The Reading of Augustus Brill

 ARKHAM ADVERTISER

Saturday, May 16, Morning Edition

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Socialite Ella B. Cocker was admitted to Saint Mary's Hospital on West Pickman Street last evening. She was suffering from a serious knife wound to her abdomen, but she is expected to recover fully after undergoing surgery. According to Ms. Cocker, a social event which included a seance abruptly ended when the drama of the evening turned undergraduate student Augustus Brill, 20, into a raging madman who killed graduate student Eric Middlegate, 27. Two other guests, Spanish dancer and movie star Conchita Padron as well as Captain (ret) Richard "Dick" Thunderstorm were also attacked, and Captain Thunderstorm suffered several serious lacerations as they carried Ms. Cocker to safety. Augustus Brill is wanted by the Arkham P.D., and he is considered dangerous and violent.

Mr. Middlegate was a graduate student at the Miskatonic University's Department of Anthropology. He was one of Professor Tyler M. Freeborn's most promising students together with Mr. Brill's older brother, Mr. Hubert Brill, who declined to comment further. However, unconfirmed information indicates that Mr. Augustus Brill had been an avid student of the occult and ancient religions, and that this had contributed to his violent episode. Mr. Brill had also been absent from Miskatonic University for much of the semester, and he is claimed to have displayed antisocial manners.

Ella B. Cocker

From the diary of Conchita Padron:

"I could not believe the guttural sounds, wails and shrieks that young Augustus emitted before apparently losing his feeble mind. I am trying to recall the words, and it sounded something like 'Why? Why? Because! Because! It is the will of the begotten, of the dreaded abougdali, of the inner sanctum. Ia! Ia! Yok-Sottoth! The offering will be done!'

'The light will shine ‘til the starts are right and our Lorde comes down from the stars to lead us on ways untrodden.'

'The function equals the derivative delving into the root of minus one.' 

This beyond weird, but perhaps the book from the Miskatonic University Library might shed some light on the matter! And what was the story behind that weird mirror?"

From the diary of Capt (ret.) Dick Thunderstorm:

"I need to buy a gun."

 

Cocker Mansion

Ma Shank's Dead Boarder

The night between April 30 and May 1 may not have been a Walpurgis with witches on broom sticks, but other strange things were aloft. At some point during the late evening, the three amigos were startled to hear a shotgun being fired inside the Mitscher Ranch. They found a frightened but determined Nurse Agatha Pettenkoffer with a smoking shotgun aimed at a shattered rear window: "It looked like a big bird of some sorts, but the angles were all wrong, and the wings seemed to be more like a bat's wings than an ordinary avian." Frank Cannon looked out of the window, his revolver aimed up towards the roof. "I fear they may be back, those Mee-Gos that were mentioned in that telegram from this Irwin Bowers fellow in New York." This was confirmed by a couple of the familiar, yet weird, triangular tracks or patterns that were found on the roof of the Mitscher Ranch.

Next morning was spent sketching on defensive plans, plans that included searchlights and flamethrowers. The amigos had already discovered that the Mi-Go were notoriously difficult to kill, and it required a disproportionate amount of firepower to dispatch of the hellish creatures. Many of the workers at the Ashford Mining Co. were sincerely worried or scared after hearing strange buzzing voices in the surrounding woods, and the accountant, the otherwise redoubtable Mrs. Eleonore Harrington, swore that she saw a pair of ominous shadows flying over the ranch at unnatural speed. However, May 2 provided a new set of problems for the three amigos in the Mitscher Ranch.

The boarding house of Louise “Ma” Shanks is located in Lincoln. It serves as a temporary home to two Mexican families, the Marquez family and the Benedicto family. The family members work as ranch hands, maids, cooks and general laborers in Lincoln and Carrazozo. The families live on the first and the second floor of the building. Ma Shanks lives on the first floor, and the top floor is occupied by Mr. James Gardiner, who arrived two months ago, and a young widow, Mrs. Madeira. James Gardiner has been working in the Lincoln general store, and he has been helping out with the bookkeeping.

