Excerpt from the Unpublished Papers of Professor Julius Arthur Smith

(Written circa 1932, discovered among his effects at University College London)

It has been many years now since the events I have here set down, and time, which softens most memories, has done little to diminish the weight of that strange and terrible affair. The world has moved forward, as it always does. Empires have shifted, new discoveries have occupied the minds of scholars, and the ordinary business of life has resumed its comfortable illusions.

Of the Blood-Red Fez itself, nothing remains. Professor Demir wrote to me some months after my friends’ departure to confirm that the destruction had been complete and, as far as human knowledge could determine, final. I have chosen to believe him. There are certain matters upon which one must either accept reassurance or surrender entirely to speculation, and speculation, in this instance, leads to conclusions best avoided.

My friends returned to their lives, though none, I think, returned unchanged. Miss Meadowcroft bore her mark with characteristic composure, treating it as one might a campaign scar—an inconvenience rather than a symbol. Captain Barrington resumed his service, though he never again spoke lightly of the unseen forces that move beneath the surface of the world. Father Byrne continued his work among the poor with renewed conviction, while Fairfax, whose courage and judgement had more than once preserved the others, became if anything more deliberate, and less inclined to dismiss the improbable.

As for Professor Worth, the experience deepened rather than diminished his scholarly caution. His later writings display a restraint uncommon in our field, and I cannot doubt the reason for it.

I myself was spared the immediate dangers they faced, yet I have often wondered whether distance is truly a protection. There are nights when the mind returns, unbidden, to certain names — Makryat, Nisra, and others less easily spoken — and one recalls that the forces which gave rise to such individuals have never entirely vanished from the world. They withdraw, perhaps. They wait. But they do not cease.

And yet, if this record serves any purpose beyond the satisfaction of memory, it is this: that in the face of such darkness, courage proved stronger than ambition, loyalty stronger than fear, and ordinary human decency stronger than powers which promised mastery at the cost of the soul.

The world is not as safe as we suppose. But neither, I am convinced, is it as defenceless.

I count it among the great blessings of my life that, when the moment came, the finest people I have ever known chose to stand against the darkness — and that, by God’s grace, they returned.