A Study in Brimstone Page 14

  How can I describe what I saw?

  I am familiar with height, width and depth, but I think there must be four or five spatial dimensions, for the creature defied physics as I understood it. Its horrid appendages seemed disjointed, appearing in several different places at once, though through their movement I began to perceive how they must come together, into a whole. It had no color—or no color I could understand. Its shape was defined to me as the area I could not see—the space where human perception failed. It pulled itself up out of the center of Trevelyan’s bed, which wasted and fell in upon itself, even as we watched.

  Only when Holmes shut the door did I realize that I had been screaming. I clutched at the sides of my aching head and felt my pulse pound against my hands with terrible force.

  “Oh dear,” said Holmes. “It’s even worse than I expected.”

  “Wha… what do we do?” I stammered.

  “Hmm… That all depends upon you, I think. Watson, did you or did you not steal my protective amulet?”

  My hand went to my chest. I flushed. Understand, I was not embarrassed that I had stolen the thing—Holmes had made it abundantly clear that such was his wish. No, I was merely ashamed to be wearing such a monstrosity; horrified by the feel of the ever-warming earwax of Holmes’s horrid trinket against my skin. Though I said nothing, Holmes must have comprehended my expression, for he said, “Good! Now understand, Watson: that thing is looking for a human sacrifice. Moffat is gone. Trevelyan is gone. There’s only one thing for it. Good luck.”

  With one hand, Holmes swept open the door. With the other, he thrust me inside. The wave of sickness that washed over me made it impossible even to protest. I heard the door slam shut behind me and turned to face my destroyer. One of the creature’s unspeakable upper limb-things shot towards me and impaled my chest. It passed straight through me. I felt no pain; indeed I felt nothing touch me at all, for the beast and I did not share an equal number of dimensions.

  Instead I saw a flash. No, I saw the flash: the fundamental, big, bright start to everything. All the matter that ever was or would be spun across an expanding cosmos in a luminous cloud. Gravity began to work upon it, drawing this sea of chaos into whirling spheres, which grew into stars and planets. Plasmas cooled to burning gas, then liquid and finally stone. Water rained down. Upon one such planet, slimy things began to crawl with legs upon the slimy sea. These creeping forms became ever larger and more distinct—fishes, insects, slugs and snails. They grew legs and traversed the cooling continents as plants sprang up all around. In an instant so small I could barely perceive it, man came. I saw the pyramids rise and the winds begin to corrode them. I saw great armies march, fight and fall. I saw my parents, younger than I had ever known them. I saw myself, but even to me, I was a thing of no value. What a small part I was, of the whole. What an insignificant jot was the span of my existence. It was already over, I realized. If ever I had truly been—if that tiny period of time was enough for anything to be said to exist at all—such a thing as might live in that inconsequential blink of time was of no account. I was gone as soon as I began.

  Yet as this revelation struck me—even as I ceased to be—the tentacle that probed my chest happened across the amulet. There was a whoosh—a great rush as all of time fell in upon me, drawn into my chest and up into my body. Suddenly, everything but the room around me was gone. There were no more planets in my mind, no more stars. Something must have been holding me up in the air, for I fell almost from the ceiling down to the floor. My head crashed into the floorboards and my left ear flared with burning pain. I had a moment of panic, for in my time as all things, I had forgotten how to be only one thing. I had no recollection of how to be an animal and no longer knew how to breathe.

  Old habits began to recall themselves to me and at last I drew a gulping breath. I curled up on the floor and stayed there, letting the air fall into my chest and out again, re-acclimating myself to the strange sensation of owning arms and legs. Behind me, a door creaked open. A head interrupted the light outside and poked in to intrude itself upon my bedroom realm.

  “So…” said Holmes, “how did that go?”

  * * *

  We stayed in Trevelyan’s room well into the day. As the sun slowly warmed the room around me, I became more and more myself again.

