WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.400 --> 00:00:09.080 At two seventeen on a Wednesday, an unimportant hour on 2 00:00:09.119 --> 00:00:11.800 a day like any other. The world paused, Or so 3 00:00:11.919 --> 00:00:14.640 I would have sworn, there is always a certain commotion 4 00:00:14.759 --> 00:00:18.320 in the Riverside library after lunch. Kids trailing left over 5 00:00:18.440 --> 00:00:21.719 energy up and down the aisles, the printer coughing out essays, 6 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:25.519 the humid chatter of a dozen voices echoing against limestone 7 00:00:25.559 --> 00:00:28.559 and old oak. I was sliding an overdue copy of 8 00:00:28.679 --> 00:00:31.559 Encyclopedia of Birds on to the Nature's shelf when the 9 00:00:31.640 --> 00:00:35.880 rooms shifted. Not just a lull, not the polite husher 10 00:00:35.960 --> 00:00:40.000 librarian might dream of, but a sudden, perfect, bottomless absence, 11 00:00:40.439 --> 00:00:44.359 sound extinguished in madeir. No giggles, no thrum of the 12 00:00:44.359 --> 00:00:47.600 ceiling fans, which had buzzed for thirteen years straight above 13 00:00:47.640 --> 00:00:50.359 the reading room, No soft flap of pages, or the 14 00:00:50.399 --> 00:00:53.359 distant click of the lobby clock. I watched a toddler's 15 00:00:53.399 --> 00:00:57.640 hands stretch, mid gesture, freeze, and hover impossibly in the stillness. 16 00:00:58.119 --> 00:01:02.119 Even the dust mote seemed suspended a pattern in glass. 17 00:01:02.719 --> 00:01:04.640 The paws were so brief it might have been the 18 00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:07.879 blink of a tired eye. A couple of heartbeats long 19 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:09.560 enough for me to look up at the clock and 20 00:01:09.599 --> 00:01:14.319 register the time two seventeen. Then, as if nothing had happened, 21 00:01:14.519 --> 00:01:18.560 the library unspooled itself. A mother's voice resumed mid instruction, 22 00:01:18.959 --> 00:01:21.920 the thunk of a returned DVD echoed in the return's bin, 23 00:01:22.280 --> 00:01:25.359 and someone's cell phone started up with the first bars 24 00:01:25.400 --> 00:01:28.879 of yesterday. Not a soul appeared to notice that a 25 00:01:28.879 --> 00:01:33.040 shiver had run through reality. I stood gripping my cart, 26 00:01:33.480 --> 00:01:37.680 lungs half full, uncertain if I dreamed it. I ran 27 00:01:37.799 --> 00:01:41.120 my tongue across my teeth. No dizziness, not a hint 28 00:01:41.159 --> 00:01:44.200 of vertigo or ringing. I wrapped my knuckles against the 29 00:01:44.239 --> 00:01:49.480 shelf experimentally. A friendly thud cleared my throat. Expected the 30 00:01:49.519 --> 00:01:52.599 absurd hush to descend again, but the noise around me 31 00:01:52.680 --> 00:01:55.879 had the stubborn normalcy of a school commons before dismissal. 32 00:01:56.359 --> 00:01:59.560 It all came back so perfectly, so seamlessly, that I 33 00:01:59.599 --> 00:02:02.599 was almost embarrassed to be standing there, blinking at the 34 00:02:02.640 --> 00:02:07.519 institutional carpeting. Beverly was at the reference desk, a sturdy 35 00:02:07.519 --> 00:02:10.840 pedestal amid the traffic, flanked by flower pots and the 36 00:02:10.879 --> 00:02:14.719 battered phone. Beverly could outpace any rumor in town before 37 00:02:14.719 --> 00:02:17.800 it circled back to the source. She wore her glasses 38 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:20.960 on a silver chain and hummed summers Old musicals. When 39 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:25.520 shelving I rolled the cart her way, feeling a little ridiculous. 40 00:02:26.159 --> 00:02:29.039 So did you just feel that, I asked, keeping my 41 00:02:29.159 --> 00:02:33.240 tone casual as possible. She glanced up, squinting at my 42 00:02:33.319 --> 00:02:36.680 face for a clue. Feel what, Anne, a draft from 43 00:02:36.719 --> 00:02:40.479 the loading dock again? You know the seals? No, I 44 00:02:40.560 --> 00:02:45.360 mean quiet, strange stillness just now. Beverly threw back her 45 00:02:45.360 --> 00:02:47.960 head and laughed at half snort. That meant she thought 46 00:02:47.960 --> 00:02:51.840 I was trying to lighten her day around here, you wish, 47 00:02:52.159 --> 00:02:55.039 unless you're about to go all shushing ghost of librarians 48 00:02:55.080 --> 00:02:59.000 passed on me. Honestly, Anne, there are toddlers building literal 49 00:02:59.039 --> 00:03:02.919 tunnels out of the story our cushions back there. I 50 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:05.560 let her have her joke. She was right. There was 51 00:03:05.599 --> 00:03:08.400 nothing out of the usual to see, or so it seemed. 