Masks of Nyarlathotep 7

Journal of Mrs Evelyn Wooldridge

21st January, New York

It is Wednesday 21st January 1925, and we are heading to Arkham. Both myself and Clayton are somewhat tired after spending much of the night reading. Clayton was reading a book of poetry about Queen Nitocris called “Amongst the Stones”. I was skimming through “Life as a God”

Erica’s staff provide us with a hearty breakfast, as well as a hamper to take with us on the train. Surprisingly the hamper contains some alcohol. It seems American Prohibition is something that gets ignored whenever convenient.

Talking to Erica over breakfast, she tells us that when Mr Grey was trying to obtain possessions back from the Buney woman’s estate, there was an objectionable individual who thought that he had the right to move into her apartment. Mr Grey forced him to move out, since it actually belonged to her brother.

We are driven to the train station, and we are not ambushed by anyone, which is good. We get onto the train, and head north through Boston and up into New England. We arrive at Arkham without incident, and find a car to take us to a hotel.

It is not of the standard that we are used to, and the food is hearty and brown.

Clayton makes a call to Professor Cowles to see if he wants to join us for dinner. We are instead offered to join him at his house this evening.

It is surprisingly easy to find people who know where Professor Cowles lives. Apparently his daughter is quite famous amongst the students here. So we take a taxi to his bungalow. The door is answered by his red headed daughter Ewa. She invites us in, and Professor Cowles meets with us enthusiastically, introducing himself as Antony Dimsdale Cowles, from Sydney.

He has an Edison Graph of the lecture, which he lets us listen to. To be honest, most of the recording is missing due to technical problems they had. From the bits that are there though, the main topics seem to be:

• There is a Father of all Bats. Some people in the region make human sacrifices to him by beating the victims with clubs embedded with bat teeth and covered in a poison which drove the victims mad.
• In West Australia there are songs that mention enormous beings, who built great walls and caves. Living Winds destroyed the gods and opened the way for the Father of All Bats.
• Father of all Bats and Rainbow Snake and involved in a battle of wits. There is also a mention of Sand Bat, which may be related to the Father of All Bats. Maybe? He was trapped in a watery place where he couldn’t hurt anyone.
• A Mr MacWhirr found some megalithic carved stones in Australia, but his party was attacked shortly after finding them.

It seems unusual to have found megaliths in Australia, but Arthur MacWirr seems to have found some in the great sandy desert. Professor Cowles does have notes on the coordinates of this site, but they are back home in Australia. He says that Arthur had found evidence of a large city.

This seems very unusual, and I’m not sure of the validity of the findings. The Austalian aboriginals are way too primitive to have built anything on such a grand scale.

He does provide us with a letter of introduction to Professor David Dodge in Sydney, though, who is looking after his house whilst the Professor is in the US.

Ewa politely suggests that it is getting late, and that her father has things to do, and we probably do as well.

Deciding not to stay in the hotel overnight, we take the sleeper back to New York.

Thursday, 22nd January

That morning, Bradley Grey finds us at the hotel and passes us the confidential medical documents of Roger Carlyle. These are the notes of Dr Robert Huston, who was Roger’s personal psychiatrist and who also went on the expedition.

Initially, the sessions are about Roger’s dreams. These seem to involve dark figures calling his name, with symbols of twisted pyramids and inverted ankhs. There are twisted people with animal limbs, glowing orbs and other strangeness. Dr Huston initially puts it down to Roger having daddy issues.

Later sessions describe an Egyptian figure, whose face is replaced with an empty void of stars, who grew into a giant figure with a writhing red tongue or tentacle replacing their head. Roger seemed to find the dreams exhilarating rather than fearful.

It seems the relationship between the Doctor and his patient became less professional, as Roger began inviting Dr Huston along to the Cotton Club for nights out partying.

Later dreams Roger described as involved his father and mother, with his mother becoming an all-consuming bloated beast that eventually ate and consumed his father. His dreams continue to mention god like vistas and feelings, and further Egyptian motifs. Dr Huston also mentions someone named I.B., who was apparently causing some problems for him.

At some point Roger began to mention something called Nyarlathotep, described as a crawling chaos, who Huston initially thinks is a father figure. Roger seems to think it’s a real person. Huston mentions more issues with I.B. that could cause him problems.

Eventually a negro woman is mentioned – presumably “that Buney Woman” who Erica disliked so much. Apparently she is of African royalty, a priestess of Kikookoo or something. We know her as Nichonka Buney, but apparently her name is M’Were.

Apparently, the idea for the expedition came from Penhew, and he contacted Roger asking him to fund it. How Penhew heard about Roger is a good question. Eventually Dr Huston is pretty much forced to go along with the expedition, being threatened with blackmail about the I.B. situation. By the end of the notes, the Doctor is having similar dreams of his own, involving the same Nyarlathotep figure as Roger was describing.

We guess that I.B. refers to one of Dr Huston’s patients – Imelda Bosch – who committed suicide, and Roger may have had Jack Brady ‘tidy things up’. No suicide notes or anything were found at the scene, and whatever happened seemed to involve a very unprofessional relationship between Imelda and the Doctor.

The notes are quite extensive, and it takes a while for us to read through them. Whilst myself and Clayton are going over them, we get news that Milly Adams, the wife of Hilton Adams who had been accused of the serial killings, has gone missing. Lefty and Monty headed off to investigate that.

