Amelia O'Neill's Journal
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Tuesday, February 14, 2006
11:47PM - Entry #3: Sunday, January 20, 1925 ~ 11:47pm
I shall have to make a trip to the local speakeasy before long. The bottle of brandy I keep concealed in my apartment is three-fourths emptied. This is a matter of some concern, at least for the time being, as I certainly don't want to allow myself any degree of dependency on the stuff - even solely as a sleep aid.
I shouldn't keep liquor at all - not because I care anything for the legal ramifications, but because the underlying temptation is always there.
Oh, but I need a drink...
No.
No, I don't need a drink. That would be the old me speaking. I know I never killed her; she merely tucked herself away into the dark corners of my psyche where she could taunt me at will. Well, my method of defeating her is simple: ignore her, at all costs. I won't think about that craving. I shall consider other things, and hopefully lull myself to slumber by more innocuous means instead.
I thought about Dougal all day today. My last journal entry prompted it, I suppose. One of these days I might actually read all the mail he sent me while he was overseas...
I stated that I had "never seen the body, nor did I shed a tear at his death," but I confess I was not entirely forthcoming with that statement. It is the truth that I shed no tears - initially. I was in a state of shock. My father cried, my brothers all cried, but I, who had been his closest confidante, could feel nothing. I was the one who ultimately made the decision not to have his body brought back to the United States; it was my feeling that he ought to lie on the ground he had fought to defend.
The uselessness of it all pervaded me with a directionless rage that left me determined not to shed tears on his behalf. I nigh shook with a constant fury, an anger that fueled my already restless inner self. I became waspish and short-tempered, snarling at anyone who so much as glanced my direction in a manner I might have perceived as awry. People began to avoid me, and I am ashamed to admit, with sound reason.
A few weeks after he died - I believe it was Christmas; I recall that there were decorations and snow, at any rate - I found myself back in Arkham at university, sitting in the campus courtyard with my coat and scarf wrapped snug about myself. In one hand I carried a handful of envelopes; they were all the letters he had written to me in his absence, the ones I had never read. After perhaps an hour of blankly watching the snow fall, I assembled the letters by chronological order, opened the first one, and began to read.
I could go no farther than the first two paragraphs of the first letter before I uttered a cry of despair and unutterable loss, collapsed from the bench onto my knees, and screamed my anguish and grief into the freezing depths of a New England blizzard. For what must have been at least a half-hour, likely more, I crouched on hands and knees, impervious to the cold, rocking back and forth with deep, painful sobs wracking my frame. Try as I might, I could not force the awful truth from my consciousness: My brother, my best and only true friend, had died in some godforsaken filthy trench alone and in agony, and out of childish, selfish fury I had turned my back on him. He had not betrayed our trust in each other; I had. The guilt and self-loathing I felt... I cannot even begin to describe it.
To this day I have neither opened nor reread any of the letters, including the only one I ever attempted to read.
Perhaps one day, I'll be able to read the letters he sent. But not now. Even eight years later, the wounds are still raw, and I am still beset by demons that have plagued me since my childhood. Dougal was the only person who ever came anywhere close to understanding me. Understand in turn, diary, that I seek no sympathy for my situation. To claim otherworldly power is to risk categorization as a lunatic in this modern age and I have no wish to be labelled as such for various reasons - not the least of them being that were I considered to be insane, I could conceivably lose my license to practice medicine. My brother never once questioned my sanity when I told him of the things I had seen and heard. If he felt my sanity was less than solid, he never opined as such to my face.
I miss him terribly. I wish sometimes that I could see him, just once. If not him, then at least visit his grave and tell him I never meant the beastly things I said to him the day before he left for Southampton, that I spoke out of anger rather than sincerity. My logic tells me he knew this, otherwise he would not have faithfully sent me correspondence; however, my guilty conscience, like all guilt-ridden souls, feels the innate need to be assuaged of its sins - imagined or real.
