It is always strange to wake up in the daytime after sleeping with the sun still out. I wonder if there was a night between the two?

Ah, you are still no source of company. After some rest, I have come to accept it cheerfully. It’s not that I believe you have my best interests in mind. Rather, you are strong in will, and stronger than I in your silence. If I am to be locked in the forest with a friend or a captor, it is best that they be capable of defending me, whether in mercy or to preserve their prize.

Your prize is safe and sound, and was just now dreaming of something grotesque. Is it okay to wake up from such a dream with a smile on your face? Perhaps it is because I had just spun around and shut it out of the waking world. You see, I don’t remember it at all.

My mouth is dry. I think I could drink now, though something ill is happening with my stomach. I have begun to hate my leg. To loathe it. If there was a pocketknife on my person… oh, is anything in my pocket?

A bit of sand and an unmarked compass, or some such device that always points one way no matter how it is spun. It seems that I came to this forest by choice, then, unless I found the compass within it. Wouldn’t that be odd?

All that is to say, by trying to remember my dream, which was not in my pocket, I have remembered a dream of someone else. Perhaps another friend like you, but one I could see clearly. Perhaps it was myself, if I could only find a time that she looked in the mirror. No, I think I look altogether too kindly on her for it to be myself on the other side and my voice doesn’t sound like hers at all. How did I meet her and what was she to me?

Her name escapes me, so I will call her East, for that is the direction I believe I was looking when I thought of her according to this device, and since then all the details of her are so vivid that I feel ashamed of my own ragged appearance. You see, she was a beautiful young bride once, if only because of the way she looked at her husband when he told her terrible things. She was not yet married when he told her that he would be leaving her. His trade was a respectable way for a man that came from nothing to provide for his wife. Her heart had always thrilled at the word “wife” when he spoke it, but it then seemed to be a bell chiming from some distant hill, echoing through empty valleys below searching for something it would never find, though it was just in plain view moments before. In her eyes, she returned the sound of that bell to him as if it had found its mark, filling her heart with joy. It was no effort, from his view. She was simply letting the good poured into her cup overflow.

Both grew up in crowded rooms with dirt floors, tamped down to a shine by little feet and meticulous sweeping. Her mother had those same eyes, which she inherited without malice, as her mother did from her grandmother. There was a sweetness in that sort of suffering that linked them to an ancient thing, even if with chains. The man she was to marry, and she did shortly after, was so taken by that old way that he would have set the earth ablaze to protect it. Those were the shackles of his own. Once off to make something of himself, he would never return.

As a parting gift, he brought East to a clearing surrounded by evergreens far from the city, though close enough to make the trip in half a day. Hidden in the trees until the pair were almost on it sprung a small home, decorated in bits of blue where paint in curls had refused to fall with the rest. The roof was far too complex for so few rooms, giving away that it had been built in parts, and each part had its own rough character matching the hands that built it by sheer will. Some were painted green with algae and rigid, while others were fibrous and waved with the earth as it had shifted over time. This description may lead you to think that the girl despaired to see it. Not at all.

The boy also considered this, as told by the white knuckles gripped at his waist. If he were able to discern, he would see that she genuinely thrilled this time and bounced with childish excitement, even after entering and being hit with the smell of must and the dark walls swallowing all but a speck of light. She jumped between rooms as if inventing new ones as she went, finding the charm of each thing he had worried would humiliate her. No, this was her home, and it had wooden slat floors! Some had been patched with odd pieces and others were soft with moisture, but they were wood. The stained curtains could be repaired, of course, and the loose windows could be patched to keep out the wind.

With the pure joy of naivety, the groom marched off, leaving with all that his wife could pack in morsel and in spirit. An odd sort of sunset then fell at once on the clearing, left with only one soul to light it. Resilient, East kicked dust from the house to the winds and announced with motion of her chest that all was and would be well just how it was. Her days would be filled with work making the house ready for a life she had painted since childhood. It was not an unrealistic image at all, and she made sure to include all the worries that she could bring to it, making it seem less self-indulgent and childish. It was her childish mind that could not have understood what would happen -- those doors not yet open. If only they had stayed shut, and the worst of her imaginings come true instead.

