Entry 2: A Second Letter and a Strange Drawing

Here's the second letter from Thom. This is where it starts to get really odd.

In case you can't read it, here's the text: 

"Barnes,

I know this will sound unbelievable, but I needed to tell someone about it. And after what we saw in Van Meter and Mount Desert, I am hoping your mind will be more open than most to encounters with the supernatural. Or, perhaps hypernatural.

I had another nocturnal visitor. A guide, I think he was. That’s what he told me, in my mind. He called himself the Astarapomp.

 A school of Bubble Comets woke me up. He was waiting for me out on the lawn.  God, he was a strange thing! He was blurry, as if I were seeing him through murky water. As if he weren’t entirely in this reality. But I could make out many details. He was like a column made of interlocking blue plates or mosaic tiles. Five faces set radially at human head level, like the four faces of Brahma. His eyes were vertical and golden. With three pupils like a Tokay gecko. Five arms. He had no feet. Instead his body ended in five radial flattened tentacles or pads. And five flexible tentacles on top, like wizard’s caps. Or the petals of a fat flower. There was something moving in the top part. Cilia? Hairs? Tube feet? I couldn’t tell.

He pointed and something opened in the air. A door. Beyond, I saw huge rock columns like those hoodoos from Bryce Canyon. But the foliage was purple and red. And the sky was white with black stars. He led me inside, but I don’t remember what happened then. There’s a gap in my memory. I’m trying me best to recall. It’s like there’s a black mask, hiding what happened.

I’ll keep you updated.

 Thomas"

This one leads me to believe this is all an elaborate story between Professor Barnes and this Thomas guy. I wonder why they never published it? Or even mentioned it to anyone else. There's no record of anything like this in any of the biographies I found on Professor Barnes.

Regarding his description of the landscape beyond the "door", Bryce Canyon is a National Park in Utah. This is what it looks like:

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Also, here's the back of the letter: 

It's a pretty rough sketch, but I think this might be one of those "bubble-comets" Thomas described in his first letter. The handwriting is Professor Barnes' though. It says "Now I see them. Need to call Thom." Make of that what you will.

By the way, here's the first of a series of drawings included with this pack of letters. This is a depiction of the being Thomas refers to as the "Astarapomp"

front of drawing

back of drawing

The drawings on the back side are also intriguing. I think there's another letter that details this "Hub" more. I'm assuming these are creatures Thomas encountered when he went through the door. They're clearly echinoderms of some sort- he even refers to them as "brittlestars", "sea urchins", "edrioasters" and so on. I'm curious why he chose such familiar names when designing the aliens for his story. I mean, they seem way too close to Earthly echinoderms to be believable as beings from another planet. Unless they're supposed to be an example of extreme convergent evolution or something. But you'd think Professor Barnes would have pointed out the unlikeliness of that happening on two completely different worlds.  Who knows. Maybe the other letters will tell me more.

One thing I do find intriguing is the note about how the walking urchin's tube feet are it's "eyes". This is actually true in real sea urchins, but that fact wasn't known until a few years ago. Just an coincidence?