Memoirs of a Miner for Truth and Delusion

Memoirs of a Miner for Truth and Delusion

“Death is never an end, never the release you want it to be. Being forgotten, yes, that is the end.”

Calvin Dreyer read and kept rereading the scrawled handwriting on the crumpled note. Surely it had some deeper meaning than just the words on the page? He thought back to when he had been assigned the case. It had only been a few days since then, however his life had been irrevocably changed. Harrow Glen, Harrow Glen, Harrow Glen, why oh why did you have to exist? Dreyer had a nearly perfect track record of untying the most knotted cases, weaving the strands together into a narrative that fit the evidence, like a young adult playing Clue for the first time since their golden childhood years.

However, this case utterly confounded him to no end. Who would yearn for the salvation of being permanently forgotten, erased from all records and memories? And most of all, who were the faceless Saints who covered their tracks better than any criminal in history? It was as if some being in a higher plane of reality than us had hit pause on the town of Harrow Glen, went in and deleted all signs of life permanently, and somehow were able to edit the permanent records of history in a fashion that was reminiscent of Big Brother from 1984. This ghostly painting of a town seemed as unexplainable as the smile on the Mona Lisa.

A flash, a bang, a shadowed face lurking in the darkness. Pulsating, blinding, burning lights, and that ever-engulfing midnight blue and charcoal blackness. The face leered at Dreyer like a surgeon at their patient, or more appropriately, a mass murderer at their next victim. The figure raised a hand, and an ear splitting shriek tore through all of Dreyer’s thoughts. The hand was slowly squeezed and deformed, and a pain like no other grabbed his soul and ripped it apart into miniscule bits of nothingness. The figure leaned over, and absorbed the shadowy crumbs of Dreyer, growing seemingly more powerful in the meanwhile.

With an audible gasp, Dreyer snapped out of his reverie, and after an interminable length of time, his headache faded enough for him to sit up. Slowly but surely, his thoughts began the process of turning lucid again. If it wasn’t for his schizophrenic delusions, he could have been the foremost detective in the FBI, solving high profile cases rather than visiting ghost towns. Distinguishing dreams from reality may not be easy, and hallucinating red herrings may be the fastest way to kill any dreams in these types of jobs.

As all famous pop culture detectives know, the first step to easing out the solution to a mystery is scoping the area. Clues may be as fleeting as a single pained heartbeat. Nevertheless, Dreyer had no reason to fear missing a key tenet of this bewildering enigma. As he leisurely ambled this way and that around Harrow Glen, every nook and cranny was as still as the surface of an infinitely large lake on a glacial winter’s night. The rhythm of the town had been dragged out to eternity, every melancholy breath watching lives pass by, every moment a perpetuity.

The unique and intricate designs of each and every building indicated that this used to be a melting pot of cultures. The next house was designed in a Victorian style. The next was semi-modern. The next looked oddly familiar to Dreyer, as a friend’s house might look two decades after you move away from them. Later were larger houses designed in an Eastern style, and even some mansions towards the end of the street.

Continuing down the road, he entered the town hall. The construction was odd for a town hall, making it seem more like a ritual center than an administrative center. Stone statues adorning the walls gazed down at Dreyer, gracefully exuding an aura of unearthly power. The building was shaped similarly to the letter “R” with the entrance being at the very bottom, and a long hallway from there all the way “up” the building. Partway through the hallway, a second, pitch black hallway branched off it. Reaching the top of the R, turning revealed a door, a door which felt recognizable to him, similarly to how the door of my childhood home now looks to me. The edges of the door revealed a bright red light, as if blood was spilling out of the next hallway. A closer look revealed that there were small puddles of dried blood next to the doorway. Maybe, just maybe, it would have been favorable for Dreyer to take this closer look.

Stepping through the doorway, he saw only darkness, where the previous hallway at least had some natural light from windows. Suddenly, as soon as he closed the door, an audible click rang through the hallway. Testing the door, he discovered something out of his worst nightmares; the door was locked. Row after row of lights flashed once, twice, thrice, maybe more and then turned on properly. Each flash a different shade of red, most of the lights stabilized somewhere near vermilion, some brighter, some darker. Even with this undeniably creepy atmosphere, by far the oddest part was what was on the shelves. Row after row of material possessions of all kinds. T-shirts, button shirts, shorts, pants, shoes, and more. Household items, keepsakes, odd items such as pacifiers, and even pets. The pets had seemingly all been shot many times in some gruesome ritual, and they ranged from dogs to frogs to cats to rats. The state of the blood indicated that this ritual had been done possibly centuries ago. Walking further up the hallway, the items came across as slowly getting less and less old. On the top shelf, there was a long list of names inscribed into plaques of varying hues, from a bright golden at the start of the hallway, to sangria red, to eventually a muted gray. Upon reaching the very end of the hallway, one of the plaques had an appearance of regalness. The space for possessions under it was empty, however it was carved into a recess in the wall, indicating some specialty about this person. Dreyer glanced at the nameplate, and his world collapsed.

