Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I told myself i'd record these
as personal insurance, just in case I started to lose
the thread of what each night was actually like. The
quite gets so thick in here sometimes it almost has
a taste of coppery hush, clinging to the saw damp
railings and old marble. I'm sitting by the glass vestibule
that faces Oak Street, phone balanced on my knee, waiting
for the digital clock to hit midnight. The staff call
would a night shift, but really it's survival with a mop.
The library's double doors grown as I lock each one,
metal scraping against warpstone. Outside the city hums and blinks,
smeared with the neon blues that bounce off the rain
slick sidewalk. My friend, Hilary, if you're listening to this, yes,
I'm chewing it exactly as you dared. No music, no podcasts,
just my own pulse for company. I thought maybe it
would feel like suspense, like those late night DJA radio shows.
You and I used a prank, but I mostly hear
plumbing and the start stops, sigh of ancient heat. Inducts.
A Janet night is about routines. I moved from desk
to desk, room to room, disinvectant, leaving sharp artificial trails
in the air. My sneakers glide across the green lannoleum,
echoing through a hundred feet of empty stacks. But to
night my echo has a strange, jumpy partner, a double
step out of sink with my own No, not even
out of sink. There's no rhythm, just a faint scrape
in the silence, like the library's interior pushing back against
my presence. I paused, pulled off one beloved to test
the airt my free fingers, waiting for another sound. The
building stayed silent, flicker of city lies crawling beneath the
glass dome overhead. Was it just nerves? You get this
on a first night, But this felt different. Deliver two
measured for random pipes or settling floorboards. It was just
past midnight. I made my way to the supply room,
touched behind circulationion, where the twel doarcher's funnel you into
the hidden bowls of the old wing. The keenest to
groken had given me a brassy, cold thing longer than
my palm turned with a click. The sharp lemon scent
of cleaning supplies greeted me, layered over dust and something older,
almost earthy. My light swept over shell's crowd with faded
vinegar bottles, wat mops, buckets with missing wheels. Something jutted
from behind the lowest shelf, a leather bound tome, grotesquely
outsides compared to the spindley cleaning locks the library used.
Now I knelt, pulling it free and setting it on
top of the mop bucket. No gold stamping, no title
on the binding, just a battered, almost greasy, black surface.
The pages inside were thick, laid out in two columns,
one for keys, one for names. I started reading the
injuries alive to my phone, half for company, half for documentation,
North Basement three Yetco de Lecy, fourth mezsany narkav t Surat.
The dates ranged back nearly a century, with browning flowing
across decades. The names kept going page after page. Some
were repeated in blocky pencil t handwriting, as if someone
had returned to obey the records in haste. The weirdest part,
several names matched nothing I'd seen in the modern staff
lists and the keys. North basement three. Our blueprints didn't
show third basement, fourth mezzanine. There were only three, as
far as I knew. I kept flipping and settled by
clipped notations, returned after ires not found, transferred to arkeevil, custody.
Even the word custody had a strange, archaic finality. A
sudden thad echoed from the hallway, making me shut the
ledge on impulse, heart pounding, I replaced it behind the
mop bucket, hand sticky with dust and a little fear.
The footsteps, too, not mine, soft and slow, retreated toward
the reading room. I flicked off the light, pressed the
phone to my cheek, and locked the door behind me.
As I slipped the master key back unto the ring,
my eyes fell on the hooks. I counted out loud, softly.
There should be a key for every area of the
public washrooms, the security office, rarer books. But to night,
the hook labeled East floor Archive was empty. I hadn't
touched it, and I'd been told by Grogan never to
leave that room unlocked. I stared at the blank space,
then scan each key again, no sign of it. I
finished my lock in a whisper, though I didn't say
the last part out loud. Instead, I promised, Hilary and
update every shift, because it never hurts for some one
else to know when things start to go off book.
The rest of my first week was a slow roll
of menotany, a slide through the kinds of silence that
settle deeper the longer you let them. Mister Grogan, the
day's supervisor, always arrived precisely at noon. He wore a
plastic badge and a Navy card, again with a snagged sleeve.
He talked to me only unless never in questions. Downt
not the West corridor were filled. The paper towels in
the lower lobby. Don't use the back elevator. It's for
crates only. His voice had a clipped edge, the syllables
clicking off his tongue with the same procedural finality as
the ledges returned after iOS. Every morning I submitted my
filled in log by slipping it into the slot at
the front desk. Then i'd spot him a clipboard already
in hand, scanning my entries as if looking for patterns.
If I said good morning, he'd respond with a nod
as flickering past me as though he was talking to
reflection and not a person with a mob and aching feet.
The other day, staff were just as brisk, their smiles, practiced,
and brief. I saw the same three faces every morning,
Masssiabre from circulation, who always wore a bright pattern scarf,
and the two student shovers Documentary, thin and huddled like
birds around the staff lounge door. They rarely met my eyes,
and not one of them asked me my name. After
the first day, I found comfort in the library spaces.
The dome sky light above the main stacks filtered down
into a pool of shifting, faded stars across the oak tables.
At Forum, I liked to stretch out along the reading gallery,
the quiet so dense it prest on my ropes. Sometimes
I'd opened a rare book at random Creek that and
illuminated manuscripts with their gold still persistent despite centuries of
fingers passing lightly over the pages. I let myself inhale
the sweetness of old paper and pay attention to the
way sound changed as I moved from brick corridor to
wooden archery. I come to the library needing the choir
people had stopped checking in on me after my mother's memorial.
The apartment was stuffy and filled with unfinished boxes. It
was easier to fill the irows with simple repetition trash, rinse, sweep,
vacuum than to confront the silent afternoons. The money helped,
but mostly I needed a place where I could become
invisible by utility. Yet there was something disquieting about that invisibility.
No matter how tidily I swept or her methodically a
stack chairs, I saw a subtle withdraw when people realized
who I was, were rather what I did at the
time clark a few hands. I caught speculative looks, as
if I was already haunting the place. My first Friday,
Hillary's text flast up you alive? Is it haunted yet?
Lolt and I typed back something bland about the joys
of solitude. But that night, as I made my rounds
struck me. Staff treated me not as a colleague, but
as some kind of recurring shadow. One morning, I returned
the broom to the cupboard and noticed the staff lounge
door swinging open for a second time that week. No
one ever emerged or entered while I was on duty,
Yet every door I would find evidence of its occupation,
new mugs, half folded papers, sometimes a cardaikin, or a
raincoat flung over a chair that hadn't been there before.
The odor in that lounge always changed, sometimes coffee, sometimes
the bitterness of lemon polish. Occasionally something shad that made
my eyes stain by summrise. It was as if a
secret society passed through those doors, leaving parallel to my existence,
and leaving artifacts as proofs I was not alone, even
if I rarely caught a glimpse. On the night before
my second week would begin, mister Grogan left an unusually
direct note, please check the cobby beside the record's office
for any cleaning supplies may need clearing out before the
new shelving arrives. He'd attached it to my time sheep
with a strip of surgical tape, as if expecting the
paper to vanish otherwise. The worker's office limped off the
maze of stacks behind a heavy fire door and two
short steps down to the sub basement. The air was
dense with the recidue of dusty philes and the pencil
shavings of a thousand cattle ojures. I flicked my phone's
flashlight on. As I stooped into the cubby, searching through
up handles and half used detergent bottles, my glove fingers
bumped against something solid wedged behind a shelf. I reached
it and hard, already pounding, pulled it free. It was
the same ledger from the supply closet. I'd left it
behind locked doors, hadn't I But here it was, its
leather surface scuffed and damp from years pressed against stone.
