Clues – Maps – Journals
Cairo, Egypt
3 January 1919
Dear Mr. Carlyle,
I am informed that you seek certain knowledge of our land and can perhaps aid you in this. In my possession are singular curios which I most happily believe of interest. These I willingly send for your consideration, if a price can be agreed upon.
Naturally they are ancient and must command a goodly sum. I will arrange matters to your satisfaction when your agent calls at my shop, in the Street of Jackals in the Old Quarter.
Until then I remain your most humble servant,
Faraz Najir
“Its angles were magnificent.,and most strange; by tbeir hideous beauty I was enraptured and enthralled, and I Thought myself of the daylight fools who adjudged the housing of this room as mistaken.”
“I laughed for the glory they missed. When the six lights lit and the great words said, then he came, in all the grace and splendour of the nigher planes, and I longed to sever my viens so that my life might flow into his being, and make part of me a GOD!”
Part A:
The man standing before me was of swarthy complexion, but with a haughty bearing befitting an Emperor. He reached out his hand to touch my cheek, my wound shrieking in agony until he brushed it, washing away my pains. He spoke to me, in low tones, with a voice like a mother to an infant babe. He spoke to me of his grand design which would unseat the rule of Man for the rule of the true Gods, and how I might serve him. I knew in my truest heart that this was the purpose I had sought, that in His service, I would be made whole and pure and that those who had wronged me so greatly would be brought low. I wept in Joy and promised I would serve him gladly.
Part B:
The beggar was held fast by my brothers and I, eyes tearing with joy, struck him mightily with the sacred club again and again until he was rendered insensate by the pain and his limbs were useless. Filled with wordless praise for Him who dwells in shadow before light comes, I turned it in my hands then pierced the wretch’s heart with the cunning bronze spike. His scream of agony washed over me and I was reborn as a full Brother and servant of the Pharaoh of Shadows
August 8, 1924
Nairobi
Dear Jonah,
Big news! There is a possibility that not all of the members of the Carlyle Expedition died. I have a lead. Though the authorities here deny the cult angle, the natives sing a different tune. You wouldn’t believe the stories! Some juicy notes coming your way!
This one may make us all rich!
Blood and kisses,
J.
P.S. I’ll need advance money to follow this one up. More later.
JACKSON ELIAS: LONDON NOTES – UNDATED
Many names, many forms, all the same and to one end. Need help. Too big, too ghastly.
These dreams – dreams like Carlyle’s? Check that psychologist’s file.
All of them survived. They will open the gates. Why? To whom? To what? Therefore, the power and the danger are real.
They…(blank line follows)
Many threads beginning. The books are in Carlyle’s safe.
Coming for me, will this ocean protect?
Ho Ho no quitters now. Must tell and make readers believe.
Should I scream for them? Let us scream together.
Main Points Of Prof. Cowles NYU Lecture By: Wesley Freundlich-Fock
It covers his two hour lecture, with slides, on “The Cult of Darkness in Polynesia & the Southwest Pacific”.
ONE: A bat cult once existed among the Aboriginals of Australia. It was known across continent, and the god of the cult was always known as the Father of All Bats. Adherents believed that by making human sacrifices to their god they themselves would become worthy enough that the Father of All Bats would appear to them.
Once he was enticed to appear, he would conquer all men. Sacrifices were run through a gauntlet of worshipers who struck the victims with clubs embedded with the sharp teeth of bats. The teeth were coated with a substance derived from rabid bats. The poison was quick-acting, but victims apparently went mad before they died. Leaders of the cult reputedly could take the forms of batwinged snakes, enabling them to steal sacrifices from across the land.
Cowles believes that this cult became dormant or extinct hundreds of years ago. Its former existence is the reason that he became interested in Jackson Elias’ books about present-day cults.
TWO: An Aboriginal song cycle mentions a place where enormous beings gathered, somewhere in the west of Australia. The songs say that these gods, who were not at all like men, built great sleeping walls and dug great caves. But living winds blew down the gods and overthrew them, destroying their camp. When this happened, the way was open for the Father of All Bats, who came into the land, and grew strong.
THREE: Cowles shows the investigators a set of four over-exposed glass slides. Each shows a few sweating men standing beside enormous blocks of stone, pitted and eroded but clearly dressed and formed for architectural purposes. Dim carvings seem to decorate some. Billows of sand are everywhere. Though he did not bring the book with him, Cowles says that the discoverer, one Arthur MacWhirr of Port Hedland, kept a diary in which he records several attacks on the party by Aboriginals. MacWhirr reportedly records deaths to victims from hundreds of small punctures, reminiscent of the earlier bat-cult.
