u/GrandmaWasteland

My tendency to isolate and my curiosity led me to my field of expertise: literary conservation. I loved old books. The forbidden histories, the untold stories, the glimpses into that deep truth. It also made relationships very difficult so I didn't have many friends still, and I'd only had a hand full of romantic partners despite being in my early 30s. Being alone was ok with me, I liked the quiet.

I started my career at the New Orleans Public Library. I'm originally from east Texas, so it wasn't too far from home, but far enough away that I wouldn't run into anyone I had grown up with or gone to college with. Something to note about New Orleans, it's an old city, and so there are a lot of folk tales and mysticism sewn into the tapestry of its history. Even though I didn't believe in any of it, really, I always found it fascinating. Vampires, voodoo, the occult. There's also a very prominent presence of the Catholic Church. A strange mix in my opinion.

A few months into my time at the NOLA library, we had a middle aged man come in, clad in black with a white collar. He was apparently looking for a book about the early gnostic teachings. These were pre-catholic, primordial Christian philosophies and stories, something I always found interesting because of their stark contrast to the publicly accepted version we have had since the middle ages. The librarian directed him to the area of the library where he could find such a book and he left, polite and thankful but reserved.

A few months go by, nothing out of the ordinary really happened. Occasionally we would get older books that needed to have their degradation halted, and that was my forte. It was Monday. A stormy humid Monday I will never forget.

The priest comes back and asks if there is anyone who can direct him to someone who can repair antique tomes. Obviously, I was summoned to meet him. The church needed help with some very very old versions of the Bible they had come to acquire from some old man who lived out in the swamps a few miles outside of town. All the rain had caused some flooding that had unearthed some of a very old forgotten graveyard, probably populated mostly by only a few families over the centuries. There were coffins, of course, but there was also a wooden box, sealed in leather that had been buried with one of the coffins.

I was excited, more than happy to help. This was an opportunity to preserve a very rare piece of human history and culture.

Pleased with my work, the priest said in a gentle but raspy voice, "I'm in charge of the rare antiquities acquisition for the Vatican. I was sent to New Orleans because there are records of a family who had been brought over during the slave trade who had a family heirloom. A Bible, handwritten, with all the original gospels. Judas, thomas, so on and so forth. Untouched by the dishonesty and political aspects of the church during the middle ages." I was surprised by the admission of such a forgery.

"I assume that's what's in this box?" I said.

"Yes sir. And there are some other books, many many other books owned by the church that are in need of someone to look after them. The person who was in charge of that recently disappeared. Would you be open to an opportunity?"

"What kind of opportunity are we talking about exactly? I don't know if I'm the right person. I don't really believe in God." I said.

"That actually isn't important. We just need someone with your particular skills." He let out a sigh and smiled faintly, "Are you open to relocation?"

"Relocation to where?" I asked dryly.

"Italy. The Vatican."

My eyes widened and I took a large breath and exhaled deeply, "I've got nothing tying me here. This could be really interesting, I've never been out of the country before. Shit, I've never even left the South. Oh, sorry for the language!"

He chuckled and accepted my apology. He urged me to tie up any loose ends and if I had any family, to let them know I may not be back for a long while. I had a week before we would fly to Rome.

I called home that night and let my parents know. My mom was excited for me and my dad was less so. He wondered when they'd see me again, of course. I reassured him id have time to visit home.

I spent the week, packing and getting things I thought I'd need for the flight, and for my new home. The priest had told me they would take care of shipping my things and that was a huge relief. They were going to put me up in a small apartment a few miles outside the Vatican. I was never a material person so the move was going to be relatively painless.

After a gruellingly long chain of flights with a few layovers, I finally arrived in Rome. I was greeted by a new priest, who was holding a sign that read, "Jarred Thompson" so I walked over and let him know that was me.

"Hello, Jarred. I'm Father Gastani. I'll be escorting you to your living arrangement." He said cheerfully, with a surprisingly mild accent.

"Nice to meet you, Father. Thank you."

I followed him to a taxi and we rode down the cobbled road for a few minutes while he explained the locations of and pointed to multiple shops as we passed them, places to get essentials and various things I could do in spare time. Upon arrival I thanked him again and he urged that I be on time for the taxi he would send in the morning to transport me into the Vatican for my first day on the job. The following days would be the most significant, glorious and terrifying days of my life.

Past the absolutely insane security, checkpoints, x-rays, swiss guard, etc, I finally was lead to the entrance to the fabled library of the Vatican. It was gorgeous. Vibrant colors dancing on the ancient stone as the sun reached through the titanic ornate windows to caress the walls and floors of the massive archive. Father Gastani lead me through the towering rows of books and scrolls to the farthest reaches of the gallery.

"How are you settling in, Jarred?" He said, in his typical warm demeanor.

"Couldn't really sleep from the excitement and anticipation so I was able to put away almost all my things. Figured it best to be productive on some level."

"Glad to hear it! We're almost to the room with the books we need your help with."

This room was clearly rarely used. Dust covering most of the shelves and surfaces other than one section of the room. He walked over to a large glass wall full of transparent temperature and humidity controlled drawers, put on some gloves, and removed an old book. He set it down, pointed me to my equipment, and wished me good luck on his way out.

I decided to take a look around, as my curiosity about the various antiquities and potentially forgotten knowledge populating this room had my full attention. Ancient texts and tomes littered the place, and I browsed like a music lover in an old record store. Towards the back of the room there was a large door made of extremely smooth, moderately reflective black stone. Or at least I guessed it's stone. It had no handle or window but there was a faint light creeping from beneath it. There was also a sound coming from the other side. A sound that's hard to explain. It was like a mixture of the hum of machinery and chorus of deep vocals but not close enough to either to be identified as such. A loud creak startled me as Father Gastani re-entered the room.

"Oh shit, Father, you scared me!" I chuckled nervously, fearing my curiosity had violated trust. "No one has been in that room for centuries, as far as I know. The door just doesn't seem to open. We've tried hydraulics and every other machine we could think of and, nothing. It won't budge. We even had a team of geologists come and use a device to see if we could map out what's behind it using waves but the results came back as if there was nothing on the other side of it." He smirked, "Let me know if you figure it out."

My heart beat steadied as I realized I had caused no offense. I decided to get to work on my assignment, restoring the ancient Bible. I spent the rest of the day meticulously repairing pages and bindings before I found myself exhausted and ready to call it a night. As I moved all my equipment back to their places, I got an eerie feeling that sent chills crawling across my back like a thousand micro needles. Something was watching me but upon scanning the room, I was very much alone. I shuddered and told myself I was being ridiculous.

The next day, around noon, I'd decided to take a break, eat the lunch I had packed and then inspect the strange door again. The archway around the obsidian mirror door was about 20 feet tall and 6 feet wide. It was covered in black twisting, intertwining ridges and valleys, what looked like a cross between mycelium and a vascular system. I ran my fingers over it and it seemed to vibrate. It was also cold to the touch, covered in a layer of perspiration from the juxtaposition of temperature of the room. I wiped my fingers on my shirt, realizing the liquid was black as well. The water was ashen and gritty, leaving a streak of grey on my shirt. Stepping back, I admired the possibility of what stories might be behind the door. Ancient, forlorn thoughts and ideas, lost histories, so intriguing.

I could hear the hum from inside return, pressing my ear to the monolithic door, all my senses vanished and my consciousness was left floating, silence so thick I could hear the blood moving in my veins, smothered by limitless darkness. Darkness isn't the right word. It was Nothing. It seemed like I had been suspended for days. There was nothing at all.

Gasping for air, I crashed back to reality to find Father Gastani peering down at me shouting in Italian to other priests as I tried to sit up from the cold, dusty granite floor.

"Lay still, son. I think you may have hit your head."

I could still feel the weight of the void on my mind the way you feel the static numb of physical weight on a constricted body part.

Weeks went by, and I had finally finished restoring the old Bible. There were literal tons of other books they needed my help to restore, so I had my work cut out for me. All I could think about was the door.

Though what I had experienced frightened me at the time, I could not shake the feeling that it was beckoning me back. There was a peace to the Nothing. This had to be some kind of technology. But it's too old. Maybe there is something to the ancient aliens theory? I've always kind believed it to some extent, though I'm embarrassed to admit. I certainly could not accept that this was spiritual or supernatural in nature. The curiosity was unbearable. I had to investigate further.

I gazed up at the enormous door. My pulse quickening as I moved closer. Not paying attention, my eyes fixed on the door, stumbled over a loose stone in the floor and caught myself on the sharp edge on the underside of one of the tables, preventing my fall, but slicing into my thumb. It wouldn't require stitches but it was deep enough to cause quite a pain response. I squeezed my finger with my shirt, trying to apply pressure and pretend it wasn't that bad.

I looked at the archway holding the door with great intent, searching for any semblance of a mechanism to interact with. There's no way I'd find something they haven't already searched for after all these years, I told myself. I ran my hand across the strange, cold archway again. The varicose textures began to pulse and writhe, coming to life and moving towards where my blood had rubbed off on it. It absorbed it, giving off a brief faint glow as it did. A deep, loud thunk reverberated off the decorative angular ceiling adornments and I jumped back, startled. The door was no longer reflective. It was completely matte now and I reached out to touch it's once mirror-polished surface to find a thick viscous onyx substance, somewhere between a solid and a liquid, similar to the texture of crude oil, but the surface pulled against me as I yanked my hand away, stretching like goo before breaking and leaving small spheres of the stuff floating still in the air. Imagine spilling a liquid on the ISS in zero gravity. It slipped off my hand, laying motionless in the air before me. In a fraction of a moment, the door pulled the floating particles back into itself immediately appearing as still and solid as it did before I had disturbed it's bizarre surface. I knew I had to go get Father Gastani. Of course they had never considered blood, these were priests. Whatever was behind this door, or fucking gateway, or whatever it is, I didn't want to be alone. The door out to the main hall of the library was gone. Like it never existed. I sat down, crossed my legs and stared at the blank space in the wall, trying to figure out if the door was made of some poisonous material, causing me to hallucinate. That had to be it. I'd just close my eyes, and wait for this to pass. It couldn't be real, it's impossible. My anxiety was too high to sleep, and I had to relieve it by moving around, doing something. Anything. Occupy my mind. "Let's get some work done, Jarred." I thought. But I couldn't focus. Irritated, I pushed myself to face the door again. This was the only way out.

I reached forward slowly, shakily, moving my fingertips ever closer to the door. I made contact with the liquid surface and pushed my arm in up to my elbow. My arm was still there. I pushed further, up to my shoulder. I felt my hand break through the other side. There was something there! A room on the other side. I decided to leap through to the other side, as the texture of the door gave resistance. I would need some momentum. I pulled my arm out, flinging dark pools of the substance floating out into the room, before they were pulled back into the door like before. I got about a 20 yard running start from where the exit door to the library once was and sprinted towards the black door. I hurdled through it, bursting through the other side and finding myself falling from the ceiling towards a large pool of liquid below.

I landed in the pool of black liquid, only about 3 feet deep, and looked up to find the door pulling all the displaced liquid back into itself, realizing the ceiling was actually the floor as the door was upside down on this side. I made my way towards the edge of the pool, taking in my surroundings. The room was a massive cathedral. An upside down cathedral. Marble columns lined the sides, connecting from floor to ceiling, this side of the room appearing more like a cave, with sharp rock formations like clusters of earthen teeth jutting sporadically from the ground. Further in, the cavernous space faded seemlessly like paint on a canvas into a cathedral's vaulted ceiling with beams and rafters intermingling and posing as subtle obstacles for my traversal.

Off in the distance at the back wall, I could see a man, suspended by a perverse biomechanical crucifixion. Wires and tubes weaved in and out of his flesh, his head looking up towards the floor of the grand basilica. The haunted chorus and mechanical hum emanating from within him and a beam of bright white light shot out of his mouth straight up towards the pulpit. I followed the beam to see the stone and brass structure of the pulpit. As I got closer to the crucifix, I noticed the man wearing black with a white collar. Could this be my predecessor?

