WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:06.960 I was straightening the last of the shelving carts in 2 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:10.119 the Saintlized Momoral Public Library when I noticed the oddest thing. 3 00:00:10.720 --> 00:00:13.080 The mainarch of a low ceiling basement beneath the regular 4 00:00:13.119 --> 00:00:15.359 stacks had always been a little brighter than night expected, 5 00:00:15.439 --> 00:00:18.079 the floor covered in oil black lanoleum, the walls painted 6 00:00:18.079 --> 00:00:21.000 the color of Umbiketo. But that afternoon the air fell 7 00:00:21.039 --> 00:00:23.120 stale and for the first time heavy with the heat 8 00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:26.000 of early September. I was maneuver in the bag of 9 00:00:26.079 --> 00:00:29.280 bound local ship logs nineteen twenties register into the corner 10 00:00:29.320 --> 00:00:31.199 when the cart clipped a tall wooden shelf and sent 11 00:00:31.199 --> 00:00:33.840 it rolling an inch away from the wall. There, just 12 00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:37.039 behind a glimpse the corner of something smaller and mostly hidden, 13 00:00:37.159 --> 00:00:39.920 A child sized set of scarred wooden shells, pressed so 14 00:00:39.960 --> 00:00:42.560 closely against the wall it had nearly blended with the shadows. 15 00:00:43.119 --> 00:00:45.159 The cat's wheel skidded as I bent to look closer. 16 00:00:45.759 --> 00:00:48.240 A ghostly outline of dust seven or eight inches thicke 17 00:00:48.280 --> 00:00:50.240 at its outer edge framed the shelf, where it had 18 00:00:50.280 --> 00:00:53.479 clearly hidden for years. The only thing that distinguished it 19 00:00:53.479 --> 00:00:55.280 from refuse fit for the town dump was the neat 20 00:00:55.399 --> 00:00:58.079 evenly a lined row of books occupying its top t shelves. 21 00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:01.479 Every cover was faded color, those mudded into pale pastels, 22 00:01:01.560 --> 00:01:05.760 creases worn nearly white, yet none remarkably seemed damaged by water, mold, 23 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:09.359 or pests. Their titles presented themselves in dim gold or 24 00:01:09.400 --> 00:01:11.879 nearly invisible type, but it was their names that made 25 00:01:11.879 --> 00:01:15.120 me pause. Colonal Waterworks, an account environs of the Midford 26 00:01:15.159 --> 00:01:17.000 showals the other side of the bell ring, a not 27 00:01:17.079 --> 00:01:20.519 a recognizable one among them. Even odder were the borrow cards, 28 00:01:20.599 --> 00:01:23.920 carefully tucked their edges. Poking from inside the covers, I 29 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:27.159 reached gingerly for the first spine, the book Migraine blue 30 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:29.200 and titled laid open at his fly leaf, displaying a 31 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:31.799 faded twenty eight day library returned slip with a signature 32 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:35.840 underneath the card yellowed but well preserved. Musta cycled through 33 00:01:35.879 --> 00:01:37.920 half a dozen hands, given the plethora of stamps and 34 00:01:37.959 --> 00:01:41.200 hasty signatures, Yet a practical memory stir at the back 35 00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:44.120 of my head. While shoving the previous week, I'd become 36 00:01:44.159 --> 00:01:46.599 mildly familiar with the names of books on the library's 37 00:01:46.640 --> 00:01:48.920 digital catalog, and nothing from the shelf had appeared among 38 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:52.400 those listings. I stood niakup, saching, and willed the shelf 39 00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:54.640 carefully so as not to topple the teetering books into 40 00:01:54.640 --> 00:01:58.359 the bride lamplight of the main basement. Emma, the assistant librarian, 41 00:01:58.519 --> 00:02:01.599 was at the circulation desk and herself in the annual report. 42 00:02:02.280 --> 00:02:05.439 I called her over, holding out the mysterious volume. Emma, 43 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:08.400 have you ever seen any of these before? My voice, 44 00:02:08.439 --> 00:02:11.360 gravely from thus seemed to echo off the linoleum. She 45 00:02:11.439 --> 00:02:14.360 straightened up, and, with her usual briskness, wiped her hands 46 00:02:14.360 --> 00:02:17.479 on her genes before taking the book. She paged her quickly, 47 00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:19.919 and then began extracting the rest of the borrower cards 48 00:02:19.960 --> 00:02:23.319 for a closer look. These, she said, sliding her thick 49 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:25.879 black glasses up her nose, aren't in our system. Most 50 00:02:25.879 --> 00:02:29.319 of these titles, as she flipped through, reading aloud, Invisible Rivermouth, 51 00:02:29.439 --> 00:02:32.360 on lighthouses and Fates, sins of the Bluffs, no barcodes, 52 00:02:32.439 --> 00:02:35.800 no spine labels, even with these of her catalog. She 53 00:02:35.879 --> 00:02:38.639 loaded the cards into the library's computer, glancing now and 54 00:02:38.719 --> 00:02:41.240 then at me, and then at our screen. Nothing in 55 00:02:41.280 --> 00:02:44.960 the digital archive. She murmured, O, K, maybe they're older. 