The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles

by G. S. Denning

  “I don’t blame you for that,” Holmes said. “You’re the best Baskerville I’ve ever met, by a good margin. In fact, you’re the first who hasn’t tried to kill me. And now the worst of them has returned.”

  I had a sudden realization. “Oh! Holmes! Now that Hugo thinks Sir Henry is dead, it won’t be long before he comes to make his claim on the Hall. What do you think, will it be a legal issue, or will he just conquer the place?”

  “I cannot tell, but if he is planning to take this place by force, he’s got a decent chance of pulling it off,” Holmes said. “When Sir Hugo was lost out of our dimension two hundred and forty years ago, he had some magical knowledge and a sharp mind, but no significant ability. Now he can burn a man alive at a hundred yards. Oh, and he used not a whit of subtlety in doing it. The amount of power he expended was unnecessary and grotesque. In all our history, the world has known only one other sorcerer who can command that sort of raw might.”

  “Moriarty?” I hazarded.

  “Me,” Holmes replied, slightly hurt. “Yet that is of little use to us. If Sir Hugo and I do battle atop five open lines, it scarcely matters which of us wins. Such a strain… such damage…”

  “Holmes,” I said, “we cannot face him here. Let it be anywhere else. Let us lure him to some more favorable field and do battle there.”

  “Would that I could, Watson, but he will not—I suspect he cannot—venture far from Baskerville Hall.”

  “Because his throat’s torn out?” Sir Henry wondered, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. “Is it still gone, do you think?”

  “Well, that’s not the sort of thing that normally heals,” Holmes replied, with a shrug, “but you two might know better than I. Have either of you ever seen his throat?”

  “No,” I said. “He always seems to be wearing his beekeeper’s gear or his ridiculous high-collared jackets.”

  “Not without reason, I suspect.”

  “But, Holmes, this sets two of our goals together!” I realized. “To close these damned rifts would greatly benefit our world and it would also kill Sir Hugo, would it not?”

  “It would, but I do not have that art,” Holmes explained. “Even Moriarty did not, I am certain. No, the greatest expert on the opening, closing, and directing of ley-lines is the very man we must face. Remember, Watson: all my power comes from beings on the other side of those lines who wish nothing more than for them to remain open, unless it is for them to finally break.”

  “Are there no entities on the other side that could help?” I asked.

  “Well… no. I mean… not so…”

  My friend trailed off. His gaze became distant. I could tell he’d seen a ray of hope. After a time, he admitted, “Look, perhaps there are a few spirits that might. If someone were victimized by Sir Hugo and lost their life because of it, near one of the lines… well some shreds of them must have been pulled through. They’re not likely to be a whole person—more probably echoes of their last moments, disembodied fears or hatreds who fancy themselves people. Still, they’re likely to be intimately tied with the power of these lines.”

  “And unlikely to be well disposed towards Sir Hugo,” I surmised.

  “One would suppose so,” said Holmes. “You know, Watson, this may be our best plan yet.”

  “This is all strange waters for me,” Sir Henry said, “but… you think these spirits could close the ley-lines?”

  “No. I don’t know how the lines might ever be closed,” replied Holmes. “Yet perhaps we don’t need to close them… Think of cupping your hands beneath a massive hourglass, trying to stop the sand. You cannot hold back the sand forever; indeed, some would slip between your fingers, almost from the start. But if we could hold enough magic back, for even a few minutes… Watson, how long does it take for a man with no throat to die?”

  “Hard to say, exactly. It’s slower than sneezing, quicker than poaching an egg…”

  “Not so bad,” Holmes reflected. “We might manage it… But, there are so many lines! I’m sure I could find one or two helpful entities, but we’d need one to block each of the lines that start here and two to block each of the three lines that continue through! Where might I find six entities who—”

  “Eight, Holmes.”

  “No, but… there are three lines to be blocked on each side…”

  “Trust me, it’s eight.”

  “And two one-sided ones, so…”

  “Eight,” Sir Henry assured him.

  Holmes threw up his hands, drawing slight retches from Sir Henry and me at the sight of his twisted fingers. “Well, eight, then, if you’re both so certain about it! That’s even worse! How could I ever find so many?”