52 00:03:08.919 --> 00:03:10.759 I made a show of examining one of the river 53 00:03:10.879 --> 00:03:15.360 view windows, noting the perfectly ordinary silhouettes outside, joggers on 54 00:03:15.360 --> 00:03:19.039 the path, a pair of scullers easing down stream. I 55 00:03:19.120 --> 00:03:21.840 told myself, perhaps I had simply lost my bearings in 56 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:25.759 a day dream, or suffered some microsecond neurological blip that 57 00:03:25.879 --> 00:03:29.719 left no residue but the memory of an impossible hush, 58 00:03:30.080 --> 00:03:33.520 but the mechanical regularity of the return sound the waytime 59 00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:37.080 picked up not a half second later, but with absolute continuity. 60 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:41.000 Something about that break continued to gnaw long after Beverly 61 00:03:41.120 --> 00:03:44.080 moved on to her next stack of interlibrary lone forms. 62 00:03:44.680 --> 00:03:47.360 I made a brief note in my pocket log, marking 63 00:03:47.400 --> 00:03:50.520 it for the Quirks and Queries section of the monthly 64 00:03:50.639 --> 00:03:54.719 maintenance report. I'd built that section into the logs myself 65 00:03:54.919 --> 00:03:58.520 when I took over as head librarian. I ruminated on 66 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:01.199 the matter all the way home that evening. My familiar 67 00:04:01.240 --> 00:04:04.680 walk along the river restored to its usual rhythm, bird song, 68 00:04:04.919 --> 00:04:07.800 distant bell tower, the squeak of my shoes on rain, 69 00:04:07.919 --> 00:04:10.800 damp brick. I considered the odds of such a complete 70 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:14.919 sudden silence, a sensory trick, a day dream cross wired 71 00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:17.879 with the environment. I even caught myself trying to mimic 72 00:04:17.879 --> 00:04:21.920 the effect, standing very still beneath the arching poplars, holding 73 00:04:21.959 --> 00:04:24.879 my breath and imagining the world as a snapped string. 74 00:04:25.399 --> 00:04:29.480 But nothing of the kind occurred only the ordinary hush 75 00:04:29.519 --> 00:04:32.959 of a spring evening at twilight, with fishermen leaning over 76 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:37.199 the banks and teenagers testing new music on tinney speakers. 77 00:04:37.800 --> 00:04:40.720 In the comfort of my kitchen. I reminded myself that 78 00:04:40.759 --> 00:04:44.360 librarians inherit a certain fondness for order, a habit of 79 00:04:44.439 --> 00:04:48.199 noting the disordered. Missus Rudd, who handed me her keys 80 00:04:48.240 --> 00:04:51.720 and her patients eight years ago, had always encouraged an 81 00:04:51.720 --> 00:04:56.959 appreciative wariness, never assumption. Perhaps, like Missus Rudd, I was 82 00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:00.560 adapting to the building's own quirks, the one's only revealed 83 00:05:00.600 --> 00:05:04.519 in quiet stewardship. I lay awake that night, counting not 84 00:05:04.680 --> 00:05:08.240 sheep but time pieces. The elegant brass clock in the entry, 85 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:12.399 the stately old grandfather clock just outside the children's room, 86 00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:16.319 the slender wall clock above my own desk, all ticking 87 00:05:16.360 --> 00:05:20.120 in their own slow music, surely impervious to whatever oddness 88 00:05:20.120 --> 00:05:25.160 had chosen too seventeen as its stage. Morning returned, with 89 00:05:25.199 --> 00:05:29.759 all its unremarkable bustle. I greeted Tim a maintenance stalwart, 90 00:05:30.120 --> 00:05:33.319 furrowed and gruff as a granite headstone, but with hands 91 00:05:33.360 --> 00:05:37.959 on kindness. His ancient tool box chipped and stickered, beyond recognition, 92 00:05:38.399 --> 00:05:42.000 was a fixture more dependable than the fire alarms. Beverly 93 00:05:42.120 --> 00:05:45.279 arrived with three shades of nail polish and a story 94 00:05:45.319 --> 00:05:50.120 about her neighbor's failed garden gnome contest. The library creaked 95 00:05:50.160 --> 00:05:54.079 slowly to life, a trickle of high schoolers, reat her ease, 96 00:05:54.199 --> 00:05:57.639 carving out calm, a war of attrition between sunlight and 97 00:05:57.680 --> 00:06:01.839 the old blackout curtains. It has always struck me as beautiful, 98 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:05.680 this building. The limestone walls still cold to touch in may, 99 00:06:05.879 --> 00:06:09.680 wide hipped windows blurring river and sky. Battered oak floors, 100 00:06:09.720 --> 00:06:13.720 patched and repatched, but impossible to stain. When the afternoon 101 00:06:13.800 --> 00:06:16.399 sun found its way through the high reading room, it 102 00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:21.560 gilded everything. Brass book plates, faces, bent over paperbacks, the 103 00:06:21.639 --> 00:06:25.759 friendly Lion's Head fountain at the garden facing end. The 104 00:06:25.800 --> 00:06:29.680 air inside is regularly flecked with voices, but always beneath 105 00:06:29.680 --> 00:06:33.879 it persistently the presence of the library itself, a living 106 00:06:34.040 --> 00:06:39.399 organism with moods, scents, and layers. Our library has its ghosts, 107 00:06:39.680 --> 00:06:43.120 though not the supernatural kind. There's a certain loose pipe 108 00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:46.560 that clanks on rainy afternoons. The wooden stair between the 109 00:06:46.600 --> 00:06:49.399 main floor and the archives lets out a low groan, 110 00:06:49.759 --> 00:06:52.600 as if wary of too many feet. We have odd 111 00:06:52.639 --> 00:06:55.680 shelving arrangements in the history stacks that I inherited with 112 00:06:55.759 --> 00:06:58.879 the job, and a second floor window facing the tracks 113 00:06:59.079 --> 00:07:02.879 that rattles precisely twelve minutes before any freight train arrives. 114 00:07:03.920 --> 00:07:07.160 Each is a private mark. The small truculent ways a 115 00:07:07.240 --> 00:07:12.199 building resists being reduced to pure utility. Tim finds them endearing, 116 00:07:12.519 --> 00:07:15.160 and I, after a decade, find them part of the 117 00:07:15.199 --> 00:07:19.639 library's personality, as irreplaceable as the signed Ann Tyler or 118 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:23.319 the spiral bound cookbooks with margin notes from my childhood 119 00:07:24.399 --> 00:07:28.399 rituals define us. At eight fifteen every morning, I unlock 120 00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:30.959 the south entrance and let in the sun. I fetch 121 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:35.519 the newspapers, still miraculously delivered in print form, and swap 122 00:07:35.600 --> 00:07:38.360 winks with mister Corrigan, who holds the record for most 123 00:07:38.399 --> 00:07:42.639 continuous library card renewals in town fifty seven years in counting. 124 00:07:43.319 --> 00:07:47.120 Beverly powers up the terminals. We gossip through our first coffees, 125 00:07:47.399 --> 00:07:50.560 updating the running tally on which school chess club attendee 126 00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:55.759 most heartbreakingly misfiles the encyclopedias. At noon, there's a minor 127 00:07:55.800 --> 00:08:00.319 hospitality crisis about whether the new espresso machine actually work works. 128 00:08:00.519 --> 00:08:04.079 It does, for the price of an eruption to carry 129 00:08:04.120 --> 00:08:06.600 the keys to this place is to feel yourself in 130 00:08:06.639 --> 00:08:09.319 the company of not just your colleagues and the patrons, 131 00:08:09.720 --> 00:08:12.839 but every other steward who walked here, deciding how much 132 00:08:12.959 --> 00:08:17.040 light and order to invite into each day. Still I 133 00:08:17.079 --> 00:08:20.360 stayed watchful for the silence, more as a private experiment 134 00:08:20.399 --> 00:08:23.920 than anything. What could one brief anomaly mean in a 135 00:08:23.959 --> 00:08:28.160 building rife with its own signatures? But old missus Rudd's words, 136 00:08:28.480 --> 00:08:31.879 it's the building's rhythm, Anne echoed in me, with the 137 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:35.559 persistence of a bell still humming below the threshold of hearing. 138 00:08:36.639 --> 00:08:40.080 By Friday, the memory had begun to fade out, competed 139 00:08:40.120 --> 00:08:43.480 by a week of catalog backlogs and a disastrous attempt 140 00:08:43.519 --> 00:08:47.080 by the after school club to host a silent chess tournament. 141 00:08:47.679 --> 00:08:51.039 They forgot about Beverly's re rooted phone line and half 142 00:08:51.039 --> 00:08:55.080 a dozen sugared up siblings. The silence shrank almost to 143 00:08:55.120 --> 00:08:59.279 the size of doubt until it returned. It happened again 144 00:08:59.559 --> 00:09:03.399 precisely the following Tuesday, at the exact same hour two 145 00:09:03.879 --> 00:09:07.519 seventeen p M. I had taken my routine trip downstairs 146 00:09:07.519 --> 00:09:11.120 to the archives, carting a crate of microfilm reels. The 147 00:09:11.159 --> 00:09:15.559 basement is a different world altogether, cooler, stiller, perfumed with 148 00:09:15.679 --> 00:09:19.159 dust and binding glue, lined with cabinets that look as 149 00:09:19.159 --> 00:09:21.679 though they've been there since the invention of the Dewy 150 00:09:21.759 --> 00:09:26.440 decimal