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About the Author

Mark Gatiss is a screenwriter, director, producer and actor. He is one member of The League of Gentlemen and has written for and acted in Doctor Who, Sherlock (the latter of which he co-created with Steven Moffat along with the acclaimed miniseries Dracula) and many others.

Dedication

For Diana

“Be quiet. No weeping here. Your tears come from your eyes only; when mine come I’ll be alone”.

To my heirs

To my heirs –

I am all too conscious, as I assemble this rambling narrative, that it may prove altogether too fantastical for the reader to believe. If these pages do indeed come down to you, descendants of the Thursday line (in the confident and expectant hope that a young lady will one day accept my unworthy hand!) then I trust that you will look kindly on your ancestor and do not look upon these scribblings, instead, as pointing to any softening of the brain.

I have attempted, in a regrettably haphazard fashion, to collect into a coherent story the various accounts which began in 1893 with my unfortunate brother’s disappearance and ended in a sooty alleyway in Bradford – and the altogether more mysterious disappearance of a tall blue box. Together these journal entries, phonographic recordings, scribbled notes, eye-witness accounts and best guesses constitute what the yellow press came to call ‘The Crimson Horror’ – and its curious prequel.

There is much here that is unaccountable. Much that is baffling and strange. But though you may suspect your unfortunate relative to have been under the influence of Mr Wells’ scientific romances or, more perfidious even than sensational literature, to have been in the thrall of the Green Fairy, all that you are about to read is TRUE.

Even the sillier parts.

Jonas Thursday. Islington. 1895.

Prologue

To Madam Vastra, I am always the Woman.

Or at least I should bleeding well hope so. She has a bit of a wandering eye even beneath that heavy veil. A very beautiful, glittering reptilian eye, I might add – but a wandering one all the same.

The Crimson Horror! Blimey, yes. How could I ever forget it? I remember the case well, being as how it was the first time that the Mistress, that is Madam Vastra, entrusted me, that is Jenny Flint, with a delicate mission on me own. By then, see, she had enough faith in me to know I wouldn’t muck it up. Or hoped I wouldn’t at any rate.

Up until now, it had mostly been the three of us. Me, the Mistress and Strax but with the Mistress very much taking the lead. We’d been set up there at No. 13, Paternoster Row for quite a few years and a very cosy little situation it had become.