Page 1 of Something Worth Keeping
Chapter One
“Actually, the provenance chain you’ve entered is incomplete.”
Julian tapped his pen against the ledger, not looking up from the page. He was working late again. Around him, the archive’s fluorescent lights buzzed, a persistent hum that most people filtered out but that he catalogued as a sixty-cycle frequency with a loose ballast in fixture J-7. Someone needed to replace it. He’d filed three maintenance requests, but it would appear they were being ignored.
His supervisor, Patricia Holbrook, stopped mid-stride. Her heels clicked once more against the linoleum before silence stretched between them.
“I’m sorry?” Her tone suggested she wasn’t sorry at all.
“The Bellamy Estate donation.” Julian traced the entry with his finger, leaving a small graphite smudge he’d need to erase later. “You’ve listed the acquisition date as March 15th, but the Bellamy family attorney didn’t sign the transfer documents until March 22nd. I have the original paperwork in box 47-C, second shelf, filed under ‘Estate Donations, 2024, B through D.’ The chain of custody is broken if we use the earlier date.”
Patricia’s jaw tightened. She smoothed her blazer, a navy blue monstrosity with shoulder pads that had gone out of style in the nineties and never returned. Julian knew this because he’d accidentally read an entire fashion history book while cross-referencing textile preservation techniques.
“Mr. Purdy, I’ve been running this archive for fifteen years.”
“Sixteen years and four months,” Julian corrected, then caught himself. He forced a smile, the expression pulled tight across his face in what he hoped was a friendly expression. His sister had told him that smiling helped his delivery. It didn’t seem to be working, much like the maintenance department. “Sorry. I just meant the personnel records indicate you started in August of 2008, so it’s actually sixteen years. But that’s excellent. Very impressive tenure.”
The smile clearly hadn’t helped. Patricia’s knuckles whitened around her clipboard. “The date is correct as entered.”
“But it isn’t.” Julian blinked, dropping his smile, confused by the disconnect between reality and her statement. “I can show you the documentation. It’ll only take a minute to pull the file.Well, forty-five seconds if I don’t have to move the stepstool.”
“My office. Now.”
Twenty minutes later, Julian pushed through the library’s side entrance into the November night, a cardboard box tucked under his arm. He hadn’t been fired - Patricia had been very clear about that. She was planning to discuss his “situation” with Mr. Pendergast, the library’s manager, at the earliest opportunity. In the meantime, Julian had been “suspended pending a review of attitude and workplace conduct.”
Julian knew he couldn’t be fired, but discussions with management didn’t happen overnight. He would be a week without pay, possibly two or more, and that would mean he’d have to take time adjusting his monthly income and expenditure sheets. And that same suspension had come with the advice for him to “collect yourthings,” Julian assumed in case the outcome of the discussion wasn’t positive.
It’s not like he hadn’t shown her the documentation because he had. She’d turned an interesting shade of crimson - Pantone 185 C would be the closest approximation - and told him that being correct wasn’t the same as being right.
Which made absolutely no logical sense at all. But Julian had nodded anyway and gone to collect his things.
The box contained his spare sweater, three pens, a half-eaten bag of pretzels, and the small succulent plant his sister had given him for his birthday the previous year. Unfortunately, the plant was dying, and Julian wasn’t going to leave it behind for that reason alone. He still couldn’t work out what was wrong with the plant. He’d followed the careinstructions exactly, but it browned anyway, proving that even botanical specimens could be disappointingly imprecise.Or is it possible that my water-to-soil ratio is incorrect?
Julian adjusted his glasses and headed home. Eighteen blocks was typically a twenty-three-minute walk at his average pace. The temperature had dropped to forty-two degrees, with the wind from the northwest at eight miles per hour.I should’ve grabbed a heavier jacket this morning.
The street stretched before him, halogen lights creating pools of sickly yellow every thirty feet. Traffic had thinned to the occasional taxi and a bus that rattled past belching diesel exhaust. He could take his usual route along Kensington Avenue, well-lit and populated - although slightly less because of the time and weather - or cut through the warehousedistrict and shave seven minutes off his trip.
Considering his fingers were already going numb, the warehouse district route seemed more prudent.
The alley between Merchant Street and the old car parts factory had been closed to vehicle traffic since 2019, when the city council had voted to redirect commercial routes. Julian knew this because he’d archived the city planning documents. The path was wide enough for foot traffic, lined with dumpsters and the occasional loading dock that jutted out like broken teeth.
His footsteps echoed off brick walls. Somewhere ahead, metal scraped against pavement.
Julian rounded the corner and stopped, double-blinking and checking that his glasses were still in place. They were.I haven’t seen anything like that before.
The thing crouched in the center of the alley wasn’t entirely solid. Shadows peeled off its form like smoke, curling and reforming, too dark for the ambient light. It wore the shape of a man, the way Julian wore his cardigan - as a suggestion, not a commitment. The being was tall, and it would appear it was broad-shouldered, although that could’ve been an illusion. The edges of the being blurred and moved, making them difficult to track in the dim light, and there were too many angles where there should have been curves. The darkness gathered thickest around its hands - hands that were currently gripping a man’s torso.
The man – victim would be a more apt term - didn’t scream. Actually, Julian corrected himself, the victim couldn’t scream. His mouth was open, yes, but his eyes were wide and unseeing. The man’s skin was anunusual gray tone that suggested death rather than a skincare regimen gone wrong. It looked, Julian realized, as if some form of energy was being pulled from the body. It wasn’t blood, but something less tangible.
Not a vampire then.
The shadow-thing tilted its head, and Julian glimpsed what might have been a face - sharp features, severe, with eyes that swallowed light.
The victim’s body began to crumble, desiccating like time-lapse footage of decay. In thirty seconds, maybe less, the man went from solid to husk. The shadow-thing released him, and the corpse hit the pavement with a sound like kindling breaking.
Then those lightless eyes fixed on Julian.
Julian looked at the body, then at the dumpster three feet away. It was agreen, municipal issue, with a lid hanging open, revealing it was already at full capacity. He glanced back at the shadow-thing, which had gone entirely still.