In time, and not so much, the house was given the mending it was promised by the first dance it made with the widow. As her mother had made the earth shine, she made even the mildew know that it had an owner. More light was added by use of white cloth against the walls, perfectly placed to balance the bits of furniture that also had fabric neatly placed to mask any tears. Even the roof was made waterproof and walls torn into and rebuilt where the water had won. This is where the dance began to slow and the eyes still shining brightly for the man who could not see them began to dim.

From the time she had first slept on a blanket spread across the bedroom floor, she had dreamt about the house. In these dreams, she was alone and someone was at the door, perhaps to deliver a package or come for a visit, though she woke before finding out. In these dreams, there was always another room or another door than was really there. In most of these, she was working to fix them. While the layout of the house often changed, a constant was a door on her bedroom wall, standing slightly open. Through It she could see stairs leading down, and she knew that she should never go that way.

These dreams made sense to her given how much energy she was putting into the house and she even entertained a silly pout after waking up to the lack of a grand room above the office or a spare wing to the kitchen. This she always regretted because it seemed ungrateful. It was when East began tearing at the walls to rebuild them and venturing into the attic that she began to dread the dreams. In those hidden places, she saw fragments of the rooms she had dreamt of… a crumpled newspaper being used for insulation in the wall had the same image as a book on the bookshelf of the dreamt library, or a pattern of wasp nests in the attic looked just like a molded alabaster decoration above the night’s kitchen.

Finding new artifacts of old dreams did come to an end, because the house had been remade as much as she could find a way to do it. Still, the artifacts had been organized and stored neatly in her mind, as all things were in that place. Added to these were the things she did not allow herself to think about until then, catching up to her as she slowed down. In her imaginings of the house, even before she had seen it, she had thrilled at the idea of her younger sisters visiting. They would beg to spend the night, and she would be coy, saying halfheartedly that it was too late in the evening. But, of course, they would force the matter. The young women would spend the night laughing and jumping at the noises she had long been accustomed to and be jealous for the time when they would also have homes to make in their own images. With that in mind, she had lovingly sewn guest pallets for them, sized just right and frilled with scraps of fabric she had bargained for when she was younger than they. Spare cups were rendered from salvaged tea sets, a bit of ribbon hiding the chips in the ceramic and making them proper. Those pallets and dish settings were never used. None of her family had even hinted at coming, and she was not bitter at all, though she almost longed to be. Instead, there was only relief. In some way, she knew they would not be safe if they were to come.

Oh… look at this. The compass needle seems to have stuck and now moves as I turn the bobble one way or the other. I might say it looks more like a watch now than a compass. In that case, I shall name the groom as Nine, for that is the time of day this watch would indicate when I first noticed it, assuming this smudge is 12 O’Clock. There is only one smudge, so what else would it be? You may be thinking it is late in the story to be giving him a name, but there is a reason he is on my mind.

You see, to live truly alone is not a path many can take. What would I do without you? Among those who attempt it, some discover methods of preventing a mind meant for a world of men from snapping. The trick is to keep it from trying to make that one mind the entire universe as a way of solving the riddle, because that is the way to madness. Some carry a person with them, sitting them just out of the periphery of their vision to prevent the mind from noticing it is only a puppet. To further trick the mind into thinking they are not alone, they sometimes speak to it as if it does not know what they know or ask it questions to which they pretend not to know the answer. That answer, when they pretend to hear it, may cause them to gently smile as if they were not lonely or to crumple as if they wished the puppet would just go away. In either case, they keep gingerly moving it to all the right places, for a callous toss might alert the mind that it is an illusion and destroy their defenses. This is not a path East would ever allow herself, for she had always given truth her greatest loyalty and found it all the more valuable when there was nobody there to notice the difference.

