ANAMNEX. Book 2: Forbidden Memory/Together

Everyone in Kestrel House followed the rule. Nobody talked about it. Nobody questioned it. They just knew. Don't use the old staircase after sunset. The door wasn't locked. There weren't any warning signs. Nothing bad had ever happened there, at least not that anyone would admit. But people avoided those stairs once the sun went down. They'd wait for the elevator even if it took forever. They'd use the other stairwell on the opposite side, even if it meant walking an extra five minutes. I noticed because I broke the rule without thinking twice. My name's Lyric Moreno. I'm twenty-seven and I run Moreno Industries, a tech and real estate company I built from scratch. People say I'm too young to be CEO of a company this size. Maybe they're right. But I got here by working harder than everyone else and trusting data over feelings. I don't believe in superstitions. I believe in logic and numbers and things I can prove. That's how my father raised me. He taught me that emotions make you weak. That paying attention keeps you safe. He was a hard man who rarely smiled and never said he loved me. My mother left when I was seven. Just vanished one morning without saying goodbye. After that, my father got even colder. He hired people to raise me while he worked. I learned early that watching and staying quiet helps you survive. That skill got me through business school and boardroom fights with men twice my age who thought I didn't belong. But it didn't prepare me for this building. Kestrel House was beautiful. Ten stories of old red brick and arched windows right in the heart of downtown. It used to be a fancy hotel back in the fifties called the Hartley Grand. Now it's mixed use. Offices downstairs, apartments upstairs, and my office on the top floor. I bought the building six months ago planning to renovate and sell it for profit. But the more time I spent here, the more I noticed things that didn't add up. Hallways that felt longer at night. Shadows moving when nobody walked past. Clocks running backward for just a second before fixing themselves. Doors opening into rooms I didn't remember seeing before. Small things. Easy to write off as tired eyes or stress. But I'm not the type to imagine things. And I don't ignore patterns. The first time I really knew something was wrong, I was working late. Past midnight. Just me and the security guard downstairs. I needed a file from the eighth floor so I headed for the elevator. Out of service. Great. That left the two staircases. The main one was closer. The one everyone avoided at night. I didn't care about some stupid superstition so I took it. The second I stepped into the stairwell, everything changed. The air got heavier. Thicker. Like walking into a room that's been closed up for years. The temperature dropped enough that I noticed. My footsteps echoed on the old marble stairs. The lights flickered once then went steady. I started down toward the eighth floor, counting steps without thinking about it. Twenty-three steps per flight. I'd walked these stairs before. I knew the layout. But when I got to what should've been the eighth floor landing, I saw a hallway I'd never seen before. It stretched way too far. The walls were the same cream paint, same old light fixtures. But there were too many doors. Way too many. The eighth floor only had six offices but I was looking at at least twelve doors on each side. I stopped. Frowned. Had I miscounted floors? I turned back to check the number on the door. It said 8. I looked at the hallway again. Still wrong. Still too long. My brain tried to explain it. Maybe I was remembering the layout wrong. Maybe I'd mixed up this floor with another one. Maybe I was more tired than I thought. But I knew what I'd seen during the day. This wasn't right. I walked down the hallway slowly, reading the numbers on each door. They went in order but some were missing. Door 801, 802, 803, then suddenly 807. Then 809. Then 812. The hallway curved left which was impossible because the building was rectangular. At the end of the hall I saw something move. A shadow shaped like a person slipping around the corner. "Hello?" I called out. Nothing. Just silence and the buzz of old lights. I should've left. Anyone with sense would've. But curiosity's always been my problem. The one thing I never learned to control. I followed the shadow. Around the corner the hallway kept going. This time there were windows looking out onto nothing. Not the city lights I should've seen. Not the street below. Just black empty space. My heart started beating faster. This wasn't my imagination. This wasn't being tired. This was real and it was impossible. I turned to go back and the hallway behind me had changed. Different doors now. Older ones with frosted glass and brass handles. The walls had wallpaper instead of paint. Faded flowers from decades ago. I was still in Kestrel House. But I was also somewhere else. Some version of the building that didn't exist anymore. Or maybe never existed at all. That's when I heard it. A voice. Soft and far away. Someone singing. I couldn't make out words but the melody was beautiful and sad. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. I stood there trying to decide what to do. The logical part of my brain screamed at me to get out. To leave this hallway and never come back. But another part wanted to understand what was happening. Curiosity won. I kept walking, following that distant singing deeper into whatever Kestrel House was becoming. The hallway twisted and turned in ways that made no sense. Sometimes the floor tilted slightly under my feet. Sometimes the walls seemed to breathe. The lights flickered in patterns that almost looked deliberate. I passed doors that I knew couldn't be there. Rooms that shouldn't exist. Through one open doorway I saw furniture from the fifties. Through another, filing cabinets and a typewriter. Everything covered in dust like nobody'd been there in years. The singing got louder. Clearer. Definitely a woman's voice. I turned another corner and found myself facing a door at the end of a dead-end hallway. This door was different. Black wood instead of the usual brown. No number. No frosted glass. Just solid and dark. My hand reached for the handle before I could talk myself out of it. The metal was ice cold. I turned it and pushed. The door opened into darkness so complete I couldn't see anything. Not even shapes. Just black. But I could still hear the singing coming from inside. I took one step forward into the dark. The door slammed shut behind me. I spun around, grabbed the handle, pulled. Nothing. It wouldn't move. "Okay," I said out loud, trying to stay calm. "Okay. Think." But there was nothing to think about. I was trapped in complete darkness in a room that shouldn't exist in a hallway that couldn't be real. The singing stopped. "Hello?" I called into the dark. "Is someone there?" Silence. Then a whisper right next to my ear. "You noticed." I jerked away from the voice, stumbled, caught myself against a wall I couldn't see. "Who's there?" My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Someone who's been waiting." The voice was female. Young. Sad. "Waiting for someone to notice." "Notice what?" "Me. This. All of it." A pause. "You see things other people miss. You pay attention when others look away. That's rare." "Where are you? I can't see anything." "I'm here. I've always been here. You just weren't ready to see me yet." Light bloomed in the darkness. Not from any source I could identify. It just appeared, soft and golden, filling the space around me. I was standing in a circular room. The walls were covered floor to ceiling with old photographs. Thousands of them. All black and white. People in clothes from the fifties and sixties. The Hartley Grand Hotel in its glory days. In the center of the room stood a single chair. Red velvet. Old. Empty. "Where are you?" I asked again. "Closer than you think." The voice seemed to come from the walls themselves. "But you're not ready to see me. Not yet. Soon though. You're getting closer." "I don't understand any of this." "You will. Keep noticing, Lyric Moreno. Keep paying attention. The building wants to show you things. And I want to be seen." "How do you know my name?" "I know everything about this building. Everyone who's ever walked through it. Every moment that's happened here. That's what I am. What I've become." The light started fading. "Wait," I said. "Don't go. Tell me what's happening. What is this place?" "This is Anamnex. The space between what was and what is. The place where memories live." Her voice was getting quieter. "Come back tomorrow night. Same stairs. Same time. I'll show you more." "Why? What do you want from me?" "I want to be noticed. To be seen. To matter to someone." A pause. "And I think you want that too." The light went out completely. When it came back on I was standing in the regular eighth floor hallway. Normal length. Right number of doors. Everything exactly as it should be. I checked my watch. Two hours had passed. I walked to my office in a daze, sat at my desk, and stared at the city lights outside my window. What the hell just happened? I pulled out my phone and opened a new note. Started typing. Things I know: - The building changes at night - There are impossible hallways and rooms - Someone or something lives in those spaces - She knows my name - She wants to be noticed - I should be terrified - I'm not - I'm curious - I'm going back tomorrow I read over what I'd written. It sounded insane. But it had happened. All of it. I added one more line. - I think I've been looking for something like this my whole life I saved the note and sat back. My father would say I was being irrational. That I was letting my imagination run wild. That I should forget the whole thing and focus on work. But my father had never understood me. He'd never understood that all the logic and control and careful observation in the world couldn't fill the emptiness inside. For the first time in years I felt something other than that emptiness. I felt curious. Alive. Like something important was about to begin. So yeah. I was going back tomorrow. Whatever Anamnex was, whatever that voice belonged to, I needed to understand it. I needed to see her. Even if it was impossible. Especially because it was impossible.