Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I crept over Annelie in heavy sways,
wrapping shat amber, street light and crumbling brick into a
kind of wary hush. I set my shoulder against the
weight of the library's main door. The latch stuck, same
as always, and groaned when I finally managed to wrench
it free. On the other side, the rotten to gate,
pale and vast, fluxed and echoing beneath my sneakers. The
echoes followed too loudly for place, men for whispers. But
the library after dark was never as quiet as people
liked to imagine. The old place was supposed to be
in the first stages of a major of a whole
municipal grand full restoration. All that, yet everything felt half waiting,
half forgotten. My own presence was just another inconvenience, wedged
into the budget. Night security, temporary until the locks were upgraded,
and insurance paper what lapsed back into compliance. Not that
I'd expected to find myself here, given my history. They
say librarians always returned to their books in the end.
Now Here are not to shelve or share but to
stand guard in the dark. The above from the second
story balustrade, desmotes fluttered under the sensor, a lazy fluorescence.
I flipped them off, one bank at a time, grateful
for the brief stutter of darkness. The reading tables, neat
and empty, reached out their thin arms and rows. The
scent of old paper faint mildy, and furniture polished, familiar.
As Beth hung in the air. I checked my phone,
lowered by start time, and slum my pouch of keys, notebook,
and batted pocket flash like crosswise over my chest like
a talisman. At the front desk, Habit nudged me to
scan for anything left behind, a plastic cup, a forgotten summary, slip,
a child's breer. Instead, it I found something stranger, A
hardcover children's pertucked against the reserved terminals, buying a half
hand's width of the laminated wood astres. The whispering alusters
was the title, the letter's age, bleached silver against mud,
brown cloth, patch tape holding the cornice. Not a book,
I recognized from the current rotation. I thought, for a
moment of all the times I chased missing books in
my last life, my real library days and almost smiled.
I picked it up and flapped the cover open. Several
pages had been thumbed together, revealing a yellowed slip crinkled
hand horn. I expected to see a name, maybe a scold,
returned to lost and found instead, in blocky holding script,
I read, don't trust the list, please help it before
it's too late. The note was addressed and bly you are.
My pulse ticked up. I checked the inside covers for
a barcoed sticker. The one I found was decades old,
with a number in a sequence I had never used,
to nine digits with the prefix that started with the threeed.
The rest of the sticker had bubbled and peeled away,
exposing a faint stamp withdrawn in purple. I set the
book upright, then, almost on impulse, sniffed the brittle paper,
its meld of attic dust, fainted oranges, and something shopper
old glue. Probably I skimmed the copyright page nineteen seventy seven.
This copy looked older even than that. I checked the
check at slip. The last daid MIY ten nineteen eighty
two was stamped in red. No entries. After outside, a
truck backfired bouncing sound along the foundation deeper beneath my feet.
From somewhere in the sub floors, a muted thumping started,
like a distant heart beat to measures for pipes, too
slow for any small animal. The sound faded almost as
quickly as it arrived. I tapped the note and book
under my arm, trying to ignore the crawling sense of
an needs, the sense something was watching, were waiting. It
had taken me years to learn the feeling didn't mean
danger always, but I wrote the disturbance, along with the
odd sound from below, in my log book. Anyway, when
I started the overnight job at Annelie Library, it felt
almost like a dare. I'd convinced myself it was just
a patche I can tell something better came up. But
the truth was I missed libraries with a kind of
hunger that surprised even me. Not just the books, but
the rhythm, the rules, the sense that everything meant something
if you just paid attention. That had been how it
started for me, before boll care and good intentions, before
carelessness and accusation wiped the shells clean. It had happened
so quickly and misplaced file, a rumor about mismanaged records,
and soon enough the whisper spread. I resigned before they
could fire me, after I had walked up past the display.
I'd built a wall's stories about second chances. Fittingly, I
wasn't sure why the board here accepted me, but they did,
provided that I stayed out of sight and worked in darkness.
My love for books drew me back. Even in disgrace,
I told myself I'd do any job to be close
to the stacks again. Overnight security meant walking the old floors,
relishing every step, listening to the deep throbe of silence
between hard covers. Maybe I could make amends by holding
the place together with low level vigilance. A strange penance,
but it gave me something almost like hope. Still, the
place wasn't what I remembered from the handful of visits
I'd made in passing. The library was a mishmoshers central
rotten that with marble floors, fifty zero paneling giving weight
to glass block, and for mica edges. Two new modern
wings shut of the waiting structural repairs. Some shells had
been emptied for restoration, others on the upper floors remain
crammed with untouched periodicals microfilm boxes, stacked and haphazard towers.
The lower level, whispered about but rarely mentioned, has the
archives and the notorious special collection's fault, supposedly built to
withstand tornadoes and atomic blasts. Half the staff avoided the
basement after dark, the ones who didn't quit early anyway. Nightly,
I swept my assigned circuit lobby adult fiction, the falling
children's area, now rarely visited reference desks, and then the
basement holds the stream, which I like least. I checked
to all locks by hand. Somewhere I convinced myself the
anxiety of old guilt would wear fin and become simple routine.
It hadn't yet those first weeks, little oddities started to
lodge in memory like sawdust. One evening, the east reading
room light flickered to full brightness and ire after closing,
despite the shut down routine. Another night, I found a
row of computer monitors blinking a curious error message, strings
of zeros staff doors sometimes scraped open by millimeters between
my rounds crews in the floor, betraying fresh movement. A
spot behind the arch had smelled occasionally of woodsmuck, but
no one could trace its source. The worst was the
feeling in the dark corners, the persistent tickle of being
waited on like a stage hand watching for a miss mark.
If you let it, your mind built goes out of
every creek. I took to writing everything down time anomally
eat possible calls. It lent a sense of order, something
I could understand with little to do. Between rounds, I
strayed into places. Security staff went exactly encouraged to linger
at the break groom bulletin board over on the twenty
year old big Saale flyers, the ancient windows destop in
the staff offers, still running the library's first digital catalog
in a black and ambideous window. Sometimes I'd stick a
thumb drive and control through the backlogs, looking for staff schedules,
incident reports, old photographs, anything to make the IROs feel
less formless. Most of the overnight staff had moved on
during renovations, and no one really checked and accept the
facilities manager who responded to my night email with two
word replies and a kind of professional suspicion. His latest
message read, simply stick the script. Whatever script that was.
It changed depending on which wing was scheduled for his
best disabatement, I started to piece together a private mental
map of the place, entrances and exits, where the old
wiring gave owl, which radiators not most in the deepest hours,
I even mapped which staff came and went, as far
as sign in sheets showed. New phases seemed to arrive,
then were gone by the next week. Occasionally I found
a forgotten ID badge under a desk or wedge, and
a registered draw, some with employee numbers that matched others
that never appeared in the directory. A sense of accumulating
anomalies crept in. It was hard to shake the feeling
that information had been delivered, erased, bend around invisible corners,
and hidden in the fibers of the building's roudines. A
week into the job, I started a double column note,
with one side for nightly rounds, the other for anything
that felt off. Open windows that should have been locked,
otsolit tapped between shelving. Even a data polaroid of a
party in the archives, captioned beneath the stacks now thirteen,
nineteen seventy eight. Nearly everyone in a faded picture was
a stranger to me, their name texts much unreadable by
flush glare. Most odd of all. No matter how many
times I tried to inventory the children's section, there was
always one book missing. A missfell the shelf where I'd
found asters the whispering owl lusters should have held biographers. Instead,
there was nothing but dust and a fine, pale gouge
in the wood, as if someone had dragged the book's
spine back in for three years. After a few nights,
the patents started making itself known. Nor maybe I was
just primed to see meaning in the empty spaces on
the batted staff check and computer, a middle list of
clock ins and passwords that rarely changed. I noticed something
that didn't fit. Step between the previous week's staff clockouts
was a login for our Hlberd timestamp to twelve forty
three am, three nights a go, with no clock cat
line following. There wasn't a single Hulberd on any current staff,
nor anyone who'd worked in the last several months that matched.
