The Dragon Turn

by Shane Peacock

  So … Mrs. Nottingham has vanished, has she?

  Sherlock looks across the dark room to the white woman in the cage with the giant lizard. He sees her holding on to the bars at the far end of her prison, her mouth gagged, eyes blindfolded … terrified. Mrs. Nottingham! Then Sherlock remembers the axe that the Wizard had in his hands just a few minutes ago. He dropped it near the big ship ropes that hold the dragon back, keep it from attacking anything that might be in its cage.

  “And now, for the great moment!” Shouts the Wizard up on the stage. “But tonight it will be more real than ever before! Tonight, look, if you dare, at the greatest, most violent, most gruesome illusion the world has ever seen! You shall see its CONCLUSION!”

  The audience is alive with excitement, getting to their feet, aware that they are about to see something extraordinary, even greater than the dragon trick itself, created in tandem by a Far East adventurer and the greatest magician in the world.

  “Appear dragon!” cries His Highness.

  The band strikes up and suddenly a section of the floor of the basement begins to lift toward the stage, raising the famished dragon and Mrs. Nottingham with it. Part of the stage shifts back to allow the cage to rise. Sherlock, glued to a wall, stares up.

  “You will get your prize onstage this time.” That’s what Nottingham had whispered to the dragon. “Yes, you can have it tonight!”

  They are going to feed their philandering wife to the giant lizard on the stage of The Egyptian Hall! There will be blood, crunching of bones, screams, and an unparalleled sensation … gruesome reality at its finest, an illusion for the ages … but not really an illusion. There will be nothing left of her! And no evidence!

  Sherlock has no weapon but his horsewhip. He races across the basement, falling into wooden boxes and picking himself up. He leaps onto the winding staircase at the other side of the room and flies upward toward the stage. When he arrives, he sees Hemsworth standing at stage left, Nottingham by the ropes with his axe in hand. The dragon is hissing, striving with all its might to get at its living meal. She is screaming underneath her gag. She knows what is about to happen.

  “Your Highness?” shouts Nottingham and turns to his partner.

  “Tonight,” intones Hemsworth on cue, “it shall not be as in days of old. No saint will save the lady. She shall be devoured!!!” His voice has grown evil.

  An old man in a bizarre pink outfit, bent in the shape of a question mark, is rising to his feet in the tenth row to get to the stage.

  There are two ship ropes. Nottingham rears back and slashes at the first. It doesn’t slice through.

  Sherlock makes for him, but the Wizard’s second swing severs the rope and the dragon lunges forward. His human prey clings to the bars, just inches from the end of the flicking tongue. Nottingham’s back is to Holmes; he doesn’t see him. The magician moves away from the boy toward the other rope and gets a swing at it before Sherlock nears. Holmes won’t reach him before he makes his second swing! The beast will be loosed! It will kill and consume Mrs. Nottingham in front of The Egyptian Hall crowd! They are all now on their feet and most are applauding wildly, cheering on Nottingham and the dragon.

  Holmes snaps his horsewhip from his sleeve and cracks it at the Wizard. His aim is off and the cord misses the axe … but wraps around Nottingham’s arm … the wrong arm. Looking at the boy in surprise, the magician still has the presence of mind to bring the axe down on the rope with his free arm. It severs.

  Sigerson Trismegistus Bell is well aware of what is reality and what is illusion at this moment. Over the last few minutes, his big brain has been processing many of the same things his assistant has been considering below the stage. He, too, has calculated all that is planned to transpire in front of the audience as he races down the aisle and leaps onto the stage. Irene and Beatrice are behind him. Both young ladies, dresses and all, make the leap too.

  The band stops playing, its members stare up at the scene in front of them.

  Bell eyes both the big scimitar blade (hanging in midair — actually from a black cord — where it was left after the decapitation scene) and the little lock on the cage door in front of the terrified woman. He rips the sword from its cord and darts to the cage. Just as Nottingham severs the last rope, just as the huge lizard rushes for the woman, Bell brings the weapon down on the lock with tremendous force and smashes it apart. He opens the door in a flash, and pulls the woman out, saving her from the lunging lizard by inches.

