Oubliette

I sit in the white tower which commands the northern end of the gardens, and which has contained my whole existence for as long as I can remember. The sun’s warmth does not reach here, it remains cold all year round, and a thin layer of snow is gently falling upon the hard ground where it will lay unchanged for most of the year. I think I probably once wandered between those desolate oaks I see out there, climbed among the strange stones nearby, and circled around the black, noiseless ponds. But I only remember watching through the window. Nor do I recall venturing into the forest beyond the garden, but I imagine it is immeasurably deep and infinitely decaying.

The window is of the small lancet kind. Directly beneath is my modest desk. The walls are brownish, though I believe they were once white and have been tarnished by candles—a constant necessity in this dark corner. Hence, in my idle vanity I call it the white tower, but it is more correctly brown. The turret is reasonably snug and adjoins the larger donjon. Here, the turret exits into endless corridors which run around the tower’s innards like intestines, depositing into vestibules and intersections where stairs rise dubiously upwards to reach turrets offering the same dismal views as before. Somewhere, the chaotic genius of its architecture arrives at a vast atrium of staircases that spiral abysmally down to gloomy balconies and levels where the labyrinth continues. Besides the pale, feeble light afforded by occasional windows and slits punched into the tower’s thick walls, there is no light inside but a kind of visible darkness. Sometimes, as I wander these starless vaults, I hear echoes rebound in distant chambers and imagine someone else is here. I detect a faint glimmer beyond the periphery of my sight. It disappears and reappears. It floats and flies around the darkness with fanciful ease. A lantern, I at last decide, hovering weakly in the air. I observe, contemplating retreat before I charge onward. Only to find the miracle of mirrored glass shining back at me and the stranger trapped behind its patinaed veil.

Such a solitary existence may seem lonely, but the mind is its own place. And, happily, the tower’s myriad chambers contain an extensive library of books. I study these with great care and as if by magic, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men whose lives, like mine, now exist only on the page. I discover lost histories, bestiaries, and the secrets of alchemists and astrologers. I relive the great romances of Arthur and Roland. And admire, like smitten Palemone, the amaranth beauty of Emilia adorning the garden below. I hear her melodious voice rising from la dolce amor distretto like sweet woodbine to my adoring ears. Lieti fiore e felici, ben nate erbe! I declare through the barred window. I bask in the radiance of my love, vowing to escape the Jealous Castle and marry her in the sacred grove. Eventually, my intense passion hurls me towards the barricade and escape through the tunnels. All for nothing. As the way down eventually leads back to the turret and the window where Emilia has vanished, but Boccaccio’s scattered pages remain. Below, the snow’s sparse decoration has made the nursery appear bleaker and more barren. No one is out there, but Emilia’s shadow remains overlayed in my mind. I see her shape formed in trembling branches and sat amongst the melancholy stones—never disappearing, but neither coming to life. I return to the waiting books, who will speak to me once more.

There is one volume that remains silent to me. Insolently it sits there, the most plain-looking of all, refusing to give up its contents. I feel its black leather is soft, not entirely ignoble though not high quality. Its spine is broken. It is small and fits easily in my hands. There is no title or mark upon its cover and nothing inside. It is somewhat familiar, presumably, I have interrogated it before. The pages are blank but slightly spoiled. Curiously, the surface of its pages seems distressed by writing but there is no trace of ink. As I run my fingertips over the grooves I can feel sentences slowly forming. I recognize a few words. Some are Latin, other passages English, and in some places I detect an unknown cuneiform which permits, even to my ignorant fingers, cryptic and uncanny interpretation.

I left this book aside, after discovering these strange indentations, content to forget it. But, as time passed, the words I detected floated into my consciousness with enigmatic significance. The more I tried to dispel these thoughts the more forcefully they came, invading my mind with their unnatural sounding syllables and frightening suggestions. After days of torment, I decided to scour my memory to find the painful source. I tried to remember in which book I could have encountered the baleful language before. Then I searched the library for some misplaced grimoire or forgotten loose page capable of solving this riddle. I consulted volumes both evil and arcane—Le Grimoire de Margot de La Barre, The Cosmic Mountains of Mesopotamia, El Kitab al Azif, etc—yet none could illuminate the shadow cast by the little black book. Many times, I reached wings and collections I believed untouched, only to find them sacked by previous research and my hopes once more exhausted. Inevitably, I arrived back at my desk where the black volume still sat. I re-examined the indentations through a magnifying glass for some faintly inked title or author, but the text had disappeared entirely. I raised the pages over a candle to blacken remnants of invisible ink, but nothing was discovered. Then a thought occurred to me. It came to me and I felt like a child for all my trouble. An amazing thought, the most simple and easy thing of all! Whilst the ink had vanished, the writing remained ingrained on the page, allowing its contours to be retraced. It seemed consequently natural for I, custodian of the tower, to resurrect the contents of this singular quair. Thus, I shall begin—

Woe, for not long ago I discovered that all my efforts have been for nothing. I returned, having completed the restoration, to find every page blank and empty again. What curse is this to dissolve ink penned so forcefully into the fibres of the page? I chide myself, I—I surely dreamed the book’s account and all contained. Reverie or pure delusion made me imagine the meaning of its lost symbols; a vision in a dream, and nothing more. Still, as I sit before the empty page, the visions linger in my memory with unsettling clarity. I close my eyes and their impressions describe shadowy landscapes and obscure faces; intrigues and tragedies that I feel intimately, fatefully connected to.

