Chapter 13: Research and Discovery.
2265 Words
Marcus called me three days later.
"Found something. Can you meet me downtown? There's a place I need to show you."
"What kind of place?"
"The city archives. Fourth and Main. Old brick building across from the courthouse."
I knew the building. Passed it every day on my way to work. Never went inside.
"When?"
"Now if you can. This closes at five."
I checked my watch. Two-thirty. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
The drive downtown was slow. Traffic backed up at every light. The city was always like this in the afternoon. Too many cars. Not enough lanes. Horns blaring. Exhaust fumes thick in the air.
I finally found parking three blocks away. Had to walk. The sidewalk was crowded. People rushing. Not looking where they were going. I dodged a woman with shopping bags. Stepped around a man on his phone.
The city archives building sat on the corner like it had been there forever. Probably had. Red brick. Four stories. Small windows with iron bars. The kind of building that looked serious. Important. Like it held secrets.
I pushed through the heavy wooden door. The lobby smelled like old paper and dust. Not unpleasant. Just old. The floor was marble. Black and white squares. My footsteps echoed.
A desk sat in the center. An elderly woman looked up when I walked in.
"Can I help you?"
"I'm meeting someone. Marcus Chen?"
"Third floor. Research room. Elevator's broken. You'll have to take the stairs."
Of course the elevator was broken.
I found the staircase. Narrow. Wooden railings worn smooth by decades of hands. The stairs creaked under my weight. Each step groaned. The sound bounced off the walls.
Third floor. The hallway stretched long and dim. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Half of them flickered. The air was cooler up here. Dry. Made my throat feel scratchy.
I found the research room at the end. Glass door with frosted panels. I could see movement inside. Pushed it open.
The room was bigger than I expected. Tables arranged in rows. Shelves lining every wall. Books. Binders. Boxes. All labeled with dates and numbers. More fluorescent lights. These ones steady. Bright enough to read by but harsh. Made everything look slightly yellow.
Marcus sat at a table in the back. Papers spread everywhere. A laptop open. Two thick binders stacked beside him. He looked up when I walked in.
"You made it. Good."
"What'd you find?"
He gestured to the chair across from him. I sat. The chair was wood. Hard. Uncomfortable. Designed to make you not want to stay long.
"Property records going back to 1890," Marcus said. He pushed one of the binders toward me. "The land where Kestrel House sits. It's been a lot of things."
I opened the binder. Old documents. Yellowed paper. Handwritten entries. Hard to read.
"Before the hotel was built in 1952, what was there?"
"A boarding house. From 1920 to 1945. Before that, apartments. Before that, a private residence. And before that..." He pulled out a specific page. "This."
I looked at the document. Dated 1892. A drawing. Architectural plans for a building.
"What am I looking at?"
"An asylum. Small one. Privately run. For people with memory problems. Dementia. Mental illness. It operated from 1892 to 1910."
My stomach dropped. "An asylum. On the same land."
"Yeah. And get this." He pulled out another document. Newspaper clipping. Faded. Fragile. "It burned down in 1910. Seven people died. The owner and six patients. They never recovered all the bodies. The basement was too damaged."
"Jesus."
"The land sat empty for eight years after that. Nobody wanted to build on it. Said it was cursed. Haunted. All the usual stuff people say after a tragedy." Marcus leaned back. "But eventually someone did build. The apartments in 1918. Then the boarding house. Then the hotel. Each building on the exact same foundation."
"The same foundation as the asylum."
"Exactly. Thomas Hartley's grandfather built the hotel using the original basement. The original foundation. He probably thought he was being practical. Saving money. But he was building on top of a place where people died. Where people with memory problems lived and suffered."
I thought about what Selene had said. About the building's consciousness being older than 1952. About the land underneath remembering things from before.
"You think the asylum is connected to the Anamnex."
"I think the Anamnex started there. In that basement. With those people and their memories." Marcus pulled up something on his laptop. "Look at this. I found mentions of the asylum in old medical journals. They were experimenting with memory treatments. Trying to help people remember. Preserve their memories before they faded completely."
He turned the laptop toward me. Scanned pages from a journal. Dated 1905.
"Dr. Edmund Price. The asylum's director. He believed memory could be transferred. Stored outside the human body. He was trying to create something he called 'memory architecture.' Spaces that would hold memories. Keep them safe."
"That's exactly what the Anamnex does."
"Right. What if he succeeded? What if he figured out how to make spaces hold memory? And then when the building burned, when he and his patients died, their memories got trapped. Embedded in the foundation. In the land itself."
"And every building built on top of it inherited that ability."
"Yeah. The asylum started it. But each new building added to it. More memories. More people. Until the Anamnex became what it is now."
I sat back. The chair creaked. My mind was racing. This explained so much. Why the building felt old. Why it took people. Why it held onto memory so desperately.
"Did you find anything about Dr. Price? His methods? How he did it?"
"Some. Not much. Most of his research burned with the asylum. But I found a few letters he wrote to colleagues. He talked about using architectural design. Specific materials. Certain patterns in the layout. He believed physical spaces could be designed to trap and hold memory."
"Like a container."
"Exactly. And Kestrel House is that container. Has been for over a century. Just getting stronger with each building. Each person it takes."
I looked at the papers spread across the table. Decades of history. Tragedies. Deaths. Memories trapped and preserved.
"Does this help us? Knowing where it started?"
"Maybe. If we understand how Dr. Price created the effect, maybe we can reverse it. Or at least weaken it. Find a way to free Selene."
"How do we find out more? If his research burned."
