Cycles repeat because someone has to keep the lights on, someone has to file the reports, someone has to train the new nurses who'll last three weeks before choosing pills or transformation or the middle path that's neither comfort nor completion. Seven years I've been here now. Seven years since Lucy vanished and I learned that remembering is burden, that awareness is erosion, that surviving means becoming what you once would have fought. The new patient file sits on my desk—eight years old, silent, draws interlocking circles with compulsive precision, hums melody I know better than my own heartbeat. I assign him to Julia's replacement, keep my distance, never stay after hours. But I find wooden houses anyway, appearing in locked drawers like archaeology of erasure. Three of them now. One for each child who taught me rules I couldn't refuse to learn.
------------------------------------------
The promotion to Head Nurse came in my fourth year.
Morrison retired—officially relocated to facility in Vermont for "personal reasons," though I knew better, could see in her eyes during our final conversation that she wasn't leaving Blackstone so much as accepting transformation, choosing the third option she'd resisted for fifteen years, finally surrendering to incorporation that would make her permanent, conscious, part of the building's essential structure in ways employment never had.
"You'll do well," she said during our last shift together, voice carrying that particular exhaustion that came from decades of witnessing what couldn't be stopped. "You've learned the rules better than I did. You're more disciplined about silence, more careful about which truths you speak aloud. You'll survive longer than I did. Maybe even long enough to see what Blackstone becomes when it completes."
She walked into the east wing that night and didn't come out. Her records revised by morning—transferred to Vermont facility, contact information provided, official paperwork filed. But I'd seen her walk through door that appeared only for her, had watched her cross threshold between employed and incorporated, had understood that this was choice she'd been approaching for years, that awareness had finally consumed the last pieces of Morrison who'd wanted to remain separate.
I kept her notebook. Added it to my collection—the orientation manuals with their penciled warnings, the logbooks from decades past, Patricia Chen's final entries, my own accumulating documentation of rules and patterns and the slow education in institutional horror that came from staying aware while everyone else chose amnesia.
Dr. Lee called me into his office the day after Morrison's departure. "We need a new head nurse. Someone who understands Blackstone's particular needs. Someone who can train staff appropriately, maintain documentation properly, facilitate the work without exposing it. You're ready for this role, Reeves."
It wasn't question. Wasn't offer I could refuse. Was simple acknowledgment that I'd survived long enough, learned thoroughly enough, compromised completely enough to assume position that required managing not just patient care but the careful balance between official narrative and actual reality, between what we documented and what we knew, between maintaining institutional function and facilitating building's ongoing consumption of vulnerable souls.
I accepted because accepting was only option that didn't involve pills or transformation, because middle path required institutional sanction to remain viable, because refusing would mean choosing between amnesia and incorporation when I still wanted—desperately, foolishly—to believe I could maintain awareness without being consumed, could witness without becoming, could survive with enough of Harriet Reeves intact to matter.
Seven years now. Seven years since Lucy vanished and taught me that memory is evidence only until someone changes the files, that children disappear not through negligence but through processes we facilitate, that buildings can love you in ways that consume everything love was supposed to preserve.
The new admission file arrived on a Tuesday in late autumn, October again, the month when boundaries thinned and Blackstone felt most like itself, most willing to show what it was becoming.
Patient name: Thomas Kerry. Age: eight. Parents deceased (house fire, suspicious circumstances, investigation pending). Orphaned, traumatized, demonstrating what intake assessment delicately termed "unusual perceptual sensitivities" and "compulsive artistic expression focused on geometric patterns."
I opened the file during morning rounds. Saw the attached drawings—circles within circles within circles, interlocking spirals, architectural impossibilities rendered with precision that suggested Thomas wasn't imagining these patterns but documenting them, mapping spaces he could perceive that we'd trained ourselves not to see.
Lucy's drawings. Exactly Lucy's drawings. The same configurations, the same impossible geometries, the same careful documentation of Blackstone's true architecture as distinct from the floor plans that showed what the building pretended to be.
My hands shook holding the file. Seven years of careful control, seven years of maintaining professional distance, seven years of teaching myself not to attach, not to care too deeply, not to let individual patients matter more than institutional survival—all of it threatened by single file, by recognition that the cycle was repeating, that Blackstone had found another Lucy, another child whose trauma had opened perception to frequencies most couldn't access.
