"Well then, that's settled," the Inspector murmured as we gave our statements on the Pie Shop. "We've more than enough evidence to book the Father for life... what sort of man of the cloth would force a woman to do his dirty work, and in such a vile manner...? I assure you, justice will be served."
"We're grateful for that," Sarah responded, nodding. "That Theodore friend of theirs left early on into our trip to the Cathedral, and he's been awfully ill since."
"Well, I don't rightly blame the man," he replied, folding his hands in his lap. "But in any case, this case is closed. Now, I did have a few... other questions to ask concerning a different case..."
Everyone tensed up immediately at that. We were right to be on edge - apparently he knew more than he let on. He knew Kensington, who'd told him some "American friends" of his would be coming to ask questions about Elias' death. When he realized the names involved in the Pie Shop incident were similar to those Kensington had sent, and received word from an informant that we were at Bridget's, he was anxious to speak with us. We relaxed a bit as we realized we were amongst a friend... at least, for the moment, as long as nobody mentioned that museum caper of ours.
"The Egyptian Murders... you've heard of them, I'm sure?" he asked, pencil tapping lightly on his notepad as his eyes scanned us. Of course we had, we were looking into them ourselves, and explained why we came to London. He asked us much about the Brotherhood and what we knew, about our suspicions... and it came to light that both of us had reason to mistrust Gavigan. The Inspector disliked him because he'd been marvelously unhelpful in the case, and he smelled a rat. That, and the more we explained our suspicions, the more his own suspicions were confirmed. His leads, which were few, were intriguing. I've dutifully listed them below, so as to bear them in mind as we continue.
- A man was found dying by the Inspector and his men, brutally beaten to near death. He was unable to tell them who had harmed him, but his last word was hotep. It sent a real chill down all our spines after what we saw in Gavigan's hidden basement, and what Bridget had translated... but Bridget did confirm the translation the police were given by Gavigan himself, that "hotep" meant "peace" or "rest". None too restful a fate for that guy, if you ask me...
- Jackson Elias had previously confirmed that the Brotherhood was a cult, a terrible one at that, and the murders were ritual killings. The Inspector had followed up with Edward Gavigan in an interview, but he got nothing useful from him about the Brotherhood. Gavigan refuted that they were a danger - and that was about the time the Inspector found him suspicious. Unfortunately, there wasn't any evidence to book Gavigan - he'd done nothing illegal except be a nuisance and haughty. Besides, why would an Egyptologist murder several Egyptian and Arabic immigrants, anyway?
- Many of the murdered victims were of Egyptian or Middle Eastern descent, and they often frequented the Blue Pyramid, a hookah bar and lounge in the area. A stakeout of the place found nothing concrete, but the Inspector was sure something was up. Unfortunately, none of the locals were willing to admit anything they saw - they were too afraid to cross the Brotherhood.
Has A
Thousand Eyes.
It was around this time we realized we'd need to board up the broken window, and took to finding material to do just that. Ewan elected to check the bedroom closet while the rest of us went to go find wood, canvas, and nails. We never should have split ourselves up like that, because things went from bad to worse the second we left the room. We all saw the lights flicker as the power went out. Then we realized how cold it was. Then, we heard Ewan choking in the other room. Bolting in, we then saw something surreal, absolutely bizarre - Ewan MacNeill, being literally constricted and choked by suffocating, burnt-hair scented tendrils of that sickening-colored yellowish fog, the tendrils of it forcing their way down his throat like they were alive.
Have you ever tried to shoot fog? It's not exactly the wise thing to do, especially not when it's sentient, because we quickly realized it wasn't just fog when something in the cloudy murk... shifted. It seemed to shimmer for a second, only just, but what we glimpsed of it was nothing short of horror. A mass of nebulous tendrils and hundreds of milky, blind eyes, all of those orbs gleaming with an inhuman malice and intellect... I don't know how we kept our wits about us long enough to help the Scotsman pull himself free, but we managed to.
As for the fog-thing, we tried everything to stop it. Clayton threw canvas over it. Ewan suggested buckets of water. Sarah took up one of those weird daggers we found, arming herself in case the thing could be physically hurt. Bridget suggested fire. Nothing seemed to stop its onslaught as it approached in a slithering, nebulous mass of death... until it crept just a bit too close to the light from Bridget's fireplace, and it recoiled almost in pain. Sarah, the brilliant girl, she had an idea then. A wonderful idea, and to this day I'm sure it saved all our skins. She turned to us, standing in front of the fireplace's light.
