Speaker 1: Audio logue One time two twelve A m began entry.
I always told myself I wasn't prone to nerves. Maybe
that's a lie we all tell at the start, still
three months in, and something about the university Uckhaus at
midnight lends itself to its storytelling. If nothing else, it
isn't just the silence either. It's the way for reescent, tubestaughter,
and grown overhead, never quite lighting the furthest corners of
the stacks. You hear things, shuffles, sudden creaks, a fragment
of breatha, could be your own echoing off a bookcase,
or something else entirely. I settle into my routine inventoring returns,
usually nothing out of the ordinary. But to night a
minor accident, the kind no one would remember if it
weren't for what came next. My pen slipped from my stack,
rolled into the gloom beneath shelves seven Sea, just past
the periodicals that no one reads any more, Classic, right,
I muttered, set down my clipboard and duck low, trying
not to breathe in the thick, musty flavor of old
box glue and nusprint. Down beneath the shelving, my knees
against cold tile. I felt around with my fingers. The
cheap plastic rectangle of my lucky pen turned up against
something flatter wood, maybe wedged half under a heavy shelf.
I jostled it free after breaking a nail, cursing softly.
It wasn't a lost book, not as I expected. It
was the corner of a slim cloth bound volume, mounted
with dust and spider worps, the gold print on its
spine almost illegible. I found the pages tentatively, expecting nothing
but pay. A slip of card fell free, landing at
my feet. A check out card, but not the usual sort.
This one was old, and possibly all with a faded
university crest. In columns for names, the ink somehow barely dulled.
I squinted in the bare trickle of light, wiping gram
away free names, all in a looping, almost in tea canned.
I recognized none at first, but one stuck with me,
Stacy Arroway. It sounded familiar a name from the phials
and orientation. The ones marked incident reports seventy six minutes
seventy seven. The last it stamped October tenth, nineteen seventy six,
four days before the legendary incident that shut the stacks
for most of a year. The card's surface was strangely pristine,
the handroid and clear, The paper only fox at the edges,
as if no air, no fingers, had touched it in
all these decades. Somewhere above a footfall, the old library
floors always grown, but this was heavier measured. I eased up,
clutching the card, heart stalling in some old childish rhythm.
The ambient hum of the building felt off in the
wake of the step behind me. Near the elevator lobby,
a door gave a rusty cry and swan gently. The
main coock in the wall and ugly brown relictift eighteen seconds,
tik tok, tik tok, each louder than the last. I'd
never win that clock, and to my recollection, neither had
any one else. I'd always thought it broken. I found
myself reading the checkoutless aloud, just above a whisper Stacy, Arroway, Calvin, stack, door,
main rubber. The names twisted in my throat, each in
date progressed forward, a pattern, methodical, almost ritual. The final entry,
perfectly space was in a different pen day after, with
a single line drawn beneath no return date listed, The
record stopped cold, the air in the stacks thickened, the
weight of every unspoken thing hanging between old paper and paint.
I thumbed the card round, my finger tips over the
last line and lessened, really listened to the choir beyond
my whisper. For an awful moment, I was certain I
wasn't alone cross the room. A shadow shifted, or maybe
it was just the lights again, but the silence felt poised,
or almost watchful, as if the stacks themselves were listening,
or have been waiting for me to find this, waiting
for some one to remember and entry Audio log two time,
eight fifteen a m. Morning shift. There's something unassuming about
campus at six forty five, when the mist still clings
to the bell tower. In the world a sugar glazed
in Falk. I usually ride my bike, not because it's coal,
but because the bus doesn't run this early. The library,
squatting behind a row of boxwoods, always looks a little
more forbudding. On days like this, my routine is almost
comforting in its repetition. Drift in fumble my badge, duck
through the staff entrance, the elevator wheezy and slow delivers
me and my thermist to the sub basement, deep enough
that my phone reception vanishes half way down. Most mornings
I bump into ms. He lay the afternoon knochivist, silver
hair pursed, lips, voices thin. She always glares at the
coffee breath and lectures me if I'm late, even by
a minute. I'm polite, I try. I'm new after all,
I say good morning, sometimes get a grunt, occasionally a warning.
These stacks are all keep to the axis routes. Records
go missing if you wander. After dropping my tote and
shivering awake at my desk, terminal number six, the one
with the sticky d keip, I start booting up the system.
The air, even with steale heat pumping through the vents,
is brisk. Fas are stacked everywhere, return locks, shell free lists,
never quite enough room to move your chair freely. The
place always smells of cleaning fluid and aging glue. I
moved here for graduates goal a half scholarship cemented by
this job on tuditionary mission. I barely comprehend. The pay
isn't much, but it's steady, and the IROs fit around
my coursework. My apartment is two dozen blocks north on
a street where every window is blind with miltyw I
have folding chairs, a mattress on the floor, and a
thrift store kettle that groans like a rusty animal. Every
morning when I make tea, the isolation is real. Friends
back home are distant now, and the walks, study kids
and so peculation vanished. Before dusk, I hardly see anyone
except my brisk supervisor, a mess Healey, the janitor of Varrow,
who keeps to himself, always muttering in Spanish as he
polishes the upper level brass, and Lydia, the admin assistant upstairs.
Lydia is the only one who volunteers a smile, even
if her nervous energy sometimes makes her hand shake when
she brings down into the butt mental mail. She's young too,
maybe a little older than me, and we sometimes exchange
memes and leftovers at noon, Huddled in the darkness the
staff called the groaning desk. There are echoes of the
library's golden age everywhere. Dusty black and white photos line
the break room, all creased with thumb prints. Students pack
shoulder to shoulder, her study ins protesting cuts waving books
and protest banners. You'd never recognize those scenes. Now everything's faded,
the marble cracked, the carpets raveling at the corners, a
special sense of energy lawn since leached away. One architectural
oddity has always drawn my attention. The heavy, sun bleached
door in the back corridor off the sub basement. One
mark authorized personnel. Only a thick pad luck newer than
the hinges, secures it. No one, not even Heey ever
scenes to pass through it. Sometimes late at night, I
linger on my way to clock out and stare at
the chip paint and faded warning sign. There's no buzz
of activity behind it shows silence, thick and expectant. I
never really thought much of victob as a job, but
lately I can't shake the feeling that this place demands respect,
that stores not just books, but secrets. On evenings like
last night, when the building empties and I'm shelving in
that old cableic quiet, no start to creep in, but
I remind myself why I am here. Pay the rent,
stack the books, get my degree, and move on. There
has to be enough. End entry audio log three times
nine fifty four p m finish cleaning the reference room.
After a while, date based work all blurs together, call numbers,
accession code states. But to night the monotony brook when
I noticed another renivult activity. Looked in the electronic ledger
a series of minor spikes in the nineteen seventies. The
database fly to high access to a handful of ACNE
text and microfilm. The oddist part each by corresponded with
the same three patient names. My eyes caught on Stacy Raway.
I checked the checkered card again, same person in orientation.
The head of security gave us one of those bright,
forced fun lectures about safety. A legend as of three
GRUD students disappeared one autumn, wild speculation, love triangles, exam stress, please,
files closed, nothing ever found, staff had snickered. No one
seemed to take it seriously, but here was a real record.
Their librarytivity surged, then nothing. Out of curiosity, I pulled
out the lost materials reports from the same window. Another coincidence.
Each missing student had reported losing a building key within
a year, pride to vanishing. Strange that such an ordinary
detail stuck out so strongly. Now layered over the a
coven old unsolved loss. I started noticing other things too unusual.
Where in the marble at the base of the staircase
behind shelving B. He wouldn't see it unless he planted
your palm for balance, right where the paint looks grubbed
shiny at than dust elsewhere, almost as if a hidden
passage or some long unused door opened there. Or often
before settling back into anonymity, I keep thinking back to
something weirdly persistent in old archive policies. These rules always repeated.
Accessions to restricted material must occur in proper order, never
specified what order meant. I asked a mess at heally once.
She just said, procedures are in the manual. No shortcuts.