Ma Shanks was concerned about Mr. Gardiner. He has not been seen for a couple of days, and he hasn’t been to work. Ma Shanks had heard that Frank Cannon is a former private eye, and she wants help and support, since Sheriff Magruder happened to be in Carrizozo together with his deputy. She saddled her trusty donkey "Buff" and took the short ride to the Mitscher Ranch, arriving just as Lotus Ashford stepped out on the front porch.

After having coffee and a lengthy conversation with Ma Shanks, it was decided that Lotus Ashford, Frank Cannon and Bill McCloud were to pay a visit to the boarding house. Gardiner was found dead, apparent following a ritualistic suicide after spending many months covering most of his body with small spirals, all carefully carved into the skin to form a pattern of spiral scars.

Gardiner had left notebooks and diaries, and he had apparently enjoyed remarkably vivid dreams, at times entering something he called "The Dreamlands" that he described in a "Dream Journal," which

indicated that Gardiner might have lost his ability to dream several months ago. They also found an old book that was written in ancient Greek, as well as two obsidian knives and the remnants of two black candles. The Three Amigos decided to save the book for Father Bose, who knew both Greek and Latin as well as Hebrew and Aramaic.

The Dream Journal also included a loose piece of paper, perhaps added as an afterthought or appendix: "Much of my research points towards the realm of Yeeg (not really sure of the spelling) being closest to the realm of dreams. This may be in the American southwest, or somewhere thereabouts. In any case, a change of pace from Philly might be good for me." The name of "Yeeg" was particularly disturbing to Ashford, Cannon and McCloud. They all recognized the similarity to the serpent deity, Yig, that was worshipped by the degenerate tribe that had inhabited Lincoln County and its surroundings before the arrival of the Apache.

Franck Cannon and Lotus Ashford went over to the young widow, Mrs. Madeira, while McCloud continued the investigation. As Frank and Lotus held a quiet conversation with Mrs. Madeira, Bill McCloud heard a stirring from the corpse of Gardiner. A dragging sound on the floor interrupted McCloud's investigation of the room. The mutilated body of the room’s tenant shifted its limbs and suddenly lurched to a standing position. McCloud looked on in terror as the flesh around Mr. Gardiner’s head began to peel, the flesh spiraling downward like some horrific party trick with an apple. The blood-slicked skull turned to look in the direction of the old book with malevolence in its lidless eyes. The spirals glowed with a profoundly disturbing blueish light, and this light seemed to protect the unholy being from the hail of gunfire that erupted in the apartment. It was only when Lotus Ashford realized that the head was unprotected that the creature could be destroyed, leaving an oozing puddle of ichor on the floor.

It was difficult, if not impossible to figure put what had happened, but the Three Amigos were hoping that Father Bose might shed some light on the matter. As they were discussing the events, a strange sound was heard in the early Spring evening. It was an aeroplane, a thing unheard of, and it was coming down to land. The aeroplane landed awkwardly north of Lincoln, and it seemed to be a mail carrier from Lockwood Airlines!

The MacNamara Expedition, part 1.

From the diary of Howard Lake:

The Explorer Club. Again at the Explorer Club. We met once more with Arthur Bentley III, the elderly Walther Prendergast (who this time did not go on about "Remember the Maine"), Johanna Scarborough, Anscomb Blakely and, of course, professor Henry Armitage from Miskatonic U. There were also two gentlemen present whose looks seemed to betray less of an academic background. They introduced themselves as Special Agents Smith and Jones. One of them had an entirely scarified right hand. It may have been Smith. Or Jones. It did turn out that they were exceptionally well read, despite their appearances.

Special Agents Smith and Jones.