The next entry jumped forward nearly twelve hours. Sharp as
a cleaver, I scanned through ARCv rosters, comparing names and
badged numbers. AH Halberd never appeared even on the old
retirement sheets that sometimes listed clerks who died in service,
Yet in the digital logs, that same user popped up
again at odd interval sporadic, always late at night, and
for years back. If the time stamps could be trusted stranger. Still,
several staff numbers appeared for chickens, but were missing in
every person al file I could find at one hundred
twenty seven sixty nine or one hundred fifty five. Many
were flagged as retired or inactive, but some look newly added.
There were gaps, blackouts, blocks of time where logs simply ceased.
A cold curiolsoity settled in my stomach. I returned to
the lone Children's but con cracked it open again, checking
the inn pepers, smoothing the fragile note with its now
familiar plea for help. I skyured the catalog system for
art in any form. Zero results, not even in our halberd,
in the donor listings or old bend registrations. On a hunch,
I searched for astors the whispering our lusters in the
library's online catalog. The result came upgrade out a single entry,
marked item lost nineteen eighty two. The database list died.
No more details if anyone at the circulation death had
seen this book, since they'd never said a word. Night
after night I turned these details in my mind while
making rounds. The stranger signal came from the basement. The
next evening, taking side stairs down to the arcast check
for leeks, I spotted something that had not been there
during my previous circuit. The handrail kicked with a film
of dust that never seemed to clear, sured a single
fresh streak, as though someone had steadied themselves descending in
the last hour. Reflexively, I checked all storage doors. None
were forced. It felt less and less like I was alone,
and certainty turned to resolve. The next night, clenching my
flashlight and starring my nerves, I mapped my entire sweep
of the older sections with meticulous care. In the self
Furst basement, I sloshed for an inch of standing water,
But that wasn't what caught my attention. It was the
series of muddy shoe shaped and princes beginning at a
fire exit. They didn't fit my shread over those of
staff boots. I knew next to the door frame a
chalk mark, small circular overlapping lines in a pattern I'd
never seen caught the beam of My Life up in
special collections. The cage seemed and touched the padlocks craped
against my glove. I ease it back into place, handshaking
as I turned to lock the check. I scanned the
glass shelves. One slot, though from the bottom labeled Asterisk
City Maps from nineteen fifty two. Asterisk was empty. The
coal slip used to track which laborian handled Each ray
book had been meticulously peeled out of its envelope and
shredded back in the office a dug for security footage.
There were four cameras per floor, most with blind spots
wide enough to lose A grown adult. Files from the
previous night archived and password protected studdard and jerked tom
playback A two weelve a m. A ghostly figure, tall,
bundled in a dark cook glided past the north stacks
a s quinnd it, trying to make out their face,
but the angle was wrong in the resolution law. They
paused at the edge of the shot and seemed to
unfold something, perhaps the missing books. Wide brown cover or chot.
A sudden flicker, white hot stroke crossed the frame, and
then the feet cut out For almost three full minutes.
Facility logs showed a pause bike in that window, Voltage
readings off by just enough to trigger the backup generator,
but not enough to allow the fire panel. No alarm sounded,
nothing in the lock, but recorded anything out of place
except my own scribbled uncertainty. I hesitated, then compose a
carefull email to the facilities manitor. I described the missing map,
the odd lock ins, the chalk marks, and finally the
log arrows. The reply arrived an hour later. Nothing stolen,
only records in error. Stick to break in checks if
the lights go out. Coal building services do not enter
restricted ocave rooms, CISI admin. The command may my skin crawl,
but I tooke it a face valley on the surface
at least that night, near the rare book's room, I
decided to bug the security routine. I hidden shadowed nook
behind a brass ber cart, breathing a shallowly as possible
for a full forty minutes. Nothing happened. Then, from deeper
in the walls, a faint, rivery thumping echoed surprisingly regular,
stopping only when I moved. I wait, then heard a
metallic screel, just barely audible. Chasing The sound led me
unexpectedly to the staff break room. The vent cover near
the baseboard rattling every few seconds. When I got close,
it stopped. I crouched and surprised myself by finding a
strip of electrical tape pasted to the under side of
the staff table. It took me a moment to work
it free. A small battered key, its metal tag to
beat you with a scrap of Basian Dick's guard My
pulse hammered. I pressed the key between my fingers and
checked the rest of the room. Everything seemed in order,
except for a half crumpled page at the bottom of
the arcas trash bin. Most of it was a routine
withdrow shee foot alawn. The margin was a scold note
the old list lake chet beneath the blackwall shelf. No
one called out, but I felt a clarity settling over me.
Some one was using the lists the logs to send
warnings or to cover up something deeper than a missing map.
Armed with the tag and the story in my veins,
I could not help myself. I followed the bread crumbs
as though I had always been meant to trailing the clues.
I worked my way to the low sub basement of
corridor I had always found curiously mismatched. One door brushed
aluminum with a battered lock that never quite lined up
with the striker plate limbed at the end marked custodial
authorized axis. Only nobody ever mentioned a B two storage.
I pressed the new key to the lock. It fit,
though it took effort to this. The bolt climbed stubbornly
before yielding with a faint gron. The air beyond the
threshold was viciously called redolent of old ware, concrete sirrel
like dust, and crumbling glue. The corridor was barely wider
than my shoulders, pat tight with shells on each wall,
coroning under the weight of binders clearly untouched for decades.
Each binder was labeled in sharp dry pen special access restricted.
Many had entire pages blotted out black eyelighter over thin type.
Over half referenced only a subasemen operations and vaulted storage.
The phrase of subbistmen repeated, often, usually ringed with a
red x I thumnd the page at random names, some
half remembered from old staff photos, others completely unfamiliar, were
paired with coats, most ending in dasiro or dash five.
My own breath sounded too loud in the close hallway.
It was clear now or in the note the staff
idea that made no sense. The missing books alverd comes
pointing relentlessly down towards something not registered in any public
building plan. I followed the instructions from the trasspin, not fiercely,
all at every CeNSE, crackling. The black or shelf, as
it turned out, was tucked into a reco's lock over
the very far end, half buried in supply boxes and
bundled newsprint. I almost missed the trap bow beneath, ringed
by brass inlid flush with chip tile, the hinges painted
over decades ago. I said the beaty key into the
lock and twisted. It gave slightly, but the heavy lid
refused to budge further. Rousted shut by age and neglect,
I pressed my ear to the join. Nothing only the
syrupy subterranean silence of a deeply buried chamber. That stillness
was shadowed when scuffing footstop scratched overhead. I ducked behind
a column just a shadow across through the weak spill
of the emergency stair alight muffled voices two maybe three.
I rest a glance. Two men in Gray city as
she coveralls with hard hats and orange vests, muttering about
duck runs and the old vent maps. Their flashlights panned lazily,
never once aimed down the Tai corridor, where I was
pressed tight as a nail. One of them was the
facility's manager. The other looked familiar, but I could not
place his face. They disappear into another room, but I
heard one say, clear and cold, if anything turns up
down here to night, don't sign out until it's gone.
