Speaker 1: No one walks the holes of the Pemberley Arms past midnight.
That's not a rule, not written on the directory board
beside the faded tenant listings, not scrawled onto a memo
from shady management. But it is somehow understood, or if
anyone defies it, they do so light ghosts. The corridors
run with the hush of sleepless breath. The doors painted
institutional beage hold in more secrets than the pit of
walls themselves. Last week massesslam, the retirie who always carried
a blue cult to toe vanished. It is the talk
of the building for a day, spoken in whispered exchanges
at the mail boxes by neighbors who preferred not to
linger close together. Since then, every sound, echo's shopper, footfalls,
returning keys, the flat slap of someone's slippers up the stairwell,
even the elevator, which croaks and stutters on good days,
seems referential to the lull tonight I lay coming home again.
I pressed my fingers hard into the cold skin at
my temple, backs long crooked over one shoulder, trying to remain.
But if I missed any texts from my editor, the
cab driver left me at the curb in a rush,
rained apples my jacket. As I hold up my badge
to the censer by a glass front door, it clicks,
a sluggish, watery sound, letting me into an ant room
redolent of mildiewn whatever antiseptic. The night super occasionally slushes
over the cracklinoleum. I shake out my umbrella. Ray mortar
skitters in tiny rivulet, catching the orange glow of the
single overhead bulb. Up the stairs, lights flicker and silent
protest overhead. The place always seems to walk after midnight.
Horizontal shadows length and down wallpapered corridors, painting obstruct scenes
across the floor. On the landing, my thumb grazes the
railing's chip brass. A ragged ring of keys dusts the
top of the banister, as if someone forgot them or
placed them deliberately, A new detail, unfamiliar, pimpic of alarm
in my rips. My building makes me jump you these days.
When I reach the third floor, every foot fulfields broad castiva,
muffled by the thread bare holy carpet. Each step sings
in my head. I pass the door to three hundred twelve,
where someone's t V leaks a buzz of a weather channel,
and three hundred fourteen papered with the no solicitors in
block capital. My own place is three hundred eighteen at
the far end, the door scuffed at the bottom, one
screw gun from the peepole. I fumble keys. Something feels wrong,
not in the usual pervert way, but a thin, prickling
tension that picks up my neck, as if every object
in the place waits for me. My apartment opens in darkness,
colder than I expect. I flicken the overhead lamp somehow.
The air carry is a faint sharp tang ozon chilled
laundry chemical. The couch has shifted off its usual axis
by a few degrees. A tropillow, always left in the right,
is now on the left. I freeze half way out
of my jacket. Then the ordinary cues tumble in the kitchen.
Radio emits a low electronic wine. Objects huddled slightly to
near the southern wall. But it's the clocks, every single
one that stopped me. The digital clock on my oven
stairs out three thirty seven, a m odd for a
device that should blinks eroes after a power cut on
my dresser, A plastic alarm clock ticks up to the
same minute breadlet. Even my analog wristwatch wind tight before
bed sits still at three thirty seven, unmoving. My phone,
revived from applane mode, says three thirty seven display unblemished.
I stand long moments watching the second hand of the
kitchen wall clock for a breathless beell. It doesn't move,
frozen between two notches. My heart pounds, then soundlessly. It
jumps a single tack ahead, then another, as if catching up.
I check the sockets the breaker. There's no sign of voltage,
no flicker whither. My cowave display resumes its slowcndown. Not
a glitch, something colder. I march to each clock, check batteries,
wind mechanisms, but find no fault. I stare again at
my phone, no missnowedifecations, but the last app I left
up in a map to the grocery is now replaced
by the clock app open to a silent alarm. I
don't remember setting blurring three thirty seven in bold white,
now goose flesh. It's then I notice the oddest feature
of the shadow. The south wall opposite all my clocks
is stained by an oddly angled, slanting darkness, like a
dial cast by candlelight, though no such light source exists.
I move about the room, but the shadow stretches, always
reflecting the face of which ever clock faces it. No logic.
I tug the curtains, windows locked tight, no footprints, I
sweep the entry away from utter prints. Nothing but a
stray leaf, damp and unremarkable. I paced my apartment over
and over, hand shaking harder as each time he staysed
uggedly and cooperative. I sit finally, wrapped in a scratchy throat,
unable to sleep. The chill stalks between my shoulder blades.
I could almost swear the ticking, muted, insistent, comes from
somewhere behind the walls. I do not sleep that night
at all. At daybreak, the clocks resume normal function, but
had left hollow eyed and worry. I doze at sunrise,
and in dreams, I hear the hush of slippers backward
on the landing, and feel eyes in every shadow that
calls south. I came to the Pemberley Arms by necessity,
not choice. Keep things simple, I told myself, as if
simplicity were a virtue you could buy with the cheap
lease and the month's deposit. The Arms was a faded
echo of nineteen seventis ambition, a brutalist slap halfway between
the river and the highway, built back when bold angles
and poured concrete past for luxury. I found the listing
after the divorce, advertised as quiet to screen in a
block when no one cared who listened at night. I
moved in on a wet Sunday, swat boxes by myself.
I sold the old flat's furniture, kept only what would
fit in a U haul. Later, I congratulated myself for
traveling light. I didn't count the backage. I couldn't box
up my freelancing men, erratic irizannless days, emailing contacts, chasing
local interest pieces, furning in interviews, scraping for stores no
one wanted. My sleep came in fits, punctuated by the
stuttering radiators, the distant rumble of trucks on the overpass.
The Arms is a place where privacy is a weapon,
not a comfort. The glass in the hallway doors as frosted,
though one pain is always broken. My neighbors kept to themselves.
There was chlorer, a nurse with circles beneath her eyes
that never faded. Who hurried down the corridor in blue
scrops at all iyros, barely nodding a hollow the holloways
in three hundred seventeen recent arrivals argued in a near whisper,
two voices never raised, always praying. Vince in three hundred
twenty one was a grad student, maround in textbooks, always
carrying notes, wrinkled at the corners. He sometimes lingered on
the steps, as if practicing escape rats, but mostly vanished
into act kademia. Miss eslamb, though was unavoidable. She greedy,
with a brisk, searching look, bluetook, clutched fiercely, as if
the sky might drop secrets in her lap at any moment.
She asked sharp questions, offered strange comments, Ye, keep od
iiros mark Some souls watch better at night, And once
pressed a tin of biscuits into my hands without meeting
my eyes. I tried to keep a routine, but the
buildings haboutashed me. You'd waked her puddle by the kitchen.
Convince yourself you'd spilled something, only to find the pipe sweat.
Overnight laundry was Saturday or never. Machines left in the
communal basement half the time out of order. Downstairs, the super,
a stunted man named Russell, was always ducking repairs. He'd
grunt and scuttle away at anything more complex than a
jam door. If you pushed him, he promised to put
it in the book. I' dad, the book exists. It
was at those laundry sessions I got the measure of
the place. The room smell, a tidal blend of detergent,
all socks, static electricity filters up to the main floors,
Vases passed through there, masses, Lamb with her magnifying glass
peering into the conslots, Vince reading a tattered sappha novel.
Hefrunz clamped his ears. The holloways loading half their belongings
at once, glaring at each other in mute accusation. No
one spoke in more than murmurs. Subjects, when ventured, were practical.
Someone's pustle gun missing, a leaky ceiling, the inexplicable overnight
loss of a single shoe. But there was an undertone
never named, a price of unease. Glances at doors left
white after midnight, heavy silences when anyone referenced an incident.
No one said what the incidents were. Strange things happened
in those early months. The brakes on my by clopped
in the shared indoor wreck were found screw too tight,
cable stiff, and u a sponsor. I dismissed it as
a prank, until the same thing happened to Vince's ride.
