Sherlock Holmes: The London Terrors by William Meikle

by William Meikle

  “I reached him too late,” Holmes said. “The thing had him raised above its head as if he weighed no more than a babe—and I swear it smiled at me from that fleshless face as it threw him to the ground.”

  Northwich wasn’t listening. He forced me aside and bent to talk to the servant.

  “Dear God, I am truly sorry to have brought this upon you,” Northwich said.

  Jake lifted a hand as big as a shovel, patted Northwich on the back, as if to reassure himself that his master was safe, then died, the life gone from him in that instant.

  The three of us didn’t move, struck immobile looking down on the dead man, until Holmes spoke quietly, as if loath to break the silence.

  “We need to leave here, Watson,” he said. “It is not safe.”

  Northwich had suddenly developed some spunk. “I will not leave him here like a beggar in the gutter,” he said indignantly.

  “In that case,” Holmes replied softly. “I shall go to your manor alone and finish this, and you may stay here and explain matters to the gentlemen of Scotland Yard. I wish you luck with that. Lestrade is already of a mind to lock you up and throw away the key. This may be just the excuse he has been waiting for.”

  Holmes started to walk away. I turned to Northwich.

  “Holmes is right—loath as I am to admit to it. We must go—to wait would be to give ourselves over to the authorities. Would you feel any safer then?”

  “But this is barbaric,” he protested as I lifted him to his feet.

  “I shall ensure that Lestrade treats him with the utmost respect—you have my word on that,” I replied, and that mollified the man enough to get him moving. We followed Holmes away through the fog, Jake’s dead eyes watching us accusingly until they were lost from sight behind us.

  Chapter Sixteen

  EF

  I expected Holmes to lead us back toward Baker Street, but he had another goal in mind.

  “I meant it when I said I would go to the manor house, Watson,” he said. “I believe the ending must take place there, if anywhere. And we cannot go back into the city. The servant’s body will be found soon enough; and that thing, that man—whatever it might be—is still around somewhere, still tracking us. No—we must get out of town, and quickly at that. Come—there is no time to lose.”

  “I will come with you,” Northwich said. “But only on the condition that you promise me you will finish this and avenge those we have lost.”

  “I am not an agent of vengeance,” Holmes replied. “And I cannot foresee that any resolution will be entirely to your liking. But I promise to do all in my power to bring this matter to a conclusion. Is that good enough for you?”

  Northwich did not reply, but he was at my side as we followed Holmes through the warren of factory buildings to arrive just north of the carriage rank at the Angel.

  It was rather late in the evening by this juncture. It took some haggling with several different drivers, but finally we found one willing to take us north out of the city and we were soon rattling through the night at high speed. I hoped it was fast enough for us to evade both the tall swaddled figure and the men of the Yard. It was the ‘wounded man’ that took up most of my thoughts; I knew he would be haunting my dreams for some time to come, should I ever be allowed any sleep.

  3

  So began our trip north, made several times longer in duration than necessary due to having to use rural transport. We crossed the countryside in a series of carriages and trains, all the while attempting to hide our identities as much as we were able. That, coupled with the fact that none of us had so much as a change of handkerchief with us for luggage, meant that we were a tired and somewhat malodorous group by the time we arrived in Cheshire.

  We were almost thwarted at the last minute when we arrived at the manor only to find two bored policemen guarding the north gate to the grounds. Luckily they had their backs to us as they shared a smoke, and we were able to sneak away without being spotted. Northwich led us away along the canal and back up the south end of the property to a spot where we could scale the wall with ease and, almost twenty-four hours after leaving London, we finally let ourselves in to the relative comfort of the old manor.

  “I’ll put the lights on and light a fire,” Northwich said. “No need to worry—the house cannot be seen from the gate.”

  Holmes had not shown the slightest sign of worry. He made immediately for the cellar door, lit a lamp and headed down. I followed close behind, with a hand on my pistol, just in case.

