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Entry #1: Friday, January 18, 1925 ~ 2:24am
I never know what to say in these things, and yet here I am, compiling a journal.
It's been ages since I touched a journal of any sort; the last one I kept, I believe I was eleven years old and my brother Dougal told me it might help me learn to control... certain abilities I had. I did eventually learn to control it, after a fashion, I suppose. If one would count the bottom of a bottle as control.
But I'll not digress. That is a subject for another time.
At any rate, I haven't had a vision in lietarally literally years, but of course, that might mean everything or nothing at all. If I've learned nothing else in teh the medical profession, I've learned that.
Goodness, I must be tired, I'm misspelling so many words. I suppose it's to be expected, as I have been awake for a few days now, compiling that information on the members of the Carlyle Expedition...
And on that note, I suppose I should relate everything that has happened, the thigns things which have prompted me to begin a journal. A few days after the New Year, one of my patients from a few months ago, a photographer named Mr. Nicholas Geist (who would be quite nice if not for the regrettable - and quite disconcerting - fact that he attempts, very poorly, to seduce me every time he sees me) contacted me concerning a friend of his.
This aquin acquaintance turned out to be an author named Jackson Elias, who writes books about the habits of obscure cults. He's all the rage amongst the socialites who dabble in the occult... at any rate, it seems Mr. Elias had requested an investigav investigative team to be assembled, and my services were required. I wasn't entirely certain about the prudency of such a course of action; however, in the interest of satisfying morbid curiousity (and to dissuade Mr. Geist from attempting to ask me out for coffee for the hundredth time) I agreed to meet Mr. Geist and Mr. Tony Redgrave, his associate - both of whom I have made more than passing acquaintance due to my treatment of Mr. Geist's rather nasty injury - at a hotel in Manhattan's Upper East Side. I supposed it would be a casual meeting wherein Mr. Elias relayed information to us, namely the reason why he required an investigative team, and then I could make my decision from there.
Henceforth, everything fell apart.
The door was locked when we arrived. Mr. Redgrave rapped upon the door so as to be polite, but there was no answer. A couple of us could hear movement in the room, however, so finally Mr. Redgrave's friend (Terri? Terry? I'm not certain how one would spell her name, sadly, I'm not so swell with names) picked the lock. A bit questionable, certainly, but by then we were all beginning to feel concern. The entire room had been torn apart. As we surveyed the scene a shabby-looking man wearing an odd headpiece, almost like the sort you might see on a flapper, poked his head out the door and asked what we wanted.
Mr. Geist said, hello, we're looking for Jackson Elias.
The man asked, "So... you were summoned by Jackson Elias? About the Carlyle Expedition?"
Nicholas (I shall henceforth refer to him as Nicholas; using "Mr." for everything is getting a bit tedious) replied that we were indeed summoned by Mr. Elias in regards to the Carlyle Expedition.
"Then I apologize," the man told us, "but nothing must interfere with the will of our lord!"
At this point, he pulled out something that looked like a giant knife. Maybe one of those mashet machete things you hear about stories from Africa or somesuch; the "great white hunters," as they call themselves, carry them for cutting through jungle undergrowth. Or so I've heard. He was obviously about to use it on us, and naturally this was not a good situation. Dr. Trevors and Dr. Douglas were prudent enough to dive behind the nearest couch. Personally, I froze. I wasn't armed.
Apparently, however, Mr. Redgrave's friend Terri was armed: she pulled a gun out of her purse and shot the man right between the eyes. He fell over before he had a chance to do anything.
I was shocked, of course, but not a moment afterwards I noticed the bedroom suite door was cracked open. Nicholas went through the door, and Mr. Redgrave and I followed quickly in suit, for that was the room from which our would-be assailant had emerged. The window was standing open and there were footsteps clattering down the fire escape. We arrived in time to see two (or was it three? My memory fails me) men wearing the same headgear, carrying the same large hunting knives, running towards a black roadster of the sort you see everywhere in New York City these days.
I believe I must have been the first to catch the stench of blood and fecal matter, once the air from the window had cleared the stink of cordite from my nostrils. I wasn't the only one, though. Mr. Redgrave moved to switch on a light, and there on the bed lay the most grisly, horrific sight I have witnessed in a very long time. It was Mr. Elias, but someone had sliced him open from stem to stern. His innards lay sprawled across the sheets; his bowels had let go, as happens when a human is eviscerated, and the stench was nausea-inducing.
Nicholas's reaction was instantaneous: he turned towards the window and began to retch. Mr. Redgrave muttered something under his breath and covered his mouth. Myself? I felt my knees go weak, my sight wavered, and I only just managed to catch myself from collapse. I'm certainly not squeamish about blood or various other matter, having seen and handled no end of it in my time. I am not, however, a military surgeon or a coroner, and my practice rarely extends to... well, that.
It made me want a drink for the first time in months. That I found to be even more disturbing than the sight itself. It reminded me too much of some of the more... lurid visions I've had in the past.
