The Raggedy Man's Revenge

Extracts from the Personal Diary of Dr Belinda Durham

 

Monday 24th July

Now that I’m stuck in Great Western Hospital in Swindon until my injuries heal, in a third floor ward with the unlikely name of Kingfisher, I’ve time to note down the events of the past few days. I know it is a cliché, but ‘remarkable’, ‘unlikely’ and ‘unbelievable’ are the words to use. The bottom line is, though, that I may have stumbled on a tool that will revolutionise archaeology by letting us look back into the past, and I’ve had to revise my scepticism of the supernatural (for want of a better word).

 

It began a few days ago when I had a strange phone call. A hoarse-voiced woman recited part of the poem that we’d found among the ones scattered on Roland Treadle’s hotel bed when we were investigating his disappearance in January:

 

"An' The Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymes,

An' tells 'em, ef I be good, sometimes:

Knows 'bout Giunts, an' Griffuns, an' Elves,

An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers the'rselves:

An', wite by the pump in our pasture-lot,

He showed me the hole 'at the Wunks is got,

'At lives 'way deep in the ground,

an' can Turn into me, er 'Lizabuth Ann!

Er Ma, er Pa, er The Raggedy Man!

Ain't he a funny old Raggedy Man?

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!"

 

It was the same bizarre poem ‘The Raggedy Man’ by James Whitcomb Riley, except that she changed the last line to something like:

 

You’d better mind the Squidgicum-Squee

Or you’ll end up like St Barty.

 

It was scary hearing it again, out of the blue. When I 1471’d the number, it was a public call box in the Strand, answered by a passer-by.

 

This took me straight back to January, and the bizarre events and people I’d become linked with, following the last meeting of the College of Antiquaries. I’d hoped that I could put it all behind me, but this phone call brought it all, and the danger, flooding back, even giving me disturbing dreams that night.

 

I decided I’d better contact the same people again and also Dr Lionel Woodthorpe. I’d got the impression he knew more about it but, just like a man of his Oxbridge type, would only give veiled hints. He wanted to meet in his ‘club’, but I insisted on the Romano-British gallery in the British Museum. I phoned Barbara Smyth, Eliza Jameson and St John to get them to come along, because they were so deeply involved in January. Of course, St John and his hippy girl-friend don’t have a phone – it probably interferes with the aether, or something – but the Aveburye Henge Shoppe takes messages for them.

 

Lionel was his usual cryptic self, but managed to say that the phone call was from Mavis Enderby, an ex-colleague of his turned bag-lady. She’d evidently had a breakdown or something similar and now, although she had a bedsit in Camden, tended to keep on the move so ‘they’ could not find her. The poem came from her great interest in US poets. It is so sad when people who must have been significant in their youth end up like that - and not a good role-model for academic life! He arranged an introduction for me to someone who knew Mavis better, a Dr Toby Higginbotham, ancient Mesopotamian and Hyperborean specialist, who turned out to be in the Wilmarth Facility in Broadmoor!

 

Now visiting Broadmoor was an experience. It completely unnerved me, even though we (fortunately Barbara and Eliza came with me) only met one patient and members of staff. Toby Higginbotham was in a separate room from us and I spoke to him by videolink. He was obviously normally kept under heavy sedation. If I’d known in advance, I would not have agreed to the visit. As it was, he ended up ranting incoherently and fighting with the staff. The other surprise was that we met Adam Walters there. Apparently he was on the Wilmarth’s medical staff! I was very surprised because he’d struck me as a charlatan who exploited vulnerable people when I met him before (although I’ve now revised my opinion after how he helped when I was injured.)

 

I had the most bizarre dream that night that seemed real and made complete sense, in the way that some dreams do until you think about them the next day. I woke up in an empty room to someone saying,

 

‘Hello! I’d like to talk to you.’

 

It was a man sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, naked apart from a symbolic veil over his lap and an elaborate mask over his head, like Tut-ankh-amun. Somehow, I knew that the weather was hot.