I had little time to grieve his passing. A far more pressing matter usurped my attention, and that was the arrival of the Spanish influenza. It had been spreading like wildfire in Boston; before long, it found its way to Arkham and the neighboring communities, and ate its way through the town like a malignant cancer. Miskatonic was forced to close its doors until further notice as students and faculty alike succumbed to the dread disease. Townspeople who had managed to remain well packed their bags and fled - at least, those who had no ill relatives to anchor them, and some attempted to take sickening children and elderly parents with them to Boston in search of a cure that didn't exist.
In all the furor and panic, no one had thought to go to Arkham Sanitarium, the state-run home for the insane, and inquire as to whether or not assistance was required there. I was but a recent graduate and seeing my fellow students jump in feet-first at the local clinic, it occurred to me that no news had come from the mental hospital since the flu outbreak began. I took it upon myself to pack a bag of supplies and make my way to the eastern edge of Derby Street.
As I had expected, three-fourths of the patients were dying. Twenty had died already, and ten more took ill the day before I came. Dr. Hardstrom, the asylum director, was at the point of tearing out his hair. The house physician had died three days before my arrival. When I stated my name and explained that I was a doctor, I fancied I could see tears of relief in the poor man's exhausted eyes.
It was working at Arkham Sanitarium and using my healing skills amongst the insane, that I first truly encountered them. My hackles initially rose at the prospect of dealing with those that had lost their reason - until I spoke with them myself. Some were beyond my reach, the schizophrenics especially, wandering through their fabricated realities and oblivious to the death surrounding them - or acutely aware and attributing it to a more sinister cause as did one gentleman of thirty or so who screamed something about old gods devouring the planet.
Some seemed as sane as I, at least on the surface. I had only to look into their faces and see the haunted, broken expression in their eyes. Sad and defeated, tormented but with a pitiful sort of dignity, the scraps of self-preservation drawn about a shattered soul. It was this very thing which determined that, after requested by Dr. Hardstrom, I should move onwards regardless of the pay offered me as an assistant director and house physician of the asylum. I knew that look in the eyes of the insane. I knew it all too well. I had seen it in the face of my mother.
Moreover, I had seen it in myself. (I would see it far more often in future, after I had succumbed to alcohol and its excesses.) It was very akin to peering into a distorted mirror, and I found myself extremely distressed by it.
I wonder sometimes what might have happened had I remained in Arkham and accepted duty as a doctor at a mental hospital. I really do. I don't think I could have remained there and retained my own sanity. It was an issue I don't believe that I explained well to Dr. Hardstrom, simply because I had no solid reasoning to give him other than a feeling. As I stated in my previous entry - should I spend my days among those of aberrant behavior, my own aberrations would seem not only acceptable by their standards, but perfectly normal, when they were very clearly no such thing. I could not, in all consciousness, risk such a thing.
As it stands, my brother's words had planted a seed of disquiet in me: I feared secretly that I could go mad quite easily without any aid from outside sources whatsoever. I sometimes fear I have and simply haven't realized it yet...
I need to stop. Dark thoughts such as these only intensify my cravings for alcohol-induced oblivion.
On that cheerful note, I am due to meet with the others tomorrow so as to share our findings. Perhaps I can set up all those appointments. Work always takes my mind off personal matters...
I shall away to seek my bed, before the lesser half of my nature triumphs. Adieu.
Current mood: 
cranky
Monday, February 13, 2006
7:53PM - Entry #2: Saturday, January 19, 1925 ~ 1:39am
Another late evening, courtesy of my chronic insomnia and my encroaching worry about the events of the past week and a half. I suppose I shall take this time to write a short autobiography of myself. Assuming, of course, that anyone will stumble upon this and read it; I'd like any readers to know a bit more about the author of this tome, if you will.
