He found a thin silver key on the ring and inserted it into the lock, twisting it once and hearing the satisfying click of the mechanism within turning.
Inside, the room looked the same as every other room on that floor that Luca had been in. There were rows and rows of tall, metal cabinets with drawers that extended nearly from floor to ceiling. The cabinets were labeled with letters and numbers, none of which Luca understood. Jamie had given him the information he needed to find the file he was looking for, so Luca meandered between the cabinets, searching for the right one.
It didn’t take as long as he would have liked, and soon Luca was sliding open the indicated drawer, ruffling through the files until he found the one with the right label.
He was always curious. Luca knew a camera was directed right at him within that room—knew that the instant he tried to open one of the folders, an army of runners would be upon him. It had to be important—the information he was sent down so often to retrieve, that was kept so locked down and hidden on that floor. He wondered what it would mean, if he were to open it and read what was inside. Would it change anything for him, to know what they were doing there?
Maybe. Or maybe he would lose the small amount of freedom he had worked so hard to gain over absolutely nothing.
Luca didn’t open the file, instead navigating his way back through the twisting black halls, heading for the stairs. He didn’t know why they wouldn’t let him use the elevator—maybe that would have been too much freedom. The stairs were usually fine, at any rate, until he was asked to go up to the ninetieth floor, where he would find himself red faced and huffing, the muscles in his legs burning from the exertion. Going up from the black floor to his floor wasn’t too bad. It was only one flight.
One flight in the dark, though, which he wasn’t always that thrilled about.
With a sigh, Luca reached the door that would lead him into the staircase. He pulled out a new key—this one larger and bronze in color—and he entered the dark beyond, the manila file with all its secrets clasped in his hand.
Chapter Thirteen
Dust clouds permeated the air, filling the room with the musty scent of something forgotten, something unused. Everly coughed, waving a hand to dispel some of the particles.
She was spending the afternoon going through her dad’s things—both because it needed to be done, and because it gave her something to do with her hands while her mind tried to piece together what she had seen while visiting the Eschatorologic.
Their house was a single floor, divided into four spaces: kitchen, living area, bedrooms, and storage. She was starting with the room they used for storage; his bedroom had remained closed up like a vault since his death, and she hadn’t been able to force herself to enter it yet. Later, she kept telling herself. That could come later.
The storage space might have once been set aside as a third bedroom or an office, but Everly and her dad had taken to filling it with sporadically labeled cardboard boxes of keepsakes and tossed aside trash bags of everything they’d never gotten around to donating or throwing out. So far, Everly had made a rather substantial pile of all her old things that she’d long forgotten were even in that back room, but she had found surprisingly little of her dad’s. She’d never considered him to be much of a minimalist, but box after box of miscellaneous junk seemed to be all hers, none his.
As she sorted through a box of old sweaters from her high school years—setting aside one or two she thought she might still be able to pull off—Everly reflected on everything that had happened the day before. Everything she’d seen at the Eschatorologic.
They’re here to change the world, Richard had said. It was nonsense, pure and simple. What could he possibly mean? Nothing Everly had seen remotely suggested the magnitude Richard seemed to believe he was working with.
She ran through a list of what she knew about the Eschatorologic. The building had a hundred and two floors, two of which you needed a key to access. What would warrant being kept locked up like that down there? Could there be dangerous chemicals stored in the basement? Or contraband of some kind? Or maybe it wasn’t that illicit, and that was just where they stored cleaning supplies. Regardless, the building had one hundred and two floors, and thus far Everly had seen exactly two of them.
A lobby, with one strange receptionist. And an all-gray floor, consisting of a hallway lined with doors.
The only room Everly had entered was a dwelling of some kind for a very old, very disturbed woman. Taking a small leap in assumption, Everly would guess that other rooms in the building likewise housed other people—perhaps equally old and disturbed.
She knew no one was telling her the truth—that much was evident. Neither Jamie nor Richard would give her a straightforward answer when asked what the building was, which could only bode poorly for whatever truth they were trying to cover up.
Everly tried to think of a logical explanation for everything she’d seen. It could be some kind of nursing home, or a hospital. An asylum. A prison?
None of it quite fit, which she knew, but she couldn’t think of anything else it could be.
Trying to banish further thoughts on the building—for now, at least—Everly shoved aside a rather heavy box and found an old wooden crate. It was soft and spongy around the edges, like the wood had been left in a damp space for far too long. Everly nudged aside another cardboard box so she could sit on the floor in front of the wooden crate, and she pried off the lid.
The interior of the box emitted a musky odor as Everly peered down into the contents. She stuck a hesitant hand inside, wary of anything that might have been overtaken years ago by mildew and age.
The first item she pulled out of the box was a photo album. One she’d never seen before. Everly opened the cover and stared in shock as she was met with the warm blue eyes of her mother. Mary Tertium smiled up at Everly through the fading picture, a floppy beach hat drooping over her forehead and a bottle of what looked like champagne in her hands.
It had been a long, long time since Everly had seen a picture of her mother. A piece of her was relieved to see that her scarce memories lined up fairly well with this tangible image of her.
Flipping the page, she found more images that reflected a time she had little to no memory of. Several of her as a baby, dressed up in frilly clothes, the occasional bonnet, and more than one animal costume. A couple of a very young version of her dad, with a full head of hair and, to her shock, in some a bushy beard. She also found some pictures of all three of them—Everly and both of her parents. A family that used to be.
At the end of the photo album were several blank pages. Everly ran her fingers over the edges of the pages, checking if there was anything she had missed. From between two of the last pages, an image fell out, landing in her lap. Everly picked it up, and the breath froze in her chest.
It was a picture of her. Not her as a baby, as in the rest of the album’s pictures, but her now. In the picture, she was seated in a nondescript area, looking away from the camera so that the shot only caught the side of her face. But there was no denying that it was her—Everly knew herself, knew that it couldn’t be anyone else.
So why did she have no memory of this picture being taken?
Shaken, Everly hastily set the album back in the crate, shoving the photo of herself back in between two random pages. She rummaged again through the rest of the items in the box, none of which she recognized from her childhood: a rose-colored sweater, a fountain pen with a university’s insignia carved into the side, several novels that she couldn’t imagine her dad ever reading. Eventually, Everly began to suspect she had found a box of her mother’s belongings—things her dad had decided to keep stored away in here rather than throw out.
The items in the box painted the edges of a picture for a woman whom Everly had never been given a chance to know. This box said she had been a woman who enjoyed small comforts and little moments. Soft things and memories. The items told a story of a woman who loved her life.
And had it taken from her all too soon.
At the bottom of the box, crushed beneath a hefty volume of short stories, Everly noticed what looked like a crumpled-up piece of paper. She pulled it out, frowning as she tried to smooth out its edges.
There was no date on the piece of paper, so no telling how long it had sat at the bottom of the crate. Someone had scrawled out a note in wide, looping handwriting across the white piece of paper. But it wasn’t addressed to her mother—it was addressed to her father.
Jacob,
The time is drawing near. You know it is. You need to make a decision, soon. Come and visit me—you remember the way, I’m sure. I think you know what has to happen.
There was no signature, not even so much as initials to go by. Everly hadn’t the faintest idea what the letter was supposed to mean. What decision was her dad being asked to make? What did this person, whoever they were, think had to happen?
She read the letter again, hoping for some other clue to pop out, but there was nothing. It was too vague, too nondescript. With care, Everly folded the piece of paper, then set it back inside the crate.
Why was her dad receiving mysterious letters at all? She had always considered him to be an upfront, straightforward kind of man, but recently she wasn’t so sure.
Could this letter be connected somehow to what happened to him?
