#porta lucis

[lakegelid]

PORTA LUCIS // PRIVATE MAIL

DATE :: XX/XX/199X (Sun.) @ 09.25p FROM :: ReverendMoonlighter [Moony] SUBJ :: Paradise Local

> I need to ask you a favor.

>

> Not board business.  Not moderation.  Not a test of insight, faith, courage, or your willingness to turn over big rocks that might have bugs underneath because someone on a bulletin board weaponized your special interests. 

>

> A favor.

> > I have reason to believe you are in Paradise, or close enough that getting there wouldn’t cost you enough in gas money to be put out by it.  This is not mysticism.  You call in from a local exchange.  The board logs what it logs.  This is my house, etc..

> > There was an incident at Lake Gelid early Sunday morning.  It will have been this morning if you check the board as often as you usually do.  A painted Dodge Tradesman ended up in the water.  Dane County registration tags.  The owner is one Hunter Varner, esq.. You will likely hear his name first, and loudest, because it is his van and because men with little notebooks prefer the kind of story where the owner of the vehicle is the locus of the event.

> > He is not. > > Or at least, not in the way they will want him to be.

> > I have it on good authority that Mr. Varner was half a state away when that van was put into the lake.  He was there before, and he may still be there now, unless someone with a badge has finally made the correct series of phone calls and found him cold, embarrassed, and telling the least helpful version of the truth.

>

> The girl who may have been driving is my sister. >

> Her name is Violet. > > The police probably do not have that name yet.  They may by tomorrow.  When they do, it will become very easy for everyone to pretend they had it all along.

> > She may have used the name Scarlet if she thought she was being followed, or watched, or overheard.  She may also have written it rather than saying it.  If you see SCARLET anywhere near this business // a sign-in sheet, a tape label, a margin, a bathroom wall, on the return card of a library book // do not decide it is unrelated just because it sounds like the sort of thing people write to make ordinary doldrum seem just a bit more exotic.

> > I am not asking you to find her.

> > I am asking you to go to the lake tomorrow, if the inevitable search effort becomes what search efforts become in towns like yours. That is to say: good natured worry, stale coffee, bored troopers, church women with blankets for shawls, grown men standing around and pretending not to gossip, and teenagers hoping the sight of blood or a dead body will improve their sorry lot.

> > Wear that as camouflage.  Bring coffee in a big travel mug if you need to shore it up.

> > Look at the scene the way a cop would not.  They will be looking for intoxication, theft, panic, maybe a body, a guilty party, and a ditch to put the paperwork in.  They may be right.  I would prefer it that they were right. Minus the body.

> > If they are not, I need to know what gets sanded down before the story reaches Madison. > > Plain facts first: > > Whether anyone is saying there was a girl, BEFORE it becomes part of the story. > > Whether anyone says the names Violet, or Scarlet. > > Whether anyone says Hunter was found, called, arrested, or “still at large” in that confident way people use when they have not asked the right questions to get the answers they have. > > Whether that old summer camp is being searched, avoided, or otherwise given due or undue gravitas. > > Whether anything was removed from the van before it became official evidence. > > Whether anyone mentions a map, a cassette or tape, a songbook, loose pages, or drugs. 

> > Whether the story at noon has different bones than the story at breakfast. 

> > Do not collect folklore for me.  Paradise has ghost stories.  I know.  Every old town with bad drainage, lead pipes in the schoolhouse, and no future has ghost stories.  I do not need Mrs. Androsen’s upstairs-window-man unless he was seen last night holding my sister’s purse.

> > Use tired judgement.  Assume people embroider, misremember, drink, lie to feel useful, and repeat the version of the story they like the best. > > Still, note the following: > > The colors, RED / BLACK / YELLOW / WHITE . > > I’ve written like that because while the order is not the point, the arrangement is.  If I could type them into a circle on this computer, I would. If those four are present in roughly equal measure, and if they seem placed rather than merely present, pay attention.  A good indication will be your stomach yearning for the service hatch when you look at it.  Do not stare longer to confirm the feeling.  You will wish you hadn’t for at minimum two reasons.

