Last Rites, part 1
Extracts
from the Diary of James Elliott
Ursula has died.
Since Gordon Brown’s moving into Number 10, MI13’s survival has been largely
down to her personal influence. Marmaduke expects us
to be disbanded very soon. We have had unofficial contingency plans for
sometime, which he puts into action. My role is to ensure that none ofthe sensitive computer files can be accessed by any of
the unbelievers who we expect to take us over. My main task, done long ago, is
ensuring that the encrypted filing systems will shut themselves down and delete
all their keys if any outsiders attempt to access the systems. The back-ups of
the keys are well hidden. All that is left is misleading the over-curious.
Arrived at work
this morning to find some spooks from some other agency, I never discovered
which, had taken over the office. They wanted me to provide access to all the
files. I pretended to co-operate. I gave them access to the accounts, the
phone-logs, the cover-story policy documents, etc., but nothing dangerous.
Over the next
few days, I was questioned at length. My story was that I had no responsibility
beyond IT. I knew that the organisation was investigating ‘weird stuff’, but I
was sceptical as to whether there was really any weird stuff to investigate,
and whether the filing-systems that I was denied access to actually had any
contents. [Marmaduke was telling them that only
Ursula had access to the keys, and she had not managed to pass them on to
anyone else before she died.]
They lost
interest quite quickly. They were soon convinced that Ursula and Marmaduke had been fabricating threats that they pretended
to thwart. However no-one is going to be disciplined for running a totally
useless department if it is properly authorised, as that would be a precedent
that would threaten most of
What they are
actually interested in is the unit’s budget and assets, most notably the office
space. I was earnestly told that I “should no longer consider [myself] part of
the intelligence community”. With some effort, I refrained from replying “Don’t
flatter yourself”.
Finally I had an
interview with Human Resources. I was offered a transfer to DEFRA or leaving
the service and getting about two months’ salary as pay-off. I decided it is
time to try the private sector again, so I took the severance.
This morning I
received an invitation to Lionel’s funeral. This is a personal and private
invitation to attend the funeral for Lionel Woodthorpe
to be held at St Mary’s Church, Cliffside on
Odd. In my experience, funerals are announced;
you don’t normally send invitations. Besides I really didn’t know the man that
well. Nevertheless as I am currently resting and
don’t have any clashing interviews, I think I will go.
Friday 31 st October 2008
I flew up to
We were met by
Lionel’s granddaughter, Lucinda, and her husband, Thomas. There was a fair
gathering for the wake. There were three members of
Marmaduke arrived with Mavis Enderby
who he has scrubbed up for the occasion. There were all a few locals: Mary
Paterson, Lionel’s housekeeper; Mary’s husband Donald, a local fisherman; Dougal McInnes, the curator of a
local (tourist attraction) cave and associated museum; Emily Parker, a local
tea-shop owner.
There was also
an American calling himself ‘Mr. Green’ (no forename apparently). He was very
interested in talking to all the former MI13 staff. He seemed to be recruiting.
He gave me a card. It had only a green triangle (or capital delta) on one side
and ‘555-7941’ (presumably an American telephone number without an area code)
on the other. As he mentioned
I have heard of
‘Delta Green’ as the American equivalent of MI13. I don’t know its official
status but I have the impression that it has less official backing than MI13
had (although probably more than MI13 now has). I wasn’t really looking for
more work battling Mythos problems, but I suppose
things could change.
Lionel is lying
in repose in a side-room. I find it a little macabre; I don’t really like open
coffins. I did go in briefly to pay my respects but I did not linger. Lionel
has a board on his chest with two little piles. One looks
like earth, the other salt; apparently an old Scottish custom.
Lucinda was
clearly very unset. She spent some time with Lionel
then retired.
Thomas came
round recruiting pall-bearers. In a traditional community like this, it is
unthinkable to have women in the role. It isn’t something that you can decently
refuse if asked. Actually I feel it is something of an honour, so I was quite
glad to accept.
I headed to my
digs at about eleven and got a good night’s sleep. Thomas intended to keep the
vigil with Lionel. I respected him forthat but really
could not face joining him in it.
Saturday 1 st November 2008
I got to
Drummond House at about ten. I was paired up with Marmaduke
asthe front pair of pall-bearers. As there were six
of us and Lionel wasn’t that heavy, it wasn’t difficult, albeit a bit
nervous-wracking. It would have been so embarassing
if we had dropped the coffin.
The service was
much as I was expecting. Just about the whole village was present. I was
slightly surprised at the ‘debts’, rather than ‘trespasses’ in the Lord’s
Prayer. Apparently that is normal in the Church of Scotland.
As the coffin is
being lowered into the grave, thomas
read two verses of the poem “And Death Shall Have No
Dominion”
by Dylan Thomas. I had
not actually heard the poem before so I cannot say for certain if the verse was
modified in any way, but having looked it up I cannot say I am aware of any
deviation from Dylan Thomas’s text.
