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Speaker 1: No one walks the holes of the Pemberley Arms past midnight.

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That's not a rule, not written on the directory board

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beside the faded tenant listings, not scrawled onto a memo

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from shady management. But it is somehow understood, or if

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anyone defies it, they do so light ghosts. The corridors

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run with the hush of sleepless breath. The doors painted

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institutional beage hold in more secrets than the pit of

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walls themselves. Last week massesslam, the retirie who always carried

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a blue cult to toe vanished. It is the talk

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of the building for a day, spoken in whispered exchanges

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at the mail boxes by neighbors who preferred not to

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linger close together. Since then, every sound, echo's shopper, footfalls,

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returning keys, the flat slap of someone's slippers up the stairwell,

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even the elevator, which croaks and stutters on good days,

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seems referential to the lull tonight I lay coming home again.

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I pressed my fingers hard into the cold skin at

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my temple, backs long crooked over one shoulder, trying to remain.

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But if I missed any texts from my editor, the

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cab driver left me at the curb in a rush,

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rained apples my jacket. As I hold up my badge

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to the censer by a glass front door, it clicks,

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a sluggish, watery sound, letting me into an ant room

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redolent of mildiewn whatever antiseptic. The night super occasionally slushes

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over the cracklinoleum. I shake out my umbrella. Ray mortar

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skitters in tiny rivulet, catching the orange glow of the

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single overhead bulb. Up the stairs, lights flicker and silent

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protest overhead. The place always seems to walk after midnight.

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Horizontal shadows length and down wallpapered corridors, painting obstruct scenes

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across the floor. On the landing, my thumb grazes the

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railing's chip brass. A ragged ring of keys dusts the

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top of the banister, as if someone forgot them or

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placed them deliberately, A new detail, unfamiliar, pimpic of alarm

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in my rips. My building makes me jump you these days.

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When I reach the third floor, every foot fulfields broad castiva,

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muffled by the thread bare holy carpet. Each step sings

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in my head. I pass the door to three hundred twelve,

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where someone's t V leaks a buzz of a weather channel,

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and three hundred fourteen papered with the no solicitors in

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block capital. My own place is three hundred eighteen at

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the far end, the door scuffed at the bottom, one

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screw gun from the peepole. I fumble keys. Something feels wrong,

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not in the usual pervert way, but a thin, prickling

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tension that picks up my neck, as if every object

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in the place waits for me. My apartment opens in darkness,

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colder than I expect. I flicken the overhead lamp somehow.

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The air carry is a faint sharp tang ozon chilled

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laundry chemical. The couch has shifted off its usual axis

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by a few degrees. A tropillow, always left in the right,

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is now on the left. I freeze half way out

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of my jacket. Then the ordinary cues tumble in the kitchen.

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Radio emits a low electronic wine. Objects huddled slightly to

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near the southern wall. But it's the clocks, every single

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one that stopped me. The digital clock on my oven

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stairs out three thirty seven, a m odd for a

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device that should blinks eroes after a power cut on

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my dresser, A plastic alarm clock ticks up to the

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same minute breadlet. Even my analog wristwatch wind tight before

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bed sits still at three thirty seven, unmoving. My phone,

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revived from applane mode, says three thirty seven display unblemished.

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I stand long moments watching the second hand of the

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kitchen wall clock for a breathless beell. It doesn't move,

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frozen between two notches. My heart pounds, then soundlessly. It

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jumps a single tack ahead, then another, as if catching up.

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I check the sockets the breaker. There's no sign of voltage,

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no flicker whither. My cowave display resumes its slowcndown. Not

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a glitch, something colder. I march to each clock, check batteries,

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wind mechanisms, but find no fault. I stare again at

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my phone, no missnowedifecations, but the last app I left

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up in a map to the grocery is now replaced

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by the clock app open to a silent alarm. I

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don't remember setting blurring three thirty seven in bold white,

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now goose flesh. It's then I notice the oddest feature

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of the shadow. The south wall opposite all my clocks

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is stained by an oddly angled, slanting darkness, like a

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dial cast by candlelight, though no such light source exists.

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I move about the room, but the shadow stretches, always

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reflecting the face of which ever clock faces it. No logic.

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I tug the curtains, windows locked tight, no footprints, I

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sweep the entry away from utter prints. Nothing but a

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stray leaf, damp and unremarkable. I paced my apartment over

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and over, hand shaking harder as each time he staysed

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uggedly and cooperative. I sit finally, wrapped in a scratchy throat,

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unable to sleep. The chill stalks between my shoulder blades.

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I could almost swear the ticking, muted, insistent, comes from

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somewhere behind the walls. I do not sleep that night

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at all. At daybreak, the clocks resume normal function, but

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had left hollow eyed and worry. I doze at sunrise,

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and in dreams, I hear the hush of slippers backward

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on the landing, and feel eyes in every shadow that

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calls south. I came to the Pemberley Arms by necessity,

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not choice. Keep things simple, I told myself, as if

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simplicity were a virtue you could buy with the cheap

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lease and the month's deposit. The Arms was a faded

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echo of nineteen seventis ambition, a brutalist slap halfway between

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the river and the highway, built back when bold angles

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and poured concrete past for luxury. I found the listing

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after the divorce, advertised as quiet to screen in a

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block when no one cared who listened at night. I

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moved in on a wet Sunday, swat boxes by myself.

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I sold the old flat's furniture, kept only what would

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fit in a U haul. Later, I congratulated myself for

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traveling light. I didn't count the backage. I couldn't box

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up my freelancing men, erratic irizannless days, emailing contacts, chasing

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local interest pieces, furning in interviews, scraping for stores no

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one wanted. My sleep came in fits, punctuated by the

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stuttering radiators, the distant rumble of trucks on the overpass.

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The Arms is a place where privacy is a weapon,

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not a comfort. The glass in the hallway doors as frosted,

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though one pain is always broken. My neighbors kept to themselves.

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There was chlorer, a nurse with circles beneath her eyes

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that never faded. Who hurried down the corridor in blue

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scrops at all iyros, barely nodding a hollow the holloways

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in three hundred seventeen recent arrivals argued in a near whisper,

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two voices never raised, always praying. Vince in three hundred

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twenty one was a grad student, maround in textbooks, always

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carrying notes, wrinkled at the corners. He sometimes lingered on

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the steps, as if practicing escape rats, but mostly vanished

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into act kademia. Miss eslamb, though was unavoidable. She greedy,

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with a brisk, searching look, bluetook, clutched fiercely, as if

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the sky might drop secrets in her lap at any moment.

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She asked sharp questions, offered strange comments, Ye, keep od

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iiros mark Some souls watch better at night, And once

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pressed a tin of biscuits into my hands without meeting

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my eyes. I tried to keep a routine, but the

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buildings haboutashed me. You'd waked her puddle by the kitchen.

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Convince yourself you'd spilled something, only to find the pipe sweat.

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Overnight laundry was Saturday or never. Machines left in the

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communal basement half the time out of order. Downstairs, the super,

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a stunted man named Russell, was always ducking repairs. He'd

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grunt and scuttle away at anything more complex than a

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jam door. If you pushed him, he promised to put

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it in the book. I' dad, the book exists. It

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was at those laundry sessions I got the measure of

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the place. The room smell, a tidal blend of detergent,

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all socks, static electricity filters up to the main floors,

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Vases passed through there, masses, Lamb with her magnifying glass

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peering into the conslots, Vince reading a tattered sappha novel.

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Hefrunz clamped his ears. The holloways loading half their belongings

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at once, glaring at each other in mute accusation. No

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one spoke in more than murmurs. Subjects, when ventured, were practical.

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Someone's pustle gun missing, a leaky ceiling, the inexplicable overnight

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loss of a single shoe. But there was an undertone

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never named, a price of unease. Glances at doors left

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white after midnight, heavy silences when anyone referenced an incident.

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No one said what the incidents were. Strange things happened

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in those early months. The brakes on my by clopped

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in the shared indoor wreck were found screw too tight,

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cable stiff, and u a sponsor. I dismissed it as

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a prank, until the same thing happened to Vince's ride.

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The Holloways reported their dog, Heape Trinilous, locked in the

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hallway one morning, howling against the door, though neither of

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them had left it. Death management brushed it away, claimed

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the lock must be faulty, promised to monitor the situation.

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They did nothing. As the weak stretched sleep grew precious,

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awoke regularly at Oddira's, drenched in sweat, breath shallow from

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some half remembered dream. I started checking every bold ties,

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jamming kitchen chairs under the knob at night, telling myself

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it was left to ver anxiety from arguments with my

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ex I repeated the lidney, tired, not haunted, mistakes not malice.

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Nothing prepares you for the day your reality side steps

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shifting a floorboard beneath your feet, tilting. The world is slant.

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After that first night, all clocks pointinged at Sey meyer.

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I doubled my checks, changed every password, left, a broom

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handle jammed against the living room window. Paranoia, I told myself,

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is just another way of grasping for control, until it

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ceases to be paranoia and become to plain enter vasion.

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Monday dawned with a sense of purpose, insidious and cold

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as old tea. I intended to treat myself to a

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normal day, make coffee, review into view tapes, jogged down

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to the bug of fra eggs in a paper Instead.

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The sullen normality of my routines was broken by small violations.

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I found my kitchen's cold water tap running dishes I

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had left to dry, had swap racks, a fork submerged

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in soapy water as if in use. My phones charged

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a dangle from a light fixture. I found my keys

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deep in the freezer, shivering among bags of kale. Worse,

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every door, atham, whole closet, even the linen cupet stood

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slightly open. All angle saw the open edge pointed south

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toward the wall outside my window. It isn't easy to

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plunge into full adult panic in your own home before breakfast. Still,

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I did a full sweet, checked over storage nook, even

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the laundry chute for signs of entry. Nothing At first glance,

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nothing was stolen, just moved. My heart beat a feverish

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rhythm as I closed each door, forced myself to brew

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coffee and tried to ground myself in busywork, but spish

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and gnaws. I grabbed my webcoum, thinking of work, only

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to see the tiny blue life latter on then off

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paranoor flare had I left it plugged into my laptop

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last night. If possible, I always implug at night, worry

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of snooping apps. I ran an antivirus scan, checked my locks,

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found nothing more than a stutter, and the activity report

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of three thirty six a m. That minute haunted me,

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as though the clock itself was stamping a water mark

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on every face. End of my life. At midday, I

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ran into Clara on the landing. She was half distracted,

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key scraping her palm, her face heavy with exhaustion. As

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your ca gotten out again, I asked, stumbling over small talk.

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We both knew she hadn't known a cat for months.

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She gave me an odd look. No cat, she said,

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a voice flat, then hesitating. Sometimes I swear whole doors locked,

201
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but stuff moves, shoe goes missing and shows a bond

202
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window sill. Whole place is nuts. She seemed about to

203
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add more, but Rustle the super thoud had past us,

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jangling his huge ring of keys, and the moment dissolved.

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Once I would have dismissed her as overworked. Now caution

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prickled my gut. Over the next few days, I noticed

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more tenants glancing at the doors before leaving for work,

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muttering about appliances and plugged over night, or fridge doors

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left carelessly. Ajar always a odd ire is always. Then,

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hastily rationalized, I thought of missus lem. Her voice drifted

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back to me from a week earlier. I'll last fresh

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conversation by the elevator, when the clock's all face south.

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She said, it's already too late. The wrong sort's wake

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at night, don't you know that? She smiles within knowing

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line and pressed the elevator button as if summoning a ghost.

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I choked it up to her eccentricity. Now I lay

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awake night, staring at the clocks, noting them in it movements.

