WELCOME TO

THE NINTH HOUR 

OF NIGHT

SEE YOU 

LATER 

LONNY

With Arms Outstretched

My therapist didn't know what I was talking about.

"I never put any book in my waiting room," he said. "I only put magazines. I know people aren't likely to start reading a long book in a waiting room."

I showed him the book. He said it wasn't his. He said that a previous patient must have left it. I asked if anyone has come looking for it, but he said that nobody has asked about it.

He asked how the book made me feel. I told him I felt confused; the resolution was not just disappointing, but didn't actually resolve anything.

"Much like life," he said.

Sure, I replied. Life has no resolutions, no endings.

"The only ending life has is death," he said. "And, unlike in fiction, death rarely resolves anything. If anything, death brings up feelings that we may not think we had."

He's had this conversation with me before. He wants me to talk about how my mom's death is making me feel. I tell him that my mom's death and The Ninth Hour of Night have nothing in common whatsoever.

"They might," he said. "Why were you drawn to the book? Why did it appeal to you so much? From what I can tell, it's kind of a mediocre pulp fiction. Why did it pull you in?"

I didn't want to talk about it, so I tried to change the topic. I talked about Rilo Kily. I talked about my job. Finally, I talked about The Ninth Hour of Night. "It was about a dark world where there was a glimmer of light," I told him. "Just a single glimmer, but it was enough. It was better than nothing."

"But at the end of the book, it wasn't enough," he said. "And that made you disappointed."

Finally, the hour was up and my session was over. I thanked him and left, the book clutched in my hand.

...and then something else happened. I'm not sure if it actually happened or if I just imagined it. I had just finished talking about the book, I mean, that's possible, right?

I walked out of the building towards my car and I saw a man. I saw a man who seemed to grow taller and thinner, whose face was filled with nothing. I saw one of the None.

I don't know what I saw. I just remember hiding behind my car and when I looked out, he was gone. I must have imagined it, right? Right?

See you later,
Lonny

My Slumbering Heart

I finished the book.

...

Fuck. I don't fucking know what the fuck that was. I mean, it was good until the very end when suddenly it went from being a good mystery to be an aBSOLUTE MINDFUCK.

So I'm going to spoil you guys, okay? I'm sorry, but I need to share my pain with others and this blog is as good a place as any. So here goes:

So Johnny Rien is investigating the Ninth Hour. He's looking for his client's daughter, who was supposed to be kidnapped by the Ninth Hour, but it turns out that she's working for them willingly...or was possibly brainwashed by them. Anyway, he finds out that she's actually been replaced by something else, some entity that can take her shape, a shapeshifter or something.

Right, so you're probably thinking "Well, yes, that is weird." No, see, that's in the middle of the book. That's weird, but I've read these types of stories before. I wasn't that surprised that the book turned into fantasy. But now Johnny Rien has to find the daughter and fight the shapeshifter and stop the Ninth Hour from replacing more people with shapeshifters (they are called "The None" here, but you know they are shapeshifters).

And then, at the end, when Johnny has finally saved the girl and stopped the evil plan, the Ninth Hour try to trick him and convince him that he's one of the shapeshifters. I was expecting this twist ending, you see; these types of stories always have a twist and I thought it might be cool if Johnny was one of the None and he didn't know it (and yes, I did realize that "Rien" is French for "nothing"). But no, Johnny is perfectly human.

But then everyone around him turns out to be shapeshifters. Or something. Honestly, I'm not sure, but then the book goes super weird:

The Ninth Hour's last curse was for me to see the truth of all things. I saw the people as they were: faceless, formless, shapeless. They were all nothing, all None. I was surrounded by crowds of the unnamed, the unseen, the unheard, the unthought. They are not real. They are mere fiction. 

I sit here in this dark room and I await my end. I await it eagerly for I cannot continue living like this. I cannot continue knowing what I know.

The Ninth Hour is None. We are all none. We are nothing but words, empty of meaning and devoid of thought.

I welcome oblivion. Turn the page and end my existence.

You see what I mean? What the fuck, right?

Well, time to return it to my therapist's office. Maybe I can ask him where he got it.

See you later,
Lonny

Paint's Peeling

I just got back from my therapist. I had to wait a while in the waiting room because I was super early and he still had another patient in there. And, for some stupid reason, I didn't bring a book, so I looked around to see if there were any good magazines.

And I found something. It was a good. An old, beat up paperback. It's called The Ninth Hour of Night. It's a thriller of some sorts and, well, I was hooked by the first page. It's about this detective named Johnny Rien who is investing this cult called the Ninth Hour. Very noirish.

And...I took it. I stole it. I know, I know, but I couldn't finish it before my session and I have to finish it. You are probably thinking: just buy it from Amazon. Well, after I took the book back home, I remembered I could do that and resolved to return the book next time I was there.

