The Hand That Wounds part
2
Extracts from the Personal
Diary of
We are losing Adam. It seems that this has
been all too much for him. He is off on a pilgrimage of sorts. It is a great shame
as he is a useful guy.
The local rag, the Cumberland &
Westmorland Herald has a report on the M6 incident. Thankfully it is
reporting it as a normal road accident. However it has a reference to a
web-site that is inviting contributions, which it seems
is a problem, but one that MI13 HQ can deal with.
Eliza was off to spend the day cutting up
dead bodies, so wouldn't be with us. She agreed to let me have the bone mask
and binoculars, so I could try to contact the victims. The places to look will
be where they died or where the bodies are.
We went to the henge
first. We had to be careful as itis close to the
scene of the ‘accident’, so the press may be nearby. There were also the normal
quota of tourists, but eventually we had the place to ourselves. I got out the
mask and put it on. There was nothing. I called to Jeremy, still nothing. I was
growing certain that Nyarlathotep has taken his soul.
If so, I will be able to contact him only if the Crawling Chaos allows it. Seeing
as how he is so keen on the use of these artefacts, I decided it was worth asking.
So I called to him.
I expected to see him in the form of the
Pharaoh, but instead I saw a bloody apparition of a mutilated youth. I wasn't immediately
sure but it was Jeremy as he had died. He was clearly confused, as was I. I now
realise that he had been sent to me with the obligation to answer three
questions. However I failed to realise this and accordingly wasted two of them
on trivia. I did however manage to ask where the bit of paper with the spell on
came from. It was Isobel that brought it. I suppose that was a partial success.
Next we went off to the morgue to try to
interview Giles. Eliza managed to get all of the staff out so that we could be alone
with the corpse. It was covered by a sheet and we left it that way. I put on
the mask. Giles wasn't there, but I felt a presence and was sure that it was
waiting for me to ask for permission to speak to him. I decided that it wasn't
worth it. I don't think Giles would have known enough to risk my sanity for. I
did however notice that there was a strange thread in the spirit world running
away from Giles body, but it was leaving in another dimension. I think it is to
where his shade is being held. I am sure that Djehuti
has both of their souls.
We went to the pub for lunch; at least this
job has its perks. Alex went off to check on all the ‘crank calls’ made to the
pigs last night. There were quite a few that could well be people who saw the Hunting
Horror. They are all in a fairly small area, and it suggests that the beast
came from the north-east and probably travelled under a mile. Given that
someone would have needed a decent sized place to summon it, there really is
only one possibility, the
We went off to interview the headmaster
again and tried to pressure him into being more candid. We completely failed;
he is one of these establishment stuffed-shirts with their typically blinkered
worldview; so it is possible he just doesn't get it. It is also possible that he
does get it and is holding out on us.
Just as we were finishing, Alex turned up
and suggested we ought to have a word with Giles' parents. We decided against
going mob-handed, and settled on Alex & Eliza. They weren't long. It seems that
the family have gone away to grieve in private.
The best lead we have left is the school. Who
ever is doing the summoning seems to be doing it there. It seems a real possibility
that they will do it again to-night. We decided to picket the school in the
hope of observing the culprit arriving. There wasn't really anywhere to hide
and some curtain-twitcher called the pigs. Fortunately
Alex was on hand to sent them away again.
I was thinking about ley-lines;
could there be one to the school? At first, I thought it very unlikely. There
is no record of any recent activity creating them. It is generally reckoned
that they pre-date humanity. Then I realised that the founder of the school,
the owner of that library of arcane tomes, had probably chosen the site
of the school, and could well have selected an ancient site. None of the houses
around here are anything like as old as the school buildings. It was probably
in the middle of nowhere when it was founded. It could well be built on an
ancient site. I decided that I need my dowsing rods to investigate. Alex drove
me back to the hotel to get them.
On the way back to the school, we spotted a
group off to our left on the pavement. It was night so it was hard to be sure,
but they didn't look right; in fact we both thought they looked like
moon-beasts. We met up with the ladies. Barbara was covered in mud. She
had sneaked into the school grounds and seen some things and her
description was horribly like moon-beasts.
On hearing this Alex decided that he had to
get his daughter home to his cats. He clearly wasn't prepared to consider
anything else until this had been done. We all jumped in the car to go with
him. First stop was the house he had left his little girl at. The rest of us
wanted to go to Friday's house as we were worried for her and Alex agreed to
drop us off on the way to his home.
