“I see this has caught your attention,” said Holmes. “Von Reichenbach is of Austrian birth but the magic of the world has been his playground over the decades. His powers encompass all folklores and legends.”
Shouts rang out suddenly in front of us as we emerged from the alley. Figures dashed in every direction. Moments later, an upper flat was ablaze. Police whistles shrilled a street over and the noise of gunfire burst in rapid succession like fire crackers on Guy Fawkes Day. We cast our gaze about to see how we might be of use in this eruption of chaos.
A woman ran into the street not ten feet from where we stood. On her heels was the horrible figure from ancient lore. The Noekken was a terrible beast to behold. It stood over six feet and was possessed of large yellow eyes which glowed like hot coals. The body appeared shaggy as if covered, head to toe, in seaweed the texture of straw; dark, matted, slimy and emitting an odour most foul. More appeared in second story windows, exiting from the doorways lining the street, one on the rooftop across the way; a dozen all told and Von Reichenbach’s obscene crime in South Africa was realized.
He had enchanted the water flowing into Bloemfontein with a transformation spell. The soldiers had consumed the water and were cursed from that moment on. Gestating within them on the return journey, they had transformed here in London and would need to consume human flesh to complete the transformation. The presence of scattered human, female remains was instantly understood. Their wives had been savaged as the men awakened transformed and ravenous in their beds. I recalled Holmes’s determination that the remains were located near bodies of water. Noekken were water spirits, the Thames their best hiding place. However, what I could not understand was how they got there without being detected.
“Doyle!” shouted Holmes. “A ward for that poor woman!”
This cry was followed by a shot from a pistol at the creature menacing the scrabbling woman. The bullet swayed the shuffling creature but did not slow it down.
I conjured a ward and sent it at the Noekken. A warding spell of this kind instills temporary paralysis as part of the healing treatment. The Noekken shuddered under the spell and froze on the spot, allowing the woman to disappear through a doorway. The paralysis was temporary and would gain us a minute or two before it resumed its rampage. Putting it to the torch would destroy the thing. However, before we could take steps along these lines, an intense flash of light shot from the eyes of the Noekken and it vanished.
“Can you explain that, Doctor?” asked Holmes.
I admitted I could not as I hurled a ward at a Noekken clumsily attempting to climb out a window.
The Noekken froze, losing its grip and started to fall to the pavement. Until a flash of light shot from its eyes and it, too, vanished.
Holmes paused in the process of reloading his revolver and struck his thigh with his fist. “I am a fool! The Od!”
He thrust his revolver into his pocket with one hand while extracting the map from the other. The rain soaked the paper instantly so he retreated under an awning two steps to the right. As the wards were stopping the creatures, I summoned all of my strength to conjure them one upon the other and let them loose at the Noekken. Flashes resembling fireworks ensued and they vanished one by one. I joined Holmes under the awning.
He had his fountain pen out and was tracing lines on the map.
“The power of the Od comes from another dimensional plane. One can be a conduit for its power,” he was saying to himself. He noticed my presence. “The Noekken are mere diversion. Look! The marks for the remains found by the police.” Here he used the pen to connect the locations. “You see how they intersect? Von Reichenbach must be using these beasts as batteries, drawing their strength. Each is consumed when their initial purpose is curtailed. He wants to open a portal to the Od and will attempt to do so at the intersection point. Here!”
He jabbed a long finger at the spot on the map. In the dim light, I had to lean in to see.
“Baker Street?”
Our journey was a desperate one. Chaos in the streets hampered us at every turn. The police were out in force, providing a barrier before the stalking Noekken and the populace. Soldiers in tight formations made their presence known as well; launching volleys into the dreadful figures while mages darted in with fire spells to finish the ghastly work. It appeared as if Lestrade had convinced them after all and I envied them their command of the mystic arts. Holmes pounded the roof in frustration at our slow progress while I exhausted myself sending wards at the monsters.
Baker Street was no different than the other avenues and we were forced to climb down and elbow our way through teeming throngs as we sought Von Reichenbach.