  “I don’t know, Holmes,” I said, laying a hand upon his shoulder, “but unless a better plan should present itself, this is the clearest course to victory. Come, let us get some rest. Tomorrow we will begin our search for allies.”

  “You two may rest,” said Holmes. “I fear I must go down to the great hall and show myself to the entities that dwell beyond the lines. Watson, you’ll come down and lock the door behind me, won’t you? I don’t want any of the staff wandering in and being driven insane by the outer mysteries.”

  “No, that wouldn’t do at all. Of course I’ll come.”

  As we went downstairs, Holmes racked his memory for victims, rivals or enemies of Sir Hugo. Most of what he said was piecemeal remembrances, but one of these random ramblings proved to be of great importance.

  “It needn’t be only dead people, I suppose. If there were someone on this side who had been greatly affected by the magic of those lines…”

  I got Holmes settled in, then headed back towards my room. I expected I’d be too fatigued to even think, but in fact, I was energetic and laughing. That last thing Holmes had said…

  I knew one of our eight.

  15

  THE NEXT DAY, I READIED MYSELF FOR BATTLE.

  Well… I mean… I spent most of it wearing a dressing gown. But still…

  As soon as I awoke, I ran downstairs to check on Holmes. I hoped he’d met with some success (and that he had not accidentally melted the intellect of any of the staff). I knocked upon the door of the great hall, but had no answer. Had something happened? Was he too deep in concentration to hear me? I laid my ear against the door and listened. Nothing. Silence. Did I dare?

  With trembling hand, I reached inside the pocket of my dressing gown and withdrew the key I’d placed there the night before. I opened the door but kept my eyes shut as I called out, “Holmes?”

  No answer.

  I opened my eyes. Nothing. An empty room. He was gone. All hope for the race of man was gone. He’d been sucked through, to the realms beyond, spinning through dark infinities, slowly digested by the immensity of horrors that lay without.

  Or—as turned out to be the case—he had left through the servants’ entrance at the back, badgered Mrs. Barrymore into making him toast and soup, begged use of the horse and cart, and trotted off across the moor.

  So, thank heaven for small mercies.

  Holmes had been busy all night it seemed, searching Baskerville Hall, and bothering everybody who slept therein. Included in the long list of social niceties Holmes was ignorant of was this: that most people do not enjoy being woken in the small hours of the morning by an intruder who leans in over one’s bed and shakes one to wakefulness. If said intruder has recently grown goat horns, which have lacerated his scalp and caused a not-insignificant amount of blood to run down his face, it turns out he is likely to be even less well received. There had been a great deal of screaming, I was informed.

  Despite this, Holmes’s search had not been fruitless; he’d left me something. On the great table, I found a battered hatbox. I had no idea what treasure might lie within, but if I’d taken a moment to think, I might have guessed.

  It was a top hat and—apart from some wear around the brim and a dent here or there—it appeared new, unremarkable and utterly mundane. There was also a ladies’
comb, beautifully made of gold and pearl, nestled in beside the hat and a note that said: Watson, guard these with your life.

  Very well, but I had plans of my own to attend to. With the help of Perkins, I selected and removed three of the ancestral Baskerville paintings. These we carried up to Sir Henry’s room. He looked rather surprised by the whole endeavor and asked what was going on.

  “I felt it was somewhat unsporting of me to deny you your fun last night,” I told him. “And—what with that broken foot of yours—I thought I might bring the morning’s entertainment to you.”

  “What d’you mean, Watson?”

  “Just wait.”

  Perkins and I arranged the paintings along the far wall of Sir Henry’s room. Then I dismissed Perkins and told Sir Henry to ring for Barrymore to bring his breakfast.

  I took a position just beside the door, so I might be hidden by it as it swung open. In a few moments Barrymore arrived, bearing a silver tray. The smell nearly distracted me from my task, but no—I remained steadfast. Stiff upper lip, Watson! Action! Answers!

  Then bacon.

  I waited until Barrymore had taken six or seven steps into the room, then swung the door closed behind him, with a loud bang. Barrymore—a natural coward—leapt away with surprising dexterity and spun to see what was the matter, painting the floor of Sir Henry’s bedchamber with bacon and eggs.