As we drove down the road to Friday's house
there was clearly something up. There were too many lights on; there were
people standing in the street. When we pulled up outside the house we found
that the front door had been smashed in, and there was a man vomiting on the garden
path. It seemed that we were too late. Alex went inside to investigate while Eliza
tried to help the man on path, who was a neighbour, rather than Friday's
father. Alex emerged after a few minutes in a state of shock!
Eliza went in to have a look around, and
reported finding a scene of complete carnage the whole family had been very
messily slaughtered.
Finally Belinda went in to have a look. She
returned with a box that she claims is ancient Mesopotamian. This seems
plausible and she should know. It contained a crystal and a piece of parchment
with a message addressed to MI13. It suggests placing the crystal to your forehead
and invoking “Thoth”. Belinda actually did this in
the room with the mutilated corpses! (10/10 for courage;
0/10for good sense!) The effect was that she saw a recording of the
family being butchered by the moon-beasts.
Alex was still out of it, so got carted off
to hospital. The rest of us got Alex's daughter home. Mercifully she has slept
through most of this. She must be used to being carted around.
At Alex's place we had a good look at the
Mesopotamian box and its contents. The box is constructed like a pin-hole
camera with the crystal as light-detector. The parchment looks like it is made
of human skin with the message written in beautifully ornate hand-writing with blood
for ink. This has all the hallmarks of Djehuti. Fortunately
I don't think this device falls within my agreement with him.
Alex returned from hospital and we
discussed the next step. The summonings had clearly
been done from the school, and we needed to search it. It would be better for
all concerned if we could do this at night without the press finding out. Alex
was determined to stay with his daughter, and given that he had just got out of
hospital, we couldn't really argue about it. He put us onto DS Pringle. Pringle
was sceptical, but is under strict orders to co-operate with us so went along with
rousing the headmaster.
The head could not be much less happy to
see us, but the combination of the news of another two dead pupils (Friday's
sister also went to the school) and threat of carrying out the search in
day-light and the full gaze of the assembled press, persuaded him that
searching immediately was the lesser evil. [I wonder if we would have been able
to search the school in the day. It would have required a warrant and a hell of
a lot of publicity, so MI13-HQ might well have refused to support it.]
The head phoned the care-taker and about
half-an-hour later we were at the school. If I remember correctly it was
between three and four in the morning by this stage. We decided to start
searching in the cellars. It proved to be fruitful. There were some conspicuous
footprints in the dust and these led us to a cache of black magic paraphernalia.
There was also a definite smell of incense. On emerging from the cellar we
confronted the headmaster with this. He now had to admit that someone with keys
to the school was performing unholy rites on the premises.
It was clear that the rituals had not been
performed in the cellar so we had a rapid sweep of the ground floor to see if
the same smell was present elsewhere. We smelt it in the gym. There we found a chalked
circle, some feathers and blood probably from the same bird. We also had
Belinda behaving very oddly; she was on the floor licking the blood! I think
she needs to see the MI13 shrinks just as soon as we are finished here.
We sent everything that we had found off to
be fingerprinted and got the headmaster to agree to all of the staff having their
dabs taken. Feeling we have done a good night's work, we finally all got off to
bed.
We got a few hours sleep and then met again
for a late breakfast. We explained the night's discoveries to Alex. Alex is of
the opinion that what we found was too obvious, and must have been planted for us
to find. Whereas that may be true, I don't see that it really matters. The main
significance of the find is that it is forcing the headmaster's hand so he will
have to, at the very least, be seen to co-operate.
Alex also related a visit to Ulthar that he had made in his sleep. He dreamt several
days at the temple to Bast where he consulted the
High Priest. He was told that souls of Giles and Friday are imprisoned in the
dreamlands. Giles is suffering a Prometheus style of torment except he is
attacked by Hunting Horrors rather than an eagle. Friday is imprisoned by
the moon-beasts on the far side of the moon and liable to be fed to the
creatures of the Black Galleys when they bore of tormenting her. Jeremy
is hidden even from Bast, so we assume is the personal
captive of Djehuti and probably beyond anyone's help.
We had not really formulated any plans,
when we received an urgent summons to the school. Isobel had killed herself in
biology class. She seems to have managed to perform the ritual mutilations of removing
her eyes and heart using only her fingers and a school dissection scalpel! Unsurprisingly
a lot of the rest of the class have had hysterics.
