The Masks of Nyarlathotep: London part 1

Extracts from the Personal Diary of Dr Belinda Durham

May 2007

I later learnt that I spent three months in the Wilmarth Facility. After the first few weeks Adam turned up. I gradually lost my interest in blood, and remembered my life as Gloriana, although, except for Adam, I certainly did not tell the therapists about her. She had a very different attitude to blood, death and fighting – very much facts of every day life that you had to deal with and move on. There was nothing special about blood, and fighting was something to avoid unless truly necessary, but to then undertake with a clear aim in mind and as efficiently as possible. Training for fighting, both personal combat and to lead others, was therefore something to take equally seriously and make time for. By the beginning of August I was back to normality, but with an Etrurian noble as my alter ego. I had a holiday, keeping away from both history and archaeology and then went back to work at the start of a new academic year.

September 2007 – 2008

I accepted training in firearms from MI13 and also in physical fitness. My Gloriana side approved. I did not want to attempt to learn any more about magic, and no-one suggested I should. Over the year I hardly heard from MI13, except for the training sessions.

Staff of MI13, 2008

Head: Dame Ursula Howard-Fiennes: from old money, cousin of Duke of Norfolk; chain smoker, very ill, coughing up blood.

CEO: Marmaduke Forbush: the administrator; civil servant caricature - Suit, bowler hat, afraid of spiders

Secretary (and more) Amanda Kensington: she and Marmaduke are the entire administration until James Elliot was appointed

James Elliot – into computers; new addition to admin.

Andy Price – ex-SAS: trains us and provides technical help when needed.

Special Branch Liaison – Alec Douglas

About 12 part-time staff mostly outside UK dealing with occult terrorism.

We are the home team part-timers. In 1990s there were 4 – 6 full timers in UK who could be deployed but these are now abroad.

Wednesday 23^rd July 2008

Finally, on 23^rd July, I had a call from MI13, to be at St Pancras on 23^rd because of an unsavoury murder on the Eurostar. A mutilated body had been found in a toilet on the train from Paris. The clothes were slashed and torn and there was massive trauma to the face and abdomen. Other details were hazy and all the passengers were being interviewed. Because the person, although probably a UK citizen, had embarked at Paris there were international overtones to the murder. The reason why we had been involved was obvious when we were told his occupation (an author of books about cults with a link to archaeology) and the way he’d died (ritually). It certainly needed to be checked carefully to see whether there was an occult connection.

To my surprise, Alec appeared again. He’d moved from Cumbria to London and was now MI13 liaison with Special Branch. As well as him, all the usual suspects – Barbara (now inducted into MI13 as well), St John, Eliza and Adam – were at St Pancras. The body had been reported by a passenger as the train was about to leave again for Paris. We got the police reports. The man’s luggage was still on the train (no computer) and identified him as Elton Jackson, author, and his identity had been confirmed from his teeth by his dentist. All the contents of his pockets had gone, and indeed his pockets had been slit open as if someone was searching thoroughly for something. He looked ill with bags under the eyes and as if he had suffered recent weight loss, although there were no signs of one possible cause, namely cancer. He had not been looking after himself and his teeth had not been cleaned properly for some time. He’d been disembowelled and also a flap of skin cut out of his face from forehead to nose. He’d died of blood loss, probably in the toilet although there was not much blood on the walls. Eliza told us that the ascending vena cava was cut but not the descending aorta, explaining why the blood seeped rather than sprayed out. This might have been accidental but the precision of the cut meant it probably was not.

We obtained all the information from the police that we could, as well as doing some searching ourselves. To summarise:

The murder

Two people had attacked Jackson and he put up a fight. There were footprints leading away from the body but these were free of blood, suggesting that the killers had cleaned their shoes.

The station’s security cameras had caught two tall slender black men in dark suits. One was carrying a briefcase or laptop. They took a taxi and the driver, Alfred Rogers, had already been interviewed. The two men had not been communicative when he tried his usual banter. He’d dropped them off in south central London where there was a large black community. One of them had left blood on the taxi seat. Other passengers also remembered seeing a black man.

