness, but as

1075
00:51:25,360 --> 00:51:28,280
some un willing to trespecific meant clarity. There were new

1076
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:30,679
staff at the front desk, two security men who smelled

1077
00:51:30,679 --> 00:51:33,400
of coffee and bored expectation. I signed him with a

1078
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:36,159
fake name, using an excuse about lost property and old

1079
00:51:36,159 --> 00:51:39,000
paperwork from the previous era. They handed me a visitor

1080
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:42,000
badge and waved me on without a glance. Wandering the

1081
00:51:42,039 --> 00:51:44,440
familiar halls, I felt their shape alive under my feet,

1082
00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:47,039
the scuffed lines on the floor tile, the battered fire doors,

1083
00:51:47,079 --> 00:51:49,960
the echo in the walls like breath. Everything looked brighter.

1084
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:53,519
Shields wreased against the dark, posters for staff whileness, programs

1085
00:51:53,559 --> 00:51:56,760
cleaned with fresh plastic, but behind every update, the old

1086
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:59,760
bones remained. I made my way through the service tunnels

1087
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:03,039
were tracing old wraps. Whenever I passed the stretch of

1088
00:52:03,039 --> 00:52:04,920
wall or a corner I had known well. I scanned

1089
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:08,679
for graffiti initials fresh or faded, peeking from behind safety posters,

1090
00:52:08,719 --> 00:52:11,239
an under nearly lacquer trim. It was all there, some

1091
00:52:11,360 --> 00:52:14,639
newly washed, some covered by layers of institutional beige, but

1092
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:17,440
always leaking through like old blood. I added one of

1093
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:19,639
my own, a tip of a pencarven a desperate, I

1094
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:22,079
are in the seam of a door frame. A nurse

1095
00:52:22,119 --> 00:52:26,480
spotted me in the archive corridor. She paused, uncertain you lost.

1096
00:52:26,679 --> 00:52:30,360
As she asked, I forced a smile, just looking for

1097
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:33,079
Irene used to be on days, hurried she might be back.

1098
00:52:33,639 --> 00:52:37,199
Her face furros then melted into professional skepticism. Don't know

1099
00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:39,559
that name, sorry, but something at the edge of her

1100
00:52:39,599 --> 00:52:41,679
voice told me it wearing a bell or maybe clamed

1101
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:45,639
in alarm. She heard off her footsteps echoing. After the

1102
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:48,400
lower levels were still technically sealed. New padlocks on the

1103
00:52:48,400 --> 00:52:51,519
steel doors fresh out of use, tape stretched tight. I hoverard,

1104
00:52:51,639 --> 00:52:53,639
waited for a gap in the cameras, then slipped my

1105
00:52:53,679 --> 00:52:56,280
hand for a loose hinge, feeling for the cold of familiarity.

1106
00:52:56,880 --> 00:52:59,039
The dome was just as I remembered, breadth and weight,

1107
00:52:59,079 --> 00:53:02,320
barely contained by the walls above. The air tasted wrong,

1108
00:53:02,480 --> 00:53:04,480
not just stale, but eat as if every exhale in

1109
00:53:04,519 --> 00:53:06,480
this place had been drawn in a hundred times before.

1110
00:53:07,119 --> 00:53:09,960
Something watched from the far side of the darkness. I

1111
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:11,960
did not see it, but I felt the old urgency

1112
00:53:11,960 --> 00:53:15,079
building in the static behind my ears. I crept forward

1113
00:53:15,079 --> 00:53:17,960
into the chill. On the blackboard of the old operating room,

1114
00:53:18,079 --> 00:53:20,760
A ghostly scroll materialized, as if conjured by my gaze.

1115
00:53:20,840 --> 00:53:24,880
Asterisks toisks, remember U s asterisks drrisk handwriting like mine,

1116
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:26,480
but not the tail on the iarth swept in the

1117
00:53:26,519 --> 00:53:29,320
style that belonged to another air at my feet a

1118
00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:32,360
new patch of initials, months fresh, the paint only just dry.

1119
00:53:32,920 --> 00:53:36,000
A cold certainty shivered through me. It wasn't just Saint

1120
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:38,039
Anson that kept the chain alive. It was every place,

1121
00:53:38,119 --> 00:53:41,119
hungry for forgetting, every shadowed institution where names were erased

1122
00:53:41,159 --> 00:53:43,880
by custom and need. I wrote on the wall myself,

1123
00:53:43,880 --> 00:53:46,760
in the open, each name I remembered, stacking them like

1124
00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:49,679
bricks against the tide. When I finish, I left my

1125
00:53:49,719 --> 00:53:51,639
badge tucked into a crevice in the wall, letting it

1126
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:54,599
join the relics had token for whoever came next. I

1127
00:53:54,679 --> 00:53:58,159
said the names aloud, voice breaking but unashamed. M k

1128
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:01,960
helbi dit si be d I r al all of you.

