Speaker 1: Hollo. I welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here,
Let's get into it. The deepest ires that Mercer Hall
had a way of distilling sound. The city outside, so
urgent and restless earlier, shrank to a faint, pulsing hush. Inside,
between the marble colonnades and exhibition rooms, the hush became
nearly perfect. Teach footful, echoing every door, laps snapping loud
as a pistol. My own breath amplified in that midnight
silence seemed like an intrusion. In my third week in
the night shift, I still carried myself like a guest,
keeping footsteps slight and eyes attentive the walk, talky at
my belt, a clipboard under my arm, the faint weight
of a warm black mag light. All these props still
felt like a costume. I almost never met anyone on patrol,
but occasionally there was a low murmur from the lake
stowdi into a stray snort from the radiators, remind as
mouser whole lived its own life with all without people
inside it. My assigned rat snake through the east wing,
looping around a gallery of plaster bus and glass fronted
cabinets displaying odd ceramics and silver trophies, all arranged in
the sound at chaos of permanent backlock. The night's inspections,
so mundane in the employee manual became more than box checking.
I carried a low, nameless anxiety every time I passed
from light into shadow and back down. Here it was
easy to imagine movement just out of sight. The east
wing's green corridor was usually dead quiet, the carpet older
and dark hair, overhead bulbs burning with a sticky yellow
persistence that bled into sepi along the wainscoating. But that night,
rounding a corner worth lock of marble sculls glared with
pinched lips, I felt a distinct chill, A draft nipped
at my ankle. Oddly cold, the air had changed thin,
almost metallic. I stopped there on the right of metal door,
heavy and non scripped scuff seal with a charve ring
around the handle. A simple paddle gluted through the hasp.
This was the old supply closet marked in the loggers
out of service flooding hazard. Most nights I had passed
it by, but to night something was wrong. The faintest
hum and A heavmic buzzing trembled beneath the door frame.
A narrow cliff of sickly lemon colored light seeped onto
the checkerboard tile, not white, not from any bulb used
inside the building. I thumbed through the russ of clipped
to my clip. Ought just to be sure. I was,
after all a rue follower, at least on paper. The
supply caused it appeared twice, once as a cleared sown,
flagged with a faded note in blue pen compromised flooding,
told to no access, no mention of repairs, definitely no
reason for light or sound. A despatch, This is East.
When I come in, my voice was a whisper despite
the empty hall. There was a pause, the little burst
of static, then the front desk voice to night It
was a mess chin, a calm, exacting tone. Go ahead, owen,
is there any after iris maintenance to night? Any one
in the east supply A rustle of paperwork, A click
not to night, all work orders deferred, storage remained sealed,
Everything all right, I hesitated, feeling suddenly childish. Yeah, just
thought I saw something, probably nothing. I thumbed the talk
button off the humm impulsed in and out, softer than
a fridge motor, but it vibrated with the texture that
raised goose bump salam my forearms. Crouching low, I squinted
at the wedge of light, close enough to hear my
own breath. A shape flickered across the glow, some interruption
in the light, but darker than a shadow. It wasn't
cast on to the force so much as calf cleaned
through the light itself, a moving black line in reversal wet,
then it vanished. I checked the handle, locked to moving.
When I pressed my ear to the steel, the door
fell faintly cold from somewhere down the long corridor, and
irregular tap knocking, maybe from a loose radiator or window sash,
but insistent enough to jolt me upright. They urged to
open the closet bordered on compulsion, but the way to
protocol in that odd little fear kept me standing. I
circled my initials on my lock, noting the time and anomaly,
and retreated up the hole, pausing only once to look back.
The lights seemed weaker, now, flickering like an exhausted candle.
Half an hour later, back at the security desk. I
couldn't shake the sense that something in the ease being
waited for another visitor. It left a residue of cold
behind my ribs as my shifts were on, making each
routine sweep feel more like an intrusion than a duty.
There's a rhythm to the life, mercer Hole offered me,
if you can call it that, I'd bounced around from
job to job over the prior. Your retail stocking catering
a brief stint. Wrangling delivery routs were when no one
remembered your face, which less your name. When the museum
posted the opening, his promise of regular iyres and just
enough overtime seemed almost luxurious. They didn't ask for references.
Maybe the sense I wanted a place to stay put
in daylight. The building is a mingled patch where neoclassical
pillars grafted aunt in nineteen sixtys. Office wings, gallery halls
that dead end against break up arches. Stairways lead into
ears of renovation. The main desk sits like an island
beneath the dusty chandelier, always stacked with paper spilling from
batted clipboats. I was handed a plastic badgete with my
first name, and nobody questioned my intent to work through
the nights. Orientation had a share of Gallow's humor. Don't
get lost in the north wing. Some say it haunted,
but Bill swears it's just the mold. Laughter echoed off Marble.
I nodded, I'm sure if there was a script I'd missed.
The city's museums had reputation's theft scandal sometimes worse, but
Mercer's quirks were cut alofed as lovable rather than menacing,
or so I thought that security wasn't glamorous. It felt
like a cul de sac of boredom. Radio check ins,
rotating patrols, scribbing down anthermostat readings, and noting which fire
exit stuck. Monitors in the break room showed lagged monochrome feeds.
In theory, the skeleton crew was supposed to keep tabs
on two dozen galleries, but the reality was that M. S.
Chen held the ford at the main desk, quietly marking
her crossward while I drifted through the wings of Flosslide
in hand. Chen was the kind of supervisor who offered
practical advice but no personal details. Don't foss with the
north arc of its off limits chain stays on, or
if you see a loose tile upstairs, leave it from intenant.
She let me fumble my first route before telling me
which shocked not to take on their as I wanted
to trigger emotion alarm. Once she pressed a packet of
aspirin into my palm with a nod, saying, kaffeen, heddicks
will catch up. Trust me. Among the few names I learned,
Hector the janitor stood out, always soft spoken, always working
in the farthest places before dawn. On my second week,
I caught him in a corner, coaxing a stubborn scrubby
machine back to life. People don't stick around here too
long all nights, he said, barely above a mumble, looking
past me, as if watching something invisible. I never pressed.
Hector preferred the company of his Mond patrols became a
ritual trace the agreed map check. The fire exits replaced
spent batteries in the sensor panels. The repetition bred an
attentiveness the real risk of the shift. M s Chen insisted,
until you found yourself half way down a forbidden hall,
surprised to see the thick chains bowlded across the north
arch ove door even locked. Some spaces gnawed at your attention.
Sometimes climbing up the half lit old stair to public storage,
I lingered one beat to lawn. At the landing, I
was drawn to the faded painted arrow that no longer
pointed to anything at all. Then there was the Blue
Room of the name whispered behind hands in the break
room always closed for refurbishment according to the plaque, but
the key card read a blink green, and the seams
around the heavy double doors were always suspiciously dust free.
The one time I asked M. S Chen changed the
subjects so deftly that I left the conversation doubting whether
I had said anything at all. Staff Tenov was an
unspoken motif. Desktop mugs harbor in someone's last coffee, mail
slots lined with dust, even a few pairs of shoes
left beneath coat rocks for weeks on end. The staff
bulletin board always pettered with shift trade requests and pinned
up resignation notices with clipped terse handwriting bore silent witness
to the museum's churn. Even the receptionist little plant, once
green and exuberant, now withered to crispsparrel in a glass
mug told its own story. Yet myrtor holes on knees
were subtle. During the day, colleagues joked about spooky galleries
just out of sight. At night, the absence deepened every
sound into a potential alarm. I lauded my observations rigorously,
trusting that if anything was truly amiss, someone would notice.
