The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  You’re telling me about the Archive again, something about the way it changes and grows, but I am not really listening. I’m twirling the silver ring on my finger. I need it now. Fractured bits of memory and feeling are starting to get through whenever someone touches me. They’re not jarring or violent yet, just kind of messy. I told you that and you told me it would get worse, and you looked sorry when you said it. You said it was genetic, the potential, but it doesn’t manifest until the predecessor makes the choice. And you chose me. I hope you weren’t sorry. I’m not sorry. I’m only sorry that as I get stronger, you seem to get weaker.

  “Are you listening?” you ask, because it’s obvious I’m not.

  “I don’t want you to die,” I say, surprising us both, and the whole moment hardens, stops, as your eyes hold mine. And then you soften and shift in your seat, and I think I can hear your bones moving.

  “What are you afraid of, Kenzie?” you ask.

  You said you passed the job to me and I can’t help but wonder if that’s why you’re getting worse now. Fading faster. “Losing you.”

  “Nothing’s lost. Ever.”

  I’m pretty sure you’re just trying to make me feel better, half expect you to say something like I’ll live on in your heart. But you would never say that.

  “You think I tell you stories just to hear my own voice? I mean what I said. Nothing’s lost. That’s what the Archive’s for.”

  Wood and stone and colored glass, and all throughout, a sense of peace…

  “That’s where we go when we die? To the Archive?”

  “You don’t, not exactly, but your History does.” And then you start using your “Pay Attention” voice, the one that makes words stick to me and never let go. “You know what a History is?”

  “It’s the past,” I say.

  “No, Kenzie. That’s history with a little h. I mean History with a big H. A History is…” You pull out a cigarette, roll it between your fingers. “You might think of it as a ghost, but that’s not what it is, really. Histories are records.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of us. Of everyone. Imagine a file of your entire life, of every moment, every experience. All of it. Now, instead of a folder or a book, imagine the data is kept in a body.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “However they looked when they died. Well, before they died. No fatal wounds or bloated corpses. The Archive wouldn’t find that tasteful. And the body’s just a shell for the life inside.”

  “Like a book cover?”

  “Yes.” You put the cigarette in your mouth, but know better than to light it in the house. “A cover tells you something about a book. A body tells you something about a History.”

  I bite my lip. “So…when you die, a copy of your life gets put in the Archive?”

  “Exactly.”

  I frown.

  “What is it, Kenzie?”

  “If the Outer is where we live, and the Archive is where our Histories go, what are the Narrows for?”

  You smile grimly. “The Narrows are a buffer between the two. Sometimes a History wakes up. Sometimes Histories get out, through the cracks in the Archive, and into those Narrows. And when that happens, it’s the Keeper’s job to send them back.”

  “What’s a Keeper?”

  “It’s what I am,” you say, pointing to the ring on your hand. “What you’ll be,” you add, pointing to my own ring.

  I can’t help but smile. You chose me. “I’m glad I get to be like you.”

  You squeeze my hand and make a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh, and say, “Good thing. Because you haven’t got a choice.”

  Doors to the Narrows are everywhere.

  Most of them started out as actual doors, but the problem is that buildings change—walls go down, walls go up—and these doors, once they’re made, don’t. What you end up with are cracks, the kind most people wouldn’t even notice, slight disturbances where the two worlds—the Narrows and the Outer—run into each other. It’s easy when you know what you’re looking for.

  But even with good eyes, finding a Narrows door can take a while. I had to search my old neighborhood for two days to find the nearest one, which turned out to be halfway down the alley behind the butcher shop.

  I think of the ripple in the fleur-de-lis paper in the lobby, and smile.

  I head for the nearest stairwell—there are two sets, the south stairs at my end of the hall, and the north stairs at the far end, past the metal cages—when something makes me stop.

  A tiny gap, a vertical shadow on the dust-dull yellow wallpaper. I walk over to the spot and square myself to the wall, letting my eyes adjust to the crack that is most definitely there. The sense of victory fades a little. Two doors so close together? Maybe the crack in the lobby was just that—a crack.

  This crack, however, is something more. It cuts down the wall between apartments 3D and 3C, in a stretch of space without any ghosted doors, a dingy patch interrupted only by a painting of the sea in an old white frame. I frown and slide the silver ring from my finger and feel the shift, like a screen being removed. Now when I stare at the crack, I see it, right in the center of the seam. A keyhole.

  The ring works like a blinder. It shields me—as much as it can—from the living, and blocks my ability to read the impressions they leave on things. But it also blinds me to the Narrows. I can’t see the doors, let alone step through them.

  I pull Da’s key from around my neck, running a thumb over the teeth the way he used to. For luck. Da used to rub the key, cross himself, kiss his fingers and touch them to the wall—any number of things. He used to say he could use a little more luck.

  I slide the key into the keyhole and watch as the teeth vanish into the wall. First comes the whisper of metal against metal. Then the Narrows door surfaces, floating like a body up through water until it presses against the yellow paper. Last, a single strand of crisp light draws itself around the frame, signaling that the door is ready.