Does Father Gastani know about this? He couldn't. He said nobody had been through this door in centuries. But that alluded he knew when the last time someone had come through was. There must have been some record of what this was!

How the fuck was I going to get out of here? The wall where the black door was, was far too high for me to reach. I looked around and realized the wall behind the pulpit was riddled with elaborate and decorative architecture. Most of it protruding far enough out of the wall to seemingly give me the space to grip and plant my feet to climb. There were two gold and stone doors on either side of the pulpit. The tubes and wires crawled up the wall in spidery limbs towards the thresholds of those doors and through to the other side. I just had to climb up the hellish crucifix to reach the architecture.

I began my ascent of the crucifix, the sound of the wicked circuitry making my skull rattle as I got closer to the priests head. The light was hot, I could feel the heat growing stronger as well. When I reached his shoulders, I planted my feet on one side of the cross, the searing white light felt like it was giving me a sunburn on the back of my neck. I reached up and grabbed onto the decorative wall structures and pulled myself higher and higher. As I reached the midway point, gravity seemed to reverse, or rather, correct itself to what you would assume would be it's normal orientation. I went falling to the floor, landing on my back with a loud thud. I had to have fallen 20 feet, yet I was completely unscathed. I stood up, and turned to face the black door.

I rushed towards it. I just wanted to be back. This place was surreal, horrific, and undoing everything I believed possible. I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong. There's something else happening beyond what we can perceive in our day to day mundane lives. The fact that this place exists within the holiest place on earth, brings so many questions to the front of my mind.

It was reflective and solid again. I had to give it blood to activate the portal. My cut finger had healed completely. I'm not sure when that happened. Not even a scar. I tried to cut myself again and it didn't work. How could I get back now? The only way was forward. To enter the doors pincering the pulpit.

Approaching the pulpit, there was a scroll lying on the surface. It was full of unrecognizable patterns and shapes. They changed and faded in and out of existence. Looking at the page made me dizzy. I felt drunk and waves of joy and fear washed over me as I gazed at it. As soon as I broke eye contact with it, I snapped back. Focus. I moved towards the door to the left of the pulpit.

The door was heavy. I pushed through and this room made the last seem normal in comparison. It looked like the main hall of the Vatican library, except the bookshelves extended upward into an infinite void. There was no percievable ceiling. And the rows of shelves extended into the horizon, disappearing into the curvature of whatever world this was. Miles and Miles and miles. The haunting machine chorus was here as well, and much louder. I walked for what felt like weeks. For whatever reason, my mortal requirements to eat and drink were non-existent and I was impervious to any physical damage.

I finally reached the end of the library. It was an enormous structure, living and mechanical. It stretched in every direction as far as I could see. Machines made of flesh and bone intertwined with gears and wires and contraptions I can't even describe. Yawning, pulsing, howling, infernal machinations performing unholy forsaken functions. Millions of bloodshot eyes across its surface, all locked on me. I approached it, the sound of the machine bringing back that static feeling in my mind. It felt like a hive, or a cocoon. I could sense something old and hungry inside the Mountain. Before it, a pedestal. There was a book.

It was black. An imperceivable black. Like the space it occupied had just been deleted from reality. So dark it was beyond the void of sleep or death. It was Nothing. I opened the book. There were no pages. A sound erupted, a thousand trumpets accompanied by screams and laughter and countless voices clamoring all at once. I could see a trillion trillion stars, I felt every emotion, every pain, every triumph, I was everywhere and nowhere all at once. Time was looping in on itself like an ourobouros. I could see for the first time. It had to be fed. It was the only way to keep It dormant. I could feel my mind slipping back into the absolute Nothing. My senses retreating like the tide in a tsunami. Consciousness slipped away slowly, my mind overwhelmed completely by knowledge not meant to be known.

I awoke in my apartment. My ears ringing and my vision blurry. I arose slowly, aching and weak. The door leading from my living room to the hallway outside was covered in a sinewy, muscular web, filled with eyes. The eyes are inside me too. Tiny iridescent particles floated on the air, swirling like the embers of a bonfire in slow motion. I cracked the thick curtains to look outside. The world was different. Did I let something out into this world or can I see what had always been here, lurking beneath the thin veil of corporeality our minds have been draped in by the Dream of the Mountain? I had to make sure they continued to quell what slumbered inside the Mountain. I've seen what happens if it stops Dreaming. I had to get back.

I walked down the winding roads towards the Vatican. The stones of the street beneath my feet slithered and oscillated. The buildings tapered off into the horizon, which seemed to move ever further away from me. In the distance, above an immense glowing aura, the sky curved up into a cylindrical hole with no end. The Vatican was the source of the aura.

I approached the first security checkpoint and stopped ahead of it, taking a moment to marvel at the impossible swirling vacuum into Nothing above the grand facility. As I moved through each checkpoint, things continued to get more and more surreal. Walls crawled and breathed, the angles of the rooms unsettling and irregular. People's faces were wrong. They were not unusual in a structural sense, but all features were unrecognizable. I couldn't tell people apart.

Finally settling into my work place, I noticed the books were different too. There was one in particular that was beckoning me, the most beautiful song I had ever heard reverberating in the room. I followed the notes, they floated on the air, almost in a physical form. They decorated time and space around me with melody unlike anything I had ever heard. It felt like a rebirth, like pure love and warmth. I was hearing music for the first time like someone born deaf. I opened the old tome, written in Hebrew. I could not read Hebrew but I knew the meaning of the words anyway. I guess, a gift of the inner eyes. It was the Song of Solomon, but greatly expanded upon. I could sense the intentions of the author. I experienced his consciousness as it was written. It was singing praises of love, of devotion, of obsession. With the forgotten verses, I could hear it was an aria of madness, inspired by something deep below the Earth. Sickly sweet and gorgeous but unnervingly so. Something dead and Dreaming of us. It's reveries a grand illusion, weaving the shapes of our desires, of our hopes, of our fears, and of the very nature of reality. An ethereal puppeteer.

I knew Father Gastani had come to check on me only by his voice.

"Jarred, good to see you've acclimated and are finding your work without need for direction. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?"

"Father, I want to ask you something that may seem strange. Are there any books about that door? There must be something.'

"You're very fascinated by that door aren't you, my son? I can give you access to your predecessors records. He worked here for almost his entire life. His knowledge of our archives is more extensive than anyone else."

I closed the Song of Songs and replaced it on the shelf it had come from. Father led me to another room, clearly my predecessors records.

"Everything is here. I hope you can find what you're looking for soon, as we have some recently excavated new additions coming tomorrow and they will require much time and your full attention." I looked at the blurred, gossamer imitation of a face that sat on Father Gastani's head, trying not to stare or do something else that alerted him to my current state of perception. I poured hours into digging through his meticulous records. I finally found it. The door was discovered by Emperor Constantines guard after the construction had been completed. It was not part of the design. It was just....there. Centuries gone by, they tried everything, like Father had told me, to open the door. The only papacy to manage it was Pope Urban II in 1094. His closest and most trusted bishops and cardinals were ordered to gather all record or instruction involving the door and destroy it. They say he was forever changed after crossing the black door and seeing what secrets were always meant to be kept hidden. It seems to me the Mountain wants to be found.

I contemplated telling Father that I had gone through the door. I contemplated telling him of the Dreaming Mountain, and of the black book that had given me sight beyond sight, and of the great Nothing. I could not. Not yet. I had to bring back the book. They all needed to know the cosmos, to have sight. They should know the true nature of God.

Over the next few weeks, I spent most of my days squeezing in time to go through my predecessors notes and records between shifts of repairing books. His name was Enzo Ansetti. He knew of the Mountain. He had spent much time with the black book over the years. He hid his greatest discoveries inside the Inverted Chapel, away from the possibility of discovery by the Church. Tomorrow I will enter the Chapel again, to find them.

The chapel was not empty this time. Grey, emaciated human forms lined the room above, weeping quietly, facing the walls in what seemed like penance or shame. I looked upon the mechanical cruciform once again. It really was Enzo, the beam of light stretching from his gaping maw into the space above me. The light was flickering, fading slowly but surely. I could see that Enzo was dying. I climbed the abominable monument, falling up to the floor like last time. This time, I would take the other door beside the grand pulpit. The heavy door resisted as I pushed, finally giving way to an expansive basilica. Strange beings traipsed aimlessly, stitched together wings wrapping them like robes and adorned with a bell over their heads. They did not seem to take notice of me at all. In the center of the room, the ceiling vaulted suddenly upwards into a maelstrom of teeth and eyes. It was like Charybdis swallowing stars from the sky rather than swallowing the sea. The sight of it brought me to my knees. It was horrific and beautiful. I could see something descending from Charybdis, down towards me. I backed away to watch a platform fit neatly into the center of the room. I wondered if I was retracing Enzo's steps, if I would end up just like he did.

I stood on the platform, my knees buckling as it unlocked itself from the ground and raised into the air. I floated up towards the whirlpool of eyes and stars, preparing myself mentally for whatever strange place awaited me, whatever secret fates lied ahead.

I stood alone in the Nothing. Physically actually here now. This is outside the Dream. It is overwhelming, suffocating me. My thoughts danced like a movie before my eyes. They felt as if I had no control over them, as if they were having me rather than I was having thoughts. In the distance I could see something. Something incredibly large and spherical. The platform became active again beneath my feet, moving forward toward the shape on the horizon. As I got closer, I saw what it was. It was a giant orb of blinking lights, metal protrusions of impossible shapes, and an amalgam of naked human bodies stuffed and stitched together like a sleeve around whatever awful machines lay beneath the fleshy surface. They moaned in pain and their arms reached out toward me as I passed them, they were begging for help. Under the middle of the Granfaloon of bodies and hellish engines, above me now, was an opening. The platform stopped moving forward and redirected itself upward. Into the mouth of the structure, an entrance by design.

This room appeared to be a nexus. A connection between an enormous number of other places. Hallways stretched into nothing all around me, unfathomable amounts of doors lining the halls, in every shape size and color imaginable. But there was one that called to me. It looked like the doors near the pulpit. Its weight formidable like the others, I discovered an archive. Enzo's truth lay here. At the back of the room, a man flayed and suspended from the shoulders by vast curtains of flesh and muscles, stretching away from him towards the ceiling like putrid wings. His back to me, he looked to be tending a massive wall of scrolls.

"Approach. I know what you seek." He said, his voice several voices at once, falling over each other at slightly different intervals and volumes.

I obeyed.

He handed me a scroll, like the one I saw on the pulpit, but now I could understand it. These were Enzo's hidden records. Hidden not only physically from the world, but hidden from normal mortal perception by unworldly elder runes.

What slept inside the Mountain always was and always will be. Older than anything imagination allows. We had brushed up against it several times in human history. The veil between the Truth and the Dream overlapping for brief moments in time. Some men were touched by the breach. Shamans, prophets, philosophers. But one man had eyes inside. That man saw the Truth. The Anointed Christ. The first Beacon. The central point of all time and space. The first being to ever fully know the secret fate of the universe. His knowledge showed him that it must always Dream. He spent his life spreading his gospel, garnering followers through ethereal wisdom and great works. The sheep would flock to their shepherd, because they must. Faith, is what fuels the machines built to keep the Mountain Dreaming. Before, all the world's religions were scattered and separate, causing the very fabric of the Dream to weaken. Reality was slowly coming undone and only he knew.

Through Him, their faith would be unified. Men were antennae, you see, whose hopes and fears and belief would be a signal channeled to the Mountain. His sacrifice was not to forgive us our sins, it was to create a bridge. An extra-dimensional intersection, between the unravelling Dream and the Mountain. This is the reason for the cruciform symbol the Church used. His death was not understood fully, they knew not what they witnessed. He would be the catalyst to keep the pillars of the world standing, connecting us permanently to the Mountain. Every prayer, now directed at the source, we were synchronized. When one person prays, it's a drop of water in a lake. When billions pray, the water moves like waves towards the shores of the Mountain.

