Sherlock Holmes 01: The Breath of God

by Guy Adams

  “No rest for the blessed,” Carnacki said. “What is that?”

  “Oh no...” Karswell whispered. “It can’t be...”

  “What, man?” Crowley snapped. “We haven’t time for indecision. If you know what it is then act!”

  The pinprick of light was slowly widening, unfolding even, into a tiny plume of smoke. That smoke began to grow as if, just on the other side of that sheet of space, there was an infernal engine getting its steam up.

  “But there must be something attracting it!” said Karswell. “It requires a focus, a beacon to draw its power!”

  “There’s nothing in the pentacle but ourselves,” said Carnacki, “and why would any of us draw this thing here?”

  The smoke continued to unfold, becoming a larger and larger ball that hovered in the distance.

  “Empty your pockets!” insisted Karswell. “All of you!”

  We did as he asked, casting things onto the floor in the centre of the pentangle. Loose change, a couple of pocket knives, pipes, tobacco... all the usual gentlemanly belongings.

  “Wait,” I said. “What’s this?” I held up a small piece of black card that I had found in the inside pocket of my jacket. “I swear I have never seen it before,” I said, “it must have been slipped in there while I was unaware.”

  “Easy enough done,” said Karswell, “but the point is: can I get rid of it?”

  For a bizarre moment the piece of paper lifted into the air entirely of its own volition and it seemed that Karswell would have no need to dispose of it for it would vanish itself.

  “No you don’t,” said Carnacki, snatching it from the air as if it were a troublesome mosquito. “How do you negate the effect of it?” he Karswell asked.

  “You don’t!” the smaller man insisted. “All you can do is pass it back to the person that gave it to you in the first place. Once the rune is cast, it cannot be revoked. The demon will hunt it forever!”

  “Then I should run,” I said, mindful of how large the ball of smoke was getting, “draw it away from the rest of you.”

  “Noble as ever, Doctor,” said Carnacki with a smile, “but Karswell will think of something. Won’t you?”

  The air of delicate gentility that Karswell had previously shown appeared to be crumbling with the panic. He looked to Crowley, then back to us, then to the smoke that was now almost twice the size of a man. Lights flickered at the heart of it, like the spitting tip of a metal sparkler.

  “Yes,” Karswell said finally, following my eyes towards where the demon was manifesting. “Give me the paper.”

  Carefully making sure it didn’t fly away again, Carnacki did just that. Karswell held the fragment by the tip and I marvelled to see it worm around as if alive.

  “Get me some of his blood,” Karswell said.

  “Some of my —” I began, but Crowley had already gripped my hand and, pulling a curved knife from somewhere within his purple robes, he drew the blade across my palm, opening a thin cut in the skin. Karswell took my bleeding hand by the wrist and dipped the tip of the wriggling paper into the blood. It soaked it up like litmus paper, the dull surface turning shiny gloss as it dampened.

  “Right,” Karswell said, keeping his eye on the smoke.

  “Quickly, man!” Carnacki shouted, pointing to the floor where a large black footprint, almost like that of a three-toed lizard, burned itself into the wood.

  “Eetz inti treiz,” mumbled Karswell, in a language I didn’t recognise.

  “It’s coming!” shouted Silence.

  “And it’s not the only thing!” cried Carnacki as a grotesque, swinish noise became audible over that stylus screech. “John!” It took me a moment to realise he meant me. “Get ready to fire!”

  Another three-toed footprint burned into the wooden floor.

  “Veesh lamma hyze!” Karswell continued in that strange dialect.

  There was something appearing in the smoke, something covered in thick, dark hair, its horns straight like an alpine goat’s. It was running towards us, getting bigger and bigger as it sprinted along the impossible tunnel that was opening between Crowley’s house and whatever awful realm it came from.

  “Ryad, kamma lan tash!” Karswell roared, the blood-soaked piece of paper vanishing from between his fingers.

