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The Mothman

Homo Lepidopterus

Also know as Anthropteryx Erythrophthalmus Lepidopterus

Bipedal Arthropod

 Thomas had encountered many odd and jarring species in his expeditions, those entities that seemed to walk a fine line between his own Darwinian sensibilities and a greater, more disturbing understanding of that which would be considered alien, eldritch or simply other. He did not fear what he didn’t understand, and with his own peculiar insights into the extra dimensions, into time itself - encountering those who shared some of his clairvoyance, yet perhaps grasped it better than he ever could -was somewhat daunting.

In 1899, a month after his American tour had been canceled, and specimens shipped back to England, he remained in the US with a view to take advantage of its own rich heritage of folklore. Having spent many months as a guest of various native American and First Nations tribes in his youth, he was well versed in their pantheon of deities and spirits. It was the Innu peoples of Quebec that introduced him to such entities as the Wīhtikow or Wendigo, and it was under their jurisdiction that he had searched for physical evidence of such things. The Wendigo was illusive, and possibly for his own good, but he did not leave the forests of North America empty handed.

He travelled to Montreal, and then on by train to America, staying at the Bartholomew Hotel in Pine Grove, West Virginia. Whilst dining one evening, he was interrupted by a man shouting at the desk clerk for assistance. Merrylin overheard him speaking of some menace that plagued his farm and that no one would help him. Thinking this an unlikely coincidence, he went to the man to offer assistance. The man went by the name Albert Tennesson, a farmer of 45 with a meagre acreage in this sleepy North west Virginian town, whose family had been terrified by nightly visits of a giant bird-like creature. He spoke of its ‘taunting’ - and when pressed, Thomas was told that the creature had spoken, and that it had a name; Indrid Cold, and that it had warned the farmer of a coming peril.

‘There will be a storm, and lightning shall strike your barn. Your livestock and livelihood will go up in flames.’

Thomas agreed to accompany Albert back to his homestead, to witness the creature for himself. For three nights, Thomas had sat on the porch, covered in a thick blanket, awaiting the return of Indrid Cold. On the fourth night, his patience was rewarded, as the giant wings emerged from the dark tree line, and a seven foot tall entity landed in the fields before the house. It walked with a human gait - although its arms were far longer than a human and its wings folded neatly behind. It had a thick black fur about its body, and yet its face was pale and vaguely human. Perhaps the most startling aspects was its eyes, that shone with a red bioluminescence.

‘Thomas Theodore Merrylin’ it said, its voice was insect-like, an organic whirring, clicking sound reverberated with each syllable. ‘You have sought us. We are the dreamers in times unformed state, in the chrysalis of that which is yet to come. You have seen our brothers and sisters, but never seen us. We are Indrid Cold. Many have listened to our warnings, others have not, and their pain is a tapestry in the aether.’

It reached out an arthropodal forearm, and he took its hand, sharing, for a brief moment, the vast cacophony of its own thoughts. A species of wandering seers - natural prophets, ancient, collectivist, unable to change what was to come, yet helpless in warning others of their fate. Fear held back any from listening, but for the First Nations and Native peoples who had interpreted their tales through their own avatars and spirits, a wealth of knowledge.

Thomas explained to the Tennesson family that the creature was a good omen, and helped build a lightning rod to channel any possible damage away from their property. A few nights later, the storm came, and in the glare of fork lightning, drawn down into the earth and away from the barn, Thomas saw the faint silhouette of a thousand winged entities, watching on in joy that their prophecy had been heeded.

Thomas searched for years for any evidence of these creatures, and it was another serendipitous, if not tragic event that saw his final encounter. A young herald of the Indrid Cold, shot down by another farmer, too scared to listen. Its body held in an ice house, Merrylin took it away to be studied. In his notes, we find reference to a Homo Lepidopterus, or (Anthropteryx Erythrophthalmus Lepidopterus, which speaks of the red eyes.)

‘The creature carries in it the traits of many species, in reference to its own words, I believe it may indeed have a pupal stage, and the vaguely moth-like attributes lend even further to this. What is most telling is the brain itself. There are two channels that run parallel to the optic nerve. These channels serve a very specific purpose, in relation to the creatures foresight.’

In a paper in 1931, a year after Neutrinos were proposed by Wolfgang Pauli, Merrylin postulated that perhaps the creatures used some form of tachyonic system to capture images from the future. One of many anachronisms of Merrylin, (The term tachyon was coined by Gerald Feinberg in a 1967 paper titled "Possibility of faster-than-light particles) he stated, ‘if tachyons are proved to travel faster than light, then it stands to reason that this species has evolved some organic process to collect and use them in the collection of data. In this regard we can perhaps consider this a simple survival mechanism that jump started a very clear intelligence and thus altruism to share their predictions with all and sundry. It is a shame that many will see the presence of giant, moth-like humanoid as an imperfect carrier of such information.’

This single specimen of a young Homo Lepidopterus is held in the collection.

It is noted that, in 1966, in Point Pleasant, West Virgina, sightings of this ‘Moth-man’ and warnings of, and then subsequent collapse of the Silver bridge that crossed the Ohio river were attributed to it. The Mothman soon became the stuff of West Virginian folklore, and remains so to this day, where a statue was erected to commemorate the creature and a festival takes place every year in its name.