Yesterday

  ...how did I get here? How did it suddenly become months later? Where did the time go? (It ran away.)

   I'm not sure how to say this. I think I'm not well. I've been living on the street for the past...I don't know how long. I think I've been living on the street. I don't remember very well. Remember.

   I thought I saw Voss and Wolfcatcher last week. They were smoking cigarettes outside a 7-11, the neon glow illuminating their vicious faces. I blinked and it turned out it wasn't them at all, just some school kids. I don't know how I could have made that mistake. I know what they look like. Voss is the skinny one and Wolfcatcher is the fat one. Or is it the other way around?

  What's happening? What's going on?

  Yesterday, I decided I was done running. I went home. I went back home.

  It was for sale. The bank had put it up for sale. I tried my keys, but they didn't work. A rock through the window did. I walked through the broken glass and remembered when this was home. A home for my wife and my son. I remembered those stairs, how he played with his toy cars on them. Accidentally stepping on action figures. Kissing my wife in the kitchen.

  How long has it been? Since they went to the City? It felt like yesterday.

  "Ronald?" A voice. An impossible voice. "Ronnie?" I turned around and there she was. Carol. My wife.

  "This isn't real," I said.

  "Of course it isn't," she said as she came closer. I could almost smell her. "I'm just a hallucination. You know that. You've known all along."

  "Known what?" I asked.

  "The answers," she said. "You just never wanted to ask the questions."

  "What are you talking about? I don't...I miss you."

  She raised her hand up and touched my cheek. "Of course you do. That's why you did it. That's why you made it up." At that, I jerked away from her touch.

  "What?"

  "You made it all up, Ronnie," she said. "The conspiracy. All those Doors you saw. Voss and Wolfcatcher. Even the name of the group was a joke. Even GOD was against you, Ronnie. Don't you get it?"

  "This...this is some sort of trick. I saw you and John. I saw you and John walk into the City."

  "That part was real," she said. "They did go into the City. They are probably dead now. You know this, but you couldn't admit it to yourself. It was such a fundamental break from reality that you couldn't admit anything. So you made up a story. You renamed yourself after an author who lost his own son. And you peppered your stories with references to that author."

  "But my hand-"

  "Sometimes your real memories were too much. Sometimes they broke through. You would hurt yourself, Ronnie. And then the pain would allow you to pretend again. You made it all up."

  "I don't...I don't believe you."

  "Yes, you do. You believe me because I am you. I'm sorry, Ronnie. I'm so sorry." And with those words, she faded away.

  That was yesterday. Today is today. I've stopped running. I called my old friends and acquaintances to see what they thought had happened to me. They all thought I died.

  Maybe they are right. Maybe I died when Carol and John went to the City. Maybe I died and just refused to admit it.

  I just looked up the stairs and saw it. The Door. The same one that had taken Carol and John. It's come back. Is it another hallucination? I don't think so.

  I know they are dead. I'm going to open the Door and walk through. I'm not going to meet them in the City. I might not even meet them afterwards, when my body dies in the ever-shifting labyrinth. But I'm going anyway. I want to see what they saw. I want to walk the same steps they did, run down the same streets they ran. That's probably impossible - you can't step in the same river twice, they say - but I'm going to try anyway.

  So. Last words before I go. Not really good at last words. Not really sure anyone is still reading this.

  Our favorite comedies were the Marx Brothers. We always loved it when Groucho sang. Especially in Animal Crackers. We used to sing along. We even taught our son the song.

  Hello, I must be going, 

  I cannot stay, I came to say, I must be going.
  I'm glad I came, but just the same I must be going.

WonderfulThings

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

Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbræ.

"Cities crumble, and chariots rust
I see through a fog that is strange and gray
All kingly things fade back to the dust
Even the gates of Nineveh"

The world lay brown and barren at the closing of the year,
Where the rushes shook and shuddered on the borders of the mere,
And the troubled tide ran shoreward, where the estuaries twined
Through the wide and empty marsh toward the sullen hills behind:
And the smoke-engirdled city sulked beneath the leaden skies,
With the rain-tears slowly sliding from her million window eyes,
And the fog-ghost limped and lingered past the buildings clad in grime,
Till the Frost King gave the signal for the Christmas pantomime!

Here, where the world is quiet,
    Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
    In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
    A sleepy world of streams.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears.

The street-lamps burn amidst the baleful glooms,
Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.

Open the Door,

And listen!

Only the wind's muffled roar,

And the glisten

Of tears 'round the moon.