When they get back, they fill us in on what they found.

Milly Adams, the wife of the Hilton Adams, the mass murder, has gone missing, so we head over to her place to investigate. It looks like her place was broken into, and she was taken. Looking around her house, Monty finds a diary in which she seems to have noted details about keeping a watch on a building.

Crates have been going in and out of the building, generally at night. She is questioning what the place might be – possibly a speakeasy. The diary contains 3 months of notes. Her last entry states that she thinks that she may have been spotted.

However, she doesn’t mention what place she was observing.

Monty and Lefty decide to head out to Sing Sing prison to speak with Hilton Adams.

According to Hilton, people have been going missing in Harlem for a long time. The police weren’t doing anything, so Hilton and others went out to try and keep the peace. He never found out what was going on, but he does know that Silas N’Kwane is somehow involved, and that something odd is going on in the JuJu House.

When bodies were found, they had the strange symbol on their head. They did some library research and found information about something from East Africa. They were told by a Police Captain to stop investigating, and a lot of pressure was applied to him and his companions.

Milly was possibly investigating the Ju Ju House, or maybe the Pawn shop next door.

He thinks that people were being kidnapped at the dark of the moon, and possibly being killed later.

He followed Mcunger Madari (?) from Ju Ju House to Fat Mabaline’s (?). Was told by everyone to avoid Mcunger because he was dangerous. Hilton was framed for murder soon after he was asking questions about Mcunger.

Monty and Lefty call in their contacts in Firearms, Alcohol and Tobacco for a raid on the Ju Ju house. I sit outside in a car on the street with one of the police officers, whilst the excitement happens down the ally.

There is shouting and the bashing in of doors, but no shooting. Silas is arrested, and a trapdoor found going down into a basement, where there were strange symbols on the walls and a solid wooden door. Beyond the door, is a stone room with crates, a large stone slab with a winch attached to it, and a curtained alcove in which were some mummified corpses.

I found out about this later. All I know at the time is that the shouting has died down, and things have gone quiet. Then there are the faint sounds of screams and gunshots coming from below.

Three civilians are passed up from below, including Milly. I am called in to check them over. Milly is rather hysterical, the other two – a black man and a homeless guy – are unconscious. It looks like they have been chloroformed.

Milly thinks it was Madari that took her. Whilst I look after the civilians above, the others investigate the pit.

After a bit, they come up and Monty asks Silas what is in the pit. He says that it is a spirit of the “many faces”. He says that we are all Doomed. The god will take us, whether it is now or later.

They go back down, and winch open the pit. There is a crying coming from the pit. Shining a torch down, reveals something purple. It is a long writhing column of flesh, with heads. Silas tries to throw himself into the pit, sliding under the partially open lid, bellowing “My God I Embrace You”. Clayton shoots the chain, and the pit slams shut. Or at least this is what Monty, Clayton and Lefty claim. They claim a lot of strange things tonight, which I managed to miss observing myself.

The local police have turned up by this point, but are being told that they are not allowed in. Eventually they are called down to help in getting a new chain for the pit door, and to bring down gasoline.

There are paintings and markings on the passage outside the room, which I ask the police to take photos of them. Taking a quick look, they seem to be Kikuyu signs of protection against evil, from a Kenyan tribe. There are also masks which have mummified tongues on them. There are strange feathers, lion claw mittens, a book called Africa’s Dark Sects, stamped with the property of Harvard University. This is the book that we were looking for, so I guess I’m going to be finding time to read it before passing it back to Harvard. However, I’m not paying the late fees.

There is a mask, which looks similar to that described in the dream notes of Roger Carlyle.

There is a sceptre, which has Egyptian hieroglyphs on it. The word Nyambe is on there in a cartouche, along with “may their power be mine”. I think that it may be tied into African devil worship. I think.

There is also a small box in which there are random bits of jewellery, possibly taken from those sacrificed down the pit. At least, that’s what we assume has been happening.

It is then that Captain Walter Robson turns up, asking to speak with Monty. Apparently an associate of Siras, Mcunda, was shot resisting arrest. Given that we think the Captain was behind the framing of Hilton Adams, it seems like Captain Robson has been tidying up lose ends.

The thing in the pit is burned. Various people bring holy water, salt, garlic and other things into the pit. I continue to decide not to look.

There are also what look like mummies, three of them look like they match recent missing person cases. The fourth is unidentified. They have been shot up quite heavily. Clayton and Monty insist that they were ‘attacked’ by them. This must be a joke, though I don’t find it funny.

Monty tries to get the death sentence over turned for Hilton Adams, since there is now plenty of evidence that Silas and Mcunda were responsible for the murders. Whether this will get done before his scheduled meeting with ‘Old Sparky’ at the end of February remains to be seen.

We go to check the scene of the killing of Mcunda. There are artefacts here that look similar to what we found at the Ju Ju house. There is a box, which has a squat three headed figure that has a giant tentacle instead of a head decorating it. In the box is a strange syrupy liquid. The figure looks familiar to what Roger described in his dreams.

It seems that the events here in New York have been tidied up. If we are to investigate further into what has happened, then we have a number of choices, but they all involve leaving America. We could head to Shanghai, or to Australia, but the most useful next step is probably London. From there we can get down to Egypt, and even Kenya. We should try and find out more about this Expedition, and what Penhew was trying to find in Africa.