system. I was sifting through a drawer labeled obituaries 151 00:09:26.919 --> 00:09:30.200 nineteen hundred and forty five nineteen hundred and seventy when 152 00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:34.080 I felt it, No witnessed it descend. This time. I 153 00:09:34.159 --> 00:09:36.480 was waiting for something, even if I didn't know what 154 00:09:36.559 --> 00:09:40.120 it would be. There was that same swallowing no echo, 155 00:09:40.279 --> 00:09:42.720 no dropping pin, not even the flicker of my own 156 00:09:42.799 --> 00:09:46.240 heart beat in my ears, just a total weightless lack. 157 00:09:47.240 --> 00:09:50.120 There was someone else in the archive room, mister Corrigan, 158 00:09:50.360 --> 00:09:54.279 hunched over a table top, chasing down an ancestor's wedding announcement. 159 00:09:54.799 --> 00:09:57.200 I had been idly listening to the sibilants slide of 160 00:09:57.240 --> 00:10:01.840 newsprint across the table, then silent, his hand froze over 161 00:10:01.879 --> 00:10:04.879 the page, finger suspended a half inch off the print. 162 00:10:05.320 --> 00:10:08.440 I picked up the wall clock's soft ticking. It hung 163 00:10:08.480 --> 00:10:10.759 in the air like a snap shot, not so much 164 00:10:10.799 --> 00:10:13.879 as a creak from the pipes. I stared at my 165 00:10:13.919 --> 00:10:17.519 own hands, one gripping the edge of the table, nails 166 00:10:17.559 --> 00:10:21.519 going white with the force of my grip. It lasted longer. 167 00:10:21.559 --> 00:10:24.519 This time, my own breath caught. I stared at the 168 00:10:24.559 --> 00:10:27.919 second hand, creeping around, no movement at all, A heart 169 00:10:27.960 --> 00:10:32.440 beat two three. The hush deepened, then appended itself. Noise 170 00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:35.720 swept back in like a high tide. The clock ticked. 171 00:10:36.200 --> 00:10:39.440 Mister Corrigan inhaled, dragged his finger across the head lane, 172 00:10:39.639 --> 00:10:42.559 and continued reading, as though some one had merely shifted 173 00:10:42.559 --> 00:10:45.919 a lamp behind him. No, that's not what happened to 174 00:10:45.960 --> 00:10:49.440 the Flannagan girl. He was muttering amiably, thumbing through a 175 00:10:49.480 --> 00:10:52.879 second page. I made myself watch him for a moment longer, 176 00:10:53.159 --> 00:10:57.200 hunting for the smallest hint, a blink, a jolt of confusion, 177 00:10:57.399 --> 00:11:01.000 a throat clear nothing. It was as if I had 178 00:11:01.039 --> 00:11:03.879 been erased for three seconds and plugged back into the 179 00:11:03.919 --> 00:11:07.440 scene at exactly the same spatial co ordinates, with every 180 00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:11.200 one else simply continuing the performance. I checked my own 181 00:11:11.240 --> 00:11:17.000 wristwatch two seventeen and thirty two seconds later that afternoon, 182 00:11:17.120 --> 00:11:20.639 I caught mister Corrigan at the magazine rack, say, Jim, 183 00:11:20.879 --> 00:11:24.240 I began, did you notice anything well odd in the 184 00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:29.279 archives around two seventeen? He looked up, spectacles slipping to 185 00:11:29.320 --> 00:11:32.879 the end of his nose. Odd besides my inability to 186 00:11:32.919 --> 00:11:35.559 read my own handwriting at this age, I was just 187 00:11:35.679 --> 00:11:38.960 reading papers. A little brittle down there, but that's par 188 00:11:39.120 --> 00:11:43.080 for the course. He examined my face, faint alarm prickling 189 00:11:43.120 --> 00:11:46.519 the edges of his smile. Nothing out of the ordinary, Anne, 190 00:11:47.480 --> 00:11:50.679 another dead end. I tried not to show my unease, 191 00:11:51.120 --> 00:11:54.200 but even as I stacked the day's returns, the contradiction 192 00:11:54.360 --> 00:11:57.600 itched at me. The silence happened only in the building, 193 00:11:57.960 --> 00:12:00.840 only at the same time, only with me as a witness, 194 00:12:01.200 --> 00:12:05.159 never with corroboration from any one else. I grew. I 195 00:12:05.200 --> 00:12:09.559 suppose methodical in my curiosity. The next afternoon, I timed 196 00:12:09.559 --> 00:12:13.120 my break to coincide with two seventeen, making sure to 197 00:12:13.159 --> 00:12:15.320 be out on the river walk. As the minute hands 198 00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:19.279 swept past, I leaned against the railing, eyes shut, willing 199 00:12:19.320 --> 00:12:23.320 the hush to come. Fairy horns blared, swallows swooped over 200 00:12:23.320 --> 00:12:27.440 the water, The wind clattered through the Catalpa leaves. No disruption, 201 00:12:27.720 --> 00:12:31.120 not even a whisper of the impossible, but the instant 202 00:12:31.159 --> 00:12:34.360 I crossed the threshold back into the library, Passing from 203 00:12:34.440 --> 00:12:38.879 sunwashed path into the Foy's shaded cool, the world felt different. 