Yeah, you read the title right.
No, I’m not talking about a D&D character class.
I’m a water witch. If you want the more “professional” term, a dowser. But, between having the word ‘witch’ describe your line of work (which is objectively brilliant) and having a job title that sounds like you drench things for a living, I’m more inclined toward the former. Especially because, to some, what I do might just teeter on the realms of witchcraft and magic.
In case you’re unacquainted with either of those terms, I’m basically a living, breathing metal detector. Except, instead of finding you metals, I’m mostly hired to find any and all sources of underground water, with nothing at my disposal outside of a few sticks, metal rods, and a good dollop of intuition.
You think I’m crazy, don’t you? I don’t blame you, most folks do. That just comes with the trade, and I take it in stride. I do my talking on the field, and if you follow me as I go, you’ll see I do my job well. No muss or fuss, just point me where you want, and I’ll grab the applicable witching rod (bonus points if you can name any other job that encourages you to carry witch tools) and within the hour you’ll be following me to the location of your future well.
I can’t tell you how I do this, because I don’t know myself. If I’m being honest, as much as I respected the former town dowser, Old Man Duncan, I can tell you with some certainty he was probably a phony, a good reader of the land if you’re rosy about it. He’d walk out onto a property with the owner, crouch and grab a handful of soil, and let it run through his fingers as he watched it with slitted eyes. Then he’d tell them to step away “while the magic happened”, and when they did, he’d find the nearest tree sturdy enough to support his weight, place his hat over his eyes, and switch off for the afternoon. If for some reason they were bold enough to return, he’d tell them they threw him off his process, and that he’d need to up the fee for all the trouble.
And where was I when he did this, you ask? Well, when you admire someone enough you might just trust them blindly, as I did Old Man Duncan. So, in those early days, I sat by him as he snoozed and watched the world go by, thinking it was all a part of the process. But at some point, spending all that time letting the afternoons while away, I spotted the signs. They appeared subtly at first, the blink-and-you-miss-it sort of cues. But then I saw them again, and again, and in time, they became frequent enough and pressing enough to one day compel an investigation.
Have you ever played the game “Hot or Cold”? Think of that, but as you approach the item or person that’s hiding from you, your ears start ringing, your vision becomes tinted, and your head starts to feel like it’s been swapped for a bowling ball.
Well, on one of those slow afternoons, seated against an old tree and poking at an ant trail with one of Duncan’s dowsing rods, my ears caught a steady trilling sound, and my vision was ever so slightly tinted, coated in the lightest shade of blue. Confused, I’d risen from my usual place alongside the old dowser and walked a little bit, thinking I was going light-headed from all the time spent doing nothing. Instead, stepping away from the tree, the shrill noise in my ears picked up, and the tint became stronger, like replacing a pair of dollar store sunglasses with the fancy ones you get in the malls. It was a gradual change, but noticeable no doubt.
Intrigued, I continued moving forward, about forty more paces before I’d stopped. There, the ringing was roaring, and the tint was its strongest, like watching life through a filter made of cerulean shadows. As if the sensory overload wasn’t enough, my head, which had been getting heavier and heavier the more I walked (a phenomenon I’d written off once again to extended periods of idle time), had reached a point where I felt the need to prop it up with my hands just to keep it upright.
With that triumvirate of quandaries, I’d stood rooted to the ground in sheer confusion until enough sense broke through that veil of bewilderment to drag me away from where the worst of the symptoms were happening. Stepping back to where I’d been seated earlier, a calmness washed over me as the sensations fell close to quiet once more. For a few moments or so, I thought I’d gotten trapped in an all too real nightmare.
As the minutes passed, my relief gave way to perplexity, those symptoms replaying before my mind’s eye. I’d looked at my hand, which had remained clasped over the dowsing stick. Suffice it to say Old Man Duncan didn’t get to complete his nap on that fateful day, my puzzlement over what I’d just experienced beating him to the chase. I’d tapped at his shoulder until he finally felt compelled to open his eyes, before recounting to him what had happened. He listened with all the enthusiasm of a kid whose ice cream had just fallen off the cone. The matters all told, I waited for a reply, which he finally provided after staring off into the distance for half a minute.
“You sure you weren’t dreaming kid?”
I don’t know why some folks think children are inherently untrustworthy. Sure, they can let their imaginations run a little wild every now and then, and sure, they can tell you a tale from the playground that’ll make you raise your eyebrows at the very claims they’re making. But when a kid approaches you with the countenance of an austere monk, when the smile that usually wicks on and off of their faces as they tell a fib is wholly absent, any good adult should treat those signs as seriously as they do the concerns of their boss or best friend.
