Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula

by Steve Seitz

  “Get her a cab, will you, Watson? No, don’t touch the blood. Once she is on her way, we may proceed with the examination.”

  “Holmes, have you lied to me?”

  “Not in the least. I have not taken anyone’s blood myself, and never will.”

  “Then how did this happen?”

  Holmes reached into his pocket and produced the false vampire teeth he had shown Jonathan Harker so many months ago.

  My stomach recoiled when I realized what my friend had in mind. Once again, he would use his own death to rid the world of great evil, and damn the price to those who love him! What must have happened to make this seem a sensible thing?

  “I can’t let you do it!” I cried. “There has to be a better way!”

  Holmes shook his head slowly.

  “If this be the price of immortality, it is far too high,” he said. “I have spent hours in libraries studying all the vampire folklore I can find. In no instance is there a story of a vampire shedding this curse and rejoining human society. It is the stake alone that can free him. How long can I continue like this? And I am doomed in any case.”

  For the only time in our long acquaintance, I heard self-pity in his voice.

  “Sooner or later, I must succumb to these cravings. Sooner or later, I will create new vampires whether I desire to or not. Godalming has a hard heart, a steady hand, experience, and he despises me. Once he sees Miss Keswick, he will want me dead. His hatred of me will accomplish what his love did for Lucy Westenra. Once the deed is done, vampires will walk the streets of London no more.”

  “Holmes, I-”

  Holmes crossed the room with surprising speed and spun me toward the door.

  “I am sorry to end our partnership like this,” he hissed, “but you must not interfere. Let me end my pain.”

  I looked into his black, bloodshot eyes. The thing that looked back at me was not Sherlock Holmes. It had his features, his intensity, his voice. But the soul, the passion for justice, and most of all the humanity were now nothing more than a dying coal in the chamber that once held a warm and human, if distant, heart.

  He was right, and I knew it. I did not resist, and I had no stomach for the task I had just proposed. Who could I tell? Seward? Van Helsing? Still ...

  “Just one thing, Holmes.” I extended my hand. He took it, and I placed my other hand on his wrist, where the pulse should be. To my astonishment, he had one: much slower than one would expect, but a pulse nonetheless.

  “Holmes, if there is a chance-”

  “There isn’t, John. Go back to your wife, your practice and the morning sunshine. Promise me that when you write your memoirs, think of me as a creature of this great and grand city, not a lurker in the night. Take the girl and go.”

  Reluctantly, I led the listless Amanda Keswick back to the street. Her cab was still there; evidently it had been instructed to wait.

  “Have you been paid?” I asked.

  “Not for the next trip, sir.”

  “Take the girl back to the Langham. There’s a fiver in it for you if you don’t tell anyone there that she was here.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  July 8, 1891

  I slept fitfully, my dreams filled with strange creatures of the night, of my dearest friend looming over a helpless woman with gore dripping from his fangs for much of it.

  Toward dawn, though, I became aware of a slow, rhythmic thumping in the back of my head. The vampires faded, and I was back in the lecture hall at the University of London. Old MacGillivray stood before us, indifferently mapping out the nervous system as was his way.

  MacGillivray was a beastly bore, the sort of lecturer who presented the material as dryly and monotonously as possible, rarely revising it unless forced by events and new science to do so. He droned like an industrial loom.

  “The autonomic nerves are responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the human body,” he said drearily, lightly tracing his pointer across the anatomy chart. “They regulate everything from the irises to the heartbeat-”

  I jolted myself to attention.

  “-blood vessels, glands, lungs and similar organs function without using our conscious thoughts in order to do so. But the autonomic system is linked to the conscious mind. If we become angry or aroused, that will increase the heartbeat.”

  MacGillivray buzzed on, the thumping continued, my interest began to wane, and my head nodded as it so often did during his dreary lecturing. But on waking, his description of the autonomic system lingered, as did the measured, steady heartbeat that did so much to lull me off. I wrote down everything I could remember before the dream faded completely, but the thing that lingered was this: the heartbeat is an autonomic nervous function.