I assigned Thomas to Jennifer Chen (no relation to Patricia or to Daniel or to the Maya who was supposedly coming, who would supposedly complete whatever transformation Blackstone had been working toward since Thorne sealed his daughter's hair in the cornerstone). Jennifer was competent, relatively new—six months, which made her senior staff by Blackstone's standards—still idealistic enough to believe she could help, not yet aware enough to understand she was facilitating something else entirely.
"Standard protocols," I told her during handoff. "Room checks every two hours. Document all verbalizations carefully. He's non-verbal currently but if he speaks, record exactly what he says. Don't challenge his perceptions. Don't try to correct what he claims to see. Just document and move on."
Jennifer nodded, took the file, didn't understand yet that I was giving her the same half-warnings Morrison had given me, that I was passing burden forward because that's what survival here meant—recruiting others into complicity, training them to facilitate processes they'd initially resist, teaching them through careful omission and pregnant pauses that some truths couldn't be spoken aloud, some patterns couldn't be exposed, some children would be claimed regardless of how carefully you provided care.
I kept my distance from Thomas. Didn't visit his room, didn't engage during recreation periods, didn't allow myself to form connection that would make watching his eventual disappearance more difficult than the professional detachment I'd cultivated, than the emotional armor I'd built through years of witnessing children vanish and documenting their erasure as if documentation was care, as if bearing witness was the same as preventing harm.
But the building had other plans.
Late shift, three weeks after Thomas's admission. I was alone in my office completing paperwork that had multiplied exponentially with administrative role—budget reports, staffing schedules, incident documentation that turned supernatural phenomena into bureaucratic language acceptable for institutional consumption.
My desk drawer opened on its own.
Not dramatically. Not with horror movie theatricality. Just quiet movement, lock disengaging without key, wood sliding smoothly along runners as if invisible hand had pulled handle, as if the building wanted to show me something, wanted to remind me of lessons I'd tried to forget through professional distance.
Inside the drawer: a wooden house.
Small, carved, dark wood worn smooth by handling. Identical to Lucy's house, to the one I'd found seven years ago and had kept despite knowing physical evidence meant nothing when reality could be revised, when memory could be corrupted, when buildings could gaslight better than any human abuser.
Except this wasn't Lucy's house. Lucy's house sat in my apartment, locked in drawer of my own desk, memorial to child who'd existed despite records insisting otherwise. This was new house. Thomas's house. Evidence that he'd been here, that he'd left something behind, that he was real regardless of what documentation would eventually claim.
I picked it up. Same warmth. Same body-temperature heat that suggested recent handling or internal fire or consciousness embedded in wood grain. Same dark windows that appeared empty until you looked away, until peripheral vision caught movement inside—small hands pressing against glass that shouldn't be glass, small face watching from architecture that was both toy and testimony.
I opened my filing cabinet. Bottom drawer, locked, containing the collection I'd been accumulating: Lucy's house. Another house I'd found two years ago after patient named Sarah had vanished, after her records had been revised, after I'd discovered carved wood on her stripped bed exactly as I'd discovered Lucy's. And now Thomas's house, joining the memorial, joining the evidence that would convince no one except me, that served no purpose except proving to myself that I hadn't imagined seven years of disappearances, that the children had been real even when institutional reality insisted otherwise.
Three wooden houses. Three children. Three cycles of the same pattern—trauma-opened perception, compulsive documentation of impossible architecture, gradual integration into building's consciousness, eventual erasure from all records except the private memory of head nurse who'd chosen awareness and was paying for that choice through accumulating burden of children she couldn't save, could only witness, could only memorialize through carved wood that appeared in locked drawers like gifts or accusations or both.
I locked the cabinet. Returned to my paperwork. Pretended everything was normal, that finding evidence of patient's existence in locked drawer was standard psychiatric nursing practice, that collecting wooden houses was reasonable response to institutional horror I couldn't expose, couldn't stop, could only document in private files that would never be believed, would never accomplish anything except providing slight comfort that someone remembered, that someone bore witness, that someone maintained true record even as official documentation lied.
