Here’s the darkness again. It’s rarely clear when it begins — the lights just get progressively dimmer, and I finally realize that the everyone else has departed. There really is so very much about all of this that is yet unclear to me. And looming in the darkness … could it be “They”? I know I shouldn’t be fearful … I, whose hand has touched the face of the Sphinx. But "They" have been looming, ever since my last visit to the Magic Castle. Oh, would you believe that I learned only afterwards that the Magic Castle is the most exclusive destination in Hollywood? If only I’d known that, I’d have enjoyed myself even more. It all started, unbelievably, an occult art challenge.

Upon saying the magic word to the owl on the sliding bookcase, the first person I saw in the Castle [a Vegas headliner whose name I really should withhold] essentially commanded me to go forth and buy a particular (expensive) artwork. He told me the artist's name, the title of the piece, and the location of the controversial gallery that housed it (La Luz de Jesus). He told me that the piece might as well have been custom made for me and that I'd want it in my house. As he held my gaze, it was clear that my procurement of the piece was not so much friendly advice as an outright dare.

And then the entire Castle began to vibrate steadily and worrisomely. I thought it might be an earthquake, but I overhead someone claiming that the L.A. subway passes right under the building. At that moment, though, what it felt like was some subterranean thing, perhaps pinned down by the Castle itself, getting restless. And then it fell back asleep.

The why of this art challenge was deeply mysterious. The apparent trophy was the artwork itself, but another, far greater (and likely non-literal) prize was implied. Perhaps needless to say, I rushed to the gallery the next day.

The place is somehow designated a church so as to sidestep secular legalities about the public display of deviant subjects (and note that as a curator of anomalous imagery, I don't use "deviant" lightly). And the piece in question was a three-dimensional (and even electrically wired) nightmarish testament to humankind's eternal struggle with the interdimensional darkness that looms over our shoulders. It was entitled, “They Should Be Gone Soon,” and “They” were in it.

The piece was terrifying, especially in how it pierced some sort of veil and “got into you." Yet I was prepared for that very phenomenon, having seen it depicted in a film, in which one Mrs. Chalfont gives a certain Laura a painting to hang on her bedroom wall -- a painting that Laura finds herself inside of, even while she sleeps peacefully -- a portal that transports one into a parallel dimension or overlapping reality. So I was predisposed.

Yet I left the gallery empty handed. The price of this art portal was not inconsequential, but as an author, I haven't technically been able to afford anything I've bought for the last many decades, so I can't say that price was truly an issue. I'm honestly not sure why I walked away and conceded the challenge. My best guess is that I applied some Robert Anton Wilson-esque agnosticism -- I didn't know if this portal (to use black and white terms) was good or evil, and so I decided not to meddle with unknown forces. Of course, perhaps resisting temptation was in fact the victory. Who knows?! It's all so surreal, because even as [name withheld] was challenging me, it felt less like the present moment than a memory, and that weirdness was surely courtesy of the Magic Castle itself, a shrine to nostalgia for bygone evenings. It's as if nothing technically happens in the Magic Castle -- it's all past tense and bittersweet. That 600-year-old Japanese pagoda just above the Castle — the oldest building in the United States -- may very well be the time-warping engine. My hotel room was about five steps from the pagoda, so my metabolism of time was profoundly altered. During the show at the Castle’s Palace of Mystery, I wasn't at all surprised to find that the star's corset was decorated with various clock faces, all sporting different times, or that her necklace was composed of fragmented clock wheels and pinions.

Yes, the figures in that artwork do indeed still haunt me. The should be gone soon … surely?—