Speaker 1: A soft final click descended into the last shreds of
libraries am My thumb hovered over the post button of
my digital recorder, catching only the persistent hum of the
climate units and my own steady breathing at side. Brain
lashed a bout of copper roof and a hevoic sheets
thunder rattled a lighted glass, and the few light flickered
as the library prepared to grind its self shut. I
reached into the nest of record boxes for the next
four to birth records from the city's late nineteenth century expansion.
Each slip a lost citizen throaded through scriptoriums were sillient
web The intercompinged out a brittle, cheerful chime. Attention all patrons,
the scriptorium closes in fifteen minutes of staff. Please ensure
all restricted areas are secured. Good evening. The announcements echoed
assolved above the marble rottender, leaving the rest of the
full disturbingly silent. I nudged my chair back, scanning the
halogen glow for signs of co workers. Nothing, even the
night janitor who shuffler be sneakerd steps had been The
back dropped my other late shifts was gone. The sense
of being outside ordinary eyres was its own alert. These
after closing sessions were supposed to be mundane, catching up
on the lapse inventory that consort him threatened to audit wrangling,
the mess of miss wild civil War maps and crumbling
donation ledgers. Yet to night, every movement felt amplified, as
though the library's walls were waiting expectant. A vend above
me rattled its cold current between the arch beams. I
slid a file into its manila sheath, flip into the
next task on my spreadsheet. When a dust choked coffer
uped behind me from the red Bushalkov I froze, listening
for a repetition, but heard only the lights humming and
in the background faint pattering from the storm. Only nerves.
It had to be forcing calm. I pried another battered
box off the shelf. This one slipped behind a stack
of shelving, starved for attention. Caught my notices unusually heavy,
the label, half peeled and written in a florid script
read Personal Account Ledgers, nineteen twelve minutes forty two restricted.
As I lifted the lid or with a fox parchment
wafted out inside paperbacks were stacked in a haphaz of
roe or alongside cloth bone ledgers. Between these a thick
cloth back volume laywage in the back of guess book
appeared almost deliberately hidden facing spineen I took the free
The cover, scuffed to gray, was pressed with the faded
gold out line of a key. Within the front cover,
an unremarkable slip pocket held a time worn borrowing card,
its edges fox bran with age. I ran a finger
over the names, the last entry in immaculate black ink
S Hargrove, twelve March nineteen fifty eight. There were other
interests to clustered through the decade, sometimes decade to part,
but three of them, including the most recent, bore the
same looping signature, and the last date circle faintly in pencil,
was just a month before I began my archival contract
that the writing itself matched the oldest style perfectly. Mike
got clenched. I pressed the red record button on the dictaphone,
hoping for some scrap of insight I could later transcribe
Box fourteen, potentially uncataloged materials. Volume appears unlisted. Card design
shows multiple interests into s hargrove. The playback cap should
not only my voice overlaying it a barely suceptible sibilance,
like a whisper ripple between syllables. I jerked up the book,
nearly slipping from my lap. I swipped my lamp round
the alcove, a tongue of shadow and foirling behind the
nearest rolling ladder. Nothing at the threshold to the bound archives,
a scrap of dust, spy or old, disturbed by neither
staff nor climate. I told myself it was only the rotors,
the constant shuffle of air, still with pulse drumming. I
slid the car from the pocket and tucked it into
my badge lanyard. My hands trembled, but whether from cold
or something else, I couldn't tell. The urged leave was
sudden and absolute, so strong it was as if I
had been warmed. Walking out into the grand stacks, I
paused only to extinguish my lamp, each step echoing a
fraction too loudly. In the deserted corridors, no one watched,
except there were moments, just the crossing of a corridor,
a quick shadow at the edge of a lot box
where I felt decisively observed. With every light I shut off,
the buildings seemed to rearrange itself around my absence. The
rare books Alkov swallowed once again behind steel and marble.
I breathed easier in the foise wash of security lighting.
It was only on the stone own steps, the rain
biting through my coat, that I realized I've forgotten what
I'd meant to record in the first place. Asterisk. My
apartment of Carlos as Delhi always smelled of pepperoni oil
and old receipts, but I'd grown fond of its thin
walls and good bad view. The spires of Scriptorium Library
looming on the horizon, shingles and rain shoots stock against
the city night. I peeled off my wet cow and
let myself sink into the battered sofa digital record a
still clip to my belt. As Richel demanded, I uncapped
a jar of lentils and made an attempt at dinner.
This was supposed to be my horizon, the start of
something solid. Degrees in history and library science packed into
twin laminated folders, A handful of intentious trailing less at
libraries and strange museums. The Scriptorium was the city's and
spoken heart, repository for not just books, but family secrets,
birth and death, the unclaimed margins of the town's memory
into the portable mic. I spoke a few lines for
a future, more optimistic self. A day twelve settling in
tasks never end. Policy briefings remained diabolical, but the staff
are uncommittal, not hostile. Head Librarian Marlins as Sphinx still
is quiet. Work missed my home libraries those day d Indeed,
though there's something funny about the roster of turnover. Two
staff transferred last week, no formal announcement, hoping a stick
it out. The apartment's hush was slightly comforting. I traced
the edges of the s hargor of borrowing cart. How
did it wind up in a box? Never meant for circulation?
The handwriting had all but quiet assurance of someone who'd
always belonged, lipping s and a final dot of punctuation
edh So dark it cut through the years, I couldn't
help but imagine its passage, a generation of hands, each
gribbling that name under circumstances I would never know. Outside.
The storm led up, and I climbed into bed, the
batter cott left facing up atop my knight stent. I
woke to an empty morning, the air in the room
strangely thick, as if the night hadn't quite let go.
The library's entrants always set the tone for my day.
Marble columns chiseled with names of obscure locals, stained glass
that painted the security vestibule and spectral ladders. Visitors in
strew struck first by the immense ceilings and clerical ash,
before being funneled to the painted information desk. The first
meetings of my employment had passed in a blow of forms,
whispered explanations of kikyard bandies and the ironclad roll restricted
areas only with double credentials, no exceptions. The other archivists
nodded through the head library in stern lectures, chewing absent
mindedly on bagels as Marlin recited the usual warnings known
sanctioned borrowing always signed the lobrooks professional discretion to refrain
uttered a half dozen times per year. Colleagues stayed polite
but a safe distance. Olivier who ran into library loans
gestured at the thick binder of transfer requests, eyes careful
but tired, just ignored the highlighted sections and anything signed
by Marlin. Really, it was Tony Riddy, the graining janitor,
who proved my first real friend in the building. Each noon,
as the others trickled way to their offices, I snaggered
a sandwich, and Tony would settle across, playing his lanyard
over the sticky breakroom table. Been here longer than I
can remember, he'd say, eyes darting places, amazed. Did you
know the south wing has a sub basement? Even management
were map meth goes. All the old payroll ledges are
still down there with the rats, plus half the city's skeletons.
Between murmurs of ghosts in the stacks, Tony outlined the
building's line like expansions, marked the off limits coal spaces,
and speculated wildly in the purpose of the brass's scutcheons
that peppered the oldest doors. Would a wink, he'd ad,
don't let the wall plaques fool you. People retire quick
around here, sometimes out of sight, sometimes just out of mind.
