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I do not understand it, but I have erred. I have erred in a way which I cannot regret, for it took many weeks of dreaming before I understood the horrors I was unleashing into the world by allowing myself to continue on, existing, as if my mind and body had not been converted into some form of gate through which the unearthly monstrosities of my dreams could escape. And yet I am a coward, so I continue on still, taking each moment new breaths while evading the truth: I have unleashed a horror I cannot contain.
I am a coward, but I am no fool. I have begun this account so one day I may pass it on. Perhaps on my death it will be published, spread widely, as those who read it come face to face with an unholy truth: those demons which have begun to prowl amongst us were not always there.
I hope I am recounting faithfully the place of the alien world of which I dream, though in truth I may have lost some details to the passage of time. But I will begin at the beginning, on a night unremarkable, in that dreary Appalachian way, in which I first found myself in that most lamentable of labyrinths, that godsforsaken underground maze. I say underground although it is true that I have no way of knowing, for I did not access the maze through any door but through arriving there, as if by magic, on the moment in which I entered into my dreams. Or nightmares, they may be properly termed, for indeed on the instant I awoke from that inexplicable horror of a place I let out a broken gasp, my waking haunted still by the terrors which stalked me through the maze. Still, I feel that the maze must have trapped me deep beneath the belly of the earth, miles below the domain of man, as while inside that wretched place the atmosphere brought such utter oppression I can singularly compare it to the time I entered the mines as a child, looking for my father in a place where no child, and indeed no mortal man, should dare trespass. For if you picture a mountain stacked on the ceiling of the dwelling in which you reside, you will have merely an inkling of an idea of the weight which seemed to press down upon me that night as I wandered ever further, seeking respite from the creatures which, even now, I cannot help but fear.
I fear that I have no explanation for the cause of the misadventure, and though I have wracked my brain for some inciting incident which might have induced my mind to suffer specters, there is no source which explains away the visions of that first terrible night or the many subsequent dreams which were to follow. My only theory is that, perhaps, being a study of the early lore, I wandered into some piece of knowledge from which I should have best kept away. My studies into the early lore have unearthed images of grotesque monsters, incestuous, alien things , and stories of abominations as described by peoples long dead by the time my ancestors first came to this land… tales of distorted, twisted men who were fish, drowned cities, and the cultists of those strange principles which were outlawed in the east. But despite those weird and sordid tales, there has been nothing so unsettling as to follow me into my head. Nothing so ancient, so primitive, as the impossible landscapes in which I walked, at first, alone.
The maze was a strangely beautiful sight, I admit. When I became conscious of my whereabouts, or semi-conscious, or however one is during the state of affairs in which they are aware of their dream and lucid enough to respond, I stared in open mouthed astonishment. The warped geometry of the planes made no sense and yet the unrevealed potential of the alien, arching lines made my dreaming form gape, realizing the constructions my mind had created.
For many minutes I walked, hearing no footsteps and feeling no breeze, through the heavy, leaden stillness. I admired the arches constructed of bending triangular shapes which transposed themselves every time I turned my head. I scrutinized the interlinked tile floor, where each flat surface had either too many corners or not enough edges. The neolithically forged columns which descended into each other with maddeningly different rhythm began to boggle my mind. My positive impressions began to fade. The spatial reality of the rooms through which I passed made little sense, and as I turned to face the way through which I had come I saw that the way had changed, slightly yet precisely, and what had once been a set of stairs which led had led me up into a stone landing now led, not down as I would expect, but up onto a terrace. I ran up the steps and stopped: what I saw below was a shifting, moving mass of walls, hallways, and stairs.
And yet nothing moved.
I stared.
The walls shimmered with impossibility; parallel lines curved and met; hallways became a singular point which drew all attention; the three-dimensional space of each room folded and became unspeakably dimensional and beyond comprehension, and even the me that understood I was dreaming cried out and took a step back, back from the terrace, back onto the same stairs which I had just ascended to their final floor and now led up, up, and to a narrow hallway which stretched the length of infinity if it were infinitely divided by half.
I fell to my knees, marveling at the paradox which my mind had conjured, and it was then I heard the sound, that tiniest of muffled threats which broke the stifled loneliness in which I had been trapped.
Mreow?
I say with certainty, such a rasping, shrill voice had never been heard by the likes of humanity before. Though the sound was quiet, it grated against my ears and raised gooseflesh along my arms. I looked up to see the source and saw then my first glimpse of this creature, this horror which must have been cursed, like the minotaur, to stay trapped inside that wretched place.
How can I describe it? It was small, covered in fur, with malevolent round eyes. Its pupils were slits, and they watched me with disdain as I found my feet and slowly made to back away. It had a tail—a violent, swishing thing, which paused in the air just long enough to let me know it was toying with me as if I were naught but the smallest of ants, caught under a cup by a child with a glass.
Then I saw its feet, the paw-like appendages on the end of its legs. There were four of them, each covered with fur like the rest of the creature. And each had several razor-sharp claws.
I stared at it.
It watched me, and repeated its frightful noise.
Like the coward I am, I ran. I sprinted throughout the maze, never stopping to wonder at the brutal majesty of the mind which had constructed it–for I no longer believed my mind capable of such impressively cruel creation–and it was perhaps my inability to boggle at the sights surrounding my flight which saved me. I think if I had stayed too long staring into the cosmic void, I might have grown impossibly mad, mad like a stranded sailor or an Antarctic voyagers lost to sea. I ran and did not look and did not stop to cower from the creatures which I could hear giving chase, almost and yet not as quiet and still as the grave.
And during the time I ran through that place, that horrid, ever-still, ever-silent and unending expanse of impossible madness, I could swear I had never before seen anything like the creatures which hunted me as if I were a rat running from the larder. I swear it still. Before I began nightly to enter that nightmarish dwelling, these creatures did not have names. They did not have faces known to man. These creatures did not exist.
And for many days after I first awoke from that place, gasping and crying aloud at relief to be free, they didn’t still. Or I didn’t notice them.
But the dreams began again.
And then, very suddenly, I saw one of those hideous beasts in my town.
I froze when I saw the creature, half-convinced I had wandered into a dream where I stood, a block away from my parent’s house. I watched the creature. It watched me in response, while sunning itself in a beam of daylight, flicking its tail with predatory intent.
I watched my neighbor come out onto her front lawn, pick up the wretched monster, and carry it into her house. I wanted to shout, ‘No! Do you know what sort of hellish creature that is?’ But I did not, and that night I was back, running, through the unending labyrinth of my dreams.
They’ve begun to take over my town. I see the creatures on the street, stalking, hunting, hissing, prowling, always finding some excuse to watch me. They play with their food in the same way, at night, they play with me. The other day, I watched one of the monsters swallow a mouse alive and whole. I couldn’t look away. This didn’t used to be.
Even worse than the catastrophe of their initial intrusion, the demons have begun to invade the memories of the town. The other day I told my sister what I had seen, what I was witnessing, and she laughed. She laughed at me, and said the creatures had always been there. My dear sister even gave them a name, as if they were common beastly things instead of beasts. She called them cats.
My sister, the town, perhaps the whole world, can call the monsters what they like. I know the truth. These creatures, these cats, had never appeared in my town until I began to dream. To dream of the labyrinth, that place of impossible dimensions and paradoxical design.
And here is another haunting fact about that maze of horrors, which had once contained monsters. Now, when I visit it at night, it contains only me.