Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it a press record for the fifth time.
Them slick in the tiny baton. My voice jumps as
I start the hush of the closed library, prickling at
my neck. It's Nielini, Saturday night. Please save this draft.
The device flickers recites the date at its soft machine voice.
Trapped in the staff room, I tucked the recorder close,
searching for wars that won't make me sound unstable. Though
I can't pretend I haven't begun to wonder. I want
a record somewhere, outside those catalog screens, outside paper ledges
that change between glances. It's been three weeks since they
started schoffing at Southwards Central Library, and only six days
since I checked out a book I can't prove exists.
I was shoving after close were spring numbers to myself,
left handed, headache from florescent glare. In the sea fiction,
I found it brittle, green jacket, faint all script, A
Garden for the Forgotten. Something about the title nagged at me,
though I couldn't say why. The catalog sticker was faded
as staff I didn't recognize I thumbed through the pages
only once, damp inside two thousand seven. I scanned it
at soft checkout, just to be funny, half expecting the
system to toss up an error. Instead, the tiny black
scanner chirped, and the receipt came out my card due
in seven days. I took it home that night and
sure if it was some ark, some donation that never
made it into the collection. I read until too, but
the story droubled away from me, a girl lost inside
walls of green, hunting for her sister, sentences flickering out
mid page. When I returned it, everything shifted, like tilting
a bookshelf and finding different books behind it. Saturday morning,
before the building opened, I placed the book on the
return cards instructed Later at the front desk, the trouble began.
Broonda from circulation frowned, running her scanner over the barcode
again and again. This is in iris, she said, are
you joking? Shulely, the manager on duty looked up my card,
then the book. We don't carry this title, she insisted,
ton sliding from confused to faintly annoyed. Trying to prove
my case, I borrowed their terminal the barcode forty eight
days was still scouted across the back. I keep it
into the staff search. The hits return not my check
out record, but a single line Marius G Status loss
September two thousand nine, inventory code an armin Is four thousand,
eight hundred thirty one location sub basement. The record ended
there except for a pale gray footnote not in collection.
Ronda called over her shoulder for someone to get the
gray bean and wave me off. Don't worry, Probably just
an old transfer, she said. But as she cried all
the book, I heard a mutter, not again, you just
have to bend it. Julie's I's met mine, narrower and
almost warning. You should put this out of your mind. Okay,
sometimes old stuffer surfaces. Don't poke at it. The staff
cluster voices warping through the break room class. Didn't they
clean those out? It's starting again. The gray bin now
the book vanished into a battered container with no mockings,
slid under the counter. I opened my audio recorder and
began hands trembling. This is my record, I told myself.
If it happens again, if I forget, at least there
is this. I want to laugh, except the hum of
the lights overhead is making my head ache throb, and
every shelf on the fire wall looks like its twelve
inches further out than before. I stopped the recording, restarted it,
and tried to think clearly. Nobody else thought it was
a Nobody else could find a record of the book,
only a ray staff name from fifteen years ago, the
librari's own system acting like a closet that keeps swallowing
your shoes. I remind myself it might be a prank,
all left over air from before the system got updated,
But there is no record of me checking it out,
and the book itself has gone now vind and vanished.
And as I walked away from the counter, Ronda watched me,
just long enough to make me wish I'd worked out
with the book instead. I locked the audio file. I
want a record of physical, digital, anything, because I can't
shake the sense that if I let this slide, I'll
lose more than just a missplace novel. I will lose
the memory that I was ever confused at all. Sunday morning,
I sit at the kitchen table, eating stale toast, watching
the city still new to me, roll up with church
bells and screen doors. My move to this town was
a desperate, quietly hopeful was set about it, cartrunk in
a single suit case, and the promise of a tide
clerical job at the nearest brunch that to take me.
The library was supposed to be haven, the way they
were when I was small, my ticket out of Saturday silence,
a place save twofold, both real and able to hide
me amongst the sacks. Southward Central, though, is not the
codling outpost of my childhood. It's a relic, a patchwork
of municipal ambition and architectural confusion, sprawling across a whole
block and sleepy Southward. Its main wing is all crumbling
beige concrete with a blue glass stone tacked on in
a ninter's expansion and two squat brick annexys ditch like
afterthoughts words is there were never enough blueprints to match
all the emergency exits. My first days are a slidehow
trying not to look. Last were stocking the returns, moving
quietly through the two main floors, shelving in the north
corridor where the fiction covers always gather pale greenish dust
like pollen. The staff pleasant mostly operate at different rhythms.
Alborost nods or weary pleasantries, rounder rushes for morning routines,
eyes always on budget print outs, chuly halking and stern keeps,
laughter and warning's at equal measure. The rest were lanyard's
heavy with KEYSA haven't earned mid morning's are slow old
men in this match suits reading the newspapers, perfectly folded
children tracing braille alphabet police mats, A regular mister fawn
always needs large print. Thrillers ses memorize the location, but
seems to like asking for help. I like running holes
of the front, helping track down a missing poetry volume
or two. My bad reads an a leany temporary assistant,
but a little girl keeps calling me the book finder.
It makes me smile even in the listless glim shifts,
but there's an undercurrent. Even on the best days. The
library is filled with odd corners, arkoves that should be
too small to hold so many shells always that never
lead quite to where you expect. When shelving in the
nine hundreds, sometimes the aisle extends, or the reference stacks
of a seam alarm the floor, as if a hidden
door is sealed just so beneath the carpet. One custodal
worker called it in the maze effect, winking at me.
The building likes to hide things, she said, almost proud.
They're ghosts of library. Low or two. At lunch, the
older staff rolled their eyes about library, eating things. Surely.
Once responded to missing magazine by saying it's the building.
If it wants to keep something, you'll never find it.
At first I assumed it was just metaphor statistical entropy,
not a warning, but then run to cackle even people.
Sometimes godspeed if you ever get stuck sorting and beat
you the jocuny in the air sticky. The orientation was
even stranger. Monday afternoon, my second week, I was summoned
to the conference room mandatory for all new hires and yes,
especially library assistants. Ms Morrissey said, gray hair up in
a halo classes so thick you could see the stacks
in the reflection. She moved a brisk pace for her age,
keys rattling on her line out like tiny bones. We
started on the main floor, but the orientation quickly diverged
from where to find the copperard into forbidden law. Mss
Morris's voice grew pointed, now the basement stacks. Assistants are
not to venture down unless specifically directed, and only with
the radio. The stairs to the basement shivered under our weight,
the walls close and sweating down below. Room after room
merged into darkness. The map room always locked, lay behind
in a naturally clean steel toer. Do not enter, SiGe Nailski.
No items from the map room are to leave the space.
She insisted. Materials there are delicate, some intention off catalog.
When I tried the door, it stuck, as if glued.
The so called red section was barely mentioned. Ms Morrissey
avoided my eye, lowering her voice. It's a special collection.
Staff should avoid moving materials from there unless cleared by
admin or myself. I asked why she hesitated simply put
provence issues. She pronounced it like an old joke, not
to be questioned. She handed around laminated security poluses stamped
with a warning I hadn't seen elsewhere. For certain older
materials you must log manual track and sheet, she said.
One sheet mentioned a waver. I asked for what. She
just smiled, teeth rotted, just paperwork. Old rules for old
books turnovers high, especially in non administrative rolls, she sighed
on the way up. Not everyone fits. Some staff don't adjust.