That evening, my shift stretched slater than planned, with the
archivas scattered and Tony wrestling an ancient floor polisher. I
lost myself in the catalog rhythm, slid a card box,
a ledger enter its barcode, check against the old print
up for phantom mangers. About half way through the New
England Histories, the overheads popped off of the metall click.
The bulbs flickered, stretching my shadow on against the file cabinets.
I tapped the circuit box, but the lights only stuttered,
then faded out one by one, until I was left
in thin twilight. The air circulation vents whined to lifen.
For a moment it sounded like voices murmuring behind steel.
I pressed record again, but the only thing I caught
was the way my own bread scattered, and the mechanical
throg behind ancient walls. I tried not to read into
the churn of staff departures, but that Friday the departure
email pinged again. Colleague Mirs of Barter has accepted another opportunity,
effective immediately. No party, no photo, no word of her
next place. Tony all, but biting through his tongue over lunch,
only managed not the first won't be the last. As
the arcaves beckoned and the hummouth events dulled the ape
behind my eyes. I found myself suited by the repetition
of it. All the shelves, the labels, the sense of
order maintained against creeping entry. Still more than once a
tingle slid down my arms as the lights followed. The
rare buck alcove was never quite dark, never quite still.
On my third week, I set the s Hargrove cab
beside my monitor. Every so often I'd catch myself checking it,
as if waiting for the name to change, or for
a fresh signature to bloom across the paper. Instead, it
lay in her the thick line under s Hargrove saw
in presence, I could neither file nor throw away asterisk.
A month had stitched itself together in small routines before
Patten called me back to her knease. It started subtly,
as all pattens to, with a hunch more than a fact,
my curiosity about this Hargrove refused to let up. One
thick morning, a brutal was static. I ducked into the
electronic catalog room and quietly keyed, and a coal number
jotted in the borrowing card. Lincoln came Aunty Manner Ledgers
succession four hundred eighty eight. Nothing. The catalog blinked and
spat an item not found message. I tried every permutation, author, year,
partial spellings. Not a single match came up, either for
the book or for anyone named as Hargrove associated with circulation.
Even the card's number encode didn't align with any of
our current structures. For a lock. I began checking other old,
boring cars as I worked through the inventory, just the
ones with physical slips left behind. It became a game.
Tape each car to the edge of my desk, see
how many names or dates I could connect more than once.
I asked Hargar's surface to sometimes as a patron, sometimes
just initials, but always associated with books marked restricted, missing,
or in one odd case, removed from collection. None of
these titles appeared in our digital archive lists. When I
checked physical inventory, the books were long gone, but no
paperwork justified their discardoor transfer, cross referencing, donation and discard
ledgers turned up nothing. I even asked Olivia about anomalies,
but she only half laughed. Paper trails in this place.
Just be glad the system doesn't eat life request as
often as it eats old ones leaving through an inventory
print out in the conference room one afternoon, I noticed
odd annotations a half dozen inches marked with a single
faint red check, an index card slipped inside, with names
Mercibato among them, lined up next to date, So at
last scene notes old employees fading from memory, most leaving
just before their books vanished from shelves. Struggling to shake
my unease, and nonetheless became preoccupied with placing the pattern.
Was I imagining the connection or was there more behind
these perfect loops of name and date? That night, tucked
far back in the stacks, the old whispers returned, barely audible,
but definitely there, A rustle threading through the high shelves.
Flicking my recorder on, I tried furtlessly to capture them,
only to hear on playback swell of static and the
faintest hint of overlapping voices repeating perhaps a single phrase,
indistinguishable but insistent. By then, the urge to ignore it
was long gone. I tugged the s harger of boring
card from my lineyard, ran my thumb across the ink,
and wondered how many others had found unlost their own
trail in this place. The library's silence wasn't empty. It
was thick post of all the unsaid warnings, the vanished names,
the unnamed books, and the lap of memory circling just
out of reach asterisk. A week slid by as I
dubbed myself deeper into the anomaly, the routine monotony now
sharpened with obsession. The libraries ridden continued wafting emails, gentle
coughs in the stacks, Marlin's clip voice issuing another reminder
about protocol. But by Friday I could hardly focus on
standard shelving. Instead, during my breaks, I made excuses to
audit the archave's physical sign out draw the old wooden
chest in a forgotten supply closet filled with indexed cards
no one had migrated online. Having copied every instance of
the s Hargo's signature on library paraphernalia, I laid them
out in the archive reading room after ires. The handwriting
never waver regardless of decae. The same looping s sharp
hoogn g appeared even on cards from three decades, a
part of feet of consistency no normal hand could achieve.
Between cups of cheap braakrim coffee. I built a masterless title,
lost known location last Sygney. Most of the missing books
had belonged to one of three genres local city histories,
family by balls, personal diye is all allegedly restricted for perservation,
but never pro official policy to accession or record a dismissing.
Late one Thursday, as thunder bristled outside and the stacks emptied,
I dared a quick expedition to the staff records room.
I was looking for older staff rostus, hoping for clues
about resignations and disappearances. The room's air was stale, before
escent tubes pussing their sharp white balls, filing cabinets heavy,
undecorated and suspiciously dented. Line every wall. Down the back,
I found a file barx labeled cause cases inside. Oddities abounded,
faded at de badges, and complete resignation slips. Sometimes just
a file folder with a dated no first name only
Barto resigned twenty twenty two in red byro. Some folders
were thicker lone doll geared photographs of employees standing awkwardly
beside cuts of unshelved books, eyes half shadowed, accord a
mid blink. Two police request forms caught my attention, tight
unsigned with large ways left blank a pattern began to emerge.
Every vanished person, staff or patron had one thing in common.
Each had last handled books on the s Hargove roster,
many missing, most ump restricted and audit journals now yellowed in,
and three different handwritings circled and read. I was late
to the brick room. My nurse raying Tony noticed. He
sat polishing his keyring with one hand to gaze darting.
You're not poking into those old sign outdrawers, are you,
he said. I tried to laugh it off. The just
ought tying up inventory backlogs, you know, he lowered his voice,
checked the windows. Smart people, let missing things stay missing here.
You won't win a medal for finding lost pages. Library
forgets for a reason. He stared at my pocket, where
the card was just barely visible. He starts seeing things,
hearing him to its time to swapshifts for bail out.
Don't say nobody warned ye. I left, but the warning
hummed under my skin. That nice sleep never to coal.
I circled my master lest tracing the clearest alignment yet
the days the book's disappeared, the corresponding staff depatures the
double matches between vanished books and now departed readers. It
was a choreography of absence by the next evening, resolved
mixed with panic. I waited until closing, then circle, quietly
done the stuff. Only all were disguised. A fire exit,
hushed steps, my camera tucked under my coat, one hand
tied around the flashlight. Here the building's noises changed, air thin,
the calking between marble blocks hummed with the pressure of
old machinery. Past the storage anics. Three book custs bought
the cross hall, each stacked in a spiral pattern, not
the usual accidental heap, but curved, deliberate layers of volumes,
spines out as though guiding a path into the stack's thicket.