Another strategy, then, taken by some I have known, is to hate everything about the world of humans to such a degree that the only logical choice would be to live apart from it. Anything that resembles it becomes a vice to be squeezed out until a purity finally emerges. This may seem a simplistic approach, but it is clever in two ways. First, as with any morality of man, there will always be sin and thus a final purity can never be truly tested for its worth. Any fault in logic can be seen as a failure to fully commit to ones worldview rather than a poor worldview. Second, by making the universe so small, the mind can in fact become it if all else fails. When it does, however, the fate is worse than madness. We may talk about that another day, should we have one together.

Finally, there is the strategy of long suffering, which is to say keeping a view on some distant shore in steadfast faith that your feet will one day stand on it and the present day’s woes will fade into a poof of nothingness if only you do not falter. Thus, the time you might be alone on the way to the dentist and ten years alone on an island are not substantively different things. You will already guess that this was the method of choice for East, whether a virtue or an indulgence painted as such. In terms of the worthiness of this method, we shall explore one case study.

In the days of disrepair, when the house was most asunder, the dark rooms could not damp the radiance of a young bride at work. She was always at her task. Though swirls of thoughts banged at the door, she did not even turn to observe their shadows at the sill. Instead, she rearranged the shelves we have aforementioned – the mental framework with which she made sense of things in keeping with the things she had taken as absolute. Everything had a place, and when new winds came to crash all the trinkets of memory down, she solved the puzzle again and all was well. All made sense and did not contradict the original thesis of her childhood or the ancient bonds she had linked to generations before. If Nine had returned then, what credit we might give her for these actions! But, he was away.

In the days of construction, when all things were broken and remade, a light shone the most resilient. New challenges, from patching plaster to sistering structural beams to mending leaky roof tiles, caused a cascade of pride and a new sort of despair in having something longed for and finding it all meaningless. This latter thought was treated as an enemy, not fitting with the house she had arranged, so she immediately swatted at it and pushed it out the door, keeping the house intact. In opening the door, she had to also fight the things banging at it to get in, and she was successful for a time. If Nine had returned then, would he not feel guilt at seeing what a place he left her! If she had allowed herself to imagine, she would only imagine telling him instead what fun it had been and how glad she was to have learned so many things in the short time he was gone. But, he was still away.

Now we are back in the days of maintenance; the house is nearly complete and anyone who stepped in, rich or poor, would find it charming and clean. The small nooks made to display ceramic knick-knacks were intricately decorated with bits of folded colored paper, the floors spotless apart from the actual spots, and the hearth set for a warm fire. If Nine had returned then, what would he find? Not the woman he had left. Though she would try to be just that, some small thing in her was out of place now. No matter how hard she fought to find the solution, she could not make sense of it without changing the things she refused to change. The things outside the door had stopped knocking. They had already come in and she could not find them amongst the mess to shoo them out. Still, she would cling to the truth she knew when she was able to see more clearly. East would not yield that.

In the dark, trying to fall asleep in her pallet, was the worst time. Even alone, there is a different sort of quiet in bed. The noise of the day becoming silent, each night was an increasingly difficult battle only to hold her ground. Thoughts of what might have happened to him or why his simply written notes with a stipend had ceased, she could no longer use logical arguments to wrestle. Instead, she could only drown them out by biting her lip till it bled or holding her breath until the vision of her closed eyes blinked white. At her most fatigued, she often was on the edge of calling out for him, but caught the sound before it escaped. The terror in it was not that he was lost and could not return, but that he would come. Come from the door with stairs leading down. The door always just beside where she lay sleeping.

We have not yet discussed the crawl space beneath the house. Every other spot had been exposed and worked on by East, but she had not so much as peeked inside to see the state of it. It should be made clear that she had not allowed herself the comfort of fear or superstition. In the work of the house, she had knocked mummified mice from the walls, laughing at herself for lurching back from the harmless captives, and bent herself through the tiny dark attic crossed with abandoned webs and others still with burden. Yet, something had kept her from considering the space beneath the house entirely, as if it did not exist at all. It was truly a crawl space, with barely room to enter, and only beneath the oldest part of her house containing her bedroom and what was now a living room. A pair of boards fixed with smaller scrap boards perpendicular to them leaned against its only entrance just below her bedroom window. It was after the third phase that her mind became suddenly fixated on it, having hardly considered it before. She devised in logical argument that it should be navigated to find any source of rot in the support beams. Another argument, which held more sway, was this: something had been keeping her from entering it and she must challenge it to show it false and be the person who could find pleasure in chains again.