"Someone throw me a torch!" She cried, and we complied. Then, just as the fog-thing tried to snatch her with its suffocating tendrils, she turned the beam on it, right at it... and the thing screeched in pain, dissipating as if it had never been there at all. We were all relieved... except for Ewan, who seemed angry.
"Really?" He cried, throwing his hands up in disbelief. "A bloody light?! That's all it took, then?!"
Ewan then rubbed at his temples and said a series of other choice minced oaths under his breath, and for the sake of the genteel readers, I'll not print them here. I will say, however, that the British Isles and their neighbors have quite the colorful vocabulary when it comes to expressing anger in words, and that is one thing I will miss about London. We all apologized to Bridget for the mess, and quickly packed our things to find a low-key hotel in the area the next day. Clayton wired Kensington for help and funding, and he hooked us up with rooms at the Red Rose Inn, a quaint little hotel in which we could lie low for the rest of our time in London... certainly for the rest of our investigations, at least. It's a lovely place, the Red Rose, highly recommended. They even provided a full English breakfast for us all, a delicious treat - black pudding, baked beans on toast, sauteed mushrooms and sausages, eggs and more, along with strong tea with sugar and milk for it, of course.
Our first stop of the day was the Blue Pyramid. The place was unmistakable with its blue neon sign and pyramid-shaped building with flaking sandstone-toned paint. Clearly, it had been fueled by the Egyptian craze of the late 1800's, and already several locals were gathered to enter. It took some time waiting for it to open (almost until noon!), but open it did soon enough... and it was busy. Such a lovely internal tableau! It was like walking into a Cairo bazaar. Silks and Muslim artwork adorned the walls, a small ensemble played Egyptian-inspired music, the smoke of tobacco from hookahs hung in the air, and the tantalizing smell of Middle Eastern food hit us from the get go. There were scantily clad belly dancers as waitresses and entertainment - something Ewan and the other guys were particularly keen on - and drinks flowed freely. It was quite the sensory feast, so much so that we nearly forgot what we had come here for until a young dancer approached the table, and struck up conversation with the strange white people eating hummus and falafel in the middle of all these Arabians.
"What brings you gentle folk here?" She queried in an Arabic lilt. "We don't get many white customers..."
"We're looking into something," Clayton responded. "I don't suppose you've seen anything suspicious around here lately?"
Her eyes went wide, and she hesitated only momentarily... before leaning down to speak with us again.
"I will talk," she admitted, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. "But not here. Meet me in the alleys across the way around midnight tonight. I'll tell you then..."
With that, she continued her dance and fake-flirted a bit, then left us. Hell of a clue, lady. Not that we had time to follow up on it until later, we had a ship to investigate. Paying the tab, stuffed with good food, and our appetites for intrigue whetted, we left and paid a visit back to the Limehouse Docks. Since we'd paid off the workers before, we knew they wouldn't be a problem. What we didn't count on was them knowing Ewan. Fortunately, it was a good relationship between them and the Scot, and they offered to keep lookout for any suspicious types as well as pointing out that if the ship we wanted was still docked, the captain, Lars Torvak, couldn't be far behind. It pays to know the right people. Fortunately for us as well, the Ivory Wind was still docked in the harbor, its Chinese crew busily offloading new cargo and eyeing us with confused looks. There were the three that we noticed before, however... suspiciously looking at us and whispering, their sickles prominent on their belts.
"What's that funny-lookin' knife they got there, then?" Ewan asked.
"It's a sickle, not a knife," Bridget explained. "They're used to harvest crops usually... and occasionally as weapons."
Before Ewan could say anything more, however, we all heard the captain stumble over the docks towards his ship, swilling what looked to be cheap whiskey. We did try to speak with him concerning the strange shipments, but he was marvelously unhelpful, and loudly drunk to boot. Just our luck. I guess we can't have it all easy, can we? Fortunately, he did say Gavigan was accepting shipments from him, and he was drunk enough to allow us on the ship to see his shipping logs, something that his crew certainly weren't very fond of as it would obstruct their work.
At least we were out of their way in the captain's quarters. Ewan distracted the booze-drowned sea dog while we looked into the logs, however, something glaringly obvious stood out - none of the crates labeled as being from Shanghai had addresses that matched in the logs. He was shipping the cargo off the record, cargo that apparently held artifacts just like the ones we'd seen in Gavigan's little cache...
Just then, however, the door to the cabin squeaked open, and we all saw exactly what we didn't want to see - those three China-men, their sickles gleaming in hand and with a look of harshness in their eyes, rapidly conversing with each other in what we thought may have been Mandarin. I couldn't tell what they said, but it couldn't be good. However, Sarah surprised us all with a talent we didn't know she had - she was fluent in Mandarin Chinese! Even the attackers were surprised by the British girl speaking their tongue, and they spoke with her quite plainly. Unfortunately, the message they had wasn't good.