> > Songs. Songbooks. Pages from songbooks. Camp songs, hymnals, lyrics, handwritten verses, anything someone is humming without knowing where they heard it. > > Mixtapes or personal cassettes.  Hand-labeled, especially.  Voice recordings.  Tape cases with the wrong insert.  VHS tapes too, if one turns up where it has no God given reason to be. > > Drugs where drugs should not be.  I am aware this phrase loses footing in a town with more teenagers than opportunities, but I mean placed things.  Drugs as offering, sacrament, apology, or bait.  Drugs somewhere too clean, too visible, too carefully hidden, or too politely left behind.  If anyone mentions weed with a source they cannot explain, step away from the situation.  THE WEED IS NOT FREE. > > Effigies, cairns, totems.  Loose terms.  Little structures.  Little bodies.  Markers.  Sticks, stones, wire, cloth, toys, bottles, hair and bones if Winchell Country is feeling literary.  Things made to stand in for an absence of something else. > > Their absence may also matter, but only if that absence announces itself.  If you look at a place and immediately think that an effigy, etc. is missing, note that negative space. If you have to take any time to persuade yourself, leave it.  That is how people become useful to the wrong end of the argument.

> > One more instruction.

> > Do not attempt make a complete picture. Do not accidentally make a complete picture. > > If accounts do not match, do not force them to match.  If someone describes something badly, do not help them to improve it.  If you find a drawing, do not redraw it.  If you see writing that seems like nonsense, record where it was before you record what it says. > > I am aware this is a strange request from a man who spends his nights begging strangers to be more precise.  Consider it evidence that I am taking your wellbeing seriously. > > Reply privately.  No public thread on the board.  No “anyone heard anything weird about Gelid this week”.  No clever subject line.  No anonymous survey of regional cranks. > > Names.  Times.  Places.  Objects.  Who said what.  Who else heard it.  What was moved.  What was missing.  What somebody tried just a little bit too hard to not mention.

> > If this is ordinary, I will have wasted your time and exposed a private family terror to someone whose chief qualification is proximity.  I can live with being sorry about that. > > If it is not ordinary, proximity is the only qualification that really matters. > > -- Moony

[hermeticlibrary]

"To you who yet wander in the Court of the Profane we cannot yet reveal all; but you will easily understand that the religions of the world are but symbols and veils of the Absolute Truth. So also are the philosophies. To the adept, seeing all these things from above, there seems nothing to choose between Buddha and Mohammed, between Atheism and Theism." - The Hermetic Library Blog

[lakegelid]

tried to digitize a postcard i found in mas stuff but i think my serial port is kinda busted

took like 20 minutes to scan so this is the best youre getting out of me

its actually a spot i recognize on the way into paradise from the highway

[lakegelid]

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

[lakegelid]

One in, and one out

(that’s the rule of it)

—

4:13 am, Sunday

That’s when today began for the Winchell county Deputy Sheriff, one officer of the peace Anthony Haver. He had been having a lovely dream about being back on the west coast some dozen or so years prior, chasing the Dead up and down the lay of California. His halcyon years, as he thought of them, before getting stuck with a sour marriage, too much debt, a badge that lost its gleam, and a transfer so well and totally inland that the locals deign to call a few overblown lakes the ‘north coast’.

All he ever seemed to do anymore was bust kids for possession of the same stuff they were tossing around the show crowds like party favors back in his day (slap on the wrist, misappropriation of evidence, everybody walks with only a few hard feelings involved). He didn’t blame them; after all, what’s there for an intrepid youth to do here in the middle of podunk nowhere except light up and try to forget the ocean of endless-nothing woods around them. He didn’t blame them for running south to Madison or Milwaukee at the first knock of opportunity, or hell, even west to the Twin Cities. At least there was more to do there. Jobs for a kid besides falling asleep on the counter at Marcus’ Discount Video over in frickin’ Paradise.

So when he got the call about a painted hippie van pitched down to its round headlights, looking all the world to be drinking from the lake like some lumbering, be-wizard’d beast, what should he assume but more of the same.

—

“Mornin’, Tee.”

“Is it?”, Haver remarked flatly around an unlit cigarette, squinting at the pre-dawn horizon across Lake Gelid, where—maybe—he could mistake a sliver of orange creeping through the treetops.

“Just being pleasant, Tee.”

Sighing inwardly, “I know you are, Newt.”

