At Last You Are Welcome

There's something in the barn.

Amongst the bones of old beams thick with dust.

Beneath hay pyres, brittle and coarse.

I can hear it, growling under the everyday.

I watch that ramshackle outhouse, all bent and warped, as if our home was fed to a hall of mirrors. I don't dare let it escape my vision. Like something wild.

Errant wind forces the doors to a violent rattle, creaking open further and further. I pray the lock holds. A curious wound in hazard red wood, an eye to widen, it is an invitation of sorts. But by whose hand? What calls to me?

The barn can see me from every room in the house.

It watches me neglect my bed, brush my teeth, eat yesterday's pizza and struggle to do a pull-up. I don't know what it is. I can't. I feel like if I dare to enter that outbuilding I'll make it real, and everything I've ever known will be undone.

These things shouldn't happen. What laughs in the face of logic and reason so brazenly? What dares? Something powerful that's for sure...

My light flickers and I realize I've written four lines in the last hour. This assignment's gonna be late. But who knows? Maybe nothing matters and I'll just wander into the barn and let whatever lurks there eat me whole, never again to be concerned with banal trivialities such as homework and the High School hierarchy.

Heavy eyes and bed calling. Part of me doesn't want to sleep. Fears that when I wake and wander to the window the barn will have moved. Sprouted legs and climbed closer, closer to claim whatever the hell it wants because it's a walking monster building. What would it leave behind? All the bones of the weary fools who fancied this their Everest, their moment to pin a flag in biological frontiers hitherto unknown. Monsters are real now kids, mandatory checks under your bed from here on out.

I have to rest or I fear my mind will break. It's scratchy and feral, overburdened, sharp but somehow simultaneously dulled. I've stayed up for as long as I can manage. Watched it for as long as I can.

I hope I wake up tomorrow. For more self torture if nothing else. Shoes and a snack by the bed just incase.

Out from the black. Falling. Something like fear... but not quite.

"You are welcome in this place, beyond dream, deep or waking. Step boldly, leave your misgivings at your feet and look upon me with full eyes."

It's hard to focus. Dressed in inkblot shadows, a mass of limbs, contorted spines and curious fingers. There's a deliberate sway to its movements, like its too used to hiding, too used to controlling pain. A feigned grace.

"Why do you not visit me? I call to you on the wind, in creaks and whispers. I am witness to all you have ever been. Will you look upon me at last?"

"I... I'm afraid. What...what are you?"

"A visitor. I sought something beyond my world and I found you. Untouched by evil fled. Do not fear me. There are so many things, forces, to be feared. Please do not count me amongst them."

"What are you saying? How is any of this possible? You're in the barn!? My barn?"

"I am in the barn. But it is not yours. It is a weakening of barriers thought eternal, a slither of light that calls to the brave, the burdened, those who can accomplish more than they could ever imagine. Purpose you cannot escape."

"You're not serious...Why me?"

"I have asked myself the same question. It does not change the tasks ahead."

"If I refuse?"

"You do as I did. You do not refuse."

"So... what now?"

"Visit me. Come as you are, wrapped in the atoms of worlds turned to dust. I dreamt you. Carved you from flesh and bone. Spoke your name before the earth turned. It is my breath that fills your lungs. Between these very fingers, I have held galaxies aloft. You hold the fate of much more in your hands now. Multitudes await you. Be brave and find me, find all that you can be."

This is insane. A nightmare to be dismissed and nothing more. But some part of me feels it's true. Some unreachable, intrinsic reality, impossible to be dismissed.

Curiosity can't kill me, surely? That thing in the barn can. Maybe it'll be stress that guarantees an early grave? Either way I'm dead. Don't I want to know what's actually inside?

I'm going to do it. I'm going to put on my brothers hockey pads, grab a spatula and claim my fate. Whatever the hell that may be.

Will these footprints in the snow be the last thing I leave behind?

I stand before doors bigger than they have any right to be, rusted lock and chain barely able to hold itself together, let alone hold whatever waits inside. Hot breath curls up to a grey sky. This is it. Key in hand, I open the doors, and step into the shadows.

Tired wood creaking with breath held. As motes burst briefly in slabs of sunbeam, before falling again into the forgotten dark.

"At last you are welcome."