 

‘Call me Djehuti,’ he said, ‘a mutual friend gave me your name. You have something on your mind. Perhaps I can help you; and you can help me?’

 

I said something like the poem was not rational, and he said that I needed to keep an open mind, needed more pieces of the jigsaw and the right tools. He said that 'the glasses' could be useful and had helped others. I was right not to trust Adam Walters, he said, because he was not reliable, but I should talk with Adam because he owns the glasses.

 

‘Give my regards to Dr Higginbotham when you see him next,’ he ended, and then he began to take his mask off. I knew with absolute certainty that I did not want to see what was under the mask, but could not close my eyes or turn my head away. As he lifted the mask away, I woke up.

 

It seemed perfectly normal then, but lying here in hospital I can see how most of it is my mind trying to explain away the sights and sounds of Broadmoor and Tony Higginbotham, and work through my distrust of Adam Walters. Still, I got Adam’s phone number from Barbara (who was now at her parent’s home in Avebury with her family) and contacted him. It turned out that he indeed had ‘the glasses’ – a pair of binoculars from the country-house sale where I’d first met him.

 

I can’t remember the exact sequence of events that led up to my injury, but they included Adam agreeing to go with St John and myself to look at Beckhampton Long Barrow, bringing the binoculars with him. Of course, I drove them there in my ‘dig-mobile’. The binoculars were very unusual; massive, heavy and obviously hand-made. Adam solemnly explained that a third sliding control focused time, which seemed totally unbelievable. I slid this back as far as possible, cutting myself on the metal in the process. When I looked at the barrow, it was replaced by an icy landscape; exactly like an ice age. Not daring to believe what I was seeing, I scanned around, seeing no sign of life, until suddenly there was a man in front of me, dressed in skins, holding a flint-tipped spear. He looked exactly as we imagine the people of that epoch. To my amazement, he stabbed me – AND I WAS REALLY INJURED! The pain of the injury was nothing compared with the shock of what I’d just seen, and what it meant. The binoculars really looked through time! To be able to see what really happened at a site, rather than having to infer from a few scraps of pot, bone and pit holes! This could completely revolutionise the subject. I have to get back to the binoculars and use them again!

 

Barbara has been an absolute brick bringing my things to the hospital and keeping in touch, although I am a little concerned about what has happened to my Land Rover.

 

There are several things that I don’t understand. Why did the ice-age man stab me? We know that most recorded meetings between peoples of very different appearance and cultures were initially peaceful and friendly, even if they deteriorated later. I look like a woman, despite a difference in clothes and height, so his reaction could have been mere surprise, or maybe I appeared at the moment he was spearing his kill and he could not stop himself. Whatever the reason, I shall take some safety precautions next time (so the explanation I have given the hospital staff and police, that I was injured by some surveying equipment that shifted in the Land-Rover and will have to fill out an accident report form for the University, is not entirely untrue!).

 

Why were my injuries not as severe as I would expect after a spear-wound? The consultant said that I’d been very lucky and it had missed all my organs, but I know that immediately after the injury both Adam and myself did something that slowed the blood-loss and alleviated the pain. I know that people have been capable of great feats despite their injuries under, for example, battle-field conditions, but I really don’t think that explanation applies here. Maybe there is a real basis to Adam’s claim to be able to ‘help’ people?

 

There is something going on that does not fit with a rational, scientific explanation of life. The evidence includes: some events at the country house; Roland Treadle’s death, dismemberment and continued existence; the Raggedy Man poem; the dream with Djehuti, and his messages; the binoculars. These do not make sense, but I cannot deny that they have happened. This enforced rest lets me think about all these data without the usual distractions, and despite my scepticism about New Ageism and all that stuff, I cannot ignore the evidence.