He lit his cigarette, and rubbed his forehead with the back of his thumb.

“Sorry if I’ve got some lip today,” Haver said, approximating an apologetic tone, “I’m still half buzzed from a few night caps. Y’know.”

“Boy Howdy. Mhm.”

“So what’s the deal with…?”, Haver gestured over Officer Newton’s shoulder with his cigarette.

Newt turned to the awkwardly canted van down on the shore, high-centered on a berm in a sparse swath of splayed reeds and pussy willows, with the nose dipping into the water, the lake swallowing most of the front wheel well and just about teasing at the doors.

“No sign of the driver. Side door was open when I got here, dome on, headlights glowing eerie in the sludge. I killed the engine, no sake in letting it get ruined, no more at least. Not too much inside. Some paraphernalia, papers. And van stuff. Best I can tell, they got her stuck over a hump like that and she’s a rear-wheel. Just donezo. Ground’s kinda wet but there’s no obvious footprints, no drag marks where they might tried pulling her back or weighing the tail back down.”

“Owner?”

“Registered down in Dane to some kid named Hunter, uh… Varner. Isn’t reported stolen. Judy at the station talked to the mother, said her boy’s out camping somewhere mid-state with his girlfriend. Left Friday. She didn’t know which campground.”

“No sleeping bags? Blankets? Pillows? Food? Two kids go camping for the weekend, and all they’ve got is roaches in the ashtray?”

“Nada, Tee. Bottle of water in the glove box, though. Old map of the state on the passenger side floor. Oh, and looks like dried upchuck down the driver door.”

“Stolen, then, I’d reckon. Kind soul let them keep their luggage ‘fore joyriding up almost half the state.” Haver sucked on his cigarette, “Maybe not. Coulda been it was the lovebirds partied too hard and dunked it in the lake themselves. Took their gear to go lay low somewhere, sober up, maybe catch a ride back south with a local’n call it in stolen from somewhere better matches their story. I’d be real interested when and where we hear from our man, Hunter.”

After a pause Haver added, “Say, what about the girl? The mother give us anything on her?”

Newt shrugged unhelpfully, “You want I should go round and check the outtatowner cabins? Could be they’re hunkering down in one of them.”

Deputy Haver’s eyes went sweeping out over the lake, spotting a moldering rooftop across the way and gesturing at it with his cigarette.

“Nah. Reckon we start with the old summer camp. If I’m out of sorts to the point where I’m parking my ride in the lake, I’m less inclined to stumble back down the road I came in on when there’s easy pickings right in front of me.”

[lakegelid]

She was named Violet. The V was for Vision.

Later, she became Scarlet. Her opposite in visible light, but so close around the span of the wheel. Just a single step’s difference, really. Hardly different at all, she could tell herself.

—

He told me that every man and every woman is a star. Said we are all a universe unto ourselves. I told him it sounded like he was quoting something.

“Ninety years hence,” he muttered between flat lips while lighting a joint.

Voice-tinged-metal with smoke, he said in that moment I reminded him of the goddess Astraea, said she was the last truly immortal thing to walk this earth. Cast out for the sake of the paradigm, those were his words. She became a constellation.

Virgo.

V. For Vision.

—

I sat there, eyes shut, running my fingers idly through the shag-carpeted interior of Hunter’s 1971 Dodge Tradesman, which he had some time that last summer dubbed the ‘Nim-rod’. I tried very hard to pretend I didn’t have a body, to pretend that I was just an unconscious mind unmoored across space and time, and not twenty-two and very sick on mushrooms in a smelly van out in the north woods, being lectured about the ‘hologram nature’ of reality by a guy I knew better than to like as much as I did.

“Hit?”, Hunter asked in my direction, equal parts concern and amusement in his voice.

I sucked air in through my teeth, not sure if my stomach was reporting lizard-brained hunger or the leaden weight of nauseatic urgency. I decided to let it ride. “Keep working on it,” I said, studying the dome light through my eyelids, “I’ll let you know if I wanna polish it off.”

Hunter made a sort of harsh consonant noise in affirmation, and I heard a soft cherry sizzle as he sucked away at his dubois. I let go of the carpet, the plush impression lingered on my fingertips for what became an uncomfortably long time.