  The slow, steady pounding was Holmes’ pulse as I remembered it.

  So what is the nature of vampirism?

  All of a sudden, I understood in a flood of hot perception. Magic had nothing to do with vampirism! Vampirism is a disease, one that somehow reactivates the nervous system after death. The body’s functions resume to a limited degree, but with one critical difference: it can’t manufacture blood. It can’t eat as we do, it can’t sustain itself. It must obtain its blood from outside sources.

  This explains the newly-grown teeth, the slow pulse, the foetid breath.

  Now the darkness of superstition has been put aside in place of a plausible scientific theory, and there was no scientific researcher more tireless than Sherlock Holmes. Where there is a theory, there is hope; where there is a disease, there is a cure.

  I dressed in haste, and made sure my revolver was loaded.

  “Call Dr. Jackson for me, Mary, and see if he can take my patients to-day,” I told my wife. “No time for breakfast!”

  The sun was bright and the air thick with a grayish, sulfurous haze as the hansom dashed over the cobbles toward Baker Street. The heat was oppressive, and my shirt soaked with perspiration by the time we rounded the corner. My heart banged in my head when I recognized the Godalming crest on the coach parked in front of 221B.

  An angry and astonished Mrs. Hudson stared at me in fear and fury as, gun in hand, I pounded up the stairs toward the ominously ajar door.

  “I’ll explain later!” I cried as I jumped past her.

  A figure appeared in the doorway: Seward.

  “Dr. Watson, I-”

  “Back away, Doctor,” I said, pointing the Webley’s barrel straight at his nose. “You two are about to make a drastic mistake.”

  “Arthur!” he barked.

  Godalming came out of Holmes’ bedroom, no bloodstains on him, thank God. He wore the drab, dusty clothing of a workman. He might have been a gardener.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “I am a doctor and an old Army man, Lord Godalming. I know how to use this, where a bullet will hurt the most and exactly what it will do at close range. Please sit down, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Mrs. Hudson hesitantly poked her head in the door.

  “Ah, Mrs. Hudson,” I said, forcing myself to calm down. “I believe some tea would be welcome about now, wouldn’t it, gentlemen?”

  “Dr. Watson-”

  “All in good time, Mrs. Hudson. All in good time. Tea for three.”

  “Ver- ver- very good, sir.”

  “I take it Holmes is in there?” I asked Godalming.

  “He’s in a coffin on the floor.”

  “Sit down, gentlemen.”

  I outlined my theory.

  “Come now,” Godalming said. “How do you explain the Count’s ability to transform himself, or Lucy’s turning herself into mist and drifting into her tomb?”

  “I don’t believe those things happened, my lord,” I replied. “You were deceived; how, I cannot say. Seward, y
ou have the facilities we need to study this. We can keep Holmes under observation, we can-”

  “You’re mad!” Godalming snarled, rising from his chair until I swung my barrel in his direction. “You haven’t seen what he’s done to Amanda!”

  “He’s drugged her,” I said. “Seward will tell you she’s lost no blood. Take a look on the chemistry table. Go on. I won’t shoot.”

  Godalming approached the acid-scarred table with its tubes, flasks, and burners and saw, as I did now that there was sunlight, that it had been in recent use.

  Mrs. Hudson came in with the tea tray, setting it down on the sideboard. I put my revolver on the right arm of my chair, where it would be within easy reach, and poured the tea myself. Mrs. Hudson slipped out.

  “John, what’s this?” he asked, motioning Seward over.

  Seward examined the tins on the table.

  “I’d say he’s been making a heroin solution,” Seward said.

  “A little more believable than vampire visitations, what?” I said. “He injected it into Miss Keswick with false vampire teeth.”

  “But why?” Godalming asked, confused. “What purpose could all this serve?”

  “He wants to make you angry enough to end his torment, my lord, with your stake and hammer. He does not know he has a disease.”