The supply closet incident became a page in my growing
mental file of oddities, A strange but isolated disturbance, maybe
something leaking from the electrical system, maybe some trick of
stress or fatigue. Either way, I left it behind. At
least I tried to. It wasn't as easy as all there.
Odd things have a way of reasserting themselves. The following Thursday,
persistent insomnia had me pacing the brick room with a
mug of burnt coffee at two. While they are my
pocket vibrated an unexpected call. The screen's pale glows stock
in the dark. I let it ring through. The only
people who had my number were inside the building, and
I was already up for another IOA with nothing urgent planned.
A minute later, my voice mill I come blinked. I
ducked into a reading alcove and thumbed it on immediate crackle.
The line warbled with thick static, broken by a chroat
mail voice frantic, unintelligible except for a handful of words
that punched through the noise. But do not open the door,
blue room down exhibit ef don't look at the next
phrase tumbled out in a mechanized stutter, something about glass
eyes and open. Then nothing but hissing, as if the
device shorted out mid sentence. A tremor ran threw me
too much caffine maybe, but the coal log on my
phone shured a number flagged private odd. No one at
Messer Hull had reason to call at that are. Curiosity
flareed in spite of caution. I sat at the security desk,
pulled out the inspection locks the supply closet again. Its
entry was sprinkled with initials dating back three months, all
ceasing abruptly beneath the blockie half torn signature. The notes
referenced flooding, then nothing at all. I flipped pages, no
record of recent checks. I cross referenced the staff lock.
Each set of initials mashed. Someone no longer on the
roster back at the east wing. On my next rotation,
the clause it's paddlock remained in place, but some one
recently had left faint angular bootprints on the tile, speckled
with dried mud. A scuff barred the lintel above the door,
as if some one had jowned something into the frame.
The sickly a light still blobbed underneath on some nights,
sometimes dimmer, sometimes flairing, bright enough to castle on sharp
lines down the hallway. A few days later, my phone
rang again, a precisely tub twelve, another private number, this
time a different clip voice. The message barely made sense.
Don't let them move at glass eyes always open, exhibit
deaf seal room un settled. I traced the messages in
my note book, multiple locations and exhibits reference all rooms
that were either not on my rubb or off limits.
Each voice mill of variation on the same warnings. That
next evening, I found Hector in a storeroom, hunched over
a mop bucket. Ever get odd calls at night, I asked,
feigning indifference. He stiffened, then shrug refusing eye contact. Not
your job, kid, he said, and went back to ringing
out his mop I caught a mess chained between radio checks,
trying to be casual. You ever run into anything? Word
in the east wing closet with the sticky lock, her
lip pressed in as she smooth a stack of paperwork
record everything, leave the closet alone. Around the break room,
rumors mutated in whispered snatches, not ghosts. This time bad
plays is to clean some stairwells. No one uses. The
staff gets weird, then they move on. Someone mentioned to
knock have his hutrans photo abruptly after a breakdown, but
the details blurred with retelling. That night, I recorded a
short video on my phone, the closet door, the flickering light.
Nothing seemed remarkable until I reviewed the play back at home.
For a split second, a thic dark band appeared at
the edge of the frame, slicing the light, and two
on replay it vanished completely. I scrub through again. There
a single frame gone as soon as it appeared, to
linear shadow or perhaps its negative hattens began emerging. Light
bruises beneath the surface, strange calls, strange light, staffer guilarities
moving in concert, each anomally pointed not to a single event,
but a system I was no longer simply patrolling. I
was involuntarily a participant. A week of nights passed in
a tangle of anxious recis petition. It was during the
stretch I found the torn envelope in my locker, stuffed
beneath my rain shell, no name inside a sheet rip
from lined yellow notepad. The words rushed and jagged. Ask
about confidential collection, not in public records, not on shift list.
My next run took me right past the East Supply closet.
A shiver crawled up my spine. I pressed my ear
to the doors. Pitted metal. Breath held, ever so faintly
a rhythm, not quite a voice, not quite music, but
a pulse on the edge of language are drawn out
syllabic murmury. It rose and fell in waves. I could
almost comp with my teeth in a security love book.
I started tracing initials, correlating them with staff rosters and
transferred notices. Each string ended with a resignation. The people
who handled the closet and two adjacent exhibits all cycled
out within a handful of months. The last fortrensferred before
their contracts expired. I dug for exhibit from the digital inventory.
Finding nothing, The online catalog presented a beige Blankeff's missing
skept over, the records were raised. Undeterred. I slipped into
the pre dawn archives, pulling bat at index cards for
on their rack by phone flashlight tuck near the back.
A card bearing a red circle death removed the Sea
Confidential collection for details. The voice mails continued, collecting, like
drips from a leaky pipe. Each new warning was delivered
in a different voice, but the message harmonized, it's in
the walls. Don't let them move it again, glass eyes,
don't look through the glass at night. The tone was
always desperate, each ending in a rattle of static and silence.
I wrote notes and margins of old ledges, patching together
a web of references, always to glass, toize, to of rooms,
and sudden resignitions. With a borrowed password. I found scold
on a sticky note under ms Chen's desmatch. In nineteen
seventy eight, I accessed staff badge logs, pattens jumped out
late night entry spiked, and odd flurries, invariably proceeding at
transfer or leave of absence. I compared those anomalies to
the closet locks the blue rooms, supposed renovations, the north
ark hast padlock schedule. It all up to a creeping
and spoken practice of shifting people away once they'd gotten
too close. That evening, finding Hector alone in the mechanical hallway,
I pressed him one last time. He trembled as he
spoke barely above a whisper. Objects and storage, some of
them problems stopped for night. People too long, It gets
in your head. Some rooms worse than others, all curated, aunble,
he knew more. Gune retired, broke down, they say, foalstered
by a knees that nuw blossomed into genuine fearure. I
planned a more serious foray. The sub basement wasn't on
any public tour, but I'd seen staff slip down through
a side stair, never posted, always off the map. That night,
feigning a routine check, I circled down the concrete spiral,
pausing at every platform to listen for footsteps above. After
the third landing, chill air bit through my uniform, dank
and mineral, flavored by censures, old dust. The low level
bristled with cages, padlocked by type and age. Somewhere museum
create stamp with warning tape. Others were open only, draped
in stained cloth or plastic sheeting. The secure door of
the bat borne new plaque as characters nearly one smooth
confidential collection, authorized access only, no handle only in numeric
code box glimmering red. I ran a gloved hand along
the row of doorways, feeling the cov'rydied from the steel
on a passing m I shined my mad light through
the mesh of a storage cage. Pale faces of dolls
and glass cases stared back, some pitted, all blank eyed
with mountain drad I retreated half way up the stairwell.
My flashlight flickered, then died in the dense silence, and
mistakable footsteps landed on the steps just behind me. Soft,
then panicked. I whirled around, heart pounding no one. The
air turned. I see the stairwell yawning black below. I
took the steps two at a time on the way up,
lungs burning, the echo of something following me overhead. In
a gray light of the staff kitchen, I caught my
reflection in the black window glass. My face looked drawn
and fore an, eyes rimmed with on slap circles, my
hands shook so badly I spilt coffee grounds across the llanoleum.
That night opened something and me, not just caution, but
a dog would need to know Paranoi, and curiosity sharpened
into resolve. On my next shift, routine cracked up in earnest.
