Well... what's left of us, at least.
It started with me waking up to an odd noise. I heard Ralph get up, too, but between you and me, I think he never slept. The man's been a bit on edge lately, and I don't blame him. There was scratching coming from the walk-in closet where Brad had set up his sleeping bag, disturbing scratching. I heard conversation between Ralph and Brad, and it was... dismaying.
"Brad, the hell are you doing?" Ralph demanded. "Stop that..."
A nervous, unstable giggle from the New York native was his only response, and then I knew something was wrong. Ralph must have known too, because he fell silent. Then a voice, Brad's voice, tinged with something unhinged, wafted from under the door.
"C'mere, Ralph, I gotta... I gotta show you something. Something wonderful..."
Well, neither I nor Ralph were having any of that, so I tried to go back to bed while he presumably crept to the kitchen for more coffee to stay awake. Brad clearly had snapped out of pressure, and to be honest he had been damned unsteady for the past week. He should have never, ever come back, poor kid...
It was on this thought I tried to drift back to sleep, intent on helping him to the sanitarium in the morning, but something caught my ear. Something disturbing, another conversation between the two men from the kitchen...
"Brad, what the hell, you okay?"
"Yeah... yeah, never better..."
"You don't sound it... Why were you moving shit around in there, huh?"
"Oh because... because well, see, I was doin' some thinkin', yeah? O-on that Black Pharaoh guy we've been talking about? And see, I came to the realization... y'know, what if the Brotherhood's right?"
The color drained from my face, and I listened in shock as Brad continued. No... he didn't... he couldn't have, could he?
"I saw things at Ju-Ju House, Ralph!" The madman rambled. "Terrible things... I heard His name! Just like back in the cache... it reminded me... He talked to me, He's God, Ralph... God talked to me!"
"Now, calm down, Brad," Ralph muttered, an edge to his voice. "Brad, put the knife down. Put it the fuck down or I'll need to hurt you. Put it down now!"
"No, I can't," he replied, "I'm real sorry, but I can't... I have... I have to kill you, Ralph! The Pharaoh said so! He told me so! I gotta kill you for Him! I'm even wearin' green, just for you!"
After that, all hell broke loose. There was a sound of a struggle, and of Ralph yelling in pain as Brad slashed the knife at him. Ralph yelled for help as he struggled, words that chill me to the core to this very day.
"Someone help! Brad's gone crazy!"
We all leapt into action then, just in time to run out and see Ralph cosh Brad hard in the head with his nightstick. He was bleeding from the gash in his shoulder, and Brad's grip on the knife faltered as he fell, unconscious, to the floor.
"What happened?" Clayton asked, looking the situation over and kneeling with Bridget to help Brad. "What the fuck?"
"He attacked me with a goddamned kitchen knife," Ralph responded, shaken to the core. "I... I had no choice, it was self defense, I..."
"It's okay, Ralph, stay calm." Clayton's fingers brushed the unconscious Brad's head wound, bleeding. "You coshed him pretty hard, I think he may -"
His words faltered as he saw blood stains on Brad's arm... and he retracted it to reveal just what we had hoped wouldn't be there - an inverse ankh, carved into Brad's pale flesh. The Brotherhood's machinations had somehow gotten to him... and it broke him. Then Clayton noticed something else awful - a thin trickle of blood from Brad's nose, and a lack of the kid's breathing...
"Oh shit, shit!" He responded, backing away. "We gotta call an ambulance!"
"Fuck, no!" Ralph cried, dropping to his knees and starting CPR. "No no no, I can't have another one... I can't have another kid die on me... please no; breathe, Brad..."
"Hello, operator? We have an unconscious kid, get someone here... yes, 32 Stockwater Street..."
The evening blurred as Ted, Clayton, and Ralph took turns giving First Aid to Brad, but his condition worsened. It was about 30 minutes later, but it felt like hours, that the paramedics arrived, having to pry Ralph from Brad's side. Unfortunately, their timeliness proved in vain...
"His head injury... it's too severe. He's got no breath, no pulse... his pupils are mismatched... I'm so sorry, gentlemen, but your friend has gone asystolic. He's dead."
I have never seen a man crumble before tonight, utterly breaking in a single moment like so much glass dropped on pavement. But that is what happened to Ralph Hemlock. His eyes welled with tears, and the light in them extinguished. He looked like a lost child, and a grave sense of guilt assailed his features. He became real sullen after that, like he'd nearly lost his will to live, and he barely talked much the next day. At the funeral, he was silent, unable to bring himself to deal with it all. Ted and Clayton were never quite right after that, either - they both became very somber and very determined. Now two of their friends had died, three counting Elias, all because of these horrendous cults... and they had no intention of letting either one get away with it. Not after this.
It was Bridget who found Brad's final note in the closet the next morning - a mad hodge-podge of hieroglyphs, praises to the Black Pharaoh, and inverted ankhs drawn in his own blood. The kid had gone insane in his final hours, and the realization hit us all hard. None of us wanted to deal with it... but Bridget, who kept her British stiff upper lip, chose to stay behind and clean up after the mess while we further investigated. We had to, for Brad's sake.
She called up a friend of hers to help clean - Sarah McCain by name, a former student she'd mentored in the past. She was a lovely, lively young girl, no more than 22, attired in the garb of the flappers we'd so come to know around New York. She acted like it too. I guess the fad must have finally come to the British Isles. We all worried that perhaps Sarah was too young, too innocent to learn of what we had been working on... but we told her all the same. She of course didn't believe any of it. How could she? And yet, her sense of adventure was keen - she was intrigued by us, she'd even read of our travels with Elias, and she wanted in.
"It's not as if I have anything better to do except write papers," she admitted, and from then on we were stuck with the girl.
