What Remains

*the following missive was discovered in Yorkshire, 1935, etched upon the inside of an unmarked coffin.*

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To whatever lost soul finds these words:

I am what remains of the Earl Thomas Winthorp. No longer do I wholly claim his name, for his undivided personhood has been lost to me forever. I write now to inform whomever may come across this epistle about the fate most strange and macabre which has befallen me. Be my tale's witness, reader!

You must know, firstly, that all people are by nature twofold.

A Russian author spoke well on this matter - saying that a line dividing good and evil runs through each human heart. But let me tell you this, reader: the line is not singular - some alabaster fence splitting our natures cleanly. The human heart is rather an entropic battlefield, a disastrous warzone with a thousand lines and fronts, tearing itself apart in undying conflict.

The darker forces of the heart endeavor to escape, and wreak havoc - and oh, how often they do! But a great many of their perverse efforts are thwarted by one's better instincts, who work not so much at conquering as containment. That which is of substance and conviction lays daily, noble siege to the darkness.

I know there was once a part of me made up of these better instincts: a part bright, beautiful, and pure, which, were my story kinder, would have departed the mortal coil to live on in a realm of celebration, reward, and glowing communion.

Here lies the dark truth of my fate, reader: that part of me is no more.

If I may tell you but one thing about Thomas Winthorp, let it be this:

In life, my instinct in the face of all crime and cruelty ever encountered was a detached and delighted curiosity. This singular, warped quality may have been the impetus for the circumstance I find myself in today.

All at once, (upon my death, perhaps?) every echo of good in my ravaged heart was taken out - I think, perhaps, destroyed. There is no flock of better angels, no conscience, there, now.

I do not know precisely what form I hold today, nor the nature of the medium through which I write these things. Perhaps I write in ink...perhaps in blood...perhaps upon parchment, or living bark...or perhaps upon something that was once living. I speak truthfully when I tell you that I do not know. All things in this tired world have become blurry; this form was made for another existence, and I cannot well distinguish thought and matter here.

An aberration in this realm, I am doomed, tasked, or cursed to be a channel twixt those who yet breathe and the plane of profound horror waiting beyond villainy's last breath.

Know, reader, that I bear no shame, nor remorse.

I write only in the hopes that one might bear witness to my life, my un-death, my story.

Regards,

The Once Earl Thomas Winthorp