By the toes en, I felt more bewildered than brief,
to like I've sat through a faux tale, not an orientation,
trying to get my bearings. I pressed on with the work,
determined to prove stable and diligent in the staff lounge,
I admitted in my diary never allowed how much libraries
to me as a child, the first place I felt
safe after my parents split, I hid behind encyclopedias, practice,
breathing in calm numbers, safe, quiet and visible. I wrote,
this new job was to be a salve. Instead, each
day I noticed little things, the way books sometimes returned
with other branch stamps, labels for places I was sure
had closed years ago, volumes far too old for the
holdings list. I chopped it up to donation overflow, or
bought shipments, but the older staff just exchanged rye glances.
I couldn't shake a subtle teasing sense, every joking warning,
every closed off wing was more than routine. Like the
building itself quartered not just books, but the boundaries of
what was supposed to be retrievable. I begun keeping notes
on my phone, half out of boredom, half nervous habit.
Monday evening, I sat in the break room tapping out
orientation oddities. Read section why waiver map room always lock staff,
save Betty, but no be too labeled. Former employees not
on bulletin board. There's a comfort and pattern. If I
could log them, maybe I could laugh it off later.
By week's end, my nerves half warn my line ou dented.
I told myself this was a place, not a personality.
Maybe if I shelve with my headphones in, if I
did not look too closely at the coal numbers that
slipped two digits overnight, or the way the fiction stacks
cast all shadows after dusk, I could outlast the strangeness
like everyone else. But it only took one Friday sorting
chef for cracks to open wider. That afternoon, I was
shelving in the b fiction returns cart, overloaded, barkered, gun stubborn.
As I sorted, I noticed the cart held two books
not matching any coal number, a batted hard back with
faded publishers and for a bright blue paperback with a
nineteen fifty three copyright. I checked the online catalog for
both no wrecker. Both volumes were present clearly so, but
nothing matched from the holding spreadsheet. I tried the shelf
scanner anyway, hoping maybe they were part of a label update.
No Barco, but a faint pencil note donated nineteen sixty
nine Airs mac guire. Feeling sheepish, I flagged Rhonda. She
stared at the blue paperback. Must be a donation that
never got processed, she said, happens. Don't overthink it. She
handed me a slip, just shelved them under overflow for now.
But as she turned away, she called back, if it's
not in the system by to morrow, just leave it.
The building will sort it. She didn't sound like she
was joking. After she left, I checked the inside jackets
for both. The hardback especially made my scalp tingle. The
copyright was marked nineteen thirty seven, almost thirty years before
Southward Central opened. The iesby n number didn't fit any standard.
It was as if the book had been mislaid before
the branch even existed. I started tracking. By nightfall, my
own spreadsheet had six more anomalies books to you, all
new or extraneous for my branch a home as the
libraries hush crept back into my head. I started double
recording everything audio diary for my own sanity spreadsheet for
something solid. The weirdness didn't stop with the stacks in
the staff interface. When I pulled receipts for recent checkouts,
I found strange glitches. Checkouts slept attached to names I
didn't recognize staff Coode, m Gordon emaher returns to ask
and Ah and Delaney no code When I asked it.
The next shift, Julie put her mug down hard old system,
ignore it iver. I thought maybe they were tempious going
before my time. One afternoon, I lingered by the old
staff photoboard. The names didn't match the faces. Names like
Marish g were never posted. Nobody seemed to remember someone
with those initials. Determined to make sense of it, I
started documenting every non catalog to find in my phone.
One night, at my usual kitchen counter, I recorded sought
at seven books with no entry, same call number as
lost items from last month. Digital receipts referenced staff no
longer on payroll, but Admund says sistemer beginning to feel
like I'm chasing my tail at staff drinks microwave side
are in a basement lunch, someone joked, why don't you
just let the library sort itself out? You try to
fix things and the vanish anyway. Another shrug, Nothing here
stays put. No one seemed alarmed. Still, by Saturday, I
had filled three pages in my spreadsheet, each anominally cross reference,
as much for my reassurance as to make something real
from the mounting unease. Day after day, I told myself
it was the overwhelm of new work, the quirks of
a poorly funded institution. Still, every night I checked my recordings,
believing i'd find skips in my own memory, snippets replaced
with static. Part of me wanted to put every oddity
into the system to demand sense. The other part was
already losing track, a stack of on shelf books forgotten,
or an entire cotgun missing right after break. I pretended
to laugh it all off, shelving late one head phone lease.
But each night my certainty unraveled just a little more.
I waited a whole week before tentatively asking any one
about the weird records. First, I tried Julie in the
back office about those old staff codes, mars gee e
Maher all that do you know if any of them
still work here? She kept her eyes glued to a screen.
Never heard of them, Probably just emerged glutch from the
old database. We imported everything after the Leaven built out.
Ignore what you can't fix. I tried cornering Rand at
the returns car. Is there a marus g on staff?
The code keeps popping up. Randa's mouth twitch, a smile
not quite reaching her eyes. Probably meant for the branch
out by the hospital or storage. Sometimes you get other
branch returns mixed in, even though this say not to.
You'll get used to it. At first, I thought maybe
everyone was too busy, so I tried my own research.
In a crumbling personnel bind outside the break from three
inches thick decades of names, I found them. Gennaro High
Day two thousand seven, no separation date, just a pencil underline,
a blank space for departure, no ferto. I found old
defas yellowed, half completed, staffless, crossed out with no reason,
job codes and a mid number. A mess, but not
the deliberate kind I was looking for. I spent a
lunch ire on the city Archives side, scrolling microfilm staff bulletins.
But marisge wasn't there. By the second week, I checked
the internal announcement logs and found nothing. No transfer, no
health leave, no farewell. Note her name only popped up
in dead end corn as the bottom of obsolete ledges
on link to any email. Every mentioned bruttle and shadowed.
My questions earned me careful stirs. Twice in the staff lounge,
as I was flipping through check and stats, I caught
two coworkers with spring in the hallway. The conversation cut
off the moment I stepped closer the new girls looking
for missing people again. It's fine. The system always fixes itself.
The next day, shelving periodicals in a section near a
narrow locked door, I tested the knob out of idle
curiosity just to thought an old sign tape healing read
red section offer a staff Only the font didn't match
anything else in the building, and the paint was the
kind of red that looks almost brown and polite. That afternoon,
an older custodial worker caught me eyeing the sign. She
set her mop sigh, voice soft. You don't want to
move anything in there, LEVI bye. When I arched my brow,
she gestured at her own temple as if searching for
the word not everything comes back if you shift things.
People learned the hobbway. She looked away just a tip.
After she left. I tried to find red section on
the building plans. The diagrams posted in the break room
shored every room carefully numbered except in the are marked supplies.
But in the archive I found a sheet from the
as red sections crolled in pencil, a narrow, pointing off figure.
It annotated special shelving inventory closure. In more recent plans,
that sliver of space wasn't shown at all. The irresistible
lore of the forbidden. After close, stomach tight, I made
my way to the area. The hallway swallowed all those
sound of carpet, thick lighting flickering in a blurroy almost
pinkish cast. The shelving in red section was a old
a d boak, not the modern steel. Physically, the room
was wider than exterior walls would suggest. The path between
rose diverge, then converged impossibly again. Labels hung half peeled,
let as faded to smudges nineteen fifty eight nineteen sixty
four were drawn. The quiet was oily resistant. I found
a cluster of books whose checkout coats trailed off into
legible black marks and one copy STEMP simply MG. After
a round through the rouse, heart pounding, I locked every buckoed,
even the ones that wouldn't scan. Most flagger as do
not circulate. A handful returned blank screen's end curiously, the
same personnel co Maris G. I left quickly. The light
flickered as I backed out, the bulb's humped teeth, grating
the smell and odd winter green like old Adhess. When
I checked my diary entried at night, I hesitated how
much of what I'd seen was real and how much
was me letting stores in a string of impossible details.