Urban II saw the Truth as well and thought that the only way to truly unify humanity in the Dream was through conquest. The Crusades were meant to be the final act, ensuring our reality remains intact, through brute force. Belief is immeasurably valuable and the Church would come to learn that it cannot be forced. The Mountain feeds on genuine belief, not fear or obligation. You must trust in It, love It. Worship is synchronization.

The Church must protect the Truth, for knowing dissolves faith. Every major catastrophe weakens the signal through loss of life and therefore loss of faith. The Enlightment weakened the signal. The discovery of heliocentricity weakened the signal. Modern secular thought is the antithesis of the Truth, being the greatest engine of disbelief. How ironic that the search for truth and knowledge would be the very thing to destroy us all. Progress is antonymic.

The Church knew everything. Each Pope is secretly taught the Truth. They were supposed to be guardians and conduits. Most were. Everything made so much more sense. It was a system. The Church itself was a machine. A derrick of faith. Missionaries were meant to increase fuel production. Every conversion strengthens the signal, and therefore reality itself. Even still, there must be a connector. Enzo became that, but the flesh is weak, and eventually his form will be used up, and someone must replace him and become the Beacon, where all prayers converge to be consumed.

I poured over an ancient Bible with my new knowledge. The Revelation had an entirely new meaning. John had written the blueprints of The End. This is what happens when the Mountain stops Dreaming. The beast awakens, the stars fall, indescribable beings pour into our reality. This cannot come to be, as Christ gave us the means to prevent the collapse.

The Mountain does not know of us. It doesnt know it Dreams, but it must.

I will become the Beacon. The transmitter of love and faith. The way, and the light.

My tendency to isolate and my curiosity led me to my field of expertise: literary conservation. I loved old books. The forbidden histories, the untold stories, the glimpses into that deep truth. It also made relationships very difficult so I didn't have many friends still, and I'd only had a hand full of romantic partners despite being in my early 30s. Being alone was ok with me, I liked the quiet. 

I started my career at the New Orleans Public Library. I'm originally from east Texas, so it wasn't too far from home, but far enough away that I wouldn't run into anyone I had grown up with or gone to college with. Something to note about New Orleans, it's an old city, and so there are a lot of folk tales and mysticism sewn into the tapestry of its history. Even though I didn't believe in any of it, really, I always found it fascinating. Vampires, voodoo, the occult. There's also a very prominent presence of the Catholic Church. A strange mix in my opinion. 

A few months into my time at the NOLA library, we had a middle aged man come in, clad in black with a white collar. He was apparently looking for a book about the early gnostic teachings. These were pre-catholic, primordial Christian philosophies and stories, something I always found interesting because of their stark contrast to the publicly accepted version we have had since the middle ages. The librarian directed him to the area of the library where he could find such a  book and he left, polite and thankful but reserved. 

A few months go by, nothing out of the ordinary really happened. Occasionally we would get older books that needed to have their degradation halted, and that was my forte. It was Monday. A stormy humid Monday I will never forget. 

The priest comes back and asks if there is anyone who can direct him to someone who can repair antique tomes. Obviously, I was summoned to meet him. The church needed help with some very very old versions of the Bible they had come to acquire from some old man who lived out in the swamps a few miles outside of town. All the rain had caused some flooding that had unearthed some of a very old forgotten graveyard, probably populated mostly by only a few families over the centuries. There were coffins, of course, but there was also a wooden box, sealed in leather that had been buried with one of the coffins. 

I was excited, more than happy to help. This was an opportunity to preserve a very rare piece of human history and culture. 

Pleased with my work, the priest said in a gentle but raspy voice, "I'm in charge of the rare antiquities acquisition for the Vatican. I was sent to New Orleans because there are records of a family who had been brought over during the slave trade who had a family heirloom. A Bible, handwritten, with all the original gospels. Judas, thomas, so on and so forth. Untouched by the dishonesty and political aspects of the church during the middle ages." I was surprised by the admission of such a forgery. 

"I assume that's what's in this box?" I said.

"Yes sir. And there are some other books, many many other books owned by the church that are in need of someone to look after them. The person who was in charge of that recently disappeared. Would you be open to an opportunity?"

 

"What kind of opportunity are we talking about exactly? I don't know if I'm the right person. I don't really believe in God." I said. 

"That actually isn't important. We just need someone with your particular skills and your passion for the work will prove very useful.” He let out a sigh and smiled faintly, "Are you open to relocation?"

"Relocation to where?" I asked dryly.

"Italy. The Vatican." 

My eyes widened and I took a large breath and exhaled deeply, "I've got nothing tying me here. This could be really interesting, I've never been out of the country before. Shit, I've never even left the South. Oh, sorry for the language!" 

He chuckled and accepted my apology. He urged me to tie up any loose ends and if I had any family, to let them know I may not be back for a long while. I had a week before we would fly to Rome. 

I called home that night and let my parents know. My mom was excited for me and my dad was less so. He wondered when they'd see me again, of course. I reassured him id have time to visit home.

I spent the week, packing and getting things I thought I'd need for the flight, and for my new home. The priest had told me they would take care of shipping my things and that was a huge relief. They were going to put me up in a small apartment a few miles outside the Vatican. I was never a material person so the move was going to be relatively painless. 

After a gruellingly long chain of flights with a few layovers, I finally arrived in Rome. I was greeted by a new priest, who was holding a sign that read, "Jarred Thompson" so I walked over and let him know that was me. 

"Hello, Jarred. I'm Father Gastani. I'll be escorting you to your living arrangement." He said cheerfully, with a surprisingly mild accent. 

"Nice to meet you, Father. Thank you." 

I followed him to a taxi and we rode down the cobbled road for a few minutes while he explained the locations of and pointed to multiple shops as we passed them, places to get essentials and various things I could do in spare time. Upon arrival I thanked him again and he urged that I be on time for the taxi he would send in the morning to transport me into the Vatican for my first day on the job. The following days would be the most significant, glorious and terrifying days of my life.

Past the absolutely insane security, checkpoints, x-rays, swiss guard, etc, I finally was lead to the entrance to the fabled library of the Vatican. It was gorgeous. Vibrant colors dancing on the ancient stone as the sun reached through the titanic ornate windows to caress the walls and floors of the massive archive. Father Gastani lead me through the towering rows of books and scrolls to the farthest reaches of the gallery. 

"How are you settling in, Jarred?" He said, in his typical warm demeanor. 

"Couldn't really sleep from the excitement and anticipation so I was able to put away almost all my things. Figured it best to be productive on some level." 

"Glad to hear it! We're almost to the room with the books we need your help with."

This room was clearly rarely used. Dust covering most of the shelves and surfaces other than one section of the room. He walked over to a large glass wall full of transparent temperature and humidity controlled drawers, put on some gloves, and removed an old book. He set it down, pointed me to my equipment, and wished me good luck on his way out. 

I decided to take a look around, as my curiosity about the various antiquities and potentially forgotten knowledge populating this room had my full attention. Ancient texts and tomes littered the place, and I browsed like a music lover in an old record store. Towards the back of the room there was a large door made of extremely smooth, moderately reflective black stone. Or at least I guessed it was stone. It had no handle or window but there was a faint light creeping from beneath it. There was also a sound coming from the other side. A sound that's hard to explain. It was like a mixture of the hum of machinery and chorus of deep vocals but not close enough to either to be identified as such. A loud creak startled me as Father Gastani re-entered the room. 

"Oh shit, Father, you scared me!" I chuckled nervously, fearing my curiosity had violated trust. "No one has been in that room for centuries, as far as I know. The door just doesn't seem to open. We've tried hydraulics and every other machine we could think of and, nothing. It won't budge. We even had a team of geologists come and use a device to see if we could map out what's behind it using waves but the results came back as if there was nothing on the other side of it." He smirked, "Let me know if you figure it out." 

My heart beat steadied as I realized I had caused no offense. I decided to get to work on my assignment, restoring the ancient Bible. I spent the rest of the day meticulously repairing pages and bindings before I found myself exhausted and ready to call it a night. As I moved all my equipment back to their places, I got an eerie feeling that sent chills crawling across my back like a thousand micro needles. Something was watching me but upon scanning the room, I was very much alone. I shuddered and told myself I was being ridiculous. 

The next day, around noon, I'd decided to take a break, eat the lunch I had packed and then inspect the strange door again. The archway around the obsidian mirror door was about 20 feet tall and 6 feet wide. It was covered in black twisting, intertwining ridges and valleys, what looked like a cross between mycelium and a vascular system. I ran my fingers over it and it seemed to vibrate. It was also cold to the touch, covered in a layer of perspiration from the juxtaposition of temperature of the room. I wiped my fingers on my shirt, realizing the liquid was black as well. The water was ashen and gritty, leaving a streak of grey on my shirt. Stepping back, I admired the possibility of what stories might be behind the door. Ancient, forlorn thoughts and ideas, lost histories, so intriguing. 

I could hear the hum from inside return, pressing my ear to the monolithic door, all my senses vanished and my consciousness was left floating, silence so thick I could hear the blood moving in my veins, smothered by limitless darkness. Darkness isn't the right word. It was Nothing. It seemed like I had been suspended for days. There was nothing at all.

 Gasping for air, I crashed back to reality to find Father Gastani peering down at me shouting in Italian to other priests as I tried to sit up from the cold, dusty granite floor. 

"Lay still, son. I think you may have hit your head." 

I could still feel the weight of the void on my mind the way you feel the static numb of physical weight on a constricted body part. 

I had finally finished restoring the old Bible. There were literal tons of other books they needed my help to restore, so I had my work cut out for me. All I could think about was the door.

Though what I had experienced frightened me at the time, I could not shake the feeling that it was beckoning me back. There was a peace to the Nothing. This had to be some kind of technology. But it's too old. Maybe there is something to the ancient aliens theory? I've always kind of believed it to some extent, though I'm embarrassed to admit. I certainly could not accept that this was spiritual or supernatural in nature. The curiosity was unbearable. I had to investigate further. 

I gazed up at the enormous door. My pulse quickening as I moved closer. Not paying attention, my eyes fixed on the door, stumbled over a loose stone in the floor and caught myself on the edge of a table preventing my fall, but hitting my head, reopening the wound. It wouldn't require stitches but it was deep enough to cause quite a pain response. I wiped blood from my face with my hand, wiping some of it off on my shirt.

 I looked at the archway holding the door with great intent, searching for any semblance of a mechanism to interact with. There's no way I'd find something they haven't already searched for after all these years, I told myself. I ran my hand across the strange, cold archway again. The varicose textures began to pulse and writhe, coming to life and moving towards where my blood had rubbed off on it. It absorbed it, giving off a brief faint glow as it did. A deep, loud thunk reverberated off the decorative angular ceiling adornments and I jumped back, startled. The door was no longer reflective. It was completely matte now and I reached out to touch it's once mirror-polished surface to find a thick viscous onyx substance, somewhere between a solid and a liquid, similar to the texture of crude oil, but the surface pulled against me as I yanked my hand away, stretching like goo before breaking and leaving small spheres of the stuff floating still in the air. Imagine spilling a liquid on the ISS in zero gravity. It slipped off my hand, laying motionless in the air before me. In a fraction of a moment, the door pulled the floating particles back into itself immediately appearing as still and solid as it did before I had disturbed it's bizarre surface. I knew I had to go get Father Gastani. Of course they had never considered blood, these were priests. Whatever was behind this door, or fucking gateway, or whatever it is, I didn't want to be alone. The door out to the main hall of the library was gone. Like it never existed. I sat down, crossed my legs and stared at the blank space in the wall, trying to figure out if the black door was made of some  poisonous material, causing me to hallucinate. That had to be it. I'd just close my eyes, and wait for this to pass. It couldn't be real, it's impossible. My anxiety was too high to sleep, and I had to relieve it by moving around, doing something. Anything. Occupy my mind. "Let's get some work done, Jarred." I thought. But I couldn't focus. Irritated, I pushed myself to face the door again. This was the only way out. 

