Chapter 1 – Head Bowed to the Ground

Chapter 1 – Head Bowed to the Ground

My childhood moved to a calm rhythm, which I still hear in quiet moments – as if someone had etched it into my subconscious with gentle but indelible script. My memories of it are neither stormy nor blandly happy. Those were years of ordinariness, but within that ordinariness was a strange silence, a kind of inner waiting for something to happen one day that would change direction.

My fear of people was so great that rather than ask a fellow passenger to let me off, I would ride one stop further.

I wasn’t the kind of child who hid in a corner, but I also wasn’t the one everyone in class turned to when something was happening. I got along with classmates, often listened more than I spoke, but when I did say something, it was usually precise, short, and surprisingly deep – as my homeroom teacher later said, a woman inclined to romantic exaggeration.

At home, I made do with books and paper. I could spend hours over building sets, maps, or geometric puzzles. My father once said I thought like an adult. I, on the other hand, felt that I perceived the world more as a puzzle someone had already solved, but forgot to tell me what it was supposed to show.

Gradually, I began to realize that the world wasn't made up only of obstacles, but also of opportunities. That some things could be changed – slowly, in small steps. But I still didn’t know where to start.

When I stood for the first time in front of the gate of a new school, with a bag over my shoulder and my head full of assumptions about who I would be there and what would happen, I had only one certainty – that no one there knew my previous silence. That I could be someone else there, or at least someone a bit less fearful.

I didn’t know how I would change. But I felt something would happen. And this time, I wanted to go toward it.

Chapter 2 – The Third in the Pair

Chapter 2 – The Third in the Pair

I was afraid. Not a big, all-encompassing fear, but a constant one. I was afraid to make phone calls. I was afraid I’d say the wrong thing, embarrass myself, disappoint someone. Most of all, I was afraid of myself – that in the moment something needed to be done, I’d freeze.

This began to shift when I started high school. Maybe it was the new environment, maybe the people who didn’t know me and didn’t judge me by the past. On the first day, I signed up for the school’s debate club. Not because I felt strong, but precisely because I felt weak.

I chose the method of antidote – to let a little fear into my body every day, like a vaccine. To speak in front of people. To volunteer even if I wasn’t sure of the answer. To raise my hand even if my palms were sweating. That’s when I discovered a new kind of joy – the joy of overcoming.

Gradually, I built a confidence I had previously lacked. I became more open, dared to joke, to make friends, even to take the lead sometimes. I never fully transformed into the “life of the party,” but I found that when I entered a room, people often noticed me before I even spoke.

The student years have a peculiar flavor – a mix of hope, restlessness, and a vague premonition that everything important is still to come, and yet is already quietly happening. At our grammar school, the atmosphere was slightly academic and slightly bored, as if everyone was trying to look like they didn’t care, but deep down just wanted to be noticed.

I fit in. Not remarkably, but naturally. My classmates and I talked about films, books, sometimes even politics – and although I didn’t feel the need to be the center of attention, I managed to hold my place. Sometimes I even made people laugh, mostly with unexpected remarks coming from an inconspicuous corner, making the class laugh simply because they were so calm and spot-on.

Then came dance lessons. I signed up without hesitation, even though the idea of touching someone – even in the rhythm of a waltz – gave me a subtle inner jolt. It was one of my “vaccination moments,” as I called them.

At the first few lessons, I danced with different girls, mostly from other schools. They were nice – sometimes nervous, sometimes overly confident. I felt like an official of physical contact – careful, attentive, but detached. Over time, I relaxed. My body got used to it. And my mind began to notice other things.

There was a girl named Klára. We didn’t talk much, but when we danced, she had a special calmness in her movement, as if she didn’t hear the music with her ears but with her spine. Once, during a foxtrot, she looked at me and said:

"You always have such a serious expression, like you’re thinking about what will happen next."

I didn’t know what to say. Probably because it was true.

I fell in love. Not wildly, not loudly, but platonically, with my whole being – the way those who spend more time in their thoughts than in reality fall in love. I didn’t know what to do with it. And above all – I wasn’t the only one. Klára had many admirers. I was the one you could talk to calmly. The one who noticed when she was in a bad mood and didn’t ask why, just offered silence or tea.

I was the one they confided in. A friend. An advisor. The third one when pairs needed to be formed. At first, it tore me apart. Later, I got used to it. And then I found a strange comfort in it.

My loves were one-sided, silent, sewn from memories and imagination. They were girls who wrote me long messages about their troubles and then fell in love with someone else – often with boys whom I wasn’t even sure were listening to them.

One of them once confided in me:

“You’re like... a safe place. Like a little box where I put things when I’m afraid of losing them out there.”

I smiled.

And I didn’t tell her that some of those things are still in that box to this day.

Those few years between starting and finishing high school were a turning point for me. I was finally someone I wouldn’t be afraid to meet within myself. I thought everything was truly beginning. I had plans, possibilities, and above all, the feeling that I was in control.

Chapter 3 – When Silence Speaks

Chapter 3 – When Silence Speaks

The serious head injury happened a week before Easter. I don’t remember the moment itself, just the strange, intangible silence that remained after a scream I’m not even sure really happened. From what I’ve been told, the operation lasted six hours. When I woke up, my first thought wasn’t of pain, but that I had to get better quickly so I could visit my girl friends on Easter Monday. I wanted to be “okay.” The nurse looked at me with sad eyes and quietly said it was already a week after Easter.

I was lying in the emergency ward, in a room where the beeping of machines interrupted the silence and where time was measured in a different unit – the intensity of human struggle. Every day I watched doctors and nurses silently and persistently fighting for their patients’ lives. They were sidesteps against an invisible wave that could rise and consume another at any moment.

There was a man lying three beds away from me. Always motionless, with tubes in his nose and his eyes closed. A woman, probably his wife, came to see him every day. She brought flowers, talked to him, stroked his forehead, and sometimes cried. It was a quiet devotion that moved me. And at the same time, terrified me.

One night, a different beeping sounded. Sharp, insistent. A nurse rushed in, then a doctor. They pulled the curtain around him. I saw only their silhouettes, breaths of movement that slowed and then ceased. In the morning, the bed was empty.