  The crowd erupts in thunderous cheers, rocking the theater.

  But the famished reptile is still making for her. It has slithered over its ramp and gotten to the door with alarming speed. Now, it tries to burst through the tight space and out onto the stage. Its tongue goes through, then its head … but nothing else. It writhes in the doorway and hisses, potential human meals reflected in its shiny black eyes.

  As Hemsworth and Nottingham look on in disbelief, the audience roars again with delight.

  If it gets through, it will kill whomever it encounters!

  But Sigerson Bell has had enough. He turns to the crowd, wielding his big gleaming blade over his head like a crazed warrior. “Leave the building, you fools!” he shouts. “It is real! It is REAL! Run for your lives!”

  The sight of this pink-clad madman, a terrified audience member like themselves, threatening the front rows with what is obviously more than a magician’s prop, causes the spectators within swinging distance to try to get away; even the musicians clamor out of the pit. Everyone stumbles toward the aisles. And when they get there, they keep on moving. Soon, the entire audience is panicking like a mob. There is pandemonium — women screaming, men shouting — and a rush for the exits.

  Onstage, the giant lizard struggles to get free. It twists and turns, rattling the cage so violently it lifts off the floor … the beast’s shoulders bulge through. It writhes again … and its midsection emerges … and then, with one last effort … it is out!

  Bell has pulled the intended victim to the side and torn the gag from her mouth and the blindfold from her eyes. “I am Angelina Nottingham!” she is shouting. “I am Angelina Nottingham!” The lizard is moving straight ahead. It doesn’t see her anymore. What it does see, directly in front of it … is Irene Doyle and Beatrice Leckie.

  It makes for them.

  Sherlock is too far away. It will kill one of them. He is frantic with fear. A strange thought rushes through his mind. Which girl would he save … if he could save just one? He also wonders what it was that Irene came to tell him at the apothecary shop yesterday. He pulls back his horsewhip and cracks it in the air, his fear giving him so much energy that the sound is like a gun going off, louder than any snap he has ever produced. It appears to frighten the lizard for an instant. It starts … and turns around, facing the source of the noise … Sherlock Holmes.

  But it doesn’t come at him. As it surveys the cage and the area around it on the stage, a homing instinct seems to seize it. It moves back toward its former prison, notices the winding stairs going down into the basement, and heads toward them.

  Sherlock picks up the axe. He rushes after the beast. Its back is to him as they reach the top of the staircase.

  “No!” cries Hemsworth. He runs toward the boy.

  Holmes raises the axe above the dragon.

  “No, Sherlock,” says Beatrice under her breath.

  But when the axe comes down, it doesn’t rend the lizard in half. Instead, Holmes has aimed at the chain between the shackles holding the front and back feet together on the reptile’s left side. It will die if it tries to descend those stairs in shackles; it will fall to its death. The blow breaks the chain.

  But the lizard isn’t in a thankful mood. It turns on Sherlock, its big, alligator-head fixed on him, flicking its forked tongue in his direction.

  Irene rushes forward, distracting it. And as it turns to her, exposing its right side, Sherlock brings the axe down again, breaking the chain between the shackles there too. It is co
mpletely free! He shouts, and the dragon turns away from Irene and back to him once more. The boy raises the axe to its face. It turns and slithers away, down the staircase, just as Sherlock had hoped.

  It moves at incredible speed. Holmes looks to the seats. Lestrade and his burly colleague are watching, aghast. Scuttle stands beside them, as stiff as a pillar, eyes ready to pop from his head and bounce onto the stage.

  “Arrest those two!” Sherlock cries, motioning to the magicians. Nottingham is frozen behind the cage, in shock. Hemsworth, who had rushed across the stage to save his pet, is near Holmes, and both are close to the staircase — the one the lizard is descending. They both race after it.

  With His Highness fleeing, Lestrade and his colleague concentrate their efforts on Nottingham, but he snaps from his numbed state and resists them. By the time they have him under control, Holmes, Hemsworth, and the dragon are gone.