I reached forward slowly, shakily, moving my fingertips ever closer to the door. I made contact with the liquid surface and pushed my arm in up to my elbow. My arm was still attached, thankfully. I pushed further, up to my shoulder. I felt my hand break through the other side. There was something there! A room on the other side. I decided to leap through to the other side, as the texture of the door gave resistance. I would need some momentum. I pulled my arm out, flinging dark pools of the substance floating out into the room, before they were pulled back into the door like before. I got about a 20 yard running start from where the exit door to the library once was and sprinted towards the black door. I hurdled through it, bursting through the other side and finding myself falling from the ceiling towards a large pool of liquid below.

I landed in the pool of black liquid, only about 3 feet deep, and looked up to find the door pulling all the displaced liquid back into itself, realizing the ceiling was actually the floor as the door was upside down on this side. I made my way towards the edge of the pool, taking in my surroundings. The room was a massive cathedral. An upside down cathedral. Marble columns lined the sides, connecting from floor to ceiling, this side of the room appearing more like a cave, with sharp rock formations like clusters of earthen teeth jutting sporadically from the ground. Further in, the cavernous space faded seemlessly like paint on a canvas into a cathedral's vaulted ceiling with beams and rafters intermingling and posing as subtle obstacles for my traversal. 

Off in the distance at the back wall, I could see a man, suspended by a perverse biomechanical crucifixion. Wires and tubes weaved in and out of his flesh, his head looking up towards the floor of the grand basilica. The haunted chorus and mechanical hum emanating from within him and a beam of bright white light shot out of his mouth straight up towards the pulpit. I followed the beam to see the stone and brass structure of the pulpit. As I got closer to the crucifix, I noticed the man wearing black with a white collar. Could this be my predecessor?

Does Father Gastani know about this? He couldn't. He said nobody had been through this door in centuries. But that alluded he knew when the last time someone had come through was. There must have been some record of what this was!

How the fuck was I going to get out of here? The wall where the black door was, was far too high for me to reach. I looked around and realized the wall behind the pulpit was riddled with elaborate and decorative architecture.  Most of it protruding far enough out of the wall to seemingly give me the space to grip and plant my feet to climb. There were two gold and stone doors on either side of the pulpit. The tubes and wires crawled up the wall in spidery limbs towards the thresholds of those doors and through to the other side.  I just had to climb up the hellish crucifix to reach the architecture.

I began my ascent of the crucifix, the sound of the wicked circuitry making my skull rattle as I got closer to the priests head. The light was hot, I could feel the heat growing stronger as well. When I reached his shoulders, I planted my feet on one side of the cross, the searing white light felt like it was giving me a sunburn on the back of my neck. I reached up and grabbed onto the decorative wall structures and pulled myself higher and higher. As I reached the midway point, gravity seemed to reverse, or rather, correct itself to what you would assume would be it's normal orientation. I went falling to the floor, landing on my back with a loud thud. I had to have fallen 20 feet, yet I was completely unscathed. I stood up, and turned to face the black door. 

I rushed towards it. I just wanted to be back. This place was surreal, horrific, and undoing everything I believed possible. I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong. There's something else happening beyond what we can perceive in our day to day mundane lives. The fact that this place exists within the holiest place on earth, brings so many questions to the front of my mind.

It was reflective and solid again. I had to give it blood to activate the portal. My cut had healed completely. I'm not sure when that happened. Not even a scar. I tried to reopen it again and it was not possible. How could I get back now? The only way was forward. To enter one of the doors pincering the pulpit. 

Approaching the pulpit, there was a scroll lying on the surface. It was full of unrecognizable patterns and shapes. They changed and faded in and out of existence. Looking at the page made me dizzy. I felt drunk and waves of joy and fear washed over me as I gazed at it. As soon as I broke eye contact with it, I snapped back. Focus. I moved towards the door to the left of the pulpit. 

The door was heavy. I pushed through and this room made the last seem normal in comparison. It looked like the main hall of the Vatican library, except the bookshelves extended upward into an infinite void. There was no percievable ceiling. And the rows of shelves extended into the horizon, disappearing into the curvature of whatever world this was. Miles and Miles and miles. The haunting machine chorus was here as well, and much louder. I walked for what felt like weeks. For whatever reason, my mortal requirements to eat and drink were non-existent and I was impervious to any physical damage. 

I finally reached the end of the library. It was an enormous structure, living and mechanical. It stretched in every direction as far as I could see. Machines made of flesh and bone intertwined with gears and wires and contraptions I can't even describe. Yawning, pulsing, howling, infernal machinations performing unholy forsaken functions. Millions of bloodshot eyes across its surface, all locked on me. I approached it, the sound of the machine bringing back that static feeling in my mind. It felt like a hive, or a cocoon. I could sense something old and hungry inside the Mountain. Before it, a pedestal. There was a book. 

It was black. An imperceivable black. Like the space it occupied had just been deleted from reality. So dark it was beyond the void of sleep or death. It was Nothing. I opened the book. There were no pages. A sound erupted, a thousand trumpets accompanied by screams and laughter and countless voices clamoring all at once. I could see a trillion trillion stars, I felt every emotion, every pain, every triumph, I was everywhere and nowhere all at once. Time was looping in on itself like an ourobouros. I could see for the first time. It had to be fed. It was the only way to keep It dormant. I could feel my mind slipping back into the absolute Nothing. My senses retreating like the tide in a tsunami. Consciousness slipped away slowly, my mind overwhelmed completely by knowledge not meant to be known. 

I awoke in my apartment. My ears ringing and my vision blurry. I arose slowly, aching and weak. The door leading from my living room to the hallway outside was covered in a sinewy, muscular web, filled with eyes. The eyes are inside me too. Tiny iridescent particles floated on the air, swirling like the embers of a bonfire in slow motion. I cracked the thick curtains to look outside. The world was different. Did I let something out into this world or can I see what had always been here, lurking beneath the thin veil of corporeality our minds have been draped in by the Dream of the Mountain? I had to make sure they continued to quell what slumbered inside the Mountain. I've seen what happens if it stops Dreaming. I had to get back. 

I walked down the winding roads towards the Vatican. The stones of the street beneath my feet slithered and oscillated. The buildings tapered off into the horizon, which seemed to move ever further away from me. In the distance, above an immense glowing aura, the sky curved up into a cylindrical hole with no end. The Vatican was the source of the aura.

I approached the first security checkpoint and stopped ahead of it, taking a moment to marvel at the impossible swirling vacuum into Nothing above the grand facility. As I moved through each checkpoint, things continued to get more and more surreal. Walls crawled and breathed, the angles of the rooms unsettling and irregular. People's faces were wrong. They were not unusual in a structural sense, but all features were unrecognizable. I couldn't tell people apart. 

Finally settling into my work place, I noticed the books were different too. There was one in particular that was beckoning me, the most beautiful song I had ever heard reverberating in the room. I followed the notes, they floated on the air, almost in a physical form. They decorated time and space around me with melody unlike anything I had ever heard. It felt like a rebirth, like pure love and warmth. I was hearing music for the first time like someone born deaf. I opened the old tome, written in Hebrew. I could not read Hebrew but I knew the meaning of the words anyway. I guess, a gift of the inner eyes. It was the Song of Solomon, but greatly expanded upon. I could sense the intentions of the author. I experienced his consciousness as it was written. It was singing praises of love, of devotion, of obsession. With the forgotten verses, I could hear it was an aria of madness, inspired by something deep below the Earth. Sickly sweet and gorgeous but unnervingly so. Something dead and Dreaming of us. It's reveries a grand illusion, weaving the shapes of our desires, of our hopes, of our fears, and of the very nature of reality. An ethereal puppeteer.

I knew Father Gastani had come to check on me only by his voice.

"Jarred, good to see you've acclimated and are finding your work without need for direction. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?"

"Father, I want to ask you something that may seem strange. Are there any books about that door? There must be something.'

"You're very fascinated by that door aren't you, my son? I can give you access to your predecessors records. He worked here for almost his entire life. His knowledge of our archives is more extensive than anyone else."

I closed the Song of Songs and replaced it on the shelf it had come from. Father led me to another room, clearly my predecessors records. 

"Everything is here. I hope you can find what you're looking for soon, as we have some recently excavated new additions coming tomorrow and they will require much time and your full attention." I looked at the blurred, gossamer imitation of a face that sat on Father Gastani's head, trying not to stare or do something else that alerted him to my altered perception. I poured hours into digging through his meticulous records. I finally found it. The door was discovered by Emperor Constantines guard after the construction had been completed. It was not part of the design. It was just....there. Centuries gone by, they tried everything, like Father had told me, to open the door. The only papacy to manage it was Pope Urban II in 1094. His closest and most trusted bishops and cardinals were ordered to gather all record or instruction involving the door and destroy it. They say he was forever changed after crossing the black door and seeing what secrets were always meant to be kept hidden. This deception brought me to the notion that the Inverted Chapel and it's contents wanted to be found.

I contemplated telling Father that I had gone through the door. I contemplated telling him of the Dreaming Mountain, and of the black book that had given me sight beyond sight, and of the great Nothing holding it all. I could not. Not yet. I had to bring back the book. They all needed to know the cosmos, to have sight. They should know the true nature of God.

Over the next few weeks, I spent most of my days squeezing in time to go through my predecessors notes and records between shifts of repairing books. His name was Enzo Ansetti. He knew of the Mountain. He had spent much time with the black book over the years. He hid his greatest discoveries inside the Inverted Chapel, away from the possibility of discovery by the Church. Tomorrow I will enter the Chapel again, to find them. 

The chapel was not empty this time. Grey, emaciated human forms lined the room above, weeping quietly, facing the walls in what seemed like penance or shame. I looked upon the mechanical cruciform once again. It really was Enzo, the beam of light stretching from his gaping maw into the space above me. The light was flickering, fading slowly but surely. I could see that Enzo was dying. I climbed the abominable monument, falling up to the floor like last time. This time, I would take the other door beside the grand pulpit. The heavy door resisted as I pushed, finally giving way to an expansive basilica. Strange beings traipsed aimlessly, stitched together wings wrapping them like robes and adorned with a bell over their heads. They did not seem to take notice of me at all. In the center of the room, the ceiling vaulted suddenly upwards into a maelstrom of teeth and eyes. It was like Charybdis swallowing stars from the sky. The sight of it brought me to my knees. It was horrific and beautiful. I could see something descending from Charybdis, down towards me. I backed away to watch a platform fit neatly into a recess in the center of the room. I wondered if I was retracing Enzo's steps, if I would end up just like he did. 

I stood on the platform, my knees buckling as it unlocked itself from the ground and raised into the air. I floated up towards the whirlpool of eyes and stars, preparing myself mentally for whatever strange place awaited me, whatever secret fates lied ahead.

I stood alone in the Nothing. Physically experiencing it rather than just in my mind. This is outside the Dream. It is overwhelming, suffocating me. My thoughts danced like a movie before my eyes. They felt as if I had no control over them, as if the thoughts were having me rather than I was having thoughts. In the distance I could see something. Something incredibly large and spherical. The platform became active again beneath my feet, moving forward toward the shape on the horizon. As I got closer, I saw what it was. It was a giant orb of blinking lights, metal protrusions of impossible shapes, and an amalgam of naked human bodies stuffed and stitched together like a sleeve around whatever awful machines lay beneath the fleshy surface. They moaned in pain and their arms reached out toward me as I passed them, they were begging for help. Under the middle of the Granfaloon of bodies and hellish engines, above me now, was an opening. The platform stopped moving forward and redirected itself upward. Into the mouth of the structure, an entrance by design. 

This room appeared to be a nexus. A connection between an enormous number of other places. Hallways stretched into nothing all around me, unfathomable amounts of doors lining the halls, in every shape size and color imaginable. But there was one that called to me. It looked like the doors near the pulpit. Its weight formidable like the others, I discovered an archive. Enzo's truth lay here. At the back of the room, a man flayed and suspended from the shoulders by vast curtains of flesh and muscles, stretching away from him towards the ceiling like putrid wings. His back to me, he looked to be tending a massive wall of scrolls. 

