The Raggedy Man's Revenge

Extracts from the Personal Diary of Dr Belinda Durham

1^st August

I found a message from Barbara on my voicemail in the evening. I’d had my phone off during the day when I was studying. I made little enough headway even without the constant interruptions that normally plague me at work. Anyway, I phoned her back and gave her Elisa and Adam’s numbers. She had had a message from St John that Jules had been kidnapped on 31 July by Rodriguez, who would exchange her for the binoculars. This is terrible news. Goodness knows what Rodriguez is doing with Jules, and I am certainly not confident that he would simply hand her back. In any case, we must keep the binoculars. They are too important to lose. And I’m stuck here trying to get a spell into my head and fathom out cryptic texts in a new language. Normally documents are an enjoyable challenge, but not under these circumstances.

Barbara gave me the number for the Henge Shop who will take messages for St John. Of course, he hasn’t got a mobile phone. I’m not sure whether that is because of money (pay-as-you-go is cheap apart from the calls but I know that they are pretty hard up) or because of Jules’ views on ‘the vibes’. I must ask him about it next time we meet because it would be so much more convenient to be able to contact him. I saw the TV news briefly in the evening and there was a man making a plea for the release of his kidnapped wife. Not St John, obviously, but it made me even more anxious to do something about Jules but unable to think of what.

2^nd August

In the morning I rang Adam to tell him about Jules. He is obsessed with doing something about the shoggoth. There was no reply from Elisa’s phone. I’m stuck here in central London until tomorrow because of my new commitment to MI13. What a mess!

3^rd August

I’d stayed in accommodation near the MI13 offices while studying the books and spells and finally went home on August 3^rd to discover that my flat had been burgled. This wasn’t at all what I wanted to have to cope with and I simply had to take the time to do several things. The flat was a complete mess but the burglars had been quite selective in what they took. They were after small, portable valuable things, not like last time when they took everything electrical smaller than the washing machine. This time they took a small digital radio, bottle of spare change, some jewellery and a spare cheque book. It looked like they wanted quick money for drugs, although they’d pulled all my books off the shelves and torn pages out of some which must have taken time. Perhaps they thought I’d have money hidden among them. I had to phone the police, bank, insurers (goodness knows what my premium will go up to now and what more they’ll want) as well as shop for food.

I tried to phone St John and Barbara and finally got a reply from Barbara at 10pm. She and her family were now in a motel because they were worried that the shoggoth was pursuing her. I told her about Jules’s kidnapping and my burglary. Adam phoned around midnight and said that he and Elisa planned to try to bind the creature. I said forcefully that we needed to rescue Jules. I said that I would go to Avebury, find St John, and then phone him again. We knew that Rodriguez must have accomplices because he led the Children of Light, so there must be those among the followers who would be willing to help him. We already knew that Moynahan was a follower and his position in the police makes his influence more difficult to deal with. Rodriguez must be able to do some magic.

I finally got to sleep, with a chair propped under the door-handle, after a sleepless hour or two wondering what on Earth I was getting involved with.

4^th August

I woke early – well, I hadn’t slept very well. My Land Rover was somewhere in Avebury so I took an early train to Swindon and then a taxi to Avebury, arriving by 10:30. I spotted St John on the street. He looked as if he was begging. He was very anxious about Jules, and cross that he’d heard nothing from any of us for 4 days. Of course we should have done more but he is a difficult man to contact, which he does not seem to appreciate. I took him to the Red Lion, where he ate as if he hadn’t had a decent meal in days and we argued about what to do. He wanted to use the binoculars to view Jules abduction. He said that Tim Moynahan had taken her but she was not in official police custody because Moynahan had showed him a picture of Jules tied to a chair. He’d never get away with that in a police station in this country – I hope! I didn’t think that the bins were a good idea because of the problem of adjusting for the correct time, the chance of whoever it is seeing us and I really doubted whether it would actually tell us anything useful. However, I eventually agreed we should try it. The poor man was getting so distressed.

To avoid them seeing us as we watched them abduct Jules we planned to follow in a car. I’d have to drive and St John give directions via the binoculars. Of course, we could not do anything immediately because neither of us had the binoculars, or transport. We collected my Land Rover and went to the caravan where I read Imelda’s diary and then we phoned Adam. Our conversation with them was almost surreal. It turned out that they were at a chicken farm near Cambridge buying chickens to sacrifice to power a pentagram of protection and to summon and bind the shoggoth. They are quite fixated on this idea. Never-the-less, they agreed to come to Avebury and reached the caravan by about half six.

We started our plan to watch the abduction through the bins. I went to wait in the Land Rover. First Adam and then St John used the bins. They used the appearance of the note Jules left when taken to tune in to the correct time but had no luck with getting to the correct time. Just as I expected, it will take more thought and careful study than we have at the moment to be able to see a precise time with this instrument.

Then we had another idea. We could ask Imelda’s ghost for information using the bone mask that looks a bit like a pair of glasses. Her body is in the morgue at the Great Western Hospital so Elisa and St John went there while Adam and I went to a motel near the motorway. I’d realised that Adam’s been with MI13 for some time. He phoned them to see if they would help us release Jules. We could tell them that her kidnap had supernatural elements, since the people involved included a sorcerer who had summoned the shoggoth. MI13 would send us a man with the right skills and weapons to help release her. A man called Andy Price turned up at our motel. Adam had met him before. He told me quietly that Andy had been one of a squad of eight SAS men of which 4 were still alive, including one who was insane. Andy looked as if he was keen on keep-fit and was very quiet. When we could not tell him the plan to release Jules, he went to doze until we could tell him something.