Some one had moved it, and recently curiosity at weighed
discomfort bubbling in my chest. I brought the book on
a cradon lea through the columns of keys and names
seemed unchanged, but now several of the entries had been
underlined in sharp heurd pencil. The name me may he
recur twice in three pages, and the phrase after iurs
nor foy were circled. My own signature, neat and perfunctory
from signing. The supply of receipt appeared nowhere. Yet, when
I ran a finger down the circument as two thousand
seventeen section, I realized the latest entches stopped abruptly five
years ago. My phone was still a cording. I mumbled,
quick update describing what I'd found, then shut the book
and pressed it back on to the shelf. As I
set it down, my skin called the sensation like static crawling,
the lent of my arms, and a breathless hush that
didn't belong to heir alone. Later, as I played back
my audio log to check for notes, i'd miss something
strange raised the house of my naphe A faint voice,
nearly smothered by static, whispered E Mayhew. I repled it twice,
lowering the volume to confirm I hadn't spoken it myself.
The audio stato replayed the soft Mayheu again, perfectly clear, breathy,
in flat, like a mouth close to the microphone. I froze.
The only living Mayhew I had known was a character
from a campus legend, rumored to wander lost sections of
the library after dark. I shook it off as best
I could and tried to focus on the rest of
my work. But the library, which had always felt familiar,
was turning itself inside out that very night. The phone
at the front desk, an ancient rotary model reserved for
emergency calls. Ran I couldn't remember the last time anyone
had called. After ires The voice on the other end
was then hissing with static. Is this Audrey to Night
that asked using a name I didn't recognize, Sorry you
now this is Lee the night Custodian. But pause. I
I am looking for the copy of the chestnut Tree
checked out in summer nineteen eighty five by Ye Mayhew.
Surely you remember where it belongs. My throat went dry.
I'm afraid we don't have any one by that name.
The receiver clicked, silence reclaimed the stacks save from my
pounding heart and the smell of ozen culling up from
the wiring in the old phone cradle. That coll fested
in my mind all night. The next time I checked
the Ledger compulsion. Now I need to confirm my own reality.
I saw chestnut trees called under color Mark's Special Requests
nineteen eighty five. The sense of being watched grew thicker
over the ensuing nights. My routes became more virtualized. Always
counterclocoys passed the reading room through the archout's checked the windows,
test every lock. I found myself anticipating oddities. A light
flicking on in a new stowell, the rattling cough of
event in the southern open stacks. Some night, dull eg
formed behind my eyes from peering at the ledge's tiny
script cross referencing in colors, trying to spot what didn't belong.
The more I read, the less sense the schemes of
keys and signatures made. Names cycled in a doubt s
Bryan who signed for a North Basement three every four years,
or our Quint's, whose only notation was moved to South Archeve.
I took to logging the pattens by hand after my shift,
copying them into the page margins of my notebook, hoping
I wasn't just spinning a story for myself. It paid
off painfully. I requested to see the basement blueprints, ostensibly
so I could report on a flickering light down there.
The prince had been amended several times, and I noticed
something immediately. Certain rooms named in the ledger, especially North
Basement three and East Lower Arkaev, weren't mentioned anywhere in
the plans. I dug further, discovering yellowed minilla folders in
the records office labeled security logs now Duty. Each one
listed staff sign outs after two and dates times door codes.
They ran back nearly four decades, but held the same
odd consistency names never mentioned in current staff rosters. The
Airliers files used fountain pen and block script, the most
recent mechanical typewriter. On a hunch, I checked the digital
staff database accessible in the battered staff terminal in a
copy room. Nothing. Not one reference to E. Mayhew S.
Bryan or ur Quints, not even in the former employees sections.
For every mysterious signer, the system claimed those years were
staffed only by a few senior employees, all of whom
had retired by now. I sat staring at the screen,
hot throwing louder with each blank entry. The next round
of strange tusks arrived the following week as slips of paper,
each folded and slipped into the back slot of my
mail books in the cook room. They were handleton instructing
me to clean areas I had never before touch, pleased
us south Stacks fifteen eighteen or chilliness specific rearrange lost
property nor vestibule by two thirty m. Every note was
signed with the name, sometimes elegantly, sometimes in trembling print,
always names I'd only seen in the ledger. Sir rat
Quince Bryan, I approached mister Grogan in the afternoon on edge.
He was as ruffled as always, lies darting impatiently to Zelus.
When I mentioned the odd jobs and unusual areas, he
quirked a half smile. You're a creative one, might be
better to stick to your actual duties. Night makes long shadows.
He didn't so much as look at the slips, just
gathered them neatly and dropped them in his pocket. As
I walked away, I caught his reflection in the glass,
his lips pressed together overwards, unseet That Friday, I lingered
to catch one days staff member, Ms. Sass Humor, retired
but still helping with periodicals. I asked, as lightly as
I could if any one besides me worked overnight. She
shifted her purse watch in my hands rather than my face.
Though there are stores some believe the night shift remembers
lost employees longer than the payroll does. She smiled gently,
pitying once or twice. People weren't here in the morning,
mostly new hires, no family close by. But these are
just old library, Miss dear. Don't let them trouble your rest.
Rest remained elusive. The silence of the library was punctuated
by new uncanny phenomena. My nightly recordings began teasing out details,
even my careful brain tried to repress on several playbacks.
Low warbling echoes, intruded footstep shuffling somewhere behind my rounds,
never close enough to pinpoint. Names emerged, sometimes repeated and choppy,
distorted voices mayhe Brian. Each time I checked my phone,
the recording was clear, no radio signals to explain the transmissions.
And now I'd mapped the library's floorpland behind, overlaying my
own sketches over the official prints. My lines didn't always match.
Here was a corridor drawn by blueprints but blocked by
a brick wall. Here the public plants showed a magazine alcove,
but I walked granite steps into nothing but waldoffnook small details,
mounted a door knob with no key of vent that
hald even on when this night's corner was colder than
the rest of the room by five or six degrees.
This is more than old architecture. The building coiled and
on itself, hinting at a malice not found in stone
or wood, but in memory. On the night, thick with
humid air and precious ordents. It made my head ache.
The lights flickered twice and went out. A line of
breakers must have tripped somewhere beyond my reach. My phone's
weak flasslight was my only guide as I navigated by
routine rather than sight. Sweating, dissorient it, and more afraid
than I wanted to admit, I made my way along
the narrow's corridor behind the staff offices. That's when I
saw it. A door that hand been there before, paint pristine,
a lock with the old brass plate marked north lower storage.
On a wild hunch, I checked my room for the
most battered, little used key, corresponding to a number in
the lager I had seen so many times but never used.
Eleven thousand, three hundred ninety three. The key fit perfectly.
Hot from my palm, the smell hit first, maufalls, dust
and a clinging in organic odor, like old glue. I
swung the flask white beam over metal shelling dozens of
battered cardboard boxes. Each was labeled in trembling handwriting with
a year and a name Quince nineteen seventy five, Surrat
nineteen ninety six, Mayhew nineteen eighty five. I crushed an
open one box at random, stomach churning inside a wallet,
a cracked pair of glasses, a photo with a face
clipped out. The next held a wrinkoat faded and stiff,
with initials embroidered in the lining, s beat, and a
staff badge from the old library logo. Each box repeated
the pattern small items muta traces nothing of valley except
the evidence of a living person's passage race with ruthless care.
The far wall drew my trembling hand duct Taped beneath
the f all's floorboard was a sheaf of old flies,
missing persons, posters, library logo in the corner. The faces
crushed off, the name's matching those in the legacca columns.
The poster's I just cull But each message was the
same last scene Library night shift terror called an ancient
trickled into my bones as realization donned it wasn't just
a letter or a series of architectural quirks. Every name
written there had belonged to some one who had worked
the same shift. Every missing person box, every sign out
in the security logs, each marked a story wipe from
the well's memory, except for whatever thing kept as record alive.
