Records of Alchemy

It is with great deliberation that this narration has been put to paper and I apologize to everyone before hand if they feel any incoherence in the sequence of events.

I had had the opportunity of visiting Mansion de M-. Unfortunately, I must keep the name a secret to protect the privacy and reputation of the estate’s honorable owners. A friend who prides himself on being an “intellectual” advised me to call on the property mentioned before and ask for permission to pore over their library. According to my friend, the library contained records with “good years”. The oldest records date back to the caliphate of Umar of the Islamic era and they have been translated into fourteen languages, all preserved well and present on that property. If truth were told, what truly attracted me were the myths bordering the shelves of books.

Indulging in the expenses of going halfway around the country, I soon arrived at the impressive façade of the mansion. After being successfully installed in one of the guest rooms, I was shown the library. I attacked the nearest floor to ceiling shelf and started pulling out the books at random. Close to midnight, my hostess checked in on me and blessed me with her company. Over a late dinner, we discussed the library and she told me how she had had all the book covers further protected by leather skins. Over a period of many months she had had all the books copied and preserved and the copies then sold to other worthy book collectors.

“But there are some records I never could copy”, the hostess murmured leaning towards me confidentially.

“Why ever not? If you could do over eleven thousand, I don’t suppose a few more could make a lot of difference.” I replied surprised.

“Oh but I can never find them!” I began to doubt her sanity.

“If you can’t find them, how do you know they exist?”

“My father, the person who can truly be credited with this collection told me. I even found some entries in his journals about it.”

“About what?”

“The Records of Alchemy of course!”

Not trusting my self to speak, the meal ended in silence and I retired to my room peering over some scrolls from the Mughal age.

Weeks later, I now feel strong enough to recapitulate my experiences. I had been involved in pulling out a collection about the Salem witch burning when I felt a presence in the room. I whipped around comprehending my hostess in a complete state of disarray, holding a hurricane lamp and saying,

“Only a few minutes now. The moon will eclipse and you will see. Oh you will see!” and she ran out. Shrugging, I turned to resume my previous occupation before stopping with a gasp. The shelf was expanding, making space for a new partition. The ceiling groaned, and cracked as the shelf pushed up to it. The noise stopped and I stepped forward to observe the change minutely.

The new partition was stacked so tightly with thin journals that it was impossible to see the colors of the flyleaves.

On my way to the room, I saw the hostess again, looking more windswept than before. She saw me laden with the journals, gave a primal scream and to my utter horror, was reduced to a heap of ashes.

I have no recollection on how I came back to my room but I read all the journals in the span of one night.

I know everything now. My hostess, I will not speak her accursed name, did not belong to the family at all but was in fact a witch from the 12th century. She is the only one recorded who had been successful in making the Elixir of Eternal Life after a prolonged study of Alchemy. The only way of ending the effect was to make sure that someone read her journals. Unfortunately, the journals were protected by the charmed shelves at the Mansion de M- and would open only on the night of the lunar eclipse on the eighty-seventh night of the 20th century.

I will lay down my pen now and rejoice in the memory that I preserved the true title of men: Mortals.