Sad news

Manhattan, September 30, 1923

Dear Mr. Spencer, 

I regret to inform you that Mr. Moishe Golansky was found dead in his ward on September 20. His remains have been transferred to the Goldmann funeral home from Bellevue following an autopsy, and the funeral will take place at Temple B’nei Avraham on 33 Elizabeth Street on October 2, 1923.  

With sincere condolences,

H. P. Vance, MD

Hightower Antiques and Fine Arts

1170 Madison Avenue

Manhattan, New York

Dear Mr.Pollack,

I am writing to inform you that the auction of the rare items from Egypt that you provided last month was an outstanding success. Please find attached the catalogue and the final list of all items auctioned. You will be able to pick a check for the final amount at any point in time you desire after September 30, 1923.

Also, I would once more like to inquire about the rare Horus statue I mentioned in a previous letter. There are several interested potential clients, and if you are in possession of such an item, it would fetch a most handful price if sold or auctioned.

Sincerely yours,

James Partridge II

Frank Cannon and Lotus Ashford Go South.

The Miskatonic Univerity has several departments, some of the more well-known include the Medical School, the Department of History and the Department of Physics and Mathematics. However, Miskatonic does have a small but well-renowned Department of Music.

”The Music Department aims to develop an appreciation of music amongst the entire student body at Miskatonic University, as well as to offer conservatory level training to those pursuing careers as professional musicians.  To these ends, the department offers introductory courses in music history and music appreciation designed for even the most novice student of musical arts, as well as advanced coursework in musicology, composition theory, and conducting.  All students pursuing music as their main course of study are required to take a one-hour private lesson in their main instrument each week.  In addition, students are expected to acquire, through private lessons on or off campus, a minimum level of proficiency in a second instrument as a requirement for graduation.  Miskatonic’s music ensembles, Concert Choir and Orchestra, are open to students in all fields of study.  Auditions for the both Concert Choir and Orchestra are held annually at the beginning of each Fall semester.”

The Department of Music was headed by Professor J. Pemberton Cass until early last year, when he retired to his native Mississippi after inheriting the family ranch in Utica, MS., from his dear mother. Pemberton was sorely missed in Arkham, since he had been quite prominent in the social life of Arkham, where he lived for almost 15 years. With his charming drawl and general witticisms, the notorious bachelor was the life of the party. Pemberton was also a quite accomplished scholar specialized in American folk music, especially from the South. He also enjoyed playing the piano and the violin at various social functions as well as clubs. Pemberton often travelled to the American South in serach of both new and old music, as well as instruments and Americana connected to folk music.

Despite moving back to Mississippi, Pemberton kept in contact with many of his friends in New England, and he remains a frequent correspondent.

J. Pemberton Cass

Cass House

Ridge Road

Utica, MS

May 10, 1923

Dear Friends, 

I hope that this letter finds you in good health and that the Arkham spring has sprung upon you. You surely remember my niece, Constance, who often visited Arkham during breaks from her studies at Tulane University in New Orleans? Well, she has finally graduated from the Department of Literature, and as Magna Cum Laude! I Intend to hold a party for her on June 20, and I would be most honored if you would be able to join us for the week, since it is after all a bit of a trip to take. However, rest assured (pun intended) that there are many comfortable rooms in Cass House, and it will be an excellent opportunity to catch up, enjoy southern hospitality as well as some really good music.

With sincere hopes of seeing you soon,

Pemberton

Talking to Sheriff Billy McIntyre at the Utica Morgue, just before midnight, June 20, 1923

”Gents, that is a hell of a mess you’ve gotten yourself into. I myself didn’t realize that the Thrasher killer would be coming to my town, but the Good Ole’ Boys of the Klan seem to have picked up on something when they broke into the house and dragged out that young guitar player and almost took him away to be strung up. Or perhaps they were just using the slaying of Miss de Winter to lynch some of the poor negroes on their Saturday blues night. I was myself looking forward to the grand party at J. Pemberton Cass’s House, but it turned into an interesting evening nonetheless, trundling through the mud, looking at mutilation and fending off the Klan. Those Klansmen are just petty crooks in frocks as far as I am concerned.