It was my first close experience with death – quiet, without spectacle. One day, someone is simply gone. But a trace remains. You look at the empty bed and know that a person was there just yesterday. And that maybe you didn’t really notice him.

My memories of those weeks are fragmented. Often, I’m not sure what really happened and what my brain offered as substitute reality. But some images return again and again: orange light refracting on the window glass like in a kaleidoscope. Vague outlines of faces that assembled and fell apart in the darkness behind closed eyelids. In that state between waking and sleep, somewhere on the threshold of consciousness, the first flashes appeared. Geometric, luminous. Indistinct. As if a new language were slowly forming beneath the skin of my mind.

Recovery, as they told me later, was nearly miraculous. The doctors smiled and shrugged when they said everything was working as it should. I was left with a scar, a slight impairment of smell, but otherwise nothing indicated that my brain had once teetered on the edge of collapse.

And yet – something inside was different. It couldn’t be described or captured in words. The world was still the same, but as if another tone had been added to it. A tone you hear only sometimes. When you close your eyes. When you dive beneath the surface of water. When silence speaks.

Chapter 4 – The Net Arrives

Chapter 4 – The Net Arrives

The years after the accident passed quietly. This time, the silence didn’t speak — it only watched. I returned to life without anyone asking what I had brought back from it. And I stayed silent, because I didn’t know what I would even say.

I studied computer science, began working as a software developer. I was good at my job. Not exceptional, but thorough and thoughtful — and in our field, that’s often enough. I lived calmly and practically. I read, exercised, had a few friends with whom one could feel comfortable even without speaking. For a while, I even began to think that the past was truly in the past.

And then she came. Unexpectedly and intensely. For the first time, I had the feeling that I was really with someone. We talked late into the night. We laughed. We touched without shame. I thought that in this, there was home. But something broke. Not suddenly. Slowly, like water seeping in until you realize your foundation is soaked through. She left. Not with bitterness, but with finality. She said she needed something else. A different kind of closeness, a different kind of life.

After the breakup, I moved. The apartment was quiet, sunny, overlooking old trees in the courtyard. I liked it. I believed I was starting over. That I was hurt, but not broken.

It appeared for the first time a few weeks after I’d settled in. When I lay in bed at night with my eyes closed, strange patterns began to spread across my inner vision — a net of irregular pentagrams. Delicate, glowing lines — sometimes green, other times gray or red — slowly rippled like the surface of water under moonlight. At first, I thought it was a visual illusion, fatigue. Programmers spend a lot of time in front of screens. It made sense.

But the patterns appeared even when I was sure I’d rested enough. And more than that — their shape began to change. The lines formed new geometries, connecting, disconnecting. And then it happened.

At first, just a trace: the face of a woman. Gentle, blurry, as if etched into fog. Eyes staring through me. It vanished. The second night it appeared again. This time a man — old, with deep wrinkles and a dull gaze. Then others. Monstrous, twisted, grotesque. Faces one would draw only in a fever or a nightmare.

They always drifted in slowly. And always, as if time ran differently, they aged — in a matter of seconds they shriveled, turned into skulls, and finally disappeared. The nets remained, continued moving, but the faces changed. New ones each night.

I didn’t dare tell anyone. Not out of shame, but because I couldn’t explain exactly what I was experiencing. It wasn’t hallucinations. I knew I was awake. That the world was still here. Just... beneath it, there was another layer, like an undergrowth of a different perception.

At first, those faces terrified me. In the middle of the night, I would turn on the lamp, just to feel like nothing was watching me. But over time, just as one gets used to the pain of heartbreak or the fear of an exam, I began to wait and see who would come next.

It wasn’t pleasant. But it was... strange. As if someone wanted to tell me something. Or invite me somewhere else.

And so each night, I closed my eyes. And waited.

Chapter 5 – Explanations That Aren’t Enough

Chapter 5 – Explanations That Aren’t Enough

At first, I hoped it would just stop. Like when, in youth, you sometimes hear blood rushing in your ears and it disappears after a few days. But the net didn’t disappear. Neither did the faces. They remained with me night after night — and even though I tried not to think about them, something in me had already started searching for an answer.

I started with the most rational route: doctors.

I made an appointment with an eye specialist. The doctor was thorough, examined my retina, measured pressure, performed a visual field test. He listened to me attentively, though at the mention of pentagrams he slightly raised an eyebrow. The result? “Visual artifacts associated with screen fatigue or temporary oxygen deficiency. They originate in the visual cortex. We encounter this occasionally.” He prescribed breaks during work, recommended shelled nuts and magnesium.

It didn’t help. The net kept coming — regularly, precisely, like a loyal ritual of the dark part of the day.

I tried my general practitioner. He took blood. Low vitamin D. Slightly elevated blood sugar. “It could be related, but it’s probably a normal phenomenon. The brain sometimes projects images during falling asleep. It’s like a dream before a dream.” He recommended evening walks.

At first, that reassured me. The hypothesis of a brain operating in a state between wakefulness and sleep seemed logical. It’s called hypnagogic hallucinations — the brain relaxes, perceptions aren’t fully filtered, fragments of dreams arise during full consciousness. I read about it for entire evenings.

But the more I studied it, the less it matched my experience.

These images didn’t come when I was dozing off. They came while I was fully awake, sometimes just a minute after lying down. When I opened my eyes, they were gone. When I turned on the light, they vanished. I could get up, have a drink — nothing restricted me. When I turned off the light and closed my eyes, they started again. As if they had been waiting for me.

I tried keeping a journal. I recorded which faces appeared, how long they stayed, what I felt. There was nothing regular about it. The faces were always different, but each had its own “quality” — sadness, hatred, pain, compassion. I began to notice that some returned. One old man with sunken cheeks and eyes staring at something behind me. A woman with moist eyes and an expression as if she were waiting for my answer.

That’s when a different question began creeping into my mind. Not what it is. But who.

I began exploring spiritual interpretations. Without really wanting to, I dove into texts I would have previously considered fringe. I was curious what religion, mystics, and esoteric traditions had to say.

