I will not call this sensation sympathy, but it was close to that. The snake men were no longer alien to me, or repugnant. I was experiencing a lofty compassion for them, underpinned by the realisation that they were beings with as much right to exist as any, part of Nature’s warp and weft. Moreover, their needs were modest, and I had the ability to influence them. They were there to be guided. As with a horse, where all that was required to tame it was the judicious application of whip, spur and rein, the snake men had to be taken in hand. They did not know what was best for them until told so by the wearer of the Triophidian Crown.
“You will stop right there,” I said.
The snake men did not do as asked. Instead they continued to prowl towards me at a slow, menacing pace. I felt a stab of panic. Was the crown malfunctioning? Was I not using it correctly?
Inwardly, the crown nudged me. I had made a mistake, it was saying, an elementary error.
I could have kicked myself. I had spoken in English, a language in which the snake men were not conversant.
I repeated the command in R’lyehian – “N’rhn!” – and this time the snake men responded instantly. They halted in a rough semicircle around me, W’gnns standing slightly ahead of the others.
“You are not Missster Holmesss,” said he. “Where isss Missster Holmesss?”
“Indisposed,” I replied.
“He did not come when he wasss meant to, and now, adding to the insssult, inssstead of appearing himssself he sssendsss hisss proxxxy. It ssseemsss disssressspectful.”
“Do not be insolent,” I chided. The crown thrummed more intently upon my head and its glow brightened. I puffed up my chest, feeling myself the snake men’s superior in every respect. I would not abide insubordination from them.
W’gnns nodded humbly. “I apologissse, Dr Watssson. I ssspoke out of turn.”
“See that it does not happen again.”
“It ssshall not.”
Somewhere faintly and afar I heard a cackling, and realised that it came from the crown. The more I lorded it over the snake men, the more energy it leeched from me. At the same time, the power I had over these creatures was attractive, even intoxicating, and I was eager to keep exercising it. I was aware that I was falling into a trap. The crown, by enabling me to make thralls of the snake men, was in turn making me its thrall. This was a Faustian bargain. Yet somehow I did not care.
“Just because I am not Sherlock Holmes,” I said, “it does not entitle you to treat me with any less deference. I am in fact his equal. My words carry as much weight as his. Don’t you forget that.”
Brighter still the Triophidian Crown shone, causing the snake men’s reptilian irises to contract to the thinnest of slivers. A couple of them raised hands to shield their eyes against its glare.
I was at once exhilarated and incensed. This light was my doing. It was generated by me. Rightly should the snake men be dazzled by it. But should they not bask in it as well? Should they not genuflect before it, as the Ancient Egyptians did before the sun?
The crown was now overcome with glee, and so was I, even though I knew perfectly well that I should not be. Any joyousness the crown exhibited came at my expense. I could feel how it had its hooks in me. I could feel it supping upon my very essence. A numb lassitude was creeping over me, a kind of anaesthesia, like rivulets of ice water through my veins, yet I had no wish to stop. How thrilling it was to have the snake men kowtowing to me! I could make them do anything – anything – I wished.
“Kneel,” I said, and they did. “Bow,” I said, and they did that too. “Grovel,” I said, and they abased themselves in the Thames mud, writhing, groaning.
“Thisss…” said W’gnns, straining to speak. “Thisss isss… not right, sssir.”
“It is if I say it is,” I barked.
“You… abussse usss. Pleassse desssissst. We have information for you. We know where the nightgaunt went. I will tell you where, on condition that you leave usss be.”
“You will tell me regardless, without condition.” I accompanied the declaration with a burst of indignant rage so strong it made the crown crackle audibly.
W’gnns clutched his head. Many of the other snake men did likewise. “It hurtsss,” he wailed. “What you are doing to usss. It bringsss pain.”
“Tell me, you grub, you worthless devil. Tell me! Now!”
