Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Future Lovecraft

Another odd thing: the further we go into this cavern, the more slime is accumulating on the walls. It has the most peculiar odour.

Day 541: What have we done?

We never should have translated the inscriptions out loud.

The moons are down.

I can’t find her anywhe—[End of log]

Exhibit 11:Hutch, the New Roanoke mouser. During this period of colonial expansion, it was common for colonists to bring a cat to their new settlement. The cat was something of a communal pet for the community, but its main role was to kill pests in the fields or in food storage areas. The cat was alive and seemingly healthy at the time that the abandoned New Roanoke site was discovered.

However, when the cat was removed from the surface of the planet (along with the rest of the salvaged items), it coughed up a hairball, went into a paroxysm, and died shortly thereafter. One of the crewmen on the transport ship, whose father was a taxidermist by trade, stuffed and mounted the cat for posterity.

Exhibit 12:Heart-shaped locket, nickel plate. Clasp damaged, chain found knotted three times. No pictures within the locket. Testing revealed trace amounts of a gum adhesive on the interior of the locket, suggesting that there were once images of one of the colonist’s loved ones within.

Exhibit 13:An antique leather-bound copy of Dire and Akashic Chronicles by John Dee, with certain passages underlined. The notations seem to be in two hands: One uses red ink and a single underline, while a reader who used a blue pen (and much more pressure when writing) underlined certain passages twice for emphasis. While some sections are underlined by both parties, most are not.

It is worth noting that all of the sections containing dual underlining are written in Duriac, with one exception: “July 13th, Mr. Talbot came abowt 3 of the clok afternone, with whom I had some wordes of unkendness. He confessed that he neyther heyrd or saw any spirtual creature any more and left my howse.”

The Duriac passages remain untranslatable, according to Dr. Armitage.

Exhibit 14:Partial map of New Roanoke, hand-drawn on butcher paper. What remains of the map shows the location of the settlement’s water wells, mineral deposits, and nearby geographical features.

A green ink square has been used to note the coordinates of some important locale, but the missing section of the map is positioned just under this green marking, prohibiting the reader from determining what this mystery location could be.

Exhibit 15:Gamer’s dice (3). Hand-carved from bone. Six-sided, roughly cubic in form, approximately fifty millimeters tall. No further testing has been done on them to determine what kind of bone was used to create the dice.

Exhibit 16:Signet ring in 10 carat gold. A lion is formed from three initials, though there is some dispute as to which letters are used. Armitage believed the intertwined letters were BCH, while Yang argued that the letters were, in fact, PCD. Neither set of initials matched the name of any colonist, leaving Yang and Armitage to concur that, whatever the initials were, they referred to an ancestor of one of the colonists: possibly Elyoner Dare or Dyonis Harvie.

Exhibit 17:The “Eldritch Slime”. So named by Professor Armitage for its strange volumetric properties. The slime is semi-opaque and pale-green. Collected from the ground at New Roanoke by the salvage team, it has been stored in a liter storage jar (pharmaceutical grade).

Armitage found the slime unsettling for several reasons, the most prominent being that the slime has the ability to increase in volume by approximately ten cc every eleven months.

No plans are currently in place to “re-plant” the slime in a larger container, as no consensus has been reached regarding the proper procedure for safely doing so. Professor Armitage estimates that, within the next four years, the slime will have grown too large to be contained within its original storage jar.

Maria Mitchellwrites. H.P. Lovecraft taught writers the importance of self-sufficiency. She is learning.

COSMIC SHORES AREN’T so distant when they nestle themselves between the synapses of self-sacrifice. Or what Amy thought to be self-sacrifice. She followed the zodiac into the sea and stood before a crystal promise. Glancing at the darkness over the Gilman House, she walked back to her house. Her mother, having never fully come to terms with her age, sat desolate in the corner.

“I’ve told you before not to go to the waterfront. It makes you stink of rot,” her mother said, and plucked a flea off her scabbed arm.

“The whole town stinks of rot, Mom. It’s been that way for thousands of years.”

“Or maybe not so little.” Her mother wheeled herself over to the window. “What do you see when you go out to the waterfront? All you see is the litter and dead fish that clog the shore.”

“Filth can be seen everywhere. It is inescapable.”

“That’s no reason to keep going back to see more of it, Amy.”

Amy turned away. She didn’t want to hear any more. She knew what it was that really bothered her mother, but it was pointless to bring the issue to her mother’s attention. Silence was always the best response. Silence, however, teaches one to brood, but not to think, and therefore, is detrimental.

She had remained by her mother’s side for many years. She liked to think it gave them both a purpose, since they were of little consequence to anyone else. Innsmouth hadn’t changed much since the most recent war with Asia, but for the fact that it had grown more impoverished. Disaffected, unemployed, burly youths, fresh home from the war, wandered the streets like sharks prowling the water, looking for any scent of blood on which to feed. For a withered, shadowy person like Amy, their incessant sauntering through the neighbourhood was a constant dread. Worse was when the church women would stroll up to the door and ask to see her mother. Their lickerish eyes loved to feast on the deformity. The hags would squeeze their rolls of fat into their pale cars and drive away, searching for another fresh victim. Amy and her mom weren’t fresh enough, after having lived in Innsmouth all their lives, but the church women still liked to smell the deformity.

When her brother didn’t return home from Asia, Amy thought about leaving. Living in Innsmouth had never been pleasant for her, yet it seemed that Innsmouth was everywhere and, therefore, there was little point in leaving. A dull rain began to thump over the attic window. Amy knew rain always pleased the jars, so she glanced over to her mother, just to make sure she had fallen into stupor before she crept upstairs to talk with them.

They stood at the east wall, facing the window. A few raindrops trickled onto the wormy chest they stood upon. She knelt before them and began arranging the stones around them.

“I don’t want to stay here, anymore. I want to leave. When will I be able to go?” she asked the jars. The magenta one snickered unpleasantly.

“You could always kill someone and go to prison. Then you’d be gone from Innsmouth.”