The library had become a seasonal mouth, swallowing up lost
time and forgotten people. On the back page below the
years twenty eighteen twenty twenty two, I saw a new entry,
and in so fresh and glistened wel gee my initials
a signmon pending. I turned flashlight trembling in my hand
to the closet's deader. The silence pressed hard a stone
on my Chest's silence that had waited an attention. Some
mechanical part of me relocked the door, pocketed the key,
closed up the library until summer's My feet carried me
back through the building, while the names from the ledger echoed,
blending with those that are resonant jim footfuls that had
nearly been my own. My routine was a fragile promise
each step forward. Now I knew I was part of
the record, and something was waiting for me to finish
the Ledger's work. I don't remember much of the walk
back to the main hall, just to flicking away, and
as the flashlight's waning beam boancing from linoleum to brass,
the box of keys heavily at my hip. For a
few minutes, I believed I could let myself go through
these practiced motions that regularity would protect me. I latched
the staff corridor door behind me. None was shock, and
wandered up past the periodicals, dustpan clattering against my leg.
Something strange happened at I passed a magazine nook. The
library itself seemed to lean in straining to listen. I
found my ears stretching for any hint of living sand,
a cough from the low beat, the click of a keyboard,
street noise crawling under the doors. Nothing, even the neon
flicker from the sign outside had dimmed. A pole of
shadow pulling at the edges of the glass. I forced
a breath, brushing my hand along the unfinished shelf, grounding
myself by touch. The place felt suspended, as if I
could tip into another world at any moment. My mind
raised over the objects I'd seen in those boxes, forward
and every things rendered monstrous by their context. The word custody,
scribbled in a dozen hands ricosheted inside my skull. My
phone vibrated a new text from Hillary, the time stamp
reading two twenty one A m hard night. Tell me
you're not making up ghost stores in their lone I've
thumbed a quick reply fingers clumsy, might be things are
weird here tonight. We'll call when I get out. I
couldn't bring myself to describe everything through texts, not yet.
Instead I pressed record and whispered into the phone, as
if the act of speaking could pin the knight back
into normalcy. Found the ledger again in a room that
shouldn't exist. Thore are boxes, boxes with people's names from
the book, missing posters and personal things. My own initials
are there now, haven't seen any one else. But there's
something wrong with the way the corry doors connect to night.
It's like I walk through a door that wasn't supposed
to open, and now I can't close it again. I
keep hearing. Just then a faint knock echoed from deep
within the stacks, single solid, then another. It was so
deliberate I nearly dropped my phone. I let the audio
run and force myself toward the sound. Still just me
in the rattle of the eight track, but each foot
soa powder to force in the last. I peered around
the end of stack five, my flasklight trembling as I
clipped it to my pocket. A glint of something metallic
flashed from beneath the arcaft cut. I crouched heart leaping,
and found the library staff tagged the old logo a
can used decades back, black ribbons ready to a brittle
plastic sleeve. The name on the card ad good de Lacey.
The edges wood sheewed and damp, spotted with mold, as
if it had been under water for years. Had I
missed this before? Or did someone or something move it
after I found the closet? There was no good answer.
I dropped it in my jacket pocket for sake keeping.
The rest of the shift blurred with tension. At every turn,
I was half convinced I catch a showder round in
the corner ahead of me. I'll look up to find
someone's reflection moving the wrong way. The old clock in
the lobby ticked out of sink with second stretching and
compressing as the hands jerked and evenly. Once I saw
my own face in the dark window split second misalignment
that made me jowled, convinced a glimpsed some one watched
from behind a glass. When the first read of morning
creased the east windows, the world's dimensions seen to loosen
its grip. I forced myself through the closing checklists sweet
vestibule or stock bathroom supplies, note bulboutage in the main stack.
The public doors would unlock themselves on a timer, And
with the sunrise came the day shift. Yobber at the
student shelves, the steady thrum of normalcy. My legs shook
as I made for the cloak room, slipping the bundle
of keys than the tag I had found into my locker.
For a moment, I paused outside the staff lounge. Through
the frosted glass, I caught the blurry impression of a
figure moving within. Then, as I blinked nothing, the silence
behind the door pressed against my skull, tempting me to
open it, as though the answer to everything behind the
ledger was just inside waiting. I moved on before I
could act, misssi Arbor appeared in the main hole hare,
as perfect as always, sorting return books into neat piles.
She greeted me without looking up. Good morning, dear, he
looked tired. Everything all right for rough night, I said,
trying to sound neutral, my voice scraped from lack of sleep.
Some oddities in the staff records things not match up,
She chuckled, not unkindly comes with the territory every old
building heaps. He could think of it as job security.
I tried to keep the conversation going, but she pivoted, neatly,
holding aloft the morning paper. See you next week, as
she said, already half immersed in her day. Mister Grogan
materialized shortly after a clipward ready problem with cleaning supplies.
He asked Tom flat, No, but the supply keys are
off again. We're missing one, and I found the staffed
tagold type down in the archives. He tense lips, thinning,
I'll handle it. Don't worry, abubble tacks. Focus on your route, please.
He scribbled a note, neatly, ignoring both the evidence I'd
brought and the exhaustion swimming under my words. The unspoken
was as loud as any alarm. I felt more than
saw his eyes trap my movements as I took off
my uniform and shouldered my bag. I had decline when
he locked the outter doors and keys chattering on his belt.
I walked home under the wait of morning. The city
outside the library buses, school children, bakery smells, felt cinsuries
removed from the hush of midnight, hulls and the ledgers Jill.
Even so, as Anne locked my apartment and clapsed onto
the fruton, I couldn't let go. Some part of the
nightly pulse had seeped into my bones, and after image
I couldn't blink away. When I finally slept, my dreams
reassembled the library and warp detail corridors folding over themselves,
stairwells that unraveled like ribbons. The soft click of keys
exchanged in invisible hands. I worke, clutching my phoe and
tempted to listen to my audio lock, but afraid of
what I might here lay beneath my own voice. The
following night, anxiety called under my skin. As I prepared
for my shift, I lingered in the apartment longer than usual,
fumbling my breakfast, checking the contents of my back back
a dozen times. I packed the staff tag in as
cars for notes and three separate pens. It felt ridiculous,
like armor made from paper. By the time I reached
the library, dust had already faded. The building loomed larger,
it spock more imposing than usual. I expected the familiar
relief of stepping into the routine, but the air inside
felt charged. The main lights flickered once before steading. I
had almost laughed when my phone bused another message from Hillary,
A dumb mimon ee, don't get eaten by ghosts room
and twenty That was her wave check in. It comforted
me more than I cared to admit. I tapped my
things into cloak room, checked lockers, and did my rounds
with methodical slowness, trying to find comfort in the sweeping in.
The gentle slap of mop on tile routine helped, but
my skin prickled with the sense that I was only
play acting at normalady. Halfway through cleaning the mezzanine hand rails,
I heard a metallic bang from the stairwell leading to
the lower archives. Not a book dropped or a mark
throwing free, something struck, deliberate, insistent. I left the cleaning
cot and crept toward the echo. The stair wall was empty.
My light lilnted on brass rails, the chip plast distaining
an odd grey at the bottom of the steps. I
descended slowly, hands brushing rough stone, aware with every step
that I might not be alone. Near the bottom, a
draft washed over me, A strange, faint scent of mildewer
in ink, I caught my own shaky reflection in a
tiny circle. We were mounted above a locked door labeled Archives.
The brass lock plate was embossed with the key number.
