by John Pirillo
Sherlock Holmes
Night of Terror
John Pirillo
Copyright 2017
Contents
Night of Terror
Incident: Leeds near the Thames
Chapter One: Emergence
Chapter Two: Houghton and Houghton Law Firm
Chapter Three: 221B Baker Street
Chapter Four: Tesla’s Lab
Chapter Five: Scotland Yard
Chapter Six: Desperate Measures
Chapter Seven: Hyde and Go Seek
Chapter Eight: Death Again
Chapter Nine: Redemption and Resurrection
Chapter Ten: The Madness Strikes
Chapter Eleven: The Master of the World
Chapter Twelve: 221B Baker Street
Chapter Thirteen: Baker Street
Author's Note
Glossary of the Baker Street Universe
Author’s Note
Other Works by the Author
Sherlock Holmes Collections
Sherlock Holmes Standalone Stories
Journey to the Center of the World Series
The Adventures of Lord When Series
The Secret Adventures of Alexander Dumas and Jules Verne Series
The Rocketman Series
Fractal Flame Series
Chesterton K
Angel Hamilton
Incident: Leeds near the Thames
The thief ran like the devil was after him. To him it was. Holmes and Watson split up to cut him off. Holmes cutting across bales of silk and hay, through stacks of fresh lumber and past barrels of ale and hard liquors. Watson darted straight past all that and to the right, crossing behind several carts from vendors that had been left out for the night, their windows shut against inclement weather and thieves.
“Halt!” Watson hollered at the thief.
The thief did everything but stop. He leaped onto a fire escape and struck upwards for the rooftops.
Watson cursed. “Always the rooftops, blast them all to hell!”
He caught the lower rung of the fire escape which had drawn upwards again, grabbed it downwards and then began swiftly climbing as best he could. He was encumbered by his black bag, which he never left behind. It had proven the saving of him and Holmes more than once and other innocent lives many more times than that, and so he never left it behind.
“Be still!” Holmes cried out from above.
Watson reached the rooftop to find Holmes already there holding the thief by his two arms. The person was struggling to break free, kicking and hollering.
Holmes ignored the curses, and did his best to avoid the kicks, but some connected. Ordinarily, the man would have been down by a move from Holmes, but evidently he hadn’t had the chance to do so, as the blaggart was fighting hard still to break free of Holmes.
Watson groaned at that. Holmes would be hurting for days after this. He commiserated, his own right knee still hurting from the whacking it go from an itinerant Midnight Angel hoping to run off with his black bag without him.
The thief saw Watson, who approached with his weapon out and froze.
“Good lad!” Watson said, gesturing with his weapon. “Get down on the rooftop. Now!”
The thief complied.
Watson drew a pair of cuffs from his bag and tossed them to Holmes who rapidly cuffed the thief.
Watson came over and gently rolled over the thief, then gasped. “God help us! Another woman!”
The woman thief leered at him. “And you’re another man,” she shot back. She gave him an up and down and then added, “Mostly.”
Watson blushed. “Here now, that’s no way for a lady to talk!”
The woman thief spit at him, “Don’t insult me you fat slob!” She laughed.
Watson dodged the spit, but not the insult. “Perhaps a few years behind bars will teach you some manners then.”
Holmes laughed.
“Seems you’ve made a new friend. Watson.”
“A friend I shall gladly remit to Scotland Yard once they catch up with us.”
Huffing and puffing behind Watson caused him to turn.
Inspector Bloodstone was stalking towards him, followed by his son, Constable Evans. The two red haired men stopped before the woman, surprised looks on their faces.
“Our society is falling apart for sure,” Inspector Bloodstone gasped.
Constable Evans grinned. “She’s a cute one, she is.”
“Constable!” Inspector Bloodstone warned his son.
The woman thief managed to sit up. She looked Constable Evans up and down several times. “And you’re a man,” she said.
Watson waited for the next words which would surely disable Constable Evans and his sense of self worth as it had his own.
“And a right handsome, beddable one too,” she went on without a leer, but with a smirky smile instead.
Constable Evans burst into laughter.
Watson let out a sound of disgust.
Holmes dropped to a knee next to the woman. “Why were you trying to break into Tesla’s lab?”
“I had orders.”
“From whom?”
She looked away from Holmes to Constable Evans. “Have him ask me and I might answer.”
Constable Evans looked to Holmes, who nodded.
“From whom did you receive orders,” Constable Evans asked, his eyes locked on hers.
“It’s not from whom, but what,” she replied.
Then her whole body began to shake violently. Constable Evans and Watson rushed to hold her steady, but it got worse and worse.
Her eyes widened and she gave Constable Evans a look of utter despair. “Matey, you and I could have had some good times together!”
Then her body began to glow a bright red.
“BACK!” Holmes ordered.
Everyone let go and dropped back beside Holmes, who pulled out his own weapon and leveled it at the girl.
“What are you doing, Holmes?” The Inspector demanded. “You can’t just shoot an unarmed woman!”
Holmes shot her twice. Once in the forehead and once in the heart.
She continued to shake and tremble, her eyes still wide open.
A voice came from her lips, but not her own now, but something far darker, far more hideous and sinister.
“I am back!”
“Run!” Holmes cried. “Your very souls are at stake!”
He urged Watson ahead of them and they dashed for the fire escape, followed closely by the Inspector and Constable Evans, who looked back once and felt every hair on his body stand up.
Something was emerging from the girl’s body. Something that his wildest imagination could never have experienced, even in his most terrible of nightmares.
Chapter One: Emergence
Light of Moon
Light of Day
One is love
One is prey.
Who shall render
The dying stroke
The wise man
Or the poor folk?
Who will answer?
Who I say?
-- Doctor John Watson
MidBells
London
All Hallows Eve
White Chapel
“I don’t care what your father says, Norma, I am not going to become a lawyer. They all grow old and fat and squeeze the poor for every last dime,” complained Thomas Eddington.
Norma, holding tightly onto her finance’s right arm, stepped onto the sidewalk with him. They were on the late side of returning her home. Her father was going to be stark raving mad when they came to the door. He was old school and not the modern type which accepted a grown woman’s right to do some things on her own.
Women were gaining more and more rights under the Good Queen of Scots, Mary, but not nearly fast enough for most, though some, sadly, didn’t care at all and preferred having the man do everything…even the thinking…while they were no more than indentured whores, manufacturing babies, house cleaners and cooks.
Harsh, but true in her mind to her.
Her cute button nose wrinkled up in distaste at that thought. Who would want a man making all a self’s decisions. That was insanity! Next thing you know they would be telling you what time to go to bed, what to eat, whom to be friends with and whether you should have a baby or not. No, she thought inside herself, I’m putting my foot down on that!
“Are you even listening to me, Norma?” Thomas demanded to know, his normally pale complexion beginning to tinge with red as he thought he was being ignored once more. His needs for attention sometimes were insurmountable!
“No, I am merely trying to decide how best to approach father once he opens the door and finds you there with me standing beside you and late, late, late.”
Thomas suddenly became as deflated as one of those circus balloons. His puffy behavior was all show and no substance. Yes, he could try to bully her around and as long as her father liked him, he would. Personally, she hoped to marry him, if only to get out of a house with such a tyrannical man ruling it. But she would not love, honor and OBEY him. Never!
Even if Thomas was a bit huffy and puffy at times, at base, he was a good hearted man. He even allowed her to suggest what to eat and where half the time, claiming a woman had half as much rights as a man to decide for herself.
She smiled at that. She felt a woman had a hundred percent right to decide for herself, but she was in no mood to dissuade him from his error in thinking. Not tonight, when she had a very angry father yet to face.
“Oh, there’s that,” he admitted, deflating even further as he considered the look her father might emerge with. Not nice, he was sure. And also quite likely. He was as she had already thought to herself, very, very old school.
Something flickered in an alley to their right as they neared it.
“What was that?” She demanded of his attention.
He hadn’t been looking that way. He had been looking down. A man should be looking up and properly guarding one’s path.
“That! That!” She insisted, pointing towards the alley they approached.
Darkness.
“I see nothing.”
She stomped a pretty right foot angrily. “You never pay attention to anything but what you want and think!” She said in a blistering voice.
He shriveled like an old rose beneath her outburst. “I’ll do better.”
“You’d better do much better, Thomas, I swear, or father will not only throw me out on the street, but he will shoot you square between the eyes!”
Thomas groaned in anticipation of the event. “Must you terrify me like that?”
Bright flash from the alley.
She saw it once more, but again his eyes were on his feet and the pavement and not upon the walk ahead of them.
“Again! It has happened again and you still haven’t noticed?” She asked, her voice cracking from fear and distress.
She stopped walking.
“I shan’t pursue another inch of this walkway until you find out what is making that light and assure me it is safe to pass that alleyway!’ She told him in her most emphatic and stern voice.
She smiled inwardly. Let him think he will be the master in our relationship; but it is truly I who will be! She thought, almost cackling in a wicked voice inside herself at the look on his face at that moment.
“Very well, I shall prove my valor and worth to you. If I can do this, then your father will be no more than a breeze blowing across my face once we return you home.”
She smiled. But inwardly she knew her father was more likely to be a hurricane blowing him away. But she appreciated his gallantry. That much she liked for certain. Though she would never let him see that. Better to keep a man always on the edge and uncertain if you wanted to stay in charge of them.
He didn’t wait for her to comment, he raised the cane he never really used in his left hand and approached the alley. “Whoever is in there had better be warned, I do not take to violence easily, nor lightly revert to it, but I am armed and dangerous,” he announced as he reached the alley.