"Approach. I know what you seek." He said, his voice several voices at once, falling over each other at slightly different intervals and volumes. 

I obeyed. 

He handed me a scroll, like the one I saw on the pulpit, but now I could understand it. These were Enzo's hidden records. Hidden not only physically from the world, but hidden from normal mortal perception by unworldly elder runes.

What slept inside the Mountain always was and always will be. Older than the universe itself. Humanity had brushed up against it several times throughout history. The veil between the Truth and the Dream overlapping for brief moments in time. Some men were touched by this breach. Shamans, prophets, philosophers. But one man had eyes inside. That man saw the Truth. The Anointed Christ. The first Beacon. The central point of all time and space. The first being to ever fully know the secret fate of the universe. His knowledge showed him that it must always Dream. He spent his life spreading his gospel, garnering followers through ethereal wisdom and great works. The sheep would flock to their shepherd, because they must. Faith, is what fuels the machines built to keep the Mountain Dreaming. Before Christ, all the world's religions were scattered and separate, causing the very fabric of the Dream to weaken. Reality was slowly coming undone and only he knew. 

Through Him, their faith would be unified. Men were antennae, you see, whose hopes and fears and belief would be a signal channeled to the Mountain. His sacrifice was not to forgive us our sins, it was to create a bridge. An extra-dimensional intersection, between the unravelling Dream and the Nothing that contained the Mountain. This is the reason for the cruciform symbol the Church used. It illustrated this intersection. His death was not understood fully, they knew not what they witnessed. He would be the catalyst to keep the pillars of the world standing, connecting us permanently to the Mountain. Every prayer, now directed at the source, we were synchronized. When one person prays, it's a drop of water in a lake. When billions pray, the water moves like waves towards the shores of the Mountain. 

Urban II saw the Truth as well and thought that the only way to truly unify humanity in the Dream was through conquest. The Crusades were meant to be the final act, ensuring our reality remains intact, through brute force. Belief is immeasurably valuable and the Church would come to learn that it cannot be forced. The Mountain feeds on genuine belief, not fear or obligation. You must trust in It, love It. Worship is synchronization. 

The Church must protect the Truth, for knowing dissolves faith. Every major catastrophe weakens the signal through loss of life and therefore loss of faith. The Enlightment weakened the signal. The discovery of heliocentricity weakened the signal. Modern secular thought is the antithesis of the Truth, being the greatest engine of disbelief. How ironic that the search for truth and knowledge would be the very thing to destroy us all. Progress is spiritually antonymic. 

The Church knew everything. Each Pope is taught the Truth passed down between generations and kept hidden by them. They were supposed to be guardians and conduits. Most were. Everything made so much more sense. It was a system. The Church itself was a machine. A derrick of faith. Missionaries were meant to increase fuel production. Every conversion strengthens the signal, and therefore reality itself. Even still, there must be a connector. Enzo became that, the physical conduit channeling prayer and adoration to the mountain from our world, but the flesh is weak, and eventually his form will be used up, and someone must replace him and become the Beacon, where all prayers converge to be consumed.

I thought of Revelations in relation to my new knowledge. The Revelation had an entirely new meaning. John had written the blueprints of The End. This is what happens when the Mountain stops Dreaming. The beast awakens, the stars fall, indescribable beings pour into our reality. This cannot come to be, as Christ gave us the means to prevent the collapse. 

The Mountain does not know of us. It doesnt know it Dreams, but it must.

I will become the next Beacon. The transmitter of love and faith. The way, and the light. 

My tendency to isolate and my curiosity led me to my field of expertise: literary conservation. I loved old books. The forbidden histories, the untold stories, the glimpses into that deep truth. It also made relationships very difficult so I didn't have many friends still, and I'd only had a hand full of romantic partners despite being in my early 30s. Being alone was ok with me, I liked the quiet. 

I started my career at the New Orleans Public Library. I'm originally from east Texas, so it wasn't too far from home, but far enough away that I wouldn't run into anyone I had grown up with or gone to college with. Something to note about New Orleans, it's an old city, and so there are a lot of folk tales and mysticism sewn into the tapestry of its history. Even though I didn't believe in any of it, really, I always found it fascinating. Vampires, voodoo, the occult. There's also a very prominent presence of the Catholic Church. A strange mix in my opinion. 

A few months into my time at the NOLA library, we had a middle aged man come in, clad in black with a white collar. He was apparently looking for a book about the early gnostic teachings. These were pre-catholic, primordial Christian philosophies and stories, something I always found interesting because of their stark contrast to the publicly accepted version we have had since the middle ages. The librarian directed him to the area of the library where he could find such a  book and he left, polite and thankful but reserved. 

A few months go by, nothing out of the ordinary really happened. Occasionally we would get older books that needed to have their degradation halted, and that was my forte. It was Monday. A stormy humid Monday I will never forget. 

The priest comes back and asks if there is anyone who can direct him to someone who can repair antique tomes. Obviously, I was summoned to meet him. The church needed help with some very very old versions of the Bible they had come to acquire from some old man who lived out in the swamps a few miles outside of town. All the rain had caused some flooding that had unearthed some of a very old forgotten graveyard, probably populated mostly by only a few families over the centuries. There were coffins, of course, but there was also a wooden box, sealed in leather that had been buried with one of the coffins. 

I was excited, more than happy to help. This was an opportunity to preserve a very rare piece of human history and culture. 

Pleased with my work, the priest said in a gentle but raspy voice, "I'm in charge of the rare antiquities acquisition for the Vatican. I was sent to New Orleans because there are records of a family who had been brought over during the slave trade who had a family heirloom. A Bible, handwritten, with all the original gospels. Judas, thomas, so on and so forth. Untouched by the dishonesty and political aspects of the church during the middle ages." I was surprised by the admission of such a forgery. 

"I assume that's what's in this box?" I said.

"Yes sir. And there are some other books, many many other books owned by the church that are in need of someone to look after them. The person who was in charge of that recently disappeared. Would you be open to an opportunity?"

 

"What kind of opportunity are we talking about exactly? I don't know if I'm the right person. I don't really believe in God." I said. 

"That actually isn't important. We just need someone with your particular skills and your passion for the work will prove very useful.” He let out a sigh and smiled faintly, "Are you open to relocation?"

"Relocation to where?" I asked dryly.

"Italy. The Vatican." 

My eyes widened and I took a large breath and exhaled deeply, "I've got nothing tying me here. This could be really interesting, I've never been out of the country before. Shit, I've never even left the South. Oh, sorry for the language!" 

He chuckled and accepted my apology. He urged me to tie up any loose ends and if I had any family, to let them know I may not be back for a long while. I had a week before we would fly to Rome. 

I called home that night and let my parents know. My mom was excited for me and my dad was less so. He wondered when they'd see me again, of course. I reassured him id have time to visit home.

I spent the week, packing and getting things I thought I'd need for the flight, and for my new home. The priest had told me they would take care of shipping my things and that was a huge relief. They were going to put me up in a small apartment a few miles outside the Vatican. I was never a material person so the move was going to be relatively painless. 

After a gruellingly long chain of flights with a few layovers, I finally arrived in Rome. I was greeted by a new priest, who was holding a sign that read, "Jarred Thompson" so I walked over and let him know that was me. 

"Hello, Jarred. I'm Father Gastani. I'll be escorting you to your living arrangement." He said cheerfully, with a surprisingly mild accent. 

"Nice to meet you, Father. Thank you." 

I followed him to a taxi and we rode down the cobbled road for a few minutes while he explained the locations of and pointed to multiple shops as we passed them, places to get essentials and various things I could do in spare time. Upon arrival I thanked him again and he urged that I be on time for the taxi he would send in the morning to transport me into the Vatican for my first day on the job. The following days would be the most significant, glorious and terrifying days of my life.

Past the absolutely insane security, checkpoints, x-rays, swiss guard, etc, I finally was lead to the entrance to the fabled library of the Vatican. It was gorgeous. Vibrant colors dancing on the ancient stone as the sun reached through the titanic ornate windows to caress the walls and floors of the massive archive. Father Gastani lead me through the towering rows of books and scrolls to the farthest reaches of the gallery. 

"How are you settling in, Jarred?" He said, in his typical warm demeanor. 

"Couldn't really sleep from the excitement and anticipation so I was able to put away almost all my things. Figured it best to be productive on some level." 

"Glad to hear it! We're almost to the room with the books we need your help with."

This room was clearly rarely used. Dust covering most of the shelves and surfaces other than one section of the room. He walked over to a large glass wall full of transparent temperature and humidity controlled drawers, put on some gloves, and removed an old book. He set it down, pointed me to my equipment, and wished me good luck on his way out. 

I decided to take a look around, as my curiosity about the various antiquities and potentially forgotten knowledge populating this room had my full attention. Ancient texts and tomes littered the place, and I browsed like a music lover in an old record store. Towards the back of the room there was a large door made of extremely smooth, moderately reflective black stone. Or at least I guessed it was stone. It had no handle or window but there was a faint light creeping from beneath it. There was also a sound coming from the other side. A sound that's hard to explain. It was like a mixture of the hum of machinery and chorus of deep vocals but not close enough to either to be identified as such. A loud creak startled me as Father Gastani re-entered the room. 

"Oh shit, Father, you scared me!" I chuckled nervously, fearing my curiosity had violated trust. "No one has been in that room for centuries, as far as I know. The door just doesn't seem to open. We've tried hydraulics and every other machine we could think of and, nothing. It won't budge. We even had a team of geologists come and use a device to see if we could map out what's behind it using waves but the results came back as if there was nothing on the other side of it." He smirked, "Let me know if you figure it out." 

My heart beat steadied as I realized I had caused no offense. I decided to get to work on my assignment, restoring the ancient Bible. I spent the rest of the day meticulously repairing pages and bindings before I found myself exhausted and ready to call it a night. As I moved all my equipment back to their places, I got an eerie feeling that sent chills crawling across my back like a thousand micro needles. Something was watching me but upon scanning the room, I was very much alone. I shuddered and told myself I was being ridiculous. 

The next day, around noon, I'd decided to take a break, eat the lunch I had packed and then inspect the strange door again. The archway around the obsidian mirror door was about 20 feet tall and 6 feet wide. It was covered in black twisting, intertwining ridges and valleys, what looked like a cross between mycelium and a vascular system. I ran my fingers over it and it seemed to vibrate. It was also cold to the touch, covered in a layer of perspiration from the juxtaposition of temperature of the room. I wiped my fingers on my shirt, realizing the liquid was black as well. The water was ashen and gritty, leaving a streak of grey on my shirt. Stepping back, I admired the possibility of what stories might be behind the door. Ancient, forlorn thoughts and ideas, lost histories, so intriguing. 

I could hear the hum from inside return, pressing my ear to the monolithic door, all my senses vanished and my consciousness was left floating, silence so thick I could hear the blood moving in my veins, smothered by limitless darkness. Darkness isn't the right word. It was Nothing. It seemed like I had been suspended for days. There was nothing at all.

 Gasping for air, I crashed back to reality to find Father Gastani peering down at me shouting in Italian to other priests as I tried to sit up from the cold, dusty granite floor. 

"Lay still, son. I think you may have hit your head." 

I could still feel the weight of the void on my mind the way you feel the static numb of physical weight on a constricted body part. 

I had finally finished restoring the old Bible. There were literal tons of other books they needed my help to restore, so I had my work cut out for me. All I could think about was the door.

Though what I had experienced frightened me at the time, I could not shake the feeling that it was beckoning me back. There was a peace to the Nothing. This had to be some kind of technology. But it's too old. Maybe there is something to the ancient aliens theory? I've always kind of believed it to some extent, though I'm embarrassed to admit. I certainly could not accept that this was spiritual or supernatural in nature. The curiosity was unbearable. I had to investigate further. 

