Our trap was met by a liveried servant who instructed lesser servants to carry our meagre luggage into the manor. Lady Fairclough, Holmes and I were ourselves conducted into the main hall.
The building was lighted with oversized candles whose flame was so shielded as to prevent any danger of the coal walls catching fire. It struck me that the Anthracite Palace was one of the strangest architectural conceits I had ever encountered.
“Not a place I would like to live in, eh, Holmes?” I was trying for a tone of levity, but must confess that I failed to achieve it.
We were left waiting for an excessive period of time, in my opinion, but at length a tall wooden door swung back and a woman of commanding presence—exotic in appearance with her swarthy complexion, flashing eyes, sable locks and shockingly reddened lips—entered the hall. She nodded to Holmes and myself and exchanged a frigid semblance of a kiss with Lady Fairclough, whom she addressed as “sister.”
Lady Fairclough demanded to see her brother, but Mrs Llewellyn refused converse until we were shown to our rooms and had time to refresh ourselves. We were summoned, in due course, to the dining hall. I was famished, and both relieved and my appetite further excited by the delicious odours that came to use as we were seated at the long, linen-covered table.
Only four persons were present. These were of course Holmes and myself, Lady Fairclough, and our hostess, Mrs Llewellyn.
Lady Fairclough attempted once again to inquire as to the whereabouts of her brother, Philip.
Her sister-in-law replied only, “He is pursuing his devotions. We shall see him when the time comes round.”
Failing to learn more about her brother, Lady Fairclough asked after the housekeeper, Mrs Morrissey.
“I have sad news, sister dear,” Mrs Llewellyn said. “Mrs Morrissey was taken ill very suddenly. Philip personally drove into Marthyr Tydhl to fetch a physician for her, but by the time they arrived, Mrs Morrissey had expired. She was buried in the town cemetery. This all happened just last week. I knew that you were already en route from Canada, and it seemed best not to further distress you with this information.”
“Oh, no,” Lady Fairclough gasped. “Not Mrs Morrissey! She was like a mother to me. She was the kindest, dearest of women. She—” Lady Fairclough stopped, pressing her hand to her mouth. She inhaled deeply. “Very well, then.”
I could see a look of determination rising like a banked flame deep in her eye. “If she has died there is naught to be done for it.”
There was a pillar of strength hidden within this seemingly weak female. I would not care to make an enemy of Lady Fairclough. I noted also that Mrs Llewellyn spoke English fluently but with an accent that I found thoroughly unpleasant. It seemed to me that she, in turn, found the language distasteful. Clearly, these two were fated to clash. But the tension of the moment was broken by the arrival of our viands.
The repast was sumptuous in appearance but every course, it seemed to me, had some flaw—an excessive use of spice, an overdone vegetable, an undercooked piece of meat or game, a fish that might have been kept a day too long before serving, a cream that had stood in a warm kitchen an hour longer than was wise. By the end of the meal my appetite had departed, but it was replaced by a sensation of queasiness and discomfort rather than satisfaction.
Servants brought cigars for Holmes and myself, an after-dinner brandy for the men and sweet sherry for the women, but I put out my cigar after a single draft and noticed that Holmes did the same with his own. Even the beverage seemed in some subtle way to be faulty.
“Mrs Llewellyn,” Lady Fairclough addressed her sister-in-law when at last the latter seemed unable longer to delay confrontation. “I received a telegram via transatlantic cable concerning the disappearance of my brother. He failed to greet us upon our arrival nor has there been any sign of his presence since then. I demand to know his whereabouts.”
“Sister dear,” replied Anastasia Romelly Llewellyn, “that telegram should never have been sent. Mrs Morrissey transmitted it from Marthyr Tydhl while in town on an errand for the Palace. When I learned of her presumption I determined to send her packing, I can assure you. It was only her unfortunate demise that prevented my doing so.”
At this point my friend Holmes addressed our hostess.
“Madam, Lady Fairclough has journeyed from Canada to learn of her brother’s circumstances. She has engaged me, along with my associate, Dr Watson, to assist her in this enterprise. It is not my desire to make this affair any more unpleasant than is necessary, but I must insist upon your providing the information that Lady Fairclough is seeking.”
