Broken Meats: A Harry Stubbs Adventure (14 page)

Editor’s Note

As usual, Harry Stubbs's account appears accurate as far as it can be
checked.

Madame
Helena Blavatsky, founder of modern Theosophy, lived in Maycot in Norwood while
assembling her notes for
The Secret Doctrine
, “the synthesis of science,
religion and philosophy,” in 1887. During this time she was visited by WB Yeats.
She had been accused of fakery and was widely considered to be a charlatan. During
her stay her assistant, Mabel Collins, who owned the house, formed a
relationship with Robert D’Onston Stephenson.

Collins
came to believe that Stephenson carried out the Jack the Ripper killings in
1888, a theory supported by Aleister Crowley and explained in detail in Ivor
Edwards’s book
Jack the Ripper's Black Magic Rituals
(2001). The theory
relies on Stephenson’s own doubtful testimony.

Stephenson,
who wrote under the pen name of Roslyn D’Onston, published many accounts of
magic in West Africa and elsewhere. These fantastic tales appear to be
fabricated for a credulous readership. His occult writings are collected in
Crowley’s
Ripper
(2006) at http://kobek.com/crowleyripper.pdf.

The Si Fan
is a fictitious organisation, invented by Sax Rohmer for his Fu Manchu series
of novels (1913-1959). The name is a typically heavy-handed joke of Stubbs’s,
his way of concealing the true identity of Yang’s employers. Of course, no such
organisation has ever existed.

Palingenesis
is an alchemical process with no scientific standing and is purely
pseudoscience. The only modern claim that a human can be resurrected in this
way is in H. P. Lovecraft’s
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
(1927); this
is now considered to be purely a work of fiction.

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Harry Stubbs first adventure: The
Elder Ice

Harry Stubbs is on the trail of a mysterious legacy left by a polar
explorer. Harry's informants are talking in riddles, and the legacy leaves a
trail of mutilated bodies. An old Arabian book proves to be the key to an
enigma more horrifying than Harry could ever have imagined, and he finds
himself facing an enemy older than humanity…

The Elder Ice is a novella of mystery and horror drawing on Ernest
Shackleton's incredible real-life Antarctic adventures and inspired by HP
Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle
e-book.

Coming in August 2015 from PS
Publishing:
The Dulwich Horror
and Others, a collection of seven stories by David Hambling