school. But firing her wasn’t the ice he’d broken. Another van turned the corner, a florist this time. Helen blotted her upper lip with the back of her wrist. Then, fanning herself with the first sheet of the letter, she focused on the second.
When your uncle John became ill, he asked me to safeguard some personal papers that you’d otherwise have found among his effects at the Arkwright House. At this point, John and I had agreed you’d be a good candidate for my assistant. Your uncle was eager for you to follow him at MU, but he was also concerned that you be properly prepared.
He turned to me not only because we were friends, but because I’m head of Arcane Studies. Your Latin and Greek would be powerful tools for tackling the Mythos, but still, you’d need help. I was to oversee your education in his place. I was also to decide when you should read John’s papers.
Most are letters and journals written by himself and by Henry Arkwright, recounting experiences known only to a select circle of their associates. You need to know about these experiences and associates. But the papers are disturbing in a way that you’ll understand now that you’ve started studying the Mythos.
I think you’ll be able to do the papers justice by summer’s end and so I want to pique your curiosity in advance. Curiosity is vital to anyone in our field, courage being the other essential. Your uncle believed you have plenty of both. I believe it, too, Helen.
Forgive me for not mentioning the papers sooner, and for writing now in this pulp-fiction manner. Don’t worry about the papers, either. I’ll help you with them. Study, but get some sun, too, and write back when you can.
Yours,
Theo Marvell
Speaking of the sun, its white brilliance was rising like a tide up the steps. Helen bumped her butt up a couple to keep her toes in the shade. She folded the lokta sheets and returned them to the envelope. Soon she’d have the damn letter memorized. So the withheld papers described experiences known only to a select circle? About the experiences she was ignorant. About the circle she had a clue.
There had been rare days when she hadn’t gone to her uncle’s after school or camp because he was hosting his “club” in the library. The one time she’d been in the house during a meeting, John had warned her to stay in the front parlor. She obeyed, but she cracked the parlor door so she could peek at the arriving guests. Most looked like professors or librarians, no excitement there. One, though, was a woman in a police uniform; another, an Indian with a long black beard and orange turban. The last to come was a Native American man. He startled Helen by looking her in the eye she’d fixed on the hall. He looked, and he grinned, and he made a circling motion with his right hand, index and middle fingers extended toward her. The wind must have followed him into the house—she felt it gust against her cheek as the parlor door swung slowly inward and latched shut.
Later, when she dared to creep to the library doors, she heard someone say, angrily, that there had been “a manifestation, a verified manifestation.” She felt sure the odd-cadenced voice that answered was that of the Native American, who said, “Yes, it’s him, of course, Nyah-Tepp.”
Nyah-Tepp was the name as she’d heard it then, meaningless. Only recently she’d realized the Native American had named Nyarlathotep, Soul and Messenger of the Outer Gods. Anyone who mentioned a god so casually had to be a member of a “select circle,” didn’t he?
As for what the withheld papers contained to make John think she needed protecting from them, she had a theory. In her new studies, Helen had read cases of scholars and cultists who’d suffered psychological repercussions from contact with Mythos documents and artifacts: crippling anxiety, obsessions, even delusions about the reality of the Mythos and its creatures. Was Marvell hinting that Uncle John and
When your uncle John became ill, he asked me to safeguard some personal papers that you’d otherwise have found among his effects at the Arkwright House. At this point, John and I had agreed you’d be a good candidate for my assistant. Your uncle was eager for you to follow him at MU, but he was also concerned that you be properly prepared.
He turned to me not only because we were friends, but because I’m head of Arcane Studies. Your Latin and Greek would be powerful tools for tackling the Mythos, but still, you’d need help. I was to oversee your education in his place. I was also to decide when you should read John’s papers.
Most are letters and journals written by himself and by Henry Arkwright, recounting experiences known only to a select circle of their associates. You need to know about these experiences and associates. But the papers are disturbing in a way that you’ll understand now that you’ve started studying the Mythos.
I think you’ll be able to do the papers justice by summer’s end and so I want to pique your curiosity in advance. Curiosity is vital to anyone in our field, courage being the other essential. Your uncle believed you have plenty of both. I believe it, too, Helen.
Forgive me for not mentioning the papers sooner, and for writing now in this pulp-fiction manner. Don’t worry about the papers, either. I’ll help you with them. Study, but get some sun, too, and write back when you can.
Yours,
Theo Marvell
Speaking of the sun, its white brilliance was rising like a tide up the steps. Helen bumped her butt up a couple to keep her toes in the shade. She folded the lokta sheets and returned them to the envelope. Soon she’d have the damn letter memorized. So the withheld papers described experiences known only to a select circle? About the experiences she was ignorant. About the circle she had a clue.
There had been rare days when she hadn’t gone to her uncle’s after school or camp because he was hosting his “club” in the library. The one time she’d been in the house during a meeting, John had warned her to stay in the front parlor. She obeyed, but she cracked the parlor door so she could peek at the arriving guests. Most looked like professors or librarians, no excitement there. One, though, was a woman in a police uniform; another, an Indian with a long black beard and orange turban. The last to come was a Native American man. He startled Helen by looking her in the eye she’d fixed on the hall. He looked, and he grinned, and he made a circling motion with his right hand, index and middle fingers extended toward her. The wind must have followed him into the house—she felt it gust against her cheek as the parlor door swung slowly inward and latched shut.
Later, when she dared to creep to the library doors, she heard someone say, angrily, that there had been “a manifestation, a verified manifestation.” She felt sure the odd-cadenced voice that answered was that of the Native American, who said, “Yes, it’s him, of course, Nyah-Tepp.”
Nyah-Tepp was the name as she’d heard it then, meaningless. Only recently she’d realized the Native American had named Nyarlathotep, Soul and Messenger of the Outer Gods. Anyone who mentioned a god so casually had to be a member of a “select circle,” didn’t he?
As for what the withheld papers contained to make John think she needed protecting from them, she had a theory. In her new studies, Helen had read cases of scholars and cultists who’d suffered psychological repercussions from contact with Mythos documents and artifacts: crippling anxiety, obsessions, even delusions about the reality of the Mythos and its creatures. Was Marvell hinting that Uncle John and
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