I inked the pages again, but to no avail, it will not stay. It sits there, the accursed thing, unrepentant and winking at my misfortune. Imagine my pain to discover that all the books—my dear companions—have now been corrupted by it too. Every page, word, and letter now resembling in their twisted, unintelligible calligraphy the evil visage of the black book. Even as I view the garden I find no reprieve in its bare prospect, instead, my eyes are fixed inwardly on malevolent and perplexing ciphers. Every hour I am consumed by it, in turns mad with obsession and anguish. It eats away at my thoughts, like a malignant growth whose despised shape I cannot ignore. It squats on my brain, burrowing into tissues, squirming in the flesh—I must rid myself of it!

I ran through the passages to the atrium. There, upon the altar of a balcony, I heaved it above my head and flung it into the abyss. It fell, disappearing into darkness—it was gone. No relief came but raging grief instead. Mysterious, existential pain erupting from its dormancy to throw open a devouring chasm. Deep in this anguished delirium, I am sure I called a name I have never heard before, nor read in any book. Some lost, lachrymose-sounding word, full of plaintive vowels resounding like a forgotten prayer. It lingers in my memory, redolent and abstract like decaying perfume, vaguely recalling sensations of intimacy, of love.

Sleep came and I floated into pools of nothingness, unfeeling and unaware until a bell tolled across the void. I listened dimly to its sounds, contemplating its presence and for whom it ceaselessly tolled. It chimed vaguely for a while until its loudest peal struck and I awoke to hear it clangouring through the tower. I never heard a bell before nor knew one to exist in the tower, yet it rang with certain clarity: CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Somewhere, in the dark air above the atrium, carillons played a ponderous and melancholy tune, stricken with such immense and gloomy feeling as to make me both awestruck and unaccountably depressed. Then, at its penultimate ring, came a reply not from up, but down—from the pit below. A wild and clarion wail that sang in time with the bells and all re-echoed through the thousand tunnels like a colossal pipe organ. The melody relentlessly continued, each leaden note stirring turbulent drafts of air as the unseen instrument pumped, and its unnatural chorus rebounded. I knew the source of the chthonic ululations immediately, their strange shape resembled completely the symbols of the black book. I also knew, instinctually, that I must retrieve it. Suddenly, and with little thought, I stepped onto the balustrade and then into the falling air.

Far and freely, I fell. Past numerous balconies and appendant staircases, each dreamily flying by like one endless precipice. For leagues I continued, expecting the impending ground yet finding more limitless depths. The feeling was like night-flying over boundless, moonless countryside; the transitory balconies like flashing lights of towns, the unreachable walls—the tenebrous vaults of heaven. Down I flew, through erebusian realms swifter than angels to paradise. Then, miraculously, the bottom came, and I landed with little more than a thud.

The floor shifted fluidly around my body and I deduced that its mercurial substance, although hard and cold, was responsible for my safe landing. Its particles were flat and round. They were metal and, rubbing one between my fingers, I decided they were silver coins. I carefully probed in every direction for the book but found only the circular wall. I erected myself and, as I did so, heard the creak of a trapdoor beneath—an exit! The possibility of escape suddenly blossomed. I plunged my hands in to find an iron ring and with great energy tried to lift the door, but it was unrelenting. Next, I tried clearing the coins away, but this too was futile as they quickly poured back. All the while the door’s creaks tantalizingly continued.

Finally, kneeling in the silver pile, half possessed by desperation, half a kind of mystical clarity, I plucked a coin, raised its cold circumference to my lips, and swallowed. Its metallic skin stung my tongue and assaulted my dangling uvula. I induced it beyond the sensitive threshold and down the delicate shaft of the esophagus to lay undigested in my stomach. After one I ate another. My body violently convulsed and dark fluids effused from my wounded mouth, yet mechanically I continued. Twenty thousand silver dollars I deposited into my shuddering bowels until the door was finally clear. Each wretched one recompense for countless depravities—all the more reprehensible having been so completely forgotten.

Immobilized, my febrile hands reached for the trapdoor yet did not find the warm texture of wood, but cold stone. My sickly fingers explored the monolithic slab, tracing its impenetrable seams to discover the crisp incisions of text inscribed across its face. I carefully followed its austere runes and read aloud the syllables there proclaimed, which were followed by the immortal words: MEMENTO MORI.