Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The first night was always supposed
to be the hardest, but they never told me how
much the mind clings to patterns, even in a place
that seems emptied of all meaning. At ten fifty eight
p m. On September ten, I sat in a brittle
glare of the Bryson office towers. Security held cheap noill
on uniform tied across my shoulders, thum hovering over the
record button on my sat assigned audio lock. I told
myself I wouldn't need it, but protocol on phibition is unambiguous.
Tape everything, even the boring parts. So my own muffle voice,
dry from norse, attached, too eager to sound professional, echoed
through the dimmer room. This is Torrors, Samuel. Monday, September tenth,
twenty three hundred hours, first overnight, all quiet. The storm
outside had gathered by then a late summer fury, bending
the city's scaffoldings and hammering glass towers with wind and colds.
Bit rain battered the Bryson's ancient window casings, setting my
teeth on edge with each dull vibration near the panelights
by terphalies circled the centers of blown out fluorescence in
a corner at a closed circuit, bank of monitors flickered
greenny corridors, silent elevator lobbies, where reception desk's form that
the overnight shiping crowd were night cleaners the building once employed.
I ran an easy fingers across the battered desk, a
sticky ring of old coffee, A bad scanner, yellowed at
the corners. My voice kept up its own play for normalcy,
but my gut stayed tight as a snare. Bryson Tower
was already infamous in the downtown district for its internees.
Since the pandemic, much of its seventy year old bolk
sat and rent each woe shading tenants until even the
vending machines petitioned for removal. I flicked my radio offstandbar
routine was supposed to anchor me a top to bottom
every two hours, they'd said, tug every handle, check every
thermosat sleep, waited for sunrise. My first patrol started at
the lobby. Badge clipped boots scraping softly un a flat
white noise from the storm in building fans the pristine
security sign in sheet, my first task registered to here
of visitors since Tuesday by eleven fifteen, I squared my
shoulders and wandered to the lobby elevator. It greeted me
with a grown mechanical belly churning somewhere unseen, doors giving
a jutter as they slid apart. The elevator panel stood
striped by green. In the reflection, all numbers a glow
except four, which was absent, with a three perched above five.
It should have been a simple data point old building
skip forward for superstition, specially once built by financiers with
a taste for imported designs. But to night in the
warped perfection on polished steel, I caught dimmered glow just
to flick of opposite my frame. Four led up steady
for half a breath, then snapped out like a mechanical wink.
I pressed three, Nothing happened. Press five of the elevator
hum jittery tents. Half way up, the lights blinked off,
jerking me into a space that fellst coached of oxygen,
a grind of gaze. Then with a jolt so sharp
I yelped the elevator jerk to a salon hall. The
display in its little digital window read for the doors
parted gently, as if inviting me to step through, except
there was only a blank wall of crumbling plaster. A
smear of dough or old paint marked the wall. Faded
streak slipping, the ghost of a number four diod hand
grew up in the now cold metal rail. Blood hammering
in my ears, I told myself quickly, firmly that electrical
failures were common. Maybe some tech rerouted forges for diagnostics.
But as I thumbed the recorder in my palm, my
voice wavered. The elevator stole between three and five doors,
opened on a wall where no flour exists. Mockings barely visible,
looks like an outline of afore might be a panel error.
Yet the air vibrated, charged by more than storm. It
prickled in my lungs, And when the door slid shot
and the cor continued up part I couldn't shake the
sense that adganced behind a musk. The building's real face
barely covered the rest of my round. I saw that
flicker everywhere, a faint hum behind the panels, a stubborn
cold in the elevator's corners. Everything told me to move quickly,
to file the memory as trivial malfunction. What else. But
it took iurs for the storms that could, to fade
from my pulse and let normalcy return, even for a moment.
Beneath the ancient hum of barrice Ands, restless bones. At dawn,
colorless light filtered through the east lobby. I rearranged my uniform,
straightened my sparse notes, and tried to ignore the tightness
behind my rib cages. Mister Leddo, the facilit ladies manager
arrived to collect my lock, but quiet enough, Torres, he
barely made our contact, already distracted by tablet loaded with spreadsheets.
Pretty standard, I replied, focusing on paperwork. One minor hic
cappellivator glitch stopped between three and five. Probable short. Maybe
alls really opened on a wall, Nothing to see, he grunted,
scribbled an a eligible note. All plays tech coorks everywhere.
Just keep your notes in order, locks forts anything really weird,
it was me, But don't lose sleep. He never asked
what word meant, and I never clarified. Most knights embrycend
how blurred into a single shuffle, small tasks and empty
signage blinking out into the dark. By all outward signs,
a place was heading toward a gentle kind of Ruin
each level, a man past eight p m. Tenants quietly
subtracting themselves, insureance agencies, divorce lawyers, male ordo start ups,
who once filled the upper two floors with pink pond
tables and economic chairs. Now even the echoes seemed to
wait for summers. My routine developed its own rhythm. Floors
who still sustained a weary sort of life. Missus Feldman,
soul survivor of a consultancy, gutted last year, hunched at
her desk beneath then our lamp, combing through ten kissed breadsheets,
glasses perched half redone her nose at my knock. She startl,
laughed nervously, and murmur about just one more phile. I
learned not to startle her. Each night she packed the same,
battered at a shape, raincoat folded, with nowhere to go
but back to an empty house. The city kept people
in motion, but Bryson seemed to preserve its denizens in place.
Then there was Hector, the night janitor, he'd limpen around
eleven thirty, carrying cottons of biodegradable sprays and humming sinatra
covers more out of ritual than joy. In the supply closet,
we share lukwon coffee, trading news about the weather, streets
or rivers, carhorror, sam and swap gropes about management. He'd
worked Bryson since before the pandemic, never see more than
two people after midnight. Miamigo, not for years quite bled
into every part of the building. In the basement, past
the last set of descending stairs, the boiler room collected
dust pipes, rattled, monitors, flickered for no purpose, unlabeled doors
lined the corridor, electrical mainframe and one with no sign
and at all pinch hip round layers of long forgotten locks.
I locked the temperature, flashed my badge at the solitary sensor,
sometimes peered him on the old key fit. Mostly out
of boredom. Breysontower's architecture announced its faded grandeur marble tiles
wanted on this ornamental molding part where chunks had cracked off.
Nowhere was this starker than in the main rottenda, where
faded out decko fixtures strained against the clutter of new
security cameras, tiny electronic sentinels forced into baroque corners, decades
of mismatch paint, some stains blooming yellow along the ceilane,
betrayed water leaks that no contract plumber could ever seem
to fix the bones of the building were showing through
its new grafts. Strangers to me was the silence around
the so cold fourth floor, no signage, nothing in a
glossy acrylic directories mounted by elevator and stairwells, the heavy
steel doors between third and fifth, feweldered shirt and the
maintenance manual skipped straight past four, as if the floe
belonged to another building. And yet sometimes when I walked
past the elevator shaft, I sense a current light, the
air turn colder, a whisp of movement. Seat for concrete.
