"Sweet Jesus, Paul, you’re naked! You're both naked! And what is that? A skull? What the fuck, Paul, what the actual fuck!"
Their second meeting took place nearer to Parliament. Not in Parliament, not Her, as was then, Majesty's Palace of Westminster, but one of the modern buildings along Millbank that try to look like they are part of the Parliamentary Estate, at least from the outside. It was hard to tell this office from the first. There was the wood paneling on the walls, perhaps. Proper air-conditioning. But still a desk and many screens.
"We are clay," said the man from the Ministry, without introduction, "shaped by our histories, molded by our memories. Tablets, written with the words of life and death, the emet and met."
"What?" said Georgie.
"You, perhaps more than most people, are made of memories. For your Service masters. A clay tablet for their recording."
"Let me take you back," he continued, and she blinked. And winced. Observing this, he added: "no, to before."
She fell into the conditioning so easily, it astonished her. The witch doctors at the Service used chimes and incense burners and intoned ritualistic phrases, but this was just…
She remembered. She remembered a book. A book in a package, a parcel. A book wrapped up in brown paper and string. The parcel had been opened. There had been a card.
"As arranged. Monkfish."
She remembered the argument with Paul. He'd been trying to tell her something, show her the book or something, and she'd just wanted to get out, to look anywhere except at her brother and certainly anywhere except the naked hairy hippy he seemed to have brought into the refined space of the Foundation. And then she'd been so cross with him that he was wasting all that money on something so frivolous, so unnecessary.
She hadn't even glanced at the book. At least not more than a glance. There had been something revolting about it, about its blackening leather cover, and the insect-like lettering. She hadn't wanted to look at it.
She certainly hadn't been able to read it.
And yet now, in the hyper-recollection, perhaps guided by the man from the Ministry, the words remained illegible, obscure, but the meaning seemed to come through.
Kyric ar'Daemol, they said, Kyric ar'Daemol is the hourglass god, is the god of the end of the world. In the end, there is only Kyric ar'Daemol.
The words danced inside her eyeballs and echoed around in her head, around and around.
"Where the hell did that come from?" she gasped.
"From hell," said the man from the Ministry. "Or at least somewhere similar. Oh yes. I believe we can help with that."
And he showed her a second file.
1964/5, United States: XXXXXXXX, Massachusetts coast
Background:
As part of the Service's ongoing effort to protect and preserve our monopoly of special knowledge through the use of counter-intelligence and misinformation, Madam XXXXXXXX of the junior oversight committee charged Mr XXXXXXXX and Mr XXXXXXXX with the task of discrediting an edition of alkitab alzaman aleazim, also called the Mystika Chronou, known to be held by the XXXXXXXX University of XXXXXXXX in Massachusetts, along with their Liber Sanguinarium and a copy of the so-called Necronomicon, incidentally one of the four versions forged by the Service in 1601 and hand printed using the stolen Guttenberg press, this particular one being the version that makes such heavy play of the Rumanian Wampirii myths.
Note:
Playing up public credence of "arcane" knowledge of this kind is a known and proved Service tactic.
[See also, for example, file 0426*204557 "The Yog-Sothoth Conceit" (cross-reference: file UN-1975-QQ)]
Therefore, where the Service is seen to be behind a source, it is often taken, by those we should like to convince, as proof of that source's in-authenticity.
End of Note.
Mr XXXXXXXX and Mr XXXXXXXX were instructed to assist one Mr Mortimer Hedley, a dealer in antiquarian and arcane artefacts of questionable honesty, easily motivated by remuneration, in a scheme to steal the University's alkitab in order to sell cheaply faked copies.
Mr Hedley, of course, was entirely ignorant of our genuine intentions: to drive down the value and credibility of the original.
Actions:
It was agreed with Hedley that Mr XXXXXXXX would remain with him in Boston and, using his emporium as a cover, obtain the materials needed for copying and reproducing the book. Meanwhile, Mr XXXXXXXX would go upstate to XXXXXXXX, accompanied by Hedley's fraternal niece, Anna-May Hedley.
Although entirely appropriate – Mr XXXXXXXX being the senior agent and certainly better suited in skills to the task of the actual theft – this was, in some ways that will shortly become clear, unfortunate.
In Boston, Mr XXXXXXXX discovered that Hedley was also making covert arrangements with one "J. Arthur Bait". Intelligence on "Bait" was scarce. Mr XXXXXXXX wired to Donald Homburg, assistant head of station A in New York, but Homburg could do little more than confirm that "Bait" was an undistinguished industrialist with interests in Michigan as well as a paper milling business in Canada.