The museum's lights flickered as I wat corridors feigned as breathing,
stirring up at the ceiling fixtures. I watched them dim pulls,
then fled too bright. My walky chirt, then hiss with
swampy static amidst the noise, A mangled voice, careful glass
eyes open. In the archive break room, at three seven
a m my phone buzzed, full screen alert. The miscall
was from my own number. No chance. I checked the lock,
and sure enough the entry redoing internal neither placed nor received.
Maskin prickled. It had left me another voice mail, my
own voice breaking desperate, yet up while you can. It
moves when you look away. I listened to the message
four times, numb hands gripping the table's edge. Each iteration
was mine, beyond doubt, but bent through some unplaceable filter.
I could remember neither recording nor saying those words. Finally,
at the dawn end of my shift, I found a
meschan in the security office. She had me from behind
stack reports. Exhausted, he found the closet, she said, not
as a question. That's how it stored for me. I
stood in the door frame, grasping for reassurance. Chin for
the first time, let her professional musk slip. Her voice
lost its evenness, thenning into confession. Seven years here nights
only he loose sleep. Then stores grow in your places.
You can't avoid even if you try. Ye double check
every door, every object, label the closet. Yes, I know.
You start with just one question. He starts seeing things
herring calls that aren't in the luck. She described in
short and halting phrases. The progression, dreamy insomnia corroded each day,
the growing certainty that some objects in the building had intent,
if not agency. I tried to tell them. They said
I was of worked. Then I got shuffled to different posts.
You're not the first. Owen Museum keeps enough records to
note the pattern. They just swap us out. She pressed
a thumb hard against her temple, voice catching on a
raw undertone. Don't go into the confidential wing alone. Too
many of us tried, it wants you when you're alone.
For the first time, I saw not just the teague
in her, but feary, yawning, and personal kind. The pattern
stretch back. Here's a rotation of new faces, each one
picking up a trail of oddities, then moving on the rumors, resignations, panic,
midchief depatches, none of it. Random leadership. Chen claimed met
fears with protocol, not solutions. Stay out of the pattern, owen,
or it'll swollow you too. I nodded, heart racing her warning,
rattling between thought and impulse, but resolve hardened in me,
like slow calling cement. I would break into the confidential collection.
I would see what was hidden behind the reinforced door
in this abasement, and learned what mercer Hall had been hiding.
I didn't touch Endos outright. Her eyes, wide with warning,
were enough to keep me silent. That morning, as the
first pink streaks of early sun glimmered through the north entrance,
I waited in the stone steps and watched to the
staff vile in They gave me a wide berth, faces
weary and closed. Something invisible and contagious had taken root
among those of us who lingered too long, amid winding
halls and lock closets. I went home, trying in vain
to clear my head, knowing that soon I would gross
one more forbidden for ashold. The doors and messahole never
stayed closed for long, and now there was little left
but the truth and whatever waited behind it. I walked
out into the growing morning, feeling the day catch in
my chest like an echo from those black corridors. The city,
blurry with streaks of sun, pressed itself back into noisy,
familiar shape. The clang of trucks, two buses facing off
at the corner, the rhythm of people normal as river water.
It ought to have emptied me out, saftened off the
dread with every step toward my battered apartment, But instead
I felt more naughty, as if the whole silences had
taken up residence. On the walk home, I checked my
phone again, thumb tracing all voicemails. I forced myself to
listen from start to finish, the low his flood, only
interrupted by those pop warnings words I knew Bernell like
lines of a poem. Door's eyes, the blue room, don't
look the glass. A thousand morning things clamored for attention,
kept at bay by the insistent of a lapping puzzlemoser
hal empowered. I changed my shirt twice, as though brushing
lyn from my collar could peel away last night's jill.
I stood under the bath room's glaring bowl, tracing the
thin blue of capillaries under my left ey, evidence of
too little sleep and too much staring. I didn't fall asleep,
not really. I drifted just enough to feel as though
I banke the sun out and back into the window.
Then I jerked away at the sound of my own voice,
impossibly close, as though spoken in my own ear. No dream,
not even a memory, just those echoing phrases, broken and halved,
stretched and bent like light under a lock door. Late afternoon,
I finally read a week's worth of backalgee mails from management,
policy updates, reminders about incident reports, two bells, one invitation,
sculled and bluing to a cousin's baby shower. I let
them wait. The every day wilt felt like paper propped
against a locked box. Then, in finite by comparison, that evening,
I lingered on the sidewalk across from the hall. Fifteen
minutes early scuffing the ground with mushoe. For a moment,
the facade looked bland, barely threatening. Columns cut straight and plain.
Heavy doorsed pulling light, but my eyes snaggered in the
eastern windows, their panes polished to a muddy shine that
reflected only hints at what lay inside. My badge press
cooled against the hollow of my throat. Inside, the rhythm
reasserted itself. Mass chinned in her usual seat, reading glasses
perched at the tip of her nose, eyes ringed but alert.
She nodded but said nothing, her gaze flicking the clock,
the camera monitor, the desk's log book routine for the
both of us. I passed Hector in the west wayne.
He was collecting scattered pamphlets without looking up. There was
no ordinary talk any more, just nods and movements rehearsed
in habitual silence. My shift began, as always, check off
the panels, passed through the rotating locked doors, tick boxes,
the halls emptied after visiting ires, exhaled long sighs with
each closing door. The soft hum of electricity felt sharper
on the skin than it used to. The Silence between
buzzes longer but to night I saw things I hadn't for,
or perhaps had but had refused to gather as evidence.
Bolt heads around the Blue room's handles, freshly scored, as
though someone had recently swapped them for newer steel. The
assistant curators lapop abruptly missing from its desk. Cores called hastily,
and left behind a note on the staff corkboard, thumbed
at bent, reading simply, if you need a swap, leave
word which en don't call the disk. I took the
main stairs to the Staff Archive, sliding past the corridor
that led to the notorious North Archive. The shadows were
thickest near the half landing, where a set of battled
wooden doors marked public storage press flush against the wall,
the top hind trusted orange. Someone had tried to cover
an all plaque with printer paper. Beneath I could just
make out the indended brass private collection records restricted down
in the archives, the air settled colt as if drawn
directly from stone. I rooted through the microfilm drawers, pulling
rills of random hands, jittering as each metallic click dropped
another slat of darkness around me. I found nothing useful,
only long lists of incomeing and at going items, some
initial by names I didn't recognize, some by Darrymple, each
ending abruptly, always in the dead of winter of the
height of summer, with no explanation but a line drawn
through the whole file. After my next patrol, I returned
to the curious apply closet, watching the wedge of light
and steady itself. Every few seconds, I couldn't stop myself.
Now from the corner of my eye, that same flicker
darted across the tile, a flash of blackness thicker than shadow,
not absence of light, but summer versal of it. This
time I did not crouch. I simply stowed, breathing noisy
and even listening as the hump fell back, then seraged
up in a low, cyclical drum. I didn't expect the
fear that followed, not the obvious shrieking kind, just the
pressure under the breastbone, as if there were displaced by
something denser than flesh, something learning to move in time
with my own pulse. I scribbled notes onto my lock,
unable to spell out what I had actually seen. Anomaly persists,
not a leak, request check, I wrote, knowing full well
no one would check least of all me. After midnight,
the radio chirt with a burst of sec east one checkpoint. M.
