(for it is human nature to want to discover what is hidden), he began to explore more eagerly; inside he found a large chamber —Jerome, Life of Paul of Thebes
I am so lucky I am so grateful, I thought to myself, standing in the neon snatch of grass beside the Barnes and Noble parking lot, feeling profoundly ungrateful and restless in my own head. The steam hissed from the back of the mall. The street-lamps buzzed in the empty parking lot. The fog and mist was piped in from the hidden fog-machine hidden down below everything. The fiber optic cables hummed in darkening woods, the blinking cell-phone towers blinked above the well-lit tennis courts. The superhighway rumbled off in the distance beyond the ever-swaying pine trees.
I suppose that I was trying to come back to myself. My soul had gone somewhere. God had gone somewhere, disappearing like the sun behind the fast-moving clouds. I was just a pile of bones and skin—where had my insides gone? And searching for them across the great land, I did not find them. I just found land, scenery, and the others, some with spirit, some vacant. The roulette wheel continued to spin in darkness, like a minor daemon screaming “Where she stops, nobody knows!”
I had left my family behind. It was hard but not hard. Like unclenching a fist. When you unclench, everything melts. You’re afraid of what might come, but it all just melts away.
I was doing bad. Very bad. I saw nothing to like. I had no joy, looked forward to nothing, Didn’t know anything, what I was doing back home. I awoke each day and went through the motions and tasks required of me, from the very first moment gasping awake and counting down the hours until night would come and I could start drinking beer and then go to sleep again—I appreciated nothing, looked forward to nothing, no longer had any hopes or dreams.
God no longer spoke to me. Walls were just walls, shadows were just shadows. I walked around looking for portals to the hidden world but it wasn’t the same, walking was just walking past the bland facades there was no heart behind it. Now all I saw were streets, traffic lights, buildings, walls, and snatches of forest, all of it impermeable and forever-bland—behind it walled-into the drywall were the memories, the ones that I prefer not to talk about.
I had entirely lost my way from the night country I had known when I was younger. It had closed up its hidden doors and passageways to me after I had tried to sell it on the open market. I knew it was wrong to sell but I had no other skills and I knew the dead souls would find it interesting or entertaining enough to pay for, so I did it for a while to pay the bills but having sold it, it closed up on me, because what is holy and bright can’t be sold like that. I picked up the dough. I threw it on the ground. Then I picked it up again.
So I stayed inside my little apartment and I worked my lilla job and minded my own business and went to bed at normal hours—being up and out in the empty streets just made me sad now because the empty street was just an empty street and I was old and there was no magic anymore and the people I knew had moved away or stayed indoors now too because we were not kids anymore; only kids are out loitering and wandering at night; goofing off in parking lots, and nowadays they didn’t even do that. I no longer talked to people.
The big evil screen flickered above the town, one big screen made up of so many little screen panels, illuminating the empty road and clean rooftops, horrifying but also enchanting.
The town had changed. Once I had plans and hopes and a will. But all that had withered away. When I used to take walks, I used to make a cup of coffee and get excited about getting out into the fresh air, thinking, listening to music, but now when I got ready to take a walk I thought what’s the point, going there and back again, what will it lead to, I’ll think some thoughts, an hour will pass, but what for, and decide not to go.
But then this is what happened: I saw him back there, behind the Starbucks.
I was pulling around the Starbucks drive-thru past the teens and soccer dads with their dogs, when I saw him back by the dumpsters. He looked wily and clever, not insane, and did not appear to be drunk, and stared back at the passengers of the cars that were staring at him with a penetrating eagle eye. People froze up and power-locked their car doors.
I saw him walking past and he saw me and I saw myself in him and I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t want to be like that, look like that—such a weird, off-kilter man, neither attractive nor unattractive, but distinctly not normal. I blushed. I felt shame. I wanted to walk different, walk upright, stand upright, be normal, blend in better. So as to not be like HIM.
I pulled down the sun-visor mirror and looked at ye-olde my face.
At one time, I had liked my face. But now I found it contemptible.
Spiders. Cobwebs. The old house. The ratty dusty armchair in the corner of the abandoned house.
He caught my eye and nodded and I don’t know why, and leaned over and unlocked the passenger door.
He crawled into my truck. What exactly are you doing, I asked him. And you know I was reaching under my driver’s seat for my, well, you-know-what.
Easy, easy, he laughed. I’ve been looking for you. It’s been a long time, he said. He grinned with the charred teeth. His features were unclear and staticky somehow.
Where do you remember me from? I asked.
I remember you from a long time ago, he said. And I know how low and sunk you are feeling. The monotony has gotten to you, they’ve chained you to the world, taught you to walk with your head down. Your problem is that you’re too much in their grid, too afraid to slip through the cracks now. Being there, somewhere outside of all this—wouldn’t it might make you feel a little bit better?
He took off his little Hemlocky disguise and pulled out a thick, wrinkled pamphlet—it looked like a bedraggled photocopied telephone book.
“A guide to the night country,” he smiled.
“It has been a long time,” I said.
He grinned with the charred teeth. His features were unclear and staticky somehow, like the broken old TV in the old house.
He took me around to the back of the mall. The colossal American flag on the roof flapped in the wind.
Do you recognize this place? He said.
“Of course," I said, “this is the mall I spent my youth in.”
He nodded.
We entered quietly with ye olde skeleton key.
TBC….