I hesitated, placing one hand atop the nearest book. The
cover was velvet black, its title simply obscured by age
and grime. Their snap chill against my face as I
traced it. H d on a spine. There s Hargro
stamped in gold. Clinting despite the scarce light, My camera
flash caught another movement, a shadow flitting between stacks. Adrenaline flooding.
I swung my lamp, pulse beating irrationally, expecting the worst. Instead,
the figure resolved into the head librarian Marlin, face hard
to read in the swinging light. Archivist Marlin's tone was
dangerously flat. What are you doing in restricted after ires?
Just ordering? I was following inventory forms. I managed building
beneath fear. They gazed, narrowed, taking in the cuts, the spiral.
My hands still trembling over the s Hargrove book. This
place protects its memory. Marlin said, don't misinterpret our boundaries.
Curiosity does not override what must be kept. I tried
to form a challenge, but the words faded. Marlin gestured,
GHEs pale and precise for me to leave at once,
the carts forming a trail toward the oldest stacks remained behind,
but spines reflecting in lines of uneasy gold, as the
librarian will lock the doors. That night, I dreamed only
shifting corridors and voices murkier than the rain asturs. What
finally lifted the slow and knees to true fear wasn't
a voice or shadow, but a sequence of faces only
precorded in a col clarity of security tapes. Another storm boiled,
pelting the city with rain so heavy it erased the
view from the break room windows. I sat alone in
the electronics closet, the bored keys from an inspecting new
nut guard digging into my fist. The axis panel for
the security archive was low tech discs and flacouts, each
marked with last week's date and temporary marker. I slaid
one into the player, willing my breed in, dis stayed
and skipped to the first night before Marisso Barto resigned.
The black and white vision stuttered there. She was moving
between stacks at midnight. Her caught heavy hands methodically arranging
books into strange looping shapes. Her eyes didn't meet the camera. Instead,
she paused, head cocked as if listening intently, then smiled
a soft, absent smile while sliding a book the same
underdorned volume might see in the staff cart across the shelf.
Lips moved in a whisper, but the audio carried only static.
I watched push and after portion of the staff, then
a lone patron grad student padge flashing, trailing a cart
into the forbidden aisle, arranging titles in the designated spiral
in every tape. The patum reassemble book stacked with an
ache and care hands moving like chess pieces, responding to
instructions just out of frame. What paralyzed me was half
way through the silent labor, every person glanced, almost by refix,
toward the security camera, always the eyes and shadow, until
in one shilling tape, the patron's facetne fall blank, mouth open,
as if mid conversation was something I could not see.
I called up the last discondated the whek before my
own hiring the Times samplinks or of thirty two. In
the grainy dark, a thin figure appeared lyna tucked into
a coat, face shrouded. They entered the deepest back wind
and with outstretched arms began stacking books, one of them
a ledger, another a silverized pamphlet, another with a golden ness.
They paused at the central junction of the spiral, then
vanish without leaving the camera's frame. One moment visible at
the corner of the shelf, the necks utterly gone. My
hand shook as I press stop on the deck. The
blackness on the morn is a mirrored de cold red
building in my chest. Only the static crackled in reply.
I uncapped the recorder and forced clarity into my voice,
though it tremble. Security locks something as guiding people in
the restricted stacks. They move like their following directions cues.
No one else can hear. Whatever this pattern is, it's
real as it possible, someone or something is still oustrating
this trail. Are I next the question We wavered in
the clothes, electrified dark as the storm outside hammered the
city into mute submission. In the monitor's reflection, they were
eyes that were not quite my own. The question wavered
in the clothes, electrified dark, as the storm outside hammered
the city into mute submission. In a monitor's reflection, there
were eyes that were not quite my own. My alarms ached,
the room, pressed close, ancient dust motes gathering hard and
silver round the fringe of my desk lamp. I let
the tape re wind, scrutinizing each shape and shadow, desperate
for some ordinary rational motion senses, no pranks. No, the
blank faces and the tapes, the mechanical obedience with which
their hands moved made ordinary explanations laughable. No one had
called out, look, startled, caught off card. In every segment
there was simply acceptance. A trance may be even eagerness
to melt into the library's old permissions. I reviewed the footage.
A second tine freezing our Marius's frame as she paused,
one hand hovering with are over a shelf's exposed edge.
Her lips potted, and I could swear I heard a
name strangle through digital static as at the cockcame sharp.
A ghost caught between syllable and silence. Cold sweats like
my palms is ascan backward hunting for anything, an intruder,
a flickering anomaly, some normal human cause for this Marionette sequence. Nothing,
just that slow choreography, a ritual as old as the
building itself. For a moment in one reflection, caught on
glossy towl near the cot spiral. Another figure loom blurred, indistinct,
standing just behind Marissa's. She worked so close that its
outline seemed stitched to hers. A line at the bottom
of the tape all caught my attention, notes handriton in
the same smoothincers s Hargrove's boring card review only do
not duplicate for circulation eyes only. No other record of
these security locks existed in a digital system. Someone or
something kept these tapes out of the ordinary AXI cycle.
A sudden crush upon me in my seat, thunder but
so close it rattled the metal boo could turned shoot
behind me. The vend above let in a damp draft
that fuzzed my hair and made the fluorescent tube's way.
I swept my things, shoving them into my pack with
frantic hands, and stumbled down two flights to the front desk,
heart rattling like a drop pencil. My passcard stuck in
the eggs it slot. I yanked it free, so hot
the line out colt snapped at my neck, dropping the
inscribed as Hargrove card to the floor. It landed corner
up paper, sighing across dome. I left it there, unable
to stoop, Feeling clumsy, and hunted the echo of invisible
feet moving behind the glass archive doors out on the
any steps. My shoes swallowed water and mud, but I
welcomed the bite of sharp weather. The city's neon nights
suddenly seemed utterly safe. The war unblowed under sodium street lights.
I tried to frame it all the way. A logical
person showed a haunted imagination prank footage, perhaps some old
hazing ritchel among the senior staff, But every explanation circled
back to those looping eyes, the on witness vanishing, the
list of names nearly matching the vanished books, people and
objects swept cleanly out of history. My apartment's batted door
stuck twice before giving way, and I didn't bother with
lights for ones. Glad to let the dark press and
around me, I returned to my oldest comfort, listing details,
saving off panic with the flatness of documented fact. I
opened my laptop created a file simply title circulation anomalies.
One pattern of missing books equals as Hargrove borrowings. Two
staff disappearances matched missing book dates. Three all vanishings tied
to restricted access, always late at night. Four security tapes
reflect trance like actions voices unheard by witnesses. Five hand
written annotations exclude digital tracking. Six had librarian Marlin aware
of memory protection? That last point I typed only after
a long pause, remembering their words. This place protect its memory.
What did that mean? That all forgotten things, books, people,
moments were not just lost, but kept ar coved in
some secret that lived as fiercely as any collection of
paper or ink. A siren shrieked far off, echoing up
the alley. My mind drifted fluttering towards sleep, But in
the moments before I dropped off, I felt the echo
of another presence in my apartment, just for an instant.
A draft pressed the curtains, and the boring cars retrieved
from my coat pocket, slid across the desk, a ligning
itself perfectly over the column labeled borrower. No went, no vibration,
just a slow of deliberate movement, as though guided by
careful fingers. The next morning, I barely spoke at work.
