crystallization

i woke up to a pungent stench of mold. i rolled to my side and the spring mattress let out rusty groans. bemused and half-awake at best, i began to realize this was not my bed. in fact, not my house. a wide, curtained window towered over me, and outside the sun was going high. i squinted in the morning light, then blinked and closed my eyes again, giving the other senses half a minute to catch up. eventually, i became more aware of my surroundings: a poorly furnished bedroom, with only this bed and one nightstand, both ancient-looking. the floor was wooden-tiled, no carpet. across the room stood a solid door made of dark, engraved wood. the wallpaper was faded and torn by old age, and the walls were completely bare. the ceiling was high, with patches of peeling white paint and a huge, elliptic dark stain smack in the middle of it. i pulled away the linen and, strangely, found myself fully clothed. i had no memory of how i'd come to this place.

i sat up and looked at the nightstand.
an old brass lamp sat on top of it, but it held no oil, and there was nothing to light it with anyway. i reached for the drawer, and gave it a pull. it was not locked, but the piece was much heavier than i'd anticipated. it slid out slowly, smoothly, without a noise. oddly, a puff of smoke escaped from within. waving the smoke away, i turned to the drawer's contents, only to find there was nothing but a thick, smoldering piece of paper. written on it, the message went - 'drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead'. the proverbs of hell. i knew them.

seized by a sense of urgency, i strode across the room and tried the door. it was unlocked.
i gave a tentative pull, and the door creaked open, just a little. through the slit i saw part of a corridor, but little else. i looked back, and wondered if i was missing something. there was the window, same as before, and the large old bed, all looking perfectly unremarkable; as i prepared to leave, i realized the shape of the stain in the ceiling did not seem quite the same, from my new perspective.

i let go of the knob and turned back to get a better look at the stain.
it looked a bit less two-dimensional, now, like a shadow cast on an irregular surface. the sunshine through the window carved a diagonal brightness which intensified the contrast between the sunlit floor and the somber space overhead. i tilted my head left and right, testing new perspectives, but the stain did to its shape what iridescence does to color. i thought i saw it stir. had it? yes, like a dreamer trapped in the agony of his nightmare. i was reminded of slumbering kittens with their little fits and spasms. very well, then... the stain was a curled up thing sleeping in the ceiling, and the creaking of the door must have disturbed it, though apparently not enough to wake it up.

unable to look away, i took a step back and felt the wall against my back.
my peripheral vision caught the door, half-open to my left. i groped for the knob, and managed a good enough grip. then, in a semi-fluid motion (which, to me, felt daring), i pulled the door while sliding through the opening and then immediately threw my weight to invert the door's momentum and close the passage. the process was not altogether noiseless, so i stood there for a whole terrifying minute, gripping the doorknob so hard my knuckles turned white, expecting it to be pulled from the inside at any moment... but nothing happened. i breathed, and released the knob, becoming aware of the muffled silence that filled the corridor as if the air in there were made of something heavier. 'must be the carpets', i considered; my mind played the highlights of a memory in which an old acquaintance went on about the acoustic properties of rough surfaces. also, this had to be the longest corridor i'd ever seen: left and right, a number of doors and old-fashioned wall sconces reached into far, dimly lit spaces. i had a simple choice to make - left or right.

i needed to move on. something in this corridor unnerved me, so i decided that right and onward was the way to go; i walked a long time under the occasionally flickering light of  the sconces. as it turned out, the passageway was as irregular as it was long, bending at subtle angles left and right, up and down. it widened and narrowed, punctuated with dark nooks which could themselves lead somewhere else - but i thought it was best to stay in the light (dim though it was). i started trying the doors, but they were all locked or barred. behind some of them, unseen things stirred as i tugged at the knob, and my ear caught the subsequent rustling, sobbing, and less identifiable sounds. so i pressed on, hoping to find stairs.

the floor was creaky wood covered in one long threadbare carpet. i eventually realized the wooden boards were squeaking too much for just one pair of feet, and stopped to check for stalkers. at once, a disembodied voice muttered next to my ear - its tone grave and benign, like that of a priest in a confessional booth. 'fellow spirit, cursed to haunt this place - i do implore you, have you found the stairway?’. i turned around fiercely, smashing my shoulder against the wall in the instinctive effort to face the owner of the voice, but there was nothing but empty air around me. ‘ah, you are still flesh', the voice continued, 'forgive my distraction, perhaps we will meet later. then you’ll help me search. you should know never to walk downstairs, in the meantime - there are terrible things, and the worst of them end up there. do not linger here either, friend, not if you can help it. there are terrible, terrible things…’. the last sentence dissolved into a whisper as the unseen stranger wandered away, causing the floor to squeak under his invisible weight.

in spite of the ghost's apparent good nature, the encounter left me more than unnerved. i was seized by a hysterical urge to take action, gain an insight, make any progress, no matter how small. i leaped at the nearest door and unleashed a series of desperate kicks to the knob. its wood cracked, its metal bent, and in less than a minute one of my strikes caused the door to swing away with a crash, sprinkling the floor with splinters - and since subtlety was off the table, i decided that i might dispense with all caution as well: so i stomped into the room, ready to beat an answer from whoever happened to be there!

what i encountered, however, stole the violence from my pulse. in this bedroom not so unlike the one where i'd started, the pale guest rested motionless on an old wing-chair, facing the window. he was covered in wounds, and parts of his anatomy were missing - most noticeably, the entirety of his left leg, which seemed to have been torn apart by… well, i couldn’t really fathom the cause of such extensive damage, not without train tracks and a locomotive speeding away. the limb’s void was replaced with a profuse flow of crimson, which was joined by tributaries oozing from various gashes and lacerations. the man’s head tilted weakly to the side, and one bloodshot eye found me.

‘you're here. good…’, he croaked, ‘excuse me if i do not stand. my leg, you see...’, and he nodded toward the stump, casually, directing my attention as if i might have not noticed the absent limb. the man groaned in pain, ‘i may be dying’. i inched closer, thinking what a cruel miracle it was that this mutilated wreck was still conscious.

‘it is fine’, he muttered, ‘i want this. deserve it. look… i know you’re not here to talk, but... will you wait next to me, though? i did not want to die alone… and it won't be... won’t be long, now.’

i crouched in front of him, unable to think of anything meaningful to impart. nonetheless, i felt as though i needed to say something, so i let a chain of well-meaning, trivial utterances roll off my lips until the man's breath became quiet and his eyes turned to glass. true to his word, he did not take long. his skin started to turn grey, and the slight curl of the mouth gave his countenance an unhappy, sort of disappointed look.

i sat on the bed and sank into thought. everything was quiet again, and thus, in the presence of death, i was reminded of what life meant: noise, movement, truly the exception in the vacuum of the cosmos. above all else, life was fleeting, and time - if time did exist - was the treacherous sea beneath which Nothing lay in wait; so life conscripts us all to sail, until, inevitably, we're thrust back into this ocean of secrets, out of time and into non-time, leaving (maybe) a trail of bubbles, but even this faint vestige must fail and vanish before long, as we trail off the world and out of memory. but at least then the suffering is ended, right? perhaps it's best to be dead.

even as i pondered these thoughts, i realized they should not be there. they just... seeped into my mind as i sat on the edge of the bed, as though my contemplation of the scene had invited them. i rubbed my face, attempting to shake off these toxic musings, but it was like they were made of oil; greedy, insidious things. 'this is awful', i complained to my dead companion. these suicidal ideas, met with resistance, now slithered threateningly about, whispering promises of agony. they could take everything from me, leaving nothing but blindness and a flat understanding of the loss inflicted. yet... they didn't; and their moment of hesitation granted me a fortuitous respite.

i told myself these thoughts were not mine, but only impertinent trespassers. so the waves of dread did subside, beating a resentful retreat, while muffled laughter echoed from somewhere else, not far, in the house - at which point i realized the mangled corpse had disappeared from the chair, replaced with two sealed envelopes. each of the white envelopes had one word, and only one, written in an elaborate hand: on the first, there was 'up'. on the second, 'down'.

'this is it', i exclaimed rhetorically, as i snatched the envelope with the word 'up' and held it with both hands for a closer examination. it felt warm; the paper was thick and coarse to the touch: the non-literal stairway. so, confident that a major breakthrough had been made, i pried the envelope open...

...and no sooner was it done than a thin trail of smoke rose from within. i yanked out the note, on which words had been burnt in a familiar fashion. 'if that is what you want', it went, and nothing else. i read it again. 'if that is what you want'. the message sounded ominous. i took a moment to recall the ghost's exact words back in the corridor... 'never walk downstairs', he'd warned, 'terrible things', etc. right? perhaps i should backtrack and see if i could find him again, and anyway he had requested that i help him find the stairway.

however, the paper suddenly burst into flames, and the room began to fill with smoke. i considered running, but then i saw that the door was closed and somehow knew it was too late to try and leave. the room disappeared, replaced by a deep, flowing mist that glowed with a reassuring light. there was a presence in it too, but it was muffled and diffuse and not entirely there. it said that i had done well and that my choices had been sensible.

in the end, however, the house was never supposed to be traversed safely. doing so meant rushing towards the exit, and depriving myself of the reward. hindsight is a cruel mistress, for only now, outcast, evicted, do i understand the house. it's a whirlpool of whimsical unrealities, dragging all that steps into the current through a chain of allegorical answers towards the base at the center; outward is the world of vigil and solid matter, where industrious people go about their meaningless, mundane business. the course of my actions had delivered and imprisoned me there. on the one hand... i am safe. on the other hand, my journey came to an empty conclusion. i have spent years searching for a way back in, a second chance, but it's too late now with the nightmares and i believe i'm finished.