Mid Spring, The Missing Hour

Something happened today that I cannot properly account for.

I have spent the last several hours trying to reconstruct the day as carefully as I can, and every attempt arrives at the same conclusion.

An entire hour is simply missing.

The morning began ordinarily enough. It rained before dawn, condensation gathered along the eastern conservatory glass, and Clio slept across the catalogue desk beside the maritime records despite my repeated attempts to convince her that damp documents are not improved by the addition of a cat. Muninn had disappeared sometime during the night. There was nothing about the day to suggest it intended to become memorable.

I spent most of the morning repairing several damaged storage cabinets in Hall B while the Archive settled quietly around me in that familiar, heavy way it often does before rain. Shortly after midday I heard the bells. They were not distant this time. Three slow tones rang somewhere beneath the eastern halls, deep enough that fine dust drifted from the shelving beams overhead. I remember setting my tools aside. I remember stopping to listen.

Everything after that is absent.

The next clear memory I possess is of standing inside the upper observatory overlooking the conservatory gardens.

There was blood across my right hand.

The taste of seawater lingered in my mouth.

The observatory had not been opened in months. I know that because the preservation seal across the outer door was still partially intact when my awareness returned. It had not been broken from the outside, but from within.

Every window overlooking the gardens had fogged completely with condensation. Drawn across the glass, over and over again in uneven spiralling lines, was the same symbol I have been finding throughout the Archive. There must have been dozens of them.

It did not take long to recognise the ink on my fingers.

The blood came from split skin across my knuckles. I must have been pressing against the glass hard enough to break the skin, yet I have absolutely no memory of doing so.

Clio was already inside the observatory when I became aware of myself again. She did not appear frightened. She simply watched me from the windowsill with quiet patience, as though she had been waiting for me to return.

Muninn arrived only a few moments later carrying another fragment of water-damaged paper. He dropped it beside my feet but refused to cross the doorway into the room. Only part of a sentence remained legible.

She remembers the tide.

I burned it immediately.

It is the first thing I have deliberately destroyed since I began keeping these journals.

The paper smelled unmistakably of seawater while it burned, and the observatory still carries that scent.

I searched the Archive afterwards, hoping I had overlooked some obvious explanation. Nothing had been disturbed. The lower halls remained sealed, there was no indication that anyone had entered the building, and every catalogue was exactly where I had left it.

Even so, several things had changed.

The brass key was no longer inside the furnace safe.

I eventually found it resting beside the observatory doorway, wrapped neatly in dry cloth as though someone had placed it there with great care. I have no memory of opening the safe, carrying the key upstairs, or setting it down. That troubles me more than the missing hour itself. It is not that I believe someone wandered the Archive wearing my face. What troubles me is the possibility that it was still me, only some older part of myself recognising something long before the rest of me was ready to remember it.

Tonight the Archive feels watchful again. I would not describe it as hostile. If anything, it feels concerned, like an old building listening for the first signs of strain within its own foundations.

Clio has refused to leave the study all evening, and Muninn has scarcely stopped moving through the rafters since dusk.

Every time I close my eyes, I see black seawater climbing ancient stone steps while silver bells ring somewhere beneath the tide.

They do not sound like a warning.

They sound as though they have been waiting a very long time for someone to answer.

I am beginning to hope that I never do.

— M