Speaker 1: I was straightening the last of the shelving carts in
Speaker 1: the Saintlized Momoral Public Library when I noticed the oddest thing.
Speaker 1: The mainarch of a low ceiling basement beneath the regular
Speaker 1: stacks had always been a little brighter than night expected,
Speaker 1: the floor covered in oil black lanoleum, the walls painted
Speaker 1: the color of Umbiketo. But that afternoon the air fell
Speaker 1: stale and for the first time heavy with the heat
Speaker 1: of early September. I was maneuver in the bag of
Speaker 1: bound local ship logs nineteen twenties register into the corner
Speaker 1: when the cart clipped a tall wooden shelf and sent
Speaker 1: it rolling an inch away from the wall. There, just
Speaker 1: behind a glimpse the corner of something smaller and mostly hidden,
Speaker 1: A child sized set of scarred wooden shells, pressed so
Speaker 1: closely against the wall it had nearly blended with the shadows.
Speaker 1: The cat's wheel skidded as I bent to look closer.
Speaker 1: A ghostly outline of dust seven or eight inches thicke
Speaker 1: at its outer edge framed the shelf, where it had
Speaker 1: clearly hidden for years. The only thing that distinguished it
Speaker 1: from refuse fit for the town dump was the neat
Speaker 1: evenly a lined row of books occupying its top t shelves.
Speaker 1: Every cover was faded color, those mudded into pale pastels,
Speaker 1: creases worn nearly white, yet none remarkably seemed damaged by water, mold,
Speaker 1: or pests. Their titles presented themselves in dim gold or
Speaker 1: nearly invisible type, but it was their names that made
Speaker 1: me pause. Colonal Waterworks, an account environs of the Midford
Speaker 1: showals the other side of the bell ring, a not
Speaker 1: a recognizable one among them. Even odder were the borrow cards,
Speaker 1: carefully tucked their edges. Poking from inside the covers, I
Speaker 1: reached gingerly for the first spine, the book Migraine blue
Speaker 1: and titled laid open at his fly leaf, displaying a
Speaker 1: faded twenty eight day library returned slip with a signature
Speaker 1: underneath the card yellowed but well preserved. Musta cycled through
Speaker 1: half a dozen hands, given the plethora of stamps and
Speaker 1: hasty signatures, Yet a practical memory stir at the back
Speaker 1: of my head. While shoving the previous week, I'd become
Speaker 1: mildly familiar with the names of books on the library's
Speaker 1: digital catalog, and nothing from the shelf had appeared among
Speaker 1: those listings. I stood niakup, saching, and willed the shelf
Speaker 1: carefully so as not to topple the teetering books into
Speaker 1: the bride lamplight of the main basement. Emma, the assistant librarian,
Speaker 1: was at the circulation desk and herself in the annual report.
Speaker 1: I called her over, holding out the mysterious volume. Emma,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen any of these before? My voice,
Speaker 1: gravely from thus seemed to echo off the linoleum. She
Speaker 1: straightened up, and, with her usual briskness, wiped her hands
Speaker 1: on her genes before taking the book. She paged her quickly,
Speaker 1: and then began extracting the rest of the borrower cards
Speaker 1: for a closer look. These, she said, sliding her thick
Speaker 1: black glasses up her nose, aren't in our system. Most
Speaker 1: of these titles, as she flipped through, reading aloud, Invisible Rivermouth,
Speaker 1: on lighthouses and Fates, sins of the Bluffs, no barcodes,
Speaker 1: no spine labels, even with these of her catalog. She
Speaker 1: loaded the cards into the library's computer, glancing now and
Speaker 1: then at me, and then at our screen. Nothing in
Speaker 1: the digital archive. She murmured, O, K, maybe they're older.
Speaker 1: I'll get the accession registers. We spent the next half
Speaker 1: hour combing the old green cloth paper accession books, which
Speaker 1: recorded with almost comical precision, every legal purchase of donation
Speaker 1: since nineteen twenty one. Every time we thought we found
Speaker 1: a match, the record told us otherwise. Wrong author publish
Speaker 1: a list, did acquisition date wrong by decades. Still on
Speaker 1: each card of her due warnings had been rubber stamped
Speaker 1: and signed off by library staff. Of further impossibility, here's another,
Speaker 1: Emma said, quietly, holding up a card sign with a
Speaker 1: sharp angular scroll reading Jay Gee Tom's twenty years past.
Speaker 1: If these were never acquire had the overdue notices get stamped,
Speaker 1: someone must have shelved them, checked them in, maybe even
Speaker 1: delivered warnings by hand. I wished suddenly that I could
Speaker 1: slip back to my work bench design a device that
Speaker 1: would translate these misplaced entries into something readable. Mechanical puzzles
Speaker 1: always contain fewer moving pieces in people. Still, there was
Speaker 1: no shaking the coal tickle rising at the base of
Speaker 1: my skull. This was in an accident you could sweep
Speaker 1: away on a busy afternoon. Each card proper check out,
Speaker 1: the return history, so methodical and aligned, almost demanded a
Speaker 1: rational explanation. Emma suggested we recheck tomorrow with the older ledgers,
Speaker 1: but her tone was not dismissive. She too saw the
Speaker 1: puzzle's pieces starting to move. I stood back, hands dusty
Speaker 1: and trembling slightly from a sense of invested curiosity, and
Speaker 1: stared at the unhalved books as if they might assemble
Speaker 1: themselves into an answer. If only I was patient enough,
Speaker 1: I'd planned after retirement to avoid idle speculation. If I'd
Speaker 1: wanted riddles with no answers, I could have grown tomatoes.
Speaker 1: Yet here among books, in their natural secret shelf, I
Speaker 1: felt that precise mental clique, a pattern hiding just beyond
Speaker 1: what I could fully grasp. There was work ahead, but
Speaker 1: I suddenly, thoughly, needed to know her stories had been
Speaker 1: kept behind this wall, and more difficult, how those stories
Speaker 1: had ever found their way home asterisk. I suppose it
Speaker 1: will help to admit I'm not. I never was a
Speaker 1: but person in the comprehensive sense. I spent my work
Speaker 1: life as a mechanical engineer, mostly turbay ins some railway
Speaker 1: signal safety, before retiring three hundred miles south to this
Speaker 1: coastal town in search of one good product. Anna my
Speaker 1: late wife always said this was the only way I
Speaker 1: truly relaxed. I told friends the library doll was for
Speaker 1: the free coffee and climate control, but really I had
Speaker 1: missed the feeling of things clicking into precise, trackable order.