The world of the scriptorium felt stranger in daylight, the
glassy sun streaming through the colored angels in the entry rottenda.
Marlin's office doors were shut, the brass name Fate glinting
like a coin, laid atop a closed eye. Tony gave
me a weary nod, but did not sit for coffee.
I walked the upper stacks as peeled for anything amiss,
each turned, filling me with an almost physical resistance. The
gap with the forbidden carts that stood last night was empty,
not a scrap of paper or fingerprint left behind. I
circled the perimeter, drawn by compulsion more than purpose, hunting
for any clue left behind. By mid afternoon, routine intervened
foul audits lunch time, sandwhich Olivia's complains that the microfiche
read achieved another historic obituary. You know, in some ways
I envy you, she said. He get to sit in
the deep silence, just you, the ghosts and the misfelled bibles.
Her attempt a laugh caught on a cough, and she
excused herself to the Grand Archives. It wasnt until the
floor cleared after the last page, and staggered out. Curt
bundled against new rain that Tony's voice came soft, still
conspiratorial as ever, by the circulation desk. Saw your card,
he murmured, the one with the fancy ess should have
thrown it back in the box. I shrugged, not sure
whether to confess my sleepless nights with the list growing
on my desktop. He leaned in, forced low enough to
disappear under the compressor. One place remembers the ones that
try too hard. That's the trick of it. He think
your catalogging it, but it's cataloging you. The laugh he
gave was short, not in kind, but freighted with something
much older than either of us. I must have looked
pale because he patted my shoulder gesture I hadn't known.
I wanted. If you start seeing past that weren't there,
don't follow, no matter what you hear. That night, unable
to rest, ap perched at my apartment window, Scriptorium's tower,
winking in the gloom, in the flicker of cityinnon and lightning.
I thought of my own place in the story, and
how so many books, people, memories could furnish without a sound,
as though the building itself swallowed them in silent agreement. Sleep,
when it came, was hollow, dreams of marble stepped, spiraling
down through rooms within rooms. Every door was shadowed by
a figure and gray, holding out a card with my
name poise, waiting for its final stroke. Continue Part one
from the last sentence at approximately nine hundred thirty four words,
no summaries, no repetition, no endin'. I jolted awake at
three seven a m. As if a hand had nudged
me from behind my rid gage. The city's pulse had
retreated in the asyluns, my window, painted with slant lines
of passing cars. There were no voices, just the indistinct
hush of distant traffic and the muffled clatter of a
garbage truck somewhere down the block. But inside my own
mind replayed the details, the slow swell of the borrowing card,
the spiraling cuts, Tony's warning echoing through the seams. Asleep
at my work desk, I stared at the growing spreadsheet
of disappearances, check ins, and bog titles, trying to locate
a floor that would reset everything to ordinary. Instead, I
kept returning to the pattern of red check marks. Some
appeared on logs from the nineteen seventies, others in pencil
arm cards from weeks ago. Always the same hand, the
same arquae, cooks and loops, pocketing theres hargrove card. I
promised myself, I'd let it go for one day, to
walk the building like a normal employee, and let the
pattern fade. By noon, the promise it splintered, pot I
found myself drawn to the upper galleries, where the oldest
genealogical materials were kept. Dust drifted in sunbeams, never settling
on the sanction shelves. Here, the labels grew smrged, and
the catalog numbers faded into stained backing tape. For a
long time, I simply watched the way patrons navigated the aisles,
never venturing too close to the locked rooms, never so
much as guncing at a cutlat of its mark. If
anyone noticed me, they acted as though I were invisible.
Later that day, a circulation assistant named Lorrain approached with
a tight pile of damage books. Tony said, you were
after odd catalog staff here. Some one slid these under
the staff door last night. No idea where they came from.
But look at the returned shelf, she hesitated, eyes flicking
to my hands. I took the books. The top one
was bound in dark blue cloth, its tetle plate missing
except for a shadow where gold leaf had been peeled away.
No sign out's slip. But when I examined the next,
a batted almanac, something odd glimmered at the edge, another
boring card, name filled and at the bottom not mine.
Not any modern hand at all, s Pargo, this time
infaded blue pencil, dated forty years ago, and again just
this past year. The entry line for a return only
bore a hyphen, as if the book had entered a
kind of limbo. Not prison, not missing, just in settle.
I set it aside paulse picking up Lorraine shrugged. Never
seen that name come up at the front desk. Marlin'll
probably want to see those, but she trailed off, gazely,
angering on the yellowed edge of the card between us.
Sometimes it feels like there are a different set of
rules running underneath things around here. All paperwork, old debts,
don't get caught up with the past. After she left,
I waited her advice, but almost against my own will,
I slipped the hargrove caught into my pocket beside the
first one, suddenly certain it wouldn't be the last. Oddly enough,
it felt heavier in a mere paper, as if laid
with the weight of a hundred borrowed memories. Afternoon blurred
through mundane tasks, the sorting of into library loans, registering returns,
answering hollow emails about missing microfilm. I felt, half dreaming,
half alert. While shoving I ran into Tony and the
sixth floor mezzanine, wielding a mop bucket that squeaked thunderously
over the parquet. Any luck with the inventory, beast, he asked,
stopping to ring out his mop. Mostly just questions, I said,
keeping my voice low. Did you ever hear of us Hargrove,
old borrower always seems to sign out books that go missing.
That got a reaction. He sucked his teeth, considering me
with a mixture of amusement and something less comfortable. Old ass.
That's name people use when they want things lost for
good or at his brow wrinkled, when nobody is ready
to take the memory back. Maybe it's just a joke
or a warning. Before I pressed further, a group of
pigeons passed by Antoni retreated, shoulders hunched, as if he'd
said too much. I returned to the archives more uneasy
than before. The main lights flickered as rain began to
pelt the windows. The old stormer than stitching itself into
the day, bidden the urge to check the boxes, and
the rarely used oversized map room overtook me. I told
myself it was for a record's request some misfeled architectural plants.
But as I slid the heavy door open, the chill
in the room deepened. Inside. Someone had left a bookcourt's
kyw near the far shelving. On its top lay a
folder opened to a page marked with neat columns of
date and booked titles. Each one corresponding to the missing items.
I chatted out in the corridor. Scraping sound broke the silence,
and for a tense moment I thought I saw the
edge of a sleeve disappear behind the shelves. I tried
to call out, but my own voice came up, then
muffled by the pressure in the air. I flipped through
the folder at the bottom of fresh slit stem restricted
hold for review. The handwriting in the notes all slanted
oddly familiar, nearly identical to the s Hargor of cards,
but these notes were more rushed, the pen strokes heavier,
bordering unfrantic. A shadow moved behind me. I caught only
a glimpse of reflection in a glass case gone before
I could turn. The storm outside crescented out, rattling seal beams.
For a moment I thought the lights would fail altogether.