And suddenly, there were many.

Demons. Supposedly, they come at night when we’re most vulnerable. They take advantage of physical weakness to penetrate the mind. Distorted, mocking, aging faces… That would make sense. But why would I be open to them?

The souls of the dead. Some traditions claim that the transition after death isn’t immediate. That souls seek closure, attention, someone who sees them. That they live among us, only not everyone can perceive them. That thought haunted me night after night — what if these aren’t hallucinations, but visitations?

The collective unconscious. Jung might say that these aren’t individual beings, but symbols. Embodied archetypes present in everyone — the old man, the maiden, the monster, the mother. That I was glimpsing into a space where human experience becomes image. But why now? Why me?

Or… what if they’re from somewhere else?

Beings from other dimensions. They’re here, but we don’t see them because we lack the ability, the filter. But sometimes — after trauma, in sleep, in weakness — the veil tears. They aren’t friendly or hostile. They simply are. And maybe they’re waiting for someone to notice them.

I bought an icon of Saint Barbara. I didn’t know exactly why her — maybe because I remembered she’s the patron of those facing sudden death, thunder, fire… and according to some, also of “mental unrest.” I chose a small silver one, with dark eyes and a tower in her hand. I placed it on my nightstand, under the lamp.

The faces disappeared. For about a week. It was like a truce. As if someone had drawn the curtain. The net receded. No images, no shadows, just darkness behind my eyelids. I slept peacefully, without expectation or fear. I didn’t know what exactly the icon had done, but it brought relief. Like when you invite someone into the room and the others leave.

But it didn’t last.

On the eighth evening, the light lines returned — faint at first, pale, as if from afar. And then everything came back again, with new intensity, as if the pause had only been preparation for something deeper.

Over time, the faces began to appear even when my eyes weren’t closed. It was enough to look into a dark corner of the room, a shadow under the table, or just a spot where dim light fell — and suddenly they emerged. First vaguely, like a silhouette, a notion, but the more I watched, the clearer they became. I could move my eyes, and they vanished. But when I looked back into the dark, they returned. They were always sad. Quiet, pained, as if disappointed. And with the monstrous ones… I don’t know. That was more like dread. Not a face, but an accusation. Not an expression, but a threat.

I started to fear them less. I began thinking instead about what they wanted to tell me.

Chapter 6 – Into the Depths of the Image

Chapter 6 – Into the Depths of the Image

The images began to fascinate me. Not like a gallery of painted canvases, but like unsolicited projections that appeared in my mind, in my dreams, and in the borderland between waking and sleep. I wasn’t as afraid of them anymore. I began to ask: What do they want to tell me?

My search led me to books. At first, I turned to medical literature — I wanted a diagnosis. I looked for an explanation that would return me to the realm of the "normal": hallucinations, sleep disorders, epileptic phenomena, parasomnias, hypnagogia, dissociation. Each had its name, its symptoms, sometimes even diagrams. But the more I read, the less I fit into the tables. When I compared my own experiences with their clinical explanations, something unnamed, intangible remained between the lines.

So I shifted to psychology. Freud, Jung, Grof, Hillman. Archetypes. The collective unconscious. The Shadow. The soul speaks in image, not in concept — I read and nodded. I began to realize that my visions were not a disorder but a language. A specific kind of communication I was only beginning to understand. And at the same time, that each apparition was both a question and an answer — a scene that forced me to slow down, open up, stop rationalizing.

Esoteric literature was the last step. Not because I trusted it more, but because I felt the rational world spills into the metaphysical like day into night. And that between them there isn’t a wall, but a permeable membrane. I read about astral projection, the third eye, chakras, karmic images, the Akashic Records. And again: I found descriptions that — though I had never admitted it to myself before — very precisely mirrored what I had been experiencing. The image was not just a product of my mind. It was a transmission. A message. Perhaps even an imprint of something that transcends the boundaries of my self.

I began to write. Every image, every emotion, every apparition. I started asking questions, but now not with anxiety — rather with eagerness. I looked forward to the next vision. I began to understand that nothing threatened me. That the only danger was misunderstanding. Rejection.

All those books — medical, psychological, spiritual — had one thing in common: the attempt to grasp the ungraspable. To name what has no name. And yet, within that mosaic of knowledge, a more complete, more truthful picture began to emerge than any of them alone could offer. The doctor sees a symptom. The psychologist sees a symbol. The esotericist sees energy. And I — I began to see them all at once. Scientifically and intuitively. Visually and physically.

I came to the conclusion that these were not images from me. They were images for me. And perhaps, through me — for others.

Chapter 7 – Transformation

Chapter 7 – Transformation

As I’ve said before, at first I had a bad feeling about those faces. Not always direct fear, but something close to it — a startle, a tightness, a sense that I was looking at something I wasn’t meant to see. Their gazes were unbearably direct, as if they knew me, even though I didn’t know them. Some were sad, others had an expression of horror etched into them that stayed with me long after I opened my eyes.

Sometimes something else emerged. Monsters. A dark snake or dragon, with thorns growing from its body like an inverted rose. Other times a dog, a werewolf, a creature halfway between animal and human, baring its teeth at me. These weren’t classic nightmares — I was conscious, I could move, I could run away. And yet I stayed and watched. The strangest were the dark masses — dissolving, changing shape, until they became some sort of giant black hand reaching toward me, as if wanting to grab and carry me away.

I used to flinch and open my eyes. I resisted. But then something changed in me — not suddenly, but inevitably. I stopped running. I stayed. And that was when I noticed the first similarity I had missed until then.

The men’s faces were stiff. Firm, emotionless. They didn’t seem threatening or sad. They just looked. But the women — they wore expressions of pain, despair, often even horror. And then I noticed something else: children appeared only very rarely. And if they did, they were like ghosts — pale, distant, expressionless.

Years passed. The images came and went. They changed. And so did my view of them. I stopped being afraid. I began to accept them. And maybe because of that, I noticed another change.

They began to smile.