  The cellar was empty—as was the sarcophagus. There was a hollow in the stone where the body had slept the long sleep, and more scraps of the tattered linen strewn on the floor, but apart from that we were alone in the room.

  Holmes turned on his heel and went back upstairs without saying a word.

  3

  We spent that night keeping a close watch out for each other, taking turns in bathing, after which Northwich attempted to provide us with some fresh clothing. Items from his wardrobe fit Holmes perfectly but in my case proved too tight, and I had to stay in the same clothes I had worn for the journey.

  Despite our tiring trip and general lack of sleep, none of us felt safe in retiring to bed. We sat around the fire in armchairs, smoking and sipping sherry as the night drew on. Holmes, even by his own taciturn standards, had fallen unusually quiet, merely smoking a succession of pipes and sitting as still as an owl waiting for its prey to twitch in the grass.

  Northwich was not as used to behavior such as this, and took Holmes to task. “I say, old chap; would you care to share your thoughts on the matter with us?”

  I knew Holmes well enough to knew that such a question was not going to lead to any outcome Northwich might want to hear, and I was about to pipe up when Holmes surprised me by answering.

  “I have been sitting here wondering whether Watson and I should not be tying you to that very chair right this moment, and leaving you to Lestrade’s less-than-tender mercies,” he said. “You see, old chap, the most likely of my several theories on the matter is that you yourself have been at the root of the problem all along. And look! now your competitors are dead, and your servant—the only witness to your scheming—has gone to join them. If we sit here long enough, I worry that Watson and I will be next on the list. No doubt we are destined for a grisly, spectacular demise that will garnish headlines across the country—headlines in which your own name would be most prominent.”

  Northwich sat listening to this with his mouth flapping like a trout out of water.

  “But you have seen him,” he said finally. “He walks.”

  “I have seen someone; and yes, he was walking,” Holmes replied calmly. “But I have seen many masterful illusions in my time. And that is all they were—illusion and sleight of hand. I have yet to be convinced there is anything else going on here.”

  “But his strength …”

  “Is not beyond that of an admittedly powerful fellow,” Holmes interrupted.

  I held my peace on my medical opinion—the thing I had seen among the looms had been no living man. I too have seen many stage magician’s tricks—but this had not been one of them. As I did not know whether Holmes genuinely disagreed with me, or was merely trying to bait our host, I kept quiet.

  “How can I prove it to you, old chap?” Northwich said. “You have seen my bruises. You saw how I was assaulted.”

  Holmes smiled. “I have seen fights staged to try to throw me off the scent in the past,” he replied. He took the clay tablet from his pocket. “And then there is this. You say that it is truly magical—that it will grant the wish of one who reads the inscription?”

  Northwich could not take his eyes from the tablet. “Yes, Holmes. Please, be careful with it—it is all I have left. I will need it to maintain my fortune.”

  Holmes raised the tablet high above his head, as if to dash it into the fireplace, and Northwich started as if he had been slapped. Holmes smiled. “Perhaps you really do believe. Let us try an experimen
t, shall we?”

  He read from the tablet, intoning the words. I did not understand any of it, but Holmes’ voice rang through the room with all the depth and presence of a seasoned preacher.

  “Please stop,” Northwich whispered, but Holmes either did not hear, or did not care to be interrupted. He read through until his voice rose to an obviously dramatic ending.

  “And now, my wish,” Holmes said more quietly when the chant was over. “I wish for the sleeper to return here, and for him to join us in bringing an end to this matter. I wish to return him to his slumber—whatever it takes for us to do so.”

  Northwich went white again. “You do not know what you have asked for.”

  Holmes smiled thinly. “I know exactly what I have asked for. Now—what are we to do about it?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  EF

  Holmes did not receive an answer to that particular question—not from Northwich. We sat in the armchairs the whole night, each of us dozing off, but always one of us awake at any one time. My head knew that it was likely that the linen-clad attacker was still many miles to the south of us—it was not likely he had just popped on a train or carriage after all. But my heart told me to keep my guard up, for this was something far out of the ordinary scheme of things—something that lent itself to improbable outcomes.