And so, when Old Man Duncan had met my eyes and told me there was no world in which what I’d just said could possibly be true outside of the one in my head, I felt compelled to prove it. On that day, hearing those words, in the face of those new discoveries, I’d grabbed him by the arm and yanked at it until he muttered a string of words I shouldn’t have heard at that age and hauled himself up. I stomped my way to where I’d experienced the worst of those symptoms, putting myself through them again, if for nothing else than to make sure he knew I wasn’t pulling his leg. As we got closer to the apex of the sensations, he watched me with an expression that grew increasingly concerned, before eventually drawing me back when I’d resorted to supporting my head once more. We walked back to the tree, but instead of resting against it, he sighed, shook his head slightly, and asked me what it was I was trying to prove. I blinked a few times, weighing up my options, and looked back to where I’d almost lost my mind from the tinnitus, tinted eyesight, and heavy head. Then I said something that, in hindsight, I was probably ill-placed to say.
“Tell the landlord the water is there.” I’d proclaimed, pointing to that spot once more, meeting the old dowser’s eyes and holding them with every drop of conviction I could. Honestly, I don’t know why that had been the first conclusion I’d stumbled onto. You’d think I’d have asked him to take me home so I could have a nap of my own. But there was something about the way those symptoms had waxed and waned that urged me to do what I did, say what I said.
And anyway, I knew the routine, the game he played. If the man had one thing going for him, it was how damn efficient he was, because at the very moment the confused landlord would start growing skeptic, the dominoes would fall. Old Man Duncan would awaken from his sleep, dust off his backside, shake the landowner’s hand as they approached him, and walk them over to a patch of grass a little greener than the rest before proudly declaring “That’s your spot.”
And you’d be damned if he was wrong, because, luck be on his side, he rarely was.
Now, some adults aren’t quick to trust kids, but there are some actions, those primal ones that trigger the subconscious parts of a person’s brain, that’ll wrangle the faith of even the most leery soul no matter the circumstance. My favorite of those? Meeting the doubter’s eyes and holding them. There’s something about anchoring your vision against someone else’s that really gets them squirming and second-guessing, makes them realize you aren’t telling tall tales. Just wait for the next time it happens to you, you’ll see what I mean.
And so, my tiny eyes fixed on him and the clock running out before the inevitable performance, Old Man Duncan yielded. When the landlord arrived, he pointed to right where I’d done, and said with as much confidence as ever, “That’s your spot.”
And then nothing happened. At least, not immediately. Because who drills a well immediately?
But that doesn’t mean fate and consequence weren’t mixing their cauldrons. Fast forward a few months later, as I was running another job with the old man, we ran into that very same landlord. He’d waved at us and flagged us down, and Duncan looked like he was bracing himself for a storm. But instead, he’d come right up to him, gave him a firm shake of the hand and slap across the back, and with a beaming smile declared how that well was the best bit of work he’d ever come across, the water plentiful even when the rains weren’t. I ran most of the old man’s jobs henceforth.
The crazy part is, when I wasn’t using the rods, those effects were totally absent, the world passing by me like it did anyone else. Rods in hand, the more I practiced, the better I got at controlling and subduing the effects.
I found that different witching rods (the Old Man always carried a variety, but never made much use of them outside of the odd encore for a particularly important performance), served different purposes, the metal ones helping me find the approximate location to go hunting in, before switching to the wooden ones which pinpointed the spot. This meant we were finishing on even the massive properties before the day was over.
I’ll save you the rest, but in short, we routinely located the most productive wells in the county, the Old Man passed away happy, and I took the helm of the business formally.
And that brings us right up to this afternoon.
You’d be hard-pressed to find anything out of the blue about how the day had started. As per usual, I began the morning late and slow with a hearty breakfast, capped with a cup of tea and a good book in hand. When it came around 11:30, I began the drive to the site of the job, letting time do the running while I meandered to the address. I’d scheduled the appointment for 12, right at midday, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to make a few stops before I got there.
The thing about small-town living, especially when you’ve been around a place your whole life, is you’re going to run into some familiar folk. And if you do, well you’d better stop to talk, or you might as well be giving them the finger and driving off. Was that Mr Collins out on the field? Well, he needs to hear what the Andrews are planning on doing with the unused plot at the back of their land. And, oh look, Mrs Buchanan’s grandkids are selling lemonade on the curb, don’t mind if I do.
