Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I balanced the clipboard on my knees,
penned between my teeth while the libraries closing music trickled
faintly from distant speakers. The marble gleamed under the recent buffing,
catching slivers of street lamb through the three story windows.
Rain had been hammering the city for a week, making
for quieter nights in the stacks. My favorite sought really
fewer loose pages to shell furilate patrons lurking after the chimes. Tonight,
Puddles formed along the warm rubber mass of the vestibule,
and water warped umbrella backs drifted in little clumps near
the entrance. I was halfway through my shift. Close routine
initial scored buys, cure special collections and low reading room
inspected would have happened. A tremendous metallic clang yankeed my
attention away. The book returned that old industrial binge just
outside the glass doors, not a soft funk like someone
dropping a forgotten romance paper, like a full boardered percussion
echoing up toward the dusty moldings. There hadn't been a
soul on the side worked for the past half fire,
not since the storm's latest squall drove out even the
most determined regulars. I checked the digital lock feed on
my phone, no new swipes, no faces on any camera
except my own. Blurry and tired. It swept up in
the routine inventory. For a moment, I wondered if it
had been a trick of the pipes of the ancient ones.
That tick could settle every night and occasionally bound like
a poultzgeist iffere unlucky, but the sound had been crisp, clear,
and inarguable a book returned. I left my things in
the stool and made for the vestibule, echoing my own
steps through the deserted atrium. Even with the rain, the
air was itched with that library smell of paper bleach,
cold stone. The return bin looked like it always did,
battered but stalwart, big enough to swallow a stack of atlases.
I fumbled with the keying clip to my belt, feeling exposed,
as if somehow I might open the hatch and find
a person folded inside. Instead waited only a single book light,
but its placement had triggered the full clang a hardback
perhaps an inch thick. The cloth gray and wholly em
marked no jacket. I set it down on the steel
shelf and whiped drop its away from the cover, surprised
to find and a fine powder of dustority clinging to
the surface. Even stranger. It's edges gave off a faint,
pleasant smell of something like lavender cut with old glue.
Then I registered the title gold Block, but half faded
the city's forgotten corners. That copy had gon missing over
six years ago, right before my first annual review. Here
a footnote in the overdue log, one of hundreds. I
opened it carefully. The borrowed slip was still inside the
back cover. The cud crisp was oppressed leaf bearing a
date stamped in blue and a name and scrid in
what appeared to be found in pen mliss. Again, I
scanned my memory. Mlissa's file had become an odd emblem
among the outstanding checkout's, her last activity pinged by the
dated lending record, but there had never been any note
on her return, nor an update to her patron profile.
The systems should have marked her as delinquent or a
loss to follow up, but it simply kept her as active.
Yet the book the actual mythic missing piece for rest
of pristine before me. No stray pen marks, no damage
the spinean's blade, impossible for a book that had vanished
into the world for more than half a decade. I
patted my pocket, pulled my batted old pole or it
snapped a photo of book and slip. The image spat
out edges, curling, colors, are and cold, and the vestibule
sodium clare. I scribbled a note for the morning desk
crew returned after iris sea and tick from note and
dropped it into the supervisor tray. The building's hush in
that moment felt not total, not empty, but coiled, as
if summoned a current move beneath the floorboards. I told
myself I was imagining things. It was late, and the
mind fills of silence with ghost when the weather is
like this. Still, on the walk back to the staff office,
every footstep seemed just a little too loud. The book
cradled oddly heavy in my arm. I left it on
my own desk, filing the moment away, but couldn't let
go of the sensation the building had just blinked somehow,
shifting its gase awaken a new and comfortable way. It
was only later, tucked into my fold out chair beneath
the reference desk's lamp, that I realized I still had
the scent of dust and lavender arm my hands. The
library is always quiet at midnight, but quiet is not
the same as calm. My colleagues often took about how
the husher settles enough to closing, but I've always sensed
it as something more articulated, like a long drawing breath,
each floor feeding whispers and distant rattles, than to sheer cavity.
That night, with the book return incident looping my mind,
I sank into the routines that typically anchor me, making
notes in the day's holds, updating my own cross checked
list of irregular checkouts, and piece in the solitary aisles,
in that almost choreograph glyde that only a night shift
librarian does well. I'm one of the last all school
record keepers on staff. The library employs dozens reference rouderness
in the mornings of flury at Nina Air than us
the lake keepers, the galas and youth programs inundate the
marble atrium in daylight, but by five thirty the day
crew thins out only miss s Redlow, the fas but
circulation lead and Javior, who nearly blends into his security uniform,
generally lingo to chat with maintenance or check their phones.
Head Librarian Delaney leaves by six, always impressed, charcoal skirts,
her shoes echoing all the way to the elevator. She
barely acknowledges the rest of us, eyes fixed ahead, already
considering the next budget review or repair request. I've been
told Delaney is replaceable. I find her more like a
shadow at dusk, present but impossible to grasp. I prefer
the company of the archives themselves. The marble echo, the
shrouded iron staircases, three sneaking up toward the old director's
white now in rest for almost twenty years. The back
rooms are my favorites, especially those with the staff only
plaquar out and that special hush she find only in
places designed for secrecy. I know each the mail room,
the old boundary, the odd look behind the dumbwaiter shaft,
where you can feel cool air rising even in August
each night. Part of man official ritual is document in
the small regularities that others might miss. Was a cart
left out nerd children's did a book leave a coffee
ring on the check and counter that no one acknowledge?
My own locks all town stamped a neatly label. Live
in a locked cabinet behind the staff bathroom. I mark
down every abnormal incident, an unfiled loan and unexplained system
alert and audio glitch, and the security feed. I don't
share these records. Not really the other's gossip. But it's
rare for any one to act on suspicion. They rely
on system of emails or an internal member making the rounds,
usually written in business euphemism, so blanded almost erases the
problem from your mind. Probably just a page who left
without logging out? Missus Redlow will say, or didn't we
get a transfer notice for that patron? No one ever
finds the paper. I collect these absences out of I
careful attention. I can keep something from slipping through the cracks.
My interaction with the co workers as cordial bahallow. Missus
red Lafoss's about shelving, grumbles about kids on their phones,
and makes daily threats to retire. I suspect Jaevia has
seen more than he lets on his runs. Take him
into off limits sections deep into the n eye, but
he keeps his own counsel. The lady floats just beyond reach.
A whisper in conference, always signing documents in a looping hand,
have come to recognize even in the absence of her name.
During staff meetings, rumors circulate a page who stops showing up,
a patron who fails to pick up a requested hold,
never seen again. The favorite suspicion is that they transferred out,
got bored, moved to another city. Yet in my private ledgers,
I can match a handful of these names with anomalous checkouts,
which he reals never looked back, in emails from their
accounts that inexplicably fail to reach the ride in books,
I take their files and organize them, cross referencing stacks,
date and last seen details, just in case someone ever asks.
