The door closed behind him with a sound like wet wood snapping.
The bells outside dropped to a muffled throb, the rhythm still heavy enough to feel in his teeth. The air inside was colder than the street. It clung in layers — cabbage boiled too many times, mildew curling in the wallpaper, something metallic under both.
A single window leaked pale light into the room. The lower corner was patched with old newspaper clippings, the ink melted into reddish stains. The print had lost meaning, reduced to flecks of serif letters like dried insects.
The space was small but crowded. Every flat surface was occupied: the tin body of a kettle on the stove, cracked mirror facedown on the mantel, boots stiff with old mud, a tea cup turned on its side with a single dead moth inside. Wallpaper peeled in ribbons, the plaster beneath brown and rough like a scab. An iron pipe ran from the stove up through a ceiling ringed in soot.
He crossed the floor slowly. His boots found a shallow depression by the desk, as if a chair had sat there so long the wood had given up. At the window, he pressed a hand to the glass. Cold enough to numb the fingertips. Outside, a lamplighter passed with his long pole balanced over one shoulder. The man stopped at the post across the street, turned the flame inside the glass blue for a moment, then made a note in a leather ledger before moving on.
The desk under the window waited. The open book was a journal, the pages swollen at the edges where damp had drunk into the fibres. The ink bled in places, but the words were still legible.
A double-page spread sat in the centre like a wound:
AFTER DARK NEVER USE REAL NAMES. ONLY A PLACEHOLDER WILL KEEP YOU SAFE
The letters had been cut into the paper, pressed until the nib tore through.
He read it twice, fingertips hovering over the torn groove.
A page back, the writing was more spacious:
Lantern went blue again on Kettle Row. The Bearers are using the wrong oil on purpose or by order. Something moves just outside the light. P. says names are hooks; you throw them and they catch in the dark. I said that was poetry. P. said poetry is just instructions with manners.
Two pages forward, the script disintegrated — the warning repeated without spaces until it was more texture than language. The pen had run low, clawing across the fibers until the nib caught and snapped.
In a margin: stand in the square, be no one. Beside it, a shaky drawing of a frame. Half-words crowded the border: pla, plac, each crossed out.
The desk had two drawers. The first opened easy: unpaid bills stamped with red seals, a stub of candle, a cat's claw tied to a piece of fraying thread. The second had a lock.
He turned the second key on the ring. The drawer stuck, then gave with a sigh. Inside lay a square of metal set into a wooden frame, four brass nails at the corners. The surface was dull and cool, heavier than it looked. Symbols were scratched shallow around the edge — not letters, not numbers, more like a language half-dissolved in acid. One mark repeated: a cross with a notch missing from one arm.
He set it on the floor.
The moment he stepped into the square, the room shifted. The cabbage smell thinned, the bells dimmed, the air pressed tighter around him. His own name — his, and the one belonging to this body — blurred in his mind, slipping out of reach when he tried to grab hold.
The journal's command echoed: Only a placeholder will keep you safe.
He spoke words aloud, testing their weight."Guest" — thin, useless."No one" — gone before it landed."Borrower" — too soft.Then: "Ledger."
The name stayed. Cold as iron filings. Ink dust in an empty counting room. Something meant to tally and never forgive.
He said it again. The square seemed to hold the word, as if it had weight now.
Footsteps rose from the stairwell. Slow. Deliberate. Up two steps, pause. Down one, pause. Up three.
They stopped outside his door.
"I know you're in there, love."
He stayed silent.
The journal had another rule: If they use endearments, they don't know you. If they use your name, they already have it. Throw a different one back.
He let the silence stretch, then spoke through the wood: "Ledger."
The voice paused. "That's not yours. That's a hard thing to carry."
"Good," he said.
The footsteps shifted, pacing in a short arc before moving away.
He stepped out of the square. The air thickened again. He sat and wrote the name in the journal's margin beneath the warning, pressing the pencil so hard it dented the desk through the paper. Then he crossed to the inside cover and printed it in block letters: LEDGER.
The graphite left black grit on his fingertips. Cold as coin shavings.
He turned more pages.Avoid Fishbone Street after dusk. Threads hang from the eaves there, but they're not threads. Don't look up.Collector took M. No knocking. Just there, middle of the room. Still there when lamps lit. Still watching.
He glanced at the door.
Further on was a list of names, all crossed out. Beside each, a single word: butcher, crow-man, debtor, stray.
A faint noise came from the hall — not steps, but something tracing the seam of the door from top to bottom. Slow. The sound paused at the threshold where the salt line lay, then slid upward toward the latch.
He took the shallow dish from the shelf, pinched more salt, and dropped it across the seam. The sound stopped.
Silence stretched until the building's old voices came back — a cough through the wall, the creak of a joist settling, the rat's small gnaw at the wainscot.
He looked at the metal square again. It leaned by the bedstead, catching the pale window light. He'd move it before sleeping. He'd keep it close.
Another note from the journal caught his eye: When you must speak, speak with the name of what you are not.
He repeated the placeholder under his breath, "Ledger", until the sound felt worn enough to fit his mouth.
From outside, the bells struck once, low and heavy, and the apartment seemed to brace itself.