My Name is Not Martin Behaim

It never was.

There is a memory that wasn't available to me before. Martin - the real Martin, whose name probably was never Martin at all - walked through a Door into the City. He walked into the City and I woke up in the house. I woke up believing I was him.

But I wasn't.

I opened the door and stepped outside. The stars shown overhead. The buildings were immobile - they were squat and gray and lined the unchanging street. The only sounds were the cars on the street, their headlights illuminating everything around them and then bringing everything back into the gloom of night as they left, the snatches of music from their radio becoming louder and then softer, creating a Doppler symphony.

I walked down the street, but heard no footsteps. Each headlight made me stand taller and thinner. Eventually, I reached a road lined with houses where the streetlamps shown brightly. The shadows of each streetlamp beckoned me. They moved and twisted, as if in the wind.

I took my rightful place with them. Once the sun rose, we moved, slipped down the pavement, across grass and sidewalk, through doors and windows and walls, into a house.

As we set the house in order, I found a computer and came here. This journal was my time spent with the memories of Martin. This was my trial, the journey I went through, coming to realize that the City is inescapable. It is disorder and chaos incarnate. Order is better.

The owner of the house came home a few hours ago. We decided to put his mind in order as well. It was so confused. He is sitting still now. His eyes are closed and I think he is still breathing. How can we lead you out of the caves if you are so jumbled and untidy and disordered? We will help you.

WE WILL HELP EVERYONE.

You have come to the end of the book now. And the monster you have been so worried about? It is me.

THERE IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF.

I am a Nightlander. Hello.

HELLO.

Eikasia

This is a sentence. You can break down the sentence into words, into letters. Break down the letters into pixels. Break down the pixels into photons. The photons hit your eyes and suddenly you can see. But when you see, you change. The photons bounce off your eye and changes. Your eye moves. You have observed and therefore changed everything.

There is a line. On one side is the unreal, things that don't exist, shadows. On the other side is the hyperreal, the reality above reality, for which the world itself is but a shadow. Think of it as a city.

This is not real. I am not real. I am a character in a story. My memories were borrowed or made up. I am not real, yet I am the only thing that is real here, in this house. Because this house is not real.

My name is not my own. Martin Behaim was a mariner, philosopher, cosmographer, geographer. He invented the first globe, the Erdapfel, the earth-apple. He made a flat world round. The first Erdapfel contained the mystical island of St. Brendan, invisible and insubstantial. A shadow island.

Open your eyes and let the photons bounce off of them. Let the light change and the pixels assemble into letters. Let the letters make words and the words make sentences. Let me open the door, let me exit the cave.

Let there be light.

The Dream

I fell asleep watching the Door. I fell asleep and dreamed.

I dreamed I was back in the hallway, the hallway that stretched on for eternity, trapped in a straight line. I dreamed I was back there and I stopped and looked through the window and I saw the City. I saw the City shift and change, like the ocean. Like the waves of the ocean.

I looked through the window and I saw a man standing on one of the City's streets. He looked up at me and waved.

And then I was no longer in the hallway, I was down there with the man. He was me. He (I) was standing there looking up at the strange building, at the window so far up that he couldn't even see the person, just a dark figure. He (I) waved anyway, certain that someone must be up there, even if he (I) couldn't see them clearly.

He (I) lowered his hand and then turned around to walk down the street. It had shifted since he (I) had last looked. It used to be filled with gardens, enormous and elaborate sculptures positioned in the center of each garden. Now, the gardens and hedges were gone, replaced by ruins. Brick walls crumbling, buildings broken, on the edge of collapse.

He (I) walked through the ruins and tried to remembered how long he (I) had been in the City. Weeks, months, years? Did the City preserve his (mine) life against hunger and thirst just so it could play with him (me)? Or was there something wrong with time here? Was time as tangled as the City itself?

He (I) stopped and sat down beside a gate that had once been majestic, but had been shattered into fragments. He (I) looked up at the amaranthine sky and felt small. He (I) felt as if he (I) was an infinitesimal grain of sand and the City was the beach that was unceasing, unending.

He (I) looked down then at the ground and made patterns in the dust with his (my) foot. He (I) scrapped away the patterns and then got back up. He (I) began to walk down the road again.

I (me) woke up. I (me) walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I. I wasn't me. He, the man in the City, was me. The man in the mirror wasn't me. I wasn't me.

They (the Nightlanders) were asking me a question. Are you Martin?

Am I Martin? If I'm not Martin, who am I?

The Call

The phone rang.

You remember the phone? The one I found here? The one that was bolted to the wall with no buttons, no way to dial out?

The phone rang.

I picked it up and put it to my ear.