I pressed the recorder's buven without meaning to. My own
voice wavering filled the air map room. After Ayres found
new instance of s Hargor's signature across multiple decades, unown
author of a current annotations in folder ARCA feels not
empt to keep an eye on these records cured them
if possible. My hand, though, hovered over the stop button
for a long time. Another crash of thunder, I left
the map room, quickly returning the folder to my back
instead of its labeled slot. It felt necessary, though I
could not have said why. I was no longer convincing
myself that these patterns were innocent. As I passed through
the lobby, the building fell subtly rearranged, the glow from
the stained glass oddly dim, the drone of the ventilation
system humming a lower, more anxious note. Back in my office,
the desk lamp circle seemed distinctly defensive. The red the
room faded into indistinct shadows. I thundered the s hark
of cars one more time, their texture now less like paper,
moral like vellum, as if some process of age or
intent had begun to overwrite them. In the coiling dark,
I wondered just how long one could carry another's memory
in what had cost, if it meant he might vanish
alongside all the rest. A crash from the sorting annex
startled me upright, but when I strained to listen, all
I heard was the endless, unresolved russell the Library's secret
song threading itself, one more leaf tighter around me. The
city was thick with rain the morning after, puddled in
every gutter and pressing against every pain, as if trying
to seep inside. I woke groggy, as courty, and able
to keep my dream separated from memory. My phones notifications
were a scroll of nothing closings, weather warnings, the usual
reminder for the scraporium staff meeting. If I had expected
any sign of upheaval from the world outside the library's walls,
none arrived. The building itself, by contrast, felt changed the
moment I walked in. Security was tighter, subtle but unmistakable.
Administration badges at every door, new signs warning against unauthorised
to access sub basements and back corridors. As I stepped
into the marble rottenda, Olivia nearly collided with me, her
arms full of book returns. She muttered an apology, avoiding
my eye. Tony nowhere inside, had left a rust colored
mop bucket near the entrance. The string mobs played like
a withered limb. I signed in, using the battered ledgers
by habit, my hand hastating over the day before I
rode it in the s Hargrove cards in my coat pocket,
pressed against my ribs with every breath. My eyes found
Marlin's office across the concourse, blinds drawn tide, a circle
of lamp light, spinning shadows, and the seed and tieles,
no welcome, no creading. The halways felt entered of their
old routines, stripped for continent. At my desk, nothing had
been disturbed except the sense of order. The new restricture
of materials inventory was left and signed in my mail box,
a subtle reprimand I slid into my chair, staring at
the blinking cusser on my Anomalies document, a map that
was starting to resemble not just a warning but a web.
The night before left after images, the thunder shivered windows,
the spiral of carts. The certainty had seen some one
move behind me, though reason denied it. I tried to
return to work, but the rhythm was off. Even routine
tasks were numbering shelved microfilm, relabeling damage. Dockhouse submitted upbates
on repairs felt hollow, executed in a fuke. People avoided
each other's eyes, and the only laughter was nervous immuted
in the brick room, a new roster clung to the fridge.
Two more names were struck through in red Lorraine, who'd
given me the damage books, A Nogourn, another assistant I'd
barely known, were located effective immediately. No explanation beyond that.
The tension pressed in from all sides. Even Tony, when
I found him repairing a broken shelf bracket, spoke only
in clip phrases. It is getting stranger, few of us
more work, you all write. His question, lingered announswered My
reflection in the staff room mirror looked sunken, paler than before,
with the new hollowness beneath the eyes. While late afternoon,
my phone buzzed with a facility security reviewed notification the
first and my brief tenure. The memo instructed all staff
to attend on emergency policy briefing in the fluorescent lit
conference room. Marlin's presence loomed, their voice cold and precise.
There are boundaries embedded in this institution. Do not cross them.
Security will review access logs nightly. If you find anything
out of place, place it an inventory and report no exceptions.
No one raised a hand. The only sound was the
shuffle folders and the squeak of a dry marker on
the whiteboard, listing rooms now sealed until further notice. When
Marlins I settled on me, I felt exposed to trespasser unmasked.
Their brief nod was both a warning and, to my surprise,
a small recognition. We both understood something had shifted, no
matter what words we pretended to speak. After the meeting,
I tried to find Tony, but he'd left already. As
signed keys missing from their hook. The growing list of
vanished or resigned people kept circling my thoughts by closing
the library, equip with the strange emptiness, as if the
walls themselves had finally learned their lesson and were intent
on holding every secret a little tighter than before. I
counted the minutes until seven p m. Heart racing every motion,
practice and deliberate. Each time I glanced into a reflective surface,
the brass lamp, a glass bookcase, the dark shine of
the elevated doors, I tried not to look for movement
that shouldn't exist, tried not to see a figure just
beyond my shoulder. With every step, I confirmed from myself
that the boundaroo between observer and observed had thinned, and
I could not pretend it was only the storm on
my own nerves, readiness, darker rhythm. The library'shusher closing was oppressive.
Markers on the map room door showed it had been
sealed some time after my incursion. A new pablock, jaggedly
bright against all tinges my office for the first time,
offered no comfort. The lights were harsher, there an yudding,
a hummer service, louder than remembered that night. I left
the building, waited by all I hadn't said or done.
The past felt porous, the present newly dangerous. In the
future for the first time, slightly haunted asterisk, I dreamt
again of spirals always folding in one themselves, book sliding
silently off shelves to rearrange themselves into unreadable hieroglyphs of order.
When I woke, the s hark of cause lay beneath
my pillow, and the apartment carried a shadowy silence that
resisted the approach of day. My morning routine stretched thin,
every small task and exertion. I nearly left the cards
at Humbert at the last moment, slipped them back into
my jacket. Something in me insisted I shouldn't let them
out of my sight. At the library, an eginus infected everything.
The click of the staff room door, the clatter of cats,
the sudden and inexplicable loss of WiFi across the restricted sections.
A maintainant request for new security cameras circulated through my
in books, unsigned but urgent. When I ventured down to
check the old staff logs, I met only knee barrier's
rooms blocked digital passwords silently reset. Officially, it was an
inventory lockdown, but the real reason was unspoken, communicated in
quick glances and unasked questions. As I passed the main
descimate morning, Olivia was arguing quietly with Marlon, why do
we keep sealing up rooms? It's like half the basement
doesn't even exist anymore. My requests keep bouncing. Marlin's response
was called almost automatic. Inventory control was not negotiable. Some
sections remained sealed by necessity if you are not needed
to stay out. They walked away papers under arm without
another word. I felt watched constantly. Crossing the corridor near
special collections, I spotted the head of facilities whispering to
security staff, the huddle breaking. As I drew neir, each
corridor felt more Laparindian old match posted but showing wings
that were no longer accessible. Door sealed with silver secure
to tape that glimmered dully under the fluorescence. That afternoon,
something changed in the buildings are of a mutual that
settled into the fortification between walls and fours. In the
hollow clank of book carts and the intermittent flicker of
overhead bulbs in the genealogy section, I discovered a shelf
empty of all volumes that had borne as Hargrove's mark.
A rough handball typed unsigned was taped where the books
had been under revucurator access, only no explanation, no clue
to who had ordered it. It struck me that I
was being nudged, not simply away from the contents of
the past, but from the very means of tracing its
vanishing points. Tony's absence grew more pronounced as the week
went on. I finally ran into him near the boiler room,
a dim stretch thick with steam and the smell of
machine oil. He seemed nervous, adjusting his lanyard with trembling fingers.
Heard you, asked after me. He began, not meeting my
eyes beginner put in for transfer. Places getting tight, too
much to remember, not enough worth keeping. You think it's
about the missing books. I pressed, desperation, sharpening my voice.