  “And you don’t have a treatment, Watson.”

  Our heads swung toward the bedroom door. A ghastly, pale and weak Holmes, clad in his familiar mouse-colored dressing-gown, hovered in the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back.

  Both Godalming and Seward thrust crucifixes at him. Holmes walked blithely by and took his usual armchair by the fireplace.

  “I’m afraid I grew up without the benefit of Catholic superstition,” he said blandly. “Dracula and his acolytes may have taken to heart the fallacies of medieval times, but we modern vampires are made of sterner stuff. I’m afraid I didn’t hear all of your theory, Watson.”

  I reiterated what I told the others.

  “So you see, Holmes, there is a good chance that you have a strange and unique illness. If we can discover its nature, we can discover its cure. We can end vampirism and the barbaric practices surrounding it.”

  “Have you worked out how to keep me supplied with blood while we work on this?”

  “That does present a certain difficulty.”

  “Nor can we say how long it will take to obtain results, if ever.”

  “Do you prefer the alternative, Holmes?”

  “I do!” Godalming cried, snatching my pistol, levelling it at Holmes’ head and firing; he had been edging towards it while I was otherwise occupied. Holmes dodged to the right and the first bullet missed. The second struck something metal in the side pocket and ricocheted, hitting him elsewhere on his body. Holmes’ eyes bulged and blood spurted from his mouth. He doubled over and collapsed.

  Enraged, I cracked Godalming hard across the jaw, felt a tooth or two loosen, but that brought no satisfaction. I struck him again, this time in the nose, and would have beaten him into a bleeding, unrecognizable side of beef had Seward not pulled me off.

  “Stop it! Stop it, man!” Seward cried. “It’s over! It’s over!”

  Godalming fell to the rug, gasping and bleeding. Hot tears streamed down my face as Mrs. Hudson’s heavy feet stomped quickly up the stairs.

  “Mr. Holmes! Dr. Watson! What could have-”

  And then she saw the carnage.

  I placed my arm around that good and stalwart lady’s shoulders and gazed at my friend’s bleeding body. Whether he was alive or dead, I could not tell.

  “I’m so sorry you had to see that, Mrs. Hudson,” I said as softly as I could.

  Godalming rose shakily to his feet.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor Watson,” he said. “It had to be-”

  “It did not!” I snapped. “We had a chance to rid the world of a horrible scourge and save one of the finest minds this century has produced! You just sent us back to the Middle Ages!”

  “Let’s go, Arthur,” Seward said. “I’ll fix you up. Please leave Mr. Holmes to me, Doctor. I am in a somewhat calmer frame of mind.”

  My heart broken, I sank into my chair and stared at the broken, unmoving body of my closest and dearest and most admirable friend, truly gone now. So much adventure. So much heartache.

  “Mrs. Hudson,” I said at last, “please summon Mycroft Holmes. We can’t let a word of what happened get into the papers. There would be riots. And though this may prove next to impossible, I implore you not to say a word to anyone.”

  “Not to worry, Doctor Watson,” she said, covering the body with a blanket from a closet I’d forgotten. “Please join me for a cup of tea downstairs. I’d just like to sit a moment and remember him. I need someone nearby right now.”

  Unable to bear more, I took a last look at the corpse on the floor, shuddering as spots of blood began to spread across the blanket and the icy hand of sorrow gripped my heart. It saddens me to think that my last memory of Sherlock Holmes will be one of a horrid, violent death. Let the matter rest in Mycroft’s hands; the Holmes stoicism will surely see him through.

  “I can do no more for him now,” I said, patting Mrs. Hudson’s hand, “but I can be make sure he will not be forgotten.”

  Chapter Sixteen: The Great Hiatus

  [Editor’s note: For the full facts relating to the murder of the Hon. Ronald Adair, refer to Watson’s published account of the case, “The Empty House.” I have omitted them here for the sake of brevity. -SS]

  Dr. Watson’s Journal

  April 6, 1894

  The fullest flower of the English language cannot express my feelings on what I can only describe as the miracle of yesterday. For the first time since I cremated my beloved Mary, there is sunshine, nay, a bright new star, in my heart. Even now, I cannot fully believe it; and this is just as well, for only the most charitable of readers could accept what has happened. These facts will likely never see the light of day.

  But the irrefutable fact remains: Sherlock Holmes has returned from the dead!

  I had spent much of my day at No. 427 Park Lane, the scene of the murder of the Hon. Ronald Adair, a minor nobleman who usually spent his days at the city’s card tables, generally without spectacular successes or failures. The fact that he had spent the last game of his life at the table with the notorious Col. Sebastian Moran aroused my suspicions, of course, but though I applied the methods of my old friend to the best of my admittedly limited ability, I could not work out just how a murderer could get into Adair’s upstairs den, lock the door, shoot him in the head and escape unseen and unheard, unless Colonel Moran had somehow developed the ability to take invisibly to the air.

  On my way home I bumped into a stooped, elderly bookseller and caused him to drop some of the books in his arms. I apologized and thought that was that, but he followed me home, thanking me profusely for helping him pick his books up from the cobblestones. To be truthful, his manner began to annoy me, but he directed my attention to a gap on my bookshelf, which he offered to fill with some of his stock. I moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me.

  When I turned again Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that I must have fainted for the first and the last time in my life.

  Certainly a grey mist swirled before my eyes, and when it cleared I found my collar-ends undone and the tingling after-taste of brandy upon my lips. Holmes was bending over my chair, his flask in his hand.

  “My dear Watson,” said the well-remembered voice, “I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.”

  I gripped him by the arm.

  “Holmes!” I cried. “Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive? How is
it possible? You were twice dead when I left you!”

  “Wait a moment,” said he. “Are you sure that you are really fit to discuss things? I have given you a serious shock by my unnecessarily dramatic reappearance.”

  “Dramatic” was hardly the word. The last time I saw Holmes, he was a dying vampire, lying in a bleeding heap on the floor of 221B as my Webley smoked in the hand of Lord Godalming. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them. My old friend still stood there, alive and breathing. He had somehow beaten his hideous disease. Again I gripped him by the sleeve and felt the thin, sinewy arm beneath it.

  “Well, you’re not a vampire, anyhow,” said I. “My dear chap, I am overjoyed to see you. Sit down and tell me how you came alive again.”

  He sat opposite to me and lit a cigarette in his old nonchalant manner, looking even thinner and keener than of old, but there was a dead-white tinge in his aquiline face which told me that his life recently had not been a healthy one.

  I bombarded him with a thousand questions, and here I condense his answers:

  “Had you stayed upstairs rather than tend to Mrs. Hudson after Lord Godalming shot me, you would have seen me stagger to my feet after about an hour or so. His bullet was deflected off the derringer I had hidden in my gown, but that slowed it down enough so that it lodged in my breastbone. A subcutaneous wound; I removed the bullet myself later. Vampires can be resilient creatures.

  “By the time Mrs. Hudson arrived with Mycroft, I had formulated a plan, one which I hope you will understand and which pleases you.

  “Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson agreed to keep the Baker Street rooms as they were, pending my return if I was successful, and we all agreed to keep silent until the time was right. The world already presumed me dead, which I was, and there was no need for anyone to believe otherwise.

  “Your theory gave me a new mission, for you were right, my dear Watson. You’ve read Darwin?”

  “Of course.”

  “I believe vampirism serves an evolutionary function; in a way, it serves as life’s last chance. While a living person carries the disease, it lies dormant. But it is activated once the body dies. Incubation takes about three days. If the body is still somewhat intact, many of the autonomic functions resume. But the host must supply the blood, which is why the canines develop. Once the disease is purged, they are no longer needed, and the body replaces them, as it does when a child grows into adulthood.”