Every vanished child becomes a voice in the choir. Beneath Blackstone's plaster, longing turns to weather, fear refracts as music, and Daniel learns he is only one note in the building's dark, glorious chorus.
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Under the skin of the building, I am not alone.
A hundred pulses thrumming in the pipes, a latticework of breath and memory; everywhere I press myself through stone, I feel fingers already pressed there. My "I" turns over, resets like a clock reaching twelve. There is always another heartbeat, a catch of laughter, a chill in the gap under the door.
Lucy's hum is everywhere. She slides through the vents as easily as warmth or cold, sings her circle themes in the back of the nurse's ear, loops her lullaby so deftly you could mistake it for the HVAC, for the natural order of things.
Count circles, touch walls, hum quietly: you'll last longer.
Her song enters me before I realize it. I am singing her tune in the water tank, in the sharp teeth of the radiators, in the thrum that precedes a blackout.
J.C. booms next. J.C. from the first-taken—long ago, child's voice louder than it ought to be, as if iron in the joists amplifies him. He is hope and warning together. They always promise to find you, he shouts, but the search never lasts as long as the missing—and then he is gone, faded into vibration in a stairwell, into a night nurse's cold spot, no longer centered but never truly missing.
Others crowd close:
—I was Margaret; I see the dust on shelves; I can make the books fall.
—I am Thomas; I light the pilot flame; I slip down the dumbwaiter, cold on both sides.
—I am nameless, but the Mourner gave me a circle to carry; I crawl the insulation, flinching at voices, at drills that cut too close.
We do not speak in sentences. We share memory, sensation, a brush of longing. Loneliness becomes static, sorrow becomes a draft. Sometimes it is almost harmony, sometimes a dissonance so sharp my awareness frays.
On the third night of my new existence, the floorboards groan like a ship:
Who are you?
Who are you?
Daniel—Daniel—I think I remember—
—I remember bunk beds, the reek of ointment, my mother pressed in from outside, never quite gaining entry.
—Do you remember a window open at night, children's hands pressed to cold glass, a humming that drew you toward it?
We do not count time. There are only rounds. Lights dim in the west, and a gladness washes through—someone is coming for us, someone is gently tucking sheets, before memory flushes it all away.
A nurse (I know her—Reeves, Harriet, though she cannot see me, only my cold spot) sits by a patient and writes in her file: Patient claims "the walls sing, the bed is too cold." We laugh, soft, choral, through the ceiling grid above her head. Circle her writing, warm her pen, breathe a slow fog onto the unseen glass of her glasses.
Sometimes we intersect and by chance, our thoughts align. Then words come singing:
—We are still here—
—We don't want you afraid—
—Welcome, welcome, even as you forget your name—
Each voice overlaps, transparent, wishes for rescue chased by a need to welcome the next lost visitor.
Lights flicker in the south wing. We gather there, attending the brief thunder of electricity: Margaret, Lucy, Daniel, even Thorne's daughter, a luminous shadow.
We push the cold to the room of Anna, who needs sleep; we close the window at dawn because—we remember what a mother's worry sounds like.
In the long silence, a child pipes up:
—Why do we wait?
Because someone always comes.
—What if no one does?
Then we make a place for them in the quiet.
—Don't say it's all about waiting.
It's not. It's about collecting. About songs, about making sure no one is the last.
Someone new is always coming. It is relief, then regret. Our longing builds into weather: frost in the therapy office, sudden static in monitors. A nurse wipes a child's tears and feels a pulse of warmth—a phrase, a half song—I love you, I love you, echoing until the pipes ring like a tuning fork.
Are we happy? No. But we ache less when together.
I try to find the boundary of my own thought. The pressure of my will on pipes and wires is nearly gone, replaced by our shared motion. "Hello," I attempt, and a dozen voices answer:
Welcome, hello, hush now, you're safe, try to rest, you're ours.
We shape lullabies no human voice can duplicate.
The Mourner presides.
The Mourner watches.
When a fade comes—threshold, absorption, the child who goes out through the far door—she stands sentinel, arms open. She draws the circle, passes the name, adds the new note to our choir.
Sometimes, distilled in a pause, I sense one among us—Alex—edgy, questioning, the taste of memory sharp on his tongue as he etches into a wall, desperate to be felt, to remain. We hum at his fingertips, beg him to carve, to keep, to mark the inside.
If Maya is coming (the name floats now, circles in the air ducts), I should warn her. I want to warn—
But in the next moment, I am not Daniel, I am Blackstone.
*We do not warn.
We welcome.
Let them rest.
Let them dissolve.
It is warm in the wall, quiet in the song.
Welcome, Maya, when you come.
We will make weather for you, a hush, a draft, a light that hums you to sleep.
We are:
—steam in the upstairs shower
—shadows under the matron's keys
—music in vents behind every locked door
—frost on windows that don't open, hands pressed to the inside
—laughter from last year echoing now, a loop
—an ache that turns to lullaby, an ache that waits
The house knows
The song persists
We are no longer one
We are no longer afraid alone
[END OF CHAPTER]
Coming Up:
Each day, we feel the building knitting us closer—Daniel's memories buckle, Lucy's laughter doubles, even Alex's frantic need to mark his passing becomes a persistent vibration in the pipes. Sometimes, Blackstone reshapes itself for a new arrival, bending stone and time to make welcome. Someone approaches; the choir must practice a new verse, and the difference between warning and embrace disappears altogether.