Stay tuned....or be warned. Either way, enjoy:)
Introduction to “The Marrow”
By ALEX PARDEE
September 16, 2009
I seem to live in my own little world most of the time, which means I'm somewhat oblivious to a lot of current affairs, including, unfortunately, those amber alerts and "missing" posters that plaster telephone poles and the bulletin boards of Wal-Marts. However, a few months ago, one of those posters did happen to catch my eye because it was, well, different. The poster was decorated in your standard "missing" flare with some basic info and a (who knows how recent) photo of the person in question. But the photo was of an older, grizzled man. The information stated that, not only was he was in his late 50's, but that he was a former police officer turned private detective.
A scary thought. The super hero who's supposed to SOLVE the cases of kidnappings could possibly BE kidnapped? I found the irony somewhat unsettling, so I looked him up when I got home.
"William Dekker -
Cardboard City Private Detective Agency"
Turned out that William Dekker, according to numerous sources, was a supposed crack-pot conspiracy theorist who was hell-bent on uncovering a super secret society of mutants that lived under the surface of the Earth. I guess, because of his unprofessional advances, scattered propaganda and neglected hygiene, no one believed him. Or, perhaps no one SHOULD have believed him. I mean, these paranoid types are a dime a dozen nowadays. In fact, at the time of his disappearance, he seemed to have cut himself off from all family and friends.
To make a long story short, something sparked my interest in Detective Dekker, but I wasn't interested as much in how he had gone missing or what his current state was as much as I was interested in some of the things he had written about. Dekker had traveled throughout the country and, on multiple occasions, gathered information and clues pointing to hidden communities living underneath the major metropolises of the United States. And not just small kingdoms of homeless people either. He stated that these communes were intensely developed, imaginative worlds with fully constructed houses, buildings, vehicles and animals. But what was even stranger about his "discoveries" was that the inhabitants of these underworlds were...well, as he referred to them early on...monstrous.
The small amount of information that I found on William Dekker, whether it was bullshit or not, fueled my imagination and I became obsessed. In a certain way, I guess I donned my own private investigator persona and began to dig. There was nothing much on the Internet, so I had to resort to the old school ways of libraries, archives and word of mouth. I contacted lost family members, found some old financial records, and I rummaged through his old properties as well as his most recent apartment.
Which is where I found his journals.
In no discernible order, this small stack of books contained hundreds of observations, deductions, child-like sketches and scribbles documenting the inhabitants of these "worlds" that he was convinced existed. Not many of the entries were dated, so putting them in order is near impossible. However, eerily enough, there did seem to be a final entry in one of the journals, which was dated 3 months ago today. That entry simply read:
"I have found it, I have found it. I was INSIDE. It was beautiful. You can laugh all you want, but I knew it. I think they might have seen me. I hope they didn't, but it doesn't really matter anymore. I finally did it. Goodni----"
The entry was cut off.
I took it upon myself to gather up some of the evidence that he had collected, as well as his journals, and do my best to abridge his ramblings and use his clues, descriptions, and stories to create portraits of some of these fantastic inhabitants of the alternate world that William Dekker referred to as "THE MARROW".
This upcoming art exhibit contains excerpts from Dekker's journals, alongside some of MY interpretations of his visions and discoveries. You can write off Dekker as a head-case and discredit his ranting as much as you'd like, but take into consideration one of my favorite quotes from the missing detective:
"Whether you believe in them or not, these places are REAL."