My name is Amelia Brigid O'Neill. I was born on the 28th of April, 1897, in South Boston in an area known as Dorchester. My father was - is - a foreman at one of the local textile mills, and my mother was a seamstress. There were six children, five boys and myself. Admittedly, my three eldest brothers are half-brothers: Junior, Kevin, and Michael. Dad had two wives; my mother Anna was the second. Dougal, Joseph, and I were her children.
Dad was very happy to have a daughter. I had always imagined that men would fancy a carful of strapping, athletic boys to carry on their family name... but Dad doted on me. He and my mother, according to Kev, had a bit of an argument regarding what my name would be. Mother wanted it to be very Irish; Dad said "I'll have none of that; she's an American and she'll have a proper name," or something to that effect. Obviously, I wasn't there to listen in on that debate! Eventually they came to a compromise; hence Amelia and Brigid, respectively.
I think what Dad meant, knowing him, is that he wanted myself and my brothers to have the same opportunities as anyone else born in America. Living in Boston, the moment people find out you're Irish, you're relegated to domestic help, firefighter, or policeman. They've been that way for the last eighty years and it hasn't changed appreciably. I heard from Junior last I spoke to him that a lot of the old prejudices against those of Irish extraction are beginning to lift; they're too busy discriminating against darkies and krauts now. And let's not forget those dirty, dirty Communists.
Yes, reader, that was intended as sarcasm. I'm fully aware that I have my own prejudices, but none of those are words I would use in public. Social progress notwithstanding, I have no intention of returning to Boston. I have too many painful memories there. I love my family, but when I was seven everything fell apart. I came home from school to find a paddywagon on our apartment doorstep and my next-door neighbor, old Mrs. Murphy, sobbing like her heart was fit to break. Two men were lifting a cot with something on it, a body covered with a white sheet, and another was talking to her. My brother sat on the doorstep with a white face, tight-lipped.
That was how I found out my mother was dead.
And scarcely two years after...
All neighborhood children have a rite of passage, if you will, a way to initiate yourself into their social circle and prove yourself worthy - customarily by way of some idiotically reckless stunt that would shock one's parents. Which I suppose is the entire point, to do something radically out of character in order to prove your moxie... at any rate, near our little street of row-house apartments, there were the gutted remains of an old tenement building that had been destroyed in a blaze which occurred probably twenty years before I was born. It was reputed by the locals (mostly the adolescents who took no small pleasure in frightening the younger members of our social circle) to be haunted. The "test", if you will, was to enter the building and remain for a period of twenty minutes. Naturally, not being a child of cowardly disposition, I agreed to this along with the other children my age.
When it was my turn to enter the building, I did so without hesitation. The door clicked shut behind me and I walked through the hallways. I was disturbed by the stench of old smoke and rotten timbers, and secretly worried as to whether the very floorboards would collapse beneath me; nevertheless, I maintained my composure.
After perhaps five minutes had passed, I took it into my head to explore the building. I wanted to see why people assumed it was haunted, and perhaps dispel some myths if they could be brought to light. Most of the rooms were either emptied, so devastated that there was little left to study, or otherwise unremarkable. Ten minutes had passed by the time I worked my way around to the third floor. There was one room to which the door stood ajar. I slipped through to look around. As with the others, there was nothing. As I turned to leave, a flash of color caught my eye. Upon the blackened floorboards lay the remains of a child's rag doll, but amazingly intact for all the damage it had suffered.
I went to pick it up, and as soon as my hand touched the fabric... all my senses were completely swept away. What I beheld instead was a horrible sight for a mere child to witness. There was no clear scene; rather, it was a series of powerful and vivid images slipping across my field of vision. I could see and smell flames, smoke, burning timber. I perceived the wail of sirens and clanging bells. I saw the face of a child scarce younger than I, cuddling the very doll in my hands. She screamed for her mother; I felt every emotion she did: the terror of the encroaching flames and the sight of her home burning and the loss of her parent. There was a sense of flight down a set of stairs, then a fall and the white-hot pain of a fractured bone... then screams of agony as her flesh was seared from her bones by the greed of the fire.