My heart thuttered and my knees ache from crouching, But
the truth rud to me deeper. This wasn't just about
missing materials. It was ongoing active. The search was stopped,
only moving in ways no official would ever admit. I
retreated carefully, waiting five whole minutes, ears prickling, breath shallow
in the whole. I thumbed the now iconic items, the strange,
but her children's book, a plea for help. I could
not ignore the chill iron of Vibituki, the only proof
I had that whatever ancient wound the library hid, it
was not merely closed or caulterized, but still bleeding, I
wave fear against study. If I left now, I could
pretend I had only seen the dust and shadows, and
could let the buildings swallow its secrets for another generation.
But I could not make myself walk out alone, Pressed
between the past and a door that dared me to
test its memory, and knew the listed light, but not
to me alone. Turning my collar up against the chill,
I understood whatever lived here had been protected to hidden
by design. If I was going to find the truth,
it meant ascending further past what was recorded, where the
official stories had run out and the shadows had written
their own. So there I was standing at the threshold
of what felt like the library's spinal cord, a tunnel
of brittlebinders and stale a recycled air, my hand gritty
from gripping the key. A single light bulcuming somewhere back
at the far end. A scato of shoe princedust disturbed
not enough to be recent, criscross the paint flake floor
in half moons, my eyes adjusted, picking out details that
earlier would have seemed dull, the careful predigital labeling on
the shelves, chemulonimbus clusters of mildy around the edges of
the vent, piping some loose thread of heat. For it
was suggesting someone may be the city workers had recently
passed close by. The sensation didn't leave me watch, not
by cameras, but by walls and the grain of rot
soft wood. I tucked the b BE two key into
my fist, not trusting my jacket pocket, and stepped as
softly as I could back up the corridor, back to
the ouchavel alcove and its enigmatic sill trap door. I crouched,
scanning the edges for further clues, and brushed away a
few dozen brutal flakes of paint and dust. Fitted just
beneath the trap door's frame was a coin American worn
to near invisibility. The face was scratched into a smooth
abstractable no liberty, no date. My heart tapped roughly against
the inside of my roofs. Some one had left it
there as a marker or a warning. I set it
on my knuckle and pocketed it. Maybe it would mean something. Later,
voices echoed again overhead, this time closer to panic. Boots studded.
A portable radio crackled. I pressed myself into the alcove's shadow,
holding my breath wandering absurdly. If I'd be able to
pass as a forgotten piece of shoving, if someone turned
their light into my corner. A beam sliced the corridor, briefly,
stuttering over brown metal rack and the batter toe of
my right shoe. I sewed the children's but quietly into
my shirt, the corners biting into my skin, and waded.
One of the men younger voice brittle, mutter, you just
see the door stick be too, The older replied, nothing
in there worth the dust lead it. Their footsteps, slow
and discouraged, trailed up the stairs in quick succession. I
risked a count to twenty. When nothing else stirred, I
uncoiled the chingly, my life prickling with half numbness. No
arm sounded, no sign that anyone had expected me there
at all. Yet, as I straightened, one detail state with me,
the older worker, the one with the clipped coal voice
he'd called the space, beat you out loud, as if
it were as plain as storage or archives. The phrase
door stick was another language, one passed down three years
of late night shifts. I followed their voices as far
as I dared back up a twisting service hall, pass
the nest of cable runs and what must have once
been a break area, now stat with brittle city hall
newsletters and the six sweet room of machine oil and
stale pastry. I kept my flashlight low. The risk became evident.
Permission had never actually been granted for these wanderings, and
it was purely the inerte of the crumbling bureaucracy that
let me move as widely as I did. Most security
people would have missed these anomalies, kept their head down,
the mind on their own clock out time. But there,
at the far edge of the old break room, on
an outdated cork board, I noticed a pin stack of
overdue maintenance lips. The top reed in red pencil ventury
a acxis denied until further notice, report only to be
cast in facilities that was not the manager's name registered
in the email chains. I took out my note book,
wrote the initials B Coss, and copy down the phone
numbers scrolled at the top, though I had no intention
of dialing it from any traceable device. Retracing steps, I
felt for the pressure and the four heading back to
the children section, hoping to recalibrate, maybe fine sense in
the daylight order of millistas, but everything to night scene
slanted off balance. It wasn't just the fact that the
whispering owl was there again on the desk when I returned,
as though I'd never hid in it at all. It
was the fact the checkout's slipped no longer match now
cap with three lines, the last one day to a
Matehn nineteen eighty two, but the one above that struck
Thor and blue Birer returned six slush eleven slash seventy
seven art Halbert. I ran my thumb over the paper,
feeling not just the ink but a faint depression in
the slip the after image of names were written and erased.
There was a low pock of thunder outside, blunt and
humid in the night's residual heat, shaking dust from the
window sills. In defiance, I returned the book to the
exact spot I'd found. It was between the lost shelf
and desk co a closed, but the note press between
the first pages like a terrible seed. I took a
polar rod with my phone. The flash too harsh, bleaching
out half the details. I em eild the image to
myself and for good measure to the address listed on
the city's main facilities page. ANOM alert at Annalley Garve.
No reply ping back in the next hour. Maybe it
was a dead link, maybe someone else was watching. My
second circuit of the stacks was slower. If anything, the
library seemed to breathe as I walked, as though anticipating
every step. I checked the finger prints smudge glass of
the Special Collection's cage, and this time sow caught for
just a frame in the flask light spill. A low
hand print reversed, small, maybe a child's, maybe just a
careless indentation for years passed, but it was pawned down,
pressed with a purpose, not the shape carelessness made. I
allowed myself a whispered curse, then checked a case padlock.
It was closed, but not dead. Bolted. With a firm twist,
I locked it, hands shaking again. It felt increasingly as
if I were walking a perimeter, always shifting, rules rewritten
as I advanced. By three seventeen a m I was
back at the basement corridor, compelled pass all reason toward
the trap door. I reasoned, if the be tu key
fit the first lock made me another tool would persuade
the rest. I I ducked into the staff maintenance cause
it by the back stair, and selected with the gambler's
prigmatism about her cheet a bar and a tub of
graphite lubricant. Kneeling at the threshold, I woke the graphite
into the lock, sweat cold in the back of my
hands despite the weight of the airless hall. A metallic
shriek teeth inside the mechanism finally shifting under my efforts,
and the lock gave by a slender margin. I let
out half a breath, nerves crackling. The hinge produced a
shivering echo, old iron singing to itself as I levered
the trap door in jepwoot, but it refused to yield further.
Another quick examination revealed a second bold, cleverly masked by
years of a crude dust no lock, merely a sly
daring myself, I jabbed the cheeter bar at the catch, harder,
then harder still, until it loosened, giving way. With the
glassy pop. The edge of the trap door lifted, and
I nearly lost my grip as the smell got me
something stale and metaland faintly The after taste of frozen,
like an X ray room, long abandoned movement, a voice,
a child's light and sibilant, or perhaps the scrape of
wind funnel through decades of neglects trickled up from the
dark below. Liszt help help, I froze. Had I heard
it in my head? Was it the pulse of my
own blood? Syllables hidden in the rhythm. I paused, breath
like knives. Nothing followed, no serge, no footsteps, only the
throb of my own fear, confirmed by the beating of
my pulse in slow increments. I lowered the trap door,
trying not to slamish at Thereby, on the black wall
shelf six from the right, just as the note suggested,
I found something else, A small latch, nearly invisible, worked
into the under side. Flicking it, I discovered a slender
glass tube captain wax, which contained a tightly rolled slip
of onion skin paper. I fished it out, hands trembling.