Not all of them. But the more calmly I remained, the more I accepted their presence, the more of them began to look at me with gentleness. With understanding. Maybe even with gratitude.

The monsters became fewer. And those that remained lost their power. If they tried to reach for me, I didn’t look away. I kept looking — and they dissolved, vanished into the light, into the slow, pulsing glow of the net that was always the first thing to appear behind my closed eyelids.

Again, I wondered what they were trying to tell me.

Maybe they’re souls of the dead. Maybe they come to show themselves so they won’t be forgotten. Maybe someone hurt them in life, and now they’re looking for someone to right their wrongs. Or they’re beings from another dimension, who have caught a glimpse of me as I have glimpsed them. Maybe they’re not trying to scare me, but crying for help — like someone drowning, waving their arms, which from a distance looks like an attack.

I tried Google. When I typed “appearance of faces that age and disappear when eyes are closed,” the response was:

“Your search query did not match any good results.”

Chapter 8 – The First Question

Chapter 8 – The First Question

The first attempt came soon. A woman’s face appeared — not one I recognized, but it still evoked a sense of trust in me. She was calm, almost sorrowful. I stared at her and tried to focus. In my mind, I clearly formulated the question:

“What do you want to tell me?”

To my surprise, the image didn’t vanish, as it usually did. It only shifted slightly — as if her face were made of thin mist moved by quiet breathing. Her eyes remained fixed, and the unusual silence deepened.

And then she began to dissolve.

But something was different — she didn’t disappear alone. The net behind her changed as well. The lines, which had previously waved in irregular patterns, started pulling inward, converging on a single point. A shape formed — a dark center surrounded by radiating light lines. It looked like an eye.

I stared into it.

And then I was falling.

I realized it wasn’t an eye, but something deeper. A funnel, a vortex that was pulling me inside. I was in motion, even though I was lying down. I was flying somewhere where light lost its colors, and yet it was still light.

And then — nothing.

The net disappeared. The images vanished. There was darkness.

Not the darkness of fear, but the darkness of waiting.

I tried again.

A woman appeared — middle-aged, with curly black hair down to her shoulders. Her gaze was deeper than any before — it didn’t feel human, but it wasn’t foreign either. She looked at me for a long time. Then, very slowly, she lowered her eyes, turned her head, and began to move away.

Suddenly, I saw her whole figure. She was cloaked in black, her coat trailing a heavy darkness behind her. She walked without sound, on something that had no solid form, just the faint shadow of a surface. After several steps, she looked back. Perhaps to make sure I was following.

Then she stopped.

She raised her hands, made a circular motion in the air, and her cloak billowed like wind over water. Her body began to shrink, rotate, ripple, and dissolve into a single point. In the end, nothing remained but a black dot, which became a black sun — silent, ominous, with dark rays extending in all directions.

Then came a moment of darkness again.

But not the same as before. This darkness began to turn red. First imperceptibly, like a distant fire burning beyond the horizon. Then more clearly. The color spread, saturating every grain of the dark until it became a deep, dense crimson.

I was somewhere else.

I stood — or perhaps just was — on a kind of upland, in a barren, stony landscape covered with red sand and pitch-black boulders. The sky was heavy, red, and black clouds crawled across it slowly, as if deciding where to fall.

Suddenly, a piece of land nearby lifted. A geyser of dust shot into the air, tearing the landscape like the exhale of a sleeping force. When the dust settled, I looked at the spot where it had risen.

There was a pit. Funnel-shaped, wide, disturbingly symmetrical.

And something was moving inside.

I tried to see it. I leaned closer, strained my eyes. But no matter how hard I tried, I always saw only the edges, just the darkness on the walls, sprinkled with red dust. The center of the pit was like a missing piece of the world. A void that refused to be seen.

And then I felt it wasn’t my weakness. THAT something — or perhaps my own brain — didn’t allow it.

Not yet. Not this time.

Chapter 9 – Back

Chapter 9 – Back

I got up slowly.

It wasn’t a jolt, no fright, no sudden gasp for air. Just a quiet realization that around me once again lay the bed, the room, the dusk of night. The air was calm. No one was watching me. And yet I felt that something had stayed with me.

I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. I was back. And yet not entirely.

That scene, that woman, the black cloak, the red sky, the geyser of dust, the pit — it had all been so concrete. Not like a dream. In dreams, places fall apart, vanish, change, but this place had weight and duration. Geography. Physics.

I knew I had been somewhere else. Not in my head. Somewhere.

I felt a calm within me, but also a kind of quiet tension, as if something remained between my ribs. An invisible thread that had not yet been cut.

Why wasn’t I allowed to see?

THAT in the pit — I had felt its presence, its movement, maybe even its will. But the image was missing. I hadn’t gone blind, I simply hadn’t been allowed to see. My sight was deliberately limited. Not physically. Consciously.

I wondered whether I had failed. Whether I should have done something differently, looked in another way, asked a question. But my heart told me that it hadn’t been a test.

It was a gate. And it hadn’t fully opened yet.

I stood up, drank some water, and wrote everything down in my journal while it was still fresh. Not just the images, but also the feelings, the tension in my shoulders, the slight trembling in my fingers. Everything.

Then I sat back down on the bed, hands resting on my knees, eyes closed.

The net was there. Thin, pulsing, calm.

But this time, it waited for me to ask.

Chapter 10 – The Second Question

Chapter 10 – The Second Question

The next day I closed my eyes again. I expected nothing. I didn’t call for them. I didn’t beg, didn’t ask. I just was . Calm, ready.

At first, nothing happened. The darkness was deep, motionless, without a spark.

And then, almost imperceptibly, a face flickered in the distance. And then another.

They surfaced and vanished again, like the faces of people in a crowd when you walk through and can’t focus on anyone.

Until a woman’s face appeared — very close. So close I could almost feel her breath.

She looked at me.

The contours of her face shifted slightly — as if she were made of water stirred by a gentle breeze. Or as if she stood between two worlds, each tugging her in turn.

Then she turned.

Her gaze moved to the right, and I knew I was meant to look in that direction. Suddenly, I was no longer in the net, but on the shore of a sea. Red waves rolled over each other, crashing onto pale red sand. The wind swayed the dark leaves of palms. The landscape was both beautiful and uneasy.

