CLAIRE DAVON

Excerpt

My expedition didn’t know that I was related to Danforth. The people at Miskatonic probably knew, since he had been a professor there, but they never reached out to me. They likely felt the way toward my family the way we felt toward them—all except me. We pretended they didn’t exist and they did the same for us.

Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

I played the recording again. Bart and the other members of the expedition were bundled against the cold, which blew the little free snow around, coating their parkas in white and sending people shivering. The mountains were visible in the distance. So was the city that had been previously hidden behind sheets of white. It was a tantalizing peek of the ancient towers, which could not have been created by any human or any earth-bound creature. Sometimes my grandfather told me of the city. Those tales were part of who I was growing up and the reason I became interested in hidden things and Elders better not to be spoken of. I looked at the spires and towers in the distance. The explorers had made camp for the night. Antarctica still held terrors for the unwary and traveling was not easy in that hostile climate. Tomorrow they would reach the city. I should be there but a luckless turn of weather had beached the second craft before we could make our launch from Ushuaia. Things had begun without us so we were stranded waiting for their reports.

I played the recording again trying to see more in the background. I looked for hidden movements, for something not quite seen out of the corner of my eye. If truth were told I was looking for any suggestion of a five-pointed star or a sandstone curiously carved. I could find nothing out of the ordinary save for that haunting cry. Bart, and indeed most that made up our expedition, did not believe Dyer’s tales of terrible creatures and old ones from beyond the stars. Even the ancient city did not quell their doubts.

There was another expedition, a Miskatonic one, but I did not know their whereabouts. The two expeditions were not in collaboration. They might be ahead of us, or behind us, but where ever they were, there was no evidence of them in this small port city.