trismegistus

i was attending college in a land where the sky was permanently dark purple. there there was no 'day' or 'night' per se. the darkness of the dark purple simply changed slightly occasionally and at unpredictable times. the sky's purple looked painted on. it was quite beautiful. and i was quite happy. because i quite like purple and i quite like the night time. i was rooming with my true brother nathaniel in a house some miles from the college. the house was owned by an elderly couple. to my knowledge my brother and i were the only boarders but it was an enormous house. there may have been twenty other boarders for all i knew but i never saw any. it was surrounded on all sides by a forest save the front which faced a long lawn completely flat and unornamented. at the end of the lawn was an enormous facade shaped like a castle and translucent within which a slowly moving brightly colored gellatinous substance traversed it up and down. i had asked what the substance was. the old man looked at me as if he could not believe the question and replied Water. soon afterward it was finals time at the college. i was hurrying to finish a paper to turn in by an imminent deadline. at the same time the old man who owned the house was performing some quaint and vaguely ominous ritual on the front porch beneath my window. there was a wind brewing up and i noticed for the first time that the trees had no leaves on them. the trees... i put down my school work and joined the old man on the porch. the wind was growing steadily wilder. i could not understand what the old man was doing but i was mesmerised by it. he looked at me and pointed at a nearby tree. its branches were thick and serpentine and intertwined and pulsating with hot glowing veins. for a moment i remembered i was about to miss my school deadline but just as quickly i dismissed the thought. i knew that what the old man was doing was much more interesting than my school work and much more important for if he succeeded in what he was attempting there would be no more school or no more anything. for i realized i was in another apocalypse dream and like something out of billington's wood this old man was trying to call up the apocalypse. as in all my apocalypse dreams i was completely calm while the chaos churned around me. the purple of the sky darkened significantly. i sensed that the atmosphere was filled with airy intelligences that moved on the wind. i could not make them out with my eyes but i could feel them there. just then the man looked at me and said Here They Come. i asked Who. he replied not with words but by smiling a smile that was at once proud and sorrowful. the smile seemed to say Ancestors. they were now everywhere.