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Each morning, one was subtly shifted an alarm clock angle

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to catch the light wrong the ovent timer facing an

220
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improbable direction. Is it possible for fear to settle in

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your belly before reason even tries to intervene? It was

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no longer just malfunction or carelessness. Something but someone was

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deliberately sabotaging order and hiding the evidence, just barely enough

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for denial. Slowly, compulsively, I began to keep crack. I

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bought a cheap notebook at the Boga blue coil bound

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thing meant for schoolwork, bestodie enough for my needs. Each night,

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at two thirty and four fifteen, I charted the state

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of my apartment. I drew cruse sketches of my living room,

229
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noted the angle of each clock to the south wall,

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measured the gap left by grated open doors. With the

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tape measure. I found him a tool box. The lug

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grew stranger quickly. A Monday aventimer shifted display, nimmed door jar,

233
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ten c m Key's under couch cushion Tuesday, warshcoff left

234
00:11:53,080 --> 00:11:56,200
in kitchen, sank south windows, slightly opened wristwach upside down,

235
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and sub drawer. A pattern insidious but elusive emerged oriented objects,

236
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subtle water rings and the Linnullian door latches left between

237
00:12:03,679 --> 00:12:06,759
positions as though are locked mid motion. I tested sleep patterns,

238
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but walk always to find one more thing moved. By

239
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the second week, exhaustion blurred my days. My phone rang

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00:12:12,799 --> 00:12:16,679
only sporadically, usually editors with more excuses and stores. The

241
00:12:16,720 --> 00:12:18,639
rest of the world receded into a tunnel. The rising

242
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compulsion to document what happened each night left me frayed voiceless,

243
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each discovery more humiliating than the last. It's possible to

244
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know your acting mad without being able to stop. There

245
00:12:28,039 --> 00:12:30,799
was the matter of the sounds too. To any one else,

246
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they might have seemed the usual old building corrus, water

247
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running through pipes, radiators knocking, the wind sowing are concrete.

248
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But lying awake senses on edge. You hear intent behind

249
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each shift, the drag of something across floor boards, overhead,

250
00:12:43,159 --> 00:12:45,399
soft tapping like cautious finger nails, or a coin wrap

251
00:12:45,480 --> 00:12:48,720
gently against e vent. I tried at first to dismiss

252
00:12:48,720 --> 00:12:51,759
my neighbor's odd remarks, but on Wednesday, Vins caught me

253
00:12:51,799 --> 00:12:53,960
by the mail boxes, clutching a bundle of fliers in

254
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his fist. You haven't noticed anything, he asked, voice full

255
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of hessant dread, the alarms my phone and plucked itself

256
00:13:00,639 --> 00:13:02,919
twice the last night, said it was charging, but I'd

257
00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:04,919
left it off. Sent in the air like old coins.

258
00:13:05,600 --> 00:13:07,799
He shivered, and I detected the telltale time that had

259
00:13:07,840 --> 00:13:10,679
haunted my apartment. He looked at so asleep with something

260
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that happened only to other people. That was the night

261
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I resolved to ask questions no one wanted to answer.

262
00:13:17,120 --> 00:13:19,120
The Holloways shut their door in my face. After I

263
00:13:19,159 --> 00:13:23,240
pressed on inconsistencies about the missing dog Flora, Stiffen muttered

264
00:13:23,240 --> 00:13:26,039
something about not upsetting the routine, otherwise it gets worse.

265
00:13:26,759 --> 00:13:30,480
Only Russell gruff and dismissive, bothered to acknowledge me. Old

266
00:13:30,480 --> 00:13:34,039
buildings are pain he said, blocks don't hold, some tenants

267
00:13:34,080 --> 00:13:37,360
move things Aroundlikely is not someone's pranking new pal. I

268
00:13:37,399 --> 00:13:40,519
wanted to believe him. But then why that ought shadow

269
00:13:40,559 --> 00:13:43,080
every night thrown across my living room alboys oriented toward

270
00:13:43,120 --> 00:13:46,480
the southern wall, emanating from the clocks. Why this strange

271
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chill after midnight? No matter how high I set the

272
00:13:48,720 --> 00:13:52,200
thermost app, I redoubled my efforts, set up my laptop

273
00:13:52,240 --> 00:13:54,480
to record video in the living room, bought cheap stick

274
00:13:54,519 --> 00:13:57,320
on motion senses, left my phone running the audio recorder

275
00:13:57,320 --> 00:13:59,679
app with the micro laid near the south wall. Every

276
00:13:59,720 --> 00:14:03,759
morning I check no intruder, but sometimes the footage showed flickers,

277
00:14:03,759 --> 00:14:06,039
stray static, a blurry shape in the glass of the oven.

278
00:14:06,519 --> 00:14:10,000
My locks grew longer, more desperate, a compulsion of vault

279
00:14:10,039 --> 00:14:12,360
after each nightly check, as set every chair and clock

280
00:14:12,399 --> 00:14:14,440
in the room square to the wall, drew all doors

281
00:14:14,440 --> 00:14:18,039
tightly shut, and lay in bed counting hotbeats. None of

282
00:14:18,080 --> 00:14:21,600
it helped my nerves frayed. I considered staying at a hotel,

283
00:14:21,639 --> 00:14:24,519
but the dreaded, both ordinary and nameable, kept me here. Rooted.

284
00:14:25,159 --> 00:14:30,279
Everything pointed south. One evening, returning from a pointless grocery run,

285
00:14:30,360 --> 00:14:32,720
I found a note slipped under my door, torn paper,

286
00:14:32,840 --> 00:14:36,759
faint blue, rolled lines. The handwriting was awkwardly slanted, as

287
00:14:36,759 --> 00:14:39,600
if the writer had used the wrong hand. Stay inside

288
00:14:39,639 --> 00:14:42,759
when the whole light stutter. That was all it was.

289
00:14:42,759 --> 00:14:46,000
The night before a rainstorm Thoud's glots against the sky line.

290
00:14:46,039 --> 00:14:48,279
Thunder ridded the air low and slow, like a groan.

291
00:14:48,840 --> 00:14:52,559
The arms felt deserted. At two thirty, I paced restless,

292
00:14:52,759 --> 00:14:55,759
watching as the rain streaked the windows. My phone buzzed

293
00:14:55,759 --> 00:14:58,200
with a blank notification. When I checked the clock up

294
00:14:58,240 --> 00:15:01,200
opened of its own accord again. Three thirty seven, a

295
00:15:01,320 --> 00:15:04,320
m highlighted and red, fingers trembling. I crept to my

296
00:15:04,320 --> 00:15:07,200
front door and peered through the peephole. Hall lights flickered,

297
00:15:07,240 --> 00:15:11,639
pausing in dizzy intervals, buzz paws, buzz poils. Something hunched

298
00:15:11,639 --> 00:15:13,919
moved out of the elevator bay, shoulders jerking at odd

299
00:15:13,960 --> 00:15:17,840
angles as if resisting some external force. It advanced backward,

300
00:15:17,840 --> 00:15:20,080
feet sliding in a stilted shuffle, its head cocked as

301
00:15:20,120 --> 00:15:23,279
if listening. It stopped at missus Lem's old door, hesitated,

302
00:15:23,360 --> 00:15:26,159
then continued its back, never turning, moving in a trajectory

303
00:15:26,200 --> 00:15:29,320
toward the stairwell, vanishing. As the overhead bulb stuttered and recovered,

304
00:15:29,879 --> 00:15:32,799
every part of my skin wanted to screen. Instead, I

305
00:15:32,840 --> 00:15:34,960
pressed myself to the wall, holding my breath till the

306
00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:39,159
feeling passed. The next night, the rain broke. After midnight,

307
00:15:39,200 --> 00:15:41,519
I slunk to the basement, determined to break the paralysis

308
00:15:41,519 --> 00:15:44,000
that had taken over my life. The air rank and

309
00:15:44,080 --> 00:15:47,679
damp pressed close half the unplugged machines gurgled erratically. The

310
00:15:47,720 --> 00:15:50,039
single exposed bulb and the ceiling flickered a warning as

311
00:15:50,039 --> 00:15:53,360
I prodded behind plumbing panels and water stained trible. I'd

312
00:15:53,440 --> 00:15:55,639
heard mutterings of bus secret tunnels for a garden artus

313
00:15:55,720 --> 00:15:59,320
ruts built into the foundation, made for wiring mayde furlicits storage.

314
00:15:59,799 --> 00:16:01,759
All I found of for us will lock steel doors

315
00:16:01,759 --> 00:16:04,639
oddly called to the touch. A persistent steel dro of iron.

316
00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:07,279
Where one panel at the rear of the laundry room

317
00:16:07,399 --> 00:16:09,120
met the wall, I fell a draft, a breath of

318
00:16:09,120 --> 00:16:11,399
air that carried a hint mold, and something rancor. Still,

319
00:16:11,960 --> 00:16:15,960
the panel was bolted fast, something scuffed inside. I froze

320
00:16:16,080 --> 00:16:18,559
the hair on my neck bristling, but no further movement came.

321
00:16:19,159 --> 00:16:22,080
Cradling my notebook, I retreated to the upper floors. Sketches

322
00:16:22,120 --> 00:16:25,639
more complex, now, arrows denoting every self facing thing. My

323
00:16:25,759 --> 00:16:28,399
journalistic insincts flared galvan as in my mind in place

324
00:16:28,440 --> 00:16:31,039
of rest. That's what I told Vince when I caught

325
00:16:31,120 --> 00:16:33,559
him loading a batter box into the elevator the next morning.

326
00:16:34,159 --> 00:16:37,960
We should document this, I said, voice warbling, something's happening,

327
00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:40,480
someone's doing this, may be using the old maintenance tunnels.

328
00:16:40,559 --> 00:16:44,279
Ye in. He hesitated, then nodded, gaze hounted, but if

329
00:16:44,279 --> 00:16:47,919
something follows us, he muttered, it's your fault. We agreed.

330
00:16:47,960 --> 00:16:50,600
I'd buy cheap cameras, Vince would rig a monitoring app,

331
00:16:50,639 --> 00:16:53,399
and we'd split the building in half to watch the siege.

332
00:16:53,399 --> 00:16:57,039
Mentality that unfolded was oddly comforting. If someone owe something

333
00:16:57,080 --> 00:16:59,200
move among us recording it was the only thing left

334
00:16:59,200 --> 00:17:02,799
between me and total madness. It was Saturday in the

335
00:17:02,799 --> 00:17:05,720
communal laundry when everything shifted from unease to our trite horror.

336
00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:08,440
I came down with a laundry sack over my arm,

337
00:17:08,480 --> 00:17:10,759
attention fixed on a new set of locks management had

338
00:17:10,759 --> 00:17:13,519
installed after someone tried to force open the coin machine.

339
00:17:13,920 --> 00:17:16,920
The soap dispenser stood open, spilling studs across the concrete.

340
00:17:17,279 --> 00:17:19,519
A single uncollected sock lay draped over the back of

341
00:17:19,519 --> 00:17:22,759
a folding chair, intending to pass time while the wall cycled.

342
00:17:22,759 --> 00:17:24,880
I knelt to retrieve a fallen sock and noticed something

343
00:17:24,920 --> 00:17:27,039
odd whish behind the third dry a pale blue corner,

344
00:17:27,160 --> 00:17:30,400
water stained at the edges. Tugging it free, I realized

345
00:17:30,440 --> 00:17:32,559
it was a battered school issue journal, the kind with

346
00:17:32,599 --> 00:17:35,599
wire spy rolls and a laminated cover. The sticker on

347
00:17:35,640 --> 00:17:38,079
the front curling at the corner, read a leney hush

348
00:17:38,160 --> 00:17:40,960
four hundred three my pulse that it was sudden, hope

349
00:17:40,960 --> 00:17:45,119
and dread. I glanced around the place was empty. I

350
00:17:45,160 --> 00:17:47,599
flipped through the journal. Most pages wore a fevered skull,

351
00:17:47,640 --> 00:17:51,480
thick tip and and frantic crossing up some entries. The

352
00:17:51,519 --> 00:17:53,839
door at two c m. Clocks realigned. The one who

353
00:17:53,839 --> 00:17:56,480
walks backward makes no sound, but leaves the trees pressed

354
00:17:56,519 --> 00:17:58,960
us by the hinges, faint perfume strung only a midnight

355
00:17:59,599 --> 00:18:03,920
nights for seven belongings gone, then return, but changed. Scratches

356
00:18:03,960 --> 00:18:06,039
on cup handle, all blood send in the woods stronger

357
00:18:06,079 --> 00:18:08,960
when clocks all face off. Fear is not paranoid if

358
00:18:08,960 --> 00:18:10,839
you can hear its footsteps in the vent. The building

359
00:18:10,920 --> 00:18:13,880
is its compass that knows when you watch reading further,

360
00:18:14,000 --> 00:18:17,160
A chill cold in my stomach. One passage written in

361
00:18:17,240 --> 00:18:20,000
all capitals loop back and forth across the margin. When

362
00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:21,839
the face is spun and t ap ta becomes at

363
00:18:21,839 --> 00:18:23,640
the hollow part of the wall, Do not move the

364
00:18:23,640 --> 00:18:26,799
wrong angle opens the waking door on the last rotten page.

365
00:18:26,920 --> 00:18:30,079
Some one behind the wall's eyes, wrong mouth inverted, not human.