FOUR: Cowles tells finally of a tale he collected from near the Arafura Sea in northern Australia. In it Sand Bat, or Father of All Bats, has a battle of wits with Rainbow Snake, the Aboriginal deification of water and the patron of life. Rainbow Snake succeeds in tricking and trapping Sand Bat and his clan into the depths of a watery place from which Sand Bat can only complain, and is unable to return to trouble the people.
First Meeting January 11th, 1918:
Reference: Erica Carlyle:
Closest Relative: Erica Carlyle:
At his sister’s insistence. Roger Vane Worthington Carlyle visited me this, morning. He deprecates the importance of his state of mind, but concedes that he had some trouble sleeping due to a recurring dream in which he hears a distant voice calling his name. (Interestingly the voice uses Mr. Carlyle’s second given name, Vane, by which Mr. Carlyle admits he always thinks of himself.)
Carlyle moves towards the voice, and has to struggle through a web-like mist in which the caller is understood to stand.
The caller is a man, tall, gaunt, dark. An inverted ankh blazes in his forehead. Following the Egyptian theme (C. has no conscious interest in things Egyptian, he says), the man extended his hands to C., his palms held upward. Pictured on his left palm C discovers his own face; on the right palm, C. sees an unusual, asymmetric pyramid.
The caller then brings his hands together, and C. feels himself float off the ground into space.
He halts before an assemblage of monstrous figures, figures of humans with animal limbs, with fangs and talons, or of no particular shape at all. All of them circle a pulsating ball of yellow energy, which C. recognises as another aspect of the calling man. The ball draws him in; he becomes part of it, and see through eyes not his own. A great triangle appears in the void, asymmetric in the same fashion as the vision of the pyramid. C. then hears the caller say “And become with me a god.” As millions of odd shapes and forms rush into the triangle, C. wakes.
C. does not consider this dream a nightmare, although it upsets his sleep. He says that he revels in it and that it is a genuine calling, although my strong impression is that he actually is undecided about it. An inability to choose seems to characterise much of his life.
September 18th, 1918:
He calls her M’Weru, Anastasia, and my Priestess. He is obsessive about her, as well he might be. Exterior devotion is certainly one way to ease the tension of megalomaniacal contradictions. She is certainly a rival to my authority.
December 3rd, 1918:
If I do not go C. threatens exposure. If I do go, all pretence of analysis surely will be lost. What will be my role?
5th February 1925
My dear Aubrey,
Elias has been dealt with. However, his associates who have taken up his investigations have eliminated the New York operation. This is of little importance now but they cannot be allowed to learn more.
This group have a seaplane capable of crossing the Atlantic and made much of this fact. We were prepared for their arrival but this was a ruse and some of them had slipped into Britain beforehand and have already interfered with several of our London premises.
Tewfik has insisted on informing the Brotherhood in Egypt even though I told him this was the action of a craven. This kind of base groveling behaviour is all too common in the modern Egyptian, Alas, only our immortal leader has any of the Pharonic majesty of Dynastic times.
You must stop Brady. It is stupefying that he has evaded us for so long. This man may become an obstacle to our great Lord. Rest assured I will take swift against the interlopers here but as a precaution I have contacted the other group whose…..
(LETTER ENDS HERE)
“A lawyer contacted me. I agreed to act as purchasing agent for Mr. Roger Carlyle of the United States, who was represented to me as a wealthy American. On written instructions from Mr. Carlyle, I purchased certain artefacts from Faraz Najir, an antiquities dealer, and illegally shipped them out of Egypt to Sir Aubrey Penhew in London. I know the artefacts were ancient, but nothing more.”
“When the Carlyle Expedition came to Egypt, I arranged for all their equipment and permits. Their main site was at Dhashur, in the area of the Bent Pyramid.”
“One day at Dhashur, Jack Brady came to me and told me that Carlyle, Hypatia Masters, Sir Aubrey, and Dr. Huston had entered the Bent Pyramid and then vanished. Brady was excited and suspected foul play, since the diggers already had fled the site and work had come to a stand-still. We did not know what to do, so we drank.“
“The next morning, Carlyle and the others reappeared. They were excited by some tremendous find, but what it was, they would not say, nor did I learn, for Sir Aubrey was a fiend for secrecy. All of them had changed in some inexplicable way, and a way not for the better; I did not ask further.”