I recognized from the ledger that he had always been
missing from the hook, or so i'd thought. I reached
for my keying, running my thumb over each one, heart
beating just below my collarbone. The heaviest, oldest key, the
one for north, lowest storage the closet i'd found, and
now felt warmer than the others, as if it retained
some charge. I tried it, just in case, but the
key didn't fit. The door remained locked tight. I tested
every remaining key, finding them that matched. I pressed my
ear to the coal wood, a muffled scrape, as if
something some one was shuffling stacks of paper deep inside.
Or perhaps it was only the whir of the building's
vents amplified by nerves. I've raised my phone, pressing echoed
on insinct for the wreckor I whispered, I'm in the
lower stairwell, standing in front of our cove sea, no
visible way inside. Something is moving another side. I can't
explain why but I feel like the ledges missing names
are connected to these locked doors. If behind me a
cough echoed from the far end of the corridor, I spun,
breath caught high in my lungs. My flashlight bounced from
all to wall, but the passage stretched empty, the old
Gnobian gleaming faintly in my beam. I made my way
back up stairs, forcing my footsteps to sound deliberate. On
returning to the reading room, I found a note waiting
for me in the reference desk. Please tidy the North
Reading Nook at earliest convenience, Thank you, asked Bryan. Beneath
the signature, a tiny, almost invisible symbol a stylized key
drawer next to the date. No one should have been
able to leave this note. The branch had closed at
six and the outer doors were chained until morning. Yet
the note itself was written in the libraries old stationary
aged at the edges, the bluing faded in a way
no new penkered manage. I forced myself to comply. The
North Reading Knook, usually a haven for university students and
people escaping the jail, was now cold shat at as
chairs askew. I tied e books and rearranged the cushions.
Every muscle braced for something, anything, to break the tension.
My phone buzzed again, this time with a voicemail. I
recognized the library's own main number. With shaking hands, I
played it on speaker, her breath ragged and halting. Then
a quiet, plaintive voice, verily able whisper, please turn out
the lights in north basement three before you leave Kisa
with Ee Mayhew. Don't forget the message, time stamped itself
at three eleven a m. I stood perfectly still, phone
pressed to my chests harder while then or trying to escape.
I had never given any one the library's number, and
no one from maintenance, so the day's staff could have
placed a coal at the sire. Slowly I walked back
to the cloak room. I tried every lock in the
building after that, front doors, staff rooms, even the lounge.
My own key wouldn't open it as always, yet behind
the frosted pane, the faint outlines of jacket and mugs
seemed to ever rearrange, ever present in new configurations. I
could smell old coffee in the shop with a four
polished streaming out the keyhole a sudden bone decal press
against my back. I turned, expecting to find the source
of the draft, but instead I saw the outline of
the staff ledge, out lying open atop my cleaning cot,
where I had not left it. This time. The book
was flipped to a page marked with the current date.
Ink wet and fat bled through three recent signatures L
greyer three fourteen, and Judy assigned my name clear and
sharp etched in the final column, beneath two lines of
blocks script do not forget your route, returned the keys.
At that moment, the lights in the west stacks flickered off,
plunging half the main floor into darkness. A chair scraped
across the marble in the empty reading room. I snapped
my head toward the noise, nerves fraying all at once,
I smelt something new in the dense, ever sharpless, I
recognized from too many late nights the acritaint of candle
wax and scotched wool. My head spun with the disorienting
sensation of time stuttering. The wall. Clocks had stopped, hands
frozen their faces, reflecting the ghost glow of my phone's display.
Had it threatened to tip me over into uselessness, but
I gripped the ledger and forced myself to act. I
needed proof, something tactile, an object to ground me. I
pocketed the book, snatching up the de Lacy tag, and
hurried toward the only window in the stuff lounge corridor.
In the pane's warped reflection, I caught a pale figure
moving not behind me, within the glass itself. Its eyes
simple voids, the face and impression of someone I almost recognized.
I reached for the door handle before I knew what
I was doing, and trembling, I pressed the latch. This
time it gave a yielding click I had never heard before.
Inside the lounge was dim, the only light leaking from
a corridor. I never noticed a narrow pinch passage shadow
crowding its farthest edge. My phones flashlight illuminated stacks of newspapers,
mugs slowly gathering ring stains, coats that draped over seats
as if melted into the furniture. The air vibrated with
the faintest of murmurs. Half heard conversation suspended in time.
A battered clipboard rested atop the microwave, nut scrolled and
block letters greerifiltels de laciousweep mezzanine Brian report to north
corridor by three thirty. The routine written out, but next
to each line, instead of check marks, were empty ovals.
Waddin expectant. A movement caught the corner of my eye,
barely more than the sense of a person rising from
a couch. I spun At the far end of the
hidden corridor. A door stood at all thick light pulling
across the threshold. It was impossible, but I felt the
certain knowledge that if I crossed the shadowed span, if
I walked to the threshold, I would see every lost
custode in every vanished night worker waiting on the other side.
Some old part of me wanted, desperately, with the longing
that hurt, to walk it, to return the keys checked.
My last box become invisible the way the ledger demanded,
My heart kicked in my chest, cold sweat breaking out
lawn my neck. Instead, I backed up, quickly, letting the
door latch close behind me with a muffled thud. The
relief was immediate, but false. The ledger still pressed sharp
against the fabric of my jacket, and the shape behind
the glass still flickered, as though trapped in a separate
clockwork from time itself. I restored the towel shelf in
the bathrooms as a distraction, tucking replacement rolls into the
lust dispenser. I caught a flash of handwriting inside the cabinet,
a pencil mark delicate as a signature, reading Grower done
after ires above it, faint and faded mayhew in beneath
that surret, all written in the same hand. I stood frozen,
then scrawled my own name beside Grewers, closing the loop
as sudden irrational hope flared that may be by marking
myself present, I could banish whatever was handing these holes.
By then, dawn was threatening the east windows, black slats
fading to gray. With the clock hands still unmoving, I
relied on my phone for the time, six nine a m.
Sunrise Almost here, Almost robotically, I finished the checkers for
the shift last time for the day, turning keys in
the doors, flipping switches, rolling my cart back into the
storage room nearest roar from the choir. Before leaving, I
returned the ledger to the supply closet, tucking it back
behind the mop bucket as if thicket smooth. Over All
I'd learned the empty hook for the east lower archav
key remained its base of silent rebuke. I told myself
I'd returned at dusk just once more, that tomorrow I
call and sick, or raise a fuss, or take what
I'd learned to summon any one who might listen. But
as I left, brushing against the cold dawnlight, and knew
with the sinking certainty, that some part of me belonged
to the library, now written into its silent memory, as
surely as the keys were recorded in the ancient ledger. Outside,
the city rushed past, and shrieks and shouts. My phone
lit up with new messages from Hillary Coffee later. You
need a laugh, but I hesitated to answer. She was
my last real tether, the one person who might witness
what I found, if the library succeeded in a making
me as it had so many others. Still, the thought
of that waiting corridor, its impossible geometry, those empty ovals
and abandoned coots haunted me, And when I did drift
into sleep that morning, I dreamed again of moving through
lamplet stacks, a slow procession of keepers and custodians trailing
just out of sight, waiting for the next entry, the
next signature, the next vanishing to seal the record. Tite,
but the worst feeling of all. I felt the routine
growing sharp in my bones, that sense of belonging that
ached to finish the list, to return the keys, to
vanish so quietly that only a librarian's ledger would remember me.
The routine didn't just horn the library, it had begun
to haunt me. I meant to stay away, or at
least to keep the daylight between myself and the things
I'd uncovered, But by late afternoon, restlessness pressed up my skin.