The shadowy figure was back, back toying with Dreyer’s own mind. This time it was close enough to spot a male visage behind the mask. Not a thought of his was private, not a sensation unmanipulated. The pain coursed through his body, stealing his attention while at the same time driving every neuron of his crazy. Imbued with the nimbus of the night, shadows flickered in and out of existence around the figure. He bent down over him, whispering gently, “Oh, don’t you worry. I will be back. And you’ll be seeing out of my mask.”

The words echoed inside his head for minutes after that, as he struggled to regain lucidity. The name etched upon stone was his very own, Calvin M. Dreyer. Who knew what the M stood for, he clearly didn’t. At the end of the hallway was a door, fully locked. Momentarily, he placed down his detective’s bag to check if there was some mechanism to unlock it. The lock audibly turned somewhat, but not enough to open the door. Warily, Dreyer laid his hat on the ground. With a grinding noise, the lock turned slightly more. After a few minutes, all of his last possessions were in the recess in the wall, and he stood bare to the world, waiting for the lock. Surprise surprise, the door was now unlocked.

With a thunk, the door locked behind him. This hallway was sharply curved and lit up an unnatural shade of electric blue, as if unsuccessfully trying to mimic the sky. Lining the walls were hundreds of computer screens, and sheets of paper. Each and every one had his name on them highlighted, and in every case his name slowly started to fade away. A very sharp turn led to the next hallway. The familiar thunk of the lock sealed my fate. The lights here occasionally flashed on a bright, solid color, however they were mostly dark. However, this room had a window in the corner. Dreyer could see himself on the other side of a glass door, in some bright environment. “Here’s your lychee tea, sir,” a foreign sounding voice spoke. Everything seemed familiar. Everything was coldly unknown. Heart speeding up, he remembered he was deathly allergic to lychee. There was nothing he could do except wait and watch as he drank it and slowly died with the attendant watching. He saw himself grab this piece of paper with his teeth and shove it into one of the walls. Into one of the walls? Where? Finally, strangely, the version of him from the other side of the glass seemed to be…laughing?

Clad in dark robes of an unknown source, Dreyer walked out of the last door, and back out into the open. Surrounding him were hundreds of shadowy figures, such as the one he saw last. Looking down, he discovered he had become one of them himself. Turns out I didn’t find truth in the room with a window in a corner, I found truth by becoming the lie. The saying “If you can’t beat them, join them” took on a whole new meaning for me. All at once, a thousand menacing voices spoke. “Being forgotten is salvation. Salvation is release. Find us again, and memories of you will finally cease. We will meet again in the place where there is no darkness”

Blurrily, my eyes slowly opened. Maybe they were already open. Every wall, the ceiling, the floor was all white. I was bound by my wrists and ankles. All that was inside the room was a newspaper article, a piece of paper with “Tell us what happened” printed on the top, and a pen. “Generational ‘forgetting’ ritual discovered in the ghost town of Harrow Glen by mentally insane detective Calvin Dreyer.” Mentally insane? In what way? Is discovering the truth grounds for being mentally insane? Sure, that wouldn’t be too far off for this messed up world. Outside, I faintly heard a conversation, and I also heard my name. They were saying I was hallucinating a whole story about Harrow Glen. They said it never existed. They said I never existed. Examining the newspaper article more clearly, it was clearly fabricated. Clearly. An attendant walked in. “Here, drink this, it’ll make you feel better. You know what will happen if you don’t.”

Oh, I know exactly what will happen if I don’t. There is no way for me to tell if the drink is water or poison, so I guess I better just drink it. I take a long swig of the drink. I really hope it wasn’t poisonous. Who knows what the intentions of the attendant were. Who knows if they tried to kill me or not. Only they know. They know everything. They can still see me scribbling away on this paper, but they cannot see what I am writing, and never will. After I finish, I will slip this paper through a crack in the wall, where I have already found my closest friend and only confidante in the Harrow Glen case. It will get out. The world will know my story. You reading this right now proves it. My soul will not rest until the world knows my story, and that is a promise. Finishing the drink has given me new energy. Well, I guess this is the end of my memoir. Oh wow, what a surprise. Looks like I will be meeting them anyways or maybe I have already, because the seemingly unfamiliar smell of the drink is now hauntingly familiar. Sweet, but light. Fruity, with hints of berry and flora. Lychee.

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Comments for this chapter

• Okay first. The premise. THE PREMISE. Schizophrenic detective guy with an UNBROKEN TRACK RECORD STUMPED??? like, give me more?? And then the POV switch from Dreyer (third person) to first person was so powerful. I'm still trying to come up with an interpretation for all this, but the first sentence and last few sentences hit me especially hard. Also I got some kind of alice adn wonderland flashbacks about opening the door that turned out to get unlocked, and then the attendant offering a drink ("DRINK ME" and "EAT ME") Anyway I love your writing style and i wanna see more sometime soon.

  Comment by rose on August 23, 2025

  Liked by 1

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