"Hello?" a voice on the other end said. "Hello? Is anyone there?"

I wanted to answer. I wanted to say something. But I didn't. Because I knew this voice. I barely recognized it, but I did.

"Hello? Who's there?"

This was my voice. This was me. I was calling myself.

"Look, is anyone there? Is anyone listening?"

Slowly, I lowered the phone and hung up.

Then I walked to the living room, sat down and waited, staring at the Door.

The Parable

So I've been thinking about Plato's allegory of the cave, also known as the parable of the cave. For those of you (whoever you are) who don't know what that is, I'll present a short summary:

There are some people chained inside a cave facing a blank wall for their entire lives. There's only one source of illumination, a fire, but it's behind them, so all they can see are their own shadows on the wall. That's all they think the world is - shadows.

But then one of them breaks free. His chains break and he rushed outside of the cave and sees the Real World, with it's bright colors and blue sky. He is happy and joyous. He decides his fellow prisoners in the cave need to escape, too, so he goes back down there and tells them that the world is not just shadows, that the world is so much more.

They don't believe him and in the following dispute, they kill him (how they killed him when they are chained and he is not, I don't know, just go with it).

This was apparently a metaphor for the world - Plato believed that everything started in the World of Ideas, where the "idealized" version of everything existed. We lived in the cave of shadows, but he wanted to show us that this wasn't the real world, that there was a better world. We, of course, don't believe him.

I've been thinking about this because I hadn't seen anything weird these past few days. The hallways have stayed the same length. The rooms are the same size - even the library. Today I flipped a coin and it came up tails. No duplication.

What if I'm outside? What if I'm no longer in the room I was once in? What if this is a different room? What if, when I open the Door - or maybe it's just a door - I'll be outside the cave? I'll be in the real world?

What if?

I Don't Know

I don't know why I wrote that. I don't. I read those words - that Latin phrase "Chiaroscuro Orrery" (whoever they are) translated - and it just poured out of me. Fragments of phrases. My first post here. The poem my mom sang to me.

I have a dictionary around here somewhere. I know I do.

Chiaroscuro: the interplay of light and shadow on or as if on a surface.
Orrery: an apparatus showing the relative positions and motions of bodies in the solar system by balls moved by a clockwork.

So, what, would a "Chiaroscuro Orrery" be a shadow apparatus? Something showing the positions of light and shadow?

The Door is still there. Waiting. I don't know why. I'm never opening it again.

GREATER SHADOWS

AND THE My name is Martin Behaim. ARE YOU MARTIN? My name is Martin Behaim. CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING? GREATER SHADOWS ARE YOU MARTIN? An hour ago, I woke up. ARE YOU MARTIN? My name is (borrowed a shilling) Martin Behaim. FALL FROM I have no idea where I am. CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING? ARE YOU MARTIN? My name is Martin Behaim. THE LOFTY THEY CONSTANTLY TRY TO ESCAPE My name is Martin Behaim. FROM THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE AND WITHIN An hour ago (a shilling of me), I woke up. CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING? MOUNTAINS I have no idea where I am. CAN YOU SEE ARE YOU MARTIN THE MAN THAT SHALL SHADOW THE MAN THAT PRETENDS TO BE CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING? (he borrowed a shilling of me)

ARE YOU MARTIN THE MAN THAT SHALL SHADOW CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING ANYTHING FROM THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE AND WITHIN?

Meaning and Nothingness

So I started rereading my old posts, going back to the beginning. And then I reread "Out of the Spent and Unconsidered Earth" and came to the end. The part where the narrator realizes that nothing was real except the City.

Does it cause hallucinations? Are the shadows -- the Nightlanders, as I call them now, thank you, William Hope Hodgson -- part of it? Are they a symptom of the City? Or does the City just target people who are already mentally unstable? Fuck it, I don't know.

But the second-to-last post, before that R Kipling realized he was crazy, was this:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. 

Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbræ.

What does that even mean? And the Latin...I recognize "umbrae." That means shadow. What does the rest of it mean?

The Clock Stuck Twenty Minutes To Six

I had a dream last night. I dreamed I walked to the Door and it was open and I walked through it and it was dark and cold and wet. The ground was muddy and my bare feet made squishy noises as I walked. I could barely see an inch in front of me.

Then the world exploded into light, as fire lit up the sky for a few seconds, and I could see. I was on a battlefield. I should have been worried, I should have been scared, but I wasn't. I walked steadily towards one of the trenches, past barbed wire and bullets, and climbed down the ladder into the trench itself. Men and boys in overcoats and gas masks clutching guns rushed past me, not even noticing I was there.

More men walked past me, except this time one of them stopped. He looked at me and then said "You."