He flinched, then managed a short, sad smile. Doesn't matter
what I think. Place keeps itself together in ways were
not part of. If you're smart, you stop asking. I'm
not that smart, but maybe you are. He checked his watch,
as if afraid he was already late for something inescapable.
If doors don't open, don't force him. If names disappear,
let him go. I wanted to convince him to stay,
to share what I'd pieced together, a theory about thees
Pargrove signature at the spiral trails Marlin's warnings, but the
words died on my tongue. Instead, I watched him leave,
his retreat down the corridor, more final than any resignation letter.
Once Tony was gone, I felt untether. I spent that
even combing through every paper and digital files still opened
to me, desperate for leverage, faded blueprints, old staff memos,
catalog print huts, anything to ground my sense of the possible.
What emerged a stranger set of references, all faint to
something called the Circulation Society buried in meeting minutes from
the nineteen sixties. The records were in complete, more rumored
than document but what little I found, sanshiver, is up
my spine. The society seemed to be a kind of
internal club invitation only obsessed with the preservation of curated
knowledge transfer, a phrase repeated but almost ritual formality. One
member mentioned a project to map book routes through sections
of the building that no longer existed on any plans.
Another ensigned bredated listed s Hargrove's secretary emeritus with judas
that included confidential review of access requests. In a batted
fold at top demid Foundation correspondence, I found a handrid
in note, unmistakable in its looping hand, the same as
the borrowing cards. Curiosity is a manner of surveys, but
boundaries must be kept. Some pathways are not for walking.
Below a diagram swelling lines connecting storage, reading rooms and
the now seats of basements deck is tracing out the
route I'd mapped through my own investigation, but larger and
possibly intricate. The implication sees my attention. What if the
missing books hadn't been removed, but rather move on a circuit,
one deliberately circumscribed to become inaccessible. It was as if
knowledge itself as flowing for a channel beneath the surface
of ordinary library operation, guided by hands unseen. Fueled by
dread and fatigue, I tried to reconstruct the path with blueprints,
staff directories, and even tonies off and remarks. I mapped
out routs to tuocross spaces and boarded up reading rooms,
each terminated with the oldest borrowing records, and in to
places no longer marked on current floor plans. My plan
took shape or trace to path, find its center and
confront whatever old secret had been left to govern this
place unchallenged, but the window for action was shrinking. New
notices informed staff the building would close early for maintenance,
and rumors of outside auditors swirled through the higher floors
like smoke. I made several attempts to speak with Marlin,
but each time their office door shut, their assistant stone
face to polite, refusing entry. Left with no options, I
wrote an email outlining my concerns about the restricted books,
the missing names for the patterns, and stat departures. I
never received a reply. Days passed each waiter and more
isolated than the last, until the only communication I got
from administration was a bland form letter reminding all employees
to secure their personal arckhouse and remain in designated work
areas at all times. Yet the phenomenon escalated. Each morning,
books with this Hargrove's distinctive script appeared, sometimes stucking themselves
in accidental steaming piles on my desk, sometimes slipped into
my return bains coated with fresh lendings, slit bearing reason
dates and handwriting too consistent to be mistaken for coincidence.
Each time the books were stranger, local diaries, register logs
annotated by bus always in the margin a small circle
in red, a mark that now filled me with a knease.
Mechanical malfunctions accompanied these new arrivals. My office phone, when
dead more than once, the photocop has seized up and
spat out garbled coppers of old, boring slips, and most
troubling of all, I found myself isolated for IROs at
a time. In the deeper archives, doors would stick, the
code pads would blink error and sell. Service faded to nothing. Silence,
never pristine, became oppressive at odd intervals that now familiar
sybili was spring rows from the stacks, not the ventilation,
not the shuffle of paper, but something else, a chorus
of memory or longing or warning. When I pressed record
on my dictaphone, the playback was never clean, static, interfered,
but buried beneath it. Every so often a faint phrase emerged,
return required, not forgotten at the desk. What little sleep
I managed was plagued by the sense of being watched,
both inside the library and in the narrow corridors of
my apartment building. Each time I dreamt, the landscape was
the same, a marble hall avus, circular desk, some deep
in lamplight, bokes passing hand to hand as face the
arkavis stayed without eyes. Each time I woke, the s
Hargrove card would have changed position on my chest, in
my pocket, beneath the pillow, as though unwilling to let
itself be misfelled. One morning, a package arrived at my door,
battered with no return address, inside a slip of paper,
stump scratorium returns, and impossibly, my own employee photocropped into
lending cloud, my name into be hand, a black looping
script I didn't recognize. I shuddered, unable to convince myself
it was a prank. The day that everything changed began
as many others had overcast air, shivering with the thread
of another storm. Round noon, a staff wide alert went
out technical failure in the climate system, building closure imminent.
Those not required for the last inventory prosure to vacate immediately.
The message came by P eight hollow, almost ritual, as
if recited by some one without any interest in being understood.
I ignored the warning, instead, feigning a missing badge so
I could slip away to the apper stacks. As the
law echoes of foot traffic faded and security doors clicked
into place, the library is lights dimmed, the emergency run
a strip along the marble stairs clothed all other luminescence
spent to shadows. My phone flat lined, the elevators jammed
in their rails, the main power breaker trip, leaving only
the wind and the squeal of hinges as companions in
the growing dark. I rested my hand and the spiral
of carts I charted as n been the pieces I'd
mapped over weeks from blueprints from staff rumors from the
half mad minuche buriedness Hargrove scroll. It was time I
realized to follow the route, not as a knock of
his checking holdings, but as something more like a participant
in a ritual waiting too long to be named Astros.
The lanterns yellow beam flickered as I moved through the aisles,
my breath fogging in the sudden chill. Every movement, every decision,
felt uneasily prescribed, as if some memory within these walls
had been pressing me year after a year, step after
step toward a moment had never wanted. I followed the
spiral book cuts costed not by chance but in deliberate arrangement, volumes,
books missing from any known record of sat top each
names written in margins, crossed out, some were written A S.
Hagger appeared on three in quick succession, each time in
a slightly different ink, but always the same, unmistakably careful hand.
The whisper strengthened as sibilant course behind the shell of
my mind. This book not in words, but an impulse,
a push to rearrange, to move, to boro, to return.
I was not entirely myself. Past the genealogy room, A
half bordered door waited. It had never been unlocked in
my tenure to night. The padlock hung open and twisted,
almost inviting against all logic. I stepped through old wiring
gaped from the walls, the electric stink of lost power
filling the air. Spiral stairs, chipped and narrow, led downward
into a darkness that held its own gravity. As I descended,
each step felt heavier than the last, each breath a
little thinner. At the bottom, the air was still thick,
with the musk of a newspaper and velvet rot. The
space should not have fit beneath the library's known for
a print, but this screporium had never truly obeyed the
boundaries charted for it. At the bottom of the stair,
I found a room vast as a knave, rinned with
shells rising higher than seen possible, each pack tight with
books whose spines glimmered in my wavering light. Names lettered
every shelfage, first staff, then patrons, then only initials, rose
on rose, ending inevitably with s Hargrove. My feet carried
me to the heart of the chamber. At its center,
a desk carved from black oak to fight dust In time.
The circulation desk older than sense, covered in catalog slips
and ledgers that bled together as my lantern being touched them.
Behind it sat a figure, impossibly pale, feature's blood by shadow,
its clothing, the sawmer gray of an emertent epoch. Its
lips moved, the silent, shaping syllables that pressed directly against
my mind. By passing the years altogether, the compulsion to
step forward nearly endid me. I drew their Hargrove card
from my pocket, feeling myself moved not from will, but
with the same trans driven certainty I had seen on
the surveillance tapes. The desks socket congestured, slow and dolorous
to the returns. Ledger atopped, the blodder, its pages waiting.
The air grew colder, still heavy with promise of something
absolute contract sign between breath and silence, I could feel
the presence of others, the vanished, the resign, the lost,
pressing and through the shimmer of shells in the tight
dart between stacks. In the lantern's meager light. Hands reached
from both sides of the desk, the shapes just strong
enough to register as memories more than physical bodies. Each
hand proffered a card, or a book, or a name,
pressing their claim for a return, for remembrance, for a
place in this unanting audit of the forgotten. My own
hand haved inches from the ledger at the s hag
of card trembling, ready to be slotted with all the others.
The figure behind the desk raze, its head, eyes meeting
my negeze more intimate than any I had known. I
heard not with my ears, but with every fiber of
apprehension I owned the whisper return, return, return, the compulsion
surgeould command as old as the library older. I felt
my memories merged with all those who had ever signed
their names, and vanished, as if the act of cataloging
had always been as root a method of consensual erasure.
I nearly set the card on the ledger, but I faltered.
Some small shred of will Toney's warning, the memory of
how it felt not to be afraid rallied beneath the
surface would an involuntary cry. I drew my hand back,
stumbling from the desk. The collective hands withdrew, the air stilled.
My retreat was ragged. Cotts toppled as I crashed through
the road, though whispers now a mournful complaint. Figuous reel
spectral both crowded the passage behind me. I ran battery,
lance and swinging up stairs. That felt twice as long
as when I entered, clutching the cod with a desperation.
Beyond sands in the main hall, the first light stared
back into existence as the buildings generator cycled on in surges.
I burst from the forbidden stair while heart hammering soul out.
I could not hear the hush that followed me. In
my hand, theas Hargroff card had faded, its grip nearly raised,
as if history had started to forget me too. I
collapsed behind the circulation desk, the ancient one below echoing
in my bones. Astersk light returned in sage, his emergency
strips blinking on into calm, stuttering back to automated civility.
Some more above, security announced the all clear, and staff
trickle from hiding places, faces drawn and wlary. No one
questioned the sweat on my brow, the tremor in my hand,
the way I kept glancing behind for something none of
us had language to name. Marlin passed me in the
staff corridor. At their expression unreadable. For a moment I
thought they might speak, but their eyes only searched my
face for a sign of what I could not say.
I busy myself with the mundane shoving returns, cataloging what remained,
pretending the world beyond had put itself to rights. But
the after image of the sub basement, the hands, the desk,
the ghostly press of obligation never left TONI did not
come back. His keys were gone from the recess, his
name stripped from morning duty lists on my desk. Books
continued to appear, though their lending clouds were now uniformly blank.
The column scrube clean. The es Hargrove cowd, now reduced
to little more than a pain of brittle pulp, sat
atop my badge. When I lifted it, no impression remained
of the name that had started it all, my own
name for the first time. A coat to me and
the eldritch hash is something vulnerable, something that could be
lent or borrowed or erased if I was not careful
in meetings. Marlin's come and sharpened custodianship requires discretion. Some
histories are not meant for circulation. I nodded, not trusting
myself to answer. My office door closed with a new
kind of finality. Each evening alone, I replayed the tape
i'd recorded in the map room, this time under its static.
The whispers resolved into Sylble's bow, familiar and terrible weight.
Your term will come return now. In the days they followed,
routine reasserted itself, but nothing fit quite the same. The
books I had seen below did not return to the shelves,
nor would the memory of the descort's occupant feed from
my mind. Sometimes upon opening a return I'd find smudges
where names had been Sometimes a book would appear whose
accession had never been entered, accompanied only by bunkard on
a faint send of dust and fox paper. On my
final afternoon, I signed out at the desk, careful to
print my name in a hand that was only my
own asterisk. The last time I walked through the marble foy,
the city was breaking into sunlight. I carried no books,
only a folder of blank accession's lips in the britto
card that for months had resistently asserted it slower making
on the steps, the breath of wind, ticket spinning at
once in a small spiral before tucking it into a
seam of shadow by the door. I wondered, as the
class doors closed behind me, what new name would surface
to take the place of the old, and who would
choose to notice when it did. Asterisk. A week pass
was strange quiet. I did not return to the library,
nor did I open any library related books at home.
Yet memory is not a thing one can simply chicken
and check out. I found myself startled by small nose's pages,
herning the scrape of paper onward. I kept the s
hargor of cord on the kitchen counter, but each morning
it had shifted by some small amount closer to my hand,
to my note book, to the apartment door. I slept little,
always waiting for a knock that never came. One night,
at midnight, the doorbell rang. I found a battered package
on the mat, no return address, no Sander's MRK. Inside,
carefully wrapped in a Manila folder, was another library card.
My name was written on it neatly, with a looping
flourisher recognized in my bones. Next To it was a faded,
boring slit. The title line filled in with the Buccanu
had vanished from the stacks only days ago. Inside the fold,
it was a small dictaphone. It wrote, recording, lights still on,
I hesitated, then press play. At first only static, a
thrum too familiar to be mistaken for anything else. But
after a moment, the whispers resolved, slow and intimate. They
said my name, They asked, without malice, but with anexorable expectation.
Are you ready for your turn at the desk? I
listened as the whispers folded into silence, then shut the
machine off. On the opposite wall, page shaped shadows drifted
and reformed as headlights passed by. Outside in the morning,
I watched the sunlight brightness, single shelf, The s Hargrove
card waited by my coffee cup, completely blank. For a
long moment, I did nothing at all. For a long moment,
I did nothing at all. The apartment seemed suspended between
night and day. Everything alert to her prisons. I couldn't
quite pinpoint. The air tasted of dustin aldink, phantom flavors
leaching into my morning routine. I sipped my coffee, gaze,
turn toward the blanket Hargrove card by my cup. My
hands steady enough in the daylight, trembled when the phone
vibrated a message from the library jenerk update building open
per usual, all staff to report. Please clear personal effects
from stuff lockers by end of Weekockev's renovation begins Monday.
No mention of last week's power failures, of the missing inventory,
no acknowledgment of staff departures, or the peculiar quiet that
had nested itself into the bones of the scriptorium. Nothing
to betray that anything strange had ever happened. Routine that
final sheet reasserted itself. But as I made my way
down the block toward the library's heavy doors, I felt
the pulse of memory in my pocket, to the Brettel
car at the dictaphones silent for it. Each shady block
brought an echo, the snap of newspapers arranged at the kiosk,
the cluster of students heads down over batted paperbacks, even
a passing bus distorting its reflection in the polished wore
no each vin yet another fragment of the pattern that
had nearly pulled me under. Inside the marble, fuay was bright,
busy than I had seen in weeks. A new guard
watched the badge station, nodding absently as they passed, asking nothing.