Speaker 1: So three afternoons a week I lived up my quiet rhythm,
Speaker 1: some astrols at the Harbor. Mornings spent in us in
Speaker 1: the same cap at fitzk Fay afternoons organizing ruper articles
Speaker 1: and old nautical ledgers beneath the library stone arches. Emma,
Speaker 1: tenacious and cheerful in her late twenties, managed the place
Speaker 1: with a diversion. I respected. She'd grown up down the
Speaker 1: block and knew each regular by name, which earned her
Speaker 1: a curious blend of authority in neighborly goodwell misses Hawll
Speaker 1: board chair Emeritus and guardian of every century old anecdotes,
Speaker 1: swept in and out with crisp politeness. Derrick, the part
Speaker 1: time archivist, was an inveterate joker, always calling the library haunted,
Speaker 1: as theories ranged from colonial ghoststew fictional leaks from pulp magazines.
Speaker 1: I liked him in small doses. The library itself a
Speaker 1: squat brick edifice with fiscal shingles and a warped green
Speaker 1: cupola as stood on Windwood Street for more than a century.
Speaker 1: By local legend, it was built in sections. The founder's
Speaker 1: family donated the original three room corps, then in the
Speaker 1: late twenties added the basement and further wings as collection
Speaker 1: in funding alau. The town, once a busy fishing port,
Speaker 1: now enjoyed a slow rhythm, fishermen and retirees landing outside
Speaker 1: in the morning. Kids cycling to direct center passed flower boxes.
Speaker 1: New arrivals like me, welcomed with gentle presumption into the
Speaker 1: stream of local tradition. I had had the odd rumors
Speaker 1: sealed attic room, a spiral staircase and covered behind a
Speaker 1: bookcase blueprints showing stairways to nowhere, that secrets of Saint
Speaker 1: Eliza's library were sources of gentle amusement over coffee at
Speaker 1: the bakery. But nothing not in all the months I volunteered,
Speaker 1: had ever matched the need impossibility of the hidden shelf's contents.
Speaker 1: Britty order of my days, I would catalog weathered editions upstairs,
Speaker 1: then join Emma for her mid off Indian circulation review.
Speaker 1: We compared pan Theo's for why the library's filing codes
Speaker 1: had never matched between the nineteen seventy three and two
Speaker 1: thousand four inventories, a difference ultimately chalked up to even
Speaker 1: system and let alone a relish sorting out the letter
Speaker 1: puzzles that others thought not worth fixing. Yet the shelf
Speaker 1: in the arc of twelve feet under soil was something
Speaker 1: altogether different. The first day, Emma brought in coffee with cinnamon,
Speaker 1: a bakery's specialty, while we poured over the old borrow
Speaker 1: cards under the harm influorescent lights. Think it's a prank,
Speaker 1: she asked, only half joking. The no prank that would
Speaker 1: last twenty years could remain this tidy, I said, holding
Speaker 1: up one card so fragile its corner as gently crumbled. Besides,
Speaker 1: the signature here has changed three times. See the pen.
Speaker 1: I pointed out the different pressures in the loops and cut,
Speaker 1: something I'd learned from decades of reading technical notes. Derek
Speaker 1: wandered in from the microffish printer hands ink smudged, and
Speaker 1: immediately offered a theory. You've stumbled into archival purgatory. Maybe
Speaker 1: these are the forgotten dreams of the shelving volunteers. He
Speaker 1: tilted his head dramatically, while library ghostfithing their own returns.
Speaker 1: We laughed, but I kept thinking. The more I learned,
Speaker 1: the less to well matched my expectations. It was in
Speaker 1: this town, small slow, used to habits built from a
Speaker 1: century of sea winded, that I found myself drawn not
Speaker 1: only to solving a puzzle in front of me, but
Speaker 1: to understanding what allowed such puzzles to exist. Here, stories
Speaker 1: were told over coffee, not texted. Here a ledger might
Speaker 1: live in the bakery to keep count of the sardo loaves,
Speaker 1: and the shelves might just have their own secret appetite
Speaker 1: for out of place volumes. I am was, and remain
Speaker 1: a lover of puzzles that can be fixed. But the
Speaker 1: shelf behind that heaviest stack invited a new problem, not
Speaker 1: merely one of misplaced inventory or a caretaker's oversight, but
Speaker 1: of a kind of story that couldn't be dismissed with
Speaker 1: a laugh, a chat, or the simple closing of a catalog.
Speaker 1: Asterirsk Emma and I divided the first pile of found
Speaker 1: books between us for a more systematic check against the
Speaker 1: accession registers. I didn't know it yet, but that was
Speaker 1: the moment from which every familiar method. I brought along
Speaker 1: wood start to crack. I took a thin, ragged edgebrook
Speaker 1: with a dark wine colored binding, and found the borrow
Speaker 1: slip inside a crisp doggy, a directingle stamped to return
Speaker 1: by six May nineteen ninety seven. The signature below in
Speaker 1: swooping cursive reader Rosalie Hench. Here's an odd one. I
Speaker 1: waved the card at Emma, who was updating the digital database.
Speaker 1: She glanced at it, Rosally Hench. That's was it you
Speaker 1: to for us, the one who passed. There's a park
Speaker 1: bench with her name not far from my old house.
Speaker 1: She dug up the town's obituary record on her phone,
Speaker 1: muttering about whether Rosalie had been alive to borrow the
Speaker 1: book in the nineties. According to her findings, Rosalie Hensch
Speaker 1: had died in nineteen ninety one, six years before the
Speaker 1: supposed overdue warning had been stamped. I checked the date
Speaker 1: on the slip again. The ink, though pale, was unambiguous,
Speaker 1: with redew twenty eighteen, nineteen ninety seven, followed by a
Speaker 1: scribble apology with the name Delia Staffer. Emma frowned. Adelia
Speaker 1: was my elementary school Libra. She retired in the eighties.