366
00:18:30,200 --> 00:18:32,960
Mustn't let the doors all face south at once as

367
00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:35,240
I read a shop flicker, more violent than usual, ripple

368
00:18:35,319 --> 00:18:39,079
through the overhead lights. I snapped the book closed. Through

369
00:18:39,079 --> 00:18:41,319
the frosted glass of the laundry door. A shape pressed

370
00:18:41,359 --> 00:18:43,079
up from the other side of movement at shoulder height,

371
00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:47,000
a smudge standing too close for comfort. It lingered motionless

372
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:49,960
as the bulb stuttered. I dotted back toward the stairwell,

373
00:18:50,039 --> 00:18:52,200
heart hammering every inch of me, prepared for a rush

374
00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:55,119
of pursuit. But nothing followed except the bursts of cold,

375
00:18:55,160 --> 00:18:58,599
damp bear. I fled upstairs, trembling. Missess Lend's journal held

376
00:18:58,640 --> 00:19:01,839
tight against my chest. That night was harsher than any before.

377
00:19:02,359 --> 00:19:05,440
I stared at the journal's jagged handwriting, my memory tumbling

378
00:19:05,480 --> 00:19:09,440
over the detailed clocks, south facing doors, the compulsively backward walker,

379
00:19:09,519 --> 00:19:12,079
the awful sense of being observed from inside my own walls.

380
00:19:12,799 --> 00:19:15,960
There was more intentionality here than mere urban decay. If

381
00:19:16,000 --> 00:19:18,440
misses Lem was to be believed, something had studied all

382
00:19:18,480 --> 00:19:21,200
of us for longer than any tenant's memory. A presence

383
00:19:21,240 --> 00:19:23,759
is all this of buildings, bones warped by, or perhaps

384
00:19:23,799 --> 00:19:27,119
controlling the logic of locked doors and shadowy corners, the

385
00:19:27,160 --> 00:19:30,640
pattern of disruptions, disturbances, and vanished pet's and tenants suddenly

386
00:19:30,640 --> 00:19:33,680
seemed less random than lethal. As I dove further into

387
00:19:33,680 --> 00:19:36,680
the logs matching missess Lem's enteres against my digital files,

388
00:19:36,680 --> 00:19:39,400
the terrifying hypothesis began to form. What if the building

389
00:19:39,400 --> 00:19:42,160
itself was in collusion? What was it guiding and why?

390
00:19:42,880 --> 00:19:45,079
When dawn came, the only evidence I had to show

391
00:19:45,119 --> 00:19:48,039
for my sleepless obsession were shuddering hands, a hoarse voice,

392
00:19:48,079 --> 00:19:50,559
and the batter journal pressed into my note book. A

393
00:19:50,559 --> 00:19:53,440
passage from Misseslymb repeated in my mind like a bad prayer.

394
00:19:53,440 --> 00:19:55,799
When the clocks all face south, it's already too late.

395
00:19:57,119 --> 00:19:59,720
With Vince's help, we laid the evidence out across my table,

396
00:19:59,720 --> 00:20:03,359
miss Cesslam's desperate note versus my own blue inklocks. We

397
00:20:03,400 --> 00:20:06,759
worked in silence, shades, drawn light stem Vince rolled through

398
00:20:06,799 --> 00:20:10,599
my times down video files, pale and exhausted, overlaying the timing,

399
00:20:10,640 --> 00:20:14,000
scrapings and vents flickers in hallway lights episode of Moved Objects.

400
00:20:14,039 --> 00:20:16,799
We saw the clusters precisely between three thirty and three

401
00:20:16,880 --> 00:20:18,720
forty a m. As if the building's pulse beat a

402
00:20:18,799 --> 00:20:23,319
terrible regularity. There's something Vince began, but we both stopped

403
00:20:23,319 --> 00:20:26,079
as Russell padded outside our door, jangling his ring of keys.

404
00:20:26,680 --> 00:20:30,279
He paused listening, then moved on. Vince gathered himself, mouve

405
00:20:30,359 --> 00:20:34,279
tents these times, these doors, everything slightly saff the angles

406
00:20:34,279 --> 00:20:36,400
aren't by chance the old designs. Do you think there's

407
00:20:36,400 --> 00:20:39,359
a master plan? I thought about the hidden maintenance tunnels

408
00:20:39,359 --> 00:20:43,279
Misseslam referenced, now lost to memory and crumbling blueprints. At

409
00:20:43,279 --> 00:20:46,400
my next opportunity, a corner of Russell by a service elevator,

410
00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:49,559
he bristled. But my questions about basement access in old

411
00:20:49,559 --> 00:20:52,920
blueprints got only a grunt. Tunnel's a pain, he admitted,

412
00:20:53,039 --> 00:20:55,799
full of rats. No one seen the real maps in years. Anyway,

413
00:20:55,880 --> 00:20:59,119
nothing useful down there. Then pointedly leave those doors be

414
00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:01,960
I now now I was taking nothing at face value.

415
00:21:02,519 --> 00:21:04,799
Using a tape measure and lengths of twine, I matted

416
00:21:04,839 --> 00:21:08,119
each door's orientation. The results uner of me. Every entrance

417
00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:10,480
was also sat by a few degrees, as if someone

418
00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:13,680
had calculated the trajectories to converge at a single subterranean point.

419
00:21:14,359 --> 00:21:17,319
The pattern in the security tapes captured by Vince's equipment

420
00:21:17,440 --> 00:21:20,640
was subtler, but more compelling. A figure blurred hunched, often

421
00:21:20,680 --> 00:21:23,440
in dropped clothes, appeared regularly after the lights flickered out, back,

422
00:21:23,440 --> 00:21:25,920
always to the camera, never showing a face moving through

423
00:21:25,920 --> 00:21:29,400
low lick corridors, just ahead of returning illumination, always leaving

424
00:21:29,480 --> 00:21:32,079
chaos in its wake. A toppled umbrella, a cupboard hung ajar,

425
00:21:32,200 --> 00:21:35,000
a slight misalignment in the rug runners. We pressed the

426
00:21:35,039 --> 00:21:38,680
clues together. Door orientations, flickering intervals, were rumors of crawl spaces.

427
00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:42,640
Everything pointed under the building into the forbidden tunnels. For

428
00:21:42,759 --> 00:21:45,319
the first time since everything began, I felt less hunted,

429
00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:48,319
more compelled to hunt. We set a plan wire Mark's

430
00:21:48,359 --> 00:21:51,240
apartment in the hall with every camera, microphone and censor

431
00:21:51,279 --> 00:21:54,000
we could afford. I placed my journal, refolded on the

432
00:21:54,039 --> 00:21:57,279
window sill as bait chair angle perfectly south. Vince kept

433
00:21:57,279 --> 00:21:59,880
to the laundry, phone buzzing in his lap, monitoring the air.

434
00:22:00,079 --> 00:22:02,839
Up that night, the storm broke again, rein pelting the

435
00:22:02,839 --> 00:22:05,319
concrete bulk of the arms thunder rolling up from the river.

436
00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:08,480
My clocks were set digitally an analog all to three

437
00:22:08,559 --> 00:22:11,799
thirty seven unbidden. As the ire approached the hallway, lights

438
00:22:11,799 --> 00:22:14,240
exploded in a fitful stutter plunging the corridor in and

439
00:22:14,279 --> 00:22:18,319
out of milky darkness. My heart clenched. I knelt by

440
00:22:18,359 --> 00:22:20,400
the door, peering through the lens as the backward walker

441
00:22:20,480 --> 00:22:23,920
shuffled into view, every sinney trembling. The haunch presence was

442
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:26,799
almost completely obscured by shadow, but the methodical way hut

443
00:22:26,880 --> 00:22:29,839
door handles, all without ever turning, made my skin crawl

444
00:22:30,400 --> 00:22:34,839
downstairs Vince's tax flaster, warning movement, and laundry. I pressed

445
00:22:34,839 --> 00:22:37,319
myself to the wall, every nerve a flame. That's when

446
00:22:37,319 --> 00:22:39,680
the scraping began, first from overhead, then from inside the

447
00:22:39,720 --> 00:22:43,079
plaster behind my surfa. Without warning, a section of the

448
00:22:43,119 --> 00:22:45,640
wal slid aside, revealing a crawl space just wide enough

449
00:22:45,640 --> 00:22:48,599
for a body to fit. Wreck caught, I saw a pale,

450
00:22:48,759 --> 00:22:52,119
irregular face peering from with then skin, waxy, mouth twisted downward,

451
00:22:52,160 --> 00:22:55,240
eyes ringed in liquid shadow. The features made no sense,

452
00:22:55,359 --> 00:22:57,799
as if arranged against logic, mouth where the nurse should be,

453
00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:01,200
ies deep set above, inverted utterly. I felt a primal

454
00:23:01,279 --> 00:23:03,440
terror at petition of a scream rising and my rope,

455
00:23:03,440 --> 00:23:05,720
but all I heard was at dreadful reversed humming, like

456
00:23:05,759 --> 00:23:08,640
a tune played backward. The face, which drew szemlessly as

457
00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:12,119
the scraping receded. The axis panel sliding home. My flat's

458
00:23:12,119 --> 00:23:14,640
camera caught a hiss of warp reflection, not my own visage,

459
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:18,279
but something slick and inhuman. Moments later, management thudded up

460
00:23:18,279 --> 00:23:20,720
the stairs, hurring tenants back to their units of bluffing.

461
00:23:21,279 --> 00:23:23,559
Rats in the walls were spray on Monday, no One

462
00:23:23,559 --> 00:23:27,039
at after midnight, building's policy. Her face was gray eyes,

463
00:23:27,079 --> 00:23:30,880
tracking every movement from the shadowy corner. Sleep was impossible.

464
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:34,319
The journal lay heavy on my pillow. I promised myself,

465
00:23:34,359 --> 00:23:36,759
as the digital clock spun obediently to three thirty seven,

466
00:23:36,839 --> 00:23:38,559
that I would chase the tunnels myself if no one

467
00:23:38,559 --> 00:23:42,799
else would. The iro ticks forward inexorably. Secerts move in

468
00:23:42,839 --> 00:23:47,200
the hollowed places, clocks, doors, shadows always pointing south. I

469
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:50,000
am awake and I am not alone. I am awake

470
00:23:50,119 --> 00:23:53,440
and I am not alone. The next morning, sunlight slanted

471
00:23:53,440 --> 00:23:55,920
weakly through the bedroom shades and anemic off white light,

472
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:59,559
barely distinguishable from the dinginess of electric bulbs. I stood

473
00:23:59,559 --> 00:24:01,960
in the middle of the kitchen. Journal splayed open, reviewing

474
00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:04,880
my hastily compiled notes to the film. Of exhaustion. Finn's

475
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,400
message at six twelve a m. No footage of the

476
00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:10,400
shape chemic glitch. At three thirty five, laundry temp dropped hard.

477
00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:13,880
You all right, man, I typed a shaky response. Sawat

478
00:24:13,920 --> 00:24:16,880
in the walls. Not a rat. We met over burnt coffee,

479
00:24:17,079 --> 00:24:20,480
monks clinking listlessly on my scratch dining table. The tension

480
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:22,680
in the room had grown corporeal. I could almost hear

481
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:25,039
the house itself, holding its ancient breath, listening for us

482
00:24:25,079 --> 00:24:28,799
to misstep. Vince was jetty, his eyes room pink. He

483
00:24:28,799 --> 00:24:31,640
shuffled the stack of print out, security schedule, motion, sense

484
00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:34,200
of print outs, my now memorized sketches of south facing

485
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:37,920
doors and clocks. He tapped the map. Everything lines up

486
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:40,720
four times last week. Lights flicker at nearly the same minute,

487
00:24:40,799 --> 00:24:43,519
Always on your floor, always paired with some disruption. The

488
00:24:43,519 --> 00:24:46,400
Holloway's dog, Clara's mess and keys. You're he gestured at

489
00:24:46,400 --> 00:24:49,759
my scattered possessions, He upside down cutlery. I ignored the

490
00:24:49,759 --> 00:24:53,680
half hearted smile he managed. Have you slept, I asked?

491
00:24:54,440 --> 00:24:57,039
He flinched. Do you dreams count if every door in

492
00:24:57,079 --> 00:24:59,440
the building swings open and you never get out? We

493
00:24:59,519 --> 00:25:03,000
lapsed int silence, thumbing through Miss s Lam's journal. Vince,

494
00:25:03,039 --> 00:25:05,000
trace the passage with a bit and fingernail. If it

495
00:25:05,079 --> 00:25:07,920
watches through the black glass, do not look back. Was

496
00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:11,119
she talking about that? Then the window the face had

497
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:13,400
glimpsed through the crawl space gap swam into memory. Is

498
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:16,319
geometry wrung enough to leave a migraine pulsing behind my eyes?

