The Reality Conspiracy (71 page)

I
hope you understand. If you don't now, you soon will.
 
It's like the videocassette in
The Ring
: once seen, it can never be
unseen
. Once read,
DEUS-X
cannot be
unread
.

As I told you, Joe has never written a ghost novel. But
DEUS-X
is a novel of haunts, and horrors, of seeing that which one wishes one had not seen; and of thus
being seen
. It is a tale of experiencing that which one wishes one had not experienced; of enduring that which one wishes one never had endured; and it is a haunted novel—cursed, as Joe himself puts it.

And now, the haunt embraces and includes
you
.

So, like I said, you don't even have to
do
anything any longer. The "haunt," if you will, has already begun.

It began when Joe conceived of
DEUS-X
. It began to spread in 1994, when
DEUS-X
was first published. It spread further, again, when it was reprinted in 2002. It spread further the second you bought this e-book. I began by telling you I had a stake in this book—now you do, too. We all have a stake in this book, whether we know it or not.

It's already happening, with or without you seeing it, with or without you knowing it—with or without you, period.

Since it no longer matters whether you're in "a good place" or "a bad place," so go ahead—get yourself situated in a good place. You might as well begin reading in a comfort zone, even if you are already tainted, for no rational reason. You're tainted whether you've done anything or do anything, or not.

What begins with apparently unrelated, localized events spread over a wider geography than any prior Citro novel proves to be—

Well, now you know.

This, you see, is the "realer than real" curse of
DEUS-X
:

X no longer marks the spot.

There is no "spot."

There is only X—

—and here it is.

Stephen R. Bissette, Mountains of Madness, VT

February 2012