  If someone came down the hall right now, they wouldn’t see the door. But they would hear the click of the lock as I turned Da’s rusted key, and then they would see me step straight through the yellow paper into nothing.

  There’s no sky in the Narrows, but it always feels like night, smells like night. Night in a city after rain. On top of that there’s a breeze, faint but steady, carrying stale air through the halls. Like you’re in an air shaft.

  I knew what the Narrows looked like long before I saw them. I had this image in my head, drawn by Da year after year. Close your eyes and picture this: a dark alley, just wide enough for you to spread your arms and skim the rough walls on either side with your fingers. You look up and see…nothing, just the walls running up and up and up into black. The only light comes from the doors that line the walls, their outlines giving off a faint glow, their keyholes letting in beams of light that show like threads in the dusty air. It is enough light to see by, but not enough to see well.

  Fear floats up my throat, a primal thing, a physical twinge as I step through, close the door behind me, and hear the voices. Not true voices, really, but murmurs and whispers and words stretched thin by distance. They could be halls, or whole territories, away. Sounds travel here in the Narrows, coil through the corridors, bounce off walls, find you from miles away, ghostlike and diffused. They can lead you astray.

  The corridors stretch out like a web or a subway, branching, crossing, the walls interrupted only by those doors. City blocks’ worth of doors mere feet apart, space compressed. Most of them are locked. All of them are marked.

  Coded. Every Keeper has a system, a way to tell a good door from a bad one; I cannot count the number of X’s and slashes and circles and dots scribbled against each door and then rubbed away. I pull a thin piece of chalk from my pocket—it’s funny, the things you learn to keep on you at all times—and use it to draw a quick Roman numeral I on the door I just came through, right above the keyhole (the doors here have no handles, can’t even
be tried without a key). The number is bright and white over the dozens of old, half-ruined marks.

  I turn to consider the hall and the multitude of doors lining it. Most of them are locked—inactive, Da called them—doors that lead back into the Outer, to different rooms in different houses, disabled because they go places where no Keeper is currently stationed. But the Narrows is a buffer zone, a middle ground, studded with ways out. Some doors lead to and from the Archive. Others lead to Returns, which isn’t its own world, but it might as well be. A place where even Keepers aren’t allowed to go. And right now, with a History on my list, that’s the door I need to find.

  I test the door to the right of Door I, and to my surprise it’s unlocked, and opens onto the Coronado’s lobby. So it wasn’t just a ripple in the wallpaper after all. Good to know. An old woman ambles past, oblivious to the portal, and I tug the door shut again and draw a II above the keyhole.

  I take a step back to consider the numbered doors, set side by side—my ways out—and then continue down the hall, testing every lock. None of the other doors budge, and I mark each one with an X. There’s this sound, a fraction louder than the others, a thud thud thud like muffled steps, but only a fool hunts down a History before finding a place to send him, so I quicken my pace, rounding a corner and testing two more doors before one finally gives.

  The lock turns and the door opens, this time into a room made of light, blinding and edgeless. I draw back and close the door, blinking away little white dots as I mark its surface with a circle and quickly shade it in. Returns. I turn to the next door over and don’t even bother to test the lock before I draw a circle, this one hollow. The Archive. The nice thing about the Archive doors is that they’re always to the right of Returns, so if you can find one, you’ve found the other.

  And now it’s time to find Emma.

  I flex my hands and bring my fingers to the wall, the silver ring safely in my pocket. Histories and humans alike have to touch a surface to leave an impression, which is why the floors here are made of the same concrete as the walls. So I can read the entire hallway with a touch. If Emma set a foot here, I’ll see it.

  The surface of the wall hums beneath my hands. I close my eyes and press down. Da used to say there was a thread in the wall, and you had to reach, reach right through the wall until you catch hold of that thread and not let go. The humming spreads up my fingers, numbing them as I focus. I squeeze my eyes shut harder and reach, and feel the thread tickling my palms. I catch hold, and my hands go numb. Behind my eyes the darkness shifts, flickers, and then the Narrows take shape again, a smudged version of the present, distorted. I see myself standing here, touching the wall, and guide the memory away.

  It plays like a skipping film reel, winding back from present to past, flickering on the insides of my eyelids. The name showed on my list an hour ago, when Emma Claring’s escape was registered, so I shouldn’t have to go back far. When I twist the memories back two hours and find no sign of her, I pull away from the wall and open my eyes. The past of the Narrows vanishes, replaced by an only slightly brighter but definitely clearer present. I head down the hall to the next branching corridor and try again: closing my eyes, reaching, catching hold, winding time forward and back, sweeping the last hour for signs of—

  A History flickers in the frame, her small form winding down the hall to a corner just ahead, then turning left. I blink and let go of the wall, the Narrows sharpening as I follow, turn the corner, and find…a dead end. More accurately, a territory break, a plane of wall marked by a glowing keyhole. Keepers have access only to their own territories, so the speck of light serves as nothing more than a stop sign. But it does keep the Histories from getting too far away; and sitting on the floor right in front of the break is a girl.

  Emma Claring sits in the hall, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. She’s not wearing any shoes, only grass-stained shorts and a T-shirt; and she’s so small that the corridor seems almost cavernous around her.