56 00:02:45.039 --> 00:02:48.240 I'll get the accession registers. We spent the next half 57 00:02:48.240 --> 00:02:51.039 hour combing the old green cloth paper accession books, which 58 00:02:51.080 --> 00:02:54.039 recorded with almost comical precision, every legal purchase of donation 59 00:02:54.120 --> 00:02:57.080 since nineteen twenty one. Every time we thought we found 60 00:02:57.120 --> 00:02:59.680 a match, the record told us otherwise. Wrong author publish 61 00:02:59.680 --> 00:03:03.400 a list, did acquisition date wrong by decades. Still on 62 00:03:03.479 --> 00:03:05.840 each card of her due warnings had been rubber stamped 63 00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:09.680 and signed off by library staff. Of further impossibility, here's another, 64 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:11.919 Emma said, quietly, holding up a card sign with a 65 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:15.199 sharp angular scroll reading Jay Gee Tom's twenty years past. 66 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:19.159 If these were never acquire had the overdue notices get stamped, 67 00:03:19.159 --> 00:03:21.719 someone must have shelved them, checked them in, maybe even 68 00:03:21.719 --> 00:03:25.240 delivered warnings by hand. I wished suddenly that I could 69 00:03:25.240 --> 00:03:27.159 slip back to my work bench design a device that 70 00:03:27.199 --> 00:03:30.439 would translate these misplaced entries into something readable. Mechanical puzzles 71 00:03:30.439 --> 00:03:33.719 always contain fewer moving pieces in people. Still, there was 72 00:03:33.719 --> 00:03:35.599 no shaking the coal tickle rising at the base of 73 00:03:35.599 --> 00:03:38.120 my skull. This was in an accident you could sweep 74 00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:41.120 away on a busy afternoon. Each card proper check out, 75 00:03:41.120 --> 00:03:44.319 the return history, so methodical and aligned, almost demanded a 76 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:48.439 rational explanation. Emma suggested we recheck tomorrow with the older ledgers, 77 00:03:48.520 --> 00:03:51.400 but her tone was not dismissive. She too saw the 78 00:03:51.400 --> 00:03:55.199 puzzle's pieces starting to move. I stood back, hands dusty 79 00:03:55.240 --> 00:03:57.879 and trembling slightly from a sense of invested curiosity, and 80 00:03:57.919 --> 00:03:59.879 stared at the unhalved books as if they might assemble 81 00:03:59.919 --> 00:04:02.400 themselves into an answer. If only I was patient enough, 82 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:07.120 I'd planned after retirement to avoid idle speculation. If I'd 83 00:04:07.120 --> 00:04:09.919 wanted riddles with no answers, I could have grown tomatoes. 84 00:04:10.599 --> 00:04:13.319 Yet here among books, in their natural secret shelf, I 85 00:04:13.400 --> 00:04:16.160 felt that precise mental clique, a pattern hiding just beyond 86 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:19.439 what I could fully grasp. There was work ahead, but 87 00:04:19.519 --> 00:04:22.040 I suddenly, thoughly, needed to know her stories had been 88 00:04:22.120 --> 00:04:24.600 kept behind this wall, and more difficult, how those stories 89 00:04:24.639 --> 00:04:28.160 had ever found their way home asterisk. I suppose it 90 00:04:28.199 --> 00:04:30.319 will help to admit I'm not. I never was a 91 00:04:30.360 --> 00:04:33.399 but person in the comprehensive sense. I spent my work 92 00:04:33.439 --> 00:04:36.160 life as a mechanical engineer, mostly turbay ins some railway 93 00:04:36.199 --> 00:04:39.319 signal safety, before retiring three hundred miles south to this 94 00:04:39.399 --> 00:04:42.480 coastal town in search of one good product. Anna my 95 00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:44.560 late wife always said this was the only way I 96 00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:47.759 truly relaxed. I told friends the library doll was for 97 00:04:47.800 --> 00:04:50.079 the free coffee and climate control, but really I had 98 00:04:50.120 --> 00:04:52.920 missed the feeling of things clicking into precise, trackable order. 