  The running creature faded as, slowly, the smoke began to shrink once more, folding back in on itself until it was nothing but the size of a golfb all, those brilliant, shining sparks glistening at its centre. Then nothing. The tunnel was gone.

  “The paper was you,” said Karswell, out of breath, drained just as Silence had been. “Transportation spell, somewhere far away...”

  “You mean that thing’s just going to burst out of nowhere in the midst of some poor innocents?” I asked, terrified that our problem had now become someone else’s.

  “Problems of our own!” shouted Crowley as the snuffling noises grew louder and, out of the darkness that surrounded us, several small, grey figures appeared. They were troll-like in appearance, snouted, with long, yellow teeth that sat uncomfortably in their mouths. They moved slowly, their great weight surely making it hard for them to manoeuvre.

  Carnacki fired, the bullet hitting the foremost and making a hole that melted around the edges, a grotesque, purple cream gushing from its centre. The creature fell and oozed away. Carnacki took another shot, and another...

  “We need to take this in turns,” he said to me. “I fire, then you, with each of us reloading while the other keeps them back.” He fired again. “Are you ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” I said, standing next to him and weighing the Enfield in my hand.

  “Good.” Carnacki smiled, and took his last two shots. “Go!”

  I stepped forward, aimed, and slowly, calmly, took my six shots, timing it to coincide with the time it took Carnacki to load. With the last, I dropped to one knee and lined the shot to hit two of the creatures. I had no idea if the bullet would pass through both but felt it worth a try. It did, they may have been big but they were also soft.

  “Show-off,” said Carnacki, but I could tell he was beginning to thaw towards me, not that I particularly craved his endorsement, I’d be happy just to survive the night. I had already shaken a handful of cartridges from the box in my jacket pocket into my hand and I ejected the spent casings and reloaded before Carnacki had taken his fifth shot.

  I am particularly good at two things in life: being a soldier and being a doctor, taking lives and saving them. The irony doesn’t amuse me one bit.

  “He must tire soon,” said Crowley, “this is leagues beyond his previous efforts.”

  “He knows there are many of us,” responded Carnacki, reloading while I took my turn, “and this...” he gestured towards the creatures, “this is just cannon fodder, keeping us distracted before the next big threat.”

  As if on cue, the ground shook. Karswell fell to the floor, cursing as some of his little pieces of paper fluttered around him.

  “What was that?” asked Silence.

  “At a guess,” I replied, taking my six shots quickly, “the next big threat.”

  The ground shook again and we could hear the sound of breaking glass from somewhere along the corridor.

  The creatures were coming in greater numbers now, more than Carnacki and I could manage with just the two guns.

  Picking himself up, Karswell stepped alongside us, muttering under his breath, folding his little pieces of paper and pitching them towards the creatures. The paper pellets hit like small grenades, blowing holes in the creatures as surely as our bullets. Silence came to the fore also, not manifesting his animal spirits this time but instead sending percussive blasts of air from the tips of his fingers that had the same effect as both bullets and pellets.

  Once more, the room shook as something large, something terrible, came our way.

  “I need you to cover for me,” said Carnacki, as he reached for the glass tubes he had been connecting earlier. He looked to Crowley as he screwed them
together. “You’re not being much help,” he said, “this is your battle, remember?”

  I didn’t hear Crowley’s reply, I was too busy taking my turn at shooting the creatures that continued to flood towards us.

  Boom. The earth shook again. This time the candelabra actually left the ground, all jumping half a foot or so before dropping back with a resounding thud. The candles flickered, a couple extinguishing, dropping us into even greater darkness.

  “Nearly ready,” said Carnacki behind me, “nearly ready.”

  The tide of small creatures ceased, the last falling to one of Silence’s flicks of compressed air. “Wait for a target,” he said, hands extended, long fingers twitching.

  Karswell took the opportunity to create more ammunition, scribbling sets of runes on more blank parchment. He set great stock by the effects of these “words of power”, and having seen them in action, I couldn’t help but agree.