But nobody does. I know. I should find comfort in
this rhythm, but the returned book has left in h
dragging me out of my routine and into speculation. I
try to focus re cataloging a shipment of reference dictionaries,
tidying the periodicals my hands. Find the comfort in the
grain of old end papers and the certainty of dream numbers,
But my mind loops back. Why to night, Who comes
out to the library, unseen in the storm, to return
a book no one expected ever to see again? The
answer surely must be harmless, That's what I tell myself,
even as a building growls and mutters its pretcisions in
every unseen alcove, the library at night breed stories. I
always thought myself immune. Yet the urge to look deeper,
to order things that don't want to be ordered is strong.
I take another circuit for special collections, just in case
an the way back. Can't resist running my finger tips
along the shelves, feeling for a shift in the rhythm
of the dust. By the time I finish, I've convinced
myself nothing is wrong. There are always ghosts in all places.
I would just need to catalog them. But when I
hang up my badge and step out under the sodium
puddle of a street lamp, I can't shake the sense
something is out of place, a page turn, just out
of sequence. I don't yet think to worry for my
own safety, not really, only for the order of things.
Long after I drift asleep night bread shallow, I see
that cloth bound book behind my allies the slip within
it unameritten in blue, awaiting its proper place in the ledger.
I arrived early the next evening rain, already coming down
in heavier sheets, ready to follow the previous nights normally.
The city's forgotten corners waited where I had left it,
quietly inconspicuous, beside the check in station. Before clocking in,
I slipped the card from the back jacket. The paper
felt oddly chilled, brittel, but whole too crisp for something
reportedly lost in as city as damp as us. I
read the neat leaping script melissagent stamped out on a
day six years past. I lodged into the circulation system,
pulled up a patron profile. Her status was active, but
the only activity was the checkout of this book that
distant evening. No returns, no finds, no subsequent calls, holes
or even reminders sent by staff. The system's nobes field
was blank. Often even with missing books, at least a
phone number or dress gets to pay. Hers held nothing
but the sparse facts of that checkout date time book
I d. I tuggled to the old digital ledgers. These
were less precise, reflecting the years before everything was moved
to cloud back up and habits at the desk there.
Melissagendad checked out other rare items a few times before.
Each entry followed the same smooth script I now had
in my palm. There were other entries, two names I
half recognized from missing persons, lissos Anad whispered anecdote staff
swapped in the brick room. On a hunch, I browsed
the archives incident look at a one eye alone supplement
my own project layer. Atop the official record, I searched
for Melissa gent one note failed to respond to over
due notice, No follow up achieved, dated six years ago,
No further entrers, no contact information. The more carefully I looked,
the more it seemed as if Melissa had simply walked
into the building one evening, taken this book and passed
into mist. I seized on the stubborn digit the column
marked catalogger initials. The entry for her last checkout ended
not with a staff of simple abbreviation, but with an
indecipherable squigglygift dure rather than name. In the surrounding years,
other irregularity surfaced in the ledgers. Names checked up rare
books and never returned for always evening visitors, always books
not meant for circulation, limited city histories, local legend monographs,
staff only materials. The loss rate wasn't its genomical, but
the pattern never stated, only suggested, felt deliberate. I pulled
older ledgers from the battered storage cabinet, handerton once rows
of smudge blue each page, saftage from decades of handling.
In the margins, I began to see a secondary code,
small triangles beside some names, partial dates, and complete initials.
I counted eight patrons whose last library act had been
boring a special collection volume between nineteen ninety nine, and
now each case, like Melissa's, was filed without follow upper correction.
I tried to comfort myself this was urban entropy, bureaucracy's
natural decay. But this ledger's marks should intend to hand
in the process, not simply oversight. A creeping sense of
misalignment burrow into me. I felt seen and dismissed at once,
as if some intelligence behind the records understood exactly how
to let things slip through, how to rub out the
evidence with a casual stroke. The mystery was no longer
who returned the book, but who does not? Want us
to notice. Frustration prickled my scalp. I wanted to call
miss s Redlow, or perhaps Javier, anyone with a longer
tenure here, But stubbornness drew me on the cards, the ledgers,
the silent return book. What process? What pattern had I
tripped over? I sat back, blinking as the overhead lights
buzzed in one near the end of the Aisle Din
for the fifth time this week. The chill up my
spine was sharper. Now my job, I always thought, was
to keep the order of things. But perhaps what I'd
stumbled into was a catalog much older and far less
forgiving than our modern database ever recorded, I sayed, late
after official closing. The sky spat rainside was against rattling windows.
The buildings old bones flexed with each gust. I'd snipped
back into the Wrecker's room, a bat of corner closet
beside the staff bathroom. Before long, poles of ledgers and
staff news at a back issues crowded my table. I
started with the missing Mliss again. I made a running tap.
Others surfaced from the haze of historical checkout's lips. Effrey
Hyde of reduced since two thousand seven, who borrowed a
city engineering Treaties Sandra Kim listed missing her name annotated
with a shaky triangle in the twenty twelve lock Robert Eller,
who signed out a volume of industrial ruins. The year
I started into, no one remembered seen after one page
on schedule for two consecutive shifts. In twenty eighteen, a
staff anecdote about getting spooked in the North Arch Evil
Stacks before vanishing from both Pyrol and Rumor Six disappearances,
some with official system workers were spring likely moved, most
just glossed as inactive, their profiles left open ended. Through
the stacks of newsletter zerox sheets with cheerful update notes,
I found subtle cracks, mentions of staff transfers to neighboring
branches that didn't exist, a welcome for a new attendant
named Eyes, whose photo an ID were absent from any
records I could find. Then nothing. After a two months stretch,
I pattern emerged. Every disappearance clustered near a specific region
of the building, the North Stacks, the reference basement, the
special collections cage places off the main paths subject to
closure for maintenance or quiet renovations. In each case final
check and times trailed off at night. No companions marked
in the Ioli locks unnerved. I dug into the old lockbooks,
where spare keys and forgotten ID badges accumulated like forensic evidence.
Wedge behind the broken laminator, a heavy cassette caught my
eye of VHS, the label praying but a date clearly
written ten slash routines slash sixteen, matching against last appearance.
I called Jaevir, he answered on the first ring, a deep,
understated voice. Trouble on the third floor, he asked, half joking,
power out or just a rats? Nothing like that? I
said to voice, law, could you get me into the
security arc. I have room tonight. I need to review
an old tape, something from twenty sixteen. Long pause. He
sure can't wait for Delaney or morning. Not this time?
That did it. Jevi prided himself on a polding protocol,
but relished any deviation into legend as much as I did.