Mr XXXXXXXX, obtaining electronic surveillance equipment from station A, contrived to overhear Hedley's next conversation with "Bait". Although displaying a casual knowledge of our and Hedley's plans, "Bait" appeared disinterested in them. However, Mr XXXXXXXX was alarmed to discover "Bait's" true motives in contacting Hedley: although couched in language of "Eldritch Forces" it was clear that "Bait" was in a position to sell an artefact or artefacts of "foreign power" design or manufacture. "Bait" was seeking to employ Hedley as his agent in order to contact an unnamed purchaser and negotiate the sale. Hedley, although clearly out of his depth, was keen to agree as soon as a suitable commission could be settled. Once their bargain was struck, "Bait" instructed Hedley to approach his buyer at his residence overlooking the mostly abandoned coastal town of XXXXXXXX.
Arriving at the infamous university town of XXXXXXXX, Mr XXXXXXXX and Miss Hedley took lodgings in one of the town houses that are so often available for rent during the summer months when students and professors are away from the university. They were posing as a professor of English and Celtic Antiquities and his American secretary, visiting at the invitation of Dame Agatha Debonpoint, the former Mistress of Newnham College, Cambridge and now holder of the Sir Roderick Bloch chair of Obscure Political Sciences here at the university. Before adopting her more secular vocation, Dame Agatha had in her youth trained as a nun, studying in the Vatican archive under that wily old master, Cardinal Etocritus. She was said to still possess her reader's card for the Library of St John the Beheaded and consequently have access to one of the other "Service volumes" of the Necronomicon, as well as the Vatican's copy of the book Mr XXXXXXXX was now here to steal. Although not a member of the Service, she was considered a useful contact and was kept fully informed of our plans.
Mr XXXXXXXX, of course, was most suitable for the role of "professor of English and Celtic Antiquities", although his reputation as an academic had been badly tarnished by events fortunately overshadowed by the "Cambridge University fiasco" at the Devil's Hump. Miss Hedley was a keen student of her uncle's arcana in her own right and, in addition, an accomplished burglar. It was part of the agreement with her uncle that she would be the one to perform the actual theft, although Mr XXXXXXXX, naturally, had no intention of honouring that part of the contract.
They joined Dame Agatha for dinner at high table and she explained to them that a problem had arisen which might disrupt their mission. It seems that the University was absorbed in some form of scandal, one that was being kept very quiet. Several items from the University's archives of the occult had been discovered to be missing – not the most valuable (the Necronomicon forgery, for example was not among the missing items, and nor was their alkitab) but rare and expensive pieces, still - and one or more of the professors were suspects. Worse, there had apparently been one or maybe two deaths and the archivists and janitorial staff were now very wary of entering that wing of the archive alone or after nightfall.
In fact, this made Mr XXXXXXXX's task both more and less complicated. More, because security would naturally be increased; but less because one more theft among several others would be likely ascribed to the pre-existing conspiracy.
Dame Agatha was also able to suggest a useful contact, one of the caretaker-handymen employed by the dean of the University to assist about the campus: a man by the name of Lorrimer Sole. Mr XXXXXXXX met with Sole the next day and took an instant dislike to him, reckoning him an unsavoury character and particularly his unhealthy interest in Miss Hedley. Sole, however, was willing to sell a set of keys to the archive wing to Mr XXXXXXXX for fifty dollars, and a promise that the keys would later be left to be found in some place not associated with Sole.
Mr XXXXXXXX then met Miss Hedley and together they planned the theft of the University's alkitab for the following night. Mr XXXXXXXX intended this to keep Miss Hedley out of his way and that, by means of the keys stolen for him by Sole, he would himself steal the tome that night and not wait for the next. Unfortunately for her, Miss Hedley trusted Mr XXXXXXXX no more than he trusted her and had decided upon the same plan herself.
In Boston, Hedley had conscientiously completed the arrangements for reproducing copies of alkitab with superficially authentic-seeming materials, and now made to excuse himself for a short number of days on a thinly disguised pretext. Mr XXXXXXXX made no fuss in letting him go, having already laid plans with Donald Homburg for Hedley to be followed by a team from station A whom he was unlikely to recognise. Meanwhile, Mr XXXXXXXX made haste to XXXXXXXX, again using an automobile borrowed from station A and unknown to Hedley.