Elisa and St John came to the motel. We wanted to set up a meet with Rodriguez, to agree to exchange the bins for Jules (but double-cross him to get Jules and keep the bins). We tried to think of a way to contact him, or someone who could get a message to him. He’s suppressed his phone number when he phoned Adam to offer to buy the bins for £50,000 and Imelda did not have a phone number on her business card, only an @childrenoflight email address. Stumped, we all went to sleep. I must admit that despite everything I was less uneasy than last night, and also more tired. At about 2 am, St John woke us all up. He’d awakened from a dream of Djehuti with the phone number for Rodriguez. I hadn’t thought that supernatural beings, gods, whatever they are, would know such useful information as phone numbers. The other thing that had happened was that St John’s hair had turned white, from root to tip, something else that was impossible. So, we ‘pulled ourselves together’ and phoned Rodriguez. He agreed to meet us in the car park of the Red Lion with Jules at 4 am. We had to quickly work out what to do and then leave to get there in time.

I drove the Land Rover with Elisa and stopped on the north side of Avebury. Adam and St John went to the car park, and had dropped off Andy earlier so he could get into position. They later told me what happened. Moynahan and Rodriguez showed up in the car park. They asked to see the ‘merchandise’ and Adam showed them the bins but there was no sign of Jules. Then Andy started shooting at Rodriguez and killed him with 3 shots. Moynahan ran off and Andy ran in with a pistol and went after him, pausing to take 2 more headshots at Rodriguez’s body. Adam and St John went for their car and phoned us to drive to the Red Lion despite all the commotion. Andy managed to get Moynahan in the leg and we got him into the Land Rover. Elisa did some first aid on him. I drove off randomly and finally went into a field to avoid the police cars that were starting to converge on the area. Elisa took him from the Land Rover and got him to tell us where Jules was. This sentence summarises a rather nasty episode which still makes me squirm inside. How far should we have gone to get Jules away from people who have shown that they have little decency? I think the answer has to be ‘pretty far’.

Moynahan told us that Jules was in a house in Marlborough so we drove there. We found her in a filthy state in the basement. It was totally disgusting and she was pretty upset. Moynahan had hit her. She’d been tied to a chair the whole time and had been fed (although with the smells and everything – I can’t image she ate much). She hadn’t seen Rodriguez at any point. Andy Price took Moynahan away into MI13 custody and he’ll probably end up in the Wilmarth unit in Broadmoor. We went back to the motel with Jules wrapped in a coat and then we all slept even though it was becoming daylight again.

5^th August

We had to decide where to go since it was not a good idea to stay in this motel any longer. The problems were Jules, the police (unless MI13 had done something about them), the shoggoth, the safety of Barbara’s family and anyone else who might be looking for us (like more of Moynahan and Rodriguez group). Jules was in a very bad state and after a time we realised that the best thing for the moment might be if she stayed with Barbara’s family while we dealt with the shoggoth since it was an immediate danger to others, if not us (as Elisa and Adam did not hesitate to point out at every opportunity; I still think that the danger to Jules was more immediate, but there is no point going over it all again. Jules is now safe and I do not think we could have prevented the shoggoth killing over the last few days (if indeed it has killed anyone).

Adam, Elisa and I went with Barbara to her house in Putney. We’d decided that this was the most likely place to find the shoggoth since it was looking for us and she was the only one it could now find. On the way we picked up a van with live chickens (some of them now dead) that Adam and Elisa had simply abandoned when they came to help rescue Jules. Of course, I’m glad they decided to put Jules first, but I don’t see why they did not bring the chickens along. The more weirdness the better! Barbara lives in a normal middle-class house in Putney. We set everything up in the front room, after checking we’d have exits through both the kitchen and patio doors if we had to run from it. Fortunately she has a laminate floor in the front room since the first thing we did was put some DIY plastic sheets over the furniture and paint a Circle of Protection onto the floor [using magic points from all of us (20 point circle)]. We put everything we thought we’d need inside it since of course we could not then leave. After then, the others tried to summon the shoggoth. One of the chickens was part of that, not too messy. Watching them carry out the spells, although I could follow parts, I really could not understand all that they were doing. Finally, by about 9pm we had done all we could and just sat down to wait. St John fell asleep and I began to doze.

6^th August

Eventually, about 5 am, it arrived. I’d never seen one so clearly before and from a (hopefully) safe position. Its eyes on stalks looked round the room. One even came out of its mouth. It had presumably travelled along the river to keep out of the light because it was wet and covered in green slime. Elisa then started the binding spell to tell it to go back under Silbury Hill. It was one of the most tense but also anticlimactic events in my life. It made no attempt to attack us, just stood there as she spoke smelling muddy and decomposing, unlike a CGI monster. When Elisa had finished, it turned and shuffled away. We’d succeeded! It was on its way to Silbury Hill. We’d debated whether to take it back ourselves but decided that it would be safer if it made its own way there. It will take time to get back, maybe a week assuming it goes back upriver. All we’ve got to do is be at the hill when it arrives and seal it in. All!!