(Newbies go here; familiar readers, dive in below.)

Offstage left. In my place for my next entrance, poring over the strange three sentences, I’m so engrossed in unscrambling the words that I don’t notice anyone around me until a voice startles me over my right shoulder.

“In my thought every word lied he was first?” says Bryan Munar. “Who was second, Mr. Edward?”

I turn to look at him and Bryan puts a finger over one ear, humming off-key and then singing, “Younger than spring-time, am I … ” He deliberately loses the key, which was wrong to begin with, spiraling off into wrong notes.

“You sing so beautifully,” I say.

Bryan curtsies, flips invisible hair and puts a finger over his ear again, singing, “There is nothing like a da-aaaaa-aaaaame … ” Again losing the key, he sings louder.

From onstage, Joel calls, “Can we have it quiet offstage please?”

Everybody goes quiet.

Bryan mock slaps my shoulder and offstage-murmurs, “Geez, Edward, learn to sing.”

“I could never sing as well as you, Bryan,” I say, matching his volume.

From my left another voice murmurs, “That’s a word scramble.”

I turn, discovering Jeremy Brandt, the production photographer, writer, local film student. He’s 20-something with curly, close-cropped hair and spectacles. Energetic. Upbeat. He looks like the fellow who should be solving this puzzle.

Bryan says, “Duh, of course it’s a word scramble.” He takes the paper from my hands, saying, “These words are familiar, like a famous quote or something.”

“Let me see that,” Jeremy says. He stands next to Bryan, they’re both holding the paper, mulling it over, murmuring the words like a secret incantation.

They move closer to a dim, blue backstage light, holding the paper close to the bulb. Stagehands come through under the direction of Judy, and we all step aside as a large set piece is moved into the stage left entrance, ready to be rolled on. Bryan is left holding the paper against the light.

“Do you practice fire safety as well as you sing?” I say.

Bryan looks at the paper and whisks it away. The light bulb has left a strange mark on the bottom of the paper, under the words.

We step up onto the concrete steps leading to the top of the theater, near another backstage light.

“Oh my gosh, Edward,” Bryan says, then sings, “Inviii-iiiisible iii-hiii-hiii-hiiiiink.”

I’m the last one to see it: a square with nine numbered boxes, like an enclosed tic-tac-toe.

“Invisible ink indeed,” I say. “Lemon juice? Milk?”

Jeremy sniffs the paper. “Now it just smells like old paint. But one thing’s for certain: that’s a magic square,” he says.

The paper looks like this:

in my thought
every word lied
he was first
____
|7|1|3|
|8|9|6|
|5|4|2|

“Is this like Sudoku? So boring,” says Bryan. “I haaaaa-aaaaate iih-hii-hiiiiiit.”

“Look at the words,” Jeremy says.

“There are nine words,” I say.

“OMG,” Bryan says.

Then we all say, slowly, finding the words that match the numerical order,

“My … first … thought … was … he … lied … in … every word.”

“Is this a note from your ex girlfriend, Mr. Edward?” says Bryan.

“This is Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, by Robert Browning,” says Jeremy.

“Eew, creeper porn?” says Bryan.

“No, fucko, it’s a poem,” I say. “And I’m embarrassed to confess, I’ve never read it.”

“I have, and this is the first line. That’s why it felt so familiar. Like, In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,” says Jeremy. “Where did you get this, Edward?”

“I found it. In a pyramid.”

They’re quiet.

I realize how fucking odd that sounds. I’m about to change my story, make a joke about pyramid schemes. But they’re looking at me in a way that gives me pause.

“Is this … part of your blog thing?” Bryan says. “Too creepy. I couldn’t read past the third episode.”

“Dude. Kill me off. Like, seriously. Put me in it and kill me off,” Jeremy says.

“Wait, you guys are reading my stuff?” I’m pleasantly surprised.

“A bunch of people are scared to walk to their cars at night because of your creepy-ass stories, Mr. Edwaa-aaaa-ha-ha-haaaaard,” Bryan says. He emphasizes the “hard.”

