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A telegram from Elizabeth's old friend Jackson Elias

[Raiko]

Newspaper Articles About The Carlyle Expedition

Big Apple Dateline
ROGER CARLYLE, the playboy whom everybody knows - or knows about - is quietly leaving New Yawk tomorrow to check out the tombs of Egypt! You've seen the cuties ROGER has found in the nightspots. Who can doubt he'll dig up someone - er, something - equally fabulous from the Egyptian sands?
-New York Evening Post - April 4, 1919

CARLYLE EXPEDITION EMBARKS FOR ENGLAND

Led by the fabulously-wealthy playboy Roger Carlyle, the Carlyle Expedition departed this morning for Southampton aboard the crack British steamship Imperial Standard.
Contrary to earlier reports, the expedition will perform researches in London under the auspices of the Penhew Foundation before continuing to Egypt next month.
Readers may recall the enormous party which Mr. Carlyle, now 24, gave at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel upon reaching his majority. Since then, scandals and indelicate behavior have become Carlyle's trademark, but he never has become tarnished in the eyes of Manhattanites.
Members of the expedition have been reluctant to reveal their purpose in Egypt.

OTHER EXPEDITION MEMBERS

Renowned Egyptologist Sir Aubrey Penhew is assistant leader of the team, and in charge of excavations.
Dr. Robert Huston, a fashionable 'Freudian' psychologist, accompanies the expedition to pursue parallel researches into ancient pictographs.
Miss Hypatia Masters, linked in the past to Carlyle, will act as photographer and archivist.
Mr. Jack Brady, intimate to Mr. Carlyle, accompanies the group as general factotum.
Additional members may be secured while in London.
-New York Evening Post - April 5, 1919

CARLYLE DEPARTS EGYPT

CAIRO(AP) - Sir Aubrey Penhew, temporary spokesman for the Carlyle Expedition, indicated Monday that the leaders are taking ship to East Africa for a 'well-earned rest.'
Sir Aubrey debunked rumors that the expedition had discovered clues to the legendary wealth of the lost mines of King Solomon, maintaining that the party was going on safari "in respite from our sandy labors."
Roger Carlyle, wealthy New York leader of the expedition, was unavailable for comment, still suffering from his recent sunstroke.
Discussing that unfortunate incident, local experts declared Egypt entirely too hot for Anglo-Saxons at this time of year, and suggested that the young American had not been well-served by his democratic enthusiasm, rumored to have led him to personally wield pick and shovel.
-New York Evening Post - July 3, 1919

IMPORTANT-VISITORS

MOMBASA (Reuters) - Leading members of an American archaeological expedition arrived here on holiday from digs in Egypt's Nile Valley.
Our Under-Secretary, Mr. Royston Whittingdon, held a welcoming dinner for them at Collingswood House, where the wit of Sir Aubrey Penhew expedition co-leader, was much in evidence.
Accompanying Sir Aubrey are two Americans youthful financier Roger Carlyle and medical doctor Robert Huston.
The party leaves inland tomorrow, for Nairobi and hunting.
-New York Evening Post, July 24, 1919

CARLYLE EXPEDITION FEARED LOST

MOMBASA (Reuters) - Uplands police representatives today asked for public assistance concerning the disappearance of the Carlyle Expedition. No word of the party has been received in nearly two months.
The group includes wealthy playboy Roger Carlyle and three other American citizens, as well as respected Egyptologist Sir Aubrey Penhew of the United Kingdom.
The expedition left Nairobi on August 3, ostensibly on camera safari, but rumor insisted that they actually were after legendary Biblical treasures.
Carlyle and his party reportedly intended to explore portions of the Great Rift Valley, to the northwest of Nairobi.
-New York Evening Post - Oct 15, 1919

ERICA CARLYLE ARRIVES IN AFRICA

MOMBASA (Reuters) - In response to clues, Miss Erica Carlyle, sister to the American leader of the lost Carlyle Expedition, arrived in port today aboard the Egyptian vessel Fount of Life.
Several Kikuyu-villager reports recently have been received concerning the putative massacre of unnamed whites near Aberdare Forest.
Miss Carlyle declared her intention to find her brother, regardless of the effort needed. She brought with her the nucleus of a large expedition.
Detailing agents to coordinate supply and other activities with Colony representatives, Miss Carlyle and the remainder of her party depart for Nairobi tomorrow.
Her companion, Mrs. Victoria Post indirectly emphasized Miss Carlyle's purposefulness by recounting the rigors of the voyage aboard the Semite ship.
-New York Evening Post March 11, 1920