We met by the control room door, tucked behind what
looked like a caricature of a bank. Vault dials and
all Jaevi's keys jingled as he slipped the right one
into the lock, turning it with practice patients inside old
catharine monitors flickered and rolled with static. There was a
viewing corner surrounded by cardboard boxes. Stamp tark have, do
not discard. He helped me thread the tape into the
battle player. You are the one who likes puzzles. Let's
see you go, story, Javier said, crossing arms, as the
video sputtered to life. The recording was grainy, washed out
in strips of gray. The town stamp flushed ten slash
fourteenths last sixteen twenty two thirty one. The third floor
gallery camera caught along view of empty carpet massicked with
beams of reflected light. For the first few seconds, nothing,
Then melissagent coat folded over one arm, book clutched to
her chest, striding soundlessly between shelves. She turned a glance
behind her as it expecting some one. The corner of
the frame, at the limits of the ancient lens, revealed
another presence, a tall figure, taller than most linden duckas
an expressive face, an old fashioned cut of court, utterly
out of place, not quite camouflaged by the shadows, but
too static to draw a mediate alarm. Melissa hesitated, walking faster,
head bowed, then the view skipped moustatic. The next image
was the empty hall. Javier drew in, peering closely that elevator,
or he just disappears. Watch the time stamp, I murmured.
Between twenty two thirty two and twenty two thirty five.
The picture wore twice. When it's stead it both had vanished.
There was no record of venue on leaving through the doors,
the locks registering no one but Melliss's initial entry. Nobody
here matches that description. Javier Mutter leaning in gaze troubled,
He clicked through out of timelines, finding without prompting. Similarly,
vague figures in the verivery of more tapes. Is this
one of those traditions, like a mascot cost him? No
mascot I've seen, I said quietly, and Jaevir checked this.
I pointed to the final clip, a staff meeting maybe
a year later. In the very back, almost invisible, the
same figure, face turned toward the camera just for an
instant he straightened up, lips tight. Suppose you ought to
talk to Delaney. There are things not for staff logs,
I nodded, but intended otherwise. If the system wanted holes
I would do the opposite, fill every gap. I left
the achav room with the sense at my understand landing
of my own building had been unmowed. The halls leading
back to the office felt too long, strangely flexible underfoot.
The ethic was something unnamable. I returned to my desk
with a fistful of blueprints, print outs, and the thickening
weight of dread. The digital four plans were in complete.
Half of the library's expansion after the nineteen eighty nine
fire remained unaccorded in official systems, but the cidi Arcos
supplied the old versions. I used the copper to enlarge
the plans, laying them side by side and tracing each
spected disappearance. Instead of coincidence, a grim lay out emerged.
Each missing person's last known location was within thirty feet
of a renovated or temporarily closed wing. In at least
two cases, the doorways described in the blueprints did not
exist in current reality. One supposed entrance to east reference
was now well crowded with tall empty shells. The staff
rumors about rooms shifting were echoed by annotated notes headed
on long forgotten printouts near the bottom over a misplaced
stack uncovered one more nomally sign in sheets from different
decades stashed in an envelope marked staff admined disposal pending
every few years. A signal which occurred barely disguised the
same spidery script, stretching under differing names, sometimes with just initials,
sometimes elaborated into a near caligraphic scroll. The most recent
entry bore the date of the return ber curlier this year.
All at once my phone pink, a staff wide emale
subject lined confidential circulation inquiry A warned of excessive pursuit
of non current incidents, urging adherence to proper channels and
minimal disruption for colleagues's peace of mind. The sender was
a generic Atman account, but I had never seen it
use for anything but past word to sets. The warning
was unambiguous. For the first time. Piore crept between my ribs,
not just for answers or bureaucracy, but for the shape
of the opposition to liberate lawng standing and watching still
a press forward Somewhere within the shifting architecture of false
walls and arrayed staff. The center of this apsis waited
to be lanced midweek. The air in the staff ARCoV
was clammy and dead, as if the walls themselves soaked
up breath. In memory, I had received another packaged internal
only left for me, labeled with the same loose script
as in the ledgers. Inside a cough bat overturned loans
to be a shaping, a note folded inside no signature.
Sorting through each item, I handled a stack of bureaucratic
gray paper, meant to lull person into complacency. Yet when
I tilted the glass case beside the oversized map drawer,
a flicker of movement caught my eye, reflection a figure
at the far end of the corridor, too tall, face illegible.
I spun around, heart hammering, the owl lay empty, A
faint draft whisking from the far boiler room, no entry door,
hinges creaking. My skin buzzed with the memory of what
I had seen on the security tapes. The frozen patient gazed,
directed out of every record, but never addressed by any.
My hands trembled as I flicked through morphotage, skipping fast
forwarding across ten years of late night marshaling. In video
after video, the figure haunted the margins, never breaking routine,
never crossing, only present when last sightings and missing files aligned,
a water perhaps shaped loving explanation. With each silent appearance,
I checked the security log of Volais. Supposedly there was
no blind spot. Yet I was as salt around these disappearances,
cameras winking to black wreckords over it. No simply gone
for every earth protocol, an exceptional look close behind, I
staggered away from the monarch, a cluster head filled with
static and cod rade. Everything I'd believed about institutional memory,
the clean modern interfaces, the immaculate records was punctured and bleeding.
It is in paranoia if they really are eliminating records.
I could not stop that night, with rain battering against
glass and every stair while echoing like a piano wire,
I set myself to tracing every appearance of the missing staff.
My own ledgers, double checked against the digital logs, suggested
not just errors, but systematic, careful manipulation. Searching through the
old city issued floor plans, I found proof walls that
should not exist, always opening to empty breck for prince
of corridors leading directly to where each loss staffer had
last been seen, one blueprint thicker than all the others,
revealed palumps, as Ti l Ayer added atop another, as
if the building's fairy foundation was being rewritten year after year.
Revelation slant into me the library was writing itself editorially, obsessively,
always at the expense of those who looked too closely,
and whoever wielded that pen. That eraser did not tolerate
persons and curiosity. My suspicions led me deep into staff
fundless city employment roles, searching for face a tax file
or retirement note for the spidery hand staffer. Nothing, only
that Looping's signature never tied to an actual person whose
life extended outside these walls. As I pressed harder, pulling
up arcaed internet memos with mysterious master access reauthorization for
night rounds, I tried every cross reference the staff ID
and names listed, and the memos did not match any
HR record in any available database, print or digital. Even
in City Hall's records. They were ghost Yet always some
one was signing updating, making sure of the library's night
side remained opaque. I began to doubt even my oldest memories.
Reading over akaved incident reports, I discovered words and photographs
had changed, and known room had become a rumor. A
regular's face was now blur the record over it. On
the master back up, entire pages of microfichi nixes had
been deleted or replaced with nonsense. That night, too heavy
with implications to sleep, I returned after closing with a
plan to breach the forbidden maintenance corridor beneath the north wing.