99 00:04:53.519 --> 00:04:56.319 So three afternoons a week I lived up my quiet rhythm, 100 00:04:56.360 --> 00:04:58.560 some astrols at the Harbor. Mornings spent in us in 101 00:04:58.600 --> 00:05:01.800 the same cap at fitzk Fay afternoons organizing ruper articles 102 00:05:01.839 --> 00:05:05.439 and old nautical ledgers beneath the library stone arches. Emma, 103 00:05:05.519 --> 00:05:08.199 tenacious and cheerful in her late twenties, managed the place 104 00:05:08.240 --> 00:05:10.240 with a diversion. I respected. She'd grown up down the 105 00:05:10.240 --> 00:05:12.439 block and knew each regular by name, which earned her 106 00:05:12.439 --> 00:05:15.639 a curious blend of authority in neighborly goodwell misses Hawll 107 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:18.439 board chair Emeritus and guardian of every century old anecdotes, 108 00:05:18.439 --> 00:05:21.519 swept in and out with crisp politeness. Derrick, the part 109 00:05:21.519 --> 00:05:25.000 time archivist, was an inveterate joker, always calling the library haunted, 110 00:05:25.079 --> 00:05:28.519 as theories ranged from colonial ghoststew fictional leaks from pulp magazines. 111 00:05:29.199 --> 00:05:32.199 I liked him in small doses. The library itself a 112 00:05:32.240 --> 00:05:34.839 squat brick edifice with fiscal shingles and a warped green 113 00:05:34.879 --> 00:05:37.519 cupola as stood on Windwood Street for more than a century. 114 00:05:38.040 --> 00:05:40.720 By local legend, it was built in sections. The founder's 115 00:05:40.759 --> 00:05:42.959 family donated the original three room corps, then in the 116 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.360 late twenties added the basement and further wings as collection 117 00:05:45.399 --> 00:05:48.560 in funding alau. The town, once a busy fishing port, 118 00:05:48.680 --> 00:05:51.480 now enjoyed a slow rhythm, fishermen and retirees landing outside 119 00:05:51.519 --> 00:05:54.360 in the morning. Kids cycling to direct center passed flower boxes. 120 00:05:54.519 --> 00:05:57.120 New arrivals like me, welcomed with gentle presumption into the 121 00:05:57.120 --> 00:05:59.959 stream of local tradition. I had had the odd rumors 122 00:06:00.160 --> 00:06:02.759 sealed attic room, a spiral staircase and covered behind a 123 00:06:02.800 --> 00:06:06.600 bookcase blueprints showing stairways to nowhere, that secrets of Saint 124 00:06:06.600 --> 00:06:09.399 Eliza's library were sources of gentle amusement over coffee at 125 00:06:09.399 --> 00:06:12.199 the bakery. But nothing not in all the months I volunteered, 126 00:06:12.240 --> 00:06:15.079 had ever matched the need impossibility of the hidden shelf's contents. 127 00:06:15.720 --> 00:06:19.040 Britty order of my days, I would catalog weathered editions upstairs, 128 00:06:19.079 --> 00:06:21.399 then join Emma for her mid off Indian circulation review. 129 00:06:21.959 --> 00:06:24.759 We compared pan Theo's for why the library's filing codes 130 00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:26.920 had never matched between the nineteen seventy three and two 131 00:06:26.959 --> 00:06:29.839 thousand four inventories, a difference ultimately chalked up to even 132 00:06:29.839 --> 00:06:32.639 system and let alone a relish sorting out the letter 133 00:06:32.680 --> 00:06:35.519 puzzles that others thought not worth fixing. Yet the shelf 134 00:06:35.560 --> 00:06:37.439 in the arc of twelve feet under soil was something 135 00:06:37.439 --> 00:06:40.720 altogether different. The first day, Emma brought in coffee with cinnamon, 136 00:06:40.800 --> 00:06:42.920 a bakery's specialty, while we poured over the old borrow 137 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:45.959 cards under the harm influorescent lights. Think it's a prank, 138 00:06:46.120 --> 00:06:48.800 she asked, only half joking. The no prank that would 139 00:06:48.839 --> 00:06:51.439 last twenty years could remain this tidy, I said, holding 140 00:06:51.519 --> 00:06:54.839 up one card so fragile its corner as gently crumbled. Besides, 141 00:06:54.920 --> 00:06:57.360 the signature here has changed three times. See the pen. 142 00:06:58.000 --> 00:06:59.959 I pointed out the different pressures in the loops and cut, 143 00:07:00.439 --> 00:07:03.879 something I'd learned from decades of reading technical notes. Derek 144 00:07:03.920 --> 00:07:06.480 wandered in from the microffish printer hands ink smudged, and 145 00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:10.040 immediately offered a theory. You've stumbled into archival purgatory. Maybe 146 00:07:10.120 --> 00:07:12.959 these are the forgotten dreams of the shelving volunteers. He 147 00:07:13.040 --> 00:07:16.759 tilted his head dramatically, while library ghostfithing their own returns. 