I believe at this point that I observed a smirk, or at least the suggestion of one, pass across the face of Mrs Llewellyn. But she quickly responded to Holmes’s demand, her peculiar accent as pronounced and unpleasant as ever.
“We have planned a small religious service for this evening. You are all invited to attend, of course, even though I had expected only my dear sister-in-law to do so. However, the larger group will be accommodated.”
“What is the nature of this religious service?” Lady Fairclough demanded.
Mrs Llewellyn smiled. “It will be that of the Wisdom Temple, of course. The Wisdom Temple of the Dark Heavens. It is my hope that Bishop Romanova herself will preside, but absent her participation we can still conduct the service ourselves.”
I reached for my pocket watch. “It’s getting late, Madam. Might I suggest that we get started, then!”
Mrs Llewellyn turned her eyes upon me. In the flickering candlelight they seemed larger and darker than ever.
“You do not understand, Dr Watson. It is too early rather than too late to start our ceremony. We will proceed precisely at midnight. Until then, please feel free to enjoy the paintings and tapestries with which the Anthracite Palace is decorated, or pass the time in Mr Llewellyn’s library. Or, if you prefer, you may of course retire to your quarters and seek sleep.”
Thus it was that we three separated temporarily, Lady Fairclough to pass some hours with her brother’s chosen books, Holmes to an examination of the Palace’s art treasures, and I to bed.
I was awakened from a troubled slumber haunted by strange beings of nebulous form. Standing over my bed, shaking me by the shoulder, was my friend Sherlock Holmes. I could see a rim of snow adhering to the edges of his boots.
“Come, Watson,” said he, “the game is truly afoot, and it is by far the strangest game we are ever likely to pursue.”
Swiftly donning my attire, I accompanied Holmes as we made our way to Lady Fairclough’s chamber. She had retired there after spending the hours since dinner in her brother’s library, to refresh herself. She must have been awaiting our arrival, for she responded without delay to Holmes’s knock and the sound of his voice.
Before we proceeded farther Holmes drew me aside. He reached inside his vest and withdrew a small object which he held concealed in his hand. I could not see its shape, for he held it inside a clenched fist, but I could tell that it emitted a dark radiance, a faint suggestion of which I could see between his fingers.
“Watson,” quoth he, “I am going to give you this. You must swear to me that you will not look at it, on pain of damage beyond anything you can so much as imagine. You must keep it upon your person, if possible in direct contact with your body, at all times. If all goes well this night, I will ask you to return it to me. If all does not go well, it may save your life.”
I held my hand toward him.
Placing the object on my outstretched palm, Holmes closed my own fingers carefully around it. Surely this was the strangest object I had ever encountered. It was unpleasantly warm, its texture like that of an overcooked egg, and it seemed to squirm as if it were alive, or perhaps as if it contained something that lived and strove to escape an imprisoning integument.
“Do not look at it,” Holmes repeated. “Keep it with you at all times. Promise me you will do these things, Watson!”
I assured him that I would do as he request
ed.
Momentarily we beheld Mrs Llewellyn moving down the hallway toward us. Her stride was so smooth and her progress so steady that she seemed to be gliding rather than walking. She carried a kerosene lamp whose flame reflected from the polished blackness of the walls, casting ghostly shadows of us all.
Speaking not a word she gestured to us, summoning us to follow her. We proceeded along a series of corridors and up and down staircases until, I warrant, I lost all sense of direction and of elevation. I could not tell whether we had climbed to a room in one of the battlements of the Anthracite Palace or descended to a dungeon beneath the Llewellyns’ ancestral home. I had placed the object Holmes had entrusted to me inside my garments. I could feel it struggling to escape, but it was bound in place and could not do so.
“Where is this bishop you promised us?” I asked of Mrs Llewellyn.
Our hostess turned toward me. She had replaced her colourful Gypsyish attire with a robe of dark purple. Its colour reminded me of the emanations of the warm object concealed now within my own clothing. Her robe was marked with embroidery of a pattern that confused the eye so that I was unable to discern its nature.