I carried it back to the staff room, and then
scrawled in the table, smoothing the creases. The script was minute,
a spidery hand, but distinct and deliberate. To those who
find this. If you read the list you are in.
It entries a promise. Exit is only a room that
missus Blackwell said the door would hold, but nothing holds
for ever. If you find the book, return it to
the vault. If you find me, I was a halberd
please help. That was all a name or write O warning.
I sank onto the vinyl chair, aware again that my
own own hands were visibly shaking the decision. The impulse
really came quick. I thunded the bee too key, over
and over, feeling for any detail I might have missed.
Eventually I slaid the key onto my own fob, hanging
it between my work badge and the loop pass I
had kept from my lost city job, as though making
it official. Whatever was hiding, whatever entry meant it already
included me. Was soon moored. Later in the staff restroom,
A splash water on my face and caught my reflection
in the security mirror. I looked older than I remembered,
more tired, but my eyes were sharp and unwilling. On
the way out, then after thought sent me back to
the faded party, polaroid and the staff room corpor this
time with my phone there ready. I suomed in there
at the table's edge stood some one a half head taller,
the most hand and shoulder of a woman with the
department pen labeled simply are. It wasn't a face I
recognized even in the grain of age, but the shape
of the hand and the tilt of the head match
may hunch some one who had left their mark below,
or perhaps had never left it all For once, I
rode a long email to my supervisor of subject unexplained activity,
Immediate attention needed. Found children's materials misfiled, an omalous staffed
check ins, evidence of building breach safety concern have discovered
vulnerabilities in old subbasement access points urgent. Can we discuss
emergency protocols or historical incent reports to clarified request access
to historic staff directories and involve inventory. Also, please confirm
if anyone is authorized to audit maintenance logs outside schedule
for invasions. I attached him Mitch's door key polaroid, the
handprints mirrored on the cage glass scent, then deleted the
draft from my sent folder. An old habit I couldn't
quite kill the reply cane twenty six minutes later, timestamped
four eight a m where viewed investigation will proceed at
admin level only. No further action required regard in sab
basement focus on visible security, report unusual behavior, but do
not pursue catalog and consistencies all other inquiries close. My
skin prickled, I locked my phone away in my locker
and retreated to the front desk, the place where, for
a precious half iro each morning daylight filtered and through
the ancient bubble glass windows. I took the batted al book,
the halbowed letter in its file and set them precisely
where they'd been left every night before. As the city
creaked into wakefulness, it considered clocking out, feigning sleep and indifference.
There some one else inherit the burden. Instead, I made
a list of real list, not the list whispered about
an old anxious scrolls, but a column of what was
known and what was left to find none. A whispering
owl moved capacity to appear, slash disappear. Ah Halbert a
ghost in assistant last trace nineteen eighty two Archive corridor
Betoo had secondary egress and a vault unknown to current
administration map from nineteen fifty two, missing at least one
employee currently and on the cover upper by carson facilities. Unknown,
what's behind or under the trap door, why the logs
are changed, what or whom they're protecting? Identities in the
staff photo full link to present staff. They'll list what
it catalogs, how one leaves it. I thought about what
are had written. If you read the list, you're in it.
I wondered how many other names had been silently added
and erased over the decades. I rove a robe of
glided down the children's owl, carrying stack of and processed returns,
squealing softly as it misatturned and clipped the biographical shelf.
I felt a sore amusement. Even the machinery didn't know
its place here s Chiff's end. I walked slowly through
the lobby, keys jostling at my belt, the faint headache
of too long vigilance settling behind my eyes. The morning
clik arrived, young, distracted, face pale above a windbreaker. I
resisted the urge to warn him to pass the hall
mess off. Instead, I offered a curt nod and left
without another word. The cities had carried the scent of
rain and a promise of new construction. I waited at
the corner for the bus, uncertain whether to return or
let the mysteries steep them without me. But in the
lint trap of my jacket pocket, the coin from the
trap dooor winked against my knuckle, refusing to be discarded.
The book was the only thing that always came back,
and near there, apparently was I. My fingers worked the
coin over and over as I rode the city bus home,
the metal warming and cooling again in my palm, an
anchor of sorts in the morning chirin of commuters and
groaning hydraulics. Every turn in the cities grew pressed together,
the hush of stacks, the rattle of pipes, a fac
and a photograph whose name might once have weighed more
than mine. Out the street window, the pale eye municipal
towers hunched over the library roof, glinting in a way
that reminded me of the trap door's tarnished latch. I
traced the law lies between things, unwilling to lose the thread.
When I got to my apartment, the conds still pressed
between my fingers, I found myself unable to sleep. My
mind circled the day before like a restless beast. The
objects had pocketed of the B two key the Brettel slip.
A print out of my list sat found out on
my kitchen table, precisely where I'd left them, no matter
how many times I glanced up expecting to see them. Bone.
After coffee and two half arted calls to job notices,
I had no intention of pursuing, opened my laptop and
returned to the only engine I still trusted research. The
city's public arcats were famously and complete digitalized, with gaps
like marth eatoncloth, but with enough patience some interest yielded
more than their keepers intended. I scrolled through City Council
minutes old blueprints, faded PD effortly is barely visible to
the eye. One entry snaiaged sub Basement Modification's architect report
from nineteen fifty nine reference programmer and program B. The
document scanned margin held several penciled editions, cross reference later
by city inspectors. I know line twice was a phrase
all new access record under custodial storage B two block
that would not quite fit with the public plan, but
promise more below. The following night, exhaustion hugging me like
a wet coat at Wilpartaut arrived early on shift. I
reached the staff corridors before anyone else. The morning clerk Benny,
finally named in my head, soft fist, lingered at the
book drop patch, rubbing sleep from his eyes. I was
half way passed him when he called out, hey, you
ever seed this one, and held up a battered index
cart the sought circulation used to label lost items. Across
as front. Someone had written where reviled to see restricted
lock are at the bottom blackwell. I scoled my voice,
where did you find that? He shrugged. Laundry room floor
must have stuck to my shoe, he smiled, not knowing
how brittle my reply became. I'll handle it, card in hand.
As slipped into the narrow hallway by the janitor's closet,
my breath shallow, not quite sure why, the familiar corners
seemed stretched now, like rooms seen only at midnight. I
pressed the carp with my other close key, corner trinity
growing heavier in my pocket. My rooms that evening were crisp,
briskeno delaying, no hestant loitering, no hope that anything would
write itself off when left alone. The echoes of measured
footsteps rang differently, a little off, almost answering my own wod.
Each passed by the children's desk, I checked the books,
still in place, the slip pressed within, not yet snatched
back by unseen hands. At one thirty seven a m.
As I returned to the ground floor reading room, I
caught a flicker motion at the corner of vision, a
shape fleeting crouched by the microfilm cabinets. My flashlight danced
over file drawers, catching only the ripple of dust motes
disturbed in the air. I advanced every instinct, prickling fitsteff
soft as I could manage, pin tight against the old wood.
I breathed in the air, sharp, now punctuated by something
electric ascent, almost a cyinge plastic anyone here I called
soft but clear. The silence swelled, something brushed against the
fog cabinet, the sye of movement. Nothing more I found
instead of a person, a glove periwinkle blue, the cheeb
late ex kind hospital staff used inside the faint and
print of ink, a reverse stamp property of sc nineteen
seventy nine. I scanned the initials, thinking of the special collections,
thinking of staff, God and quit. Was someone else combing
through the old archevs, hunting the same trails as me.