The Holloways reported their dog, Heape Trinilous, locked in the
hallway one morning, howling against the door, though neither of
them had left it. Death management brushed it away, claimed
the lock must be faulty, promised to monitor the situation.
They did nothing. As the weak stretched sleep grew precious,
awoke regularly at Oddira's, drenched in sweat, breath shallow from
some half remembered dream. I started checking every bold ties,
jamming kitchen chairs under the knob at night, telling myself
it was left to ver anxiety from arguments with my
ex I repeated the lidney, tired, not haunted, mistakes not malice.
Nothing prepares you for the day your reality side steps
shifting a floorboard beneath your feet, tilting. The world is slant.
After that first night, all clocks pointinged at Sey meyer.
I doubled my checks, changed every password, left, a broom
handle jammed against the living room window. Paranoia, I told myself,
is just another way of grasping for control, until it
ceases to be paranoia and become to plain enter vasion.
Monday dawned with a sense of purpose, insidious and cold
as old tea. I intended to treat myself to a
normal day, make coffee, review into view tapes, jogged down
to the bug of fra eggs in a paper Instead.
The sullen normality of my routines was broken by small violations.
I found my kitchen's cold water tap running dishes I
had left to dry, had swap racks, a fork submerged
in soapy water as if in use. My phones charged
a dangle from a light fixture. I found my keys
deep in the freezer, shivering among bags of kale. Worse,
every door, atham, whole closet, even the linen cupet stood
slightly open. All angle saw the open edge pointed south
toward the wall outside my window. It isn't easy to
plunge into full adult panic in your own home before breakfast. Still,
I did a full sweet, checked over storage nook, even
the laundry chute for signs of entry. Nothing At first glance,
nothing was stolen, just moved. My heart beat a feverish
rhythm as I closed each door, forced myself to brew
coffee and tried to ground myself in busywork, but spish
and gnaws. I grabbed my webcoum, thinking of work, only
to see the tiny blue life latter on then off
paranoor flare had I left it plugged into my laptop
last night. If possible, I always implug at night, worry
of snooping apps. I ran an antivirus scan, checked my locks,
found nothing more than a stutter, and the activity report
of three thirty six a m. That minute haunted me,
as though the clock itself was stamping a water mark
on every face. End of my life. At midday, I
ran into Clara on the landing. She was half distracted,
key scraping her palm, her face heavy with exhaustion. As
your ca gotten out again, I asked, stumbling over small talk.
We both knew she hadn't known a cat for months.
She gave me an odd look. No cat, she said,
a voice flat, then hesitating. Sometimes I swear whole doors locked,
but stuff moves, shoe goes missing and shows a bond
window sill. Whole place is nuts. She seemed about to
add more, but Rustle the super thoud had past us,
jangling his huge ring of keys, and the moment dissolved.
Once I would have dismissed her as overworked. Now caution
prickled my gut. Over the next few days, I noticed
more tenants glancing at the doors before leaving for work,
muttering about appliances and plugged over night, or fridge doors
left carelessly. Ajar always a odd ire is always. Then,
hastily rationalized, I thought of missus lem. Her voice drifted
back to me from a week earlier. I'll last fresh
conversation by the elevator, when the clock's all face south.
She said, it's already too late. The wrong sort's wake
at night, don't you know that? She smiles within knowing
line and pressed the elevator button as if summoning a ghost.
I choked it up to her eccentricity. Now I lay
awake night, staring at the clocks, noting them in it movements.
Each morning, one was subtly shifted an alarm clock angle
to catch the light wrong the ovent timer facing an
improbable direction. Is it possible for fear to settle in
your belly before reason even tries to intervene? It was
no longer just malfunction or carelessness. Something but someone was
deliberately sabotaging order and hiding the evidence, just barely enough
for denial. Slowly, compulsively, I began to keep crack. I
bought a cheap notebook at the Boga blue coil bound
thing meant for schoolwork, bestodie enough for my needs. Each night,
at two thirty and four fifteen, I charted the state
of my apartment. I drew cruse sketches of my living room,
noted the angle of each clock to the south wall,
measured the gap left by grated open doors. With the
tape measure. I found him a tool box. The lug
grew stranger quickly. A Monday aventimer shifted display, nimmed door jar,
ten c m Key's under couch cushion Tuesday, warshcoff left
in kitchen, sank south windows, slightly opened wristwach upside down,
and sub drawer. A pattern insidious but elusive emerged oriented objects,
subtle water rings and the Linnullian door latches left between
positions as though are locked mid motion. I tested sleep patterns,
but walk always to find one more thing moved. By
the second week, exhaustion blurred my days. My phone rang
only sporadically, usually editors with more excuses and stores. The
rest of the world receded into a tunnel. The rising
compulsion to document what happened each night left me frayed voiceless,
each discovery more humiliating than the last. It's possible to
know your acting mad without being able to stop. There
was the matter of the sounds too. To any one else,
they might have seemed the usual old building corrus, water
running through pipes, radiators knocking, the wind sowing are concrete.
But lying awake senses on edge. You hear intent behind
each shift, the drag of something across floor boards, overhead,
soft tapping like cautious finger nails, or a coin wrap
gently against e vent. I tried at first to dismiss
my neighbor's odd remarks, but on Wednesday, Vins caught me
by the mail boxes, clutching a bundle of fliers in
his fist. You haven't noticed anything, he asked, voice full
of hessant dread, the alarms my phone and plucked itself
twice the last night, said it was charging, but I'd
left it off. Sent in the air like old coins.
He shivered, and I detected the telltale time that had
haunted my apartment. He looked at so asleep with something
that happened only to other people. That was the night
I resolved to ask questions no one wanted to answer.
The Holloways shut their door in my face. After I
pressed on inconsistencies about the missing dog Flora, Stiffen muttered
something about not upsetting the routine, otherwise it gets worse.
Only Russell gruff and dismissive, bothered to acknowledge me. Old
buildings are pain he said, blocks don't hold, some tenants
move things Aroundlikely is not someone's pranking new pal. I
wanted to believe him. But then why that ought shadow
every night thrown across my living room alboys oriented toward
the southern wall, emanating from the clocks. Why this strange
chill after midnight? No matter how high I set the
thermost app, I redoubled my efforts, set up my laptop
to record video in the living room, bought cheap stick
on motion senses, left my phone running the audio recorder
app with the micro laid near the south wall. Every
morning I check no intruder, but sometimes the footage showed flickers,
stray static, a blurry shape in the glass of the oven.
My locks grew longer, more desperate, a compulsion of vault
after each nightly check, as set every chair and clock
in the room square to the wall, drew all doors
tightly shut, and lay in bed counting hotbeats. None of
it helped my nerves frayed. I considered staying at a hotel,
but the dreaded, both ordinary and nameable, kept me here. Rooted.
Everything pointed south. One evening, returning from a pointless grocery run,
I found a note slipped under my door, torn paper,
faint blue, rolled lines. The handwriting was awkwardly slanted, as
if the writer had used the wrong hand. Stay inside
when the whole light stutter. That was all it was.
The night before a rainstorm Thoud's glots against the sky line.
Thunder ridded the air low and slow, like a groan.