And, in fancy, the tread

Of vanishing shoon--

Out in the night with the Dead.

HidingInGoodbyes

  I need to go into hiding. Well, more into hiding.

  The last time was too close. Voss and Wolfcatcher won't stop. They can't stop. It's not in their nature.

  So this means I have to go underground even more. No more hotel rooms. No more fake aliases based on Rudyard Kipling.

  No more writing. Not until the chase stops.

  Which means not until Voss and Wolfcatcher are dead. Which will probably not be for a long time.

  So this is goodbye for now.

  S-L-M.

AlmostCaught

   They almost caught me. Voss and Wolfcatcher. I don't know how they found me. I thought I was being careful after last time.

   I was lucky to see them before they arrived. I managed to slip out the bathroom window before they shotgunned the down - no more messing around, no more taking me alive.

   I ran. They followed.
   (You know when you watch those horror movies where the young, blonde victim is running and the killer is doing a slow walk, yet always seems to catch up to her? It felt like that. It felt like I was running so fast, but they could follow me anywhere with a slowly, steady walk.)

   I found a movie theater and decided to hide in dark anonymity. One ticket for whatever.

   Still, they followed. They swept from row to row, looking for me in the dark, only illuminated by the screen. When the screen went bright, I could see their faces: Voss, with his double chin, and Wolfcatcher, with his eerie grin.

   I slipped away and hid in the bathroom. They strolled in two minutes later.

   "Do you ever get that feeling, Mr. Wolfcatcher?" Voss asked.

   "What feeling, Mr. Voss?" Wolfcatcher said.

   "That feeling of singing, Mr. Wolfcatcher?"

   "Can't say that I have. Can't hold a tune worth a damn, you know."

   "Ah, well, I love me a good song. 'Tis sweet to roam when morning's light resounds across the deep. And the crystal song of the woodbine bright hushes the rocks to sleep." As he sang, they opened all the stalls one by one, taking their time, looking around. "And the blood-red moon in the blaze of noon is bathed in a crumbling dew..." They were getting closer and closer. "And the wolf rings out with a glittering snout..." They reached the last stall and carefully pulled out daggers from their jackets. "...to-whit, to-whit, to-whoo!"

   As they stared in the stall that only contained my jacket, I slipped out of the utility closet and ran as fast as I could.

TwoByTwo

   I know who they will send after me. I met them once, in the year I helped the Gentlemen. The year of regrets and mistakes.

   We thought we found a Door. It was cold and raining and we were having trouble locating it. They said they were bringing in "experts" to help. They said that the experts could persuade locals into helping us. "They are well known for their persuasive ability," they said. They didn't lie.

   Imagine Laurel and Hardy. Now imagine Laurel and Hardy in the real world - the world away from the television, the world that can knock you down at a moment's notice. One was tall and thin, the other short and chubby. They wore suits like the other Gentlemen, but on them it seemed...off. The short one grinned too much. The tall one looked at his fingernails.

   Their names were Mr. Voss and Mr. Wolfcatcher. They didn't give us first names (none of the Gentlemen liked using their first names either, but I have the distinct impression that Voss and Wolfcatcher didn't have first names). Voss was the thin one, Wolfcatcher the short one.

   They were independant trackers. Persuaders. And, as I found out very soon, unrepentant killers.

MyHandInBandages

   My left hand is pretty much useless. The doctor said it would take months before I could use my fingers again.

   I am forced to admit that I am a runner. I run.

   A while ago, I met another runner, running from something else. He told me about it -- this creature he called the Slender Man -- and how it had no face and couldn't be killed. "We made it," he said, in a slightly crazed voice. "We made it with our minds."

   I don't agree with him. (For one, I have no idea if this Slender Man exists or not - I saw no proof, but then again, I have seen stranger things.) I don't think human minds could come up with such incomprehensible things.

  We seek order from chaos. We hope to comprehend. We are doomed to failure.

HarpSongOfTheDaneWomen

  They broke my fingers. Four fingers on my left hand are broken. They broke them without asking questions. They broke them just for fun.

  They broke into my hotel room (yeah, I didn't go back to my apartment - I'm crazy, not stupid) and grabbed me. I fought back hard - I'm pretty sure I busted one of their noses - but they clamped a chloroform rag over my mouth.

  Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie. They asked no questions. After they broke my fingers, one of them started tugging at my fingernail. And singing.

  "What is a woman that you forsake her,
   And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
   To go with the old grey Widow-maker?"

