I felt him tug at my hand. My friend called. I answered.
We ran out of the workshop. I turned back once, just in time to see the green mist flare then fade. The last hint of it to go was in Boothroyd’s eyes. He stood in the doorway of the workshop, watching us all the way as we fled.
*
It took over half an hour to get back to Baker Street, most of it on foot. Holmes scarcely said a word the whole time, but he did wave the journal he had taken from the trestle at me.
“The answer will be here Watson, trust me on that.”
I myself had much on my mind, not the least of which was that black cathedral of dancing shadows. It had felt wrong, but even as I walked along the thoroughfares of North London I could feel its insidious tug at my mind. For the first time I had some inkling, some idea of kinship, with those poor souls who spent their waking hours chasing the dragon in the opium dens of the East End.
And even after we reached Holmes’ apartments and settled in our chairs awaiting a welcome pot of tea, still Holmes did not speak. He lost himself in the newly found journal. I knew I would get little out of him until he was good and ready. I went to help Mrs. Hudson prepare our supper and afterwards read the Thunderer from front to back.
It was near midnight before Holmes put down the journal. He stayed quiet through the process of lighting a pipe, and it was only when he was satisfied he had it going that he brought me in to his findings.
“It is a rum do Watson,” he began between puffs. “But I fear Boothroyd, in his search for knowledge, has uncovered something far more arcane.”
He tapped the journal with his pipe.
“He has been corresponding with a young man in the United States. They have some wonderful theories regarding the transmission of sound through the ether without the need for wires, and they even conjecture that electrical power may one day be available in this fashion. But that is a story for another day. What concerns us here is what happened on their first attempted transmission.
“It appears they woke something up with their racket,” Holmes said with a thin smile. “Something that has been asleep a long time. Here is what Boothroyd has to say in his journal.”
He read.
“Tesla believes it to be a denizen of some other dimension, a creature so vast we can scarcely encompass its nature in our primitive brains. Normally it is dormant, merely drifting, somewhere not in or even out of our space, but somewhere between. Whatever it is, we have woken it. And it has taken note of us. God help me, it haunts my every dream. We have a theory as to how we might be able to placate this thing before it fully wakes, to send it back to its long sleep. But will we be given the time? At night I dance with it, there in the vast blackness. And, dear God, I find I have little will to resist. I would that I could be there now, lost in the dance.”
That last gave me a bit of a turn I can tell you, bringing the events of the evening rushing back to me. But if Holmes noticed, he paid it no heed.
“There is some more,” he said. “Notes on how they intended to put this entity back to slumber, but there is some experimentation of my own I must attempt before broaching that subject. It may take some hours old chap. Maybe you would prefer to return in the morning?”
I knew my friend well enough. I might be able to return to bed that night, but he would not; he would be unable to leave a problem alone for that long. Besides, I had spent so many nights in the old chair by the fire that its upholstery was moulded in the shape of my spine and it had become almost as comfortable as my own bed.
I lit a last pipe of the night and watched Holmes work.
He seemed to spend most of his time trying to decipher some kind of code that took up a dozen sheets of handwritten journal. And it had him stumped. After almost an hour he gave up and retired to his own chair to brood over a pipe of his own.
After a while I drifted in to a fitful sleep, troubled by dreams of vast black emptiness and dancing shadows. I woke with a start to find Holmes shaking a fistful of papers in my face.
“I have it Watson,” he said, his face flushed with excitement. “It is not a code at all. It is a rhythmic notation – the steps of the dance if you will.”
He said no more, having already moved to start making marks on the wax disks of the Graphophone. I could not for the life of me follow what he was up to, so I closed my eyes again and tried to rest, knowing that Holmes might have need of a rested friend in the morning.
But sleep would not come, interrupted as it was by a series of unworldly screeches and drum-like raps from Holmes’ experiments. I gave in to the inevitable, sat up and got a fresh pipe going. Just as I had it lit to my satisfaction, Holmes stood from his work, stretched with palms pressed to his spine, and turned towards me, smiling broadly.