And then I flew over a forest.

The treetops were strangely quiet. The forest grew denser and darker, as if each branch were trying to hide something. But I wasn’t falling. I was rising. And with each breath I rose higher, faster, until I emerged above the clouds.

I stood at the top. I didn’t know of what — a tower, a pillar, an obelisk? It was monumental. The column disappeared deep below the sea’s surface, rising from darkness and lifting me into the height where silence, light, and cold reigned.

And she was there. She was waiting for me. Wordlessly. Without movement.

Suddenly, flat shapes began to appear in space around me. Thin lines, sharply outlined, moving as if on their own. I had never seen them before in the net. They were different. Geometric. Technical.

They clustered together. The lines formed the outline of the pillar I was standing on. It was a blueprint. A technical drawing.

Then everything rearranged, and the outline transformed. I saw a floor plan of a house. Walls, layouts, rooms. Something between architecture and a mind map. A house without furniture, but with structure.

What are they trying to show me?

I stood in the middle of what had once been just a vision. Now it was a message. But the language it was spoken in — I was only beginning to understand.

Chapter 11 – The Plan

Chapter 11 – The Plan

The next morning I felt different. Calm, but not fully present. As if a part of me had stayed on the top of that strange pillar above the sea.

I knew I had to write everything down — not to remember it, but to understand it. Words often unlock layers that images leave sealed.

I started with what was strongest: the woman. She appeared again, different, but still it was her. Her gaze, her gesture, the turning of her head — none of it was accidental. She had shown a direction. This time literally. To the right. And I knew it meant more than just the next scene.

The sea. Red. Maybe a symbol of emotions I still couldn’t express in words. Or a boundary between this and another world. The red wasn’t just a warning — it held life, motion, strength.

The black palms seemed to grow from the subconscious. Familiar and yet foreign. Silent, and yet alive.

The flight above the forest reminded me how I used to fear woods — dark, tight. This time, I wasn’t lost in it, but flying over it. With perspective.

Something had changed. Maybe inside me.

And then the pillar — or tower. Huge, quiet, without windows. Rising from the depths of the sea all the way above the clouds. A bridge between worlds. The embodiment of transition.

When I stood there and met her again, I was ready — and in that moment, the lines appeared. At first incomprehensible, but clearly deliberate. Thin lines that formed an image.

A drawing.

And then another. A floor plan. Layout, room divisions.

I realized it wasn’t a home in the physical sense. Maybe it was a map of my mind. Or perhaps of the soul.

Structure.

It was the first message that wasn’t a feeling or a face, but a blueprint. As if someone had said: “Here it is. This is where you live. This is how you’re constructed. And you can rebuild it.”

I wrote down notes:

the first time that instead of a symbol (a face), a process appears. The experiences shift from passive visions to an actively guided inner journey. The narrator is now drawn in — no longer observing from the outside, but becoming part of the story.

The woman with curly hair This woman is not the first face the narrator sees, but she is the first to direct his attention. She doesn’t only look at him, but away — the direction of her gaze is a signal that it’s time to stop being the object of seeing and become the traveler. She represents a guide, or the archetypal figure of the "great mother" or "world soul."

The red sea and black palms The red sea may represent an emotional or spiritual transition — the sea is an ancient symbol of the unconscious, depth, transformation. The color red here isn’t only dangerous — it holds energy, passion, blood, life and death. The black palms might signify life in the shadow — life that exists on the edge of the known and the unconscious, life that is both beautiful and dark.

Flight above the dark forest The forest is a classic symbol of the subconscious. Flying above it means gaining perspective on what once caused fear. The darker, denser forest suggests that one truly enters their unconscious — but this time from above, with distance.

The pillar/tower into the heavens A monumental column rising from the sea to beyond the clouds is a connector between worlds — between the unconscious (sea), the conscious (land), and the superconscious or spiritual realm (clouds, sky). The narrator symbolically climbs the mountain of knowledge, to the very point of insight.

The technical diagrams and the house plan These images signify that the world the narrator entered has structure. It’s not a chaotic field of hallucinations. It has logic, order, design. The house plan can be seen as a blueprint of the psyche — or even a spiritual map — since the house, in many traditions, symbolizes the self. The narrator is thus peering into the architecture of the soul, or into the structure of reality as revealed through the “net.”

What are they trying to show me? That all of this has order. That it’s not a hallucination, but a language. A way someone — or something — is speaking. And that now, since I’ve learned to see, perhaps I can learn to read.

Chapter 12 – Guides

Chapter 12 – Guides

Another night. Another dream.

This time it began differently. There was no net, no pulsing patterns. Just a row of objects, lined up in a row. They looked like toys, but they were too heavy, too cold. Weapons. Some kind of spears. No — they were rifles, neatly arranged. They were silent.

And among them — the face of a little girl. Small, with wavy brown hair, cheeks flushed from cold or perhaps shame. She looked at me for a moment — surprised, like a child who unexpectedly sees you somewhere they didn’t expect you to be. And then she turned away.

Suddenly, I saw her from a distance, her whole figure. She was walking alongside that line of weapons. Alone. She slowly pulled a hood over her head, as if trying to hide not only from the cold, but from the whole world. Her steps were calm, determined. She didn’t look back.

Soldiers ran toward her. In rows. Quickly. Not as if preparing to fight, but more like they were chasing one another. They didn’t notice her. They didn’t know she was there.

The image began to twist, to curve, to spiral in on itself, until it became a spiral. Red and black, slowly rotating, silent and deep. And from its center, a bird flew out.

It was large, with long feathers trailing behind like a comet. It flew calmly, elegantly, without effort. It hovered over the landscape, then landed in a garden.

The garden was strange. Quiet, enclosed by high walls. On the walls were ornaments, engravings, symbols I didn’t recognize — yet they felt familiar, as if someone had drawn them in the sand of my childhood dreams.

In the garden was another bird. Smaller, with metallic blue feathers. And next to it... an animal.