The arms felt deserted. At two thirty, I paced restless,
watching as the rain streaked the windows. My phone buzzed
with a blank notification. When I checked the clock up
opened of its own accord again. Three thirty seven, a
m highlighted and red, fingers trembling. I crept to my
front door and peered through the peephole. Hall lights flickered,
pausing in dizzy intervals, buzz paws, buzz poils. Something hunched
moved out of the elevator bay, shoulders jerking at odd
angles as if resisting some external force. It advanced backward,
feet sliding in a stilted shuffle, its head cocked as
if listening. It stopped at missus Lem's old door, hesitated,
then continued its back, never turning, moving in a trajectory
toward the stairwell, vanishing. As the overhead bulb stuttered and recovered,
every part of my skin wanted to screen. Instead, I
pressed myself to the wall, holding my breath till the
feeling passed. The next night, the rain broke. After midnight,
I slunk to the basement, determined to break the paralysis
that had taken over my life. The air rank and
damp pressed close half the unplugged machines gurgled erratically. The
single exposed bulb and the ceiling flickered a warning as
I prodded behind plumbing panels and water stained trible. I'd
heard mutterings of bus secret tunnels for a garden artus
ruts built into the foundation, made for wiring mayde furlicits storage.
All I found of for us will lock steel doors
oddly called to the touch. A persistent steel dro of iron.
Where one panel at the rear of the laundry room
met the wall, I fell a draft, a breath of
air that carried a hint mold, and something rancor. Still,
the panel was bolted fast, something scuffed inside. I froze
the hair on my neck bristling, but no further movement came.
Cradling my notebook, I retreated to the upper floors. Sketches
more complex, now, arrows denoting every self facing thing. My
journalistic insincts flared galvan as in my mind in place
of rest. That's what I told Vince when I caught
him loading a batter box into the elevator the next morning.
We should document this, I said, voice warbling, something's happening,
someone's doing this, may be using the old maintenance tunnels.
Ye in. He hesitated, then nodded, gaze hounted, but if
something follows us, he muttered, it's your fault. We agreed.
I'd buy cheap cameras, Vince would rig a monitoring app,
and we'd split the building in half to watch the siege.
Mentality that unfolded was oddly comforting. If someone owe something
move among us recording it was the only thing left
between me and total madness. It was Saturday in the
communal laundry when everything shifted from unease to our trite horror.
I came down with a laundry sack over my arm,
attention fixed on a new set of locks management had
installed after someone tried to force open the coin machine.
The soap dispenser stood open, spilling studs across the concrete.
A single uncollected sock lay draped over the back of
a folding chair, intending to pass time while the wall cycled.
I knelt to retrieve a fallen sock and noticed something
odd whish behind the third dry a pale blue corner,
water stained at the edges. Tugging it free, I realized
it was a battered school issue journal, the kind with
wire spy rolls and a laminated cover. The sticker on
the front curling at the corner, read a leney hush
four hundred three my pulse that it was sudden, hope
and dread. I glanced around the place was empty. I
flipped through the journal. Most pages wore a fevered skull,
thick tip and and frantic crossing up some entries. The
door at two c m. Clocks realigned. The one who
walks backward makes no sound, but leaves the trees pressed
us by the hinges, faint perfume strung only a midnight
nights for seven belongings gone, then return, but changed. Scratches
on cup handle, all blood send in the woods stronger
when clocks all face off. Fear is not paranoid if
you can hear its footsteps in the vent. The building
is its compass that knows when you watch reading further,
A chill cold in my stomach. One passage written in
all capitals loop back and forth across the margin. When
the face is spun and t ap ta becomes at
the hollow part of the wall, Do not move the
wrong angle opens the waking door on the last rotten page.
Some one behind the wall's eyes, wrong mouth inverted, not human.
Mustn't let the doors all face south at once as
I read a shop flicker, more violent than usual, ripple
through the overhead lights. I snapped the book closed. Through
the frosted glass of the laundry door. A shape pressed
up from the other side of movement at shoulder height,
a smudge standing too close for comfort. It lingered motionless
as the bulb stuttered. I dotted back toward the stairwell,
heart hammering every inch of me, prepared for a rush
of pursuit. But nothing followed except the bursts of cold,
damp bear. I fled upstairs, trembling. Missess Lend's journal held
tight against my chest. That night was harsher than any before.
I stared at the journal's jagged handwriting, my memory tumbling
over the detailed clocks, south facing doors, the compulsively backward walker,
the awful sense of being observed from inside my own walls.
There was more intentionality here than mere urban decay. If
misses Lem was to be believed, something had studied all
of us for longer than any tenant's memory. A presence
is all this of buildings, bones warped by, or perhaps
controlling the logic of locked doors and shadowy corners, the
pattern of disruptions, disturbances, and vanished pet's and tenants suddenly
seemed less random than lethal. As I dove further into
the logs matching missess Lem's enteres against my digital files,
the terrifying hypothesis began to form. What if the building
itself was in collusion? What was it guiding and why?
When dawn came, the only evidence I had to show
for my sleepless obsession were shuddering hands, a hoarse voice,
and the batter journal pressed into my note book. A
passage from Misseslymb repeated in my mind like a bad prayer.
When the clocks all face south, it's already too late.
With Vince's help, we laid the evidence out across my table,
miss Cesslam's desperate note versus my own blue inklocks. We
worked in silence, shades, drawn light stem Vince rolled through
my times down video files, pale and exhausted, overlaying the timing,
scrapings and vents flickers in hallway lights episode of Moved Objects.
We saw the clusters precisely between three thirty and three
forty a m. As if the building's pulse beat a
terrible regularity. There's something Vince began, but we both stopped
as Russell padded outside our door, jangling his ring of keys.
He paused listening, then moved on. Vince gathered himself, mouve
tents these times, these doors, everything slightly saff the angles
aren't by chance the old designs. Do you think there's
a master plan? I thought about the hidden maintenance tunnels
Misseslam referenced, now lost to memory and crumbling blueprints. At
my next opportunity, a corner of Russell by a service elevator,
he bristled. But my questions about basement access in old
blueprints got only a grunt. Tunnel's a pain, he admitted,
full of rats. No one seen the real maps in years. Anyway,
nothing useful down there. Then pointedly leave those doors be
I now now I was taking nothing at face value.
Using a tape measure and lengths of twine, I matted
each door's orientation. The results uner of me. Every entrance
was also sat by a few degrees, as if someone
had calculated the trajectories to converge at a single subterranean point.
The pattern in the security tapes captured by Vince's equipment
was subtler, but more compelling. A figure blurred hunched, often
in dropped clothes, appeared regularly after the lights flickered out, back,
always to the camera, never showing a face moving through
low lick corridors, just ahead of returning illumination, always leaving
chaos in its wake. A toppled umbrella, a cupboard hung ajar,
a slight misalignment in the rug runners. We pressed the
clues together. Door orientations, flickering intervals, were rumors of crawl spaces.
Everything pointed under the building into the forbidden tunnels. For
the first time since everything began, I felt less hunted,
more compelled to hunt. We set a plan wire Mark's
apartment in the hall with every camera, microphone and censor
we could afford. I placed my journal, refolded on the
window sill as bait chair angle perfectly south. Vince kept
to the laundry, phone buzzing in his lap, monitoring the air.
Up that night, the storm broke again, rein pelting the
concrete bulk of the arms thunder rolling up from the river.