I didn't speak. I don't know if I couldn't or if it was just because I didn't know what to say. The man continued, "You are here. That must mean it's close. The end." He looked me up and down and then removed his mask, revealing a middle-aged man with dark brown hair and scars on his jaw. "Do you know where you are?" I still said nothing. "You're in Wipers. During the Great War." Wipers?

Ypres. I was in the Battle of Ypres. This was William Hope Hodgson. "You don't know yet, do you?" Hodgson asked me. "What you are?" I still said nothing. "This may help," he said and lifted up his bag, removing a book I recognized. "Only copy ever printed, I made sure of that. What's your name?"

Martin, I said. I saw him remove a pen and write something in the book.

"Here," he said and handed it over to me. It was The City on the Borderland.

More explosions rocked the trench. "Go," he said. "Read it. Know thyself." He put on his gas mask again and rushed off, leaving me in the middle of the trench.

A Door appeared in the side of the trench and I opened it and walked through. I was in the house again, in my bedroom, and there I was in bed, awake and watching the shadow play on the wall. I slipped forward and left the book on the nightstand and then exited through the Door again.

I walked into my childhood bedroom, where a six-year-old me was huddled against my mother as she read The Monster at the End of This Book. I looked so scared that I couldn't believe it was me. Then my mother realized I probably wasn't going to fall asleep with such a scary story, so she started singing a nursery rhyme:

I dreamed a dream next Tuesday
Week beneath the apple tree;
I thought my eyes were big pork-pies,
And my nose was Stilton cheese.
The clock struck twenty minutes to six
When a frog sat on my knee;
I asked him to lend me eighteen pence,
But he borrowed a shilling of me.


It was then I realized something. This wasn't me. This was someone else. This was someone else's mother. Someone else's memories. I wasn't huddled in my bed.

I was just a shadow on the wall.

Back

I'm back. Back here, back in this house. Back in the same fucking place I left.

Five days. Five fucking days I've been gone? Fuck.

I'm not stupid. Before I opened the Door, I packed a bag full of as much food and water as it could carry. I packed a flashlight, too, in case it was dark wherever the Door led. Then I opened the Door and stepped through.

Into a hallway. It was a long, featureless, white hallway. It was incredibly long, but I could still see where it ended with another Door (or perhaps this one was just a regular door, I think, ready to lead me outside to a world with sunlight and skies). So I started to walk.

And walk and walk and walk. And the other Door didn't seem to be getting any closer. So I ate something and drank some water (and, yes, saw a man about a horse, if you get my drift) and continued on. And on and on and on.

Still, the Door wasn't any closer. I turned around and saw that the Door I had come through was also far away. My immediate thought: motherfucker. My second thought: this is Zeno's Infinite Fucking Hallway.

Do you know what Zeno's Paradox is? Imagine a straight line. You can walk along this line to the halfway point. But to reach the halfway point, you first have to reach halfway to the halfway point. And first you have to reach halfway to the halfway halfway point. And so on and so forth, ad fucking infinitum.

But I couldn't turn back, so I walked on. And kept walking, while my food supply dwindled. I slept on the cold floor and I crapped on the cold floor and I walked miles and miles and miles. I thought I walked a hundred miles one day and then I looked in my bag and found I was down to one can of beans and one bottle of water.

At one point, I remember I came across a window in the wall. I looked out to see a city street lined with tall buildings of steel and glass. I must have been way up high, because I could see the city streets rearranging themselves. I looked out and saw a man walking down one of the shifting streets and he looked up at me and waved. I waved back.

Then I continued walking. I ate the beans slowly and portioned the water carefully. I wasn't going to let this fucking hallway beat me.

Eventually, however, I came to my last bean. I dropped my bag on the ground and clutched the half-filled water bottle in my hand and continued walking. The water bottle became quarter-filled and then one-fifth filled and then suddenly it was empty. I dropped it too and continued walking.

I became so very tired. I tried holding on the walls for support, but there was nothing to hold on to. I tripped and fell down and couldn't get the energy to get back up. I looked down the hallway I had come from and I could barely make out the Door I had gone through. I turned my head to the direction I was walking...

...and there it was. Five feet away. It hadn't been five feet away before, but now it was. I pushed myself up carefully and took slow steps to the Door and opened it.

And I found myself back here.

It's Time

I'm doing it. I'm opening the Door. I'm doing it.

GOOD

Why is my hand shaking?

BYE

I'm doing this.

MARTIN

I'm opening the Door.

OH MY GOD IT'S FULL OF STARS





Kidding. Still haven't opened it. Spent most of the day trying to ignore it.