148 00:07:17.319 --> 00:07:20.120 We laughed, but I kept thinking. The more I learned, 149 00:07:20.160 --> 00:07:22.839 the less to well matched my expectations. It was in 150 00:07:22.879 --> 00:07:25.199 this town, small slow, used to habits built from a 151 00:07:25.240 --> 00:07:27.319 century of sea winded, that I found myself drawn not 152 00:07:27.360 --> 00:07:29.079 only to solving a puzzle in front of me, but 153 00:07:29.120 --> 00:07:32.680 to understanding what allowed such puzzles to exist. Here, stories 154 00:07:32.720 --> 00:07:35.720 were told over coffee, not texted. Here a ledger might 155 00:07:35.759 --> 00:07:37.839 live in the bakery to keep count of the sardo loaves, 156 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:40.199 and the shelves might just have their own secret appetite 157 00:07:40.199 --> 00:07:43.160 for out of place volumes. I am was, and remain 158 00:07:43.199 --> 00:07:45.720 a lover of puzzles that can be fixed. But the 159 00:07:45.720 --> 00:07:48.759 shelf behind that heaviest stack invited a new problem, not 160 00:07:48.920 --> 00:07:51.759 merely one of misplaced inventory or a caretaker's oversight, but 161 00:07:51.800 --> 00:07:53.639 of a kind of story that couldn't be dismissed with 162 00:07:53.680 --> 00:07:55.920 a laugh, a chat, or the simple closing of a catalog. 163 00:07:56.519 --> 00:07:59.439 Asterirsk Emma and I divided the first pile of found 164 00:07:59.480 --> 00:08:01.879 books between us for a more systematic check against the 165 00:08:01.920 --> 00:08:05.079 accession registers. I didn't know it yet, but that was 166 00:08:05.079 --> 00:08:07.199 the moment from which every familiar method. I brought along 167 00:08:07.199 --> 00:08:10.560 wood start to crack. I took a thin, ragged edgebrook 168 00:08:10.600 --> 00:08:12.680 with a dark wine colored binding, and found the borrow 169 00:08:12.759 --> 00:08:15.240 slip inside a crisp doggy, a directingle stamped to return 170 00:08:15.279 --> 00:08:18.600 by six May nineteen ninety seven. The signature below in 171 00:08:18.639 --> 00:08:22.800 swooping cursive reader Rosalie Hench. Here's an odd one. I 172 00:08:22.839 --> 00:08:25.560 waved the card at Emma, who was updating the digital database. 173 00:08:26.199 --> 00:08:29.319 She glanced at it, Rosally Hench. That's was it you 174 00:08:29.439 --> 00:08:31.600 to for us, the one who passed. There's a park 175 00:08:31.639 --> 00:08:33.960 bench with her name not far from my old house. 176 00:08:34.600 --> 00:08:37.080 She dug up the town's obituary record on her phone, 177 00:08:37.240 --> 00:08:39.440 muttering about whether Rosalie had been alive to borrow the 178 00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:43.240 book in the nineties. According to her findings, Rosalie Hensch 179 00:08:43.279 --> 00:08:45.440 had died in nineteen ninety one, six years before the 180 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:48.720 supposed overdue warning had been stamped. I checked the date 181 00:08:48.759 --> 00:08:51.759 on the slip again. The ink, though pale, was unambiguous, 182 00:08:51.759 --> 00:08:54.399 with redew twenty eighteen, nineteen ninety seven, followed by a 183 00:08:54.399 --> 00:08:58.720 scribble apology with the name Delia Staffer. Emma frowned. Adelia 184 00:08:58.840 --> 00:09:01.600 was my elementary school Libra. She retired in the eighties. 185 00:09:02.279 --> 00:09:05.399 She closed her laptop, no more curious than annoyed. This 186 00:09:05.519 --> 00:09:08.399 isn't just record keeping slopinus, is it. I pulled a 187 00:09:08.440 --> 00:09:11.519 few more books at random. Each card inside was filled 188 00:09:11.519 --> 00:09:14.000 with borrowings, names of people I'd never heard, but, according 189 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:17.440 to Emma, should have addresses. Their corresponded to blocks demologizerl 190 00:09:17.480 --> 00:09:20.480 era since rebuilt as public squares, dates aligning newly with 191 00:09:20.519 --> 00:09:23.080 certain entries in the library's own odd Events log, which 192 00:09:23.120 --> 00:09:26.600 included references to two notorious summer storms, a water main break, 193 00:09:26.679 --> 00:09:28.799 and a day when, as the story went, the entire 194 00:09:28.840 --> 00:09:31.720 staff failed to open the library for hours without explanation. 195 00:09:32.360 --> 00:09:34.759 Derek found us crouched, half lost in the stacks, A 196 00:09:34.799 --> 00:09:37.440 sheaf of borrower cards spread like playing cards on the table. 