Call of Cthulhu : New York

[mdavis]

Wednesday night

In Ransom Court, there were three men sheltering from the wind. The investigators slipped them some money and told them to go and get something to eat. The men shuffled onto West 137th Street, but after they turned the corner set off quickly and purposefully. The investigators realised they did not have much time.

Jude deftly picked the lock and the investigators slipped into the shop. A search of the shop counter turned up only the ledger. Raskolnikov pulled up the rug behind the counter and exposed a trap-door. They decided to search Silas N’Kwane’s room first. Another shabby and sparsely-furnished room. Under the bed was a bundle wrapped in a leopard skin : a hideous Bloody Tongue mask, complete with mummified human tongue nailed to the forehead (Sanity checks everyone!) and his pinga (Kikuyu throwing knife).

Under the trap door was a narrow staircase and short corridor finishing in a heavy oak door reinforced with iron bands. Jude took care of the lock, opening the door into a basement chamber. The surfaces were all of dressed stone, covered with strange cult symbols. Large African drums lined the walls. At one end of the room, the mouth of a pit was covered by a thick stone block, with a winch apparatus above to lift it. There were two large wooden crates against one wall.

Rebecca pulled back the curtain covering an alcove, and discovered a horror within : four corpses, sliced across their midriff, entrails hanging out, standing against the walls. As soon as the curtain was pulled back, the corpses turned and lurched towards Rebecca (Sanity check!)

Raskolnikov could not comprehend these moving corpses and was dazed for a minute, with a loud ringing sound in his ears. The others drew their weapons. The investigators emptied their pistols into the monstrous living dead and attacked them with clubs and knives, while the monsters grabbed and tore at them with inhuman strength. Rebecca ineffectually hurled a paper weight at them before her reporter’s instincts took over and she took out her camera instead. She took photos of the zombies and the chamber while her companions battled for their lives.

Surviving with minor injuries, the investigators opened the crates. In the first one they found Arthur. The second crate contained Frank, who had been abducted from his hospital bed in Harlem. Both had been drugged with chloroform.

Basile took a look in the alcove. At the back was a large feathered shawl made of shimmering coloured feathers, together with another mask like the one upstairs (complete with mummified tongue) and a pair of lion claws (fixed to glove-like garments so they can be worn). There was also a bundle wrapped in a leopard skin, a cash box, and hanging on the wall, a very modern marine chronometer. Rebecca took a few more photos.

Not wanting to waste any time, the investigators bundled up the things they had found and started to make their way up the stairs, carrying their friends.

Too late! Cecil was keeping watch at the top and hissed down to the others, “someone’s coming!” The door of the shop burst open and seven men entered. Two of them rushed forward, vaulting the shop counter to attack Cecil, who had ducked there. Having failed to hide, Cecil rushed into the back room and slammed the door shut, leaning against it. His assailants bashed on the door but were now distracted by the rest of the party beginning to emerge from the trap-door.

A violent fight ensued. One of the cultists tried to slam down the trap door, trapping those beneath, but Daniel forced it up and pushed him out of the way. Shots were fired. Silas N’Kwane, who had waited back by the door, saw that things were going badly and ran outside. Basile started to make after him, but one of the cultists swung his machete (Critical Hit!) slashing through tendons and muscles. Basile toppled to the ground, unconscious and hemorrhaging from a gaping wound.

Raskolnikov took a shot at N’Kwane who was just disappearing out the door, and rushed after him. N’Kwane pulled a trashcan across the alley and kept running. This slowed Raskolnikov , who almost caught up with him, but on the main street he was able to take cover behind some pedestrians and Raskolnikov lost him as he slipped into a nearby building.

As Raskolnikov re-entered Ransom Court to help the others, Rebecca picked up the cash box and headed out to West 137th Street and called a taxi. She got in: “New York Times offices”, she said. The taxi drove off.

Daniel managed to tie a tourniquet to stop Basile bleeding but he was in bad shape. They carried him out to the street, hailed a taxi and paid him $10 to take Basile to hospital. Then they rushed back inside to help the others.

Jude was badly wounded and unconscious, but they managed to bring him round. The other two were still drugged. Daniel, Cecil and Raskolnikov manhandled them out onto the street where they hailed another couple of cabs and made their escape.

Cecil commented that perhaps it was time to get out of town.

[mdavis]

Synopsis

It’s about 9pm on the night of Wednesday 28 January. Silas N’Kwane has escaped, so it won’t be long before the Cult of the Bloody Tongue are aware of what has happened.

Rebecca Shosenburg

Rebecca is in the darkroom at the New York Times, developing her photos of tonight’s bizarre events and mentally preparing the copy for her article. She has the cash box, which is locked.