I suppose some considerable time must have passed; my brother told me later that it was forty-five minutes before he decided to search for me, as he feared I had perhaps fallen through one of the floors and injured myself. The next thing I knew I felt arms lifting me and a sense that I was carried; still, I remained utterly senseless until awakening in my bed at home and Dougal standing over me with a cup of tea. I refused to tell him what had happened. I had heard the stories of Danvers, where you got sent if people thought you were a lunatic. In my childlike fears I thought that surely such a wild tale would either see me punished for lying or sent to the lunatic's asylum in shackles and straps, to be confined to a padded cell for the rest of my life. I had heard the older children snicker about it and threaten it far too many times to believe otherwise.
After days of agonizing over my decision, I finally told Dougal, and swore him to absolute secrecy. Dougal and I were always close. He was the only one who knew everything about me, truly, and long past the point when most people would have disclosed my darkest secrets to their companions and sworn them to secrecy, he kept them to himself. As far as I know, that particular secret would be one of them.
(Even my current companions have no idea. God willing, they never will. Perhaps I can remain quiet, and soothe the fear that sometimes threatens to overwhelm me with the occasional shot of brandy in my tea. In the same way I dispel melancholia and periods of overexcitable activity. Whether my mother's curse, the curse of my second sight, or one merely brought upon myself by alcoholic overindulgence, I cannot say. I am a physician, after all, not given to flights of childish fancy; nor do I swear by the words of that quack who fancies himself a healer of the mind by probing into the sexual escapades of his patients and charging them a fortune to tell them that they secretly wish to lie with their own mothers.)
Life continued without particular discord. I was an unusually precocious child, and my father - having harbored great ambitions for me even before this happy discovery - insisted that I should have an education. I began school at the local parish-run authority, taught by austere Ursuline sisters about the rigors of humility and whatnot, but more than that I was able to learn the classics, arithmetic, reading, penmanship... I learned quickly, and soon came to the top of my classes. It was suggested that I continue my education beyond into university, but my father could not afford such a luxury. It was only by the grace of a parish scholarship and a donation from a benefactress who had employed my mother for many years, that I was able to enroll at Miskatonic.
Miskatonic University is an Ivy League school. Though perhaps not as renowned as Harvard or Yale, Miskatonic possesses a very solid academic program in nearly all areas, as befits a university of her standing. To everyone's surprise, I chose to enter their medical program, which of course has quite the reputation for being rigorous, demanding, and at times outright insurmountable. My family attempted to dissuade me, suggesting that I take up nursing, or get a degree in literature or the like - something a woman could do fairly easily. I rejected them all in turn. I wanted to be a doctor. I've always wanted to be a doctor. My femininity posed a hurdle, not a blockade.
I had a difficult time of it - not from the subject matter itself, but from classmates and professors. Those who didn't attempt to seduce me or belittle me, harasssed me, and I admit that there were several nights I trudged home in tears and determined to quit that hell. Every morning, however, I would awaken refreshed and equally determined to prove that their cruelty would be of no consequence to me.
Not long after I began college, Dougal announced to me his intention to join the army and go to Europe, to fight in the great war. I was furious, furious beyond reason. I said so many things that I should never have said... in return, he told me what had happened to our mother.
She was a woman of mercurial temperament, always mentally high-strung and fragile. Her moods became worse and worse as Dougal and I aged; she would spend day after day huddled in her bed unmoving and unresponsive, or sometimes fly into violent rages wherein she would throw things at my brothers and my father, or excessively cheerful. Once, I do recall, she came home with buckets of paint she had bought with the week's grocery money and announced to all of us that the Virgin had told her to paint a religious mural on the wall. Not long after that, I remember she was gone for some time. I had asked Dad, who had told me that she was on a trip and would be back after a while. A month passed and she came back, seemingly back to her old self, but after awhile it would always start up again.
