by Ken Asamatsu
Then, I plan to head straight to you and hold you safe in my own arms. Until then, do stay safe.
Yours faithfully,
S. L. Mathers
P.S. I love you with all my heart.
P.P.S. Do not worry for me, I am a more than capable boxer and can defend myself well.
II Around September 8th, 1882
Memo of Professor Henricus Banning, assistant head of the Egyptian and Assyrian collection, British Museum
◉Best keep this written down for my own sake, as I found the words of Mr. S. L. Mathers so queer. He came to visit the collection on September 3rd, saying, “I believe this might be the name of some ancient Egyptian god.”
◉ The name is question is Nyarlathotep.31 NYA- is a prefix found in the mythologies of west-African Negro tribes referring to things of the gods. AR-LAT is perhaps a moment of incantation or cursing? (No, not that!) HO TEP (a suffix meaning “satisfied”?!)
◉ From hieroglyphs carved on the monolith of Pharaoh Nephren-Ka: “Nyarlathotep, dark messenger of Karneter (Cthulhu?), came from the desert, came from across the hot sands after his prey. He walks unbarred across his dominion, which is all the earth.”
◉ The Faceless God/a sphinx with vulture wings and hyena body/a triple-crown upon its head, adorned with the left-facing sauvastika./ Fast as shadow, wide as the clouds, universal as the dark, he makes his home in the hearts of all, he strikes with endless fear.
◉ Messenger of Demons. He who prepares the way for the coming fiend.
◉ Why does the name of this ancient and long forgotten god fill my heart with such dismay?
Investigation Log of Inspector Joseph Chandler, Scotland Yard
◉ Victim Name: Annie Chapman
◉ Sex: Female
◉ Age: forty-seven years of age
◉ Occupation: Prostitute
◉ Family: Husband (Deceased), Children (Two)
◉ Location of Incident: In the back yard at #29 Hanbury Street
◉ Time of Incident: Around 5:45 AM on September 8th, 1888
◉ First discoverer of body: John Davis
◉ Discoverer’s Occupation: Carman for Spitalfields vegetable market
◉ Circumstances of Discovery: Discovered around 6:05 in the morning on September 8th. Davis opened the back door leading to the yard and when he went down the steps he found her lying at the base of the back fence. When he approached, he saw she was covered in blood and had already stopped breathing.
◉ Around 6:15 in the morning on September 8th, Davis ran into Whitechapel street Police Station and alerted the officer on duty, myself. I dispatched others to find the nearest doctor, and then hurried to the scene along with Davis.
◉ Annie Chapman’s corpse lay with arms outstretched, palms up, and there was a white handkerchief wound round her neck. This was not the cause of death; rather it appears the murderer used the handkerchief to hold her nearly-severed head in place. Her legs were open and her knees raised. The body showed significant signs of violence, with blood covering the hands, face and feet. There were particular signs of injury around the chin and mouth, and the head was swollen overall. The deceased’s tongue protruded from her mouth, and we assume the murderer pulled it out thus.
Her black coat and skirts were raised, but there was no evidence of violation. There was, however, a large gaping cut in the lower abdomen, from which the internal organs had been removed and placed near her shoulders. The direct cause of death (as determined by Dr. George Bagster Phillips upon his arrival at 6:30 am) was the cut throat.
Inquest testimony of Dr. George Bagster Phillips
. . .The victim appears to have had her mouth covered from behind, then a very sharp blade, like a surgical knife, drawn across her throat from below her right ear to below her left, ending her life. Then, the perpetrator appears to have attempted either to sever the head or remove its skin, but changed his mind and tied a handkerchief around the neck.
He then slit open the abdomen and removed the intestines, which he placed above the victim’s right shoulder. The victim’s womb, upper vagina, and two thirds of the bladder were completely removed.
The work was clearly that of someone with anatomical knowledge.
The only truly inexplicable finding was the incision inside the victim’s mouth, as with the tip of a scalpel, of a leftward-facing sauvastika and the cryptic word Nyarlathotep.
Unmailed letter from Mina Bergson
September the 9th
My Dearest Brother,
London is so stimulating as to sometimes give me nightmares.
It seems those things I once told you of are coming true. You do remember, don’t you, about my singular spiritual gifts?
How I had visions of the terrible state of Paris’s slums back in 1850, like Montrouge?
Montrouge, where beggars and whores wandered through streets where rubbish and muck and rats were piled along the river and canals, and the corpses and entrails of animals lay reeking in the sun. Indeed, there exists now in London the very image of that nightmare of Paris of almost forty years ago, where one cannot breathe for the soot and smoke. The place is called the East End.
And now those nightmare streets are haunted by “him”. The murderer.
And oh, oh, the horror! For only I know his true face and name!
I beg you, brother, hark to what I tell you. He is a short Austrian man, with black hair worn low over his forehead, and is about fifty-five or fifty-six years old. He wears a tiny moustache below his nose. His gaze burns as if he were possessed, and he speaks with overwhelming force. He wears an unfamiliar uniform, and on his left arm bears a red band decorated with a reversed sauvastika.
