Memories of Getting Lost

The maze began, or the labyrinth. I don’t know what to call it. None of these words feel right to describe a haunted fucking house.

3.

The maze began, or the labyrinth. I don’t know what to call it. None of these words feel right to describe a haunted fucking house.

2.

It’s foggy now and memories of that time still slip much easier than others. This makes it hard to know what was real and what has developed from imagination over the years. I always come back to the same conclusion though: everything you want to be real can be.

The first thing I remember about being there was my feet on the cold ground. Moss grew between the stones that pushed together to create the hallway floors on the ground level. I had no shoes on, no socks, only bare feet. Light jeans that were frayed at the bottom fit loosely around my skinny legs, though they held the pelvic area perfectly. I felt cashmere across my arms and chest, a light cream colored sweater.

Then I was walking.

Towards what I don't know, my legs just moved. Like Forrest Gump I started and never stopped again for a long time.

This place was a house, I assure you. Or a combination of houses that aspired to be a garden. No house I’d ever seen had walls made of hedge and brick interlacing each other where there should have been drywall. The hedge walls were so tightly groomed that you couldn’t tell if it was alive until you put your hand inside it and felt the crawlies tickle your palms and the little clear hairs on top of your fingers.

The hallways were tangled. That’s the way to best describe it. Jagged and tangled. A bolt of lightning tied like a shoelace.

There was no ceiling, only open sky above where a purple and orange sunset was everchanging and everlasting. Clouds moved across it as if blowing along by a strong wind that I didn’t seem to feel on the ground, there was only ever a light breeze and the slightest chill. Inside those clouds above, lightning flashed but never struck the ground and the thunder was soft.

How I knew this was a house and not Eden was because of the rooms that I passed as I walked intentionlessly. There were endless doors leading into endless rooms. Some of these doors were unlocked, many others weren’t. Several of the doors were left open, inviting you in but I promise there was something urging to stay out. It wasn’t fear because fear was gone there. It was more like being a character in a video game, and whoever was controlling me as that video game character knew not to go into these rooms. Each of their doors was different from the next, and they were all made of various woods. No one else seemed to roam the hallways though I called to them just in case. There were plenty of voices inside the rooms. Voices of every type of person and of every age. Behind the various beech, elms, and sycamore doors couples fought, holidays were celebrated, love was made, creatures slithered, old film rolled, windows broke, teeth chattered, teen voices called to Asmodeus, Leviathan, and Beelzebub, plays I’d never heard before were recited, sports played, games won, wars run, lives lost, books torn, rockets popped, and bones ground all up. I heard childbirth in one room and the next day a mother crying alone in that exact same spot. There were birthday parties behind several doors and old gramophone crackles from another, though no records ever actually played, just the scratch of the vinyl. I waited there for a long time to make sure.

There was other music though. In the far distance a choir sang melodies that I didn’t recognize. Not that I knew tons of classical music, only what I could get my hands on in the music rooms at the school I cleaned. There was a melting quality in the voices. I wondered if these voices, too, came from inside the many locked doors of hallways, but deep down I knew that they didn’t. They came from outside the hedgebrick walls, another story happening not too far away.

There was much more of this world out there beyond what I could see of this new reality. A reality that I began to quickly realize I was stuck in. Beyond the choral voices, orchestral instruments tuned as they do before a performance, yet the tuning never stopped nor did these instruments ever find their pitches.

The constant taste of pennies lined my throat, as if I were always thirsty despite the cool running waters that veined the edges of the floor. I could drink from them, I learned quickly, and that water was sweet. I watched it flow and followed it often to see where it led to but there was no source and no mouth that I could find. It ran around corners and zigged and zagged with the endless hallways and sometimes ducked under one of them to cut to another hallway. By following this water I was quickly convinced that this new house was constantly altering, even if ever so slightly. The only consistency was one very dark hallway.

The end of this hallway was so dark that it too reminded me of a video game. It was a locked level, one you hadn’t earn yet and when you did the light would be there, showing the set of stairs that led up into the sky until they faded away. My first thought was to go up these stairs anyways, to look out and see all that was beyond, to map where I was. But before I could, she appeared.

1.

All I could do for that year — and ya it was a year — was run from Vinyet and go mad. The seasons appeared to change, leaves whirled and collected in corners, not long after that, snow did too. The flakes never seemed to fall, they moved in the air like Spring pollen and Spring eventually came as well. I only knew Summer had arrived when the shade of sunsets behind the clouds matched forest fire season from back home when the sky looked its best. Despite the season, the temperature always felt the same: a little cold, never freezing, never warm. In fact each element of the house felt that way. Not bad or good, simply there with a slight discomfort, as if the climate came from inside me. You could have blamed it on the open roof, or the living walls, or even the bookshelf at the end of the crawlspace that spoke and told stories and acted childishly.

But it hadn’t always been like this. At a time I’d loved and been loved back.

The rest of the story isn’t a nostalgic tale, it just starts that way.