My clocks were set digitally an analog all to three
thirty seven unbidden. As the ire approached the hallway, lights
exploded in a fitful stutter plunging the corridor in and
out of milky darkness. My heart clenched. I knelt by
the door, peering through the lens as the backward walker
shuffled into view, every sinney trembling. The haunch presence was
almost completely obscured by shadow, but the methodical way hut
door handles, all without ever turning, made my skin crawl
downstairs Vince's tax flaster, warning movement, and laundry. I pressed
myself to the wall, every nerve a flame. That's when
the scraping began, first from overhead, then from inside the
plaster behind my surfa. Without warning, a section of the
wal slid aside, revealing a crawl space just wide enough
for a body to fit. Wreck caught, I saw a pale,
irregular face peering from with then skin, waxy, mouth twisted downward,
eyes ringed in liquid shadow. The features made no sense,
as if arranged against logic, mouth where the nurse should be,
ies deep set above, inverted utterly. I felt a primal
terror at petition of a scream rising and my rope,
but all I heard was at dreadful reversed humming, like
a tune played backward. The face, which drew szemlessly as
the scraping receded. The axis panel sliding home. My flat's
camera caught a hiss of warp reflection, not my own visage,
but something slick and inhuman. Moments later, management thudded up
the stairs, hurring tenants back to their units of bluffing.
Rats in the walls were spray on Monday, no One
at after midnight, building's policy. Her face was gray eyes,
tracking every movement from the shadowy corner. Sleep was impossible.
The journal lay heavy on my pillow. I promised myself,
as the digital clock spun obediently to three thirty seven,
that I would chase the tunnels myself if no one
else would. The iro ticks forward inexorably. Secerts move in
the hollowed places, clocks, doors, shadows always pointing south. I
am awake and I am not alone. I am awake
and I am not alone. The next morning, sunlight slanted
weakly through the bedroom shades and anemic off white light,
barely distinguishable from the dinginess of electric bulbs. I stood
in the middle of the kitchen. Journal splayed open, reviewing
my hastily compiled notes to the film. Of exhaustion. Finn's
message at six twelve a m. No footage of the
shape chemic glitch. At three thirty five, laundry temp dropped hard.
You all right, man, I typed a shaky response. Sawat
in the walls. Not a rat. We met over burnt coffee,
monks clinking listlessly on my scratch dining table. The tension
in the room had grown corporeal. I could almost hear
the house itself, holding its ancient breath, listening for us
to misstep. Vince was jetty, his eyes room pink. He
shuffled the stack of print out, security schedule, motion, sense
of print outs, my now memorized sketches of south facing
doors and clocks. He tapped the map. Everything lines up
four times last week. Lights flicker at nearly the same minute,
Always on your floor, always paired with some disruption. The
Holloway's dog, Clara's mess and keys. You're he gestured at
my scattered possessions, He upside down cutlery. I ignored the
half hearted smile he managed. Have you slept, I asked?
He flinched. Do you dreams count if every door in
the building swings open and you never get out? We
lapsed int silence, thumbing through Miss s Lam's journal. Vince,
trace the passage with a bit and fingernail. If it
watches through the black glass, do not look back. Was
she talking about that? Then the window the face had
glimpsed through the crawl space gap swam into memory. Is
geometry wrung enough to leave a migraine pulsing behind my eyes?
I forced myself upright daylight. We can check the rout now,
no flickering lights. No one's going to stop us. The
words felt like a lie, brittle as eggshell. Still actions
seemed preferable to paralysis. We split duties. Vince scouted the
stairwell and main hallwy while I prowled the length of
my floor, noting every threshold, every distorted not hole in
the wall. I tried the laundry shoot to low metallic clang,
and the searing scent of bleach came back up, no
hollow resonance. I crouched at the baseboarts outside my unit,
running glove fingers along the old wood. One spot, not
far from where the cross space had opened the night before,
felt oddly warm, pulsing. Faintly. Voices echoed upward from the
first floor. I peered over the banister. Rustle lumbered through
the lobby, muttering to the manager, chanting about an ex dominator,
hands tugging anchssey at his oversized ring of keys. From
my angle, I could see one heavy brass key, long
half did and worn, dangling from a separate loop. Russell's
thumb flicked over it, rhythmic, as if the motion sued
him back upstairs. Vince waited, breathless. Misseslam had her unicanted
the furthest salt sea. He held a strip of measuring
tape and a small protractor six degrees more than ires.
The blueprint doesn't lash the real angle either. The door
frames have been refitted. Behind the throb of fatigue, something clicked,
every disruption, every alarm movement, missing or replaced object wasn't
just time but spatial. The pattern wasn't just about the dire,
but orientation, as if the building was marshaling all its
interior geography toward one magnetic convergence. A door slammed two
floors down. The echo sharp and insistent. I started, then
caught a glimpse of Chlora on the landing below. Scanning
her phone. We exchanged a glance her, his weary mind
likely wild eyed. She mouthed something I could interpret it.
Did you hear it last night? I nodded, I press
fince the shift. Did your camera of a catch any
sign that it was person? Or could it be something else?
Management wants us to think this is rats, just an
old building headache. He shrugged, helplessly, pushing up a crumpled sleeve.
I only get the aftermath. The logs show a drop
in temperature, em spikes, then nothing but blur. But he
hesitated gaze, darting to the ceiling. My camera in the laundry,
just for a second caught a reflection in the window.
It was near face for mine. We crowded around his
phone as he replayed the jittery night vision footage. Pale
daylight bounced off the basement window, and for just two frames,
a figure lighted by the motion, all wrong for a
body pivoting forward, the head crown nearly brushing the lintel.
Never turned. I stared, hot, laden, It moves backward, always
away from us, never turning. Why. Finn slicked his lips,
voice fraying, Maybe it only exists if you don't face
it head on like it needs to building, the angles,
the routines to keep it here or to keep us
from seeing it completely. A theory wormed into my mind,
a compromise between the rational and the uncanny. There might
be something or someone living in those old tunnels, depending
on secrecy, disarray, and the subtle alignment of doors close
unspoken rules. We stared at one another, stealed by dread
and the faint, aching hope that investigation might shield us
from most things. Looking in the half lick corridors of
Pemberley Arms, A noise from my apartment, intentional, mechanical, almost
a tap, broke my reverie. I strode to my door,
hand on the knob, pin shadowing behind me. As I
cracked it open, A sudden guest of cold air swept
past my knees. The clocks, every single one, seemed to pass.
In unison. We exchanged a look, both of us electrified
the question. I could see it flicker in Vince's eyes,
and maybe my own was no longer what haunted us?
But why? And for how long? It had been part
of the building's dreadful order. Unshaking over my mug, I
stared at the pale coffee Finn shifted restlessly opposite, glancing
toward the door, as if expecting it to fly open
at any moment. Sunlight, if it could be called, that
limped into my apartments, mirroring the patterns already charted in
my notebook. Attension left by the knights encounter dron the
air between us. The memory of the wall panel sliding
would hollow certainty, the backward shimmer of a face that
refused the dignity of forward motion away. Every clock in
the place seemed to pulse at the same rhythm. It
was as if we'd all been set to the same ire,
ticking down together, sleepless and watched. I kept replaying the
face in the coal space, the mouth that threatened to
smile on the wrong side, the darkness wrapped up in
its posture, darkness that I knew was not only nocturnal,
it was structural. It was in the angles of the hall,
the tilt of every door, at the chill in the
southern air. The building's heartbeat had denounced itself, And now
with the evidence of Missus Lembs broken script in Vince's
blowed footage in hand, denial no longer shielded us. Something
was moving through the physical spine of Pemberley Arms, abducting
objects and peopled by laws, and visible but not unfeeling.
You saw it, Vince whispered, barely above a hiss. I nodded,
not trussing my voice. Management. Did you see their faces?
They know? Vince rose to pace the room, shoulders hunched,
picking a spot on his wrist until it reddened. All
that rats in the wall's talk has just cover. No
one's stopping it. Ere keeping us here, trapped by our
own routines, or maybe they trapped to I hardly recognized
my own voice, raw stripped of certainty. Did you check
for any exit points this morning? Vince gesture helplessly heased
fire doors chained from the inside, now rear exits newly
screwed shut. I heard Russell mumbling to himself in the stairwell,
there's nowhere in or I'd accept the lobby at night.