One night, as rain rattled the windows, I finished a
late shift, stuck in the reading room. Her return had
appeared on the desk of Fat Navy hard back its
buying gold to Boston Alien. No bock out. Instead, the
jacket bore a handritten tag and fade of Fountain penskrit
owns History nineteen seventy three. The library circulation began in
nineteen seventy seven. This couldn't belong here. I checked the shelf,
computer keyed in every number on the inside cover. One
catalog hit transferred from Basement B two confused. I comb
the master staff directory. There is no be too. Our
basement is a single level, at least on every plan
I've seen, but the system lock printed date stamped claim.
The last return was a Basement B two, nineteen eighty four,
finalized by r Ann Delaney. I stared at that scan's
signature for five minutes before logging it. The handwriting was
identical to the label on the spine. That night, as
I closed up wheeling the cart by the red section,
I heard a distant sound like heavy furniture scraping below.
Muffle forces bled through the slats in the vent. I
told myself it was plumbing or the custodial crew on
some late project. Yet as I keyed out, my hands
went cold. They urged to call some one, any one.
Nearly overwhelming, My notes became frantic, document annotate, Try not
to add what you can't prove. I wanted so badly
for the strangers to be explainable, but all I had
were often books, vanished names, and rooms that could not exist.
The final stroll came when I watched a page and
drop a book in the night returns. There was no
one by the door, only the thunk of the hue.
By morning, the book was gone. Randa said, the building
sorts it for us. She was chewing gum, unfaced. I
went out to the slot, nothing but curled receipts, none
more recent than a year ago. I stopped, then, staring
at the pale shadow of myself reflected in the glass mouth,
open fingers pressed to the door. I knew in that
moment that I would have to go deeper the next week. Desperate,
I cornered to mess Morrisey again, as she sit dark
tee in the reference alcove. Can I trouble you for
staff map? She pressed her lips, thin, gay shrewd. Is
this about the basement, she asked softly. I nodded. Ever
heard of his staff member called Marischi. She didn't answer
for a long time, instead tracing the room of her muck. Finally,
in a conspiratorial hush, she said, the building's be knolted
many times, sometimes on purpose, sometimes as an accident of budget.
She fished a ring of keys from her pocket and
hut one lawn brass key and said it in my
palm the iff you insist on poking about tick care.
The floor plans are in the old staff archives. Be
sure to put them back exactly as found, and don't
mention this to the others. Some of us remember differently.
After I rows alone, I used the spekey to access
to locked staff archives past the supply cabinets in a
carton labeled nineteen seventeen eight nineteen ninety three Yadmen I
sifted through brittle folders at the bottom under a mained
in its orders was a massive intricate drawing issue in
nineteen eighty five, but raised it and added to so
many times the paper fell quilt like, pieced together from
smaller maps. It shall prickled over me. The master plan
included a space below the annotated basement sub basement traced
up with dotted lines. The sub basement was twice the
size of the rest of the building. My site never
had any permit for such a space. Not just that
between the marked corridors was a shaded block red section.
In one corner of the old floor plan was a
scold at endem do not mean anything from red section
after catalog closure return reck closed nineteen ninety seven sound
which did in a plastic sheath was a half crumpled
page of grainy time stumped black and white photos a
series of workers descending a thin spiral stair in the
supply room. The final photo was the stairwell empty. The
dates damp read two thousand and nine, no one re
emerging on the back of the sheet. In spidery blacking,
someone had ridden one center recos rovert. Only our civet
memory persists. Locked door behind, I dropped the key's hand, shaking.
The floor under my feet felt deeply, fundamentally wrung, like
something below might pulse and dragged me down At that
if I so much as shifted weight, the walls around
the ark I've seen to bulge, just for a moment,
as if the whole structure exhaled. This was in a
cataloging error. The problem was not digital or administrative by
the product of my clumsy inexperience. It was real, hidden
under our feet, a system of vanished recos, forgotten staff,
forbidden rooms anchor to physical logic no longer obeyed. The
last line on one blippriant re access not permitted after
a last inventory. All records were self correct with than
forty eighth there. If I left it alone, maybe whatever
was happening would swallow itself and me, and no one
would care. But I thought of marriage g and the
vanished books, and the low grating sound of something large
sliding into place far below the library's kind face. I
would have to go deeper still. The next ascent I
knew might not let me back. I would have to
go deeper still. The next ascent I knew might not
let me back. I didn't sleep that night. I lay awake,
looping the record of soft Playback. Were listening to my
own thin voice, naming dates, staff codes, stray book titles,
my attempts to anchor myself. I tried to forget the
waxy feel of the master blueprint. The warning scrolled along
its margins, but it crawled beneath every thought. By dawn,
my heart thud had like an overdue notice. I found
myself staring at the ceiling, reciting red section said basement
catalog closure, until my throat grew raw. Mid morning, as
the city creaked awake and the back addy garbage truck
bellowed away, I forced myself through a routine. Shoes on line,
now double checked, red thermis in hand, my reflection in
the lobby's warped brass lifts didn't reassure me. The work
badge Inane is wrecked in gole on Borough time. Inside
the library, the main floor was bright, too ordinary, full
of familiar coughs and printer jams. I forced myself to
return to surface. Dude's shlving non fiction, answering her regular
smuttered question about into library loans, nodding at Rhonda's complained
about broken return spins. But under the fluorescence, every surface
felt slightly out of focus, the edges of the ordinary
rippling at my peripheral vision. The copy machine jammed, and
the help many flashed an error. I had never seen
no operator on file m G minus fifty seven. I blinked,
and the screen cleared itself. I slipped away at break,
ducking into the staff lounge with my half warm tea.
Julia was at the table, working through a set of
overgee reminders with a greasy red pencil. She barely looked up,
botting a rebellion as she asked dryly, we're just hiding
from Saturday Rush. I tried for casual. You ever find
weird stuff in the arquet's old plans or whatever? Julie
squeezed her pencil, eyes guarded you shouldn't be rifling in there,
how lips twisted into a half grin. Most of that's
just bureaucracy anyway. Half the old maps contradict each other,
and the foundation settled so many times we stopped comparing them.
Why has Morrissey got you searching for foundation cracks? Just curious?
I managed. I wondered then, just how much July remembered
about old staff or lost books, and how much she'd
let herself forget. She shrugged. People get obsessed with this place,
catalog errors, little mysteries. But you do your work, put
things back where you found them. It doesn't follow you home.
Her gaze locked on mine, clear as an exit sign.
Don't chase old ghosts, Neelini, there's enough real work. My
phone buzzed a Cattalov notification for a missing reference atlas.
The code attached last scene section our pending. I didn't answer.
Shirley gathered her papers and swept from the room, her
silhouette flickering in the glass panel like a reflection from
another building. Entirely after lunch, I drifted over to the
staff ock has under the pretense of organizing old DVD cases.
My hands shook as I opened the cabinets, but I
no longer trusted what candid as evidence. Ledgers faded while
you looked at them, and digital files white themselves clean.
I copied what I found blueprints old staffless into my
online notebook, jotting every odd annotation in a shaky hand.
A routine cotship brought me past the locked red section door.
