Ergo Sumus

He was old, cragged. He looked forlorn and lost, seated before the glass. He became aware of my presence slowly, and looked up.

“Ah, Doctor, so good for you to have come.”

He looked at me and somehow seemed… younger than before.

“Please extend me one small courtesy, that you read my letter to the end before you pass judgment.”

He shuffled a few loose pages, yellowed and well-worn, from hand to hand and then paused.

“There are old tales, Doctor, tales that center around a book from the mad Arab… tales from those few who have found knowledge best kept as old secrets know that strange aeons may reveal… truth!”

He leaned forward, so close that steam formed on the glass between us. He looked at me earnestly, then leaned back and brought up the pages he held and shook them.

“No one could guess the power held between mere letters on paper. You may have scoffed at me before, but you can not deny the truth that these pages hold.”

My face must have hardened at the word “truth,” as he had a retort at the ready.

“Madness, you say? Are you so sure you’ve cornered the market on normal, when every known part of your world can be seen as a mere speck of dust, a flash of a moment? Truth cannot be solely held by what meets the eye. Your normal can not even stand the test of the current epoch, let alone the era of humans.”

A crazed look crept across a face that had been so calm up to now.

“Do you even know yourself, let alone the person before you? What can you say that acknowledges some sort of personal awareness of my true status, current past or future? Do you want to plumb the depths of my psyche, or just brush the surface and assure yourself that your banal old hunches are once more correct?”

The eyes of a crazed old man bore down on me, but there was a gleam of… the thought escaped me. My eyes returned to the yellowed pages he held loosely between us.

“Remember the others, the young man who refuses to fear, the knowledgeable scholar, the playful youngster, and the stern matron who cares for us all. They are near, the danger equal for all of them, and for you as well.”

He paused at a dull, muted sound.

“They are near, now. They come for all of us, Doctor. Needles and cures and methods to destroy us.” He muttered.

The muted sound rang once more, and a sort of lethargy overcame me.

“Look not just at the words on the page, but at the spaces between them. Remember what we talked about before. Do you not feel a sense of loss, a key element that you somehow lack? Through loss comes acknowledgement, acknowledgement affords acceptance, and acceptance starts us down the path of true knowledge.”

My eyes began to glaze, they cast over the words on the page as my thoughts began to echo the repeated statements.

“Do these words no longer sound natural to you? Perhaps you wonder whether or not they are truly from a sane man. The answer? Both yes and no. But let us go back a moment, to the recent past.”

For some reason, the room began to lose focus. The background faded. The letter, however, seemed to gleam as he waved the pages back and forth before my eyes. An old man’s laughter echoed around the room.

“Do you remember the sorrow once you learned of the loss of your parents? So strange to hear of the tragedy. Two corpses, found huddled together, rumors of a cult and other horrors that hounded you?”

Ghostly forms seemed to dance around us. A memory of dark, empty spaces and chants from the darkness loomed strange. The letter… my eyes locked on the pages as he spoke once more.

“The endless barbs and arrows suffered at the hands of those who supposedly loved you? You returned to your old home, only to come upon a house as completely deserted as the hearts of all your supposed loved ones… On the second floor, at the back of the hall, you came to your old room. You found the room deserted, dusty and empty, clearly someone had stolen your personal effects!”

All at once, the memory came on strong, as well as a powerful anger that had coursed through you.

“Your rage caused you to lash out, an honest attempt to self-soothe. The result: an enjoyable crack and crumble of plaster and lathe, a release and a reveal. There was a letter stuck between slats of wood, somehow addressed to you even though that was absurd. How could a letter, sealed between the walls of our ancestral home for ages, be so clearly meant for me to read here and now?”

The memory was so clear. My hands shook as the envelope opened, and the enclosed pages fell to the floor. The paper was yellowed, crusty and faded, yet the message was penned clearly.

The author seemed to have a deep, personal knowledge of our current state. As though the author knew all of our personal struggles. The words spoke to me, and my mouth fell agape as our current struggles, namely the poor, troubled bond to the world, as well as all my loved ones, was presented clearly on the pages before me.

The whorls made by the pen were so savvy and seemed as though they could have come by my own hand, a hand that had never known even a mundane form of carpentry.

My whole body shook, my eyes returned to the face before me, only to see that we were no longer separated by the glass…

There was a hum, as a warm blankness overtook me. The words, the key was not just what was stated, but what lacked between the words.

“Truth revealed,” we murmured. Not he, but we. We know who we are, and no one can take that away from us.

We are us and we are now free.

Pages clutched to our chest we leave, down among the comfort of the deeps. Safe from those who would separate us, safe beyond the aeons.