Trembling in distress, W’gnns spat out his answer. “Due eassst. Where the sssity petersss out. Where the river mergesss with the land. Thither did the nightgaunt fly. We traced the placesss where it alighted. Where it resssted upon the way. Sssomewhere in thossse marssshes did it land lassst of all.”
“Be more precise.”
“I cannot. I cannot! We dared ssstray no further than that from our hauntsss. To do ssso would be to risssk exxxposing ourssselves. Pleassse, Dr Watssson! We can take no more.”
The voice of the crown was adamant that they could – and indeed should. It was telling me that I was entitled to increase the torment until they begged for death. Indeed, if the mood took me I could actually destroy the snake men by scorching their psyches from the inside out until nothing remained. And would that be so bad? I despised this race, after all. I disapproved wholeheartedly of the way Holmes had given them the run of the city, setting himself up as their noble liberator. If I got rid of the Irregulars, what a message it would send to the rest of their kind. Never would London have anything to fear from them. They would stick to their benighted underworld, cowed and cowering.
The crown was offering me an unparalleled opportunity, and I had a vague inkling of the cost. In order for me to kill the Irregulars the crown would have to reach deep and extract every last iota of energy from me. It would mine me until the seam ran dry.
For a moment – a very long moment – I considered this a price worth paying.
Then it hit me. What was I doing? I was a doctor, a man dedicated to preserving life. I did not kill except as a last resort, in self-defence or to safeguard innocents. Yet here I was, contemplating the slaughter of a score of sentient beings who were at least partway human.
A wave of disgust swept over me – a disgust aimed not at the beleaguered Irregulars but at myself. With a grunt of protest I snatched the Triophidian Crown off my head and hurled it into the mud.
The sudden absence of that coarse, provocative voice in my mind was a blessing. I felt cleaner, more wholesome, as though I had purged myself of something poisonous and sickening.
The Irregulars ceased their agonised contortions. One by one they picked themselves up off the ground. They looked haggard and worn after the ordeal I had put them through. Several clung to their neighbours for support.
W’gnns, his stripes besmirched with riverbed filth, fixed me with a malevolent stare.
“Missster Holmesss would never have done sssuch a thing,” he snarled.
“I know, I know. I can only express regret. The crown – it possessed me. I had no idea what it would be like, wearing it. Holmes warned me, but even so. The power. It was hard to resist.”
“That isss not what I meant. I meant he would never have been ssso carelesss.”
“I was careless, yes, but—”
“Ssso carelesss asss to drop the crown where I might reach it.”
With that, W’gnns darted forward. He moved with snakelike speed, quick as any cobra striking its prey. In an eye-blink the Triophidian Crown was in his clutches.
* * *
“Give that back,” I said.
“Why?” retorted W’gnns. “Why ssshould I? It isss an inssstrument of tyranny. With it, you sssubjugate and caussse sssuffering. Without it, you are nothing. Just a sssoft-ssskinned mammal.”
The other Irregulars hissed assent. Still reeling from the misery I had inflicted upon them, they perceived nonetheless that the balance of power had abruptly shifted. I was no longer the master. I was merely a lone human whom they outnumbered twenty to one. My fate was in their hands now.
W’gnns gestured, and one of th
e Irregulars – he who was wholly snake from the waist down – slithered towards me. I was slow to react, doubtless because the debilitating effects of using the crown still lingered, dulling my reflexes. I went for my revolver, which I had once again, as last time, made the precaution of bringing along. Before my hand even made it to my pocket, however, the snake man had coiled his lower portions around me, wrapping me from knee to neck. My arms were pressed against my sides and my legs were locked together. I was helpless, entwined in a long, thick cylinder of muscle. I knew then how a monkey must feel when caught in the grip of a boa constrictor. I struggled, but the snake man only tightened his hold upon me. I felt my bones creak. I was having difficulty drawing breath. To make matters worse, the ammoniac reek of the snake man’s body filled my throat and nostrils chokingly. This would be an awful way to die, and I was all but powerless to do anything about it. My only hope of escaping the predicament was to talk my way out.