It was in this mode of thought that she devised a strategy. When the midday dishes had been cleaned, she would look inside and see what tools might be needed to properly survey it, or if it was tall enough to navigate at all. This was only meant to take a moment, except the space was just tall enough to move through and there were no signs of snake nests or poisonous insects to deal with. There was nothing keeping her from going in at that very moment, except there was, and that is what made her more determined to go in without further hesitation.

In a space that low, one must choose to go in lying on stomach or back. East chose her back, since the task was to inspect the house above. Her body blocked most of the precious light coming from the entrance, so the inspection was done in large part by feel. Her hands hesitated at first in case of unseen insects, then became more sure as she focused on the task — in the third beam, there were ribbed rows (a sign of termites), and the fifth had spots closer to the outside wall that fell to dust when touched. It was around then, when her body had vanished from the outside world, that her elbow bumped a piece of wood on the ground. Shifting to the side to give it light, and thinking to catalogue what had fallen, her eyes were caught on the rafters above instead. Their appearance was of the stairs leading down from the door beside her bed.

Beside her was a door set into the damp soil, though not like the one in her dreams. No decorative crossing timbers marked the top — it was simply a panel of wood with waves crossing through it, indicating years of swelling from moisture and drying again. At the further end from the crawl space entrance were burnished hinges. All of this East saw with her head pitched to the side in the dim and small space, and then her hand was on the lip and it was open. As open as it could be, at least, because the door was far too large to open fully. In that space she felt a cold metal bar speckled with rust. Reaching down further brought another bar, revealing that they both belonged to a ladder. This investigation set her ear in the narrow opening, which told a gentle story of passages deep below through layers of whispers in the wind. While she speculated about animals and storm cellars of another time, a scratching vibration padded at the ladder, drawing her mind gently numb. This is why she failed to notice, until it was nearly upon her, that something from inside had noticed her.

East knew again what she had by instinct and before rejected, though now the instinct had overwhelmed all other senses and was pulling her body from the space, clawing frantically at the timbers that she had been so cautious with before. If instinct had any name or voice, we might ask of it what it was running from, and it would only say, “It comes!” She pulled violently away from the door in one futile motion, scraping flesh from her back and bruising her head on the floor above. Tearing at the beams and kicking with her legs, she moved toward the entrance, feeling it closing even as it stood open and hearing the muffled clink of the ladder behind her. She finally emerged and got to her feet as she heard the door set in the ground open -- not with the creak of a hinge, which was well oiled, but with the sickeningly gentle change of air pressure coming from below.

Running to the edge of the clearing and behind a tree, East waited, listening acutely for any noise from the house. The beating in her ears dulled that sense, so by instinct she calmed it to a gentle wave. All her energy directed toward that narrow opening, yet the instinct she had hired to mind it warned her to look in the other direction instead, to the forest deep and endless, as even small patches of forest are. Even louder was screamed a name, though she would never tell me what the name was. When she finally moved from the tree to look fully back at the house, the sun had nearly set, casting it all in a haze of pink as if she had lost the home she knew forever. On colder reflection, the only change was that the door to the crawl space had been put back over the opening. It was so subtle and so common a sight that she wondered if she had done it or if she had gone in at all, though this was far fetched. Her own signs of violent exit, torn plants near the house, and bloody fingernails seemed to discount the calming thought. Her intellect was also back and had given full report, not missing any time or detail.

And so her method of surviving away from mankind came to a final test. You see, surviving is the body holding on to the soul it's been given. You can look at a person lain flat with nothing in their eyes and know — they have separated, and the two won’t meet again. The soul, we pray, is much better off without the body than the body without the soul. Perhaps that is a dangerous prayer, as are any that involve matters beyond our comprehension.