“He could be anywhere along here,” I observed.
Holmes snatched up a straw broom a street sweeper had abandoned in the panic and thrust it at me. “Can you infuse this as you did the paper in Stevens’s office?”
I caught his meaning and used my failing magic to do as he suggested.
Holding the broom high as one would hold a torch, we continued along Baker Street. The infusing spell would react when in close proximity to black magic as the strip of paper had done in the water bottle.
We were halfway up the street when the long bristles of the broom began to crackle and writhe. Holmes flung the broom about, trying to pinpoint the cause.
“He is here! Inside 221B!”
Holmes pulled his revolver. Mine was in my hand as well. The door to the flat leaned askew on the hinges and there was blood upon the steps leading to the upper chambers. A prone figure lay at the foot of the stairs. I pushed past Holmes and bent to examine the injured man. This took mere seconds as it was clear the elderly man was dead.
An unholy roar upstairs froze my blood. Holmes seized me by the arm and hauled me forward. We threw our shoulders against the door and it cracked inward.
Von Reichenbach stood with his back to us, arms outstretched over his head. His hands lay within globes of pulsating light. Before him was an undulating orifice. He was opening the Od portal!
Holmes aimed his revolver. The revolving interchange of the energy streams enveloping Von Reichenbach revealed the danger of what Holmes intended to do.
“Don’t!” I cried.
I launched myself at Holmes the instant he pulled the trigger. Colliding with his slight frame, I succeeded in knocking him out of the return path of the bullet. I was not so fortunate. The bullet caught me on my right side. It passed through cleanly but in my already weakened state, it knocked the fight out of me and I lay sprawled.
Holmes was at my side in an instant, hands probing for injury. “Has he murdered you? The devil!”
He released me and rose to his feet, his body trembling with a rage that shocked me.
“Von Reichenbach!” shouted Holmes over the roar of air being sucked into the widening portal. “I’ll have your life for this!”
Von Reichenbach pulled his gaze off the portal and regarded us over one shoulder. “Ah, Holmes! Bear witness to my triumph!”
“Bullets cannot stop him!” said I, but it was a whisper lost in the roar.
My energy was sapped from the battle with the Noekken but I had to try something. But what? It was no use, I was spent.
Suddenly an old woman appeared at my side. Her white hair loose and flowing about her head, she glared malevolently at Von Reichenbach.
“Let me have what remains, Doctor!”
I seized her hand and felt my power draining into her.
The woman had her hands primed to unleash a banishment.
Von Reichenbach turned to face us. A bloodless smile split his features. He raised his hands and the portal widened until it was as wide as the far wall.
“My army heeds me! They come!” he shouted in triumph. “Behold the dawning Od!”
At this the woman unleashed the banishment. It struck with terrible force and Von R
eichenbach doubled at the waist; the grin, at least, was knocked from his ugly face. A howling multitude of voices from the Od reached us, growing louder. Von Reichenbach slowly straightened. The banishment had weakened him but had not finished him. We had lost. There would be no stopping his army now.
With a roar, Holmes launched himself at Von Reichenbach. He threw his long arms about the torso of the man in a vice-like grip and, driving with his legs, propelled Von Reichenbach towards the portal. The two tumbled into it and with a concussive blast that shattered the windows.
The portal was sealed.
In the weeks that followed, Mrs Hudson, for that was the name of the venerable sorceress, and I worked at setting the upper rooms of 221B to rights. It had been her warlock husband Holmes and I had found dead at the foot of the stairs, his heart having given out in his battle with Von Reichenbach. Mrs Hudson used reconstitution spells to great effect on the damaged furniture but I did not need to witness this to know that she was a witch of the first order. The upper rooms had been her late husband’s laboratory, they were now vacant and I moved in as soon as the place was once again fit for human habitation.
From her I learned that the Od attempts to break through into this plane of existence every thirty days, though, without assistance from our side, these can be easily thwarted. That far wall of the flat is but one of the contact points. There were others spread across the world. It was for this very reason that the Hudsons had purchased the property, as they had been appointed to guard the portal.