  “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”

  She rocks back and forth as she says it, the beat of her body against the wall making the thud thud thud I heard earlier. She squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them wide, panic edging into her voice when the Narrows don’t disappear.

  She’s obviously slipping.

  “Wake up,” the girl pleads again.

  “Emma,” I say, and she startles.

  Two terrified eyes swivel toward me in the dark. The pupils are spreading, the black chewing away the color around them. She whimpers but doesn’t recognize me yet. That’s good. When Histories slip far enough, they start to see other people when they look at you. They see whomever it is they want or need or hate or love or remember, and it makes the confusion worse. Makes them fall faster into madness.

  I take a slow step forward. She buries her face in her arms and continues whispering.

  I kneel in front of her. “I’m here to help you,” I say.

  Emma Claring doesn’t look up. “Why can’t I wake up?” she whispers. Her voice hitches.

  “Some dreams,” I say, “are harder to shake.”

  Her rocking slows, and her head rolls side to side against her arms.

  “But do you know what’s great about dreams?” I mimic the tone my mother used to use with me, with Ben. Soothing, patient. “Once you know you’re in a dream, you can control it. You can change it. You can find a way out.”

  Emma looks up at me over her crossed arms, eyes shining and wide.

  “Do you want me to show you how?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “I want you to close your eyes”—she does—“and imagine a door.” I look around at this stretch of hall, every door unmarked, and wish I’d taken the time to find another Returns door nearby. “Now, on the door, I want you to imagine a white circle, filled in. And behind the door, I want you to imagine a room filled with light. Nothing but light. Can you see it?”

  The girl nods.

  “Okay. Open your eyes.” I push myself up. “Let’s go find your door.”

  “But there are so many,” she whispers.

  I smile. “It will be an adventure.”

  She reaches out and takes my hand. I stiffen on instinct, even though I know her touch is simply that, a touch, so unlike the wave of thought and feeling that comes with grazing a living person’s skin. She may be full of memories, but I can’t see them. Only the Librarians in the Archive know how to read the dead.

  Emma looks up at me, and I give her hand a small squeeze and lead her back around the corner and down the hall, trying to retrace my steps. As we weave through the Narrows, I wonder what made her wake up. The vast majority of names on my list are children and teens, restless but not necessarily bad—just those who died before they could fully live. What kind of kid was she? What did she die of? And then I hear Da’s voice, warning about curiosity. I know there’s a reason Keepers aren’t taught to read Histories. To us, their pasts are irrelevant.

  I feel Emma’s hand twist nervously in mine.

  “It’s okay,” I say quietly as we reach another hall of unmarked doors. “We’ll find it.” I hope. I haven’t exactly had a wealth of time to learn the layout of this place, but just as I’m starting to fidget too, we turn onto another corridor, and there it is.

  Emma pulls free and runs up to the door, stretching her small fingers over the chalk circle. They come away white as I get the key in the lock and turn, and the Returns door opens, showering us both in brilliant light. Emma gasps.

  For a moment, there is nothing but light. Like I promised.

  “See?” I say, pressing my hand against her back and guiding her forward, over the threshold and into Returns.

  Emma is just turning back to see why I haven’t followed her when I close my eyes and pull the door firmly shut between us. There’s no crying, no pounding on the door; only a deathly quiet from the other side. I stand there for several moments with my key in the lock, something like guilt fluttering behind my ribs. It fades as fa
st. I remind myself that Returning is merciful. Returning puts the Histories back to sleep, ends the nightmare of their ghostly waking. Still, I hate the fear that laces the younger eyes when I lock them in.

  I sometimes wonder what happens in Returns, how the Histories go back to the lifeless bodies on the Archive shelves. Once, with this boy, I stayed to see, waited in the doorway of the infinite white (I knew better than to step inside). But nothing happened, not until I left. I know because I finally closed the door, only for a second, a beat, however long it takes to lock and then unlock, and when I opened it again, the boy was gone.

  I once asked the Librarians how the Histories got out. Patrick said something about doors opening and closing. Lisa said the Archive was a vast machine, and all machines had glitches, gaps. Roland said he had no idea.

  I suppose it doesn’t matter how they get out. All that matters is they do. And when they do, they must be found. They must go back. Case open, case closed.

  I push off the door and dig the slip of Archive paper from my pocket, checking to make sure Emma’s name is gone. It is. All that’s left of her is a hand-shaped smudge in the white chalk.

  I redraw the circle and turn toward home.

  THREE

  “GET WHAT YOU WANTED from the car?” asks Dad as I walk in.

  He spares me the need to lie by flashing the car keys, which I neglected to take. Never mind that, judging by the low light through the window and the fact that every inch of the room behind him is covered with boxes, I was gone way too long. I quietly curse the Narrows and the Archive. I’ve tried wearing a watch, but it’s useless. Doesn’t matter how it’s made—the moment I leave the Outer, it stops working.

  So now I get to pick: truth or lie.

  The first trick to lying is to tell the truth as often as possible. If you start lying about everything, big and small, it becomes impossible to keep things straight, and you’ll get caught. Once suspicion is planted it becomes exponentially harder to sell the next lie.