Historian, The

My dear and unfortunate successor:

It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here. The regret is partly for myself - because I will surely be at least in trouble, maybe dead, or perhaps worse, if this is in your hands. But my regret is also for you, my yet-unknown friend, because only someone who needs such vile information will this letter someday read. If you are not my successor in some other sense, you will soon be my heir - and I feel sorrow at bequeathing to another human being my own, perhaps unbelievable, experience of evil. Why I myself inherited it I don't know - perhaps in the course of writing to you or perhaps in the course of further events…