499
00:25:17,039 --> 00:25:20,400
I forced myself upright daylight. We can check the rout now,

500
00:25:20,559 --> 00:25:23,440
no flickering lights. No one's going to stop us. The

501
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:26,880
words felt like a lie, brittle as eggshell. Still actions

502
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:30,680
seemed preferable to paralysis. We split duties. Vince scouted the

503
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:32,640
stairwell and main hallwy while I prowled the length of

504
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:35,880
my floor, noting every threshold, every distorted not hole in

505
00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:38,960
the wall. I tried the laundry shoot to low metallic clang,

506
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:41,519
and the searing scent of bleach came back up, no

507
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:45,200
hollow resonance. I crouched at the baseboarts outside my unit,

508
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:48,680
running glove fingers along the old wood. One spot, not

509
00:25:48,839 --> 00:25:50,880
far from where the cross space had opened the night before,

510
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:54,319
felt oddly warm, pulsing. Faintly. Voices echoed upward from the

511
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:57,759
first floor. I peered over the banister. Rustle lumbered through

512
00:25:57,759 --> 00:26:00,559
the lobby, muttering to the manager, chanting about an ex dominator,

513
00:26:00,599 --> 00:26:03,880
hands tugging anchssey at his oversized ring of keys. From

514
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:05,960
my angle, I could see one heavy brass key, long

515
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:09,000
half did and worn, dangling from a separate loop. Russell's

516
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:11,480
thumb flicked over it, rhythmic, as if the motion sued

517
00:26:11,559 --> 00:26:16,319
him back upstairs. Vince waited, breathless. Misseslam had her unicanted

518
00:26:16,319 --> 00:26:19,000
the furthest salt sea. He held a strip of measuring

519
00:26:19,039 --> 00:26:22,119
tape and a small protractor six degrees more than ires.

520
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:24,559
The blueprint doesn't lash the real angle either. The door

521
00:26:24,559 --> 00:26:28,079
frames have been refitted. Behind the throb of fatigue, something clicked,

522
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:32,240
every disruption, every alarm movement, missing or replaced object wasn't

523
00:26:32,279 --> 00:26:35,160
just time but spatial. The pattern wasn't just about the dire,

524
00:26:35,319 --> 00:26:37,759
but orientation, as if the building was marshaling all its

525
00:26:37,799 --> 00:26:41,720
interior geography toward one magnetic convergence. A door slammed two

526
00:26:41,759 --> 00:26:45,440
floors down. The echo sharp and insistent. I started, then

527
00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:47,920
caught a glimpse of Chlora on the landing below. Scanning

528
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:50,759
her phone. We exchanged a glance her, his weary mind

529
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,920
likely wild eyed. She mouthed something I could interpret it.

530
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:57,440
Did you hear it last night? I nodded, I press

531
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:00,240
fince the shift. Did your camera of a catch any

532
00:27:00,279 --> 00:27:02,359
sign that it was person? Or could it be something else?

533
00:27:02,559 --> 00:27:04,519
Management wants us to think this is rats, just an

534
00:27:04,559 --> 00:27:08,079
old building headache. He shrugged, helplessly, pushing up a crumpled sleeve.

535
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:10,839
I only get the aftermath. The logs show a drop

536
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:14,240
in temperature, em spikes, then nothing but blur. But he

537
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:17,319
hesitated gaze, darting to the ceiling. My camera in the laundry,

538
00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:19,559
just for a second caught a reflection in the window.

539
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:22,480
It was near face for mine. We crowded around his

540
00:27:22,519 --> 00:27:25,680
phone as he replayed the jittery night vision footage. Pale

541
00:27:25,759 --> 00:27:28,680
daylight bounced off the basement window, and for just two frames,

542
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:30,640
a figure lighted by the motion, all wrong for a

543
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:34,160
body pivoting forward, the head crown nearly brushing the lintel.

544
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:38,440
Never turned. I stared, hot, laden, It moves backward, always

545
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:41,759
away from us, never turning. Why. Finn slicked his lips,

546
00:27:41,839 --> 00:27:45,039
voice fraying, Maybe it only exists if you don't face

547
00:27:45,039 --> 00:27:46,960
it head on like it needs to building, the angles,

548
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:48,680
the routines to keep it here or to keep us

549
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:51,400
from seeing it completely. A theory wormed into my mind,

550
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,440
a compromise between the rational and the uncanny. There might

551
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:57,240
be something or someone living in those old tunnels, depending

552
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:00,000
on secrecy, disarray, and the subtle alignment of doors close

553
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:03,920
unspoken rules. We stared at one another, stealed by dread

554
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:06,440
and the faint, aching hope that investigation might shield us

555
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:08,480
from most things. Looking in the half lick corridors of

556
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:12,880
Pemberley Arms, A noise from my apartment, intentional, mechanical, almost

557
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:15,359
a tap, broke my reverie. I strode to my door,

558
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:18,200
hand on the knob, pin shadowing behind me. As I

559
00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:20,440
cracked it open, A sudden guest of cold air swept

560
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:24,039
past my knees. The clocks, every single one, seemed to pass.

561
00:28:24,079 --> 00:28:27,359
In unison. We exchanged a look, both of us electrified

562
00:28:27,960 --> 00:28:29,960
the question. I could see it flicker in Vince's eyes,

563
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:32,279
and maybe my own was no longer what haunted us?

564
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:34,279
But why? And for how long? It had been part

565
00:28:34,279 --> 00:28:37,519
of the building's dreadful order. Unshaking over my mug, I

566
00:28:37,559 --> 00:28:41,079
stared at the pale coffee Finn shifted restlessly opposite, glancing

567
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:42,960
toward the door, as if expecting it to fly open

568
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:45,759
at any moment. Sunlight, if it could be called, that

569
00:28:45,920 --> 00:28:48,440
limped into my apartments, mirroring the patterns already charted in

570
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:51,480
my notebook. Attension left by the knights encounter dron the

571
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:53,759
air between us. The memory of the wall panel sliding

572
00:28:53,759 --> 00:28:55,960
would hollow certainty, the backward shimmer of a face that

573
00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:58,359
refused the dignity of forward motion away. Every clock in

574
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:00,559
the place seemed to pulse at the same rhythm. It

575
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:02,319
was as if we'd all been set to the same ire,

576
00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:05,759
ticking down together, sleepless and watched. I kept replaying the

577
00:29:05,759 --> 00:29:07,519
face in the coal space, the mouth that threatened to

578
00:29:07,519 --> 00:29:09,519
smile on the wrong side, the darkness wrapped up in

579
00:29:09,519 --> 00:29:12,319
its posture, darkness that I knew was not only nocturnal,

580
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:15,519
it was structural. It was in the angles of the hall,

581
00:29:15,599 --> 00:29:17,119
the tilt of every door, at the chill in the

582
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:20,480
southern air. The building's heartbeat had denounced itself, And now

583
00:29:20,559 --> 00:29:22,839
with the evidence of Missus Lembs broken script in Vince's

584
00:29:22,839 --> 00:29:26,519
blowed footage in hand, denial no longer shielded us. Something

585
00:29:26,559 --> 00:29:29,279
was moving through the physical spine of Pemberley Arms, abducting

586
00:29:29,279 --> 00:29:31,960
objects and peopled by laws, and visible but not unfeeling.

587
00:29:32,559 --> 00:29:36,880
You saw it, Vince whispered, barely above a hiss. I nodded,

588
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,400
not trussing my voice. Management. Did you see their faces?

589
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:43,319
They know? Vince rose to pace the room, shoulders hunched,

590
00:29:43,359 --> 00:29:46,079
picking a spot on his wrist until it reddened. All

591
00:29:46,119 --> 00:29:48,039
that rats in the wall's talk has just cover. No

592
00:29:48,119 --> 00:29:50,240
one's stopping it. Ere keeping us here, trapped by our

593
00:29:50,279 --> 00:29:54,519
own routines, or maybe they trapped to I hardly recognized

594
00:29:54,519 --> 00:29:57,440
my own voice, raw stripped of certainty. Did you check

595
00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:01,480
for any exit points this morning? Vince gesture helplessly heased

596
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:04,079
fire doors chained from the inside, now rear exits newly

597
00:30:04,079 --> 00:30:06,759
screwed shut. I heard Russell mumbling to himself in the stairwell,

598
00:30:06,799 --> 00:30:08,720
there's nowhere in or I'd accept the lobby at night.

599
00:30:09,319 --> 00:30:11,839
I'm going to the archives to day, I decided aloud.

600
00:30:12,359 --> 00:30:15,839
The building plans, construction records permits, some blueprint or past

601
00:30:15,839 --> 00:30:18,279
complaint must explain those axis tunnels. We need to know

602
00:30:18,319 --> 00:30:22,240
if anyone's been inside the words alone, steadied me. Finn

603
00:30:22,240 --> 00:30:25,720
spit his lip. You shouldn't go alone. I don't have

604
00:30:25,759 --> 00:30:29,640
a choice, I reply, not any more. He didn't answer.

605
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:32,240
I watched as he twisted the batted plastic of his

606
00:30:32,279 --> 00:30:35,039
student idea as cast's south, as though the pressure grew

607
00:30:35,079 --> 00:30:37,680
stronger the longer he fought it in the hallway. The

608
00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:40,200
motion's answer triggered a brief blink of the fixture overhead

609
00:30:40,319 --> 00:30:43,319
and alert pinging on Vince's phone. Neither of us moved.

610
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:47,599
No footsteps followed. Last night, Vince said, I dreamed, I

611
00:30:47,599 --> 00:30:50,039
walked backward into the hall following a ticking sound, and

612
00:30:50,119 --> 00:30:52,319
woke up standing by the laundry chute. My keys were

613
00:30:52,319 --> 00:30:55,319
in my left shoe. I never put them there, I swallowed.

614
00:30:55,960 --> 00:30:58,559
We document what we can now to day. The sense

615
00:30:58,559 --> 00:31:01,200
of expectation of building drove pressed at my back as

616
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:03,440
I shrugged into my coat and stepped out, trailing the

617
00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:07,039
echo of every clock left behind. Thence hesitated at the threshold,

618
00:31:07,039 --> 00:31:10,039
as if stepping into the corridor's open mouthed invited consequences.

619
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:12,519
I left him there and certain if I'd see him

620
00:31:12,559 --> 00:31:15,200
unchanged when I returned. I spent the first half of

621
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:17,519
the day knee deep in city wrecords. The modernity of

622
00:31:17,559 --> 00:31:21,079
the ark of nearlier comfort. Gray files listed Pemberley Arms

623
00:31:21,079 --> 00:31:23,759
as an experimental multi unit designed the language of sterile

624
00:31:23,799 --> 00:31:27,359
as rain on concrete. Floor plans revealed layers between public

625
00:31:27,359 --> 00:31:30,440
holes and private units. A Weber maintenance passages, apparently built

626
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:33,960
for efficient universal servicing, now marked restricted in heavy black,

627
00:31:34,559 --> 00:31:37,240
no mention of current use, only cryptic notes f initial

628
00:31:37,279 --> 00:31:41,400
security issues nineteen seventy five minutes seventy seven unresolved. I

629
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:43,799
followed a lead to the planning office, where a retired

630
00:31:43,839 --> 00:31:46,720
engineer agreed to meet me after some cajoling. He was

631
00:31:46,759 --> 00:31:49,279
a gentle, stoop shouldered man whose line face flickered with

632
00:31:49,319 --> 00:31:52,039
old suspicion. As soon as I mentioned arms in a

633
00:31:52,119 --> 00:31:54,559
rented office, smelling of friar oil and dry cleaning, he

634
00:31:54,599 --> 00:31:56,799
thumbed through a folder and slid it to me. I

635
00:31:56,839 --> 00:32:00,319
can't discuss most things, he muttered, But Weird problems early

636
00:32:00,519 --> 00:32:02,240
used reports of break in shifts in the floor a

637
00:32:02,279 --> 00:32:05,319
Lyman in its subtly off level. Residents complained about lost time,

638
00:32:05,359 --> 00:32:08,680
forgotten rooms, doors that jammed at weirdire's, but every inspection

639
00:32:08,720 --> 00:32:13,240
showed nothing lost time. I pressed. His eyes darted to

640
00:32:13,279 --> 00:32:16,519
the window. Nothing they could prove, just don't trust that building.