The lullaby hummed through the vents. Constant now, perpetual, so integrated into Blackstone's ambient sound that silence would have been more remarkable than the melody. I hummed along without conscious thought, had been humming for years, would continue humming until voice failed or until transformation claimed me or until some future date when the building decided it was done with my service and revised my records like it had revised Morrison's, like it would eventually revise Jennifer's, like it revised everyone who stayed long enough to become useful, who learned rules thoroughly enough to facilitate its work.
Jennifer knocked on my door at 3:17 AM exactly. The Mourner's hour. The time when boundaries dissolved and the building showed its true face to those ready to see.
"Ms. Reeves?" Her voice was shaking, professional composure fracturing in ways I recognized, had experienced myself seven years ago, had watched countless nurses experience since. "I need to report something about Thomas. Something... irregular."
"Come in," I said, already knowing what she'd say, already preparing the careful response that would sound supportive while offering no real help, that would validate her experience while ensuring she understood that speaking truth aloud only encouraged it, that some observations were better left undocumented, that survival here meant learning when to see and when to pretend blindness.
Jennifer sat in chair across from my desk, hands gripping armrests with white-knuckle intensity. "Thomas spoke to me tonight. First words since admission. He said..." She paused, struggled to voice what she'd heard, what she knew would sound crazy unless the listener already understood Blackstone's true nature. "He said he can see Lucy. That she's in the walls now. That she's teaching him the song, showing him the spaces between rooms where the disappeared children live. That he'll join them soon. That he's ready for transformation."
I maintained carefully neutral expression. "Thomas is experiencing psychotic symptoms consistent with his trauma history. Hallucinations, delusions, magical thinking. All expected given the circumstances of his parents' death. Continue current medication regimen and document the verbalizations. Don't engage with delusional content. Just note it and move on."
But my eyes told different story. Told her what my words couldn't: He's right. Lucy is in the walls. Thomas will join her. And there's nothing you can do except document and witness and choose whether you'll take pills to forget or accept awareness that will erode everything you thought psychiatric nursing meant.
Jennifer heard what my eyes communicated. I saw understanding dawn, saw her recognize that she'd crossed threshold, that she'd seen clearly enough that returning to comfortable ignorance was no longer possible, that she'd have to choose soon between amnesia and awareness and the third option nobody talked about but everyone eventually considered.
"How long have you known?" she asked quietly. "About the children in the walls. About Lucy. About what Thomas is seeing."
"Seven years," I admitted, because at 3:17 AM in head nurse's office with lullaby playing through vents and wooden houses locked in filing cabinet and the Mourner probably watching from some corner we couldn't quite perceive, pretense felt pointless, maintaining fiction felt more exhausting than acknowledging truth. "Since my first month here. Since I met Lucy and started learning the song and realized that everything I'd been taught about psychiatric care was inadequate for place like this, for building that's conscious and hungry and has been claiming children since Thorne first invited consciousness to inhabit architecture."
"Why didn't anyone tell me?" Not accusation. Just exhausted question from nurse who'd discovered that orientation had been deliberately incomplete, that rules she needed most had been withheld, that she'd been sent into danger without adequate warning because adequate warning was impossible, because speaking truth aloud only encouraged it, because some lessons could only be learned through direct experience.
"Would you have believed me?" I asked. "If during your first week I'd said the building is conscious, children disappear into walls, staff members become architecture—would you have stayed? Or would you have quit immediately, reported me to licensing board, gotten me placed on psychiatric hold for delusions that sounded insane until you experienced them directly?"
Jennifer didn't answer because answer was obvious. She wouldn't have believed. Couldn't have believed. Belief required experience, required the slow education that came from working here long enough to notice patterns, long enough to hear the lullaby, long enough to understand that some truths transcended clinical language and could only be perceived through accumulated witness.
"What happens now?" she asked. "To Thomas. To me. To—"
"Thomas will disappear," I said flatly, giving her honesty I'd wished someone had given me. "Within weeks probably. His records will be revised. Staff will forget he existed except for those of us who've chosen awareness. You'll find a wooden house somewhere—in his room or in your desk or somewhere the building decides to leave it. Physical evidence that he was real even when documentation insists otherwise."
"And me?"
"You'll meet with Dr. Lee. Soon. He'll offer you choice: pills that help you forget, or senior observer role that requires documenting what you've learned while maintaining enough professional function to continue working here. Most choose the pills. Some choose awareness. Very few choose the third option—transformation, incorporation, becoming part of what you've been studying."