S Chen's voice mechanized and distant. I replied, routine, intact,
my own voice and steady only to my ears. There
was a quart a beat of silence, the kind that
coul filled the whole building before she acknowledged and load
me safe. The only real interruption came at two sixteen
a m. A minute off from the usual coals. My
phone vibrated against my ribs. Another voicemail private number, the
same chop whittled voice as two nights before. If you
see the eyes, don't turn away. If you see the eyes,
don't look back. If you see the eyes, then nothing
but a deep rattling in hail, like the wind scraping
its way between walls. I pressed my forehead to the
col steel of the brickham fridge, willing myself to stay calm,
to catalog what mattered. After a long moment, I pulled
the staff loupwrock out again, this time running my finger
down the roster, matching each initial against badge numbers h
R transfers. I found seven names flagged in a three
month window of those only two still worked in the building,
Hector among them. The others had all left, resigned, or
transferred mid schedule. A coincidence, felt manufacture, contrived, like a
story written by a lazy author. When I next passed Hect,
he was cleaning near the cook closet. I rest a
hushed question, Has anyone ever opened that supply closet during
a ship He didn't break pace, but his hands trembled
as they steered the mop. Not since before you, he murmured,
don't be curious. Some thing's once opened, don't close. He
left before I could press further, vanishing behind a swing
door with his supply cart. I was left with the
echo of his warning and the certainty dat whatever was
inside predated my time by a wide margin. After another
go round, I planted myself at the Blue room's heavy doors.
The key cart blinked steady green, just like every night.
But refuse me entry through the glass. The merrest hint
of shape I covered easel, maybe something draped in blue fabric.
No noise, no movement. I found my pumpress flat against
the mack glass, the chill sinking deep to the bone.
The last ire of shift crept by mess chen called
final sweep. At four fifty five, the halls had the
stillness of an emptied swimming pool, sumless except for me checking, scribbling,
double checking. I watched the sky gobly through the tall
front glass, the ordinary light diluting the whole secrets, but
in my pocket the yellow slip from the locusts molded
with urgency. Ask about confidential collection not in public records.
I decided tomorrow I would map every off limits room,
every schedule quirk. I would list the doors I'd never patrolled,
and again, one by one to find what lay on
the other side. The next day was in the way
of such things, both ordinary and punctuated by itself. I
sandy with fatigue. I spent I recycling through old museum newsletters,
scans of directories. I found repeated mention of doctor Dalrymple,
whom everyone remembered as meticulous, a little forgetful love the
colored glass work. His name trailed off in later issues,
we replaced by abrupt staff announcements and notably chilly congratulations
on his retirement, no interviews, no photos. After his final month,
I tracked further, using the sticky note password as slay
into the oldest portions of the staff directory. There, I
saw that for every position that had lasted more than
a year, at least three names cycled through abruptly cleaning
security archives might admin many left without a forwarding address
hr form simply marked a resigned or transferred by record.
I wrote down every oddity circling the building staff map
in my spiral notebook, until it looked like a tangle
of transit lines. Every door you couldn't easily pass through
was one more link in the chain. On shift, I
came prepared with an edged floor plan, the kind handed
out during orientation tours, but obtained by my own note
taking and observation. I marked all that I could, color
coded yellow for known hazards, blue for actively locked, purple
for those closets which seemed by location and use most
plausibly a part of the pattern. When I arrived that evening,
I sewed my bag behind a mess chain's desk, watching
her avoid my gaze. I took a slow circuit through
the logistical offices, noting which deaths had gone vacant since
last Friday. At one of those empty cubicles, a mack
sport in the faded logo from a science museum up States,
still steamed. I ran my finger along the rim damp,
as if some one had set it down seconds before
I arrived. No paperwork, but a set of heavily smelged
fingerprints around the handle. I checked the cubicle's phonets display,
read last call too for where they am The same
minute those voice mel scene to arrive in the supply
closet corridor. The light of furthered amas barely a razor edge.
Now the hum a little stronger, if anything, rose up
only as I moved closer, stopping when I drew like
a metronomyoon to follow my steps. No one else seemed
to notice. The next forcemell minutes before three zero A
m was the shortest, yet only two words spoken in
attired shaking whisper behind glass. The message sent a pulmonary
thaed through my chest. I replayed the phrase until it blood,
meaning the closet, the blue room, the backages in the
sub basement, all these had glass in common with my
raut finish. I returned to the wide, a new stair
that ched downward into the building's heart, broken only by
clusters of emergency lights. No one had asked me to
check there. I hadn't entered since my first panic trip
up when the flashlight died, but curiosity ground me down.
The undo levels were less museum than crypt stone and
concrete worm by decades of unseen labor. To night, my
prop was greater. Fresh batteries, full night, backed up, radio
turned NIM maximum. I pressed could after coded to the
storage room, keep out each drawn from references I'd found
in obsolete staff manuals, STU impols, old notations, even the
day of the voice mails in reverse. Finally, on attempt
nineteen the six was correct. Nineteen fifty four. A click sounded,
the lock disengaged. I waited a full half minute pulse
grinding like car tires on gravel, before I dared to
turn the handle. Nothing moved inside but shadows and my
own hurried breath. The Confidential Collection wasn't a room exactly,
but a sequence of shallow vaults, one beside another, facing
inward onto a narrow aisle, chain link barriers and thick
glass viewing windows. The boxes inside, all shaped and sizes,
bore inventory tax pierced with red wax. Some piles sat
carelessly empty, others wrapped thick with old blue fabric tax
culling from age. A single shelf by the far wall
held death object removed in the loose careful script, belowered
some blue tinged glass beads, and beside a small painted
canvas afferated from damp. At the very back a box
labeled to Darrenblise with a blue taped strip and a
badge aside, his face peering up, distorted through the scratch plastic.
Halfway between curiosity and dread, I shined my light along
a glass front a case bolder to the wall. There
blinkered and anert child's dull propped inside china, face cracked
as a glassy sapphire blue. For a moment, I saw
my own reflection staring back, ghosted face lawn mouthed thin,
and then just out of sink, another face behind mine,
lips moving. In the moment before I recoil the case,
we roberated with the same hum. I traced in the corridor,
now amplified, pulsing up my arm to my draw. The
urge to reach for the lock came on so fiercely
I nearly dropped my flashlight. I stabbed myself in the
thigh with the maglight's edge to break through, managing to
set back behind me in the mirk of the corridor,
the chain link cradled. I spawn brough tight light, sweeping
through mouts of dust, catching nothing but a scatter of
pale glass, eyes restored broken, all toys, bags of marbles
gleaming from every box. I pressed Ourrimble's badge to my palm,
absorbing the oil of film that had crept up its face.
They are scrolled in tiny colored letters, and the edge
the phrase I'd heard in every voicemail, every warning, eyes
open night only. The radio clicked her mess Chen's voice faint, urgent,
the lights above me dimmed. I felt for several sharp
beats that if I stayed longer than acount of ten,
I would never leave it all. I turned, retraced my
path of quick halting steps, nearly tripped on a raise
pipe by the exit. My badge, the one with my name,
snapped off into the gloom. As I reached to pick
it up. A rasp of breath echoed at my back,
near to mine nor any I could ignore. I sammed
the door and bolted it, chest tight and world spinning.
When I reached the brighter halls above, the tension in
my limbs didn't em The hall had marked me. Now
I felt myself seen, counted, included, as though I belonged
to the object cataloged as much as to the staff ledger.
The next morning, as I left my badge for the
day crew and took my keys from the hook, ms
Chen didn't look up. Instead, she pressed her own badge
into my pomp for a moment, hand closed and tents.
Stay away to night, for your own good, she said.
