May 12, 2009. Manchester, NH.

Guide, n. [OE. giae, F. guide, It. guida. ... ]

1. A person who leads or directs another in his way or course, as in a strange land; one who exhibits points of interest to strangers; a conductor; also, that which guides; a guidebook.

2. One who, or that which, directs another in his conduct or course of life; a director; a regulator.

He will be our guide, even unto death. Ps. xlviii. 14

"You've got nothing left to lose,"
She whispered as she walked me through the rooms
"Forever," she said, "waits for no one.
"Follow me or give it all away."

I don't normally mind basements, but even I can smell the thin breath of the deadworlds over the sour smell of dirt flooring gone bad. Actually, the thing that bothers me is the very real possibility of stumbling on a homeless squatter, or worse. Some of the boards on the first floor windows looked pretty loose. They would have been my second choice if the hasp on the basement door hadn't been rusty enough to break. I should have brought a gun. I should learn how to use one.

The door at the top of the basement stairs looks pretty solid, but I've already jammed a dollar and a half's worth of dimes into the hinges to be certain. I don't want any witnesses.

The candles I light burn sluggishly in the stale air down here; the sourceless light they cast on the other side of the Shroud is blue and dim, but enough to illuminate the dead man whose company I've been keeping for the last month. The formless masses of the undifferentiated dead filter through their oblique ways, cowled and henbane-crowned, making room for him. I have the odd feeling that he's enjoying this.

I'll have to use my own blood to trace the markings on the dirt floor; I don't want to leave anything to chance.

The door opened to the room of nightmares
I breathed in the silent darkness, cold
To which she cried, "There's no turning back now
"Follow me; it's got to be this way..."

The incantation lasts just under ten minutes. It's not really important, just a crutch to support belief, but I feel dizzy from the distilled concentration.

Still, I can feel it working. Like a slow disease, the combined power of blood and belief gnaws at the surface of things. The Vaseline smear of the Shroud doesn't part, but thins, sworling away like mucus strands on top of old milk. Touching it, I can feel the thinness vibrating, like a stretched drum head slicked with oil.

I reach through the Shroud with one hand. Sticky, it clings to my skin in cross-section as I grasp at the bluelit space in the dead-world basement. Contact. Clutching the dead man's hand and holding my breath, I pull myself through.

Something pries my hand from his, even as the ice-shock of the Shroud passes over my head. I lose my grip. I land in six inches of water. This is not what I had expected.

But as we leapt through the shadows
Like the animal released from its cage
Gently she wiped the blood from my face
"Follow me or give it all away."

I can still see the blue of the dead-basement and the flickering yellow of the life-basement. Neither of those is where I am. Stumbling out of the water by reflex, I feel my shoes crunching on broken tiles, which don't exist where I came from. And snow, melting at the edges of the water.

She's waiting for me on the silver-flooded moonlit street, just outside the basement door with its scrolled handles and subway-style railing. The gritty flickering of a firefly streetlamp illuminates her. Sometimes, I believe that I know her face better than I know my own : the bruised mouth, the gaping blue eyes, the knotted hair pulled through the laurel crown. I've never heard her speak, not lucidly. But I know what she would say, and it rings in my head.

- You don't know where you are.

"No." The echoes of the street put me on edge, but I don't like having two voices in my head. She watches me with that awful, boneless tilt of her head. Vapors pool at her bandaged feet.

- Not the dreams of the living, or the dreams of the dead.

"Where, then?" The wavering peaks of the opposite houses are festooned with creaking weathervanes that spin lazily against the starfilled sky. The street is familiar, like a memory.

- The dreams of dreamers, once removed. The night-thoughts of those that were once dreamed into being. A purer sort of world.

"Purer than what?"

- What will you do with him?

I turn, startled. My dead man has arrived at the top of the basement stairs, silhouetted against the blue moviehouse flicker of his land. He casts about, sharp features drawn into relief. Pockmarks on his cheeks and nose; wide, epicene mouth half-open as he searches.

"He doesn't see me."

- Not here. Dimly, because of familiarity. What will you do with him? He showed you where the weakest point was. He held your hand, showed you the door.

"I ..." His cloak is the only similarity to the half-formed shades which drift through and around him. He licks his lips, eyes wide and reflective. "Oh, God."

- You dreamed him up. You remembered him, made him think again.

"But he's still ..." I look at her closed face, the unbeautiful jut of bones beneath skin. She smells like chypre. "He's only on the banks of the Styx. Not on the other side. I needed someone from the close side. Nobody from the further bank could have seen the right place." She watches me. "Oh, God. I didn't think ..."

- Be merciful.

"I have no right to destroy him. He created himself." He has staggered into the street, cowl thrown back. His bare feet are very white in the dead streetlight.

- Without your help, he would still be mindless. Now he has a mind, but no direction.

"He's no tool. I can't just throw him aside once I've used him."

- The great desire of the restless dead is for obliteration. To sleep, not to wander.

"I can't." There is something wet on my cheeks. I don't care about the echoes of this world's streets. "I can't, do you understand? I'm not that strong." I want to throw myself at her, shake her, make her see.

- You are. You must un-remember him. Forget him. Take my hand.

Something is hard and damp in my throat; her hand is bony and delicate in mine. Like his. "I can't." I try not to watch him where he stands, grasping, the tattered robes clustering and flapping around him. I try not to hear him as he shouts.

- You have no choice. I will help you.

"He helped me when I needed it." I close my eyes. I can feel the memories fading as her palm presses into my fingers. I can't look. "He showed me where to look, where I could breach through ..." His eyes -- what was the color? Details slip away, draining. "He was ..."

- He was more lost after you found him.

I can't remember his face.

- This is better.

Nothing. I look up, still clutching her awful hand in mine, breathing her acrid smell. The street is empty, and the wind blows away whatever is left.

- Come. You have done well. We have walking to do.

I wipe my face, and follow.

"The Nature of the Whole out of the Substance of the Whole, as out of wax, moulds at one time a horse, and breaking up the mould kneads the material up into a tree, then into a man, and then into something else ... and every one of them subsists just for a moment."

- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

[Lyrics: "Follow Me" from Kill Switch ... Klick.]