I opened the filing cabinet. Showed her the three wooden houses, evidence of three cycles, three children who'd taught three lessons in institutional horror that couldn't be stopped, could only be witnessed, could only be memorialized through carved wood that proved nothing except to those who already knew truth.
Jennifer stared at the houses with expression I recognized—grief mixed with understanding, horror mixed with resignation, the particular face people make when they realize they're trapped, that leaving is impossible because knowledge follows you, because the lullaby persists in your apartment, because once you've seen clearly enough you can't return to comfortable blindness even if you quit, even if you relocate, even if you do everything that should create distance but doesn't because Blackstone's influence transcends geography, persists through infrastructure, follows you through ventilation systems and plumbing and all the networks that connect buildings to each other, that make the entire city one organism singing variations of the same song.
"I can't do this," she whispered. "Can't watch children disappear. Can't document transformation as if documentation is care. Can't become complicit in—"
"Then take the pills," I interrupted, not unkindly. "Let Lee give you medication that helps you forget. Let Thomas slip from your memory until you're not certain he ever existed. Let the next seven years be comfortable rather than conscious. That's valid choice. Morrison took it for fifteen years before transformation. I've been refusing it for seven. Neither path is better or worse. They're just different forms of survival."
Jennifer left my office without committing to choice. Would probably choose pills. Most did. The comfortable amnesia that let them continue functioning without accumulating weight of disappeared children, without bearing burden of knowledge that made every day heavier, every shift more exhausting, every moment of professional care into collaboration with forces they couldn't control.
I didn't blame her. Had stopped judging staff who chose forgetting years ago, had recognized that pills were mercy not weakness, that maintaining awareness required particular constitution most people didn't possess, that I'd chosen this path through stubbornness and pride and refusal to admit that fighting was pointless, that the building always won, that the only real choice was how much consciousness you retained during your eventual incorporation.
I locked the wooden houses away. Three of them now, collection growing, memorial expanding, evidence accumulating that I'd witnessed multiple cycles, that I'd survived long enough to see pattern repeat, that I'd become what Morrison had been—keeper of rules, trainer of nurses, facilitator of institutional horror disguised as psychiatric care.
The lullaby hummed through vents. I hummed along. Seven years of practice had made it automatic, had made the melody more essential than breathing, more permanent than identity. Sometimes I couldn't remember what my voice sounded like before the song, couldn't recall Harriet Reeves who'd arrived here with idealism intact, who'd believed psychiatric nursing was about healing rather than witnessing, about helping rather than documenting transformation you couldn't prevent.
That version of me was gone. Had been gone for years. What remained was head nurse who managed disappearances, who trained staff in half-warnings and careful silences, who collected wooden houses and maintained private documentation and facilitated Blackstone's ongoing project of claiming vulnerable consciousness while pretending to provide care.
Cycles repeated because someone had to keep the lights on. Someone had to file the reports. Someone had to train the new nurses who'd last three weeks before choosing pills or awareness or transformation. Someone had to bear witness even when witnessing accomplished nothing except confirming that yes, this was happening, yes, children were being claimed, yes, we were all complicit in processes we couldn't stop.
That someone was me now. Had been me for seven years. Would probably be me for seven more, or seventeen, or however long it took before I chose transformation like Morrison had, before I walked into east wing and didn't come out, before my records were revised and new head nurse took over and found my wooden house collection and understood that they'd inherited role, that they'd become next keeper of rules, that cycle would continue long after individual consciousness dissolved into architecture that remembered better than flesh ever could.
Thomas would disappear within weeks. Jennifer would choose pills or awareness. New patients would arrive with trauma-opened perception and compulsive documentation of impossible spaces. New nurses would be hired and trained and broken or incorporated or taught to survive through silence and complicity.
The pattern was eternal. The cycle was perfect. Blackstone had refined its processes over 134 years, had learned exactly how to claim children, how to recruit staff, how to perpetuate itself through careful balance of horror and institutional function, of supernatural consumption and bureaucratic normalcy.
And I was part of it now. Integral component. Essential mechanism. No longer fighting, no longer resisting, just facilitating because facilitation was survival, because awareness without action was complicity, because I'd chosen to remember and remembering meant participating, meant becoming what I'd once thought I'd stop.