“W’gnns,” I gasped. “Think. If I do not return home tonight, Holmes will soon work out why. He will know what has become of me and who is to blame. He will come looking for you, all of you, and his anger will be terrible. None of you will escape it.”
“But he will not have thisss.” W’gnns waved the crown under my nose. “We therefore will have that much lesss reassson to fear him.”
“Crown or no crown, Sherlock Holmes is a force to be reckoned with. Listen to me. Do not do this. For all your sakes.”
“Ssshould I ssshow you mersssy?” W’gnns mused. “When you yourssself ssseem ssso lacking in that quality?”
The other snake men snarled that I should not be allowed to live. Let their colleague suffocate me. Let him crush me until my every bone snapped and my organs burst.
“But I did not, did I?” I said. “I relented. I saw sense. You can do the same. You do not want my death on your conscience.”
“From threatsss to an appeal to my better nature.” W’gnns’s lipless mouth grinned starkly, revealing sharp, sickle-shaped fangs. “What nexxxt? Pleading?”
“Never,” I declared. “An Englishman does not plead for his life. If nothing else, an Englishman knows how to die with dignity.”
“Englissshman,” W’gnns echoed quizzically, for I had spoken the word in my native tongue, knowing no easy way of translating it into R’lyehian. “Isss that your tribal affiliation? Isss that what you are?”
“Amongst other things, yes.”
“Well then, Englissshman, you will get your wisssh.”
For one dreadful, vertiginous moment I thought that my claim about dying with dignity was going to be put to the test. I steeled myself for what was to come. I had faith that beyond the pain, as my soul parted company with my body and flew to its ultimate destination, Mary would be there to greet me. I saw myself prostrate before her, imploring her to forgive me for my failure to protect her. I saw her reaching down a benevolent hand, her features lit up with a radiant, loving smile. I felt then that I could die with equanimity at least, if not dignity, knowing what awaited me on the other side.
“You will live,” said W’gnns. “But,” he added, brandishing the Triophidian Crown, “thisss isss oursss now. Never again ssshall Missster Holmesss, or anyone elssse, ussse it upon usss. We will continue to obssserve our pact with him. My race ssshall not impinge upon yoursss. That will be, however, on the underssstanding that the reverssse alssso holdsss true. Your kind ssshall not be troubled by usss again asss long asss we are not troubled by you. Isss that clear?”
Still enmeshed within the snake man’s coils, I nodded.
W’gnns gestured again, and the snake man gave a final squeeze, exerting an almost intolerable pressure upon my ribcage. Then he relinquished his grasp, unravelling himself, and I could breathe freely once more.
The Irregulars ambled off to the sewer outfall while I stood mired in the Thames mud, feeling both relieved and rueful. The tide rose, but only when the edge of the widening river began lapping at my feet did I stir myself to move.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Looking-Glass World
HOLMES WAS IRATE. I HAD ANTICIPATED THAT. From his sickbed he raged at me for several minutes, and I took it, head bent, hands behind back, like a contrite schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s study over some infraction of the rules.
“In my defence,” I said, when the tempest had abated, “you failed to convey quite how insidious the Triophidian Crown is.”
“Perhaps I ought to have been clearer about that,” Holmes said, recanting somewhat. “I thought that a paragon of probity such as yourself would have sufficient moral fibre not to give in to the crown’s enticements. I misjudged. That does not, however, alter the fact that I have lost a powerful weapon in my arsenal. I mean not just the crown but the Irregulars. Both are irreplaceable, and I fear that their loss will come back to bite us at a later date.” He sighed. “Regardless, I shall soldier on. Tell me again what W’gnns said about the nightgaunt.”
I had prefaced the bad news about the crown with the good news that the Irregulars had identified where the nightgaunt had flown to. Now I repeated the rather vague directions W’gnns had furnished.
“Fetch me my atlas of Britain, would you?” Holmes said.