Sleep came only in fractured intervals, half freemed people by
vanished stuff, moving from door to door with the same
strange deliberation I had felt inside the library walls. Each
time I blinked awake, the ghost rolle continued names I'd
read or had stuttered between consciousness and memory. When the
sun finally dropped behind the high rises, surrender was easier
than avoidance. I shower, tie my hair up tight, and
packed my bag as if nothing had changed. Crossing under
the blue kneon sign for the main entrance, I tried
to catch the smallest details. The hat andeed library iOS
pluck out fresh tape over last month, rip the sharp
outline of my reflection. As aboust myself in through the
staff entrance, my badge beated in the lock stutter to deliberate,
as though hestating. The front vestibule was cold, breathing out
a whistle when the mechanical time were quietly disengaged for
the closing shift. Inside, the air retained that old blend
of must and foe polish, but now there was something
under it, a mineral weight that gathered just beyond every
patch of light. My footsteps sounded too present, as if
each tapper wrote the dust behind me. I found myself
wholly my breath at odd moments, listening for the echoes
stray sounds that belonged to other knights of the Keeper's
Starting my rounds brought an automatic relief. I checked the
stuff closet, half dreading, half expecting to find a ledger gone.
But there it sat, placed squarely on the lowest shelf,
as if no one had ever distowed it. I opened
it by wrote whole pages darker with every reading. From
the oil of my thumb. My name was still there
not crossed out, not initial as clear to the right,
a new column pending Sea North Corridor. Something inside me
crystallized to resolve. Maybe were the last vestiges of skepticism
burning away Before I could talk myself out of it,
I tapped the book beneath my jacket and pushed through
the hallways toward the library archives. The route twisted more
secured as than I remembered, as though the familiar floor
plant had stretched during the I, or as I had
been gone. My first stop was the local History room.
Microfilm reeel sat behind glass, heavy with thirty years of
staff recros, payroll ledgers, and faded anniversary clippings. I strained
my eyes at the microfiche reader, spooling past dusty lists,
old pose group photos for each year, the same pattern,
someone missing, a blank insignia, or worse, a familiar cluster
of faces with one body out fully erased, standing gap
jawed beside grinning colleagues. I shifted tracks, searching for Mehew's
obituary yielded nothing. The city arc has chooked on Brian
and at a lasi, I tried to recall if I'd
been wrong, if I'd simply confuse ol ghosts stores for fat.
But the blank spaces and the record said more than
any legend. Names bright in the ledger were absent everywhere else,
as if their existence was sandpepered from every source except
this one secret log and these forgotten boxes. Infrustration, tinted
with dread, I traced four numbers and cross reference to dresses.
My search only brought up dead links or lines routed
to disconnected voicemail. Reaching for an outside authority felt desperate,
but I tried. I dialed the police, priests listen to rings,
let my anxiety build. The officer who finally answered was bored,
courteous until I mentioned the missing employees. May he Brian
surrat at each name. His tone dulled patients evaporated into
the mechanical script of a no records here, ma'am, maybe
you have the department room. Before I could plead the
lion cut out, I sat in the local history room,
adrenaline draining like a burst pipe. Every gambit failed physical archives,
city records, direct human intervention. I've felt the library's quiet
assertion at the edge of things, a pressure to return
to the known, to the ledger, to the keys, the
all routines, calling me home. I shouldn't have been surprised
when mister Grogan found me there. His entrance was silent,
no greeting, just the click of the latch and his
dark outline stained by the dusk falling through the stained
glass window. You're behind on your signed route, he said,
words clipped as if fresighted from an invisible script. I
need to know what's going on, I replied, steadily, clutching
the ledger with both hands. Who are these names? Why
does nothing match the staff ledgers? Why am I listed
as pending in this book? His oyes flick or perhaps
a shadow of genuininees raucus mix up overtime? Best if
you don't overthink some things under a department, stick to
the checklist, Lee that all the library expects from that staff.
He didn't look away, not until I rose and placed
the ledger between us, its cover facing outward, daring him
to acknowledge what we both knew. The overhead lights hummed,
intensity rising a notch. He reached out, fast and pale,
and slid the book back toward me. Leave it, he warned,
Stop making work for yourself. If you keep digging, you'll
lose your access here the meaning was plain, the finality
already decided. I stopped arguing. No words would twist his
silent resolve everything about him, his sudden prisonce behind closed doors.
His careful shield of polite bureaucusy felt complicit as he
turned to leave, a carterlasque glimpse of his badge. The
pin adorned its edge a townished token that I never
noticed before. It was the shape of a key. Alone again,
I mussage my temple in the hush of balance, dust
motes and fluorescent bulbs. Rustionality suggested resting, but ritual insisted,
and who finished my rounds? Keep the schedule still part
of the pass, and even if it meant walking into
its teeth. The library felt newly alien. The corridors seemed
to unspoil as I moved through them, Staircases that were
short and daily trailed on and possibly long. At night,
on a hunch, I tried a door I had never
noticed before, Using one of the old keys from the
ledger's ring. The brass made contact, grown and clicked open
inside the corridor beyond, pulsed with the chill, lit by
the skipping fluorescence of a single overhead bulb. Rooms extended
beyond the boundaries. I had mapped. What at once been
a knock of for periodicals, had shifted into a passage
one in gently, then abruptly twisting, lined with dusty portraits
whose features had been blurred to the point of anonymity.
My legs carried me forward, magnetic, with dread clocks on
each landing poles out of order, in a hand, tracing
slow backward docks, even as the phone in my back
pocket ticked normally onward. A movement to my side, hard
to catch, seen only through the flutter at the far
edge of vision, a figure ro of, not and wool,
but in dust and static, and moving until I tried
to center my gaze. Each time I stopped. It halted
as well, part Gray's part distortion, Norse basement free my
mind so called back to the impossible places the ledger marked.
I aimed myself there, fingers, searching for the key I'd
avoided for so many days. It slid into the lock
with dreadful rightness. Beyond the threshold, air became syrup, stale, motionless,
waited by hundreds of lost hours. The flashlight picked out
low shouts, stacked with label boxes handwritten years, vanishing into
calculus in script. Each box's label echoed the missing names.
I opened one at random, and covering a spray of objects,
a battered library card, coined with faces sanded blank, brittle
calls of paper, shift locks, marked only as a veil
to return. Shuffling forward, I tripped on a battered patch
of linoleum. Below, stassed under loose planks, a sheaf of files, paperwork,
meticulously recording the removal of staff families from official memory,
one page at a time. The handwriting took pains to
raise not only individuals, but the net of those living.
Fred school registers, marriage certificates, club memberships, all methodically canceled.
Cold fingers of fear crawled up my arms as a
terrible realization. To call the library's ledger was a boundary
stone catalogan erased as much as the present In the sight,
silence footstrech rung out behind me. I jerked my head.
The road figure crossed into view, silver bright and flickering
at the edge of vision, then vanished as soon as
I turned to look. Panic crocketed in my veins. Desperate
for an anchor, a pressed record on my phone and
let myself speak whispering sharp, shallow words as I described
room after room, box after box, each furled with a
shiver of missing presence. Pages in the ledger shifted as
I spoke, as bestowed by windlass off, harckey, jerky movements,
the book endlessly rearranging itself to show. My gaze fell
only on whatever details the library wanted me to absorb.
Names floated up, pending, always pending, and then my own
being bled across the page, the text swelling grotesquely so
that Ale Greernext became the only clear line in a
darkening soup of enters. The oppress of certainty filled my gut.
