Crossover Cover: Remnant

In this e-novella, ghost hunter Simon Feximal and his biographer and lover Robert Caldwell join forces with visiting American scholar and sorcerer Percival Endicott Whyborne and his own partner, ex-Pinkerton Griffin Flaherty, to investigate an occult menace in England. Feximal reads a news story about Whyborne’s visit that says that he discovered the tomb of the pharaoh Nephren-ka. Whyborne looks at a drawing of an Egyptian tablet in his notebook and recognizes Apep, the serpent of chaos, who is sometimes associated with Nyarlathotep. Whyborne and Flaherty initially speculate that Caldwell may be a member of a cult called the Eyes of Nodens. Feximal and Caldwell later take Whyborne and Flaherty to a private club called the Remnant, run by the Hesselian Society of Occult Investigation. It is said that one may meet the ghost-finder Thomas Carnacki at the Remnant on his usual storytelling Thursdays (which are best avoided), and that Dr. Silence always takes one of the small bedrooms on his infrequent trips to town. Feximal snaps at Whyborne that the Saaamaaa Ritual is not sorcerous. This story is a team-up between the occult detectives of  K.J. Charles’ The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal series and Jordan L. Hawk’s Whyborne & Griffin series. Nephren-ka is from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos tale “The Haunter of the Dark.” In Lovecraft’s Mythos fiction, Nyarlathotep is one of the malevolent Great Old Ones, while Nodens is a benevolent Elder God. The Hesselian Society of Occult Investigation is named after Dr. Martin Hesselius from J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story collection In a Glass Darkly, considered by many to be one of the first occult detectives in fiction. Thomas Carnacki is from William Hope Hodgson’s collection Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, while Dr. Silence is from Algernon Blackwood’s collection John Silence. The Saaamaaa Ritual is from the Carnacki stories “The Gateway of the Monster,” “The House Among the Laurels,” and “The Whistling Room.”