“I believe I have it Watson,” he said. “But time is of the essence, and the only way to test the theory is to return to Boothroyd’s workshop. Are you ready for more burglary?”
*
Watery morning sunshine greeted us as we approached the Boothroyd House. The trip back to Hackney had been made somewhat easier by the use of a carriage that Holmes managed to flag down at Paddington. I was most grateful, for he had left it to me to carry the Graphophone and, despite it being encased in a rather attractive carrying valise, it was rather cumbersome, if not particularly heavy. But what with that and the weight of my service revolver – which I thought circumspect to bring along – I felt rather burdened as we walked along the avenue.
Holmes made no pretence of hiding our approach, striding down the centre of the drive as if we were simply making a house call on a friend. I had no idea how we might explain ourselves to Boothroyd should he note our arrival and confront us. It was a moot point however, as we reached the workshop without any interruption.
The workshop itself lay in silence. As we approached I was on tenterhooks, straining to listen for any resumption of the vibration that had so bewildered me the night before. Holmes had no such qualms. He strode forward and threw open the large wooden doors.
I had my free hand on my revolver, but it was not required.
“It seems we have the run of the place Watson,” Holmes said, and before I could speak, he walked quickly inside so that I had no option but to follow him.
In the dim daylight that filtered in through whitewashed windows above, the array of machinery was even more bewildering. Metal tubes and cables snaked across all surfaces, and steam hissed from pipes obviously under a high degree of pressure. But my gaze kept returning to the main object of Holmes’ attention – the large black iron cylinder.
“Don’t stand there gawping old boy,” Holmes said. “Fetch me the Graphophone.”
I was loath to step too close to the trestle where the iron cylinder sat, but I had come this far, and six feet more was not going to make much difference. I did as I was requested and Holmes immediately got to work setting it up. I saw that he had made certain modifications to the instrument that would allow him to play several wax disks in succession and, with minimal manual intervention, restart the whole thing at the turn of a key.
But even while he was still setting it up, I felt the vibrations start to build around the iron cylinder, and the air inside the workshop took on a green tint, like a fine emerald mist.
I felt the vibrations first through the soles of my feet, but soon my whole frame shook, vibrating in time with the rhythm. My head swam, and once again it seemed as if the very walls of the workshop melted and ran. Holmes turned towards me, but his pale face receded into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness. I was once again alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and an ever louder, pounding beat. I gave myself willingly to it, lost in the dance, lost in the dark.
Some time later I was brought back directly to the workshop by a new sound – Holmes had switched on his modified Graphophone. A giant drum still beat all around me, but I no longer felt any compunction to join it in
the blackness beyond.
Above the black cylinder the room was filled with a dancing green aurora so dense that I could not see the workshop walls. For the first time I could sense a presence directly, probing at my defences, looking for a passage through.
The Graphophone sounded thin and tinny in comparison to the deep vibration that echoed in the room but when Holmes began to stamp and pound on the trestle in time with the wax disks the vibration seemed to falter. The aurora thinned enough that I could momentarily see the walls of the room. I almost let out a cry of victory, but I was premature.
I was looking at the cylinder and only just caught a movement at the corner of my eye as Boothroyd came at a run along the corridor between the trestles and barrelled into Holmes, knocking him to the ground.
The aurora surged. Sparks flew across the iron cylinder, the sudden light so bright I had to squeeze my eyes shut, and even then the after image stayed there for long seconds.
Boothroyd reached for the Graphophone.
“Shoot him,” Holmes shouted. “Before it comes through completely.”
I pulled out the revolver but could not fire – not on an unarmed man – not until Boothroyd turned and stared at me, the green aurora dancing in his eyes. I felt the tug of the place beyond calling me. I pulled the trigger until it went away.
