I suppose that I should explain a little about the
circumstances surrounding my decision to begin this electronic archive prior to
actually uploading the first document, in order to explain the inevitable
fragmentations and errors in the text and save any future confusion as to the
source of the problem.
Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote the famous phrase “If you
gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you” – which has, of course,
been misappropriated the world over to give works of horror fiction the appearance
of sophistication. In reality, the phrase means nothing so crude as an actual
abyss staring into your soul. It is, rather, a warning to those who battle
against monsters to beware lest they become as foul and inhuman as that which
they struggle against.
It is a mark of the seriousness of my current situation that
I can think of no more-appropriate phrase, then, to illustrate the reasons
behind the fragmented state of the documents which I am shall present to
you. Herr Nietzsche, even though you
are long since dead and buried, please accept my humblest apologies for this
improper quoting of your philosophy.
You see, in my particular case, when I gazed into the abyss,
the abyss truly did gaze also into me. And what it saw, it resolved to destroy.
I have yet to determine how, precisely, it – or, more
accurately, they – became cognizant
of my attentions, but given how little that anyone truly understands about
these beings, perhaps this should not be very surprising. However it happened,
though, the result is the same: I am being hunted by forces against which
little to no defense is possible. Even the mortal foes I face are rather more
dangerous than an old man such as myself can hope to combat.
And so I am completely at the mercy of those stalking me. I
have not left the archives in several days. This section of the building has,
after all, been fortified and stocked with ample provisions in case any of
those whose files I store needed somewhere to hide. I even have a few weapons
with me, for all the good that they will absolutely fail to do. But, in all
honesty, this preparation is wholly futile, and I have absolutely no idea as to
why I have not been slain and my archives destroyed.
And yet none of those beings hunting me has made any move
towards harming me as of yet, despite undoubtedly having full knowledge of my
identity and whereabouts. I have no doubt that attempts on my life shall
eventually be made – indeed, they shall assuredly succeed – but, for now, I am
allowed to continue my work in peace.
Except, that is, for the interference of the one which I
have dubbed “Aqualung”. A fitting name for my most persistent foe, I think,
given my chosen nom de plume. Others refer to it as the Blind Man, the Howling
Dark, the Screaming Void, Reason’s Demise, or any number of other things, but
ever since I have laid eyes upon it, “Aqualung” has been the only name which I
could think of to bestow upon it. It wears the mask of an old man, bowed and
hobbled with age and ill health, dressed in tatters and stinking of decay and
filth. Its long, stringy, grease-encrusted hair obscures its face, but when one
looks past that lank curtain, its eyes and mouth are hollows, doorways to an
endless nothingness. They are not merely gaping black pits, as some have
described them. Nor are they hallways stretching away into an endless starry
expanse. They are nothingness itself, and nothingness cannot be described as
“blackness” or “emptiness”. That implies that there is something there which is
capable of bearing the descriptors. There is not.
It alone, out of all those hunting myself and the vast store
of knowledge in my care, has disrupted my work. It stalks the shelves,
appearing and disappearing according to some ineffable whim beyond my
comprehension, accompanied by the abyssal un-sound that is its only herald: the
vast, endless, silent wailing of utter nothingness.
Its hunger is limitless. In the end, it will claim
everything that I have safeguarded for all these years. In the end, it will claim me. For
now, it takes at random, eliminating some records completely and ravaging
others piecemeal, leaving only tatters behind. And, try as I might, I cannot
remember the contents of the destroyed records. Aqualung has claimed them, and
the information that they once contained has never existed. Were it not for the
empty, still-labeled files and the half-blank pages of those records which
it did not completely take, I would never have known that anything that it has claimed existed at all.
It is for this reason that I am transplanting my archives
from their former ink-and-paper bodies into this electronic one. The things
which I have studied for so long have finally come to take me for their own,
and Aqualung has begun to destroy that which I have worked so long to create.
Soon, all memory of these paper records shall vanish from the world. They will
not merely be destroyed. They shall never have existed.
I sometimes wonder, in what few idle moments I have, if the
same thing will happen to me, when it finally comes to claim the archivist
rather than contenting itself with the archives. But, in the end, it does not
matter whether or not I am remembered. It only matters that I publish what
records I can salvage, that I am able to fling some tiny source of light out
into the darkness before it claims me for its own.