641
00:32:16,559 --> 00:32:18,240
Not at night. I had a friend. She said the

642
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:21,200
clocks in her flat would synchronize, all pointing south, and

643
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:23,599
then things would disappear. Doors would open, but not to

644
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:25,640
where you meant. I told her to move, She never did.

645
00:32:26,200 --> 00:32:29,640
I asked about the tunnels. He hunched further. They were

646
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:32,400
from maintenance. Now I'd keep out lines got blow between

647
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:35,359
short cut and hiding place. If people go missing, sometimes

648
00:32:35,359 --> 00:32:37,519
they don't mean to leave. Sometimes the building wants them

649
00:32:37,519 --> 00:32:40,400
to stay. See. He would not elaborate, and I did

650
00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:43,200
not push. I left the foot coppies of the old

651
00:32:43,200 --> 00:32:45,960
maps and a chill in my chest. Back in the lobby,

652
00:32:46,039 --> 00:32:49,799
my phone shined a voicemail. The message was gibberish, a long, static,

653
00:32:49,799 --> 00:32:52,160
gridden whisper, but three words scorned out through the noise.

654
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:55,440
Three three seven. The tank could read three thirty seven

655
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:57,920
a m. Though my phone never rang. I sped up

656
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:00,839
the stairs, heart in my throat. On my landing, I

657
00:33:00,839 --> 00:33:03,720
stopped short. My fuse box hung half open, wise twisted.

658
00:33:03,839 --> 00:33:07,039
The acrid scent of burnt insulation standing near my dead

659
00:33:07,039 --> 00:33:09,880
bolt was scored with fresh cratches. The kitchen lamp flickered weakly,

660
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:12,680
as if gasping. On its last damp. In my apartment,

661
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:16,519
everything was wrong by degrees. The living room workainst bulled edgewise,

662
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:19,359
couch shove against the window, Clocks arrayed on the south wall,

663
00:33:19,599 --> 00:33:22,119
each reading three thirty seven. Even when I swapped their

664
00:33:22,119 --> 00:33:25,680
batteries on the counter. An envelope with no return address

665
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:28,680
lay partly open. I slid it, hands barely steady enough

666
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:31,720
to hold the knife, A torn slip of paper inksmearred

667
00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:34,359
and shaking with haste. Read Some doors cannot be locked,

668
00:33:34,359 --> 00:33:37,359
some sleepers cannot wake. The dread, and my belly sharpened.

669
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:41,119
I opened the Frisch milk, sired bread nod. Even my

670
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:43,279
wallet lay on the shelf, as though it too had

671
00:33:43,319 --> 00:33:47,720
tried to escape. I dialed Bince, something's here, I said,

672
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:52,000
voice barely audible. Everything's out of order again, He sounded

673
00:33:52,039 --> 00:33:54,720
worse than before. Breath tight is a drum My phone

674
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:56,559
shows calls I never made I had as I m

675
00:33:56,599 --> 00:33:59,839
card replaced. Wasn't me stay put? I told him, no

676
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:02,240
one goes out at night, not until we figure this out.

677
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:05,720
But his tone betrayed doubt. Not sure I'll lost that

678
00:34:05,799 --> 00:34:08,440
lawn mock. I could just make out the scraping his

679
00:34:08,559 --> 00:34:12,960
hand or something else before the line went dead. Evening fell.

680
00:34:13,679 --> 00:34:16,559
I sat in darkness, all clocks confiscated, safe one, lights

681
00:34:16,599 --> 00:34:19,440
dimmed except a lantern in the corner. Every sound pressed

682
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:22,920
inward on my mind. The south wall grew larger and larger.

683
00:34:23,079 --> 00:34:25,400
Each took another invitation for the wrong door to open,

684
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:28,880
a close insistent dread balloon, crowding out sense and sleep.

685
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:32,480
I grit missess Lam's journal. If survival men ritual, I

686
00:34:32,519 --> 00:34:35,079
would master it. That night, I waited for the ire.

687
00:34:35,119 --> 00:34:38,000
When the building's hot began beating for someone else, I

688
00:34:38,119 --> 00:34:41,519
rose well before three, assembling what I needed, flashlight's camera cloves,

689
00:34:41,559 --> 00:34:44,360
the old blueprints folded into my jacket. Vince met me

690
00:34:44,400 --> 00:34:46,719
on the second floor, face a shock of hollowdies in

691
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:49,159
the washed hair. He brought two crobos in a kin

692
00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:51,639
of cheap spray paint, the latter for mocking out progress

693
00:34:51,639 --> 00:34:54,159
in the tunnels. We waited until the halls were as

694
00:34:54,159 --> 00:34:56,880
silent as the grave. Each step echoed in a panic

695
00:34:56,920 --> 00:35:00,519
stricken register, but the building's silence pressed back, swallowing up sounds.

696
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:03,280
Somewhere above, a door thudded with the dullness of a

697
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:06,000
coffin lid. The laundry room greeted us with an old,

698
00:35:06,079 --> 00:35:09,639
metallic cold sireus soerap bleach, the living stink of something hidden.

699
00:35:10,119 --> 00:35:12,800
We peeled back the false panel behind a last washing machine,

700
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:16,320
exposing rusted bolts and concreatse cold with black streaks. The

701
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:19,320
crowbo worked and the panel buckled inward, exhaling a muddy

702
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:23,239
draft older than anything outside. We squeezed in flashlights, bobbing.

703
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,599
This chirked the throat of the passage. The tunnel narrow

704
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:30,119
brick's grobe with old waterproofing and decades of sediment. Rats

705
00:35:30,159 --> 00:35:33,320
grabbled ahead, their chairs and sewing noises, answering into pipes above.

706
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:37,000
We pressed on, vince marking a green streak every ten meters.

707
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:40,079
After a time that stretched and shrank, we hit a junction,

708
00:35:40,159 --> 00:35:43,400
pipes splitting in three directions. Graffiti old and smudged. A

709
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:46,719
stick figure, mouth twisted askew underneath into locking clock faces,

710
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:50,360
all tilted south below the initials lump scorched into the paint.

711
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:54,239
It was a living record. We skirted along the lowest passage,

712
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:57,679
following the tattered blueprints by our phone's glow. Above, distant

713
00:35:57,679 --> 00:36:00,440
foots of secoda body are more moving room to room,

714
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:02,320
too slow to be the super, too purposeful to be

715
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:05,320
lost in the coal, I lost all sense of time.

716
00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:08,280
My phones displayed died at three thirty seven, unresponsive until

717
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:11,000
we called further on deeper, where even the pots seemed

718
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:14,000
to stutter. We reached a tea junction. One wall sheend

719
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:16,880
in what looks like nod wax there talks in a

720
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:20,000
pocket of shadow. Was evidence of habitation, A nest of rags,

721
00:36:20,079 --> 00:36:23,840
battered paperbacks, half burnt batteries, the stink of sweat, copper,

722
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:25,760
and weather throws up a person had lived here, of

723
00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:30,000
something approximating it thins crouched slow, probing under a pile

724
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:32,480
of shreded flannel, he found a collection of items, keys

725
00:36:32,559 --> 00:36:34,599
dusted with green pattern at it showed up dog collar,

726
00:36:34,679 --> 00:36:37,159
the holloways, a faded photo of Missess leamb con as

727
00:36:37,159 --> 00:36:40,800
foxed eyes betten away. Every item pointed south, even framed

728
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:43,400
photos or tour trucks, as if the nest builder refused

729
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:45,960
to let anything face back toward the building or toward us.

730
00:36:46,599 --> 00:36:48,480
A chill worked its way into my bones, both the

731
00:36:48,519 --> 00:36:51,280
cold and annoying I wanted to deny. We pressed on

732
00:36:51,599 --> 00:36:54,519
fingers numb, passed another edged warning, one who walks backward

733
00:36:54,599 --> 00:36:57,639
needs no door. The script twisted upward, then trailed off.

734
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:02,199
Suddenly overhead thundered and knocked, thus poured down, and somewhere

735
00:37:02,199 --> 00:37:05,400
a pipe on it. Someone or something was moving in

736
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,199
tandem with us, tracking our progress step by step. On

737
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:10,599
between the metal, a whisper, as if a song played

738
00:37:10,599 --> 00:37:13,719
backward on an old reel, three thirty seven, three thirty seven.

739
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:16,760
As we turned to a narrow crosstch of pipes, Vince

740
00:37:16,800 --> 00:37:21,280
Pale pausing, clutching his chest. His gas brococheted through the tunnel.

741
00:37:21,880 --> 00:37:25,800
I can't, he whispered, breath clipping, it's too tight. I

742
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:29,400
steadied his shoulder, heart racing. We're nearly there, but the

743
00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:33,199
dread was tetonic, settled and immovable. We kept crawling, following

744
00:37:33,199 --> 00:37:35,159
what remained of the chalk marks on the faintest echo

745
00:37:35,159 --> 00:37:38,039
of air. Behind a heavy vent, the tunnel opened into

746
00:37:38,039 --> 00:37:41,079
a low chamber beneath what I estimated was Missess Lamb's unit.

747
00:37:41,559 --> 00:37:44,079
A ring of broken clocks, glass and plastic splinted lay

748
00:37:44,119 --> 00:37:47,639
in a careful circle, every dial mangled or intact, point itself,

749
00:37:48,199 --> 00:37:50,840
a tangled mass of gray hair not in knitting yarn

750
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:53,239
and blue fabric, the color of missess lambs touch rested

751
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:56,519
at the midpoint, God, Vince muttered, voice lost in the

752
00:37:56,519 --> 00:38:00,119
gray of Jarveco. He knull, running, trembling fingers along the tie.

753
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:04,360
These are her things, I choked. She was here on

754
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:07,159
the walls, gouged deep where looping marks like Matha's faces,

755
00:38:07,159 --> 00:38:10,360
no eyes, only inverted crescent shapes, too monstrous to be smiles.

756
00:38:11,039 --> 00:38:13,400
All at once, the shuffle of backward steps echoed above.

757
00:38:14,159 --> 00:38:17,679
Something moved with jazz irregular timing, wrapping on the boards,

758
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:21,400
almost as if were counting down. Vince began to shake.

759
00:38:22,159 --> 00:38:25,400
We have to go. I realized he was right. The

760
00:38:25,519 --> 00:38:27,920
chamber behind us gave off, arising from the distant sound

761
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:30,960
of a hundred clock sticking in unison, growing closer closer.

762
00:38:31,599 --> 00:38:33,519
We scrambled about the way we had come, till a

763
00:38:33,559 --> 00:38:35,920
lighting wavering, the pale glow now felled by our own

764
00:38:35,960 --> 00:38:38,280
house breasts, and the dragging steps of another body moving

765
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,639
parallel to our flight. At the next junction, Vince froze again,

766
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:45,679
tears leaking from his eyes. It's following us, markets following us.

767
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:49,719
I squeezed his arm, dragging him forward. The paint find

768
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:53,679
the marks. The backward walker, with all its homicidal rythmic certainty,

769
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:56,639
shadowed us through the pipes. I smelled its approach before

770
00:38:56,679 --> 00:38:58,599
I glimpsed the pale shimmer in my periphery, the scent

771
00:38:58,599 --> 00:39:01,760
of bleach, rust, and something more intimate, like the inside

772
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:04,840
of a mouth, and its footsteps, sliding then thudding, each

773
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:07,679
time almost in a reversed rhythm. Thence tried to run,

774
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:11,679
but slipped. He landed hard, clutching at his ankle. I

775
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:15,239
turned to lift him, flashlight beam slicing the dark behind us.

776
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:18,480
The tunnel brimmed with movement. The gaunt presents dripped in

777
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:20,679
a shabby gray coat. Masks sown from a warped clock

778
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:23,960
face blocked the rear passage. Its limbs hung round, not

779
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:26,119
from injury but purpose. The gate, a series of backward

780
00:39:26,199 --> 00:39:29,639
lurges had forever tilted away, never offering up its own front.

781
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:33,159
It came closer the ticking moon. From behind the mask,

782
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:35,760
I could swear through the holes. An inverted smiles split

783
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:38,960
the jowler. Not grotesque but impossible. My hand shook as

784
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:42,480
I reased the flashlight. Thence weeeze, trying to drag himself upright.