Speaker 1: She closed her laptop, no more curious than annoyed. This
Speaker 1: isn't just record keeping slopinus, is it. I pulled a
Speaker 1: few more books at random. Each card inside was filled
Speaker 1: with borrowings, names of people I'd never heard, but, according
Speaker 1: to Emma, should have addresses. Their corresponded to blocks demologizerl
Speaker 1: era since rebuilt as public squares, dates aligning newly with
Speaker 1: certain entries in the library's own odd Events log, which
Speaker 1: included references to two notorious summer storms, a water main break,
Speaker 1: and a day when, as the story went, the entire
Speaker 1: staff failed to open the library for hours without explanation.
Speaker 1: Derek found us crouched, half lost in the stacks, A
Speaker 1: sheaf of borrower cards spread like playing cards on the table.
Speaker 1: He tapped one, grinning, books that borrow themselves. That's the
Speaker 1: dream job. Don't look at me. I still haven't returned
Speaker 1: Moby Dick from sophomore year. I could only shake my head.
Speaker 1: The more books I examined, the more the numbers, names
Speaker 1: and timelines tangled. There was obvious error, except everything about
Speaker 1: their processing was meticulously correct and yet completely impossible. Beneath
Speaker 1: the humor, my curiosity prickled into urgency. If it's not
Speaker 1: a prank, I said to the room at lodge, and
Speaker 1: these are processed, cataloged, over dueber name still referenced in
Speaker 1: town history. Then I trailed off. Emma's eyes flickered uncertainly.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, I think we have to follow it.
Speaker 1: This isn't a one person mistake. It's too much. The
Speaker 1: puzzle had changed, the anomaly refused to stay contained, enough connected,
Speaker 1: but not enough to explain. I felt the old channels
Speaker 1: in my mind open. Here at last was the kind
Speaker 1: of problem that might consume a whole season. That night,
Speaker 1: I lay in bed, reviewing every detail. Something itched at
Speaker 1: the edge of my comprehension, a sense of a pattern,
Speaker 1: or of something that monoked to patten just closely enough
Speaker 1: to vade all ordinary sense. In the morning, I made
Speaker 1: a list of every borrower name on those carbs I
Speaker 1: was going to ask around Asterisk. My first interview was
Speaker 1: by accident. On my way to Phipkvay to pick up
Speaker 1: a second cup, I stopped for a cherry scone at
Speaker 1: the bakery, mess lancing the owner balancing a tray hunt.
Speaker 1: As I waited, I pulled out a borrower card and
Speaker 1: slid it across the counter when she saw me looking
Speaker 1: at the handwriting the mess lancing. You ever know a
Speaker 1: Philip gi Mallory, I asked. She scanned the card eyebrows lifting.
Speaker 1: Mallory sure had a fishing boat left town ages back.
Speaker 1: I think he lost a slop in that bad storm.
Speaker 1: Let's see this address is where my cousin lives. Now,
Speaker 1: I tried another, Helenes Darrow. Oh, she was my aunt's
Speaker 1: best friend. Funny. I remember her spern Off books after
Speaker 1: she spilled tea on a library novel decade ago. She
Speaker 1: added the slip where'd you get these? I told her
Speaker 1: I was looking into a stack of return books. They
Speaker 1: are not quite listed anywhere, I offered, Maybe just before
Speaker 1: my time, or maybe upstairs with all the dead letters,
Speaker 1: she said with a wink. I thanked her. My mind
Speaker 1: sorting through her responses, names recognized, relationships clear, but the
Speaker 1: timeline's always some halloose are not quite lining up. Next
Speaker 1: a dark green inteek shop two doors down, mister Weinberg,
Speaker 1: the proprietor, peered at a borrow card over his beforecals Boh,
Speaker 1: that's a famous one in my family. He pointed at
Speaker 1: a name Olivi M cass. She supposedly earned a book
Speaker 1: about local shipwrecks, but then it disappeared from my shelf.
Speaker 1: They belonged to the library all along, she said, which
Speaker 1: was strange since I never saw her actually bring it back.
Speaker 1: I pressed gently on dates. Do you remember when this was?
Speaker 1: He laughed, trying to recall. Sometimes I wonder if the
Speaker 1: stories blend library home school. My sister swear as Olivia
Speaker 1: oone to the book herself, but that would have been
Speaker 1: before she moved away. The years all run together. At
Speaker 1: some point a sigh, the sun struck the bakery's tee,
Speaker 1: awning the street live with talk, I waited for Agnes,
Speaker 1: said to be the oldest resident, on the bench by
Speaker 1: the fountain. She shuffled over in a powder blue wool
Speaker 1: hat to spite the heat. Agnes, would you mind looking
Speaker 1: at this? I handed her a thin sliver of a card.
Speaker 1: She held it at arm's length, then smiled, Oh, I
Speaker 1: remember this book, wonderful story about the old lighthouse. Her
Speaker 1: lips pursed in effort. I borrowed it during Backout Festival
Speaker 1: summer I turned fifteen. I looked at the return date
Speaker 1: stamped in institutional blue eighteen odd nineteen seventy two. Agnes's
Speaker 1: brow furrowed. HA must be remembering rum was that the
Speaker 1: summer everyone's freezer melted all at once. Everyhe was ruined.
Speaker 1: My mother always said the library was closed a week
Speaker 1: for the wiring. Maybe it was later. She handed back
Speaker 1: the card, shaking her head. Funny how memory works. Carrying
Speaker 1: her uncertainty with me, I began to wonder if it
Speaker 1: was simply a kiss of shoddy record keeping or something else.
Speaker 1: In the evenings after the library closed, I stat the
Speaker 1: borrow cards on the kitchen table and began shouting their
Speaker 1: dates against events in local newspaper clippings. Each time I
Speaker 1: tried to pin down a factor date, a property and
Speaker 1: overdue notice, another contradiction rose. One book bore a card
Speaker 1: with its return stamp to one week prior to its
Speaker 1: check out. Another the signature appeared in two different hands,
Speaker 1: one fainter, one recent, the inks blue, still bright after
Speaker 1: what should have been decades. Occasionally, borrowed addresses correlated with
Speaker 1: a plot that the town lost and found section. Some
Speaker 1: one reported a family bible or a journal missing. Only
Speaker 1: two finded in their portch mail. Books with a library's
Speaker 1: slip inside. When I brought the findings to Emma over coffee,
Speaker 1: she grew thoughtful. What if the cards aren't a butt
Speaker 1: loaning the books? What if they are more like invitations?