Boothroyd took four bullets to the chest. The green aurora glowed in all four wounds. He staggered, but did not fall. He turned away from me, once again reaching for the Graphophone.
“In the head,” Holmes shouted.
I obliged him, putting my last two shots into the back of Boothroyd’s skull. More green showed as a mixture of blood and brains escaped. Finally the body fell away.
The aurora above the iron cylinder surged as if alive, and once again I felt the tugging in my mind, the thing between, searching for me. But Holmes immediately went back to stamping and thumping on the trestle in time with the recordings on his wax disks.
He also started to chant in time with the recordings, meaningless sounds, but strangely apt to accompany his stamping and thumping. The new sound found some sympathy in the walls of the workshop itself. A new beat grew; a bass drum pounding in perfect time with Holmes’ chanting.
Once more the green aurora surged and threw itself forward towards Holmes.
His voice faltered… just for a fraction of a second. The aurora swelled and pressed an attack stronger than any previously made. I raised my voice, joining Holmes and putting more depth into the chant, aware that there were surely mere seconds left to us before the wax disks stopped spinning.
In answer the whole workshop seemed to swell in song, our voices echoed and amplified, as if recorded and re-recorded on a thousand Graphophones simultaneously. Even as the wax disks started to falter, the aurora shrank and diminished. A blue spark crackled and I was forced to blink. When I looked again it was just in time to see the aurora hover over the iron cylinder, like a cape falling over the contraption.
The Graphophone played out with a last dying whirr. The aurora fell, streaming inside the cylinder, then was gone. The echoes faded and died and our chants died with them. We stood in a sudden silence.
*
We had made our way back to Baker Street in silence, and it was only when I inquired about informing Lestrade about the body we had left behind that Holmes spoke.
“No,” he said. “We cannot allow the police access to that workshop. They would only cause more mischief. I shall send the journal to Mycroft. The defence of the realm is, after all, more his domain than mine.”
“The defence of the realm?” I asked. “You believe it was that much of a threat?”
He was quiet for so long that I thought he would not answer. When he did he was deadly serious.
“It was only my knowledge of musical theory that saved us from enslavement and calamity,” he said. “Boothroyd has opened a door that we might not be able to shut. We were fortunate in that I was able to set up a rhythm that exactly cancelled out the vibration they had brought forth from between. For if it had been otherwise, we two would also have been taken away – I believe you got a glimpse of the place to which I am referring?”
He went on before I could reply.
“If allowed to persist, the dance would have spread as the vibrations grew stronger. All of London, perhaps even the whole of Europe, may have fallen under its sway if the vibration had not been countered.
“We have sent it back into dormancy. But for how long? That is the question that vexes me now Watson. I believe that the experimentation we saw in that workshop is some twenty to thirty years in advance of current scientific theory. But what will happen when other scientists catch up and start sending out more and more transmissions into the ether? What happens when the dreamer in the dance wakes once more?”
He went quiet.
I had no answer for him — not at that time.
But there are some nights when I dream, and I am back there in the dark cathedral of emptiness, back between.
I hear the call of the dance.
–
–
William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries, the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies. His current best seller is The Invasion, a sci-fi alien invasion tale with mass carnage, plucky survivors, and last minute rescues. It has been as high as #2 in the Kindle science fiction charts (and #4 in Kindle horror ). Click here to view and buy William Meikle’s books at Amazon.com.
Illustration by mimulux.
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NOTE: Images contained in this Lovecraft eZine are Copyright ©2006-2012 art-by-mimulux. All rights reserved. All the images contained in this Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without my express written permission. These images do not belong to the public domain. All stories in Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without the express written permission of the editor.
Unearthly Awakening
by W.H. Pugmire
I want to kiss you.