Ralph worried about her especially, and I don't think the rest of us felt any better about having her along. She didn't even know how to shoot a gun! None of us felt comfortable bringing her to Limehouse's docks to investigate, so we left her and Bridget to clean the closet mess while we headed to the docks and the spice shop, intent on finding answers.
Have you ever been to the Limehouse district? It's not the nicest place in the world, let me tell you - it's a hotbed of sleaziness and slummy grime, with a thousand shady dealings and the roughest customers you'll ever meet. Case in point, the Irish weapons smuggler who accosted us as we headed toward the Spice Shop. He thought we were someone he knew, and of course he was wrong and skedaddled as soon as Ralph flashed his badge. Not that he knew a Federal Marshal had no power overseas. He saw the badge and ran like the coward these criminals are.
Oh yeah, London's charming, alright. Real damn charming.
The Spice Shop, owned by a man named Tewfik, was a gem of culture in the shady gallows of the Limehouse district, a fragrant and exotic place. Inside were fresh spices and herbs and teas, of many different kinds, all enticing. Tewfik himself was kind and explained that Gavigan bought tea from him often, but Ralph immediately started accusing him of hiding info from us and of consorting with the Brotherhood. Tewfik didn't take too kindly to that, and Clayton had to talk him down. Surely buying a container of tikka masala spice proved helpful in that regard, and we left on good terms but without any decent answers.
The docks proved more helpful. There we found the warehouse Gavigan had entered into... and a Chinese junk docked in the harbor, the Ivory Wind by name. Nearby, guarding the warehouse, were about five or so burly men, one of them armed with a switchblade, all of them eyeing us with an intimidating glance...
"Oi, you lot," the switchblade guy murmured, his Cockney accent thick as a London fog. "Whatcha doin' hangin' 'bout round 'ere, then?"
After a stare-down by Ted and copious applications of social grease by Clayton, though, not even a tough Limehouse dock-worker would press his luck. Instead, he gave up, and told us what we wanted to know... for the right amount of money. Apparently, Gavigan was a warehouse customer, receiving shipments through here. The Ivory Wind, with its sullen Chinese crewmen, were untrustworthy, he said - they'd brought a strange crate on shore from Ho Fong Imports, and he offered to show us it. Inside was a strange valve-like part with wires that nobody could identify, some sort of scientific instrument? We assumed it was some kind of device used by the Foundation, or maybe a repair valve for a broken pipe, and thought little of it.
There was one other tidbit he mentioned, something about the Ivory Wind possibly having some information on Gavigan. For the right price, the guard and his boys would look the other way, letting us have free reign to look around the docks as we pleased. We pooled our cash, took the offer up, and resolved to investigate the Ivory Wind at a later time.
Ralph went mad dog at the idea of it all, going so far as to pull his night stick, but we pulled him back to calm him down. Ralph shortly thereafter went on a walk, to clear his mind he said. Nobody stopped him, but... I can't help but think we should have. Something worse than Brad's death was on his mind, and it struck me as suspicious.
I was right. We found him later on, crying in a telephone box and shaking. He wouldn't tell us much about what was wrong, but by the broken look in his eye... we knew it was something big.
"Francine," He murmured, voice as cracked with grief as it had been for Brad. "My... my wife's dead..."
We expressed condolences, but nothing seemed to help his crushing despair. Then suddenly, he stood up.
"I'm going to go take a walk, then head back to the house," he said, voice filled with purpose. "I'm not really feeling well... I think a long rest is what I need."
With that, Ralph Hemlock, Federal Marshal and our friend who'd gotten us out of a million scrapes, unshakable Ralph who'd faced down Ju-Ju House unscathed, simply walked away. He didn't even say goodbye. We went home to meet up with him, but Ralph Hemlock wasn't there. We stayed up late, hours and hours waiting, but Ralph Hemlock never came back. He walked out of our lives and, we feared, to his own death. Whether the Brotherhood got him or he offed himself in a hotel room somewhere, we'll never know.
Maybe he would have wanted it that way.
We were about to give up and turn in when suddenly, Clayton's face contorted into a look of dread. He clutched at his chest, groaning in pain and the color draining from his face.
"H-heart... heart!" He stammered, and we all knew what that meant. Sarah immediately realized the danger and leapt into action, springing to the phone... but it wasn't needed. Clayton's strain suddenly ceased, and he untensed, completely unharmed and unaware of what had just happened.
"Are you alright?" Sarah asked, flitting about nervously as flappers are wont to do.
"Y-yeah," Clayton replied. "Yeah, I think I am... but between you all, I think these last few days have taken a toll on me. On all of us."
His eyes peered curiously from his weary and sweating face, and he dabbed his forehead with his shirt.
"We need a break," Ted admitted, and we all conceded - Bridget especially. I can't imagine the hell we've put her through these past days, or what she must have told her pupil about us. It was at this point that Sarah's eyes lit up, and an idea came to her...
"Well... you blokes did come all this way to London, for nothing more than work," she said, brushing a stray golden curl aside. "It would be a terrible shame if you didn't take time to see some of the sights while here. There's a lovely church, Salisbury Cathedral... it even has a copy of the Magna Carta on display, if you're interested in architecture and history."
Clayton was all ears at "Magna Carta", and we groaned inwardly as he told Sarah and Bridget about his crazy theory concerning a map on the back of that document and old legends about treasures. Unfortunately, Sarah had heard the legend, and wanted to see if there was any truth to it, so she bought into it hook, line, and sinker.
"What a capitol idea!" She exclaimed, smiling. "It's just around noon as well... we can swing by Ms. Hewett's Pie Shop for lunch before our daytrip. How lovely..."
Well... we did ask for a break, didn't we? Let's just hope it's more restful than the past weeks have been.