Basile Lerouc

Was unconscious and critically injured, put in a taxi and sent to a hospital. (Unconscious, Major Wound, Dying, 1 HP : needs medical attention within 1 hour to stabilise).

Raskolnikov, Daniel Masters, Cecil Goulding, Jude Gregson, Arthur Bell, Frank Johnson

Hailed two taxis and paid $30 to leave quickly, no questions asked. Jude and Frank have Major Wounds (needs several weeks of complete rest to recover; professional medical care in a hospital will help speed recovery). Frank and Arthur have been drugged but are recovering consciousness.

Basile was carrying the items from the alcove but would have dropped everything before the fight. I assume someone picked up the leopardskin bundle. The other items were probably left behind in the chaos of getting everyone out.

Everyone Else

Probably enjoying a nice cup of tea in Manhattan and blissfully unaware of what has been going on.

[mdavis]

Officer Reuben Carter Directing Traffic at Lenox and 135th St, 1925

A Yellow Cab Company taxi, 1925

Interesting facts

In early 1907 Harry N. Allen, incensed after being charged five dollars (equivalent to $130 in 2018) for a journey of 0.75 miles (1.2 km), decided “to start a [taxicab] service in New York and charge so-much per mile.” Later that year he imported 65 gasoline-powered cars from France and began the New York Taxicab Company. The cabs were originally painted red and green, but Allen repainted them all yellow to be visible from a distance.

The Yellow Taxicab Co. was incorporated in New York on April 4, 1912. Its fares that year started at 50¢/mile (roughly equivalent to $12 today adjusted for inflation), a rate only affordable to the relatively wealthy.

In the mid-1920s, an average of almost ten people a day suffered injuries in automobile accidents in Harlem, between 130th and 155th Streets. Reports of those accidents regularly appear in the black press, and occasionally in The New York Times.

[mdavis]

Another interesting fact (historical footnote)

On 24 January 1925, Carr Vattel Van Anda steps down as managing editor of the New York Times. One of the things he was famous for was intuiting that the Titanic had sunk on 14 April 1912 :

Van Anda was brilliant, decisive, indefatigable, coldly demanding and insatiably curious. He was also a gambler — although he didn’t see it that way — as he synthesized scraps of information on deadline to produce exclusives that were the envy of the world press.

Van Anda was in his office on April 14, 1912, as he was almost every night from 10 o’clock on to shepherd the paper personally through each edition. An Associated Press bulletin from Cape Race, Newfoundland, arrived at 1:20 a.m. “The White Star Line steamship Titanic called ‘CQD’ to the Marconi station here, and reported having struck an iceberg,” it said.

Cold reasoning told him she was gone. Paralyzing as the thought was, he acted on it. Van Anda was not playing a mere newspaper hunch. He never went on that alone. He was satisfied that there could be but one answer to the Titanic’s silence so soon after her SOS.

While editors on other morning sheets were figuring cautious heads about ‘rumors’ of harm to the Titanic, and hedging even on known facts, The Times news chief wrote a bold four-line three-column front page head: ‘New Liner Titanic Hits an Iceberg; Sinking by the Bow at Midnight; Women Put Off in Lifeboats; Last Wireless at 12:27 A.M. Blurred.’

He was also an expert on ancient Egyptology :

Versed in hieroglyphics, he convinced himself by examining a photograph that a stele ascribed to the pharaoh Horemheb was in fact produced by his predecessor Tutankhamen. “The evidences of Horemheb’s forgeries are all over it,” Van Anda wrote, and proceeded to deconstruct a couple of suspect cartouches.

[mdavis]

On 29 January, the following news story is published in the New York Times :

Later that same day, a fire breaks out in the Ju-Ju House and it is burned to the ground. The surrounding tenement buildings also caught fire and at least 12 people lost their lives, with dozens injured from smoke inhalation.

[mdavis]

A telegram arrived for Frank Johnson :

[mdavis]

And a letter for Daniel Masters :

[mdavis]

The following items were recovered from the Ju-Ju House on Wednesday night :

Africa’s Dark Sects, by Nigel Blackwell

A copy of the book, stamped “Property of the Trustees of Harvard University”. Rebecca Shosenberg started to read it in a taxi, and was seen to become increasingly anxious. When the car was stopped at a junction, she inexpicably jumped out, dropping the book on the seat beside her. Bessie picked it up and has begun to study it.

A wooden mask

A carved African wooden mask with four hideous faces perched atop a thick, corded neck with a basket-like reed, feather and fabric collar that would hide the wearer’s face.

A burnished copper bowl

Etched with unrecognizable runes and signs.

A headband of grey metal

Various cuneiform-like runes are scratched into its surface.

The cash-box

It contained various pieces of jewellery and personal items, several of which could be identified as belonging to the murder victims. These were handed over to Carlton Ramsey, who is using them as evidence to re-open the Hilton Adams murder case.