The night stalker

I did it again last night.
Spent almost the entire night from midnight till dawn exploring every room, every little cubbyhole, drawer, crack and crevice trying to find 'it' again.
This is a big house: Large farmhouse kitchen with fire place and rear entry, big walk-in pantry and separate wash room, 3 other large high ceilinged ground-floor rooms (one of course the beloved library).

The first floor contains my boudoir and two other empty rooms and a rather lovely bathroom with Victorian claw footed tub. The top story is partitioned into two massive whitewashed spaces; the first is populated my easels, paintings old and new and various artistic tools, materials and paraphernalia. The second contains nothing but an old wardrobe and two ancient rolled up rugs.
The derelict and rubble strewn north-west 'wing', cellar and woodshed always constitute the final challenges on my regular nocturnal itineraries.

I lit the brand new big fat cream candle that sat in its silver holder and turned all the lights out at the mains - no parachute, no surrender!
I began as usual on the ground floor, edging my way through the darkness, step by step.

I love the way the naked flame is tickled by the innumerable little drafts that whisper like invisible serpents throughout this strange old place. I know that occasionally these cold eddies are the exhalations of unexplained things: the occult vapors of silent watchers forever lost in their own desolate houses...my brief passing candle flicker illuminates their strange predicament for a moment, and then the cold darkness rolls back in like a brutal black wave of nothingness.

Funny how even the most familiar objects - my old chair, books, that mahogany sideboard, guitar, bed etc - take on an otherworldly appearance in the jittering sepia candlelight. My physical world becomes metaphysical with the simple addition of a primitive flame in the darkness.

Like an archaeologist I explore my Lascaux, deciphering the marks of human passage and symbolism, scouring the runic graffiti for unforeseen relationships, odd juxtapositions, indications, doorways to the great elsewhere. Mundane objects become chiaroscuro graphics open to multiple interpretations.

The sounds and textures are so delicious in the darkness too. All those creaks and groans, that subliminal hum that is suppressed by the buzz of daylight and mundane visual imperialism.
Night is the servant of sound. The thick darkness speaks in dead languages, a skeletal hand tapping old brick. I just need to tune in, catch the wavelength, kill the static and isolate THE WORD.
That will set me free.

I am the Minotaur lost in his labyrinth, desperate to find a way out.