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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BuddhaTheGreat on 2024-10-30 12:33:14+00:00.

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Weird title again, I know, but there is a reason.

Honestly, nothing much could be done on the preacher front for today, so once Naru had finished rustling his files, we decided to head straight home. The rest of the family was bustling about preparing for whatever ‘ritual’ they needed me to do tonight, and my grandmother was smoking up the whole kitchen with her culinary black magic, though I must admit it did smell good. She was finally using the goat; apparently, keeping it in the freezer any longer would destroy the flavour. I wouldn’t know anything about that, but she wants me to eat before I go out. That was probably a bad idea, given that I am definitely going to overstuff myself if it’s her cooking. But there’s no arguing with Grandma.

Either way, since I had no idea what to do to help, I decided to give the journal another go, focusing on the entries I could read. I hadn’t intended to go very in-depth for the moment, but the very first entry caught my attention. Reading through it, I could not help but notice how much it related to our current situation. Almost as if it had been placed first for a purpose. What’s more, I could have sworn a different entry was in those pages when I checked it the last time. There was no way to prove it, but the book had apparently shifted its contents around.

Anyway, as the title says, there is no church in Chhayagarh. There is an old mosque, though it’s crumbling and abandoned now. There are lots of Hindu temples, including our family temple on the estate and the old, crumbling temple on the top of the hill, built many centuries ago by our ancestors and then abandoned when we moved our holdings to the plainland. But no church.

This was rather surprising since Bengal was the lynchpin of the British Raj, and we know that the government was aware of this village and, to some extent, its peculiar situation. Surely, they would have concluded that building a house of god, the ‘true’ god, on this land was a sure way to rid it of ‘evil’? But there was never any evidence to show they had tried.

But I now had the evidence in my hand. You see, until 1813, the East India Company was reluctant to allow missionary activity in India, as they felt it would anger the local populace and damage their business interests. However, the Charter Act of 1813 passed by the British Parliament made the Company take responsibility for the ‘education’ of the Indian people, which included allowing missionaries to preach in the EIC’s territories. Following this, a missionary priest was dispatched with the permission of Governor-General Francis Rawdon-Hastings (the other Lord Hastings) in 1816 to Chhayagarh, with the goal of “addressing its menacing relationship with devilry and establishing the law of god in the province”.

The diary entries of this missionary, named Charles Eden, have been meticulously copied by hand into this journal. Or rather, a part of them: the portion covers his entries from his arrival in Chhayagarh to what would be, for reasons that will soon become clear, his final entry. Instead of transcribing them exactly one by one, which would both pose trouble due to the archaic language and be incredibly boring, I have decided to use my incredible literary skills to compress them into a single, continuous account that will cover the entirety of his experience over the two days he spent here. For continuity’s sake, I’ll be writing them in the first person as well, but you’ll know when it’s me speaking and when it’s Charles.

All right then, here goes nothing:

It was raining when I first arrived in the village of Chayagore (Chhayagarh). It is a hamlet in a miserable state, built on hard, infertile land where almost nothing grows, and absolutely nothing grows well. The local zamindar seems to have a reputation for being a good friend of the Company, and the Governor-General has assured me he will cooperate, even though he neglected to furnish me with a letter of recommendation. I am not aware of the persuasions of this Hindoo fellow towards me, but his subjects are decidedly not entertained by my presence. Even in the brief time I have spent in the streets so far, I have caught two dozen glares, one or five frowns, and even a few sneers. It is evident that my black frock and starched collar are both an unfamiliar and unwelcome presence.

On the way towards the zamindar’s admittedly extensive estate, I glimpsed a prayer hall of the Mohammedans, identifiable by its dome even in its state of disrepair and neglect. I found it rather galling that even that beastly religion, responsible for so much of the sufferings of the natives if scholars are to be believed, had found purchase here when a bearer of modernity and rationality like myself should have to struggle for heathen approval.

But the Lord had only been too clear that spreading his Word would not be easy, and that was especially true amongst the unwashed and the illiterate. I had no choice but to soldier on.

At the gate, I was met by two very immodestly dressed guards, presumably of the lower castes. After all, such is the lot of the dark-skinned races in this country. They searched my luggage quite thoroughly with their grubby hands before letting me through. I suppose the idea of hospitality that the zamindar has does not extend to the trust one must place in guests.

(I feel compelled to clarify here that the racism is not my own, but his. I debated whether to leave it out entirely, but it is necessary to understand Eden’s worldview. As it is, I have already softened the blow by editing out the numerous slurs he seemed determined to hand out like candy.)

To add insult to injury, upon reaching this landlord’s sprawling and frankly obscene property, I was informed by a fresh-faced manservant that his most vainglorious master, not having the civilized decency to receive me, had instead embarked on some sort of ‘hunt’ in the vast forests of his property. He would not return until late at night.

Truly, much work is required to make gentlemen out of these natives. Thankfully, a few members of his family, including mostly women but gratefully a man or two in the form of his brothers, did receive me. However, I turned down their offer to attend with them some sort of nautch girl’s performance scheduled to take place in the evening, and instead asked to retreat to my quarters and have my dinner in seclusion. I have no patience for the vulgarity of those garish prostitutes, pretending to be something refined while flouting all God-given laws of modesty and submission to the social order.

Thankfully, they had at least heeded my sensibilities in assigning me simple and modest quarters, featuring none of the arrogant opulence that the local rich man seemed accustomed to. As a man of God, I do not seek nor condone excess in anything.

As I was rather peevishly scribbling this entry into my pocket diary, the same young servant brought in my food: a generous serving of rice along with some lentils, vegetables, and a thick, oily meat curry: this last one, I returned untouched, having adopted vegetarianism a year or so earlier. As with all the cuisine in these parts, it was heavily seasoned and immensely, overpoweringly flavourful. The abundance of spices in our Indian possessions has made even the poorest serf the owner of what would be a treasure trove in English kitchens, to say nothing of my hosts. Perhaps one of the few positives of their culture.

Nevertheless, I was careful to eat in moderation: besides my earlier disdain for luxury, my stomach was not fully accustomed to this clime. The servant waited at the door while I ate, squatting on the ground in a thoroughly unseemly manner while his eyes burned holes into my skull. When I returned my half-finished plate, he wordlessly bore it away, returning with a copper plate and a jug of water to wash my hands: the custom in these parts. I decided to cause no further aggravation by refusing.

This is where the first entry ends. As you can tell, nothing interesting really happens in this part, but I felt it necessary, nevertheless, to include it, as it tells you a lot about the basic character of Mr. Eden. These traits will be important to explain his choices and fate on the second day, which is where the matter comes to a head.

The entry begins as follows:

I did not sleep well. Despite my caution, my stomach betrayed me, tossing and gurgling all night in rhythm with me as I thrashed on the uncomfortable, thin mattress. I must have been half-feverish from indigestion, for nothing else can explain the dreams I had in those fugues, stuck between sleep and waking.

I dreamt of the forest, its canopy closing in an embrace that grew tighter every minute, snuffing out the light of the full moon above. I dreamt of a man clutching a rifle, his back turned to me as he stalked through the shade of the trees. I dreamt of a portal of quicksilver, gleaming and shifting with a light all its own, spread out in a fan, like a wave frozen just as it breaks upon the shore. I dreamt…

I dreamt of myself, laughing and pointing. Giggling. Dancing.

Beckoning.

Calling out.

That was when I snapped awake, roused by the rays of sunlight that streamed through the curtains and hit my eyes. Judging from the posi…

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