Goodnight, Antarctica….

As my week has been busier than most, I’m sorry to say I simply haven’t had the time to finish the 11th, and nearly final part of “Trois Freres.” Yet fear not, fellow Lovecraftian nihilists! I bring to you instead a sneak peak at the follow-up tale to “Trois Freres,” the prologue to “Goodnight, Antarctica”!

“Goodnight, Antarctica” follows the disastrous International Expedition to the Elder Ones’ Antarctican cities on a last-ditch effort to search for any hints of how the Elders beat and imprisoned Great Cthulhu and its fellow-kind in R’Lyeh millions of years ago. Continuing the tradition of the first story in using “real life” personages (such as myself) as narrators or major figures in the tales, the leader of the International Expedition and primary viewpoint character for “Goodnight, Antarctica” is none other than well-known dark fantasy/Lovecraftian author and professional paleontologist (and Official Homegirl of the author), Caitlin R. Kiernan.

Here’s a brief sample of what you’ll find in the prologue, “Icebreaker”:

Above her, the sky is so crowded with perfect jewels that don’t twinkle at all in the frozen air it’s hard for her to believe that behind them, between them, among them…? Nothing—truly nothing—but inimical blackness. Darkness visible, serv’d only to discover sights of woe. Azathoth, the soul of the darkness. The Other Gods writhing in their beds of dark matter. But are the stars themselves any less threatening? After all, their configuration has finally spelt the end of her species.

Reports from elsewhere in the world are growing rarer and rarer: R’Lyeh had opened like an incomprehensible puzzlebox, Great Cthulhu and its brothers were loose upon the world, spreading madness, mutation, sweeping aside cities and armies and the most powerful weaponry Humanity had ever invented. She’d failed. They’d all failed. Scarborough was dead. Kingston and Lukasik missing. Shen Li was lost somewhere in the mental memory spaces of the Pit, climbing the Moon-ladder to the court of the Elder Pharos….

Oh, dear….Things certainly don’t look too good in this one, either. If the conclusion of “Trois Freres” doesn’t wreck your spirits for months, I personally guarantee that “Goodnight, Antarctica” will freeze the blood to immobile slush in your veins. Check it out now before the shoggoths come for you, too!