I slid the glove into a fresh evidence bag, pocketed it,
and made another note to myself. By the time the
eyes curved toward dawn, no other trespasser had made themselves visible,
but the rooms felt watched, measure breast pacing mine. I
returned to the children's section, knelt by the lowest shelf,
and ran my hand inside the back panel, feeling for scenes,
gaps or catches, a desperate hope for hidden things. My
fingers found only dust in the splinter of olt wood.
I straightened, stretching not stiff shoulders, and caught sight of
myself reflected in the glass by the puppet theater gaunt hay,
pressed loot by old sweat, as hollowed by worry. Still,
I nodded at myself confirmation and battle flag. As I
replicated my clothing sweep. I looked one last time at
the batted slip Benny had given me. Something new shimmered
in the cut beneath the harsh fluorescence and indentation, the
ghost of old graphite. Entryless Complete six slash eighty two
Halbert S. C. Blackhaw names that wouldn't quit names now tied,
and shop grapha shadow to every corridor, in every closed
fault and aney library. I press the cart to my
chest briefly, fiercely, before locking it away with my other
tokens in the drawer, under a stack of unread inventory sheets.
Whatever way to blow the black wall shelf, whatever business
tide are. When dawn came that day, it felt like
an intrusion. I barely registered the new light as I
gathered my jacket, badge and a transfigured sense of a
knee that now stuck to me unstintingly. I walked home
through the shadowy hush of a city not quite awaken,
undertow of tension, clinging to my clothes, to my mind,
I slept fitfully, if at all, my thoughts circling the
index card Benny had handed over the glove, the photo
of the string of NaN's Halbert s c blackhaw. They
move in and out of each other like dancers joined
by waltz. No one else could hear. Some time in
the late afternoon, with some light crowling low over my
kitchen table, a brew coffee, but my hands, when ignored, absent,
while my eyes reeled three years of news clippings on
my battled laptop. Annelee Library's public history was mostly dollar's
milk dedications, reading drives, a photo in the city newsletter
when the mayor's kid donated a set of encyclopedias in
nineteen seventy one, but now with their every year from
nineteen fifty six through the late nineteen eighties, I searched
for anything that might mention subbasemen, blackwell a containment, or
even just unexplained city expenditures. Most reports offered only thin pickings,
but old newspapers had their quirks. A sentence dropped carelessly
in a council meeting summary as sidebar about bond drills
when the library claimed to be a designated shelter but
never used for its intended purpose. Then a sliver of
gold bird in a nineteen sixty one feature work on
Anneley Library's secondary storage to be expedited due to civil needs.
In a grainy phootograph, three city engineers preside a near
a huge great stamped Federal defense one. A woman with
sharp cheap bones wore pin marks jas see. I compared
it to the staff photo from the Potipolar Road to
Telled of Virchen. It could have been Blackwell herself, though
the print was that before I could be sure that evening,
on my way in for chef, my gate was brisker.
My sense of resolved less oppose more function of accumulated
dread ringglayzed the sidewalk, the cities light glittered, shop and
hostel in the puddles. I was at the first one
through the doors. A line of contractors was checking out
tools from the front desk. Two men carted in boxes
labeled planning and cothes. There a laughter echoing thinny at
the marble stairwell. I kept well clear until the night
crew had dwindled. No one spoke to me at my
assigned time. I collected my keys and double checked the pouch,
the bitiu key, a coin, the index card, the glove,
and now print out of the nineteen sixty one article.
I lobden and out of the staff computer, looking for
new signs for reassuring myself. Sometimes routines are there to
anchor sometimes to warn. At my first sweep, I did
not go immediately to the beastment. Instead, I mapped mentally
and on paper every place where last night's disturbances had occurred.
The chalk symbol the finger smash bookshelf. For the glass tube.
I built a lattice out of the staff locks, the
old event rosters. The vanished nineteen fifty two map A
shape was emerging behind the libraries, so sawt one of corridors.
Sub corridors concealed air gresses and unlisted doors, Nearly all
of them converged at the point called BETU. I made
a second, even more careful circuit of the building, comparing
emergency panels and h ac rates to odd notes I
copied from staff minutes here and there, small scenes betrayed
attempted patch jobs in the ultra quiet special collections. The
faint bozo static barely perceptible seat beneath the flooring appeared
to old wiring. Spot Checks of the perumtive turned up
no other living soul. Even the overnight cleaning bought program
I realized was scheduled to avoid the southernmost hallway between
two zero and four zero am. At one nineteen am,
I passed the black shelf. The traploor, as ever, looked
inert and terminally rusted, but in the glare of my
flask light, the dust ringed out A recent disturbance a
half moonarch near the hinch, someone steadying themselves there within irs.
I knelt, impressed, my ear low for a scant instant,
A chill vibrooding was persifted through, not a voice, but
the suggestion of one, like sentences remembered from dreams. The
exit is only a rumor. I forced myself to breathe,
to focus inventory, not imagination. At home earlier charting arcavil
logs and city permits, I have marked three addresses, all
staff directories, cross referenced by what little was still legible
to home addresses. Most when nedfunct, buildings demolished, lots converted.
Yet Halbert had been listed for several years. An apartment
block only two streets away from the library. I made
a private note, Should I walk by to morrow in
broad daylight? Should I go knock and ask about a name?
RaSE from nearly every record. The thought was both comfort
and threat Instead to night. I finished my round and
steeled myself for what i'd none was coming since I
first found the key. I returned to Beachyu, pausing only
to check the side corridor. Though event three eight note
was gone from the bulletin board, removed or deliberately concealed
by someone with a stake and keeping things quiet. Once more,
A crouched at the block hole shelf, eyeing the trap
door under the pretense of her routine inspection. I held
my batterity to barready slipped the falk key into the lock,
and tapped the graph autel on the stockge, this time
with force. It shifted more full with the last attempt.
The hush of air from below was sharp, mineral, A
rushed determination, numb, hard edge propelled me. I wedged the
door open, scraped with a noise that made my skin
call metallicovstone. The dark inside the gap seemed almost viscous.
I clicked on my flashlight. The beam fell away against
an old wood lad of b altered into a concrete shaft.
The walls were slick, the rungs flicking but intact. I
tested one gingerly, then too, and began to descend. The
crawl space was narrower than I liked. The air pressed
heavy against my chest, laced with a blend of damp,
broad and exhaust only sixty year old basements possess at
the bottom. After maybe twelve steps, I emerged into a
low chamber that defied my every expectation. Concrete block walls,
slate tiled floor, and along one side a motley row
of steel cabinets marked central scripts classified, the labels crackled
in yellow with age. Old office chair stood in semaphore circles,
a handful of typewriters, and the stained brown covers. Beyond
all this, just to the right of a dim red
bulb stirred a single metal strong box. The top edge
gleamed faintly till under the dust. But before I could approach,
I registered a more immediate threat of shivering echo of
footsteps from the opposite side of the subbasement, the thint
scrape of shoes over dial. I stepped behind a pillar, slowing, breathing,
clutching my flasklight tight from the corridor. Voices drifted low
and careful. One was gravelly accidented with bureaucratic exhaustion. Another
shop female altered a voice that vibrated with bad panic.
