The Well in the Walls

The bus coughed Nora into the salt-bitten wind as if it were relieved to be rid of her. Graymouth lay under a pale sky, roofs bleached, windows filmed with sea crust, gulls circling as if stitched to the air. The municipal library hunched at the edge of the drained reservoir, a slab of tired concrete with narrow slit windows and a row of chained metal letters missing the B and the R, so it read: G A YMOUTH LI A Y. She stood with her duffel at her feet, the smell of kelp and old paper blurring together, and listened to that other smell, the quiet, like something breathing behind the walls.

“You’re Nora Albright?” A woman in a red parka that had seen many winters pushed the door open against the wind. “Dettmer. I was told you’d be… enthusiastic.”

“I’ll try to be,” Nora said. The gum line inside her cheek tasted of coffee. She followed Dettmer through a vestibule of cracked linoleum into a lobby where the carpet gave underfoot like a wet sponge though it was bone-dry. Rows of empty shelves lined up like the ribs of a beached whale. Posters for poetry nights flapped softly at the edges.

Dettmer handed over a keyring heavy with brass after-shine. “Your station is in the recording room. Power’s inconsistent, so there’s a generator in the alley. Don’t run both heaters at once. The roof leaks on the west side. And the sub-basement is off-limits.”

“Off-limits?” The word was a taste.

“City safety. After the reservoir was drained they found voids under half the block. It’s not structurally sound. You digitize, box, label. Three weeks, then demolition.” Dettmer’s eyes flicked to the narrow stairwell that descended out of the lobby’s far corner as if to underline the warning. “Watch the steps. You step sideways here or the building eats you.” She smiled a little too hard, then left.

Nora set her bag down by the door to the recording room. Inside, a table with a wobble, an ancient reel-to-reel machine the color of nicotine, a stack of tapes sealed in paper sleeves stamped with dates. Someone had tacked a map of Graymouth on the wall with a dark ring where a coffee cup had once rested like an eclipse. She ran her finger over the metal reels; they stank faintly of machine oil, a smell that sat low in the throat.

She told herself this would be a job like any other. She’d done the training, learned how to coax fragile tape into giving up its stories without tearing. She clicked on the overhead light. It complained before settling into a watery glow. In the weak circle of it, dust moved like snow in a globe. Beneath, the building hummed.

Gulls cried. Somewhere in the concrete, a slow drip counted seconds that weren’t there.