My own beloved Mathers kept watch over me to ensure that this Austrian did not appear to menace me, from September 1st to the 6th, but he finally had to give up his endless vigil.
And then, dreadfully, on September 8th, the second of his victims was found in a slum called Hanbury Street.
Darling brother, I know of a certainty that three more unfortunates will fall victim to this Austrian-born monster, this A. H. I have seen it in a dream, clear as day, and indeed lately I see visions of it even awake. And yet what more can I do?
How I do wish that my calm, objective, kind brother were here with me!
Ah, but I’m sure I can hear you already, crying,
“Come home to Paris at once, dear Mina!”
Is that not so?
Yours ever,
Mina
III Around September 30th, 1888
Magical Diary of S. L. Mathers
Saturday, September 29th, 1888 (Third day since the Full Moon) Magical Motto:32 ‘S Rioghail Mo Dhream
◉ Fourfold Breath / Relaxation Techniques / Meditation
◉ Vision received via magical memory evocation:
A tall man, about seven feet, draped in black from head to toe, accompanied by a well-built middle-aged man of about six feet, two inches. The middle-aged man is wearing a silk hat and a black inverness coat. The cloaked man’s age is unknown. He wavers in and out of sight. The middle-aged man carries something sharp and metallic in his pocket. A blade? A pocketknife? A surgical knife.
The scent of blood. . . an image of a womb. . . or a wyrm? Writhing maggots form the shape of the reversed sauvastika. Terror. Approaching footsteps. Explosions?
The vision will not settle.
I shall attempt astral projection to try to find the beast. (The following is a record of those things witnessed by my astral body in the outside world recorded via my body—indeed, only by the fingers holding this pen—through the technique of automatic writing.)
I am in the den of Westcott’s rented house at 396 Camden Road, which the two of us now use as a temple for ceremonial magic.
I face east and gaze upon the Enochian Tablet of Wind, and b
egin breathing slowly.
The ticking of the wall clock guides my meditation. I look at it from the corner of my eye. It is a quarter to one in the morning, so already Sunday the 30th. He will carry out his third foul crime this evening, I imagine— No, I intuit it. L’intuition mystique, as Mina’s brother might call it.
The reverse sauvastika was the hint that brought me to this day. The symbol, and the word, signify “destiny” in Sanskrit.
From what I found at the British Museum, the symbol also represents Thor’s hammer in northern European tradition. However, the reversed symbol, with its bent arms turned clockwise, represents destruction, darkness, death, misfortune, the death of the sun, and black magic.
I visualize Whitechapel and its two murders. Bucks Row and Hanbury Street. I can hear bells in both. What bells? The bells of St. Mary’s. Isn’t the Mass of St. Michael over? A mass on September 29th? No... So why those bells?
The bell rings one o’clock in the morning.
With the sound, my astral body descends to the physical realm.
I am surrounded by stone walls in a place resembling the courtyard of some clubhouse.
Alongside one wall, a woman sits limply on the ground as a man in an inverness coat grips her lapels. Nearby, an unbelievably tall man draped in black stands watching.
The beasts! Have they found their third victim?! I guess as much. And then, the unfathomable!! Although I am not there in body, but a mere phantom of will, the two murderers turn toward me as one.
The face of the man in the inverness coat is half hidden by his silk hat, but he is clearly not the man of Mina’s vision. He is large, sturdily built, and clean shaven.
“Who the hell are you?” He cries out in a deep voice. Naturally, he speaks not German but English, and with a strong American accent. It puts me in mind of the western cowboys in the penny dreadfuls.
Yet the fiend’s nationality does not surprise me nearly as much as that he has recognized me in my astral body. On pure instinct, I take a fighting stance. When the cowboy sees my shade raise my fists, he releases the third victim.
She is a middle-aged woman in threadbare black clothing. The fur collar of her jacket flutters in the wind as she falls lifelessly to one side.
The woman’s throat gapes open. The pavement beneath her is covered in a pool of blood. It looks as if she’s lost over two quarts already.
The desperately twisted cuckoo-printed handkerchief in her drink-withered hand gives silent testimony to the immense agony she’s suffered.
“Heheh, I reckon it don’t matter none. Whether you got a body or you ain’t, whether you’re a man or a woman, even just a durn ghost! Anybody who gits in my way is goin’ to learn a whole lot about hurtin’.”
The beast brandishes his bloody knife at me during this crude tirade.
I’m a mere projection. He cannot harm me. When I think this, though, the cloaked creature suddenly laughs from behind me.
“O follower of the way ‘S Rioghail Mo Dhream. Self-proclaimed Adeptus Minor! What a sad thing to be. Thou shalt soon learn that there are greater things in this world than are dreamt of in your reason.”
What?! As I spin around, the cloaked man brandishes his pitch-black hand and hits my left shoulder, which burns like fire. Then, the surgical knife flashes out—
“Die, you dirty Jew!”
The curse hits my ears as the blade bites into the back of my incorporeal right hand. I scream silently.
As if somehow it has heard me, then, a pony neighs from beyond the stone wall.
“Come on, now, quiet down there,” says a middle-aged man in a perplexed voice, followed by the sound of a stick across the pony’s back.