The library intended to make me next. Something called to
me from deeper in the basement. A subtle trailing whispered,
half a memory, half a voice finished the list lee
returned the keys. My attention was drawn to a fissure
in the wall, previously hidden in shadow. A draft, impossibly
call curled from its depths. I pressed forward, hard, battering
at my ribs. The passage within threaded downward, growing narrower
with each step. My flasklight flicker, its beam warping as
a struck by currents of static at the bottom shelves
rose on either side. Library uniforms carefully folded. A dozen
staff badges pinned in even rows, each one inscribed with
a name that now only existed inside the ledger. Unreadable
photographs faced upward from the cement walls, images wipe of
detail except for hands, pockets, and keys. A lao humming
song welled up from beneath the floor of tamber that
vibrated not so much in my ears as along my
teeth and bones. I could swear. The ledger pulsed in
my hand, simultaneously growing heavier and more impossible to hold.
I turned, stumbling back into the brighter corridor above, but
the architecture had shifted again. Rooms I'd entered minutes before
had shuffled the rout up were now ran longer, with
landings that curved into forgotten class rooms and storage rooms
I couldn't remember seeing before. My knuckles whitened around the
strap of the ledger as I moved, sweat running coal
down my back, my resolve held together by the frail
insistence to see this night through. At the summit of
another staircase, I emerged on what should have been the
main stacks. The ceiling arched tied than I recalled. The
skylight now mirrored, pulls that reflected only shadow every direction,
healthy arranged shells, books called with coded notations and margins
returned before midnight. After I was only non transferable. A
phantom pain thunded at my temples as the sense of
being inside a living mind a memory engine came into focus.
The library was more than stone. It was a steel trap,
perpetual record. My phone buzzed in my pocket, expecting another
text from Hillary. I unlocked it, only to find the
device cycling through all voice locks of my own, each
garbled at the worst moments, breaking into static, got cut
off before the crucial details. I tried to scroll back
through my archived files, but files from the last two
nights were inexplicably missing in their plays. A single save
message repeated, don't forget the keys, finished a list art
in my throat. I realized calling for help, even reaching
out for outside intervention, was now meaningless. The record itself
was rewriting my memory, stripping each attempt to anchor myself
to ordinary reality. A scraping sound rushed down the next corridor,
moving almost on instan I followed it through an impossibly
twisting passage to the center of the building. The path
terminated in a broad circular chamber lined with clus display cases.
Behind the glass badges, cleaning locks and tarnish keys floated
on velvet cushions. A subtle movement shimmered among the case's figures,
spectral and ashen, shuffing from exhibit to exhibit, each drawing
a translucent index finger across cold glasses, if waiting for
their turn to be selected. I stood still, hands pressed together,
my breeding shallow enough to muffle my presence. Slowly, the
figures took on more detail, the outline of name TEGs,
the shimmer of keys dangling at their hips, a shimmer
of eyes that reflected no light. They moved as if
performing a lupicustodial ballet preserved in the film of memory.
One stepped forward. His face was a blurwdico of the
staff photo as I traced in a Microffiche no features
to pick apart, only the shape of a mouth moving
with silent syllables. The voice, when it came, was everywhere
at once, inside my skull, rattling softly with the cadence
of the routines we all shared. Finished the list. Lee
it said, adorning hands with the restless air record complete,
preturn the keys close the night. I clutched the ledger
ato my chest. I won't, I won't become part of
this this cycle. Why us? Why are we always next?
No direct answer, only a ripple among the others. The
slow mechanical movement of keys passed from hand to ghostly hand.
The pressure to yield was immense, like cold water force
in me, under clearing me out until lonely routine remained.
The figures advance vainly, outline hands and furling toward my phone,
my badge. Myself had pinned down by documentation. As one
press close, I felt the lightest touch. Cold time is
at the base of my neck. Memory bled away, I thought,
to clutch at what remained. I pressed the phone's record
button again, shouting into the dark, Hilary, listen, if you
hear this, I need ye to remember me aye. But
the words slurred, the device luggish. As time began unraveling
inside my head, concepts stretched, order stuttered. What had happened
last hour, last week, last winter? All shuffled through the
warrn teeth of the library's gears. The ledger yawned on
my palm, its final page, lifting in a tremor, as
if blown from within. My name scrolled itself, blacking, seeping
over the white cloth. I'ming to the top of the
assignment list. El greer, duty close, please return keys. The
urge to comply was an ache, paralyzing yet seductive. I
found myself walking, then being walked out from the circle
of display cases. The spectral hands guided, gently, never harsh,
twisting me through rooms were dust, swelled in the light,
through galleries lined with boxes of possessions, up to a
final glass door, the very heart of the building. Sliding
the final brusk key from my ring, I placed it
in the slot. The door fell away. Inside I saw
the full assembly, every Vanish shift worker, sitting in order
of ranks, perfectly still, eyes open, a blank, one chair
sat empty. The pole was unbearable, Take your seat. The
course drifted, torn between invitation and command, caught between resistance
and resignation. I dug into my pocket for the last
vestige of self. The battered staff, badged, the one with
de Lacey's name, the one I pocketed. The rough surface
pressed into my thumb, grounding me for a shuddering second.
I squeezed until my knuckles went white, focusing entirely on
the texture, at the idea that may be objects could
persist even as memory faided. With a erst of motion,
I hurled the badge across the room. The spawn struck
a shelf, and the room's frozen tablets slipped. For half
a second, the ledge's pages trembled violently, flapping as though
and wind all around me. The spectral figure spun a watch,
slack jawed mouth stretching in confusion or anger. I seized
the distraction, stumbling backward, phone still recording. The pressure abated
just long enough for me to stumble from the room.
The ledger clutched hard against my robs. A shadow broke
loose from the group, flickering by the door, a swirl
of movement gaining mass and intent. I ran longs, burning
every corridor, now winding toward the entrance rather than away.
The walls flecked each bend, stretching longer than logic aloud.
But something may be panic, maybe luck pushed me on.
My thoughts swam half lost to the undertow of the
library's record. At each turn, the bookshelves reached, but the
badge in my mind, and the memory of my own
voice and the tape kept me moving. Finally, I crashed
through the side, exiting to the false darn. The city's
billy re lights pierced the library's gravity, the sound of
cart eyes and a garbage truck restoring a portion of
my lost weight. My last memory, Hurian inside the door
was letting me go, not swinging shot, but ease and closed,
as if disappointed, saving strand for another night. I made
it past the bus stop before my legs gave out.
I slumped against the stone wall, sucking in breath after breath,
waiting for my heart rate to slow. When I could
think clearly again, I realized the ledger was gone. My phone,
still warm, still running, had been recording all along, but
as I searched through the files, I found gaps, smears,
dropped time stamps, the crucial moments, the confrontation, the voices,
my desperate message to hilaryol flickered through with static and
were gone. The next day, Sundays and hollow, I locked
onto my email to compose a timeline of what had happened,
attaching copies of what little had survived, an audio Hilary's
reply was brisk and straightforward. She hadn't received most of
the recordings. A file or two reached her clip with
so muffled the sounded like interference. My detail texts from
the previous night had been delivered as half strings and
garbled cymbals. She assumed my phone was dying in sant
Amimi return. I checked my voicemail history. Nothing upbound, nothing inbound,
but the barest roements as static cry for help, lasting
less than a second, but for being erased. I called
the library. The number rang into silence. Then a cliff
unfamiliar voice informed me I had reached the historic main desk.
I left a message. It never pink back. When I
visited the city's human resources page, the roster for the
main branch displayed a completely different name beside janitorial. Overnight,
my own badge number had been reassigned. Pushing through my
hangover of dislocation, I told myself, go back, see if
anything is changed, if you still exist, to the building
in any way, I walked in during open hours. The
security guard smiled, but the scanning device denied my card.
The staff lists displayed in the wall and modest plaque
engrave with names had replaced Lee greared with the Deborah Mels.
