Sherlock Holmes 01: The Breath of God

by Guy Adams

  “The train’s coming!” I said. “It’ll mow us down!” Then a thought occurred to me. “Or pick us up.”

  I turned and flung my lantern at the wall where it exploded sending a trail of frame licking across the dirty brick.

  “What are you doing?” Carnacki asked.

  There was no time to explain. As I had hoped the electric sound shifted in pitch, as the driver – that fraudulent old soak – panicked at the sudden explosion and slowed the train’s engine, uncertain what he was driving into.

  “Jump on!” I said, and we ran back towards the train, clambering onto the slight scoop at the front. Gripping the edge of the windows, on either side of the driver, we could hang there, somewhat precariously, as the train once again picked up speed and moved along the tunnel.

  “All he can do is hope we fall off!” I called, looking up at the infuriated face of the driver.

  “An objective he may yet see fulfilled,” Carnacki replied, gritting his teeth and trying to work the tips of his fingers more firmly into their holds.

  The train began to speed up and it was all we could do to maintain our grip.

  “We might be able to jump clear at the next station?” I suggested.

  “One of us may,” Carnacki agreed. “It rather depends what side of the train the platform is on.”

  I saw what he meant. While it was certainly in the realms of possibility for whichever of us was on the same side as the platform, there would not be time for the other to inch across the front of the train in order to jump.

  “Then let’s both be ready,” I said, “so we can take the chance when it’s offered.”

  Both of us hung there, trying to twist our heads so that we could see ahead and anticipate our chances. Soon, light appeared.

  “Your side,” Carnacki said and I felt bad for him as he tried to shift his grip before it slipped. “Best of luck.”

  I dropped my body weight to my left, the opposite direction to the platform, waiting for the right moment. I would need to swing myself, using momentum to jump in the right direction. Hopefully the wind resistance, pushing past the nose of the train, should help carry me. The train’s speed was limited, fast enough to offer a genuine threat of injury but slow enough that I might just manage the manoeuvre with my legs intact. There was only one way to find out. I tensed and then flung myself towards the light and the platform beyond it. For one terrible second it was all in the air – would I make it or not? Then I hit the platform and rolled. I got to my feet as quickly as I could and ran back towards the train. Was it long enough? Would I have time?

  I jumped towards the final carriage, grabbing at the ropes that held the tarpaulin in place. It was smaller than a passenger carriage and, clambering over the top of the gas canister, I was able to look directly through the rear window and into the carriage we had originally been sat in.

  Holmes was up and still fighting, though I could tell from a fast blossoming bruise on his cheek that he had taken something of a beating. He turned towards me and I saw a momentary flicker of recognition on his face as he caught sight of me through the window. He turned his back on me and did his best to block any view of me from the Karswell or Crowley who were at the front of the carriage.

  I could only hope that Carnacki had managed to maintain his grip.

  I inched forward, wondering whether I might be able to disconnect this last carriage from the rest of the train. But if I raised my head a fraction too far, the roof of the tunnel would shave it right off me.

  The sound of raised voices alerted me to trouble. In the carriage Holmes was being shoved out of the way as Karswell ran towards the rear window.

  “I knew it!” he shouted. “Crowley! He’s here, the bastard’s here!”

  Karswell yanked down the window and pointed his gun to fire.

  “Don’t be an idiot man!” Crowley shouted. “You’ll hit the gas!”

  I didn’t know what else to do but duck as the sound of a gunshot rang out. The shot went wide – it would later become clear that Holmes had pushed Karswell to ruin his aim – but there was a popping nose, like a champagne cork, from a foot or so away. It was followed by the hissing sound of escaping gas. He’d breached the canister.

  I did my best to hold my breath, sure that the gas must be flooding around me. It was too late though, for the effects of that terrible poison began to make themselves felt. The jolting of the train wheels against the track got louder and louder, like the pounding of a blacksmith’s hammer, and I became aware that the tarpaulin was shifting underneath me.

  “John...” whispered a voice, still audible over the noise of the wheels, “take my hand John, I’ll keep you safe.”