I can't let it out, No, not again, cousin, you
know what's down here. We can't just leave it, replied
the first the protocol. A third voice broke in, steadier,
almost eerily calm. The last time its surface. People vanished
this time it must be finished. I gathered myself, peered
around the pillar. Four figgas in city labeled windbricks clustered
near the strom Bucks. Two at a vaguely recognized from
late night facility foto I d but the other two
were strangers except one. It was bearing even bent with age,
carried weightiful, lost authority. Beside her white hair crop tight
stood a woman whose profile sent an electric jolt of
memory through me. The face from the old party photo
hang on a colleague's shoulder. I whispered her name into
my sleeve. Blackwell closer behind the safety of my pillar,
I listened. One of the city men was speaking ters Hanns,
trembling if the note's back. Someone started the chain again, lusaid,
if it broke, surface block called. The older woman replied,
voice almost tender. The list isn't what you think. It
doesn't just keep track. It chooses entry means you're part
of the keeping exits a risk. A heavy silence landed
among the group. Then, in other voice, wheezing and unfamiliar,
Halbert tried to end it. The book wouldn't let them
gnaw the rest. Council said, the shelf could hold, but
it's always the circulation that works the roof. Some one
moved toward the strong box, hand wavering. So what's protocol?
Then do we burn out? Breech Receeal Carson, the only
name I distinctly heard among the faceless bureaucrats, replied, we
can't destroy it. City liability if it gets out in
the wild. This place, as the cork and the bottle
always was, My mind went burning, racing the book asterisk
for whispering al l asterisk, whatever relic in the strong box,
the names threaded through disappearing records. I thought of the warning,
if you read the list, you are in it. Head
across some arkane rubkein by following these clues. The group
gestured and bickoed, tempest close to shattering in the thin
reach of the flash like cones. The strong Books's combination
lock was being tried with hestant fingers. Someone near the
back tap furiously at an old security tablet. With the
last twist, the lot popped. The boxes lit stuck. It
took two of them to wrench a loose air wheezed
out to smell like fireworks left up for years from
the depths. Black hole reached with trembling hands and removed
the book. Old, yes, but older than even the library's
curated treasures. It's leather cover bore no title. Stamped into
the high barely perceptible, were leaping script initials. It's spine
quivered in the lamp light, colors shifting like spilled oil.
The woman's fingers burst the pages, and I saw the
text warp, lines that wavered, illustrations that seemed to cull
at the margins. Even as black Hall whispered down to
her warning was too late. One of the men, thin bespectacled,
wearing a La pelpin from the city's Coats division, snatched
the book and began thumbing through. At first, he reads silently,
lips forming strange words, then abruptly, voice croaking over itself,
he muttered, the list. If I just finished the list,
final enters, it says it right here. Black Hall tried
to yank the book from him, shudding, now, you fool,
don't read it aloud. That's how he stumbled back, stammering,
voice and raveling. I can see the names, so many
are how Albert s c Blockwellby Carson l ted. The
more he spoke, the more urgent his tone, as if
deciphering something only he could see. His hands fumbled as
he slammed the book close, knuckles white. It took three
of the group, panic irrupting now to restrain him. The
man shrieked, If I felt the last name, it all stops.
The chain finished the lists, or it starts over and over,
and a black hole, breathing ragged, grabbed the strong box.
Her eyes caught the lomp light. They were wild, desperate,
full of something like horror. We need to reseal it
or destroy. No, that never worked before. Remember the warehouse fire,
the first breach the permissions drawn up, the groups in
fighting reached cacophony. Someone's flashlight tumbled, rolling with a hollow clan.
In that confusion, I bolted from my cover, aiming for
the far wall, hoping to fade to shadow's edge. But midstep,
Carson's voice were plus out, stop, who are you? Their
flashlights dead or now? Hit me square. For a bare moment,
all sound ceased. I held up my hands, no threat,
no script, but the trude scrape raw. I work upstairs
over night, tempt security. I have no idea what you want,
but I know what you're hiding. I want to help
or just understand. Who is our Halbard? What does the
list keep a beat past? Blackhall's eyes bored and to
me from the edge of exhaustion. If you're in here,
you're a part of this. Now that book. She pointed
a quaking finger at the object on the table. It's
not catalog, not meant to be read. It's a vector,
a story that eats its keepers. Carson barked. We have
to contain protocol, isolation. Cealing would draw all names past circulation.
That's how the chain was broken before the bespectacled councilman splottered.
But there's a way out, it says, so a last
entry Blackwall advanced on him. Nobody who's tried to finish
the list of her leaves right the exits rumor that's
the price. The story survives in fragments, like a virus,
book list, vault, shelf note. They began to argue, turning
on each other, wondering whether to rebury or berno, simply
walk away and let the chamber consume and starve. I
thought of the warnings of books that refused to be lost,
of ledgers that eat generations. A new sound derailed the
confrontation and alarm, distant at first, then rising shrill pervasive,
the old five panel screechy. As the faulty system responded
to the disturbance, red strobe lights began to pulse against
the damp walls, casting the scene in staccado. The bespectacle
man broke away, clutching the book cheer's chest. No protocol
says if he finished the listed He turned, fleeing toward
the far passage, knocking over a cart, babbling, it doesn't finish,
It comes back every time, every single The remaining official scattered,
Black Hall, shouting after the man cast and calling for
him to stop, another making for the emergency phone by
the hatch. In the chaos, I locked between two battered
metal cabinets, my mind working ro adrenaline and fear into
a plan. I saw the man's hand wrenches side door.
Alarm sirens wobbled as he vanished up the stairwell, the
dangerous book flapping in his grip. Blackwall gave Chase the
rest sealed after her. I found myself alone but for
the strom Bucks, its lining scattered with crumbling forms, sindic
slipped fragments of names, brittle onion skin paper that bore
in a dozen hands, please for help and warnings to
stay away. I rifled through hand's numb, collecting what I could.
One document bore halberd in a herd, smeared, scripped it.
I made the list. I kept each name. They told
me this would keep us safe. But every time the
book is reopened, more names appear. I only wanted the
children's shell silent again, forgive the line broke off fink
trailing into a wild living scroll. Another slip, this one
non city latter had read. Council proves restriction. If itemal reappears, contain, isolate,
transfer all responsible staff, and destroy associated list after sealing.
If protocol fails, informed bacal l. None of it made
sense except in the language of fear breaers and experts,
making walls of paperwork to box in something fundamentally unspeakable,
and failing, each generation, passing the burden on thening the
truth to rumour. Sirens wailed a new overhead, A mechanical
clank signaled the sprinklow system's activation. Water hissed, arrangent pipes
raining down in patch called reubens, and then mercifully smoke
began to billow from the hallway, false smoke that triggered
the intrusion system, but I did not wait to see
who or what would return. Now that the alarm had
called city response, I gathered a clutch of slips nose
and the small dense tube of glass with Halbert's handwriting.
With care but not much grace, I slid across the
wet tile toward the ladder, hand shaky knees knock into
rungs as I climbed back to the shelf above trap
was swan shut behind me with a ponderous thud. The
book the other one astrous the whisper now lusters. I
couldn't find where I'd first hidden it, nor in the
disordered shelves, but I had no time to search for it.
Now it would reappear, I was certain it always did. Smoking.
The shriek of fire alarms covered my tracks as I
scrambled up through the worn of wreck of rooms and
out into the prudormed groy Even as I slid past
the children's section, the lights foockered and died. I saw
movement in the reflection of the puppet theater, A two
tall silouette coat trailing arms clutching a book to its
chest from the last home. Before the exit. I looked
over my shoulder, certain that if I lingered, I would
see ah Halberd or black hole or corsin, but only shadows, replied.
I left the library by side door, footsteps slipping on siliclinoleum.
For the next three days I slept at Oddire's anxiety
worn into my skin like die. I did not answer
when the supervise a cult. Instead, I composed and then
recomposed an anonymous dossiate. Every piece of evidence I could
man uster, photos of the door, a coin, the index slips,
the notes pulled from the strom books, my catalog of
logan anomalies, attached with a brief cover letter, There's something
wrong in Themley Library. Look for the names start in
the vault under beatty. Do not trust the official lists.
