The Chronicler

You will think me mad - but everything I tell you now is true, or as true as any one man can understand a thing so strange to be. I have gone over this many times, have racked my thoughts for any idle reasoning I can divine. There is none. What I am about to tell you simply is, despite my best efforts.

I have a library, which I adore. It has long been my place of haven, a refuge from the terminally ill world around me. In its embrace I have read many titles, their spines bearing no authors’ names, and have inhabited lives too close for easy breathing.

Through my books I have come to understand more about this world than I ever thought possible. This library is a shell around me, with its ornately carved dark teak wood, a mismatch of books crowding its enclosure, and the rich smell of old paper and knowledge.

But I cannot enter it now. It has been barred from me, occupied by an incessant chronicler. No, I am not mad! It is there! Day and night and day again and whenever I attempt to open the old door with its creaky hinge I hear the faint paper rustle of breathing and I know it is awaiting me, but for what purpose? What does it want from me?

I attempted once to know its face. To see the thing tormenting my days and prohibiting my indulgence. I creaked the door ajar and gently tucked my head into the room.

There it was.

It was a small thing, to be sure. Wrinkly and wizened, with no shape I could easily discern. Was that a pair of bifocals on its face, or simply the face itself? I could not tell. It raised what I took to be its head when it heard my clumsy movement, in fact shot up in a manner both frighteningly quick yet measuredly slow, its gaze holding mine the entire time. I could not understand how such a thing was possible. It lumbered toward me yet came on like a shot from a musket! Its hand - or what appeared to be so - was stretched out, spindly, inky fingers grasping for me. Its other hand languid at its side, with what appeared to be a book in its grip.

I could see in the corner the very titles I wished to peruse, volumes marked with my twenty-fourth year, and my very favourite one concerning my sixteenth, the summer of my first love, so sweet and new the feeling. But the gap closed quickly and a gasp tightened my throat and I fell backwards screaming and pulled the door towards me with a mad grip. What foolishness, this! What menace to force such a childish reaction from a man so aged as I! This thing cannot be allowed free rein over my life and my reflections.

I cannot say whether hours, days, or weeks have passed since that wretched moment. The greyness I glimpse through my windows hardly yields to any season. But my life has starkly changed in the aftermath: without my books I find myself at the end of a thread, drifting into silent nothingness. What purpose have I now without my tomes to reflect upon? How do I measure the distance of my life in any meaningful way? Truly I have lost the sense of myself without the words I have relied upon. I find I now potter around the house in a deathly fashion, responding to my mother’s inquests only in the most general of ways.

When night comes I hear it through the walls. Scratching its solemn beat, steady and unwavering. I hear it still. It never leaves, scratching relentlessly. I lie in bed, eyes red with wakefulness, and wonder to myself what it is doing in there. What preoccupation keeps it scribbling through the night? Or is it scribbling I hear? Could the dry rustle I take for rumination be mastication? Is it in fact chewing on my words, the pages of my life?

If so, what devilish work! Eating the very fact of me! I feel the rampant indignity of one who has endured so unfair an event, one I have done nothing to bring about. It is cruelty!

And what evidence to show for my theory? Why, myself of course! The very fabric of my being unravels on my face: the grey hair now curling at my temple as I stare into my mirror, a warning of the fate to come. My knee, aching now as I climb the stairs two at a time. The dry papery cough lingering in my throat, another unwelcome tenant who refuses to depart.

All of these point to a single truth: that thing is eating my life. I am exposed to the fact of time in a way I could not have imagined before its presence.

Yes, yes, it must be so. These days, these hours are fleeting somehow and I am bearing the result of it on my soul! It must be stopped!

And in this truth I find my heart beats kinder in my chest. The air now comes easily to my lungs and I can feel the restfulness wash over me. Yes, it must be stopped. Of course.

I shall stop it, at all costs if necessary. For what else would a reasonable man do when confronted with such wanton disregard for his well-being?

But how to take action against the blotted beast? A physical contest would do no good, I have seen the speed with which it moves. It would overwhelm me before I had chance to consider it. A war of attrition could yield nothing either, since its sustenance appears only to be the paper I have given my life to. No, no such attacks on its person would suffice. Ah, but the room itself. I could make the room its prison, a trap it could not release itself from. Were I to cause calamity within that room, it would have no recourse.

But how? What mischief would serve? Among the many pages, the desk, the chair, the heavy oil lamps, their paraffin scent encasing the room, giving the perfect ambience, how to use any of these?

Oh. Oh! But the lamps, of course! The lamps themselves could do untold damage were the flame inside to spill out. What then could the dratted thing do to save its life?

But my books…my life. The many volumes I have pored over these last years.

No. No, they are forfeit now anyway. It is eating them alive. Rather they perish by my hand, in the flames of revenge, than destroyed by ravenous greed. If I must lose my life, then I shall do so with my own agency, and tear away any power that thing yet has over me!

And so I began the delicate task. You would have admired the care I took.