"They're going to kill us!" Sarah cried, reflexively reaching for the straight razor and strange lustrous dagger she had acquired. "It's a mutiny!"
Well, the cat was out of the bag then, and we all drew weapon as the three attackers bolted into the room. The captain, meanwhile, dove under the desk and remained there, incredibly unhelpful as always. We shot and stabbed, and for a while everything seemed to slow in the heat of the skirmish, until Sarah revealed another talent... and this one was accidental.
I don't quite know how to define exactly what she did, but as soon as one of the cultists ran at her, sickle poised to slice her flesh, she reacted by jamming the lustrous dagger into his torso and slicing upwards. It cut through him like butter, leaving a glowing rift as if reality itself had been sliced, and as the man fell something stirred in that cicatrice, something big. Something insectoid... Slowly, like some sort of great, shimmering, ethereal and rugose cockroach-man, the thing emerged, crowding the entire cabin and staring down at poor Sarah expectantly, an aura of malice about it. The thing had stepped from another plane, it seemed, to arrive here. It was magnificent... and terrible.
"Sarah, what in the hell did you just do?" Clayton asked, eyes bugged out. "What the hell is that thing?"
"I don't know!" She responded. "I was just slashing with the knife, this one... I don't know what I did exactly... but it must have conjured that... bug-man."
Meanwhile, the captain crept from his hiding place to see the bug-beast chowing down with its mandibles on the mutinous crew members, and blinked slowly before settling back in. Sarah, curious to a fault, gently approached the thing she summoned... and laid a hand on its head, petting it like a cat. It purred and continued its meal.
"Y'know, it's kind of cute if you squint," Sarah responded sheepishly. "I-it's a bit like touching velveteen..."
"I's be needin'a lay off'n the drink, I do," the captain slurred.
The thing, satisfied, grabbed some pieces of the corpses to it, and slashed a rift in the world before jumping through it and vanishing. It quickly became clear to us all that the lustrous knife summoned that thing, and that maybe, if Sarah tried again, we could use it as a distraction or a weapon. At least we have something now.
At this point, the rest of the crewmen came in, saw the blood, heard the captain try to explain what happened, and realized that we'd prevented a possible mutiny. Sarah was the information broker and designated speaker, explaining better than the captain, and asked the men about the three fallen crewmen.
"They were cultists," she explained to us, translating. "They belong to some sect called the Bloated Woman Order, they're bad men and the crew tells me they were picked up in Shanghai recently. You see those sickles? They insist they're cursed. The symbol on them, the characters. They read 'Bloated Woman Order' - a particularly nasty cult, if they're correct."
At that, we all turned to look at the symbol engraved in the sickle's metal, as if forged there. They were elegant, beautiful as all Chinese characters were - at least they would be if we didn't know what exactly they stood for. Clayton then made the connection to the bizarre, grotesque statue he saw of the oriental woman in Gavigan's cache, and it quickly became clear that Shanghai would need to be one of our next stops, if not Cairo. Great, another cult. Just what we need.
Midnight came, and we arrived on time to the alleys. The girl we met before was much more piously dressed this time, wearing traditional Muslim garb and without the makeup she had on during her day job. She seemed relieved to see us, and hastily explained her situation. Her name was Yalesha, and she greatly feared the power of the Brotherhood. They had kidnapped her boyfriend Abdhul a month ago, and she dreaded the worst, believing him dead. She didn't know much else, but did know that there were members of the cult (as Inspector Barrington suspected) who met at the Blue Pyramid about once a month to hop onto a truck and go someplace outside of London. They followed a nearby seaport route road, she said, but she had no idea where exactly they went. As for who drove the truck, she knew that a local shopkeep was the driver - one Tewfik Al-Sayad.
"Dammit, I bought spices from him!" Clayton murmured. "I knew something was up with him!"
Well, that cemented our suspicions, certainly, and gave us a clear lead into what we needed to do next. As Yalesha left us and wished us luck, promising to pray for us, we returned to the Red Rose Inn to plan. We had a ship. We had a means to stakeout the truck. We had an idea of where they all may be going, after looking at some maps and realizing the seaport route Yalesha mentioned went towards Essex. All that remained was to gather supplies and possibly some extra men, and follow these bastards to whatever hole they hid out in.
The Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh should watch its own back for once. We've got thousands of eyes of our own, and we're not about to let them get away with their dirty work. Not this time.