Crossover of the Week

January 1920

THE WHITECHAPEL DEMON

            The title of Royal Occultist, once held by Thomas Carnacki, has been passed to Charles St. Cyprian, who battles a demonic being that has assumed the persona of Jack the Ripper alongside his assistant, Ebe Gallowglass. St. Cyprian quotes, “That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange eons, even death may die.” St. Cyprian accuses Robert Gladstone of using a mummy to murder Colonel Warburton and Bertie Moore. One of the members of the Whitechapel Club that summons the demon uses the name Mr. Eddowes, and tells Mr. Kelly, Mr. Nichols, and Mr. Chapman to align themselves to three cardinal points, according to Prinn’s translation of the Incantation of Raaaee. Carnacki allowed a fellow named Dodgson to write about him for The Idler. Carnacki once acted as an apprentice to Edwin Drood. St. Cyprian has inherited Carnacki’s residence at No. 427 Cheyne Walk. Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a previous Royal Occultist, gathered a library that included books by Dee, Strange, and Subtle, as well as lost Pnakotic texts, but that collection was ultimately burned by Oliver Cromwell’s men. Morris, an employee of the Ministry of Esoteric Observation, asks St. Cyprian to look into the murders of several people in Whitechapel; St. Cyprian agrees in exchange for a look at Gough-Thomas’ 1867 translation of the Livre d’Eibon. St. Cyprian asks his apprentice, Ebe Gallowglass, if a spiritualist residing in the house where the murders occurred owned a copy of The Revelations of Glaaki or Harzan’s monograph on lupine waveform entities. St. Cyprian traces the Voorish Sign in the air. St. Cyprian asks if Morris is familiar with the Sigsand Manuscript and Morris replies by asking if the deaths were the result of a Saiitii manifestation. St. Cyprian mentions an affair regarding a man named Bains that Carnacki was involved in before the War. A member of the Whitechapel Club called Stack says that St. Cyprian was associated with Carnacki before the war, along with Arkwright and Dodgson, and mentions that St. Cyprian is a member of the Drones. Morris visits St. Cyprian and Gallowglass, accompanied by men named Mr. Haddo and Mr. Booth. Gallowglass suggests taking Aife Andraste, the medium who conjured up the faux Ripper, to St. Cyprian’s Rosicrucian pal’s place, up the road, or to “that old fraud Klaw, in the East End.” St. Cyprian tells Gallowglass to go to the cabinet in his office and get some oil of Hyssop, a vial of the powder of Ibn Ghazi, and Carnacki’s electric pentacle. Edwin Drood allegedly once faced a tulpa that served as a doppelganger to its creator; this encounter was supposedly distorted into a morality play and given a gloss of science by Robert Louis Stevenson. Attempting to remove traces of the Ripper demon from Andraste’s body, Gallowglass makes the lines of the second sign of the Saaamaaa Ritual within a circle of water, and St. Cyprian traces sacred shapes from the Third and Fourth Rituals of Hloh in the air. Among the books in St. Cyprian’s library are du Nord’s Liber Ivonie in the original French, Artephous’ Key of Wisdom, a concise collected edition of the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan, Armstrong’s English translation of The Book of Minor Grotesques, the pamphlet edition of The Zanthu Tablets, a partial Negus translation of The Book of Iod, The Garden of Forking Paths by Ts’ui Pen, and The Oldest Rite by Arkady Cottonwood. St. Cyprian refers to an acquaintance named Warren, and later mentions “those boxing lessons I got from Captain Drummond that night in Marseille.” St. Cyprian does not look forward to going up against the Sisterhood of the Rats or the Si-Fan.

            Novel by Josh Reynolds, Emby Press, 2013. Thomas Carnacki, the Incantation of Raaaee, Dodgson, No. 427 Cheyne Walk, Harzan, the Sigsand Manuscript, Saiitii manifestations, Bains, Arkwright, the electric pentacle, and the Saaamaaa Ritual are from William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder. The quote “That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange eons, even death may die” is from the Necronomicon, as cited in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu.” The Pnakotic texts are a reference to the Pnakotic Manuscripts that appear in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The Voorish Sign and the powder of Ibn Ghazi are from Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror.” The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan are mentioned in Lovecraft’s tales “The Other Gods” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” Warren is from Lovecraft’s story “The Statement of Randolph Carter.” “Colonel Warburton’s madness” is the subject of an unchronicled Sherlock Holmes case mentioned in “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb.” Prinn is Ludwig Prinn, the author of De Vermis Mysteriis, from Robert Bloch’s “The Shambler from the Stars.” Edwin Drood must be a relative of the title character of Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Strange is an ancestor of the Marvel Comics magician Doctor Strange. Subtle is from Ben Jonson’s play The Alchemist. The Livre d’Eibon is Gaspard du Nord’s translation of the Liber Ivonie (Book of Eibon) into 13^th century French; the tome appears in various works by Clark Ashton Smith. The Revelations of Glaaki are from Ramsey Campbell’s contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos. The Drones Club is a recurring organization in the works of P.G. Wodehouse. Mr. Haddo must be a relative of Oliver Haddo from W. Somerset Maugham’s novel The Magician. St. Cyprian’s Rosicrucian friend is the French pulp character the Sâr Dubnotal, while “that old fraud Klaw” is Moris Klaw from Sax Rohmer’s collection The Dream Detective. The Si-Fan is the criminal organization run by Rohmer’s most famous creation, Dr. Fu Manchu. The story of Drood’s encounter with the tulpa inspiring Stevenson must be false, since there are numerous stories bringing Dr. Henry Jekyll and his alter ego, Mr. Edward Hyde, into the CU. The Rituals of Hloh are from the Miles Pennoyer stories by Margery Lawrence. The Book of Minor Grotesques is mentioned in other stories by Reynolds. The Zanthu Tablets appear in Cthulhu Mythos stories by Lin Carter, while The Book of Iod and Johann Negus were added to the Mythos by Henry Kuttner. The Garden of Forking Paths is from Jorge Luis Borges’ short story of the same name. Arkady Cottonwood is from Reynolds’ story “Corn Wolf.” Cottonwood’s book The Oldest Rite appears in Reynolds’ short stories set in Jackapo County, South Carolina, as do quotes attributed to him. Captain Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond is the hero of novels written by H.C. McNeile under the pen name “Sapper.”