I did not move in out of sentimentality for Holmes and his sacrifice. Mrs Hudson told me that the intersection phenomenon can, occasionally, allow something from the Od to pass through to this plane, if the breach is handled carefully. If Holmes was still alive, I owed it to him to wait and see.
As the days drew ever closer to this event, I was filled with anticipation. As irritating as Holmes was, he was still possessed of more courage than I’d found in most human beings and his intellect was capacious. If there was a chance he could be recovered, I owed it to myself and humanity to be there to help, if possible.
Until the next event, I had my Drood to labour over and Mrs Hudson’s magic instruction to fill my time as I took my first steps into this new world.
Contributors
Philip Cornell is a writer, illustrator and caricaturist and has been a devotee of Sherlock Holmes since he read ‘The Speckled Band’ at the age of ten in a Readers’ Digest Young People’s Annual. Half a century later his enthusiasm for the Sherlock Holmes Canon is undiminished and he is a long-time member of The Sydney Passengers, the local Australian Sherlock Holmes Society, an organisation for which he has produced dozens of scholarly articles on the Holmes Canon for The Passengers’ Log quarterly journal. He also wrote and drew a set of trading cards in comic-book form wherein Lee Falks’s famous hero the Phantom encountered an evil British army colonel and his mathematics professor employer: The Empty Cave. A similarly Victorian-set story was Mr Cornell’s collaboration with Christopher Sequeira and Dave Elsey on the Sherlock Holmes: Dark Detective series of graphic novels, and both his art and a short prose tale of his appeared in Sherlock Holmes: The Australian Casebook. However, his greatest claim to Holmesian fame may be the fact that the council responsible for the town square in Meiringen, Switzerland, commissioned him to produce all new colour art depicting events from ‘The Final Problem’ for permanent display on signs in the park!
Julie Ditrich is a writer, editor and comics creator, as well as the Founder and CEO of Comics Mastermind™, a professional development service for evolving comics creators. Julie has a BA in Professional Writing (University of Canberra), and has worked in mainstream publishing as a bookseller, publicist, marketing manager, editor and author. Julie contributed to the Oblagon comics anthology for Kaleidoscope, was co-writer on ElfQuest: WaveDancers for Warp Graphics, was cowriter on the Dart miniseries for Image Comics, a writer on the Supanova Tides of Hope anthology, and wrote the script for the epic fantasy Elf~Fin: Hyfus & Tilaweed comic book for Black Mermaid Productions, and she contributed a script to the Australia anthology for Comicoz.
Julie was the co-founder of the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Comics / Graphic Novels Portfolio, and jointly hold the role between 2007 and 2012. In 2018 Julie joined the judging panel of the Ledger Awards, which acknowledge excellence in Australian comic art and publishing. Forthcoming work includes a new superhero character—Djiniri—published in SuperAustralians for Black House Comics, a story in Cthulhu Deep Down Under 3 for IFWG Publishing, and Julie will also be the first Australian woman writer on The Phantom published by Frew Publications with the release of The Adventure of the Dragon’s Leg.
Julie Ditrich—Acknowledgement: I am eternally grateful to Professor John Hilton, Consultant in Forensic Medicine, for helping me research the historical medical aspects of this story. John’s openness and patience in answering my probing questions with such authority and with his own unique stamp of creativity were absolutely second to none.
Ron Fortier is a veteran comic book creator, best known for writing the Green Hornet and Terminator: Burning Earth, with Alex Ross, for Now Comics back in the 90s. Today, he keeps busy writing and editing new pulp anthologies and novels via his Airship 27 Productions (http://robmdavis.com/Airship27Hangar/airship27hangar.html). He won the Pulp Factory Award for Best Pulp Short Story of 2011 for “Vengeance Is Mine” which appeared in The Avenger—Justice Inc. from Moonstone Books and again in 2012 for “The Ghoul,” which appeared in Monster Aces.
