Shadows Out of Time

Seven years earlier, archeologist and occultist Enoch Bowen had explored the ruins of the tomb of Nephren-Ka, discovering, in a box covered with indecipherable symbols, a bizarrely shaped object he dubbed the Shining Trapezohedron. The socalled Black Pharoah had built a temple around that item, in which unspeakable acts occurred.

Apparently its geometry affected Bowen as well. On returning to his hometown of Providence, Bowen formed a cult known as the Church of Starry Wisdom, and subsequently cut all ties to his scientific colleagues.

Exploring those same ruins, Bauer discovered what Bowen had missed: a second oddly marked box, containing an artifact even more weirdly shaped. Following precedent, Bauer dubbed it the Lustrous Triacontahedron. It was a clumsy nomenclature, he had to admit, but the thing almost seemed to name itself, emanating a weird power. Again, Bauer could neither define or adequately describe the sensation. He hoped his museum colleagues could help him discover the source.

After what seemed an interminable wait, but in reality was less than a quarter-hour, the train lurched forward. The open cut down the middle of Atlantic Avenue, created a few years earlier to compensate for the steep grade of Cobble Hill, had only recently been covered over. The outside world went dark.

Bauer felt a sudden urge to gaze once more on his treasure. He’d only examined it in the light before, and for the briefest of moments each time. Steadying his hands, the professor carefully unwrapped the stone box and raised its lid.

A greenish glow temporarily blinded the archeologist.

Then it enveloped him.

Half a mile further on, the train returned to surface level. The traveling bag tucked beneath the seat was the only sign that a Professor Wolfgang Bauer had ever been aboard.

Six and a half decades later, Robert Suydam sat brooding in his study. Shelves covered every wall of the room, even partially blocking the single window, as they displayed a lifetime’s collection of mystic artifacts and arcane books.

On this particular evening, the white-haired Suydam was taking advantage of 1916’s leap day to expand on a new line of mystic research. Glow from the lone lamp on his desk deepened the furrows of his brow, highlighting swollen cheeks. In recent months he’d begun focusing his studies more on immortality and methods of transcending time; death, he’d come to realize, would render moot his search for ultimate power.

Piled on his desk were archived issues of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, recently liberated from the newspaper’s vaults under a spell of distraction. These were not the most recent ones, of course; Suydam cared little about the Great War that had raged throughout Europe for the past year and a half. It was also unlikely any of the staff would notice mid-19th century gaps in the library before he returned the trove.

Behind the desk lamp, partly in shadow, sat a glass jar in which floated a human brain preserved in formaldehyde. None of the weak-brained fools Suydam employed for menial tasks truly appreciated his genius. If by chance any of them did, he still preferred not to share his knowledge. The anatomical artifact provided him with the perfect sounding board.

“Well, Clarence,” he addressed the organ, “let’s see what we can find tonight.”

Clarence’s sole response was a slight tremor as Suydam slammed open the August 1850 volume. He was working chronologically backwards through the archives.

Suydam of course was well aware of Enoch Bowen’s 1843 Egyptian adventure. As a young man, he’d even made a personal visit to the Church of Starry Wisdom in Providence in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to obtain the Shining Trapezohedron for himself. According to certain forbidden texts, the wielder of said artifact could, simply by gazing into it, summon the ancient being known as Nyarlathotep. In exchange for horrible unspecified sacrifices, that entity would then reveal other worlds and much arcane knowledge. The insanely angled stone had been created by an unknown race on the far-off planet Yuggoth, and somehow brought to Earth eons before humans evolved.

Suydam did not push his bid for that object further, as he soon discovered there was bigger game to be found, capable of far greater power: the Lustrous Triacontahedron, which allegedly could open portals between worlds, bend time, and, if the legends were remotely true, even invoke mighty Cthulhu himself.

Itself.

For months the trail of that object led to one dead end after the other. A German archeologist named Wolfgang Bauer supposedly found the Triacontahedron on an expedition to Egypt half a decade after Bowen’s discovery. Every artifact save that one was shipped directly to the Boston Museum. Bauer himself made a side trip through New York, and was never seen again.