At first, I thought it was a dog. Then perhaps a dachshund, but there was something unusual about it. Peacock feathers grew from its back — long, iridescent, delicate. It looked both comical and dignified.

It ran up to me. Without fear. Without hesitation.

It stopped right in front of me, tilted its head, and began nudging me with its nose. Roughly, but kindly. As if it were inviting me out — or wanted me to finally understand something.

Chapter 13 – What She Meant to Say

Chapter 13 – What She Meant to Say

I woke up with the image of that creature still in my mind. It had a dog’s eyes. Trusting. But also something ancient in them — something that didn’t belong to a dog at all. As if it had seen more lives than I could ever imagine.

I wrote down everything I could remember. The line of weapons. The girl. The birds. The spiral. The garden.

And again, I asked the question:

What did she want to say to me? What did the little girl mean? Why didn’t she speak?

I started flipping through old psychology books. I remembered that Jung sometimes talked about the "child" as a symbol — of newness, vulnerability, and also of something divine that lives within us, waiting to be born. Could it have been her?

Or was she someone real?

I didn’t recognize her, but she felt close. The kind of closeness one doesn’t explain through logic. As if something in me knew her story — even though I had never heard it.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her turning away. It wasn’t rejection. It was retreat.

A movement I knew well.

Not because she was afraid. But because she didn’t expect to be seen. Because no one had ever looked at her that way before.

And the weapons? They weren’t meant for her. But they were part of her world. Lined up, ready, silent. The child and the machinery of war. Innocence and destruction — in the same frame.

I began to understand that she wasn’t showing me herself. She was showing me a wound .

Not hers. Ours.

A shared memory. Something that hasn’t healed, because no one has looked at it long enough. Not with judgment. But with attention.

The bird that flew out of the spiral — that was a message too. A phoenix? A soul? A spirit? I don’t know. But it came out of the center of motion, from the very core of everything turning and churning. It didn’t escape. It emerged. Transformed.

And then the garden. A sacred space.

Guarded. Enclosed. With symbols on the wall that I didn’t understand — but felt. Like echoes of dreams I once had as a child, which I forgot upon waking.

And that strange animal? The peacock-dog? That was no hallucination. That was a guide.

Its touch was clear. I remembered the nudge. And the warmth that followed.

Not comfort. But a call.

Chapter 14 – The Net Returns

Chapter 14 – The Net Returns

That night, the net came back. Stronger than before. With a clarity that almost frightened me.

The lines were sharper. No longer trembling or soft, but taut and bright, like threads pulled tight in the dark. They stretched across space behind my eyelids in patterns that felt both random and perfectly ordered — like constellations we’ve yet to name.

I wasn’t afraid. But I felt a kind of awe. As if I had entered the main hall of a building whose entrance I’d only glimpsed before.

And then — faces.

Dozens of them. Not rushing in chaos, but appearing one by one, in sequence, like stations on a track. Each looked at me calmly. Each held its gaze.

Some were familiar. The woman with the soft face. The old man with sunken cheeks. The child with too-large eyes. But many I had never seen before. They passed by me not like a parade, but like a line of witnesses. Not judging. Just being.

And then — a rupture. The net pulsed. Once. The light shifted — from pale blue to deep violet. And the whole structure began to spiral inward.

I didn’t fall. I was drawn.

This time, the darkness that awaited me wasn’t empty. It was dense. Heavy, but not threatening. Like a deep sea that doesn’t drown, only carries. I floated. And something opened.

A room.

I don’t know where it was — whether in me or beyond me. It had no walls. And yet, it felt enclosed. I stood inside it. Not alone.

In the center sat a figure. I couldn’t see its face. But I knew it saw me.

No words were spoken. No sounds. But a sentence formed in my mind as clearly as if someone had whispered it into my ear: “You are not here to watch.”

The presence didn’t move. But its message rang through me. And with it, an understanding: That I had reached the end of observation. That the next step would not be shown to me. It would have to be taken.

I opened my eyes. The room was dark. The air still. And yet — nothing would ever be the same again.

Chapter 15 – The Door

Chapter 15 – The Door

From that night on, I began to see it.

Not just in visions, not behind closed eyes — but in the world around me.

First only briefly. A glimmer in the corner of a room. A flicker in the window reflection. A shimmer in the dark hallway when I turned off the light and lingered one second longer than usual.

A pattern. A movement. A structure.

I thought I was imagining it. That I wanted to see it so badly, I was inventing it. But then came the certainty — quiet, unmistakable, the kind that doesn’t ask for proof: It’s here.

Not all the time. Not everywhere. But often enough that I stopped doubting.

I began to notice other things. The glances of strangers. The repeated occurrence of the same words in different places. Messages in graffiti, in snatches of conversation, in books I randomly opened on a page that suddenly contained an answer I hadn’t even known I was looking for.

The world had shifted.

Or maybe I had.

Once, while sitting in a café, I looked up from my notebook and saw a woman at the next table watching me. Not in a threatening way. Not even curiously. She just looked. And when our eyes met, she nodded slightly — not a greeting, more like recognition.

And then she left.

She didn’t even finish her drink.

When I walked home that evening, I passed a metal door I had never noticed before. It was set in a wall beneath a railway bridge. No sign, no number, just dark green paint, chipped in places, with a black handle.

And I knew.

I stopped.

Stared at the door.

And I didn’t open it.

Not out of fear. But because I understood: It’s not about opening every door. It’s about recognizing them.

Chapter 16 – You Are Not Alone

Chapter 16 – You Are Not Alone

The thought came to me during a tram ride. I was sitting by the window, watching the buildings slide by like worn scenery, when a sentence appeared in my mind:

“What if there are others?”

Until then, I had assumed I was alone in this. That the visions, the net, the faces — were something unique, strange, and therefore isolated. But the idea that someone else might see the same, feel the same — it didn’t frighten me. It calmed me.

I began to pay attention. Not only to signs and symbols, but to people.

In cafés. In libraries. On trams.

There were moments. Fleeting ones. A glance too long. A movement too deliberate. The feeling that someone knew more than they showed.