It's just all drafty seals, Labard said, fail bank, but
voice just a notch too high. You've worked in older places,
have anu Taurus. I just nodded and left the question alone.
Military life taught me silence. It gave me a nose
for routines and an appetite for long stretches of nothing.
After injury and medical howl. I liked the solitude, even
when it ditched into isolation would in brycin. The loneliness
did not settle in gently. On my four shift, the
pressure at the base of my skull lingered eyes after
I had locked down the fire doors and finished the
two way m rounds. Even so, there was comfort in
the checks and rossets, review lobby feeds, shuffle through temperature
print outs, pin each CAMO sensor until the system church complete.
I told myself that was all anyone ever asked me for.
Before dawn, i'd crossed the lobby one last time, lob
wookd under my arm. Sighting the elevator cabin's polished blankness
no four button, but around the middle rim of the panel,
I sometimes saw dust stuck in the shape of numerals,
or a single short black Esse nag where hundreds of
pressed and hovered for decades, always just enough strangers to
keep the question alive. When sunlight touched the crack text tile,
revealing each day the building still stood. The second night,
two nine a M. I took my break in the
cramp's security booth, had it slung low to one near
the rain, had died down, but inside a different pressure
built behind a glass of weight of things unspoken. I
leaned on the elevator console, thumbing through logs in the
digital pad. At that time on the overnight rounds, the
place could be funereal tonight, though the elevator's ready light
blinked and consistently the green rain would brighten, pulse weakly,
then stutter off, cycling just below the threshold of attention.
When I pressed for the third four routine check on
a drafty window, or so I told myself, the same
pattern appeared. The panel showed only one, two, three, and five.
I started to accept the missing for as just another
quirky throbuck to fussy architects, more superstition in fact. But
that flicker occurred right at my feet. The gangly red
of a fore glimmer to faded, then died. Before I
could reach out, I snapped a photo, not sure if
the ghost digit would appear on screen. Nothing abnormal there,
just the uneven reflection of my own face, drawn and
hollow elle in the shift. As I checked the night's
video clips, I noted that something had gone wrong. At
two eleven a m. The feed for the llevator lobby
on the main forget of violently popping in static, thin
wearing me lines crawling up the image, I replated on
the computer. Curiosity is smolitch. First came with scrolling snow,
then a short audio burst, garbled but with a shape
in the noise, a clept gasp or a brief and
intelligible phrase swallowed by digital distortion. I leaned in headphones
tight for a heartbeat. There beneath the static came sounds
that were echoes, faint footsteps as stifled word may be
a half laugh then, and nothing so total. I flinched
away when chased itself along the holes on camera, the elevator,
though blinked floor four. I rewound again. There was no
four on the button panel, yet the display showed it
for two seconds. When I pause, the elevator was stalled,
not on three or five, but on something in the
middle nowhere according to the blueprints. If I was honest
with myself, it was only then I began to question
more carefully. I dug out last month's logs, no mention
of failures. I marked every time stem two eleven, three,
twenty six, four, fourteen on a pad lines linking them
a cross referenced the lists, hoping to find a pattern
beyond the flicker. What I saw only deepened the problem. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
always the second eye or post midnight, always ending with
the elevator posing for less than three minutes on a
non existent four to four. Curiosity and caution ward to me.
I went down to the lobby, flicked through every button,
tried holding both three and five. The doors opened to
the same blank panel of wool, though this time as
I stepped in, I could feel cold seeping behind the boards,
a cold so or shop. It made me cough. My
hands flickered, and the thin beam from my pocket flashlight,
and I thought I saw the outline of an old
fire map, ghost traced with tape and grime. Until I
blinked in the marks vanished. My note had filled with
times and marginal observations. Though four flickered, the elevator hiccupped,
always at the edge of something real. I addited my
loger interest to sound measured professional, but I kept the
second private set of notes. In those the words were
run together footsteps twenty two twenty three, elevator satic two
eleven panel and normally tued weelve cold draft, no button
in the official logs. My knees stayed hidden. But each
time I returned to the cold, dusty seen between floors,
the wich at the base of my neck sharpened. I
checked again. No four in the building directory. No mention
on the master floor plan in the manager's office, not
even an old name badge or fire escape rop mentioning
the space. Yet the time fell into line, as if
the building wanted to reveal a pattern, but just missed
the chance. Three nights later, tied from the accumulation of
too little sleep and too much coffee, I spent a
quiet hour after midnight in the security room, in the
drowsy hummer fans and the dark spaces on the screens,
I queued up all tapes, ghosting back through weeks of
night video. Each clip cycled by under a minute. Most
showed stillness, pixelated shadows, hector steady progress up the holes
with his cart, the bright flicker of missus Felman's lamp.
But on the feed for the third floor lobby. At
two eleven a m Thursday, something art caught my eye.
The camera pointed straight down the hall by the elevated doors,
caught Hector rolling his cut down the gleaming floor. He
was humming mop buckets, slashing edges, blowed by the faint
digital haze of failing night vision. As he neared a
segment of wall that physically, in person was just a
stretch of painted plaster, no seams, no doors, he hesitated,
the cart, vanished for breath, as if swallowed by light,
and for a heartbeat, Hector shadow blushed sideways. Then the
image snapped back. He was walking away, whistling as if
nothing had happened. Frame by frame, I scrawled it backward
and forward. On a hunch. I checked the same camera
at the same time on different nights. Sometimes, though vacant
hallway lights flaked on for no reason, a few seconds
of pale artificial glow slip through and then died, as
if the space briefly remembered how to be used. On
the log file, the digital system tracked the anomaly set
at e g F l A freye A active deactivision
and slash A. After an ire swept pebbling my brow.
Despite the overactivisi, I put headphones on and replayed my
most recent recorder lock hidden in the background, his were
more noises much weaker than the four scrapes, like a
chair dragging or rustle, A woman's voice cut short by distortion.
The mood changed as I let the sand sloop, a
suggestion just at the edge of hearing of some one
searching through a foul box. Then a short phrase useless,
safe for clarity of intent, but don't elevator. I tracked
Hector down eily in his runs, pausing as he opened
the janitor's closet near the second floor brek room. You
ever get turned around up there? I mean past three?
He looked up in the soft yellow light. He gave
a slow dismiss of shrug. No sam, just old pipes.
I do the floors and trash, never get lost you.