Speaker 1: She shrugged, but a speculative openness was contagious. Later that
Speaker 1: week I invited Missess Hadell, the library's dignified chair for
Speaker 1: tea at my house. When she arrived her silver gray
Speaker 1: hair wound and an orderly knot tree jacket unsuited to
Speaker 1: late summer, she accepted the china cup without small talk.
Speaker 1: I found out a few Borough cards on the table
Speaker 1: and asked her gently about their origins. At first, she bristled,
Speaker 1: shifting uncomfortably in the antique chair. That wing has given
Speaker 1: us trouble before, old shelving, mildew odd drafts, catalog errors.
Speaker 1: Once or twice she traced a finger down one card,
Speaker 1: then paused, lips tight. Did you ever hear the stories
Speaker 1: about books that find their readers? Used to be the
Speaker 1: new title would appear on the counter and the right
Speaker 1: person would come in, sometimes before it was even shelved.
Speaker 1: My own mother insisted a novel arrived just in time
Speaker 1: to keep her from making a bad decision In forty three.
Speaker 1: Perhaps she returned at Laton forgot. Who can say? I pressed,
Speaker 1: So there are stories, foot tales really about the library
Speaker 1: bringing things back, not just books, but stories or memories,
Speaker 1: She nodded quietly. But stories drift, fact shift. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: put too much weight in what people remember or claim
Speaker 1: not to, She sipped her tea. You know, the shelf
Speaker 1: he found is not the only one rumor to go
Speaker 1: missing for decades. Don't ask me how. That unexpected candor
Speaker 1: sent me deeper into the town's archives, this time sifting
Speaker 1: through newspaper clippings and reports of oddities. A rash of
Speaker 1: disappearances in the late nineteen fifties, droughts that broke on
Speaker 1: the day overdue notices palled high, announcements of reunioned, lost
Speaker 1: and found persons reappearing after being presumed gone. I drew
Speaker 1: charts on the library office kitchenette wall, listing every book,
Speaker 1: borrower and corresponding event. Again and again. A pattern emerged,
Speaker 1: only to fracture. The more I chronicled, the more contradictions
Speaker 1: each detail refused to settle at rest. When did these
Speaker 1: books actually arrive? Why did some stories some shall feerily
Speaker 1: mirror or sometimes predate events in tamlore. If nobody recalls
Speaker 1: borrowing them, but every one remembers having them, whose story
Speaker 1: had been kept and whose were written? If I felt
Speaker 1: myself lost, Emma was further along still. She pointed out
Speaker 1: that the return dates, when mapped against town audities, almost
Speaker 1: always fell close to moments of communal disorder or relief Deryck. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: after listening to our latest theory, mused, maybe when no
Speaker 1: one's looking, the library runs aside business for endom memory
Speaker 1: reced included. I was no closer to a solution, but
Speaker 1: I began to feel the shape, the negative space of
Speaker 1: the answer pressing in. This was not the simple matter
Speaker 1: of lost objects. This was something acting upon memory itself. Asterisk.
Speaker 1: It was early afternoon a week later, as a late
Speaker 1: summer scure rattled to heavy glass of the library's south windows,
Speaker 1: that I found myself leaping once more through the oldest
Speaker 1: of the found books, searching for new connections. I became
Speaker 1: aware of an eerie familiarity reading story with then A
Speaker 1: fisherman lost at sea returns home a different man, A
Speaker 1: family missing a locket discovers a copy call in the
Speaker 1: belt towers brass gears simple tales. Yet each recollection, when dated,
Speaker 1: had a subtle but pointed counterpart in real events. A
Speaker 1: fisherman's mysterious reappearance after days missing in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: a local family reporting a lost earlom found in the
Speaker 1: church the next year, And yet the most uncanny detail
Speaker 1: was the temple drift. These book stories sometimes depicted versions
Speaker 1: of town events before the occurred in history. I brought
Speaker 1: this to m. The problem is, I said, flipping to
Speaker 1: a passage. Some of the story in these books described
Speaker 1: things that hadn't happened yet, or at least hadn't happened
Speaker 1: when a book was returned or borrowed, whichever you want
Speaker 1: to call it. She frowned, reading the passage twice, then
Speaker 1: a third time in silence. Is it possible the stories
Speaker 1: have changed? People sometimes write, write, Maybe someone edited the text.
Speaker 1: We check several editions. Every story, every time was printed,
Speaker 1: not handriton the paper itself, of differing vintages, or consistent
Speaker 1: but odd signatures of type, note books sharing quite the
Speaker 1: same font or page formatting. Derec, when we tugged him
Speaker 1: from the reading room, listened and muttered. Ghost stories, time travel,
Speaker 1: collective hallucination, He pointed to the charter drawn math called
Speaker 1: in a sly grin. Or maybe the building has just
Speaker 1: got a knack for being in the right place when
Speaker 1: stories need an exit. Ramp Em clicked her tongue. It
Speaker 1: sounds like the books aren't just predicting things. Maybe townspeople
Speaker 1: remember these stories after something happens. Memory isn't fixed. Maybe
Speaker 1: the stories changed afterward. I began to lose track of
Speaker 1: my own assumptions. My instincts always trained to look for sauces,
Speaker 1: but a place where failure crept in no way useless.
Speaker 1: Here I was forced to admit the patterns sometimes ran backwards,
Speaker 1: sometimes forward. Sometimes I had to give up on discovering
Speaker 1: whether the effect shaped the memory or the memory shaped
Speaker 1: the event. There was no longer any comfort and cause
Speaker 1: and effect. I meticulously mapped each book, each dated card,
Speaker 1: and aligned them to waves of town crisis and tranquility.
Speaker 1: Missing persons found ones, storms and festivals, and things lost
Speaker 1: and returned. Some patterns emerged, only to dissolve again. In contradiction,
Speaker 1: the books stories matched real events except when they did,
Speaker 1: except when they slipped the bounds of plausibility and arrived
Speaker 1: as allegories for events years away. What had once been
Speaker 1: a curiosity had become in my mind a living record
Speaker 1: of some kind of mechanism feeding back upon itself. I
Speaker 1: became convinced by my own grass the anomaly was not
Speaker 1: about misplace or time dislocated books. It was about stories, memories,
Speaker 1: and archave would order only from a broader perspective. I
Speaker 1: stood at the archive cart, looking at the shelf I
Speaker 1: discovered weeks before I realized the question was no longer
Speaker 1: how did these books get here? But what is the
Speaker 1: library keeping? And why? And then, as if in patient response,
Speaker 1: the most enigmatic volume of all revealed itself Asterisk. It
Speaker 1: was late, the lights humming low in the near empty library.