The man who sat next to Jackson on the train had also been interviewed. He was Reg Dundas who said that Jackson was agitated. He went to the toilet several times taking his laptop with him. There might have been a flash drive, or dongle for the internet, plugged into it.

We determined that Jackson was killed while the train was in the UK, so there was no need to involve the French.

Elton Jackson the author

He was born in 1968 and his popular works on cryptic and sinister cults were published by Prospero Press. Jonathan Kensington was his editor. The titles were:

‘Skulls along the river’ (1993) about headhunters

‘Masters of the Black Arts’ (1996) a history of sorts

Then in 1996 ‘The Way of Terror’, about the use of terror in cults was published. This was well received and he began to be more widely known.

In 1998 his ‘The Smoking Heart’ appeared which was also popular, about Waco, Koresh and a history of other modern death cults.

His next one was the blockbuster ‘Sons of Death’ in 2001 about the Thugees of India and their modern descendents.

After that came ‘Witch cults of England’ in 2003 to poor reviews.

‘Black Power’ in 2004, about African death and blood cults, was controversial and his last book to date.

Barbara remembered that she had met him around 2002-3 and helped him get access to some monuments. St John had heard of him although never met him and was aware that there was some antagonism towards him from New Agers. He’d been sceptical himself although now he knew that Jackson had been correct about the Children of Light. We found out that MI13 did not think that there was any problem with Thugees in the UK.

His luggage

Some of the contents were strange.

Three letters, from Miriam Arkwright at the Weidner Library USA, from Farraz Najir to Roger Carlisle dated July 2002, and Mathers from Shanghai.

There was something from the Stumbling Tiger bar.

Three books: A history of the warfare of science with theology; Death cults: Murder Mystery and Mayhem; the Joy of Sects.

A Russian receipt for Aubrey Penhew, dated 2008. We got a translation of it from GCHQ.

A travel itinerary. London – Nairobi - Kampala – Mombassa - Hong Kong - sails to Shanghai – overland to Odessa – ship to Cairo – Athens - Paris.

A photo of a yacht in a very modern harbour that we identified as Shanghai.

A flier for a talk ‘Cult of Darkness’ at the College of Antiquities by Professor Anthony Cowles; I had been at it.

Business card of Edward Gavigan, Director of the Penhew Institute.

We found out more about the people and places to make sense of these objects.

Roger Carlisle was a wealthy American with lots of money and no sense. The tabloids loved him. A few years ago he came to the UK to take up Egyptology and led an expedition to Egypt that found nothing. The party included the photographer Hypatia Masters. Then he went on holiday to Kenya and was not heard of again.

The Penhew Institute was set up by Sir Aubrey Penhew, a famous Egyptologist with a wealthy background. I knew something about it because of my background as a university archaeologist. Lots of Egyptologists hated him and he was asked to resign from University College in London. He then used his fortune to set up the Institute which now employs about six people and does good research. He had odd ideas but they have gradually become more mainstream. The Institute gets stuff out of Egypt despite the restrictions on export of antiquities and he is able to return for further digs. It acquires some choice things, especially papyri. People suppose that bribes must be involved. Penhew resigned from his own Institute, leaving Gavigan as Director, to give the intellectual lead to Roger Carlisle’s dig and went on to Kenya with the whole expedition. They were all killed in 2002 or 3 in Mount Elgon National Park that straddles the borders of Kenya and Uganda. This made the receipt signed A. Penhew in 2008 either a forgery or very interesting.

Professor Cowles is an entertaining speaker with a beard; from the University of Sydney but currently on sabbatical at Cambridge. The talk on ‘Cult of Darkness’ started about Australian Aborigines and their idea of the Father of All Bats. They sacrificed to him and he would appear. People ran through a gauntlet of clubs, spikes and poison. He mentioned an Aboriginal song cycle when enormous beings gathered and living winds blew down walls. Cowles’ lecture showed four over-exposed pictures of men from Miskatonic University on a trip to Australia in the 1930s who were attacked by Aborigines. He also mentioned a tale originating near the Aral Sea, but with a rainbow snake that trapped a bat in a watery place.

Adam used the binoculars to see the past in the corridor around the toilet where the murder presumably took place. He saw nothing, even in the toilet. Eliza used the mask to check on the body and saw that the silver cord was cut.