I lead it, hang vaguely frustrated. Maybe he didn't want
to see it, or maybe he couldn't. The next morning,
curiosity prodded me back to the basement, long after Lebo
had left for the day. The file room, cinder block,
and stale sat under the weight of seventy years of
misplaced folders. I run my through box's labeled utilities, the
leases of fire, mushal slush, arch plans, looking for anything
that might clarify the elevator pattern. Buried under a stack
of faded time sheets from nineteen eighty, I found a
roll of blueprints, some pages of chunks weredacted with white
out thick blocks, obscuring texts and numbering. Yet in shivering
half light, I could make out a faint scrip beneath
the chemical fog, Bryce and Towner mezzanine level fourth floor
research and records. The floor plan had been whited out
on the nearer version, stitched between third and fifth, But
if I held it up to the light, I could
trace a corridor, a lunch room, a set off phes
e Reco's room. A line drawn through the space divided
it from the rest, just as in the real building.
The elevation masks seemed to skip over the gap. I
photographed the plans, puzzled and shaken. My superstition's never strong,
but growing, prodded at the seams that shift. After logging
everything twice, I brought the matter to Lebo, hoping for
answers old habits, he said, curtly, as not leaving his tablet.
Big Companies used to number mis a nine level special
fire code's expansions whom number files nobody keeped puffect track
any more. Some things get lost in a paperwork. He
fixes attention on me worily. Just keep your logs, torus.
Don't go exploring where you don't have keys, He dismissed
me in the gentlest way possible, furnace under lay by
a warning I couldn't ignore. Yet that night, the power
died at three nineteen a m. Without so much as
a flicker. At four, lights vanished, monitors blink black, and
I was left in a hallway that felt suddenly for on.
My footstep sicken with uncomfortable volume. In the stone stairwell,
emergency lantern in hand, I moved slowly, noting every bend
in the stair, every oddjill. My mouth dry above, vain
and growing. I heard the unmistakable rhythm of footsteps not
on the fifth floor, but higher are closer, as if
pacing out steps on a wood four inches above my head.
Each step came tanned in pairs walk Pau's shuffled drag.
When I reached the fifth floor landing, the pattern abruptly
cut off, as if the walker had realized I was listening.
I retraced my rad again, listening for other signs. Nothing moved.
The silence returned in a returning normalcy of artificial light.
When the back of Cackton and the monoitis reawakened, I
reviewed the feed. No one but myself on the stairs,
nowhereb of but sheer blank wall. But as I set
my radio on the counter, a small note of fear
took root. The boundaries of this building did not always
obey its own paperwork. By Friday, the fever of routine
held little comfort. I drifted through the empty halls, more
as a sentry than employee, watching for patents, mapping cold spots,
locking every unmatched line. I wondered, who are what I
was protecting and from whom. The shift began with loud,
pelting rains striking a broad glass lobby. Midway through the night,
at twelve thirty three a m. The security phone jolted
me from half sleep. The screen read block collar. I hesitated,
pulse in my throat. Company prote cal said to answer
any of a night ring immediately. The voice was a
grating was pro barely human, modulated by static, almost gentlest.
Stop looking for the fourth floor, it said, some floors
aren't meant to be found. Some people are not meant
to be remembered. I stood every hair on end. Who's this?
What do you want? A long electric silence followed by
gobbled word erase, and the line clicked dead. For a moment,
the room felt struck clean of air. Stunned A rifle
from my personal file box, the one I borrowed from
storage in a moment of over cautious diligence. Beneath a
remarkable inverses and safety codes about a manilla envelope caught
my attention. On the back, thumb smudged in dull pencil.
Someone had s cralled Old Staff nineteen sixty two. Inside
a black and white group photo creesed to the corners
if people, women and men in conservative suits narrow a
ties stood in bright formation, smiling in front of a
sign bryce and tower, fourth floor research and record, no date,
but the architecture matched all look pro toohead's high eyes expectant.
Nowhere in that photo did the prison day directory mark
a single office. The names in grease pencil couldn't be
found in any digital file. I could access the floor itself,
gone from bliprince raised from memory, I now held evidence
it had truly existed. Slowly, I put the photo on
my desk and head stop on the recorder. The room
was exceedingly quiet, save for the storm twitching overhead. I
dared not look too long at the elevator doors, reflected
blackly in the glass and in the stillness. My whisper
seemed both too loud and barely there. What the hell
did dehi? But the night wouldn't let matter settle. Not
after that call, I left the foto on the battered
steel desk, half hidden under routine shift paperwork, and paced
a jittering circuit of the ground floor. Even my foot
sets felt unconvincing, softer than they should have been under
aging tiles. The fullorescent lights this few left working castickly
waves across the marble, and the tick of my watch
seemed to echo in opposition to the building's deeper pulse.
High above the elevator gears made a sound barely audible
and certainly out of sequence. The thought lingered. The machinery
was alive, hungry in its minos revolutions, yearning toward a
space that wasn't in theory. There, the stormt's earlier violence
faded to a persistent wine tapped incessantly at the window
panes behind the front desk. The lobby, with its high
ornate ceiling, seemed to draw in the smallest noise, fulling
it to an unnatural fullness. By habit, I take the
logs again, chasing any anomaly with my name behind it.
Bank security men, you reported everything, even your own feelings
of unease. I tapped a short update into the official
lock no unusual activity and a far longer entry to
my private password locked notes. Every moment since the elevator
as midnight aberration was cataloged, pressed in the form of bland,
measured sentences. But my mind rushed beneath the surface. The
photo glared at me from under the pile, the words
fourth floor, seepy fuelik InKo, floodwater. I flicked through the
security feeds. Most lenses showed nothing of just the flat
yellow dust to ghostliness of empty lobbies in the silent
tash of Hernew's conference rooms. Yet every hour, as if
on the schedule, static crawled in the lower right quadrant
of the third floor's camera. It wasn't pronounced a brief waver,
a suggestion of shadow or shimmer that rancounter to the
corridor's right angles. Sometimes it looked almost like a figure.
Every time I replayed it, my pulse laps the frame
caught on something inexplicable, a shoe perhaps, or the edge
of a cult, Always in the spot where the elevator
should have oven on to the fourth floor. I turned
away from the monitors, suddenly weary. The back of my
neck prickles, as though charged cold gusts traveled the elevator
shaft again, cycling into the lobby and beats that had
nothing to do with their conditioning schedules or the storm outside.
For the sake of professionalism, a perhaps self defense, I
called it in leaving a terse message on Lepo's work
force mail. When I finally sat again, hunger gnawing at
mine size, the building choose that moment to remind me
I was not alone. I shrieked the sword of rusted
metal arms and scream older buildings produced, ripped up from
the lower level half its length. The noise sounded mechanical.
The rest, however, struck a tragic imitation of a human
groan dissolving to a he keeping silence. My hand have
it over the panic button of no use, but reassuring,
I forced myself to make another check boiler room, mechanical closet,
the a marked door in the basement, where the air
always felt clammy. The the halls and those recesses were
even quieter than usual. My footstep seemed not to register
at all, and my radio, normally full of quiet static
off at the hush of the truly disconnected resolute. I
tested each door, shining my light around pipes and storage
crates whose provements probably predated my own birth. In the
layer of my flat light, the edges of the blueprints
I had photographed earlier began to take on new clarity.