I did not expect that a human being could do such horrible things to a fine young lady as Miss de Winter, and it sort of makes you think of those old folk tales about people losing their eyes and the fiddler that was hung back in West Virginia in the day that y’all told me about.

But I’m telling you, Mr. Cannon, being a Yankee and firing off that machine rifle and killing off Jeb Calhoun’s favorite horse, you better skedaddle before the sun sets tomorrow evening. Father Hill and his band of hooded hooligans will try to get you as soon as it gets dark. Meanwhile, we might as well settle in here iu the morgue, deputy Donahue, the three of us and Ed the mortician over there. I brought along my trusty shotgun and a case of shells just in case we have some unwanted company before the sun goes up in a couple of hours. I’ll be on slab B to your left”.

From the diary of Lotus Ashford:

I am trying to gather my thoughts and impressions of what happened on the night of June 22. I seem to recall being in a morgue together with Sheriff McIntyre, Deputy O’Donahue, Frank Cannon and Ed the Mortician, and that the Klan seemed to be roaming the streets of Utica. We went to the Utica Hotel, Bar & Grill to look for suspects in the Thrasher killer case, but then, early in the morning, the accursed preacher Father Hill forcefully demanded that we hand over the ”guitar player” if we ran into him. It was then that we realized that the Klan might be on to something after all, and his name was Robert Johnson. He was the young blues musician we heard just two days before, and he would be trying to escape being lynched by the posse of klansmen. Sure enough, we picked him up trying to get on the train while Sheriff McIntyre distracted the klansmen at the station.

 Johnson told us a fantastic and frightful story as we trundled through the cotton fields in the first class car. He said that he had been taught how to play the guitar by a character named ”One-Eyed Jimbo”, who was ”supposedly full of hoodoo” at the intersection of road 61 and 49. There were some dark and ancient myths about One-Eyed Jimbo, that he was a beast, or even the Devil incarnate, and that playing the chords he taught you could have dire consequences. Nevertheless, we got off the train, rented a car, and proceeded to the crossroads. 

It was dark when we got there, and it was desolate indeed: endless cotton fields, a thick forest on the side of the Mississippi River, and a small shack or shed next to what looked like a long-abandoned general store. We stepped out of the car, looked into the shed, and realized that the inside was a hellish den of vile odors and frantically scribbled mathematical formulae or notes. Leaving the shed, we had Johnson start playing his guitar in the illuminated cones of the car’s headlights, his notes reaching out into the cotton fields and matching the cacophony of the cicadas in a bizarre and disturbing fashion. 

Then Jimbo showed up, seemingly out of nowhere. He was a smallish man, wearing worn tails and a high hat, and he seemed surrounded by a could of insects and strange, repulsive things. My memory thankfully starts to fail me at this point, since I do not recall how the fighting began. Did I hit One-Eyed Jimbo with the stock of my shotgun? Did the world turn into a mad nightmare in the cotton fields? I do not know how my senses at all could perceive the loathsome perversion that One-Eyed Jimbo transformed into. Our shots ringing into the dead blackness of the night! Johnson torching the shed! The shrieking, otherworldly noises from the beast! The cotton. Oh my God, cotton everywhere! Iä! Iä!

At daybreak I found myself in a first-class railway car. Thank God.

What Ashford and Cannon saw at the Crossroads

Cass House

Ridge Road
Utica, MS

June 23, 1923

Dear Frank,

 I hope this letter finds you well and that the trip back to Arkham didn’t lead to any additional trials and tribulations. I am, however, writing to ask you for a favor: as you may well recall, my niece, Constance Bryer, will be attending the Miskatonic University Department of Archaeology. Although she’s visted Arkham on many occassions, I would feel a bit better if you checked in with her every now and then, just to make sure that she fares well amongst the Yankees,

Most sincerely yours,

Pemberton

Nightboat to Cairo!