Except I couldn't find the book on Amazon. Or at Barnes and Noble. Or anywhere on the internet.

Isn't that weird? I mean, nowadays, it's almost impossible to have a book that's not recorded somewhere on the internet. On eBay or Goodreads or whatever. But I can't find it.

So I resolved that as soon as I finished reading it, I will return it. I mean, it's not like he will miss it, right?

See you later,
Lonny

The Good That Won't Come Out

Okay, so, I have a confession to make: I wasn't a very good son. I know it, I just have to admit it to other people. I didn't call my mom, she always called me. I don't know why. I think I lived alone with her so long that I just...got sick of it. I got sick of her.

That sounds horrible and it is. I wasn't a good son. I left home as soon as I could.

But I didn't want her to die. I just wanted to be somewhere else. Is that wrong? Is that bad? Isn't that what I was supposed to do? Aren't kids supposed to move away and grow up and become adults?

I don't feel like an adult. I never have. At first, I justified that by saying it was because I was in college and I was still going to classes and living in a dorm. But then I graduated college and I moved to a different city and have a job and I wear ties and cook my own dinners and I still don't feel like an adult. I don't feel grown up.

I feel like I'm pretending. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm just a kid trying to be grown up and failing miserably

I don't know what to think. I have a session with my therapist again today; perhaps he will.

See you later,
Lonny

Capturing Moods

What I never realized about death is that there is so much stuff that comes after it. I thought I would just have to bury her and that was it. But no: there is so much more.

First of all, there is her house. My house. The house I grew up in. I have to sell it. I mean, I can't afford the mortgage and I have a job in a completely different city, so I have to sell it, right? Even though it's the house that I made most of my memories in. Even though it's the house my mom spent most of her life paying for.

And then there is all the other stuff. Her clothes, her books. Do I keep them? I don't have any use for her clothes. I could sell them all in a garage sale. But her books, I will keep them. I use to love going into her library and running my fingers across the spines of all of those books, the hard covers and dust jackets, the paperbacks with broken spines. I will keep them. Even if I never read them, I have to keep them, right?

And then there's her savings. Here's where things get kind of weird: she already spent a big chunk before she died. She bought a coffin and a spot at a cemetary.

I know, right? She bought her own coffin. Did she know she was going to die? I mean, was the accident actually suicide?

...do I want to know if it was? I mean, I've had suicidal thoughts before. I told my therapist this and all he's concerned about now is if my mom's death is making me more suicidal. But having suicidal thoughts isn't the same as being suicidal, is it? Doesn't everyone have suicidal thoughts sometimes? Like, when you are walking across an overpass, don't you ever think about jumping off?

Anyway, I wouldn't kill myself. I stand by Dorothy Parker's advice:

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp;

Guns aren't lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

See you later,

Lonny

Hail to Whatever You Found in the Sunlight That Surrounds You

My name is Lonny. My mom said that she named me after Lon Chaney Jr., the Man with a Thousand Faces. We used to watch his movies together -- she bought one of those big cheap DVD collections that had a bunch of horror movies in it and we would sit on the couch and watch The Wolfman and The Mummy and Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

I hadn't seen her that much before she died. I had moved away for college and then I found a job in a different city and I just never got around to returning. I called her sometimes and she called me sometimes and we would talk, but it's not the same as actually being there.

The last time I saw her was Christmas. I stayed at home for a day and we had a nice time, though I think something was bothering her. She was distracted by something. I don't know what it was, but I'm sorry I never asked her about it. I never asked her if she was okay.

And then she died. The police called me at work. I don't usually answer my cell phone when I'm working, but this time I did for some reason. Maybe I just knew it was something bad.

It was a police officer. They told me that my mother had been in some sort of accident. I still don't know much about it. I don't know how she died. They never told me and I never asked.

Why didn't I ask? Why didn't I want to know?

Sometimes I remember those times we watched The Wolf Man and I remember that rhyme Lon Chaney is told about:

Even a man who is pure in heart

and says his prayers by night

may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

and the autumn moon is bright.

See you later,
Lonny

The Execution of All Things

I've been listening to a lot of Rilo Kiley, specifically the songs from their album The Execution of All Things. The whole album is about broken things: people, memories, lives, marriages, families.

There is one song. "A Better Son/Daughter." I can't stop listening to it. I told my therapist about it. He says that it's a symptom of my grief over my mother's death. She died a few months ago. He says I still haven't processed it. He recommended that I start a journal and put all my feelings and stuff in it.

But I am nothing if not a narcissist, so if I'm going to share my feelings and whatever, I want to show it to other people. Hence: a blog.

The title of this blog comes from one of my favorite poems, Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden. I'm sure my therapist would have something to say about that, too. Anyway, this is how it goes:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public

doves, 

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

See you later,

Lonny.