I propped the images against the wall, tracing lines with
my finger between the third and fifth fours on the
original and the erase versions. The scale made no sense.
There was simply too much space accounted for in the
earliest drawings. One blueprint, clearly from the nineteen fifties indicated
an additional electrical closet, a kitchenette, several windowless offices. That
entire strip of rooms was missing from every subsequent version,
each trace of research and records painted over, as though
the people who labored there deserved only a budget. Lines oblivion.
My radio buzzed abruptly, distorted full static in my palm.
I answered, expecting Lebow's grouchy drowl, or perhaps hec to
smooth banglish. Instead, what merged was a hess broken by
deck of a woman's voice, urgent, close to sobbing. You shouldn't,
don't listen to them, don't don't go before it, and
end nothing. Only the gentle whine of interference in what
might have been a low were sinful sigh layer beneath,
chased by silence so complete at left my ears ringing.
On a normal night, this might have been enough to
send me home early, but curiosity or perhaps duty one out.
I retraced my steps to the elevator again, armed with
a portable recorder and a small stack of copper blueprints.
The elevator all but greeted me with a low stutter
and an amber warning light, as though protesting undue attention.
I tried once pressing all available buttons and sequence, then
on a hunch, held the open door and five together
for a three count. The elevator stuttered as usual between
the documented floors. For a cruel second indicator pulsed white,
then red, four, then with all preambles cast a sigh.
The doors parted on a blackened, featureless slab, only this
time just above a level A patch of the wall
a Jetti's paint underneath smeared in the texture of faded stenciling.
I could read three letters wreck. I reached up, brushing
my finger tips across the brittle wall. The plaster gave slightly,
revealing the curve of Veno in a partial hour records
my record as microphone dutifully looked the sound of my
own nervous breathing, the friction of skin against all paint,
and unmistakably to Gustavisi air escaping from cracks. I could
neither see nor folly feel. With this new proof, I
resolved to delve deeper on my next off shift as
grounds for further traces, not just digital traces, but tangible,
holdable things, disguised by armfuls of trush bags and old files.
To lend myself an air of purposeful cleaning, I visited
floors two and three year change over iOS when the
holes were least likely to host another soul. Every closet,
every half forgotten storage bin, every lock draw became a
candidate for condestined scrutiny on the third floor, behind a
door marked electrical loafer's staff only. I unearthed the battered
cardboard box, filled not with tools, but with patented envelopes,
yellowed ladderhead, and half burned staff rosters. Some Bourne names
that matched no employee current elicited in bryzened human resources system.
Still others had briefed nottitions of transferred nineteen sixty two
inquiry pending, or simply erased each script in different colored
inks and pencils, told of a frantic lost effort cover
collapse in office's legacy. The rosters, organized by year, converged
and separated like tributaries. The same handful of surnames Vance
Zimmermann raised, cropped up repeatedly, each attached to positions in
recos a file supervision of the still more cryptic car
Cavil oversight by nineteen sixty four, though all their notations vanish,
as though their entire existence within Bryce and Tower been deleted.
An odd tingle trace my spine as I traced finger
over the paper, sensing layers of authorship piled thick as paint.
The implication wasn't lost on me. Some one with the
shops sent for a rasure had worked methodically and not
just once, to shed the building's real story from routine scrutiny.
That night, I pressed Hector, more insistent than before, you
ever clean up near for or see anything weird oult
door's odd cold spots. He shook his head, grin weary, Sam.
Sometimes you ask too much. Keep your mind on your rounds.
That's how you keep your job here. The answer was light,
but I caught the word glance. He dropped over his shoulder,
as if afraid the wools themselves might frown. I blurred it,
frustrated in the old staffless thurn names vance rays. Did
you ever? He turned away, his smug one suddenly busy
stacking cleaning bottles, shoulders pinched. People come, people go, sometimes
people go for good. Don't be the one looking werthers
walk away? Sam. Unsettled, I let him leave, watching a
shrinking figure vanish down the dim corridor before corporate branded
fire door closed behind him. Determined now, I waited until
the building had fully slipped into post midnight stillness, then
returned to the security office. The storm outside lent the
night a brittle charge, every flash of lightning flashing pale
blue over the marble floors, with the coppet floor plans,
the stuff Roster and the group Furtile arranged under the
desk lamp. I sifted through each piece, searching for some
narrative that would resolve into sense. But my findings only
compounded the mystery, a puzzle with no center, no border,
only edges that blurred more on every circuit and bidden.
My thoughts looped again and again to the unlisted collar
whose warning had disrupted what passed for peace. Some people
are not meant to be remembered. There was sadness in it,
but also something angry and frey. A shiver rattled beneath
my uniform, and the recorder in my pum always recording
caught quaver in my voice as I might, What did
they do here? My own words seemed to hang in
the air for living the sterile hush. I drafted an
email to a friend on City Pyerial, someone whose favor
I twice returned, and he owed me at least in
evening's worth of record searching Bryce and Tower fourth floor
self abrupt disappearance in sixty to sixty four? Can you
pull any city permit where incident reports lost in digitization.
I hit send before I could talk myself out of it,
already picturing the repercussions. The feats demanded another check. I
toggled through the split screens at two nineteen a m.
To my astonishment, the monitor for the elevator camera displayed
a brief pulsing image. The digital readout showed fort bright
as a wound red banded by ghostly static for a
two second eternity. The doors drew open on the monitor,
where before there had been only the street gray wall.
Now the feed shimmered with a faint cipia has almost
but not quite, revealing the outline of a person within.
I lunged for the digital capture, catching only the end
of the phenomenon, the frame freezing on a half scene
shape was shoulder slumped and hands pressed together, as though
in supplication. Even as it faded, the pattern didn't. Each
night light from that point some signal visual auditory emerged,
only to be wiped up by the systems of Razillah
self cleansing, data ridden and erased traces lost. Every morning
in the archaz cycling buffer, the remainder of every shift
came in exercise in doubt. Did I truly see what
I thought I saw with these patterns, merely my sleepless mind,
coaxed by shadow and anxiety, drawing meaning when unexisted or
did The building itself built by hands who'd sign no confession,
hunger to reveal its own betrayals, and flickering piece real
fashion Friday suns felt sharp edged, my limbs hung heavy.
Yet even the bitter coffee kept at my station, with
its vague taste of burned plastic, seemed to feel tension
rather than resolve it. On my way out, I paused
one last time in front of the elevator's blank panel,
The spot where a for should have been seethed with
a low static that buzst against my finger tips, and
I swore for the briefest instant the smell of sine
paper hung in the air. I commuted home on the
washed out dawn, sleep with held by theories circling a
round something deeper than codes and maintenance. The city looked
no different, skyscrapers rimmed in old gold rainwaters sluicing through gutters,
crows tracing lines overhead, But some mood changed my phone flast.