After she bore Joe, it seemed to be the last straw for her. She refused to see him, which was a problem because he was a very young child and was not yet weaned; Dad had to find a wet nurse for him. Not long after he made that decision, Mother died. Dougal was the one who first found her, and it was he who told me that she had taken the rest of the chloral hydrate she kept in the kitchen cabinet. Her doctors had prescribed it to her for her "nervous condition," as they called it. Mother had been gone from the apartment for an extended period of time twice before she died; once before I was born, the other when I was six. Both times, those so-called "trips" were actually involuntary commitments to Danvers State Hospital. My mother was one of the very people which the older children on my street had cracked so many jokes about.
I was, as you might well imagine, badly shaken by my brother's words. I had known my mother was nervous and high-strung, but I had not expected that she was actually insane in the truest sense of the word. In addition, I was still furious with him. The day after that, he left on the steamer for Southampton. Less than a year later, we received word that he had died in France, on the western front, and was to be buried in the military cemetery outside London. To this day I have not seen the body, nor have I shed a tear for his death.
Time passed, and I graduated magna cum laude in due time. One of the few places that was willing to accept me after graduation was Arkham Sanitarium; I had summarily rejected the invitation. Despite the pay it offered, I had no desire - and still have no desire - to spend my days amongst the mad. Not out of any particular prejudice against them... I will take a moment to admit that I feel a kinship with them that frankly disturbs me. I too have seen and heard things beyond the scope of human reason, and I don't dare immerse myself in that world for fear that my visions will become not only acceptable, but normal. I would be as mad as my charges, and as a physician that would be a dire conflict of interest.
Thus, with degree in hand I made my way proudly back to Boston, sure of the respectability and reliability that medical degree would confer upon me.
Imagine my chagrin when I found social attitudes in Boston to be utterly unchanged outside my own enclave of Dorchester! Outside the immigrant areas, there was no work to be had. All I had to do in practice interviews was state my name - or in most cases, open my mouth. I had been cursed with my father's accent, despite all my attempts to rid myself of it as a child, and it was painfully obvious that I was Irish. In Bostonian eyes, should my status as a mere woman not be enough to discredit me, my Irishness certainly was.
I found myself with little recourse but to look to other horizons. It was at the height of my quickly growing despair that my brother Michael sent me a telegram. Dad had told him of my difficulties in finding employment. He was in New York City, he said, where attitudes were far different and the Irish were more accepted; surely I could find work there. In the meantime, I could stay with him. I agreed and packed my meager possessions, and caught a train to the metropolis.
At first I had similar difficulties as in Boston. The combination of female and Irish apparently was at odds with the popular idea of one who practices medicine professionally. Midwife was acceptable to them, or nurse, but a doctor? Surely not!
It was Dr. Lewis who finally decided to take a chance on me, and invited me to join his practice. Said he "needed new blood" to spice things up around the office, and that I seemed quite competent. Thus began my employment as a full-fledged physician. I harbored no hopes of running my own practice after the prejudices I had witnessed - or at least, not for a considerably long period of time. I still doubt that attitudes will change in the near future, but a girl can always hope, can't she?
My visions continued unabated in the meanwhile, and eventually, out of desperation, I took to the bottle. This continued until it came to Dr. Lewis's attention; at which point he took me aside and told me plainly that he felt it wasn't his business what I did in my spare time as long as it didn't affect my ability to work. The minute I came in to the office drunk, however, I would be dismissed. I understood his meaning right away, and resolved to quit drinking.
That was five years ago. I've struggled to stay on the wagon since then; alcohol is a mistress you don't easily forget... and I fear I might be slipping again. Hopefully not. A slip of sherry or brandy in one's heated beverage is certainly harmless. Medicinal, even.
Well, I've written enough tonight, I feel. I suppose I should go attempt to sleep, once more.
Current mood: 
restless
Sunday, February 12, 2006
2:24PM - 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.
Current mood: 
awake