But I already knew it wouldn't end there. My reflection
glass eyed and haggard, and the staff entrance me refused
to blink until I looked away first, and somewhere among
the rooms below, the hum resumed, faint but inescapable, dragging
me forward through every careful calculation I made not to return,
but I would return, because the unsolved patterns now belonged
to me. The inn instant, the heavy basement door slammed
behind me, the hush of the arc of preston waiter
than before. My shoulders were stiff, the back of my
shirt struck cold to my skin, and despite the roaring
pulse in my ears, I heard nothing but the thin,
mechanical one of old events. My hands, one bowled around
Darrymple's walk badge, the other, still clutching the crumpled inventory slip,
trembled audibly as I dupped into one of the lowlit
document rooms adjacent to the staff kitchen. A ball in
the main galleries, burly morning light feathered the edges of
tall windows down here that light never reached, and as
I tried to steady my breath, I realized they'd brought
some new, uninvited attention with me, something that had stuck
to my clothes in the vall that made every shadow
jerk when I blinked. I hung back, waiting until my
pulse evened and the room's familiarity resumed its normal shape
of bazzard round table, brown, my greens overlapping on the wood,
the stack of forgotten cleaning cloths left under the supply cabinets.
I saw that a mess chinned crossword had been abandoned
mid growd penstad into the page. She would find me
soon enough, or pretend later not to notice the ridness
in my eyes if I managed to wash my fist
before the other staff filtered in. The urge to speak
to some one, any one award with a stiff, defensive
silence in my chest. I had seen what I'd set
out to find, or enough of it to burden me
with possible consequences. I only have understood. Nothing about the doll,
or the room, or the rippling hum behind that glass
case made rational sense. But the sheer cohesion of all
the signs, of the logbook patterns, the blue fabric concealing
broken forms, the warnings in those voice mills had formed
a cage. I wanted, in the rawse way, to quit,
but resignation felt cowardly or just useless. More than that,
I was angry, more than afraid. I felt the hum
of an old, second hand betrayal. This museum had kept
me and all the others he had cycled through lost
in darkness, and it had cost us something, piece by piece.
I shoved Dalwymple's badge and inventory into my pocket and
checked my phone, hoping for any sign of outside normalcy
to steady me. I scrawled past the stout voicemells without listening.
There rose now mapped to the basements, called geometry and
separable from the blank, stirring blass. Within minutes, emmesse schened
huescrape against the linoleum of the main hallway. She didn't
call my name, nor did her reflected face in the
staffroom window betray surprise at finding me hunched there. She
took me an ice, sharp mouth set. Her silence held
something more final than exhaustion. Did ye go down? She said? Lo.
I nodded, feeling smaller than I wanted to. She had
studdied me for a lawn on blinking beat, then handed
over a cheap hospital gray heat pack from her coat pocket.
Keep this, it's good for shakes. Her voice registered no anger,
only a subdued, resigned sort of regret recognition. He saw
the eyes that means you need to be careful. To night,
I swallowed, fluxing my cold fingers. You told me not to,
and I did it anyway. I couldn't. Ye never can,
she said not. After that first night, Her foot slipped
to the table top, tracing invisible lines with her finger,
as if counting out each person who sat where I
was now. They always say they are going to fix things,
they never do. For the next hour, there was no
hiding the changes. My vision fussed a little to the
left every time I tried to focus on the load book.
The air was unnaturally dry. I drank two mugs of water,
wore the same patrols I always had, but every step
of the tenuous, brittle logic as if caught in a slow,
invisible web. I sat at my assigned station, running through
checkliss with mechanical diligence. Around six sier or a m
the day guards arrived, all careful, avoiding direct conversation. I
watched as the incoming supervisor, a sturdy man with a placid,
unreadable face, greeted him as a chen glanced at me
and made some notation at the edge of the main roster.
There was a flick in his eyes, the briefest squint
when he saw me, recognition of suspicion, or just for
a second, a blink of pity. He kept walking. Mess
Chence laid her badge across the table to me after
I swapped out my own, her gaze remaining averted. I
gripped it all hurridly, feeling the cold plastic sweat against
my bomb. Don't fill our report to night, she said,
some one else will love the change of her. As
I left, she stopped me with a last whispered word,
pack your things before your next shift. Just in case
the city outside was already warm. Causpuzzing past the stone steps,
the normal rhythm lad within all the museum's jail caught
me wrong footed, too fast, too bright. I walked home,
feeling hunted by it, as if the city itself was
now a trick mirror shape to reveal the gap between
whom I'd been a day ago and who I was now.
At home, I hid our imples, badge, and the torn
inventory formed deep inside a bat of paperback on my
night's tent, afraid to leave them out in the open
word they might contaminate the room. Nothing in the apartment
comforted me as it once had. When I closed my eyes,
the pattern of cold blue eyes behind glass flashed over
and over. Not quite a nightmare, but not memory either.
When I finally slept, it was only out of a
kind of viscous exhaustion, the kind that made me weak
four hours later, breathless and drym out. Daytime failed to
drain the dread. It only put clearer lines around it,
made it distinct from the ordinary clotter, and nosed the
pile of laundry, the unpaid bilhlf tupped under a cereal box.
The shore of a neighbor's television. My mind circled relentless
back to the vault, to what was behind the glass,
A thing not dangerous in itself, but dangerous in its
gathering of attention, the way it called people to witness
and then marked them on their way out. I started
the night shift again, with hesitation bordering on panic. I
arrived early, nearly forty minutes before my schedule time, hoping
to steady myself before the long patrol began. Anew The
east hall was too quiet, the air stale, all the
miner noises distant now, like echoes from a dream mess.
Chen was waiting at the main desk, jacket shrived off
and eyes rim red. She glanced up at me, then
back at the morning log book. She seemed old to somehow,
her demeanor stiff defeated Hector's not coming to night. She
said something about a family emergency. She didn't elaborate. I nodded,
tightening the strap on my vest. The place felt were
on a little shifted. There was a note from management
clip to Chen's clipboard. I caught a guns before she
whisked it away. Precycle revised all access points for sub
levels restrict evening entry firewell of an exit paperwork by
six zero, not so much of protocols and admission silent
evidence that they expected more problems and would welcome their containment.
As the evening wore on, the tension in the hole
built up palpably. Every locked door seemed to pulse with
some insistence, just below the threshold of hearing. I kept
on task, pacing routes, but felt my focus s blood
embraided with worry, as if on a constant invisible scrutiny.
Every time I passed a window, I checked my own reflection,
looking for some hint of blue or BROWNE should be
some flicker of compression at the edges. Later in the
staff kitchen, I noticed three mugs missing from the shelf.
In their place was a tightly wound bundle of blue cloth,
the same shade as the covering I had seen over
the known object in the restricted room. When I reached
out to touch it, the refrigery made a whining sound,
startling me. I left the cloth and touched. At two
eleven a m my phone vibrated in my pocket. I
ignored it, then thought batter and picked up. On the
second buzz, static sharper than before. Then, A half strangled
voiced the last word distinct stop. The message hung in
the air, spended between fret and warning, I left the
phone faced down on the table, uncertain to blooming in
my gut. I needed answers, but now any step deeper
felt like stepping off the edge of a freshly broken ledge.
I spent the next several iro was chasing small concrete
tasks for setting faulty alarms, adjusting the register on the
upstairs thermostat, checking windows for new leaks. But everything was
colored by what I'd found. Patterns ran through my mind,
the scheduled rotations, the changed codes, the rounds marked by
absence as much as content. Mess Chin kept away, present,
but always in sight, as if compelled by invisible lines
to remain anchored by the main desk. I noticed she
had packed her personal effects into a small batter duffel.
In the quiet breaks between patrols, I began mapping my
own memory against each restricted zone, compiling lists, cross referencing
artifacts by number, jotting quick frantic notes on sticky pads.
