Recollections: The Map That Found Me
By Walter Winkwink
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From time to time, I find myself revisiting moments I can’t quite explain. Events that don’t fit neatly into the fabric of reality as we know it. The kind of stories that, when spoken aloud, earn you skeptical glances and polite nods before someone changes the subject.
But some stories refuse to stay buried. Some memories resurface, uninvited, tugging at the edges of reason.
This is one of them.
There are maps, and then there are maps.
The first kind simply show you where to go. They’re useful, practical, and predictably dull. The second kind, the ones that whisper secrets, bend reality, and never quite let go of you, are the ones that change lives, reshape destinies, and, if you’re lucky, leave you with a halfway decent story to tell.
This is the story of one of those maps.
It happened in a city that doesn’t exist on any official record, inside a bookshop that had no name, run by a man who had no past. I was merely a youngster, and had been wandering for weeks, following a rumor about a collection of lost manuscripts, when I stumbled into a dimly lit shop tucked between two buildings that seemed to be leaning in on it, like they were trying to crush it out of existence.
The elderly man behind the counter had the kind of face you’d swear you’d seen before but couldn’t place. He watched me with quiet amusement, as if he knew I had already taken the bait before I even knew there was a hook.
“You’re looking for something,” he said, his voice coated in dust, like he hadn’t used it in years.
“Aren’t we all?” I replied, eyeing the bookshelves stacked with tomes that looked like they might crumble if I exhaled too hard.
He grinned, reached under the counter, and pulled out a parchment so old it looked like it might predate time itself. It was a map, hand-drawn, edges distinctly worn, markings that made no immediate sense. He slid it toward me as if it weighed more than it should.
“You’re the only one who can follow it,” he said.
That’s when I made my first mistake. I picked it up.
The first thing I noticed was that the map wasn’t written in any language I recognized, and I’ve seen my fair share of questionable dialects. There were symbols, crude landmarks, and a path that seemed to curve in ways that defied traditional cartography.
The second thing I noticed was that the ink moved. Not like it was alive, but like it wasn’t entirely settled on where it wanted to be.
I looked up to ask the man a question, but he was gone. Vanished. The shop was empty. The door behind me, locked. And outside, where there should have been a street, there was nothing but a blank void, as if the universe itself had momentarily forgotten to load the background. A glitch?
Then, just as suddenly, everything snapped back into place. The shop was normal again. The door was open. The street outside, bustling. The only proof that anything had happened was the map still clutched in my hand.
I should have left it there.
I should have thrown it into the nearest fire.
Instead, I folded it neatly and tucked it into my pocket.
Following the map wasn’t easy. For one, it didn’t correspond to any known geography. The terrain it depicted was impossible. Rivers curved and flowed the wrong way. Mountains rose in places that should have been flat. After translating the unusual markings, the landmarks were vague; “The Tree That Watches,” “The Whispering Stones,” “The Place Where the Sky Bends.”
And yet, the deeper I studied it, the more I understood it. Not in the way you learn a language, but in the way you remember something you shouldn’t.
And that’s when the trouble started.
Every attempt to leave the city was met with…resistance. Flights were mysteriously canceled. My hotel room was ransacked, though nothing was taken. Just rearranged, as if someone was looking for something. At one point, I was nearly run over by a fruit cart, pushed down a hill by a man whose face I never saw.
Something, or someone, didn’t want me following that map.
Naturally, I followed it anyway.
Months passed. I navigated jungles that weren’t on any official map. Hired guides who mysteriously disappeared overnight, their tents left perfectly intact, their footprints ending abruptly as if they had been plucked from existence.
The deeper I went, the stranger things became. Animals that didn’t behave like animals. An entire village that spoke in riddles, refusing to answer any direct questions about the land beyond their borders.
And then there were the eyes.
I first noticed them at dusk. Shapes in the trees, watching. Not predators. Not men. Something else. Every time I turned to look, they vanished. But I could feel them.
It wasn’t fear I felt. Not exactly. It was something more…expectant. Like they were waiting for me to figure something out.
And that’s when I saw it.
The map had changed.
The path I had been following was gone, replaced with a single phrase scrawled in a language I had never learned but somehow understood:
“You were never meant to come alone.”
A gust of wind ripped the map from my hands, and before I could grab it, it was gone, disintegrated into the air like it had never existed.
I had reached my destination, but I had no idea what I had reached.
A clearing. Silent. Unnaturally so. The trees swayed, but there was no wind. The sky seemed…wrong. And then, just as I felt I was on the edge of understanding something monumental…something world-changing…
A voice behind me.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
And then…
Nothing.
I woke up three days later in a hotel room I didn’t remember checking into. The map was gone. No record of my trip existed. The city I had departed from had no recollection of me ever being there. The shop, the man, the journey, all erased.
Except for one thing.
A single, small marking on my palm. A symbol from the map. One I couldn’t read then. One I still don’t fully understand.
But I know this…
That map wasn’t leading me to a place.
It was leading me to them.
And I wasn’t supposed to find them yet.
Not alone.
I never saw that map again, but I saw others. Fragments of the same puzzle, appearing in places they had no right to be. In old books. On the backs of paintings. Once, in the stitching of a tailor’s work in a country I won’t name.
Each one led me closer. Each one more dangerous to follow.
And eventually, years later…
I found them.
But that’s a story for another time.
For now, all you need to know is this: If someone ever hands you a map they shouldn’t have…if the ink moves…if the air around it shifts ever so slightly…
Put it down.
Because some maps don’t just show you the way.
There are things I’ve yet to say. Things I’m still piecing together. Because some journeys don’t end just because you think they should. Some maps never stop unfolding.
And if you think this is where the story ends…
You haven’t been paying attention.
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