Don't get clever with the archives. No manual ever described
the order. It feels like there's a deeper pattern, a
set of rules buried just below the surface. Every discovery
circles back to that. The old names, lost keys, the
unexplained excess echos, worn walls were hands lingered too long.
Each clue is a thread, and the threads are starting
to not in my mind and entry audio log four
time one forty one a M two Night's Tasks, shelf readings,
night rous shelving cross reference in missing items. I took
to cobbing out old accession numbers from the seventies, just
to check if they aligned with lost items. Most matched
a stuck drawer, a misshelf, periodical. But the patterns start
a tangling together. Books, strange hams, send names. What the
logs never explained was why these things happened in clusters,
always after midnight, never before. I started a private note
book just in case. Maybe it's paranoid. But these details,
the old chickut carved, the key reports keep looping back
on each other. I stobbed Lydia in the lunch hale
before her shift ended, trying to sound casual. Have you
ever noticed files going missing? What incidant reports that don't
add up? She flint twisting her fingers in her scarf.
She said, though some things disappear because nobody's supposed to
keep looking, Just be careful. There are records that nobody
asks for it anymore. Some staff get touchy if you
were too interested. Her voice trailed off. She fiddled with
her phone, ended the conversation almost before it began. Back
in the sub level atroll, faculty files security locks for
October nineteen seventy six had entire pages blacked out in
thick strokes. In an old staff for Doir dated nineteen
seventy four, I saw a younger ms heely face stone
under a pointed bob, standing at the end of a
group beside a row of thickly banned volumes. She'd been
here longer than any one else I'd met. Then the
building began to misbehave. The lights dimmed and pulsed overhead
a brief brown out the internal and which hadn't work
since before. My hire spotted alive for three seconds static,
then a shushing sound like someone drawing a slow breathright
by the mic. I froze, half afraid someone was watching
through the cameras, even though half the security fees blink out.
By midnight, a new return came in a battered copy
of Asturis Tests of the D'erberville's Asters, my favorite novel,
marked as overg for three years, I shelved it in
a fiction section, and which between its pages found it
a slip of line paper, folded as neatly as ergami,
impossibly clean compared to the yellowed book. The message in
a tight elegant script. Remember mind the order of doors.
I stared at it, hands trembling despite the warmth of
the room. Order of doors, again, the mysteriously official phrase
from files and rumors. Who would leave this for me?
In this book which I shelved not six hours earlier.
The noises got stranger as the shift wore on. A
distant shuffle, a tap tapping near the mechanical nor natural,
the clatter toy briefed to pin down. Sometimes it feels
like the flow itself. Breeze were entire flexing and slow,
and even rhythms. And once, just before closing up, I
caught a glimpse of arrow, the janitor ducking through the
rick corridor, emerging from the vicinity of the padlock door.
Every one pretends doesn't exist. You're working late, I ventured
as he passed. He didn't meet my eyes. Only keeping
things clean. You should leave the old stuff alone. His
tone was softer than usual, but urgent, with the sort
of warning men for some one about to step off
a ledge. I almost laughed, but a second note appeared
by my work station. That shift tucked inside a blanker's
showing slip the same precise hand you're brave, but bravery
is why they vanish. Reverse the order and you'll see back.
My hand shook. I'm not brave, I'm bored maybe, or reckless.
Words swirl in my mind as if some one else
pushes me along. I cross checked every architectural file in
the digital vault. The sub basement floor planned shows a space,
an empty blank behind the special collections, with no corresponding
room above, a blow in the blueprints, a phantom floor.
I asked a mess Healy about a half joking to
see her reaction. She stiffened, said curtly, let the maps be.
Some plans don't show reality. Don't meddle if you want
job security, keep your interests routine. The stacks of rules
that no one explains, warnings that keep circling back. I
keep trying to tell myself these only stores, and yet
every clue, every silence, drives me further. In and entry
audio of five times nine twenty nine p m. This
is going to sound unhinged, but everything changes when there's
a storm. The whole campus hums differently. Tonight, the dean
ordered early closure for the library. A tree came done
near the science building, and most staff had gone by nine.
I linger finishing my last tasks, half excuse and half curiosity. Upstairs,
Rain puts the stained glass windows leg fists down here
it muffles every movement, cloaking the building in intimacy and secrecy.
I told myself it was now or never, the notes
meaning it had to be a code, right order of doors.
I tried to reconstruct what it meant, tracing my steps
through the layout, lining up bacsis rose, and working out
the most logical sequence of entry. There's a trick to it,
I realized now. The card's names, the lost keys each
checked this aerya periodicals reference saf corridor, always in the
same order. The first note said, mind the door order,
the second reverse it. I backtracked, moving in reverse, hands
on the chilled brass handles, breath fogging as I moved
reference periodical staff alway. With every door, I tested locks
out of solid until the final try a padlocked door
I stared at so many nights. The lock was disengaged
in my head. I heard the final note, reverse the order,
and you'll see back the cold metal slid away beneath
my hand. I forced myself in, with heart clanging in
my chest, behind the door, a narrow cupboard staircase, ancient
worn then you'd never know it was there. I flicked
on my phone light and descended, each step, softer than
it should have been after years of neglect. Air more
stagnant than any place above. Wallpaper peeled from the wall
in ragged strips at the base. Shelling units block to
blind passage, but I squeezed through, boot crunching on scattered glass,
I found myself in a cramped corridor. Bulletin boards warped
with water and time sagged on every wall, thumbtass larged
ancient fliers. A research seminar Cognition and Sleep Circon eighteen
seventy six, discarded text books with titles like Experimental Method
and Thought Control. They air tingled with mildy and something
bitter electrical. At the far end, tipped to a door
which reader searched for b by approval only, was a
campas bag of canvas, mold stained with a weathered student.
I declipped to a strap our away s. The bag
slipper jammed, but after wrenching it open, I found water
logged notes inside entries about thresholds that the experiment heline
and agitated sculls never break the packed orders survival. As
I pieced through these ramants, panic took hold overhead. Footsteps
pounded on the main floor, heavier, more purposeful. Someone was upstairs,
and they weren't trying to be quiet. Sudden dread, overwhelming,
impossible to ignore, flooded me. More was buried here than
a cold case. I tried to record what I'd seen,
hand muffling the phone as I whispered, afraid the echo
might carry whatever I'd uncovered. The scale was bigger and
so much older than I'd ever let myself imagine. I
hear movement just outside and entry. I press myself close
to the wap plaster, choking back my breath. My thumb
hovers above the phone's PAW's icon, but I forced myself
instead to keep it running. If this recording stops, if
these details vanish into the same silence that swalled up
those students, I have nothing, no record, no proof. My
pulse seems to drum louder than the rain slapping the
windows of a grand The light on my Ferne's green
casts wobbly shadows across the broken tile. I edge backward,
steps feather alight until I find refuge behind a bat
of file cabinet on rusted castors. I can taste dust
in the musty tang of damp cardboard. My mind cycles
through what I've found, the battered book back slumped against
the door Arroway's I t the scraps of her note,
sinked in periodic terror. Thrishold's order is survival? What thresholds?
What order? The footsteps above seas were placed by silence,
so thick it needles My ear drums the strained wine
from the building's bones. I strained to listen, straining too
hard for a moment, I imagine the foots steps were
just a trick of acoustics, a wandering annal, a mazzo
lost cat. But behind my eyes, the memory of Olvero's
warning pulses bravery is why they vanish. I risk a
glance around the cabinet to the glow from the corridor.
Nightlight spills under the door's threshold. That beacon makes me
realize the whole air down here is wrong, starved of ventilation,
older than even the oldest stacks. I tried the door
to four be fingers, brushing the ridge glass window inside
in a maple frame to my relief. Its unlocked. I
slip inside, shutting it behind me with exaggerary care. The
latch falls stully home. Inside the room makes of stillness.
Opposite a board with curling type sheets still pinned and
placed on the far wall, a chalkboat's mudge with what
could be formulas or merely sketches, suckles, arrows, squares nested
within squares. I sweep my light around the room, hovering
over a long a lamin and frim laboratory table, and
in at the far corner, where an old tape accord
a wind with brown rubin rests beside a stack of foldos.