I sent it to three city reporters, one city archievist,
and a former councilwoman roumored to be collecting stories about
the old municipal coal cases. The only acknowledgment I received
was a message received form letter Think Comfort. But two
days later the news broke. Renovations at Anneli Library were
abuptly and indefinitely suspended contractors. Some at any rate were
paid off, others quietly reassigned City Council's emergency agen deduct
library review near the bottom, just above public safety fence repairs.
Walking past the library that week, I saw apply would
go up over the lower level windows. Contract as none
of whom wore the lineyard badges had come to no
tipped over glass doors, and what had once been a
rear alley for deliverers was sealed with steel panels. Sir
heavy the elerked warsaplus. Nobody explained the sudden shift. The
local news called it asbestos reevaluation and unexpected subfloor issues,
but I knew the truth for what it was a
pattern of hasty containment, an old story repeating itself, just
tidier for the next generation. My own departure was swift.
I've hacked the things I needed, left a resignation notice
in the payil portal, and deleted all traces of my
login ide except when a ghost signature are left behind
in the staff checking system. More habit than message. I
left the city with a battered suit case and as
many notes as were fit in the shoe books. Destination
chosen on a whim. The rest are mailed by slow
posts to my own chain pee o box, just in case.
In the months that followed, I lay low, drifting between gigs.
My own reputation, shredded and ill served by an old
town's memory, was no less battered, for the events of
the library trailed me like shaken dust on old shoes.
I found myself awake at three zero, a m ever
inherited instinct warning me off new routine. I compulsively counted
doors and windows in every new place I stayed. Yet
it was silence that followed me, hardest silence and a
dread Brettel like ice. Whenever I glimpsed the curve of
a dome anywhere, or the glint of brass hardware that
recalled the library's trap door, I thought sometimes that I'd
hear Blackhaw's voice, or gussily echo of Helber's an even
script whispering from just around the corner. Six months passed
in this half shadow. I moved once more to a
smaller city, smaller rooms, smaller libraries, to shelter in. I
stopped checking headlines for Anneline News, forced myself not to
look for robituaries, retirement notices or staff transfer lists. I
tried to convince myself the story was closed until in
late autumn a package arrived at my door. Their return
address was playing the library's old zip code, nothing more.
The postage stamp was curling. Tucked inside the Battle of
Manilla envelope, wrapped in brown paper, was an object that
dried the blood in my veins the moment I recognized it,
A hard covered children's book, as tape worn corners familiar
as breath Astoris, the whispering owl asterisk. The book was
heavier than I remembered, walked by water or by something deeper.
Inside the front cover, pressed out against the ancient, boring slip,
my hands found an new note. The handwriting so like Halber's,
so liked. The message left months before, trembled along the
upper margin. It's if not finished, the book always comes back.
Don't trust the lists. The page smelled of attic, distant fear.
I turned it over and found, beneath the brittle end
peeper a slip of city ladder head, torn small, thin
enough to be seen through on it. The names still there,
mine among them now are cold freshening at the end
of the list, a small dash trailing off instead of
a period. I placed the book in a drawer. I
moved to another apartment, kept the curtains drawn. Still, some nights,
lying in the silence, I would hear it, a gentle skitter,
the pulseive paper shuffle by unseen hands. No matter how
quiet a cat the sensation would grow an animal certainty
that somewhere barely out of sight, something was returning, reading
itself quietly back into the world. No matter at the doors,
the locks, the lists, or the vaults, the story was
always looking to be finished. All was waiting, and by
the time you heard it, you were already part of it.
Just one more name, quietly cataloged in a volume that
would never quite let itself be shelved. Sometimes at dusk,
the air would dicken with a hush that made me
pause hard in might row, as if waiting for the
scrape of a child's chair. Over all anoleum, but in
an a new apartment miles from Manneley Streets. All was
thin walls and the distant drone of city buses. Even so,
every so often I'd hear the sound fluttering, gentle, a
flick of pages somewhere behind plaster board, or leaking up
from the floorboards. I started finding things moved around the room,
a coffee mark sid in inch sidewards, a spare key,
knock from a dish. They were small, mundane gestures, but
each time the book weighed heavier in its drawer, vibrant
even through the density of old wood. I thought of
mailing it away, burning it, burying it deep as the
old strong books. But every plan seemed to shrink beside
the simple fact of its return. One evening, with the
northern wind rattling the windows, I set the book out
on the kitchen table and sat staring at its cover.
I made tea, poured half without noticing the steam curling
up and slow, insistent spirals. It felt like a mutelyjgmental guest.
At length, I flipped it open, the note, the new
one trembling and urgentry main tuct inside its ink was splotched,
as if some one's rest had trembled. At the close.
I took a deep breath in at this time let
myself read the list of names fully, Blackwell, Halberd, Corson,
and all the way at the bottom. Mind the block
printed letter just faint linear than the rest, as if
the page itself had absorbed my story. The moment I
touched the book, my hand trembled as I closed the
volume with a soft clap. The lamp stuttered as I
did so, filament catching for a heartbeat. I waited, expecting
a chill, was some distant knock from the old library's
pipes come to haunt me here? But the silence hell waiting.
The logic of the library, I realized, wasn't merely about
containment or banishment. It was about story, A story that
sustained its half on attention. Sixies burden, the book that
lists the hiding of names, all whether to keep the
cycle unbroken, to make sure someone was always watching, always responsible,
and able to look away for fear the story might
spill outward. So I did the only thing I felt
true and called my own name aloud to the empty room.
My voice, hoarse from disieuse, surprised me with its steadiness.
You have me, I said, you have my name, What
do you want? The only answer was a breeze shivering
in the window seams, a thin ripple running through my
stack of unpaid bills. I left the lamp on and
walked into the small bedroom before colla my bare feet.
I stood by the aware how easily this could evolve
into madness, talking to gohists and old paper, explaining away
the impossible as insamnia strick. The sleep did not find me.
That night, through the thin wall, I listened to someone
playing in old radio, the volume ebbing and rising oddly.
At one moment, when the station static twisted, I caught
what sounded like a recitation of names, like a roll call,
terribly familiar. I pressed my ear to the wall. It halted,
replaced by the gentle shuffle of newsprint. The host reading library.
I was for a town I'd never heard of. My
skin crawled. I could not quite convince myself that I
had misheard. I tried distractions. I met grocery lists, called
my sister after midnight, just to hear her laughter. I
filled out job applications for night clerk, for copy editor,
for bus schedule of sliding into anonymity. But the weight remained,
the book in the drawer at the slip with my name,
the echo of the trap doors hinge every time a
cabinis squeaked open in the building's hall. After a week,
fatigue carved me out my hands shook as I reached
for the kettle. One wet morning, heavy with the scent
of distant snow, I found myself at the local branch library,
a squat red gremment built on a triangle lot. Its
shelves were plain to smell, nothing like Annelie's old corridor,
but even so, I stopped in the children's section and
ran my fingers along the spines. Each book felt warm, safe, ordinary.
I was about to step away when an elderly man
in a warren green cardigan, a staff lyingard around his neck,
wheeled in a cart of returns. He stacked books in
tidy rows, then glanced up and gave me a careful smile,
looking for anything in particular. His tone was soft to
crook in the brow, gentle stewardship in his voice. I
shook my head, then heard myself asking do you keep
a list of lost books once you can' quite account for?
He considered me misfouled more often than not. Sometimes, though
they do go missing, nothing fantcy kids pocket them most likely.