A single response just passed nine A m tours, heavier permit,
inspection reports attached Bryson's citations, ree fourth floor word staff employed, disappearance, suicide, rumors,
repeated clothes, Colwyn offshift. Before even opening the files, a
single thoughts spun unbidden. I was being watched, if not
by flesh and blood, then by the restless memory of
a place determined not to be forgotten. The Bryson had
its story to tell, and I was too entangled to
walk away now, not without tearing away something from both
of us. In the growing daylight, the building's mystery seemed,
if not tamer, then at least manageable by the light
of public record and civic curiosity. But as I re
entered that ancient marble lobbied the next night, feet are
going alone, elevated inan hollily. It was the memory of
the photograph, the redacted names, and the phantom floors and
quiet silence that shadowed my overystep. Whatever had tappened to
the fourth floor and to those who once charted its boarders,
it would not release me easily, nor leaf quiet. The
voices pressing faintly against the Knight's pale glass at seven
hue m for recent light crept through the cracked windows,
slats of the security office, painting about a desk in
and even stripes and dimming the faded black and white
photo I had left and covered up with some dun defiance.
The overnight still clung to my skin, thick a sweat,
heedless of the chill, in a pit of my stomach.
The last I was of my shift moved in jittery
fit fold of forms, half finish. Email windows opened and minimize.
The photo was staring up at me with those cheerful,
impossible faces. Eight people signed out of public memories completely
as the phantom floor lead occupied all at once. The
building had changed, not by some overt destruction, no glass shire,
no sirens blared, but in a sutler shiveringly. My headset,
still plugged in from the storm, racked night buzzed and bursts.
Even with the volume turn low, every monitor in the
control bank held some small tail, a warping of the
image at the edge, a stat at vertical bar calling
upward the tie in displaced, lifting back a few seconds
and then correcting itself. The elevator, of course kept up.
A charade door was opening twenty tons and an ire
unclean barren anolium. But now each time my eyes caught
the impression of movement behind the glass, a blip too
fast for even the recording buffer. I didn't bother logging
the anomalies a simple malfunctions, and the more not after
the message from the block number, not with the smuggled
velo of nestling on top of the city's setation print
out about missing recos and vanished personnel to write. All
quiet as I had on my first knight, felt suddenly absurd.
I rode only enough to protect myself. Tetical glitch logs
retained will clarify after sleep. Missus Feldman's light glowed on
floor too, as always, but even she seemed subdued. Fore
had resting against dubtur and hands at her batter desk.
She didn't look up when I passed the glass walled office,
nor did she acknowledge the quiet knock I rapped gently
on the frame. Her eyes were peeled wide, but she
seemed to be reading the air, not her spur sheets. Hector,
mop bucket and toe hardly paused to swap gibes and
complaints about management. His greeting, usually tinged with tired humor.
Was then you see it too, Sam, he whispered, glancing
at the elevator. Before I could answer, he turned away,
lips moving silently as he worked them up long, the
same section of floor circles, tightening focus somewhere else entirely,
the weight of the building pressed in his secrets, no
longer content to luck in diminishing patterns of static and chill,
I found myself treading The next time the elevator doors
would jutter open. I found myself thinking, the the only
thing separating the living from me raised is how loud
we keep telling the world we're still here. At eight one,
a m leb arrived, moving briskly, face buried behind a
thick folder. He paused outside the security office, eyes flickering
briefly to the stack of my locks, then to this
liver of all photograph peeking from beneath a sheaf of
maintenance forms. He didn't interrupt the silence as he sculled
through the logs. Eventually he muttered, update camaufirmera again half
the feet's glitch. He didn't meet my gaze, not even
when I approached the subject of the block call scam
spam building's numbers everywhere he said voicelow and clipped, don't
obsess torrors. His hands hovered and surer over the photo's edge.
He only took what was nest free and slipped out,
door whispering shut behind him. I watched the elevator, half
expecting it to open on nothing for him too, But
the doors kept the silent whispers for after dark. Even
with the dawn diluting the buildings or as shadows, the
fourth floor felt more present, its origin now more fragile,
its memory parting like a loose tooth. I was left
to drift through what passed for morning alone, with the
knowledge that in these walls, seeks were maintained, like the
wires and pipes behind Bryson's art Deco shell patch, redirected
and always always humming, just beneath the surface. I left
work that morning, with the fort now transferred to my
own folder, and the greeny screen capture from the elevator monitor.
The two artifats pressed hot in my hand that the
September air was called a steady drizzle, rinsing away to
city's surface. Grind. Home was not home, sleeper, shallow and
a reliable, haunted by a feeling of being pursued not
by a person, but by a place that had finally
started to take an interest in me. My phone, long
set to silum, vibrated all the table before noon. The
message came through on the secure encrypted up favored by
city investigators. Bryson employee incident, elevator complaints, disappearances in sixty
two sixty four municipal archives. Theodefel R M three hundred
twelve sat morning only. Some records might require a sign
off for copied discretion. By early evening, my waking life
and my anxious, near hallucinated nights blurred together. Screens glimmered
with files qued from city databases, mechanical violations, electrical safety citations,
noise complaints, all in them. Columns I th read stood
out simple to any one who knew what to look for,
not just a missing people nor the closed offices, but
a pattern of official removals and a authorized four numbering changes,
each waddled in bureaucratic language. To prine for accidents and
to opick for coincidence. I skimmed through all news clippings
now stashed in my backpack. Onorn about a suicide penciled
in the margins. Last seen boarding elevator twelve fifty three,
a m another duller, but more chilling. Fifth floor occupants
complain of strange noises over nigh date stamp. Late in
nineteen sixty three, municipal inspectors flagged the building three times
for an accounted mechanical stoppages, the last just days before
the fourth floor vanished from every map. With every new file,
Bryson Tower sharpened its intentions, as though the building itself
wanted to make sure I saw what had been so
carefully vacuumed out of memory. On Saturday morning, I entered
City Archives. Inside the well lit waiting area, with its
industrial carpet and cookie cut off furniture, felt alien compared
to the tower's half rou and grandeur. The receptionist a
pale faced woman, thin hair, drawn back in and not
frown over my requests, her fingers stolling on the keyboard. Bryson.
She began again, her voice fading at my nod. She
scrawled the musk, sticking restlessly those files on flight for
routine issue. I pause, Her eyes lingered on my badge.
Let me check the old permit ledgers. Wait here, I
paced between rows of metal bookcases. The arcous air was
dry and metallic. Paper and tone are and something less pleasant.
When she returned, she handed me a thin yellow folder
sealed with a brittle pink string. Be careful, she said,
a warning hidden in her soft tone, though to whom
I could not say. Inside inspection reports, hand written amendments
faded polaroids of what had once been full offices with
glass typewriters and bulletin boards. The notes repeated the buildings
odd formatteime mezzanine slip between third and fifth, then erased
and rebranded too many footnotes. The notation room never cleared
for occupancy pending inquiry appeared beside every vanished office number,
and alongside each a notation I'd seen before. Employee last
seen entering elevator two four a M. No further records.