204 00:12:39.559 --> 00:12:42.480 I pressed my palm to the thick, uneven stone of 205 00:12:42.480 --> 00:12:46.000 the entry. It was reassuring to touch something so solid 206 00:12:46.279 --> 00:12:49.240 after floating in a problem that had no evident edges 207 00:12:49.360 --> 00:12:53.200 or substance. Each day I watched for the moment. The 208 00:12:53.279 --> 00:12:56.080 silence was sly. Sometimes it felt like it would not 209 00:12:56.200 --> 00:13:01.480 arrive at all, then would inescapably, with increasing confidence, always 210 00:13:01.519 --> 00:13:05.720 at two seventeen, never outside. Each time it left the 211 00:13:05.799 --> 00:13:09.399 ordinary comforts and patterns of the library a little more mysterious. 212 00:13:10.360 --> 00:13:13.039 By week's end, I was carrying a slim notebook in 213 00:13:13.080 --> 00:13:17.240 my pocket, a cheap digital stopwatch, and somewhat surreptitiously, a 214 00:13:17.320 --> 00:13:21.159 decibel meter on loan from Tim. The next Monday, I 215 00:13:21.200 --> 00:13:24.840 resolved to stretch my observation further, positioning myself not in 216 00:13:24.840 --> 00:13:27.840 the reading room or archives, but in the children's section, 217 00:13:28.200 --> 00:13:31.879 where the chaos reached its daily crescendo, as toddlers overtook 218 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:36.320 unwary grandmothers and the toy bins broadcast their rattled contents 219 00:13:36.360 --> 00:13:39.879 in gleeful percussion. I sat at the miniature table at 220 00:13:39.879 --> 00:13:44.799 precisely two fifteen, listing the sounds plastic blocks snapping, a 221 00:13:44.919 --> 00:13:48.840 child negotiating piece over a stuffed caterpillar, the soda machine's 222 00:13:48.879 --> 00:13:54.799 insistent exclamation about low syrup. At two seventeen, the silence dropped, 223 00:13:54.879 --> 00:13:56.840 as though some one had pressed a mute button on 224 00:13:56.879 --> 00:14:00.759 the world. Even the children's motion paused, caught mid leap, 225 00:14:01.039 --> 00:14:04.919 hair and dress unmoving in the sunlight. I flicked my 226 00:14:04.960 --> 00:14:07.639 stopwatch at the first tick of the minute. The gap 227 00:14:07.759 --> 00:14:11.080 was growing a full five seconds, this time between the 228 00:14:11.120 --> 00:14:14.159 fall of silence and the sudden backward rush of sound 229 00:14:14.200 --> 00:14:19.279 and movement. When everything returned smooth and unknowing, I glanced 230 00:14:19.279 --> 00:14:22.679 around for any ripple of confusion, but the children's argument 231 00:14:22.799 --> 00:14:27.399 resumed in perfect continuity. The soda machine blinked obliviously, and 232 00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:31.360 the world preceded. It was a performance, as though played 233 00:14:31.360 --> 00:14:35.799 for me alone. Each note paused and resumed, choreography seamless 234 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:40.320 except for the impossible absence in between. More unnerved than before, 235 00:14:40.399 --> 00:14:42.759 I wrote it all down, the steady increase of the 236 00:14:42.799 --> 00:14:47.039 interval two seconds three now five. I brought the decibel 237 00:14:47.120 --> 00:14:51.519 meter next, recording high frequency background sound during the noon rush, 238 00:14:51.639 --> 00:14:56.240 then holding my breath as two seventeen approached. Each day 239 00:14:56.320 --> 00:14:59.559 it mapped the same pattern, a total drop, not even 240 00:14:59.559 --> 00:15:02.720 a shiver of static or a whisper recorded a gap 241 00:15:02.759 --> 00:15:06.480 in the display. When everything resumed, the meter showed the 242 00:15:06.519 --> 00:15:11.360 soundscape resuming identically on the other side, not static, not interruption, 243 00:15:11.759 --> 00:15:16.080 pure absence. My notes grew detailed where I was standing, 244 00:15:16.320 --> 00:15:19.279 which section, who was present, what objects and people were 245 00:15:19.279 --> 00:15:23.600 in motion, Any anomalies in temperature or light. None. I 246 00:15:23.679 --> 00:15:27.000 tested the edges, trying the windowed room upstairs, then the 247 00:15:27.039 --> 00:15:31.559 half forgotten roof access stairwell, even the tiny claustrophobic maintenance 248 00:15:31.559 --> 00:15:35.639 crawl space where pipework grown behind the oldest stacks. Every 249 00:15:35.679 --> 00:15:40.120 space inside, regardless of depth or access, was equally affected. 