“That evening, an old Egyptian woman visited me. She said that her son had been one of the diggers. She said the diggers had fled because Carlyle and the others had consorted with an ancient evil, the Messenger of the Black Wind. She said that she could recognize that the souls of all the Europeans but Brady and myself were lost. If I wanted proof, I should go to the Collapsed Pyramid at Medium at the time when the moon is slimmest—the night before the dark of the moon. God help me, I went!”
“I took one of the trucks, pretending to leave for a night in the pleasure quarter of Cairo. But instead I drove the twenty miles south to Medium, and secreted myself where she advised. There in the midnight blackness I saw Carlyle and the others disport themselves in obscene rituals with a hundred madmen. The very desert came alive, crawling and undulating toward the ruins of the pyramid. To my horror, the stone ruins themselves became a skeletal, bulging-eyed thing!”
“Strange creatures emerged from the sands, grasped the dancing celebrants, and, one by one, tore out their throats, killing all until only the Europeans (and one other robed celebrant) remained.”
“Something more loomed out of the sand, the size of an elephant but with five separate shaggy heads. Then I realised what it was—but it is madness to speak it! I saw it rise and in a great ravening swallow as one all the torn corpses and their hideous murderers, leaving alive only five people amidst the stench of the blood-soaked sands. “I fainted. When I recovered, I wandered into the desert. There further horrors awaited me. Stumbling up a rise before dawn, I saw beyond hundreds of dark sphinxes, rank upon rank drawn up and waiting for the hour of madness when they will spring to devour the world! I fainted again, and this time I left the world for many months.”
“A man found me; for two years he and his mother cared for me—me, a man mindless and returned, I came back to Cairo. But I began to dream! Only hashish helps now, or opium if it can be found. My supply is low again, and my life is intolerable without it. Will you gentlemen please contribute? Only strong drugs keep me from insanity. Everything, gentlemen, everything is lost. There is no hope for any of us. Everywhere they wait. Perhaps you will join me in a pipe?”
Diary of Arthur MacWhirr – Handout 36
Mar. 7:
Jock Kuburaga says that abos are following us. Most unusual if true. Primitives have every reason to fear guns—and our bush ranger predilection for using them. In the past, I have always known them to head the other way as soon as they sight white men.
Mar. 21:
We are about equally distant from Joanna Spring and Separation Well, east of an awful line of dry lakes. The heat is terrible. Our hopes are low—there is nothing here, certainly not quartz reels! L.’s notations are in systematic error. He is a complete duffer as a surveyor.
Today we sighted several enormous birds flying lazily far above us. How did they get here, and where can they be going?
Mar. 22:
At about noon today we found Jock, partly buried in a gully. His body was scoured and covered with hundreds of small punctures, as though somebody had sandblasted him, we buried him, of course. I shall miss his counsel, and he was an excellent hand with the camels.
Mar. 23:
We have discovered what appears to be remnants of an ancient city, rising from the shifting sands! I believe I have secured several good photographs of this amazing find, though the heat has ruined all but six of my photographic plates. By the pitting of the stone, the blocks and pillars appear to be more than 10,000 years old! Incredible!
Mar. 24:
Four camels killed in the attack last night. I saw at least two abos, and more must have been skulking out there. I’m sure I hit one. That ends this trip—we’ll have to head back to Cuncudgerie and report this incident. More than men were out there last night. I saw shapes much bigger than men during the attack. My evidence is the body of Old Sam the camel, punctured and scraped is the best way I can described the remains, just like poor Jock. Since the attack lasted only a couple of minutes, it’s hard for me to believe that anything human could have done so much damage so quickly. But then what was it?
Jack Brady’s Statement
“I’m Jack Brady. I hear you’ve been looking for me. I got a minute, and you got some questions. I gather you never got to talk to Jackson Elias. If it’s all the same, I’ll talk now, and you can ask your questions later.
“As far as I can make out, we’re all in a lot of trouble. The more I learn about the situation, the scareder I get. When I spilled the beans to Jackson Elias, I figured people would read his book and do something about this cult. Sorry he ended up that way-you guys friends of his? All the same, I did warn him, and I didn’t hold nothing back. I’m warning you guys, too: the cult plays for keeps. Or maybe mugs like you already know that.” (He laughs.)
“Well, right from the start I knew that Roger’s nigger-girl was trouble. She was as tough as they come, and she had him around her finger. He must have known she was trouble, too, because the more he saw her, the more crazy dreams he had. I thought it was great when he wanted to go to Egypt-that’d be the end of her, see, and things would get back to normal. I liked the guy, and owed him a lot.