I gazed up at the enormous door. My pulse quickening as I moved closer. Not paying attention, my eyes fixed on the door, stumbled over a loose stone in the floor and caught myself on the edge of a table preventing my fall, but hitting my head, reopening the wound. It wouldn't require stitches but it was deep enough to cause quite a pain response. I wiped blood from my face with my hand, wiping some of it off on my shirt.

 I looked at the archway holding the door with great intent, searching for any semblance of a mechanism to interact with. There's no way I'd find something they haven't already searched for after all these years, I told myself. I ran my hand across the strange, cold archway again. The varicose textures began to pulse and writhe, coming to life and moving towards where my blood had rubbed off on it. It absorbed it, giving off a brief faint glow as it did. A deep, loud thunk reverberated off the decorative angular ceiling adornments and I jumped back, startled. The door was no longer reflective. It was completely matte now and I reached out to touch it's once mirror-polished surface to find a thick viscous onyx substance, somewhere between a solid and a liquid, similar to the texture of crude oil, but the surface pulled against me as I yanked my hand away, stretching like goo before breaking and leaving small spheres of the stuff floating still in the air. Imagine spilling a liquid on the ISS in zero gravity. It slipped off my hand, laying motionless in the air before me. In a fraction of a moment, the door pulled the floating particles back into itself immediately appearing as still and solid as it did before I had disturbed it's bizarre surface. I knew I had to go get Father Gastani. Of course they had never considered blood, these were priests. Whatever was behind this door, or fucking gateway, or whatever it is, I didn't want to be alone. The door out to the main hall of the library was gone. Like it never existed. I sat down, crossed my legs and stared at the blank space in the wall, trying to figure out if the black door was made of some  poisonous material, causing me to hallucinate. That had to be it. I'd just close my eyes, and wait for this to pass. It couldn't be real, it's impossible. My anxiety was too high to sleep, and I had to relieve it by moving around, doing something. Anything. Occupy my mind. "Let's get some work done, Jarred." I thought. But I couldn't focus. Irritated, I pushed myself to face the door again. This was the only way out. 

I reached forward slowly, shakily, moving my fingertips ever closer to the door. I made contact with the liquid surface and pushed my arm in up to my elbow. My arm was still attached, thankfully. I pushed further, up to my shoulder. I felt my hand break through the other side. There was something there! A room on the other side. I decided to leap through to the other side, as the texture of the door gave resistance. I would need some momentum. I pulled my arm out, flinging dark pools of the substance floating out into the room, before they were pulled back into the door like before. I got about a 20 yard running start from where the exit door to the library once was and sprinted towards the black door. I hurdled through it, bursting through the other side and finding myself falling from the ceiling towards a large pool of liquid below.

I landed in the pool of black liquid, only about 3 feet deep, and looked up to find the door pulling all the displaced liquid back into itself, realizing the ceiling was actually the floor as the door was upside down on this side. I made my way towards the edge of the pool, taking in my surroundings. The room was a massive cathedral. An upside down cathedral. Marble columns lined the sides, connecting from floor to ceiling, this side of the room appearing more like a cave, with sharp rock formations like clusters of earthen teeth jutting sporadically from the ground. Further in, the cavernous space faded seemlessly like paint on a canvas into a cathedral's vaulted ceiling with beams and rafters intermingling and posing as subtle obstacles for my traversal. 

Off in the distance at the back wall, I could see a man, suspended by a perverse biomechanical crucifixion. Wires and tubes weaved in and out of his flesh, his head looking up towards the floor of the grand basilica. The haunted chorus and mechanical hum emanating from within him and a beam of bright white light shot out of his mouth straight up towards the pulpit. I followed the beam to see the stone and brass structure of the pulpit. As I got closer to the crucifix, I noticed the man wearing black with a white collar. Could this be my predecessor?

Does Father Gastani know about this? He couldn't. He said nobody had been through this door in centuries. But that alluded he knew when the last time someone had come through was. There must have been some record of what this was!

How the fuck was I going to get out of here? The wall where the black door was, was far too high for me to reach. I looked around and realized the wall behind the pulpit was riddled with elaborate and decorative architecture.  Most of it protruding far enough out of the wall to seemingly give me the space to grip and plant my feet to climb. There were two gold and stone doors on either side of the pulpit. The tubes and wires crawled up the wall in spidery limbs towards the thresholds of those doors and through to the other side.  I just had to climb up the hellish crucifix to reach the architecture.

I began my ascent of the crucifix, the sound of the wicked circuitry making my skull rattle as I got closer to the priests head. The light was hot, I could feel the heat growing stronger as well. When I reached his shoulders, I planted my feet on one side of the cross, the searing white light felt like it was giving me a sunburn on the back of my neck. I reached up and grabbed onto the decorative wall structures and pulled myself higher and higher. As I reached the midway point, gravity seemed to reverse, or rather, correct itself to what you would assume would be it's normal orientation. I went falling to the floor, landing on my back with a loud thud. I had to have fallen 20 feet, yet I was completely unscathed. I stood up, and turned to face the black door. 

I rushed towards it. I just wanted to be back. This place was surreal, horrific, and undoing everything I believed possible. I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong. There's something else happening beyond what we can perceive in our day to day mundane lives. The fact that this place exists within the holiest place on earth, brings so many questions to the front of my mind.

It was reflective and solid again. I had to give it blood to activate the portal. My cut had healed completely. I'm not sure when that happened. Not even a scar. I tried to reopen it again and it was not possible. How could I get back now? The only way was forward. To enter one of the doors pincering the pulpit. 

Approaching the pulpit, there was a scroll lying on the surface. It was full of unrecognizable patterns and shapes. They changed and faded in and out of existence. Looking at the page made me dizzy. I felt drunk and waves of joy and fear washed over me as I gazed at it. As soon as I broke eye contact with it, I snapped back. Focus. I moved towards the door to the left of the pulpit. 

The door was heavy. I pushed through and this room made the last seem normal in comparison. It looked like the main hall of the Vatican library, except the bookshelves extended upward into an infinite void. There was no percievable ceiling. And the rows of shelves extended into the horizon, disappearing into the curvature of whatever world this was. Miles and Miles and miles. The haunting machine chorus was here as well, and much louder. I walked for what felt like weeks. For whatever reason, my mortal requirements to eat and drink were non-existent and I was impervious to any physical damage. 

I finally reached the end of the library. It was an enormous structure, living and mechanical. It stretched in every direction as far as I could see. Machines made of flesh and bone intertwined with gears and wires and contraptions I can't even describe. Yawning, pulsing, howling, infernal machinations performing unholy forsaken functions. Millions of bloodshot eyes across its surface, all locked on me. I approached it, the sound of the machine bringing back that static feeling in my mind. It felt like a hive, or a cocoon. I could sense something old and hungry inside the Mountain. Before it, a pedestal. There was a book. 

It was black. An imperceivable black. Like the space it occupied had just been deleted from reality. So dark it was beyond the void of sleep or death. It was Nothing. I opened the book. There were no pages. A sound erupted, a thousand trumpets accompanied by screams and laughter and countless voices clamoring all at once. I could see a trillion trillion stars, I felt every emotion, every pain, every triumph, I was everywhere and nowhere all at once. Time was looping in on itself like an ourobouros. I could see for the first time. It had to be fed. It was the only way to keep It dormant. I could feel my mind slipping back into the absolute Nothing. My senses retreating like the tide in a tsunami. Consciousness slipped away slowly, my mind overwhelmed completely by knowledge not meant to be known. 

I awoke in my apartment. My ears ringing and my vision blurry. I arose slowly, aching and weak. The door leading from my living room to the hallway outside was covered in a sinewy, muscular web, filled with eyes. The eyes are inside me too. Tiny iridescent particles floated on the air, swirling like the embers of a bonfire in slow motion. I cracked the thick curtains to look outside. The world was different. Did I let something out into this world or can I see what had always been here, lurking beneath the thin veil of corporeality our minds have been draped in by the Dream of the Mountain? I had to make sure they continued to quell what slumbered inside the Mountain. I've seen what happens if it stops Dreaming. I had to get back. 

I walked down the winding roads towards the Vatican. The stones of the street beneath my feet slithered and oscillated. The buildings tapered off into the horizon, which seemed to move ever further away from me. In the distance, above an immense glowing aura, the sky curved up into a cylindrical hole with no end. The Vatican was the source of the aura.

I approached the first security checkpoint and stopped ahead of it, taking a moment to marvel at the impossible swirling vacuum into Nothing above the grand facility. As I moved through each checkpoint, things continued to get more and more surreal. Walls crawled and breathed, the angles of the rooms unsettling and irregular. People's faces were wrong. They were not unusual in a structural sense, but all features were unrecognizable. I couldn't tell people apart. 

Finally settling into my work place, I noticed the books were different too. There was one in particular that was beckoning me, the most beautiful song I had ever heard reverberating in the room. I followed the notes, they floated on the air, almost in a physical form. They decorated time and space around me with melody unlike anything I had ever heard. It felt like a rebirth, like pure love and warmth. I was hearing music for the first time like someone born deaf. I opened the old tome, written in Hebrew. I could not read Hebrew but I knew the meaning of the words anyway. I guess, a gift of the inner eyes. It was the Song of Solomon, but greatly expanded upon. I could sense the intentions of the author. I experienced his consciousness as it was written. It was singing praises of love, of devotion, of obsession. With the forgotten verses, I could hear it was an aria of madness, inspired by something deep below the Earth. Sickly sweet and gorgeous but unnervingly so. Something dead and Dreaming of us. It's reveries a grand illusion, weaving the shapes of our desires, of our hopes, of our fears, and of the very nature of reality. An ethereal puppeteer.

I knew Father Gastani had come to check on me only by his voice.

"Jarred, good to see you've acclimated and are finding your work without need for direction. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?"

"Father, I want to ask you something that may seem strange. Are there any books about that door? There must be something.'

"You're very fascinated by that door aren't you, my son? I can give you access to your predecessors records. He worked here for almost his entire life. His knowledge of our archives is more extensive than anyone else."

I closed the Song of Songs and replaced it on the shelf it had come from. Father led me to another room, clearly my predecessors records. 

"Everything is here. I hope you can find what you're looking for soon, as we have some recently excavated new additions coming tomorrow and they will require much time and your full attention." I looked at the blurred, gossamer imitation of a face that sat on Father Gastani's head, trying not to stare or do something else that alerted him to my altered perception. I poured hours into digging through his meticulous records. I finally found it. The door was discovered by Emperor Constantines guard after the construction had been completed. It was not part of the design. It was just....there. Centuries gone by, they tried everything, like Father had told me, to open the door. The only papacy to manage it was Pope Urban II in 1094. His closest and most trusted bishops and cardinals were ordered to gather all record or instruction involving the door and destroy it. They say he was forever changed after crossing the black door and seeing what secrets were always meant to be kept hidden. This deception brought me to the notion that the Inverted Chapel and it's contents wanted to be found.

I contemplated telling Father that I had gone through the door. I contemplated telling him of the Dreaming Mountain, and of the black book that had given me sight beyond sight, and of the great Nothing holding it all. I could not. Not yet. I had to bring back the book. They all needed to know the cosmos, to have sight. They should know the true nature of God.

Over the next few weeks, I spent most of my days squeezing in time to go through my predecessors notes and records between shifts of repairing books. His name was Enzo Ansetti. He knew of the Mountain. He had spent much time with the black book over the years. He hid his greatest discoveries inside the Inverted Chapel, away from the possibility of discovery by the Church. Tomorrow I will enter the Chapel again, to find them. 

