The Masks of Nyarlathotep: London part 3

Extracts from the Personal Diary of Dr Belinda Durham

Afternoon Saturday July 26^th 2008

We didn't stop running until we got to Walton-on-the-Naze. This was only a street with a few shops and a pub sandwiched between caravan sites, so we stood out like squaddies in the senior common room. One well-intentioned manager-type came over to see if we were – well, I'm not quite sure what, but Alex and his warrant card saw him off. My knee was giving me a bad time, although Eliza said all it needed was time for a full recovery, and a check at A&E in case there was any glass still in it. Barbara was definitely hurting from so much exercise after her injury in France. She looked grey when we came to a halt, but her colour came back to more normal once we stopped and thought about what to do next.

After inspecting our obvious injuries, Adam and Alex spotted that St John was suffering badly but from something more nebulous than a physical injury. I'd noticed that he was hovering right next to Barbara and myself as Eliza inspected our injuries – as in the next available space – but I was focused in my knee rather than him. Adam took him to one side, put an arm round him and talked quietly with him. From my (now extensive) experience of Adam's perceptiveness and empathy, I'm sure that he had spotted something serious and was helping him.

What happened next was that Alex got onto the phone to MI13 HQ to get reinforcements. The way that he insisted on using code names and terms briefly took my mind off my knee; I thought it highly unlikely that the people and thing we'd left at the house would listen in to phone-calls. Anyone else would think that the real names were a code! Anyway, we found a cafe – the all-day breakfast with strong tea sort – and stayed there until three jeep-loads of the army showed up. We, or rather Alex, told them that there were aliens and a possible bioweapon at the house, and the major in charge said he had orders to secure the grounds, seal off the area but not go into the house. In fact, Alex's briefing to him and his orders sounded eminently sensible. Alex shot off in a jeep with them, while we stayed and ate. I noticed that St John was still keeping very close to Adam, but Walton is broad-minded these days.

After a time, Alex told us over the phone that the army had the place surrounded and thought that the people in the house had been reinforced. I later saw a third car outside the house in addition to our two. The next step was to re-take the house but that needed a more specialised force. After a few phone calls we decided that the creature had to be a star vampire (aka shambler from the stars). The tittering sound, invisibility and state of the dead human body were diagnostic. It could be killed with bullets but the problem was that it was invisible, and if you saw it you could go mad. It became visible when it ate by sucking out body fluids and leaving a dry husk behind, just like the body we'd seen in the library. It looked like it was currently confined to the library, but we had no idea if it would have to stay there always. After a discussion, we decided to ask for reinforcements on the shooting front, namely Andy Price and anyone else similar who was available. It would have been great to also have occult reinforcements, but since we were the MI13 home team, there would be nothing more apart from the advice we had already received.

After quite some time, a jeep re-appeared and Eliza, Barbara and I were taken back to the house. This was because we would be part of the fire-power going into the house. It seemed inappropriate for so many reasons for the army to go in. Anyway, the people inside might try to leg it and with only 12 soldiers and a lot of shrubbery they were all needed to make sure none escaped unseen. One of them lent me a pump-action shotgun. I'd not trained with one, but my practice with a pistol had given me more confidence with guns. Andy Price arrived with a second ex-SAS man, Harry Wise. He seemed to be the same sort of calm and methodical killer but was momentarily taken aback by seeing Eliza. It turned out that she'd been at the notorious Gallows Hill incident where he and Andy Price had been the only survivors from his SAS squad. He had had a mental break-down and was only now returning to service, so meeting her was a bit unfortunate. I didn't mention that I'd been there as well, the first time I'd encountered MI13, because I had left before the fatal night and he had presumably not seen me. I'd been interviewed by someone from the police or army after the incident and been able to convince them that I knew nothing of the so-called terrorists since I'd left before most of the action, which was essentially the truth. It was a good thing that Adam, who was also at Gallows Hill up to the end, had stayed at the cafe, so there is only one known face for Harry to cope with.

Andy and Harry had no qualms about killing people, but were likely to fall apart if they saw the star vampire. Ideas of what these highly trained killers might then do meant we had to avoid this. The plan was therefore for Alex, Eliza, Andy and Harry to go through the house and capture (or more likely, kill) all the people. Then they'd come back for Belinda and myself to help get rid of the star vampire. We'd try to damage the interior of the building as little as possible. It was Grade 1 listed with truly exquisite art deco styling so I hoped we could do this. If only we had a spell for 'expel alien back to the stars'. But then I've been unable to learn even the simplest 'ring of protection' spell.

After they'd started, we heard the army shooting at one side of the house as a decoy, and then occasional shots and bangs from inside. Finally, we were called in as a helicopter appeared. I learnt that it was taking Harry Wise to hospital since he'd been burnt all over as the result of spell. Not a good return to work. Alex and Eliza told us that the two SAS had gone methodically though the ground floor, killing anyone they saw and then headed upstairs equally systematically where they'd interrupted a man doing a spell. Andy had killed him but not before Harry was caught by his spell. Fortunately the bodies had been removed and bagged before I entered the house, but I could not miss the blood and smells. Although my own obsession with blood had now gone, it was a rather unnerving sight.