 

Tuesday July 25th

I’ve had another visit from the consultant, Mr Siva Swaram. The lab tests have confirmed his suspicion that there’s no infection in my wound, no damage to my organs and the spear didn’t even breach the peritoneum. That’s so completely unlikely, especially the lack of infection that I didn’t know what to say. When he asked if he could add me, anonymously, into a study on the outcome of abdominal injury, I just said ‘Yes’ automatically. To say ‘No’ would seem so ungrateful. He says that I’ll probably be released tomorrow, but I’ll have to be very careful. No driving, no lifting, very careful bending. That hardly fits with following up the binoculars, but should let me do something more interesting than simply lying here!

 

I dozed off after dinner, and was wakened by visitors. This is where it all starts to get a bit confused, because of what happened later that night. I’m still not sure that I remember everything, and I get flashes and feelings that I’d much rather not remember. My visitors were Adam Walters, St John, Barbara Smyth and Eliza Jameson – I think it was all four of them, anyway, although it might not have been. They’d been inside Silbury Hill! It is not supposed to have a hole in it, but St John had been all the way down to the bottom, and brought a piece of an engraved bronze plaque back with him. He looked quite shaken by the experience. They showed me the piece, and to my surprise I recognised it. I often talk with Jenny Vaughan, the department’s Egyptology specialist, over coffee, or lunch, or about departmental politics. One of her pet areas is the theft and smuggling of archaeological artefacts, and I remembered her showing me a picture of this exact plaque which had been stolen. It was from the Louvre, which now has pretty good security, as you’d expect, but the theft was also a surprise for another reason. The plaque was actually modern, or at least nineteenth century. It explained a stele that Napoleon had ‘added’ to the Louvre, showing ‘the weighing of the heart’. This piece was part of it, covered with hieroglyphs. I could read a few, but not enough to make out what they said.

 

Considering everything that had happened, I thought we needed to know as much about it as possible, so I took photos of it with my phone, sent them to Jenny and then followed up with a phone call. I had to explain what had happened to me, but she was sufficiently intrigued by the pictures to see if she could pick out anything more. Eventually she phoned back to say that the hieroglyphs, rather to her surprise, were older forms that on the stele that they were supposed to explain, and included the name Thoth in an archaic form as Djehuti. Of course, that immediately rang bells, from both my dream after visiting Broadmoor and another that night. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

They went away, and I settled down for the night, as much as you can settle in a large hospital ward. Never-the-less, I fell asleep and into a dream. As you do in dreams, I was looking down at a very old man in the bed opposite. He was immensely old, just skin stretched over bone, like dry mummified skin. Then he spoke to me, telling me to wake up.

 

This is where my memory gets very, very confused. The short, and strictly confidential, facts are that I was attacked by a shoggoth. I know that now, but not as I came out of sleep through that unsettling dream to the dim light of the ward and realised that something heavy was lying on me that smelt of decay. I must have screamed continuously once I realised I was awake and it was real, because after my voice had almost gone and my throat was sore, but I have no memory of the sound.

 

What I do remember is fear and anger from being trapped, fear of my wound re-opening, of being unable to breath, and then as I felt something poking at my body, fear of rape. I must have tried to push him away, to hit him, but his weight against the bed clothes held me almost as well as if I’d been tied up. My fear at the damage I might do to myself by struggling conflicted with my fear of what he might do to me if I did not get away.

 

Of course, I woke up the other patients and the nurses, and even Eliza arrived. I later learnt that she had been called back to the hospital for an autopsy, found that the corpse (and a porter) were missing and pursued her missing corpse to my ward. Probably within a minute of my first scream the lights came on, and then nurses tried to drag him off. Very soon thereafter Eliza hit him with a chair, his head came off, he got even bigger and then he jumped out of this third floor window and ran away. This must have happened within only a few minutes, but I remember a very long time of helplessness with fear and anger. I told the doctors I remembered nothing, which was initially almost true, but more has now come back.