First I brought a lamp from my rooms and cleaned the chimney, using an old cloth to clear away any soot which remained from its previous use; next I unscrewed the filler, poured the paraffin into it just shy of the brim, and here the sharp oily tang invaded my nostrils and I felt a ghostly thrill; then I secured the filler tightly back in place; the wick I soaked in oil, the better to burn, but not before I wound it slightly, snipping the charred crust and rounding the corners. I watched the sun descend low behind the skyline as I did so: the time was near; finally I held a match to the wick and watched as it burned low and blue, then replaced the chimney, turning the knob slowly as the flame built taller and taller, its faint blue glow giving way to a bright yellow burst, and the chimney itself grew warmer with the heat.

As darkness descended, enshrouding me in shadow, I allowed my chest to rise and fall in measured beats, closed my eyes and listened to my breath, and felt myself let go of the fear of what I was about to do.

The house was gravely quiet, stillness itself. I rose from my chair and carried the lamp by my side, a faint tremor in my hands. I could feel my pulse beating through my fingers.

I swept the corridors until I reached the library and stared once more at the cumbersome door. I could hear it scribbling inside, taunting me with its scratchy incisions.

The bastard.

Well, no more.

The moment had arrived.

I opened the door slowly, inch by painful inch. The hinge creaked its weary objection. It threatened to rise in pitch, and so I slowed my entry. I held my breath, fearing even the softest noise might betray me, and shielded the light from the lamp lest the blasted thing notice the glow.

Only the thinnest beam emanated from it now.

As I entered the room the beam alighted upon the thing, hunched over at my desk. Its desk now. Motes of dust settled around it, seemed to become it, even. As though it were absorbing the very room itself. It was not asleep. Rather, it was feeding. Its spindly fingers were moving across pages, scratching louder and louder. It grunted on occasion, its eyes focused intently upon the parchment, darting left to right.

The light, when cast upon it, gave off a glint of something from its face and I saw it wince as its fingers - grasping an implement of some kind - worked the page as a beast devours a carcass.

The scratching stopped instantly.

It did not move. I saw the round fleshy protuberance from its head twitch and its jaw tighten.

I flung the door wide.

I launched myself into the room with an assertiveness I did not feel, lamp held high above my head, a lightning bolt bound to scorch the earth and remove any trace of either of us from its surface.

It stared at me, cautious, reproachful even.

It did not attack, nor cower from my vengeance. Instead it rose from the desk with that strange confluence of speed and measured control…and held out a book toward me.

Its other hand was open and empty, gesturing me further into the room.

I stopped for a moment, considering its request.

Funny, it seemed no evil thing at all once I stood in front of it. It was softer than I had taken it for at first, with a warmth in its eyes I had missed in my manic resolve.

Entranced by this gentle golem before me, I set the lamp down gently upon the floor, releasing the handle and feeling the weight lift off my arm. The flame inside steadied, seemed to flicker and dim slightly.

I took the book from its slender hand and cracked open its spine.

And dived into my youth.

How bright my soul was then! How little the dark edges of the world touched me. I was a being of pure light.

We were all together then, my family. It would be one of the last times. And around me I felt the vibrant fullness of joy. The smell of turkey and the crackling of freshly roasted potatoes. My uncle wheezing in laughter as my father - but gods he seemed a young man then - toasted to our health. My mother stared at him with a fervour that would fade over the years.

I gently turned each page and devoured my past, sat contented in the arms of my family and their love. How each moment was vibrant with detail. I was present and could soak it all into me like a sponge; my wonderful family, together again - on this page they would never age nor fade. I could hear them laugh forever.

It was all here, waiting for me.

I hadn’t lost it at all.

I saw its words written on the page, in handwriting to match my own. It knew me. It had been standing guard over my life, adding to the vast library of my memories as it did so.

It kept them.

All of them.

I turn quickly to the new tomes, the ones whose contents I desperately want to consume. In these pages lie the answers I have been searching for. They will tell me of loss, they will let me prepare.

I grab one off the shelf and attempt to crack open its spine, but it does not yield to my force. I grip harder, pull my arms wide and feel the strain across my chest as my heart beats faster and my breath quickens to match its rate.

I feel a weight on my shoulder and turn my head to see its hand resting there, that solemn look on its face. It beckons me and begins to lumber down the shelves.

Its finger traces the books of my life, the volumes written on their spines: Nine, Sixteen, Twenty-Four, Thirty…until finally it reaches the place where Thirty-Nine is and pulls it from the shelf. I see, with my own eyes, the pages are filling in front of me. Words inking silently across a pure white canvas.

Ahead on the shelves are more books I have yet to read. Forty, Fifty-Five, Sixty. Far more ahead of me than behind. They stretch on into the dark corner of the library, a place I have avoided for so long.

I glance back at the book in its hand, at the words slowly filling each page. There are still many pages to go.

It holds the book out to me, open faced, and I sigh as I notice it: the ink is still wet.

Without a word he moves back over to the desk with Thirty-Nine in his hands, and picks up the implement he had held, which I now see for what it is: a pen, old and worn, its nib dark with ink.

The scratching begins again, taking up where the silent words left off. The sound which has tormented me now feels strangely like a peaceable companion.

I pick up the lamp with which I had intended to burn my life to ashes and place it on the desk, the better for him to see the work being done.

Together we sit in silence as he continues his recording of my life.

You may think me foolish, but I feel at ease among the tomes, with him sitting beside me.

Listening to the faint scratch, scratch, scratch.