Regardless, Professor Armitage was very excited. He showed Mackie a photograph of an old Egyptian stela. Mackie pulled out a magnifying glass and read the hieroglyphs:

"Let one remember Samontuweser! He says: "I was director of the hall, steward, overseer of services in the property of Montu, the one who invested with their authority the officials of the palace of the prince by anointing them, being a man who cares for his city. I owned beautiful artificial lakes and tall sycamore trees. I was one who founded a vast estate in his city and excavated his tomb in its cliffs. I established a water supply for my city, I ferried its inhabitants across in my boat. I was a wise man in ruling my subordinates until the day will come when I shall be blessed. I handed this on to my son in my will."

Mackie scowled at the photograph. "Pretty ordinary stuff. Who doesn't do great things on a regular basis?" Mackie was clearly not impressed. Armitage, on the other hand. looked smug. "Well, that may be the case, but what if I told you that the stela was found deep in the jungle on the border between Mexico and Guatemala?" The room became quiet, with the exception of Moira grasping her pearls. Armitage continued: "The Leighton-Shaw Expedition set out more than six months ago, and they were really just doing a very basic survey of some, well, less interesting pre-Columbian sites. But something must have happened on their way back. This photograph was mailed from Kingston, Jamaica more than a month ago by Johnny Gale, a graduate student that accompanied Leighton and Smith. As for these three gentlemen, they seem to have vanished into thin air." At this point, the special agents intervened: "You see, that is why we are here. A journalist by the name of Johnny Schwartz has been investigating this unique find as well as other oddities at the Miskatonic University together with an individual that may be named Arkady Zimin. Professor Armitage contacted us, and we believe that Mr. Schwartz real name may be Janis Sarts, a Soviet citizen of Latvian heritage working for the OGPU, that is the Cheka. Sarts worked for Trotsky before Trotsky fell from grace, but Stalin decided to keep Sarts, mainly for his particular and brutal efficiency around Leningrad and Kronshtadt. Sarts has also displayed keen interest in strange religious matters, and he is believed to be employed by an organization known as Proletkult, which is a special organization devoted to liberating the Proletariat spiritually and culturally from the bourgeois past. The occult tenet that the individual is a microcosm of the macrocosm and traditional Orthodox injunctions against self-will and to aestheticize rather than oppose the Bolshevik suppression of the individual. Proletkult (Proletarnyj Kultur) is possibly led by a Vyacheslav Ivanov or a Sergei Bulgakov."

Sarts or Schwartz?

Armitage

To sum it up: Mackie has been forgiven (at least temporarily) by Miskatonic, if not Thornton-Smythe, and she is now in charge of the MacNamara Expedition. The actual expedition will be organized by Dr. Evan Sinclair, the Deputy Head of the Department of Archaeology. Jules volunteered to add some able-bodied veterans from the 369th Infantry (Harlem Hellfighters), and we would head to Kingston while the main parts of the expedition was being organized by Dr. Sinclair. Oh, and Armitage wondered if we'd be able to arrange a "permanent loan" of the Nahariya manuscript...

From the diary of Irwin Bowers:

- Unintelligible

From the notebook and prescription pad of Franz Alter:

I will never let my dear Ima visit Grand Central again! We did manage to commit the crazy woman Diana Spinoza to Bellevue and hand off Billy the Cat to Ima, praise be G-d, but whatever horror she may have contacted or summoned seemed to remain in the strange tunnels below Grand Central Station. We were dressed as common laborers and entered the tracks from one of the outside locations around 92nd Street. The tunnels below the station are well-nigh uncharted, and any maps are classified, so we entered that dirty and dimly-lit Gehenna with utmost caution. We almost got lost in this subterranean hell, and time seemed to lose all meaning. Apparently the unleashed monstrosity had claimed yet another victim, a vagrant, and we tried to find that location. However. the abomination found us first, but I was prepared with five fire-bottles filled with medical-grade alcohol and prepared with fuses. I was hoping that the indications in the Nahariya manuscript were correct, and that the entity would be susceptible to fire.

The entity is beyond revolting. It assaulted me and almost violated me in ung-dly ways. It is rancid, foul, and clammy, and it creates a mass of tendrils that seek out every part of the human body. Being exposed to the formless mass is being both squeezed and torn apart, and one lose both breath and composure. Fortunately, the spell that Jules and Mackie has prepared seemed to work, and I actually believe that the being is banished from this Earth. That being said, I still have recurring nightmares of what it did to me, over and over again. Oy vey ist mir!

From the diary of Mackie MacNamara:

We took a most civilized cruise to Havana between May 17 and May 23, and then we had an adequate passage to Kingston, arriving on Tuesday, May 26, 1925. It was difficult to manage both shuffleboard and champagne, but by now I'm an expert! It was a tad more difficult to figure out where Johnny Gale and the Americo-egyptian stela might be, but by asking the right questions to the right people, it turned out that young Johnny Gale had been drawn into the company of one Jonas Hennessy, who owns a major banana plantation and who's in cahoots with United Fruit, apparently using his reputation as a prophet and would-be wizard treat his laborers in a most inhumane fashion, promising the destitute workers that their toil would enable them to do an exodus to their roots in Africa. It was utter balderdash, of course, but for some reason he wanted the stela. Was it to prove the connections between Africa and the Americas? We just didn't know.  

Meanwhile, Jules decided to try out his new diving equipment on the ruins of Port Royal. He managed to find a decent-sized vessel, the Cormoran. The captain of the Cormoran was a real character, a Irish fellow by the name of Fergus Sharkey. Black Irish, he insisted. Oh, and Jules was also incredibly lucky in finding an old book from the early 1700s with a small but quite visible so-called Elder Sign embossed on the frontispiece. It seems to be  a tale of travel around the Caribbean during the reign of Queen Anne. 

Hennessy's plantation was located just north of Kingston, and was known to hold religious mass meetings in and outside Kingston together with a female, an albino medium named Jacques. This time, we decided to abandon any pretext of pleasantries and simply simply barge in to find Johnny Gale. We had Sergeant Washington and his Harlem Hellfighters as well as our own armed selves, and after arranging for an explosive diversion by what seemed to be a pagan monument at the edge of the plantation, we went in, guns blazing. Moira Baker managed to get hold of a Lewis gun, and we were clearly more well organized than the defenders. Rounds were being fired in every direction, and several guards left in automobiles to find the cause of the explosion. We took the parlor floor, and we squeezed Moira and her machine gun into a dumbwaiter, and she apparently found Jonas Hennessy and Jacques. They did indeed have Johnny Gale imprisoned, and we somehow reached a détente. Johnny Gale was in ill health, but we took care of him, and all seemed to be going well when Moira emptied her Lewis gun upstairs. I really did not know what happened, but Moira came down the stairs with a befuddled look on her face: "The abomination known as the eternally voracious Tsathoggua is apparently inhabiting the mortal flesh of Billy the Cat in Sara Alter's Lower East Side apartment."  Franz Alter's expression was one of utter horror. 

From the diary of Jules Pollack:

Thursday, May 28. The Cormoran is an excellent vessel, and I am glad that we could leave Jamaica on this neat ship. Onwards to Mexico!

M/S Cormoran

Weird cross at the and of the plantation

Jonas Hennessy's plantation house

A Lewis gun

Jonas Hennessy

Jacques

Johnny Gale

Lotus, Watch the Stars!

The deranged and dirty derelict was bundled up and carried back to the Mitscher Ranch. He was incoherent and violent, and he had to be strapped into a bed. Nurse Pettenkoffer pumped him full of sedatives, and examined the man. He was in remarkably good shape, despite being exposed to the elements and quite dirty. His uniform actually had a name sewn into the uniform: Edgar Broome, First Sergeant, U. S. Army. This was a familiar name to at least McCloud, since Broome was a real war hero, and had it not been for Sergeant Alvin York, Broome would have been the premier soldier of the Great War. McCloud was actually a bit awestruck. Nurse Pettenkoffer's examination also revealed series of strange triangular scars, most of them almost healed, and most of them located close to vital organs and arteries.

Broome in 1919.

