I hope you never experience the conveyor and that, if you do find yourself in White Arch, you are one of the few that manage to escape. For a small while, at least.
Or that you will have a quick passing through.
I was there for ten rotations and have just managed to put my encounter into a post. I’ve been trying to ever since I realised what it is that powers this world. Since I woke up in that room.
But every story needs a twist, right? So I’ll save it.
If this goes through, that is. In the small chance that it does, I am here to warn you—or, more likely, prepare you in case you ever find yourself in White Arch.
What do I mean by rotations, the conveyor, and White Arch?
I’ll start from the beginning.
I’m Mitchell Carter, 23, from a small town of 5, 000 people. It is currently 29th March 2023.
Just over a month ago, I woke up and, for the rest of the day, took no notice of White Arch, though it was there. Beneath my consciousness. It had dug its way into my synapses.
You see, how it works is that it creeps up on you, and before you know it, BAM! You’re in White Arch.
So, when I went to sleep that night, I had a weird dream. I was standing on some kind of surface, but I couldn’t move my head to look down. I could only move my eyes and eyelids, but not close them. There was a slight moisture in the air that tickled my nose hairs.
I was standing facing a block of white in the form of a vertical wall. It was smooth, with no bumps or breaks, as there would be with paint or plaster. As I looked around with my peripheral vision, I saw that there were two identical walls on either side of me. If I really tried, I thought I could see a wall behind me too, but my vision was blurry looking that far sideways, so I couldn’t be sure.
This dream felt so real that I believed it was playing out in real time. I felt every second.
It was not particularly dark or light. I could see my outline shadowed on all of the walls, which led me to the conclusion that there was a light source above me.
It was during this “observation” that I noticed that the only sound was a slight buzzing that seemed to be ruminating from the walls. I squinted at the walls and saw nothing. Squinting until my eyes hurt, I made out miniscule grey lines running along the wall in all sorts of directions; these had no start or end. Moving so quickly along these lines were almost microscopic balls of blue light. Hundreds of them. I decided to call these lines “veins”.
During my concentration, I also noted a whispering sound, as if I were high above people who were talking. Apart from trying to decipher what they were saying with no success, it was so boring.
When I did eventually wake up, I briefly thought of the dream, trying to find some semblance of symbolism to help me explain it away; maybe a simple illusion created by my unconscious mind?
I had my theories, sure, but nothing seemed to fit. I could also not figure out why this particular dream was making me almost obsess over its meaning.
Now, of course, I know, the more you notice it, the more it creeps.
During that day was when I started taking notes. Whenever I blinked, or closed my eyes, there was this white blur that got clearer and closer every time. I obsessed over its meaning more and more with every day that passed.
Things have changed as I write this, and now time is of the essence, so I will be fairly brief.
For the following four nights, I had the same dream, I was just facing a wall with the veins. The veins had slightly different patterns each time, so I guessed I was in a box and changing positions each time. I just stared at the wall until I woke up.
until the fifth night.
During that fifth day, I saw it for the first time. Clear. I still could not move. I could just stare at it.
About ten feet away from me loomed a gigantic, horseshoe-shaped Arch. It was so big that I could barely make out the top. It was White in colour, but the actual shape was made out of White tree like roots, impossibly thick ones. Twisting and spiralling all around in a messy but also neat way helped form the shape. The roots slightly creaked, as if moaning, as they moved. Snaking in and out of these roots were the wall veins, which then crawled from the base of the structure in my direction, buzzing the whole time.
I managed to move my head to follow the veins as they slowly climbed up my body, and I was absolutely repulsed, disgusted, and every other word you can think of by what I saw and experienced next.
The end of these snake like veins retracted back into itself, like a sheath, until it came to a point. A sharp, metallic, prong. I don’t have a phobia of needles, but this was something else.
I had this chill in my bones, this deep fear and loathing, even before they curled around my legs, and the, what I’ll call, teeth, went to work.
I watched, and felt with extreme pain, the teeth scrape against the bones of my knuckles, inserting themselves under my flesh and travelling further into my hand before they curled around my arm, moving to my shoulders before entering my chest.
I felt them slide around my ankles before digging into my heels. Sneaking under my skin and around my legs.