Afterwards we
were all invited back to the house. When there, the lawyer (Hamish Blawke) read a list of names including Adam, Alex and most
of the present company who were invited to a formal reading of Lionel’s will. I
assume that this is also the list of persons invited to the wake.
The will was
pretty simple. The bulk of the estate goes Lucinda. This includes the house and
fair portion of the Morvern peninsula (some tens of
thousands of acres). The one large bequest is £50,000 to Mary Paterson.
Several of us including
most of the MI13 folk present are to receive £5,000 on condition that we remain
in Cliffside for 48 hours after the interment. This list does not include Marmaduke or Amanda, but does include me. Odd, I am the
only member of HQ staff included. Finally there is a box, about the size of a
shoe-box, that Lionel has requested is given to
Lucinda.
Marmaduke, Amanda, Mavis and Mr. Green all departed
for their respective homes. Amanda got a lift with Marmaduke
as I am not leaving yet.
I needed to
extend the car hire so, with permission, I used the
house phone to contact the hire company. There was no problem extending. While
I was there I noticed a couple of old cuttings about the deaths of Sophie Ennis
(Lionel’s grand-daughter) by drowning in 1990 and the suicide of Nicole, her
mother, around the first anniversary. The former mentioned a card Lucinda left
for her dead sister. It included the line “Who was it took you from us?” Why
“who” rather than “what”, or is that reading too much into an eight-year-old’s writing?
Lucinda thanks
everyone personally for coming in a particularly intense manner. The one
exception was Dr Alan Ettringer, the local physician,
who she got very angry with saying that he was “no friend” of hers. It was not
clear if this was just Lucinda being over-wrought, or if there was some history
to that.
I asked Lucinda
if I could do anything for her. She did not have anything in particular. We
were all invited to supper; I decided to stay. Before Mary left to go home, she
gave Thomas some keys as new master of the house, including one for the safe in
the study.
We were all
there when Thomas unlocked the safe. In it we found ammunition for Lionel’s
antique duelling pistols, including about five silver balls, one gold ball and
a couple of dozen hardwood bullets. Additionally there were two modern
small-calibre pistols and ammunition for them.
In one of the
locked drawers of the desk we found Lionel’s journal. By searching at dates we
knew to be important, we learnt a disturbing story. It seems that Camilla was
killed by the “Spiders of Leng”; according to
Belinda, “Leng” is in the Dreamlands!
The details of his grand-daughter’s death is far more worrying.
Lionel reports casting an ancient Egyptian spell on his grand-daughter’s corpse
that convinced him that she had been sacrificed to some Outer God. [He based
this conclusion on the spell’s lack of effects; was that actually a reliable
deduction?] He was sure that someone local was responsible.
He believed that
if he could identify the Outer God, he could summon her shade and consign her
to the Dreamlands.
He has a scheme
that involves Lucinda using a mind-reading skill to learn the identity of
culprit. Lucinda wouldt hen raise Lionel as a sluagh, a hideous undead
vengeance creature which will be under the control of the summoner
(Lucinda) but have the knowledge of the deceased (Lionel). Presumably this is
to coerce the culprit to reveal the Outer God, and allow the casting
(posthumously) of spells to rescue the little girl’s shade.
I was wary of
helping, but I felt it would be unwise to work to prevent it. We were best
observing Lucinda and try to keep her safe but not attempting to stop her. I
recommended this to Thomas. We agreed that we would all stay in the house and
dressed. We set watches for the whole night. Mine was
At about
Nothing happened
for a minute or two. Then there was a sound of scrabbling from underground. It
seems that the spell worked; Lionel was being raised as undead.
She ordered Lionel to rise, hide in the mines, kill David Fraser and then go to
the “door under the house”.
She then walked
off towards the house. I waited. A minute or two later I heard Emily calling.
We all met up and returned to the house. We have a look around the outside for
the “door under the house” and found nothing. Then the others decided to
investigate the cellar for said door. I thought it was daft to do this in the
middle of the night, with Lucinda upstairs. I said as much but they went ahead
anyway. After a bit of searching they found the door. It was locked and the
lock rusted up. Thomas found the key and could not turn it. He embarked on
oiling the lock and hitting it with a hammer (yes, really!) to free it.
The noise caused
Lucinda to investigate. She found me in the kitchen and Thomas, Belinda, Emily
and Freddy downstairs. She insisted on the door being re-locked and taking the
key. We all went to bed.
Sunday 2 nd November 2008
In the morning,
Mary was overdue when Toby arrived to tell us that Lionel’s grave has been dug
up. Mary had discovered this on the way to Drummond House. Freddy and I set off
to investigate as though this news was a total surprise. The grave had been
trashed by Lionel digging himself out. It wasn’t obvious that this was dug from
underneath. We went to the church to talk to the minister. We told him that we
would phone the police. He asked us to take Mary tothe
Drummond House.