785
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:45,880
Don't look at he carved eyes flicking away. Don't look

786
00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:49,239
at its face. I didn't, I looked and said at

787
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:52,800
its hands, Pale, jittery, impossibly long fingered. It moved with

788
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:55,519
neither haste nor slowness, only the certainty of returning to

789
00:39:55,559 --> 00:39:59,079
a familiar routine. It muttered as advanced voice, slow and

790
00:39:59,119 --> 00:40:01,159
syrup thick, as if if the tape inside its throat

791
00:40:01,159 --> 00:40:04,320
turn backward, winding must wine, must reset count face North,

792
00:40:04,559 --> 00:40:07,760
never never face North. Her. In pure terror and frustration,

793
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:10,719
I lurched forward, seizing its mask with both hands, half

794
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:14,000
expecting the flesh face of someone I recognized the mass

795
00:40:14,039 --> 00:40:17,679
torror was scratchy, cardboard, oily with decades of sweat. I

796
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:19,840
saw not the face of the super or a tenant,

797
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,760
or even Maseslam. Instead, I saw a uncanny visage, features

798
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:25,920
shuffled and split, eyes set deep under what should be

799
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:29,079
a mouthed lips stretched above, no sun cameward, nothing belonging

800
00:40:29,079 --> 00:40:31,559
where it should. The walker jerked and made a wet,

801
00:40:31,559 --> 00:40:34,159
smacking sound, like a tick caught in a clock. It

802
00:40:34,159 --> 00:40:36,599
slithered backward into the gap in the Brooksen was gone.

803
00:40:36,880 --> 00:40:41,039
Motion impossibly swift. The tunnel's air dropped to freezing for

804
00:40:41,119 --> 00:40:44,199
a long moment, Vince and led ezed, hats battery, mine

805
00:40:44,239 --> 00:40:46,719
s blitz with the impossibility of what we'd seen. The

806
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:49,719
quiet that followed felt near a safe, nor blessed. We

807
00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:52,880
limped out, Vince uizing my shoulder. My coldes reaked of

808
00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:57,440
metal unmold. Every muscle screamed. We forced ourselves back along

809
00:40:57,480 --> 00:40:59,679
the spray painted line until we breached a false panel

810
00:40:59,679 --> 00:41:02,760
behind me, the laundry blinking in the humming fluorescence. We

811
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:06,480
tumbled out, gasping, the building unchanged and yet unrecognizable. No

812
00:41:06,559 --> 00:41:10,000
one met us. The complex, as ever, bore the aspect

813
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,800
of sleep, but the sense of something turned, something unlocked

814
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:16,719
pulsed in every shadow. The corridor felt alted, heavier, more deliberate.

815
00:41:17,239 --> 00:41:19,880
I felt every clock above our heads driding our hearts soufthward.

816
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:22,880
Something inside the building had noticed us, and now it

817
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:26,039
would not stop. Back in my apartment, hands trembling, I

818
00:41:26,079 --> 00:41:28,800
tried to review the evidence. Fins and I haunched around

819
00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:32,199
the battered laptop, breath coming harsh and shallow. We keied

820
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:35,480
the footage, grainy images of tunnels, glimpses of clock faces,

821
00:41:35,519 --> 00:41:38,239
and echoing sequence of footsteps recorded by the tiny microphones

822
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:41,199
I had planted near the panel. At first the film

823
00:41:41,199 --> 00:41:43,679
played true. Our own voice is cursing and praying, the

824
00:41:43,679 --> 00:41:46,360
beam of my flashlight flickering as we blunted through the dark.

825
00:41:47,119 --> 00:41:49,599
Then the feet stuttered to the video warped, faces stretched

826
00:41:49,599 --> 00:41:52,559
southward in the screen. The audio gobbled of, ridden by

827
00:41:52,559 --> 00:41:54,920
a deep mechanical ticking, like a metronome set to the

828
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:57,119
heart of the earth. What should have shown the backward

829
00:41:57,159 --> 00:41:59,639
walker became only a skittering blur edges no away by

830
00:41:59,639 --> 00:42:03,840
sad we skyured the frames in one as Vince krawl

831
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:06,519
from the circle of broken clocks, his face reflected on

832
00:42:06,559 --> 00:42:08,880
a shadow plastic dial, bent backward mouth, where as I

833
00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:11,960
should be sock it shrinking to a point in another,

834
00:42:12,199 --> 00:42:14,880
my own soilow at collapsed and redouble lons flickering, as

835
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:17,480
if time had folded in on itself. I checked each

836
00:42:17,559 --> 00:42:20,679
time marker whenever the footage dulled white. The time samp

837
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:23,199
read three thirty seven a m. Even when recorded iro

838
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:25,519
was before or after. It was as if the force

839
00:42:25,559 --> 00:42:28,159
moving through the tunnels warped not only the living but memory,

840
00:42:28,159 --> 00:42:31,679
recoat time itself. The old notes from miss eslamb newly

841
00:42:31,679 --> 00:42:35,840
ominous mirrored our experiences with cruel clarity. Somebody behind a

842
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:38,559
wall's lawn before me changes the ires, changes the intent,

843
00:42:38,679 --> 00:42:41,760
seeks new hands. When old one's fade, Vince stood abruptly,

844
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:45,239
rubbing his neck, face shining with terror. It'll come again.

845
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,559
It follows routine's ires. There is the building itself. I

846
00:42:48,559 --> 00:42:51,599
couldn't contest him. Even with the evidence in digital art

847
00:42:51,599 --> 00:42:54,639
of ax glitch clock's mutated glimpses, corruptive file dates. No

848
00:42:54,679 --> 00:42:57,599
authority would care or believe. I pressed the journal to

849
00:42:57,639 --> 00:42:59,719
my skull, as if it wild script might inoculate me.

850
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:03,800
That afternoon, I've visited the station. I unspoiled my story

851
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:06,119
for a detective with tired eyes, who gave my photographs

852
00:43:06,159 --> 00:43:09,440
a once over, then slid them back. You've got no intruder,

853
00:43:09,679 --> 00:43:12,599
no evidence of forced entry, nothing on the tapes, probably

854
00:43:12,599 --> 00:43:14,960
a problem messing with the electrical Leave a light on,

855
00:43:15,159 --> 00:43:18,320
get some sleep. Thence was gone. The next day, a

856
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:20,800
note under my doorplane and signed, I'm breaking the lease.

857
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:24,119
I won't be here to night. Always two began packing frantically,

858
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:27,840
all excuses and anxieties, the sense of siege. Lieutenants puring

859
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:30,800
out with inflamed, bruised eyes, dogged by insagnia, and a

860
00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:34,800
sense of being endlessly maliciously curated by sunset. The new

861
00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:37,480
security cameras above the lobbied and laundry had been shattered

862
00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:40,599
with a single careful blow. I closed my blinds, shut

863
00:43:40,599 --> 00:43:42,760
down my phone, and walked the boundary of my rooms,

864
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:45,320
re oienting every object, checking with the building's logic I

865
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:48,199
now understood, but could never utmatch. I pulled out miss

866
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:51,599
as Lemm's journal wrote, my own desperate entry. Cannot sleep. Clocks.

867
00:43:51,599 --> 00:43:54,400
Won't wereset eyes behind the wall, humming backward? They need

868
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:57,559
new hands. Late that night, another tenant, Clara, I think,

869
00:43:57,599 --> 00:44:01,199
knocked face wild at the people some broke in. She whispered,

870
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,760
everything's moved, pointing south, just like the others I heard

871
00:44:04,760 --> 00:44:07,519
singing through the vent. It signed my name. I pressed

872
00:44:07,519 --> 00:44:10,440
her hand, words useless. We sat in my living room,

873
00:44:10,599 --> 00:44:13,280
both of us flinching at every shuffle around us. The

874
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:15,480
clocks ticked on their faces a line, even with all

875
00:44:15,519 --> 00:44:18,440
our efforts. As the ire grew late, I realized the

876
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:21,960
cycle was beginning again. No barricade, no logic, off of

877
00:44:22,039 --> 00:44:25,000
final safety. The spare set in. Not a few of violence,

878
00:44:25,199 --> 00:44:27,079
but that of being absorbed into a logic older than

879
00:44:27,079 --> 00:44:29,840
any calendar. All I could do was chronicle as those

880
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:32,400
before me had done, and no doubt those after would

881
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:36,119
do as well. I could not, would not succumb. That night,

882
00:44:36,159 --> 00:44:38,559
I resolved to confront the heart of it alone, if necessary,

883
00:44:38,559 --> 00:44:40,440
to try at least to break the cycle by facing

884
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:43,199
the backward logic head on. My plan was simple, born

885
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:45,400
of desperation and the patterns I traced. I would bait

886
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:47,679
the presence into my apartment, forced the encounter on my

887
00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:50,599
own ground, with cameras set, tripped, wire stretched, and every

888
00:44:50,599 --> 00:44:53,440
object lined just so, not its way but mine. I

889
00:44:53,480 --> 00:44:56,519
would not be observed. I would observe for once. I

890
00:44:56,519 --> 00:44:59,639
would wind the clocks. I set up two motions answers,

891
00:44:59,679 --> 00:45:02,039
one by the corspis panel, one at the hallway door.

892
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:05,480
Cheap microphones went live hidden under the sofa and on

893
00:45:05,559 --> 00:45:08,480
top of the dresser. Raked my laptop every clock in

894
00:45:08,519 --> 00:45:11,480
the apartment. Digital analog bristwatch phone was set to three

895
00:45:11,519 --> 00:45:14,639
thirty six. Hands trembling, I backaded the main door with

896
00:45:14,639 --> 00:45:17,639
a heavy chair, tool books and mop pandle the bait.

897
00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:21,639
Missesslim's journal laid open south facing beneath the living room lamp.

898
00:45:22,199 --> 00:45:24,599
I lay on my couch with my clothes on, lights low,

899
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:27,639
and forced my eyes closed, pretending sleep, willing my heart

900
00:45:27,679 --> 00:45:30,360
into a rhythm as old as the building's foundation. Just

901
00:45:30,400 --> 00:45:33,079
before the half fire, the apartment grew colder, every exhalation

902
00:45:33,199 --> 00:45:36,360
visible in the air. The ticken grew a monstrous unison,

903
00:45:36,519 --> 00:45:39,159
leaking from every corner, from inside the radiators, the fridge,

904
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:42,280
even the weak pulse of my phone. Outside. The hallway

905
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:44,880
lights began their stuttering dwance, a nervous moss code flickering

906
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:47,719
over the gray tail. At three thirty seven, the motion

907
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:50,800
sensorus chimed in sequence, first the wall, then the door.

908
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:53,920
I kept my eyes shut, listening as the wall panel

909
00:45:53,920 --> 00:45:56,280
glided open with a faint complaint murmur, the same as

910
00:45:56,320 --> 00:46:00,360
every other time, and utterly different. Footsteps, delicate practiced backward

911
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:03,360
crossed the floor. The air filled with the scent of machinery,

912
00:46:03,519 --> 00:46:06,079
metal and lie, and undercurrent of old and washed cotton.

913
00:46:06,559 --> 00:46:09,079
The backward walker entered the room, masked, draped in gray,

914
00:46:09,119 --> 00:46:12,840
humming faintly. The song was wrong, drifting, halting wine backward,

915
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:15,400
as if pulled from a broken tape. I witted as

916
00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:19,320
across the room, methodically resetting every clock, turning faces, realigning

917
00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:22,000
the TV remote, tilting my lamp inch by inch, until

918
00:46:22,039 --> 00:46:24,719
everything in the room pointed itself. My body ached and

919
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:26,679
devene to snap the logic. But I let the water

920
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:29,440
play out its script. Only when it reached the journal

921
00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:31,760
did I break the illusion of sleep. Shifting on the sofa,

922
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:35,360
the backward walk of froze, shoulder stwitching. In a voice

923
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:37,320
that sounded like the scrape of finger nails on slate,

924
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:42,199
it said, you ache. I opened my eyes. Why, I whispered,

925
00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:46,159
what do you want? Wires? It didn't turn, but spoke,

926
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:49,199
barely moving Its draw absorb the iris of the rest

927
00:46:49,239 --> 00:46:51,840
of your sleep away. Every clock face out for sets, memory,

928
00:46:52,039 --> 00:46:54,800
resets intent. We keep them looping for safety, for safety,

929
00:46:54,840 --> 00:46:57,679
because waking is the wound. Its masked patch or clock

930
00:46:57,719 --> 00:47:00,400
face mouthed downtown to glinted in the half light. You

931
00:47:00,519 --> 00:47:02,840
watched the eye or two. We need witnesses, new hands

932
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:06,880
to wind the clocks. No, my voice cracked, but didn't break.

