I\u2019m not going to tell you a lot of things. The things I need to tell you, I will, but the rest you will have to trust in or disbelieve the entire thing. I don\u2019t really care.<\/p>\n
Which is the first lie.<\/p>\n
I do care. I\u2019m trying to tell you something that\u2019s important. If I fail to convince you of the meat of this story, then I will have to try again. That will be dangerous. But someone needs to know.<\/p>\n
And that is the second truth I\u2019ve revealed to you.<\/p>\n
Proceed with caution but proceed. It\u2019s important.<\/p>\n
This is about a single night in the calendar that you\u2019ve never heard of but which has as many names as cultures that are aware of it. It’s the Night of Many Names, the night when bad things happen to good people because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. It\u2019s unfortunate, but necessary. The herd must be culled.<\/p>\n
Sometimes this is true, sometimes not. I cannot confirm or deny the veracity of the last statement. You will have to take it on faith. If you take it all.<\/p>\n
No one dies on the Night of Many Names. At least not a result of the Night itself. Maybe the actions that occur after, but nothing directly related to what I\u2019ll describe. There is a spillway into our Universe and its location is known only to we Builders. Our Great Houses must be located far from the spillway. That is paramount.<\/p>\n
The fourth truth is that sometimes it\u2019s possible that good things can happen on the Night of Many Names.<\/p>\n
For the Builders, anyway. I was initiated as a Builder on the last Night of Many Names forty years ago. Ah, wait. I need to explain.<\/p>\n
The Night of Many Names doesn\u2019t happen according to the calendar on your wall or in your phone. The notion that time as we know it is the clock the Universe runs on is too egocentric. It\u2019s not the way the Unvierse works, so now you know.<\/p>\n
Mom and Dad dropped me off to spend the night with my grandfather and my big sister slept over at a friend\u2019s. I\u2019m older than her now but that\u2019s not important to this story.<\/p>\n
That might not be a lie.<\/p>\n
So I was a mere boy when Gran\u2019pa brought me in front of – no, even anonymously I can\u2019t tell you that.<\/p>\n
Anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cZanzi follik parthen,\u201d Gran\u2019pa said as we sat in the audience. He pointed to the top of the wall in front of us and told me to pay attention.<\/p>\n
I did. What happened next was something straight out of pulp fiction horror stories. A swirl of inky darkness appeared then produced glittering diamonds of light that spread out into seven arms. A dusting of glowing matter occupied the space in between though the blackness was omnipresent. A cold mist rose up around us. Gran\u2019pa put his hand on my arm which settled me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing to fear,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a protected place. Just watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
I watched the mist creep across my feet. I saw blinking – I don\u2019t know, fairy lights I suppose here and there. I didn\u2019t then and still don\u2019t now have any other way to describe them. But they weren\u2019t the main attraction.<\/p>\n
The comets that shot out of the seven arms – I quickly lost count but there were hundreds – were lost to sight so fast that I wondered later if I\u2019d seen them. That probably isn\u2019t a lie.<\/p>\n
\u201cZanzi klast pussuure,\u201d everyone said. Everyone but me.<\/p>\n
In the past, as I\u2019ve thought and thought about the events of the Night With Many Names, it\u2019s been true that I haven\u2019t been able to find words adequate enough to describe what I felt. It\u2019s still true, if you believe me so far.<\/p>\n
Good.<\/p>\n
Because what I felt cannot be translated into any other human experience. It\u2019s a kind of awakening, yet it\u2019s so mingled with fear and excitement that comparing it to waking from a nightmare is more apt. Then it\u2019s not exactly like that, either. There\u2019s hunger for food, a desire for sex, one\u2019s brain is afire with visions of things that don\u2019t exist and never could. Not on this plane of reality, anyway. There\u2019s sweat and awful scents and things crawling on your skin but they\u2019re not. Perhaps it\u2019s more like tuning a guitar to an open chord rather than its standard tuning.<\/p>\n
Certainly everything after is like learning to play in that open tuning. The chords are constructed differently and they sound similar but they are not the same.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what happened to me that night. The Night of the Lights. The Night of the Comets. The Night of Awakening. The Night of Fear. The Bad Night.<\/p>\n
My grandfather brought me out of the viewing and took me to a whorehouse. I was thirteen.<\/p>\n
It took three experienced women four hours to bring me down. When I left, the madam smiled at me. I never saw her take money from my grandfather. Never since have I been able to repeat that performance. I’ve tried but no. That was the Night of the Pillars of the Earth. The Night of the Breaking Grounds. In some ways it haunts me.<\/p>\n
Gran\u2019pa taught me the ways of the Builders, all about the Great Houses and the Things\u2026 When I graduated high school he\u2019d set me up at the college all the Builders attend no matter what\u2019s on their resumes. My internship was interesting but that\u2019s none of your concern, right now. My early career was spent in learning the ins and outs of managing the Building of the Great Houses. There is as much art as science, as much magic as management in this regard. I am recognized as one of the Great Builders.<\/p>\n
The Great Houses are important. Each is part of the historical register in its region, many of them nationally recognized, too. I leave it to you to discover which of them are which. Do not give in to the temptation that they are all mansions, either. Some appear to be very humble indeed.<\/p>\n
But perhaps that is a lie.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it is time I closed and left you with a final truth. The Night of Many Names is a Night of Truth and Deception Revealed. It is the Zanzi Boruk Trepaghit.<\/p>\n
It is something you will have to experience for yourself. I haven\u2019t mentioned even one tenth of the Names of that night. I don\u2019t know them all. That is a truth.<\/p>\n
If you choose to believe it.<\/p>\n
When the mists come and you see the fairy lights, you\u2019ll know what is true and what isn\u2019t. That much is in your blood.<\/p>\n
I already told you how I know that. Perhaps you don\u2019t recall. Or perhaps that is the final lie.<\/p>\n
Or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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