Location Withheld “Pre Rendered”

“There is a place.

A place that is, and a place that isn't. It is a place that I visited one time, in my dreams, and twice in real life. It is a place that seemed to be waiting for me. Waiting for me to come to it, because that is what it is.

It is a place of waiting, something that sits in silence, listening for someone to hear it.

And I heard it, loud and clear, in a quiet place of my mind, and eventually in real life.

I had been having trouble sleeping, and so I was released from what things one considers important in waking hours. That let me sleep at last, and when I did, the dreams that I had were visceral and immediate.

And one time when I dreamed it was of a particular place and time.

Afterwords I searched the internet, scoured forums, over and over again, hoping to find something about it. It was much like I had done when I went in search of lost media. These lost files were things from my childhood that sat in the places of my mind where the pleasure in not knowing is a pleasure driven by a desire to know, even if in some ways we don't want to.
We don't want to spoil the memory, to ruin the surprise. We want to see it as simply a place of mystery and darkness, a space of something that lingered within and child's mind, in a way that can only be suggested to be trauma, but not trauma.

We remember it like trauma, but it sits in us like pleasure.

And so I went in search of the place, certain that I wasn't the only one who had dreamed of it, people who had seen it in the waking hours, when the things we consider important are set aside and we are forced to confront those empty spots where something is missing, and try to fill it.

And I found nothing. For the longest time I found nothing. No one understood what I had seen, and no one seemed interested in finding out. And in the end it was not in these places where I found these answers, though I am still sure I am not the only one.

I found this place in my waking hours, and what I found there stunned me.

I have forgotten where I had meant to go that day. At first I had thought I had run into it on accident, as I had thought that I was lost. But it was not where I had been seeking to be going at the time, just the place I ended up.

It was a place of ruined buildings, a space abandoned and set aside, where something must have been at one point.

And there was no one in this space, not a human or other creature. Even when I descended into the bowels of the ground, into the small tunnels where access was granted, it was not as I had remembered, the towering places of torches and molten earth replaced with simple caves lit by the light of my cellphone. But I knew that this was the place.

Or perhaps I had gone mad.

And I couldn't find the valley.

Before I left, I made note of a graveyard, and promised myself that I would return with my girlfriend, someone whom the world seem to react to in a way that it doesn't with me. My dreams are more vivid than hers, but her waking life was like the opening of doors, and it is this quality that drew me to her.

It was this quality that caused me to insist she come with me when I returned.

It was easier to find the second time. Getting lost was not required, as I was seeking something that was waiting to be found, and no longer had I set it aside in order to indulge in those responsibilities that take up so much time.

She was excited because I was excited, and upon arriving I believe that she at first understood the meaning of the place, and why it mattered to me.

She commented that it seemed like a place in waiting, and together we searched it, looking over broken buildings and brown grass choked with all sorts of prairie works. And eventually we found the tunnels, just as I had before, but when we did it was not as restricted to us like it had been when I was alone.

This time it was wide open. This time we could hear the sounds of the things residing within the caverns. I had thought this was a place of waiting, and it is, but there are things that are waiting, waiting for their time and waiting for their discovery. They sit in the dark of a forgotten place, waiting for the right TIME for them to emerge.

And we watched these things while we held hands, and though her hand was shaking, I knew she felt it too.

The feeling of nostalgia.

We left after what may have an additional hour, or perhaps minutes, but eventually we rose to the surface, and there we saw it at last! The valley from my dream was there, waiting for us, only this time when I stepped out into the sun it wasn't a time for waking! I was awake, and the sun felt like nectar on my face.

And it made her look so beautiful.

We made love in the graveyard, and we heard the howls of what things lay below the ground. I could not hear them, but she could, and she told me what they said.

They said 'once there were seven, then there were four.'

'Now there are three'

I still do not know what they meant, even if she seemed to believe that I did.

She said it was an echo of a past, a past that had not yet come to pass. It was the future, but the places within and the creatures that wait there can only be understood to be something that was, but now isn't, and something that will want to be again, though it never truly will be.

When I dreamed of it, it was a space with a rising sun, a long valley that I recognized to be a place one might see rendered in a video game, one I may have visited in one of those pre rendered worlds, and then failed to realize that you had seen.

But I know that isn't the case.

Because if I had seen it, I would know.

Know it like I did when waking up, when the final scene of it was a picture of a valley, choked with deposits of weird ores and other values.

The mines I started the dream in were a series of tunnels cloaked in darkness, with only sparse lighting from torches and pools of waiting lava to light your way. In these dark tunnels, I came upon an open chamber, built for the things that I had forgotten I missed, an area that brought out something raw and painful in me.

Visions of my family and my life.

I ended up yelling at my sister, telling her that she had no right to judge me, even if I judged myself. My mother was there...was my father? It is all mixed up in my mind, though like I said it is a memory that I knew immediately upon waking.

There were things I hadn't wished to remember, and things that I never new I forgot.

It was like my soul had been dancing within its old halls, seeking out old things in distant corners of the shadowed caverns, only to eventually find the way up, the image of the valley rising into view.

And in that valley there were strange things to collect.

There was a strange sense of awe to the valley, even if such a place should illicit no such thing, but when one spends enough time in the dark, like the manner of time afforded to us in a dream, it is hard to realize just how much we are seeking the sight of the light. And when I saw that light after so much time in the dark, it could have been anyplace, but the fact it was the valley meant that it is seared into my mind.

In this place, this dream, full of caverns and the lingering, waiting places...I saw IT in the valley, warm sunlight beginning to touch my skin as I felt my mind torn away, back to reality.

I took my time upon waking, and I lingered upon it. Savored it. I do not normally linger upon the ways of dreams, having had so many lately within my restless sleep. It is a sleep I come to easily, and one that I rise only upon its appointed time, and in these spaces I find rest at last, though not in the same way as I felt in that dream.

And I knew needed the place. No. I didn't need the place.

I wanted it, more than I have wanted anything in a long time. That longing that I had been feeling, that longing to feel anything other than the dull and senseless listlessness that causes one to function but only just so, that makes one temperamental, but only in the quiet way that sits inside you, waiting to be released over something small that is suddenly much, much too large to hold onto.

This is why I tried to find it again.

And I did.

There is a place where a valley shines bright with light. A place for waiting things and for those waiting for themselves. And one day I dreamed of that place, and another time I found that place.

Another time I shared that place.

But it is something that matters only to me, even if I am sure I am not the only one.

Perhaps the waiting things understand, but I doubt it. Their existence and mine are meant to cross paths, not overlap, and there is a hope within me that perhaps I will one day keep that connection. My girlfriend no longer believes, and I wish so much to find others like me, even if in so doing I come in contact with the end of all things, that these things whisper about in the darkness of lonely caverns.

I came upon a place that is and isn't.

And now when I sleep, I finally feel at rest.”

The Wellington Street Historical Society collects together all sorts of strange accounts, acts of prophecy or perhaps just insanity that suggest one thing and mean another, or that say what is true, even if it feels unreal. Though we are asked to take these accounts seriously, it is certainly these accounts that I feel the least connected to.

Wellington Street is a place of tangible reality, even if it may seem unreal or outside the realms of truth. But the things that reside here, by and large, exist within the confines of natural laws, cause and effect. There are rules, and those rules can be broken, but they are still rules all the same, and those things that can break them follow patterns of their own.

The above account is one of the many mentions of the phrase “once there were seven.” Over the last few years I have heard it come up again and again, and I cannot help but think about all of us.

There were four of us. You, Max, and The Officer, and me. And now Max is gone...and we three are what is left.

It isn't a coincidence, though I want it to be. Perhaps for an outsider it would sound crazy, but you have been talking to me, and you know how these disjointed pieces can come together in strange and obtuse ways. It is not the first mention of this phrase during the last couple of years, and it is not the first mention of the end of the world.