The sign was impossibly a deeper read end. Before I
knelt and pressed my palm against the seam in the carpet,
there was a draft seeping from below, faint but real,
like a ventilation current in reversed, something breathing out of
the stacks instead of in. By then it was all
I could think about, the whole under the foundation, the
shelf after shelf of them misplaced memory, the logic that
sometimes you could return a book and lose yourself in
the process. Was it superstition or something engineered who decided
that record should vanish or that certain stuff would never
get their photo on the wall. A patron interrupted my
thoughts as student fidgety, returning about a biography. Sorry, there's
weird writing in this one. She slid the book across
the counter and I turned the pages along the inside margin.
Someone at scribbled, barely visible beneath library memory weights. My
skin prickled. I loved the return, typing slowly, half daring
the computer to flash up marrist g a sname, or
another lost staff code. This time the screen simply blinked
and confirmed the return, no anomaly, though the sistant time
stamped it as nineteen ninety six. I stared, then refreshed.
Now it was twenty twenty two. Again, the clock over
the reference death ticked on all afternoon. I shoved and
re arrange here, straining for any unusual noises scraped from
below the suit, scrape of paper over carpet, even a
shifting whiff of old spices were glue. Nothing yet the
sense of being watched Paul's stronger the later it got.
The motion sensors in the basement flicked the lights on
and off, even when empty. In a far alcove, I
heard muffled shuffling, like someone shoving behind a wall. After
closing in the echoing hush, I lingered at the circulation desk.
Wanda worked by with her purse tucked under one arm,
waving to me, you don't stay late if you can
help it. She warned gets weird after the lights off.
The phrase could have meant anything or everything. Once the
last patron felt it out and the main Entr's thumbshot,
I made my way, heart rattling to the supply closet.
The key m mess Morrissey had given me was cold,
and upon the kind of heavy brass he could use
to anchor a fishing line, and possibly old fashioned. The
door opened thus with a click, then yielding, as if
the lock recognized not just metal but intention. Inside beneath
stray boxes of persisting forms and the canteen from a
coat at your Self Era, there was a handle half concealed.
I pried back a warp shelf behind it. The dust
swolled thickly around a shadowy stair spiral lane, steep and
leading somewhere deeper than the should have fit below ground level.
I paused. I press record Neelini after ius circulation close
entering service stair supply cause it if this is the
last entry. I stopped through it dry a going in
each step down the spiral stone, my sinuses with a
mintow tail, as if diving into a deep still lake.
It was colder than the rest of the building and
As I descended, the sound of the bebuffaded into absolute hush.
No distant cars, no gurgle from all plumbing. My phone
lost signal. Before the third curve, I continued, one hand
on the wall, feeling the brick damp, and at the
bottom the stair flared out into a corridor. Walls kicked
with paint the color of water blood peeling in sheets
century old light fixtures hung overhead bulbs flickering dem orange.
The air pressed down with the hush of sealed barkhouse,
no mold, no decay, just a heavy paper, dry stainess,
as if tiny here was held in abeyance. I moved
forward with slow steps on either side. Metal doors shimmered,
labeled in stints of paint, BETO reference, storage A B,
two staff lockers, unfamiliar titles. The corridor folded around itself,
geometry stretched, perspicuous buckle. The walls bulged in, then receded,
corridors tightening and then opening again with each step, as
though someone had assembled the space from half remembered schematics.
Inside the first storage room, endless shelves stimulate, holding rows
of books not on any current catalog. Each bind bore,
handing number not a barcode. Some covers appeared and touched,
others were warped, title newly ellegible. I ran a finger
along a shelf and felt thus cut my skin thick
of the non enemy fore shelving. One book shelved with
lonely pride. I dared to pull it out. The trellised city,
no copyright, no publisher inside the dedication to those who
keep what must not be named a post it ghost, yellowed, clunted.
The last page m G staff leisure updated, did not
reshelve closure protecoll nineteen ninety seven. Where was Maris G.
The nose pointed again and again to the same year's
names and instructions, repeating like a flawed refrain. As I
explored further, I saw other signs of habitation more recent
than the dust. A paper coffee cup, half filled lid,
peeled sigh, a folder of chicken slips dated within the
past month, filled with names I'd never met, signatures that
bled out at the end, as if the signers were
bleeding into the page. I moved through three more rooms,
each stranger than the last. Teach shelved with book stamped
only with dates, no titles or with stickers marked e race.
At the end of one passage, propped against a file
cabinet was a book cut for rosen midr shelving an
entire bottom row filled with red label volumes that all
looked identical and heavy. Something recalled inside me. I closed
the door behind me, careful not to touch any of
the spines. Then ahead, the corridor nodded itself into a
space that clearly hadn't seen recent entry. At its heart,
in the shadow of a swaying bulb, the door to
the red section waged framewarp to sign half cracked. The
name was stinseled in a faunt I'd only seen in
the deepest corners of the old blueprints. My hand shook
as I approached the door. Should not have fit here.
The wall had only been a thin partition above, Yet
here hewed wider than any sea nut stairs, the wood
older and ducker, the handle bronze and warm under my touch.
I listened nothing, just the thread of sounds, daddic and
hissing from further within. With effort, I pressed my shoulder
to the door. It opened in a sigh, not a creek.
The room within was impossible, not broad, but deep, ale
after ale, vanishing into shadow. Some shells ran in a grid,
others twisted off kilter, not lining up with floor or ceiling.
It smelled of bitter dust, old ink, the mineral sweetness
of forgotten paper. The carpet was flattened, almost slick in places,
as if too many cots had rolled the same path.
I prowled the first aisle. Here the books ran in
coded notations, labels, peeling off mid name, lock, pending, review,
nine and g unreturned, each volume heavier than it should be,
as if something weighed the covers halfway down A return
cut stood lid and a top. It a buttted ledger,
red band, blank except for a scold note closure. Do
you not remove? As I edged past, the room shifted,
I swear the aisles moved, crowding me, funneling me deeper.
From somewhere behind a row, A shuffle of footfalls, then faintly,
the almost human kidtence of a cough. I froze, breath, shallow,
a voice, papery behind the stacks. Don't move, what's settled.
It was barely audible, neither male nor female, just old brittle.
I retreated a step, trying to orient myself The path
behind me seemed longer than moments before. My senses buckled
against the layer. It's mellsmok paper, something wetter beneath it,
like old moss. I reached for my phone, trying to
set upin on my location, in no service, not even
a flicker of Wi FI. I retraced my steps, heart hammering,
but each turn, each aisle seemed to bend away from memory.
Had I taken this row before? Had the red labeled
cart always been at this angle? Spine out instead of up?
The overhead bulbs poles rhythmically in a pattern I couldn't name.
I pressed myself into a corner, breathing against cutderber hosts.
In my ear, the faintest echo a woman's voice, saying,
returned for closure. Don't forget. It was not quite Mare's name,
but it was something. It was too much. I forced
myself to walk back. The path opened from me, almost
abrupt in its mercy. Through the final door, I stumbled
right into stairwall shadow, the warmth of my own palm
on the railing, the smell of the upper floor spilling
down in faint traces, leminous infectant nucleue, the living world
above I shuddered, fighting down a shiver. The ledger, the
hidden records, the submerged rooms. Something in this place. Control forgetting,
not away. Rage is one lost transaction at a time,
leaving only the adline of what had been. And if
I went back, if I risked one more descent, I
might not be Neleni at all. Not by the time
I surfaced. Maybe none of them were back at the
top of the stairwell. The overhead light flick once twice.