  “What are you?” I demanded, leveling a finger at Barrymore.

  “Oh! I… Dr. Watson! You gave me a fright. I… What am I? A butler, I suppose.”

  “Are you? I suppose something quite different,” I said, striding to the paintings I’d set against the wall. I indicated the portrait of Sir Charles, and the figure in the background—John Barrymore. Next, I stepped to an eighteenth-century portrait of a bewigged Baskerville and again, John Barrymore. Finally, I moved to the portrait of Sir Hugo, depicted with his unfortunate wife Olivia and… John Barrymore.

  “What are you?” I repeated.

  He looked as if he might cry. “Down at the local taverns, it’s easy to hear stories of the Curse of the Baskervilles. But if you stay long enough, you might hear of another Dartmoor oddity: the Curse of the Barrymores.”

  “Which is?” I prompted.

  “Folks say that the first John Barrymore was a bad fellow. They say that when Sir Hugo left this world, he laid a curse on Barrymore to wait for his master’s return, to serve him again in his wickedness.”

  “Which couldn’t have gone as planned, since Hugo Baskerville didn’t come back for 240 years,” I surmised.

  “Right. So John Barrymore aged and died, just like decent folks do. But here’s what he did different: his son was just… him again. His looks, the way he spoke, the way he thought, even the things he remembered—John Junior was John Senior.”

  “Ha!” Sir Henry laughed. “So, John Barrymore the Third was…”

  “Rather similar to John Barrymore the Second,” Barrymore confirmed. “And not so far off from the fourth, fifth, or sixth. I myself am John Barrymore the Ninth and Little John, downstairs, looks an awful lot like I did at his age.”

  “And you actually believe that story?” asked Sir Henry, who rather looked as if he believed it himself.

  “I didn’t want to, sir,” Barrymore wailed, “but there’s days when I wake up, ready to march into the master’s room and apologize for burning down the old stable. Then I realize: how could I have? I’d not been born yet. In fact, I’d not been born when the new one we built on the ashes burned down, too. Then I remember that the person I was going to confess to has been dead for 150 years and I never met them and… well… yes, I do believe it. I’m sorry, Sir Henry. I didn’t mean to be anything unnatural.”

  “Oh, well, hey… not your fault, Barrymore. Right? Sins of the father, and so on,” Sir Henry replied.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “So you see, Sir Henry?” I asked, raising a conspiratorial eyebrow at my host. “It would seem that—though he is yet living—John Barrymore the Ninth here has a strong, mystical link to those ley-lines downstairs.”

  “So he might be able to help close them, eh?”

  “That is my hope,” I said, then turned to Barrymore and asked, “What do you say, Barrymore? Do you think you would be willing to help us end all this mystic nonsense? Perhaps break the Curse of the Barrymores?”

  “I might,” he muttered, beginning simultaneously to sweat and to edge towards the door. “Yes. But, er… I don’t know anything about breaking curses, sir. Not sure I’d be much use. I’d just be in the way, I would think. I’ll bring Sir Henry another breakfast. Shall I bring you one, Dr. Watson? Yes, I think I better had.”

  And with one final lunge, John Barrymore IX cleared Sir Henry’s bedchamber and escaped down the hall.

  “We can’t let him out of it,” I said, taking the wastepaper basket from near Sir Henry’s desk and scooping the scattered remains of his first breakfast from the floor into it.

  “You’re right,” Sir Henry agreed. “We’ve got too little going for us to let him weasel out now. Really though, the only thing I want right now is breakfast.”

  “Me too.”

  “Can you smell that bacon? I keep reminding myself I’m a lord and I got dignity and all, but my belly keeps sayin’ that ain’t true—that I’m nothing but a hungry Canadian. Oh, and I’d be lying if I said that was the dirtiest food I’ve ever eaten. Why, in the lumber camp—”

  “Stop! Sir Henry, I absolutely forbid it!” I put the wastepaper basket in the farthest corner. It was my duty to the realm to dispose of this temptation, before Sir Henry regressed once more to that primal state his misspent youth had taught him: half-man, half-Canadian. Not that there weren’t moments when I considered sneaking a bite. If Sir Henry hadn’t been watching me with hungry, resentful eyes, I think I might have.