“Edward! Where the hell are you?” Judy shouts from the bottom of the stairs, looking upstage toward the roll door.

I’ve missed an entrance. I scramble down the steps and jaunt onto the stage like I’m right on time.

All I can think about is the quote.

When I exit at the end of my scene, Bryan and Jeremy are standing offstage left with an old paperback between them. I peek at the title: The Collected Works of Robert Browning, Volume [faded, obscured number].

“It’s from Jim’s library, over there,” says Jeremy before I ask.

“Who names their kid Cuthbert?” says Bryan, focused on the words.

I go to the shelves near Joel’s office, formerly his father Jim Schlader’s office, searching for a duplicate copy. Nothing else by Browning. I return to where Bryan and Jeremy are reading, feeling like a third wheel.

Jeremy says, “This is awkward, it feels like you’re a third wheel.” He looks up from the book. “How do you come up with all this creepy stuff, Edward? And—wait, if this paper is related to your blog, how is it here? I mean, do you craft props to support your fiction, or … ”

I’m flummoxed. How to answer? They’re both looking at me now, as various actors and crew members swarm back and forth on their various paths. We’re a still pool amid furious rapids. In spite of our stillness, I’m aware of a whirlpool of doubt forming.

Is it possible I’ve imagined all of this? Clearly, it hasn’t been deliberate. But has anyone else here seen Weedbeard? Even the interactions between Obi-Wan-point-five, Weedbeard and Judy were a recovered memory. That may not have ever happened. Because the thing is, people literally do not “imagine” events and believe them. It’s a common term, “I must have imagined it,” but what it really means is, “I must have mis-perceived / mis-remembered / misunderstood what I was seeing.” When people see things that are not there, those people are delusional. And when delusional people believe the unreal things they see … Yikes, am I more than just depressed?

Mental illness—as far as I know—only manifests in my family in the form of depression. But is it possible that I’m the one who inherited a more generous dollop of genetic mental issues? There are multiple things I remember from my childhood that nobody else in the family has any memory of; in addition, I have what sometimes feels like a perception of an alternate universe, wherein some events coincide with events in our timeline, and I can feel when those events happen.

I can feel when those events happen sounds like something a delusional schizophrenic might say. Would say.

Holy shit.

I even have an entire timeline in my head of a massive earthquake that hit the Bay Area in 2012. It’s something I started to write down at the time. It didn’t happen in this world, but aspects of those alternate reality events had echoes in our own, most notably the predictions of Harold Camping, Jr., and the direct correlation between the days he predicted the end of our world and the days upon which the quakes occurred in that alternate timeline.

This is the kind of thing I push to a mental back burner most of the time. It only really bubbles to the surface when I’m about to fall asleep, when I let my mental guard down.

All of the above runs through my head in the span of an interminable three seconds. I realize now that I can’t tell them anything about this. I need help. I need to tell my therapist everything on Tuesday.

Jeremy says, “Oh fuck. Is it real, Edward?”

Bryan looks from Jeremy to me, then back. “Wait, no? Please? Tell me it’s not real Mr. Edward.”

I’m frozen in place, entirely uncertain. I feel myself blushing.

“The Browning Monument!” Jeremy says. “That’s it!”

“Quiet offstage!” from Judy in the stage left wings.

“Browning Monument feels familiar,” I say.

“It’s a tower, Edward. It’s right here in the park,” Jeremy says, very excited. “’My first thought was he lied in every word,’ is the first line of Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. This means you have to go to the tower!” Judy peeks around the corner from the wings, scowling. The three of us move away from the roll doors, toward the men’s dressing room. Jeremy says, quiet but nearly bouncing out of his shoes, “And holy fuck-a-mighty, it’s real!”

“Wait. This is all bullshit, right?” says Bryan. “You guys planned this? To freak me out?”

I’m looking at them. Thinking about how I never would have found this answer so quickly without them.

Have I found my detective companions?