The Holder of the Blue

In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask to visit someone who calls himself "The Holder of the Blue". The worker will take a step back and rustle through a drawer. Should they take their eyes off you, or you off them, run. They will alert the Holder, and the fate of all those in the room will be sealed. Should they hand you an old notebook, take it, turn, and look for a chair. It will be blue, and marked "Fresh Paint". The seat is dry. Sit in it and open the book. Look carefully. It will be filled with gibberish and pointless drivel. Look for writing on a page in an ink that matches the chair. This will tell you vital words, but they change each time this Holder is called upon.

Return the notebook to the clerk. They will wave you to a blue door with a paper sign on it. Lift that paper to reveal an arcane mark. Touch that mark with your hand and say the first vital word. Do not move your hand, even when nice covers it. Move your hand only when the door swings away. Blue halogen lights drown this hallway in light. There will be five doors ahead of you; two on each side and one at the end. Go to each of the doors, first on the left, then the right, then the end. Say the second vital word at each door. If you think about it, this word will tell you which door is the right one.

Each door carries with it different trials. We Who Write have yet to test each door. Know this, regardless of what horrors await you, the third vital word will keep your mind from bleeding into madness. Meditate on it well. At the end, you will find a pedestal with a book and pen. It will detail your every step from the moment you realized the Objects were real. Read through this book to the end. At the first blank space, take up the pen and write the fourth vital word. That word will vanish into a plume of smoke. The smoke will coalesce into an imp with a face made from faces of all those you hate.

Ask the imp, "What happens to those who fail to seek them?" It will tell you every horrid detail, down to every splintered toenail and every burned-out eye socket. When it finishes its tail, it will be gone. The pedestal will slide away, revealing a small mask with hair, almost as if it was to be fitted over a doll's face. Take this up, and if you so choose, take up the book as well. Just into the hole the mask was kept in. You will fall into a shower room in the place you call home.

This mask is Object 107 of 2538. The Mask of the Blue Path. Its face always looks forward to when they are reunited.

The book is the first Object of We Who Write, the Journal of the Writer. Hold it tight, for you may yet join us.