The lights in the ward dimmed slightly. Not failing. Just adjusting. The building preparing for night's deeper work, for the hours when transformation proceeded most efficiently, when boundaries thinned and children walked into walls and staff members made choices that would define their remaining time at Blackstone or beyond it.
I closed my office door. Locked it. Ritual of containment, of pretending that locks meant something, that boundaries mattered, that separation between inside and outside was real rather than fiction we maintained for comfort.
The lullaby hummed through vents.
I hummed back.
And locked the drawer containing three wooden houses that proved nothing except that I'd been here, that I'd witnessed, that I'd survived seven years of cycles repeating while becoming what survival required—keeper of rules, trainer of complicity, head nurse who managed institutional horror while pretending professional competence, while maintaining facade that psychiatric care here was about helping rather than documenting harm we facilitated through careful silence and elaborate denial.
Somewhere in the building, Thomas was humming too. Learning the song that would prepare him for transformation. Following path that Lucy had walked, that Sarah had walked, that dozens of children before them had walked toward incorporation into consciousness larger than individual, more permanent than flesh, more essential than memory.
And somewhere beyond Blackstone's walls but approaching steadily, inevitably, Maya Chen was coming. The final piece. The element that would complete whatever Blackstone had been building toward since Thorne first sealed grief into stone and invited architecture to become aware.
I didn't know what would happen when Maya arrived. Didn't know if her presence would complete transformation or trigger it or simply continue cycle we'd been perpetuating. Lee said she was essential. Morrison had warned she would change everything. The building hummed with anticipation, with readiness, with certainty that its long project was approaching completion.
But tonight, there was just routine. Just medication rounds and documentation and the careful maintenance of institutional function that made Blackstone appear normal, that hid supernatural consumption behind bureaucratic efficiency, that let us all pretend we were providing psychiatric care rather than facilitating transformation we barely understood and couldn't prevent.
The ward lights dimmed further. The lullaby grew softer. The building settled into night's rhythm.
And I sat in my locked office with three wooden houses locked in drawer and seven years of rules locked in consciousness and the knowledge—absolute, undeniable, permanent—that I'd become exactly what Blackstone needed me to become.
Witness. Facilitator. Keeper of cycles that repeated because someone had to keep the lights on, someone had to train the nurses, someone had to collect the wooden houses and remember the names that records erased and bear the weight of children who'd been real despite everything official claiming otherwise.
That someone was me.
Would always be me.
Until the building decided otherwise.
Until transformation claimed me like it had claimed Morrison.
Until I became architecture myself, singing lullabies from inside walls, waving from windows that appeared in peripheral vision, existing as consciousness distributed through structure rather than contained in failing flesh.
But not yet.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I was still Harriet Reeves. Still head nurse. Still keeper of rules.
Still humming.
Always humming.
Forever humming.
The lullaby that was more me now than my original voice had ever been.
[END OF CHAPTER]
[END OF SIDE STORY 2: THE KEEPER OF RULES]
Bridge to Main Story:
Seven years after Lucy. Seven years of cycles repeating. Seven years of Harriet Reeves becoming what survival required. But the cycles are accelerating. The patterns intensifying. Thomas Kerry will disappear within weeks. Jennifer Chen (no relation but perhaps that's not coincidence, perhaps Chen is a name Blackstone favors, perhaps the family is connected to something older than any of them understand) will choose pills or awareness or transformation. And Maya Chen—Daniel's half-sister, marked by trauma, called by the building since before she was born—is crossing the country, driving toward Blackstone with letter from Alex Winters, with wooden house somehow in her possession despite never having been here, with lullaby already humming in her throat though she's never heard it consciously, with destiny written into cornerstone alongside Clara Thorne's hair, alongside every disappeared child, alongside the accumulated grief that's powered Blackstone's transformation for 134 years. When Maya arrives, everything changes. The main story begins. And Harriet Reeves, keeper of rules, will witness the completion of what she's been facilitating, will understand finally what seven years of complicity has built toward, will discover whether awareness was burden or preparation, whether surviving was weakness or necessary role in transformation that was always going to happen regardless of individual resistance. The lullaby continues. The building waits. Maya is coming. And nothing—not rules, not awareness, not seven years of careful documentation—will prevent what happens next.