"The foundation. The original basement. It's still there under Kestrel House. Your renovations never touched it. It's been sealed off since the fire. But the answers might be down there. His equipment. His notes. Anything that survived."
"You want me to go into a sealed basement from a burned asylum."
"I want us to go. Together. With Selene. She knows the deeper parts of the Anamnex. She might be able to guide us to the original space. The core."
I thought about that. About going deeper into the building. Into spaces even Selene feared.
"When?"
"Soon. This week if possible. The longer Selene stays trapped, the more she risks fading like the others. We need to act."
He was right. But the thought of going down there made my hands sweat. The building already felt dangerous. Going into its core felt like walking into the mouth of something that wanted to consume us.
"Let me talk to Selene. See what she thinks."
"Okay. But Lyric? Be careful. The building knows you're looking for answers. It's probably watching. Preparing."
"Preparing for what?"
"To stop you. Or to take you. Buildings that eat people don't give them up easily."
We spent another hour going through the documents. Marcus had done good work. Thorough. He'd found newspaper articles about the asylum. Death records. Property transfers. Everything that told the building's story.
By the time we left it was almost five. The archive building was closing. We walked down the stairs together. Out onto the street.
The evening air hit me. Warm. Humid. Smelled like car exhaust and someone's cigarette. The sun was low. Orange light slanting between buildings. Shadows long on the sidewalk.
"Thanks for this," I said. "For doing all this research."
"Of course. You're my friend. Selene's important to you. That makes her important to me." Marcus pulled out his keys. "Let me know what she says. About going to the basement."
"I will."
We walked to our cars separately. I sat in mine for a minute before starting it. Thinking. Processing.
An asylum. Memory experiments. A fire that killed seven people. All of it buried under Kestrel House.
No wonder the building was the way it was. No wonder it took people. It had been doing this for over a hundred years. Started by a doctor who wanted to preserve memory and ended up creating something that consumed it.
I needed to tell Selene. Needed to see if she knew about the basement. If she'd ever gone that deep.
I drove to Kestrel House. The building looked normal in the evening light. Just another downtown structure. Red brick and tall windows. Nothing sinister. Nothing strange.
But I knew better now. Knew what lived underneath. What had always been there.
I parked in my usual spot. The garage was half empty. Most people had gone home. The space echoed when I walked. My footsteps sharp against concrete. The air smelled like oil and rubber.
I took the elevator to eight. The hallway shifted before the doors even opened. The building knew I was there. Knew I'd learned something important.
Selene was waiting in the courtyard. She looked worried.
"What's wrong? You feel different."
"Marcus found something. About the building. About where the Anamnex came from."
I told her everything. The asylum. Dr. Price. The fire. The basement that still existed under the building.
She listened without interrupting. Her face got paler. When I finished she sat down on the bench hard.
"I knew it was old. Older than the hotel. But an asylum? Memory experiments?"
"Does it make sense? With what you know about the building?"
"Yes. God yes. That's why the building is the way it is. Why it takes people with memory. It was designed to do exactly that. And when it burned, when those people died, their memories never left. They stayed. Became the foundation of everything that came after."
"Marcus thinks if we can get to the original basement, we might find answers. Ways to weaken the building's hold. Ways to free you."
Selene stood up. Started pacing. The courtyard felt different tonight. The air was thicker. The shadows darker. Like the building was listening. Reacting.
"I've tried to go that deep before. When you were gone those two weeks. But the building stopped me. Pushed me back. It doesn't want me in the core."
"What if we went together? You, me, and Marcus. Three of us. Vouching for each other."
"It might work. Or it might trap all three of us. The deeper you go, the stronger the building gets. It could take you. Make you like Margaret and James and Elizabeth."
"I'll risk it. If it means freeing you."
"Lyric." She grabbed my hands. "This isn't a game. The building has been doing this for over a century. It's had time to perfect its hold. To strengthen its grip. Going into the core is dangerous. Really dangerous."
"I know. But we have to try. You can't stay trapped forever."
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she nodded. "Okay. We'll try. But we need to be prepared. The core isn't like the rest of the Anamnex. It's older. Darker. The memories there are confused. Broken. The people who died in the fire, their last moments are embedded in that space. We'll experience their fear. Their pain. Their deaths."
"Can you handle that?"
"I don't know. But I'll try. For you. For us. For the chance to be free."
We spent the rest of the evening planning. Figuring out when to go. What to bring. How to stay grounded so the building couldn't take us.
Eventually I had to leave. Real life waiting. Work in the morning. But I promised to come back tomorrow. To bring Marcus. To start our descent into the building's core.
As I walked back to my car I looked up at Kestrel House. Ten stories of red brick and dark windows. From here it looked almost peaceful. Just another building in a city full of buildings.
But I knew the truth now. Knew what it really was. What it had always been.
A trap. A prison. A place where memories went to die. Or worse, to live forever in confusion and pain.
And we were about to walk right into its heart.
I drove home through evening traffic. The city was quieter now. Rush hour over. Street lights coming on. The sky fading from orange to purple to black.
My apartment felt empty when I got there. I'd barely been home lately. Spent all my time either at work or at Kestrel House. The place didn't even feel like mine anymore.
I made dinner. Didn't taste it. Sat on my couch staring at nothing.
Tomorrow we'd go down. Into the basement. Into the asylum's remains. Into the place where all of this started.
And maybe, if we were lucky, we'd find a way to end it.
Or maybe the building would end us instead.
Either way, we'd have answers.
I just hoped we'd survive getting them.
- Writer
