Introduction: Latia Morian's Doctor's Bag

[Part 1: The Hidden Gems]

"You need to prepare yourself for what comes next."

When I walked into the newspaper office and got straight to the point with the Sun's editor-in-chief, saying those words—

—the slick-haired young man in his twenties didn't seem to realize how important this was. He didn't recognize me, didn't recognize David Victor, and naturally didn't recognize Latia Morian.

He didn't remember my face, much less the pen name I'd once used.

Not until I walked past the shelves of publications printed on proofing plates and settled familiarly into the editor-in-chief's office. Young Green went to fetch his father, and the family business finally got underway in earnest.

"Ms. Latia Morian?" Old Green asked nervously.

I answered at once. "Yes. I used that name in 1961."

Old Green immediately straightened up. "Mr. Victor, are you here to pick up the stories you wrote before? To publish them again?"

"No, the contents of these story collections have never been officially published." I corrected him at once. "Until recently, they were just a scattering of material—scraps left to rot and stink in the kitchen, no longer fresh enough to use."

As I spoke, I opened my doctor's bag and took out several yellow file folders from the bottom.

"They may be even more..."

For a while, I couldn't find the right words to describe the material.

I thought it over for a long time, then said with conviction,

"Uncanny. Yes, that's it—uncanny."

"Like the fantastical tales in Weird Tales? Lovecraft? Or Frankenstein? It feels like it belongs to the previous era—most of it is told from a first-person perspective."

Just like this introduction I'm leaving you now, these works belong to Latia Morian, another alter ego of David Victor's. I never published these stories in a newspaper under