They crawled up my nostrils, and I lost the ability to breathe, but I could not pass out or attempt to gasp for breath. I could just accept this new state I was in.
It was like a horror film, like some form of torture; the way they twisted, the bones cracked, the pulse of blood as my body reacted to this new invader with terror.
They reached my ears, and the buzzing was piercing, I could feel blood dripping from my ears. I tried to scream in pain, but no sound came. There was one vein by each ear. The teeth dug into my ears with no mercy and with such ease as if there were no bone, cartilage, or anything else in their way. They just tunnelled through.
I lost my hearing and most of my abilities. Except the pain.
The teeth widened the entry points, and the veins followed them inside of my body.
I felt them inside me, they were careful not to harm my major organs. I felt the ones in my head wrap and squeeze my brain before the two combined into one and skulked down my spinal cord. The others met it there, and they all seemed to turn into one and stiffen, holding me upward in this position.
I don’t know how long I was like that. Not able to breathe but not able to die. Impossible pain. A disturbed puppet maker’s work.
The veins suddenly squeezed more, and I could feel all of my bones and features being wrapped up and about to break. I readied myself as much as I could for the end.
That’s when I woke up, on the couch where I fell asleep. It was morning and no-one had disturbed me.
There was dried blood on the inside of my ears. I couldn’t really get the chill or fear out of my system. Whenever I closed my eyes that day, It was just a still image of that gigantic structure, with the exception of the buzzing, which grew louder every time I went there. The rest of my day was normal—well, as normal as my obsessive longing to find meaning was. I searched the internet for White Arch, but as you would expect, I only found the not horrifying versions.
It was late, and I was watching TV with my family—the news, some kind of local prison documentary. I wasn’t really paying attention, as I hadn’t done to anything that day. My eyes were closed; the Arch was so close now. My head bobbed, and I was awake again. A few minutes passed before I fell asleep.
But it was different than the previous dreams. It was not a dream.
I was standing facing the veiny wall as normal for a few minutes before I felt that I was being lowered. This lasted for another few minutes before the white wall I was facing silently dropped, leaving the buzzing veins freestanding in the air. They shook slightly before dropping to the floor and then starting their familiar crawl to the Arch, where they entered at it’s base.
This was when I noticed that I could move, but not leave the box. I looked at my body, patting myself down. There were no veins inside of me, which I was grateful for. The veins were simply outlining my box and connected to the Arch. They were emitting a small amount of blue light. I had a momentary lapse of balance as I noticed that around the box’s outline there was nothing. A black void. I could not see a ceiling or floor.
As I was steadying myself, I heard a whispering voice to my left,
“Hello?”
I saw another person, a human, a woman. She looked like she had been crying. I took a chance to believe it wasn’t a mirage,
“Hello. My name is Mitchell. Are you ok?”
“Y-Yes, given what I have seen. Are you real?”
“Yes.”
I won’t bore you with conversations, but summarise. Her name was Janet. She had experienced the same as me, but she was alone before she came here. Janet advised that I look around and then went quiet, giving me time.
I followed her suggestion. There were around two hundred rows of boxes containing human beings, in exactly the same situation I was in. There were invisible walls around our boxes, so we could not jump into the nothingness that separated each box from the ones around it.
I was at the end of a row, so on one side of me was nothing but an infinity of empty blackness. No sound came from it. In fact, the only sounds that existed here were buzzing and a mixture of human emotions combined with talking. Neither I nor Janet could see the other end of our row.
On the other side of Janet was an elderly man who had been in some type of accident when he came here. He only lay on the floor, bleeding from unseen wounds and twitching, but never dying. Just breathing a constant last breath. Death Rattle. Janet didn’t like to acknowledge or look at him.
After what felt like a few weeks, Janet and I had to keep each other somewhat sane. We talked constantly, you could not sleep here. I had never felt so close to another person. I guess you could say that I loved her.
Every now and again, our “row” would glide closer to the “front”, if it was the front, and behind us there would be a new row of white boxes. We witnessed these newcomers go through the same experience we had, even watching some new veins crawl inside of their skin. Janet and I both, not surprisingly, had PTSD from this, so we didn’t watch. We could not see or interact with the rows in front, only seeing their box’s outlines, we could see but not interact with the row “behind” us, however. We called this the conveyor.