He set a slim hard back on the shelf, then pause,
his fingers resting on the book as he met my eyes.
But sometimes the same ones do come back years later,
no one claiming them old habits, I think are his
gaze shop and almost playful, something in the stories that
wants to be found again. I tried to weigh his meaning,
searching for a glimmer of recognition, and inside Joe a test.
Was it only common sense? Or did o though librarians
keep their own ghostless doors bray shut against stores too
unruly to shelve. Anais interrupted the nervous Shatto school children,
the plain and convenience of the day. He gave me
a nod and trundled away, and I felt the strangest
pang of envy for his simplicity. Was I looking for validation,
for permission to breathe more easily? Or for some one
else already entangled by the library shadow? Back at my apartment,
toilette gathered, pressing against the window. I sat at the
kitchen table, the copy of Astris the Whispering Our Lastus
between my hands. I examined the book more closely, this time,
hunting for change, any sign it wanted to reveal something new.
Under the dust jacket, I found a thread bare patch
where perhaps a label had been torn away. Running my
nail over the edge, A seam lifted slightly, and with
a decisive tug, a folded slip fell out, flatter and
older than the others. A near miraculous survivor, I unfolded it,
heart pounding. The ink was faded almost to invisibility, but
in the hard light words emerged to be kept record
of all terraces to risk. Let the last care to
his name be the verse in the next. If you
inherit tell no one but those who have also seen
versions multiply, lis expand there is always another shelf. A
signature at the bottom, just three loopy initials S, C, B.
So the story had always been recursive, filling the empty
spaces left behind. Each failed attempt to bury it only
forced a new care to go, another set of hands,
another attempt at silence. Overwhelmed, I pressed the slip to
my forehead, trying to imagine what would happen if I
simply gave in, Let the story sweep outward, warned, no
one left. The name at the bottom acclaimed, would the
cycle collapse? Or would something far worse bleed up? Through
a hundred new books? Drifting shelf to shelf, I stared
at the batter cover of asters who whispering al lastrous
convod of Halberd's desperate plea of black holes, stricken eyes
in the subbasement of Cosson's clipped warnings of the forgotten
city workers, coded language, the compulsive thoroughness of all who
had come before me. They'd each believe they could keep
the truth safe, keep the story locked in the vault
with the rest of the restricted debris, but stores clow
their way out. I stood and opened the front door,
breathing a brisk night air. I held the book at
arms length, poised to fling it into the yard, but
found myself unable. I pressed the cover to my chest,
breath shuddering. The memory of the trap board, the subasement stink,
the shift of that other ancient book in the Strom
Book's name, shifting, catholog mutating rose up. I saw for
a flash the battered hands of the council when clutching
something unnamable, his force fraying as he tried to finish
the list. Every attempt at refusal was a continuation. A
cough from the stair will startled me. It was only
Missess Loring, the upstairs neighbor, with her shopping bags. She
gave me a when smile reading late, She said, forced
gravely something like that. I replied, forcing a semblance of calm.
She hesitated at her bower, then, in a backward glance, said,
my father used to say stories, find the teller, keep
yours close, and don't read after midnight. She disappeared with
the clack of her door. I shut my own softly.
The book burning in my hands seemed to tremble with possibility,
the compulsion built by degrees like thirst, mounting slowly to
a desperate and ignorable need. I sat at the table,
took out the battered slip and read aloud the warning,
testing the words in the hush of the night. Don't
tryst the list, Please help before it's too late. The
air in the room shifted. The lamp flickered, once, fled,
then faded for a second. It seemed as if the
stack of unpaid bills in the far counterstowed a single
envelope fluttering over the linoleum. It was enough. I rose
found the envelope that had moved and scanned the handwriting.
It was my own scroll. Too quickly a grocery list
begun and never finished, with my first initial and last
name at the top, that echo of that recursive return.
I joined the story circle without end. I looked back
at the book, nearly breathless. What was it hungry for continuity, secrecy,
my defeat, or did it simply urge another caretaker, desperate
for relief, to reach for help when they too realized
the list could not be finished nor safely erased. There
was a single blank line on the oldest boiling slip,
the one with all the names, just beneath my own.
I considered writing in another name, any one, a librarian,
a neighborer, a faceless city official. I imagined the ribble as
the pattern continued, spooling out to draw in. The urge faded,
almost as quickly as it had come, replaced by an
ake of responsibility. Instead, I wrote a letter, not an
inheritance of dread, but a confession. I addressed it to
the city's main branch, attention to future staff records. I
described the book as journey what I'd witnessed in the abasement,
and ended with an apology. If you find this, let
the story end with me, for still it so tightly
that not even memory can ship it free. I bundled
the book letter slips every fray bit of evidence, careful
not to leave out the old coin, and wrapped them
into When I found buried at the bottom of a
kitchen drawer, I left the package on my postman's shell
for anonymous return, Knowing with a certainty, rooted and helplessness
that the library's address was still memorized in my bones.
I did not leave a return address. The next days
were thick with waiting. I felt for the packag's weight
missing from my life, and watched the mail books with
the kind of grim anticipation. No package returned, not yet,
only junk fires and half hearted bills. Still the hush
hovered at the edges of consciousness. I kept a journal
by my bed, jotting any strange sound, any accidental shift
in routine, trying to capture the story before it followed
me out. I stopped visiting the Little Neighborhood library, afraid
to see the book waiting for me there, or worse,
a name, my name on a list already pinned to
the staff board. The letter the book felt like a
confessions and ahead of her disaster. But at night, as
I tried to rest, I woke down familiar foots sets
in the hallway, the flutter of pages against the silence,
no sleep could breach. Sometimes, on the edge of waking,
I seemed to hear a child's voice, as if reading
to itself. Some were just beneath the floor. On the
third night, when the wind drove hard against the building,
I heard someone knock at the door. Three sharp raps, impatient,
then nothing. When I checked, the hall was empty. At
my feet. Slipped under the frame was a plain slip
of card in tiny script. It read, It's not finished.
The book always comes back. Don't trust the lists. I
crushed it in my palm, fighting anger and sadness. Both
the door's need for attention for a new Tello was insatiable.
I did not sleep for the rest of the night.
I waited in my chair until dawn, sweat chilling on
my back, the familiar pane of helples in his settling
in once more. When morning came, all knights slanting across
the kitchen table are resolved not to cower, not to
flee from any library, not to let FURBI the only
outcome I wrote along message to Benny, the clerk from
Anna laid tracing his last known contact, private email. I'd
scribbled hastily. Before leaving. I told him to be careful,
to watch for the children's books, to ask about the
old names. I signed off with a plea, You're not
alone in this. If you find assers, the whispering Alaster
is comong the shelves, don't read the slip, don't try
to finish the list. Weeks past, the package I'd sent
did not return. No reporter called, no city official knot.
The story for now seen sealed tighter than before, but
the unees never left. I woke the new city's streets,
watching the faces of commuteros for the suspicion, the glint
of someone who knew, someone who had seen the same things.
In the hush before morning, sometimes late at night, as
had lets trace the ceiling and shadows drifted over the
kitchen tile, I'd hear the unmistakable hiss of paper sliding
against itself, a book somewhere being opened, just out of sight,
just out of mind, biding time. There'd be no final entry,
no true clover. The story weaned on and tighter. I
was only the most recent line in a ledger that
never balanced. If you find this, no, the list is
not finished. The book always finds its way back, one
page at a time. Don't trust the list, don't trust
the silence. And if one day you hear the soft
flutter of turning pages in the dark, remember some one
else has already written your name down. Some stores can
only be kept, not ended, and that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.