I'm going to the archives to day, I decided aloud.
The building plans, construction records permits, some blueprint or past
complaint must explain those axis tunnels. We need to know
if anyone's been inside the words alone, steadied me. Finn
spit his lip. You shouldn't go alone. I don't have
a choice, I reply, not any more. He didn't answer.
I watched as he twisted the batted plastic of his
student idea as cast's south, as though the pressure grew
stronger the longer he fought it in the hallway. The
motion's answer triggered a brief blink of the fixture overhead
and alert pinging on Vince's phone. Neither of us moved.
No footsteps followed. Last night, Vince said, I dreamed, I
walked backward into the hall following a ticking sound, and
woke up standing by the laundry chute. My keys were
in my left shoe. I never put them there, I swallowed.
We document what we can now to day. The sense
of expectation of building drove pressed at my back as
I shrugged into my coat and stepped out, trailing the
echo of every clock left behind. Thence hesitated at the threshold,
as if stepping into the corridor's open mouthed invited consequences.
I left him there and certain if I'd see him
unchanged when I returned. I spent the first half of
the day knee deep in city wrecords. The modernity of
the ark of nearlier comfort. Gray files listed Pemberley Arms
as an experimental multi unit designed the language of sterile
as rain on concrete. Floor plans revealed layers between public
holes and private units. A Weber maintenance passages, apparently built
for efficient universal servicing, now marked restricted in heavy black,
no mention of current use, only cryptic notes f initial
security issues nineteen seventy five minutes seventy seven unresolved. I
followed a lead to the planning office, where a retired
engineer agreed to meet me after some cajoling. He was
a gentle, stoop shouldered man whose line face flickered with
old suspicion. As soon as I mentioned arms in a
rented office, smelling of friar oil and dry cleaning, he
thumbed through a folder and slid it to me. I
can't discuss most things, he muttered, But Weird problems early
used reports of break in shifts in the floor a
Lyman in its subtly off level. Residents complained about lost time,
forgotten rooms, doors that jammed at weirdire's, but every inspection
showed nothing lost time. I pressed. His eyes darted to
the window. Nothing they could prove, just don't trust that building.
Not at night. I had a friend. She said the
clocks in her flat would synchronize, all pointing south, and
then things would disappear. Doors would open, but not to
where you meant. I told her to move, She never did.
I asked about the tunnels. He hunched further. They were
from maintenance. Now I'd keep out lines got blow between
short cut and hiding place. If people go missing, sometimes
they don't mean to leave. Sometimes the building wants them
to stay. See. He would not elaborate, and I did
not push. I left the foot coppies of the old
maps and a chill in my chest. Back in the lobby,
my phone shined a voicemail. The message was gibberish, a long, static,
gridden whisper, but three words scorned out through the noise.
Three three seven. The tank could read three thirty seven
a m. Though my phone never rang. I sped up
the stairs, heart in my throat. On my landing, I
stopped short. My fuse box hung half open, wise twisted.
The acrid scent of burnt insulation standing near my dead
bolt was scored with fresh cratches. The kitchen lamp flickered weakly,
as if gasping. On its last damp. In my apartment,
everything was wrong by degrees. The living room workainst bulled edgewise,
couch shove against the window, Clocks arrayed on the south wall,
each reading three thirty seven. Even when I swapped their
batteries on the counter. An envelope with no return address
lay partly open. I slid it, hands barely steady enough
to hold the knife, A torn slip of paper inksmearred
and shaking with haste. Read Some doors cannot be locked,
some sleepers cannot wake. The dread, and my belly sharpened.
I opened the Frisch milk, sired bread nod. Even my
wallet lay on the shelf, as though it too had
tried to escape. I dialed Bince, something's here, I said,
voice barely audible. Everything's out of order again, He sounded
worse than before. Breath tight is a drum My phone
shows calls I never made I had as I m
card replaced. Wasn't me stay put? I told him, no
one goes out at night, not until we figure this out.
But his tone betrayed doubt. Not sure I'll lost that
lawn mock. I could just make out the scraping his
hand or something else before the line went dead. Evening fell.
I sat in darkness, all clocks confiscated, safe one, lights
dimmed except a lantern in the corner. Every sound pressed
inward on my mind. The south wall grew larger and larger.
Each took another invitation for the wrong door to open,
a close insistent dread balloon, crowding out sense and sleep.
I grit missess Lam's journal. If survival men ritual, I
would master it. That night, I waited for the ire.
When the building's hot began beating for someone else, I
rose well before three, assembling what I needed, flashlight's camera cloves,
the old blueprints folded into my jacket. Vince met me
on the second floor, face a shock of hollowdies in
the washed hair. He brought two crobos in a kin
of cheap spray paint, the latter for mocking out progress
in the tunnels. We waited until the halls were as
silent as the grave. Each step echoed in a panic
stricken register, but the building's silence pressed back, swallowing up sounds.
Somewhere above, a door thudded with the dullness of a
coffin lid. The laundry room greeted us with an old,
metallic cold sireus soerap bleach, the living stink of something hidden.
We peeled back the false panel behind a last washing machine,
exposing rusted bolts and concreatse cold with black streaks. The
crowbo worked and the panel buckled inward, exhaling a muddy
draft older than anything outside. We squeezed in flashlights, bobbing.
This chirked the throat of the passage. The tunnel narrow
brick's grobe with old waterproofing and decades of sediment. Rats
grabbled ahead, their chairs and sewing noises, answering into pipes above.
We pressed on, vince marking a green streak every ten meters.
After a time that stretched and shrank, we hit a junction,
pipes splitting in three directions. Graffiti old and smudged. A
stick figure, mouth twisted askew underneath into locking clock faces,
all tilted south below the initials lump scorched into the paint.
It was a living record. We skirted along the lowest passage,
following the tattered blueprints by our phone's glow. Above, distant
foots of secoda body are more moving room to room,
too slow to be the super, too purposeful to be
lost in the coal, I lost all sense of time.
My phones displayed died at three thirty seven, unresponsive until
we called further on deeper, where even the pots seemed
to stutter. We reached a tea junction. One wall sheend
in what looks like nod wax there talks in a
pocket of shadow. Was evidence of habitation, A nest of rags,
battered paperbacks, half burnt batteries, the stink of sweat, copper,
and weather throws up a person had lived here, of
something approximating it thins crouched slow, probing under a pile
of shreded flannel, he found a collection of items, keys
dusted with green pattern at it showed up dog collar,
the holloways, a faded photo of Missess leamb con as
foxed eyes betten away. Every item pointed south, even framed
photos or tour trucks, as if the nest builder refused
to let anything face back toward the building or toward us.
A chill worked its way into my bones, both the
cold and annoying I wanted to deny. We pressed on
fingers numb, passed another edged warning, one who walks backward
needs no door. The script twisted upward, then trailed off.
Suddenly overhead thundered and knocked, thus poured down, and somewhere
a pipe on it. Someone or something was moving in
tandem with us, tracking our progress step by step. On
between the metal, a whisper, as if a song played
backward on an old reel, three thirty seven, three thirty seven.
As we turned to a narrow crosstch of pipes, Vince
Pale pausing, clutching his chest. His gas brococheted through the tunnel.
I can't, he whispered, breath clipping, it's too tight. I
steadied his shoulder, heart racing. We're nearly there, but the
dread was tetonic, settled and immovable. We kept crawling, following
what remained of the chalk marks on the faintest echo
of air. Behind a heavy vent, the tunnel opened into
a low chamber beneath what I estimated was Missess Lamb's unit.