  As the tarpaulin slipped away it revealed what was left of my wife. The years had been cruel and the fingers that reached for me, tickling my cheek and leaving a little of themselves there, were far thinner than even the dainty hand of the woman I had loved with all my strength.

  “Not real,” I said, begging myself to believe, even as her other hand pushed its way between the buttons of my shirt and raked my skin with tips too hard and wet to be nails. “Not real!”

  “Oh, John,” it said, breathless, as if its lungs couldn’t hold enough air, punctured and withered like old bellows, “I’ll always be real to you.”

  I screamed, my voice matching the brakes as the train slowed down on approaching Bank. The lights of the station flooded over me, showing something I could not bear to see. I screamed and screamed, tumbling from the canister and onto the platform.

  Others began to scream around me and I thought then that it was proof of my visions, but of course the gas was still flowing and the passengers gathered on the other platforms had visions of their own. Perhaps the lights turned into branding irons, hissing their way towards unblemished skin. Maybe worms filled the tunnels ahead of the trains, their blind snouts straining upward towards the stairs and an escape to street level. Maybe, like me, they simply saw the horror of what our loved ones become when we have the terrible burden of outliving them.

  In a panic crowds of passengers began running for the stairs, desperate to escape the impossible terrors that surrounded them.

  “Watson!” I heard his voice, that fine voice of logic and reason that has pulled me back from many a moment when I have been close to death. For all his irritations, for all I could really punch him some days, he has always been there. He has made my life what it is and, for better or worse, I would have no other.

  I felt hands grabbing at me and for a moment, I fought them off. It was the sound of a gunshot that brought me to my senses and I realised it was Holmes holding on to me. I looked and saw Karswell racing towards us, the pistol held out in front of him.

  “Stick to your books, Karswell,” I said, getting to my feet and doing my best to force away the sensation that Mary was still gripping me, clambering on my back and trying to get inside me.

  Then I changed my mind. This was not my Mary but if it had been, no matter what she looked like, I loved her and if she had been with me, gripping me close, I would have been charged by the experience not scared of it. It would have made me stronger.

  “Oh,” I said, grinning thanks to the newfound strength in my chest, “and my wife says to tell you: learn to count!”

  Karswell’s fingers squeezed the trigger but he’d had his six shots and I punched him so hard in the jaw that my fingers ached pleasantly for over twenty-four hours afterwards.

  Holmes was holding himself up against the wall of the station.

  “Are you all right my friend?” I asked.

  He looked me right in the eye and the determination he showed was every inch the match for my own. “It takes more than phantasms to stop me, John Watson,” he said. “Let’s rout these imbeciles once and for all, eh?”

  The driver, his nerve broken both by the gas and the impending realisation that it was the gaol for him unless he made himself scarce, was running, screaming along the platform. He dashed up the stairs, beating
at something imagined that fluttered around his head.

  Carnacki slowly pulled himself onto the platform, his arms shaking from holding on for so long, the gas making his eyes bulge and his mouth shout threats at the air around him. Crowley was stood between us, his long hair awry, his face absurdly happy below engorged pupils. “Yes!” he cried. “This is the world. This is my world!”

  I have no idea what creatures surrounded him in his hallucinations but the pleasure he took in their presence was terrible to see. As the last few bystanders ran for the surface we were presented with a miniature vision of his proposed future: the lunatic despot luxuriating in the terror of others.

  Holmes pushed past him and climbed into the driver’s cab. After a few moments the train began to reverse and Holmes jumped back out. Slowly, the train built up speed and vanished from sight, pushing the gas canister ahead of it.

  “It’ll keep going until reaches the terminus,” Holmes said. “Then it will stop somewhat dramatically. The gas should dissipate along the length of the line.”

  “No!” Crowley shouted. “You will not take my beautiful demons from me!”

  There was a screech of wind and suddenly the platform was filled with the Breath of God, chasing round and around the walls, knocking us from our feet and pushing us along the ground. Holmes, Carnacki and I fought our way towards the stairs, crawling from one platform to the other.