“It seemed for a while that everything would work out. London was a lot of fun, but once we got to Cairo, Roger started having dreams again about meeting a god, and crap like that. But now he wasn’t drinking, and the girl wasn’t around, and the gentlemen Roger had asked along started acting nuttier than Roger did, and so I said to myself, ‘trouble is somewhere up the road.’
“After I paid Faraz Najir for his junk, Roger spent some time with it. He went off the deep end. There was a black kind of head-and shoulder statue that he’d stare at for hours. And there was a map that he’d study and study, like a normal guy would check out a beautiful dame. He started telling me that we could meet the god as soon as he destroyed the eye and opened the path.
“That hotshot Dr. Huston should have talked Roger down, but he only encouraged him. So the first night that we were up the Nile at
Dhashur, Roger snuck out and climbed up the Red Pyramid. Any of you guys ever climbed a pyramid? They’re steep! Roger started up that pile like a monkey. Never looked back or hesitated once, which proved to me that the poor bugger was absolutely crazy. But I followed him up.” (He laughs again.) “I was crazy, too.
“For about two thirds of the way up the Red Pyramid, you just climb up and over big blocks, sort of like something some dumb kid could make by piling up a million great big construction blocks. The pyramid builders filled in all the gaps with nice smooth stone, but then later people stole that nice stone from around the bottom of the pyramid-the high stuff was too hard to grab, and they couldn’t finish the job. Well, Roger zipped right up this part, too, with me still behind, my eyes bulging out ’cause I could bare-Iy find handholds to keep from bouncing down the whole damn pyramid.
”There’s a little flat place at the tip of the When Roger reached the flat place, he put on some kind of robe and started making weird sounds, as though he had flipped for, good. But then there was a hell of an explosion with all kinds of funny echoes and screams with it, and a big red flash of light. Well, I lay there for a minute until it seemed safe to go on. He looked at me and said, ‘the eye is gone, Jack. Now we can be gods.’
”Well, that was just Roger talk, you know, but beside him there was a big patch ripped right out of the stone, and it looked fresh. When I went back the next day, the patch had been filled in, as though the pyramid had repaired but near the base of the pyramid, I found part of a rock which looked like it could have been in that patch originally, and it had this sign on it.” (Brady sketches a mysterious-looking sign; this is the strange symbol).”Now I know what it was-its strong magic kept evil things away from us, and Roger deliberately broke its power.
”Two days later, the whole gang-Penhew, Roger, Huston, and Patty-gave me the slip and disappeared in the Bent Pyramid. Some of the messenger boys went to find them, and they came out shrieking that the pyramid had eaten the respected scientists, woe, woe, woe. Bingo, the workers run in all directions! The whole dig deserted. In five minutes the only person left in the whole area was me. Well, I went in. Sure enough, nobody was inside. I was worried.
“But, a long time later, out come all the missing people from the pyramid. Roger says they’d been to Egypt, to the real Egypt. And that was about the most sensible thing he said. Penhew looked like he had lost about five years. And Patty and Huston both seemed somehow changed. Nobody would explain where they’d been, and nobody cared that after that it was to hire workmen.
“After that, when I’d wake up in the nights, the rest of the gang would be talking creepy lingo like I’d never heard before. Then one evening Roger said that he was going to show me the power of what they’d leamed. We went out into the desert with a passel of Arabs. Everybody started screaming weird words and songs, and Penhew beat the drum that we got from Najir. When creatures started coming out of the ground and eating the Arabs, and Roger and the others started laughing, why I took my leave, as they say, and went on a real toot. Roger found me the next day and warned me that I’d better change my attitude. Well, lowed the kid, and I wouldn’t desert him, but after that I started thinking real good.
“Then we went to Kenya, and Roger filled me in during the trip. We had found a true god, he said, who would rule the Earth, and we would rule with that god, for we were the chosen of the god. The god had picked us to open the way for his return. And there was enough in what they said-and in what I saw make me listen. Every week Penhew seemed a little younger and a little livelier. Patty was sick a lot. We ware going to leave Nairobi from some place in the mountains where there was no river, no railway, no telegraph, no police and nobody who looked friendly. I figured that Jack Brady wouldn’t live very long thee, so I made some arrangements. On the last night, in Nairobi, I drugged Roger, kyped the cashbox (it was Roger’s money, anyway), and got me and them aboard an unscheduled dead head freight to Mombasa.
“Later I read that my guess was right. The newspapers said a lot of people died, but Penhew, Huston and Patty Masters weren’t among them
“Anyway, my arrangements went off without a hitch that happens when you think small and carry a lot of cash. When we got to Mombasa, we got off before the causeway and found a fisherman who was willing to go to Zanzibar for a few dollars. From there we hopped a coastal trader to Durban, and in Durban we dyed our hair, got some decent clothes, and sailed for Perth.