Speaker 1: As I leaned over the found books one last time.
Speaker 1: Emma had gone home. Derrick waved from the parking lot.
Speaker 1: I was, as usual, the last to leave. I set
Speaker 1: about a stack of the mysterious books on the bottom
Speaker 1: shelf and glanced over the line of spines, feeling again
Speaker 1: that off forrum of patten unresolved. The lowest, thinnest book
Speaker 1: of slender lay the bound volume. Unlike the rest stood thou.
Speaker 1: Its black cover bore only a single word at the bottom,
Speaker 1: impressed in faded gold memoranda. I almost left it and touched.
Speaker 1: I felt in a way that this book was not
Speaker 1: for me, but my resolve overrode my hesitation, and I
Speaker 1: lifted it careful, as if turning a lock dial. Its
Speaker 1: pages at first were blank, save for a faint scrawl
Speaker 1: across the inside fly leaf. As I tilted it to
Speaker 1: the lampy, my own name rose and pale inscript unmistakable,
Speaker 1: shaped by a hand that I could my own, though
Speaker 1: I had not written it. I stared, thinking the latter
Speaker 1: had tricked my eyes. But the ink was real and dry,
Speaker 1: almost part of the paper itself. I opened to the
Speaker 1: first page. It was empty. Setting a book down, I
Speaker 1: returned to the neighboring stack, shift another volume for shelf space.
Speaker 1: No more than five minutes passed before I glanced back
Speaker 1: to see that a sentence previously absent had appeared midwa
Speaker 1: down the first page, written in an impeccable but unfamiliar hand.
Speaker 1: September twelve, for twelve p m. Missess Howell's voice is
Speaker 1: softer than you remembered. She will not speak about her
Speaker 1: father's absence, but she will set the blue and white
Speaker 1: cap in front of you just the same. I checked
Speaker 1: the clock above the door. It was, in fact fort weelve.
Speaker 1: I flipped another page, still blank. I ran my finger
Speaker 1: back to the line with my name, then to the
Speaker 1: sentence about missus Howell, which exactly described to our other conversations,
Speaker 1: specifically a detail neither of us recalled, discussing I had
Speaker 1: remembered the tea, but not the color of the cup.
Speaker 1: Before I could close the book, another line appeared, forming,
Speaker 1: slowly liking, floating up from beneath the paper. September twelve,
Speaker 1: four seventeen p m. A blue scoff fluttered along the harbor,
Speaker 1: just out of reach. He wondered, who dropped it? A
Speaker 1: chill ran through me, not a fear, exactly, but of
Speaker 1: intense attention. That small, precise momentablue scarf fluttered along the
Speaker 1: harbor had in fact just happened as I walked from
Speaker 1: the pier that morning. I had told no one. I
Speaker 1: flipped through to the end of the book. Five more injuries,
Speaker 1: each cryptic, some referencing Emma's laughter at the coffee machine,
Speaker 1: another phrase Derek had spoken in the hallway. What was this?
Speaker 1: The book seemed to be writing itself, cataloging, tracing the
Speaker 1: most intimate moments of my recent days, lifting facts and
Speaker 1: emotions into its lines. I put the book down, blinking hard,
Speaker 1: and stepped outside for air. The town clock channed quarter
Speaker 1: past the hour. When I returned, trembling fingers clutching the volume,
Speaker 1: A roughish map had beaningked on the last leaf, a
Speaker 1: rough outline of the library's lower floor, one corridor snaking
Speaker 1: toward a sailed door in the basement's oldest wing. The
Speaker 1: door I recognized, the one rumored by Townsfoot, never to
Speaker 1: have been reopened since the nineteen thirty, stood at the
Speaker 1: edge of a corridor I'd never walked. I paged backward.
Speaker 1: My name remained on the fly leaf, now accent by
Speaker 1: looping flourish of some other older handwriting. A shockingly coherent
Speaker 1: thought cut through with someone observing me. Had someone been
Speaker 1: following the investigation, inserting entries into the blank spaces at
Speaker 1: opportune moments? More impossibly, was the book itself somehow responding,
Speaker 1: shaping inquiries and folded, nudging me toward a sealed place
Speaker 1: none of us really believed in. In all my years,
Speaker 1: I had never been so uncertain whether I was charting
Speaker 1: a puzzle or being quietly drawn into its machinery. The
Speaker 1: next day, I placed the book before Emma watched her
Speaker 1: half tiden in concentration, as with tremping hands. She flipped
Speaker 1: through the entries. Did you write this? She demanded? Voice
Speaker 1: Lord no, I said, and let her look at the map.
Speaker 1: Derreck when we showed him the volume only grin more
Speaker 1: broadly than before. Maybe the library doesn't just store stories,
Speaker 1: Maybe it borrows moments too. At the next board meeting,
Speaker 1: I approached Missus Howell with the book crapt in linen.
Speaker 1: She allowed herself a pealm, a smile. Some doors a
Speaker 1: seal for a reason. But you're not the first to ask.
Speaker 1: The library keeps more than paper. Sometimes it keeps us
Speaker 1: asking the right questions. With the shelf, the carards, and
Speaker 1: nother miranda, the library strangeness had shifted once more. No
Speaker 1: longer simply a jumble of impossible returns, it now felt
Speaker 1: like a living, breathing akv one, able to reflect my doubts,
Speaker 1: capture a moment, or draw a new path to be walked.
Speaker 1: I pressed the book against my chest and looked toward
Speaker 1: the shadowy curiosity burned brighter them before whatever answered this
Speaker 1: place held it was no longer a question of miss
Speaker 1: wild books. It was about the shadow between memory and truth,
Speaker 1: and what precisely it means for a story or life
Speaker 1: to return. I replaced the linen wrap around memorand and
Speaker 1: touched it under my arm, hardly noticing the ache and
Speaker 1: my knees from crouching too long over the ancient stickularoleum.
