The Intake

A driver reports a woman standing in the road, facing away, not moving. He stops. He waits. He gets out. She is standing on the far shoulder now, still facing away, and he did not see her cross. He gets back in the car. She is in the road again. He drove through her. There was no impact.

The water was drained in October. In February a maintenance worker found it full, and warm, and moving as though someone had just left it. It was drained again. It was full the following morning. The building has since been sealed. The pump was never running.

A tenant reports that her downstairs neighbor has begun copying her. Not her habits. Her sounds. He runs water when she runs water, a half-second behind, matched exactly. She stopped running water. He runs it anyway now, at the times she used to.

Hikers report a stand of trees carved with a single word, repeated, in a language none of them read. Two photographed it. Both photographs show only bark. The third hiker did not photograph it, and is the only one who can still remember what the word looked like, and will not write it down.

Drivers on the overnight run began arriving with an extra hour. Same route, same departure, same arrival, one hour unaccounted for and no one able to say where it went. Dispatch corrected the logs. The drivers stopped mentioning it. The hour did not stop.

A custodian reports a child's handprints appearing on the inside of the third-floor windows. The third floor was demolished in 1994. The building has two floors. He has worked there eleven years and only began seeing them in March, and he can tell you what height they are, and he does not like what that height implies.