The Tower That Remembers
Excerpt: They called it the Tower of Memory, but the stories it whispered were never the same twice. Some said the building was alive, or that it kept forgotten truths.
They said the Tower of Memory had stood long before the city rose around it. In the oldest photographs, it loomed in the mist, untouched and windowless, a pale face among concrete children. The city planners tried to chart its blueprints but found none; surveyors argued about its height. It was the only building in Northbridge without an address, yet everyone knew where it was.
Day after day, commuters hurried past its rusted doors, always locked, often scrawled with tangled, cryptic graffiti. No one had seen anyone enter or leave. Only the pigeons seemed to keep it company, circling above.
Celia was nineteen when she first heard the Tower speak.
She was late for her night shift at the hospital and scurrying along Hartley Street, shivering in her pale blue uniform. Her mind was busy rehearsing an apology. That’s when she paused outside the Tower, her eye caught by a new message painted on its wall. It was not graffiti but rather a single, looping word: REMEMBER.
A faint vibration buzzed under her feet—so slight she thought it was traffic at first—until it pressed against her memories, strange and insistent. A whisper brushed her ear, almost her own voice: “Do you remember me?”
She spun, seeing no one.
“Who’s there?” she called, heart thudding.
Only the empty night and the hulking Tower replied. She shook off the sensation and dashed away. But from then on, whenever she passed, she heard stories through the walls—a child calling for their mother, a song half-remembered from her grandmother’s kitchen, the echo of her own first heartbreak. The Tower pried open memories Celia thought long buried. The more she listened, the more she heard.
A week passed before Celia dared tell anyone. Hospital staff had their legends: janitors joked about the haunted block; nurses warned each other about strange dreams. Celia confided in Francisco, the night security guard. He listened, brow furrowed, tapping a faded badge pinned to his jacket—his late brother’s, she knew.
“It chooses who to speak to,” Francisco said. “But not even my brother heard the same stories I do. Me, I always hear footsteps and rain—even on cloudless nights.”
That night, Celia passed the Tower again, this time with closed eyes. The wall hummed beneath her palm, another word surfacing: FORGOT.
She felt compelled to ask, “What did I forget?”
No answer—just a slip of paper poking out from beneath the door. On it, spidery handwriting read: “Be careful. Memory is also a prison.”
The next evening, city news broke that the mayor’s daughter was missing. Desperate pleas echoed on every screen and radio—the city’s first true loss in decades. For the first time, the Tower’s stories shifted from whispers to cries: names, warnings, sorrowful confessions, all overlapping inside Celia’s mind until she doubled over, clutching her head.
Over the coming days, a flood of others heard the Tower too. Strangers on buses muttered, mixed-up recollections. Posters of the mayor’s daughter lined lampposts, but sometimes Celia saw different faces on them—her own, Francisco’s brother, and once, inexplicably, her mother’s, gone four years but surely not forgotten. Memory fractured at its seams. Time felt strange; morning seemed to repeat, conversations twisted from one telling to another.
Celia feared she was losing herself, or that she never truly knew who she was to begin with. Desperate, she approached the Tower on a rain-speckled evening, voice trembling.
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded, pounding her fist on the door.
A low, resonant groan echoed through the metal—then a strange tick, as if a lock had turned.
Celia hesitated, then pushed. The door swung open with a sigh.
Inside, the Tower was taller than it should have been, floors twisting out of sequence. She climbed endless spiral stairs lined with flickering screens—each a living window into someone’s memory. At times, she stumbled into searing images of her own life, distorted: her mother singing at dusk, the last words they spoke before the cancer took her. At other turns, she lived flashes of the mayor’s daughter—a girl chasing her puppy under the Tower’s shadow—or Francisco’s brother writing letters that were never sent.
Time stretched and curled. Celia’s reflection flickered between ages—child, adult, old woman. Sometimes, on landings where the stairs doubled back, her reflection wasn’t hers at all.
On the highest floor, light poured through cracks in the ceiling. At the center stood a pedestal bearing a single, pulsing artifact: a crystal sphere, swirling with images. As Celia touched it, voices crowded her mind—pleas, secrets, the reason the Tower remembered. It kept what others let slip away.
Celia saw it all: the Tower was a repository, built by hands desperate not to forget. Sometimes it was protection; sometimes punishment. When the city collectively lost something—like the mayor’s daughter, like the words Celia had left unsaid to her mother—it was drawn here and replayed until remembered, or until someone was brave enough to reclaim it.
She wept as a dozen memories collided inside her. She had not been there for her mother’s final breath, too afraid to face loss. Guilt had walled her off, severing warmth from her past. Now, with the city unraveling, her pain was not hers alone; forgetfulness threatened to consume everyone, memory splintered by neglect.
In the Tower’s light, Celia spoke her regret aloud. The Tower trembled, then listened, and the voices quieted.
“I cannot bring her back. But I can remember, honestly this time.”
The pulsing artifact dimmed. Stairwells straightened. As Celia descended, the memories came clearer to her—her own and those she borrowed. Stepping outside, she saw the city was changed: people comforted each other openly, strangers naming their losses and regrets. The mayor found his daughter just blocks away, dazed but unharmed, drawn by a story heard through unfamiliar walls.
In the days that followed, the Tower’s whispers faded to a hum, but its shape remained. Celia visited sometimes, pressing her hand to the stone, feeling the resonance of all that had come before. She learned that honoring what was lost—memories, loved ones, found and forgotten—connected the city in a way fear and neglect never could.
So the Tower stood, neither curse nor salvation, but a gentle reminder: what was remembered need not weigh heavy forever, and what was honestly faced could guide even strangers home.
###END###