197 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:41.320 He tapped one, grinning, books that borrow themselves. That's the 198 00:09:41.399 --> 00:09:43.919 dream job. Don't look at me. I still haven't returned 199 00:09:43.960 --> 00:09:46.919 Moby Dick from sophomore year. I could only shake my head. 200 00:09:47.559 --> 00:09:49.960 The more books I examined, the more the numbers, names 201 00:09:50.039 --> 00:09:53.879 and timelines tangled. There was obvious error, except everything about 202 00:09:53.879 --> 00:09:57.720 their processing was meticulously correct and yet completely impossible. Beneath 203 00:09:57.720 --> 00:10:01.039 the humor, my curiosity prickled into urgency. If it's not 204 00:10:01.080 --> 00:10:03.039 a prank, I said to the room at lodge, and 205 00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:06.200 these are processed, cataloged, over dueber name still referenced in 206 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:09.879 town history. Then I trailed off. Emma's eyes flickered uncertainly. 207 00:10:10.519 --> 00:10:12.559 Whatever it is, I think we have to follow it. 208 00:10:12.639 --> 00:10:15.440 This isn't a one person mistake. It's too much. The 209 00:10:15.559 --> 00:10:19.320 puzzle had changed, the anomaly refused to stay contained, enough connected, 210 00:10:19.360 --> 00:10:21.960 but not enough to explain. I felt the old channels 211 00:10:21.960 --> 00:10:23.960 in my mind open. Here at last was the kind 212 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:26.720 of problem that might consume a whole season. That night, 213 00:10:26.879 --> 00:10:29.840 I lay in bed, reviewing every detail. Something itched at 214 00:10:29.879 --> 00:10:31.840 the edge of my comprehension, a sense of a pattern, 215 00:10:31.919 --> 00:10:34.039 or of something that monoked to patten just closely enough 216 00:10:34.080 --> 00:10:36.960 to vade all ordinary sense. In the morning, I made 217 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:39.759 a list of every borrower name on those carbs I 218 00:10:39.840 --> 00:10:43.639 was going to ask around Asterisk. My first interview was 219 00:10:43.679 --> 00:10:46.279 by accident. On my way to Phipkvay to pick up 220 00:10:46.320 --> 00:10:48.120 a second cup, I stopped for a cherry scone at 221 00:10:48.159 --> 00:10:51.759 the bakery, mess lancing the owner balancing a tray hunt. 222 00:10:51.759 --> 00:10:54.279 As I waited, I pulled out a borrower card and 223 00:10:54.279 --> 00:10:56.320 slid it across the counter when she saw me looking 224 00:10:56.360 --> 00:10:59.240 at the handwriting the mess lancing. You ever know a 225 00:10:59.240 --> 00:11:04.279 Philip gi Mallory, I asked. She scanned the card eyebrows lifting. 226 00:11:04.879 --> 00:11:07.679 Mallory sure had a fishing boat left town ages back. 227 00:11:07.960 --> 00:11:09.840 I think he lost a slop in that bad storm. 228 00:11:09.919 --> 00:11:12.279 Let's see this address is where my cousin lives. Now, 229 00:11:12.879 --> 00:11:16.879 I tried another, Helenes Darrow. Oh, she was my aunt's 230 00:11:16.919 --> 00:11:19.440 best friend. Funny. I remember her spern Off books after 231 00:11:19.480 --> 00:11:22.360 she spilled tea on a library novel decade ago. She 232 00:11:22.440 --> 00:11:25.720 added the slip where'd you get these? I told her 233 00:11:25.759 --> 00:11:28.440 I was looking into a stack of return books. They 234 00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:31.919 are not quite listed anywhere, I offered, Maybe just before 235 00:11:31.960 --> 00:11:34.840 my time, or maybe upstairs with all the dead letters, 236 00:11:34.919 --> 00:11:37.519 she said with a wink. I thanked her. My mind 237 00:11:37.600 --> 00:11:41.399 sorting through her responses, names recognized, relationships clear, but the 238 00:11:41.399 --> 00:11:44.679 timeline's always some halloose are not quite lining up. Next 239 00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:48.240 a dark green inteek shop two doors down, mister Weinberg, 240 00:11:48.320 --> 00:11:51.840 the proprietor, peered at a borrow card over his beforecals Boh, 241 00:11:51.840 --> 00:11:54.360 that's a famous one in my family. He pointed at 242 00:11:54.360 --> 00:11:57.559 a name Olivi M cass. She supposedly earned a book 243 00:11:57.600 --> 00:12:00.480 about local shipwrecks, but then it disappeared from my shelf. 