Once, I found a note in a second-hand book. No name, just a sentence written in small, careful script:

“We don’t always wake up in the same world we went to sleep in.”

It wasn’t a quote. I googled it. Nothing.

Another time, I found chalk drawings on a sidewalk near my building. Spirals. Eyes. Arrows pointing nowhere. They were gone the next day.

Coincidence? Maybe. But I no longer believe in coincidence the way I used to.

I started writing anonymously on a forum that discussed altered states of consciousness. I described my experiences carefully, leaving out details that might make me sound delusional. I expected silence. Or mockery.

But someone replied.

Then another.

They didn’t describe the same visions — not exactly. But the structure, the feeling, the pull — it matched. One person spoke of a “light mesh” behind their eyelids. Another about “visitors who don’t speak, but wait.” A third claimed to have seen the “spiral tunnel” during fever dreams.

Some of them were clearly confused. Some sounded like they needed help. But a few — just a few — knew. I could tell.

We started writing privately. Cautiously. As if we all feared saying too much. But piece by piece, something formed. A shape made of scattered testimonies. A shared language.

We called it “the net.” Others had other names. The Weave. The Lattice. The Threshold.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was:

I wasn’t the only one.

Chapter 17 – Imprints

Chapter 17 – Imprints

They began to linger.

At first, the faces would vanish the moment I opened my eyes. The net dissolved. The visions evaporated like fog at dawn.

But now, fragments remained. Even in daylight. Even at work. Even among people.

It started with small things.

A corner of a room that shimmered differently. A shadow that held its shape just a moment too long. A ripple in the reflection of a shop window, even though no one was moving nearby.

Once, while walking home, I saw a face reflected in a puddle.

I leaned in. It wasn’t mine.

It vanished, of course — but the feeling remained.

I began to notice other kinds of traces. Not images. Not visions. But presences.

I would enter a room and feel that someone had just been there — not physically, but as if a thought had lingered, or an emotion had stuck to the walls like humidity.

Sometimes it was sorrow. Sometimes joy. Sometimes something completely different — a strange neutrality, like the air itself was watching me.

At first, I wondered if I was imagining it. But then I noticed something new.

When I concentrated, when I quieted my thoughts, I could tell where they had been.

Not people. Not exactly.

But the others.

The ones I saw in the net. Or maybe those like me. The ones who had learned to perceive differently.

Places carried imprints. Like fingerprints on a windowpane. Not visible to everyone — but undeniably there.

Once, in an old passageway beneath the train station, I stopped mid-step.

There was nothing unusual. Just concrete walls, flickering neon, the usual scent of rust and damp.

But I knew — someone had stood there . Someone like me. Maybe yesterday. Maybe years ago. But the imprint remained.

I reached out and placed my palm on the wall.

And for a brief second, I felt warmth.

Chapter 18 – The Boundary

Chapter 18 – The Boundary

I began to realize that what I was experiencing had a shape.

Not a visible one, not one you could draw or measure. But a structure. A rhythm. A direction.

As if the images, impressions, and presences were not random fragments — but parts of a map. One not made for orientation in space, but in something else.

Consciousness. Memory. Time.

I started thinking of it as a kind of architecture. The net wasn't just a field of visions — it was a structure. Something woven. Constructed. Like a city with its own rules, gates, walls, and — above all — boundaries .

And I had begun to find the edges.

They weren’t abrupt. There were no warning signs, no flashing lights. Just a feeling. A subtle resistance. Like walking through fog that thickens until you realize you can't go any further. Like a thought you can't quite finish. A word always just out of reach.

It happened for the first time when I tried to follow one of the figures from the net.

He appeared on the left edge of my vision. A man with long arms, dressed in something that shimmered like fabric but moved like smoke. He beckoned me. I turned toward him and began to follow.

But the moment I stepped out of the familiar pattern of the net, everything changed.

The light dimmed. The lines thickened. The silence grew sharp.

And then came the feeling: “Not yet.”

Not in words. In essence. Like an invisible wall. Not solid — but insistent.

I stepped back. The resistance vanished.

And I knew — I had found a boundary.

From then on, I encountered it more often.

It wasn't always in the same place. Sometimes at the edge of a vision. Sometimes in waking life — when a place seemed to hum with meaning, but something held me back from entering. An old gate. A sealed door. A path behind a warehouse where every step felt heavier than the last.

I began to respect it.

Not as a limitation. But as a threshold.

Something told me: These places are real. But not every door is ready to open.

Not until you are.

Chapter 19 – The Silence Before the Image

Chapter 19 – The Silence Before the Image

There were nights when nothing came.

No net. No lines. No faces. Not even darkness with depth — just plain, flat black.

At first, I thought I had lost the connection. That the gate had closed. That perhaps I had done something wrong — doubted too much, spoken too openly, misunderstood some image.

But slowly I began to understand: This, too, was part of it.

The pause. The emptiness. The silence before the image.

Like when a stage darkens just before a play begins. Or like the moment after inhaling but before speaking.

These were not empty nights. They were waiting nights.

I learned not to resist them. Not to search for shapes where none yet appeared.

I simply lay still and listened.

And sometimes… something stirred. Not a voice. Not even a thought. Just a presence.

A kind of knowing that didn’t need form.

Sometimes it was just a breath. A single breath that wasn’t mine — but passed through me.

Other times, it was a single point of light. So faint, it could be mistaken for a retinal afterimage. But it pulsed. Deliberately. Like a heartbeat in the fabric of darkness.

Then it faded.

And I knew: That was all I was meant to receive that night.

No more. No less.

Chapter 20 – Time Within

Chapter 20 – Time Within

I began to notice something strange.

Inside the visions, time flowed differently .

It wasn’t just that things moved slowly or quickly — it was as if the whole concept of “before” and “after” loosened its grip. Sometimes I’d see the end before the beginning. Sometimes I’d return to a place that, in waking life, I had only just entered the night before. And sometimes, I stood in a single moment that seemed to stretch endlessly — not frozen, but complete.

In the net, there were no clocks. No indicators of hours or days. And yet, I could feel that something had changed.

Like the shift of seasons — imperceptible in a single step, but obvious when you look back.

One night, I found myself walking through a corridor. Narrow, with high walls on both sides. The light was dim and amber, as if coming through dusty glass. The corridor had no doors. Just a curve, always forward.

And then — a mirror.

Tall. Simple. Without a frame.

I stopped in front of it. I saw myself. But not entirely.

My face was mine — but the expression wasn’t. It was older. Not aged — wiser. Tired, but not weak. As if I were looking at a version of myself who had already gone through something I was only now approaching.

He looked at me. Didn’t smile. Just nodded.

And in that nod, I felt it: Time doesn’t only go forward.

It spirals. It folds. It returns.

Sometimes, who we become is already watching who we are — and waiting.

Chapter 21 – Across the Threshold

Chapter 21 – Across the Threshold

I didn’t know it would happen that night.

I lay down like always, not expecting anything in particular. The day had been long, ordinary, filled with practical matters. I hadn’t read anything profound, hadn’t seen any signs.

But the moment I closed my eyes, I felt it.

The pull. Not gentle. Not slow. Immediate.

As if I were already inside.

The net appeared all at once. Bright. Dense. Pulsing with more layers than ever before.

And behind it — a door. I had never seen anything like it.

It wasn’t metaphorical. It was real.

Wooden, massive, carved with intricate patterns. At its center: a symbol I didn’t recognize, but which filled me with a strange familiarity. A circle split by a line, with two dots on each side. It pulsed gently.

I approached. The closer I came, the more I felt it:

This was it.

The threshold. The crossing.

I reached out.

The surface of the door was warm. Not hot — but alive.

I placed my palm on the symbol. And everything fell silent.

The net dissolved. The air thickened. My body became light.

And then — I stepped through.

Chapter 22 – The Other Side

Chapter 22 – The Other Side

It wasn’t like anything I’d imagined.

No shining temples. No winged figures. No grand revelation.

Just space . Endless, quiet space.

Not empty — just... still.

It felt like being inside a breath that hadn’t yet been exhaled.

The light had no source, yet everything was gently illuminated. No shadows. No horizon. Just soft gradients of silver and grey, pulsing with an inner rhythm that didn’t seem to belong to time.

I stood — or floated — or simply was . I no longer knew where my body ended. But I was still me .

And around me, I began to sense... presences .

Not people. Not quite.

Consciousnesses. Minds. Witnesses.

They didn’t speak. But I understood them.

Or rather — I understood that I was being understood .

All I had carried — every question, every doubt, every fear — was already known.

Not judged. Not solved. Just... held.

I didn’t cry. But something in me did. Something that had been waiting for this moment far longer than I had lived.

I don’t know how long I remained there. There was no before, no after. Only is .

And then — a shift.

A feeling, not of being sent back, but of being... released.

Like a diver returning to the surface.

The light faded. The stillness softened.

And the next thing I knew, I was lying in bed. My hand resting over my heart. Eyes open. Tears on my cheeks.

Chapter 23 – Return

Chapter 23 – Return

I didn’t speak about it.

Not because I was afraid no one would believe me — but because I knew they wouldn’t understand.

How do you describe something that didn’t happen in time, in space, in any shared frame of reference?

And more importantly — how do you explain what changed?

Because something had changed. Permanently. Quietly.

It wasn’t visible from the outside. I still looked the same. Went to work. Paid bills. Answered emails.

But I carried a different silence inside me.

Not the silence of emptiness. The silence of knowing.

There are moments when I remember it — that place, that presence, that being seen without being measured .

It returns in dreams. In the stillness between two thoughts. In the eyes of someone who pauses just a second longer than they need to.

And I no longer ask: “Was it real?”

Because I know: I was.

And maybe that’s all reality ever is — the part of us that remains when all the stories fall away.

Chapter 24 – The Net Behind the Lids

Chapter 24 – The Net Behind the Lids

Even now, when I close my eyes, I sometimes see it.

The net.

Not always. Not on command. But when I’m quiet enough inside.

Thin lines. Glowing threads. A living weave stretched just beneath the surface of darkness.

Sometimes it holds faces. Sometimes only light.

Sometimes nothing at all — just the calm presence of something that has always been there.

It no longer frightens me. I don’t analyze it. I don’t chase it.

I let it come. Or not.

Because I’ve understood something:

It’s not about the visions. Not about the symbols, the figures, the messages.

It’s about what they awaken. What they touch .

That deep place in us where memory becomes more than what we’ve lived. Where knowing goes beyond what we’ve been told.

A place beneath thought. Beneath fear. Beneath language.

Where the soul remembers itself.

Some will say it was imagination. Others, madness. A dream. A vision. A trance.

But I don’t need to name it.

I only know: I saw. I listened. I followed.

And now, when I close my eyes, I smile.

Because I know: Even in the darkest night, even in the deepest silence — there is always a net behind the lids.

Epilogue

Epilogue

I opened my eyes. I was in the waiting room of a psychiatric clinic. In the doorway of the office stood the doctor.

“Good morning, Mr. Dubský. How are you feeling today? Have the ghosts disappeared, or shall we increase the dosage?”

I closed my eyes again. The net unfolded around me and carried me into its world.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Head Bowed to the Ground

Chapter 2 – The Third in the Pair

Chapter 3 – When Silence Speaks

Chapter 4 – The Net Arrives

Chapter 5 – Explanations That Aren’t Enough

Chapter 6 – Into the Depths of the Image

Chapter 7 – Transformation

Chapter 8 – The First Question

Chapter 9 – Back

Chapter 10 – The Second Question

Chapter 11 – The Plan

Chapter 12 – Guides

Chapter 13 – What She Meant to Say

Chapter 14 – The Net Returns

Chapter 15 – The Door

Chapter 16 – You Are Not Alone

Chapter 17 – Imprints

Chapter 18 – The Boundary

Chapter 19 – The Silence Before the Image

Chapter 20 – Time Within

Chapter 21 – Across the Threshold

Chapter 22 – The Other Side

Chapter 23 – Return

Chapter 24 – The Net Behind the Lids

Epilogue