The student shelters were near the of the ones I
had seen before. The css yabre had been replaced by
a man named Ollen, who greeted me with the sort
of cheer reserved for Lanston in strangers. The new staff
looked through me or around me, never at me, pushing
down her knees. I wandered past the cloak room. My
old locker was locked tight, the door numbered for another
down the staff corridor. The lounge was open, mugs and
jackets in evidence, but the background objects changed in new brands,
new colors, All traces of my presence erased. Even the
scent in the lounge had shifted. No lemon polish, just
the touch shadow of a different cleaning agent. I lingered
near the supply closet, rationalizing a reason to loiter. The
keys on their hooks were new, numbered in a pattern
and familiar to me. Still, as I watched, I felt
a magnetic pullinage to reach for the oldest one, to
retrace my steps to slighter forgotten key into his lock.
I left the library that day without accomplishing anything, but
with a sense of being hollowed out at the center.
I could not recall the routines of my old life,
and yet the urge to patrol the quiet irons to
serve the building's insatiable record pressed up my mind with
painful regularity. Night blurred sleep came rarely. When it did,
dreams forced me from corridor to corridor, each turn looping
me back to the empty waiting chair in the assembly room.
Always at the last moment, the ledger appeared, his final
page blank, but for three new names, late one andsum
nect night I walked past the library's courtyard. Light burned
in a utility closet, just passed the integative view, only
visible if he were watching for it. Motion flickered in
the narrow slit of frosted glass, the shape of someone
hunched over a cat, pushing a mop in practice circles,
checking a wall offfooks from missing keys. A new custodian,
he passed through shadow and light, his features indistinct, the
echo of his footsteps naturally out of sync with the
city's rhythm. When he pulled open the staff locker, I
saw the ledger once again in its place, as though
it had never left, the black cover gleaming with its
miserable weight, curiosity or dry or both compelled me to linger.
The custodian bent over the ledger, tracing a finger along
the final page. There three names bloomed of an obdurate
incammine included scold in my hand, the letters slanting as
if caught midfinch. The new costodian paused, head cocked at
an angle. He pressed his phone to his ear, speaking quietly,
recording a message I could not hear, but I fell
rather than heard a trace of my own voice answer
back from somewhere behind a locked door. Don't let them
forget you, I whispered, and possibly my words distorted by
static cycling on lips off to insistent warning, or perhaps
only the plea of someone lost amid the shelves. Each
rep petition wavered, the tapewarping, fragmenting into silence. As the
sound washed away, the ledger's pages trembled, ready for new names.
The cycle had not broken. Its hunger was patient, its memory,
and was the system older than any one of us.
Feeding quietly on the lost and unremarked, Soon another would
take up the keys, answer the notes, fall into the
habit of the routine, and draw close to finishing the list,
the footsteps would echo in corridors that lengthened with every loss,
until all the city's names belonged only to the library's
mescless ledger, And in time the night shift would continue
and broken, unknown, its victims, marked not only by what
was present, but by what was so thoroughly arrayed. No
one but whisper behind the locked door could even remember
to mourn, But the city moved on outside the glass,
a silent jury to a mystery it would never quite see.
My limbs felt heavy with an urgency that didn't belong
to me, as if some invisible leash were tagging me
back toward the foundation I had already slipped from. If
the cycle was what it seemed, each night drew in
new names, and mine was only the latest, almost vanished echo.
The ledger, malicious in its patients, was already waiting to
inscribe whoever next turn the key. Despite every chilling warning,
a part of me rebelled at a prospect of becoming
only another raised footnote. Instead, I returned night after night,
sometimes blending with the crowd of students, sometimes trailing the
new sturdian in schadow. He looked ordinary enough, early twenty's
hunched in concentration, movements careful but never truly at ease.
His eyes darted too quickly to the shadowed corners, the
architecture warping behind him, just as it had for me.
One evening, as the clock outside struck half past eleven,
astition myself on the steps, watching the last patron's filter
out the breeze wort, cigarette smoke from a group of
medical students huddled under the awning I pressed into the
stone work, watching the new night man arrive. He fumbled
at the badge reader, dropped his keys, then pause, staring
down at the ring as if weighing each metal tooth's purpose.
I recognized the hesitation, the cold thrill of knowing a
routine was about to become a test of all against
something deeper than boredom. He glanced left, caught the yell
of glint of the outer vestibule's window, and for just
a second, looked directly at me. Our eyes met, My
pulse stuttered as the air responded a whispering pressure in
my inner ear. Did he truly see me? Or had
I become just another distortion in the glass? The ghost
moving at the border of tie vision inside the cleaning
carse wheels squealed the sound I knew so well, Echoing
up the deserted corridors to the reference desk. I circled
the building, slipping through the alley hanshove deep in my coat,
telling myself this was research, not obsession. Each window's reflection
threatened to show a figure where only shadows should be.
But the only certain movement was the new custodium, beginning
his rounds, mop in one hand, fawn an the other.
Recording his first lock. I pressed him clothes irriticled masonry,
straining for details through glass fogged with condensation. His voice
carried in sharp and certain bursts. I'm starting in the
reading room north stacks. There's this book here, which I
guess it's some sort of checkout. Lock doesn't match the
room keys. Though he was moving fast at first, taking
notes a lout in embracing practical rhythm, the ledgerer was
haz Now. For whatever span of time the library allowed,
the city fell away. I trailed him from outside to
watching the flicker of light as he entered unexited rooms.
Shadows walk behind him, stretching in an outnatural proportions across
a polos slenoleum, and when he doubled back, stopping at
the staff lounge, I watched a ship blare ever so
slightly in a frosted glass, as if something inside was
already putting distance between his bones and the rest of
the world. He didn't last long before encountering the same mysteries.
A note slid beneath the wrecker's office store, a phone
rang once, then went dead, ere turned biting by a
lock supply room. I recognized the mounting panic, a pattern
ie ditched into the building's grows as certainly as scoping
the same stains night after night. I felt a melancholykinship.
But all I could do was watch if I re entered,
if I exposed myself again with the ledgacies on my
name anew or was I forever locked out bearing witness
in the cold, unable to intervene. Still something compelled me,
and one night, when the last commuter tram had rattled past,
I pressed a hand to the cool marble and whispered
through the cracks of the building, don't let them forget you.
My voice or itt shadow seemed to curl along the hallway,
weaving in and out with the stale bookshaer. I almost
believed I could smell the scorched wall, the wax drifting
through the dark, perfume of old wood, the invisible leash time.
The city, too full of its own noise, failed to
notice the act of a rasure, one more persons being
ground into dust. That night, I walked further, pacing the
neighborhood until dawn. My phone vibrated with the message from Hillary.
Still up, having heard in weeks everythin coul my thumb
hovered over, replied the urge to confess, all to flutter
her with the terreller kept me up rose, but language failed.
How could I explain I wasn't merely afraid, but unraveling.
I put the phone away, heart pounding over the week's
routine redrew itself as obsession. I chatted the new custodian's schedule,
a different patent, but familiar in its slow surrender to
the ledge's demands. I tracked whose names appeared with each miss,
and key, whose footsteps multiplied an echo, how I was
seemed to stretch her double over. After midnight, each instance
marked progressed deeper into the story, and it became clear
that the process, whatever it was adapted to the individual,
rewriting the script as soon as they tried to fight
or skip a step. One evening, desperate for connection to
anything that wasn't the building or at prey, I reached
out to miss esque Humor, hoping she might remember even
a slaver of my presence. We mef for tee in
the park spring wind, blocking napkins off the table. Her
eyes were revermmed, tired but warm. You always did work
too hard, she said, after a moment, holding her mug
with both hands. I've been meaning to ask, did you
ever find out why the lounge always has a different
mug on the table in the morning? I stared at her, stunned.