I exhale. Here at least I can breathe, though the
air is siled with mold. I rifle through the folds
as quietly as I can. The first two are administrative
committee attendants supply inversies, some with signatures so faded there
nearly gone. The third phase room and two subject group notes.
I open it cautiously, bracing for a wave of cold.
Inside carbon copy sheets, less dates and times three A
m subject entry is staggered exposure tests or results and
conclusive subject requested exit. There's noble operation staple to the
back is a list of initials and what look like
strudent id numbers and clarify. But my eye latches on
to s arroway Ce Steck and the d Weber. Suddenly
there's a shudder outside, a hard rattle like someone's striking metal.
A free ease, balancing the folder awkwardly. Footsteps again, this
time on the low fly. How many people have come
after me? The familiar dragon stamp of shoes gives way
to a slower, almost shuffling gait. It's then I realize
I can't risk staying. I gather what a can shoving
arrow is, waterlog, notebook pages, the folder, and the battered
I d batch into my own tote, the tape recorder
heavier than it looks. I slide quietly into the canvas
I barely breed. He is straining for a clue, whether
it's just building noise or pursuit. Behind Forby's battered desk,
a crack window appears into voy. There is nowhere to
run unless a climb out, which is in an option.
The corridor outside blinks with the intermittent light of a
dying ball, alternately illuminating and submerging each inch of tile
and gold and shadow. I press my ear to the door,
praying for quiet, but there are someone exhales low and
close right outside, A muttered curse in a man's voice,
followed by the squeal something metallic dragged across the floor.
Come out, Come on the voices is barely above breath,
but rough enough to catch on the silence. You are
not in trouble, Just come out. Much chess seases. I
try to breathe shallowly, my throat acking with the effort
to stay silent. I thowt a dragged footfall's linger in
the far side of the door, as if ever moves us,
weighing each step. Unwilling to break the rules of this
hidden space, I recognize the cadence of error. His shoes
always scrape concrete the same way. Second pool into minutes.
Eventually the footsteps recede, and the aching and certain quiet
trickles back in. I count to sixty. Nothing stirs. When
I push O from the battered door, it resists, swollen
in its frame. I make my way back down the corridor,
cradling my tote. On impulse, I stop at a wall
mounted thask cabin inside yellow newspaper clippings, document research grants,
and faculty awards nineteen seventy two, nineteen seventy four, nineteen
seventy six. The same faces as the foreto's upstairs, but
one middle aged, tall, blank eyed, hair combed harshly appears
in photo after photo, always at the edge, never named
in captions. I fumble my phone to snap quick foils,
just in case, before hurrying on lightning flares blew through
a window slit at the corridor's end. A squeeze back
through the jawn shelving, and begin to cautious nee bar
can climb up the narrow stairs, posing at the landing,
drawding that Olvaro or some one else waits at the top.
I listen the muffled huh of the storm out's eide,
some with the distant thrill of a coral on. I
decide I can't risk the elevator. If they know I'm
down here, they'll be waiting quietly. I take the back stairs,
emerging into the main corridor behind special collections, the scand
of mildy replace mercifully by dry dust. I duck into
the staff lound, steadying my nerves. The hooded glow over
single sodium bulb turns everything jaundiced. I fish out hourways
notes while my hands still tremble. The binding is soft.
Accordion folded the students riding doubles and triples back across itself.
The entry in the last page two thirty seven Door
Secrets does not match returned by a second route. Files
and complete left, key and staff bathrooms arranged per instruction's
firshold effect observed, do not break the order above that
pen in a different hand. If observed, out of sequence
effect seem to persist. Dissociation, time gaps, sound over laps,
requests follow up, doctor illegible, Do not proceed if concertain, petrochoire,
I copy the last page in the terminal's flat bit scanner.
The machine wheezes, but miraculously feeds the torn sheep through
the resulting PDF. Air plow to my hidden cloud folder.
My head keeps thrubbing. I don't sleep that night. Instead,
with the lights on, I listen to the batta tip
from the recorder, looping it on my ten year old laptop.
At first a burst of static, then three voices in
quick succession, only too clearly distinct, one tense, excited, the
other measured and worry. Voice one second rotation, phase two,
Weber unmonitoring arrow were recording door sequence initiated, reference, then circulation,
then staff voice two, repeat process reverse order voice one again,
voice breaking in a way that makes me shiver. I
don't like this. Whato's two. We're already here. Don't break
the pact. Just keep to the sequence. The recording distorts,
fees static, then continues voice three, older, gender and clearer.
You remember the rule. If you hear them de asters,
not break the order asterisk. That's when you stay. That's
how it works. That's when we keep you. The rest
is distortion, a hotbeat rhythm rattling in the tape's hisses
and pops, then silence. The rain doesn't stop all night.
When I finally call beneath my covers, the rustle of
sheets in the wind at the window blend into a
warning echoing in my mind. If you hear them, do
you not break the order? And entry audio lock six
time seven twenty two a m. Morning after the storm,
rain order trickles through the gutters, remnant, pulling at every curb.
I only two ears before snapping awake in full daylight.
Every muscle aches it is in fear. At least, I
tell myself that it's an animal sense of not quite
belonging in your own skin any more. I pedal to
campus as usual, steering my bug through puddles, my toe
heavy with contraband arrowhiz id the coppet notes the folder
of project materials. I try to look normal, but inside,
every movement feels rehearsed, each step of performance inside the library.
Nobody comments on my early arrival. Miss Healely isn't at
her desk. Liddious station sits empty, her coffee therm is untouched.
I checked the duty lock or error hasn't signed in either.
The autumn chill gnaws at the edges of my composure.
I wandered the main floor, feigning routine, pulling new returns,
prepping a small cart for shelf frets in the supply closet.
I glance at my reflection in a cracked mirror. My
eyes are drawn, shadowed, but defiant. I think of Arroway's
warnings of the recording's final words. They keep looping, merging
into all the bureaucratic language I once saw as harmless
order of access proper sequence. I do not break the
rules I slip into the abmans wead after a while,
drawn by the click of fingers on key's Lady is there, hunched,
pecking at her keyboard faster than usual. When I step close,
she flinches. I say, do you have a sack? She hesitates,
then shrugs. If you're asking about errors, it's posted already.
It's not the schedule. I lower my voice. The incident
from the sevenders. You know what happened, don't you. She
glances at the door, then back at me. Don't let
anyone hear you. Aye, there's mortar it. Don't ask too
many questions. They are particular about who looks where file's gummising,
not just books. If you're wise, you pretend not to notice.
She gives the faint to shake of her head, mouthing
don't push the waistweat beats along her brow. The way
her hands flutter reminds me she's already breathing more than
she wants. A shudder rattles the air vent above us.
Liddy checks over her shoulder, then whispers, don't ask Keely,
she'll notice. If you find something strange, hide it, don't
copy it. They always know. It's not an answer but
it's more than I should have expected. And entry audio
locks seven time, twelve forty four p m. Lunch break.
I heat a cup of sweep in the staff my
crow wave. The kitchen smells of cloves and the charred
crust of someone's forgotten toast. The admin office door is
propped open, but a mess Healy is nowhere to be seen.
I take my tray into the brick room. Noting the
old photos again, I look for the same unin face,
middle aged, always off to one side, his outline distinctively
toll next to the rest. Flicking through the oir dated
Jebeks on the bookshelf, I finally find him in an
early seventist staff directory, Research lead M. E. Garrison, Experimental
Cognition Laboratory Aarrison. His name rings Cyril bells. There is
not a citation, not a byline in current journals. Nothing.
I wonder if he was quietly a rastor if nobody
noticed when he left my mind races? Did he author
the pact? Did he drive the others to breach it?
My phone buzzes an internal message from the director not
my usual contact, please report unusual maintenance request to admin
only avoid entering non standard staff spaces. After ires, the
message is unsigned. I shiver, ready to return to routine,
but I can't shake the feeling I am being watched
and entry audio log eight time, four thirty nine p m.