CARLYLE MASSACRE CONFIRMED

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The massacre of the long-missing Carlyle Expedition was confirmed today by district police representatives.
Roger Carlyle, New York's rollicking playboy, is counted among the missing.
Authorities blame hostile Nandi tribesmen for the shocking murders. Remains of at least two dozen expedition members and bearers are thought found in several concealed grave sites.
Erica Carlyle, Roger Carlyle's sister and apparent heiress to the Carlyle family fortune, led the dangerous search for her brother and his party. She credited Kikuyu tribesmen for the discovery, though police actually found the Site.
Among other expedition members believed lost are Sir Aubrey Penhew noted Egyptologist; New York socialite Hypatia Masters, and Dr. Robert Huston. Many bearers also are reported dead.
-New York Evening Post - May 24, 1920

MURDERERS HANGED

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Five Nandi tribesmen, convicted ringleaders of the vicious Carlyle Expedition massacre, were executed this morning after a short, expertly-conducted trial.
To the end, the tribesmen steadfastly refused to reveal where they had hidden the bodies of the white leaders of the expedition. Mr. Harvis, acting for the Colony, cleverly implied throughout the trial that the massacre was racial in motivation, and that the fair-skinned victims were taken to a secret location, there to suffer the most savage treatment.
Miss Erica Carlyle, defeated in her efforts to rescue her brother, left several weeks ago, but is surely comforted now by the triumph of justice.
-New York Evening Post - June 19, 1920

[Raiko]

A Letter from Jackson Elias to Jonah Kensington (click to enlarge)

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A Telegram from Jackson Elias to Jonah Kensington

[Raiko]

Clues From Jackson Elias' Murder

Found on Jackson's Body


Symbol Cut into Jackson's Forehead


Found in Jackson's Room


Yacht Photo


Matchbox (All sides)


Found on 1st Assassin's Body in Jackson's Room


Harvard Letter (Click to Enlarge)


Front and Back of Emerson Imports Business Card (Click to Enlarge) Handwriting on back is Jackson's


Found on 2nd Assassin's Body outside Chelsea Hotel


A letter to Roger Carlyle (Click to Enlarge)


Penhew Foundation Business Card (Click to Enlarge)


Found on 3rd Assassin's Body at the 'Crash Site'


'Cult of Darkness' Flyer

[Raiko]

The Nairobi and London Notes of Jackson Elias

The Nairobi Notes of Jackson Elias:

SET ONE of the Nairobi notes sets forth the offices, officials, and tribes which Elias visited, searching for material concerning cults and cult rituals. Nothing conclusive was learned, though Elias discounts the official version of the Carlyle massacre.

SET TWO describes his trip to the massacre site. He notes particularly that the earth there is completely barren, and that all the tribes of the region avoid the place, saying it is cursed by the God of the Black Winds, whose home is the mountain top.

SET THREE is an interview with a Johnstone Kenyatta, who says that the Carlyle murders may have been performed by the cult of the Bloody Tongue. He says that the cult reputedly is based in the mountains, and that its high priestess is a part of the Mountain of the Black Winds. Elias is politely sceptical, but Kenyatta insists upon the point. In quotes, Elias records that regional tribes fear and hate the Bloody Tongue, that tribal magic is of no protection against the cult, and that the cult's god is not of Africa.

SET FOUR follows up on the Kenyatta Interview. Elias confirms from several good sources that the Bloody Tongue exists, though he finds no firsthand evidence of it. Tales include children stolen for sacrifice. Creatures with great wings are said to come down from the Mountain of the Black Winds to carry off people. The cult worships a god unknown to folklorists, one fitting no traditional African pattern. Elias in particular cites 'Sam Mariga, rr-sta.'

SET FIVE contains a single page reminding Elias that the Cairo-based portion of the Carlyle itinerary must be examined carefully. He believes that the reason which prompted Carlyle's Kenyan side trip is on the Nile.