In the sitting room I went to the section of bookshelf where he kept non-occult works of reference – it formed a comparatively small portion of his total collection – and took down the volume requested, returning with it to his bedroom. Holmes leafed through until he came to a map of London and environs. After some study, he jabbed a forefinger at the page.
“There,” said he. “‘Due east. Where the city peters out. Where the river merges with the land.’ W’gnns could very well have been talking about Rainham Marshes. The place matches all three criteria.”
“But it’s a barren, largely uninhabited area. It covers several hundred acres. I am loath to use the cliché ‘a needle in a haystack’, but…”
“You are looking at the problem the wrong way, Watson. Yes, Rainham Marshes is a wilderness, but that makes our task easier, not harder.”
“How so?”
“Let us presume the nightgaunt was acting under instruction. I think we can both agree that that is more probable than not. The targeting of the inmate, the fact that he was specifically singled out for abduction, invites no other reasonable interpretation of the data. Bear in mind, too, the condition in which the man was first found – covered in scratches and bruises – and where he was found, namely near Purfleet.”
He pointed to the small town on the map. It lay adjacent to Rainham Marshes.
“Does this not suggest to you that our abductee was, immediately prior to his consignment to Bethlem, an escapee?” he said. “That the nightgaunt brought him back to where he had been previously held against his will? That it was carrying out a retrieval?”
“Gracious!” I exclaimed. “Yes. I see that now. He must have picked up his superficial injuries during his escape.”
“They seem consistent with the kind of damage one might sustain while fleeing through inhospitable terrain, stark naked, in a state of blind panic, tripping, falling repeatedly, treading barefoot on sharp stones, forcing one’s way through clumps of reeds and thorn bushes. He was doing it in pitch darkness, what is more.”
“How can you know that?”
“Gregson said the man was discovered by a farmhand early in the morning. That implies he made his escape during the night. The night in question was overcast, the moon at its newest. There would have been virtually no natural light by which to see his way. Little wonder he stumbled so often.”
“So prior to that he was being held in some sort of dwelling?”
“And has been reinstalled there now by the nightgaunt, or rather by its master. Such was my suspicion all along but I needed confirmation, which the Irregulars have provided. Happily for us, the paucity of human habitation in the marshes means we will have many fewer locations to check, many fewer doors to knock on.”
“When do you propose we c
ommence doing so?” I enquired.
“If I said ‘right away’ you would certainly chastise me for it,” Holmes said.
“And justly so. You are still not strong enough yet.” His outburst of some minutes beforehand, however, told me that Holmes was well on the way to recovery. A day ago he would never have been up to such an effort.
“Then first thing tomorrow morning,” he said.
“Too soon. The day after tomorrow, maybe.”
“Tomorrow noon. That is my final offer.”
I had no alternative but to accept this compromise. I counted myself victorious, and assuredly Holmes did likewise.
* * *
Holmes was dressed, shaved, and tucking into breakfast when I tumbled out of bed the next morning. He looked much improved, although still far from hale. I, for my part, ached all over from my rough treatment by the snake men, my ribs in particular feeling tender. That was bad enough, but worse was the throbbing of my head. It was as though I had spent the previous evening drinking heavily.
“A Triophidian Crown hangover,” my friend observed as, with a shaky hand, I helped myself to a cup of tea. “All the unpleasantness of a traditional hangover but with none of the enjoyment that engenders it.”
“For your sake it may be no bad thing that that damned artefact is now in the snake men’s possession. You will no longer have to put up with feeling like this the morning after.”
“Oh, normal use of the crown was no great hardship,” Holmes said airily. “It might leave me a bit listless, nothing a shot of cocaine could not rectify. You should try that remedy yourself. It will fix you up in no time.”
“Thank you, but this is all the stimulant I require,” I said, indicating my tea. “That and some of those poached eggs I see, and a rasher or two of bacon.”
The Cthulhu Casebooks--Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities Page 10