Speaker 1: Em A locked the main door upstairs. She was now
Speaker 1: unmistakably as invested as I was. It was only when
Speaker 1: we into the lightless stairway to the basement's farthest wing
Speaker 1: that she cleared her throat. Do you really think it
Speaker 1: wants us to follow? She asked? Her voice wasn't fearful,
Speaker 1: just steady, as some one might query whether the tighte
Speaker 1: was going out or coming in. I consider them running
Speaker 1: the cover's edge. If it's orchestrating anything, it's done a
Speaker 1: fine job so far. But I think it's more like
Speaker 1: it wants to be found, or perhaps wants us to
Speaker 1: want to find. We both glanced over our shoulders as
Speaker 1: Derek skidded down the stone steps a board of nervous energy.
Speaker 1: He'd brought a crumple fold under one arm Van plans,
Speaker 1: he announced with theatrical relish. The old blueprints were three
Speaker 1: versions of the basement. I ran them by missus Howell.
Speaker 1: She's interested, but she said if you insist on poking
Speaker 1: the foundation to bring her along. There was a crisp
Speaker 1: knock at the street door. Moments later Missus Howell herself
Speaker 1: joined us, pocket book clutched tightly, walking stick tapping in
Speaker 1: imperious sikavo. She looked first at Emma, then at me,
Speaker 1: and finally lingeringly at the book in my hands, without
Speaker 1: a word. We studied Derek's plans in the lamplight. The
Speaker 1: sealed wing was visible as an odd protrusion, its four
Speaker 1: shaded in a dense cross hatch and labeled Special Collections.
Speaker 1: Decommissioned nineteen forty three. The newer plan simply called its
Speaker 1: storage restricted. The hallway outside was a blank corridor leading nowhere,
Speaker 1: with a thick ball cross bar indicating a blocked access point.
Speaker 1: Emma pointed to a narrow and label rectangle, touching the
Speaker 1: outer edge the approximate location memoranda map had indicated. We
Speaker 1: made our way over feet shifting on the sticky floor.
Speaker 1: The corridor was narrow as paint, marked by years of
Speaker 1: casual abrasion. From bookshels holed around with neither precision nor nostalgia.
Speaker 1: At its end, the door stood surprisingly modest, old beaded
Speaker 1: oak with an iron lock, rusted but still shiny in
Speaker 1: spots from decades of idle touch. Derek Handy me a
Speaker 1: Bob's key leap, and I tried a few before the
Speaker 1: lock clicked open, far more easily than four decades of
Speaker 1: rumor should have allowed. The hinges creached, and the smell
Speaker 1: of a dense fog of old glue dust and the
Speaker 1: lemony scent of once polished foot billowed out. Our phones
Speaker 1: provided a little light. Inside was a squat room, sealing
Speaker 1: lower even in the archives. Perditioned loosely by wire. Storage
Speaker 1: cage is filled with assordid books, folders, and what I
Speaker 1: have first took for the detritus of a forgotten move
Speaker 1: suit cases, scorecases, old bell draws Emma made for a
Speaker 1: bath of metal disk at once rifling through what appeared
Speaker 1: to be registered books, thin hundred and ledgers, each line
Speaker 1: a name or book title, accession day, and a curiously
Speaker 1: entwine column for member or title additional note. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: listed book and borrowers name were crossed out in matching ink,
Speaker 1: sometimes one leffing crossed. Scores of entries were thickly smudged,
Speaker 1: as if someone had tried to erase whole stories but failed.
Speaker 1: I walked the wall finger trace in the deep grooves
Speaker 1: of an ard thumb sized motif carved above a now
Speaker 1: dark whistow, A book spine vertical overlaying the image of
Speaker 1: a key. Something in the symbol. It was barely larger
Speaker 1: than my palm, seemed both preposterously deliberate and deeply familiar.
Speaker 1: On the wall opposite the door hung a mural, nearly
Speaker 1: destroyed by mold in the lower corners, but otherwise vivid.
Speaker 1: It showed the town, but destroyed it. Jumbled street layouts,
Speaker 1: some familiar refines. Certain windows were oddly blank. When I
Speaker 1: moved the form seemed different. In my peripheral vision. A
Speaker 1: third gabled roof might appear or vanish. A stall front blurred,
Speaker 1: never quite settling into recognizable shade. Here and there, small
Speaker 1: faces peered from the paint, but melted into clouds upon
Speaker 1: direct gaze. Miss s Howell spoke, surprising us with the
Speaker 1: firmness of her voice. When I was young, before the war,
Speaker 1: this was called the Registry room. My mother brought me
Speaker 1: here when they requested community signatures. I remember the Maya's
Speaker 1: wife crying, and the entire fire brigade lined up for something.
Speaker 1: No one would ever name this cabinet. As she pointed
Speaker 1: to a file, dwarf festuon de Max held the Reflections folder.
Speaker 1: I was told never to open it, but every child
Speaker 1: A knew was ended once, never twice. Ema gently pulled
Speaker 1: out the folder, its contents stacked and stained. Began with
Speaker 1: two printed pages, simple paper. The head and curling up
Speaker 1: at the line were reflections instructions to staff the first
Speaker 1: line borrower and book mirror and memory. Return only that
Speaker 1: which is shared. Deric now uncharacteristically silent, read over my shoulder.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like cattalogging best practice. I opened Mimoranda,
Speaker 1: which I kept pressed to my chest and watched its thin,
Speaker 1: watery letters. Began pulling on a black page. We returned
Speaker 1: to the place of keeping like falter Us. When you
Speaker 1: asked the right question, Emma gasp, pointing to the mural. Look.
Speaker 1: The library itself is painted with two wings. That second
Speaker 1: one isn't built, or never was. I stepped closer. Indeed,
Speaker 1: next to the tower window was a section labeled and
Speaker 1: faded script to be considered. The painted wall rough beneath
Speaker 1: my finger tips possessed the fitness of stories half told.
Speaker 1: I turned and saw across from the mural two shells,
Speaker 1: lined with thin volumes. Each are marked identical, save for
Speaker 1: a single difference on the spine instead of gold letters,
Speaker 1: where finger prints burned into the leather. On impulse, I
Speaker 1: reached for the last book. Its cover was blank. When
Speaker 1: I opened it, the page's gleam pricceined never written upon.
Speaker 1: Emma and I traded a look of tent wonder. She
Speaker 1: nodded as if to answer a question. Neither of us
Speaker 1: dared articulate. We circled back to the ledgers on the desk.