At the end of the file I found a binding,
a red legal ribbon tagging a stack of time I
pretend statements and memos, all with the phrase for internal
review only. It was there in the clet formal prose.
I learned about the suicides too, in the spine of
three months, in about the extraordinary pressure to keep those
rumors out of the papers. Nothing was explicit, but the
implication was impossible to miss. People have vanished, wreckers had
been scrubbed, and at least four of them had been lost,
officially listed on the fourth floor, I closed a folder
with non steady hands. It didn't surprise me at the receptionist,
now watching my every move, looked away as I returned
the documents and scowled my signature records returned to Central
Review Monday. She said, in a voice meant for no
one at all. If you need more, use the formal request.
Don't mention this here, She hesitated, the only tell in
an otherwise and passive face, missing floor. I nodded, thanked her,
and left as smoothly as I could, the skin between
my shoulder blades prickling in the way it always did
when the air grew too thick to breathe. By Sunday afternoon,
the evidence was inarguable, if still partial. The elevator shouldn't
fit in its shaft by any measurement I could reconstruct
from city plans or the tower's original engineering drawings. There
should be dead space enough for a hidden corridor or
cluster of offices between fours three and five, sealed by
brittle walls. Nobody but the oldest maintenance cruise had ever
laid eyes. On the next shift, I returned to Bristom
with the air of a man of business. The sky
threatened rain, but the air was clear, brittle as a
razor's edge. Before settling into the security office, I checked
the stairwells. Nothing had changed visually, but in the gap
between fours, a seam of concrete where a number should
have gone, A faint breeze pushed against my finger tips.
I thought perhaps it was the breath of the space itself,
reluctant to be forgotten. Inside the elevator, I pressed each
button in sequence, holding them in odd combinations, trying every
trick I gleaned from old elevator manuals and urban legends.
At two twelve, they am, The doors shuttered and snapped open,
not with their usual mechanical indifference, but with the reluctant
shivering lack between three and five, and the digital readout
there lingered just for a heartbeat, thoughfore again red and
urgent or wound in a plastic I bent down, feeling
for seams that would mark a hidden panel. My flashlight
found what the naked I could not scratch along the foe.
A dusty hemisphere, ardy and stockpaint revealed the word erecus,
half field, yet pure as first print. When the door
slid open, there was no hallway, just a blank wall,
until as A stepped closer my way pressed down on
a worn stone tile, something clicked inside the shaft, the
faintest of latches. All at once, the air shifted, and
for an instant I felt as if I could step through.
My hand clutching the recorder was sick with sweat on
the tape, only breath, the clock of my boot and
the low, far off hum of electricity. I pulled back,
and the wall seemed to resettle, the chill air as pating,
as though nothing had occurred, but the impression lingered, a
presence close and insistent, neither friend nor autrefo. That morning,
waiting for the building to stir, I saw an anonymous
envelope slipped under the security door. Inside aged newspaper clippings
dated from early nineteen sixty four with names are recognized Fance,
Simmamin Rais and a fourth blurw to ellegibility by use
of handling. All the short, inevitable head lines, each in
desperate font said the same last seen heading to fourth floor,
under lined three times in shaky blue ink. My fingers
shook as I refold a do nvelope and slipped it
into my pack. The message was clear. I was not
the first, nor perhaps would I be the last. The
ghosts floor was not satisfied merely to be buried its
memory and the memories of those it had swallowed. Hunger
to be found demanded, not simple remembrance, but something like
a reckoning. On my next shift, the routine I kluantif
for comfort was gone, replaced by a trembling vigilance. Even
small failures now felt auxtrated. My badge failed to scan,
the fire alarm chirped at random. Security phone rang and
rang into silence each time, the number flashing unreadable. Hector's
greeting was a mutter, and missus Feldman was gone, her
lamp dark, heard a shame missing from her usual chair.
It was after midnight, and I was truly alone for
the first time. I resolved then that fear of being
watched was not reason enough to hide from the truth.
Quip with every KIA could borrow, my phone set to record,
and the battered city foldustache in my backpack. I waited
until the building had settled into the deepest night. At
the top of the eire, with my hot thudding, I
called the elevator and watched the door spot with glacial slowness.
This time, the panel glowed red, flickering from three, two,
four and back again, until it seemed the plastic itself
would melt. I rode up, flashing my light along each seam.
As the elevator trembled and stopped hard abrought between the floors.
The doors pried open, resisting as if the space beyond
was not made for people. What greeted me was at
first only a gap of pitch black chamber, tight enough
to force me sideways. My feet sank into dust as
thick as fine ash. I pressed forward, crawling for a
split at shoulder height, the world narrowing to the urgent
beat of my heart and the thin, uneven beam of
the flashlight. The core space was lined in warp plaster
and russ flake metal, like the inners of a disassembled building,
half eaten by time and refusal. Inside there felt utterly motionless.
My breath rasped, steaming briefly in the beam. I pressed forward,
now stooped in a corridor, two narrow for comfort. At
my left, a partition of glass and yellowed paper marked
what was once a window, now only a view on
to more darkness. Folded benches, shredded upholstery, broken filing cabinets
cluttered the space where once there had been bustling off
as partitions. Only skeletal, firm nature stood guard. It might
have been thirty seconds or thirty years before I first
heard it. The sound of voices, distant and pitched on
a weavent that by passed the year and settled straight
into the skull. A chorus not in time, not in harmony,
of horrod conversations and half shouted warnings, each at once
separate and overlapping. As I inched along the flashlight circle,
picked out signs of previous occupation, a faded nameplate Zimmerman,
a sprawl of papers fused together by fulth in time,
an overturned surround it mug that read Bryce and Tower
Research go forth. I gripped my recorder, tied her my thumb,
shaking against the stop button. The voices grew clearer as
I pressed on a temperature in the corridor, dropping steadily
each breath dampered in the last sudden movement of flicker,
just at the margin, white shirt of forms gathered in
silent conference heads lowered over what must have been a
projector or a Telux machine. The lights started again, and
they were gone, replaced by the impression of a desk
and a pair of hands, ghostly and blue leaf and
through files that felt to us the moment they turned
the page. My phone recording caught the hushed rush of
many voices at once. We were just doing our jobs. Remember,
please let them see us, sir. The files, the files high, dim,
and again the distorative phrase don't trust her. I pressed
on one desk, held a cracked badge for rays. The
lamp beside its bark flickered and died. I skirted around
a spill of shred of plastic in paper, the misake
of texture carpet, nearly eeries beneath years of damp. The
path narrowed further until I emerged, bruised and breathless, into
what might once have been a Ricker's fault. The room
had no true doors, opening yon like a wound split
along the line of cinder block and gas. The walls
patched with grimy tape and browning newspaper bore painted numbers,
now nearly invisible. At the far end, a bank of
battered metal filing cabinets had been forced open draw slung
wide in a wild panic pattern. Here the air was different,
still charged, sharply metallic fluorescent light washed the space from nowhere,
flickering with unsteady purpose. I stepped forward, drawn toward a
battered cut stack with reels of magnetic tape typritain labels flapping,
the only eligible one reading Incident January fourth, nineteen sixty three.