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey. It seemed a rather ordinary trip when Dr. "Mackie" MacKenzie, Mr. Jules Pollack, Ms. Moira Baker and Mr. Henry Chester, four young, ordinary, reasonably sane paranormal investigators, left Arkham that early June morning, to find the whereabouts of a professor Artburthnot MacKenzie, the ex-tutor and father of Ms. MacKenzie. It is true, there were dark storm clouds, heavy, black and pendulous towards which they were travelling. It's true, also, that the equipment they carried was somewhat outdated, but they being normal paranormal investigators and on an important mission… well, they were not going to let a storm spoil the events of their journey, were they? On a trip to Egypt….it was a trip they were going to remember...for a very long time. 

Professor MacKenzie was indeed lost together with professor Marston-Hyde, despite contradictory telegrams and letters. As soon as the paranormal investigators descended upon Cairo, strange things started happening. Moira Baker was almost smothered in her hotel room by an unknown assailant, only to be saved by the outstanding marksmanship of Jules Pollack. Strange individuals associated with the Fellowship of the Black Sun seemed to be keeping track of the investigators, and after securing the assistance of professor MacKenzie's old friend Mustafa al-Bakr, they all proceeded to the excavation site.  

The German, Herr Mattias Brenner, was initially suspected of having had something to do with the disappearance, but alas, no. He was simply running an excavation, and together they figured out approximately where professors MacKenzie and Marston-Hyde had ventured. As it turned out, there was indeed a remote oasis way out to the west of Sohag.

The horrors encountered in the oasis defy description, and the investigators were quite reluctant to describe the true nature of the abominations they encountered. Mackie MacKenzie stared out into some unfathomable inner abyss, Jules Pollack emptied his hip flask in one gulp while Moira Baker simply wept in complete silence. Only Henry Chester provided hints of gunfights against unnatural creatures followed by an encounter with an insane or even possessed Marston-Hyde and an immobilized professor MacKenzie. Chester claims that the meeting led what can only be assumed to be  a strange, possibly drug-induced, excursion into a desert, if one disregards Chesters mumbled account of intra-dimensional travel to hinder a cosmic horror named "Iogsattoth" from acquiring a "Demon Orb" that would devastate our world. Whatever happened in the far, far reaches of the desert claimed the lives of both professors, and the investigators did display some very weird injuries.

The story is more than a little odd, and it gives me a dark sense of foreboding. What really delves out in space or in the depths of Earth's unknown corners? After all, crawling on the planet's face, some insects called the human race, lost in time, and lost in space, and meaning.

Paul S. Grey, criminologist in Arkham, Massachusetts. September 10, 1923.

Mustafa al-Bakr

The oasis

Professor MacKenzie

Professor Marston-Hyde

The temple.