  “I will have my world!” Crowley shouted, pursuing us relentlessly. “I will!”

  Holmes slowly stood up. Against all reason, the wind still blowing just as hard around us.

  “No,” he said, calmly, “you will not. Because this will be the century of change, the century when the human race forges ahead with the mad vigour it always has. It won’t have time for your world, your dark, dark world with its superstitions and fears. With its gods that rage and demand pain and sorrow and blood enough to colour oceans. The human race will finally turn its back on that world, it won’t even see it any more, far too busy being blinded by the beautiful, brilliant lights of the future. It won’t believe in you, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?” He was nose to nose with Crowley by now and utterly unruffled by the wind, because for him it didn’t blow. “Belief,” he said. “Without it you are nothing but a man screaming into the dark.”

  The wind ceased and Crowley, tears in his eyes, staggered back along the platform. The groaning Karswell had moved across from the other side, confused by the wind and the solid jolt I’d given his dull brain. Crowley grabbed him, tugging him over the side and onto this new stretch of track. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll have our time, they’ll see, we’ll have our time.”

  They disappeared into the tunnel, Crowley’s voice echoing back a few moments later.

  “Our time is coming!” he screamed. “It’s coming!”

  “Yes,” Holmes said, as the sound of a train whistle filled the air, “as is the nine forty-five to Waterloo.” He looked up at me as the sound of Crowley and Karswell screaming echoed back along the tunnel and into the station. “And that, like progress, simply cannot be stopped.”

  The train pulled up to the platform and, with a macabre grin, Holmes held out his hands beckoning for Carnacki and I to join him.

  “We’ve earned ourselves some dinner,” he said, “to see in the New Year!”

  Tomorrow would see the horror brought home as the reports came in of how many had been harmed during the two gas attacks. Between the explosion on Oxford Street and the inevitable casualties during the mass exodus of Bank Station, thirty-nine people died, with twice that injured physically and countless more mentally. That was perhaps the worst legacy, those that had been shown the very worst their imaginations could throw at them, forced to live with what they had seen. To think the foolish John Silence could have ever thought that what they were doing was for the betterment of mankind. There’s nothing so easily deluded as a man with good intentions.

  Holmes, Carnacki and I were desperate to wash the foul events away with celebration. Nothing sharpens the appetite more than near-death.

  After a brief stop at Scotland Yard where a confused Inspector Gregson was told all he needed to know for now (Holmes would only too happily discuss the case in minutiae come the morning but for now he wished to walk away from it all; as much as he bemoaned the reputation he laboured under, it did allow him to behave quite outrageously at times). We decamped to one of Holmes’ favourite restaurants, a little bistro just off Mayfair.

  “It was the most devilish business,” I said, once we were surrounded by the detritus of a meal well done. “I still cannot begin to fathom it all.”

  “You will,” Holmes said with a smile, “once you’ve had another glass of wine.”

  “I say,” Carnacki said, who, for all his snobbery about the menu had enjoyed his meal a great deal, “who was it that tried to shoot me do you think?”

  “Silence,” Holmes said. “Watson here heard him weeping away in the night, troubled by a guilty conscience. No doubt it had been decided by Crowley that you really were one complication too many. They met shortly after the two of you had retired. I believe you both saw Silence wandering up the street.”

  “I thought it was you,” I admitted.

  “Which is why you make an excellent doctor but only a passable detective.”

  “Silence thought he was doing the right thing,” I said. “He was acting according to his beliefs.”

  “As soon as your belief costs a single innocent life,” Holmes said, “you lose the right to hide behind its justification. None of us are above that rule. As all three of them have now learned. Fatally.”

  Though actually this would turn out not to be the case. While the body of Dr Silence was found just where it should be, amongst the wreckage of their commandeered train, the same could not be said of either Crowley or Karswell.