I sky rode institutional records from a forgotten stock computer
by the genitorial office. Initial pages, schedules and heavy ink
dozens of transfers over the course of just a single year.
The names blurred, but the padden stuck. Staff who stayed
longest at night, staff who filed the most irregularities inevitably
shuffled out, transfer terminated, retired. Under ambiguous language, I saw
Hector's name highlighted twice in blue, scheduled for a transfer
to another trust. Even a ms chen was shown as
marked conditional eligible for early retirement. The deep ride out
the more alarming. Their repetition quite cycles of warning and replacement,
each instance separated by an episode centered on a unique
confidential item. There was always a precipitating event, a door opened,
and a law misfired as staff member acting unusually. Each
time a wave of resignation followed. On my break, I
crossed paths with two junior dozens from the evening shift,
eyes ringed with exhaustion, voices cautious. He the new one
one asked, don't lose track of time, you look a
bit pale. The other only watched me her gaze, un
settled but careful. I mumbled a reply and excused myself,
eager to avoid the scrutiny. The night dragged. The familiar
routine had become artificial. Every lock door now a trigger
for a new suspicion. The supply closet remained shut mercifully,
but the air at distreshold felt denser. Where to fide
a memory of the humming, flickering prisons, I made myself
take notes, checking my handwriting against its elf, looking for
tremors of sudden and familiar loops in my script. The
radio beamed at odd intervals, sometimes crackling out of sync.
Each one confirmed last checkpoint M s Chen's voice clip forced.
I replied always that yes, routine clear, nothing out of place,
patrol line holding. After each call, I found I drifted
a little, standing just outside the wrong gallery, a stirring
longer than usual into grainnee reflecting glass. After four Z
I sat in the main office, flipping through my records
and re examining my findings. Everything pointed toward containment, both
of objects and of people. The pattern was not only
in who left, but in how the institution closed ranks
after every episode, cleaning evidence out of Logwick's, moving artifacts
under new labels, borring rooms under new codes. I wondered
how many other places worked like this, trading off risk
for plausible and ability, cycling through low level employees as
though they were as disposable as light bulbs. The anger
of the sense of boor dread made me less cautious
enough that when I spotted Chain heading for the staff
exit with her duffel slung off over her shoulder, I
called after her. She didn't stop, but left a folded
slip of paper at the edge of the desk with
my name spelled in quick leaping script or an if
you have to look, don't do it alone DWR and
poquet records. Don't trust the archive code use the guest bass.
I stuffed the note into my breast pocket, the panic
receding just enough to leave pepose behind. Whatever I was
going to happen next, I would face it with the
benefit of a little more knowledge, and I hoped a
less forgiving sense of wonder. But the consequences grew unavoidable.
By my next shift, rumors had begun to curdle. A
whisper runs off the monday's staff about an incident in
the sub basement. The overnight axis code change the janitors
set of keys pulled forward. It manages snapping stone at
staff who lodged by the blue room. Management's email flaged
a single line in their daily briefing overnight A normally
reported controls are being reviewed. Strict adherence to protocol required,
no explanation, no offer of assistance. For me. The blowbuck
arrived with a physical force. My locker, which I had
always found unlocked, had been locked, and my emergency shift
swap form vanished from its usual place. I retrieved what
I could flashlight clubs, back up energy bar and the
battered notebook, and something else was wrong. The museum, which
had always felt slightly too large for the people inside it,
suddenly ummed with unfamiliar activity. At least three faces I
didn't recognize. Two men in facilities blew another woman smartly
dressed in two stiff movement with intent through the main
and east Hall's voices low. When they passed me, the
gaze is flicked over my torser and halted my badge
before looking away. In the stair all between first and Basement,
I saw a new padlock where there had been done before.
Further down, the axis panel screws peered freshly stripped. The
corridor beyond had fresh blue painted a space board as
if to erase old stains were old warnings. The staff kitchen,
usually clotted with the old doughnuts and soft drinks, had
been cleaned and cleared, save for one mug. Sat deliberately
at the countertop center, my name written on masking tape.
Inside the mug, a small glass marble sky blue, called
to the touch. I rolled it between my thumb and finger,
examining every side. On close inspection, a tiny black dot
in the center gaze back at me, and I my
stomach turned. I left it there and went to check
the brick room monitors, which to night showed a slow,
erratic flicker. One monitor dying, screen shifting hues, another stuck
on an endless lip of the blue room stuble doors.
The time stamp, incrementing by seconds, jumped backward every third minute,
then snapped ahead, the picture warping as if under pressure.
I barely had time to process this before my phone
giant new message. This one a text and save number.
It's words You're almost there. Only those who see the
pattern can stop it. Exhibitef was a test. I sat
heavily gripping the phone. Some one watching or just another
artifact of the museum's inexplicable addiction to secrecy and control.
But the text and the other clues hardened my intent.
I couldn't abandon this, not now. I ran through possibilities
in my head, the doll in the glass, the badge,
the new marble, the end, the cycle of departures and warnings.
Checking my note butt, I mapped out what I'd learned.
Objects rotated through the subbasement, sometimes temporarily placed us worse
supply closet, a blue room, rarely accessible archive. Each time
staff would despatched a cycle the way to minimize exposure.
Most avoided the worst of it, but anyone who stumbled
across the heart of the pattern became a vector, a
carrier for whatever dread or influence. De Mesium was desperate
to contain, and the pattern was ramping up. Technical failures
cropped up everywhere, Alarms triggered with no cause, motion senses
blinking right above already locked doors. More staff kept their distance,
Chen no longer appeared to a last entry on the
low bok simply slastry with a red pen. The only
option a direct confrontation with the source. That night, I
prepared first, I spent time in the unused abmin office,
pouring over architectural blueprints found in DW impulse battered box files.
There in dark spidery lines were outlines of levels that
didn't match public maps. Sub basement corridors connecting blue room,
supply and confidential collection, some loops circled in thick red
areas inaccessible yet likely crucial with hand shaking, I copied
downside notes, abbreviated entries glassed all mirror with blind spot,
animal with blue eyes, small canvas u labeled. I scraunched
through Durrymple's ledges rescued from the sub basement, noticing the
date of the original flood in the supply closet, fell
within a quarter ire of a badge being scanned in
on a scheduled obje rotation, an event meant to be
hidden by a false plumbing report. On a whim, I
downloaded a basic emfrider app to my phone, nothing fancy,
just enough to catch bikes. I ran a circuit of
the main gallery, the green corridor and the break room,
all normal. When I moved to the supply closet, the
dial lept on it expectedly, then faded near the blue room,
just outside the velvet wrote entrances of reading spike, then
flattened at the staff stairs leading to the sub basement.
It jittered only these places, the map points of the art.
Fax migration flirted with magnetic disorder. It was all a chain.
The object in the glass case exhibited a wi shuffle
from room to room using a closed inventory. Staff was
cycled in an doubt exposure's manners by rhythm of concealed
quarantines and hushes. Every so often the object's awake anxiety, paranoia,
insomnia demanded a new transfer of fresh eyes. The pattern
replayed boxes stacked in the back of the arque has
whispered of more secrets. I leafed through old checklists, blue room,
ecomp storage, f intaxed for process. The increments tracked perfectly,
every four months, a personnel cycle, every event. A record
quietly vanished. Dawn threatened at the windows, false city lit,
blurring the world with watercolor gray. But there was no
more avoiding the confrontation. My shift drew close to end,
tension stretched tight. I was no longer sure I wasn't
being watched, or perhaps coordinated against, by the very people
charged with keeping us safe. When my relief didn't show
a volunteered for the double gen gone, hector out, the
admin office closed. No one with practical knowledge remained on.