After a few months, Janet and I had moved up so that we could see where we were headed. There stood the White Arch, just as it had looked when I was face to face with it.
When the conveyor moved, the nearest row would be put into a line and, one by one, face the Arch. This was the only time we could see any other rows except the one behind us.
The veins of their box would form a bridge they could cross to the Arch. If they took too long to move, the veins would form a wall behind them and force them forward. The person eventually went through, whether that was crawling, walking, running, or…experiencing the veins invading their body again and forcing them through. In these cases, however, once through, the veins ripped the person to shreds, bursting out of their flesh. Their screams echoed throughout the chamber. Then, when they were truly deceased, the veins slid back into the Arch, dropping the remains into the void.
Everyone else who passed through simply dissolved, and their veins slid back into the arch, ready for a new person.
Janet told me that she was on her fifth rotation and explained that she was sorry she hadn’t told me before, but it is best left for the person to discover themselves. Rotations, she said, were what Archings (people who had been to White Arch), called how many times you had passed through the Arch and come back to the conveyor. Some, Janet said, didn’t return after their first.
From talking to people in her rotations, as that was the main way to pass time and gain information, Janet discovered that no one really knew if anyone escaped, they only came back to the beginning of the conveyor, or… they did not. Some had told of seeing their children, relatives, or friends there, who, in the “real” world, were in comas.
As we grew within two rows of the Arch, Janet grew quiet. I understood.
It was our turn. Janet and I were both crying as we knew that we would more than likely die, or never see each other again. The old man was dragged through the Arch and vanished. For his sake, we both hoped he had finally died.
Janet was next and steadied herself before, tears streaming down her face, she took one last look at me and then vanished through the Arch.
I was next and the last in our row. I took a deep breath and stepped through.
I blinked and I was back in my white box. I was back on the conveyor. The process was beginning all over again.
There’s one thing I have been delaying telling you. Randomly, without warning, your veins would assault you again, their teeth digging into you. They would go a little further each time, a little tougher, a little harder, which caused a lot more stress and pain. Some people could not stand this and died in the process. Others just sat there and only slightly twitched with a little whimper, accepting this invasion. The worst were the ones that tried to fight it. You could tell the veins wanted to do their job. In these cases, the Arch would creak so loudly that all of the rows could hear it. The veins would become jagged, covered in teeth, like thorns, and hang the person with these teeth sticking into their flesh. They would have the usual invasion while hanging in this manner.
It served as both a warning and a punishment. Quite effective, really. Next time, they gladly took the “normal” route, as did everyone who witnessed it.
You become somewhat desensitised… No, just a little bit more used to it.
I talked to my rows the next nine rotations, but not as much as I had to Janet. I missed how she kept me as grounded as possible, our personalities fused well and we had taken each other’s focus away from our inescapable doom, at least for most of the time.
I also kept to myself at times, which everyone understood.
Then I approached the Arch again. By now, I just wanted to get it over with. I stepped through and blinked.
That’s when I woke up in the “real” world. Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t survived that first rotation.
Apparently, I had just woken up from a coma and had been brain dead for ten days.
There were hundreds of people here. Of all ages. Just, lying here. It was so quiet. So still. There was nothing else. Just. Rows and rows of human beings. Dressed in whatever they had on in White Arch. They were neatly laid out, with barely a space between them.
Wait.
That’s when I noticed.
None of them were moving. I was the only sign of life here.
The bodies are stacked.
This is a morgue.
Oh God!
I covered my mouth, but vomit still escaped from the cracks between my fingers and onto the pile I was standing on.
That’s when I really moved and fell into the mass of corpses beneath me. I struggled to get out, just kept moving forward, swimming in this horrific human pool whilst crying and almost suffocating. I saw people I had talked to in White Arch, pale and dead. I saw children, adults, and the elderly, but not any younger than 13 or so.
I was about to give up, my strength was spent when I reached the end of the pile.
Gasping, I freed myself from the abomination, and once fully free, I noticed there was a narrow path, about four feet wide, in between the rows.
I weakly gazed at the path and saw something glowing in the distance. I didn’t look back at the pile. I didn’t look at anything except that light. I knew I was going to be scarred for life anyway and didn’t care to further desensitise myself.
