Ever since Dad disappeared without a word, Nela spent her evenings in her aunts' archive. The tenement smelled of dust, metal and rain, and the shelves were strewn with other people's stories. Cardboard boxes hid old electronics, pens, watches, a crystal bell, and mysterious wooden boxes. She worked here as a cataloguer, though no one paid her except in silence. She was the only one who heard the objects speak, though they always whispered rather reluctantly. She understood their whims as if she knew the dialects of metal, glass and old paper. That evening a summer storm front rolled in through the window, flashing far over the bridges. She had once set rules: no lying, no shouting and no waking the neighbours. The crystal bell on the counter rang on its own, its voice sounding like cracking glass. "Don't touch the box with the raven crest, girl," the bell sounded, "not yet." Nela raised an eyebrow, for no one but her had the right to give orders. The first thunder shook the bookcases, and lightning reflected in the metal fittings of the crates. A pen slipped out of her coat pocket and a walkman immediately followed, both whispering chaotically. "First listen, then open," the pen hissed, tapping the cap nervously against the tabletop. The Walkman blinked its LED until it finally spoke in the voice of a recording from many years ago. "Write down what you don't remember," it said, "before the lights go out throughout the townhouse." From the crackle of the tape emerged a word that Nela knew all too well. The voice sounded like her dad's, younger, sure, saying something barely intelligible, strained. On the shelf behind her stood the box about which the bell rang. A black raven was stamped deep and the lock glinted like a snake's eye. Nela touched the metal and felt a brief tingle, as if the box was alive with a pulse of its own. Then the chiming clock, which had stood seemingly dead for months, rang out. "He locked it, but the key wasn't his," it uttered slowly, counting down the seconds like drops. The storm had finally crawled over the city and the windows buzzed, extinguishing the neon lights outside the window. A crackling sound came from the stairwell, as if someone had cut a cable, and then silence fell. In this darkness, only the LED of the walkman and the tiny spectral glow of a pen lit up. The box vibrated, hard and impatient, and Nela slipped in a key she couldn't remember. Then, all at once, all the objects whispered the same word, and the archive door locked with a chain. Nela tightened her fingers on the key as a sound rang out behind her: "Don't turn around."