Chapter one hundred and eleven

Chapter one hundred and eleven
Marlowe

I have stopped trusting my own handwriting.

The notes on my desk look forged—every word familiar, yet as though someone else wrote them in my hand. I reread the names, the times, the sketches of floorplans and corridors. None of it matches the museum as I remember it. None of it explains the gap between what I’ve seen and what I’ve dreamed.

Perhaps there is no gap anymore.

The corridors echo in my mind even when I’m home. Long white walls that bend into darker halls. I’ll be walking to the kitchen, only to stop short because I’ve convinced myself I’m still inside the Langford wing. Sometimes I smell the varnish, the faint chemical burn of turpentine, as if a painting is drying just beyond the wall.

I no longer tell anyone these things. They would call it exhaustion, obsession. Maybe madness. Perhaps they’d be right.

And yet, beneath the paranoia, there’s clarity. Every time I close my eyes, I see Vivienne’s face in the dim light of that archive room—pale, strained, as if her life depends on something I will never be permitted to name. And Emeline. Always Emeline. The girl-woman who refuses to stay in one shape, one truth. I write her name again and again until the letters blur.

E M E L I N E

The page fills, black ink bleeding into the fibers, until it looks less like a name and more like a wound.

A sound startles me—my own door rattling, faint at first, then harder, as if someone is testing the lock. My pulse hammers. I don’t move. I wait. After a minute, silence. No footsteps retreating. No explanation.

When I finally rise and check, the hallway is empty.

But I know someone was there. Watching. Waiting.

I return to my desk and tear the page into strips, scattering the pieces into the trash. If they’ve been inside once, they’ll come again. If they’ve been watching me, they’ll know what I’ve written.

I tell myself this is paranoia. I tell myself I’m still in control.

But when I look at the wastebasket, the shredded strips of her name still spell something back at me, crooked but legible:

MINE.

I sink into the chair, shaking, unsure if it’s an accident of tearing—or if the paper arranged itself while I wasn’t looking.