250 00:15:41.080 --> 00:15:43.080 When I made a show of knocking a book from 251 00:15:43.080 --> 00:15:48.519 the shelf at two seventeen, it stopped, suspended, hovering awkwardly, 252 00:15:48.519 --> 00:15:51.679 a hand spreadth above the floor, and after the silence, 253 00:15:51.720 --> 00:15:54.679 it fell to the carpet, as if obeying the restored 254 00:15:54.759 --> 00:15:59.679 lore of gravity. That experiment left me staring, blood prickling 255 00:15:59.679 --> 00:16:03.200 in my fingertips. Was it possible that the entire library. 256 00:16:03.519 --> 00:16:07.519 This fortress of creaking floors and chipped balustrades could, for 257 00:16:07.600 --> 00:16:12.559 those few seconds, decouple from time. I needed another perspective. 258 00:16:12.879 --> 00:16:15.679 If Beverly wouldn't notice the moment when it came unannounced, 259 00:16:15.759 --> 00:16:20.039 perhaps fore knowledge wasn't necessary. The next day, at two ten, 260 00:16:20.279 --> 00:16:22.600 I called her over, under the pretext of needing help 261 00:16:22.639 --> 00:16:25.879 with an inventory tangle in the locked classics. We joked 262 00:16:25.879 --> 00:16:28.960 about the misplaced bronte. Beverly swore up and down it 263 00:16:29.159 --> 00:16:32.159 was the high schoolers and not the board. Ret her ease. 264 00:16:32.879 --> 00:16:37.240 Two sixteen, I fiddled with a stack of catalog cards, 265 00:16:37.639 --> 00:16:40.840 smiling and listening to her run down her usual list 266 00:16:40.840 --> 00:16:45.919 of suspects. As the clock inched forward at two seventeen, 267 00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:50.840 the silence arrived, unheralded total. Beverly's lips moved in mid 268 00:16:50.919 --> 00:16:54.399 sentence about old missus Buncher taking the wuthering heights just 269 00:16:54.440 --> 00:16:57.919 for spite. Her voice paused on the tiniest fragment of 270 00:16:57.960 --> 00:17:02.120 a vowel and impossibly hung there. Her hands froze half 271 00:17:02.159 --> 00:17:05.359 way up in a gesture of exasperation, half way through 272 00:17:05.359 --> 00:17:08.680 what should have been a real life punch line. Six 273 00:17:08.720 --> 00:17:13.519 seconds this time, when sounds sluiced back. Beverly finished her 274 00:17:13.559 --> 00:17:17.160 sentence and shifted a stack of returned books into her arms. 275 00:17:17.839 --> 00:17:21.000 Never thought any one could actually read it for fun? Anne, 276 00:17:21.319 --> 00:17:25.079 Can you imagine she hadn't noticed a thing? I let 277 00:17:25.119 --> 00:17:28.319 her words hang, weighing whether to admit what I'd seen. 278 00:17:29.359 --> 00:17:32.240 Did you just now? Did anything seem odd to you? 279 00:17:33.319 --> 00:17:36.559 She gave me that sidelong look reserved for misfiled jokes. 280 00:17:37.160 --> 00:17:40.680 Besides the mess we're in, No should I be expecting 281 00:17:40.759 --> 00:17:44.559 hidden cameras? I dropped the subject, half laughing, and later, 282 00:17:44.839 --> 00:17:47.839 as she walked away, I noticed my hands were trembling. 283 00:17:48.880 --> 00:17:51.720 I kept pushing at the seams. I called the library's 284 00:17:51.759 --> 00:17:55.079 main phone line from my cell at two sixteen, letting 285 00:17:55.079 --> 00:17:59.039 it ring aloud. At the break, the rington stopped mid blare, 286 00:17:59.279 --> 00:18:03.400 a pinched off squs. When motion returned, the ring resumed 287 00:18:03.440 --> 00:18:06.839 as if nothing had interrupted it pattern unbroken call a 288 00:18:06.960 --> 00:18:11.799 ID capturing nothing amiss, trying something absurd. I set up 289 00:18:11.799 --> 00:18:14.359 a camera at the help desk to record myself reading 290 00:18:14.359 --> 00:18:19.160 a book at two seventeen. I began reciting aloud, later 291 00:18:19.279 --> 00:18:22.400 playing back the audio. The recording was seamless except the 292 00:18:22.440 --> 00:18:25.680 spoken words and electronic time stamps had a strange lacuna, 293 00:18:25.920 --> 00:18:29.680 an unexplained skip. Video footage showed me mid syllable mouth, 294 00:18:29.759 --> 00:18:33.880 frozen body at perfect rest frame to frame a cut, 295 00:18:34.039 --> 00:18:37.000 then resumption. The passage of time seemed to have simply 296 00:18:37.039 --> 00:18:41.400 been left out. Whatever this was, it obeyed its own rules. 297 00:18:41.960 --> 00:18:45.920 The silence extended throughout the building, never outside, never the 298 00:18:45.960 --> 00:18:48.440 parking lot or the steps leading down to the river. 299 00:18:49.079 --> 00:18:51.839 No matter where I stood within those ancient walls, the 300 00:18:51.920 --> 00:18:56.079 hush came even in spaces I'd rarely visited, the boxed 301 00:18:56.079 --> 00:18:59.640 in attic where we stored surplus shelves, the neglected crawl 302 00:18:59.680 --> 00:19:04.240 space behind Tim's maintenance closet. One day, I pulled a 303 00:19:04.279 --> 00:19:08.240 folding chair into the vault, crammed between ledgers left untouched 304 00:19:08.240 --> 00:19:12.359 since the nineteen fifties. The pause was, if anything, even 305 00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:18.279 more profound, Increasingly driven. I started questioning patrons about their routines. 306 00:19:18.759 --> 00:19:22.480 Did anything odd happen? Around two seventeen, I asked a 307 00:19:22.480 --> 00:19:26.440 couple of chess club regulars. No, I asked Missus Torres, 308 00:19:26.599 --> 00:19:29.559 who clocked her crossword habit with the precision of a metronome. 309 00:19:30.039 --> 00:19:33.799 Nothing since I heard about the last blackout, she replied, amused. 310 00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:37.680 Every answer the same. Nothing broke the continuity, but for me, 311 00:19:38.759 --> 00:19:42.240 yet the evidence had begun to mount. Coldly, Tim, not 312 00:19:42.319 --> 00:19:45.440 known for investing in technology, let me borrow the building's 313 00:19:45.480 --> 00:19:49.039 master sound level logger, a device intended to profel h 314 00:19:49.119 --> 00:19:52.039 VAC noise for a grant last year. Plugged into the 315 00:19:52.039 --> 00:19:56.000 security terminal, it should have produced an uninterrupted trace for hours. 316 00:19:56.519 --> 00:20:00.279 On scanning the logs, I found neat, inexplicable gaps apps 317 00:20:00.680 --> 00:20:04.319 seconds erased from the record every day. At two seventeen, 318 00:20:05.319 --> 00:20:09.920 the playback was clean, no static, no malfunction, simply a 319 00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.680 place where nothing existed to record. Even the security cameras 320 00:20:14.880 --> 00:20:19.279 normally as stubbornly comprehensive as the irs, showed aberrations at 321 00:20:19.319 --> 00:20:22.920 two seventeen. On every day I checked, the footage blurred 322 00:20:23.039 --> 00:20:27.480 or skipped digital time codes hopping ahead by elongated, fuzzy seconds. 323 00:20:27.960 --> 00:20:30.599 When I asked him if there had been power fluctuations, 324 00:20:30.680 --> 00:20:35.160 he shrugged, nothing on my end. Electrics are solid, especially 325 00:20:35.200 --> 00:20:39.720 at that time. Battery back up too. Each test seemed 326 00:20:39.720 --> 00:20:42.880 to harden the edges of the phenomenon whilst stretching its strangeness. 327 00:20:43.319 --> 00:20:46.279 By the second week, the silence had stretched toward twenty 328 00:20:46.319 --> 00:20:50.160 full seconds. Once watching the second hand sweep toward the 329 00:20:50.160 --> 00:20:53.200 appointed hour, I stuck out a foot, letting it hover 330 00:20:53.319 --> 00:20:56.720 in a pool of sunlight. At the instant the quiet struck, 331 00:20:57.000 --> 00:21:00.960 the sensation of touch and pressure itself seemed suspense, not 332 00:21:01.079 --> 00:21:03.960 just the air but matter itself. Paused at the boundary, 333 00:21:04.960 --> 00:21:08.680 curiosity tightens the senses, but I also felt the isolation 334 00:21:08.799 --> 00:21:12.599 of being its only recipient. After closing one night, I 335 00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:16.279 played back the security footage yet again, this time watching 336 00:21:16.319 --> 00:21:19.960 as my own outline in grainy infrared paused in the 337 00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:23.160 act of shelving a blur of motion freeze cut out 338 00:21:23.160 --> 00:21:26.279 of the floe, then hastening on as if nothing had 339 00:21:26.319 --> 00:21:31.000 disrupted the hour. Night deepened through the windows, the swirling 340 00:21:31.079 --> 00:21:34.000 dark of the river, sometimes reflecting the pinpricks of the 341 00:21:34.039 --> 00:21:38.720 bell tower clock across the floodplain. I remembered missus Rudd's stories, 342 00:21:39.079 --> 00:21:43.400 quirky elliptical remarks about listening for the building's own clock 343 00:21:43.880 --> 00:21:46.640 and giving heed to the paws, but never minding it 344 00:21:46.720 --> 00:21:51.000 too much. When I inherited her hand labeled keys, i'd 345 00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:55.440 also inherited her hand over logs, thick yellowed notebooks filled 346 00:21:55.440 --> 00:22:00.000 with everything from scheduled bulb changes too, sometimes little riddle, 347 00:22:00.440 --> 00:22:04.799 private anxieties, or what might as well have been coded fragments. 348 00:22:05.279 --> 00:22:08.799 Now I found myself paging backward, desperate for any clue 349 00:22:08.839 --> 00:22:12.039 that this was more than some neurological artifact that I 350 00:22:12.079 --> 00:22:16.400 hadn't quietly slipped a cog one log faintly penciled on 351 00:22:16.440 --> 00:22:22.039 a torn page, leapt out two seventeen silence again uncanny, 352 00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:26.279 no record on tape. Let it be another in her 353 00:22:26.319 --> 00:22:30.759 looping business, like cursive, don't dwell on the silent hours, 354 00:22:31.119 --> 00:22:36.000 Always one more shelf to tend, noted weeks apart, surrounded 355 00:22:36.039 --> 00:22:41.079 by mundane details, rusted window latch, the perennially damp lower stare. 356 00:22:41.640 --> 00:22:44.559 It seemed nothing to her, almost an accepted part of 357 00:22:44.680 --> 00:22:48.480 daily management. But she had marked it nonetheless. And now 358 00:22:48.559 --> 00:22:51.240 those remarks felt like signposts at the edge of a 359 00:22:51.279 --> 00:22:55.720 forest only I could perceive. I made a comprehensive entry 360 00:22:55.720 --> 00:22:58.519 in my own logbook that night, detailing not only the 361 00:22:58.599 --> 00:23:02.440 time and physical effects, but the emotional disturbance. I felt 362 00:23:02.799 --> 00:23:06.200 part or part confusion, as if I had stumbled upon 363 00:23:06.240 --> 00:23:09.480 a fissure in the day's logic. If this were hallucination, 364 00:23:09.880 --> 00:23:13.119 it was a well mannered one. If a mechanical failure, 365 00:23:13.359 --> 00:23:18.480 it was an exquisitely tailored prank. But every log, every recording, 366 00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:22.519 every test with witness or machine pointed in the same direction. 367 00:23:23.279 --> 00:23:28.000 This was real and not explainable by ordinary malfunction or imagination. 368 00:23:29.160 --> 00:23:33.440 Restlessness threaded through my waking hours after that, each ordinary 369 00:23:33.480 --> 00:23:37.880 moment in the library felt double exposed, layered atop invisible machinery. 370 00:23:38.400 --> 00:23:43.039 There was my routine morning unlock, newspaper run, preservation of 371 00:23:43.079 --> 00:23:46.960 structural quirks, and then, beneath all of that, a persistent 372 00:23:47.079 --> 00:23:51.240 sense of stealthy anticipation, awaiting the moment when everything would 373 00:23:51.319 --> 00:23:56.119 fall impossibly quiet again. It was the building's rhythm. Missus 374 00:23:56.200 --> 00:23:59.880 Rudd had said hers, and now mine. I began to 375 00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.079 suspect that being head librarian conferred something more than custodianship 376 00:24:04.279 --> 00:24:08.119 over plaster and shelves. If so, I needed to know 377 00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:12.319 how far back this reached. Late one Friday after closing, 378 00:24:12.599 --> 00:24:15.000 I rolled up my sleeves and headed for the admin 379 00:24:15.160 --> 00:24:19.119 archive closets. The room was already labyrinthine, a history of 380 00:24:19.160 --> 00:24:22.240 the town and its library, stacked in bank boxes and 381 00:24:22.279 --> 00:24:26.640 battered ledgers, all carefully labeled in generations of script I 382 00:24:26.680 --> 00:24:29.880 started with the transfer logs, working backward from my own, 383 00:24:30.200 --> 00:24:33.720 cross checking every record for mid afternoon notations or odd 384 00:24:33.799 --> 00:24:39.240 time stamps. My progress was slow but methodical. Each binder, 385 00:24:39.440 --> 00:24:44.880 each folder bore the imprint of a custodian, sometimes formal lists, orders, receipts, 386 00:24:45.279 --> 00:24:49.640 sometimes almost confessional in tone. I found the first real 387 00:24:49.680 --> 00:24:53.200 echo in a maintenance log from nineteen seventy three, then 388 00:24:53.519 --> 00:24:57.599 turning backward, flickers of the same anomaly. Some entries were 389 00:24:57.680 --> 00:25:03.960 quick remarks nine perfect stillness at seventeen after two shelving 390 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:10.200 stopped mid motion, disregard for work flow, unexplainable fades. Other notes, 391 00:25:10.279 --> 00:25:14.799 surprisingly candid, circled the same hour, the same hush, every 392 00:25:14.799 --> 00:25:17.000 one written in the hand of the head librarian at 393 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:21.000 the time, never an assistant or junior staff member. I 394 00:25:21.039 --> 00:25:24.480 began to plot them, page after page, noting not only 395 00:25:24.519 --> 00:25:27.880 the recurrence of the two seventeen silence, but that it 396 00:25:27.960 --> 00:25:30.920 was never remarked upon, except by the person in whose 397 00:25:30.960 --> 00:25:34.519 hands the master set of keys must have lain a 398 00:25:34.599 --> 00:25:40.119 century of documentation, scattered, cryptic, sometimes dismissive, sometimes almost poetic. 399 00:25:40.599 --> 00:25:45.079 I traced styles. One librarian favored full sentences, another wrote 400 00:25:45.079 --> 00:25:48.680 half lines or verse. The phenomenon, whatever it was, predated 401 00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:52.519