The head librarium was not at the reception desk, and
the heavy doors to the arkhauster prop open on scuffed
brass wedges. Workmen, faces and familiar moved in and out
of the corridors, hefting crates and tool gets. The tangle
tapestry of everyday life, paperwork, casual chatter. The from of
building services flooded the ground floor, washing away the long silence,
but the higher I climbed pass stacks and quiet study rooms,
the stranger. The atmosphere grew, tape notices, worn staff of
temporary access restrictions due to interim collections transition. The genealogy section,
once crowded with footprints, had been cleared entirely. Hauntingly bare
plastic sheeting hung over the entrance to the map room,
the dust smell already heavy behind it. I drifted addle
on the surface, but inside my attention carved through each reflection,
each hush. Behind a closing office door, I checked my locker,
gathering personal books in a battered rinker, feeling the weight
of other presences in the corridor of absences, more accurately
avoid left behind by too many missing names, Durin's cubby
was empty. Argin's label had been peeled off. A line
of lockers stood with locks hanging, useless and open, and
the faintest dusting of all books sent clong to their hinges.
Marlin's office door, usually sealed, was open just a crack.
Their voice reached me and measured so due torrents that
these were always intended for audits. Trying to let some
stores rest, we serve the living collection. I caught a
glimpse of this silhouette posture, rigid speaking not to me,
but to a young woman from HR who was nodding
with grave formality. Before I could approach, both vanished deeper
into the office. I wanted to ask about Tony, about
the books, about the true meaning of the circulation, but
the moment did not come. Official business flowed forward, illicit
question slept beneath it, unacknowledged. Outside the office, Taped to
the door, a new memory declared further inquiries regarding our
Cavil movement should be submitted in writing. Personnel changes are
confidential and final. I circled through the upper stacks, were
calling each point along the spiral. I traced nights before
gone with the misplaced carts, the cryptic marks in red
pencil on the lingering or of invisible watches replaced by
the bone deep institutional a nege of post incident clean up.
Even the faintest trace of s Hargrove had been skirried
from the open shelves. Stale reality was not completely restored.
Peripheral fleckers caught in my side, shaped parting at the
edge of archways, brief pulses of cold and certain corners,
and more than once I caught a patron has to
take him midstep bravuro as though struck by the invisible
impression of a book that should have filled their hands.
I spent my last appointed chief seated at the public
facing archived desk, logging newer turns and fagging overdews for
the system to process. Every so often a misvald book
would drift to my bin, no lending card within only
blank sheets tucked in the sleeves. My computer lagged, the
wireless signal flickering in and out, the ghostly from of
an old air circulation unit, syncopating with the nervous stap
of my pen. Almost no one spoke to me directly.
Lorrain's absence was the most poignant. Her cheerful chaos cleared
from the entire floor, a vacuum of both clutter and warmth.
Emails bounced her locker contents and abandoned mog A single
left shee remained untouched. In the hour before closing, Marlin
appeared behind me, a stack of files in hand. Their
gaze was as unwatable as ever. For a moment, I
thought I saw sympathy, until it was shuttered behind the
habitual chill. We thank you for your attention to policy.
Please do you update your forwarding information with EACHAR before
you depart. Some positions do not reopen archives. Custodianship can
be unforgiving. I nodded, unable to muster a challenge. The
lasting of resistance was gone for a year. At this
point had become a species of fatigue. I stepped my
remaining paperwork and left the files as requested. As I
walked through the library's main hall and into conflict on
and off, briefly warbling, then falling silent, just a shiver,
as if the building itself for said its communication. A sigh.
Dusk flared gold along the stone balustrade, and the city's
chatter bobled in you. I lingered at the bottom of
the steps, fully expecting to feel relief. Instead, I experienced
only a quiet vacancy, in awareness that I'd stepped clear
of something, perhaps, but also been defined by my evasion.
The nets that followed were at once RESTful and sleepless.
No more interruptions at midnight, but my thoughts found the
old pattern of spirals, the compulsion to organize and re
catalog what could not be fully resolved. Sometimes, glancing in
my living room mirror, I caught the flicker of another
face beside my nutting shop, only as Mudge quickly dismissed
as a trick of reflection. The battered package with this
blancss Hargrove cart and the dictaphone sat on the counter
for days. I did not touch it, yet every morning
it seemed a little closer to my work bag, waiting
for transit. No books vanished from my shelves, but now
and then a slip of paper appeared in a novel,
as if nanci in hand was practicing a signature, training
itself to fit any name at all. The consequence I
came to realize was not simply that people vanish or
that books became untraceable, but that the library at the
means systematic relents, so smoothing its own story and tangling
rebellous memories, and folding those who saw too much back
into the blankness. Not destruction or even punishment, but absorption.
One night, as rain swept the glass, I found myself
awake at the kitchen table, as Hargrove's card in one hand,
the dictaphone in the other. The device was called its
table on dead, but the residue of voices remained, the
way in old Bucold's finger prints and fox binding. I wanted,
in some way to answer no, I am not ready,
not yet. I gathered up my remaining library files, boxed
every slip and borrowed card, and sealed them all the way,
labeling the box not with my name but with a
question mark. The urge to vanish or to yield had receded,
but not disappeared. That undercurrent of belonging, of being called
not to duty, not to curiosity, but to the simple
act of returning, remained. Weeks left past, the library from
a distance resumed its place as a fixture of civic pride.
Banners hung new open house scheduled, all signs of disruption
papered over by institutional optimism. I applied for other jobs,
told myself the Arkave was only away station, the stop
between studies and whatever would come next. Still, the habit
of watching shadows, of the periphery, of double checking lists,
of listening for breathless turbulence in a silent room stuck
with me. A month from my last shift, stranger stopped
me at the bus stop, asking for directions. Their smile
was too white, their eyes otherwise, and memorable. In their
hands a book, battered library stamped without title or author.
They thanked me and walked away, And though the gesture
was unremarkable, I found I could not shake the sensation
that the book spy and bore a name that would
only become visible in the right light. Back at my apartment,
the dictor fun was still, But sometimes as I tidied
the shelves, I found pages passed together, brittle fox carrying
faintly the sand of circulating air. The blankas Hargor card
fluttered from kitchen to living room, always one step closer
to the front door. At last, I understood some libraries
returned what was borrowed, but others circulate what is lost
into finding memory, name, and place, so that no oddit
is ever truly concluded. My story like lorraines, like tourneys,
like all those whose names I traced, had joined the
palimpsyst brain patted against the panes. One night, as I
resolved to leave the city, if return was what was required,
perhaps absence was enough to resist the calling. I packed
a suit case, leaving only a single envelope loss record,
not for retrieval, only so the next time to pick
it up might know the pattern was not theirs alone.
In the morning, as I drew the blinds for the
final time, the s Hargrove cod lay by the door,
utterly blank, a silent epigraph for everything unspoken. When I
closed the door, a breeze rattled the paper. I did
not look back. Yet, even as I stepped into the
thinning rain, I felt some small part of me settle
into place on an infinite shel fouled, not forgotten, a
name written, not yet returned.