It’s true, I have not bothered to see you since that strange yellow day. I’ve been preoccupied with that house on Benefit Street, and the area adjacent to it. You never mentioned that wooded plot of land, so I suspect you haven’t really investigated the neighborhood of the shunned house. You have been excited by its legend – but it’s just a story for you, not something that dwells in haunted reality. I was mesmerized as you spoke of it, that day of yellow light, and so I could not resist going to look at it after we had our little meal. Everyone in the café on College Hill was talking about the yellow day, and we never did get any explanation of the phenomenon. Do you remember the shadows of the clouds on the pavement as we walked to our rendezvous? Have you ever noticed the shadows of clouds before? I’ve been aware of shifting light, of brightness turning into shade as clouds obscured the sun; but this was different, this display we saw crawling on the pavement, the unnerving shapes of the grotesque clouds that crept across the sky as we watched them through the yellow light. Do you remember how nervous it made you, to watch those shadows play across the surface of my eyes, so that the substance of my jelly orbs seemed transposed, exchanged with alien element? I smiled when you mentioned it, as I am smiling now.
It was the yellow day that brought to your mind the yellow house and its unfathomable aura. You had mentioned it, briefly, once or twice; but on this occasion you expounded on its history, and spoke so acutely of its place in the history of haunted Providence. You mentioned that Poe had often walked past it, on his way to court Mrs. Whitman, or as he journeyed so as to dream in this burying ground to which I have spirited you. Perhaps Poe sat on this very slab that cools
our bums. You mentioned the history of that yellow house (it looks so pretty now, alas, so clean and unspoiled), of the tale of how two gentlemen entered it so as to pierce its mystery, with only one of them emerging alive and semi-sane. They had gone into the shunned house with cocky scientific assurance; but they were unnerved by the patches of mould that took on such suggestive shapes (similar to the shapes of those clouds we viewed as we peered upward through the yellow light of that strange day), and their health was sapped by the titan thing that burrowed beneath that house, the dead yet dreaming enigma. How enticing your voice sounded as you spoke of it, on that yellow day, and how impossible it was for me to resist walking down College Hill after our tête-à-tête, so as to touch my hand to the yellow wood of the lower section of the house on Benefit Street. And I did indeed sense something – but it didn’t surge from the house itself, but from the adjacent wooded area. I pointed to the little spot on our way to this burying ground, just before we passed the shunned house. You paid scant attention and merely glanced at the black fence and the region beyond, the wooded hillside. I had been instantly drawn to it, on the day of yellow light, for woodland had always been a kind of asylum for me from the world. I loved how time seemed to stop in wooded realms, how removed I felt from the age of men as I was sheltered by trees and shadow. So I stepped away from the shunned house and walked through the black iron gate, onto the small patio of brick. I looked at the growth of shrubs and their large leaves, all of which appeared unnatural in the haze of the yellow day. There was, beyond the other end of the black iron fence, a path of large stones, on which I walked toward seven lengths of eight stone steps that took me up toward the wooded realm. I glanced beyond my left-hand side, over a wooden fence and into the back yard of the shunned house; and I saw the nebulous shadow on the ground there, that might have been the shadow of a malformed cloud, although the area was almost entirely shaded with a canopy of trees. The stone steps ended, replaced with three tilted steps of wood. The pathway curved, and I walked upon its sod, into the small grove, and saw the thick old tree that was different from all others. How dark the place suddenly seemed, unmarred by the sallow light of the yellow day. There was but one hint of illumination, a phosphorescent growth of mould that blighted the surface of the thick and ancient tree; and I was curious at the shape of that growth, of how it seemed to form a fungous face from which minute threads of mist emanated. Something in the shape of that pale fungi drew me to it, so as to investigate its form and fragrance – for it had an aroma that was such as I had never inhaled, an intoxicating bouquet that intensified as, standing just before it, the fleshy surface expanded subtly and threw off infinitesimal streams of sickly mist that floated to my nostrils, which sucked them in. And at the sound of my sudden ecstasy, the curious face of mould curled what might have been a mouth, and the shape was so inviting that I could not resist but press my lips onto it.
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