244 00:12:00.559 --> 00:12:02.840 They belonged to the library all along, she said, which 245 00:12:02.919 --> 00:12:05.480 was strange since I never saw her actually bring it back. 246 00:12:06.039 --> 00:12:09.080 I pressed gently on dates. Do you remember when this was? 247 00:12:09.720 --> 00:12:13.000 He laughed, trying to recall. Sometimes I wonder if the 248 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:15.960 stories blend library home school. My sister swear as Olivia 249 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:17.679 oone to the book herself, but that would have been 250 00:12:17.720 --> 00:12:20.080 before she moved away. The years all run together. At 251 00:12:20.080 --> 00:12:23.240 some point a sigh, the sun struck the bakery's tee, 252 00:12:23.320 --> 00:12:26.399 awning the street live with talk, I waited for Agnes, 253 00:12:26.440 --> 00:12:28.200 said to be the oldest resident, on the bench by 254 00:12:28.240 --> 00:12:30.840 the fountain. She shuffled over in a powder blue wool 255 00:12:30.840 --> 00:12:33.720 hat to spite the heat. Agnes, would you mind looking 256 00:12:33.759 --> 00:12:36.480 at this? I handed her a thin sliver of a card. 257 00:12:37.159 --> 00:12:40.200 She held it at arm's length, then smiled, Oh, I 258 00:12:40.279 --> 00:12:43.799 remember this book, wonderful story about the old lighthouse. Her 259 00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:47.159 lips pursed in effort. I borrowed it during Backout Festival 260 00:12:47.200 --> 00:12:50.080 summer I turned fifteen. I looked at the return date 261 00:12:50.159 --> 00:12:54.320 stamped in institutional blue eighteen odd nineteen seventy two. Agnes's 262 00:12:54.360 --> 00:12:57.720 brow furrowed. HA must be remembering rum was that the 263 00:12:57.720 --> 00:13:00.840 summer everyone's freezer melted all at once. Everyhe was ruined. 264 00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:03.200 My mother always said the library was closed a week 265 00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:05.960 for the wiring. Maybe it was later. She handed back 266 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:09.759 the card, shaking her head. Funny how memory works. Carrying 267 00:13:09.759 --> 00:13:11.960 her uncertainty with me, I began to wonder if it 268 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:14.679 was simply a kiss of shoddy record keeping or something else. 269 00:13:15.440 --> 00:13:17.919 In the evenings after the library closed, I stat the 270 00:13:17.919 --> 00:13:20.279 borrow cards on the kitchen table and began shouting their 271 00:13:20.360 --> 00:13:23.799 dates against events in local newspaper clippings. Each time I 272 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:25.639 tried to pin down a factor date, a property and 273 00:13:25.679 --> 00:13:29.279 overdue notice, another contradiction rose. One book bore a card 274 00:13:29.279 --> 00:13:31.240 with its return stamp to one week prior to its 275 00:13:31.320 --> 00:13:34.639 check out. Another the signature appeared in two different hands, 276 00:13:34.679 --> 00:13:37.080 one fainter, one recent, the inks blue, still bright after 277 00:13:37.080 --> 00:13:40.879 what should have been decades. Occasionally, borrowed addresses correlated with 278 00:13:40.879 --> 00:13:42.960 a plot that the town lost and found section. Some 279 00:13:43.039 --> 00:13:45.519 one reported a family bible or a journal missing. Only 280 00:13:45.519 --> 00:13:47.840 two finded in their portch mail. Books with a library's 281 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:51.320 slip inside. When I brought the findings to Emma over coffee, 282 00:13:51.320 --> 00:13:53.879 she grew thoughtful. What if the cards aren't a butt 283 00:13:53.919 --> 00:13:56.399 loaning the books? What if they are more like invitations? 284 00:13:57.080 --> 00:14:00.759 She shrugged, but a speculative openness was contagious. Later that 285 00:14:00.840 --> 00:14:03.799 week I invited Missess Hadell, the library's dignified chair for 286 00:14:03.840 --> 00:14:06.720 tea at my house. When she arrived her silver gray 287 00:14:06.720 --> 00:14:09.159 hair wound and an orderly knot tree jacket unsuited to 288 00:14:09.279 --> 00:14:11.440 late summer, she accepted the china cup without small talk. 289 00:14:12.200 --> 00:14:14.000 I found out a few Borough cards on the table 290 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:17.639 and asked her gently about their origins. At first, she bristled, 291 00:14:17.679 --> 00:14:20.799 shifting uncomfortably in the antique chair. That wing has given 292 00:14:20.879 --> 00:14:24.679 us trouble before, old shelving, mildew odd drafts, catalog errors. 293 00:14:24.919 --> 00:14:27.639 Once or twice she traced a finger down one card, 294 00:14:27.639 --> 00:14:30.639 then paused, lips tight. Did you ever hear the stories 295 00:14:30.639 --> 00:14:32.639 about books that find their readers? Used to be the 296 00:14:32.679 --> 00:14:34.639 new title would appear on the counter and the right 297 00:14:34.679 --> 00:14:37.240 person would come in, sometimes before it was even shelved. 298 00:14:37.240 --> 00:14:39.399 My own mother insisted a novel arrived just in time 299 00:14:39.440 --> 00:14:41.480 to keep her from making a bad decision In forty three. 