I reached out hand trembling and pressed play on the
bat of reel to real player. White noise hissed out,
resolving to a woman's voice, and clipped terrified rhythm. Four
floor bordered shut after Discovery staff ordered to sign NDA
offices cleared out, files and records disappeared. Elevator panel locked.
Do not remain after midnight? Do not. A sudden shot bang,
echoing not through tape but through the space itself, sent
ust boiling from the top of the cabinets. A froze,
barely breathing from the coroner. A shape resolved, a figure
neither whole nor in fragments pressed out from the wall
like a press flower between failing pages. Its mouth opened,
emitting a desperate, strangled sound. Help us, it said, not
quite with a voice, but with the flat certainty of
the mind press pass reason. We were a race. Do
not let them. Another flash, this time dizzily bright, and
the rumor upted alarm Clackson's blight, the familiar, hated fluorescent
whale screaming through the office. Pages soar from cabinets, as
if snatched by invisible hands. Typrotus clicked in a furious
mirrored cadence. Outside the room, footsteps pounded, echoing in the
same double rhythm I'd heard in the stairwell weeks before.
Every muscle in my body screened to escape, but the
room held fast. The specter at the wall twisted, transparency,
blotting and warping with static voices, crestened out words mashed together,
betrayed for goodden don't let them, and always don't trust
the elevator. The walls pulsed, moving as though filled with
liquid instead of old air, and behind them more nos
suffering bureaucracy and muffled angry grief, shoving tapes and papers
into my pack. I staggered backward, fighting against wind that
seemed to come from every direction. At once. My flashlight flickered,
the light bending, so the shadows grew teeth and claws,
narrowing the space until the only way out was the
way I'd come in. I crawled, scraped, banged elbows and
knees on jutting plaster behind me. I felt the present spill,
the tension almost unbearable. Just as I reached the elevator,
the doors slam closed. The hall cowd juttered, hurling me
to the ground floor with a motion more violent than
any I had experienced in years of military travel. I
rolled onto the scuffed marble, boots, scraping longs burning. For
a long moment, I simply lay there, stunned and empty,
the well asserting its ordinary gravity inch by inch, as
though I had been spared out from somewhere else. Entirely.
The stillness that followed was Brittell's class. The security system
rebuted in a slow, mechanical wine. I checked my pocket's recorder,
still running, the battered sissy folder crisp and full of
stolen evidence. The taped weighty is bricks at my side. Upstairs,
the elevator panel oscillated between three and five, never again
pausing on for I remained where I was, knowing that
in some critical way, the building itself had shifted. The
events side witness couldn't be explained away, as power surges
were all wiring the boundary between what was lost and
what remained. It dissolved, albeit momentarily, showing me all that
had ever been meant to stay hidden. The next day,
I was summoned to Labo's office and a still little
room flanked by fire exit maps in a lean imposter
of high rise safety protocol. He sat behind the desk,
face fixed in the hard managerial kindness of someone trained
to make him pleasantness seem roudine. There was a break
in Lebo asked, hand press a temple as he read
through a new batch of incident reports. Yes, I said,
each word, carrying the full weight of a mission file.
Room made a tapes gone. He were on leave until
further notice, he said, I is never leaving the page.
We've had complaints about your reports. They don't match with
our logs. I left the room without arguing, clutching my
batted backpack tighter. The contact at City Chez wouldn't answer
my messages. The phone want so a key story in
its silence, claned twice the next night, each time disconnecting
the foy could answer. Contractors arrived Monday to modernize the
elevator system. I watched from across the empty street, rain
streaking the windshield. As a team in matching the uniforms,
faerroed bricks and some men into the lobby. Signs went
up a safe to modernization in progress, and by week's
end they'd sealed off the segment of all the elevator
at once, reluctantly opened on. Afterwards, the lights on three
and the five gluid steady, and afore it was no
longer flickered, but an absence complete. The city sent a
stack of new paperwork routine, impersonal and signed sensitive incident
further review required, recommend suspension pending psychiatric evaluation. My own logs,
audio unwritten vanish from the company server. My keekad no
longer registered in any system. Sleep was fractious, a patchwork
of restless starts and sudden wakings. The forbidden voices from
the fourth floor pressed in by tape and plaster, choking
inside elevator shafts long since. Blots started to seep into
my dreams. Every night I heard the warning, don't let
them seal the door again. My old skills, the ones
trained for vigilance, for noticing patterns, became a curse. One night,
returning from a late walk, I found an email let
it go, no sender, no reply. At three fourteen a
m a sharp knock landed on my apartment store. I
eased it open to empty air. A single sheet of
paper lay at my feet, the clipped headline in padotype
Bryce and tower Safey complete, no incidents reported. I took
my evidence tapes, news clippings, the group photo, and weighed
my next move. I rehearsed waste, exposed the truth, then
discarded each the city's indifference, the buildings hung over silence,
the machine's capacity to erase both the living and the dead.
I could slip everything to the press, But as I
sat at my breakfast table in the cramp blue dawn,
the weight of those other warnings worked their way, and
whoever I told would soon join the forgotten. Behind my eyelids,
the faces from the fourth four floated A blurredun insistent
voice after voice demanding not exposure but re condition. I
didn't answer, not yet, but pressed my thumb over the
batted office keys, still swinging from a faded lineout at
my throat. Late that night, I curled up with the
tapes and played them through, letting the voice spill over me,
learning the shape of a story that had once been
buried in a sealed up room between one ordinary floor
and the necks. There was nothing for it nel but
to act. On my last night before packing up my life.
I cradled the batted office key, knowing it would never
open a door again. I queued up the final tape
on the bat of a corridor, and the reel spun
out into silence. My voice, dried and ragged with exhaustion,
played back from the middle of the recording security lock,
fourth floor, no longer present, system, lugs wiped, contractor evidence sealed.
Project done. But before the tape spun to the end,
another voice cut in, not my own, faint, desperate, layered
by tones I recognized from the archive. We're still here,
it whispered, not a plea or a warning, but a certainty.
Please don't forget us, don't let them seal the door again.