  One fingernail gone and one verse done. He started on the next one.

   "She has no house to lay a guest in,
   But one chill bed for all to rest in,
   That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in."

  I cried out for him to stop. My pants were soaked with urine. My fingers were a bloody mess. I swore I would tell them everything, every detail of what I knew. I could bring them to another Door, take them into the City itself. They could raze it to the ground for all I cared.

  The man started on the third fingernail.

  "She has no strong white arms to fold you,
   But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you,
   Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you."

There was a bright light and a Door was there. I had never seen a Door just appear before (and hadn't now, since my eyes had been closed) and this wasn't like any Door I had seen. It was tall and majestic and golden. All of the Gentlemen stared at it with awe and rapture in their eyes.

  It swung open and a great darkness consumed them. It pulled them in and shut the Door behind it.

  I sat alone and breathed and cried as the Door softly vanished away.

LowMenInDarkCoats

   They found my apartment. Broke down the door and left me a note. They still think that shit like that scares me.

  I made the mistake once of helping them. I won't do it again.

  There are different Doors. Or maybe the Doors react differently to different people.

TrottingThroughTheDark

  A week after my wife and son entered the City they found me. The Gentlemen of the Dark. They dressed like businessmen and handed me a business card that said they were from the lawfirm of Ashland & Thorn. They represented someone who was interested in my story.

  I am not stupid. When the police questioned me, I said nothing about the Door or the City. What would I have said? No. Sometimes a lie is easier.

  But they found me anyway. I must have told someone. I could have muttered it in my sleep.

  They said if they could find another Door, they could help bring my wife and son back. (Sometimes a lie is easier.) "Those who see a Door and don't go through sometimes can find more Doors," they told me. I made a mistake. I helped them.

IfYouWakeAtMidnight

  I'm going to break the rule. I'm going to talk about the Gentlemen of the Dark.

  They will try to find me. They will try to break me. I do not care.

  They track the Doors. They have people everywhere looking for them. Wondering alleyways, the symbols of the Door tattooed to their arms for quick reference, so they know if they've found one. Why look? Why the search? Why the secrecy? They answer all questions the same:

  Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.

TheLastWave

   There are those who claim that the City is by a sea or body of water. "Water changes," they say. "Water is change. It never takes the same form twice, just like the City."

  They are right and wrong. The City is like the sea. Constantly shifting. But it is not controlled by the moon, it has no tides, no ways to predict where it will land. There is no shore for the City.

  But we have fed the City and the sea for a thousand years and she calls us still, unfed.

OurProudAndAngryDust

   Sometimes I imagine them. Imagine what they are doing right now. Chasing each other through the winding streets, the twisting lanes that change as soon as you walk past them. They are running, laughing, never growing old. There is no time there.

  Sometimes there are traces. Fragments of a life consumed by the City. I still have their pictures in my breast pocket, close to my heart. And I've found others. A boy in Washington who was sent to his room by his parents and never came out. An group of illegal immigrants, lured by the promise of America, packed into the cramped cargo hold of a boat, all of them suddenly vanishing.

  I can see it now. They are sleepless, whispering to each other, wondering about when they will arrive, when they see a Door. A Door to the ultimate freedom, the endless labyrinth of the City.

TheGardenOfStatues

  A few years ago, I met a man who claimed to have seen through one of the Doors to within the City. He said he saw a beautiful garden filled with tall statues reaching to the heavens. He said that he believed these statues were of the builders of the City.

  When I asked if he had seen these statues' faces, he grew quiet, then said, "They had no faces. Their faces had been carved off, leaving only jagged forms." I said that perhaps these statues were not of the builders, but rather of those who tried to claim the City for themselves and that the statues were reminders to any who wished to do as they did.

  I later learned that this man was a consummate liar.

ANetworkOfLinesThatIntersect

  It's time to talk about networks.

  The Doors form a network. You can walk through one Door and emerge out of another. How do I know this?

  I am driving through the rain when I see it. There's a metal staircase beside a building that leads to a door...and another Door. I remember the markings. I can see it, practically taste the other side. I hurriedly park the car, slam the door shut, not even bothering to lock it, and rush up their steps. I take the door handle, fervently wishing that it won't be locked, and am surprised and relieved when it isn't.

  I turn the handle and walk through. On the other end is a sandy beach, the night sky overhead. The Door shuts behind me before I can stop it.

  It's three hours before I find out that I'm on the Ivory Coast.