1129
00:54:02,559 --> 00:54:04,960
The room seemed to hold its breath for a fraction

1130
00:54:05,039 --> 00:54:07,679
of a second. The pressure ebbed there grew lighter, but

1131
00:54:07,760 --> 00:54:09,559
my time was up. The tap of footsteps in the

1132
00:54:09,599 --> 00:54:12,320
service stair will snap the moment I slipped back into

1133
00:54:12,360 --> 00:54:15,239
the daylight halls. Visitor badge turned backward, my skin humming

1134
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:18,039
as if electrified. I passed through the lobby, giving a

1135
00:54:18,079 --> 00:54:21,159
last glance at the front desk. Behind a glass, I

1136
00:54:21,199 --> 00:54:23,519
caught the reflection not of myself, but a blow of blue,

1137
00:54:23,559 --> 00:54:25,639
a fragment of an old uniform, A face watching with

1138
00:54:25,679 --> 00:54:29,880
weary sorrow. Irene, her eyes solemn and proud met mine

1139
00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:32,800
in the security mere just for a heartbeat. I walked away,

1140
00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:35,519
not daring to look back. The remainder of the day

1141
00:54:35,599 --> 00:54:38,960
and weak and month bled together, countless names flickering across newstickers,

1142
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:42,239
another misimpatient, a janitor gone, and note posted online about

1143
00:54:42,239 --> 00:54:45,920
strange voices in a subway tunnel. My warnings proliferated were copied,

1144
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:49,800
erase marked, but sometimes they stuck. I compiled a masteril

1145
00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:52,639
as a constantly upbate it desperate ledger on old envelopes,

1146
00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:56,239
Napkin's browser book wax, a memorial for those who had

1147
00:54:56,239 --> 00:54:59,519
gone and those who were come. Sometimes a stranger would

1148
00:54:59,519 --> 00:55:01,519
reach out, our nurse from half way across the country,

1149
00:55:01,519 --> 00:55:04,639
a custodian from a retirement home in Florida. I've felt

1150
00:55:04,639 --> 00:55:07,679
it too. Their emails read, thank you, what do I do?

1151
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:10,840
My advice was all I could offer Astro Rischustraus. Don't

1152
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:15,239
go alone, write the names, tell some one, don't forget,

1153
00:55:15,960 --> 00:55:18,920
asked Rischstraus. Occasionally someone sent back news that the cycle

1154
00:55:18,960 --> 00:55:22,239
had claimed another. Sometimes it was just thanks for the

1155
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:24,880
confession of an unameable relief that some one else believed.

1156
00:55:25,599 --> 00:55:27,599
It was never enough, not when the Knights were at

1157
00:55:27,599 --> 00:55:31,000
their Thurchiston's silence pressed barbs into my dreams. Even now,

1158
00:55:31,119 --> 00:55:33,440
I awake sometimes to find the initials traced and fog

1159
00:55:33,480 --> 00:55:35,400
on my window, my own name added. Now, the chain

1160
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:38,920
nodding tider, the city mouse on time cycles, stubbornly toward

1161
00:55:39,000 --> 00:55:41,840
new losses, new amnesia. For each time I feel the

1162
00:55:41,840 --> 00:55:44,039
coal begin to creep each time the radio flickers to

1163
00:55:44,079 --> 00:55:46,239
static and begins the old Ludney a wick Fully, I

1164
00:55:46,280 --> 00:55:48,599
walked to the knight stand and I whispered the truth aloud,

1165
00:55:48,719 --> 00:55:51,199
line by lion, name by name. I do it not

1166
00:55:51,280 --> 00:55:54,719
for myself, but Friarrene, for those she saved, for every

1167
00:55:54,719 --> 00:55:57,440
soul who carved a warning where only the desperate would see,

1168
00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:00,599
For the possibility that some day the name will outnumber

1169
00:56:00,599 --> 00:56:03,320
the hush, and the dark hunger will go wanding. But

1170
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:07,440
until then I keep the watch, I remember, because that's

1171
00:56:07,480 --> 00:56:09,639
all the living can do in a world. Build on forgetting,

1172
00:56:09,800 --> 00:56:12,199
keep the names alive, breathe meaning back into the silence,

1173
00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:14,559
and hope, against all laws and all endings, that the

1174
00:56:14,639 --> 00:56:17,039
chain will not end with us, but be carried still bright.

1175
00:56:17,119 --> 00:56:19,000
But it was brave enough to listen to the whispers

1176
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:22,039
in the night. Some nights the chain felled, unbreakable, as

1177
00:56:22,079 --> 00:56:24,360
if every warning and whispered name did nothing, but by

1178
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:26,880
time for the next shadow to step forward and be swallowed.

1179
00:56:27,519 --> 00:56:30,039
On those nights, I'd pace the apartment badge pressed into

1180
00:56:30,039 --> 00:56:33,000
my sweating palm, collecting breaths like border charm. It would

1181
00:56:33,000 --> 00:56:35,320
always begin with the draft cold as a hospital stairwalls

1182
00:56:35,360 --> 00:56:37,519
that forced its way beneath the door, rattle the glass

1183
00:56:37,519 --> 00:56:39,639
in its frame, s and shivers racing up my arms.

1184
00:56:40,239 --> 00:56:43,000
My mouth would dry out, my nerves would drag me

1185
00:56:43,039 --> 00:56:45,400
to the window, where the city glimmered, indifferent and endless.

1186
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:47,679
The streets taught with the tension of seekers, kept to law.

1187
00:56:48,280 --> 00:56:50,960
But there was a shift coming, heavier than before. I

1188
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:53,119
could feel at an impatience in the silence that old

1189
00:56:53,199 --> 00:56:56,400
rituals didn't soften, an urgency behind every creak of the floorboards.

1190
00:56:57,039 --> 00:56:59,480
The final test had not yet come. That much was clear.

1191
00:57:00,079 --> 00:57:02,639
Three nights after my last visit to Saint Ansem, just

1192
00:57:02,679 --> 00:57:04,800
as the clock's re red digits blinked past one thirteen

1193
00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:07,039
a m. A new sound shattered the routine. A knock,

1194
00:57:07,119 --> 00:57:09,679
slow and purposeful at my front door. It was not

1195
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:11,599
the wild pounding of a break in, but near there

1196
00:57:11,599 --> 00:57:13,719
was the casual tap of a neighbor come to borrow sugar.

1197
00:57:14,280 --> 00:57:17,760
It was measured one, two or three beats, pause, then

1198
00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:21,440
three more. I stood motionless in the kitchen, pulse stuttering.

1199
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:24,920
The radio pop was static, and I see metallic tank

1200
00:57:24,960 --> 00:57:27,760
slithered into the air. I glanced toward the nights then

1201
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:30,639
the badge colored faint as a captive star. The knock

1202
00:57:30,679 --> 00:57:33,679
came again. I crept to the people, careful, silent, heart

1203
00:57:33,719 --> 00:57:36,880
in my throat. Through its gas, I saw nothing but shadow.

1204
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:39,760
The cheap whole wisconces outside my door, flickering like defective

1205
00:57:39,800 --> 00:57:43,000
heartbeat monitors. And then as I reached to double lock

1206
00:57:43,039 --> 00:57:45,519
the bolt, a voice, hoarse and doubled, whispered from the

1207
00:57:45,559 --> 00:57:49,440
other side. Alex opened up. It was my mother's voice,

1208
00:57:49,559 --> 00:57:53,079
and yetna flat, hollowed, as if channel through a mouthful

1209
00:57:53,079 --> 00:57:56,639
of dirt. Mine sides twisted. I'd spoken to her, we

1210
00:57:56,679 --> 00:57:59,079
coul ago her number, letting up my phone miles away,

1211
00:57:59,400 --> 00:58:02,880
certainty Iell in her tone she wouldn't be here, She

1212
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:06,199
couldn't be here, Alex, I forgot the names, let me in.

1213
00:58:06,920 --> 00:58:09,280
Terror flared, urging me to recoil, to retreat to the

1214
00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:12,280
kitchen and dial for help. But something heavier kept me,

1215
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:14,320
rooted the call of the chain, or may be the

1216
00:58:14,360 --> 00:58:16,239
part of me that was tired of running, of letting

1217
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:19,440
others pay the price. I can't, I said, voice trembling

1218
00:58:19,519 --> 00:58:22,000
but clear. You are not her, You can't come in,

1219
00:58:22,199 --> 00:58:25,960
not to night. A pause, then a voice turned what

1220
00:58:26,239 --> 00:58:28,280
by hatred a knee. You remember, but you will forget.