East had long been making dangerous prayers, though we should not judge her. If there is any virtue that man in his imperfect way can attain, is it not loyalty? She was loyal to Nine and even more to the chains, and to prove it now she would hang herself by them over a pit in faith that they would not break. This was the idea, though it is I that added the frills of romance to it, that placed her in a bush across from the crawl space entrance that same night. She would watch and see what came or went. Not being loyal to her eyes or ears, much less her heart, she would stamp their report of the day as false if the night was without incident.

Normally, plans made by East were detailed beyond necessity. She and Nine had nearly fought over it, he being the type to jump in without looking. In this plan, she was more like him and his sort, because thinking about it too much risked letting all the warnings she had been ignoring gain ground.

The bush, in her defense, was a good place to hide. Its leaves were dense and webbed across one another, so that even a man standing directly by it would not have seen her there, and she had long stopped wearing a perfume that might give away her scent to an animal. As the sun turned on another day, and only a performative nibble of her sparse dinner in her stomach, she practiced different ways of crouching to find one that could be kept without repositioning herself for long periods. Her eyes fixed on the small house as if it was her first time seeing it… like it was not her own at all. It really was very small. How odd and ugly it seemed, and for the first time she felt shame. The worst were the parts she had fixed, which seemed to perfectly blend with the rest of the patchwork of repairs. She had looked down so sharply on the old repairs before, thinking she had made things pretty and modern by tearing them down and rebuilding them. She was glad to be hidden from the world then, both by the branches and by the darkness.

In time, nature soothed the vanity and distress from East, who had fooled the trees and cicadas into thinking she was one of them. Wind blew in waves, cascading through the low places and crashing on shores of branches above. Small shadows scurried from holes and knocked themselves through the yard as if the mistress was away. Even the house seemed to become part of the land itself, and she was no more ashamed or proud of it then than the bush she sat in. This lack of concern for the things that had weighed on her for so long seemed at first to be clarity. The more she embraced it, though, the more it became something else.

The forest and clearing had also failed to notice another thing. It bent and crept forward, so silent that it could only be heard when seen, giving the mind image for the sound to match. That image was almost of nothing also without the sound, but looking closer it was so dark that, like a dim star, one must look a bit off of it to see it. There were two parts, with the one in front dragging the limp one behind it, and both the size of men.

It was not until the thing was in full view that the bush saw it. At first, it seemed to be an optical illusion of some sort, her mind finding patterns from nothing. Then, perhaps something that had blown over – a piece of fabric left to dry in the sun or some repair made to the roof that had blown loose. As it drifted to the door of the crawl space, she and the night conversed and agreed that the thing belonged to them. A hand then reached out from it to push aside the door, making disaster of her theories. The night, for some reason, had yet to change its mind.

The fingers on the hand curved like the branches of a white birch tree, catching the sparse moonlight and giving away its shape. The tree in a pot at the corner of the room on the right of the grand entry, with emerald curtains and a small desk. It was gone now, and the whole of it under the house. She could feel the floor above the crawl space on her back, where she had lain for years, and wondered if she could will herself into waking up there instead and calling this another dream. If she were you or I, she might have done it, but she had practiced the third strategy to its end and was now bound helplessly to sanity.

Her thoughts now drifted from that space to the room on the right of the entry, which had a floor made of hardwood. Not the soft and overworked boards of the house she knew, but thick slats that were cut evenly by proper craftsmen. Even so, they had lost their sheen after having no care for some time. There were scuffs along the edges, as if they had been rubbed together, and the design seemed from an older era. Unlike the door in her room, she was not afraid of it. She wanted to go in.

There it was at the crawl space door again, whatever it was that went in, except no longer dragging another behind it. It now clearly had a head, looking down as the figure went back the way it came. As with the rest of it, it was draped in dark fabric and made no sound except for the sound it stole from the ground. Looking at it, or perhaps neglecting to look away from it, East lost part of herself in that small room to the right. One of her in the room and one outside it. The imposter resided in the bush, her body no longer bound by the rules East had set for it before her departure. Its instinct was to run to the creature crawling back into the woods. To give herself to it. The only salvation for the one in the room is that the one in the body did not care enough about anything to act. Even to raise her voice or reach out a limb of the body was a mountain insurmountable for what was left of her.