SET SIX is a long interview with Lt. Mark Selkirk, leader of the men who actually found the remains of the Carlyle Expedition, and a Kenya hand since the Great War and the fight against the resourceful von-Lettow. Importantly, Selkirk says that the bodies were remarkably undecayed for the length of time which they lay in the open - "almost as if decay itself wouldn't come near the place." Secondly, the men had been torn apart, as if by animals, though what sorts of animals would pull apart bodies so systematically he could not guess. "Unimaginable. Inexplicable." Selkirk agrees that the Nandis may have had something to do with the episode, but suspects that the charges against the ringleaders were trumped-up. "It wouldn't be the first time:" he says cynically. Finally, Selkirk confirms that no Caucasians were found among the dead - only corpses of the Kenyan bearers were scattered across the barren plain.

SET SEVEN is another single page. Elias ran into Nails Nelson at the Victoria Bar in Nairobi. Nelson had been a mercenary for the Italians on the Somali-Abyssinian border, and had escaped into Kenya after double-crossing his employers. Nelson claimed to have seen Jack Brady alive (March of 1923) in Hong Kong, less than two years before Elias was in Kenya and long after the Kenyan court declared that Brady and the rest of the expedition were dead. Brady was friendly, though guarded and taciturn. Nelson didn't press the conversation. From this report Elias deduced that other members of the expedition might still live.

SET EIGHT discusses a possible structure for the Carlyle book, but is mostly featureless, with entries like "tell what happened" and "explain why:"

The London Notes of Jackson Elias.
This set of notes embarrassed and alarmed Jonah Kensington. The pages are folded and stitched together to form a small quarto volume containing dozens of mismatched pages. Frequently a page or a dozen pages are blank. Sometimes a single word is repeated for several pages. Most entries are written with agitation and can barely be read.

All the words are clearly in Elias' hand. The following quotes represent what can be gleaned from this text:
"Many names, many forms, but all the same and toward one end - Need Help... Too big, too ghastly. These dreams... dreams like Carlyle's? Check that psychoanalyst's files... All of them survived! They'll open the gate. Why?... so the power and the danger is real. They... many threads beginning... The books are in Carlyle's safe... Coming for me. Will the ocean protect? Ho Ho no quitters now. Must tell, and make readers Believe. Should I scream for them? Let's scream together..."

[Raiko]

Main Points of Prof Anthony Cowles’ NYU Lecture

ONE

A bat cult once existed among the Aboriginals of Australia. It was known across the 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 bat-winged 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.

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Doctor Robert Huston's Notes on Roger Carlyle:

Code: Select all

First Meeting: Jan. 11, 1918 
Reference: Erica Carlyle 
Closest Relative: Erica Carlyle 
    At his sister's insistence, Mr. Roger Vane Worthington Carlyle visited me this morning. He deprecates the importance of his state of mind, but concedes that he has 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 extends 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 no particular shape at all. All of them circle a pulsating ball of yellow energy, which C. recognizes as another aspect of the calling man. The ball draws him in; he become part of it, and sees 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 characterize much of his life.
September 18, 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 3, 1918.    If I do not go C. threatens exposure. If I do go, all pretense of analysis surely will be lost. What then will be my role? 

[Raiko]

The Books in Carlyle’s Safe:

Selections de Livre d’Ivon: A French commentary written in 1240 by Gaspard du Nord of Averiogne, France. Gaspard claims to be a sorcerer of great power, and that this work is based on his interpretations of a Greek book called The Book of Eibon - itself supposedly translated from earlier Atlantian and Hyperborean works. The original tome was reputedly penned by the Hyperborean wizard Eibon, and was found amid the ruins of his blasted tower.

The Pnakotic Manuscripts: An Old English translation by an anonymous translator. The first portions of these manuscripts are written in a curious sort of cuneiform and dot-group glyphs, which is possibly a cipher. Later portions are mostly commentaries and efforts at translation by a succession of translators, each of which have been translated in turn into Old English. Again claims are made by the author that the manuscripts have been handed down since hyperborean times, and indeed that the original ‘fragments’ predate human civilisation. The translated portions of the manuscripts carry the warning that ‘A Guardian’ will be extract a price from all who read from them.

Note: Professor Cowles also mentioned The Pnakotic Manuscripts.

The People of the Monolith: Volume of poetry by Justin Geoffrey. A rare prepublication draft from 1919. Includes such poems as “People of the Monolith”, “Dark Desires”, “Mirror of Nitocris”, “Out of the Old Land”, “Star Beast” and “Summer in Darkness.”