The coated murderer quickly withdraws his knife, still wet with the night’s grisly work.
Then, in a very strange turn, the mysterious cloaked man seems to fade away like smoke, and the coated beast’s shadow stretches queerly toward the top of the clubhouse wall.
“What’s wrong? Is somebody there?”
A match flares to life, illuminating the surroundings.
That is when I learn I am in the courtyard of the International Worker’s Educational Club on Berner Street, in the East End.
“Hey, Kozebrodsky, come out here! There’s a woman fallen down!”
The man climbs down from his pony cart and runs into the clubhouse, calling out the name of a Russian Jew.
Return. . . back to Camden Road number 369. . . .
I focus my will as I try to ignore the pain. My astral body rides the wind away from Berner Street, away from the brutal murder scene. I was unable to stop the woman’s murder, but I succeeded in finding the murder scene with my astral body. And there will be no more murders tonight.
When I returned to my body, I was still staring at the Enochian Tablet of Wind. My left shoulder and right hand were aflame with agony.
Upon touching my shoulder, I found my jacket and shirt shredded. The back of my right hand gaped open with a clean slice, as if from a scalpel.
Lucky thing I was staying at Bill’s, for if not, I’m sure I would worry Mina needlessly. I can imagine her now asking, “What are these wounds! Did you get into a knife fight with some street ruffians?”
I’ll tend to them on my own, as best I can.
Dream Journal of Mina Bergson
Morning of September 30th, 1888
Screams. . . Blood. . . Blade. . . Fists. . .
An upside-down triangle appeared. But it is not finished. The fourth star. Surgical knife.
Bloodstained hands enter a woman’s belly. They pull out her intestines!
It’s him! The Austrian with the moustache!
He turns toward me!
Our eyes meet!
What shall I do?!
I met the fiend’s eyes in my dream. He knows of me now. What shall I do? Whatever shall I do?!
Report of Constable Edward Watkins, City of London Police
◉ City District: Mitre Square
◉ Time: Around half past one in the morning, September 30th, 1888
◉ Upon returning to the Mitre Square area around 1:45, I saw a woman lying upon the pavement. The area was well lit, but I saw no one suspicious.
◉ I went to Kearley and Tonge’s warehouse to request assistance from a night watchman there. Two patrolmen in the area responded to the night watchman’s whistle, and I had one go to fetch a doctor.
◉ While he was away, I inspected the body.
◉ The woman appeared to be in her forties and was clearly of the lower classes. Her face was quite badly battered. There were deep cuts from her nose to her right cheek, and her right eye was plucked out. One portion of her right ear was cut away. Her throat was cut, and blood was still flowing from the wound. This wound was apparently made not long after her murder.
We found a white handkerchief, a matchbox containing cotton swabs, a table knife, a red tobacco pouch, a pipe, soap, a comb, and mittens in her pockets. A tin containing sewing goods and two pawn tickets was found lying next to the body.
◉ I have worked with the city police for quite some time, but I have never seen such a terribly battered body in all my days. It made me feel an animal at slaughter would be better done by.
◉ Finally, I feel it my duty to say that I believe this murder to be the work of the same individual that killed a woman in Berner Street not an hour earlier, that crime being not ten minutes’ walk from Miter Square. I wish this fact to be known to the officials of the City of London as well as Scotland Yard, and to those in charge of my own City Police.
From The Illustrated Evening News
Early in the morning hours of September 30th, another two “unfortunates” were murdered. The first victim was Elizabeth Stride (44), found dead in a yard next to the International Working Men’s Educational Society, on Berner Street. She was discover
ed by the steward of the club, a Mr. Louis Diemschitz.
Diemschitz promptly alerted the police, and constables rushed from the nearby H-Division Whitechapel Station. The remaining Jews at the clubhouse were thoroughly questioned, but no possible suspects were identified.
Elizabeth’s throat was savagely cut, but the fiend seemed to be interrupted at his fun and left the corpse propped against a wall. These events all took place around 1 o’clock in the morning on the 30th.
Then, not even an hour later, a second bizarre murder occurred in City of London, the financial and economic heart of the British Empire.
The second victim was Catherine Eddowes (43). Eddowes had been arrested for public drunkenness at Bishopsgate, but was released upon sobering up at around 12:30 in the morning.
It was after this that she fell into the clutches of the fiend already irritated at being so recently interrupted at his work.
“It was as if someone had punched into her belly and ripped out all her insides,” reported someone from within the City Police.
“Her intestines were around her shoulders. Most of her womb and her entire left kidney were missing, taken by the madman. Why would he do such a thing? Damned if I know. Ask the devil himself.”
“We know who done it. It was one of them communists, or a Jew, or an Irishman, or a Russian. Or one of them Polacks. While back they arrested that Polack Jew, Jozef Weizer, but he had some alibi din’t he? Let him walk right out, they did. Buncha bollocks, that. You ask me, this murderer’s a Catholic priest, a Jewish doctor, or an Irish communist,” local pub patrons commented.
Letter from J
I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with it but it went thick like glue and I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha.
The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work; then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck,