Under the gables (1/10)

   There are pools of deep darkness on this earth. Places untouched by light since times immemorial. Perhaps I once mocked in disbelief those who spoke of what I called the fruit of disturbed fanciful minds. They who told of the darkness being inhabited by things, ancient things, things from another place for which we have no name. It is debated amidst the scientific community whether childhood fear of darkness is a natural instinct or a form of psycho-pathology requiring treatment. I now know the former to be true. The fear of darkness is a survival instinct, an atavism if you will, that has been handed down since cavemen first realized that there were depths to their caves that should, under no circumstances, ever be plumbed.

   You wonder how I know of what I speak? Against my better judgment, I will tell you my tale. Yet be warned, I have not slept at all in two weeks and you too may well lose your sleep if you insist hearing what I have discovered. You are decided? So be it. I feel that someone should know about it. Perhaps doubt what I have come to take for truth and then reassure me by proving my insanity. Regardless of my desires, I know I have not yet lost my mind…  and if I am loosing it now, it is only because of what I know.

   I am, or rather as I should say it, was at the time a reporter for a modest local newspaper in Marietta Georgia. I was doing research for an article about some gabled roof houses built on the banks of Blue ridge lake sometime in the nineteenth century. When I first reached the small town I was informed that there were no hotels but that I could rent a room in one of the very houses I had been sent to write about. I took this to be a stroke of luck, but in retrospect, I realize it was the first step on the road that has led me to question my understanding of the world that surrounds us.