My dearest A

 

I was extremely bothered by the tone and contents of your last message, and I very much appreciate the strength it must have taken to expose such a vulnerability of spirit. Trust that I am taking every measure to help, and no sooner had I finished reading your letter than I booked a bus to Philadelphia. I arrive tomorrow at noon, and hope that my physical presence offers some sort of fortification against the malevolent workings you have uncovered, as well as their psychic inflictions with which I am sure you are all too well acquainted. 

 

The mask must be reclaimed at all costs. I hope you know that, in embellishing that horrid object two years ago, I was acting out of pure aesthetic reason, operating with the most cursory and flippant knowledge of the powers which I evoked. At the time, occult symbols seemed like little more than poignant graphic choices - darkly pleasing to the eye but holding no more gravity than a pentagram scrawled pubescently on the belly of a skateboard. I was fresh out of university where, like yourself, I studied design, and in this context the world’s signs, icons, and talismans appeared to me as an undifferentiated milieu from which I could clumsily take as I wanted. How idiotic of me! How egoic! If only now I could somehow contact that petulant child; stop him from creating such a curse and convince him to tread the forest of symbols with light and careful feet. Or, better yet, to turn away from it altogether.

 

But that, of course, is an impossibility. The terror we have released is our responsibility and ours alone, and as such we must fix it alone. I vehemently urge you not to tell another soul of what you have discovered - the memetic potential is too great. Flies, as you know, are excellent spreaders of disease, and my body shudders to think what a Lemurian psy-virus would do to its victims. We must pray that the mask, wherever it is, does not fall into the hands of one who recognizes its terrible, terrible potential, though I fear such foul men are not uncommon in the city of Canaanite lust. 

 

The situation is certainly grim. However, I believe the light of Providence still shines - our time is not up. This Lemur residing within the mask emerges from the Numogram, and thus to the Numogram it can be banished. Your discovery of its name - Bobobja - is of the utmost importance, and it was in using this information (along with my own research of the infernal) that I was able to decipher the abominable insect’s net-span as [7::6]. Now all we must do is locate the mask, perform the appropriate rites, and imprison it once and for all in its hell-cage of decimal numeracy. Of course, if the Lemur were to somehow reverse the order of the numbers of its net-span, if it somehow broke containment, to go beyond the mask…

 

An unthinkable thought, for such a scenario would surely imply an erasure of the mind itself. 

 

I pray this affair will one day be a distant memory, a fleeting thought shared by no one but ourselves. 

​​​

 

Atlantis Praevalebit

 

 

-J