He arrived in the early afternoon, several hours ahead of Hedley and used the time to investigate the de Blessure Estate, the mansion where Hedley was due to make his doomed negotiations. To his surprise, the house was boarded up and empty. He was able to enter the building via an unlocked cellar door and found no one within.
This gave Mr XXXXXXXX the opportunity to install similar electronic eavesdropping as he had used in Boston, but here he was thwarted. Subsequent investigation suggests that his microphones were defeated by the use of a protective talisman, a Dagon sphere seeming likely in the context.
Leaving the house again, Mr XXXXXXXX concealed his borrowed car and spent a little while looking around the old, ruined town. Although mostly abandoned, there was still some sign of habitation, and a few of the local residents, an evil looking race by Mr XXXXXXXX's account, came out to watch him with harsh and unblinking stares. He made some attempt to engage one or another in conversation in the hope of gaining local intelligence but was met with blank hostility or incomprehension.
Abandoning this inquiry, he returned to the old house and took up a position to watch for Hedley's arrival.
As night fell over the university, Mr XXXXXXXX used the key provided by Mr Sole to enter the archive wing. Although there were guards, nervously patrolling in pairs, a small glamour included in our special training enabled Mr XXXXXXXX to move unnoticed through the galleries. A permanent guard had been set outside the door to the strongroom wherein the alkitab had been secured along with others of the university treasures. He was eliminated.
Mr XXXXXXXX then set to the business of cutting out the strongroom lock. Unfortunately, he was discovered at his task by two men, later identified as Doctors James and Myrtle of the University. They themselves, however, were clearly as unauthorised as he, encumbered as they were by the heavy regalia of a Mohawk medicine man.
In his own words:
"The taller gentleman [James] dropped the heavy garment on his companion who allowed it to spill to the floor, transfixed by terror. It was quickly apparent that some other party had been killing off their little gang of pilferers and they thought that I was the killer come upon them to do them mischief."
It seems Doctor James had come prepared against such an eventuality and had a gun, which he drew on Mr XXXXXXXX. Before he could shoot, however, he was struck a blow in the throat with a heavy bladed knife, in Mr XXXXXXXX's estimation the sort used by fishermen. It was the handyman, Sole.
Mr XXXXXXXX's report continues:
"Sole attacked the man [James] with some fervour. The other thief watched for an instant before uttering a strangulated shriek and fleeing blindly. His victim expired and Sole, apparently satisfied, turned to look at me. We stared at each other for some moments, neither of us moving. I recall seeing the way his neck puffed up as he breathed, like the gills of some amphibian. Eventually, he blinked, moistly, and disappeared into the darkened archive."
By this point, at the old house on the coast, Hedley had arrived for his meeting. Even though it had been boarded up earlier, Hedley had no difficulty in entering by the front door. From his distant viewpoint, it seemed to Mr XXXXXXXX that Hedley was met on the porch. However, as he now discovered, his microphones were not working, and he was unable decipher what was occurring. With no guards visible, Mr XXXXXXXX decided to risk approaching the house more closely to try to hear conventionally what was happening.
The night was dark, and he made it to the lea of the house apparently undetected. Still unable to hear anything, he began to move cautiously round to the front of the building only to be shocked by a hideous and all too human scream. Throwing caution to the wind, he ran to the front porch, arriving in time to see Hedley emerge running and "white as a dustsheet, and 'is eyes rolling fit to fall out of 'is 'ead!"
Before either of them could effect an escape, Mr XXXXXXXX realised that they were surrounded by a troop of ill-aspected natives from the town below. They closed upon the pair with similar unblinking belligerence to that which he had encountered earlier.
Urging Hedley to run for his life, Mr XXXXXXXX took flight, outpacing the local's determined but slow-paced pursuit. Looking back, however, he saw that Hedley, in his fright and confusion, had not been so lucky. The antiquarian was gripped between two of them and was being frog-marched back towards the house and the genesis of his horror. Fearful for himself, Mr XXXXXXXX ran again, his pursuers silent in their chase, the only sound echoing across that headland being the re-echoing screams of the terrified Hedley. And, abruptly, they were cut off.
Mr XXXXXXXX speculates that, far from negotiating "Bait's" contract, Hedley was, in fact, part of the "sale". No remains of Mortimer Hedley were ever found excepting the buttons of his waistcoat and a great deal of blood.
The door to the university strongroom did not prove an insuperable barrier to Mr XXXXXXXX. He was startled, though, upon opening it to reveal young Miss Hedley already within, having lithely gained entrance via a skylight in the roof. He saw at once that she was already in possession of the alkitab that they sought.