Several of the dead were security guards from the Penhew Institute as well as Sir Aubrey's housekeeper and the butler, her husband. The library was untouched and the tittering was still there, maybe just inside the doorway. Clearly the star vampire was still inside and we wanted to get it before it left. For once, we rapidly made an efficient plan that worked. Alex made a circle of protection in the corridor at the entrance to the library with Eliza and myself in it with him to contribute to its strength. Then we just fired at random into the room until the tittering went away. The beautiful wood-panelled library, with shelves of statues and objects got rather damaged, not just by us but also the star vampire once we'd wounded it.

After killing it, we looked round the library carefully. There was a life-sized black marble statue of, I'd guess, the Black Pharoah. It looked brand new, in much too perfect condition even for something that had spent the last thousands of years in a tomb. I'd guess Sir Aubrey had it made to support his ideas when he could not find an authentic one. All the rest of the statuary and jewellery in the room were Egyptian. Most was beautiful and of the highest workmanship - and I'd guess both authentic and in excellent condition until today. Still, that's what the skill of conservators are for. Surprisingly for a library, there were few books and none were interesting. However, we found a safe. In it was a letter from Dr Henry Clive, a plastic key card, an ordinary key like a locker key and a canopic jar for abdominal organs. Remembering the locked basement door at the Institute, we thought we now had an easy way into it. Locating one locker would be more difficult as would discovering the significance of the canopic jar and what it said in the letter.

The letter was intriguing. First, it was dated 22 February 2008 and sent to Sir Aubrey, although he should have been dead. Dr Henry Clive was evidently yet another Egyptologist. I must remember to ask Jenny Vaughan, my Department's Egyptology specialist if she has heard of him, and to look him up in the Online Egyptological Bibliography. The letter said, roughly:

We have found the tomb of the queen and moved the sarcophagus to the Great Chamber for the ceremony of resurrection of the queen before moving to Memphis. Broadmoor and Gardner are with us but I have had to dismiss Van Heuvelen because he won't obey orders. Awaiting the turning of the stars, yours in blood, Clive.

Does not sound like main-stream archaeology! Is someone masquerading as Sir Aubrey, or is he still alive?

Anyway, with this evidence from a 'terrorist' incident, Special Branch raided the Penhew Institute immediately, and took all the staff away to various police stations around London. The idea was to keep them isolated while working out who was really innocent and who was involved in the 'terrorism'. We heard that Gavigan the acting director was probably innocent but the actions of his secretary were suspicious. We, including Andy Price (who had been shot in the arm making it almost unusable although he insisted that it was 'not a problem') drove back to London, to Tottenham Court Road, were escorted through the police cordon that was causing major traffic disruption, and into the basement. The card indeed let us in. There were two rooms. One was for living in, with a camp bed and so on. The only interesting things were two false passports, both out of date, with Sir Aubrey's picture but other names. The other room was an occult workshop. It was full of ancient Egyptian material. Alex suddenly grokked that all showed Mythos creatures. It looked like genuine material to me, so the implication was that these creatures have been infesting the planet for millennia. That really made me think, and they weren't happy thoughts.

There was a cabinet of books that we opened with the locker key from the safe. It had books in many languages and between us we could understand the gist of many of them. They were of mythos philosophy, Books of the Dead, the testimony of Nephren-Ka, poems praising Nyarlathotep and scrolls of spells like Bind Servant of Set, Evoke Servant of Set, Bind Steed of the Black Pharoah, Evoke … Bind Ghost of the Desert, Evoke …, Curse of the Power of Djehouti and command Spawn of the Fog Thing. Only the last one sounded remotely funny.

There was also a small sandalwood chest inlaid with silver images of ghosts of the desert that contained two wavy-edged blades, that simply did not look nice. Andy said something about the intent being in the user rather than the blade, but I think even he immediately realised that they were for a ritual sacrifice. We also found in the room jars, bags and boxes of all sorts of materials associated with black magic like bats wings, frogs eyes and skin strips (the origin of which I do not want to think about since this whole trail started with a murder and removal of strips of human skin). There was a small stoppered stone jar of a powder and some metal vials sealed with an elder sign that we most certainly did not try to open.

Alex made a formal report of our finds to Marmaduke (steadfastly maintaining his cover as 'Tulip'). All the contents of the basement were impounded, to be catalogued and taken away, but fortunately not by us. We heard that GCHQ, or someone, had made progress with Grey Dragon. It was a legitimate organisation, but a very minor player. End user certificates, like the one from it, had been involved in several scams, with Ukrainians arrested for selling fake uranium. The consensus was that the Ukraine really did not have any fissile uranium or plutonium. The certificate added to the possibility that someone was impersonating Sir Aubrey, maybe because his title added spurious legitimacy. As an aside, Marmaduke told us that Dr Henry Clive was really leading a Penhew-sponsored dig in Egypt and the other names were really supposed to be assistants with the expedition. This obviously begged the question of what it was up to, but because we are the 'home' team, it does not look like we will be sent to Egypt any time soon.

Despite the loose ends, our instructions were now to resume our normal lives while others continued to pursue some of the angles. That was fortunate for me since I'd been offered a place in August on a dig in Northumbria, at a pre-Roman site and I was reluctant to cry off. So, I packed up and headed off for the site near Hexham.