A ring of broken clocks, glass and plastic splinted lay
in a careful circle, every dial mangled or intact, point itself,
a tangled mass of gray hair not in knitting yarn
and blue fabric, the color of missess lambs touch rested
at the midpoint, God, Vince muttered, voice lost in the
gray of Jarveco. He knull, running, trembling fingers along the tie.
These are her things, I choked. She was here on
the walls, gouged deep where looping marks like Matha's faces,
no eyes, only inverted crescent shapes, too monstrous to be smiles.
All at once, the shuffle of backward steps echoed above.
Something moved with jazz irregular timing, wrapping on the boards,
almost as if were counting down. Vince began to shake.
We have to go. I realized he was right. The
chamber behind us gave off, arising from the distant sound
of a hundred clock sticking in unison, growing closer closer.
We scrambled about the way we had come, till a
lighting wavering, the pale glow now felled by our own
house breasts, and the dragging steps of another body moving
parallel to our flight. At the next junction, Vince froze again,
tears leaking from his eyes. It's following us, markets following us.
I squeezed his arm, dragging him forward. The paint find
the marks. The backward walker, with all its homicidal rythmic certainty,
shadowed us through the pipes. I smelled its approach before
I glimpsed the pale shimmer in my periphery, the scent
of bleach, rust, and something more intimate, like the inside
of a mouth, and its footsteps, sliding then thudding, each
time almost in a reversed rhythm. Thence tried to run,
but slipped. He landed hard, clutching at his ankle. I
turned to lift him, flashlight beam slicing the dark behind us.
The tunnel brimmed with movement. The gaunt presents dripped in
a shabby gray coat. Masks sown from a warped clock
face blocked the rear passage. Its limbs hung round, not
from injury but purpose. The gate, a series of backward
lurges had forever tilted away, never offering up its own front.
It came closer the ticking moon. From behind the mask,
I could swear through the holes. An inverted smiles split
the jowler. Not grotesque but impossible. My hand shook as
I reased the flashlight. Thence weeeze, trying to drag himself upright.
Don't look at he carved eyes flicking away. Don't look
at its face. I didn't, I looked and said at
its hands, Pale, jittery, impossibly long fingered. It moved with
neither haste nor slowness, only the certainty of returning to
a familiar routine. It muttered as advanced voice, slow and
syrup thick, as if if the tape inside its throat
turn backward, winding must wine, must reset count face North,
never never face North. Her. In pure terror and frustration,
I lurched forward, seizing its mask with both hands, half
expecting the flesh face of someone I recognized the mass
torror was scratchy, cardboard, oily with decades of sweat. I
saw not the face of the super or a tenant,
or even Maseslam. Instead, I saw a uncanny visage, features
shuffled and split, eyes set deep under what should be
a mouthed lips stretched above, no sun cameward, nothing belonging
where it should. The walker jerked and made a wet,
smacking sound, like a tick caught in a clock. It
slithered backward into the gap in the Brooksen was gone.
Motion impossibly swift. The tunnel's air dropped to freezing for
a long moment, Vince and led ezed, hats battery, mine
s blitz with the impossibility of what we'd seen. The
quiet that followed felt near a safe, nor blessed. We
limped out, Vince uizing my shoulder. My coldes reaked of
metal unmold. Every muscle screamed. We forced ourselves back along
the spray painted line until we breached a false panel
behind me, the laundry blinking in the humming fluorescence. We
tumbled out, gasping, the building unchanged and yet unrecognizable. No
one met us. The complex, as ever, bore the aspect
of sleep, but the sense of something turned, something unlocked
pulsed in every shadow. The corridor felt alted, heavier, more deliberate.
I felt every clock above our heads driding our hearts soufthward.
Something inside the building had noticed us, and now it
would not stop. Back in my apartment, hands trembling, I
tried to review the evidence. Fins and I haunched around
the battered laptop, breath coming harsh and shallow. We keied
the footage, grainy images of tunnels, glimpses of clock faces,
and echoing sequence of footsteps recorded by the tiny microphones
I had planted near the panel. At first the film
played true. Our own voice is cursing and praying, the
beam of my flashlight flickering as we blunted through the dark.
Then the feet stuttered to the video warped, faces stretched
southward in the screen. The audio gobbled of, ridden by
a deep mechanical ticking, like a metronome set to the
heart of the earth. What should have shown the backward
walker became only a skittering blur edges no away by
sad we skyured the frames in one as Vince krawl
from the circle of broken clocks, his face reflected on
a shadow plastic dial, bent backward mouth, where as I
should be sock it shrinking to a point in another,
my own soilow at collapsed and redouble lons flickering, as
if time had folded in on itself. I checked each
time marker whenever the footage dulled white. The time samp
read three thirty seven a m. Even when recorded iro
was before or after. It was as if the force
moving through the tunnels warped not only the living but memory,
recoat time itself. The old notes from miss eslamb newly
ominous mirrored our experiences with cruel clarity. Somebody behind a
wall's lawn before me changes the ires, changes the intent,
seeks new hands. When old one's fade, Vince stood abruptly,
rubbing his neck, face shining with terror. It'll come again.
It follows routine's ires. There is the building itself. I
couldn't contest him. Even with the evidence in digital art
of ax glitch clock's mutated glimpses, corruptive file dates. No
authority would care or believe. I pressed the journal to
my skull, as if it wild script might inoculate me.
That afternoon, I've visited the station. I unspoiled my story
for a detective with tired eyes, who gave my photographs
a once over, then slid them back. You've got no intruder,
no evidence of forced entry, nothing on the tapes, probably
a problem messing with the electrical Leave a light on,
get some sleep. Thence was gone. The next day, a
note under my doorplane and signed, I'm breaking the lease.
I won't be here to night. Always two began packing frantically,
all excuses and anxieties, the sense of siege. Lieutenants puring
out with inflamed, bruised eyes, dogged by insagnia, and a
sense of being endlessly maliciously curated by sunset. The new
security cameras above the lobbied and laundry had been shattered
with a single careful blow. I closed my blinds, shut
down my phone, and walked the boundary of my rooms,
re oienting every object, checking with the building's logic I
now understood, but could never utmatch. I pulled out miss
as Lemm's journal wrote, my own desperate entry. Cannot sleep. Clocks.
Won't wereset eyes behind the wall, humming backward? They need
new hands. Late that night, another tenant, Clara, I think,
knocked face wild at the people some broke in. She whispered,
everything's moved, pointing south, just like the others I heard
singing through the vent. It signed my name. I pressed
her hand, words useless. We sat in my living room,
both of us flinching at every shuffle around us. The
clocks ticked on their faces a line, even with all
our efforts. As the ire grew late, I realized the
cycle was beginning again. No barricade, no logic, off of
final safety. The spare set in. Not a few of violence,
but that of being absorbed into a logic older than
any calendar. All I could do was chronicle as those
before me had done, and no doubt those after would
do as well. I could not, would not succumb. That night,
I resolved to confront the heart of it alone, if necessary,
to try at least to break the cycle by facing
the backward logic head on. My plan was simple, born
of desperation and the patterns I traced. I would bait
the presence into my apartment, forced the encounter on my
own ground, with cameras set, tripped, wire stretched, and every
object lined just so, not its way but mine. I
would not be observed. I would observe for once. I
would wind the clocks. I set up two motions answers,
one by the corspis panel, one at the hallway door.
Cheap microphones went live hidden under the sofa and on
top of the dresser. Raked my laptop every clock in
the apartment. Digital analog bristwatch phone was set to three
thirty six. Hands trembling, I backaded the main door with
a heavy chair, tool books and mop pandle the bait.
Missesslim's journal laid open south facing beneath the living room lamp.