Last shift before the weekend. I make rams, shadowing the
same echo routes as always in the Special Collections prep room.
Have paused at the door to the lock sector. My
hand hovers on the padlock, which now looks freshly oiled,
as if someone's been through just since last night. When
I set my note bet on the shelf, a slip
of paper flutters out, the print out, this time on
thin library receipts dark, someone's typed axis pattern, noted observation, ongoing,
maintain sequence. Who is leaving? These? Are they threats? I
can't decipher if this means someone want to help or
to warn me away. My spine prickles with the sensation
of invisible eyes, some watcher who's always just out of
reach in my periphery. I spot of arrow wiping brass
at the stair landing. I hesitate, then approach. Did you
come down sairs last night during the storm, I ask quietly.
He looks away, brow furrowing. Not my shift. I was
told to stay upstairs. Libraries old sometimes paflickers doors and
locked by themselves. You should stay clear when things go strange.
I saw you or heard you down there? What are
they hiding? His eyes flick almost in pain, then darken
with a warning edge. You do not want to know,
not for you. Some things get locked away, not because
anyone's cruel, but because opening them brings trouble. He softened slightly.
I seen what happens if you look too close. Do
you want to keep your job, your peace, your mind?
Stay out of the hidden places. Archivists disappear for a reason.
His words hang heavy, not a threat, but a plea
end entry Audio Log nine, time eleven fifty eight p m.
The building empties camp as a haunted ship. Every step
sets off a new echo. Every turn by book cut
might catch a shadow not quite my own. I spend
my last minute staring at the door to the phantom sector,
the sequence echoing in my mind. Reference periodicals, staff, then reverse.
I try the lock again, still open. Did I forget
to close it? Or did someone open it for me?
Reason wars with paranoia, the former losing ground as I
shoulder my tote and stepped through the door, begin my
descent and to seek it, not mind for daylight. Midway
down the stairs, I pause, listening, nothing but the metallic
hush of infrastructure at the bottom. The air feels charged.
My head fills were to cotony pressure, as if every
breath thickens, the uncertainty, the pact, whatever it means to
break the order. In the dim not quite dark beneath
the humming overhead emergency bowl, I speak into my phone
for the record, for honor my earlyer thoughts of simply
making it to payday. What I've found demands no, insists
on memory. That there are patterns and there are warnings.
I whisper, voice as faint as the air around me.
Patterns buried in the quiet, stitch into every list, every rule,
every lingering shadow above and below the stacks I thumb
the battered folder are always notes, the faded I d
If there is an order, then breaking it is how
you vanish. But reversing it, maybe that's the only way
you see what's been hidden with the packt amends, a tremor,
shakes a corridor. My shift is about to end, but
my investigation is just beginning and entry and entry Audio
Log nine continue time twelve seven a m. I huddle
a moment at the bottom of the staircase, letting the
echo of my own words dis paid into the must
of old insulation and childer. My phone light rakes to
walls and fit flocks, picking out ancient tape rescue and
overlapped rectangles where dozens of forgotten signs once on. Some
part of me expects to see a fresh set of
footsteps stamped in dust, But the corridor is almost pristine,
save for when borne debris and the heel marks left
by my own shoes. A minute passes, I listen, searching
for signs anyone followed, my heart, vaulting at every crackle
of piper distant electrical click. When nothing comes, I edge forward,
just past the maintenance panel that marks where the Phantom
four widens behind the wall. I pause, ruffling the files
in my tote. The temptation sim was to tear into
our ways, soak notek right here, to lose myself in
her fragments for answers. But something steady propels me forward, motion,
keeping up the appearance even for myself, of composure. Step
by step, I explore the dead end corridor, the tile
here page jade in thenleum tape is into a patchwork.
There's an odd depression near where the walls don't truly meet,
like a seam that never quite shut. I drag my
finger to it. Over waltz seems, expecting a latch or a button,
but finding only painted plaster and the ghost of adhesive tape,
but of a rattling air vent circles lazy inismatic, as
if pushing breath through lungs, reluctant for work after all
these years. A gust of air, just cold enough to
make me flinch, draws a waft of roth and bit
of soap across my face, mingling with the over present
note of mildy. The ceiling SAgs above, lined with water
spots in the telteale swells of ancient leaks. I suppress
the urged sneeze. At the corridor's end is a doorplane,
nearly featureless save for a battered strip of frosted gossipstead
above the handle. The words, once painted in crisp serif,
are almost gone, but research for be is still readable
if you squint for want of a key. I check
the latch, recalling the smooth movement of every knob I've
tested tonight. This one yields with a click, almost too loud,
thunder richisting somewhere deeper in the guts of the building
as the storm continues raging overhead. The room beyond a
smaller rectangular pilor of chaos layered over design foul carts,
brittle and doughjered are ried, and two haphazard rows. Along
the right wall. The draws gape half open, some containing
nothing but splintered index cards and the gride of time. Opposite,
a heavy steel desk forms a barricade, the surface littered
with evidence of someone's panic flight, a manuscript and uncapped
pen dry to nab, a scattering of our debadged lineouts
with faded lornigo faces peering out through fog plastic. The
stale air walls around my ankles as I step inside,
the floor is courted in a glue of mixed bill
toner and age. But my footful sound like rifle shots,
I say quietly, a refex where I'm just here to look.
Something about this ritual makes me feel less like a trespasser,
more like a witness. On impulse. I snap open the
top desk drawer inside a bundle of envelopes, each sealed
but unlabeled, edges curling with moisture. I pluck out one,
then two, resisting the urge to pocket them all. Beneath them,
a coil bound lab notebook sits pages bloated and stuck
together the cover experimental routine lock. My throat feels thick.
I flip it open at random columns for time, for
room for participant, and a final roll labeled digs at
why slash en many entries in with a heavy dash
and no next line. Beneath the scroll data. One note
stands out incinafina, almost trembling hand. Remember any deviation, risks, persistence,
close old doors in reverse brick of the silence. Another
line cross out if you hear them return by first
entry path. I press the book to my chest, glancing
toward the only window slit walled over and sind a
block from that side, but with a sliver of orange
soidium glow leaking around the plug. Either sunrise waits to return,
or the street light's been left on, marking time for
no one to witness. I walk back out into the corridor,
shutting the door carefully. My foot bumps something. I look
down to see a pair of batter by focal glasses,
the right line spiderword with cracks lying half in shatter,
half beneath a slick foam of condensation. There are no
footprints here but my own. I draw a steadier breath,
feeling the boundary between past and present blow my job.
These routines of cataloging and archiving suddenly a mockery of
the old urgent work conducted here. I tuck the note
book and the envelopes into my bag for now their
secrets will have to wait. But the pact, whatever it was,
feels as alive in this hallways when Narroway wrote her
frantic notes to tell me to give rise to a
memory that was supposed to survive. At the head of
the stairs, the building has stilled again. Out sight the
first hush of the storms endfulters in, But the stacks
below door let go so easily, and above in the
library proper I sense a shift in old silence, flexing,
aware now that someone news keep and count and andry
audio logged ten time one forty seven. A m he
ache in my ankle says I should stop, go home, sleep,
forget all this. Instead, I lean against the cut stone
of an unfinished corridor. Beneath the library. The sounds of
the storm are bufading, replaced by the fainter rolling creaks
within these walls. When I check the time on my phone,
it blinks mockingly, one forty seven a m. My shift
has ended, but I have the stolen folders clipped tight
under my arm, and the words do not break the order,
not up the air around me ugly in assistant, while
breathing a shallow still. I cannot bring myself to climb
those stairs and resurface. Not yet. It's as if surfacing
would mean the evidence would evaporate, or that even worse,
I'd find the Library of unchanged again, as if nothing
below had ever existed. I squint through the by a
notebook and arrows undulating script observations of sleep deprivation, passages
about distributed cognition, theories of how memory can be altered
by passage, physical and psychological thrist space. I flipped the
final page, pumming the canvas bag I found last night,
and clutched the envelope mark phase Romante. My head is
full of static and exhaustion, but too awake for comfort. Suddenly,
footsteps overhead, measured and slower. Someone is making rounds in
the building above. I freeze, shutting off my phone screen,
holding my breath. A second later, a buzzo, low, flat
mechanical vibrates through the stone, maybe a signal, maybe just
the elevator grinding for maintenance, but it brings a sudden,
chilling realization. I am not alone down here, not any more.
I gather the folders into a tighter stack and slip
the tape a cordor into the bottom of my toat
crumpled paper rattles. As I nudged the door just wide
enough to peek into the corridor again. My reflection in
the glass is pallid, I stark and wide above the
shifting grains of dawn. This sharp taste of panic buzzes
inside my chest as I backed toward the side stairs,
railing myself with every step, half way up by Paul,
one hand in the warm wooden banister, and glance backward
the corridor to research four bee gapes at the end
like a split lip darke iss holding its own. Before
I am fully conscious of making the decision, I snap
a quick photo of the corridor insurance, or maybe just
proof for my own sanity. The camera flash flickers, eliminating
the empty space, and start and stop bursts. Cabinet desk,
rows of abandoned badge line outs, the outline of files
scattered wildly. I can hear a mistakably now two sets
of footsteps above, one much heavier. It drives my pulse faster.
There's no more safety to night, nothing that resembles comfort
or the careful bottom of my usual routine. My only
thought is retreat, but I take my evidence with me.
The battered card arrow ways id the experiment lock all
press flap beneath my jacket. As I make for the surface,
my shoes stick on each step, as if in seen
hands have covered everything in treacle or glue. The axis
store at the top persists my shelve, and the third
try it finally gives with a groaning yawn, and I
stagger out, squinting in the harsh fluorescence of the library
sub level landing. The hallway is deserted. When I look
up at the clock, it reads two zero a m.
Though my phone stubbornly insists on two thirty one. The
building doesn't seem to care about time, and I have
little power left to disagree. I try to pull myself together,
white mud from my shoes and pocket what evidence I
can I tell myself. I'll sleep, I'll process because every
instinct says this is now too bigue, too real for
me alone. And entry audio Log eleven time nine eight
a m. I wake after only a couple hours on
my desk. The files and notespile like a fortification against
a wild My handshake as I open Arroway's notebook again,
tracing lines of her careful, desperate print phase room and
two door sequence side effects, increasing subject awareness, staggered inputs
only on the next page. Sound over lapse echoes we
are hearing I, ourselves or others of the space between.
I listen again to the batter tape fingers I see
in the controls. The voices are clearer than last night.
The first our way anxious and earnest. I am recording
sequence free. The door behind is loft. Why does that matter?
Time is strange. I think we're being watched. The static
spikes here, then nothing. The second voice, deeper Garrison, says,
maintain occupancy, observe only, do not intervene. There's distress, a shuffling,
The desperate whisper if you keep to the order, you'll
leave hall. If nod, the tate ends on the screen,
choked off by mechanical wine. When I finally leave my apartment,
I cut my tote so hot the straps cut into
my palm. The sun's out, but the campass is gloomed
by yellow clouds in late autumn puddles reflecting the blank
Bruce sky. I avoid the main entrance to the library,
instead making my way in through the side, swiping my
badge with deliberate slowness. Nerves burn behind my eyes, but
I keep moving at my desk. Lydia sits stiff and pale,
hands wrapped around her travel mug, as if for warm.
She glances up when I approach people's blown wide skin
sheen with sweat. She lowers her voice. Did ye keep
anything from the old rooms? You shouldn't. There was a
problem last night. Some one triggered the emergency lock. Heally's furious.
She says, nothing leaves that suctor. That's protecoll I tell her,
just above a whisper, they're always notes experiment locks. I
d cards her hand stop or to tremble. Don't if
she knows forget you ever saw them? They keep a record.
They always know fas have eyes. Lady Eline's close voice
nothing but a hiss. Get rid of it, whatever it is,
Leave it some way safe, not at home, not here.
She stands abruptly, stammering an excuse about the copier, and
is gone. In her absence. The air folds thickly around me,
the scent of bleach from last night's mop lingering. I
spread the documents one by one across my desk, snapping
digital images of the pages, saving them to cloud storage.
The campus WiFi glitches sputters twice, the file uploads fail.
The air hums with invisible tension, a low and rhythmic threat.
I force myself to endure it, documenting, documenting every word.
Every morning. A sharp knock at the glass makes me jump.
It's a mass healy, her gaze fixed and appraising. There's
maintenance in the reading room, she says, flat toned, clear.
Your things will be replacing the light fixtures. You may
walk upstairs. I nod, piling everything into my tout. She stands,
arms folded, watching me leave. Her eyes allegric calculator risk
and compliance. Once in the stairwell, where my footsteps echo
in the air, is sharp, metallic. I gret my phone whispering.
Some things change. They know I need to finish before
someone else does. And entry audio log twelve times two
thirteen p M. I hide out in a tiny staff
study beside the Humanity stacks, feet propped on a bat
of footstool, trying to pass the files from the night before.
Every so often my gaze drifts to the window and
remains glum, indecisive, just missing. Now the routine comfort of
books fails me. Every sound, every coffer shuffle, page out
in the main hall spikesman nerves. I opened the Manilla
envelope from a search four B. The first page confirms
what I feared. Phrase I initial threshold, entrance, must observe
precise door sequence, discrepancy yields lasting effect. Beneath the garrison
lead and a dark signature, the phrase in force silence
confidentiality pat appears atop every form. Another fold of bristles
with ominous memos memory disturbances. Subject unable to recall except
time discrepancy note a loss of self fanitdodals ecosystemic effect.
Next page circle test halted after subject Bee's disappearance. Further
navigation not vice except by protocol initiates. I flick to
a dogit and discard at the back. The ink almost
faded but unmistakable for reversing reference circulation. Staff wait for intervals,
listen for old exit, do not break order, do not
return by new door below. In Arroway's loop, we tried
to reverse Calvin loss for six minutes. Disorientation, sound, blood
of voices, not ires, door sequence changed without warning. There's
a threshold you can cross and cross back and changed.
Leave a record if you can. My lunch it's untouched.
Every swallow is sandpaper. The longer I stare at these pages,
the more the warnings claw beneath the skin of rationality.
Here on paper, evidence that someone knew, that staff colluded
to hide it, that the experiment's boundaries were always poorse
My hand shakes as I clip all of it into
a digital folder, hitting up with a wild, pounding hot
I lock my phone when the last progress bar blinks green,
praying at sticks that's someone somewhere. We'll have a record.
I don't leave the study until dusk, waiting out change
of shift. My way out to the bike racks is
secured aside. I keep behind stacks ducking when I glimpse
Heey's stern profile or the shadow of a Varrou's battered
boots in the stairwell. By the time I hit daylight,
my nerves are freed to the quick and entry audio
LG thirteen time six five p M. Home at last,
behind my little door with three locks, I sit on
the floor, knees to chess, sipping cold tea. The city
outside thrumming, the distant thunder, and the occasional siren. I
try to make sense of the scattered documents, shuffling them
into some kind of narrative, a timeline, a series of choices,
poluses written in code, the order of doors. Its more
than superstition. It was deliberate environmental manipulation, a pressure system
designed to fracture concentration, perception, even identity. My lap up pings.
Someone is trying to access my cup folder. I pear known,
but the location pings within campus. I begin to panick,
twitching my password. But for every security measure I try,
a narrow message fits back a sense of being watched
through the glass through VPN, through every screen. I unplug everything,
shut the curtains, stuff arrow as I d'd on the
tape cassette into another envelope marked local and occurgrent and
scroll an anonymous label to drop it in the campus mail,
just in case it feels theatrical. But the alternative, going
to university police with no real proof, no official memory
of my discovery seems like suicide. I cull under my covers,
every passing car and the night pressure in my senses.
When I doze, I hear the voices from the tape,
the sustained hush, the shifting firsholds of doors that open
differently each time me past them. I wake more tired
than ever, and entry audio allergy fourteen time eleven twenty
a M. I don't bite to campus the next day.
The chillin I got won't let me go near the library,
though my classes are all inside Begun and hall next door.
Still news travels, lydia, texts in a harodburst library closed
till Monday. Heally called emergency repairs, security everywhere of Arrow
on leave, not answering texts. Nobody says why. Another message
two hours later from a number I don't know, stop,
drop all inquiries, records, seal for safety, leave the district
as the afternoon Sire's campus fills with security trucks, forests
and jacket It seems no police, just contractors. I walk
the perimeter head down, but not before I see Healy
at the pablock door, gesturing furiously at Tekoile two minutes
buol heavy cable behind her. I keep my distance as
I circle the north court. Two plain close staffers inter
sip me, a man and a woman nearly with visible
university badges, but both direct. You're the night archivist, correct,
but the older one says too polite. My heart shrinks,
but I nod wis serving also basement staff building's close
safety check. You're aware of the protocols. Yes, it's a threat,
dresses a question. Just here for class, is all I say.
The woman narrows her eyes, scanning my face for any
stray clue. Good, she says, Eventually, let's keep it that way.
They move on, But as I duck into Buchanan, I
realize my limbs are trembling. My tonguees gold with a
copper byte of fear. There's no way backward. Every step
is forward into more danger. I call and sick for
my next shift and entry Audio Logue fifteen times two
fifty nine a m I can't sleep. I ly on
my back, staring at the guttering shadows above my bed,
every creek in the plumbing, every pot from the fridge
morpars into fantom footsteps. The shash of Taypertekey's never heard,
but always just about to echo at two fifty nine,
a record almost in a trance. They know the evidence
is gone, or not gone enough. I don't think I
could stop if I wanted to, but some one has
to finish this. My mind claws back to the tape
of fragments, the warnings, the last logos cautions about for recording.
If there's a way to prove any of this, it's
hidden deeper, beneath the scripts and triggered routines and stage distractions.
I decided then and there to return to the hidden sector,
to try to reverse hoarder in person, to see if
the threshold can be crosswise. Maybe if I can retrieve
a final piece, another tape, a missing low book, something
beyond the reach of university sensors, then the story will
become undeniable. I pack my bag by moonlight, alleedy flashlight,
back up phone, portable charger, a bottle of water took
in defenses against a kind of frett can't name. I
wait for the city's rhythms to settle into their shallow
asleep before heading out end entry Audio Log sixty time
four thirteen. A m canvas is a freezer. At this
are my boots by cold into the grass. As I
cut across to the service entrance. The rain from before
is frozen encrusted flecks in the stone are My key
cardinally sticks in the lock with condensation, but I make
it in silent, cut off beneath the hum of ancient
sodium lamps left burning for reasons nobody will explain. I
task the security desk and noticed entered the archhouse by
the staff hallway, but authorized personnel door still hangs slightly open,
as if expecting me. My heart's tempo is a war drum.
As I retrace the reverse order staff allway, then periodicals,
then reference last each door. I count ten breaths before
opening each handle. I test once, then twice, letting muscle
memory take charge as much as thought. Lo On the
hidden stairs, they are closes in like a physical pressure.
The chill is thicker, more aware this time. There is
a smell of burnt chemicals, as if some one's recently
run ancient equipment on faulty wires. My light is both
a beacon and a trap. I keep it lowered, illuminating
only my feet the path ahead. Some one has been
done here down new scuffs at the door. A faint
drift of soldis near the door frame, where it looks
like the hinges have been oiled within the last day.
The padlock previously rusts stiff as gone entirely. Only a
dangling piece of chain remains. I step through every neervrow
and find in the main corridor that the filing cabinet
has been pushed sideways. Papers scatter the tide, and two
slow arcs, as if poured through an organized haste. There
are signs of someone searching someone else recently. At the
doorway to four B. I pause, soft rhymic warring ventilation,
or is it something else hardened? I press inside? The
room is not as I left it. The desk drawers open.
The tapeer cordor gone cable rip from the socket and
coiled like a snake in the ground. A new slip
of card wrists in the center of the table, stark
against the dust. I approach scan the blocky script. Welcome,
you are now an archivist. Do not break the order
for a moment. The walls tilt, shadows, shuddering with the
thread of approaching dark hole. Worse, the sense that I
am being observed from many directions at once. I spin slowly, listening.
Footsteps were maybe just my hammering pulse. But as I
reach for the card, I hear it voices overlapping, filtered
through the outdated intercom, my own, mixed with airways, then
Garrison's lair, nearly synchronous, half whispered. I do not return
by the new door. If you leave something behind, it
becomes theirs. The pat was for silence. Nobody crosses without
the order, nobody. As the sound bleeds off, I realize
I'm caught in summercussis spull. They have my voice, just
as they have airways. The system has been running always,
not just when I pressed record. Behind me a foot
drugs against tyle. I will it's al Vero gone as
crustive with exhaustion and panic. He puts up both hands, trembling.
You shouldn't be here, he says, softly, not now she's coming.
I tried to warn you, but once you start, it
never stops. He gestures to the table. I've seen too
many try they keep a list. It's not about the doors,
not really, not any more. It's about remembering who belongs
and who vanishes. He sways voice horse. I came to help,
but you don't get out, not in the usual way.
Did you touch anything else, leave anything? I shake my head,
unsure if it's a lie of Arowince's eyes following something
behind me. I spin, but nobody's there, just the sway
of the half block corridor and the hovering dock of
the open lockers. The air thickens again, sudden and shop.
I taste pennies, A warning, my grain blooming behind my eyes.
You need to leave. A Varro says, take nothing, leave nothing,
don't break the order, don't claim any new thing, just go.
Attention ratchets the atmosphere. We both freeze as the main
corridor door squeals A slow what narrow stuff steps inside
a mess heally. She looks between us, gaze like Bob
Ware thought you'd get clever, She says. You want to
know why the records break, why the key's vanish, because
no one who questions the order stays, Because the library
can't resk memory, not the wrong kind. She comes closer
and minding a ring of keys from her pocket. There
was a time when the experiment mattered. Now it's only
about keeping silence, of silence that cost people each Archavista's
a roll. You can be part of the record, or
you can be erased of Aero glances at me agony
in his slumped shoulders. He murmurs, she means it if
you make noise, if you take what isn't yours. Healey interrupts,
her eyes sharp. He think the system cares. That's bigger
than you, bigger than us. It fills you away or
pushes you through corridors. Forever. We keep it safe, we
keep the order, We keep ourselves. Her voice chills deeper.
Put down the card, set all things right, and you walk,
refuse and you join the missing. My body is all adrenaline.
Yet as I back toward the door, something shifts inside me,
a worn resolve, a thread of rage, tinged clarity. I
think of airway of notes left for no one, words,
beam for broken systems. I'm not part of your pact.
I say I'm not staying silent. Heey narrows her eyes,
an old tire threat. You do what's necessary if you
want to survive down here. The rest, she shrugs, becomes forgotten.
The tension twists a Varrow's shoulder shake, as if he
wants to protest but knows the rules better than I do.
But just leave, he says, almost a plea. The air
shimmers at the edges, fision, doubling like heat on a
summer road. The corridor lies but arrived zing stroke, then
sudden blackout. A coal persons crowds the room, the sense
of other silent witnesses behind every door, waiting for me
to fail, to take the wrong turn, to break the order.
I clutched the envelope tighter in my coat, arroways, scripped
like a mounter, her tear courage leaking into my bloodstream
first but second. The room seems to vibrate, then like
an afterimage from the flash of an old camera wall,
but vanishes into a blinding white and entry audio allergy
seventeen time unknown. I wake to the hiss and fob
of emergency lights, red hum wavering, pulling loocently in each
niche of the passage outside. Four B. My toat half opened,
is scattered on the floor, folders found like a deck
of cards, takes sept poking brazenly into the aisle. My
phone is missing. Hannick spikes a fumble for a scrap
of note paper, the only source of sense left and
scrawl time unknown. Woken basement air, cold, silence, unbroken. My
head vibrates with that same recursive hum. The building above
is silent. I creep to the corridor door. The old
key ring has been left in the lock, but healy
a errow, no sign of either, just an endless humming echo,
a feeling of spectator's crouched just beyond each spill of light.
I pocket the tape, grab what I can of the folders,
and creep back up the stairs toward the staff corridor.
Each door I reach for, I remember the warning sequence,
don't break always the order. I double check each rout,
which ray steps in reverse, counting out loud until the
redness fades into softer, familiar fluorescent. At the last door,
I catch my reflection in the glass, older drain behol
just barely. My shoes echo each up, chased by silence
that feels more intimate with every crossing. When I reach
the sub level, I slump into the nearest chair and
let my head fall into my arms. For a moment,
I let myself cry and entry audio LG eighteen time
six forty a m. No one else is here. The
morning's light drips through the narrow windows, slanting green gold,
past tangled webs in the edges of the old return's desk.
The weight in my toad isn't just paper and tape,
its responsibility. I threat memory itself. I push open the
staff lounge door. No sign of Healy, no a Varro,
no Lydia. In fact, the entire building fields abandoned, as
if the repairs announced yesterday were an excuse to flush
us all out and let whatever needs to happen happen.
I try my login at the desk terminal access denied,
my ID revoked overnight. I feel a flare of despair,
but I know it's too late for normal channels. Instead,
I wedge the folders into my back back, slip out
the north fire door, and make for home, moving on adrenaline.
A memory outside the world is too ordinary, too bright,
but my brain still hums in recursive cycles. If you
break the order, if you return by the wrong door.
I sit on a park bench across from the law
clinic were trickles. Students clustered before class and sept the
envelope with our ways. I d and take set into
the outside mail bin, addressed as always to the Ethics office.
If I disappear, maybe some one will find it at home.
I shut curtains and plug my laptop and make it
ree quick anonymous uploads, PDFs, images, voice memos, a scan
of my own reflection in the corridor's batterglass. I send
these to half a dozen local gossip blocks, a handful
of librarians on public forums, the one podcaster who specializes
in haunted academia. Some will vanish and open it, but
maybe one will take it seriously post it, keep the
memory alive without me. I always filtered by and no
one comes. A packer go bag, stand by the window
with a mug of tea cooling to gray. My eyes burn.
But I stay fixed to the view outside, just in
case someone comes to finish the work of silencing what
I discovered and entry audio Elogina eighteen time five twenty
one p m. By evening. News has moved in the
university in books is light up and official circular renovation
closure safety hazard, no cause for alarm. All rumors are
to be dismissed as fabrications, disciplinary action for staff fans
spreading unfounded allegations. A second email and sign, but the
tone is Heeli's leave history to the wreckord. If you
are meant to know, we'll let you know. Gossip threads twist.
The campus online board illuminates or chatter about police tape
and a mart fans at the library's west wing. A
post quickly deleted claims of the arrow was taken away
in an ambulance. No word where. Another rumor says Ladya
was terminated for breach of pert call, but no details,
just a warning to keep your story straight. One blogger
contacts me using an anonymized e mail, did you write this?
Can we talk? I ignore it for now. Night falls.
Every noise in the street is double, just the same
as in the subbasement of the world, turned recursive, everything
leaping inward, my chestakes with a longing for the ordinary, irregular,
boring shift, A friendly nod from a coworker at the
ease of routine over dread, but the dye is cast.
I reach for my notebook, Stop logging every detail and
careful script. If this is as far as I go,
I want there to be recored and Entry audio Lock
twenty time one forty eight a M. I hear nothing
from Alvero Lydia or any one from the library. After that,
it as if a cut and dropped, severing the world
into the part which truth can exist, in the part
that refuses violently to permit it. My dreams returned to
the corridor, to the echoing voices, the terse warnings, the
vanished faces of the lost. But waking is worse. Each
wall in my apartment seems thinner, each window a possible eye.
I do not leave home for two days. I order
groceries delivered, let dust a crew in corners, and keep
all evidence hidden. Accept from my handritchen transcription of clues
as slip arrives through the mail slot. Plain library check
out card stock, old style, the line for return date
left blank below the patron name written in my own careful,
unmistakable hand, Night Archivist at the bottom, a stamp in
dry Crimson Inc. Welcome to the stacks. And Entry audio
Ology twenty one time eight forty four p m. A
plain card board mailer comes to my door, battered around
the corners, no return address, inside a single, a mock
cassette tape, a library card, this time stampf with today's date,
and a tad slit. Listen closely the order changes. I freeze, suddenly,
certain that someone is just outside my door. I wait,
heart shugging, but the hallway still. I play the tape
out of compulsion. It's my voice, unmistakably overlaid by dozens
of others. Archivist, you have entered. Maintain order, record, observe, repeat,
do not break the silence. The words layer and double
until my alphabet dissolves into static. A rush of paper shuffle,
and then so feigned only a stillness deeper than it.
Quiet of none lets me hear at the clock of
a typewriter. One final line types itself, Welcome home. I
sit with the card, the tape, and the sense that,
whether vanish or present, the archive has found its way
into every threshold I cross. I stare at the door.
I wait for the echo of steps, never sure if
they come for me or if they always always have
And entry. I clutched the new library card in my palm.
The paper still call from the batted mailer. My eyes
drift from it to the gage of moonlight. Falling thin
across my cluttered disk, over folders of evidence, the rod
stamped envelope, fading artifacts I once thought would free me,
not fuse me, to this place. In the hush, just
before the clock shiants, I realize the silence here is
the same as the one below, only more familiar. Now
I let the card rest take a slow, deliberate breath,
and for just a moment, hear the softest scrape of
typewriter keys in the dark behind me, And I know
I am part of the record. And I know I
am part of the record. Audio elegy twenty two times
nine seventeen p m. I leave the mailer open on
my desk, a cold draft coaling through the room. Each
time I touch the card A pressure bells behind my eyes,
something more than migrain, a resonance, as if an tuning
to a frequency previously unknown. The distant city noise shrinks,
the night no longer shield presses close to night to
tap repeats, no matter how I try to stop it.
The static, the overlay of voices. One is mine, others
are throated beneath, like an old course, rising up from
every envelope, every lost log, every artifact captured and forgotten.
I listen until my bones vibrate. The message is clear.
If not inwards, then in insistence. You're called, you recorded,
You're not the first. I pace restlessly from room to room.
Blind's close. Certain now that the same silence that rolled
the basement dwells. Hereto finding me wherever I try to
carve out peace. The laptop pings incoming mail, social notifications,
questions from distant digital strangers. He sniffed out fragments of
my leak. Words like hoax, legend, exposure. Some one wants
to call me, interview me, dig ferdor, I read idlyte.
Not one of them understands the cost. Another low tap
at the window, a trick of nerves. I flinch every muscle,
ridge and glimpse only my own face, warped in darkness,
cross a glass. There's nothing. I wait for dread to subside,
but it doesn't. Instead, a yawning sense of unfinished process.
It grew still turning in the machinery, a pattern, always
demanding another. Itoration settles over everything. I tried to shape
what happened into statements, evidence, a tidy sequence from my
own record, But the words flatten, lose meaning. The pact
is not theory now, not something baried. It's enacted by
living hands, rotating through each possible Archivist's life outside the
world resumes its routines inside e mails, vanish certificates are revoked,
My history and the university network erased. In real time,
I become hard to reference a hole where a person walked, dreamed, wondered.
The shrink wrap around myself peels away slowly. My memory's
taste of flanoleum thus at yellow creep of sodium lie.
My tongue fumbles at the truth, but there's no shape
for it any longer. The consequences of telling or not
telling snake along my nerves, a lingering electricum. Not pain exactly,
but a pressure. There's a choice, and it vanishes at
the same rhythm that every warning was delivered. Do not
break the order. My phone rings, the number is blocked,
the tone clipped. I let it ring once twice, then
silence returns, no message, just me. The current. The echo
minutes slip past as I watched the rain start up again.
In the alley, A mute ribbon cast in orange from
the one working lamp across the wet concrete. A pair
of figures, one tall, one hunched paws in the glow.
They don't look up, don't knock, merely wait for a
moment as of keeping figil for a signal. Then, as
the rain dickens, they step from sight. I shudder and
move quietly away from the window. At the fridge, I
find I am hungry, but my stomach rebels in the mirror.
My eyes scan slightly off center, always searching for a fliquor,
a double chatdow. The certainty settles in. I'm being monitored,
but not through technology alone. It's ritual, its repetition, another archivist,
another echo. Each consecutive IRU brings one new minor distortion.
I shuffle papers, then find a slip returned to its envelope,
a card shifted back on to the desk where had
swept it. Aside the scent of old carbon, the brittle
chill of a draw just opened, cling to the air
with a persistence that makes leap, even at a distant impossible.
I do is only in brief, nervous bursts, waking to half,
memories of footsteps circling my bed, the soft click and
rattle of keys. By dawn, messages from campus have stopped
news speedge roll out templated Denell articles. No further interviews
are offered. I sit on the floor, feet flat to
the boards, the library card gripped in my fist, and
reconnize that the machinery can idle but never really stops.
Time buckles refolds. Sometimes I am in my apartment. Sometimes
in the window is staff lunge, always with the same papers,
the same warning, Welcome to the stacks. Audio allog twenty
three times two three a m to night. Something changes.
The intercom buzzes through my laptop's audio, though the device
is shut on power. The voice distinctly mind spells out
a sequence staff, then circulation, then reference another older voice.
Garrisons I'm almost certain to have elapsed. Do not cross
twice a freeze, hands hovering over the keys, every sense
alive and anticipation of intrusion. A faint tapping not quite
at the door, threads through the static. When I try
to record, the inf crackles uselessly, feedback echo, then nothing.
My phone dies, the battery abrupt, cold and warranted. I
open my notebook only to find that pages from our
ways look blowed and complete, now match my own script,
my own scroll as if time in writing have dabbled back,
blending intent and outcome. I try to recopy the details,
but memory drops like keys into what are retrievable. Maybe
only if I can find the correct route back. My
world reduces. Crossing my living room, each threshold feels thinner
and thinner. The cob pulses faint heat stub at, its
face now smunged into an unreadable crimson shadow. Upstairs, the
pipe'sknock a rhythm three two, one, then hush. At some
point minutes hours later, I realize I am muttering aloud,
not equations or observations, but the order staff, circulation reference.
If I can say it in reverse, maybe I'll remember
something crucial. But the fear is Perhaps the reversal is
what breaks you, what finishes the loop that begins decades ago,
when students first agreed to participate, when librarians first signed
their naimes onto the pact. I clutch my notes, my
fingers cramped and stiff. The wind outside rises. Someone else's
record of mine now awaits completion. Audio LG twenty four,
time unknown. The phone rings the same unknown number as
the first note of the Rinton cuts the silence. My
heart launches into my throat. I answer, half in challenge,
half resigned, nothing but a cadence of breath and the
line ain't out measure of familiar. Then three words, low
and flat. It's happening again. I recognize the voiceleadier, ragged
but unmistakable. It don't meet anyone, she warns, don't hand
anything over. If they come, pretend you don't see them.
Whatever door you've left open, close it a click. Then,
in the hour afterward, apace hatless, coatless, waiting for a sign,
a knock of the forced intrusion of certainty. Sleep alludes me.
Fruit spoils on the counter, and touched with every passing
car light, every hum of late traveling elevators in the building.
I tense, expecting present, but only the silence grows. My
apartment has shrunk, faltit humming with the finished questions, But
the feeling of being filed away is the worst, as
though the order is swallowed, all gaps in possibility, leaving
me preserved like an increasingly blurred document in the drawer
marked pending. The male slot rattles. I leap up pulse
in my ears, but find only a thin, almost weightless
envelope inside nothing but three ancient keys tarnish, each labeled
with an initial matching those trapped in the experiment long ago.
One is etched with my own initials. The meaning seeps in,
cold and remorseless. I am a custodian of something now,
a bearer of the order, not just an observer. The
keys burn cold in my hand, even after long minutes.
I set them on the sill, and they cast faint
reflections in the streets, meeg a globe, resembling for a
chilling moment, the missing faces from faded staff photos. For
an instant I consider leaving, slipping out into pre dawn,
vanishing as others have. But the polto understand, to the
very end out weighs the wish to flee. I put
on my coat, slide the keys into my pocket, and
ready myself for an inevitable confrontation audio llog twenty five
times three thirty seven. A m outside the city is guttered,
the campus windows dark. I return, not for anyone else,
not even finally for arroway, but to see if the
order can be broken on my terms. I cover the
rout with ritual, precision, staff, door, then circulation, finally reference.
Each one attacks on memory sanity resolve. The badge no
longer works, but the old keys do each turn smoother
than I expect, almost as if they have been used
many times by previous hands. Within the library, the hush
is oppressive. No security patrols, no humming from the main
floor's ancient lights. In special collections, the maltor as personnel's
side is gone. For the first time, the padlocked door
swings open without resistance. I descend the basement. Air throngs head.
A light burns in the glass office by research for
be a flicker, then steady. As I approach, every nerve
protists still I go. I press my hand to the
panel and step inside. A mess Helius waiting, rigid, her
hair in a severe twist, petique slung across her face
like a film of old race or dust. She sits
behind the desk, bat a catalog open in front of her.
He are the last archavist, she says, it isn't a question.
She slides a slip across the desk. My staff racoat
with only a date, a blank signature, and a space
for a return day. The pact was always about containment,
not the experiment. Not any more. You keep the sequence alive,
and the rest of us remain. If you want to leave,
you relinquish the keys. If you want to stay, he'd
join the record no more in between her eyes look tired.
I hesitate new terror, jostling against the old. I place
the keys down, but keep my hand on them, testing
nemine in my commitment. You have a choice, but only
now if you walk out without the order. She starts,
But I cut her off. My name on the card,
the tape, the voices. There what initiation or am I
a placeholder for the next She only shrugs a small,
sad gesture. Ye, every one hears a copy of someone before.
That's what we file. That's what's left. When the order
is kept for a moment, everything in the room aligns,
the folders, the recorder, the ledger of vanished names. I
see how the library consumes, not in flesh, but in memory,
in process. Arrowe tried to warn me, I say, for
is hardly audible. Some one will come after me. I
stare at the stamp on the records, slip a floor,
and the crimsoning pulled like an amendable wound. Heey gouters
the files, clutching them to her chest. We don't make
the rules, we follow the order, or we dissolve. That's
the cost, she rises. If you want to make your
own record, to go, leave nothing behind, not even this.
I close my hand over the keys, took the old
card into my coat. The light up of flickers in
the hallway beyond the first threads of dawn sneaking from somewhere,
painting shadows on floor tiles, a deep bruise blue. My
steps are careful as I retreat, passing through each door
in the prescribed reverse, as if I might inspool myself
from their memory. At each threshold, I whispered the pattern,
returning my body, if not my mind, to somewhere that
feels like the world I left. The corridor breeds with
me for the first time, I believe I might actually surface.
As I reached the ground floor, out of the suffocating
poll of the stacks, I glance back, half expecting to
see heey or our way of the long echo of
everyone one who tried and failed. But the hole is empty.
The Arkouse hunger is satisfied for now, stepping out into
mourning breath, shot back heavy with all that proofs and dams,
I understand what it is to be kept in stacks,
not by iron or by policy, but by the structure
of memory, sacrifice, and a promise too old to undo.
I walk away, not vanishing, not yet a race, holding
every echo as tightly as I do the keys. Months pass.
It's another city, another apartment, doors, here creek, but the
sequences are all wrong. I speak less, write more, find
myself tracing the order across New Threshold's grocery store, subway, laundromat.
Out of reflex more than superstition, A battered miller arrives
one dusk inside a library card. My name's stamped in freshingk,
the date marked more at the bottom, the welcome to
the stacks. I sit, lit only by a certain dusk,
the card cool in my palm, as the first faint
clut of typertic keys bills from the shadows behind me.
In this new hush, I know the ark I've remembers,
and now so do I