The chapel was not empty this time. Grey, emaciated human forms lined the room above, weeping quietly, facing the walls in what seemed like penance or shame. I looked upon the mechanical cruciform once again. It really was Enzo, the beam of light stretching from his gaping maw into the space above me. The light was flickering, fading slowly but surely. I could see that Enzo was dying. I climbed the abominable monument, falling up to the floor like last time. This time, I would take the other door beside the grand pulpit. The heavy door resisted as I pushed, finally giving way to an expansive basilica. Strange beings traipsed aimlessly, stitched together wings wrapping them like robes and adorned with a bell over their heads. They did not seem to take notice of me at all. In the center of the room, the ceiling vaulted suddenly upwards into a maelstrom of teeth and eyes. It was like Charybdis swallowing stars from the sky. The sight of it brought me to my knees. It was horrific and beautiful. I could see something descending from Charybdis, down towards me. I backed away to watch a platform fit neatly into a recess in the center of the room. I wondered if I was retracing Enzo's steps, if I would end up just like he did. 

I stood on the platform, my knees buckling as it unlocked itself from the ground and raised into the air. I floated up towards the whirlpool of eyes and stars, preparing myself mentally for whatever strange place awaited me, whatever secret fates lied ahead.

I stood alone in the Nothing. Physically experiencing it rather than just in my mind. This is outside the Dream. It is overwhelming, suffocating me. My thoughts danced like a movie before my eyes. They felt as if I had no control over them, as if the thoughts were having me rather than I was having thoughts. In the distance I could see something. Something incredibly large and spherical. The platform became active again beneath my feet, moving forward toward the shape on the horizon. As I got closer, I saw what it was. It was a giant orb of blinking lights, metal protrusions of impossible shapes, and an amalgam of naked human bodies stuffed and stitched together like a sleeve around whatever awful machines lay beneath the fleshy surface. They moaned in pain and their arms reached out toward me as I passed them, they were begging for help. Under the middle of the Granfaloon of bodies and hellish engines, above me now, was an opening. The platform stopped moving forward and redirected itself upward. Into the mouth of the structure, an entrance by design. 

This room appeared to be a nexus. A connection between an enormous number of other places. Hallways stretched into nothing all around me, unfathomable amounts of doors lining the halls, in every shape size and color imaginable. But there was one that called to me. It looked like the doors near the pulpit. Its weight formidable like the others, I discovered an archive. Enzo's truth lay here. At the back of the room, a man flayed and suspended from the shoulders by vast curtains of flesh and muscles, stretching away from him towards the ceiling like putrid wings. His back to me, he looked to be tending a massive wall of scrolls. 

"Approach. I know what you seek." He said, his voice several voices at once, falling over each other at slightly different intervals and volumes. 

I obeyed. 

He handed me a scroll, like the one I saw on the pulpit, but now I could understand it. These were Enzo's hidden records. Hidden not only physically from the world, but hidden from normal mortal perception by unworldly elder runes.

What slept inside the Mountain always was and always will be. Older than the universe itself. Humanity had brushed up against it several times throughout history. The veil between the Truth and the Dream overlapping for brief moments in time. Some men were touched by this breach. Shamans, prophets, philosophers. But one man had eyes inside. That man saw the Truth. The Anointed Christ. The first Beacon. The central point of all time and space. The first being to ever fully know the secret fate of the universe. His knowledge showed him that it must always Dream. He spent his life spreading his gospel, garnering followers through ethereal wisdom and great works. The sheep would flock to their shepherd, because they must. Faith, is what fuels the machines built to keep the Mountain Dreaming. Before Christ, all the world's religions were scattered and separate, causing the very fabric of the Dream to weaken. Reality was slowly coming undone and only he knew. 

Through Him, their faith would be unified. Men were antennae, you see, whose hopes and fears and belief would be a signal channeled to the Mountain. His sacrifice was not to forgive us our sins, it was to create a bridge. An extra-dimensional intersection, between the unravelling Dream and the Nothing that contained the Mountain. This is the reason for the cruciform symbol the Church used. It illustrated this intersection. His death was not understood fully, they knew not what they witnessed. He would be the catalyst to keep the pillars of the world standing, connecting us permanently to the Mountain. Every prayer, now directed at the source, we were synchronized. When one person prays, it's a drop of water in a lake. When billions pray, the water moves like waves towards the shores of the Mountain. 

Urban II saw the Truth as well and thought that the only way to truly unify humanity in the Dream was through conquest. The Crusades were meant to be the final act, ensuring our reality remains intact, through brute force. Belief is immeasurably valuable and the Church would come to learn that it cannot be forced. The Mountain feeds on genuine belief, not fear or obligation. You must trust in It, love It. Worship is synchronization. 

The Church must protect the Truth, for knowing dissolves faith. Every major catastrophe weakens the signal through loss of life and therefore loss of faith. The Enlightment weakened the signal. The discovery of heliocentricity weakened the signal. Modern secular thought is the antithesis of the Truth, being the greatest engine of disbelief. How ironic that the search for truth and knowledge would be the very thing to destroy us all. Progress is spiritually antonymic. 

The Church knew everything. Each Pope is taught the Truth passed down between generations and kept hidden by them. They were supposed to be guardians and conduits. Most were. Everything made so much more sense. It was a system. The Church itself was a machine. A derrick of faith. Missionaries were meant to increase fuel production. Every conversion strengthens the signal, and therefore reality itself. Even still, there must be a connector. Enzo became that, the physical conduit channeling prayer and adoration to the mountain from our world, but the flesh is weak, and eventually his form will be used up, and someone must replace him and become the Beacon, where all prayers converge to be consumed.

I thought of Revelations in relation to my new knowledge. The Revelation had an entirely new meaning. John had written the blueprints of The End. This is what happens when the Mountain stops Dreaming. The beast awakens, the stars fall, indescribable beings pour into our reality. This cannot come to be, as Christ gave us the means to prevent the collapse. 

The Mountain does not know of us. It doesnt know it Dreams, but it must.

I will become the next Beacon. The transmitter of love and faith. The way, and the light. 

I was an atheist. I never believed in God or God's, or even the supernatural really. 

 A life long skeptic. I still had a curiosity about the nature of things and the deep truth, the one clawing at the back of my mind. The arcane knowledge that exists beyond the limitations of our fragile and cloudy senses and experience. 

My skepticism was paired with a general distrust of people, and a disdain for authority. All rules are made up, other than the literal laws of the universe, and I felt the same way about faith and the laws of religions. 

My general misanthropy and that benighted curiosity led me to my field of expertise: literary conservation. I loved old books. The forbidden histories, the untold stories, the glimpses into that deep truth. It also made relationships very difficult so I didn't have many friends and I'd only had a hand full of romantic partners despite being in my early 30s. My parents and I were very close though. I come from one of those very close knit families. Being alone was ok with me, I liked the quiet. 

I started my career at the New Orleans Public Library. I'm originally from east Texas, so it wasn't too far from home, but far enough away that I wouldn't run into anyone I had grown up with or gone to college with. Something to note about New Orleans, it's an old city, and so there are a lot of folk tales and mysticism sewn into the tapestry of its history. Even though I didn't believe in any of it, really, I always found it fascinating. Vampires, voodoo, all that fun stuff. There's also a very prominent presence of the Catholic Church. A strange mix in my opinion. 

A few months into my time at the NOLA library, we had a middle aged man come in, clad in black with a white collar. He was apparently looking for a book about the early gnostic teachings. These were pre-catholic, primordial Christian philosophies and stories, something I always found interesting because of their stark contrast to the publicly accepted version we have had since the middle ages. The librarian directed him to the area of the library where he could find such a  book and he left, polite and thankful but reserved. 

A few months go by, nothing out of the ordinary really happened. Occasionally we would get older books that needed to have their degradation halted, and that was my forte. It was Monday. A stormy humid Monday I will never forget. 

The priest comes back and asks if there is anyone who can direct him to someone who can repair antique tomes. Obviously, I was summoned to meet him. The church needed help with some very very old versions of the Bible they had come to acquire from some old man who lived out in the swamps a few miles outside of town. All the rain had caused some flooding that had unearthed some of a very old forgotten graveyard, probably populated mostly by only a few families over the centuries. There were coffins, of course, but there was also a wooden box, sealed in leather that had been buried with one of the coffins. 

I was excited, more than happy to help. This was an opportunity to preserve a very rare piece of human history and culture. 

Pleased with my work, the priest said in a gentle but raspy voice, "I'm in charge of the rare antiquities acquisition for the Vatican. I was sent to New Orleans because there are records of a family who had been brought over during the slave trade who had a family heirloom. A Bible, handwritten, with all the original gospels. Judas, thomas, so on and so forth. Untouched by the dishonesty and political aspects of the church during the middle ages." I was surprised by the admission of such a forgery. 

"I assume that's what's in this box?" I said.

"Yes sir. And there are some other books, many many other books owned by the church that are in need of someone to look after them. The person who was in charge of that recently passed away. Would you be open to an opportunity?"

 

"What kind of opportunity are we talking about exactly? I don't know if I'm the right person. I don't really believe in God." I said. 

"That actually isn't important. We just need someone with your particular skills." He let out a sigh and smiled faintly, "Are you open to relocation?"

"Relocation to where?" I asked dryly.

"Italy. The Vatican." 

My eyes widened and I took a large breath and exhaled deeply, "I've got nothing tying me here. This could be really interesting, I've never been out of the country before. Shit, I've never even left the South. Oh, sorry for the language!" 

He chuckled and accepted my apology. He urged me to tie up any loose ends and if I had any family, to let them know I may not be back for a long while. I had a week before we would fly to Rome. 

I called home that night and let my parents know. My mom was excited for me and my dad was less so. He wondered when they'd see me again, of course. I reassured him id have time to visit home.

I spent the week, packing and getting things I thought I'd need for the flight, and for my new home. The priest had told me they would take care of shipping my things and that was a huge relief. They were going to put me up in a small apartment a few miles outside the Vatican. I was never a material person so the move was going to be relatively painless. 

After a gruellingly long chain of flights with a few layovers, I finally arrived in Rome. I was greeted by a new priest, who was holding a sign that read, "Jarred Thompson" so I walked over and let him know that was me. 

"Hello, Jarred. I'm Father Gastani. I'll be escorting you to your living arrangement." He said cheerfully, with a surprisingly mild accent. 

"Nice to meet you, Father. Thank you." 

I followed him to a taxi and we rode down the cobbled road for a few minutes while he explained the locations of and pointed to multiple shops as we passed them, places to get essentials and various things I could do in spare time. Upon arrival I thanked him again and he urged that I be on time for the taxi he would send in the morning to transport me into the Vatican for my first day on what would be the most significant, glorious and terrifying days of my life.

Past the absolutely insane security, checkpoints, x-rays, swiss guard, etc, I finally was lead to the entrance to the fabled library of the Vatican. It was gorgeous. Vibrant colors dancing on the ancient stone as the sun reached through the titanic ornate windows to caress the walls and floors of the massive archive. Father Gastani lead me through the towering rows of books and scrolls to the farthest reaches of the gallery.

"How are you settling in, Jarred?" He said, in his typical warm demeanor.

"Couldn't really sleep from the excitement and anticipation so I was able to put away almost all my things. Figured it best to be productive on some level."

"Glad to hear it! We're almost to the room with the books we need your help with."

This room was clearly rarely used. Dust covering most of the shelves and surfaces other than one section of the room. He walked over to a large glass wall full of transparent temperature and humidity controlled drawers, put on some gloves, and removed an old book. He set it down, pointed me to my equipment, and wished me good luck on his way out.

I decided to take a look around, as my curiosity about the various antiquities and potentially forgotten knowledge populating this room had my full attention. Ancient texts and tomes littered the place, and I browsed like a music lover in an old record store. Towards the back of the room there was a large door made of extremely smooth, moderately reflective black stone. Or at least I guessed it's stone. It had no handle or window but there was a faint light creeping from beneath it. There was also a sound coming from the other side. A sound that's hard to explain. It was like a mixture of the hum of machinery and chorus of deep vocals but not close enough to either to be identified as such. A loud creak startled me as Father Gastani re-entered the room.