And so a few stops became a few too many, and I reached the site around 12:20PM.
Strangely enough, for all my knowledge of this town and its ins and outs, the address I was headed to was one of the only places around here that was grayed out on my mental map. It was one of those properties that had its own approach, a narrow dirt track with trees on either side that went on for a few minutes, bumping you along until you met the smoother dirt on which the house sat. Right where the plot started, the ground gained in elevation a little and the trees parted, revealing an open field behind the property that, much like the abode that sat on the near end of it, I had no recollection of seeing prior.
The house was as bog-standard as they came. A run-of-the-mill two-story place, painted a brilliantly bland shade of gray, with asphalt shingles for the roof, four-pane windows in even intervals where the rooms probably were, and an old oak door right where you’d expect it to be, front and center. No garage, just a lone hatchback parked in the open, perpendicular to the facade. There was a porch too, nothing fancy mind you, floored with the same oak as the door and decorated modestly with a single aging rocking chair and a coffee table.
And there, upon that chair, sat a man. An average-looking man to complement the house behind him. Middle-aged from what I could discern, bespectacled with brown hair and a cup in his hand. When I got out of the truck, he stood and gave a light wave.
“You the dowser?” he asked.
“The one and only,” I returned.
“Thought you wouldn’t show up.”
A grin crept across my face as I replied.
“Not acquainted with country time are you? We do things slow and steady around here.”
He pondered my answer briefly before setting his cup down on the coffee table and trodding over to where I stood.
“Seth,” he said with a slight smile, offering his hand. I shook it and replied in kind.
“Meg.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Meg. You were the one on the phone, right?”
I gave a single nod before responding. “I don’t think there are many water witches out here with assistants to take their calls,” I hoped he’d appreciate the attempt at humor, but instead, Seth cocked his head.
“Water witch?”
“Water witch, dowser; interchangeable terms,” I retorted in clarification. He looked at me funny before slowly nodding and turning to face the house.
You probably think I was being petty, and you wouldn’t be wrong.
“This place belonged to my father. He passed away a few months ago, left my name on the inheritance, and now it’s mine. Truth be told, I didn’t even know he was out here.” He looked around as he spoke. “I’ve been living in the city and hadn’t talked to the Old Man in ages. Then one fine evening I’m minding my business and the news arrives.”
Listening to Seth, I mhm’d and uhuh’d along, but, between you and me, my head just wasn’t there at the start. Nothing against the guy, but while I was still switching to work Meg, home Meg lingered on the thought of getting back to her domain and shutting down.
I guess some of Duncan’s habits have rubbed off on me, but in my defense, the past few months have been super hectic. Even though these days I have the symptoms of this work under pretty good control, they still leave me woozy and depleted if I push myself too far. At that moment, with no appointments scheduled for the next week, I was relishing the opportunity to recharge my batteries and step away from the water hunt. Seth though, he’d booked well in advance and at a time when I thought I could juggle the load. A deal is a deal, and I always hold up my end.
He went on for a fair bit longer, though all I can recall now are the highlights of what he’d said, about how he was estranged from his dad and apprehensive to even visit the place when he’d found out about it, which had kept him away for a good while. Eventually, he’d put it down to a coin toss, and when he called heads to stay in the city, it landed on tails.
“Fate and chance mixing their cauldrons,” I’d told him, which elicited a half laugh, better than the reception I got for the earlier attempt. He paused for a moment then and looked at the sky, shaking his head at the heavens.
“Can I be honest with you?” he’d asked.
“I thought we were already being honest,” I said, arching an eyebrow.
He waved his hand as if to dismiss the previous statement. “No, no, you’re right. What I mean to say is – look. I don’t normally put my faith in pseudoscience, but the one thing I know for sure is that there’s no running water in that house, which makes me wonder how my Old Man even lived here.”
He gestured around as he continued. “No well either, which means I’ve got to get one built, and that’s gonna cost a dime, even if it’s just to sell the land. So I figured, heck, if fate wanted me to be here, I’d gamble on her some more.”
He stopped watching the clouds and looked at me.
“So just point me somewhere half decent. I’ve only seen good things on your Google reviews (which was news to me, I haven’t set up a page for the business), and if you’re half good at this job then you ought to save me some trouble, right?”