933
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:09,199
No more. I won't let you make me part of this.

934
00:47:10,119 --> 00:47:13,840
Slowly I stepped forward. The figure trembled, but did not retreat.

935
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:16,599
As I reached for the mask, I forced myself to

936
00:47:16,599 --> 00:47:18,559
touch it, peeling the warped card board away at a

937
00:47:18,559 --> 00:47:22,159
single shaking motion. Beneath the face was my own, every line,

938
00:47:22,239 --> 00:47:24,639
every freckle and scar, but the mouth pole viciously up with,

939
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:27,039
as cavernous and empty, as if my own reflection had

940
00:47:27,079 --> 00:47:30,440
given up on logic. The expression coiled with the joyless mirth,

941
00:47:30,599 --> 00:47:32,719
lets parting to reveal a mouthful of teeth arranged in

942
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:37,400
impossible spirals. I reeled, staggering back, naus boiling up as

943
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:39,960
the figure spawn, walking backward into the coroll space. Even

944
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:43,280
as I lunged fingers brush into bare wall, it disappeared,

945
00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:46,320
the panel sliding home with a brutal click. My apartment

946
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:49,000
filled with the relentless course of clocks, all taken together,

947
00:47:49,159 --> 00:47:52,280
hands frozen at three thirty seven, I fell to my knees,

948
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:54,599
shaking uncontrollably the taste of us. They come, my tom

949
00:47:55,239 --> 00:47:58,920
behind the wall, the reversed lullab I resumed, soften and human, a,

950
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:01,960
banging at the door manager as haunted, threatening eviction for

951
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:04,840
a causing disturbance. I saw the tell tale flicker of

952
00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:07,039
trid cross her face as she glanced behind my shoulder

953
00:48:07,039 --> 00:48:08,840
at the arrayed clocks, as if she had seen it

954
00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:12,079
all herself once before. She spoke in brittle tones, this

955
00:48:12,199 --> 00:48:15,280
is the last warning. No more disruptions, mister Holden, next

956
00:48:15,280 --> 00:48:18,239
time you're gone. Her words vanished into the static of

957
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:20,880
my thoughts. In the days I followed, I wanted my

958
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:23,800
apartment like a wraith, compulsively setting every object straight, checking

959
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:27,519
the orientation of clocks, stores, mirrors, Tenants passed with grim,

960
00:48:27,599 --> 00:48:31,000
sleepless faces. I was flickering away from mine. Management laid

961
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:32,960
new locks at every entrance, only for them to be

962
00:48:33,039 --> 00:48:36,119
ripped out or vandalized within IROs. Clara moved out in

963
00:48:36,159 --> 00:48:39,639
a rush, her old cat carrier left behind. Vince's room

964
00:48:39,679 --> 00:48:42,079
stood empty, save for a pale spot where his desk

965
00:48:42,119 --> 00:48:45,519
had been. I left warnings and forms, blog posts desperate

966
00:48:45,559 --> 00:48:47,719
d M. Do not let your clock's face salve. If

967
00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:50,000
you do, you'll hear the humming. If you hear the humming,

968
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:52,440
moon leave, or you'll wind up winding the clocks yourself.

969
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:57,000
The Holloway's dog never returned. The police came again, another disappearance,

970
00:48:57,159 --> 00:48:59,840
another set of vague questions about routines, and I was awake.

971
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:03,840
It no longer mattered. The logic had absorbed itself into me.

972
00:49:04,039 --> 00:49:06,679
I stayed up through the nights, listening, always to the south.

973
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:10,159
As the cycle wound down, rebel wand down again. I

974
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:14,239
do not sleep. I am always listening. One night leads

975
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:18,599
into the next. The arms of the clocks never quite reset. Management,

976
00:49:18,679 --> 00:49:20,920
the police, even the Superno one will enter my unit.

977
00:49:21,039 --> 00:49:23,960
Now I record the pattern, knowing it change is nothing.

978
00:49:24,519 --> 00:49:26,960
I am become the Watcher, not by choice, but by ritual.

979
00:49:27,519 --> 00:49:29,199
I sit in my dim lit living room, the glow

980
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:32,280
from a dozen clocks breathing around me. Each face shows

981
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:35,440
three thirty seven, every taken perfect sympathy with the others.

982
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:38,800
I align the last clock, hands trembling, mouth dry, and

983
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:41,000
dare a glance at the tarnished, warm mirror by my chair.

984
00:49:41,559 --> 00:49:43,960
From low in the wall, behind plaster and pipe comes

985
00:49:44,000 --> 00:49:47,840
the lullaby, again, soft, mechanical, and mistakably reversed. My own

986
00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:50,199
image flickers in the glass, mauf tugging upward as if

987
00:49:50,199 --> 00:49:53,280
pressed by invisible fingers. I cannot seem to look away

988
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:56,000
as my reflection lifts a town behind me, reaching, but

989
00:49:56,079 --> 00:49:58,800
my body feels heavy and slow. In a final moment,

990
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:01,519
before the clocks all reset. The figure appears inside the mirror,

991
00:50:01,599 --> 00:50:05,280
backward Walker, pale and tremulous, hovering behind my shoulder. Lights

992
00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:09,519
flicker and fail, the ticking stops. The silence is complete.

993
00:50:10,079 --> 00:50:12,719
There was nothing, not even the hiss of pipes in

994
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:15,079
that total blackout, With only the bat of clocks faintly

995
00:50:15,119 --> 00:50:17,840
luminescent against the gloom. I was left sitting not quite upright,

996
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:20,280
breathing in shallow half gasps, as if enable to draw

997
00:50:20,320 --> 00:50:24,880
the air completely into my chest. My eyes would not adjust. Instead,

998
00:50:24,960 --> 00:50:27,239
again and again they caught the same impression in the rooms.

999
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:30,320
Din surfaces, the backward Walker, their second presence, flickering at

1000
00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:32,400
the corner edge of glass, each time gone when I

1001
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:34,840
tried to focus, but always hovering just past the frame

1002
00:50:34,880 --> 00:50:37,159
of my vision. I must have stayed in that state

1003
00:50:37,159 --> 00:50:39,519
for neelie an ire, though every signal of time had

1004
00:50:39,559 --> 00:50:43,360
been stripped away. Gradually, after the silence came the soft

1005
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:45,960
grinding return of the refrigerator motor, the snap of a

1006
00:50:46,079 --> 00:50:48,400
relay in the hallway light, and in the low firimpour

1007
00:50:48,440 --> 00:50:50,840
of the building's water running somewhere above me, a floor creaking,

1008
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:54,480
someone shifting in their own small, sleepless apartment the clocks

1009
00:50:54,480 --> 00:50:57,679
did not move, their faces, persisted hands soldered to three

1010
00:50:57,760 --> 00:51:01,039
thirty seven glass fogg from my sweating palms. I waited

1011
00:51:01,039 --> 00:51:03,960
for something, a second intrusion, a voice, a visible threat,

1012
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:08,159
but none came. The building had exhaled, then resumed its endless, stale, breathing.

1013
00:51:08,760 --> 00:51:12,480
Day's blurred. I tried to keep tor routines, but routines

1014
00:51:12,519 --> 00:51:15,719
now belonged to someone of something else. Each time management

1015
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:18,119
posted and you signed no petsant whole way after midnight,

1016
00:51:18,239 --> 00:51:20,320
all laundry rooms locked. After ten p m. I saw

1017
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:22,599
the anxious call. The way corners of the laminated paper

1018
00:51:22,599 --> 00:51:25,960
culd and upon themselves. The holloways were gone before Wednesday.

1019
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:28,320
Their door hung with a brittle gone visiting carden marker

1020
00:51:28,880 --> 00:51:31,440
Clara was next, her absence marked by an empty spot

1021
00:51:31,480 --> 00:51:33,559
on the mail shelf, the musty scent of all perfume

1022
00:51:33,559 --> 00:51:35,840
that clung to a door nub. I left the apartment

1023
00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:38,639
less and less, trailing only to the grocer, always by daylight.

1024
00:51:38,719 --> 00:51:41,519
I was jumpy at the shuddering of the elevator. Vince's

1025
00:51:41,519 --> 00:51:44,400
text shrank and then stopped. Have you heard it again?

1026
00:51:44,599 --> 00:51:46,519
Was the last a time stamp I would not let

1027
00:51:46,519 --> 00:51:50,119
myself translate. I tried, out of old loyalty a superstition,

1028
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:52,719
to set the clock facing ease, but sooner or later

1029
00:51:52,719 --> 00:51:54,599
I could never tell quite when they drifted south of

1030
00:51:54,639 --> 00:51:57,760
their own accord. Once a neighbor pounded on my door

1031
00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:00,199
and begged, if you're going to move, say something. My

1032
00:52:00,199 --> 00:52:03,559
bathroom clock were sets every night. Now Their face disintegrated

1033
00:52:03,559 --> 00:52:06,159
into panic before I could answer. One night, the police

1034
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:09,519
questioned me in the lobby, Mussus Lemm's journal in my pocket.

1035
00:52:09,679 --> 00:52:11,760
My hands still black under the finger nails from prying

1036
00:52:11,760 --> 00:52:15,440
open vent covers. There is another tenant missing, the detective said,

1037
00:52:15,559 --> 00:52:17,559
her exhausted face late with the pitch of someone who

1038
00:52:17,559 --> 00:52:21,280
had stopped expecting so hands. Kora Gasque, last seen Monday,

1039
00:52:21,360 --> 00:52:25,400
were asking everyone's strange noises unlocked doors. I shrug, knowing

1040
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:28,199
my own statements would sound arranged if honestly given. This

1041
00:52:28,280 --> 00:52:30,039
place is old. It has a lot of tricks, was

1042
00:52:30,039 --> 00:52:32,840
all I offered. She looked at me longer than necessary.

1043
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:37,440
If you remember anything, call I never did. Other changes

1044
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:40,480
came quickly, new locks on laundry and stairs, digital security

1045
00:52:40,519 --> 00:52:42,760
paths that beat then stutted, but never actually stopped the

1046
00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:44,679
doors from opening to the run angle. If you push

1047
00:52:44,719 --> 00:52:48,000
hard enough, the wholeway cameras flickered, then went blank, a

1048
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:51,400
blank red light glowing beside the lens. Someone colored every

1049
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:53,199
clock in the communal lounge with a black shop I

1050
00:52:53,280 --> 00:52:55,760
errow of facing gown the building southern wall. In the

1051
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:58,559
elevator an entire set of buttons stack, so every ride

1052
00:52:58,559 --> 00:53:00,239
deed to the fourth floor, then fell back back to

1053
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:03,239
the basement before the doors allarge you out. In my unit,

1054
00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:05,320
the walls trembled with the rhythm I could not trace.

1055
00:53:06,039 --> 00:53:08,239
Sometimes I would wake to the sense of being pried

1056
00:53:08,239 --> 00:53:10,559
out from my sleep, as if some old heavy hand

1057
00:53:10,559 --> 00:53:13,320
pressed on my chest. If I risked a glance into

1058
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:15,679
the mirror of the window after midnight, the backward walker

1059
00:53:15,719 --> 00:53:18,679
hoverded aim, mouth drawn sharp as a blade, hands dangling

1060
00:53:18,679 --> 00:53:21,360
at its side. Once I saw what I thought was

1061
00:53:21,360 --> 00:53:23,960
my own reflection, but a smile curled in the wrong direction. I,

1062
00:53:24,079 --> 00:53:27,119
slack and unblinking, had tilted just so. The only way

1063
00:53:27,159 --> 00:53:29,079
to banish it was to turn every clock back north

1064
00:53:29,079 --> 00:53:30,800
and cover the glass with a towel. But the next

1065
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:33,840
morning the towel would be gone, folded carefully beside the

1066
00:53:33,920 --> 00:53:38,320
kitchen sink, tenancy and Pemberley Arms hollowed out. Management brought

1067
00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:40,480
in a cleaning crew, two hard eyed men one elderly

1068
00:53:40,519 --> 00:53:42,920
woman with rubber boots, who scrubbed every baseboard and left

1069
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:46,480
muttering to each other in rapid clipped tones. When they finish,

1070
00:53:46,559 --> 00:53:48,480
they handed me a slip. If you see any one

1071
00:53:48,480 --> 00:53:51,280
in the crawl space, call the number below. Do not approach.

1072
00:53:51,480 --> 00:53:54,320
Some units may experience pawcycling between three and four am.