ARKHAM ADVERTISER                                                                                   Tuesday, May 8, 1923 _________________________________________________________________________________________________ MISCATONIC UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR FOUND DEAD Rumors of horrific struggle – Horrible mutilation – The academic society and all of Arkham mourns an upstanding Citizen ___________                                                   The late Professor Wyndham. ARKHAM, MAY 6 – One of Arkham’s finest academics, professor Trevor Arburthnot Wyndham of Miscatonic University, was found dead around noon on May 5. Presumably a victim of a gruesome homicide, the questions from the assembled press focused on the rumors of a blood-curdling murder and much mayhem. The Arkham Police Department has cordoned off the site of the suspected homicide, and when asked by Mr. Edgar Murdoch of the Gazette if the suspected murder is connected to the break-in at the Miskatonic University two days earlier, Detective George O’Keefe could neither deny nor confirm that this was the case. The Campus of Miskatonic University where Professor Wyndham was found dead. _________________________________________________________ Wyndham Exhibit to Remain Closed Indian statuette recovered after burglary but ongoing investigation is keeping doors shut   _______ ARKHAM, May 6 — This morning, Dr. Henry W. Jones, the co-organizer of the Wyndham-Jones expedition, met the press to inform them that Wyndham-Jones exhibition will remain closed. This is presumably due to the two police investigations regarding the death of Professor Wyndham and the attempted burglary that occurred on May 4. Dr. Jones was visibly shaken when he addressed the members of the media, and he excused himself after reading the brief statement. Detective George O’Keefe did mention that an artifact of the elusive Arumbaya tribe was recovered, but no details were provided  Dr. Henry W. Jones. Missing Young Woman Found Ms. Vera Buchanan found after two weeks ARKHAM, May 6. The scantily clad woman found to be walking barefoot in Beggar’s Canyon two miles north of Danvers has been identified as Ms. Vera Buchanan, a young and successful artist that was reported disappeared some two weeks ago. Ms. Buchanan was cold and in a disheveled state, but otherwise in good health.       Rioting in Germany NEW YORK CITY, May 4 --- The May Day rallies held by Reds in Munich were attacked by members of a fringe party calling themselves the National Socialists. Two agitators, Mr. Adolphe Hitler and Mr. Ernst Roehm, had arranged for what seemed to be common thugs from as far away as Nuremberg to congregate and attack the Red protesters just after the marching started, and dozens were taken to hospitals all around Munich.   Arkham Slugger Ready for the Red Sox ___________ BOSTON, Ma, May 5 – Outfielder Henry “Flash” Simmons signed a four-year contract with the  Boston Red Sox last Sunday, The far-reaching slugger is the first Arkhamite to play for a major league  team since Frederick “Flippers” Marsh played one season for the New York Giants in 1902 Simmons forceful batting is expected to help the Red Sox proceed from a drab and dull beginning of a season, most recently losing a series to the New York Yankees by 3-0, 7-4 and 11-2. Simmons has stated that he is intent on showing the Yankees and Babe Ruth that Massachusetts and the Sox are not to be trifled with. _____________________________ Shots Fired at Night? _________  ARKHAM, May 8. Neighbors filed several complaints regarding a number of shots being fired in the vicinity of West High Street and Garrison Street by the antiques and curiosities shop of Mr. Jules Pollack at some point during the night of May 6 and May 7. The Arkham Police Department did investigate the complaints, and a thorough sweep of the neighborhood was conducted, but without finding any evidence of foul play. However, Mrs. Elliot Spencer of Garrison Street stated that her prize-winning poodle was more than a little upset, barking ferociously and tugging at her leash for some time before the supposed gunfire.

Notes and comments, April 28 to May 6.

From the diary of Moira Baker, April 28, 1923
"One of Arkham's up-and-coming antique dealers, Mr Jules Pollack, held this wonderful soirée in his studio the other night. It was indeed a rather eclectic mix of New England's population, and I had a most invigorating conversation with a Fred Spaulding, a quite amusing 'mystic and sooth-sayer'. As far as I am concerned such things are mere legerdemain with tea leaves, but it is fun distraction. Mr. Pollack also introduced me to the amusing Ms. "Mackie" McNamara, an Egyptologist by profession, and the somewhat quiet but interesting Mr. Henry Chester, an author who had recently arrived to Arkham to do some research for a coming literary project. The event was great fun, and we are all all supposed to have lunch on May 1. We all need to eat, so why not?"

An excerpt from the notebook of Mr. Henry Chester, probably early May, 1923
(illegible)

Hastily scribbled down comments from Mr. Jules Pollack, the late evening of May 6, 1923
I am still shaking as I sit in the chaise lounge, and my hip flask is by now woefully empty. What did we see? I may have blacked out before being brought to by Mackie, and I can only recall those eyes, everywhere! What deviltry introduced itself in our midst? I cannot even attempt to grasp what really happened, and I could never, ever have imagined that a simple attempt to help Mr. Biron would have such dire consequences. Professor Wyndham is dead, killed in a most brutal way, and we seem to have been invested by a most horrendous apparition from the depths of time itself. My God, what it did to poor Henry Chester, and just to think that there might be more such aberrations around the world, in places like remote Tibet and hoary Egypt! How will I even be able to enter the basement of my own house, dreading that that black nemesis of mankind might be lurking there, ready to steal my soul and feed it to some loathsome horror called Yog-Sothoth!

From the diary of Ms. Moira Baker, early, May 7, 1923
It is difficult to describe what happened between May 1 and May 6, but I am jotting down some quick notes, just to make sure that we retain our bearings, and perhaps, out purity of essence. Being asked to investigate the house of Mr. Biron's manservant led us to a very recently abandoned Victorian, save for that half-crazed inbred, Ignatius Hernandez. The basement seems to have been a place of occult worship of the Santoria practice, and they were seemingly dreading the impending arrival of a "Guardian". The man-beast Ignatius had to be committed, and while we were attempting to uncover what actually might have transpired, an Arumbaya fetish from Wyndham's and Jones' expedition was stolen, only to materialize next day next to the mangled body of Dr. Wyndham. But as it turned out, this fetish was a fake. There were clearly other, greater powers at foot in Arkham, and as we feverishly worked through arcane tomes to understand what might be the cause of all this, we witnessed what can only be described a s a truly supernatural event. I did not for second imagine that I would be firing an old shotgun at the violent and vile sprectre that seemed to be draining all life out of the rigid, yet contorted, body of Henry Chester, but I did.

There is so much that needs to be understood? Why are there mathematical formulae in Otto Hernandez's notebok? Who stole the Arumbaya fetish? Where is it, and has it become the abode of something unnatural? Is all of this simply a cruel hoax?

Some comments by Ms. "Mackie" McNamara on the evening of May 6, 1923
- By Jove, we never had events like these in Egypt.

The Order of Taarna

In this era of mysticism and searching for ancient knowledge as a pastime, the so-called "Order of Taarna" is a prime example of societies at times devoted to such undertakings. The creation of the order was result of the well-known Arkham author Ella B. Cocker being introduced by attorney James E. Biron to Helena Roerich in New York, and Ms. Cocker invited Mrs. Roerich to hang some of her husband's work in Arkham back in 1921. The exhibition was a great success, and Nicholas Roerich himself came to Arkham to New England to introduce his art and spiritual vision. Several Arkhamites displayed further interest to study various aspects of mystery and culture, and Ms. Cocker held the first meeting of the Order of Taarna (brazenly named after the heroine in one of her own novels, A Madame of Jade) on All Hallow's Eve of 1921.

The Order of Taarna meets every month in the separate dining room of the Metropolitan Restaurant, usually to listen to a presentation from one of the members of the order and to enjoy a fine dinner, which includes a percentage of the hefty price to support fine or alternative art in New England and Arkham in particular.

Nicolas Roerich's painting We are Not Afraid.

Walpurgis in Arkham

April has been particularly cold in the state of Massachusetts. There were still patches of snow up in the mountains as the end of April approached, and people of Arkham enjoying their Sunday strolls would shiver as they walked out of direct sunlight. Even the sun itself seemed to struggle to share its warmth with the cold and unforgiving vales of Arkham County. Thomas O'Malley, a local drunk in Brattleboro, was found frozen to death as late as April 15, and the old Indians up in the Miscatonic Valley spoke of the unnaturally cold spring as "the season of the Wendigo" as they secretly drummed and chanted at the gibbous moon for just a couple more degrees to warm the bones of the old and frail. Up in Millhaven, a small village located just north of Topsfield and straddling the Turner Brook, the devout of the hamlet spoke of a "Curse of Millhaven" after having had a long series of unnatural and bizarre accidents ever since New Year's. Meanwhile, older, superstitious country folk dreaded the end of the month, since:

"May-Eve was Walpurgis-Night, when hell’s blackest evil roamed the earth and all the slaves of Satan gathered for nameless rites and deeds. It was always a very bad time in Arkham, even though the fine folks up in Miskatonic Avenue and High and Saltonstall Streets pretended to know nothing about it. There would be bad doings—and a child or two would probably be missing". (H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep)