Виктория Шваб: The Archived

We step up to the revolving doors, and Dad’s hand lands on my shoulder, filling my head with a jumble of static and wavering bass. I cringe and force myself not to pull away. The dead are silent, and objects, when they hold impressions, are quiet until you reach through them. But the touch of the living is loud. Living people haven’t been compiled, organized—which means they’re a jumble of memory and thought and emotion, all tangled up and held at bay only by the silver band on my finger. The ring helps, but it can’t block the noise, just the images.

I try to picture a wall between Dad’s hand and my shoulder, like Da taught me, a second barrier, but it doesn’t work. The sound is still there, layered tones and statics, like radios tuned wrong, and after an appropriate number of seconds, I take a step forward, beyond his reach. Dad’s hand falls away, and the quiet returns. I roll my shoulders.

“What do you think, Mac?” he asks, and I look up at the hulking shape of the Coronado.

I think I’d rather shake my mother until a new idea falls out and leads us somewhere else.

But I know I can’t say this, not to Dad. The skin beneath his eyes is nearly blue, and over the last year he’s gone from slim to thin. Mom might be able to power a city, but Dad barely stays lit.

“I think…” I say, managing a smile, “it will be an adventure.”

I am ten, almost eleven, and I wear my house key around my neck just to be like you.

They tell me I have your gray eyes, and your hair

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back when it was reddish brown instead of white

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but I don’t care about those things. Everyone has eyes and hair. I want the things most people don’t notice. The ring and the key and the way you have of wearing everything on the inside.

We’re driving north so I’ll be home for my birthday, even though I would rather stay with you than blow out candles. Ben is sleeping in the backseat, and the whole way home, you tell me stories about these three places.

The Outer, which you don’t waste much breath on because it’s everything around us, the normal world, the only one most people ever know about.

The Narrows, a nightmarish place, all stained corridors and distant whispers, doors and darkness thick like grime.

And the Archive, a library of the dead, vast and warm, wood and stone and colored glass, and all throughout, a sense of peace.

As you drive and talk, one hand guides the steering wheel, and the other toys with the key around your neck.

“The only things the three places have in common,” you say, “are doors. Doors in, and doors out. And doors need keys.”

I watch the way you fiddle with yours, running a thumb over the teeth. I try to copy you, and you catch sight of the cord around my neck and ask me what it is. I show you my silly house key on a string, and there’s this strange silence that fills the car, like the whole world is holding its breath, and then you smile.

You tell me I can have my birthday present early, even though you know how Mom likes to do things right, and then you pull a small unwrapped box from your pocket. Inside is a silver ring, the three lines that make up the Archive mark carefully etched into the metal, just like yours.

I don’t know what it’s for, not yet

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a blinder, a silencer, a buffer against the world and its memories, against people and their cluttered thoughts

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but I’m so excited I promise I will never take it off. And then the car hits a bump and I drop it under the seat. You laugh, but I make you pull off the freeway so I can get it back. I have to wear it on my thumb because it’s too big. You tell me I’ll grow into it.

We drag our suitcases through the revolving door and into the lobby. Mom chirps with glee, and I wince.

The sprawling foyer is like one of those photos where you have to figure out what’s wrong. At first glance it glitters, marble and crown molding and gilt accents. But at second look the marble is coated in dust, the molding is cracked, and the gilt accents are actively shedding gold onto the carpet. Sunlight streams in through the windows, bright despite the aging glass, but the space smells like fabric kept too long behind curtains. This place was once, undeniably, spectacular. What happened?

Two people mill by a front window, seemingly oblivious to the haze of dust they’re standing in.

Across the lobby a massive marble staircase leads to the second floor. The cream-colored stone would probably gleam if someone polished it long enough. Wallpaper wraps the sides of the staircase, and from across the room, I see a ripple in the fleur-de-lis pattern there. From here it almost looks like a crack. I doubt anyone would notice, not in a place like this, but I’m supposed to spot these things. I’m hauling my luggage toward the ripple when I hear my name and turn to see my parents vanishing around a corner. I hoist my bags and catch up.

I find them standing in front of a trio of elevators just off the lobby.

The wrought iron cages look like they might safely hold two. But we’re already climbing into one of them, three people and four suitcases. I whisper something halfway between a prayer and a curse as I pull the rusted gate closed and press the button for the third floor.

The elevator groans to life. There might be elevator music, too, but it’s impossible to hear over the sounds the machine makes simply hoisting us up. We rise through the second floor at a glacial pace, padded in by luggage. Halfway between the second and third floor, the elevator pauses to think, then heaves upward again. It gives a death rattle at the third floor, at which point I pry the jaws open and set us free.

I announce that I’m taking the stairs from now on.

Mom tries to free herself from the barricade of luggage. “It has a certain…”

“Charm?” I parrot, but she ignores the jab and manages to get one leg over the suitcases, nearly toppling as her heel snags on a strap.

“It has personality,” adds my father, catching her arm.

I turn to take in the hall, and my stomach drops. The walls are lined with doors. Not just the ones you would expect, but a dozen more—unusable, painted and papered over, little more than outlines and ridges.

“Isn’t it fascinating?” says my mother. “The extra doors are from way back when it was a hotel, before they began knocking down walls and combining rooms, converting spaces. They left the doors, papered right over them.”

“Fascinating,” I echo. And eerie. Like a well-lit version of the Narrows.

We reach the apartment at the end, and Dad unlocks the door—an ornate 3F nailed to its front—and throws it open. The apartment has the same scuffed quality as everything else. Lived-in. This place has marks, but none of them are ours. In our old house, even when you took away the furniture and packed up the stuff , there were all these marks. The dent in the wall where I threw that book, the stain on the kitchen ceiling from Mom’s failed blender experiment, the blue doodles in the corners of rooms where Ben drew. My chest tightens. Ben will never leave a mark on this place.

Mom oohs and ahhs , and Dad drifts quietly through the rooms, and I’m about to brave the threshold when I feel it.

The scratch of letters. A name being written on the slip of Archive paper in my pocket. I dig the page out—it’s roughly the size of a receipt and strangely crisp—as the History’s name scrawls itself in careful cursive.

Emma Claring. 7.

“Mac,” calls Dad, “you coming?”

I slide back a step into the hall.

“I left my bag in the car,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

Something flickers across Dad’s face, but he’s already nodding, already turning away. The door clicks shut, and I sigh and turn to the hall.