Friday 24 January 2014

Private ~ Letters

 Private


23rd October 1902

Dear William,

I sincerely hope my words here find you well. I have taken your advice and walk each evening. I find I am increasingly dispondant to my usual pursuits. I seem to simply exist miserably. I am a victim, no doubt, of the saddening affliction that the colder weather brings. I long again for spring and summer, the longer days and balmy nights. I have been in a funk and walking eases something of the isolation and loneliness that singular living involves. The house is a modest cottage where I have retired after that bad business in the city. It was your doctor's orders to do this and without my books and my work I may have slipped even further. But the walking does help enormously. It was whilst walking tonight, enjoying as I was an unexpected clement day that an incident of some import occurred. The road between Buxton and Skeyton is a myriad of hedgerows and woodlands, interspersed with fords and by lanes, some leading away towards Aylsham, others continuing to Wroxham and beyond. I was pursuing a new course, adjacent to the road and off my beaten track when I noted a sign to some wood. 

The sign was old I think, 'Private' scrawled in hand written letters. I have always been naturally inquisitive and furthermore, have been a keen observer of that which is deemed irregular, indeed, if the action comes close to breaking the law, I must admit I am wont to test the waters, albeit without willfully crossing the threshold of decency and responsibility. So of course, I gleefully bounded over the short stone wall that partitioned the road and the scrub land, entering this private wood. My idea was simply to walk through the woods and no doubt observe some fantastic property on the other side, returning to the road with a boyish excitement that I had been daring. All to alleviate the continuing depression that I could feel impinging upon the reaches of my mind. I wandered, kicking small rocks and strolling through the trees, the strong and unexpected sunlight frittering through the branches. Birds were carousing their evening chorus and I was in good spirits. I would return and take up a book or maybe even write a few letters that I had been putting off, in short, I would engage myself fully to my existence.

 Happy, I turned to walk back to the road but was stuck by the sudden and alarming cessation of the birdsong. Nothing stirred. I was struck by how remarkably still the very air had become. But not only that William, I was suddenly absurdly tired, as if drugged. My limbs would not respond, I was dizzy and heady, as if taken by a fever. All about was quiet and even when I rested on the low branch of a nearby sycamore, it crumbled to dust against my weight, falling to the ground. I wanted to rest, to lie down and sleep. My dear friend, if you could have felt the fear of my situation, if you could have but felt that inexorable fatigue that pressed down on every sinew that was so slow to command! If it was not for the short distance I had walked, I suspect that I would have fallen unconscious there as night fell! But before I managed to bolster myself to escape, I swear I witnessed my own self bounding over the wall ahead as I had a few minutes before. In full view yet as if shrouded in a haze of heat or shimmering mist, the form strode, as I had done, to pass through my person, causing a shiver akin to someone passing over my grave. I stumbled out of the wood, onto the road again and gladly bathed in the last of the day's sun; the very rays revitalising me. I rushed home and took a little brandy, whereupon I sat and have penned this letter directly to you.

I cannot explain the absence of life in that woodland, anymore than I can explain my weakening of body and the hallucination.  I have read of places in this world where science can have no meaning and where time itself is like a coil, each part touching another so that one may pass through unhindered. Had I found such a place? A bubble of time exposed and discovered by my meandering self?

I would appreciate your thoughts William. We have been friends for sometime and I sincerely wish to discuss this further as I feel that the sunlight is indeed fading from view.

Your friend,

J.W

Private ~ Letter Two

1902

Dear William,

I returned last night to the woodland. I had passed another night of restless sleep as I have done these past months. Why do you not come? My experiences of that day all those months ago plays upon me, dressing my reason in absurd fancies; I am wearied by it now, to the point that I must regain the experience of the wood and thereby resolve this confusion.

Sleep is not easy and rest does not enter my body when I am awakened from these dreams; dreams of malice and forboding my friend, such dreams! I walked there again, as the sun began to sink, it's glow a reassurance but then! I was plunged into a darkness, shielded from the fading light by the canopy of trees overhead and I was fearful. There seemed to be light from the woodland ahead, a glow against the darkness, so I hurried to it, at least to rid myself of the awful sense that the dreams I had been experiencing in my half woken state should manifest themselves, and take me whereto I knew not where. I stumbled over a field , to approach the wood from the south.

And there! Before me, such fear at the sight that now I can barely set down the words without the pen shaking so violently from my grasp. I assure you I must retire, I must gather myself.

I saw again myself. Stood as I had been to begin with, as I had witnessed my person undertake the same distnace as I had done before; William, I saw myself stand and then vanish and as I did watch, the light that had filled the night with it's aura vanished too. I was alone, more alone than I have been in my entire life, and William, the sun was rising again. I had passed the night there in this state, time had had no meaning and I had passed it as if stepping simply through a door, as if I had fallen through a slip in time itself.

Dear God! What can it mean? Am I to go mad? Is this a paroxysm of the brain, my mind sick with a sullen morbidity that threatens to rid me of all rational sense? Or can it be truth? Yes, William, truth. For I have been aware of how very alive I felt at the first instance. I have been tired and worried, but I remember that I felt vital in my senses, as if washed clean by some unseen hand and powered by some force other than mine own.

William, I again take you into my confidence and implore you to join me here. We were friends at university and some time has passed since my last letter, yet no response. You have ever known me to be of sound mind. Come to East Anglia as my guest, observe me, let me take you to the wood that you might also witness this acute and perplexing occurance that is threatening my very life! I swear upon Nature! Upon the very laws you and I so keenly observed and documented. I ask you to see this as an opportunity that God, or Nature, or some power as yet unknown to the science of mankind has lain before me; as a great adventure! Lest I fall prey to it's effects and perish!

I beg you to come,

I await your reply,

In earnest hope,

John.