  In any case, we survived the night without any further alarms. Northwich proved he could survive without a servant by rustling up some breakfast—all three of us together in the kitchen the whole time—and the day developed after that into a long watching brief.

  Having worked alongside Holmes on many cases, I was used to long periods of inactivity while waiting for something to happen, and Holmes had once again retreated inside his mind, sitting in a chair by a window that looked out over the expanse of the grounds. Northwich, however, proved less capable of sitting on his hinder end for any great time. I took to playing card games with him in an attempt to calm his clearly fraying nerves, but his mind was not on it, and after I’d taken a few shillings off him in a game of brag, he lost interest and started walking the floor constantly. Even a smoke did not stop him, merely allowed him to trail ash across the expensive rugs in the parlor.

  I had to ask him to desist after a time, for he was making me damnably twitchy. Finally, as afternoon started to turn to dusk, he started to settle. Perhaps it was the fear of the coming night that did it—or perhaps it was just that we had all become rather hungry by this time. We found some hard biscuits and cheese in the pantry that took the edge off our hunger, and Northwich started in on the brandy to help with his fear. Holmes continued to sit in the chair by the window, and I sat by the fire, smoking a succession of cheroots and wondering what the darkness might bring.

  3

  Once the gloom settled outside, Holmes gave up attempting to peer into the shadows in the shrubbery and joined me for a smoke by the fire.

  “Keep your pistol loaded and close to you, Watson,” he said. “The time for action is near at hand.”

  Northwich and I played a few listless games of brag—I won more shillings from him, the brandy having only served to make his judgement even worse—and we had just started a round of whist when the stout front door shook under a series of heavy blows.

  “Shall you let him in, or shall I?” Holmes said sardonically as Northwich and I stood, somewhat unsure as to our next move. I took out my pistol, thinking I could at least use it as a club should the bullets prove as ineffective as they had before. Holmes showed no signs of concern, even as the old door cracked and splintered under the furious onslaught.

  We followed Holmes out into the hallway just as the pounding reached a new level of frenzy. The door gave way with a crash of tumbled, broken timbers. The swaddled figure stood in the doorway, although the linen wrappings had not endured the obvious rigors of the journey.

  As it came into the hall, it moved with a pronounced limp, almost a shuffle, the left leg dragging uselessly along behind it, trailing a six-foot-long swath of unwrapped linen on the floor. The material was mud-covered and tattered, leaving a wet streak behind as it came forward.

  The torso was scarcely in any better shape. Ribs showed through where the linen—no longer white but a dirty gray—had fallen away, and tatters of cloth hung, like a rough kilt, around the figure’s waist. The skull, almost completely free of wrappings, leered at us. The thing’s skeletal hands reached in the air as if grasping for purchase. It stumbled forward, closing in on where we stood transfixed by the sight.

  I raised my pistol.

  “No, Watson,” Holmes said, and stepped between the thing and myself, raising the clay tablet in front of him. “This is what he wants. I believe this is what he has always wanted.”

  Holmes backed off toward the cellar door.

  The thing followed him, finger bones clacking as Holmes stayed just far enough away to keep out of its reach.

  “Close the door and light a lamp, Watson, and crouch down in front of me. Quickly, now.”

  I did as I was bid, having a brief funk when my first match fizzed and blew out before I had a chance to light the lamp.

  “Any time you like, Watson,” Holmes said softly, as I got the wick burning on the second attempt and turned to see that the thing was mere inches from snatching the tablet from Holmes’ grasp. I backed down the steps as quickly as I was able. Holmes followed and the thing stumbled, almost tripped as it reached the top step, then came down after us.

  “What in blazes do you think you are doing?” Northwich called out from above. I saw his silhouette in the doorway as he joined us at the rear, and the four of us went down into the cellar.