  Holmes set Trevelyan’s clockwork tableau before me. Over and again he wound it and I beheld the clown flung through the air to his sure demise, saved at the last second each time by the man on the flying trapeze. I marveled to see the tiny figures. They moved and existed in a way that so resembled free will, yet I knew the action and outcome every time it began. The little clown had no way to prevent his ordeal. The shining brass trapeze artist, no alternative but to save him. Did they believe themselves masters of their own choices? If so, they were deceived in that notion.

  I cannot say why, but this was comforting to me.

  “You might as well keep it,” Holmes said. “Nobody owns it now.”

  Dumb, I nodded. After a time, I asked, “Is it gone? The thing in the box?”

  To answer my question, Holmes drew two plain wooden boxes from the folds of his overcoat. One was from the ruins of Trevelyan’s bed, the other from Moffat’s study downstairs. He flipped open both lids and showed me the contents.

  “See? Nothing.”

  “So… what does that mean?” I asked. “Have we changed the world? Can time no longer waste us?”

  “Oh, no!” Holmes scoffed. “The beast still lives upon this plane, Watson. We have merely bound it. Understand that the power of time to wither all is not anything the beast does on purpose, merely a side effect of its existence.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, it will still kill us all.”

  “I see.”

  “It just won’t lunge out and kill us all.”

  “Well… that’s something, I suppose.”

  “Against such a foe, Watson, yes it is. It is indeed. I think I’ll leave the boxes here. Moran must be skulking close by, waiting for the house to fall in and reveal where the dangerous box was hidden. Let him have it. He’ll find it disappointing, I think.”

  I rose and wandered about. The rooms were familiar to me, but they seemed a distant memory. Still, I began to recover enough of my senses to recall that I had things I wanted to accomplish, both great and small. I drifted downstairs and finished one of the smaller errands, ere I left.

  Holmes was waiting for me upon the bullet-riddled front step.

  “Ready to go home, Watson?”

  “Holmes, did you know the amulet would save my life?” I asked. “Or did you mean to sacrifice me?”

  He smiled. “I knew that either the amulet would save you, or you would be doomed anyway.”

  “I hate it.”

  “Well, you don’t have to wear it anymore. I am sure that after such a strain it is useless now.”

  “Good.” I dug down beneath my clothing and began pulling melted, re-fused chunks of earwax out of my chest hair. A charred and twisted sovereign fell from my shirt. Holmes swept it up and regarded it with a jolly smile. The chain I kept. I prize it still.

  Holmes waited patiently as I divested myself of the ruins of his gift. After a time, I said, “Oh! Holmes, I got a present for you.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. Here.”

  In his hand, I deposited a pair of platinum cufflinks, emblazoned with Holmes’s initials in 24-carat gold.

  “Wonderful, Watson! Wonderful! You shouldn’t have,” he proclaimed, tracing the W and H with his fingertip.

  Though he had the means, Holmes was not in the habit of purchasing luxuries for himself. Still, he could appreciate fine things when they were presented to him. He seemed to like the cufflinks; I often saw him wearing them and occasionally smiling at them.

  We stepped into the street and directed our steps homewards, to Baker Street. I don’t know if it ever occurred to him to wonder what I had been doing in the house that day, while he waited on the f
ront step. I laugh to think that, in all the time we spent together, he probably never realized how Henry Moffat’s fine platinum cufflinks would appear if one wore them upside down.

  THE CASE OF THE CARDBOARD… CASE

  TO THE BRILLIANT MIND, THE TRUE ENEMY IS inactivity. At least, that’s what I tell myself, because I like to pretend I’m an intellectual. And because I know how badly I cope with idleness. I still cringe when I recall how much I hated the pause that came between Holmes’s and my first two adventures and our third.

  Our Study in Brimstone took place over two days in early November. Just one week after that, we handled the Adventure of the Resident Sacrifice. I prided myself on how well my medical knowledge had prepared me to solve crimes and I was eager to prove my mettle on our next adventure. Yet the remainder of November passed without any call to action. December followed. Each telegram, each piece of post, each visitor to our door would—I prayed—reveal our next challenge, but each of them failed me. I hardly knew what to do with myself. I formed the habit of taking long walks about the city, if only to fill the time.