The lock, rusted and stubborn, gave way more easily than
it should with a little leverage from my toilkit. Descending
the narrow stairs into the oldest sub basement, I felt
the wall's crowd in. No modern pipes, no fluorescent lighting,
just the deep mineral breath of the building's bones. Shells
lined a passage holding miss field inventory cards, often books,
broken staff tacks, everything shone from legitimate order, and near
the corridor's end, hidden behind a bank of discarded metal cabinets,
a false wall door, sized with a nearly invisible seam,
I pressed around the edges, heart thudding, A lah yielded
inside a room unlit but for my little flask light
and the memoring blue pilot light of an emergency fixture.
Overhead tables surrounded by stacks of ledges, each marked with
suades of erased entries. On the largest wall, a corkboire
coveredage to edge with pushpin naps, incidentt print outs, lists
of vanished patrons, overlaid with staff directories and spiraling strings
of red twine. Dozens of ID cards pinned up peach
with a missing person smile, staff title inactive stamped across
their faces. At the margin was a card, and like
all the rest, my own ID printed clipped to a
slip mark of potential risk. My head reeled before I
could lose myself in panic, the overhead bulb sparked and died,
plunging the room into bruised, watery darkness. A footstep landed
behind me, soft but certain. Then the door shut itself
with the most final thing I'd ever heard. He stood
in the doorway, tall and shadowed, cured, blocking escape entirely.
I recognized him, not from any badge or memory, but
from the margins, half glimpsed in decades of library security footage.
The watcher, looking beside the erased and the forgotten face,
half turned my recorder, still in a pocket, blinked soft red,
I capturing the heavy breath in my chest, the low
static swallowing the silence and the first words the figure
was about to ADDA the building I realized was no
longer merely alive. It had finally turned to address me.
He came no closer, but the air in the little
hidden room thinned anyway. His height crowded the doorway, so
much so that the spill of escape light behind him
seemed to wrap around his outline, shattering any hope of
knowing his face or age. For a long moment, neither
of us spoke. In the silence. I could hear a
building above us, the soft, measured pulse of his boilers,
A shufflers putch released trapped there. This smell was heavier here, gilio,
old dust and something flat and mineral, dry as chalk.
My knuckles whitened around the recorder in my pocket. He
spoke voice a low rub on the edge of hearing
you catalog very thoroughly. Each consonant was clipped, manufactured, like
something learned by rote. You noticed. The phrase was not
quite a question, not yet accusation. I swallowed, finding my
own words stuck gravelly and out of order. I I
work evenings. It's my job. Who are you? He seemed
to turn that creery over weighing it names change the orchaesprosis.
That's all you need for now. He didn't move at all,
as if even shifting his weight would snap the wall's
fragile pretense of normalcy. You understand the danger in fixing
records that are meant to remain soft. You see that,
don't you. Some instinct sharper than fear, made me straighten up.
The id card marked potential risks stared at me from
the coke board. I tried to steady my voice. I
keep records. I look for order. It's what keeps the
doors open. My tone was too defiant, and I heard it.
His head tilted, almost imperceptibly. Order is preservation, yes, but
occasionally gaps must be maintained. Too much memory and the
shells break under the weight. You understand that too. A
flush of outrage overtook apprehension. People vanish, not memories, people
staff Patron's friends. It's not a gap, it's a grave.
A moment's cool silence, then his voice quieter. Some losses
keep the institution alive. Ask too loudly, and the story
itself spells. Then no one remembers even the building shape,
the words struck deeper than I expected. I side stepped,
seeking the line between threat and warning. If this is
about Melissa again, about any of them, someone needs to
answer for it. You were there. I've seen you in tapes,
in ledgers, everywhere there are holes. I took a shuffling step,
pump slick. What does the library want? He finally entched
forward into the spill of flashlight from my hand. His
features resolved just barely, cheek burns drawn shop by shadow.
I set deep and glass bright. He was ageless, composed
of manner more than flesh. His uniform, if that's what
it was, rippled at the edges, shifting from a faded page,
white told uniform blue. As I tried to focus. The
library is in a building, he said, almost sadly. It's
a discipline, an accumulation, too many memories, and the doors
closed behind the knowledge again, the formulation, not quite a riddle,
not quite a warning. I press the recorder to my
palm thum, hovering near the save switch. Where are they,
the ones who vanish if you take them, where do
they go? My voice barely registered above the hush. He
glanced behind, toward darkness too thick for my bean to cut,
not far, not always permanently. His case snapped back sharper.
Now mostly they simply stop insisting on shape, to stop
demanding that the cracks be closed. Then life resumes wreck
as settle. Order returns, and the library becomes something you
can walk through again instead of something that walks for you.
There was something in his phrasing that made my stomach twist.
You erase them, that's all you. I found myself blinking back,
a fierce, dumb heap behind my eyes. You take them
out of our history, not just the files, the building, everything.
I watched the words fall unmoved. There are rules to silence,
he offered, even rules to Mersey. I'm only one in
a line. If not me, another, some one has to
make sert in the stores, finish that not too many
versions survive. His gaze held me brittle and cold. You
ask more than most. I looked down at the ledges,
the patents mapped, the circle's traced through time and space,
all leading here to this room, framed and neglecting conspiracy.
My own photal clip of the words awaiting a future
read in stamp seemed to glow on a flicker of
my feeble lamp. I won't stop, I said. My voice
sounded younger, less sure than I wanted. People deserve better
than to be taped over there. It was the smallest
mile flicked at the edge of his mouth, tragic and proud.
Then you must choose persistence with survival. The library only
allows so much of both. He stepped aside, leaving the
way out open, sul wet, just as tall, just as resolute.
I hesitated every self, screaming at me to run or
to bury myself deeper. Instead, I grabbed my own id
from the corkboard, clenching it tight, and traced one shaky
path out into the twine in dark. But even as
his shout a slip away, I felt the gentle tap
of his hand on the door as he closed it
behind me, a gestment not to seal me in, but
to gesture silently, you are already cataloged. I paused there,
heart rattling, unable to decide whether I just survived an interrogation,
failed to test, or merely postponed. The inevitable Footstetch retreated
down the hidden hall and heard, unconcerned the silence that
Preston had none of the usual comfort. It fell charged
and stable, thick with a thread as old as the
books lining every forbidden corridor Behind me, the room lay
sealed in, no latch, no catch, as if the last
few minutes had never happened. In my pocket, the recorder blinked,
its memory chip burning warm above my racing heart. I
checked its screen, still rolling, blinking, a wreck, the red light,
a single, fragile god against what I now knew. Not
every story in this place wanted to be remembered, and
not every archivist survived to tell theirs alone in the dark,
matt clutch in hand, I felt every inch of the
library pressing in, examining me as coolly as any old,
unseen curator. Behind every doorway, another memory, smooth flat, another
piece raised from the hole, a gap where something alive
once was now locked in the stacks with all their
But I was not gone, not yet. My footsteps began
a slow returned to the upper floors, echoing in narrow
and familiar stone holes. The institution, I realized, was never
content to simply forget what didn't serve its memory in
its endless preservation. It demanded something more obedient complicity or
failing that, silence I had made my choice, step out,
record what I could, and life if the building would
let me. But at my back the libraries every bone remembered.
