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The Room Behind the Wall · The Midnight Archives

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Midnight Archives, Season 1, Episode 4, File 004, The
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  Speaker 1: Room Behind the Wall. Every file has a story. Some
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: should have remained closed. The archive building has three floors
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: above ground and one below. I have worked here 11
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: years and I have measured every one of them. The
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  Speaker 1: ground floor is the reading room and the office. The
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  Speaker 1: first floor is the stacks. The second floor is Arthur's
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  Speaker 1: old rooms, kept exactly as he left them. The basement
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  Speaker 1: is the vault. Four levels, 41 rooms. I know the
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  Speaker 1: count exact, the way Arthur taught me, because exactness is
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  Speaker 1: the only courtesy the files ask. Last Tuesday, I counted 42.
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  Speaker 1: I found the extra room the way you find everything
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  Speaker 1: in this building, by accident and then by refusal to
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  Speaker 1: accept the accident. A delivery driver wedged a crate of
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  Speaker 1: archival boxes against the east wall of the basement corridor
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  Speaker 1: and the wall sounded wrong. Hollow. Not the hollow of
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  Speaker 1: a cavity or a pipe chase. The hollow of a
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  Speaker 1: space with air in it. A space large enough to
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  Speaker 1: stand in. I knocked three times. The sound came back
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  Speaker 1: the way an empty room answers. Patient and certain. The
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  Speaker 1: building plans show no room there. I checked all four copies,
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  Speaker 1: including Arthur's hand-annotated set, which marks everything down to the
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  Speaker 1: disused dumbwaiter behind the pantry. Where I stood knocking, every
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  Speaker 1: plan shows solid foundation. Eighteen inches of stone between the
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  Speaker 1: corridor and the earth outside. There is no room. I
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  Speaker 1: knocked again. The room knocked back. Once. The way someone
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  Speaker 1: knocks who has been waiting 11 years to be acknowledged.
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  Speaker 1: I did what Arthur would have done. I opened a file.
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  Speaker 1: File 004. The room behind the wall. And then I
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  Speaker 1: did what Arthur specifically told me never to do. I
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  Speaker 1: looked for a way in. There is no door. There
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  Speaker 1: is no hatch. No panel. No loose stone. I spent
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  Speaker 1: two nights tapping every inch of that corridor with a
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  Speaker 1: mason's hammer borrowed from the hardware shop on Mill Lane,
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  Speaker 1: and I mapped the hollow precisely. Eight feet wide. Ten
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  Speaker 1: feet deep. Seven feet high. The room, the size of
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  Speaker 1: a large pantry, sealed inside the foundation of a building
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  Speaker 1: that has stood for 140 years, with no entrance and
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  Speaker 1: no record. On the third night, I brought the stethoscope
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  Speaker 1: from the first aid kit. I know how that sounds.
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  Speaker 1: I pressed it to the wall at midnight and I listened.
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  Speaker 1: And what I heard has rearranged my understanding of this
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  Speaker 1: building the way file 002 rearranged my understanding of my
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  Speaker 1: own name. Breathing. Slow. Regular. Asleep, I judged. The way
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  Speaker 1: you judge a thing you already know. Something in that
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  Speaker 1: sealed room was breathing in its sleep, and beneath the breathing,
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  Speaker 1: so faint, I questioned it for an hour before accepting it.
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  Speaker 1: A voice, counting, backwards from one, hunted, over and over,
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  Speaker 1: in a whisper like paper sliding on paper. When it
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  Speaker 1: reached one, it paused, and I heard, clearly, in a
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  Speaker 1: voice I recognized with a certainty that stopped my own breath,
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  Speaker 1: my own name. Elias. Then it began again, at 100.
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  Speaker 1: I know that voice, the way you know your own handwriting.
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  Speaker 1: It was Arthur Bell's, Arthur Vanished Eleven Years Ago. I
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  Speaker 1: have the file. I wrote half of it myself in
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  Speaker 1: the months after, when the police stopped coming. And the
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  Speaker 1: questions stopped being asked. Arthur's coat was found on Grey
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  Speaker 1: Widow Point. Arthur's car was found at the station with
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  Speaker 1: the keys inside. Arthur was never found. Eleven years. And
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  Speaker 1: now his voice was counting backwards behind eighteen inches of
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  Speaker 1: foundation stone saying, My name. At the bottom of every hundred.
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  Speaker 1: I sat on the basement floor until dawn with a
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  Speaker 1: stethoscope around my neck like a medal I had not earned.
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  Speaker 1: I considered every explanation the way Arthur taught me in
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  Speaker 1: order without flinching. Pipes. I had the water shut off
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  Speaker 1: at the main and listened again. The breathing continued. The
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  Speaker 1: counting continued. Vermin. No animal breathes that slowly or counts
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  Speaker 1: backwards from 100. My own mind. Possible. Overtired archivists hear
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  Speaker 1: things the way overtired sailors see lights. but I recorded it.
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  Speaker 1: I pressed my telephone to the wall and recorded six minutes.
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  Speaker 1: And the playback holds the breathing and the counting and
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  Speaker 1: my name, faint but present, the way all important things
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  Speaker 1: in this building are present. Here is what I have decided.
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  Speaker 1: I will not break the wall. Arthur sealed something in
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  Speaker 1: this foundation, or something sealed Arthur, and either way, the
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  Speaker 1: wall stands for a reason The way all his rules
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  Speaker 1: stand for reasons. The telephone rule. The counting rule. The
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  Speaker 1: rule about never calling a number twice, which file 003
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  Speaker 1: taught me the price of. Arthur's rules are load-bearing. You
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  Speaker 1: do not remove them to satisfy curiosity. Instead, I have
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  Speaker 1: added a ritual. Every night at midnight, I go to
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  Speaker 1: the basement corridor and I knock three times. And I
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  Speaker 1: say the count aloud with him. Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, down to one.
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  Speaker 1: And when he says my name, I answer. I am here, Arthur.
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  Speaker 1: The archive is kept. The files are in order. And
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  Speaker 1: the breathing slows. The way breathing slows. When the sleeper
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  Speaker 1: knows someone is sitting beside the bed. And I go upstairs,
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  Speaker 1: and I sleep the sleep of a man. whose exactness
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  Speaker 1: has finally been useful. The building has three floors above
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  Speaker 1: ground and one below. Four levels. Forty-two rooms. I know
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  Speaker 1: the count exact. Man, one of them is breathing. That
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  Speaker 1: is where the archive lives. That is where I will be.