I signed the log stating a double pro schedule and
slipped out of side as the day superviser made a
desultery round eyes red and lined, pocketing both my guest
badge on what I now realized was Dalrymple's final inventory sheet.
I moved the code to the confidential collection had changed
as expected, but the note Chen had left said don't
trust the arka've code used to guess. Pass Eating the risk,
I scanned the guest baths across the axis plate. A
second later, the door clicked open, passing from one breadth
of corridor to the next time and space seened to
fold to geometry failing under the weight of shadow an
old insufficient light. The lower level contracted behind me a slow,
deliberate squeeze. As I advanced into the maze of artifact
cages by Brett Charlotte and quickened, the hallways reminded me
of film negatives. Rows of caged objects, their shapes barely defined,
glass globes and marble boxes mirroring each other in the
low amber lanterns that hadn't changed since Dalrymple's day. At
a tea junction, A flicker swept the wall to my left,
not shadow, but the visible and making of light, a
shape more absent than present, Running against the grain of
all known movement, I paused flasklight, trained steadily, and forced
myself onward. The vault opened inter chamber, smaller than I expected,
but thick with the smother of decade's memories. On a
central pedestal, caged under titanium framed glass, the doll weighted,
its skin cleaming with a faint crack. Glaze reflected the
sharp cut of my flashlight, but its eyes were the
thing that pulled impressed, and I did all Cautian, deeply blue, iridescent,
the color shifting as I moved, not quite gems, but
not glass as I had ever known it. I stepped close,
feeling my norse bunch and release, as if the hum
underfoot had learned the rhythm of my own heart reflected
in the case. My face stretched in thin, the features
blurring then clarifying into an unfamiliar mask, and just behind
the flicker of others, impossible to pin down faces of staff.
Some I recognized, some absent for years, all staring forward,
mouths frozen in shapes of warning, their eyes one and
all of vivid, unnatural blue. My hands began to tingle,
as if holding invisible the case pulse with vibration, a
sound and sensation at once, phone in pocket. I heard
sudden legible voices spinning from the speaker behind glass. It
don't turn a stay away to night, and finally, my
own voice, whispering hopeless help. I reached for the glass,
finger tips hovering over the badge set inside A Dalrymple's
identity battered and faded. My own reflection, distorted by the
uneven pain, warped around it. For an instant, I was
sure my eyes had turned the same luminous liquid blue.
A compulsion rose open, a case removed, the badge, finished
a pattern logic, and fear ward. I pressed the guest
pass against the lower panel. It clicked half way open,
leaving a thin gap inside. The badge slipped, landing flat
on its back. Beneath it a folded sheet of the
same yellow notepaper as the slips in my locker, burying
Dalrymple's handwriting. Do not move her, Do not expose to mirror,
surviving staff, do not replace logs, trust no change to schedule.
Behind me, something stirred in the darkness, accompanied about a
now familiar stomach bending hum A figure flickered at the
corridor's edge. I bun hot, hammering and had the crush
of a dropping object, a heavy impact from a case shelf.
The humming beaked. Then from behind me, I've always fractal
with static. If you see the eyes, don't turn. I
had crossed some boundary and the change was live, kinetic,
alive in the skin. My vision warped all around the
glass panes on the cages wabbled in distortion the room,
The entire vault shivered as if irridescent. Light and shadow
warred for primary substance. A blue white fire danced along
the badges the glass, the doll's eyes. I was lost
in an avalanche of echos. A thousand residual presences, faces
stretched across time, each as real and incomplete as my own.
Durable chin hector, laugh, lines and frowns contorted into one
universal expression, you are not alone. Rattling grew to shuddering.
The alarms dead for years, screened back to life. A
screech doubling inside the reinforced vault, light so over had
burned and angry flat white. I snatched both badges, shoving
them deep into my pocket, and grabbed the yellow notepaper,
falling it once twice again. I turned in ten on
the door as the figure at the corridor's mouth lunged forward,
not running but stuff and starts half real, half mirror,
blue eyed, unlatching and relatching focus. As it moved behind
the dolls. I seemed to widen, or perhaps only fixing,
that unique paralyzing shine. Panic bloomed. I burst through the
open cage, half crawling, half running, as the floor seemed
to heap beneath me, its slow pulses running line to
line in the tile. The doors at the end of
the hole climb open. My own shadow ran before me, elongated,
blue eyed and familiar, and neck glided bodily into the
main stairs weedy door behind me, the hump spiked a
cold gus wrapped around my ankles. I slammed my guest
badge through the reader, felt the mechanism grind above. Sirens,
yodel muffled through a thudding of old brick and new electronics.
The thing, whatever it was stopped at the threshold to
the corridor, pressed against the invisible, inviolable line between the
confidential vault and the rest of the living world. I
staggered up, gasping at raw air, desperate to fill my lungs.
He echoed of hundreds of feet once, then again, snap,
and collapsed round the walls. When at last I emerged
into the faint blue glow of the lobby, every ceiling
light blaze a whole pl too bright for comfort. The alarms,
which moments ago seemed to summon all the lost, now
only echoed in redundant, desperate stuttering. In the staff kitchen,
a crumple sliding to the floor, shaking so hard my
tea clacked. My hearing buzzed overhead. Everything felt unnaturally still,
as if the very building waited to see what I
would do next. In my pocket, the badge is burned
with cold. It was over for now, But the world
I'd returned to was not the one I had left.
A sharp knock on the staff entrance startled me up.
The facilities woman who'd been prowling earlier, strode straight in,
eyeing the last flicker of the alarms and the wavering
of the security feeds. Her tongue was clinical, suspicious overnight incident.
You'll be reporting to h R at nine. Before I
could reply, she was already calling management, muttering about access logs,
badge irregularities and missing staff. I had triggered the institutional response.
Four minutes later, two more Atmann staff appeared from the
record's office, one with a clipboard, the other with a
digital badge scanner. They kneved briskly, already were setting locks
on every point of my road. Within twenty minutes, the
entire confidential collection corridor was healed, a new tape, new
digital locks, paper signs posted restricted to no access by
order of amen. I was escorted to a second floor office,
My pocket tempted personal effects bagged and tagged. They questioned
me in tight clip segments. What had I accessed? Had
I removed anything any an authorised contact with artifacts or staff?
I offered what little truth they'd accept. They recorded redacted,
moved on. An hour or later, with the rising sun
washing the entry hall bloodless. They handed me an envelope,
transfer papers and liew a further review, a discreet severance,
the promise of a recommendation on file if you co operate.
The subtext was obvious. Take the offer except silence, and
leave other people to finish the wash cycle in you.
No one mentioned a mess chen by name. Actor was
out on leave. My own lock entries vanished from the file.
By lunch Eire, I saw boxes being wheeled through the
side holes, new locks, new faces. The leftover coffee mug
with my name was gone. When I made a last
round to clear my locker, the security guard at the
staff engine returned my badge, neutral and sharp eyed, as
if I were already a memory. I left Mercy Hole
in broad daylight, possessions round into a fraying backpack. The
police tape and ladder trucks outside were Roverse Water, Maine.
Nothing to do with me, or so the story would run.
None of it surprised me. Their system was too old
to practice. To break from one confrontation, I sent a
letter handriton to doctor Downble's last known address, including everything
I've found, the records, the badge numbers, the repeated warnings.
A week later, a then careful reply came back. Thank you.
They never believed me either. You did better than most.