  It is just the three of them in the basement now. The big reptile reaches the bottom of the stairs and pounds across the floor on its enormous claws, its shackles clanking on the floor. When it gets to the staircase on the dressing-room side, it begins to climb. Sherlock, who is well ahead of Hemsworth, remembers that he left the little door open that leads to the passageway under the rooms. As he reaches the bottom of the staircase and looks up, he can barely make out the image of the dragon. But he can see where it goes: through the passage door … a perfect, tight fit.

  Holmes isn’t about to go in there with the creature. Instead, he climbs the stairs, his legs churning, his breathing heavy. He flings open the hallway entrance and runs toward Hemsworth’s dressing room. He cannot recall if he closed the floorboards. It takes him mere seconds to arrive. He holds the door open a tiny crack to peer inside. Suddenly, the creature rams into him, knocking him back against the wall as it explodes through the doorway. It smelled me at the door! It has incredible hunting instincts! For an instance, the dragon is turned toward the far end of the hall. Hemsworth comes through the basement door. It spots him. What should I do? thinks Sherlock. Why not let his pet kill him? But that wouldn’t be right. It would be vengeance, not justice. I must be better than the villains.

  Sherlock shouts at the lizard to distract it. It looks at him, then turns back to Hemsworth. It, too, must make a choice. It chooses the boy.

  Holmes is in an enclosed space. He has just one option. Get outside! He sprints down the hallway with the dragon in pursuit. He can’t believe how fast it can move. At the door, Sherlock fumbles with the handle. The beast nears. Its huge tongue darts out at him. The boy turns the knob and rushes through. The skies have opened and it is pouring rain, making the evening prematurely dark. Sherlock can’t take the time to close the door behind him. The dragon emerges into the soggy London night!

  They are in the little courtyard behind the theater. The boy realizes he is leading the lizard. It is following me! I must take it away from people. He chooses the back alley that goes out to Jermyn Street. As he runs down it, boots smacking on the wet cobblestones, he hears Hemsworth pursuing them, shouting at the dragon as if it were a dog off its leash that must come home. He IS mad!

  The boy is not just running for his life now, he is running for the lives of every Londoner in their path. He must choose a route that is nearly deserted. It helps that the night is inclement. But he knows that some citizens, poor folks mostly, are almost always on the streets. It is time to think like Malefactor again, use the alleys and mews and the narrowest little arteries.

  He is well aware of why Malefactor came into his mind. It isn’t just because of his rival’s ability to navigate the back roads of London. He is here. Sherlock knows it. He could feel his presence when he got to the courtyard. The young crime lord and his minions are running, somewhere behind, waiting for their chance. He turns left off Jermyn Street, quickly finds an alley going south, and heads to where he tracked Miss Venus: toward the park at St. James Square. Surely not many pedestrians will be there in the rain. Sherlock hears a scream or two behind him, but it is so dark where he and the beast are going, mostly out of the gas-lit areas, and only under the lamps for brief stretches in pelting rain, that most of the people who are out don’t even notice them. Sherlock keeps the dragon close to his heels, no more than twenty feet away and never out of sight. It seems to be fixed on him. He wonders if it really wants to kill him, or if it is terrified too, and just concentrating on a living thing it knows. From the square, he continues south-east, becoming drenched, but with an idea forming in his mind.

  Within minutes he approaches Pall Mall Street, the elegant, wide avenue that runs from Trafalgar Square almost to Buckingham Palace. Private clubs are on the south side here, places where London’s wealthy gentlemen go to drink, smoke cigars, read papers, and converse. Rich people don’t go out into the rain; the place is deserted. Holmes sends the lizard past their wide front doors. Then Sherlock leads the creature to the far end of the queen’s park. No one goes to a park in a downpour. He hopes the swans are farther to the west, closer to the palace. They would make quick, tasty meals. But there is no sign of them. The dragon slows on the grass here, so Sherlock slows too, tempting it to keep moving. They enter an alley on the far side of the park, rush down an artery past the Admiralty, and cross Whitehall Street, just a stone’s throw from Scotland Yard.

