The restricted archives weren’t off-limits to me, not exactly. But they weren’t a place I was expected to linger, either. Field Undertakers dealt with the dead as they were, not as they were remembered. That was the Archivists’ job—categorizing, restoring, sometimes even sealing books away when necessary. I brought in the pages. Someone else decided where they belonged.


    Except now, I had a book that didn’t belong anywhere.


    The lamps overhead burned low, casting long shadows that flickered against the stone walls. The air down here was colder, staler, as though the passage of time itself had forgotten the space. Rows of iron shelves stretched off into the darkness, each crammed to bursting with books both old and new.


    Some were wrapped in oilcloth, waiting to be restored. Others bore the scarlet ribbons that marked them for review.


    Each book had a tag, handwritten with a short description—most losses of identity or violent ends. My steps carried me past a blood-stained volume with a note that simply said, “Murdered by a jealous lover at age 23,” and another charred tome tagged as, “Perished in a tenement fire.”


    Sometimes, I almost forgot that books were more than just objects. More than leather, ink, and paper. A person was a person, even when dissolved and distilled. Maybe especially then.


    I knew better than to listen too closely.


    Books whispered.


    Not words, not always. Sometimes it was just the ghost of a thought, the last traces of something lingering before it faded completely. Some books were louder than others. The younger ones, usually. Those whose endings had been interrupted, or who hadn’t lived enough to exhaust their need for an audience.


    A child’s book murmured from its place on the shelf, half-repaired after an accident had damaged the spine.


    Not fair. Not fair. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please, Mama. Not fair.


    I knew better than to linger.


    At the end of a long row, tucked away between two shelves, sat an old oak desk. A heavy lantern perched on the corner, casting a pale circle of light onto the scratched and stained surface. It would do.


    I set my case down and opened it, retrieving the slim volume. The leather was still smooth to the touch, even through my gloves, and the pages opened easily. Whatever had happened to Eleanor Reed, she’d been meticulous in her living. Or whoever Nathaniel was.


    “Okay,” I muttered, settling into the chair. “Let’s see who you are.”


    <hr>


    <blockquote>


    “This is the story of a man who never existed.”


    </blockquote>


    The first line stared back at me, and the accompanying voice as well. Deep, worn, but resolute. Older than his forty-one years, and certain of its purpose. The ink had settled, crisp and precise, the words forming in neat, uniform script. No smudging, no hesitation. It was a proper Transcription, the kind that came from a soul certain of its story.


    But it wasn’t Eleanor Reed’s story.


    Normally, a book was given a resting period, allowing the soul inside to adjust to its new form before it could be read.


    My eyes skipped down the page to where his tale began in earnest. The first memory unfolded like the opening scene of a play. The writing was vivid, each word conjuring a scene so clear it was as if I was standing on the platform myself, watching a steam engine rumble into view, its pistons churning, belching smoke into a sky of inky grey.


    Nathaniel was aboard, traveling alone, his reflection blurred in the glass of the window. The compartment was dim, lit only by a small lamp overhead, its flickering light barely enough to see by. Outside, the world rushed past in a blur of colour and motion.


    <blockquote>


    “I can’t say exactly when the story begins. There’s no date to mark on a calendar, no event that set everything into motion. I was simply there, on that train, bound for somewhere far away from everything I’d ever known.”


    </blockquote>


    My finger trailed along the edge of the page, turning it gently. The next scene was in a tavern, its air thick with pipe smoke and the sour tang of old ale. The low murmur of voices at every table, conversations half-heard and half-forgotten. A man sat in the corner, shadowed beneath the flickering light of a gas lamp, his hat tilted low over his eyes. He nursed a drink in one hand, fingers absently tapping against the glass.


    The name came easily. Nathaniel Kade.


    The book described him well—a man of average height, lean and angular, with a sharpness to his features that betrayed a life of hardship. His eyes were a pale grey, like chips of ice, and his hair was a tangle of dark, unruly curls. A man who had lived somewhere else, sometime else, under circumstances that bore no resemblance to the life Eleanor Reed had lived.


    I turned another page.


    Nathaniel Kade had debts. He had friends and enemies. He had a lover who had left him, a business partner who had betrayed him, a secret he never spoke aloud. He had existed.


    Except he hadn’t.


    I reached into my coat pocket, pulling out Eleanor Reed’s official record. Her employment history, her medical files, her personal records. A life of certainty and documentation.


    None of it matched what I was reading.


    Not one damn thing.


    I exhaled slowly, rubbing my thumb against the bridge of my nose.


    There had to be an explanation.