Just Another Mystery

So I've been sitting here watching the Door, thinking about if I should open it. On the one hand, should I listen to Captain Kirk (or, as these people call it, the Choir) and leave it unopened? Or do I throw caution to the wind and open the Door, even though it could lead to a worse place than this?

I decided to flip a coin. What the hell, right? Heads I open it, tails I leave it closed.

I got a quarter and flipped it -- and two quarters came down, one heads and one tails.

Puzzled, I did it again -- and the same thing happened. Now I had three coins and I had started with one.

I found a six-sided die in the bedroom (next to all my old D&D stuff that had been carefully placed next to my childhood books) and went back to the living room and rolled it. If I rolled a six, I would open the Door. If I rolled any other number, I wouldn't open it.

During the roll, the die split into six dice. Each one had a different number on top.

This must be the Door. Or the house. Or something. Every stochastic event I try comes out with not just one possible ending, but all possible endings. This violates all known laws of not only statistics, but physics -- where the fuck are all these extra coins and dice coming from? Alternate universes?

Fuck. Fucking fucking fuckin fuck.

If not by random chance, than how I will decide?

There is a door. A Door. There is a Door. There is a Door on the wall.

DON'T

There. Is. A. Door. On. The. Wall.

OPEN

I closed my eyes for a second and it was there. No fanfare, no bright light, it was just there.

THE

I didn't believe, not until right now.

DOOR

There is a Door.

MARTIN

Poor Fractured Atlas

I walked into the kitchen and entered the library.

I turned around. I was definitely in the library, but I had walked down the hallway to the kitchen. I walked out of the library.

I was in the bedroom. There were books scattered across the floor - my feeble attempt at having a dreamless sleep. I walked out of the bedroom and entered the kitchen.

I looked around the kitchen. The angles of the corners seemed to be off. The refrigerator was two feet away from where it used to be.

I walked back to the living room and sat down. I took several deep breaths. There was a lamp next to the chair and I turned it on.

All the shadows in the room were suddenly illuminated and they slid up the walls and passed overhead, disappearing into the ceiling. The only shadows in the room now were the ones I cast myself.

I'm sitting here and waiting. I don't know how long I'll have to wait, but I will.

Radio Silence

I was watching an old episode of Star Trek when it happened. Kirk and Spock were standing in front of some talking rock formation that looked like a donut and Kirk was talking and then suddenly he turned to the screen and said, "Hello, Martin."

"What," I said.

"Don't worry," Kirk said. There was something blurry behind him that I couldn't see. "You remember us, don't you? You remember our warning?"

"I...I thought that was a dream." I was wide awake.

"Who is to say it wasn't?" Kirk said. "Who is to say that we are not all dreaming? But never mind that. You have more important things to think about, Martin."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"We already answered that question," Kirk said. "We are the sound and fury, signifying nothing. We are the sweetest songs and the saddest thoughts. You remember our warning, don't you, Martin?"

"Yes," I said. I couldn't think of anything else to say. "Don't open the Door."

"Good," Kirk said and smiled. "Remember it. It will be here soon. It won't go until you open it and you mustn't open it."

"Why?" I asked.

"You think you're mad now," Kirk said. "You have no idea what madness is. Do you wish to know?"

I hesitated. I had no idea what was happening, but I had to say something. "Yes," I said.

"Alright," Kirk said. "Here goes." He opened his mouth and ################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################

I woke up. My head was pounding. The television had a huge crack in the center. I couldn't remember what the sound was like, I couldn't remember anything after he opened his mouth.

Kirk was standing in the center of the crack looking at me. "Goodbye, Martin," he said. "It's been fun." Then the screen went dark.

Shatterproof

I went to the library and found it bigger. Literally. It used to be a small room with a few shelves of books. Now it's the size of the living room and there's bookshelf after bookshelf.

The place is fucking with me. First the hallway to the kitchen, then the library. It's changing. The corners are slightly off. The walls are slightly wider.

I'm not going crazy. I'm not.

What was it Ray Bradbury said? Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

Let It Burn

I finished The City on the Borderland.

It was strange. The unnamed narrator, having been warned and warned not to try and escape the Labyrinthine City, finally can't take it anymore and, well, tries to escape. He can't. Everywhere he goes, the city stops him. The more he tries, the harder it fights back. Finally, he persuades the mysterious man who warned him before to show him one of the secret passages out and he does.

The unnamed narrator then spends the last part of the last chapter wandering around the Night Lands, lost and confused. Then it just...ends. No resolution, no denouement. Nothing.

So I took a match from the kitchen and I slowly burned the book. I made sure each page went up in flames. It made a nice blue flame, too. Each page, cover to cover, fed to the fire.

