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.