“Mm,” I grunted, clearing my nose with a hard sniff, then wheezed. “Smells nice. What’s this one called? Don’t tell me if it’s gross.”

Hunter sat silent for a moment. “Cheetah piss,” he said, holding an inhale, the play of a lying smile in his voice. “And I put the last of the chief in it, that’s why it’s so, uh, floral.”

“I said don’t tell me!”, one eye slitting open just brave enough that I could lob a kick at him, and miss.

“Anyway, I got it from the Reverend. I’m surprised you don’t recognize it. Your place must reek of the stuff, what with his, uh—”.

I cut him off, warning, “Hunter.”

“What?”, he complained flatly, but decided it wasn’t worth the retread. “Okay, whatever. I got it from him. Says a guy from a place I don’t remember grew it. Sounded like — who was that scientist — ‘Avogadro’, maybe.”

“From Alla-Gadda?”, I asked, sitting upright, squinting intently.

“Bingo,” he said, taking another drag. “Hey, you want any of this? It’ll be down to the dregs soon.”

Fuck.

“Yeah,” I said, reaching out, hoping the shakiness in my voice sounded like it was drug-induced. “Lemme finish it.”

“Atta girl. I knew you’d feel better.”

—

Within thirty minutes I was back on I-39, sending the Nim-rod complaining into the red zone, which it did at around 65 miles per hour. If what I thought was happening was, in fact, happening, there was precious little time. If not, well, I could tell Hunter I bugged out. I’d probably tell him that, anyway. He’d forgive me.

I had lifted the keys when he went off to relieve himself in the camp outhouse. Of course, I didn’t leave him totally out of sorts. It was a beautiful night, and I dumped his sleeping bag and other effects before heading out. In the morning he could use the office’s phone, and one of his friends or coworkers could be out to get him by noon.

Really, he’d be fine. He’d have a funny story about being stranded in the woods by a girl on a bad shroom trip, and win some sympathy from his buds in the process.

I clicked on the dome light, unfolding over the wheel a road map of Wisconsin that probably came with the van. Fucking podunk town was always so hard to find. The Lake made sure of that.

My eyes were swimming and struggling to focus as they darted between the map and the weak beams illuminating the road ahead, so it was a gut-punch when I finally noticed my vision changing. It had shifted in its subtle totality into a four-color pallet, stark and horrible, matching the ink of the map.

Black. Yellow. Red. White.

The Humors of Alla-Gadda.

This was bad. Oh, this was so very bad.

I tossed the map onto the bucket seat, in turns swearing, hyperventilating, and pounding the wheel with my palm. I got halfway through a set of Hail Marys before I had to slam on the brakes and throw up out the window.

It only made me feel worse.

[lakegelid]

ive been saying its like this

but moony doesnt like it because hes wrong

[lakegelid]

Re: Fighting the Basilisk

It’s a continuing trend. Gets framed as being a societal metaphor for sin, but it’s quite literal. Too much knowledge about a daemon opens you up to influence through it, which is true. Even discussing the idea of them starts to lay the ground work, so I’ll be vague where I can.

(Note: Abrahamic *demons* aren’t what we’re discussing here. The conflation of the term sends me into a tizzy. For the most part, they’re just homonyms. Please be precise.)

It’s sort of a foible among all conscious minds, a fulcrum point beyond which force is easily multiplied. By allocating space in your brain to understand [the thing], you hollow out a home for it to live in. The more accurately you comprehend it, the more exact the replica you craft is, the more dangerous it is to you due to its extreme proximity to the parts of you that live in your head.

They “duplicate” in that way. I’m careful to not characterize it as reproduction, or anything else animal, or deliberate. Daemons are not alive, like a virus is not alive. They don’t even really exist until you give them space to exist.

But they are real. Which is a doozy to reconcile.

And they are un! pleas! ant! In the way that taking a melon-baller to your brain and filling the holes with sludgy cosmic static is unpleasant. Every neuron you give is a neuron that’s now working against you. You can’t stop what’s already in.

But again, you can prevent the damage in the first place by LOOKING NO FURTHER INTO IT. If I see one more mention of clowns or gliders on the bulletin, I’m locking the thread and revoking access keys.

> Moony