As Frank Cannon finally retired, he did notice one thing: his window was open. It would have been no big deal if it wasn't for the fact that Cannon was utterly convinced that he's closed the window, and he also knew that the maid, Marita German, didn'r open the windows unless specifically instructed to. A quick search outside the window did not reveal any irregularities, but Frank Cannon nevertheless could not shake off an odd feeling of being watched, and the whispers that seemed to interrupt his dreams added to his unease. Frank Cannon would be in need of lots of coffee throughout the following day.

Next day, Nurse Pettenkoffer gently started to gently wake up Sergeant Broome. Frank Cannon and Lotus Ashford were ready with scrumptious ham sandwiches and a big pot of coffee, and although Broome was quite disoriented, he eventually responded to the remarkably calm reasoning of Frank Cannon, who after all had taken care of crime victims in New York as well as the tantrums of Frank Black. Sergeant Broome was far from lucid, but it seemed as if he had ended up in argument with a young lieutenant, 2/LT Gorman, and punched the lieutenant. Realizing the consequences of his actions, Broome deserted from the unit that was to escort Don Dixon's astronomical entourage. After that, it seemed as if Broome had had some surreal experience, and really could not be determined if this was factual or hallucinatory. Had he been abducted and experimented on? Was this merely the delusionary thoughts of a mind being pressed to the limits by shell shock from the Great War? Were the strange scars inflicted by Dixon and his team of scientists? The question marks kept piling up. Even more questions were raised when news from Arkham reached Lotus Ashford regarding the fate of the Topsfield power plant. He decided to send a telegram to Dr. MacKenzie MacNamara, the famous Egyptologist at the Miskatonic University.  

Broome was left in the tender care of Nurse Pettenkoffer and Bill McCloud while Lotus Ashford and Frank Cannon decided to pay Don Dixon's observatory a visit on April 30. They rode up the slopes of the Capitan Mountains, following a fairly narrow path until they were astounded to fins a military checkpoint just short of the abandoned mining office located on a plateau high up in the mountain range. The sentries were rather relaxed, but still wearing prim and proper U.S. Army uniforms.

The former mining mansion turned observatory.

The soldiers called up to the makeshift observatory, and Don Dixon was delighted to have visitors. The former mining office was being renovated at a breakneck pace, and a small telescope had already been mounted in what seemed to have been the study. This is where Cannon and Ashford found an enthusiastic Dixon surrounded by strange machinery and coils of cables. It all looked very technical. Dixon, being a most enthusiastic astronomer, was enthralled when Frank Cannon started asking questions about Betelgeuse, while Ashford tried to make any sense whatsoever of the strange equipment in the little observatory. However, Dixon promised that there would be a new, splendid, observatory next to the office building in no time, or rather in a year or two. Ashford also noticed several gun racks, bit then, this was New Mexico. Ashford and Cannon finally left, still not convinced of the true intent and purpose of the astronomical endeavor. Ashford did discreetly point out that the existing telescope was indeed aimed at the mountain top that seemed to have spawned so many strange flying abominations earlier this year. 

As Ashford and Cannon were riding down the path towards the Mitscher Ranch, they noticed a female figure waving at them a couple of hundred feet away. The stunning woman introduced herself as Georgetta Carlton, an astronomer, and she was very anxious about her fiancé, First Sergeant Edgar Broome. According to the visibly upset Carlton, Don Dixon and his fellow scientists had conducted strange and horrifying experiments on Edgar Broome, until  he finally managed to escape from these cruel procedures. He had not been seen for several weeks, and she begged Cannon and Ashford to not turn in Broome if they found him, but to notify Ms. Carlton instead by leaving a note in the Wortley Hotel, one of the two hotels in Lincoln. She was even shedding tears of desperation as Lotus Ashford told her to return to the observatory before nightfall. She left the two amigos with  a slow wave before riding up to the plateau. A strange encounter in a set of strange circumstances. Frank Cannon leaned over to Lotus Ashford and muttered "I do not believe that broad a single bit." 

Georgetta Carlton