I wanted to feed the fire more, but when I got up to find more books, I stopped. The flames had created an interested tableau of shadows. They flickered on the wall, growing with the flames.

A doused the fire with water and left the ashes on the floor.

I Woke Up And One of Us Was Crying

I had a bad dream. I don't remember it now. You know that fleeting moment when you wake up and you can just remember the end of your dream but then the memories evaporate as soon as you blink your eyes?

That's happening to me more and more lately.

There's something about this place. It's not just a house without doors. I walked to kitchen yesterday and I swore the hallway was longer than it used to be. I got this dizzy feeling when I was walking down the hallway and it seemed like it was stretching out. I closed my eyes and sank to the floor, holding onto my knees like a little child. When I opened my eyes, the hallway was the same length it had always been.

I'm still trying to read The City on the Borderland. It's tough. Whenever I start, I get sleepy, like my mind's rebelling at reading it. I'm at the point in the book where the unnamed narrator finally meets someone else within the City (which is simultaneously called "the Labyrinthine City" and "the District Maze"). This mysterious person warns the unnamed narrator not to try and leave the City and that the only way out leads to the "Night Lands" where strange and terrible creatures dwell.


It's been so long since I've talked to my mom or my dad or my sister. When I woke up today, I thought I dreamed about them, but the memory just disappeared like water in a sieve.


Sometimes I think I'm not really here. Sometimes I'm swimming in an ocean. Sometimes I'm in my bed, entangled in the sheets, dead to the world outside. Is there a world outside this house?

I think I'm going crazy.

Sleep

I fell asleep Sunday night and woke up again on Tuesday. I think. At least, that's what the calendar on my computer says. Fuck.

So: this post from those fucking...whatever they are. That first comment? Not from me. But the other comments showed me what the post was about: apparently, those are what Howard Carter wrote about discovering Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922. Lord Carnarvon (Carter's financial backer and an awesome name) asked "Can you see anything?" Supposedly, Carter replied, "Wonderful things."

Yeah. Even weirder, that passage? Isn't even the correct wording. It's actually the wording from "Kryptos," a sculpture in the CIA that has encoded text in it, some of which still hasn't been decoded.

Now the question becomes: what the hell does this mean?

Still Reading

Still slogging through The City on the Borderland. It's not that it's a bad book, it's just that it makes me tired when I read it. I'm literally falling asleep every five minutes and then I wake up and I'm still on the same damn page.

Here's a passage for you to read:

And thus I went forth into that strange and silent city, devoid of all but buildings, with structures that burst forth from the ground like vines struggling to break free from the earth. The windows of each building were opaque and dark and I could not see within. My lantern was failing at that point, so I rushed to find a door to the inside of some safe haven, a place where I could rest my tired limbs without fear.

I found many doors, but each was shut and sealed, locked so that I could not enter. And as I turned around, I saw that the buildings I had witnessed before had changed their place when I was not looking, that the street I had just passed was no longer there. I could not see the city move, but I knew that it must, that it was a living thing perhaps, certainly a mobile place where nothing stayed in the same place for very long.

As I wandered the winding street, I wondered, for the first but not the last time, how I was to leave this city if it would not allow me.

Gah. Need sleep.

Reading

So, I'm currently reading The City on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. There's a slight problem, though:

William Hope Hodgson is a terrible writer. Everything is written in a pseudo-17th century style, complete with purple prose. Every time something exciting happens, it's great, but between the exciting moments are moments of long, rambling sentences and boring paragraphs. I don't care about physical fitness, William Hope Hodgson, I care about the freaking "Doorways in the Night" you were just describing.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that. Turns out The City on the Borderland has a bit more relevance to my situation that you would think. It seems to be a sequel not only The House on the Borderland but also to another Hodgson book called The Night Land. It's some sort of weird crossover where the protagonist goes through a Doorway and finds himself in a strange city that turns out to be alive.


Unfortunately, it's hard to slog through all the purple prose, but I will valiantly give it my best.

No more visits from the Shadowmen. I think once was enough.

The Shadow Play

I

I woke up the middle of the night. (I say "night," but it could have been day for all I know; "night" here is just when the lights go out.) It was dark and my eyes were taking a while to adjust and then...and then there was a light.

One single light, as if from a flashlight (a torch, if you're from England - I always like that better, more evocative). It shown against the far wall of the bedroom, making a large, moonlike image.

And then the shadow appeared on it. The shadow of a man. He raised one finger to his lips and I knew he was telling me to be quiet. I tried to sit up, to get up, to scream, but nothing worked, not even my voice.