The morning found East’s spirit back in place, though the pieces were not quite where they were before. As she gathered herself to be presented as an invader to the clearing again, she realized something for the first time. She had never been anyone else in the dreams of the house. Not like the dreams of being a child in school or the dreams of being back at the home of Nine when she was 13. It was very rare before to ever just be herself in a dream, but she always was in those dreams when the house was more. Still, the dreams always gave themselves away as false when she awoke. That night, though, had only become morning.

We are almost done.

Even the vague plans East made before the night had no place in them for what she had seen without some time to clean up the things bumped out of order. She traced the normal day of the person she was before to try to find her again. Cleaning the cupboards, but her hands felt the cold of the porcelain cups differently. Eating breakfast, but the toast had no flavor. Bathing, but she wanted to be dirty again.

It was afternoon when she shook off all the things that had broken through the gates. What she had seen was only an animal, and all else was weakness. She would not bow to delusion. She would not give up the house or the future, because all else would be a lie. Any pleasant moment she ever had again would be the true delusion if she gave in now.

So, she gathered the tools she had worked so hard to gather over the time she had been there and used the skill she had so relentlessly earned to secure the door to the crawl space shut. Nails and screws to keep it secure and decorative trim to make it clear this was not done out of fear. To show that the house was hers. Finally, putting aways the tools as if it were any other day, she lay down where she always had and let night come again.

There in her pallet on the floor, she was awoken by an almost sound. One that might make sense if there was an image to go with it. Then, something louder. A probing along the boards from below. The animal was still inside, she thought, and closed her eyes to sleep again. She would free it in the morning. Then, a prying of hands at the edges. Of hands. Her eyes were open, though the room was still as black other than the pale rectangle of light in the shape of a window.

A raucous banging sent waves through her body and broke the delusion, causing her body to lurch instinctively backwards until her back was against the wall where the window could not see her. The pounding came first from below, then joined with hands hammering at the crawl space door from the outside. The wall shook so violently that the old window pane, loose as it was, fell out of its frame and stuck with a thud in the soft wood floor beside her.

A gentle change of air pressure drew breath from the opening, bringing inside the smell and substance of the outside world, which responded by returning to silence. A listening.

Knowing, as any animal would, mortal dread, East did not turn to look at the open window. From it came the presence of something tilting through, bending its head to find the member of the day who had intruded on the business of the night. Within that presence was a dual and conflicting sense of familiarity, showing one face to the body and another to the soul. Because East was paralyzed and unable to dissect them, the two images formed one impossible portrait. A doorway that she knew never to enter.

With her spine pressed into the wall, without words she proposed a desperate bargain with the house. She would remain above if it saved her from being dragged down below. Part of the house, and so of no interest to the one in the window.

After some time, the sense of arousal subsided. The presence was gone, or perhaps she had forfeited her ability to sense it in the bargain, if it had been agreed to. There she remained in purgatory until sunlight dispelled it by casting light on all the world around her without touching her spirit, still dark as pitch. Even if the exchange had been made, she could no longer be invisible, being a shadow in a world of light.

As she sat up, the sensation was of leaving her spine against the wall. There was no doubt, then.

She left alone later that day, carrying only what would fit in the rucksack her mother had given her treasures in to start her own home. She returned these to her mother along with herself, though her mother could never quite find East again. Her compass was as broken as mine, I suppose. Wherever East lived, when she dreamt, she was back in the house, finding new rooms.

This shiver has turned into a fever, so I’m afraid it’s time to shut my eyes and let it run its course. You can start talking any time. I won’t notice. The sleep, I expect, will be too noisy to hear a quiet person like yourself.

…

The world is full of mischief. When a person is left alone for that long, their place in it becomes so very quiet that they begin to hear the small hands knocking at doors they had never noticed before. It is only natural that at some point, no matter how strong their will, they will open one. I suddenly feel even more glad to have you to talk to, my friend, though I regret not remembering who you are.