My phone's clock insisted a single ire had passed, but
when I checked the lobby clock it was nearly closing.
I ducked into the staff bathroom, scrolling a quick note
into my audio diary subbasement reel, where it section not
myth ledger there too. Shelves don't line up, not safe
to linger, Must check personnel records, must find out who
was missing. I looked in the mirror and saw not
just my own face, but a hint of someone at
my shoulder gun. When I turned, I blinked not. Then
the library's double doors croned as the last staff felted
home wander cold Neelini all locked up. I nodded, shook,
staggered out onto the front steps. City dusk numby my skin,
night pressed in every street like a pale beacon. Shadows
clustered at the windows behind me. I swore there in
the hush, I saw movement in the upper stacks of
figure was shelding, moving with the gate that was nearly familiar.
I would try again tomorrow. But as I walked home,
keys clenched, I could not shake the center or someone
else's memory. Some one gun from the rolls, wandering the
edges of the light. I woke to the sound of
my phone vibrating across the bedside table, jittering against a
wadded cattalot print out Sunday sun pulled across my window,
wrong in its angle, as if more than a single
night had passed, knuckles white. I sat up, part pack
with dull ache before my feet. At the fore the
library's sub basement shone behind my alleids, the corridors that
bent and shifted, that desk of ledgers, the reflection of
some one who might have been me in a blank
glass of a staff picture frame. Coffee scalded my tongue
on the first ship. I set down my mug and
plugged in the audio acorder. The recording from the night
before was there but brittle static leaden chopped into harsh
splinters beneath my own voice Nalini after iris circulation closed,
If this is it? And then a rattling swell like
the interior of a moving van interrupted in a raised
The glance at my calendar told me it was midday Monday.
My body was heavy, muscles sore as if I'd run miles.
In the bathroom mirror, a bruise blossom at my wrist,
not visible. Before I pulled up my phone. Three new
texts from Rhonda timestem scattered over the missing ires. Call
em when you see this. Ye still at sick. We
need the desk covered. N A. M. Julie says, come
in when you're up for it. No mention of my absence,
no scolding for vanishing two shifts in a row, just
a sense that time had alighted, scouted up from under
my life. My note book, at the spot where I'd
left off copying blueprint dimensions was blank for the day before,
no writing, not even an indent were my pen had
pressed yet the INCLM my pomrade section scribbled in a
panic was smeared, as if I had been sweating in
my sleep. I swung my legs off the bed, finding
my shoes were muddy with a stain at one heel
I couldn't name. Half Way through a cautious breakfast, I
checked my work email. Hope you're feeling better, as discussed
your desk schedules of date had come in for orientation
with a mess Morrissey before resuming stacks. No mention of
the sub basement on missing time or the locking door,
only Adman's relentless cheerfulness. The linger and taste of iron
in my muff reminded me of breathing too deeply in
the narrow hidden passages under the floor. Resolute, I repacked
my back audio recorder phone. A copy of the blueprint
had managed to swipe my staff badge's sticker had peeled
half way off the dragged in its place faint scratch
marks shaped like initials energy. I'd never noticed them before.
Outside clouds gathered over the southward roof line. My walk
to the library seemed to take twice as lawn every
block tinged with alarm and misalignment. Cars idled at the
intersection a second too lawn. Old ladies in the steep
of the bakery, watching me pass, and pursed their lips
as though sniffing out the knee. When I stepped inside
the main branch, the change was immediate. The lobby's color
scheme had shifted, not the pale blue mats I remembered,
but a worn red runner stretch to the desk kicked
as if its centuries of rat The placards and the
walls now carried I coms for information commons and annexed
three sections I had never seen nor had referenced. At
the central circulation, Rhonda's hair was cut short, her glass's
new frame marbled green. She waved from behind the desk,
her greeting and familiar welcome back Neelini new lock of
Combo's on your ID. As she passed, I caught a
flicker from her lanyard beneath the plastic a business card,
a circulation supervisor and another line and its coordinator. The
staff roster updated on the TV above the lone desk,
scold names with a half dozen editions I'd never met,
s Cherney, F. BOGIERO, M. Gordon, and a handful missing,
including Duly. In my peripheral vision, the wall seemed to
pulse outward, fattening with a density of shells. I'd never
shelved corners. I'd never dusted. The map room, once cordoned
off then lot, was now local heritage, its metal door
replaced by glass. I passed through the morning drift of
returning patrons, startled by smaller minsitions, irregular gone, replaced by
someone else's family. The little girl who called me a
book finder no longer looked up. Mister Fawn, always waiting
for large prints, was nowhere to be seen. In his place,
a young man with bottle thick glasses rifled through a
sack of and cut newspapers. In the break room, a
mug sat with the name written a marker Nilini, but
the handwriting wasn't mine. I sat heavily palmstitching. The audio recorder,
when played was just static for the past two days.
The list of an omely scrubbed my spreadsheet opened displayed
only headers, the unres caught in a haze, interspersed time
stemps from last year. I scrolled hot tripping until I
saw a single logged note inserted in the wee eyes
before the missing night check red ledger and staff room.
I slept out glancing at the security mirrors. My face
caught twice, once in a way that didn't quite line up.
Whoever had reset my locker had left a folded note,
staff meeting at noon, please return. All would drawn out
as promptly. Even the shells themselves seemed to barrow. The
histories corners bulked out with non fiction titles I'd never
inventoried fiction runs that ended abruptly and restarted under a
new coal numbers. The supply closet door was now latched
with a keyp at, its paint and touched unease grew claws.
My pocket buzzed with the message no sense were only
the words annex sneeds were shelving B two with a
keykoat attached. My skin prickled D two, the level that
never existed, now referenced openly. I made my way down
the main corridor, passing coworkers who should have been strangers,
all nodding too familiarly. At the elevator, the button for
minus two glold a deep secret of orange. No one
seemed to mind as I pressed it, not even as
the door shut on an older woman, I didn't recognize
her as nearly closed, humming under her breath. The descent
was too smooth. The elevator music due into a frequency
I could barely register. When the doors slid open, I
found myself in a brightly lit, low ceiling, tannex metal shelves,
gray carpeting, Brin's mark, transferred older organomic chairs piled high.
The air smelled of disinfectant and something fainter, sweet but wrong.
Crossing the floor, I retrieved a bin of withdrawn materials
for order inside red bound ledgers, a handful of ancient
children books, and a battered blank library car tucked under
a folded ledger page. The handwriting stiff measured read mGy
closure pending do not file. I was sweating, heart shivering
in my chest. The only other sun was the single
echo of staff member shelving books in the next room,
caught wheels squeaking ehithnically. A tap on my shoulder jarred
me back. The custodian, same sharp eyes as ever, uniform,
a different color, set down a small envelope mail from
Archives for you. Inside the envelope was a length of
red thread and a single brass key, identical to the
one Ms Morrissey had leant before. But Polish knew there
was a carved map room direct access. Don't let it
drift inked over the signature. The initials were Energy. I
climbed the silver stairs, clear headed, pulse, thundering at the top.
I forced the map room lock key, guiding home as
if cut yesterday. The room was familiar, yet off maps
were pinned in different patterns. The case containing proper directors removed,
replaced with legal sized folders split by decades inside the
low drawer beneath the brittle folder marked City Memory Initiative
nineteen eighty seven minutes one thousand, nine hundred ninety six
lay the same blueprint I had found before, but this
time added sections were overlaid in computer print controlled archival
Erasure project Southwards Central Library. It was stamped at the header,
followed by Mayell signed off some project numbers. Something in
my stomach twisted, not superstition, not hallucination. Here inc to
public project sprouting from the stacks beneath my feet a
loss experiment with a name. Permits were clipped to the
margins sub Basement expansion approved nineteen eighty five minutes. Six
personnel denied keyk art access except special project coordinator Energy.