There was this look in his eyes and a slight quiver in his voice when he’d said that, the sort of cues that hinted at desperation; like he’d banked a fair share on his decision to visit and fix up that house. In a way, I almost sympathized with him, but that first line about not trusting a water witch (maybe he hadn’t said those exact words, but the message was clear) was the only thought still lingering in my head when he was said and done.
Like I said, I take it in stride, but that doesn’t mean I won’t relish an opportunity to prove a doubter wrong.
“Well Seth, I appreciate your forwardness. I don’t take offense to your skepticism, most people think I’m a fraud.” I walked back to the truck as I spoke, and undid the tarp covering its bed, rummaging through the branches and rods I kept there before finding my trusty copper rods and witch-hazel twig (the very same twig Duncan used). Retrieving them, I returned to Seth and held out the Y-shaped stick for him to take. I didn’t expect him to suddenly start dowsing with me in case you’re wondering. It was more a gesture of goodwill, an attempt to break through that first barrier of suspicion.
“You’re welcome to join me as I work. I reckon we can get your doubts sorted in—” I glanced at my watch for dramatic effect “—20 or so minutes.”
He stared at me a bit longer before putting his hands on his hips, exhaling sharply and glaring at the ground, lips pursed.
That’s a no then, I’d thought. I lowered my arm and returned to the truck. Assuming the conversation was over, I began on the part I was paid for, the work, and started on gathering my bearings. The best place to kick off the search on most properties was out in the open, and I noticed the house’s slightly raised plot extended for a bit beyond the building’s back before giving way to the field. With the facts in mind, I headed in that direction and was at the end of the plot when a voice from behind halted my progress.
“Alright, let’s go.”
And so I handed Seth the witch-hazel stick, smiled, and off we went.
As we stepped off the house plot and walked out onto the field, I asked Seth if he had any preferences for the location of the well (sometimes I get multiple hits on a single property, it all depends on the strength of the sensations). He shrugged, saying it didn’t matter, so long as it produced enough water to service a family. Once it was set up, he could advertise the property as having one, which would increase its market value. While he waited for it to sell, he could use it too.
That piqued my interest.
“You’re not going back to the city?” I’d inquired as a follow-up, to which Seth quickly and subtly shook his head. “Not anytime soon.” He looked a little more comfortable as he said that, like he’d been contemplating the very idea and waging war in his head, glad to finally give the thought substance by sharing it with someone else. I didn’t prod any further, and instead, as we approached the center of the field, shifted the conversation topic.
“We’re good here.” I came to a stop, and Seth followed suit before lifting the witch-hazel stick, studying it, and then speaking.
“Do you need this yet?”
“Not quite. That there is for close-range work,” I answered with a gesture at the twig. He flicked his eyes at me and then down toward the copper rods.
“So you use that for long-range stuff?”
“Kind of. The metal rods tell me where to search and from there the sticks take me to the spot.”
Dowsing rods are shaped like guns, and my copper ones have handles on the shorter side. Planting my feet shoulder-width apart, I stood straight and raised the long ends of the rods until they were perpendicular to the ground, the ends pointed right at Seth. He raised his arms in mock reply.
“Hey, if you shoot me you don’t get paid,” he chuckled. I rolled my eyes but felt redeemed by the fact his humor was as flat as mine.
I’ve not told you about the metal rods and their effects yet, have I? Well, they differ from the sticks in that their influences are of a subtler nature. Far more comfortable to work with.
Steadying my focus, I shut my eyes and awaited the first sign, which always manifests itself as a droning sound coming from the direction I ought to search in. Once that was determined, the ends of the rods would begin to bob up and down, though not by my volition. Wikipedia calls it the ‘ideomotor phenomenon’, which apparently occurs when you move without meaning to, like being a puppet on the ends of a greater being’s strings.
But there, in the light chill of the autumn, under the soft glow of the sun and what I presumed to be the focused eyes of Seth, all was quiet, and nothing happened. The seconds that passed started in the single digits, grew into the dozens, and eventually ran into the hundreds. I even tried slowly spinning without the sound for guidance, stopping intermittently to see if the rods would begin their dance, but my arms remained stiff and straight.
“Shit,” I muttered when I’d done multiple complete 360-degree turns. A solid 3 minutes had come and gone with no hit whatsoever. There were always hits, even when the water source was miles away, faint and feeble, but still there, still present.
“Has the magic happened yet?” Seth asked, breaking his quiet. He had a sorta smug look on his face, decorated by a sense of contentment, practically the equivalent of a kid sticking their tongue out at you.
