[note: this text is compiled from charred fragments of the extraordinary diary of an english expatriate gentleman, monsieur roger choltham, who perished from the earth, along with his house and possessions, in 1749. his residence in the countryside near avignon caught flame in the middle of the night on july 31st and burned nearly to the ground. because of the distance at which mssr. choltham lived from the nearest villages, the tragedy was not noticed until the following day, as is chronicled in sorgues’ town log. all the people from these villages wondered at the event, just as they had always wondered what the englishman’s business was in france. none, however, felt the need to mourn choltham’s passing, for he had been somewhat of a recluse, living without matron or maid or heir in his house, which could better have been called a mansion. and besides, his french was not so good. a cursory search was made of the debris before the property was cleared and auctioned to one mssr. desruisseaux, who had always thought it a shame choltham had let the fields about his house lay fallow. choltham’s body was never found, but this is the nature of fires. as for the diary, it was burned in a very curious fashion, such that all entries before what appears to be the last, july 25th, disintegrated upon touch, but july 25th itself was preserved with little damage. it is presented here, reconstructed where necessary by myself and my colleagues at oxford. – N. Rochinauld, ed.]
july 25th, 1749
that thing which i have feared above all else happened yestereve, and the events of today confirm it beyond no doubt. i am the last of our order. my order, i should say now. i had known we were few, declining in the world, but so few? i suppose the curse has accelerated and, one-by-one, fallen on my brethren in england and india, and i despair that our great libraries at bombay and cambridge will fall out of existence. so much wisdom and learning, covered in dust for too long, is now to become it.
but that is the course we chose when we closed the doors to our order and sued the gods for immortality, hoping to preserve things as they were forever. why in all our wisdom could we not see that immortality is always at someone’s expense? why didn’t we anticipate a counter-suit? and the particular gods who had granted us immortality so swfitly were all too happy, in their damnable treachery wherein they derive their twisted joy, to grant the prosecutors’ request just as swiftly. so we were cursed. marked.
not all of us were, immediately. in fact, i didn’t believe in the curse until i heard about the Passing of professor ransfeld, and then later made sure of it with my own eyes; professorship had assuredly Passed to my colleague darmon, who transformed in front of me as proof. this was a curiosity! we had thought there would be no more Passings after we became immortal, but the gods had found a loophole in the pact: we never specified that we wished to live forever in our world. among gentlemen, and respectable gods, this would have been taken as given, but is clear that the gods we dealt with were barbarians and connivers.
and so, because these demons, as they should more properly be called, stole life from innocents (against our knowledge and will) and gave it to us, and because the innocents objected (as one would expect), the demons cursed our order, so that the current professor would eventually leave this world and be forced to live out his immortality in another (and knowing now how cunning are the gods, i would not wager that this other world is a kind one). since the binds of the rite of the Passing are restricted to this world only, it has returned, even though ransfeld never actually died.
we were somewhat relieved that the curse only affected the current professor, but that is the trouble with immortality: because of the curse, we would all eventually be professors, and be forced to suffer that the curse depart us from this world. and so it happened to me last night. it happened to me, the lowest in our order and therefore the last to be Passed the professorship and the last to remain yet on the earth.
i proved my professorship to myself by becoming an owl and flying to sorgues and then the six miles to avignon and back. it was exhilirating, but already the curse is doing its work. i feel that my professorship will be the shortest in the history of the order, and now i understand why ransfeld and darmon and the rest went crazy before they left; they could see glimpses of the world to which they were going.
when i laid myself down to sleep last night and closed my eyes, i had my first vision of it, and it burned my eyes. i saw that i was in a wide expanse, and there were people around me. a red mist swirled about us, choking me and causing tears to stream down my face, and so for a long while i could not discern what these others were doing. i learned, after clearing my eyes, that they were tilling the earth with some kind of glowing implement, which i took to be molten metal that somehow retained a solid shape. the pain involved in holding the tool was obvious, and it seemed that the red mist actually emanated from the subdued groans of the people and from there made a link with the others around them, so that if i looked carefully i could discern that the mist formed a moving grid, with heavier and lighter patches, that connected everyone together.
the folk themselves were dressed in heavy black cloth, robed and cowled so that i could see nothing of them save the pain. they did not notice me, and in fact i did not feel as if i were physically in that place, or i would surely have been burned by the dead, steaming sludge that passed for earth. i never learned why the people were working the hellish field, as there was nothing growing, nor do i think there could ever be anything good grown there.
just after i had been able to notice this, i shuddered with the most potent feeling of shame i have ever experienced. i saw that i was not completely disconnected from the world i was spying on, for all the slaves, as they obviously were, stopped their meaningless toil and shuddered as well. they seemed to draw into themselves, as if experiencing the same shame i had felt. and then i saw the source of this emotion, which, upon reflection while writing this diary entry, must have been one of the minions of the very gods we had made a pact with.
at that point, however, i was altogether consumed by the shame-producing object that was approaching. it is hard to describe it though it seared my soul: it was not a shameful thing, but instead much more like shame as a thing. it had no particular shape as it floated among us, but flickered from form to form, conveying failure and indecency (one of its favourite forms was unmistakably a phallus). wherever the thing went (and as i looked about i noticed that there were more than one of these unholy spirits drifting through the vast fields of black-robed sufferers), the red mist which tied the slaves to each other and to their harmful labor grew stronger and more defined.
the people, though it was obvious they knew the floating devils were there, took no notice of them, but instead turned their faces as if to hide them deeper in their black hoods, endlessly churning the burning soil and endlessly churning out more ethereal chain via their pains.
i realized, since i was only seeing a vision and not yet a vassal in the fiery fief myself, and since my mind hadn’t been continually ravaged by pain and shame like those of the slaves (my great tutors ransfeld and darmon were among them, as i eventually caught their faces, grimacing and unawares of my presence), that these shifting, floating demons were the police, the very right hand of the god who was king of this hell.
then i opened my eyes, and i knew that no time had passed at all since i’d closed them. the vision was gone, but small flames started to lick at the edges of my sight. they are doing so even now, and i know that it will not be long before the bindings call me to that world permanently.
i do not know if my predecessors were granted the same extensive vision of their future home as i was. and i do not know if my mind will be altered so much when i arrive there that i will slavishly allow my own shame to provide ever-stronger bonds to useless existence. but maybe as the last of my order to pay the price for our dealing with devils in laws and magics in which we thought ourselves wise, i could be the first to throw off the burden of shame and strike back against the evil gods. what we need is a rebellion, right now, and i intend to lead it.
but presently i must order things here for my departure. i will speak a command that all record of the order’s activities, purposes, and existence be destroyed on my Passing (for such is the right of professor), except that this journal entry be left unspoiled. for what i have seen with my eyes closed is too horrible to be ignored, and if by reading this some might come to be aware of our order, against the regulations that have been in place since the beginning, it is but a small thing compared to the good it might do to warn the world against making agreements with treacherous spirits, and what curses can be avoided thereby.
resolved,
roger s. choltham
