Carnacki: The Relict

By Roger Wood

A direct continuation of The Saiitii Manifestation, The Relict begins with those left behind by the weird events in Putney. Life is especially hard for the family of Percy Jessop, who cannot access his wealth until either his body is found or seven years have elapsed since his disappearance. Then Mrs Jessop receives an invitation signed 'M Carnacki'. If she or her representative can attend the former Carnacki residence in Cheyne Walk Chelsea they might hear something to their advantage. Mrs Jessop, naturally, can't go - she has her invalid daughter to attend to. But her younger daughters go. On Cheyne Walk they meet the son of Reggie Arkright, who also vanished that night in Putney. In the top floor flat they meet the Relict. And then ... and then the portal opens on an occult infestation and the evening gets weirder and weirder. Included with the story is The Bronze Medal, the first of three scenes from the short life of William Hope Hodgson, creator of Carnacki the Ghostfinder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roger Wood
• Release date: Oct 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310702136

Roger Wood

I have graduated four times from three different English universities and have a PhD in Radio Drama. I used to be a local politician and ran an advice centre. Now I am a magistrate and write inflammatory political material for my local political party.

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Carnacki: The Relict

by Roger Wood

Also includes Scene One of WHH: Scenes from a short life

Copyright 2013 Roger Wood

Published by RogerWood at Smashwords

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Table of Contents

The Relict

Scenes from a short life 1: The Bronze Star

About Roger Wood

Also by Roger Wood

The Relict

I had become one of those ‘left behind’, a member of the legion of the bereft and broken whose ceaseless demands exhausted Carnacki’s gift.

The Saiitii Manifestation.

1.

Such a quiet street, a respectable street, a street in which respect was shown, in which residents – respectfully – went out of their way to ensure they minded their own business. This was a street unused to motor vehicles, to motor cabmen hammering and banging on doors and screaming blue murder, a street never previously swamped with police wagons, never before host to a phalanx of constables barging down the door of Number Eleven with lowered shoulders and flexed backs. Despite their best intentions, the residents of Camber Lane could not help but step outside and watch events unfold. Number Eleven was where that nice Mr Taylor lived, an unassuming young man with impeccable manners in an unassuming yellow-brick suburban villa. Young Mr Dodgson, someone reminded others, had once lived there too. A strapping young fellow – all the girls were besotted with him. Yes – Dodgson. Haven’t seen him for years. What became of him, I wonder? Went away to war, you say? Ah... Don’t suppose he---? No. Well, so many didn’t. A supper party – at Number Eleven? Good lord! I never took Taylor for the sociable type. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him for some time either...

Meanwhile police officers came and went through the wreckage of Taylor’s front door. Uniformed officers gave way to men in overcoats, with hats pulled down at the front and serious moustaches. Plainclothes detectives, witnesses declared with unwarranted assurance. Those nearest the scene passed information back to their neighbours like links in a human chain. They’re saying it’s a mess inside, plates thrown about, furnishings torn and smashed. But no blood – and no bodies. The cabman swears he heard voices but there’s no sign of anyone inside. The doors locked, front and back, keys still in the inner locks, and – you’ll never guess – all the windows barred, actual wrought iron bars like a prison cell, only these, they say, are in the shape of five-pointed stars. It fair makes my flesh creep...

And that’s what the gentlemen of the Press thought when they arrived to gather up the gossip. The Putney Mystery they dubbed it, and within six hours that’s what the hawkers of newspapers were carolling on every street corner in London. It was an overnight sensation which lasted for weeks. Every edition brought new information – the names of the four missing men, their antecedents; the fact that one of them, the so-called ghost-finder Carnacki, had made a minor sensation before. When facts ran dry, theories began to flow. There had to be a supernatural element, surely, with Carnacki involved. Carnacki was a foreign name, was it not, and thus suspicious in itself. Veiled suggestions appeared in more esoteric journals regarding alleged relationships between Taylor and Dodgson, and Dodgson and the foreign conjuror Carnacki. All in all, in the summer of 1919, the Great British Public gorged itself on the Putney Mystery. Books were hurriedly written and cheaply published. One purporting to quote verbatim from the Carnacki casebook was serialised in The Idler and syndicated across the Empire. There was a shortlived Carnacki craze in which young men wore their hair flopping against their cheeks from a centre parting in the manner of the