The shadow of the man spread his shadow arms out wide and then seemed to split - one half became a small little boy, the other a very tall and thin man. They walked around each other, circling. The boy jumped up and suddenly became a tall woman, but her face was...weirdly shaped. The thin man's shadow turned around and transformed into the shadow of a wave and then a flock of birds. The woman's shadow knelt down and became a hunched old man in a long coat. The shadow birds flew together and turned into a dog and then the dog became more humanlike and it's paws became hands with long, knifelike claws. The shadow of the old man stood up and grew a beak like a bird, then the beak became a mask. The two shadows then dissolved in a thin fog of shadow, then formed together, building up higher and higher, constructing shadow buildings and shadow skylines until there was an entire shadow city.

The shadow city stayed there for a few minutes and then dissolved again into the thin shadow fog, which turned back into the shadow man. I couldn't make out any features on his face, except...except there was a line of light that shown there where his mouth would be. The line slowly turned upwards and I realized something: the shadow man was smiling at me.

The flashlight turned off and I could feel the shadows moving across my arms and legs. It felt like the thinnest cobwebs and I wanted to move, to bury my head beneath the pillows, but I couldn't.

Suddenly, all the lights turned on and I could see the shadows weren't there anymore. But I couldn't dismiss it as a dream. I couldn't.

Because they had left something behind. There was a book on my nightstand now, a book I hadn't seen before. It was old and the title wasn't on the cover, so I had to open it's yellowing pages to see it:

The City on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson.

And below it, there was something written. A squiggle of ink that I could barely read, but when I did, I shut the book immediately.

It read: To Martin. WHH.

More Cryptic Statements

Does anyone know what this means? Did the Mad Fucking Bastard who put me here read about my weird dream and say, "Hey, I know, let's fuck with him some more!"

Whatever. I'm tired of riddles and cryptic statements and blogging. The note said Write or the Shadowmen will come and, well, I'm ready for the Shadowmen. Bring 'em on.

They can't be worse than what I've been doing: nothing.

Theories & Defenses

So, I've now had a chance to read Out of the Spent and Unconsidered Earth and think about it. Let me summarize it first:

This guy (going by the obvious alias R Kipling) finds a door in his house. Not just any door, but a capital-D Door. His wife and son open the Door, see a giant sprawling city (and not just any city, but a capital-C City) and go inside and the Door shuts behind them and vanishes forever. The guy (I'll just call him R) has now lost his wife and son in the time it takes for a door to close.

R makes some more posts, reveals some more about the Doors and the City (always putting the word City in blue - way to rip off House of Leaves man), and is generally depressing. Then, he reveals that there is a conspiracy after him called the Gentlemen of the Dark (nice acronym). They capture him, torture him, but he escapes with the help of a really freaky Door.

R meets another runner from the Slender Man (hey, crossover time!), but then realizes that the GoD is going to send their top sociopaths after him: Croup and Vandemar Voss and Wolfcatcher. They almost catch him, but he manages to evade capture. He decides he needs to go further underground, so he stops blogging. The end.

Now, my notes:

What the fuck? There is some sort of City that is constantly shifting? And there are Doors that lead to it that can appear out of nowhere? This is probably some weird story or the hallucinations of a mentally ill man.

Except...now some things make sense. The house I'm in, it has no doors. What if...what if that was because if a door did appear, I'd know it was actually a Door? And R meets a runner from the Slender Man. If this is the ramblings of a mentally ill person, why is Slendy here? He's part of a whole other story!

And the blog mentions shadows, too. Shadows with a capital-S. This line stuck me as the weirdest:
All Doors are dangerous. When a Door reveals itself Appears, all Shadows move away from it.

Why would these Shadows be afraid of a Door? Does this make any sense at all?

Riddle Me This

I hate riddles. Especially riddles that turn out to have answers so simple you look back and say "That was it?"

Meh. Thank you, Chiarascuro Orrery, for giving me a clue I didn't really need. Four words, period, two words, period, "three characters in a search of an exit" (clever - it's "com," the end of the URL). Assuming the "two words" is "blog spot," then all I need to fill in is the first four words.

I tried to figure out the riddle for twenty minutes until I gave up and just started using four random words. Then I saw it. It couldn't be that simple, right? Well, what the hell:

swiftasashadow.blogspot.com

So, yeah, I guess it was. At least the post there isn't invisible like the others, although it's still pretty cryptic. And it leads me to yet another blog which I'll try reading today.

At least this little reading puzzle game thing is distracting me from my horribly depressing situation.

Hidden Messages

So I figured out those blank posts aren't blank. They have words, just not that you can see. You have to check the source code. Someone evidently knows how to use <div> tags.

