INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS HENSLOWE:
Mr Henslowe was brought
into the room clean shaven, with good posture, if in the need of a good
haircut. He is an older man and a bit
out of shape, which is unsurprising.
He was a bit fuzzy on some
details (probably a result of the continual medication, and therapies which
encourage him to both discourage and deny the occurrences), beginning with that
there were 4 or 5 of them total, who travelled the country on the trail of a
cult they had discovered. He quite
proudly described their merry band as true investigators, questioning people
and gathering evidence, even taking pictures “like detectives”.
Mr Henslowe described the
group as “armed” with secret knowledge of the occult, and found it a terribly
exciting time. Mr Winston, he describes,
as a businessman, who made good money, and acted as their leader. It was Walter who gathered them together, to
battle the perversity of this cult. Mr
Henslowe repeatedly referred to Walter Winston as “a good man”, whilst also
expressing his disappointment that Mr Winston had abandoned him, left him here,
and cut off all communication.
He said their group
“followed the drugs” (their method for tracking the cult) all the way to Los
Angeles, where they conducted the bulk of their investigation. He said LA was also “where everything
terrible happened” (i.e., the location of the incident), where it “all went
wrong”.
In addition to Mr Winston,
they were also accompanied by one Vincent
Stack aka “the fixer”, who came
in gun first and liked to drink. Mr
Stack was the one who waded in with a shotgun and “brought Hell” to some of
those cultists. They were also
accompanied by a Katherine Clark, a
“sharp girl” and archivist – the camerawoman who took most of their notes.
She hated the idea that something like that cult could exist, in the
underbelly of America. She got close
enough to take photographs – and it was she who figured out what would be
happening that night “at that barn”. According to Mr Henslowe, she died that
night.
The fifth member (now we
know) was an F.C. Kullman, known far
and wide as an occult expert, an American who did a lot of his own
digging. He was the man we’d heard
referred to as in a wheelchair, and – according to Mr Henslowe – also died that
night. Douglas described F.C. Kullman as
being stuck in a wheelchair, but with a real can-do attitude; and unfortunately
a sitting duck during the incident.
Walter, he said, was the
brains; he and Kullman did the research about what they were planning (“the
summoning”), and figured they were using the drug money to fund their operation. They determined that the cult was planning to
summon some dreadful thing with a thousand mouths (or some incarnation of it)
in the barn that night. Walter had also
said something about “the stars being right” that night.
When they rushed in, they
were surprised at just how many cultists were there. But they were “prepared” (with bombs and
guns) to save the world. Then came the
horrific fire, the shootout, and “that thing” began tearing people apart. He confessed to shooting some people that night,
that in the heat of a moment like that you forget they’re still people.
And then “the thing came
for us”. Walter panicked, he saw it in
his face. And so Douglas ran.
Mr Henslowe confirmed he’d
written it all down in a journal, and hidden it away with a secret key. He gave us permission to retrieve it, and a
letter for Frank Hickering (of whom
Dr Keaton had never heard) whom he said we should contact at his mother’s
estate. He remembers spending some time
there (the timing does correspond with letters and references to the journal),
and seems to recall some unpleasant memories of that time. His mother, he said, would not have fond
memories of his last visit.
The last bit we got from
Mr Henslowe was a reference to symbols of protection. He said to check the walls, that you have to
know how to put the symbols there.
Might this explain the strange symbols in Walter
Winston’s office? I’m certainly
intrigued to investigate these symbols further.