I walked on, deeply uncertain if I would ever again
be the kind of person who left the lights burning behind.
There was no clarity, only a feverish, taut cordid need
to keep moving, to pull myself upward out of the
locksap basement and away from the shape that had stood
so implacably in the dark. By the time I stumbled
free of the maintenance corridor, but of my p roll
tied in my fist, the library above was in full
closing hush. From some splintive corner of my mind, I
realized it must be just past two a m. The
city's storm pressed more heavily against the windows, the pounding
rain muffled by tons of limestone and glass. Every step
echoed like warning, a scrape of shoe sol a jangle
of keys I barely remembered, grabbing wrung out by adrenaline
in a numbed, jostal terror. It was as if the
air throughout the old library had changed texture, crown denser
and slurcer, pressing me from all sides, as if daring
me to find my way back to the world outside.
I ducked past the last soloway to display shells, each
lamp already snuff except for the tiny red eye of
an emergency exit lighted solf flickering with sporadico or removie irregularde.
When I pushed the staff door open, it caught for
a moment, held by some ancient pressure on its frame
that made my breath stick, my shoulders twitch. I looked
back into the black. I expected to hear the heavy footful,
the measured voice, but nothing, only another creek, a gust
that raised dustmotes, and a final rotten whisper. As the
door stilled itself, I slipped through, reached for the light panel.
With shaking fingers. I managed to find a lobby in darkness.
For the first time in my career. I left the
lobby lights off, chose not to signal anything as normal. Instead,
I let my phone screen guide me to the upstairs
staff office, body raptide as a cable, My thoughts tumbled.
Was I truly locked into some antibureaucracy's fantasy, or had
the building everything it held simply gotten tired of being
pride open Every hard fact I possessed the tape, the
erased ledges. My own id flagged like a condemned artifact
in that underground room, was now shadowed by the presence
of the figure. His words more threatened philosophy scored themselves
mainly through my mind. Some losses keep the institution alive.
I reached my desk on the second floor and sat down,
locking the door behind me with a trembling hand. My
parlord photo of he returned book was still there, pinned
next to a staff munk, half full of rain water
from a leak overhead. I tapped the recorder from my pocket,
its dim warm light blinking, as proof I hadn't imagined
the entire encounter. I replayed the final minute instead of
voices static for suppen layers arm review. The figures were
was were almost garbled, as if the building itself erased
the recording in real time, leaving me with little be memory.
In a raw visceral unease crawling up behind every door,
thunder rattled down from the roof. I pulled the shades,
checked the time, and stared at the empty desk chair
across from mine. There was no one left to check
him with Missess red Loough had signed off, Java never
answered his frone again off to midnight, and Delaney's extension
wrote it automatically to voice Mailbook's band for stuff. I
was conscious, viscerally, physically, conscious of being utterly alone, yet
equally aware in my bones that I was being observed
by the very shape of the silent stacks above un
beneath me. What the building wanted, what the figure's warning meant.
These were tangled questions with the answers I was prepared
to entertain. Just yet I only knew there was a cause,
and I had looked directly at it. I sat in silence,
waiting for morning, thinking through every person in the library
had ever pretended to leaves, and wondered which colum my
own name now waited in. When dawn finally pinked itsin
certain way through the high windows, I aroused myself, washed
my hands at I was cold water at the genitorial sink,
and submitted the anomalous return book to the morning shift's intake.
My note was bland as oat mail book returned over night,
conditioned pristine, needs supervise a review, but my nose were
still jangle. I pocketed my map, hid my recorder behind
the first day kit, and left before the noise of
the day could catch up to me. The ordinary ridden
children clattering in the attrium, missus red lufassen over copy
paper felt dream like guilt and dread crept in wherever
my focus lapsed. In that I I realized nothing I
found would keep me safe, nor was there any path
now to forget. I went home to my dinner apartment,
draight drawn fast against the day, my fingers cap tracing
the rich paper edges of my copy of the library blueprints,
now blistered from rain and sweat. The id card potential risk,
and thick black pen weighed in my breast pocket like
a stone. I replayed again and again the last ten
minutes on my recorder, always finding only sibilant static instead
of the voice I needed for proof. By early afternoon
I had slept badly haunted by since the library had
followed me home summer. Even my own shells, neat rows,
baskets of bookmarks, old staff, berthycards seemed to hunker down
witholding themselves from my tired inventory. At last, appetite gone,
I left my apartment and circled the block. I stinging half,
expecting to glimpse the two tall figure on some street
corner in the rain. Instead, I met only my own
reflection in the glass, gaunt gray at the edges. Caught
between shame and obsession, I forced myself to breathe, recite
the call numbers that had always grandered me eight hundred
ninety nine point two hundred twelve, nine hundred nd ten
point forty five, three hundred thirty point nine hundred seventy three,
and counted my steps back home. When my phone buzz
at four p m, my hands leapt answer, hoping for Javier,
maybe even a scolding message from Redlow. But it wasn't
any name. I recognized extension two hundred twenty one, Library urgent,
a press call back, A recorded voice clicked on. Please
attend a staff protocol review at eight p m. In
conference b Attendance is mandatory, no explanation, no signature. My
pulse hammered. I packed my blueprints, wrapped the potential risk,
badging an old staff shirt, and left, resolving to be
early and certain if it would help. When I arrived,
light Poort's eye withdrew the upper floors, blind, slicing narrow
shods of gold across the marble. Conference b was already unlocked.
Various stuff, filtered in familiar faces, cheerful in the one
way of people who have to smile in drobs and drabs,
mugs in hand, hair damp from the constant brain. Nobody
met my eye for long, and it was clear in
little Q's hush tons, chin nods. That word carried through
the day. Crew I was a subject, not appear. Minutes
ticked by mess, Delaney entered last, of course, her posture imperious.
A sheaf of forms clutched like a weapon. As she
took her seat at the head of the oversized table.
She unfolded one form and tapped it sharply. There are
rumors passing around, she said, force cool as glass at
but materials found in restricted rooms, procedural errors, people asking
questions without routing through departmental lines. Every head nodded lamely.
My hands hid in my lap. We are here to
remind staff. Delaney continued that curiosity, while valuable, isn't a
substitute for trust. Our collection, our institution depends on order.
Disorder least to confusion, confusion, breed's mistakes. The words struck
with the resonance of threat. I searched faces for any
sign of fear. Red look coughed, tapping her pen. Chavia
looked pointedly away. There was no mention of lost patents,
lost staff, or found books, only order, only silence between words.