Life as a God: A handwritten diary by Montgomery Crompton, an English artist who travelled to Egypt in 1805 and claims to have became a minor priest of a cult calling itself the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. The work appears to be bound in human skin, and narrates all manner of unspeakable acts committed for the ‘Pharaoh of Darkness.’

[Raiko]

Articles from The Scoop that Jackson Elias viewed when he visited Mickey Mahoney:

“IT ALMOST HAD ME!”
by Alan Groot, Victim

It was like turning suddenly, knowing something was there, only to find nothing - a nothing possessing hideous life! The dank water smell of the cloying fog was replaced by a foul scent of smouldering hair which somehow reached out and filled my lungs, driving itself deep into my body. I began to choke. It meant to kill me. I cannot describe the terrible feeling of invasion by those foggy tendrils. And still I could see nothing!
- THE SCOOP

Extract from a larger article ghost-written by Mickey Mahoney. Although Alan Groot escaped with his life thanks to the intervention of a policeman, the story concludes by noting that Groot at present is in a Scotland Asylum (Brown's Resident Clinic for the Insane, Glasgow).

POLICE BAFFLED BY MONSTROUS MURDERS!
Inhuman Killer Shot But Still Alive?

VALLEY OF THE DERWENT RESIDENTS, shocked several months ago by two murders and a serious assault on a third victim, are still without explanation or perpetrator of the dreadful attacks.

At that time, Lesser-Edale farmer George Osgood and resident Miss Lydia Perkins were torn to shreds in apparently-unrelated murders on consecutive nights. On the third night, wheelwright Harold Short was nearly killed but managed to drive off a grisly creature which he swore to be man-like but not human.

Constable Tumwell, also of Lesser-Edale, believes that he shot and killed the beast on the night Mr Short was attacked. Other residents of the region have claimed to have seen the thing since.

Reportedly, Lesser-Edale endures to this hour the bizarre wailings of the beast on nights near the full moon.

Readers of The Scoop are reminded of their esteemed journal’s long-standing Danger Protocols, and are advised that the picturesque cloughs surrounding The Peak have been declared by The Scoop to be a 'Zone of High Danger!'

Residents of the Midlands are advised to remain indoors at night, and to report all mysterious happenings to the police and to The Scoop.
- THE SCOOP

Shocking Canvases Bring Recognition
Local Artist’s Monstrous Scenes Mock “Surrealists”

NOW COLLECTORS CAN BUY savage scenes which rival or surpass the worst nightmares of the Great War, but which are far more exotic than that grim business.

London artist Mr. Miles Shipley’s work is being sought out by collectors, who have paid up to £300 for individual paintings.

This correspondent has seen dozens of the works of artist Miles Shipley, and finds them repulsive beyond belief. Maidens ravished, monsters ripping out a man’s innards, shadowy grotesque landscapes, and faces grimacing in horror represent only a fraction of Shipley’s work.

With all their repellent content, these works are conceived and executed with uncanny verisimilitude, almost as though the artist had worked from photographs of alien places surely never on this Earth!

The artist reportedly is in contact with "other dimensions" in which powerful beings exist, and says he merely renders visible his visions.

Mr Shipley is a working-class man without formal artistic training, who has nonetheless made good where thousands have failed. Art critics say that Shipley provides an English answer to the Continental artistic movement of "surrealism," whose controversial practicioners have still to convince John Bull that the way in which a thing is painted is more important than what is painted.

A tip of the hat to Miles Shipley for exposing those frauds!
- THE SCOOP

Along with this story, The Scoop also printed a reproduction of one of Shipley's paintings, depicting a lurid monster sizing up an unfortunate damsel. Sadly the quality of the photograph is rather poor, making it difficult to fully appreciate the quality of the painting.

SLAUGHTER CONTINUES!
Scoop Offers Reward!

AN UNIDENTIFIED FOREIGNER was found floating in the Thames this Thursday, the 24th victim in a series of bizarre slayings.

Though Inspector James Barrington of the Yard had no immediate comment, sources exclusive to The Scoop agreed that the victim had been beaten severely by one or more assailants, and then stabbed through the heart.

This series of murders has continued over the space of three years, to the bafflement of our faithful Metropolitans. Must we hope that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, though reported by Mr Doyle to he in retirement, will one last time rise to the defence of our majestic isles?

Readers of The Scoop are reminded that this esteemed journal has a standing reward for information Leading to the apprehension and conviction of the perpetrators, in an amount now risen to £24 with the latest death. Be on guard
- THE SCOOP