He peered into it.
It was all shadows and darkness.
He smiled.
Nothing ado.
He turned to look at Norma. “Nothing here at all, my dear.”
“You sure, Thomas? I distinctly saw a brilliant light come forth from it. Red light!”
He glanced into the alley again.
“No, nothing there.”
He smiled.
She began walking to join him.
A brilliant red light burst forth from the alley.
Thomas turned around and then he screamed as if he were about to die.
Norma didn’t wait to see if that were going to be the case. She grabbed the hems of her skirt and then high tailed it the opposite direction as fast as she could.
The sidewalk behind and ahead of her flared briefly with the brilliance of a ruby red light and then it dimmed and was gone.
Chapter Two: Houghton and Houghton Law Firm
Michael Forsythe looked out his narrow window onto the street below. Not a single vehicle or pedestrian. Midbells had barely passed, which would explain that. He sighed and turned back to the pile of paperwork in front of him on his much too small desk.
He was the Legal Assistant to Houghton and Houghton, brothers whose father had founded the law firm some fifty odd years ago. He was paid a nice sum to do all the dirty work as he described it to his wife, Emily.
“Now don’t complain, Michael, it pays for our lovely flat and,” she held up baby Francine, who made goo goo sounds as she stuck her fist into her tiny, cute mouth, “and insures our daughter has a roof over her head.”
Michael smiled at that memory. True enough. But law was hell. It took hours and hours of work just to get the basic paper works done. One form after another. And never just one copy, always in triplicate. And then copies of those for the attorneys.
He swiped at his forehead when something touched it. “Dratted flies!” He cursed.
The buzzing of the fly told him he had missed.
He was almost done.
He sorted out the last bundle of paperwork, noting the dates on them, and then shoved them onto a wooden tray he had purchased for that purpose. His employers supplied him nothing but the miserably too small desk, saying his salary was more than adequate to pay for anything else he might need.
Not only was Houghton and Houghton successful, but it was also known to be a miserly place of employment. He had taken the job reluctantly, but knowing his wife was pregnant, needed medical care and a roof over her head, he had immediately taken the job offer, even though as he shook hands with the sweaty palmed lawyers, whom he immediately despised, he felt the end of the world had come.
Doctor Watson had visited him and his wife yesterday and after he had examined Emily, he had taken Michael aside, “You look absolutely awful, Michael. Are you eating well enough? Do you need some money for food?”
Watson was like that. He never took pay for his services when they were low on funds and he was the first to offer help when they had none. He saw Watson as the father he never had. His real father had disappeared at sea, lost in a tropical storm that had blown out of nowhere and taken his father and all hands to the bottom of the sea and Davy Jones ’s locker.
Something flashed out in the street which he saw from the edge of his vision. He wheeled his chair about to look.
Nothing.
Peculiar.
He stood up and peered out the window.
No one.
No, wait!
Someone was there. Just inside the shadow of a large sign that cast a huge enveloping shadow on that portion of the
street.
The Tesla Street Lamps were bright, but not enough to illuminate this far from them.
He frowned.
He had to go home soon.
Did he dare do so with some stranger out there?
Then the shadow moved. As it did it flashed a brilliant red, and then turned black again.
Very, very peculiar.
He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
The shadow stepped into the street, but the streetlights didn’t illuminate it in any detail. Was that possible?
He strained his eyes to see better. This defied physics as he knew it.
Whatever it was it slowly looked up towards him. As it did luminous red eyes glared at him.
The shadow flashed again, and this time he saw what it truly looked like.
Hideous!
He immediately slammed his window shut. Pulled the curtains across them and ran to his office door and locked it, making sure that all bolts were drawn tightly.
Sweating with fear he took his desk and shoved it against the door to keep it blocked. He then moved a filing cabinet against the desk to further strengthen the block he had made.
The whole time he was doing these things, he kept muttering over and over, “Oh God, oh God, oh God!”
The vision of what he had seen momentarily was etched into his brain forever as he looked for more heavy things to strengthen the barrier he was constructing, but there was no more. It was all there against the door, except for his office chair.
Panting, he fell back onto his chair, the only other furniture. His fear began to subside somewhat, but then another spurt of alarm shot through him once he realized what he had unconsciously done in his haste to defend himself from that terrible vision outside.
The paperwork he had spent the last three days ordering and managing was now all over the floor, totally a mess! It would take days to put it all back into order again, to create new documents to replace the torn and crumpled ones.
He groaned.
He was going to be fired.
What was he going to do?
How could he explain what he had seen, what he had done once the lawyers returned tomorrow morning?
He felt so defeated and exhausted that he fell onto his chair, almost knocking it and he over as it tilted sharply. He recovered and put his face into his hands and began to sob miserably.