I lay on my couch with my clothes on, lights low,
and forced my eyes closed, pretending sleep, willing my heart
into a rhythm as old as the building's foundation. Just
before the half fire, the apartment grew colder, every exhalation
visible in the air. The ticken grew a monstrous unison,
leaking from every corner, from inside the radiators, the fridge,
even the weak pulse of my phone. Outside. The hallway
lights began their stuttering dwance, a nervous moss code flickering
over the gray tail. At three thirty seven, the motion
sensorus chimed in sequence, first the wall, then the door.
I kept my eyes shut, listening as the wall panel
glided open with a faint complaint murmur, the same as
every other time, and utterly different. Footsteps, delicate practiced backward
crossed the floor. The air filled with the scent of machinery,
metal and lie, and undercurrent of old and washed cotton.
The backward walker entered the room, masked, draped in gray,
humming faintly. The song was wrong, drifting, halting wine backward,
as if pulled from a broken tape. I witted as
across the room, methodically resetting every clock, turning faces, realigning
the TV remote, tilting my lamp inch by inch, until
everything in the room pointed itself. My body ached and
devene to snap the logic. But I let the water
play out its script. Only when it reached the journal
did I break the illusion of sleep. Shifting on the sofa,
the backward walk of froze, shoulder stwitching. In a voice
that sounded like the scrape of finger nails on slate,
it said, you ache. I opened my eyes. Why, I whispered,
what do you want? Wires? It didn't turn, but spoke,
barely moving Its draw absorb the iris of the rest
of your sleep away. Every clock face out for sets, memory,
resets intent. We keep them looping for safety, for safety,
because waking is the wound. Its masked patch or clock
face mouthed downtown to glinted in the half light. You
watched the eye or two. We need witnesses, new hands
to wind the clocks. No, my voice cracked, but didn't break.
No more. I won't let you make me part of this.
Slowly I stepped forward. The figure trembled, but did not retreat.
As I reached for the mask, I forced myself to
touch it, peeling the warped card board away at a
single shaking motion. Beneath the face was my own, every line,
every freckle and scar, but the mouth pole viciously up with,
as cavernous and empty, as if my own reflection had
given up on logic. The expression coiled with the joyless mirth,
lets parting to reveal a mouthful of teeth arranged in
impossible spirals. I reeled, staggering back, naus boiling up as
the figure spawn, walking backward into the coroll space. Even
as I lunged fingers brush into bare wall, it disappeared,
the panel sliding home with a brutal click. My apartment
filled with the relentless course of clocks, all taken together,
hands frozen at three thirty seven, I fell to my knees,
shaking uncontrollably the taste of us. They come, my tom
behind the wall, the reversed lullab I resumed, soften and human, a,
banging at the door manager as haunted, threatening eviction for
a causing disturbance. I saw the tell tale flicker of
trid cross her face as she glanced behind my shoulder
at the arrayed clocks, as if she had seen it
all herself once before. She spoke in brittle tones, this
is the last warning. No more disruptions, mister Holden, next
time you're gone. Her words vanished into the static of
my thoughts. In the days I followed, I wanted my
apartment like a wraith, compulsively setting every object straight, checking
the orientation of clocks, stores, mirrors, Tenants passed with grim,
sleepless faces. I was flickering away from mine. Management laid
new locks at every entrance, only for them to be
ripped out or vandalized within IROs. Clara moved out in
a rush, her old cat carrier left behind. Vince's room
stood empty, save for a pale spot where his desk
had been. I left warnings and forms, blog posts desperate
d M. Do not let your clock's face salve. If
you do, you'll hear the humming. If you hear the humming,
moon leave, or you'll wind up winding the clocks yourself.
The Holloway's dog never returned. The police came again, another disappearance,
another set of vague questions about routines, and I was awake.
It no longer mattered. The logic had absorbed itself into me.
I stayed up through the nights, listening, always to the south.
As the cycle wound down, rebel wand down again. I
do not sleep. I am always listening. One night leads
into the next. The arms of the clocks never quite reset. Management,
the police, even the Superno one will enter my unit.
Now I record the pattern, knowing it change is nothing.
I am become the Watcher, not by choice, but by ritual.
I sit in my dim lit living room, the glow
from a dozen clocks breathing around me. Each face shows
three thirty seven, every taken perfect sympathy with the others.
I align the last clock, hands trembling, mouth dry, and
dare a glance at the tarnished, warm mirror by my chair.
From low in the wall, behind plaster and pipe comes
the lullaby, again, soft, mechanical, and mistakably reversed. My own
image flickers in the glass, mauf tugging upward as if
pressed by invisible fingers. I cannot seem to look away
as my reflection lifts a town behind me, reaching, but
my body feels heavy and slow. In a final moment,
before the clocks all reset. The figure appears inside the mirror,
backward Walker, pale and tremulous, hovering behind my shoulder. Lights
flicker and fail, the ticking stops. The silence is complete.
There was nothing, not even the hiss of pipes in
that total blackout, With only the bat of clocks faintly
luminescent against the gloom. I was left sitting not quite upright,
breathing in shallow half gasps, as if enable to draw
the air completely into my chest. My eyes would not adjust. Instead,
again and again they caught the same impression in the rooms.
Din surfaces, the backward Walker, their second presence, flickering at
the corner edge of glass, each time gone when I
tried to focus, but always hovering just past the frame
of my vision. I must have stayed in that state
for neelie an ire, though every signal of time had
been stripped away. Gradually, after the silence came the soft
grinding return of the refrigerator motor, the snap of a
relay in the hallway light, and in the low firimpour
of the building's water running somewhere above me, a floor creaking,
someone shifting in their own small, sleepless apartment the clocks
did not move, their faces, persisted hands soldered to three
thirty seven glass fogg from my sweating palms. I waited
for something, a second intrusion, a voice, a visible threat,
but none came. The building had exhaled, then resumed its endless, stale, breathing.
Day's blurred. I tried to keep tor routines, but routines
now belonged to someone of something else. Each time management
posted and you signed no petsant whole way after midnight,
all laundry rooms locked. After ten p m. I saw
the anxious call. The way corners of the laminated paper
culd and upon themselves. The holloways were gone before Wednesday.
Their door hung with a brittle gone visiting carden marker
Clara was next, her absence marked by an empty spot
on the mail shelf, the musty scent of all perfume
that clung to a door nub. I left the apartment
less and less, trailing only to the grocer, always by daylight.
I was jumpy at the shuddering of the elevator. Vince's
text shrank and then stopped. Have you heard it again?
Was the last a time stamp I would not let
myself translate. I tried, out of old loyalty a superstition,
to set the clock facing ease, but sooner or later
I could never tell quite when they drifted south of
their own accord. Once a neighbor pounded on my door
and begged, if you're going to move, say something. My
bathroom clock were sets every night. Now Their face disintegrated
into panic before I could answer. One night, the police
questioned me in the lobby, Mussus Lemm's journal in my pocket.
My hands still black under the finger nails from prying
open vent covers. There is another tenant missing, the detective said,
her exhausted face late with the pitch of someone who
had stopped expecting so hands. Kora Gasque, last seen Monday,
were asking everyone's strange noises unlocked doors. I shrug, knowing
my own statements would sound arranged if honestly given. This
place is old. It has a lot of tricks, was
all I offered. She looked at me longer than necessary.
If you remember anything, call I never did. Other changes
came quickly, new locks on laundry and stairs, digital security
paths that beat then stutted, but never actually stopped the
doors from opening to the run angle. If you push
hard enough, the wholeway cameras flickered, then went blank, a
blank red light glowing beside the lens. Someone colored every
clock in the communal lounge with a black shop I
errow of facing gown the building southern wall. In the
elevator an entire set of buttons stack, so every ride
deed to the fourth floor, then fell back back to
the basement before the doors allarge you out. In my unit,
the walls trembled with the rhythm I could not trace.