When the meeting adjourned in mess Delaney caught my eye
for a single heartbeat long interval, her gaze pin me
and placed sharp as tax before flighting elsewhere. As the
others dispersed, I lagged behind, hoping to catch someone, anyone
willing to talk in truth. But there were no confidences, offered,
no invitations, not a glimmer of alliance. Outside the street
was glassy with water and light. Behind me, the library's
door shut, solid and low and muscle closing its palm.
I lingered hands and pockets, feeling the weight of all
the vanished faces hanging around me in a sharp, wet
city air. That evening, my phone burst again. Temporary suspension
pending review. Please refrain from entering library premises or contacting
library staff. This is for your safety. I read the
message three times before deleting it, knowing its meaning was
both scolding and absolute. My apartment, once so companionable, became
a blaze of surveillance. I drew the blinds, tight checked
every lock twice, and exiled the blueprints and my badge
to the bottom drawer of a broken dresser. The recorder,
now a totem, remained under my pillow. Every hour, it
seemed I reached for it, seeking evidence. The voice had
left more than static stain. But when I press play,
the mechanism had keeped and skipped, and the tape warbled
with that familiar, defeating hiss. Night fell when pressed at
the windows and whining gusts, I kept feeling that presence,
unseen but palpable, around me, as if the lines between
library and life had been blurred and redrawn to include
my trembling little world. In the hours before dawn, I
found myself sitting on the dusty floor, niece tucked to
my chest. All my careful cataloging, all my protocolls for
truth and verification, now felt naive. The institution had defenses
much older than any procedure, and one of those guardians
had marked me out, corner me with brittle choice persist
or survive. I was suspended with no notice of return,
no contact with staff, and an unvoiced implication about what
happened to those determined to bring the dead till lie still.
I couldn't let it go. By noon the next day,
what little appetite for caution I had left was warm
roll by sleeplessness. I press play once more on the
digital recorder. After a moment of static, just on the
threshold of comprehension, I caught a voice, faint but utterly
present a catalog thoroughly you noticed at once. I slapped
the stop, buff and breath snagging. I had evidence, even
if it fought me tooth and nail for existence. The
recording still skipped, but now the voice bled through in loops.
That's all you need for now, gaps must be maintained.
I replayed the few words over and over, letting the
voice's mechanical flatness root deep into my ears. Was it
enough to confront them? Would any one outside the library believe?
I pulled up staff memos, wondering if there was anything else,
any record I could copy or duplicate, some way to
force the institution's hand. The system denied my credentials, of course,
I made a list by memory of every one I'd
known to vanish. Each column waver details slipping from my
grass bassoon as I tried to pin them down. At
three p m. There came a sharp rap at the door.
I stilled, crouching instinctively through the peephole, only blurry glass.
I hesitated, then cracked it open. An envelope sat on
the welcome Matt Library letterhead, no address, no name. I
picked it up, harpounding inside a single page. You are
invited to attend a special review of records to night
at nine fifteen p m. Use the site's staff entrance.
Bring nothing. There was no signature, a warning, a command,
or perhaps for the first time, an opening, a chance
to force a truth into the lay. My skin thrommed
with that familiar dread, as if the pale envelope had
been written by the shadowed hand itself, spelling out the
risk impatient living script. I paced for ires, weighing every outcome,
Go and perhaps disappear myself, refuse and lose my final
grip on what I'd found. In the end, they urged
Catalog to percee the evidence wherever it led, wore me down.
At nine zero, the city streets were slimmer for pedestrians.
The rain finally stoled into mist I dressed for the night,
black jeans, sturdy boots, the old staff windbrecker with a
zipper snagget at the neck. I rapped the badge and
blue Prince under layer hidden against my skin, and set
out recorder in my pocket for ballast, even though I'd
been told to bring nothing. I reached the staff side
entrance as the city clock told the sonorous nine. The
door was unlocked, just as promised. Inside the whole lights
were dimmed to the color of nicotine an old bone.
I slipped down the corridor, passing closed doors, the tanue
of dust and old bax heavy in air. Then at
the bend by the boiler room, another figure appeared, at
all correct in coat and posture, as if peeled from
another century and left to ossify here among the utezy
keys and broken clocks. He did not move when I stopped.
He gestured wordlessly down the maintenance hallway, where yellow globes
overhead flicked one by one, illuminating a path. Every instinct
screamed at me to turn back. I moved forward and
said the passage ferret, dropping into a stairwell that did
not exist on any blueprint. I memorized the steps gave
a little under each tread. The smell a mix of oil,
scorched filaments, and something sweetly rotted. I reached the bottom
and found myself to on a script door staffarqu have
no entry. The handle turned with a click. Inside was
a long, low chamber, sealing hand by force. Perspective and
shatter boxes were stacked to the brink, honest and about
a table. A chair waited opposite the same manguardian shadow,
whatever name fit the roll. The only other light came
from a far window, glass brick sealed in concrete, filtering
moon into lavender. He gestured me to sit, a complied legs,
un certain, folding in slow motion. The moment I did,
the door behind me swung shut, the latch, sounding far
more final than any ordinary click. He spoke was cold
as hinges. You persist, you threaten silence? Why I swallowed, acutely,
conscious of my every word. Some one has to remember,
someone has to draw the line. My voice sounded small,
battered by both terror and the knowledge that I had
no leverage, nothing but what I'd witnessed, and the splinter
static's god record of his warning. He nodded, both approving
and damning the every few generations, there is one like you.
His mouth made an almost smile. You draw out the history,
He pull at the threads. You seek the gaps. We
are charged to maintain what happens to those who notice?
I press, finding my voice inside the steel wire. Mliss again, Alla, Sandrakim.
The ones who vanished? Are they dead? Or are they
simply not known any more? His hands folded, fingers entwined
with the patience of old oak. Some are assimilated, as
you might say. Some walk out memory race, unable to
name the halls they haunt. Some choose different routes. He
gestured to the corkboard on the far wall, chaos of
names and faces, none of them settling for lawn, twisting
away as the shadows cast their own and stable veils.
You want me to stop, The words were bit of chalky.
You want me to accept that this is virtue, keeping silence,
letting goose stack up and shells where no light falls.
He shrugged. I want you to understand that this is necessity.
If the library fails at silence, the city forgets what
it was. If the walls fill with ghosts, the building falls.
History becomes nothing but fractures and please, I skim the
room for any exit, thinking through the splits and false walls.
I'd mapped and scroll pencil. You are the only one involved.
There are utters. You passed the duty on. He met
my gaze, and for a moment a sadness flickered. There
is always another. But you are dangerous. If you record
too carefully, you pull the ghosts into the light that
is destabilizing. I press forward, desperate. I have evidence for cordings,
the returned slip, the videotapes. I can go outside your walls.
His mouth bent into a line sharp as a paper cut.
But how much will you remember before you reach the street?