We managed to recover ourselves enough to gather some bits and pieces of information and leave (I wanted to remain, especially since Dr. Douglas picked up the knife without thinking). Several leads to chase and not a single one of them definitive...
I have chosen to compile a complete (or as complete as possible) dossier upon the memebrs members of the Carlyle Expedition. This is what I had at the beginning, as far as Nicholas Geist's collection of newspaper articles could tell:
-The party was assembled here in New York. They consisted of the following: the playboy Roger Carlyle, a debutante by the name of Hypatia Masters (the name is ringing a bell but I can't place it), Dr. Robert Huston (whom I do recall; he was a physician himself before he went to Vienna to study beneath that old German quack who's obsessed with sexual relations - again, a subject for another time), and a man named Jack Brady.
-Their first stop was London, where they disembarked briefly in order to pick up a British Egyptologist by the name of Sir Aubrey Penhew. I've never heard of him before; I suppose he's one of those people only those in particularly esoteric circles would recognise. Perhaps I should ask Dr. Trevors.
-From there the party traveled to Cairo.
-Apparently both Mr. Carlyle and Miss Masters were experiencing problems tolerating the extreme climate of the desert, so it was suggested that they trek southward, to the relatively cooler uplands in Kenya.
-Outside Mombasa, the party disappeared. A few days later, there came the news that there had been a large-scale massacre. Hostile tribesmen were later captured and hanged and the authorities closed the matter, ostebsi ostensibly for good.
However - and this is a very important distinction - while Carlyle, Penhew, Masters, Brady, and Huston were all declared dead, none of their bodies were ever found amongst the dead. A rather important point of fact, I should imagine, as dead bodies can't exactly pick themselves up and walk off. I've no idea what African tribesmen would even do with the bodies; some claim it's possible that they were cannibalized, but then why would they steal those particular individuals and leave the rest behind?
It all seems a bit too convenient to me. Add to this the other odds and ends that we discovered whilst searching among Elias' personal effects, such as a letter addressed to Mr. Carlyle from Cairo... and the rather interesting chat I had with Mr. Carlyle's sister Erica - who incidentally trekked into the bush to look for her missing brother?
I don't like the feel of this. Too many coincidences tend to make me quite nervous, diary.
No one else seemed to want to follow up on the members of the expedition themselves; they were after some clues that seemed a bit more of a stretch to me. I took the liberty of having Terri and Mr. Redgrave (Tony for the purposes of the journal, that's what I call him anyway) drive me to Westchester County and out to the Carlyle estate. We were met at the door by security. I had to do a bit of fast talking to the head of security before I was allowed to see Miss Carlyle. She turned out to be a little plethora of information... and mentioned something that set my alarms off.
Not long before they left, a mysterious colored woman ingratiated herself into Mr. Carlyle's company. The entire family was appalled (Mr. Carlyle apparently had a history of being the black sheep to begin; Erica Carlyle gave me an entire list of the universities which had accepted and then summarily rejected him - my own alma mater of Miskatonic being among them, so it must have been especially a shock), naturally.
I suppose my attitudes towards Negroes stems from the fact that I grew up in Dorchester (a Southie at heart am I, oh yes!), and the Irish are considered a mere step or so above them on the Boston social ladder. To this day one still finds "No Irish or Negroes Need Apply" signs on doorframes and in the windows of otherwise respectable shops. Even after I graduated from Miskatonic, renowned for its medical program... well. I am of Irish extraction, and a woman. The patrons of Boston, not to mention a good deal of the medical community, found that to be unacceptable and I was forced to search elsewhere. Hence the reason I ended up in New York. I'll grant that life here is not much less of a struggle; I'm viewed as something of a novelty, however, and Dr. Lewis was willing to give me a chance, so... here I am. At least the pay is decent, and I do what I enjoy. I also have some freedom within the practice.
Oh goodness, I've gone and digressed again. I swear, my mind couldn't work in straight lines sometimes if my very life depended upon it.
At any rate, Erica Carlyle encouraged the Negro to accompany her brother and his party out of the country. I'm hardly surprised that there was no mention made of her. One wouldn't expect the society papers to mention a colored woman in association with the names of rich white folk unless there was a potential scandal involved. Either this woman was working far, far behind the scenes or was shrewd enough to keep herself out of view of the muckrakers (not to mention the muckity-mucks; how he could have got her anywhere above steerage class on a luxury liner is beyond yours truly).
And no one seems to know anything about Sir Aubrey Penhew. He seems a cipher. I'd almost say a red herring if his business card hadn't been one of the items found in Elias' hotel room. That... concerns me.
There's several other leads I would like to follow. Public records at the county courthouse outlining police records, if any. The Medical Examiners, to see if I can't receive a release of Dr. Huston's files on Roger Carlyle (Erica revealed that he was actually treating Roger Carlyle for his frequent night terrors... which only began after he met the black woman. Strange, that).
But all that is for tomorrow, I'm afraid. For the moment, I believe I shall take a shot of brandy in my tea, and attempt to sleep.
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