Long lists of funding allocation's local history, discretionary memory reformatting
where footrace alongside ominously blocked out sections below a yellow
sticky if itxed more recently, don't let the records reattach
basement entry's lock after a ledger signed, some one at
some point had tried to make forgetting official city policy.
I sat on the caldalnoleum, hands trembling, piecing it together.
Suffwood wasn't just disorganized. At some point, it had volunteered
its dangled memory for burial, As if history could be
scrub smither than concrete. This sub basement expanded, the red
section assembled, the erased names cued, and oblivion. If names leapt, vanish,
or receded, well, that was all part of the design.
Each missing protocol or vanished memory costs some one with
something dearly thun the spat against the window. I tucked
the blueprint into my jacket and locked the map room
using a new key pocked in the brass. Every gesture
made the world seem to tell to her settle on
my way back a mess more as you found me
in the reference stacks for voice, warier than ever I
see you found the blue prints I had hoped they
would help. She surveyed the annex, as if the walls
themselves could hear. You realize, don't you that the library
won't let you dig too deep? I swallowed. She studded
my face. It's not meant to be cruel. In the
early days, we thought we could at it what the
town remembered, the local errors, fail projects, things best left
to mark. But papers stubborn and so's place. She glanced
at the scar on my wrist, a small sadness in
her eyes. If you want to go deeper, you do
it at your own risk. I started myself. The missing
thy said the staffhemerist, GI, the vanish, the odd barcoats.
Is there a way out for them? Her lips pressed.
Then sometimes the records do revert, but you must not
try to return what isn't yours. If the ledgers out
of order, the erasure is partial. They the system, the
walls call it. What you want to take a price.
She slipped a small silver notebook into my hand. Write
down what you see. Don't depend on electronic records. Don't
let your only proof be to catalog. She patted my
arm and moved on. I slouet, shrinking against the shifting stacks.
I took the rest of my shift shoving, moving from
Annix three to Heritage. The air was thicker than I remembered,
as if way down by falk. Twice I misshelved a book,
only to find its snap back on to the cart
moments later. The buck could now one number off. The
fiction aisle at the far end lengthened unexpectedly flanked with
the extra rows every fifth title replaced by a red
stick ord wodrown. A group of teens lingered near the
staff only door, peering down it scene I caught only
fragments heard it used to go further. My grandma said
there were two basements. She swears. A younger boy flicked
a penny at the wall. It bounced and then scattered
beneath the nearby shelf, vanishing into sh shadow I hadn't
seen before. With the library closed and the security lights buzzing,
I gathered my notes, one section heavier than before, blueprints,
the silver notebook, brusqu key, and my badge, now bearing
a faint stamp provisional pending. I sat in the staff lounge,
fingers absent mindedly twisting the red thread check the red
ledger in staff room, my note commanded. I obeyed. Near
the back wall and the cabinet usually home to staff handbooks,
was a narrow gap. I slipped the brass key into
his lock and ease the panel aside. Inside sat the
red ledger, spine cracked, every page oddly weighted, entrant cross
Hashton's script half smudged into palimpsyst. Staff names were cud,
some cross, some only just legible. Each row included details,
but processed, even erased a page and removed sea suphell,
and always the coded closure date marked either returned or unresolved.
My own name appeared at the bottom, nearly kny provisional
closure column blank. I snapped the book shot, tucking the
ledger into my jacket. The world's spun a fraction, the
lounge lights blinking. As I stood the door to the
staff lunge. Seen further away was corridor longer like in
a dream. Resolved, I made my decision. I would enter
the sub basement of deliberate descent, not the stumbled trespass
of before. I packed the brass key, silver notebook, my
own blank LI library card, and stepped into the supply closet.
The spiral stairs awaited. I made my way downward, flastlight
train ahead, the geometry slipping as before, stairs, coiling deeper,
wall squeezed tight, the earthening and then thickening until it
stuck to my skin. The red section's door was ajar,
as if expecting me inside. The architecture strained all sense.
Shelves warped and stretched. Books hangled in a danse game
of perspective. With each step, the corridor seemed to riovenez
around me, shoving boo carts into new formations, sometimes thanking me,
sometimes forming a dead end. I would link to find open.
The sun came quickly, shelving, then pencil scratching, almost ordinary.
At the far end of a shifting aisle, a shadow
trembled between metal and wood. I sealed myself in a perch,
ledger pressed tight to my chest. Closer the shadow or
less dragged outline of woman chintuck close sh broad beneath
a tattered stout sweater. Hands worked methodically reshoving a cut
lined with ledgers and foul boxes. The face, when it
turned pale, blurred, as if the world wouldn't commit to
resolving it, yet undeniably present courage, something familiar, I drew
in my breath and sure if I should speak, Maris.
A blink, then the shadow shivered. The handstilled, one finger
pressed to the spine of a ledger who's left. This
time the voice was neither echoed nor hallucination, for Adbert
marbled with static, a mid range contralto slurring into the hush.
It's new any I work up stairs? I found your
name in the records. I the words sounded foolish as
they left me. The figure half smiled, head tilted back
always someone new. What is it you hope to fix?
I hesitated. There are missing books, names, some of you
never returned. They they erased too much. They always erased
too much. The words ached. What is it you want
records restored? Or only your own name? And blurred? I
want the truth cataloged. I want people able to find
what was lost. My knees threatened to buckle. I want
to know if I can return to who I was before,
or if you if anyone can round us. A's drifted
in and not a focus, Maris. If it was heard,
extended a hand, palm up in. It was a blank
libery card. I just frayed with handling. What would you
do with the ledger, Sign your name, riskclosure, or shove
it and let it rot. If I sign, do I stay?
I whispered, or do I just join the ones? Nobody
remembers he sign, and the record hardens. Someone always stays,
another assistant, another page, but nobody leaves with what they
mean to. She released the card, letting it flutter to
the floor. And if you reshove the ledger unfinished, more
gets lost, rooms, books, faces, even exits. I shook, caught
between wanting to run and knowing I must stand what
happens if I walk away? Her eyes, if they were
eyes narrowed. The building will keep reaching foreclosure until it
gets what it wants. May be this time it will
be satisfied with a book, a single page. Maybe it
swallows a wing or shifts a whole memory. It is
a hungry place around us. The wall's flexed echoes bloom,
father died, the stack's voices faintly arguing, someone sobbing the
scuff of a cart, rolling, then vanishing mid note. My
fingers curled around the blank card. I unclapped the silver notebook,
flipping to the cleanest page left one by one, I
wrote down what I knew names lost, years, collapsed, books
misplaced were erased at each name. Maris g he maher
r n Delaney. I inked a square, not closing the line,
refusing the final period. Maris watch hunched, as if pressed
in by whatever force kept her chained here right fast,
she rasped, I did. In writing, I could feel the
ledger resisted, pages heavier, then lighter, in pulling into patterns
that moved at the edge of sight. As I transcribed,
the shelves re arranged themselves. In my peripheral vision, the
library grinding for its layers, testing the edges of forgetting. Suddenly,
an electricity shuddered through the room. A light near the
ceiling guttered and failed. The air thickened, pressure mounting until
my ears popped. Maris spasmed, as if jerked back by
an invisible leash. Don't let the ledger closer, she stammered,
Not unfinished, not while you remember. I fumbled the red thread,
the card, the notebook, all dropping to the floor. The
ledge is spine opened, pages flipping in a windless rush,
cataloging Juris one after another. Ink andr inked in a
thousand hands my own name surface, then slipped away all
around spectrol figures flickered, a library staff not present since
before I was born. Elders and children, each pressing fingers
to lips, urging silence, or holding up were drawn slips
like badges. One started to speak, but his words disintegrated,
paper fraying in an invisible wind. I lunged forward, yanking
the ledger from the shelf, its spine burning in my hands,
as if charged with static. What do I do? I
demanded of the room of Maris, the thousand echoing histories,
Marius fading now her outline, loss in the gloomery, each
from my shoulder, fingers missing by the second. Shelve it
on your terms. Don't file yourself. The pressure belt like
crushing my ears, the aisles shrinking, books sliding from shells,
as if every lost memory rebelled at once. I braced myself,
knelt on the warped carpet, and yent the red thread
tight through the ledge's clasp, binding the last page. Not
only I could and tie. The stack of spectral staff swirled,
dissolving into red haze. Everything collapsed inward, then burst outward.
My own name I could back at me, muffled to syllables,
slurred by distance, nearly ne a flare of heat, the
taste of dust, and then silence. I pitched forward, arms
aching leger pester my chest. The shells were empty round me,
the carpet now the stale gray from above, a ghost
and print of the stacks in my face. The blank
cut pulsed in time with my heartbeat. Above. A hatch
in the ceiling cracked open. White lights built through, sharp
and antiseptic, accompanied by the distant pus of a staff announcement,
all hands closing in ten minutes. I staggered up, Leijer,
wedged under my arm and holed myself through the hatch.
The daylight bit not library golden, but blue white from
new aled. The room I entered was unfamiliar, more modern
than any library space. I remembered a glass wall framed
the distant city squat versions of the circulation desk, staff
by faces that felt assemble from memory, not acquaintance. Julie
was there, but younger, in her twenties, hair and grayd
She looked up, smiling, then frowned, you're new or new first? Eh?
She pointed at my lanyard. It still read it temporary,
but the sticker was gone, replaced by raised letters provisional.
A crowd of staff bustle were stocking, glancing side, was
at me, but never quite meeting my eyes. Return all
with drawn materials promptly, their voices chimed an eerie harmony.
I tempted to hand over the ledger, but my hands
passed through their stack of paper work, as if through mist.
One staff member, a young man, i'd my badge, then
looked away quickly. He should put that back where you
found it, he muttered, Put it back in things settle.
I pressed into the new annex. What was once the
map room, now a conference pod. Every corner was both
familiar and estranged. Books lay in piles, but their titles
ran backward, was jumbled. The air was itching the clean
the smells all wrong, chemical pine and fresh plastic. None
of the green dust paper wrought comfort I once relied on.
I waited, watching for any change. Nothing did. My personal
items the audio recorder, phone, silver notebook were absent. My
lockage lay a coat I didn't recognize. The only constant
was the weight of the red ledger under my arm,
and a blank library car, now scarred with a single
pale streak on a hunch. I stole into the heritage
corner another new edition, this one filled with clippings and
bruttle out of order microfilm. No one stopped me in
a back display case a framed sheet Staff m General
Service two thousand seven Loss record and complete. I blink.
Tried to read it again, but the glass grew fog,
the text fading. Every time I tried to mention Marius's
name to co work out, the word dissolved, syllable splitting
and sticking in my throat. When I tried to log
into my staff account, the pass what was invalid. After
three tries, the system locked me out, a single line
of text blinking status pending. During an afternoon shift, I
found myself shelving in a room that hadn't existed yesterday.
The call number runs stopped as an impossible code, A
patron approach asking for the book, a garden for the forgotten.
I looked for it, but it wasn't on fire. I
began to sense a patter in every attempt to anchor
the truth. Every act of recording or naming trigger to
counteraction stack order Chaine dates in my note, but reindis themselves,
names faded or thickened with new pemmacks. The audio diary
coffin static over its own entries. The longer I remained,
the more to concrete details of my own memory bled backwards,
overwriting and overwriting, until the holes themselves began to close.
In that night, in my small apartment, I tried to
play back in the recorder each file from the last
forty eight. Eyes began mid sentence, overlap with older entries, paused, resumed,
stuttered in a voice ten years younger than mine. I
checked my note book. Every name except mine had run
together in a nod of a lligiblink. With panic rising,
I scrolled the facts again, dates, rooms, lost names, pressing
the pen so hard and nearly burst, I set alarms
to wake me every two hours, afraid that sleep would
erase the rest. Each time I opened my eyes, I
checked the arms of my chair, needing the tactile truth.
The grooves I had whittow of myself scratched beside the
second for trial physical and changed. In the morning, the
marks had blurred. Things outside the library were changing as well.
A boarded up shop appeared on the corner that last
week had been a bakery. My street's trust pickup vanished
one morning, never to return. I ran into the little
girl from Children's but she had a different name and
her mother didn't recognize me at all. On my next shift,
the lobby clock ran backward for ten minutes. A news
clipping on display listed the library centennial as two years prior,
impossible given the dates in my own records. Old coworker
smiled and familiar smiles, all carrying matching red threaded bookmarks,
though none acknowledged them. The staff for a croom had
faint new editions, a pin board of lost and found badges,
many bearing blank spots where names should be. A fotover
staff party. My own face blurred in the edge of
the frame, yet when I stared at it, I remembered
being there sort of. Or was it someone else who'd
warn my badge that night? Days ran together the library,
shifting each time I attempted to pin it down. Between shifts,
I tried to find a mess Morrissey, but no one
seemed to remember her. The cubby previously home to her
Thermos held on the unclaimed library cards, each blank on
one side street faintly with red refusing to yield. I
carried the red ledger with me each day. Its present
seemed to tell a reality, a heavy, unwieldy anchor. I
added to it, note in the pattern of e raised names,
map changes, even tracking my own increments of forgetting. But
the more I wrote, the more the ledger fed back enters, multiplying,
growing denser, entire pages repeating themselves, old staff names popping
up Marischi, r. N. Delaney, even my own, with the
status Revere marked in an anxious hand. Fearing what would
happen if I stopped, I set out to retrace the
path to the sub basement, seeking the stair inside the
supply closet. By the closet had been replaced by vending
machine and a wall of publicly posted memos new staff
entrance basement closed for renovation, access pending, there was no
visible way down. Late in the afternoon, I snucked behind
the book drop, searching for any sign of the hatch
or stairwell. As I pressed my palms to the wall,
I felt a shift the same gentle exhil a sliver
of shadow, coal less part seem part handle. With the
tips of two fingers, I tugged an arrow spiral stair unfolded.
Its were cuckolder than anything in the building above. Notebook
in one hand, ledger in the other, are leaned into
the passage, the air called than before, a press close.
I counted its steps, breath tight. At what should have
been thirty three, the count faltered. The stairs doubled back
on themselves, twisting into corridors and felling at each wrong angle.
My flasklight caught a glint, then a shape, the library
cup with a single book atop it, a garden for
the forgotten, spine, split bookmark, woven of red thread through
its center. I lifted the book, hot thumping. Inside was
a check out slip and name date pending. The slipboard,
traces of multiple signatures, each crossed out we replaced with
others ghosted into the page. A final line year turn.
Only one name may hold. The scuff of another set
of footsteps echoed behind me, a shape nothing more. Passing
with a ledger in hand, I could not speak, could
only listen as their footsteps faded, aisles collapsed, corridor shrinking,
a press forward, dizzy. At the end of the path,
the familiar door of the red section opened without touch.
Inside all was motioned, ledgers cycling through hands both seen
and seen, stacks rising and falling. Old staff I d
discarded in heaps on the central table, waited the book,
the card, the silver notebook, all arranged as if for
a ritual. The air twisted with low voices and endless
recitation of lost titles, sea states, missing persons, my own
names circled the room. In a current of static. I
dropped the ledger on to the table. Page is fluttering.
A single line formed at the top shelf or signed
He'd choose the urge to sign my name surged a
flush of relief. I promised that things would settle even
if I vanished with the rest. But Marius's words echoed then,
and I recalled the string of a RaSE faces, each
one's signing forclosure, each one lost by morning. If I
filed the ledger, I might gain peace, or simply replace
a missing page with my own. Instead, I turned to
the silver notebook. Its page is bent. I wrote every anomaly,
every fracture of memory, every erase or shifted detail, a
single entry from myself, employee Nellini, present, memory, intact, pending.
I wrapped the red thread three times around the ledger's
bind and slaid it unfinished into the gap between table
and stack. In that moment, the room twisted shows rutchard, skyward, ledges, gush, smoke, names,
rickshet off the walls, and vanis into specks of shadow.
My heart beat spiked, my hands blistered from the cold.
One by one, the spectral figure screamed, then blinked away.
No more files open, no more returns penned in the
door behind me, slam shut. Light pulled up my feet,
the grand fever with words I couldn't read. I pressed
myself operate, Exhausted, clutching the silver notebook and the blank card,
now stamped with a date to day, I scrambled for
the hatch, dragging myself up through the spiral stair into
the sound of rowing book carts in the bray of
the closing announcement, immerged in the staff lounge, with the
fading sunlight catching the side of my face in the
security mirror. Three minutes before closing, and the world had reset,
no annex, no new staff, only the layout. I remembered.
My badge was plain again, nearly any temporary assistant. The
library hummed with the brittle, wavering silence. Corners too bright,
others too dark. My phone vibrated with a message from
Ronda you closing to night, broutine, casual, as if I
had never missed a day. In my jacket, the silver
notebooks edg just bit into my palm and saw it.
Every page was still filled with names, records, the anomalies
I had tracked, now a mo unwritten. I pressed the
red ladder and finished into the staff safe, locked it
and slid the key into my pocket, never to hand
it over. I rewound my audio recorder. The last entry
played Nelini after hours, if this is my lasted, and
then silence. I walked to the exit, scanning the shells
for anything out of place. The fiction section ran through
the nine hundreds lay in disturbed. There was no red
section signed anywhere, no spiral stair, no visible hatch. Just
the library, ordinary and stubborn, as it should have been
all along. Everything was still for a moment. The only
sound the hum of old electricity through the walls. In
that calm, I breathed in dust disinfectant to the ghosts
of her sharper ozen that might once have been static
from a ruptured catalog. I closed my notebook, slipped the
blank library card deep into his pocket, and turned the
staff badge over in my hand. The last thing I
saw as I stepped up was my own faint reflection,
mouth shut as searching a single lann lingering status of
pendant for a breathless instant. I stood in the staff lobby,
as if expecting the world to riple again, to show
some fundamental scar or future. My chest ached sharply with
confusion and left of a fear, my hand tight in
the coal key in my pocket. The finality of the
staff lounged just fluorescent light, chipmunks and a faded flier
about over too fine stare of me to hope nothing
had ever happened, that I had never gone below at all,
But I knew better. I felt the ledge's absence as
roar as a missing tooth. I forced my breathing into rhythm,
stepping out among lies still proceeding as if the library
had never shifted. Chili waved from the copier, not a
hint in her eyes of the subterranean maze or its casualties.
Staff moved up and down. The corridors, were rolling couts,
smiling their professional half smiles. Even the buildings hush felt new,
as if freshly printed, ready to overwright, whatever memory I
risked voicing. When I passed the old supply closet, there
was no spiral stare, no sign of breech, only the
janitor's cat, the mock bucket, and some one's forgotten coat.
I brushed my fingers along the door fram caught a
trace of coal, but nothing more. The wall met my
touch with a steady, ordinary resistance. I was desperate to
recount the ordeal to Anchorage oddity with wharrows at my locker.
I thumbed open the silver notebook, flipping for each entry.
Still there but oddly fixed, the ink, refusing to blur
or fade no matter how hard I looked, it stubbornly
displayed what I'd written, names, codes, map skews, and inventory
of losses. A relic perhaps, or a barrier holding back
the pressure of a ranger for a few more cycles.
Ronda's message blinked on my screen. I'll be late tomorrow,
can you cover opening. There was no mention of lost time,
no flicker of suspicion about where I'd been or what
I'd done. Even the watch on my wrist read the
time I expected, as if the eye was nested cleanly together.
After all the distortion. The old clock above the lunge
chiped backward once briefly, then resumed. For a moment I
wondered if it was warning or coincidence. My skin prickled.
I pocketed the notebook, folded my badge securely behind it.
The urage to withdraw from the buildings gentle from me
was immense, but another part of me recognized a new
pattern emerging. Nothing would remain static now, not the structure,
not the rosters, not even myself. The library would always
try to digest the stray, to file every curiosity in
appending or resolve, and it would never close every gap.
A knock sounded from the side door. I turned mess Morsey,
or someone who wore her ship or hat to fraction sharper,
the shoulders more angular, the eyes darker passed me in
the lobby. She didn't acknowledge the keys of the liijo
or the gap between memories, but her hand brushed mine
for a heart beat too long as she collected her mail,
and the slip of paper left in the counter read
only care for what you try to fix. On my
final walk through the stacks, I counted call numbers, check spines,
and gently reshelved the night's last returns. Several books now
bore narrow red stickers, nothing overt, but just enough to
catch a glint in the lamp. Play on a whim.
I reached for one, a bat of volume. When I
scanned it, the catalog confirmed in place, in no missing,
no anomalies. Yet on the inside cover a penciled notation
read R. N. Delaney nineteen eighty four. I pushed the
cart toward the central desk. As Rohnder reappeared. She jerked
her thumb at the fore end. See the new display
someone swapped at the local history feature. Looks good. Actually,
where I expected to find the olds and ten il
posters was now a modest case marked in memory loss
staff inside little more than a pie of blank library cars,
a vintage staff vest and a letter opener. No names,
no photographs, just a brass plaque, freshly engraved to those
who shelf too deep. I ran my finger over the cards.
Each one was bone playing, most with a faint line
of rare, some smudged at the edge. I checked my
own pocket, half fear in my card to have joined them,
but found it safely tucked in the notebook. I slid
the display cases glass, a sliver open. For a moment,
my reflection flickered over the emptiness inside. Then as quickly
was gone, the library closed with its usual ritual of
final announcement, the shuffle of keys, the distant yawn of
automatic doors. Rund offered a ride, which I refused with
a strained smile, careful not to betray the trembling relief
that the building's persistent memory might simply let me exit
to night outside. The night air fell crisper than before,
sharper in the tongue, as though the wall beyond the
library had waited for me to return. I turned back
for an instant. In every window, the fluorescent cloth cast
faint rectangular shadows bent like open ledges, stretching shelf after
shelf into darkness. And that is the end. Thank you
for listening, and I will see you in the next one.