We arrived at the school and went up to the
biology lab to observe the scene of the incident. Isobel's body was still
there. We managed to get the place to ourselves and I had a quick look at
Isobel with the mask. There was the same thread leading away from her as I had
seen with Giles. Her soul is also imprisoned somewhere, but it isn't clear whether
she is being held like Giles and Friday or hidden like Jeremy.
We interviewed Miss Peta
Northlay who was taking the class at the time. Whereas
she was upset, she wasn't hysterical or anything. At the time, I thought that
it just hadn't hit her yet. We didn't get very much out of Miss Northlay. She had only just arrived at the school as a
temporary replacement.
Mrs Arbuthnot
arrived to escort Miss Northlay away. A couple of us
noticed that Mrs Arbuthnot was wearing an inverted
crucifix, so is probably a member of the black magic cult. We decided to keep
her away from Miss Northlay, who Alex took to the
taxi, while the rest of us questioned Mrs Arbuthnot. We
didn't manage to get anything useful out of her, except that Miss Northlay had been engaged at short notice as a replacement
for Mrs Joy Samson.
Next stop was the administrator's office to
try to find out the details of Miss Northlay's
recruitment. The administrator, Mrs Matthews, seemed to know next to nothing
about it. It seems that it had all been organised by Mr. Carleton and there is
no paper work to speak of.
I think it was around about this point that
Alex noticed that Peta Northlay
is an anagram of Nyarlathotep!
Eliza and I went off to try to talk to, or
find out about Mrs Samson. We got to the hospital and Eliza's medical
credentials plus our official status got us the basic facts. Mrs Samson has a
very aggressive case of necrotizing fasciitis. They
are progressively lopping bits off her to try to control the spread of the
infection, but the prognosis is bad. We got to talk to a very unhappy Mr.
Samson, who told us that his wife is being operated on again; he was waiting to
hear how it had gone. He didn't seem to know anything of value. While we were talking
a doctor arrived with ‘bad news’, apparently Mrs
Samson did not survived the operation.
From the hospital, we went to see Mr.
Carleton. It seems that the death of his daughter has finally convinced him to
confess and co-operate. He said that Isobel was being used as a scapegoat. Apparently
he is a coven member as are all (or nearly all) of the school's senior staff. It
seems that the P.T.A. is the coven. The founders arrived here in the thirteenth
century, having been driven out of somewhere in
It seems that Mrs Samson objected to this
lack of zeal. She was of the opinion that the rituals should be done properly
and seems to have left the group in disgust. He didn't actually give us any
idea how Mrs Samson got the necrotizing fasciitis,
but I would wholly discount the possibility that it was coincidental. It is
actually very significant as it seems to have been the first thing that
happened and it provided the opening for Miss Peta Northlay to arrive.
Whereas Carleton coming clean (assuming
that he really has) is welcome, I still find his take on this a little odd. I
would not describe Isobel as a scapegoat; she is a blood-sacrifice who's soul languishes at the whim of the Crawling Chaos. That
is a fate that makes even the most gruesome mundane death seem comparatively
attractive. I really don't think he appreciates even a fraction of the
full horror of the situation. Either he is in shock and denial, or he was
staggeringly clueless about what his religion was really about.
There are still plenty of unanswered
questions, but at last there seems to be a prospect of putting a stop to all of
this. With Carleton's confession, it is now time to confront Sinclair, so
we returned to the school. He wasn't in his office but we were told he was in
the gym with three of the senior staff. On the way there, we heard screaming.
We rushed along the corridor, the floor was
shaking as though great weights where hitting the ground nearby. Alex, who was
in the lead, pushed his face to the windows in the gym door and was clearly shocked
by what he saw. After a moment, he pulled the door
open, standing behind it so it shielded him from the room. Through the gap I
could see the end of the gym. The wall was liberally decorated with sprays of
fresh blood. On the floor were scattered ripped body parts and clothing. In the
middle of the room was a dragon. It was clearly summoned as it was far too big
to have got in there in any other way. It had some poor sod in its mouth, who I
am sure was already dead and was now being shaken to pieces. The only person
still alive was Sinclair, who was running for the door that Alex was holding
open for him.