 

My memory is still broken up, a jumble of pictures and feelings, and difficult to think about. The medical staff checked whether I’d been injured further, and I think gave me some sort of sedative. I also said something to the police, who were trying to make the event match with their idea of an assault or attempted rape. However, all this is still genuinely rather confused. I think I said very little, and everyone was prepared to accept that because what I’d been through.

 

However, in addition to the ‘normal’ experience of being attacked in what should be a very safe place, namely a hospital bed, I was aware that my assailant was not a man, and that someone had helped me through a dream. There was no way I was going to say this to anyone outside the small circle of people in whom I have confidence – Adam, Barbara, Elizabeth, St John, Jules.

 

My initial scepticism has been replaced with a conviction that something outside normal experience is going on. I think several of them – certainly Adam and Eliza – know more than me, as became very apparent later.

 

Wednesday July 26th

Once the next day came, along with more police, Adam Walters, Barbara Smyth and St John returned. In fact it was very reassuring to have them there, people I knew, and also knew to be more competent and knowledgeable than most about ‘strange things’. By then, rather surprisingly, I was fit enough to join in the search of the hospital grounds.

 

He – it – had made a deep dent in the tarmac on landing, which the police could not understand. St John tracked it to a lake in the grounds, using his divining rods. Then he wanted to get into a boat to check whether it was still there, hiding under the water. I thought he was completely mad. I would not contemplate going anywhere near where it might grab me.

 

In the end, even though Barbara had gone to find an inflatable boat, Adam used the binoculars to see where it had gone, by looking into the recent past while St John searched for underwater exits from the lake. This time, we took precautions. Adam created some sort of magical circle of protection, with my help. (And, as an aside, how easily I wrote that, now that the extraordinary has become normal!). I did not know how he did it, but my help gave me a moment’s dizziness. He saw the creature, and saw it leave the hospital grounds through the waterways.

 

Having got the binoculars out and some protection from the sort of attack that I experienced, I urged him to let me look further into the past. I could not miss this opportunity. He gave me the binoculars, and after I’d cut myself on them again, I tried to understand the scale on what would usually be the focusing ring. I turned it a short way, and saw what must have been a Second World War bombing raid on Swindon, and when I turned it further, I saw horses with armoured riders in the distance.

 

It struck me then that I was being both foolhardy to use the binoculars without a proper plan or record, and also wasting time when we should be trying to track the lethal creature. So, reluctantly, I gave them back to Adam. Later will be the time to make a proper study of and with them, when I’m fully recovered, and the creature is caught.

 

Despite the turmoil in the hospital, normal work had to continue to treat the accidents and illness of Swindon. My physical injuries were healing nicely and my bed was needed for another patient. I discharged myself and went with Adam and Eliza to an anonymous building in central London, which looked like yet another government administrative office. Adam and Eliza led the way. It indeed belonged to another branch of the government, but one that I am sure keeps even its existence unknown, MI13. The ‘spooks who deal with spooks’ is about the best way to describe them. I was interviewed by a man called ‘Algernon’, and it was clear from the start that he knew much more than I about this new world.

 

Monday July 31st

I have agreed to work for MI13, on a part-time, casual basis. I do not understand exactly what I’ve committed myself to, both in terms of time and effort. However, since I think I’ve accidentally got myself involved in this secret organisation’s activities, at least this way I should get some resources, and be able to explain to the University that I’m engaged in legitimate consultancy or research, rather than having a holiday. The fact that everything is confidential is not a problem for me or them. Indeed, saying that I am ‘undertaking confidential consultancy for a government department’ is much better than having to say that I’m working on a problem that sounds exactly like a horror movie!

 

They suggested that I read two manuscripts, the Sussex manuscript and the Necronomicon. Neither are in modern English, but at least I have experience from my work as an archaeologist of the pleasure that comes when an old manuscript finally yields its meaning. Struggling with the subtleties of language is part of my standard work.

 

They have also tried to teach me some, in the absence of a better term, magic, namely the circle of protection that Adam used. However, to date I have not managed to work out how to do it successfully. It is certainly not an easy thing to do.