I started running, and, though nothing was chasing me, it felt like there was.
I skidded to a halt and couldn’t believe my eyes.
In front of me was a normal steel door with a bar handle. I opened it. It was not locked. I walked slowly and shakily down a corridor before passing out.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital, with fluids and all manner of things being fed into me. My parents were there. I was in a private room, it was expensive.
That’s when I realised, there would be no point in telling them what had happened. What if that is how White Arch gets new people? With knowledge of it?
If that is the case, then I apologise to you.
The theory that I most bought into is that White Arch runs on the electricity that our brains use. I have heard tales from others in White Arch that the people they have spoken to are in comas in the “real” world. Every rotation, they lose brain activity in the “real” world, since you are beating the White Arch. It might see taking your activity as, rightly, making you weaker, therefore less likely to be able to share your experience. Perhaps the stronger your will to live is, the more rotations it tries before spitting you out as it gives up. Not give up, but… you’ll see.
Maybe that’s what happened to me.
Or maybe it is simply feeding off of it. Maybe it is not sentient as much as we theorise and is just an organism surviving, like a plant with it’s roots. I met a doctor on my second rotation who said that dementia cases have risen. He also told me of people who would carry weapons with them everywhere in case they were transported here, so that, in their words, they could “take control”.
If they couldn’t handle being in White Arch any longer, they would, with some difficulty, stab or cut away at their head or brainstem until they ceased to live. Apparently, this caused the person to die in the “real” world, too. In White Arch, the wiry veins for this person would act like snakes, slithering away from them back to the Arch before vanishing into the mass of veins. The white walls would slide up around the person, blocking our view of them, and then the box would lower and disappear into the void of nothingness underneath us. This would also cause another box to drop and a new person to arrive.
I don’t know the answer, which is another reason I have made this post.
Maybe if we…or, as time has all but run out for me, you, understand White Arch and how it works, you can stop it.
It has been a month since then, and I’ve had a few MRIs. Apparently, I am losing my brain functionality. It was labelled as early onset dementia. Then came the other ‘illnesses’. I have, totally, lost the ability to speak. My nervous system is shutting down, randomly, every day, a different part of my body fails to feel stimuli and decides to stop reacting to the signals my brain sends them. They just hang limply, either permanently or until they decide to work again the next day.
One of the few, slightly morbid I’ll admit, hobbies I had left was searching local obituaries. I found Janet in the days that followed.
Janet’s landlord had discovered her dead body in her apartment five days ago. She had slit her throat and written “Mitchell” on a note, but there was no connection between us for anyone to put the pieces together. She lived about two hours from me.
My blonde hair litters my pillow. I am but a skeletal frame now, I no longer want to eat or drink.
I do not want to waste anyone’s time, money, or attention, so I do not have any further tests. I spend my days propped up in my hospital bed, awaiting the day when my brain decides to push it’s own power button. I write this as much for myself as for anyone who reads it.
I am slowly losing my grip on the absolute horror that I witnessed. That I experienced.
The one portion of my body that never seems to be affected are my eyes, despite a slight dulling of the blue colour. I blink, and the White Arch, as I have recounted in this post, seems to change slightly every time. It gets friendlier, more inviting. Even the voice in my head works to blur my perception of the place I spent so long fearing, speaking to me so that I am in the mindset that these are my own thoughts.
Maybe that is a self-defence mechanism of White Arch, or if there is something controlling it, it is to make sure there are no witnesses if any do survive. Maybe all of this is.
But there is hope, I believe that if this goes through, it shows that White Arch is actually getting weaker the more it grows. I have managed to break through to you, and the only way that could happen is if it “bit off more than it could chew” with it’s growth.
I feel no pain. I feel nothing now except fear of going back to White Arch.
But… do I fear it?
I’m starting to think I need to go back. It may be different this time. It may miss me.
I see the door to White Arch as my room’s door. The Arch itself is shimmering, twinkling, letting off little “magical” bits of light. It’s veins, with their blue neurotransmitters, almost seem to stretch out, reaching for me with their comforting, familiar embraces.
It is beautiful.
Please help me.
I know I don’t have much more time to decide.
Should I go in or await my end in this bed?