I’ll admit, I probably should’ve seen the warning signs then and there. Since I discovered my abilities, I’ve never had an occasion where the rods didn’t elicit some kind of response. Even the times I’ve started on concrete plots, wooden porches, or on asphalt roads; the sensations were never pointed or pronounced like they were on earth and soil, but they still made themselves known.
Still, while Seth stood there subtly delighting in his triumph and while I sat in my defeat, I felt that, though the battle was lost, the white flags of surrender weren’t yet ready to go up.
“Game’s not over yet Seth,” I said, gathering the copper rods in one hand and holding them out for him to take. He scoffed and smiled before accepting them, but my hand stayed extended.
He glanced between it and the witch-hazel stick and made the connection. “But you don’t know where to search yet,” he remarked, the smugness of sure victory running through his voice.
“Doesn’t mean I won’t try.” He shook his head in enthused satisfaction before obliging.
And then my world fell apart.
The very instant I had a hold of the stick, the sensations that I’d spent years mastering broke free of their chains and cuffs and brought their wrath upon me. My ears were flooded with a blaring ringing, like a school bell going off inches from my face, and when my head assumed a weight twice that of the rest of my body, I crumpled to the ground. Seth had stepped forward when he realized what was happening, reaching out to try and stop my fall. But he had started too late, and I struck the earth with a thud against the back of my skull, blacking out on impact.
The timeline is still blurry in my head, and I don’t recall how long I was out, though I dipped in and out of consciousness throughout it all. When my senses finally felt compelled to return, the first sight I caught was a worried Seth hunched over my figure, his concern swapping places with relief upon realizing I was wholly back in the realm of mortals.
“Christ Meg, what was that?”
I blinked a few times before propping myself up on my elbows and scanning the surroundings. The ringing had subsided and the weight dissipated, but they’d both been replaced by a far subtler terror.
“Why’s everything red?”
Seth’s eyebrows creased. “What? Look I think we gotta go to the hospital, your eyes are crazy bloodshot.”
But his words slipped between the cracks of my focus, which, though still recovering, was distinctly aware of the fact the world beyond was coated in a monochromatic sea of red. The tree trunks were dark, their leaves darker. The sky was a pastel shade, and the clouds were still lighter. Though I only glimpsed it momentarily, the Sun was the most striking of all, a blazing orb of bright crimson.
But all invariably red.
I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, but the filter maintained its heavy intensity.
“C’mon Meg, that fall was intense. You gotta get a doctor to check if everything’s alright. I’m sure whatever you’re seeing has to do with that fall you just took.” His words prompted me to feel the back of my skull, the site of the impact swollen and throbbing as I brushed my hand across it. All I’d struck was soil, but the fall was so swift and sure that it had dealt more than enough damage.
I switched my focus to Seth then, who was now standing. In each of his hands, he held different ends of the now-splintered witch-hazel stick, which had suffered from the fall as much as I had.
“Shit, the stick’s broken?” I asked. He sighed and dropped the pieces to the floor, crouching slightly before offering me a hand up. I took it and rose to my feet, examining the dirt that clung to the back of my trousers and work jacket.
“You can’t tell me that twig is your biggest concern,” he said. “Did you take that fall for show? If that’s what this is all about, then you win, Meg; I believe in your powers. For a moment there I thought I had a deceased dowser on my hands.”
“Water witch,” I corrected. “And no, none of this is a performance. I wish it was.” My thoughts had spun into a flurry, still attempting to reason with the redness that’d overcome me.
Seth sighed and held his tongue as I looked around dazed for a moment before brushing myself off.
“Now are we going to the clinic?”
I firmly shook my head. I don’t do doctors.
“Well look you ought to sit for a bit after that” He gestured back to the house as he continued. “I can prop you up as we walk.”
Those were terms I found more agreeable, and so we made our way back, my arm around Seth’s shoulder, in a punctuated silence. When we stepped up onto the house plot, the redness began to dissipate.
“My vision’s getting better,” I remarked. Seth glanced at me and raised his eyebrows in mild assuagement before continuing. By the time we returned to the foot of the porch, the filter had subsided completely. I said a silent prayer of thanks to the greater being who held the strings, before dropping off of Seth’s side and onto the steps, exhaling deeply. He went to retrieve the cup he’d left on the table earlier, came back to where I was, and held it out.
“Care for cold coffee?”
“Thanks, but I’m a tea person.”
He took a sip for himself before joining me on the stairs.
“Your eyes are still bloodshot,” he said.
