YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT...
THE WORLD IS GOING DARK
After dinner the team must start trying to work out what the King in Yellow's offer truly is.
'The King offers you a bargain
To return you to the auction
With all your knowledge
So you can accomplish your mission and save your world
I can do nothing to help you
Until the stone is returned to time
When you're ready
When there's nothing else left
Call me'
The card left with the dinner ends with the phrase ‘alzifaf al’asfar’ and a telephone call to the increasingly hard to reach IMF HQ tells them it is a ‘lost ritual’, that has never been successfully performed. They have only one reference to it in their files – a page in Libellus Veneri Nigro Sacer (The Little Book Sacred to the Black Venus), by John Dee and the only copy is with the Warburg Institute in London, attached to the British Museum.
They manage to call up the Insitute and get a fax sent over through ALICE. On one page, Dee refers to a ‘seventh Lord’ who he has never dared summon, nor seen anyone do so, for the bargain offered comes at too steep a price. Dee says he once heard the spell – the alzifaf al’asfar - begun and was filled with dread. It has six steps, from the Welcome to the Promise, but he dared not stay past the 'placing of the candles in the six-sided shape and the veiling of the participants with yellow silk.' He claims the Welcome has been written in other books – De Vermis Mysteriis, the Book of Eibon... The sign itself he does not dare mark down here, for without the sign the ritual cannot succeed and he does not wish to be responsible for any person attempting it, but he 'knows it can be seen at some ancient sites – painted in dark caves, carved on pillars in the deep desert and seen on stones that fall from space'.
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Despite being unsure as to whether they will want to perform this 'wedding', the team feel they should prepare to do so if they cannot think of another way to fix time and space. To assemble all the steps of their ritual, they will have to call in favours and research requests from all over the world – which at the same time is collapsing around them. Slowly but surely contacts and places are vanishing, just as the rooms of the house are, as the diamond, freed by the pressure of time, begins to open and the blackness pushes and overwhelms their world.
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And with the darkness come the Hounds, attacking them in the house now, it is only a matter of time before their guns run out of bullets and their defences are overwhelmed and each attack brings the risk more of them will die.
For a while they can use the phone, or files can be sent to them through ALICE the computer system, but as the world goes dark more esoteric communication methods are needed... asking the dead, speaking via telepathy, using hypnosis on Mr Brock's memory and even remotely viewing a book deep underwater in a safe on the Titanic.
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Since returning from the court of the King, the group have felt their consciousness joined, they are becoming less certain where each of them ends and begins. And yellow has become the only colour for them.
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As they finally finish their frantic research, they realise the ritual involves giving up the entire ownership of their soul to the King in Yellow for all eternity, and sealing the deal by spilling their lifeblood with the Dagger of Emptiness – one of Friday's auction items.
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“And now the King walks with the Dreamers
Our lifeblood’s promise ready to receive
As with the Dagger born of Emptiness
We give freely all we Shall Ever Be”
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If they do this there is no coming back. But meanwhile nearly every room in the house is nearly gone, the Hound attacks are increasing, and the world is going dark as their reality shrinks down to a single space containing only them, and outside time the diamond opens and expands.
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Past, present, future, all are one for the Haunter. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where.
You hear the beating of wings in the dark.
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Past, present, future, all are one for the
Haunter. He knows where the Old Ones broke
through of old, and where They shall break
through again. He knows where.
You hear the beating of wings in the dark.
THE YELLOW WEDDING
THE WELCOME
No-one has the Book of Eibon or the De Vermis Mysteriis. But both are based on The Book of Dead Names, or the Kitab al-Azif, written by Abdul Alhazred. The only copy of that is held by Miskatonic University but their copy is missing the pages on 'Summoning and Welcoming The Unspeakable Ones'. The last person who viewed it before the damage was done was Jack Parsons. Parsons is dead and all his notes were destroyed in the explosion of his home. Whatever he and Margot tried to do drove her insane. The only way to obtain the words to the welcome is a séance where Jack and Margot are finally reunited. "Remember... we drew the hexagram together and you placed candles placed at the points. The nature of the being vibrated at each point...The coloured silk... your beauty veiled... and then the words..."
FORSAKING ALL OTHERS
Found in a description of the French Revolution in an
unperformed play
There is a reference to figures in yellow veils who appeared at the steps of the Guillotine during the Terror in Paris, crying out for a new master to take them. It was said these yellow figures had spent the night before stripping themselves of all allegiances – ending marriages, breaking oaths, and recognising no earthly law or authority over them, nor fealty owed to any higher power. Each knelt down and removed their veil, giving their true names and crying a 'phrase such as the Moors call out in prayer, and which I am told is the ‘accord jaune’'. A telephone call to theatre expert Adrian de la Touche gives them Elizabeth Inchbald’s tragedy The Massacre, written in 1792. Her early death and insanity meant the play was never staged, and there are only a handful of copies of the work. In her portrayal of the Guilllotine in Act 1, Scene 3, she describes THE CHORUS OF LIBERTY, IN YELLOW saying....
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SPEAK NOW OR FOREVER BE SILENT
Part of a ritual performed by The Yellow Children in Antelope Valley, California
Both Dr Hayes and Dr Kaur worked to deprogram Stacey, the only survivor of The Yellow Children, who were attempting to use a ritual to ask a being they called the Neon Emperor
to take them into new bodies in space before a comet hit the earth. Dr Hayes had always assumed their name was a Yellow Submarine reference... The whole cult took a fatal drug hoping to gain the group telepathic link they would need to survive their ascendance. It took months of patient deprogramming to encourage the only survivor Stacey to move on with their life and convince them they could no longer feel the consciousnesses of their fellow cult members inside their head. But now they must call them up and ask for the words used...
THE SIGN
Found on cave paintings... and also on a Delta album cover
Julian Cavendish was dropping hints on Friday that Delta did a deal with ‘something’ for the success of Black Rainbow End and a couple of the team can probably remember the sleeve notes. There is a little yellow symbol and a dedication ‘FOR THE KING’ next to the lyrics to ‘Marry Me’ and the last lines of the track are ‘With this sign I mark myself yours, my soul belongs to you, my lord (baby, baby, baby).’ Then they sing something that sounds a bit like ‘Aleesha, always far’ – which any Arabic speaker will know should be al’ishara al’asfar – yellow sign... Confirmation comes through in the shape of a fax of a cave painting from Lascaux.
THE LIBATION
A book by Persian expert Lady Dickie Akeley
An occult contact tells them the crucial step in any ritual in which you are attempting to make a deal is the binding
agreement or libation – where a sacred liquid is offered to the god: In the first edition of the Golden Bough, Frazer includes a footnote on a Persian custom where a bitter
drink is shared when important bargains are agreed. "I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but yellow cups are always used and the cry of ahtaram alsafqa given after the terms have been stated... I have another older book that talks about the ‘black drink for the yellow guest’ – and
a carving that suggests it is a drink made from the black lotus." It's a good job they kept some of the Liao/black lotus drugs and the little yellow glasses from dinner.
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THE PROMISE
Found only in the specific edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar
Khayyám that went down with the Titanic
When they hear the ritual is lost, Mr Brock knows that entirely lost books are few and far between and the Titanic accounts for a fair few. A call to theWidener Rare Book Collection at Harvard confirms one of these was a unique edition of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám which supposedly contained an additional quatrain described as the Wedding Promise, following on from the usual Stanza V. The only way to view the book is to remote view it inside a safe on the Titanic. Which it turns out MK Ultra CIA agent Ginger Bormann is able to do, though the experience nearly kills her.