  Another tremor, and the dawning certainty that there was something out there in the dark. A warm gust of air passed over us, a breath I realised, that brought with it the sweet, straw stench of an animal cage in a zoo.

  “It’s right here!” shouted Karswell.

  “Not for long,” insisted Carnacki, flicking a switch on the large wooden box that sat by his feet. There was a brief whine that built into a solid, low hum. In his hands the glass tubes were now constructed as a mirror of the chalk shape we stood in. Surrounded by a fan of metal shutters, the tubes glowed brightly, powered by the acid battery in the wooden box, cables hanging between the two as he strode forward. “The Electric Pentacle,” he explained, his face bathed in the blue light the device cast. “A weapon of my own design, the gas in the tubes has mystical properties, the light it casts is hugely powerful.” He moved to the furthest point in the pentangle. “It burns,” he said finally, pointing the pentangle out towards the darkness and flipping a large brass switch that dangled from one of the wires hanging around him.

  The light from the Electric Pentacle pulsed and Carnacki triggered a switch at the rear of the device that brought the shutters down, surrounding the tubes like the petals of a flower, focusing their light in a steady beam directly into the darkness.

  For a brief second we all caught a glimpse of the creature that was out there as the light reflected off its many black eyes, and the quivering mass of ganglia it sported where its mouth should be. Then there was nothing but the blue light, and the ground shook once more as the creature returned to wherever it had come from.

  Carnacki gave a short cry as the Electric Pentacle began to smoke in his hands. “The cables!” he shouted, getting tangled in them. “Disconnect!”

  I yanked the two, heavy-duty wires from the top of the wooden box and the light immediately cut out.

  Carnacki slowly lowered the whole device to the floor and stepped back, waving his burned hands in the air. “Needs a bit more work,” he admitted.

  “Seems just fine to me,” I said, “it’s certainly effective.”

  Carnacki nodded. “True, but if it had exploded, I’m not completely sure it wouldn’t have torn a hole in the fabric of reality and that wouldn’t have been good.”

  “What’s wrong with Crowley?” asked Silence suddenly, dashing over to where the man had fallen flat on his back.

  “He is possessed,” said Karswell, stepping back slightly as Crowley’s body began to shake. “What did you do to him?” he asked Carnacki.

  “Me?” Carnacki was clearly affronted. “What makes you think I did anything?”

  “You were the last to talk to him.”

  “I merely asked him why he wasn’t taking a very active role – a fair comment!”

  “Gentlemen,” I said, grabbing Crowley’s arm and feeling for a pulse, “now is hardly the time.”

  Crowley appeared to be experiencing some form of seizure, his teeth clenched, his brow furrowed. Beads of sweat trickled down his face as he thrashed around on the floor.

  “Dear Lord!” I moved back slightly, startled by the sight of his body beginning to swell beneath the purple robes.

  “What is happening to him?” Karswell shouted. “He’s inflating like a damned balloon!”

  Silence moved forward, pushing between Crowley and I. “Forgive me, Doctor,” he said, “but this may be a matter that requires more than medical knowledge.”

  Feeling it was hardly constructive to fight the man over it, I stepped back and allowed him room.

  He held Crowley down as the robes continued to swell, as if he were filling up from the inside.

  “The Breath of God!” declared Karswell. “It must be!”

  Crowley’s eyes flickered open and he roared at the ceiling. The experience was incredible, a wind that raged through the room, knocking over the candelabra, smashing the censers and extinguishing the fires.

  “It’s here!” Crowley shouted. “Help me push it —”

  There was a sudden silence. The darkness was empty for a few moments then a match was struck illuminating Carnacki’s face. I heard him elevating one of the toppled candelabra and then watched as he relit the candles.

  “Gone,” whispered Crowley. “It’s gone.”

  “You destroyed it?” I asked.

  Crowley shook his head. “Just sent it elsewhere, released it...”

  “Released it?” Carnacki was beside himself with rage. “You’ve let it loose?”

  Crowley nodded and Carnacki looked as deflated as I had ever seen him. “Then who knows how many will die before we might contain it once more.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A LETTER (CONTINUED)

  EXCERPT FROM A LETTER WRITTEN BY DR JOHN WATSON TO SHERLOCK HOLMES

  I begin to think that this letter will never be posted.

  Holmes, for all my favourable talk of the country it must be remembered that they have no infrastructure here. If I want to send you a message, I have to commit to half an hour’s cart journey and a village post office that views opening times with the sort of loose informality that would have an urban business bankrupt within a week.

  No matter, I can only hope that I will find the time when I arise later, for really, matters have come to a point and we need you here. I need you here. If only to tell me I’m dreaming.

  I have explained to you, in as much detail as possible, the events of the night, our “battle” against whatever unbelievable forces they were that faced us across the dimensions. Oh dear Lord... I’m even beginning to talk like them. Holmes, you simply cannot imagine how terrifying it was. Worse, how quickly one stops questioning and just adapts. I was firing my service revolver at DEMONS, Holmes. My whole view of the world is in ruins.

  And Mary. How can I not think of her? Now that I know that the veil between life and death is thinner than I imagined, now that I know that there are souls out there that are still themselves. I was somewhat ambivalent about the idea of an afterlife, Holmes, I think all soldiers are; have to be. But now I begin to wonder.

  I miss her so very much.

  Enough, forgive me, my friend, I know you find this sort of conversation awkward. Let’s stick to the facts shall we?

  Where had I got to...? Ah yes, Carnacki’s concern that the Breath of God was now loose upon the world.

  I cannot pretend I followed every aspect of their conversation. Once the battle was done – and it was, there were no more attacks after that – my adrenalin faded and I began to feel that same sense of disassociation I had experienced on the train. A dizziness and lethargy, nausea even. It was shock, I know, I am a medical man after all.

  Still, despite my discomfort and confusion, I followed the generalities of their discussion. It seemed that Mathers’ final act had been to send the Breath of God directly into Crowley. How he was able to do that I cannot say, the words of explanation simply slip off the brain. No doubt I adopted that vacant look Mary always had once I started to discuss anatomy. All you had to do to send that woman to sleep was speak Latin.

  Explanations aside, that is what had ha
ppened. And in order to defend himself, Crowley had vented it elsewhere. Where, he could not say. He suspects London (in which case you will likely know more about it than me) because he tried to send it right back to its source. But he could not be certain.

  As dawn broke it shone its light on five exhausted men. The only plan we had was to use a “scrying” ritual (don’t ask) to try and locate the Breath of God, but apparently before that could even be considered all concerned needed to rest. Fighting psychically is – logically enough I suppose – extremely draining.

  I confess that I was unsure as to whether I could possibly sleep after such an experience. In all honesty, though, as I write these words, I find I am struggling to stay awake. Perhaps it would be better were I to leave

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  HIS RETURN

  I was shaken roughly awake by a hand on my shoulder.

  “What?” I was extremely disorientated and despite the perfect brightness of the day that lit my room, it took me a few moments for my vision to clear. I rubbed at my face, aware that someone had awoken me, yet I could so easily have fallen back asleep, my mind was that sluggish.

  “Have a drink of water,” said a familiar voice, “it may help.”

  “Holmes?” I asked, my voice cracking, throat dry.

  I looked over to find him sat beside me on the bed, propped up on my spare pillows. Scattered all over the bed and floor were pages of writing. My letter, I realised. I was about to remonstrate with him when he placed his finger to his lips and smiled.

  “Keep your voice down, my friend,” he said, “I have no wish to disturb the rest of the household as yet.”

  I took a drink of water as he had suggested, to clear my throat. “You mean they don’t know you’re here?”

  “I entered via your window,” he gave a dry chuckle, “though I have left some of the most complex and absurd dance-patterns in the sand outside Crowley’s temple, I’m afraid I just couldn’t resist!”

  “Oh Holmes...”

  “Never mind that. I’ve read your letter and must say that I’m enthralled. What an adventure you’ve had.”