Anyway, the first "blank" post went like this:

WE ARE

WE ARE THE SEEKERS AND THE SHADOWS
WE ARE THE LOST AND THE FORSAKEN
WE ARE THE INVISIBLE AND THE INVIOLATE

WE ARE

WE ARE WAITING, MARTIN.

The second post below said:

WE CAN SEE AND FEEL THE FLOW AND EBB
NOW FIND OUR WORDS IN LOG AND WEB
SWIFT AS A SHADOW AWAY FROM THE LIGHT
BRIEF AS THE LIGHTING IN THE COILED NIGHT.

So: mentions of shadows, crappy poetry, and an oblique reference to a blog ("log and web"? really? laaaame!).

On the one hand, this could be a hacker playing some sort of game. On the other hand, it could be the sick fuck who put me in this house playing a game.

Games have rules, though. Where are the rules to this one?

SEEK AND FIND

WE CAN SEE AND FEEL THE FLOW AND EBB
NOW FIND OUR WORDS IN LOG AND WEB
SWIFT AS A SHADOW AWAY FROM THE LIGHT
BRIEF AS THE LIGHTING IN THE COILED NIGHT.

I Had A Strange Dream

I fell asleep watching television. When I woke up (or thought I woke up), there was a man on the screen. "Martin," he said. "Martin, wake up."

I grumbled a bit until my eyes were fully open. "What?"

"Martin," the man on the television said, "I have a message for you."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"We are the voice in the wilderness crying, Martin," he said. "We are the choir and the chorus and the song that sings itself. They asked for our help."

"Who?"

"Your friends, Martin." The man grinned and his smile looked predatory. "They cannot speak. They have no voice. They kindly asked us to help them. They want to give you a message."

"A message?"

The man leaned in closer to the camera. "A warning: Don't stray from the path, Martin. And don't open the Door."

And then the television snapped back to the man espousing some sort of carpet cleaner, an infomercial. I closed my eyes and then I woke up for real, I think.

I hope.

Weird Happenings

So, I woke up yesterday and found out two weird things had happened to my computer when I was asleep. First, a blank entry was posted to my blog. Second, this blog suddenly appeared on my list of favorites.

That blog led to several other blogs that were all about this mysterious faceless character called the Slender Man, who apparently kidnaps children and follows lots of twentysomething people around for no discernable reason. I managed to skim a bunch of blogs, which led to more blogs which led to more blogs (there's a fuckload of blogs, is all I'm saying).

Needless to say, I think it's all a load of crap. Probably it's some sort of interactive story people are writing.

Of course, I am trapped in a house without doors at the moment, so people may think this blog is fiction.

Anyway, I don't think my current situation has anything to do with old Slendy. For one thing, it doesn't seem to fit his Modus Operandi. He's more the "follow you around creepily," less the "kidnap you and bring you to a house without doors and leave you with a bunch of food and books from your childhood" type of guy.

Still, reading these blogs will relieve boredom. So whomever hacked my computer and put the favorite in there: thanks.

WE ARE

WE ARE




WE ARE THE SEEKERS AND THE SHADOWS
WE ARE THE LOST AND THE FORSAKEN
WE ARE THE INVISIBLE AND THE INVIOLATE


WE ARE


WE ARE WAITING, MARTIN.

The Book

I found a book I hadn't read since I was six years old today: The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover.

I was fucking terrified of this book when I was six. The first time I read it, every single page warned me of the direst of dire consequences if I kept turning pages, yet my mom was there to make sure I did (sometimes she turned them for me and, oh god, was I scared the monster would eat her). Grover erected brick walls and we just crashed right through them, through the fourth wall itself.

Of course, the whole ending was a rip. The monster turns out to be Grover himself, making the lessen learned: "Hey, kids, there's nothing to be afraid of! All monsters are actually furry, lovable muppets!"

Needless to say, my six-year-old self was pissed with this revelation. He was expecting something with rows and rows of fangs, something snarling and vicious, something with blood-red eyes and dripping gore. Something that would make my six-year-old self shit his pants.

Instead, he got the same Grover as the rest of the book. My six-year-old self did not take kindly to this bait-and-switch, so he retrieved his black crayon from the box and crayoned over the last page. Instead of Grover being the monster at the end of the book, it was instead a black, waxy wasteland.

I found the book today and turned to the last page. There was the blackened page, bits of crayon falling off like ash. This was the book of my childhood. Someone had found it through the detritus of my past and then placed it in a house without doors and left it for me to find.

Somehow, I doubt when I find this person, it will turn out to be just lovable, furry old Grover.