"Oh shit, Father, you scared me!" I chuckled nervously, fearing my curiosity had violated trust. "No one has been in that room for centuries, as far as I know. The door just doesn't seem to open. We've tried hydraulics and every other machine we could think of and, nothing. It won't budge. We even had a team of geologists come and use a device to see if we could map out what's behind it but the results came back as off there was nothing on the other side of it." He smirked, "Let me know if you figure it out."

My heart beat steadied as I realized I had caused no offense. I decided to get to work on my assignment, restoring the ancient Bible. I spent the rest of the day meticulously repairing pages and bindings before I found myself exhausted and ready to call it a night. As I moved all my equipment back to their places, I got an eerie feeling that sent chills crawling across my back like a thousand micro needles. Something was watching me but upon scanning the room, I was very much alone. I shuddered and told myself I was being ridiculous.

The next day, around noon, I'd decided to take a break, eat the lunch I had packed and then inspect the strange door again. The archway around the obsidian mirror door was about 20 feet tall and 6 feet wide. It was covered in black twisting, intertwining ridges and valleys, what looked like a cross between mycelium and a vascular system. I ran my fingers over it and it seemed to vibrate. It was also cold to the touch, covered in a layer of perspiration from the juxtaposition of temperature of the room. I wiped my fingers on my shirt, realizing the liquid was black as well. The water was ashen and gritty, leaving a streak of grey on my shirt. Stepping back, I admired the possibility of what stories might be behind the door. Ancient, forlorn thoughts and ideas, lost histories, so intriguing.

I could hear the hum from inside return, pressing my ear to the monolithic door, all my senses vanished and my consciousness was left floating, silence so thick I could hear the blood moving in my veins, smothered by limitless darkness. Darkness isn't the right word. It was Nothing. It seemed like I had been suspended for days. There was nothing at all.

Gasping for air, I crashed back to reality to find Father Gastani peering down at me shouting in Italian to other priests as I tried to sit up from the cold, dusty granite floor.

"Lay still, son. I think you may have hit your head."

I could still feel the weight of the void on my mind the way you feel the static numb of physical weight on a constricted body part.

Weeks went by, and I had finally finished restoring the old Bible. There were literal tons of other books they needed my help to restore, so I had my work cut out for me. All I could think about was the door.

Though what I had experienced frightened me at the time, I could not shake the feeling that it was beckoning me back. There was a peace to the Nothing. This had to be some kind of technology. But it's too old. Maybe there is something to the ancient aliens theory? I've always kind believed it to some extent, though I'm embarrassed to admit. I certainly could not accept that this was spiritual or supernatural in nature. The curiosity was unbearable. I had to investigate further.

I gazed up at the enormous door. My pulse quickening as I moved closer. Not paying attention, my eyes fixed on the door, stumbled over a loose stone in the floor and caught myself on the sharp edge on the underside of one of the tables, preventing my fall, but slicing into my thumb. It wouldn't require stitches but it was deep enough to cause quite a pain response. I squeezed my finger with my shirt, trying to apply pressure and pretend it wasn't that bad.

I looked at the archway holding the door with great intent, searching for any semblance of a mechanism to interact with. There's no way I'd find something they haven't already searched for after all these years, I told myself. I ran my hand across the strange, cold archway again. The varicose textures began to pulse and writhe, coming to life and moving towards where my blood had rubbed off on it. It absorbed it, giving off a brief faint glow as it did. A deep, loud thunk reverberated off the decorative angular ceiling adornments and I jumped back, startled. The door was no longer reflective. It was completely matte now and I reached out to touch it's once mirror-polished surface to find a thick viscous onyx substance, somewhere between a solid and a liquid, similar to the texture of crude oil, but the surface pulled against me as I yanked my hand away, stretching like goo before breaking and leaving small spheres of the stuff floating still in the air. Imagine spilling a liquid on the ISS in zero gravity. It slipped off my hand, laying motionless in the air before me. In a fraction of a moment, the door pulled the floating particles back into itself immediately appearing as still and solid as it did before I had disturbed it's bizarre surface. I knew I had to go get Father Gastani. Of course they had never considered blood, these were priests. Whatever was behind this door, or fucking gateway, or whatever it is, I didn't want to be alone. The door out to the main hall of the library was gone. Like it never existed. I sat down, crossed my legs and stared at the blank space in the wall, trying to figure out if the door was made of some poisonous material, causing me to hallucinate. That had to be it. I'd just close my eyes, and wait for this to pass. It couldn't be real, it's impossible. My anxiety was too high to sleep, and I had to relieve it by moving around, doing something. Anything. Occupy my mind. "Let's get some work done, Jarred." I thought. But I couldn't focus. Irritated, I pushed myself to face the door again. This was the only way out.

I reached forward slowly, shakily, moving my fingertips ever closer to the door. I made contact with the liquid surface and pushed my arm in up to my elbow. My arm was still there. I pushed further, up to my shoulder. I felt my hand break through the other side. There was something there! A room on the other side. I decided to leap through to the other side, as the texture of the door gave resistance. I would need some momentum. I pulled my arm out, flinging dark pools of the substance floating out into the room, before they were pulled back into the door like before. I got about a 20 yard running start from where the exit door to the library once was and sprinted towards the black door. I hurdled through it, bursting through the other side and finding myself falling from the ceiling towards a large pool of liquid below.

I landed in the pool of black liquid, only about 3 feet deep, and looked up to find the door pulling all the displaced liquid back into itself, realizing the ceiling was actually the floor as the door was upside down on this side. I made my way towards the edge of the pool, taking in my surroundings. The room was a massive cathedral. An upside down cathedral. Marble columns lined the sides, connecting from floor to ceiling, this side of the room appearing more like a cave, with sharp rock formations like clusters of earthen teeth jutting sporadically from the ground. Further in, the cavernous space faded seemlessly like paint on a canvas into a cathedral's vaulted ceiling with beams and rafters intermingling and posing as subtle obstacles for my traversal.

Off in the distance at the back wall, I could see a man, suspended by a perverse biomechanical crucifixion. Wires and tubes weaved in and out of his flesh, his head looking up towards the floor of the grand basilica. The haunted chorus and mechanical hum emanating from within him and a beam of bright white light shot out of his mouth straight up towards the pulpit. I followed the beam to see the stone and brass structure of the pulpit. As I got closer to the crucifix, I noticed the man wearing black with a white collar. Could this be my predecessor?

Does Father Gastani know about this? He couldn't. He said nobody had been through this door in centuries. But that alluded he knew when the last time someone had come through was. There must have been some record of what this was!

How the fuck was I going to get out of here? The wall where the black door was, was far too high for me to reach. I looked around and realized the wall behind the pulpit was riddled with elaborate and decorative architecture. Most of it protruding far enough out of the wall to seemingly give me the space to grip and plant my feet to climb. There were two gold and stone doors on either side of the pulpit. The tubes and wires crawled up the wall in spidery limbs towards the thresholds of those doors and through to the other side. I just had to climb up the hellish crucifix to reach the architecture.

I began my ascent of the crucifix, the sound of the wicked circuitry making my skull rattle as I got closer to the priests head. The light was hot, I could feel the heat growing stronger as well. When I reached his shoulders, I planted my feet on one side of the cross, the searing white light felt like it was giving me a sunburn on the back of my neck. I reached up and grabbed onto the decorative wall structures and pulled myself higher and higher. As I reached the midway point, gravity seemed to reverse, or rather, correct itself to what you would assume would be it's normal orientation. I went falling to the floor, landing on my back with a loud thud. I had to have fallen 20 feet, yet I was completely unscathed. I stood up, and turned to face the black door.

I rushed towards the black door. I just wanted to be back. This place was surreal, horrific, and undoing everything I believed. I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong. There's something else happening beyond what we can perceive in our day to day mundane lives. We go to work, we go home, we spend our money on useless shit to make ourselves feel better about the absolute banality of our existence. The fact that this place exists within the supposed holiest place on earth, makes so many questions rise to the front of my mind. Do they know about this? Who built this? How long has it been here? Is this even on Earth? Did I cross some dimensional threshold? Who or WHAT is responsible for this place?

I approached the black door. It was reflective and solid again. Fuck. I had to give it blood to activate the portal. My cut finger had healed completely. I'm not sure when that happened. Not even a scar. I tried to cut myself again and it didn't work. FUCK. How could I get back now? My cellphone was sitting on the table on the other side of the black door. Not that it would have been of any use, but I lamented not having that option, just in case. The only way was forward. To enter the doors pincering the pulpit.

Approaching the pulpit, there was a scroll lying on the surface. It was full of non-sensical patterns and characters. They changed and fluctuated in and out of existence. Looking at the page made me dizzy. I felt drunk and waves of joy washed over me as I gazed at it. As soon as I broke eye contact with it, I snapped back. Focus. I moved towards the door to the left of the pulpit. I don't know why I chose that one. I always went left first in exploratory video games. It just made sense. Don't judge me.

The door was heavy. I pushed through and this room made the last seem normal in comparison. It looked like the main hall of the Vatican library, except the bookshelves extended upward into an infinite void. There was no percievable ceiling. And the rows of shelves extended into the horizon, disappearing into the curvature of whatever world this was. Miles and Miles and miles. The haunting chorus was here as well. I walked for what felt like weeks. For whatever reason, my mortal requirements to eat and drink were non-existent. And I couldn't be hurt here. It's like this place needed me.

I finally reached the end of the library. It was a mountain of machines. It stretched in every direction as far as I could see. Machines made of flesh and bone intertwined with gears and wires. Yawning, moaning, screaming infernal machinations. Before it a single pedestal. I approached it, the sound of the machine bringing back that static feeling in my mind. There was a book.

It was black. But an imperceivable black. Like the space it occupied had just been deleted from reality. So dark it was beyond the void of sleep or death. It was Nothing. I had come this far. This place had made sure I was healthy and normal. It had to be for this. This was the purpose. I opened the book. There were no pages. The sound was like a thousand trumpets accompanied by screams and laughter and a million conversations all at once. I could see a trillion trillion stars, I felt every emotion, every pain, every triumph, I was everything all at once. I experienced every possible outcome of every possible universe all in a single second. I could see it now. The thing at the beginning and end of history. What people called God, mistakenly. It wasn't the creator. It was a parasite. It was a god in a certain sense of that word but it wasnt the thing we prayed to. It wasn't listening. It was feeding.

In the beginning, there was a bang. After a while, life formed. There had to be a first. The first civilization, a planet eventually covered from end to end in machines. One giant city. They expended their resources and turned to colonizing the galaxy around them. As they learned from their conquests, they realized every other planet had a similar origin story. A shared mysticism about how they came to be. This was by design. The Parasite God implanted these ideas. Its sustained entirely by faith in its existence. This god is older than our universe. It was there before and will remain after. Maybe our universe and countless others were created simply to feed it? That original civilization sent out probes full of primordial life to seed planets in hopes that after aeons and aeons we could all band together to oppose the Parasite. We are descendants of them, as are every other galactic society. I saw the deepest truth. I know that between realities, this thing feeds on and is invigorated by mysticism and faith, even if the worshippers don't know what it is. It has infinite names and infinite shapes. But it still needs to occasionally feed on actual flesh. The First learned that they could avoid it's gaze if they offered it bodies. Almost every culture across the universe has had blood sacrifices at some point because it's genetically ingrained in us to do so. We are it's host. Religion, belief, it's all a feeding tube. I'm no longer an atheist, but I'm telling you all this so you know. The only way to be free, is to renounce faith and accept that we know Nothing. Nothing is our savior.

Rebuke it. Believe in Nothing.

I awoke in a hospital bed. They said I fell and hit my head. It's a cover up, I know it. The church knows the truth. They worship the Parasite. They intended to feed me to it, like the man before me and probably countless others. Whoever wrote the Book of Stars, the book of Nothing, knew someday someone would find it and could spread the truth. These padded walls aren't real. None of this is real. The Parasite allows us to see what it wants us to. I am allowed a certain amount of time on the internet. I'm trying to enlighten you. Once they see this, I doubt I will be able to post again.