300 00:14:41.519 --> 00:14:45.039 Perhaps she returned at Laton forgot. Who can say? I pressed, 301 00:14:45.799 --> 00:14:48.320 So there are stories, foot tales really about the library 302 00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:51.600 bringing things back, not just books, but stories or memories, 303 00:14:52.200 --> 00:14:55.919 She nodded quietly. But stories drift, fact shift. I wouldn't 304 00:14:55.919 --> 00:14:57.960 put too much weight in what people remember or claim 305 00:14:58.039 --> 00:15:01.279 not to, She sipped her tea. You know, the shelf 306 00:15:01.279 --> 00:15:02.919 he found is not the only one rumor to go 307 00:15:02.960 --> 00:15:06.240 missing for decades. Don't ask me how. That unexpected candor 308 00:15:06.279 --> 00:15:08.759 sent me deeper into the town's archives, this time sifting 309 00:15:08.799 --> 00:15:11.279 through newspaper clippings and reports of oddities. A rash of 310 00:15:11.320 --> 00:15:14.240 disappearances in the late nineteen fifties, droughts that broke on 311 00:15:14.279 --> 00:15:17.759 the day overdue notices palled high, announcements of reunioned, lost 312 00:15:17.799 --> 00:15:21.039 and found persons reappearing after being presumed gone. I drew 313 00:15:21.120 --> 00:15:23.679 charts on the library office kitchenette wall, listing every book, 314 00:15:23.799 --> 00:15:27.559 borrower and corresponding event. Again and again. A pattern emerged, 315 00:15:27.679 --> 00:15:31.000 only to fracture. The more I chronicled, the more contradictions 316 00:15:31.679 --> 00:15:34.600 each detail refused to settle at rest. When did these 317 00:15:34.639 --> 00:15:38.080 books actually arrive? Why did some stories some shall feerily 318 00:15:38.120 --> 00:15:41.720 mirror or sometimes predate events in tamlore. If nobody recalls 319 00:15:41.720 --> 00:15:44.120 borrowing them, but every one remembers having them, whose story 320 00:15:44.159 --> 00:15:46.759 had been kept and whose were written? If I felt 321 00:15:46.759 --> 00:15:49.960 myself lost, Emma was further along still. She pointed out 322 00:15:49.960 --> 00:15:52.679 that the return dates, when mapped against town audities, almost 323 00:15:52.720 --> 00:15:57.279 always fell close to moments of communal disorder or relief Deryck. Meanwhile, 324 00:15:57.320 --> 00:16:00.200 after listening to our latest theory, mused, maybe when no 325 00:16:00.240 --> 00:16:02.960 one's looking, the library runs aside business for endom memory 326 00:16:03.039 --> 00:16:06.320 reced included. I was no closer to a solution, but 327 00:16:06.360 --> 00:16:08.279 I began to feel the shape, the negative space of 328 00:16:08.320 --> 00:16:10.919 the answer pressing in. This was not the simple matter 329 00:16:10.960 --> 00:16:15.720 of lost objects. This was something acting upon memory itself. Asterisk. 330 00:16:16.279 --> 00:16:18.360 It was early afternoon a week later, as a late 331 00:16:18.360 --> 00:16:21.240 summer scure rattled to heavy glass of the library's south windows, 332 00:16:21.279 --> 00:16:23.600 that I found myself leaping once more through the oldest 333 00:16:23.639 --> 00:16:26.960 of the found books, searching for new connections. I became 334 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:29.440 aware of an eerie familiarity reading story with then A 335 00:16:29.480 --> 00:16:32.120 fisherman lost at sea returns home a different man, A 336 00:16:32.159 --> 00:16:34.559 family missing a locket discovers a copy call in the 337 00:16:34.559 --> 00:16:38.600 belt towers brass gears simple tales. Yet each recollection, when dated, 338 00:16:38.600 --> 00:16:41.039 had a subtle but pointed counterpart in real events. A 339 00:16:41.080 --> 00:16:44.240 fisherman's mysterious reappearance after days missing in nineteen forty eight, 340 00:16:44.320 --> 00:16:46.480 a local family reporting a lost earlom found in the 341 00:16:46.600 --> 00:16:49.639 church the next year, And yet the most uncanny detail 342 00:16:49.679 --> 00:16:52.519 was the temple drift. These book stories sometimes depicted versions 343 00:16:52.519 --> 00:16:55.320 of town events before the occurred in history. I brought 344 00:16:55.360 --> 00:16:58.519 this to m. The problem is, I said, flipping to 345 00:16:58.600 --> 00:17:00.960 a passage. Some of the story in these books described 346 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:03.759 things that hadn't happened yet, or at least hadn't happened 347 00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:05.960 when a book was returned or borrowed, whichever you want 348 00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:08.920 to call it. She frowned, reading the passage twice, then 349 00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:12.119 a third time in silence. Is it possible the stories 350 00:17:12.119 --> 00:17:15.759 have changed? People sometimes write, write, Maybe someone edited the