    Eleanor Reed and Nathaniel Kade couldn’t exist in the same book, because they couldn’t exist at the same time. And yet, here I was, with a book that insisted otherwise. What then? Had Nathaniel hijacked her Transcription somehow? Was he some kind of ghost possessing a corpse?


    It didn’t seem likely. A haunted body usually meant the book was a fragmented mess, words scattered between the ghost and the deceased. The Archivists would have picked up on it. This book, though—the narrative was clear, focused, certain of itself. If there was a possession, it was a seamless one, so perfect it had erased any trace of Eleanor at all.


    That wasn’t possible.


    Was it?


    I shook my head, turning my attention back to the book. It would have answers, whether it wanted to share them or not. I just needed to find the right question.


    I flipped through the pages, skipping forward through the memories until I found something familiar—the street where she’d lived, the small milliner’s shop with its dusty windows, the rickety staircase leading to the apartment above. Eleanor Reed—or Nathaniel Kade—lived there at the end.


    I read, and learned, and felt myself slipping into the story of his life. The small moments, the big ones. A childhood spent on the streets, scraping a living from the dirt. A stint in the army, an honorable discharge, and a return to a city that no longer welcomed him.


    He moved from place to place, living a dozen lives in a hundred different ways. A gambler, a thief, an accountant, a gun for hire. By the end of his days, he’d been a broken man, a shadow of his former self, the kind of man who slipped through the cracks unnoticed. Forgotten.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    But the book said he had never existed.


    I paused, staring at the page. The handwriting was less steady now, words blurred and smudged as if written in haste, or by a hand made unsteady by drink or age. Or both. A few of the letters bled into one another, sentences trailing off into half-completed thoughts.


    <blockquote>


    “Is this what you wanted?”


    </blockquote>


    The voice shifted.


    A woman’s words.


    The thought snapped me back to myself, and I drew back from the book, staring down at it. That had been her. Not Nathaniel. Eleanor Reed had spoken to me. From the pages themselves.


    No, not to me.


    To him.


    I pushed myself away from the table, taking long, measured breaths. It was one thing to read a book. To hear its voice in your head, to know that each sentence is a fragment of a life, an impression of a soul. You couldn’t read the books and pretend that what was written didn’t come from somewhere real, someone who had once walked and breathed and thought.


    But it was another thing to hear a response.


    Books didn’t answer.


    They simply... told.


    I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing the heels of my palms against them until spots of colours burst across the inside of my eyelids. The whispers of the books filled my ears, each one vying for my attention, begging to be heard, to be remembered.


    Sometimes, you could get lost in them. Drown in the sheer weight of the words. My mentor had warned me of it early on, when he first recruited me. The books were voices, and voices could drown.


    And I’d gone deaf a long time ago.


    A sharp breath.


    Another.


    Slowly, carefully, I drew my hands away from my eyes, blinking until my vision cleared. The book rested on the desk in front of me, its pages open. Inviting. Taunting.


    I looked at it for a long time before reaching out and shutting it closed. The snap of the cover echoed through the archives, a lone sound amidst the quiet susurrus of shifting paper.


    Is this what you wanted?


    Her words, spoken through ink and parchment. Not to me, but to him. One soul reaching out to another.


    I had heard of minor inconsistencies in Transcription before. Sometimes memories blurred at the edges, the final moments of a life overlapping with old recollections, dreams bleeding into reality. But this wasn’t a mistake in memory.


    This was an entirely different life.


    A thought settled in my mind, cold and unwelcome.


    What if Eleanor Reed hadn’t just been living a double life?


    What if she had been two people at once?


    <hr>


    I needed more information.


    The public records wouldn’t help me now. If Nathaniel Kade had never officially existed, then I wouldn’t find his name in the usual archives. I needed to dig deeper.


    I locked the book back in my case and made my way out of the restricted archives, slipping through the dimly lit corridors toward a smaller wing of the Library. Not many people used this section—at least, not unless they were looking for something most would prefer to forget.


    The Department of Lost Histories.


    It was where we kept the names that had been erased, whether by force or by choice. People who had changed their identities, who had disappeared from official records. Those who had been forgotten, buried under falsehoods or deliberate omissions.


    Or those whose histories were deemed too dangerous to be left out in the open.


    If Nathaniel Kade had been real—even in some small, unrecorded way—then this was the only place he might have left a trace.


    The door to the department was unlocked, as always. Some corners of the Library preferred to keep their secrets behind thicker walls, but this one didn’t bother. I stepped inside, closing the door behind me.


    The clerk on duty barely glanced up as I entered. His desk was a mess of unsorted papers, his robe stained with ink, the mark of the Lost Histories etched into the cuff of his sleeve.


    “Alistair,” he greeted, his voice hoarse from too many hours spent in silence. “Didn’t expect to see you down here.”