How much will your tape remember when you play it
for others? Every record is only as strong as the
institution it fits inside. If the institution decides otherwise. He
let the words trail, and I could taste the risk
behind each one. My panic shifted, no longer the mirror
of freezing terror of being stalked, but a flickering, brutal
realization that Orazia was not death, only a kind of
a murray. The city itself will close it in forgetting
my name, my pursuit, the sound of my steps in
its marble echo. He reached below the table, retrieving a
bat a card catalog drawer as were dark with oil
and age. He slid it toward me, inside a collage,
a locket I recognized from a less against last staff
I d battered at the hinge, A torn byron inscribed
notebook page copied in my hand. I remembered writing it
late on a cold January night years ago, but never
recalled misplacing it. My breath caught. Other objects sat beneath erasers,
paper clips bent into nervous shapes, fragments of broken water bands.
I recognized none of these, but I could guess demining.
He spoke with warning and invitation. Both You can choose
to persist and risk a solution, or you can accept curation,
join the record keeping that preserves what needs preserving, unless
the wrist slip into the comfort of silence. I stared
at the drawer. My own handwriting were turned by a
stranger's evidence that my forgetting was always a risk, always
closer than I guessed. He rose, moving past with a
motion neither aggressive nor gentle. Come further if you must.
I watched as he motioned toward the back of the room,
where a low, warm panel swung open on hidden hinges.
Without waiting, he disappeared through it, leaving behind only the
trailing scrape of his shoes on tile and the suggestion
of lamplight. I stood, legs robbery, well, stubborn, but splintering.
I held the drawer before me, knuckles bloodless, afraid to
leave it, afraid to drop it. My badge, the one
flagged potential risks, sat at the bottom, now turned to
my own heston. As stayed up from the gloom. The
room was heavy with the weight of delay, of decisions
that had laid bricks and strained shapes for a century.
It was then I registered the faintest muffled sound, a
hiss of static like my overcorder, deepening in the old
ducks that tied these secret rooms together. Steps above me,
or perhaps below, a low subchurution rising through the marrow
of the building. I followed, drawer in hand. The passage
was narrower than before, almost too tight to walk without
scrape and shoulders on rough stone. The light flickered oil
lamp yellow from faded gunces, and beyond the walls swelled
over shelves of battered files and deed. Boxes, their surfaces
caked in gray flakes and carb and pinstripes. Every few feet,
tokens were pinned beneath wire locks of hair, library keys,
staff nameplates. The walk was lined with memory, but every
object had the hush of a secret, deliberately smothered. In
the next chamber, he waited, seated now penpois above a
gigantic ledger in pulled in a scallop well. He gestured
for me to approach. At his feet sat more boxes,
some nearer, others so old. The cornice had gone white
and rounded with age. This is the nulus, he intoned,
pronouncing it as it, expecting me to disagree. Where final
edits occur, stores chosen, stores of race, the archive. Behind
the archive, his pen hovered over a list of names,
some crossed out, some half obscured by a smear of
faint pattern of colored ink. I looked at the open files,
my mind catching on half seen photographs, one labeled de
Kin's nineteen fifty nine night Page. In the next, Braur
Assistant Director nineteen seventy three eighty one. The faces were
all wrong for the names. Some match the man before me.
Each decade a variant, older, younger, always with that careful,
watchful mouth and dark, deep eyes. A long list of
rolls maintained as if the same player had simply walked
through different disguises in the libraries endless night, are you?
I hesitated? Always here he allowed himself a single, careful nod.
The library does not allow a vacuum. The position is
always filled, the memory always adjusted to suit. It is
a relay, not a person. Sometimes the runners uses. Sometimes
the runner is chosen for a fleeting second. The mask
of his composure slipped, and something desperate, hungary flooted across
his features. I rifled the open folders, marveling and disgusted
in equal measure at the perfection of the curation. Every
vanished staff member, every lost patron, notes on behavioral tics,
learning styles, criminal records, sometimes, but more often, only comments
like noticeable persistence or tendency to request root files. Behind
the desk, a wall was tapped over with coming caught
catalog slips laid at angle top angle. Some bore my
own name, and I pulled one down, written shakly and graphite,
potential to disrupt ubt So further I faced the figure, anger, surging,
shaking my hands. Why do any of you stay. Do
you not know what you participate in? He grew in
that moment, almost kindly grave. What persists, endurers? The library
is a vessel. It does not forgive, but it does
outlast us all. He nodded at the files, at recurring names,
the memory and its gaps, these structure. What survives? Would
you rather lose it all at once? Or lose it carefully,
piece by piece and pretend you remember the rest? I
let the question hang for it dry hands trembling. He
gestured then a final drawer beneath the desk, which slid
open just enough to reveal the glint of metal keys, dozens,
each with a paper tag, some so old the InCred
rum beyond recognition. The nurse bore my own name. He
placed the keys in the blotter and looked at me
with final unmolent in firmness. Last chance, you may shoulder
the record, add yourself to the custodians, and never risk
a rasure, or ye may leave. Try to surface what
you can know. The odds are impossible, but if you try,
the library will revise. It always does. The air crackled,
the silence, intentional teeth beared. I stared at the open files,
found the rough paper badge at my heart. I made
a choice with my battered, stubborn will, I said, in
a voice I barely recognized as my own. I'd rather
leave than be complicit. I'd rather risk being lost than
forget myself. The figure inclined his head and for the
first time looked genuinely sad. He will remember only what
you can carry. The rest will go one day at
a time. When you forget, the holes will be the
only thing left to greet you. I snatched my badge
and pressed it between my shaking hands, rising from the table,
the drawer of memories sliming back into its niche with
a rasp that rattled my teeth. Suddenly, a whine erupted
in the walls, A piercing mechanical shriek. Red bulbs overhead
pulsed the man know the thing spoke in urgent near
whisper alarm. You have breached protocol. Returned to the known history.
Now behind a chair, a hidden metal door shivered open
in the reflection of the filing cabinet. I caught the
man's shake growing in discinct smear at the edges, as
if already retreating past the line of record, and in
the myth remember nothing or carry it all but move.
I fumble through the door, likes robbery, hard a piston.
The library's emergency prote calls blowed a siren. Now fire break,
doors slamming one by one up and down the stacks.
The corridor split into mirrored passageways. Each step I took,
the man's echoing footsteps resonated from multiple directions at once,
as if every staffer who had been lost was finding
their way behind me, pushing me deeper into decision. In
the panic, I realized my recorder still clung in my
pocket with feverish dexterity. I thumbed it on, not trusting
it to retain anything permanent, but needing the life line.
My own voice, breathless, incoherent, bounced off pastor mixed with static.