  Chapter Eighteen

  EF

  I remembered the sconces on the cellar walls and made a quick tour, lighting them as I went. By the time I reached the entrance again, Holmes was backing down the last step, the thing already looming above him such that he had to step back sharpish to avoid it.

  “The sarcophagus, Watson … is it open?”

  I turned to look. The stone lid was pulled back, revealing the thing’s original sleeping place inside. “It’s open, Holmes,” I said, starting, for the first time, to see his intent.

  Holmes backed away across the rough floor, keeping himself just out of reach of the grasping fingers until he reached the sarcophagus. I saw him risk a quick look around—it was almost his undoing, as the thing sensed its chance and lumbered forward. Holmes raised the clay tablet, intending to drop it into the casket.

  Northwich chose that moment to make his move. He arrived at the bottom of the steps at a run, immediately saw what Holmes intended, and threw himself across the cellar to intervene. He grabbed the amulet just as Holmes dropped it, clutching it to his chest and backing away.

  “I told you, Holmes,” he said, his whisper echoing around us in the confines of the cellar. “I need this. I am nothing without it.”

  The tall figure switched its attentions from Holmes to where Northwich was still backing away, heading once more for the steps.

  “Give it up, Northwich,” Holmes shouted. “He wants to go back in the box—can’t you see that?”

  “I’m going upstairs, and locking the door behind me,” he said. “You can deal with it however you think fit; as for me, I intend to get as far away as possible—and stay there.”

  He turned to flee.

  He was not fast enough.

  3

  The thing caught Northwich at the foot of the steps and started to drag him bodily back toward the sarcophagus. Northwich squealed in pain.

  “Help me, Holmes,” he shouted.

  “Perhaps you should make a wish?” Holmes said softly.

  I stepped forward, pistol raised, but was imperiously knocked aside by a swinging blow from a skeletal arm that felt more like being hit with an iron bar. I hit the wall hard, knocking the wind out of myself and tumbling to the ground. By the time I righted myself it was almost all over.

  Holmes jumped forward in an attempt to wr
est Northwich free from the thing, only to receive a backhanded blow that sent him reeling across the room. Then, before either of us could move, the linen-clad figure half-stepped, half-rolled into the sarcophagus—with Northwich and the clay amulet pulled tightly against its chest. The heavy lid slid shut with a grating of stone on stone that echoed like a rumble of thunder in the room.

  The last thing we heard was a fading, piteous wail from inside, before the lid slid fully into place, leaving us in deadly silence.

  3

  Holmes pushed down with all his weight on the diagrams on the lid, but this time there was no give in them. There would be no repetition of his trick of opening the box.

  “We should fetch a hammer,” I said, realizing even as I said it the futility of the gesture.

  “”I’m afraid we would be too late—it is already too late,” Holmes said. “It is as I expected—he has returned to the long sleep.”

  I pushed on the box, even go as far as trying to rock it over in the vain hope that I might smash the damned thing open, but it was all to no avail. The sarcophagus stayed closed. There was no movement and no sound from within.

  “You knew it would work all along, didn’t you, Holmes?” I asked. “You knew he would go back to his resting place, didn’t you?”

  Holmes traced a finger along a portion of ancient Greek that ran among the carved murals.

  “I think so, Watson, ever since I read this.”

  He refused to elaborate further—not right then.

  3

  Lestrade was waiting for us on our return to London and the Baker Street apartment. He was not best pleased.

  “I hope you’ve a dashed good explanation for all of this gallivanting around,” he said. “Dead men in the streets have a habit of making the bosses twitchy—and when they are twitchy, I have an itch.”

  We adjourned to the front room and the warmth of the fire. Lestrade was mollified somewhat by some of Holmes’ best sherry and a pipe of strong Egyptian tobacco, but was obviously not going to leave until he had an answer—or at least something he could tell his superiors with a straight face.