In the most ancient of lands, where the tribes of the first men rode on bareback horses, there lived a great warrior chieftain. The fierce chieftain had lead his tribe from the days before the sun was set in the sky, to beyond the days when the lady Night first sewed the stars into her cloak. In the old times, great men and women lived longer, for as long as the memories of mankind. It was this warrior who defended his people and their land from the dark things, before there was light, and it was he who drove them into the depths of the ocean when the lady Night took the moon for her eye.

The dark things both hated and feared the chieftain, and he knew well how they burned in their empty black hearts with thoughts of revenge. Though he strung all his doorways with silver bells, and planted sage trees at every crossroads, still the dark things stalked him on moonless nights in the winter. He became determined that he should have a place of refuge and a sacred place of final rest.

The great chieftain knew the dark things could only come at him from the cardinal points, because he was so forthright, none could come at him sideways. He knew the dark things could not help but play a game, as well, for they were endless fascinated by artifice. The chieftain determined to construct a confounding labyrinth, of the sort which no dark thing should ever be able to solve, and so find peace at its center. With his course set, the chieftain set out in search of four great artisans, who would also lay down their life and give up all mortal sights.

Each artisan dug into the soft earth at the four cardinal points. Each artisan built, in total darkness, a room of his own design. And when the rooms were finished, each artisan came forth, letting no light spill upon his creation, shutting his eyes to the light of the sun, and each one then carved out his eyes, never to see again. In this way, the rooms of each artisan were never seen by the sun, and so were unknown by all eyes, mortal and immortal alike.

The chieftain made his home between the four rooms, and he made the last, blind days of the artisans comfortable as best he was able. The dark things would come to his home, seeking blood and atonement, but at each corner they would find a labyrinth, a room whose nature could not be divined. For hours the dark things would sit and waste away their energy, until the cloak of night began to slip over the horizon. Weak and exhausted, they would crawl into the rooms and would never be seen again.

But even the great chieftain’s memory would come to be lost in the mists of time’s passage, and so he would pass on from this world. More years then any mortal could know came and went, and the sacred four rooms werebe forgotten. Men would make their homes on the very same spot, though for every generation born into the house of four rooms, madness would come.

Marry X was born into the house of four rooms in the second age of machines. When she was just a little girl, she dreamed that there were monsters under her bed, as little girls often do. She would see the shadows swirl like smoke in her nightlight. Her parents thought it merely a childish overactive imagination, and (in truth) as she grew, older she no longer saw the ghosts of the dark things, but only because her thoughts no longer spilled over into the night to give them substance.

When Marry X was a young woman, she would stand in the hallway at the top of the stairs, in the middle of the night, when no one was awake. She would look around at the four closed doors and shiver, for their bland wooden facade promised an ominous secret behind each one. At night the prosaic reality became mutable, and she would shiver to herself, conjuring up the unknown inside the rooms of her house. Her thoughts in these moments did not spill out of her mind like the eager but unschooled thoughts of a child. She stepped behind each door, her mind, herself, full and entire. Behind each door, so late at night, were the four rooms and thus, in each of the four rooms, a part of Marry X became trapped.

The house of four rooms came to belong to Marry X when she was a woman, as it had come down to her mother and her mother’s mother, and she often found herself before the mirrors in the bathrooms and in the downstairs hallway. She would look into the mirror, and see another reflection, and wonder if the reflection was whole, or if it was not missing some part of herself. But the reflection was where those missing parts of herself were to be found. Her reflection would gaze back upon her, and her reflection’s eyes were unsettling for holding in them all the parts of herself lost inside the four rooms.

When Marry X dreamed at night, her reflection came to her. “Do not search for what is missing in my eyes, for that is only where you will find it. Find your way through the fog and let me carry you.”

When the sun was looking over the horizon, she took her shower as was customary, but as she stepped out from the curtain, she saw herself through the haze of steam in the mirror. Marry X reached out to wipe the steam away, and it parted as fog. She stepped though the fog, but for every step she took towards her hazy reflection, her reflection took a step away. She did not know how long she chased her shadow before she realized she was lost. Marry X looked around, fearing for a moment her reflection had fled and left her alone, and in that moment she found herself facing her mirror image. In that moment, she saw those parts of herself trapped in the four rooms.

The Marry X who emerged from the fog was the same girl trapped in the four rooms, and the same woman in her reflection, and all of them the woman who stared at the mirror. She turned her eyes to the sun, and in this way the sun and mortal eyes saw what lay in the four rooms. The labyrinth vanished in the glimmer of a tear and the ghosts of the dark things and the past troubled the house of four rooms no longer.