  Returning from one such walkabout at around ten on New Year’s morning, I found Holmes slouched in his armchair before the fire, honking away with his accordion and singing “Auld Lang Syne” at the top of his lungs. I waved a greeting and he nodded back, but any verbal exchange would have been lost in his cacophonous song.

  Upon finishing the final verse, he paused. Tilting his head to one side, he listened intently for a few moments, then complained, “Nothing. Nothing! When will you answer, oh being from another world?”

  “What being is that, Holmes?”

  “Oddlingsygn. Last night and this morning, it seemed every reveler and passerby I saw was calling upon the same entity. All London is bent on summoning him, yet he will not appear! So strange…”

  “Not strange, Holmes,” I said. “That is not a name, it is a Scottish phrase.”

  “Oh, I think I know a demon’s name when I hear one, Watson.”

  “‘Auld Lang Syne’ means ‘for the sake of old times.’”

  “Oh! A nostalgia demon—he must be potent indeed…”

  “No, not a demon at all, I am telling you… Wait! What is this?”

  My eye had fallen across a white envelope that lay upon the side table beside Holmes’s armchair.

  “Oh, a letter,” said he.

  “From whom?”

  “Well, I don’t know! Honestly, Watson, would you put aside the chase for a reluctant demon just to read an everyday letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, do so then. I have other matters to attend.”

  He launched back into the first verse of his supposed summoning ritual. I stepped to the table, unfolded the letter and read. I must have made quite a face, for when he observed my expression, Holmes at last lay aside his accordion and asked, “What does it say, Watson?”

  The message was short. It read:

  When I read it to him, Warlock sucked air through clenched teeth and declared, “Ouch. Sounds like a bad one. What say you, Watson? Ready for an adventure?”

  “I don’t know, do I?” I replied. “He gives us no hint of what we might expect.” At the bottom of the letter, Lestrade had included an address, but nowhere was there any indication of what was wrong or how we should prepare ourselves.

  In the delay between adventures, my frustration with Vladislav Lestrade had only grown. At first I had sought to raise his spirits whenever I caught him moping. Holmes had given me to understand that this was a useless gesture, as Lestrade was an annihilist. At first I thought he meant a nihilist: a person who believed in nothing. But no, he was an annihilist: a person who believed there should be nothing. Thus, anything that was, is, would be, or might possibly be offended the little Romanian, by dint of its very existence. Every man, woman and child, every object and every idea was a slap in the face to Vladislav Lestrade, who was convinced that the only way to avoid tragedy and suffering was simply not to exist. He many times commented that, if only he had the ability, he would cheerfully annihilate himself, me, and all of creation. Without commenting on the philosophical validity of this position, let me just say: Vladislav Lestrade did not have many friends.

  “Of course he hasn’t given us a clue,” Holmes beamed. “The little fiend is playing on my curiosity, as well as my duty to help my comrades. Let us chide him for it when we get there.”

  So—in only the time it took for us to gather our hats, coats, gloves and Holmes’s shoes—we found ourselves bouncing along in a hansom, bound on a new adventure. The address was not in an area of London I often frequented, but the streets were familiar to me and became more so as we drew nearer our destination. As we made our final turn, I realized why.

  “Wait! This is Grogsson’s street! Are we going to Grogsson’s house?”

  Very nearly. In fact, our destination was just next door. As we approached, I could see Inspector Lestrade pacing the pavement in front of the house. I knew he must be perturbed indeed to suffer daylight just to wait for us. Holmes must have thought so too, for the moment the hansom pulled to a stop, he sprang from the cab calling, “Lestrade, what is the matter?”

  Lestrade made no answer, except to tilt his head and raise his eyebrows as if to say, “It’s bad.” He turned and walked inside, leaving Holmes and me to follow.

  The first piece of bad news greeted us with a smile. In the hall stood a smirking man/boy. I call him such, because his face looked to be no older than twelve. In spite of his seeming youth, he wore a badge that declared him to be a detective inspector of Scotland Yard—of equal rank to Grogsson and Lestrade.

  “This is Inspector Lanner,” said Lestrade. I winced. On his many visits over the past few weeks, I had heard Lestrade complain of him often. Of all the things Lestrade hoped would cease to exist, he rather hoped Inspector Lanner would go first. Though Lanner had solved less than half the number of cases that Lestrade had solved in the last year, and less than a third as many as Grogsson, he was considered a rising star at Scotland Yard. He therefore enjoyed the support of his peers and superiors when he had declared he would at last discover the true nature of the two supernatural detectives. It seems Grogsson and Lestrade’s success bred more resentment than esteem.

  “Ah! Holmes!” Lanner said as we marched in. “I am so glad you could be here to see this.”

  “And what is it you intend to show me?”

  “Your little group is going to shrink today, Holmes. One of your freakish cadre is bound for jail, perhaps the gallows. Come see what that oaf Grogsson has left for Miss Susan Cushing.”

  He led us into the sitting room. On a sofa sat a young lady in her late twenties. She was haggard and pale, her eyes flushed from a morning of crying, but I caught my breath when I saw her nonetheless. She was strikingly pretty, yet it was not her beauty alone that caught my attention—it was her kindness. She wore it in her eyes. Understanding began to dawn upon me. I knew Grogsson to be a lonely fellow and easily fascinated by any person who possessed grace or beauty. Yet beyond that, if Miss Cushing displayed any kindness to him, she must be the only lady who ever did so. This would be invitation enough for Grogsson to hope that she might one day look beyond his monstrous form and begin to care for him. She also lived just next door and was likely seen by him every day and… In an instant I understood that he must be wretchedly in love with her.

  “Gentlemen, this is Miss Susan Cushing,” Lanner announced, “and this is what she found on her doorstep this morning.”

  On the table in front of the lady lay a package, clumsily wrapped in brown paper. It had been tied with tarred string, bent into a knot so convoluted and crude that she had been forced to forgo untying it and simply snip the string with scissors. Writing was just visible on the inside of the paper, but as the box hid most of the characters, I could not decipher it. Within the paper lay a battered cardboard case—the kind used to hold inexpensive cigars. Within that case, on a bed of coarse salt, lay two disembodied human
ears. Two left ears.

  “A token of his esteem, no doubt,” Lanner declared. “Like the cat who brings a mouse to the foot of your bed, Grogsson has surrendered his trophies.”

  Holmes’s features sank. Lestrade gave an almost imperceptible nod to indicate that he concurred with Lanner’s interpretation of events. With a deep sigh, Holmes asked, “Where is Grogsson?”

  “Fled,” Lanner smiled. “He is not so great a fool as to stay. Miss Cushing confronted him this morning and he ran off. Hasn’t been seen since. It won’t take us long to find him, I think. There are few places in this city where a beast like that can hide.”

  “I think our friend will soon be returned to us. Lanner has issued a warrant for his arrest,” said Lestrade. “Either the police will find Grogsson and arrest him, or they will find him and he will slay as many as he can, before they bring him down. However it goes, Holmes, I think things are not looking good for Torg.”

  Holmes, brightening to the role of great detective—a role in which I had been tirelessly instructing him—declared, “We shall see, Vladislav, we shall see. Appearances can often deceive, but careful observation will reveal the underlying truth. Isn’t that right, Watson?”

  “It is.”

  “And I said it correctly?”

  I clapped my hand over my brow; he’d been doing so well. With a deep sigh, I said, “Yes, just as we rehearsed.”

  Lanner laughed. “Your charade is unraveling, Holmes. Soon the light of truth shall shine upon you and your confederates; we shall know who you really are.”

  “Perhaps, Lanner,” Lestrade growled, “but in the meantime, Holmes and I will investigate. Holmes, won’t you come upstairs and help me examine the rest of the house?”

  “What do we expect to find up there?” asked Holmes. Lanner’s expression led me to believe he was wondering the same. Vladislav gave Holmes a pointed look and Holmes quickly amended his statement, “The truth! The undisclosed truth—that is what! To the stairs, gentlemen!”