  The former reappeared in America, hiding out in New York where he attempted to make a nominal living as a writer. Certainly, it seemed his grander ambitions had been beaten from him. Holmes, forever determined that he would see the man put to account for his crimes – crimes for which we still had no admissible evidence whatsoever – made a point of following Crowley’s movements, ready to pounce should the circumstances allow. It soon became clear that such action would not be necessary. Even now, Crowley makes something of a name for himself as “the wickedest man in the world” – a name given to him by the Daily Express newspaper, which, in fairness, doles out such high-handed epithets on an almost daily basis – but he is a spent force. Worshipped by those who are always inclined to worship someone, feared by those who find fear comes easily. But is he believed? No. The majority simply view him as a scandalous rogue, an opinion with which I will not argue. On that terrible night, the cusp of a brand-new age, he had set his sights higher. But the brand-new age really didn’t want him, certainly not in sufficient numbers for Holmes to ever be concerned.

  As for Karswell, there was some fuss about the publication of his “magnum opus”, the somewhat prosaically titled: History of Witchcraft. The book was terribly received and Holmes grew concerned that he might have to involve himself when one of the reviewers, a man by the name of Harrington, died in rather mysterious circumstances. In the end there was little with which to concern ourselves, however, and the matter seemed to come to its own satisfactory conclusion.

  But all of that was in the future.

  On that night, everything seemed all too rich with the possibility of change. I was still trying to decide what was real and what was not. I had experienced so much that simply couldn’t be explained away. I did not – and still do not – know what to think.

  “Who is to say what our beliefs are now?” I smiled and topped up my glass, just as Holmes had suggested. “So many things to accommodate into our view of the world.”

  “My views haven’t changed,” said Holmes. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  NOTES ON WHAT I
S REAL AND WHAT IS NOT

  (TO BE READ AFTER THE NOVEL)

  The Quick Answer: None of it is true.

  The Long Answer: A good deal of it is true. With some reservations.

  SOME RESERVATIONS

  1. ALEISTER CROWLEY

  Our main concern is Aleister Crowley, the rest of our characters are fictional and are therefore resilient enough to look after themselves (just as they have for the decades before I got my grubby hands on them). However, it takes very little reading to realise that the public face of Crowley was often as fictional as Holmes, and I therefore have no issue with doing what I like with him. That said, it would be extremely unfair not to point out – for the few that may need it – what is utter fabrication. Crowley very successfully created his own notoriety: he doesn’t need my help.

  For many years it was de rigeur to paint Crowley as a villain. Indeed, the Daily Express did label him – as Watson himself points out – “the wickedest man in the world”. This is blatant nonsense, he was contentious, bigoted and perhaps a little mad but he was certainly never truly wicked. Nonetheless he excited a great number of authors, being the inspiration behind such creations as Mocata in Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out, Somerset Maugham’s Oliver Haddo and, indeed, Julian Karswell (ahem) in MR James’ Casting the Runes (but more on him later).

  Later biographers redressed the balance, many of them painting him in an extremely positive light as a philosopher and author rather than scoundrel. It is perhaps this renaissance that saw him placed on 2002’s “100 Greatest Britons”, a poll compiled by the British Broadcasting Corporation. He ranked 73rd, four places ahead of popstar Robbie Williams. In fact, making him the villain these days is more surprising than casting him as the hero. Like us all, I suspect he could be a little of both and rarely all of either.

  Mathers was a contemporary (and they often did not see eye to eye). He did buy Boleskine in order to practice the Abramelin Ritual. He apparently summoned all manner of forces into existence and then, due to personal circumstances intruding, failed to complete the ritual and banish them. There are those who believe Crowley contaminated the house with evil in so doing. It’s difficult to comment as, like Holmes, your own beliefs get in the way of assimilating the information. As a case in point: in a documentary on Crowley’s time in Boleskine, paranormal writer (and author of The Space Vampires filmed by Tobe Hooper as Lifeforce, one of the finest bad movies ever made) Colin Wilson states unequivocally that Crowley discovered magic worked. I would qualify that as: “Crowley discovered magic worked for him” because I don’t believe in magic (or, as Crowley always said, wishing to differentiate from stage illusion and Telstar romantic mail order LPs, Magick). But then I’m a rationalist who finds himself writing about things he doesn’t believe in, the theme of the book as I’m sure you now realise.