Speaker 1: Missess Howell patiently scanned them, muttering names and dates older
Speaker 1: than any one living could remember. One of these lines
Speaker 1: is my uncle. He disappeared for three months. When he returned,
Speaker 1: he claimed he owned a hardware store that no longer existed.
Speaker 1: Do you think this room was meant to keep track
Speaker 1: of people or stories? I asked, But it was Derrick,
Speaker 1: to all our surprise, who answered, maybe this whole place
Speaker 1: is a cross roads. The ten decides which memories to
Speaker 1: keep on which to forget the ones nobody claims drift
Speaker 1: into the stacks. He said it with an almost reverend oar,
Speaker 1: his jerk stripped for once, leaving only a speculative urgency.
Speaker 1: There was steady anticipation, now not percissely fear, like standing
Speaker 1: in a machine shop. Moments before the first test run.
Speaker 1: We began digging further photographs, file cards, and slid between
Speaker 1: two dictionaries, an envelope label to don't remove staff only
Speaker 1: inside blurry polaroids of people holding books. Some phases were familiar,
Speaker 1: most not attest to each photograph. A slape return see
Speaker 1: reflections registry Saton emerged whenever someone or some event had
Speaker 1: no easy place in town history. There was a record
Speaker 1: in this room. Most were crossed out, others annotated with
Speaker 1: impossible events, returns of lost objects, family reunions, storms, forecast
Speaker 1: days ahead. Emma sat on a dented metal strewl brow furrow.
Speaker 1: It's like if a memory won't take or can't be settled,
Speaker 1: when copy gets stored here until someone's ready to pick
Speaker 1: it up again. I then threw memoranda for hints and
Speaker 1: found startling myself and entry time for the present moment.
Speaker 1: The mural's right hand faces forward. The blank book is
Speaker 1: waiting return. And remember I looked back to the wall
Speaker 1: beneath the murals only painted hand open palm picture it
Speaker 1: a book set upon it. The shelf was bolted from
Speaker 1: in place, every blank volume perfectly all lined in its cradle.
Speaker 1: I replaced the book I'd taken. It's laid home with
Speaker 1: a satisfying brush of leather onward, and for an instant
Speaker 1: the motif beside the shelf the book, and he caught
Speaker 1: a glint of Emma's flashlight, flashing the briefest impression of
Speaker 1: another inscription for the unhaired. The hair along my arms tingled.
Speaker 1: It seemed mwise, not dangerous, but heavy with a sense
Speaker 1: of wrongness to press further at that moment. Instead, we
Speaker 1: left the registered room as we'd found it, padlocking the
Speaker 1: door with hands that felt as if they'd grown heavier
Speaker 1: with each revelation. Upstairs, daylight had faded into the honey
Speaker 1: haze of evening. Our group scattered. Dirrec left muttering under
Speaker 1: his breath, while miss Essowe pressed my shoulder before departing
Speaker 1: a gesture of solidarity, not comfort. Emma and I agreed
Speaker 1: to meet in the morning. She lingered As I packed
Speaker 1: away Memoranda, eyes narrowed in a way that told me
Speaker 1: she was working at some private sequence of implications. As
Speaker 1: I made for the exit, I slipped a slip of
Speaker 1: note into the book. As the library shoes or dew
Speaker 1: we that night's sleep was elusive. Every so often I'd
Speaker 1: sit up, sure i'd heard a page fluttering in the hallway.
Speaker 1: Memoranda lay unopened beside my bed. When at last my
Speaker 1: eyes were closed, the mural haunted me, shades constantly sliding,
Speaker 1: never resolving into a single stable image. Morning brought clarity, quiet,
Speaker 1: like the sea after a gale. I knew I needed
Speaker 1: to speak to the only person who in this town
Speaker 1: had a formal relationship with memory itself. Doctor sever Hysterical
Speaker 1: Society's long time president, agreed to meet it the library.
Speaker 1: More piqued by curiosity and professional duty, she was a slender,
Speaker 1: gentlewoman in her sixties, sharp weighted beneath the demeanor of meditation.
Speaker 1: Her office was filled with ten records, each bound and
Speaker 1: faded blue. I spread in careful order the evidence before her,
Speaker 1: borrow cards by charts, snippets, have found ledgers, and finally,
Speaker 1: the memoranda she made no move to touch it, but
Speaker 1: watched fascinated. As I opened it. Two fresh lines shimmered
Speaker 1: on the page. You are standing in the presence of intention.
Speaker 1: The pattern is older than the town, but trace is
Speaker 1: only what is kept. I've heard the phrase plays of
Speaker 1: keeping about the library's founding, Doctor Siver mused, fingers sebaled.
Speaker 1: She produced the oldest charter, parchment, brittle as pastrycus in
Speaker 1: brown the time I read with her pull scattering. Lie's
Speaker 1: memorial deserves place of keeping for such records, books, memorials, accounts,
Speaker 1: and chosen happenings as the town may need, whether lived
Speaker 1: orun told, and in service of the community's ongoing account.
Speaker 1: She gestured to in him familiar term chosen happenings in
Speaker 1: the earliest years, Doctor Siver continued, that probably mean anything
Speaker 1: not easily filed elsewhere. But in the board minutes there's
Speaker 1: reference to unsettled stories, tragedies, oddities, disputes never quite resolved. Apparently,
Speaker 1: when the library lacked room, those were kept as memorials,
Speaker 1: but in the thirty eight expansion they added entries form
Speaker 1: mirrored items, and living accounts on the front of the document.
Speaker 1: In archievel seal wax nestled another book and key icon.
Speaker 1: Doctor c was spied it and pointed to the door
Speaker 1: frame behind her scratch beneath the notch, barely the size
Speaker 1: of my thumbnail was the same motif. With Emma's help,
Speaker 1: we digitized what traces we could, collecting every tantalizing half
Speaker 1: fact books appearing or vanishing in the year, after storms,
Speaker 1: children fetching the lost pets, after stories appeared about miraculous
Speaker 1: animal returns, brokers of the burrowers who had died years
Speaker 1: before their supposed checkout. But we no longer needed examples.
Speaker 1: What bloomed in their place was a question of causality,
Speaker 1: of what it meant for a whole town to hold
Speaker 1: or to release any given thread in its collective tapestry.