I let the recorder run to its final click, hands
trembling as the room filled with the static punch of
those old, obliterated voices. In my pot, the offics key
pressed a pattern into my skin, the tag, once blank,
now showing faint script. Floor for aside. The night lay
still and unbroken. In some far corner of the city,
a building slumbered, its secrets, pared away, yet still breathing
in the dark. I watched the keitton listened for the
elevator's ding, and when nothing came, I sat quietly, holding
the silence close, remembering the voices pressed forever between the
concrete floors. I watched the key and listened for the
elevator's ding, and when nothing came, I sat quietly, holding
the silence close, remembering the voices pressed forever between the
concrete floors. The next morning, sun, then a metallic against
a sky irritated to Peter, gave my apartment all the
warmth of sheet metal. I stared at the battered brice
and fold a spread across my table grew photo stuttering,
audio logs, faded blueprints, ghosting out floor that hadn't existed
since long before I was born. The city outside jogged
to life, in cautious winds, and for a while it
felt as though I had strayed into reality parallel to theirs,
a world whose forgotten dead throb just beneath the surface,
but whose living never once aimed there. Iized the direction.
I didn't return to the tower. My suspension became a female,
then a termination communicated by impersonal email position no longer available, restructuring,
Please return all company property of my night after the elevator,
I remember a little at all, drifted a round my apartment,
unwilling to sleep, The voices on those tapes swirling through
the air so laid and plaint if I kept the
speaker's turned low, as though even at a whisper, they
might rouse the neighborhood. The City Archives digital access shut
down that afternoon, my password revoked without ceremony. Every back
up I tried to keep, Cloud and Crypto flash drive
returned in error, the files deleted or walled off. So
entirely it was as if I'd never type the queries
at all. They didn't come for the physical papers or
the tapes, and I engineered my days around their absence,
listening for footsteps in the hallway, cars idling tou lawn
beneath my window, the lurking premonition that anyone in an
elevator was a potential harbinger. When my phone rang at
untraceable arrows, the line always dropped dead before I could speak.
I dreamed of gaps between stone, hans pressed to glass
that wouldn't break, an endless spreadsheet of names with lines
drawn through every entry. Word drifted in from contacts at
city Hall. Nothing concrete, just hints, inspectors let go. Suddenly,
floors were numbered in new audit documents. Minor fire is
reported and quickly resolved. Headlines never ran with the words
bryson or missing. And when a wat passed the building
on and overcast Tuesday, the sword of brisk anonymous day
that passes for autumn. Here, plastic barricades wrapped the entrance,
and a new signs swam above the doors, now lease
in modernized spaces available. If I looked too closely at
the procrook above the lobby, pale scars left from the
patchwork showed with something older, something bearing letters in art deco.
Catchel had once been scraped away. Still, even as the
terror tried to reinvent herself, the charge of unease, The
knowledge of something unfinished clung to those streets like humidity.
Shadows that shouldn't have existed, parted across windows in the
fourth floor, quick and pointed contu sin to trust. Passing
late one evening across the street and in the sullen
hush of oncoming rain, an amber light flickered for an
instant above where the old panel should be, the shape
of a four, perhaps burned into my vision. I blinked
and saw nothing but the scuff or painted brick. By then,
I'd stop trying to warn anyone afright. My first attempts
at cheering in the files are anonymized, routed through burner
email accounts to journalists whistle blower tip lines. City planners
yielded either silence or respond says so noncommittal they might
as well have been placeholders fones. When I dared to answer,
only offered silence. Static, and on a single occasion, a
mechanical voice reciting a warning do not approach elevator sealed
and authorized no further inquiry permitted. I deleted the message
and kept the tapes in the locked box beneath my bed.
Pressing on became an act of defiance against comfort. I
arranged to meet with Hector on a park bench far
from Bryson's leaving outline. He looked thinner, his face more drawn.
When I offered him the yellow photograph the group from
the fourth floor, his hands trembled. I was a kid here.
Old man cleaned these floors before me. He shook his head,
eyes wet and distant. Stores never leave, they hide. I
never saw four flour Sam, but sometimes I dreamed haud voices.
Now cleaning's just cleaning. You walk the straight lines. You
don't knock on doors that aren't there. What about the
people who vanished, I asked, did any one remember them?
He avoided my gaze, studding the pigeons at his feet.
After a while, if the pay comes in and nobody's
asking the wrong questions, you let yourself forget. He did
meet my eyes then, and for a second both pity
and relief flickered there. Whatever you found, best to let
the stores sleep that building. It chews up memory and
spits it out as paperwork. You can fight, but it'll
be the papers fold up next. I thanked him, letting
the silence bloom. I knew he was right, but still
some injustice, gnawed with a coal from the elevator, had
never left me. Restlessness crept in, unable to sit with
my memories, I returned repeatedly to the box of tapes,
desperate for something concrete, a code, at a revelation that
would allow me to force the world to admit what
it had allowed to vanish. The best I could find
was a final mangled staff, rosters inman rays bounce, and
the last name obliterated by a spill of water long ago,
each struck through with diagonal lines. Months later, these details
suffaced in dreams, an elevator ride with no destination, a
wall splitting wide to reveal a parade of suited office
workers walking single file into a room that sealed shut
behind them. But the waking world offered only the diminishing
returns of obsession. My apartment, now crowded with evidence no
institution would accept, became his own kind of arc. I've
every box labeled not by four or year, but simply
by the compulsion not to let more lives disappear unaccounted for.
All that's left in the end is the choice to
step away or to act. I waited for weeks, hoping
some new piece would fall through the cracks. Every night,
I watched the span of city where the tower cast
its longest shadow, listening as the street noises faded and
the sky line went vacant. Nothing changed except the feeling
that with every passing day the seal floor receded further.
It's inquired dead, pressing just a little harder at the
inside of my skull. The evening before I planned to
pack away the remainder of my life tapes files, Key
Oliver has sat with the recorder in my lap, thumbs,
tracing the battered plastic edges. The city's ordinary hum became
background static, and in that hush I believed I could
almost hear beneath every surface. The gentle hum of elevator
gives idling and endless cycles seeking stop, no longer permitted
by any of fission map. As rain tensed and slackened outside,
I queued up the last tape. My own voice was there,
a herod worn detailing routine locks. But then under that drone,
another layer, not mine, and unmistakably out of time, desperate, urgent,
a harmony of loss were still here. Please Stone, forget us,
Don't let them seal the door again. I let the
silence build, afraid to breathe too loudly, afraid I break
whatever fragile connection had momentarily pierced the worlds will loftance
to remember, my hands pressed to office, key, fat into
my palm, attack always blank, now legible, one word faded
almost to invisibility. Floor for I shut my eyes and
pictured the room, pressed between stone and plaster, voices filing
paperwork they'd never escape from, doomed to repeat a vanished routine.
I don't know if any one else could find the
same door again, or if my persistence had moved the seal,
if only an inch. But as the lust of the
recordings flickered out and the room fold with a twilight
that no lights could quite dispel, I decided I would
keep watch, at least for now, not to expose the story,
not to call down the vengeance of a city eger
for simple endings, but simply to hold up the evidence
that between the third and fifth four lives had existed.
And until some one else asked again, until the silence
broke for another desperate force, I would not forget. And
that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I
will see you in the next one,