  To make matters worse, Barrymore did not hurry back with a replacement. We were just beginning to grumble about what might be keeping the man—trying not to stare at the wastebasket full of slowly cooling eggs and bacon—when we heard footsteps in the hall. Not one person’s footsteps, either, but two.

  When John Barrymore at last pushed open Sir Henry’s door, his expression was even more terrified than when he’d left. But at least he had breakfast with him. He was followed by his wife who, to my lasting delight, was similarly laden with food. She barged past her husband and unceremoniously deposited her tray on Sir Henry’s dressing table, then turned to us with a vengeful eye. It seemed that, between the death of her brother, Holmes’s late-night searches and our interrogation of her husband, Eliza Barrymore had just about had it with Sir Henry and me.

  “John here says you’ve had the story out of him, about the Curse of the Barrymores?” she demanded of Sir Henry.

  It was hardly a fitting way to address a baronet, especially one’s employer, but there was enough of the displeased school matron about her that neither Sir Henry nor I thought to protest at the treatment.

  “Er… um… yes,” he replied.

  “And you think you’ve got a way to break it?” she demanded, turning on me.

  “Yes,” I said, sheepish beneath her terrible gaze. “We thought, if we found eight individuals who had been affected by the magic that seeps up through the lines on the floor of the great hall, they could stand on those lines and block off the magic. Might be enough to break the curse.”

  “And lots of other problems, too,” Sir Henry volunteered. “There’s all sorts of bad stuff Sir Hugo Baskerville did, with those lines.”

  “Sir Hugo?” said Eliza. “Sir Hugo from 240 years ago, who everyone says is back and burned up my little Freddy?”

  “Well, yeah. I know it sounds—”

  But he was interrupted by Eliza Barrymore’s fist, which she slammed down upon the dressing table, rattling the much anticipated breakfast and nearly sending a second iteration of that meal to the floor.

  “We’ll help!” she shouted.

  “You’ll… what was that?” said Sir H
enry. I think it took us a moment to realize we’d just won. Neither of us was used to being offered help so combatively.

  “Thank you for volunteering your husband,” I told her, “but I think your own services may not be needed. My colleague, Holmes, seems to think that only people or spirits who are directly affected by the magic of those lines may participate in the—”

  “You think I’m not directly affected?” she demanded.

  “Er… no?”

  Eliza Barrymore marched up to me, stuck her face an inch or so from mine and said, through gritted teeth, “I had to give birth to my husband! The Greeks wrote plays about that!”

  “Well yes, but not in that context, madam.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Big-City-Doctor-Man, have you ever had to suckle the tiny baby version of your husband, with the grown-up version looking on? Huh? Not affected?”

  “I… I stand corrected,” I said.

  She turned on her heel, headed back for the door and said, “We’ll do your ritual, Sir Henry. You let us know when. This one might try to run…” here she paused, to jerk a thumb at her husband, “but I won’t let him.”

  I well believed her.

  With a defeated sigh, John Barrymore placed the second breakfast tray upon Sir Henry’s lap, turned, and was gone.

  Breakfast was all the better that morning, for it was seasoned with victory. Sir Henry and I resolved to race Warlock. If we could get four allies, we would consider it a tie. If we got five or more, we would never let Holmes live it down.

  So bored had Sir Henry become with the confines of his chamber, that he demanded to be moved down to the great hall for the day. Once installed, his disregard for secrecy was so profound that the entire staff soon knew nearly every particular of our predicament. Strange to say, but this created a somewhat carnival atmosphere. Duties were ignored, chores overlooked. The day was spent trading dark tales and daring ideas. Gunther asked to see my Webley, which I brought down only to discover he was planning on dipping my live rounds into molten silver. This would not have resulted in the anti-demon weapon he hoped for. In fact, it would have resulted in a bullet too wide to fit through the Webley’s barrel, if it didn’t heat the bullet to the point of accidental discharge. Still, it was hardly the worst plan of the day.