Speaker 1: I spent the afternoon alone at the far reading desk,
Speaker 1: trying to reframe the problem with a diagram, calls and
Speaker 1: effect story memory ledger. For once my mechanical engineering mind
Speaker 1: failed to satisfy me. Wherever I placed the arrows, another
Speaker 1: countercurrent drifted, always inverting, was seen clear. Emma joined me
Speaker 1: for coffee and we sifted our findings together. What if
Speaker 1: the stories I said slowly on forecasts or even histories,
Speaker 1: but a living negotiation. The town revises its own pass
Speaker 1: not by act of will, but by deciding together which
Speaker 1: stories to keep him much to leave behind. Emma's expression
Speaker 1: flickered with awe. It would mean these aunt just records
Speaker 1: their possibilities, and by borrowing them someone brings a version
Speaker 1: into being, like anchoring experience or choosing which memories will last.
Speaker 1: We sat in thought for a time, listening to the low,
Speaker 1: pleasant murmur of regular patrons. I found curiously that my
Speaker 1: curiosity was deepening into something like humility or gratitude. The
Speaker 1: need to solve had grown into a respect for the mechanism.
Speaker 1: I had uncovered a mechanism less like a lock and
Speaker 1: moll like a garden gate opening in both directions. Later
Speaker 1: that week, Derek called us from the far basement, with
Speaker 1: an a characteristic note in his voice. You need to
Speaker 1: see this. I found him at the mural with Missus Howell.
Speaker 1: The faces so often blurred now were clear. Emma's mine,
Speaker 1: even Agnes in her blue will hath each rendered faint,
Speaker 1: as if by a hasty new hand. Beneath in a
Speaker 1: space previously blank, a single volume had appeared, a painted book,
Speaker 1: its title obscured but I was certain newly added. Is
Speaker 1: it possible? Emma whispered, The mural changes as we look.
Speaker 1: Francis the cess, Howel regarded us softly. It has always
Speaker 1: shown the town as it could be, as much as
Speaker 1: it was when sorry settle. So does the paint when
Speaker 1: they don't more shadows. I returned to Memoranda and open
Speaker 1: to the latest page. This time there was no crypic message. Instead,
Speaker 1: two words in a bold hand place of keeping. A
Speaker 1: spike of realization passed through me, the kind at how
Speaker 1: described by those who witness a natural phenomenon. No text
Speaker 1: were critically explains the book's return. Yes, but not as
Speaker 1: static objects, or as time traveling fictions, or as ghosts. Rather,
Speaker 1: the library is an instrument of invitation and possibility, collecting
Speaker 1: and offering back the memories, stories and cross roads the
Speaker 1: community has not finished. With every marked card, every borrower,
Speaker 1: every contradictory slipeach is a token of the ongoing conversation
Speaker 1: which tale should shape the fabrica belonging, what must be
Speaker 1: held and what released. It wasn't a haunting, nor a
Speaker 1: trick of bureaucracy, nor an even simple folklore. It was
Speaker 1: something gently repeatedly human communal, kneed, yearning, regret, hope, all
Speaker 1: find instructure in the stories we allowed to persist. As
Speaker 1: I sat there, the pressure to yourself dissipated. I was
Speaker 1: not the architect of this pattern, nor the keeper of
Speaker 1: its logic. I was simply a participant to trusted observer,
Speaker 1: permitted to borrow a piece of the patent for a time.
Speaker 1: Emma looked at me and grinned, So what now start
Speaker 1: writing our own entries? I shrugged, smiling back. Maybe the
Speaker 1: town's been doing that all along, Maybe we just noticed
Speaker 1: the mechanism for the first time. The remainder of my
Speaker 1: volunteer tenure passed more quietly, The questions no longer nod
Speaker 1: at me. Instead I became alert small signals. A book
Speaker 1: returned with a puzzled smile from a widow recalling a friend,
Speaker 1: the brief electric connection as to patrons appeared to remember
Speaker 1: the same event differently, then reconciled an older edition story
Speaker 1: between them. Even outside the library, I saw traces of
Speaker 1: the negotiation. A neighbor referencing an old rumor that gave
Speaker 1: this other new guidance, or a song sung at the
Speaker 1: annual festival which had known the most decorative able I'd
Speaker 1: found on a shelf weeks earlier. On my final morning,
Speaker 1: Emma met me at the door with a box of peastries,
Speaker 1: jerking that she'd always known I'd find some new mechanical
Speaker 1: puzzle too big to walk away from. We sat among
Speaker 1: the morning soft light and ocean breeze were reflecting her
Speaker 1: with bright energy, meet with quiet relief on the task
Speaker 1: completed and the events precipitated by an unlikely shelf. You
Speaker 1: know it won't have a close Not really, she said, softly,
Speaker 1: glancing around the freshly ordered archives. We only see the
Speaker 1: outlines when we looked just so. I nodded, absorbing the truth.
Speaker 1: That's more comfort than trouble these days. Later that day,
Speaker 1: as I straightened the shells for the last time, I
Speaker 1: paused at the one now reserved for anomalous returns. The
Speaker 1: memomand of volume, my talisman was gone. In its place
Speaker 1: forested anew slender book, the kind I come to recognize
Speaker 1: as a foundational piece of the registry. This one bore
Speaker 1: a label printed not by hand, but in a blocking
Speaker 1: mechanical fought so familiar it took me a moment my
Speaker 1: own name. I was not startled, at least not in
Speaker 1: the conventional sense. Setting the book on the cart, I
Speaker 1: ran a tent to finger along the blank borrowcod inside
Speaker 1: under the space for signatures, a single printed phrase to
Speaker 1: be borrowed. I held the new volume in my handed
Speaker 1: container for a story not yet told, an open invitation
Speaker 1: to whoever would next seek to notice, to question, to shape,
Speaker 1: tanker a memory in this living arcive. If the library
Speaker 1: had shown me anything, it was that curiosity does not
Speaker 1: always end with answers, but with a continued vulve echo.
Speaker 1: My only certainty was that each question leaves its own
Speaker 1: room in the registry, waiting to be borrowed in turn.
Speaker 1: And as I set the book gently back, I realized
Speaker 1: the library's gift was not explanation, but an abiding permission
Speaker 1: to keep searching at every story left and keeping grunted
Speaker 1: the next reader, anyone licensed to become part of the pattern.
Speaker 1: The stories, after all, belong to everyone who stopped long
Speaker 1: enough to wander. And that is the end. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening, and I will see you in the next one.