Sometimes I would wake to the sense of being pried
out from my sleep, as if some old heavy hand
pressed on my chest. If I risked a glance into
the mirror of the window after midnight, the backward walker
hoverded aim, mouth drawn sharp as a blade, hands dangling
at its side. Once I saw what I thought was
my own reflection, but a smile curled in the wrong direction. I,
slack and unblinking, had tilted just so. The only way
to banish it was to turn every clock back north
and cover the glass with a towel. But the next
morning the towel would be gone, folded carefully beside the
kitchen sink, tenancy and Pemberley Arms hollowed out. Management brought
in a cleaning crew, two hard eyed men one elderly
woman with rubber boots, who scrubbed every baseboard and left
muttering to each other in rapid clipped tones. When they finish,
they handed me a slip. If you see any one
in the crawl space, call the number below. Do not approach.
Some units may experience pawcycling between three and four am.
Installation error. The phone never connected from my living room router.
I tried streaming videoto an old laptop, propping the camera
at a low wedge under the couch, just to catch
a glimpse of the walker, or perhaps of myself. Inverted
the way I had seen under the mascore in the glass.
Every file corrupted itself at three thirty seven, the same
blank flicker over taking the screen. I posted on forums
begging for advice for ritual for any map that would
pin down the geometry of the infernal tunnels beneath the building.
The replies laughed, simply linked a video of clock spinning backward.
No answer given. I lost track of most things that mattered.
The names of those I passed in stare was the
details of new stories I'd meant to cover. I clung
to small, pointless duties, collecting stray keys, canting footsteps from
my bed to the bathroom by memory, sail or, taping
the edge of every rug to slow the drift. The
pattern always won. The sessions crept back to the south wall.
Clocks found new faces. On another night, the air turned
sharp at the sword of cold that means the building's
heat was failing, or set deliberately low. I slept huddled
in my coat, arms folded gladiator style across my chest.
In those ires approaching three, the walls seemed to harrow
meeg every inch, radiating soundless vibration. The presence pressed in,
no curtain, no tell, locking it. This time, the backward
walker did not have to emerge from the coalsepiece or
through my door. It filled the room by implication alone,
reducing my heart to a machine's rhythm, matching my breath
to its relentless backward ham. I did not try to
confront it. Its logic now was inside me. My hands
sometimes moved without clear will, resetting the clocks, closing the
fridge with a soft clack, adjusting the alignment of mail
staff by the entryway. The windows fogged steadily, always clearing
to face the south. I then no tenant, but me
lingered on the floor. The mail slots were all unclaned,
even rustled. The gruff supor left without notice, his heavy
brasquy abandoned on the stairwell, green with corrosion. The building
itself quieted for days, as if sated or merely observing
a pause for regrouping. I kept my lights low, my
movements low, brote detailed logs in the vein hope that
righting would stave off absorption. But when a new couple arrived,
faces tense, eager to prove how little buildings scared them,
I heard them laughing as they rolled the cart to
foe Be. I locked eyes with the man, who offered
a brief, hollow pleasantry, any tips for getting the heat going.
I tried to warn him, found I had no voice.
He passed by the woman, already fumbling with the new
key in the freshly cut lock. That night, the pattern
spun up again, inexorable. I heard it again from a distance,
a course of ticking somewhere beneath the floorboards, rising as
a counterpoint to the soft reversed lullaby that now owned
the hollow ires. Furniture scuff doors clicked into new angles,
always to the south. Through the vent, A note slid,
A scrap of cleaning receipt scrolled in the old awkward script.
Did not open the door. At three thirty seven, I
sat heavy limbed by a kitchen, listening as they made
the new Homer routine that sounded all too familiar, shuffling laughter,
abruptly cuffed by the click of a clock. I did
not intervene. Even if I had, I doubted I could
say anything to keep them safe. The building was not
haunted now, I was simply its keeper. That night, I
gathered all my clocks, lying them on the living room window, sill,
arranged every object I could lift face away from the
southern wall, and set my phone to film the room,
rejecting the internal impulster. Orient properly. If the pattern needed witnesses,
it would of mine impossible. Chilled the deep prudwned quiet,
and then inevitably that old grinding scraping behind the wall.
The familiar mechanical music started again, humming, then singing, then
for symphonic chimes. The panel slid open and the walker
step threw, neither hurry nor threatening, mask in place, handsplain
the darkness behind it. I stirred to face it on
my own two feet, posture rigid against the silhouette, as
the clocks began to flutter forward and back beneath the
theater of shadow. This time no words were exchanged. The
walking figure approached, slow to deliberate, and griped my right
wristskin ice cold, the pressure oddly gentle, almost reluctant. I
raised my free hand as it returned the gesture, But
the walker, masked, still hiding its face, had never turning,
shifted closer. We stood locked in tableau for a beat,
the world caught between a second and a century. Dick Dick.
My mouth worked, shaping the question that had echoed since
miss Eslam. Whispered about clocks and doors and things waking
up the wrong ere, What happens when we all face south?
If the walker answered, it did so with only the
pressure of its hand, a shared chill that hollowed out
my sense of self, My thoughts blurred, memory, skating and reorienting,
not gone, but reordered by an alien logic. I tried
to resist. It felt like wrestling, not with flesh, but
with the rules of perspective itself. In that instant, I
saw through the mask's broken eye of gas segment, a
glimpse paray of faces, each slotted into their cruel smile, neighbors,
the super massesslamb, even vince, their images warped and oscillating,
all flickering backwards into the infinite regress of mirrored clock faces.
They urged a step in time to move, not forward,
but back. Nearly overwhelmed me, I clenched my fists, braced
hard against the tug, and jerk free the walker ligo.
The mass dipped, it staggered toward the coal space, its
formers into a slip of pale cloth and shadow, retreating
as if unwilling to continue without full compliance. I stumbled,
catching myself on the chair, unable for a second to
recall what direction was forward at all. The clock shuddered,
lights flickered, the humming seat back behind the walls. My
cameras indicator blinked, then snapped off. Storageful for a moment,
the room was my own again. The south wall, the clocks,
the torn slipped from the ventfall, poised as if dis
guiding weather to yield or begin again. A sharp series
of knock splinted through my door. Urgent, not police, but sheman.
The woman from four b VCE raw called my name, Please,
some things in our hall. I can't find him. The
light's gonna stay here just a minute, please. Her keys jangled.
I let her in behind her shoulder. The corridor yawned
with that same slandered artificial hush. We huddled in the
half light, hands trembling over coffee. Down the hallway, the
door studded and shining one after another. Through the window,
I saw the opposite buildings security lights begin to stutter.
They two pointed south. We sat. I could not say
or do much. My visitor whipped the clocks realigned silently
in the background. When dawn came, the apartment was unchanged.
She left without a word, never meeting my gaze. By noon,
her belongings had already vanished from the fourth floor. Evening alone,
again surrounded by the clutter of my own compulsions, I
looked into the tawness mirror, bracing for what my peer
up from behind my own reflection. But for the first time,
no figure appeered. Only my own face gazed out, cautious
ruined by exhaustion, but for now mine. I watched the
sunlight shrink along the wall as I take forward three
thirty five, three thirty six, three thirty seven. The clock
hands did not move. I sat all the same and waited.
And that was how the ending came, not in violence
or revelation, but in the unbroken continuity of rooms wall.
And I was winding, rewinding, and returning in endless, unremarkable circles,
always pointing south.