1221
00:58:28,400 --> 00:58:30,159
You keep the chain alive, but you never break it.

1222
00:58:30,280 --> 00:58:32,079
Let me in and name them for me, Alex, Let

1223
00:58:32,159 --> 00:58:34,760
me in and be forgotten with them all behind the door.

1224
00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:37,440
The shadow shifted, press flat and tall against the threshold.

1225
00:58:38,079 --> 00:58:40,760
The chill in the apartment ballooned until my breath turned visible,

1226
00:58:40,840 --> 00:58:44,480
curling white in the air. My teeth chattered. I gripped

1227
00:58:44,519 --> 00:58:47,800
my badge until my knuckles burned. Not this time, I whispered,

1228
00:58:47,920 --> 00:58:49,880
and felt some old piece of self fusing to steal.

1229
00:58:50,559 --> 00:58:53,599
I remember, I will always remember. For a moment, the

1230
00:58:53,639 --> 00:58:56,239
world hung suspended, one thin wall between me and oblivion.

1231
00:58:56,840 --> 00:59:00,159
Then with a sudden, shattering bang, the front window exploded inard.

1232
00:59:01,039 --> 00:59:03,320
Shards papped the floor with a crystal and roar, frost

1233
00:59:03,360 --> 00:59:06,360
biting at my bare feet. The shadow poured through the rupture,

1234
00:59:06,440 --> 00:59:09,360
a cold fog racing toward me. Voices carried on its currents,

1235
00:59:09,480 --> 00:59:12,679
hundreds of mouths, names blurring together, Irene, Daniel, Marcia'll be

1236
00:59:12,760 --> 00:59:14,320
as sea help us at A fled to the center

1237
00:59:14,400 --> 00:59:16,920
of the room, badge raised like a ward, eyes stinging

1238
00:59:16,960 --> 00:59:19,960
with tears and dust. The fog circled me the voices

1239
00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:23,400
pulling in opposite direction, some pleading, some threatening, all desperate

1240
00:59:23,480 --> 00:59:26,400
to be acknowledged. Something ancient and hungry loomed in the

1241
00:59:26,480 --> 00:59:28,639
center of the howl, in its outline, vast and void like,

1242
00:59:28,719 --> 00:59:30,880
as if the hospital itself had broken through the skin

1243
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:33,079
of the city and now bend over me, insisting to

1244
00:59:33,159 --> 00:59:35,639
drag me in. In a rush of panic, I did

1245
00:59:35,719 --> 00:59:38,239
the only thing left. I shouted the names, aloud, louder

1246
00:59:38,280 --> 00:59:42,000
and harsher than ever before. Every syllable rang with memory, pain, hope.

1247
00:59:42,639 --> 00:59:45,039
Each name was a blow against the cold, against the silence,

1248
00:59:45,079 --> 00:59:47,679
against the ancient. With that's aught to erase n k

1249
00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:50,360
d d de sief, I'll beat I ah Marsha dorend

1250
00:59:50,360 --> 00:59:53,039
irene Daniel gibble. Every one remember us? I remember, ye'd

1251
00:59:53,079 --> 00:59:56,679
I remembered. The shadow roared, the temperature plummeted further, and

1252
00:59:56,760 --> 00:59:58,639
I dropped to my knees, badge burning in my grip

1253
00:59:58,679 --> 01:00:01,639
as if electrified. Light streamed up from my hand's blie,

1254
01:00:01,719 --> 01:00:04,760
silver piercing the gloom. With each name, another pulse like

1255
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:07,760
bells tolling through falk. And then in the center of

1256
01:00:07,840 --> 01:00:10,880
the cold, a figure resolved, iery in spectral and resolute,

1257
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:14,519
standing between me and the darkness, arms wide, her voice

1258
01:00:14,559 --> 01:00:17,199
at once, everywhere and nowhere, cut through the uproar. No more,

1259
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:19,480
not him, not to night. He keeps the names, He

1260
01:00:19,559 --> 01:00:23,159
bears the chain. The shadows shuddered, recoiled, its edges unraveling

1261
01:00:23,159 --> 01:00:25,440
as if at the touch of sun. For an instant,

1262
01:00:25,519 --> 01:00:27,559
a glimpse face is in the depths, snarling with loss,

1263
01:00:27,880 --> 01:00:30,760
weaving with relief, calling out name after name after name,

1264
01:00:30,800 --> 01:00:33,400
before the fog shrank, contracted, and was suck loudly through

1265
01:00:33,400 --> 01:00:35,440
the hole in the window, trailing a storm of whispers.