We took Mary
back to the house, and I tried to phone the police but the line out of the
village was down. I tried a few numbers; all local ones worked; all the others
failed. We visited the church again to tell the minister. He told us that the
phone-line being down is not especially rare, so he was unsurprised.
Lucinda came
down to breakfast and asked us what we knew. We gave a fair indication and told
her that we would not interfere. She says that there are three people for
Lionel’s vengeance to be visited on. David Fraser is merely the first.
We all went to
church. At the end of the service the minister announced the desecration. He
was clearly very angry and shocked.
After church,
Belinda and Freddy decided to go and warn David Fraser. I thought this was a
Bad Idea for two reasons. It would be interfering in long laid plans. More
importantly, I thought they were almost certainly too late. The sluagh had already been commanded to attack Fraser and after
hiding in the mines. He was clearly waiting for a suitable time. When everyone
else would be in church and Fraser as one of the village’s very few church non-attenders would be at home, seemed to me to be the obvious
time for the sluagh to strike. Lionel, and hencethe sluagh, already knew
that detail.
Belinda and
Freddy returned. As I expected, David Fraser was dead. He had had his head
ripped off. Barbara, his invalid and mentally-ill wife was found upstairs with
injuries and equipment that indicated David had been systematically torturing
her. She was referring to someone (we think the sluagh)
as a “very nice man”, presumably for killing her tormenter. Barbara is being
cared for by Dr. Ettringer, who is a neighbour. The
minister’s wife is also in attendance, having arrived for a pastoral visit.
They also found
some occult paraphernalia and an associated book. Belinda has done a cursory
inspection and did not recognise this as belonging to any recognised cult. They
brought the book back with them. Examination of the book will be our best
indication of whether he was involved in any magic, and any Mythos
allegiance of the cult.
Thoughts
Is it really a
co-incidence that Lionel’s funeral was held on Samhain?
I very much doubt it. This is something that Lionel has been planning for
quarter of a century. Conjuring the sluagh will have
been far easier, perhaps only possible, on a liminal
day. Perhaps Lionel died some weeks ago, and the death was hidden until it was
appropriate.
Perhaps Lionel
committed suicide, advancing his death by a month or two for a propitious
funeral date. The most
significant point is that Lionel’s plans were almost
certainly finalised before Ursula’s death. He might not have been aware of the
precariousness of MI13’s continued existence. His plans almost certainly
presumed MI13 would be around to clean up the mess.
Lionel’s plan seem to have been to ensure that as many as possible
MI13 staff were here (except Ursula, Marmaduke and
Amanda who were to be at head-office to co-ordinate). Communications to the
outside world have been cut. I am sure that the loss of the telephone
connection is deliberate, and I am nearly as sure that the mist is conjured.
Lionel does not want any outside interference until his quest is complete.
What I am unsure
about is just what he intend our role to be. Clearly it includes cleaning up
afterwards. Whereas that does not seem an immediate priority for him, no doubt
he cares a great deal for the people of this community and would want minimise
the collateral damage. I fear that with the demise of MI13 and the loss of its
influence, our ability to keep what is happening quiet is serious compromised.
Did he intend
any further role for us? Did he intend us to find his journal? If he was in his
right mind, then he should have been aware that half a dozen experienced
investigators would make short-work of finding it and locating the relevant
passages. In which case, he intends us to help or at least not interfere.
Nevertheless he probably has contingency plans to deal with any opposition.
There are a
number of more worrying possibilities. Perhaps one or more or us are intended victims of the sluagh.
I doubt this as I don’t think any of us have been involved for anything like
long enough. Albeit he may have other grudges to settle and that would not have
been mentioned in a left-to-be-found journal. It is possible that Lionel has
some more active role for us to take on. If so, he has yet to reveal it.
I also have
doubts as to whether Sophie suffered the fate Lionel believed. Lionel’s
reasoning is based on the failure of an ancient spell that he attempted to
cast. It is entirely possible that the spell failed for some other reason.
Further, all of this reasoning assumes that Lionel was at least moderately
sane. There is the distinct possibility that he was not.
Indeed the whole
of this affair could be based on Lionel’s psychotic delusions,
in that case anything could be planned.
The final
question is whether to stay or not. There has already been the desecration of a
grave and one particularly grisly murder. There are likely to be at least
another couple of them. The police will get here eventually. We, as the
outsiders, are particularly venerable to being made the scapegoats. Whereas
doing a runner would be suspicious in itself, if I boarded a trans-Atlantic
flight before some of the deaths, it would pretty well put me in the clear.
The real
clincher is that anyone leaving now will be assumed to be going to fetch the
police, and Lionel has probably taken precautions against this that may well be
lethal for anyone attempting to leave. The road to Drimnin
would be dangerous in this weather even without sabotage; the locals who know
the road well are wary of it. It really would not be difficult to send a car
rolling down the hillside.
Whereas there
are very significant dangers involved in staying, in my estimation leaving will
be more dangerous.