The lot was still there. The city would not do anything with it. A surveyor, coming home from his secretary's or back to work after a power-lunch, would check it out every once in a while. The few people in the ten-odd years who did not run off screaming after getting mid-way into the lot, would drop their plans inexplicitly, not even remembering that they had a plan or there was a lot.
But, things were not well now. Mills Construction and Sombra Real Estate had bought out the land and for almost six-years battled in and out of court what to do about it. Now, Turtle Bay Condominiums were set to begin its groundbreaking in November. This bothered me beyond words.
I have lived in this city all my life. My first seven years were Queens, so I'm not sure if that counts though. When I got bumped up a grade, we moved to the Lower East Side. Something like that. I first found the lot when I was nine, my first lone foot tour of this city. I was drawn to it. Now that I know what that lot is, I know I was drawn to it.
It is unusually quiet here. I'm here right now. It is a door. I figured that out when I found three newspapers scattered throughout it when I was ten. The first was from Topeka unusually fresh though it was dated from May 1977 with a red-circled article about a boy who was killed by a blue Cadillac under suspicious circumstances. The incident happened a few blocks away. The second was a horrible disease that was sweeping across the nation. It was from the L.A. Times and they were calling Captain Tripps. The writer was ripping apart President Reagan, the EPA for some reason, the FDA, and everyone else. The writer was scared, as was everyone else. The third, all in one paper, told about a writer who was kidnapped and tortured by one his big fans, a beloved schoolteacher who fell into a coma after a car crash, and a review of the newly rebuilt Overlook Hotel.
I love reading and the movies. Something was wrong with these. Hell, I even had some of them on bookshelf. I have a bunch in my DVD collection now.
I'm home now. I can only spend so long in the lot. I can still feel it echoing hundreds of realities into orbit around that flower. Nothing is coincidence in the lot. It's a like a glitch in the Matrix, but this real. Beyond real. It is scary to experience every timeline possible. It is beyond words. I have to stop the condominiums. I do not know where the flower goes to, but I know what it goes to.
I learned when I left one day and returned to a timeline where I never existed. It took two days to learn that the lot was the reason I was there. The reality of it was scarier than you can think. I got back by asking. I asked the lot, more like screamed in it, to send me back. I know it was the rose who actually did it. A security officer who walked the beat past the lot that I made friends with asked me what was wrong, if I was hurt, and it was silly place for a smart boy like me to be. I figured was either back or somewhere close enough. The rose took care of those missing days for me.
I figure that the unusual amount of trash in the lot is not so much trash as interdimensional dust. It just randomly flows in. Like my first visit and every other one since.
I know the lot and the flower want me here. It is the only reason why I see the things in there. The floating faces of others. The other worlds next door. It is because I write it all down. Everything I see. It goes straight into my notebook. Notebooks, now.
There was a problem, though. There is always a problem. My mother found one I left out on my desk, about a door that to place where the Yellow Eye was already in control. The therapist who she took it to thought I should "go away from the city" for a bit. It meant medication and a nice padded cell. I was not happy about that.
I got back a few months ago. I missed about three months of high school and now have the label of the crazy guy. I'm not saying I'm not. I have every reason to be. But I'm fine enough. When I got back to the lot, I saw the sign with the construction start-date. That was when the rose showed me what it was. I actually took my medication that night and did not go back for four days. To see it, the Tower, your mind explodes.
I know that the group, or whatever they are calling themselves in their strange language, is getting very close to It.
I also know that I am going to have to do some industrial sabotage to prevent construction. The crawling darkness is creeping closer to the lot. Further into this world.