“You misunderstood me, Doctor,” she intoned in her unpleasant accent. “I stated merely that it was my hope that Bishop Romanova would preside at our service. Such is still the case. We shall see in due time.”
We stood now before a heavy door bound with rough iron bands. Mrs Llewellyn lifted a key which hung suspended about her neck on a ribbon of crimson hue. She inserted it into the lock and turned it. She then requested Holmes and myself to apply our combined strength to opening the door. As we did so, pressing out shoulders against it, my impression was that the resistance came from some willful reluctance rather than a mere matter of weight or time.
No light preceded us into the room, but Mrs Llewellyn strode through the doorway carrying her kerosene lamp before her. Its rays now reflected from the walls of the chamber. The room was as Lady Fairclough had described the sealed room in her erstwhile home at Pontefract. The configuration and even the number of surfaces that surrounded us seemed unstable. I was unable even to count them. The very angles at which they met defied my every attempt to comprehend.
An altar of polished anthracite was the sole furnishing of this hideous, irrational chamber.
Mrs Llewellyn placed her kerosene lamp upon the altar. She turned, then, and indicated with a peculiar gesture of her hand that we were to kneel as if congregants at a more conventional religious ceremony.
I was reluctant to comply with her silent command, but Holmes nodded to me, indicating that he wished me to do so. I lowered myself, noting that Lady Fairclough and Holmes himself emulated my act.
Before us, and facing the black altar, Mrs Llewellyn also knelt. She raised her face as if seeking supernatural guidance from above, causing me to remember that the full name of her peculiar sect was the Wisdom Temple of the Dark Heavens.
She commenced a weird chanting in a language such as I had never heard, not in all my travels. There was a suggestion of the argot of the dervishes of Afghanistan, something of the Buddhist monks of Thibet, and a hint of the remnant of the ancient Incan language still spoken by the remotest tribes of the high Choco plain of the Chilean Andes, but in fact the language was none of these and the few words that I was able to make out proved both puzzling and suggestive but never specific in their meaning.
As Mrs Llewellyn continued her chanting she slowly raised first one hand then the other above her head. Her fingers were moving in an intricate pattern. I tried to follow their progress but found my consciousness fading into a state of confusion. I could have sworn that her fingers twined and knotted like the tentacles of a jellyfish. Their colours, too, shifted: vermilion, scarlet, obsidian. They seemed, even, to disappear into and return from some concealed realm invisible to my fascinated eyes.
The object that Holmes had given me throbbed and squirmed against my body, its unpleasantly hot and squamous presence making me wish desperately to rid myself of it. It was only my pledge to Holmes that prevented me from doing so.
I clenched my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut, summoning up images from my youth and of my travels, holding my hand clasped over the object as I did so. Suddenly the tension was released. The object was still there, but as if having a consciousness of its own, it seemed to grow calm. My own jaw relaxed and I opened my eyes to behold a surprising sight.
Before me there emerged another figure. As Mrs Llewellyn was stocky and swarthy, of the model of Gypsy women, this person was tall and graceful. Swathed entirely in jet, with hair a seeming midnight blue and complexion as black as the darkest African, she defied my conventional ideas of beauty with a weird and exotic glamour of her own that defies description. Her features were finely cut as those of the ancient Ethiopians are said to have been, her movements filled with a grace that would shame the pride of Covent Garden or the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
But whence had this apparition made her way? Still kneeling upon the ebon floor of the sealed room, I shook my head. She seemed to have emerged from the very angle between the walls.
She floated toward the altar, lifted the chimney from the kerosene lamp, and doused its flame with the palm of her bare hand.
Instantly the room was plunged into Stygian darkness, but gradually a new light—if so I may describe it—replaced the flickering illumination of the kerosene lamp. It was a light of darkness if you will, a glow of blackness deeper than the blackness which surrounded us, and yet by its light I could see my companions and my surroundings.
The tall woman smiled in benediction upon the four of us assembled, and gestured toward the angle between the walls. With infinite grace and seemingly glacial slowness she drifted toward the opening, through which I now perceived forms of such maddeningly chaotic configuration that I can only hint at their nature by suggesting the weird paintings that decorate the crypts of the Pharaohs, the carven stele of the mysterious Mayans, the monoliths of Mauna Loa, and the demons of Thibetan sand paintings.
The black priestess—for so I had come to think of her—led our little procession calmly into this realm of chaos and darkness. She was followed by Mrs Llewellyn, then by Lady Fairclough whose manner appeared as that of a woman entranced.
My own knees, I confess, have begun to stiffen with age, and I was slow to rise to my feet. Holmes followed the procession of women, while I lagged behind. As he was about to enter the opening Holmes turned suddenly, his eyes blazing. They transmitted to me a message as clear as any words.
This message was reinforced by a single gesture. I had used my hands, pressing against the black floor as I struggled to my feet. They were now at my sides. Fingers as stiff and powerful as a bobby’s club jabbed at my waist. The object which Holmes had given me to hold for him was jolted against my flesh, where it created a weird mark which remains visible to this day.
In the moment I knew what I must do.
I wrapped my arms frantically around the black altar, watching with horrified eyes as Holmes and the others slipped from the sealed room into the realm of madness that lay beyond. I stood transfixed, gazing into the Seventh Circle of Dante’s Hell, into the very heart of Gehenna.
Flames crackled, tentacles writhed, claws rasped and fangs ripped at suffering flesh. I saw the faces of men and women I had known, monsters and criminals whose deeds surpass my poor talent to record but who are known in the lowest realms of the planet’s underworlds, screaming with glee and with agony.
There was a man whose features so resembled those of Lady Fairclough that I knew he must be her brother. Of her missing husband I knew not.
Then looming above them all I saw a being that must be the supreme monarch of all monsters, a creature so alien as to resemble no organic thing that ever bestrode the earth, yet so familiar that I realized it was the very embodiment of the evil that lurks in the hearts of every living man.
Sherlock Holmes, the noblest human being I have ever encountered, Holmes alone da
red to confront this monstrosity. He glowed in a hideous, hellish green flame, as if even great Holmes were possessed of the stains of sin, and they were being seared from within him in the face of this being.
As the monster reached for Holmes with its hideous mockery of limbs, Holmes turned and signalled to me.
I reached within my garment, removed the object that lay against my skin pulsating with horrid life, drew back my arm and with a murmured prayer made the strongest and most accurate throw I had made since my days on the cricket pitch of Jammu.
More quickly than it takes to describe, the object flew through the angle. It struck the monster squarely and clung to its body, extending a hideous network of webbing round and round and round.
The monster gave a single convulsive heave, striking Holmes and sending him flying through the air. With presence of mind such as only he, of all men I know, could claim, Holmes reached and grasped Lady Fairclough by one arm and her brother by the other. The force of the monstrous impact sent them back through the angle into the sealed room, where they crashed into myself sending us sprawling across the floor.
With a dreadful sound louder and more unexpected than the most powerful thunderclap, the angle between the walls slammed shut. The sealed room was plunged once again into darkness.
I drew a packet of lucifers from my pocket and lit one. To my surprise, Holmes reached into an inner pocket of his own and drew from it a stick of gelignite with a long fuse. He signalled me and I handed him another lucifer. He used it to ignite the fuse of the gelignite bomb.
Striking another lucifer I relit the kerosene lamp that Mrs Llewellyn had left on the altar. Holmes grasped the lamp, leaving the gelignite in its place and lead the four of us—Lady Fairclough, Mr Philip Llewellyn, Holmes himself, and I—to swiftly make our way out of the strange room and the Anthracite Palace.
Even as we stumbled across the great hall toward the chief exit of the Palace, a terrible rumbling seemed to come simultaneously from the deepest basement of the building—if not from the very centre of the earth—and from the dark heavens above.
The Sherlock Holmes Megapack: 25 Modern Tales by Masters: 25 Modern Tales by Masters Page 49