I returned once to one the latest night guard, a
young man eager, hopeful, he accepted my words with half
a smile and a shrug. Lot of stories in these
old museums, they'll be all right. I let him go.
That's what the pattern demanded. The last time I saw
the East Wing entrance, the supply Closet's old door was gone,
replaced by a blank wall, new paints, still smelling of
chemical sharpness. The Blue Room's double doors gleaned and disturbed
to all watching, everything had been I left the museum
the evening with little ceremony, shoulders lighter but heart not unburdened,
crossing the city in a crowd of faces, both familiar
and strange. Weeks later, on a summer morning, mottled by
rains landing down the window panes, I found a thick
envelope in my mailbox and marked silver with a blank
black wax. Inside, I found my lost staff badge, cold
and waited, along with a polaroid photograph, an image of
me standing outside the Confidential Collections open doors, eyes a
gleamed with a glassy, unmistakable blue. I didn't recall the
photo being taken. It hadn't belonged to any one on staff,
nor had there been cameras facing a corridor, save for
the feed that never came up on the main detmonitors.
I turned the photo over. Spidery blue Inkin in a
familiar hand had written a single question, what did you
see on Exhibit F. The chill of the question stopped me.
As I stood that night in a subway car, cradling
my badge and the photo. I let my gaze drift
to my reflection in the window. For the briefest moment,
I thought I saw not just me, but a second face,
a twin eyes, glass smooth and blue, looking back perfectly still.
And then it was only me watching myself, silent and
indivisible as the train rattled on beneath the city. And
then it was only me watching myself, silent and indivisible
as the train rattled on beneath the city. That moment,
that thicker of uncanny symmetriling good days after settling deep
in the mirror, I avoided mirrors, glass fronted buildings, even
the pitch black of my own Fahne sleeping screen. Yet
each time I caught my reflection, I found myself cataloging
the eyes, their color, their clardy, retracing the shadow of
blue I had sworn was only a trick of exhaustion.
Paranoia folded itself into my routines. I kept the old
badge and foot a locked away, but sometimes late at
night I would feel compelled to check. The image never shifted,
and yet on some nights holding it, I thought I
felt the pulse of a distant hum of vibration, feigned
as the memory of a headache. Even my apartment seemed
oddly un settled creeks in the floor where none had
been before, an inexplicable batch of cold near the closet,
the refrigerator light flickering out in the quiet eyes. The
city moved on effortlessly. Each morning I folded into crowds
up subwaysters, out into the press of pedestrians passed or
from screaming with indifferent light. My severance cleared with that argument.
Polite hr emails reminded me to submit benefit forms to
return any museum property I still held. I never replied
new job searches, plowed together applications, interviews, but every time
I reached for something promising, I hesitated at the thought
of entering unfamiliar halls, rooms with their own histories and secrets,
and pounded behind unassuming doors. The transfer package from Messer
Hull included a single she takes its statement voluntary separation,
no mention of incident or performance. Only the line future
were highed possible. A supervisor's discretion struck me as pointedly insincere.
A mess Chenz named surface once buried in a group
up bait, leaving to pursue other opportunities. Act never replied
to my message, though on the day I last reached out,
as phone returned to curt pre recorded response number no
longer in service. What remained of the museum in my
mind was a latice work of locations, never quite disarmed
by sun lighter geometry of avoidance and ritual nights were worst,
a time when any unexpected sound or flicker outside my
window threatened to connect me again to that old layer
of dread. Sleep came in fits every dream stitch, with
bright blue flashes, closed doors, the same haleway receding forever
just out of reach. About a week after my resignation,
I received a second envelope, this one hand written but
with no return address. Inside on museum let ahead were
five names, those of former overnight guards, ending with Dalrymples
followed by a question, did you see it move too?
No instructions, just that silent invitation to a seek a
club of the market in the werry, I kept my
world small groceries, reading, walks around the block each day.
I expected the feeling to fade, but the events of
those weeks spawned like a centrifuge in my head. Refusing
to solution, I tracked news about the museum online, finding
nothing and not even a mention of renovation, no whispers
about the confidential collection's fate. All evidence s guirried away.
The building on the surface functioned as it always had,
the public men the wiser that anything had shifted or burned. Then,
without preamble, the pattern started in new and small, precise ways.
One evening, as I passed by the Municipal Library's glass entrance,
I caught my own face in double reflection, and for
a one breathless second, sore figure just behind my shoulder,
not a par but a nutline colored in that particular blue.
I spun, but the street was empty. Panicked a cold
Dalrymple's number, the only risk I would take. The line
rang forever before a voice picked up, thin older wavering
on the edges of speech. Did it follow you too?
He said, quiet and resigned. We spoke little. He told
me carefully that it was best to keep moving to
avoid routine, that the art fat patten had a way
of tracing itself on to the body, first in samnia,
then uncertainty, then a slow and reveling of the ordinary.
When I pressed for specifics about the doll, the glass,
the collection, he only said, every time it's locked away,
that comes back someway slightly shifted. We warrant the shuffle,
but nothing gets fixed. Why the eyes, I asked, Are
they cameras memory? What are they not cameras? He replied
so softly I had to repeat the question. They remember,
not in the way we do, but enough enough to
find those who notice. Be glad you got away. That night,
I placed every scrap of the past month, badges, slips,
notes into a zipper pouch and buried it in the
bottom of a storage box behind old papers, obsolete chargers
closing in no longer war, but objects, once witnessed, exert
their own kind of gravity. The following day I held
from a former coworker, a line cook who sometimes did
security ships when short staffed. Did you have something to
do with the Blue Room, he texted. Out of nowhere,
I heard they finally painted over the door. Somehow the
story had drifted, transformed in the telling an electrical issue,
a small flood and unruly overnight guest, no mention of
anything more. Yet under the casual tone, I could sense
the question how much did you see? And what do
you still carry? It was not just the museum. They
had their own need for replacements, for closure, both literal
and psychological. When I returned to pick up my final check,
no one looked directly at me. The woman at the
reception d'escagneux, young, careful, pushed the envelope toward me with
just two fingers, staring not at my eyes, but at
the badge clipped to my bag. I asked quietly if
the Blue Room was finally opened again, and she blinked,
searching for a script, and told me it had always
just been for storage. Behind her, the Blue Room stors,
nonetheless gleaned a wet, unsettling blue that evening. As I
rode the elevator up to my apartment, someone's kid peers
and pass my shoulder, eyes round and curious for a
moment in the half darkness of the closing doors. They
glinted a curious blue. When the light shifted, it was
only childish wonder. Weeks drifted past, the world filled with distractions,
each one never quite dull in the memory, only glossing
it with a hum of normal life, a clean shop
visited with distant friends. When I finally stopped checking each
dark and pain for the flicker of movement, I realized
it might never truly leave date. One night I heard
a familiar static cors pulse from my phone, though no
new message shured in my lock, the sequence I had
learned by heart sounded again behind glass. Stay away to night.
It moves when you look away. My own voice broken
across time. I sat beneath the window, the city lights trembling.
The old badge now awaited my palm. A single thought
gripped me, insistent and never quite completed. Would I one
day return not to confront, not to Saul, but to
become the next Lincoln and unbroken chain of watchers and replacements.
Would some one else see and know and turn away?
I let the thought pass, then, as the last siren
wailed far below, A blutionma lifted across a puddle on
the sidewalk outside. It just a momentary gleam in the
looking glass of my apartment's night dark window. Only two
eyes mine looked back, this time, both shawan brown. But
somewhere in the blue lit deep of the city, I
knew some one else had already taken my place. And
that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I
will see you in the next one.