William Meikle - Carnacki: Heaven and Hell

This eBook edition published 2010 by Ghostwriter Publications, Dorchester, Dorset, England

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In the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century the fight against evil was in the hands of Sherlock Holmes, John Silence and Allan Quatermain. And one other, a man who carried the fight to the forces of darkness armed only with his wits, his science, and his arcane knowledge.

Meet an Edwardian occult detective who goes where no other gentleman will dare, venturing deep into neolithic barrows, into the crypts of ancient cathedrals and fighting the elemental powers of darkness on his own terms.

Meet Carnacki: Ghostfinder

I write to escape.

I grew up on a West of Scotland council estate in a town where you were either unemployed or working in the steelworks, and sometimes both. Many of the townspeople led hard, miserable lives of quiet, and sometimes not so quiet desperation. I was relatively lucky in that both my parents worked, but they were both on shifts that rarely coincided, and I spent a lot of time alone or at my grandparents house.

My Granddad was housebound, and a voracious reader. I got the habit from him, and through him I discovered the Pan Books of Horror and Lovecraft, but I also discovered westerns, science fiction, war novels and the likes of Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Alistair MacLean, Dennis Wheatley, Nigel Tranter, Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov. When you mix all that together with DC Comics , Tarzan, Gerry Anderson and Dr Who then, later on, Hammer and Universal movies on the BBC , you can see how the pulp became embedded in my psyche.

When I was at school these books and my guitar were all that kept me sane in a town that was going downhill fast. The steelworks shut and employment got worse. I could have started writing about that, but why bother? All I had to do was walk outside and Id get it slapped in my face. That horror was all too real.

So I took up my pen and wrote. At first it was song lyrics, designed (mostly unsuccessfully) to get me closer to girls.

I tried my hand at a few short stories but had no confidence in them and hid them away. And that was that for many years.

I didnt get the urge again until I was past thirty and trapped in a very boring job. My home town had continued to stagnate and, unless I wanted to spend my whole life drinking (something I was actively considering at the time), returning there wasn't an option.

As I said before, I write to escape.

My brain needed something, and writing gave it what was required. That point, back nearly twenty years ago, was like switching on an engine, one that has been running steadily ever since.

And most of the time, the things that engine chooses to give me to write are very pulpy. Id love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.

Most of the aforesaid characters are trademarked and off-bounds for writers without paying licensing fees.

Carnacki however is fair game.

Nowadays there is a plethora of detectives in both book and film who may seem to use the trappings of crime solvers, but get involved in the supernatural. William Hjortsbergs Falling Angel (the book that led to the movie Angel Heart ) is a fine example, an expert blending of gumshoe and deviltry that is one of my favourite books. Likewise, in the movies, we have cops facing a demon in Denzel Washingtons Fallen that plays like a police procedural taken to a very dark place.

My interest goes further back to the gentleman detective era where we have seekers of truth in Blackwoods John Silence and... and William Hope Hodgsons Carnacki.

Canacki resonated with me immediately on my first reading many years ago. Several of the stories have a Lovecraftian viewpoint, with cosmic entities that have no regard for the doings of mankind. The background Hodgson proposes fits with some of my own viewpoint on the ways the Universe might function, and the slightly formal Edwardian language seems to be a voice I fall into naturally.

These eight tales see Carnacki pitted against a variety of foes. and sees me working out more aspects of the cosmology.

There will be more to come.

I write to escape.

I havent managed it yet, but Im working on it.

I arrived in Cheyne Walk that Friday evening in response to a very welcome card from Carnacki. It had been several weeks since our last supper together, and I knew that Carnacki had not been at home for a fortnight at least. Such an absence told of an adventure and I admit to a certain degree of anticipation as he showed me in.

So what is it this time old chap? I asked as he took my overcoat. A haunt or just another gang of criminals bent on deception?

He smiled.

Oh, there was certainly a degree of deception involved, he said. But never fear... it is a fine tale that will be a whole evening in the telling. I hope you have a full pouch of tobacco at hand.

It was not long before Carnacki, Arkwright, Jessop, Taylor and I were all seated at Carnackis ample dining table. As ever he brooked no discussion as to why we had been asked to supper, and we all knew from long experience that he would not say a single word until the meal was over and he was good and ready.

At table we exchanged cordialities, and Arkwright entertained us with his tales of the goings on in the corridors of Westminster. Carnacki kept us waiting until we retired to the parlour and charged our glasses with some of his fine Scotch.

Jessops palate was the first to notice a new addition to Carnackis drinks cabinet.

I say old man, isnt this The Auld Fettercairn ?

Carnacki smiled.

Indeed it is old chap. And thirty five years old at that, one of only twenty bottles in existence. It was part of my payment for my recent sojourn. If you will all be seated, I shall tell you the tale as to how it was procured.

It begins with a letter, he started as we fell quiet. It was delivered on the Monday three weeks past, delivered by hand from those same Westminster corridors that Arkwright has so successfully lampooned. It was a simple note, requesting my attendance for lunch with a certain Claude Bowes-Lyon. Of course I knew the chap, knew his family history, and his reputation. I wondered what a Scottish Lord from one of the old families would want with me.

I did not have to wait long to find out. Lunch was served on the terrace, a fine breast of duck and an even finer Chablis. The Lord, although he looked to be in rude good health, took none of it. But he had the good manners to wait until the meal was over before getting to the reason I had been brought here.

There are two things in this world I love above all others, he said by way of preamble. My castle at Glamis, and my youngest daughter. To have both under threat at the same time is almost more than I can bear.

I lit a pipe and waited. I knew when a proud man needs to talk, and this was one of those occasions.

I have heard the stories of course he continued. All of us who live in and around the estate have lived with them all our lives; about the beast in the hidden room or the card game being played with Auld Nick for the players souls. I put no credence in such matters. I have seen men dead... and they stay that way. The dead do not come back.

At least that is what I have always believed, and I continued to believe it right up until the birth of my youngest, Lisabet. Our troubles started on the night she came into the world.