I sensed the presence of something else. The inside room of the Pit was a very strange room. With only one window - opening to the inside of our flat, and no view of the outside - it possessed a mood of staleness and abandonment. Mould was still creeping up the walls, a problem which had driven Tommy to live in the lounge instead of this cramped box; a problem the landlord still hadn’t resolved. It was a miserable prism. And now, the floor was a chaos of feathers. My amazement at just how many feathers are stuffed into a pillow was quickly squashed under the eerie sense that there was someone else in the room. I shivered. The Pit itself had grown a lot darker. Haunted, I was sure of it. Things had become strange and eery outside the feather room even; unsettling. I didn’t like to think what had happened in this flat before our coming, or what was at the bottom of the gaping hole to nothing that was caged just outside our front door. Whatever it was, it had stolen itself into our
After a night of no sleep, I emerged from of the damp depths of the Pit. Dunedin was in its quietest hour of the night. And yet, it was calling me out before the peeping dawn. For what? I wondered, slinking down into the lamp-lit street, slipping from shadow to shadow to the Octagon. The centre of Dunedin. The mystery I hadn’t yet cracked. For an answer, perhaps? I was seeking an answer to the problems I had created for myself - the downward-spiral that was my finances and creative endeavours. And I trusted in Dunedin. I trusted in its magic tricks and mysteries. I believed I would find my answer here, hidden in the city I held dear. The statue at the Otagon’s crown held my attention. I always noticed this man sitting there, nonchalant in the centre of town. And yet I had never stopped to wonder who he was or how he ended up there, immortalised in Dunedin’s most curious place. A seagull landed on his head and squatted there, looking oddly suspicious. It cocked its head. Why i