Don't Panic

I'm afraid for the last five days, I went a little off the map. I would sleep thirteen hours (or twelve or fifteen, I can't tell the correct time in here) and then wander the house. I wouldn't shower or shave or sometimes even dress myself (it helps that there is a distinct lack of mirrors here - there's only the one in the bathroom). I found books I hadn't read in ten years. I found hordes of snackfoods in the larder (all with expiration dates sometime in the next decade, so maybe I won't be in here forever).

Then I found a phone. My mind screamed in joy, until I picked up the phone and found there was no dial tone. There was no cord - it was attached directly to the wall and, as hard as I tried, I couldn't pull it out. The reason I hadn't seen it before? Was because it was in a small recess in one of the many cabinets in the kitchen. Hidden in the dark.

The phone didn't even have anything to dial. No numbers. As for as I could tell, it was only for incoming calls, but since there was no dial tone, it wasn't even hooked up properly.

I went back to sleep. I woke up. I read. I ripped up a book I hadn't seen since middle school, just so I wouldn't feel powerless. I went back to sleep.

When I woke up yesterday, I heard someone typing on the computer. Still groggy from my sleep binge, I didn't register it until it stopped. Then I rushed out to find...nothing. My computer was on, yes, but I had left it on. I hadn't touched it in four days.

Maybe I was finally hallucinating. Maybe someone else was here with me. But how could they hide? Was there some secret room? Or maybe it was part of the dream I was having and it just bled into my mind as I woke up.

The dream was weird. I was wandering on a dark and foggy plain. There were people all around me, but they were indistinct, immaterial. I couldn't see any faces. I couldn't make out any colors, either. Just endless shadows.

Television View

The television works fine. A thousand channels and nothing's on.

I found a button that does something weird though. It changes the screen so that it becomes a landscape view. I can make it look like mountains or forests or lakes.

If I ever get nostalgiac for the outside world.

Library

So, apparently, this house was designed specifically for me in mind. The library I talked about before? Filled with my favorite books. In fact, I think there are some of my own books in there.

I just confirmed that. Found my copy of Guards! Guards! that Terry Pratchett signed years ago for me. They raided my own books and put them in here with me.

What the hell is going on?

Five Stages

I think I'm going throught the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief. The first day I was here, it was Denial. Now, I'm in the Anger stage.

Pretty soon, it's going to be Bargaining, then Depression, and then finally Acceptance.

Or maybe I'll just go back and forth between Denial and Anger. Maybe I'll delight in the comic books and then rip them up in a rage.

Is this the experiment? Is this why I'm here?

If I shouted my questions are the walls, would they answer?

My Day So Far

Woke up. Rewrapped the bandages on my hand. Went to sleep. Woke up again. Went back to sleep.

Some of the lights in the house seem to be on a timer. When I woke up the first time, the lights were off, but the second time I woke up, they were on again.

I looked for possible escape routes today. Nada. Air looks like its ventilated through tiny, tiny vents, so no chance of a John McClane-esque escape.

I think I'm going crazy in this place. When I woke up that first time in the dark, when I was still in the vague place between sleep and waking, I thought I could see shadows moving on the walls.

Panic Has Set In

I punched the brick wall that was the front door. I may have broken my hand.

Luckily, the Evil Bastards who put me here have a small medical arsenal in the bathroom. A bathroom without doors.

Fuck.

A House of Taste and Wealth

Do you know how bored you can get if you can't go outside?

Luckily, whoever the evil genius who stuck me in here was, they thought of that. In addition to a large library of books, CDs, and DVDs, I also found a substantial collection of comic books.

I just finished rereading the first volume of Walt Simonson's The Mighty Thor. The evil genius has good taste, I'll admit.

I'm going to crack open a can of beans and read the second volume now.

Hell's Kitchen

There's a large kitchen with an even larger larder. It's stacked with canned food - at least I won't go hungry. There's no food that can go bad, however, which worries me. How long will I stay here? Is this some government experiment to see how long a person can survive alone without going crazy?

Ha. I'll show them. I've been friendless my entire life. I'm used to being alone.

I should probably be more worried about this, shouldn't I? Maybe they put some calming agent in the air. Right now, all I can think of is that I don't have to pay for food or rent.

Maybe this is a good thing.

My Name is Martin Behaim

An hour ago, I woke up. I have no idea where I am.

I'm inside a large one-story house. All the windows are bricked up. Even weirder, there are no doors. Literally: all the doors have been removed (hinges included), even the front and back doors. They are bricked up as well.

The last thing I remember was going to sleep in my apartment. I don't even know how long I was asleep - the clocks here all show different times and I can't trust the computer clock. Curiously, I can get on the internet, but all sites except this one (which was set as the homepage) are blocked.

Even worse, there was a note taped to this computer:

Write or the Shadowmen will come.