Thinking that he might reunite their partnership, Mr XXXXXXXX paused, a near fatal mistake. Miss Hedley, reacting more swiftly, dived past him, caught up Doctor James's dropped revolver and turned it upon him. Fright and unfamiliarity meant that her reflex shot caught Mr XXXXXXXX in the left upper thigh rather than a more fatal location. He was knocked to the ground and badly hurt, but fortunately she missed the femoral artery.
Possibly believing him dead, Miss Hedley turned and made to run off. Mr XXXXXXXX, although badly wounded, paused only briefly to bind his leg as best he could with a strip torn from the late Doctor James's coat before pursuing her. Despite his injury he did not fall far behind, as Miss Hedley was hampered by unfamiliarity with the interior of the archive and darkness. Furthermore, the sound of the gunshot had attracted the attention of the guards and their approach was cutting off Miss Hadley's options for escape.
Mr XXXXXXXX pursued determinedly, catching up enough to see her disappearing into one of the darkened, empty storage rooms.
Sole appeared, wordlessly, and slammed the door behind her before vanishing again into the night. Mr XXXXXXXX was but moments behind but still he was too late.
A shriek of terror too pure for human lungs came from within.
When he flung the door open again, he discovered Miss Hedley kneeling on the floor, her gaze unfocused and her reason unhinged. The alkitab was gone.
Mr XXXXXXXX had no explanation for what had occurred in that empty room. An empty room heavy with the air of the sea.
***
Although the loss of the alkitab had finally ruined the remaining chances of our plot, Mr XXXXXXXX returned alone to Massachusetts the following January, once his wounded leg had healed. His intention initially had been, with our approval, to try and trace either "Bait" or Sole.
However, in Boston he heard rumours of an underground bookseller who might be able to provide a copy of a singular and powerful text. Hardly daring to credit the audacity, Mr XXXXXXXX tracked down this bookseller who turned out to be none other than Doctor Myrtle, late of XXXXXXXX University, eeking out an existence in the dregs of Bostonian society.
Fortunately, Myrtle did not recognise Mr XXXXXXXX from their nocturnal encounter those several months before. Mr XXXXXXXX was therefore able to purchase the promised book from Myrtle and, as he suspected, it turned out to be a copy of the alkitab lost from the XXXXXXXX University.
Examination revealed it to be a copy of rather better quality than we had intended for the late Hedley to produce and distribute. While still obviously a fake, as identified by the lack of fading in the inks and the type and use of gum in the binding, it was a true and faithful reproduction of the text, including all the passages we had particularly wanted to suppress.
This was obviously a disaster: without the subtlety of Service involvement in their distribution, these forgeries would represent an extremely regrettable release of the secrets of alkitab alzaman aleazim, with no discrediting of the content.
Mr XXXXXXXX followed the degenerate Doctor Myrtle back to his lodgings and indeed for several more days before Myrtle finally led him to a meeting at an industrial wharf, part of "J. Arthur Bait's" business empire. "Bait" himself was present along with Mr Sole, apparently acting as a bodyguard. Mr XXXXXXXX, familiar with the 1958 file, was finally able to identify "Bait" as Mr Monkfish.
Keen to prevent any further distribution of the disastrous copies, Mr XXXXXXXX disposed of Doctor Myrtle as he left the meeting using the convenient Hudson River to remove the evidence. Monkfish and Sole, however, departed in a chauffeured limousine and were not seen again. Several of "J Arthur Bait's" businesses filed for bankruptcy in the following months and the trail went cold.
Conclusions:
Monkfish's interests in this affair are obscure. Hypotheses include:
(a) The sale to be arranged by Hedley was for the disposal of and realisation of the profits upon the proceeds of Monkfish's own theft from the university.
(b) Monkfish was attempting to raise capital to enter an auction for the items stolen from the university by Doctor James, Doctor Myrtle and their associates.
(c) The trip to XXXXXXXX was a ploy directed at thwarting the Services own plans for the stolen alkitab by disposing of Hedley.
It is by no means certain whether Monkfish himself was responsible for the business at the University, although the presence of Mr Sole suggests it.
His "buyer", or whoever inhabited the old estate on the coast, has never been identified.
Nevertheless, Monkfish's actions, particularly his later profiting from the copied alkitab, rendered our operation worthless and badly damaged our interests. He is therefore to be regarded as an active hostile should we encounter him again.
Richard Flowers
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