He continues to write his own graphic novels and series, such as Mr Jigsaw Man of a Thousand Parts via Redbud Studio. (http://www.robmdavis.com/RedbudStudio/index.html) and you can keep updated with his latest projects by visiting his personal website at: www.airship27.com
Nancy Holder is a versatile writer who has written over eighty novels and more than 200 short stories, essays, and articles; has been on The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Los Angeles Times bestseller lists; has received five Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association (HWA); and is well known for writing fiction and episode guidebooks for TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Smallville, Sabrina the Teen Age Witch, Beauty and the Beast, Saving Grace, Wishbone, and for novelizing movies including Wonder Woman, Crimson Peak, and the recent Ghostbusters. Her series, The Wicked Saga, co-written with Debbie Viguié, was optioned by DreamWorks. She is the writer on Kymera Press’s comic book, Mary Shelley Presents, in which Mary Shelley and the Creature showcase works written by women writers from 1780 to 1920; and she’s written and edited pulp collections and comic books for Moonstone Books, featuring the Domino Lady, The Avenger, The Phantom, Zorro, and other characters.
She also teaches seminars and workshops on writing comics and graphic novels for the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing offered through the University of Southern Maine, and she is an avid Holmesian, having written for the Baker Street Journal, as well as short stories for anthologies such as The Further Crossovers of Sherlock Holmes, In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, and Gaslight Gothic: Strange Tales of Sherlock Holmes. She has also written two games for the Storium™ storytelling gaming system: The Unsolved Cases of Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Holder’s World of Dracula.
She is on the Board of Trustees for the HWA. Ms Holder lives in Washington State. Find her at www.nancyholder.com and @nancyholder.
Leslie S. Klinger is the New York Times-best-selling editor of the Edgar®-winning New Annotated Sherlock Holmes as well as numerous other annotated books, anthologies, and articles on Holmes, Dracula, Lovecraft, Frankenstein, mysteries, horror, and the Victorian age, including the Anthony®-winning anthology In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, co-edited with Laurie R. King. His latest books are Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s, also nominated for an Edgar®, and For the Sake of the Game: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon, also co-edited by Laurie R. King. In 2019 he wi
ll publish New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham and Annotated American Gods with Neil Gaiman. www.lesliesklinger.com
Rafe McGregor is the author of over two hundred short stories, novellas, magazine articles, and journal papers. His work includes crime fiction, weird tales, military history, and academic philosophy. As regular readers of The Strand Magazine will realise, his contribution to this anthology owes as much to L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace (‘Followed’, December 1900) as it does to Conan Doyle (‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’, February 1892).
Brad Mengel works in Australia’s criminal justice system. Before that he was trolley boy, a barman, an office manager and a teacher. A lifelong reader and pulp fan it was natural that he would turn to writing. His book Serial Vigilantes of Paperback Fiction: An Encyclopedia from Able Team to Z-Comm (McFarland, 2009) was the first book to examine vigilante fiction of the 70’s and 80’s. He has also contributed stories to Tales of The Shadowmen#3 & #7, Pro Se Presents Nov 2012, Charles Boeckman Presents Johnny Nickle, Pulp Obscura: Senorita Scorpion, Blood & Tacos #4, Domino Lady Vol 2, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol 12 and Poker Pulp. His first novel Australis Incognito is coming soon from Pro Se Productions.
Will Murray has been writing about popular culture since 1973, principally on the subjects of comic books, pulp magazine heroes, and film. As a fiction writer, he’s the author of over seventy novels featuring characters as diverse as Nick Fury and Remo Williams. With the late Steve Ditko, he created Squirrel Girl for Marvel Comics. Murray has written numerous short stories, many on Lovecraftian themes.
For this collection, he returns to two culturally significant characters he previously explored, H. P. Lovecraft’s Dr. Herbert West (‘Tombstone Tribunal’ for the Herbert West Reanimated round robin tale) and Sherlock Holmes, whom Murray previously teamed up with Colonel Richard Henry Savage in ‘The Adventure of the Imaginary Nihilist’ for Sherlock Holmes: The Crossover Casebook.
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