  But Sherlock isn’t directing the murderous reptile to police headquarters. He doubts it would go willingly into a cell! He can smell the River Thames and knows he is nearing his goal.

  Darting through the courtyard in Scotland Yard, breathing heavily, soaked to the skin, he screams as loudly as he can. Three constables come rushing out, one after the other. Though they miss seeing the boy pursued by the strange beast, they spot Hemsworth, still a suspect in the Nottingham case, running, looking raving mad in the dark London rain … apparently chasing someone. They pursue him. Sherlock enters a small street on the other side of the Yard, looks back to make sure the beast and everyone else is following, and somehow picks up his speed. They are on a downward slope and up ahead the boy can see a series of wharves and the dark surface of the river beyond that. There are few gaslights here. The rain begins to subside.

  He leads the lizard right out onto a long wharf, well over the Thames. The water is deep here. His boots pound on the slippery, damp boards; the lizard’s shackles clang. This seems the best place to corner the beast. First, it is far away from people. That is most important. Secondly, there are police officers to help. Thirdly, there are fishing nets on the wharves, some of them with thick-corded webs capable of holding a shark. They could be thrown over the big reptile to subdue it. If need be, the police (he is hoping at least one is armed with a revolver) can kill it, quickly and humanely, where no one will see it happen, or be injured in the action. He is praying they can capture it alive.

  But the dragon does something he hadn’t expected. Out at the end of the wharf sits a ship that is being refitted. Next to it is a raft about eight feet square, that workers must stand on while making repairs. When the creature nears Sherlock, almost at the edge, it spots the raft and slows to a crawl. Holmes, gasping for air, slips past his foe and gets to the land side of the wharf. The dragon comes to a halt at the very edge, looking down, examining the raft. It seems mesmerized.

  Hemsworth, then the police, arrive on the wharf, some fifty feet away.

  The magician moves closer. “It remembers,” he says.

  The officers of the Force, standing not far behind him, have no idea what that means, but it isn’t a surprise that His Highness would say something incomprehensible — they believe he is loony. Neither can they make out what is happening way out there in the gloom at the far end of the wharf. All they know is that the boy whose voice they had heard screaming in their courtyard is still out there, even though his pursuer has stopped. “Is he committing suicide?” one of them asks.

  Suddenly, the dragon drops off the end of the wharf and crashes onto the raft. The police rush forward. When they arrive, they are surprised to see
the boy still standing there. They seize him as he looks down to the water. He is watching the creature on the floating boards below, as it grips the wood surface with it big claws, shackles still on its feet, artificial wings drooping on its back. It snaps at the rope that holds the raft to the boat, perhaps remembering the cords that held it to the cage. The rope tears free, and the little vessel begins to drift out into the muddy Thames in the diminishing rain. It has grown very dark, and none of the Bobbies notice the raft, but Sherlock watches the dragon looking back at its tormentors, as if satisfied to be free of them, and London, and human civilization. Within seconds, it is just an outline on its boat in the water, nearly beyond sight, going east and picking up speed, toward the North Sea and the ocean.

  “Is there something out there?” asks one officer, squinting into the night.

  Downriver, on the next wharf, Sherlock sees the silhouettes of three figures watching the dragon drift by. One wears a black tailcoat.

  Hemsworth stares across the rainy river toward the sea. “It remembers,” he repeats.

  FINAL ACT

  It takes Sherlock Holmes a few minutes to convince the constables to bring Hemsworth back to the Scotland Yard offices. Nothing has been proven against him in the Nottingham case, they insist (two of them had seen the amazing hat feat with their own eyes), and it isn’t a crime to chase someone in the night. So, the boy has to tell a lie, explaining that His Highness was trying to force him off the wharf and into the water. Hemsworth smirks at this, but then Holmes also assures them that once they get to the Yard, Lestrade’s son will be there with more serious allegations against the magician.

  His Highness goes without resisting, though he glances back at the water a few times as they usher him away.