“Now, on the train to Mombasa, Roger got some sleep, and he seemed to wake up a different person. I guess that being away from the influence of those other people let him return to his old self. I told him we were in a lot of trouble, and that we needed to hide out, and reminded him about the Arabs being killed in Egypt, and the god stuff, and so on, and he could remember it all right, although it didn’t seem very important, somehow. But he understood the logic of the situation. After a week or so, though, his nightmares started, and he began to go off the deep end. He was beginning to realize some of the things he had done.
“I was in Shanghai while I was in the Marines, and I had a fair number of friends here. By the time our ship put into Hong Kong, Roger could go no farther. He began shrieking at shadows and everything that moved. So I put him in a sanatorium there-I had to use up most of the remaining money to get him settled. Then I went on to Shanghai, believing that I’d never again see any member but Roger of that damned expedition. “So I thought, until I looked through naval glasses at a certain yacht, and saw Sir Aubrey Penhew preening on the deck of the Dark Mistress.”
The ineffable Eye must be worked into natural substance which is naturally hard.
The unrivalled light of the marvellous Eye transcends taint if all evil presences have been dispatched or dispelled.
The blood for the pupil of the winnowing Eye must be fresh.
Only one incorruptible Eye may guard a location.
The wondrous Eye must not first burn where evil beings or creatures lurk.
He who first chants must be able to create the gift of the Elder Sign.
All who chant must detest evil.
— Chou Teh Notes Translated for us by Mu Hsien
“Of those signs effectively sealing the festerings of the dark god, the most potent is the Eye of Light and Darkness. Inscribed into the substance of a high place near the haunts of evil, and no further than 30 li from them, expels the evil strength for so long as the sign exists. The Eye must be created the afternoon before the full moon rises. At moonrise, the blood of an innocent must fill the pupil of the Eye once per drumbeat from then to moonset. As the first blood is given, chant the words ‘sa-ma, sa-ma, te-yo, sa-ma,’ and continue until the moon sets. When next the moon rises, the Eye opens to ward and to guard. Gather the friends of good to work this wisdom, for too few shall surely fail.”
— Translation from “The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan”
Hail Pharaoh of Darkness, Hail Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu fhtagn, Nyarlathotep th’ga, shamesh, shamesh, Nyarlathotep th’ga, Cthulhu fhtagn!
13th June, 1921:
At last I have arrived to begin the task of my lord and master, the Black Pharaoh. He has given me my dreams, given me Egypt, and I will duly repay him by giving him the world of men. The power, the beauty, none cannot appreciate who do not witness. I know the power, the beauty; I bear the beauty of a life Devoted to him….
30th August, 1921:
Huston has at last sent the plans. Very complex and fascinating. It will take some time to grasp their meaning and begin building. I have been promised the knowledge necessary, and my faith is strong….
7th September, 1921:
The first shipments have arrived. All of us know great joy. The deep ones have arrived to stay. The work begins….
15th January, 1922:
The first phase is complete. Shipments are arriving more quickly now. I must begin work on the warhead soon….
8th April, 1923:
The rods have been drawn, but more knowledge is needed. Huston is worthy—I never would have thought it possible….
4th October, 1923:
Work on the guidance system has halted. Huston must open a deeper level, and that will take time. Our Master has promised to aid him by bringing one of the Great Race. How I long to speak to one of those….
19th January, 1924:
With joy we begin work again. Soon is the day ….
29th September, 1924:
The missile is complete, but the warhead baffles me. I must pray for guidance. Ho Fong warns of someone who knows our plans—is that nursling Carlyle still alive? Will Our Master deign to tell me?
11th February, 1925:
All is ready. Now we simply await the Great Day When the Great Gate Opens. None can baffle His will.
Nyarlathotep th’ga, Cthulhu fhtagn!
“As the priestess whirled around the fire-lit circle, chanting dim words from an ancient spell, the cult executioners busied themselves with their screaming sacrifices. As the blood flowed, a chill wind sprang up, and I felt a flash of fear: the wind had become visible, a black vapour against the gibbous, leering Moon, and slowly my terror grew as I comprehended the monstrous thing taking form. The corrosive stench of it hinted at vileness beyond evil. When I saw the great red appendage which alone constituted the face of the thing, my courage died, and I fled unseeing into the night.”
– Nigel Blackwell, Africa’s Dark Sects
