PORTA LUCIS // PRIVATE MAIL
DATE :: XX/XX/199X (Sun.) @ 09.01p FROM :: ReverendMoonlighter [Moony] SUBJ :: Before you do anything
> You are near to Lake Gelid.
> > I am going to assume you know enough for that sentence to be heavier than it looks. > > There is some trouble there. Well, more than some, but I mean fresh trouble. The public shape of it: a van in the water, Dane County boy, likely narcotics, sheriff’s office doing their shiny badge arithmetic. The inner shape: unsettled. Do not let anyone else settle it for you, and don’t settle it for yourself just because you have inherited shelves full of mysterion. > > My sister may be inside the matter. I suspect that she is. > > Violet. > > Scarlet, if things have gone sideways for her. > > I am not giving you more than that because you are exactly the sort of man who could make too much out of it. That is neither praise nor insult, it is a risk assessment. > > If you go to the lake, and I suspect that you won't be able to resist, go as a witness, not as an operator. And not as a practitioner. > > No rites. No old calls. No opening formulae. No “just checking” a correspondence table or Goetia. No testing the Goddamned middle air with a name to see whether the room answers. It may answer. That is not the same as your hunch being right.
> > Do the dull work first. Dull work is underrated and underappreciated. Dull work has saved more lives than revelation has. > > Establish sequence. Who found what. What was moved, where. What has been sitting there since before Nixon got all sweaty on the television. Who avoided which nouns. Who corrected themselves when they realized they overshared. Who offered a name they should not have known. > > Keep your attention low and lateral. Ground, hands, pockets, labels, soles of boots, ashtrays, tape cases, folded corners. Do not stare into the sun and congratulate yourself for seeing fire. > > I suspect you are familiar with a specific arrangement of colors being present around town from time to time. RED + BLACK + YELLLOW + WHITE . There with intention. Balanced against itself. I suspect you have also learned to block them out by now, as best as you can. Continue doing that. When you see instances of it going forward, register the placement and then leave the Humors hungry. Treat them as a warning sign with very sharp edges. > > If you find a song, do not hum along. > > If you find a tape, do not play it alone. > > If you find drugs, do not touch them bare-handed. Don’t let anyone make a little joke about their provenance, or try to pocket them casually. Do not let them out of your care until you are sure you can dispose of them where nobody else will find it. > > If you find little constructions // effigies, icons, idols, wards, totems // note what it is standing in for, what other thing it is proxying. Leave them be, as a rule. Such things tend to be passive observers waiting for stimulus, and there’s no sense in drawing undue attention to yourself. > > Preserve contradictions how you found them. Do not harmonize accounts, improve descriptions, or give a bad drawing better anatomy. If a matter becomes clearer just because you are looking at it closely, stop helping. Some things use comprehension the way black mold uses damp. > > Now, because I suspect you are already thinking of the old woman’s materials: > > Do not introduce this to her archive yet. > > Not tonight. Not at first.
> > You know enough about contact to know why. Two unrelated stains become a treasure map the moment a clever man lays one atop the other. Your grandmother, whatever she was, had an instinct for collecting stains. Some of them may still be wet. > > Likewise, do not ask after her people. If there are barnacles still stuck to the hull, leave them below the waterline. They will want to be helpful to the scion, and those are just their better devils. > > ( And God help me for my metaphors! ) > > Bring me facts before meanings. > > If the facts are ordinary, I will tell you so and you can resent my tone in the quiet comfort and privacy of your own home. > > If the facts are not so ordinary, I may have things worth trading: names I do not otherwise post, old arguments I have deleted from the board, bad scans, worse translations, and a few prophecies I trust more than the men who wrote them. > > Do not mistake this for recruitment. I am not interested in founding another lodge in your pantry.
> > I am asking you to help keep the wound sterile long enough that we can glean what kind of infection we are looking at. > > Reply privately. Say little otherwise. Sequence over theory. Provenance over interpretation. Contradictions left intact, not doctored. Not eased. > > There are others around Paradise I have contacted w/r/t/t/m. You may find it’s helpful to work with them. I suspect you will be able to recognize other people who are similarly under the rose. > > And if you find Scarlet written where it has no business being, stop being so clever. > > Tell me where. > > -- Moony