In the mechanical house of the library's lockdown, I broke left,
following remembered shortcuts through the yaca's back room, staff kitchen,
then a dumb water shaft. Here the echo of the
guardians foot its grew louder, closer, until my own seemed
to speed ahead of themselves, leading me onward as if
memory alone could carve and acted. A staff room had
been turned into storage boxes, kicked aside, tables blocked by
plastic sheeting, and stacked bundles of musty, unlabeled journals. I
slammed the door behind me, prone, now gasping in the
meager light. The fire protocols had trepd the automatic sprinklers
and stacatto. Arcs of water spattered from the ceiling, mixing
with the grit and dust of ages. I took my
batted badge, pressed the emergency panel, transmitting my own trembling
voice live into an auxiliary staff archive I had mapped
months before, and now prayed still functioned. Outside footsteps panded
the shape filled. The width of the frosted staff room's
window is so wet, wrong for the geometry of the world.
Neck near the ceiling, hands beg enough to conceal matches, tape,
all the tools of erasure. He called through the door
of voice. Raw, Please let the sorry die here, We
keep the piece, you keep the wound open. The wet
battered boards beneath my knees began to sag. The tape
was running. My only chance to push evidence of the night,
the truce, into as many corners of the library. As
stillhead light, the man pounded again, words now frantic, I
looked around, steel toolbooks, a mop liny towels, a control
panel by the door. I yanked the red lever marks
Sprinkle's basement override, and a sudden pressure iz blust rumbled
in the walls, filling the room of the roar of
water and disorientingspace the libraries. Ghost blanched and fell back shadows,
Clinging to his frame, his eyes too bright in the wash,
I bolted, slipping through the newly opened break in the wall,
docking cart after cart, every alarm echoing the building, howling
like a wounded animal, all the while the recorder squorked
its manic feed, my voice, his warnings, footsteps, and underlying
at all, the insistent buzz of erasure. When I reached
the upper stacks, I burst out into the main hole,
hair and coat streaming, face cut by the cold light
of morning, Breaking through storm glass. There, I let the
recorder fall into return bin, hot while knowing the mess
would be found by security if anyone had the courage
to listen. I never stopped running. If through the side
exit badge pressed deep into my coat, I did not
look back. The next day, the library was cordoned off,
maintain and signs covering four doors, crews in yellow poncho
spreading wires and hoses through the damp. Inside only staff
I no longer recognized, whispered behind duct tape and huzzard cones.
My own shift, now formerly pending review, was a race
from the roster outside HR. When I called in, the
lion played a recording new staff number has been disconnected,
no further information available. I visited the administration office, but
the doors were locked behind glass and the signature and
the incession's sign was unfamiliar, looped tight, but in the
same spidery script I had seen on too many vanished memos.
That afternoon, a plain brown envelope arrived at my door,
no return address, only the faintest depression of the library
stamp pressed into the paper. I opened it with a knife,
inside a blank earring a steel tagg etched with the
library's initials anew and touched staff. I d badge with
that name or title on the reverse one line in
ballpoint only the quiet endure. I pick up the phone,
tried calling Javior. The number ran twice, then buzzed dead
red look to her voice mail box now claimed no
such subscriber. I pulled up the library's digital roster, searching
formlyiss again, only to find her entry removed, not even
a record of previous checkouts, as it should never so
much as breathed among these shelves. On the recorder, I
pressed play once more, only the click, only silence, then
a brief bearing of static in one voice so faint
A didn't say if it was his or mine. Remain quiet.
I packed away what little evidence I had to notes,
blueprints of the battered badge deep into a lot box
at the back of my closet. When I finished, something
in me felt skired hollow. That night, I discovered the
edges of my own memory were already going soft. Names
on my private less blowd faces fogged behind fogged glass.
I clutched at detailed shoes, laughter, over due notices, incton read,
but the scenes faded, elusive for replace, with gaps that
only I noticed. I spent the next day pushing back,
writing down everything that came to mind, recording details, taping
reminders to kitchen cabinets, reading staff directories a lot until
my voice cracked. It didn't matter by dusk. I knew
I could not enter the library again. If I crossed
that threshold, I would forget too. I would become only
empty initials in allege of pockmark by the patient for
giving hand of the curators. Still, I attended the off
io's policy reviewed called at the old community center. Invitation
forced attendance required for a recently affected staff, A folding
table and coffee earn lent the rumor kind of bureaucratic
on reality. The face here where theres of survivor's towards
she fidgeting eyes darting from clock to window. The new
session moderator wore a neat charcoal suit and signed the
visitor's sheet with deliberate, elegant spidery familiar another name to
know one another mask Ready for the next night, the
moderator urged everyone not to dwell in the past. We
are stronger together. We have AUNT only as a team.
Individual interests cannot supersede institutional legacy. It's Bob Lamley in agreement.
Some one asked about MLISS agent the REPLI slid through
the group like oyl staff transfer out of district. Please
consult they char if you require closure. Her name was
never spoken again. When the meeting ended, I lingered at
the front, watching as the moderator amiss the lady or
whoever wore her name, that we quietly signed a new ledger,
her hand mistakably spidery. The groups like conversation, all surface,
musty gruntens that knotted at the back of the room.
Every so often, as people drifted out and nervous glance
darted in my direction, I realized, abruptly, amid a pulseive
cold certainty, that the role of curator would be passed
over and over. The library always found some one. It
was an organism, feeding on silence, on cover ups, on
those who looked too closely. On the walk home, my
mind snagged on every odd footstep in the dark, every
unexplained echo behind me, every gap in the wet, glimmering sidewalk.
When I reached my apartment, I could not remember the
elevator ride, only that the key shook in my hands
as I opened the door. I spent that night pacing,
refusing to sit and refusing to sleep, waiting for the
world to clarify itself or collapse. The IROs ran together.
I left the hall way light on burdened. Some badge
and keys laid out in a row on the kitchen table,
its note only to quiet a door of offfery, neither
comfort nor warning. Later, near midnight, a heavy thun clanded
against my apartment door. I frozed, blood rushing in my ears,
and peered through the peep hole. No one. But when
I opened the door, the hallway was empty, safe for
a thin manila envelope laid precise as any library request
inside a set of century old keys, each tired with
numbers I remembered from the restricted sub basement at hatch
was a new and touched employee badge, my own name,
preprinted with a space for a photograph that was already
faded to wipe, and beneath a handwritten note in a
too familiar script for you, Your entry is ready. No instructions,
no demand, only the quiet implication, humming like feedback behind
every word I spoke to myself in the dark. I
sat at my desk as the clock ticked past two
a m, dragging the badge and keys into the sickly
yellow pop beneath my lamp. My hand reached for the
recorder palm clammy, and I pressed the button, speaking softly,
throat raw, this is record library staff log unumbered. I
know I something's gone. I'm losing my place writing it down.
Can't let it slip, not yet. And beneath my voice
ascended those measure staticky footsteps pacing up right behind me,
close his breath in the seal room. I dropped the
keys on to the table. My hand hovered over the badge, uncertain,
my voice, small but steady, finished the recording. I sat
there alone in the glow where that the story had ended,
and I had not left the room. And that is
the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see
you in the next one.