On seeing all of this Belinda finally
snapped. For some reason that no doubt made sense in her deluded imagination,
she decided that she wanted to get into the room. Obviously this was the last thing
I was expecting. The first thing I knew was this incongruous shriek of delight
as Belinda rushed past me towards the open door. It was too late for me to grab
her but fortunately Alex saw her and stopped her in her tracks with a blow from
his baton. A couple of us, I think it was Eliza and I, grabbed Belinda and
started to drag her away from the door.
We could see Sinclair get within a few feet
of the door and then a vast equine head appeared; the jaws, filled with long
sharp teeth, snapped shut on his shoulder. He gave a hideous scream as he was whipped
off his feet and out of sight. Then all we could see was a scale-covered body
and enormous bat like scaly wings shaking and the headmaster was evidently
getting the same treatment as the previous victim. Alex slammed the door shut;
there was no longer any purpose in having it open.
We dragged Belinda about fifty foot away from the door and I held her while Eliza gave her
an injection of something. By the time this was done, it had all gone quiet. The
dragon had disappeared; evidently the task it had been summoned for was
complete and it had returned whence it came. We later learnt that the creature
was a Shantak; they have only two legs but otherwise
they are classic non-fire-breathing dragons, and are no doubt the real creature
that many legends are based on.
We phoned in an emergency report to HQ, and
then went to investigate. The gym was a bloody mess. On the end wall, in Peta Northlay's ornate
hand-writing was a message. I don't remember the precise wording but I think it
was something in the ‘so die traitors’ line. We did our best to obliterate
that, and did a quick search of the school for anything similar. In one of the
classrooms we found a message addressed to us on one of the white-boards,
reading “Nice working with you.” We photographed and then erased that too.
Got Belinda into the school first-aid room,
got a police guard on the door and Eliza kept her sedated while waiting for her
transport to arrive.
By this stage, the police were turning up
in force. We convinced DS Pringle that this is a national security case and
that they have to allow as few people as possible into the school, police
included. Shortly after this, the Chief Constable turned up. (He is based
in Penrith so he didn't have far to come.) It was
clear that he had had a call from
Eliza carefully collected the remaining
body parts, trying to preserve the clues as which body each bit came from. I
kept well out of that. I concentrated on preventing anyone investigating too closely
and had a few journalists arrested. Meanwhile we bandaged Belinda's head and
hands to make her unrecognisable. It is reckoned too difficult to be really
sure no-one notices the transfer to Broadmoor, so the
cover story is that we are transporting ‘Peta Northlay’. She was here and has disappeared so she is the
obvious person to blame; it's even true! We can claim to have caught her
(explains the lack of a man hunt).
Two hours after our call, an ambulance
arrived from Ashworth to collect Belinda. We told them the patient's name is Peta Northlay, and she needed to
be kept sedated for their safety: “Seen ‘Silence of the Lambs’? Remember what happened
to the ambulance crew? Keep her properly sedated; that is in a dreamless sleep,
or she will ‘sleep-walk, which is quite as dangerous as her being awake.”
Of course, I am worried about her and our
safety rather than the ambulance crew, but putting the frighteners on them
seems the best way of making sure they do the job properly.
Shortly after that a couple of van loads of
security-cleared industrial cleaners from
The official story is that a psychopath
with Al-Qaeda connections called ‘Umm Muhammad’ murdered and dismembered
She took a supply-teaching post in Penrith and went on a murdering spree. Supposedly it was an
attempt to murder the whole school, and merely a trial run for a whole series
attacks. Thanks to great heroism on the part of the dead teachers, the attack
was curtailed and the perpetrator did not escape to report back to her Al Qaeda
commanders.
Obviously this means that terrorists are
desperate to know how things went, and it is vital for National Security that
they do not find out. Accordingly there is total black-out on all details of
how the attacks were executed and countered.
The only detail they are releasing (and
they are pretending this leaked rather than was released deliberately) is that
the attack involved the use of a very powerful hallucinogen which has resulted
in many of the witnesses being very confused about what they saw.
One or two of the police knew enough to
know this was bollocks. With them we took the line: “Yes, we know how it
happened. No, we aren't telling you. You are honestly better not knowing, we
wish we didn't. No, we did not cause it, we
merely failed to prevent it”.
One of them expressed doubt on the last
point, and I pointed out that if (hypothetically) we were capable of doing
things like that, how wise would it be to pick a fight with us?
In
That at least is what we are being told. Given
that we know that everyone else is being lied to, I would almost feel left out if
we weren't being lied to as well.
By early evening, we weren't needed any
more. We finally got back to the hotel and collapsed.