text. 351 00:17:16.319 --> 00:17:19.240 We check several editions. Every story, every time was printed, 352 00:17:19.319 --> 00:17:23.160 not handriton the paper itself, of differing vintages, or consistent 353 00:17:23.200 --> 00:17:25.519 but odd signatures of type, note books sharing quite the 354 00:17:25.559 --> 00:17:28.720 same font or page formatting. Derec, when we tugged him 355 00:17:28.720 --> 00:17:31.960 from the reading room, listened and muttered. Ghost stories, time travel, 356 00:17:32.039 --> 00:17:35.079 collective hallucination, He pointed to the charter drawn math called 357 00:17:35.079 --> 00:17:37.640 in a sly grin. Or maybe the building has just 358 00:17:37.680 --> 00:17:39.440 got a knack for being in the right place when 359 00:17:39.480 --> 00:17:42.960 stories need an exit. Ramp Em clicked her tongue. It 360 00:17:43.039 --> 00:17:45.720 sounds like the books aren't just predicting things. Maybe townspeople 361 00:17:45.799 --> 00:17:49.319 remember these stories after something happens. Memory isn't fixed. Maybe 362 00:17:49.319 --> 00:17:52.319 the stories changed afterward. I began to lose track of 363 00:17:52.319 --> 00:17:55.759 my own assumptions. My instincts always trained to look for sauces, 364 00:17:55.880 --> 00:17:57.680 but a place where failure crept in no way useless. 365 00:17:57.720 --> 00:18:01.200 Here I was forced to admit the patterns sometimes ran backwards, 366 00:18:01.240 --> 00:18:04.759 sometimes forward. Sometimes I had to give up on discovering 367 00:18:04.759 --> 00:18:07.000 whether the effect shaped the memory or the memory shaped 368 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:09.759 the event. There was no longer any comfort and cause 369 00:18:09.799 --> 00:18:13.480 and effect. I meticulously mapped each book, each dated card, 370 00:18:13.559 --> 00:18:15.960 and aligned them to waves of town crisis and tranquility. 371 00:18:15.960 --> 00:18:19.359 Missing persons found ones, storms and festivals, and things lost 372 00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:23.160 and returned. Some patterns emerged, only to dissolve again. In contradiction, 373 00:18:23.319 --> 00:18:25.680 the books stories matched real events except when they did, 374 00:18:25.839 --> 00:18:28.279 except when they slipped the bounds of plausibility and arrived 375 00:18:28.279 --> 00:18:31.359 as allegories for events years away. What had once been 376 00:18:31.359 --> 00:18:34.400 a curiosity had become in my mind a living record 377 00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:37.359 of some kind of mechanism feeding back upon itself. I 378 00:18:37.440 --> 00:18:40.000 became convinced by my own grass the anomaly was not 379 00:18:40.039 --> 00:18:44.119 about misplace or time dislocated books. It was about stories, memories, 380 00:18:44.119 --> 00:18:46.839 and archave would order only from a broader perspective. I 381 00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:48.839 stood at the archive cart, looking at the shelf I 382 00:18:48.880 --> 00:18:52.079 discovered weeks before I realized the question was no longer 383 00:18:52.079 --> 00:18:53.759 how did these books get here? But what is the 384 00:18:53.839 --> 00:18:57.559 library keeping? And why? And then, as if in patient response, 385 00:18:57.640 --> 00:19:01.720 the most enigmatic volume of all revealed itself Asterisk. It 386 00:19:01.839 --> 00:19:04.160 was late, the lights humming low in the near empty library. 387 00:19:04.160 --> 00:19:06.119 As I leaned over the found books one last time. 388 00:19:06.680 --> 00:19:08.880 Emma had gone home. Derrick waved from the parking lot. 389 00:19:09.039 --> 00:19:11.880 I was, as usual, the last to leave. I set 390 00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:14.000 about a stack of the mysterious books on the bottom 391 00:19:14.039 --> 00:19:16.680 shelf and glanced over the line of spines, feeling again 392 00:19:16.720 --> 00:19:20.039 that off forrum of patten unresolved. The lowest, thinnest book 393 00:19:20.079 --> 00:19:22.480 of slender lay the bound volume. Unlike the rest stood thou. 394 00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:25.519 Its black cover bore only a single word at the bottom, 395 00:19:25.519 --> 00:19:29.400 impressed in faded gold memoranda. I almost left it and touched. 396 00:19:29.400 --> 00:19:31.079 I felt in a way that this book was not 397 00:19:31.119 --> 00:19:33.960 for me, but my resolve overrode my hesitation, and I 398 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:36.759 lifted it careful, as if turning a lock dial. Its 399 00:19:36.759 --> 00:19:39.440 pages at first were blank, save for a faint scrawl 400 00:19:39.440 --> 00:19:42.079 across the inside fly leaf. As I tilted it to 401 00:19:42.079 --> 00:19:44.799