1073
00:53:54,320 --> 00:53:58,599
Installation error. The phone never connected from my living room router.

1074
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:01,400
I tried streaming videoto an old laptop, propping the camera

1075
00:54:01,440 --> 00:54:03,440
at a low wedge under the couch, just to catch

1076
00:54:03,480 --> 00:54:05,840
a glimpse of the walker, or perhaps of myself. Inverted

1077
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:07,880
the way I had seen under the mascore in the glass.

1078
00:54:08,599 --> 00:54:11,199
Every file corrupted itself at three thirty seven, the same

1079
00:54:11,199 --> 00:54:14,519
blank flicker over taking the screen. I posted on forums

1080
00:54:14,559 --> 00:54:16,960
begging for advice for ritual for any map that would

1081
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:19,599
pin down the geometry of the infernal tunnels beneath the building.

1082
00:54:20,119 --> 00:54:23,320
The replies laughed, simply linked a video of clock spinning backward.

1083
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:26,280
No answer given. I lost track of most things that mattered.

1084
00:54:26,320 --> 00:54:28,079
The names of those I passed in stare was the

1085
00:54:28,119 --> 00:54:30,880
details of new stories I'd meant to cover. I clung

1086
00:54:30,920 --> 00:54:34,039
to small, pointless duties, collecting stray keys, canting footsteps from

1087
00:54:34,039 --> 00:54:36,000
my bed to the bathroom by memory, sail or, taping

1088
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:38,360
the edge of every rug to slow the drift. The

1089
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:41,639
pattern always won. The sessions crept back to the south wall.

1090
00:54:41,719 --> 00:54:45,000
Clocks found new faces. On another night, the air turned

1091
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:46,880
sharp at the sword of cold that means the building's

1092
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:49,920
heat was failing, or set deliberately low. I slept huddled

1093
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:52,480
in my coat, arms folded gladiator style across my chest.

1094
00:54:53,119 --> 00:54:55,559
In those ires approaching three, the walls seemed to harrow

1095
00:54:55,599 --> 00:54:58,880
meeg every inch, radiating soundless vibration. The presence pressed in,

1096
00:54:58,960 --> 00:55:02,239
no curtain, no tell, locking it. This time, the backward

1097
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:04,320
walker did not have to emerge from the coalsepiece or

1098
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:07,119
through my door. It filled the room by implication alone,

1099
00:55:07,239 --> 00:55:09,719
reducing my heart to a machine's rhythm, matching my breath

1100
00:55:09,800 --> 00:55:12,559
to its relentless backward ham. I did not try to

1101
00:55:12,559 --> 00:55:16,599
confront it. Its logic now was inside me. My hands

1102
00:55:16,639 --> 00:55:19,960
sometimes moved without clear will, resetting the clocks, closing the

1103
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:22,400
fridge with a soft clack, adjusting the alignment of mail

1104
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:26,000
staff by the entryway. The windows fogged steadily, always clearing

1105
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:28,800
to face the south. I then no tenant, but me

1106
00:55:28,880 --> 00:55:31,760
lingered on the floor. The mail slots were all unclaned,

1107
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:35,239
even rustled. The gruff supor left without notice, his heavy

1108
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:38,679
brasquy abandoned on the stairwell, green with corrosion. The building

1109
00:55:38,679 --> 00:55:41,639
itself quieted for days, as if sated or merely observing

1110
00:55:41,639 --> 00:55:44,400
a pause for regrouping. I kept my lights low, my

1111
00:55:44,440 --> 00:55:46,880
movements low, brote detailed logs in the vein hope that

1112
00:55:46,920 --> 00:55:50,039
righting would stave off absorption. But when a new couple arrived,

1113
00:55:50,039 --> 00:55:52,719
faces tense, eager to prove how little buildings scared them,

1114
00:55:52,719 --> 00:55:54,480
I heard them laughing as they rolled the cart to

1115
00:55:54,519 --> 00:55:57,320
foe Be. I locked eyes with the man, who offered

1116
00:55:57,360 --> 00:56:00,000
a brief, hollow pleasantry, any tips for getting the heat going.

1117
00:56:00,679 --> 00:56:03,400
I tried to warn him, found I had no voice.

1118
00:56:03,440 --> 00:56:05,440
He passed by the woman, already fumbling with the new

1119
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:08,159
key in the freshly cut lock. That night, the pattern

1120
00:56:08,199 --> 00:56:11,559
spun up again, inexorable. I heard it again from a distance,

1121
00:56:11,639 --> 00:56:14,440
a course of ticking somewhere beneath the floorboards, rising as

1122
00:56:14,440 --> 00:56:16,920
a counterpoint to the soft reversed lullaby that now owned

1123
00:56:16,920 --> 00:56:20,280
the hollow ires. Furniture scuff doors clicked into new angles,

1124
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:22,880
always to the south. Through the vent, A note slid,

1125
00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:25,519
A scrap of cleaning receipt scrolled in the old awkward script.

1126
00:56:25,559 --> 00:56:27,880
Did not open the door. At three thirty seven, I

1127
00:56:27,920 --> 00:56:30,280
sat heavy limbed by a kitchen, listening as they made

1128
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:33,360
the new Homer routine that sounded all too familiar, shuffling laughter,

1129
00:56:33,400 --> 00:56:35,960
abruptly cuffed by the click of a clock. I did

1130
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:38,840
not intervene. Even if I had, I doubted I could

1131
00:56:38,840 --> 00:56:41,519
say anything to keep them safe. The building was not

1132
00:56:41,639 --> 00:56:44,639
haunted now, I was simply its keeper. That night, I

1133
00:56:44,639 --> 00:56:47,679
gathered all my clocks, lying them on the living room window, sill,

1134
00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:49,719
arranged every object I could lift face away from the

1135
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:52,039
southern wall, and set my phone to film the room,

1136
00:56:52,199 --> 00:56:56,400
rejecting the internal impulster. Orient properly. If the pattern needed witnesses,

1137
00:56:56,559 --> 00:56:59,760
it would of mine impossible. Chilled the deep prudwned quiet,

1138
00:56:59,800 --> 00:57:03,519
and then inevitably that old grinding scraping behind the wall.

1139
00:57:04,079 --> 00:57:07,480
The familiar mechanical music started again, humming, then singing, then

1140
00:57:07,519 --> 00:57:10,840
for symphonic chimes. The panel slid open and the walker

1141
00:57:10,880 --> 00:57:14,159
step threw, neither hurry nor threatening, mask in place, handsplain

1142
00:57:14,239 --> 00:57:16,840
the darkness behind it. I stirred to face it on

1143
00:57:16,920 --> 00:57:19,639
my own two feet, posture rigid against the silhouette, as

1144
00:57:19,679 --> 00:57:22,119
the clocks began to flutter forward and back beneath the

1145
00:57:22,119 --> 00:57:26,119
theater of shadow. This time no words were exchanged. The

1146
00:57:26,159 --> 00:57:29,000
walking figure approached, slow to deliberate, and griped my right

1147
00:57:29,039 --> 00:57:32,800
wristskin ice cold, the pressure oddly gentle, almost reluctant. I

1148
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:35,079
raised my free hand as it returned the gesture, But

1149
00:57:35,119 --> 00:57:37,480
the walker, masked, still hiding its face, had never turning,

1150
00:57:37,519 --> 00:57:40,440
shifted closer. We stood locked in tableau for a beat,

1151
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:44,360
the world caught between a second and a century. Dick Dick.

1152
00:57:45,199 --> 00:57:47,440
My mouth worked, shaping the question that had echoed since

1153
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:49,800
miss Eslam. Whispered about clocks and doors and things waking

1154
00:57:49,880 --> 00:57:52,480
up the wrong ere, What happens when we all face south?

1155
00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:55,199
If the walker answered, it did so with only the

1156
00:57:55,199 --> 00:57:57,400
pressure of its hand, a shared chill that hollowed out

1157
00:57:57,440 --> 00:58:01,000
my sense of self, My thoughts blurred, memory, skating and reorienting,

1158
00:58:01,119 --> 00:58:04,320
not gone, but reordered by an alien logic. I tried

1159
00:58:04,360 --> 00:58:07,480
to resist. It felt like wrestling, not with flesh, but

1160
00:58:07,519 --> 00:58:10,760
with the rules of perspective itself. In that instant, I

1161
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:12,760
saw through the mask's broken eye of gas segment, a

1162
00:58:12,760 --> 00:58:16,320
glimpse paray of faces, each slotted into their cruel smile, neighbors,

1163
00:58:16,400 --> 00:58:19,760
the super massesslamb, even vince, their images warped and oscillating,

1164
00:58:19,920 --> 00:58:23,000
all flickering backwards into the infinite regress of mirrored clock faces.

1165
00:58:23,599 --> 00:58:25,800
They urged a step in time to move, not forward,

1166
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:28,920
but back. Nearly overwhelmed me, I clenched my fists, braced

1167
00:58:28,920 --> 00:58:31,880
hard against the tug, and jerk free the walker ligo.

1168
00:58:32,599 --> 00:58:35,559
The mass dipped, it staggered toward the coal space, its

1169
00:58:35,599 --> 00:58:38,599
formers into a slip of pale cloth and shadow, retreating

1170
00:58:38,639 --> 00:58:42,199
as if unwilling to continue without full compliance. I stumbled,

1171
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:44,480
catching myself on the chair, unable for a second to

1172
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:47,559
recall what direction was forward at all. The clock shuddered,

1173
00:58:48,079 --> 00:58:51,000
lights flickered, the humming seat back behind the walls. My

1174
00:58:51,079 --> 00:58:54,840
cameras indicator blinked, then snapped off. Storageful for a moment,

1175
00:58:54,880 --> 00:58:57,719
the room was my own again. The south wall, the clocks,

1176
00:58:57,719 --> 00:58:59,880
the torn slipped from the ventfall, poised as if dis

1177
00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:02,840
guiding weather to yield or begin again. A sharp series

1178
00:59:02,840 --> 00:59:05,679
of knock splinted through my door. Urgent, not police, but sheman.

1179
00:59:06,239 --> 00:59:09,159
The woman from four b VCE raw called my name, Please,

1180
00:59:09,239 --> 00:59:11,000
some things in our hall. I can't find him. The

1181
00:59:11,079 --> 00:59:14,800
light's gonna stay here just a minute, please. Her keys jangled.

1182
00:59:15,440 --> 00:59:18,559
I let her in behind her shoulder. The corridor yawned

1183
00:59:18,559 --> 00:59:21,559
with that same slandered artificial hush. We huddled in the

1184
00:59:21,559 --> 00:59:24,800
half light, hands trembling over coffee. Down the hallway, the

1185
00:59:24,840 --> 00:59:28,000
door studded and shining one after another. Through the window,

1186
00:59:28,079 --> 00:59:30,760
I saw the opposite buildings security lights begin to stutter.

1187
00:59:30,880 --> 00:59:34,719
They two pointed south. We sat. I could not say

1188
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:39,039
or do much. My visitor whipped the clocks realigned silently

1189
00:59:39,079 --> 00:59:42,559
in the background. When dawn came, the apartment was unchanged.

1190
00:59:43,280 --> 00:59:46,559
She left without a word, never meeting my gaze. By noon,

1191
00:59:46,599 --> 00:59:50,760
her belongings had already vanished from the fourth floor. Evening alone,

1192
00:59:50,840 --> 00:59:53,599
again surrounded by the clutter of my own compulsions, I

1193
00:59:53,639 --> 00:59:55,960
looked into the tawness mirror, bracing for what my peer

1194
00:59:56,039 --> 00:59:58,920
up from behind my own reflection. But for the first time,

1195
00:59:59,039 --> 01:00:02,320
no figure appeered. Only my own face gazed out, cautious

1196
01:00:02,400 --> 01:00:05,639
ruined by exhaustion, but for now mine. I watched the

1197
01:00:05,679 --> 01:00:07,920
sunlight shrink along the wall as I take forward three

1198
01:00:08,000 --> 01:00:11,280
thirty five, three thirty six, three thirty seven. The clock

1199
01:00:11,360 --> 01:00:14,559
hands did not move. I sat all the same and waited.

1200
01:00:15,159 --> 01:00:17,119
And that was how the ending came, not in violence

1201
01:00:17,199 --> 01:00:20,480
or revelation, but in the unbroken continuity of rooms wall.

1202
01:00:20,599 --> 01:00:24,599
And I was winding, rewinding, and returning in endless, unremarkable circles,

1203
01:00:24,639 --> 01:00:25,679
always pointing south.