Out of the Aeons

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"Out of the Aeons" is a short story by H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald. It focuses around a Boston museum that has found an ancient mummy from a past-sunken island to be put on display.

[edit] Synopsis

The story is told from the point of view of the curator of the Cabot Museum in Boston. In 1879, a frieghter captain sighted an uncharted island, presumably risen from its sunken state due to volcanic activity. From it, they recover both a strange mummy and a metal cylinder with a scroll with it. A year later, the mummy is put on display in the museum, though the island once again vanishes without a trace.

Over the years, the mummy garners a reputation as a possible link to an ancient tale from the Black Book by von Jutz of a man named T'yog, who challenged Ghatanothoa, one of the gods of Yuggoth, using the power of a magical scroll. In his sleep, however, one of the cultists stole the true magical scroll and replaced it with a fake one, and T'yog was never seen again. When the possible link to the Black Book and T'yog reaches the general public, the nararrator begins to notice more and more suspicious foreigners coming to the museum.

Soon, several incidents occur when suspicious foreigners attempt to steal the mummy itself. These incidents come to a head when three men die as the mummy seemingly springs to life, opening its eyes before them and revealing the last images imprinted upon its eyes, the approaching form of Ghatanothoa. With this revelation, the reader comes to understand that the mummy is actually the living-yet-petrified remains of T'yog.