    “I need a cross-reference,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Off-record identities. Any known aliases connected to Eleanor Reed.”


    The clerk arched a brow. “We don’t get many women in this section.”


    “I know,” I muttered. “Just check.”


    With a long-suffering sigh, he set aside the stack of papers he’d been fumbling with, turning to the wall of shelves that spanned from floor to ceiling. He mumbled to himself as he went, pulling out one file, then another. His steps echoed in the quiet of the chamber.


    “Strange request,” he called over his shoulder. “Reed, was it? Seamstress from the sound of things. Not the usual sort we keep here.”


    “She died last night. The book that came out was...” I trailed off. “Different.”


    “Happens, sometimes,” the clerk shrugged. “When they live a bit too freely.” He stepped onto a stool, straining to reach a stack of files at the top. “It usually sorts itself out, though. Don’t see why you’re bothering.”


    “I just need to be sure.”


    “Suit yourself.” He thumbed through the stack, mumbling to himself. “Let’s see. Eleanor Reed, Eleanor Reed... nothing, nothing.”


    He moved on to the next shelf, digging through an older batch of papers. His search stretched on, each new stack of files seeming more unlikely than the last. By the third shelf, I was beginning to wonder if I was wasting my time.


    “What about the name Nathaniel Kade?” I called. “Have any matches under that name?”


    He paused, balancing precariously on the edge of his stool. “Man’s name? What are you looking for, exactly?”


    “I’m not sure.” Which was close enough to true. “I just need to know if there’s any connection between them.”


    With a grunt, the clerk pulled down another sheaf of papers, flipping through them with practiced efficiency. Each page bore a name, paired with the alias they’d taken on—or had been forced to assume. He paused, licking his thumb and turning a page, then another.


    “Strange.” He scratched at his neck. “That’s odd.”


    I leaned forward. “What?”


    “There’s... something here. Not much. No official documents, no census records, no birth or death certificate.”


    “Then what do you have?”


    He tapped the page. “Mentions. Scattered references. Letters that never made it into formal archives. Pieces of conversation noted in personal journals.” A pause. “All dead ends. None of the leads led anywhere.”


    Nothing official.


    Nothing verifiable.


    Just traces.


    Like a ghost moving through the edges of someone else’s life.


    I clenched my jaw, my grip tightening on the edge of the counter.


    “Let me see them.”


    The clerk brought out a slim file—too slim. He laid it on the counter and slid it toward me. “It’s all there.”


    I flipped it open, skimming the pages.


    A bar receipt. A short note scrawled in an unsteady hand: “Nathaniel Kade, tab open.” No surname. No other identifying details.


    A letter—half-burned, edges curled. No sender, no recipient. Just a fragment of ink on brittle parchment: “Kade is reckless. He’s going to get himself killed.”


    A debt ledger, cross-referenced against others from the same period. Someone named Nathaniel Kade had borrowed money from a gambling hall, but the ledger never listed a collection. As if the debtor had simply... vanished.


    And then, the most damning thing of all.


    A journal entry, undated.


    <blockquote>


    “I saw him again today. Nathaniel. He looked different—tired, drawn—but it was him. Or at least, I think it was. The way he spoke, the way he carried himself... it was familiar. But strange, too, as if he were someone else entirely. Perhaps I’m imagining it. Or perhaps I am wrong about who I thought he was.”


    </blockquote>


    The words sat heavy on the page.


    Him.


    Not "her." Not Eleanor Reed.


    Nathaniel Kade. Him.


    I exhaled slowly, rubbing a thumb over the ink, as if the pressure might make the words settle differently in my mind.


    A mistake?


    No. This wasn’t a slip of the pen. Whoever wrote this had seen Nathaniel as someone distinct from Eleanor, distinct enough that the pronoun felt natural—undisputed.


    Was that just perception? A trick of confidence, of presence?


    Or was it something deeper?


    I closed the file—a slow breath.


    The traces were too real to be coincidence. But too inconsistent to be a full identity. The life of a ghost, a fragment of a person, pieced together like a half-told story. Like the impression of a life, rather than the life itself.


    How could this Nathaniel Kade exist in the world, without leaving any real trace?


    My thoughts kept circling back to the book. To the words on the page. Is this what you wanted?


    Her voice. Her words.


    There was an answer in that book, even if I couldn’t see it yet. Something important enough to risk disrupting the Transcription. Enough to fracture the narrative, to break through to a story beneath the story. A life beneath the life.


    But finding that answer meant finding out more about Eleanor Reed. Not the woman on paper, but the woman behind the name. What had her life been like? Who had she been, beyond what her record claimed?


    I knew one place to start.