“Bloodshot, maybe, but back to normal. That’s all that matters,” I shot back, perhaps a little too defensively. He responded with a low grunt of acknowledgment.
We stayed like that for a few minutes, the quiet occasionally broken by the sound of Seth sipping at the coffee.
“It’s supposed to be blue,” I said.
“What?”
“My vision’s supposed to turn blue the closer I get to the water source.”
Seth shifted where he sat and turned to face me.
“Do your eyes turn blue too?”
I shook my head. “Not outwardly, no. But the effects are never this bad. And my vision has never gone red.”
Seth looked like he was processing my answer before he offered another question.
“So what does that mean?”
I met his eyes briefly and shrugged. “I wish I knew.”
I was going to leave it at that, but a thought bubbled up to the surface of my mind that wouldn’t sink until it was addressed.
“You can’t dig a well here.”
Seth recoiled a bit at the words. “Why not?”
“Something’s wrong with this place.” I nodded in the direction of the field. “Whatever happened there, first with the rods and then with the witch-hazel, those were signs. You said you wanted to gamble on fate right? She brought me here, and I’m speaking on her behalf now. That land is cursed.”
Seth dropped his head and stayed quiet. A few more seconds passed before he mumbled something.
I caught it the first time but asked him to repeat what he’d said to see if he believed the words enough to say them twice.
“Could be blood.”
This time it was my turn to face him.
“Blood under the ground? You’ve lost your mind.”
“You said your eyes go blue when you find water right? What else turns them red? Iron?”
I scraped my mind for objections but settled on saying nothing. Better not feed an idea that had no substance to begin with. Instead, sensing the mood was shifting from cautious to tense, I rose from my seat and approached the truck. The tarp was still undone, and so I refixed it before wandering over to the driver’s side door.
“I reckon I’ll head home now,” I called. “Don’t worry about the payment, we’ll say that scare I gave you calls us even.”
Seth was still seated on the porch steps, his head hung. He raised his hand to signal goodbye, though kept his face obscured. Sighing, I climbed into the truck, started the engine, and was fixing the seatbelt when I heard a tap on the window.
I looked up to see Seth standing there, raising the copper rods I’d handed him earlier. I quickly rolled down the glass. “Crap, thank you, I can’t work without these.”
He gave a single nod in reply before returning to the porch, watching silently as I turned the truck around. Starting down the dirt road, I glimpsed his figure through the side mirror as it fell behind the trees.
When I reached the main road, I paused to check the time.
13:00PM
The pickup’s dashboard clock told me only an hour had passed, but something about the whole ordeal I’d just gone through made that fact feel entirely wrong. In that field, the minutes felt far longer, like they’d come and gone at their own pace, following no rules or reason.
That, or the fall had splintered my ability to think straight.
Returning home, I collapsed onto the couch, exhausted from the affairs of the day, and slunk into a tranquil sleep. When I awoke, the Sun was setting, and I brewed another cup of tea (this time of the chamomile variety), picked another book from the shelf, and settled down on the sofa for a long evening of peace and quietude.
But something about what Seth had said kept gnawing at the back of my head. Despite the shutters, I’d put up to the idea, there was nothing ill-placed about his logic. Some dowsers claim they can find you more than a place to put a well, I say that’s how you find out which ones are really bogus. It’s always been about water for me, always been a vision of blue. But red? There’s something sinister about this kind of unknown.
And so I sat down to compose my thoughts, the very ones you’re reading right now.
When you’re truly unaware of something, of its ins and outs, you retain that blissful ignorance. And I’d had that, all the way up until I accepted the witch-hazel stick and suffered consequences beyond anything I ever thought possible. Now my unknowing is pocked and marked not by ignorance, but by incomprehension, and that’s scary. That’s dangerous.
There’s something I’ve not told you. I was weighing up whether to put it in the write-up at all, but I realize that, while you’re missing the whole picture, you’ll remain ignorant. And don’t get me wrong, that’s fine, so I’d advise you to stop reading here if you want to keep your thoughts in order.
You’ve been warned.
When I was out cold, caught in the time that doesn’t flow as time normally does, I saw a place in the darkness. It was a place of pure black, but I felt the fingertips of consciousness there for a few moments before I returned to our world. In that place, I saw nothing, felt nothing, thought nothing.
But I heard something. A voice, gravelly and potent. It filled the space around me and consumed my consciousness with a vigorous grip. Its message was simple. Lucidly clear.
“Stay away from here.”