She smiled politely, clearly expecting an answer, but not recognizing
any further meaning in the question. Whatever remnant memory lingered,
it was slipping, just as the city had moved on
the people nearest the library, no matter how kind had
surrendered to the new pattern, making room for what the
building required, orderly plausible forgetfulness. I left the park with
a new fear, not just that I would be erased
by the ledger, but that all proof, every connection would
collapse under its weight, that some day nobody would be
left even to remember being forgotten. On a row Wednesday,
I decided to press my luck. If the ledger wouldn't
let me back inside as myself, maybe I could pass
as a stranger, visitor of clothing, a city record inspector
at anything. That evening, I dressed in board work clothes,
pulling my hair back, adding thick glasses that pinched my nose.
Inside the air struck differently. Hostile alert public axis entered
at dusk, but it trailed in with the last two
late readers docked under the velvet ropement called in off
staff areas. The new custodian steps, heavy from fatigue, echoed
upward from the basement. I crept past the record's office.
I was flicking to every reflective surface. My own reflection
kept warping, sometimes absent altogether. Once it seemed an outline
shimmered beside me, a pale tran sparren shape. With my
nannerisms stubbornly resisting the pull of the building's routines, I
reached the familiar supply closet. The door propped half open,
let out the chilly breath of the library's bowels. The
hooks were mostly full now except for a key labeled
fourth mesny Narkov. It was missing, the space under its label,
worn clean from countless repeated absences. I forced my hand
inside the room desmotes DRUSI, and the dimvolved spun in
tight spirals. I knew what I was reaching for before
I saw it. The liger, always waiting, black and greasy,
as much a part of the building as stone or glass. Cautiously,
as if avoiding a trigger, A brushed fingers over the cover, cool,
then hot. The sensation was shot, like stepping suddenly from
a conditioning into afternoon san My thumb looped open the
final page, not with the easy, greedy appetite of the
boot prime, but with reluctance, as if he recognized the
floor in its system. The air of my semi rais status.
Where my name used to sit, scrolled with desperate script,
there was now a blank spot, three faint traces impressions
from heavy pen strokes, impossibly shallow where name should be.
Only the impressions remained, as if some one had tried
to remember, tried to resist and fail. A wave of anger,
divind terrified arose within me for the first time since leaving,
I shouted, Fuice, echoing, you will not of all of me.
Some one will know what happened here, some one will
remember the names. The ledger did not move, but I
felt the building we act a distant metallic rattle, perhaps
just pipes, or maybe the shifting of keys searching for
their proper place, rolled through the corridor. I pressed my
pond to the cold paper, channeling every memory I could summon,
an act of preservation against the tide of loss. A
sudden pressure on my shoulder made me whirl. The new
custodians stood behind me, wide eyed and weary. The Great
of the city street like, rusting his face. He held
a rag in one dir crusted hand, the other gripping
the phone is recording light burning bright and clear. What
are you doing back here? He blurted a voice raw,
Who are you? I tried to steady myself, held up
both palms as if warding him back. Listen, the ledger,
you keys the routine. It's a trap. It keeps folding
people into itself. You have to fight it. You can't
let it erase you or make ye disappear. You need
a record, something that can be wiped this confusion deepened,
but he did not back away. In a low voice,
he asked, have you been following me? Did the day
staff to groirt and send you? No one sent me.
I worked here too, not long ago, but you won't
find my name. They took it, took everything. My words
felt then in wild, barely trustworthy even to myself. But
the urgency was overwhelming. If you want to keep yourself,
don't let your locks go and witness. Get them outside,
copy them somewhat safe, leave something physical in note, anything
you have to disrupt the routine. He shook his head,
as if clearing out of troublesome dreams. Are you serious?
This is? Is this some kind of hazing? Because I
already told them a I'll cut through usicking from below.
Then silence, like a sound erased in the act of
hearing it. The custodians face strained of color worthlessly. I
gestured for him to ham me his foam. For a
wild moment, I thought he might run, but he offered
it up. Pans trembling as I pulled up his recording
app sharing what little expertise I had left. You see
the gaps of the static him playback. There are there
are voices layered in. There aren't there older voices, names
from the ledger. That is an interference, that's the building
making its own record. It will wipe you out unless
you get proof somewhere I don't know, outside the walls.
He took the phone back, glancing at new messages, scanning playbacks,
his mouth working silently, calculating. I kept thinking I was
losing time, he whispered. Sometimes it's like it's not my
shift at all. But I have to just keep cleaning,
keep checking the list. Last night the clocks all stopped.
I kept finding my signature in places I'd never been at.
You not imagining it, I murmured. But routine is the
snare that will keep changing things, making you disappear. You
have to break it, record yourself saying who you are,
mail it to someone, write it on something real, and
get it out to night before you forget. Wheels squeaked
outside the closet, A rising pulse of footsteps shook the
linearlum Both of us froze, dread coiling. He licked his lips,
panic clear now as he asked, who was before you?
Who's in the list? Do you know what's in the
bottom basement? I saw them, I replied, voice cracking. I
saw boxes, names, badges, lives raced over decades. Some part
of them remains, but not enough to fight. Don't let
that be. The library is poarsurged like shuddering, before snapping
to emergency mode. Shadows twisted, distorting our faces in half light.
I far off, echoing him and toory. Bell rang, a
sound I'd only had once before, in my deepest nightmare.
He stared at me, breathing shallow, then darted from the closet, cursing,
as if chased by Hell's oone archivists. I followed slow
at first, then faster as I realized the doors we
passed no longer corresponded to any blueprint. Corridors bent, doubled back,
led us in and out of familiar rooms turned ever
so subtly wrong. Portraits and frames flickered, of faces, blurring,
glasses becoming knives, uniforms, stitch clothes, cross hollow chests. The
further we ran, the more the sensation thicken. The library
locking were sitting, stripping away not just memory but possibility.
We reached the main hall breathless. He turned his phone's
camera outward, naming himself Robert mad as, I'm here, I'm
still here. Do not let this at the emergency lights
win dark, plunging us into brief total absence. When they
flickered on, I half feared I'd be gunn erased, overidden,
but our reflections lingered in the glass vestibule's curved surface,
blurred by condensation but present. Suddenly, a wave of cold
sweat through, the taste of copper and lemon polis, thickening
the air until it was almost unbreathable. The gas vibrated
beneath our hands. I heard faint but unmistakable dozens of voices,
each one whispering a name, overlapping in the same dead,
defeated kadinside once found in the ledger. The keys in
the wall rattled, some flinging themselves to the linoleum with
the clatter. He pressed his back to a lock staff door,
eyes rolling with terror. What is happening? What do I do?
If they do finish the checklists? I blurted, I don't
lock up, don't follow your locks, walk out, Leave something
behind for them to find, a mark of broken routine, anything,
fight it with chaos, make a mass, make noise. He
nodded slightly, dazed. Then in a swift, desperate arc, he
swept the cleaning card over supplies, tumbling mop water sluicing
onto the floor, bottles, spinning and scattering in every direction.
With a horse shower. He snatched a staff ledger and
flung it under the nearest radiator, then pounded on the
fire alarm. The clocks and scream ripped through the building,
shattering the thick silence. I stepped back, uncertain if the
act would break the pattern or deepen the snare. Red
lights pulsed, exit signs blared. I watched Robert run, truly
run for the stuff vestibule, daylight flickering over his wild silouette. Alone.
I stood at the center of the rottende. Smoke edged
up from the trap mop border, culling along the marble.
The building's bones seemed to tighten, resisting. I walked slow
to liberate, toward the phone ledger, feeling for any last
traces left to my name. When I touched it this
last time, the final page was no longer blank. Three
names written boldly mine at the top, then two more
the third space, still waiting. Don't let them forget you,
and muttered, pressing the cover clothes jamming, the ledger back
up right on the shelf, and that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.