Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu

by Lois H. Gresh

  The unfortunate souls being dragged were the type who slept in gutters when they didn’t have the coins for den use. I knew their sort well. They wore rags, and matted beards hid their faces. They staggered, they fell to their knees when a Butcher pushed their shoulders down, they lacked strength and determination. These were my customers, and their tormentors were my Butchers.

  It was the natural order of the world. The strong dominated the weak, and without the strong, the world would cease to have meaning, forward momentum, any fluidity. In the wild, beasts devoured one another. Here in civilized society, we restrained our worst inclinations. Usually, that is…

  A tall Butcher shoved a policeman, who fell to the street. As the officer scrambled to stand back up again, my man lifted a cleaver and slammed it down—straight down—straight down through the officer’s skull.

  The head split open, cracked in two, and the body twisted to the side and dropped.

  My man—it must be Dorsey, for no other Butcher was this brutal and strong—let out a laugh the devil would have been proud of. He pivoted, and his knife slashed at another officer, who gripped his stomach and doubled over before falling. Another maniacal laugh and now a scream of glee, and Dorsey grabbed a metal chain from another of his men. Dorsey wrapped it around another officer’s throat and pulled tightly. The victim clawed at Dorsey’s hands.

  Abruptly, Dorsey released the chain and kicked the man in the groin, then followed with a blow to the face. The policeman fell just like the one before him had fallen. Dead, both of them—dead. I almost laughed with Dorsey, but controlled my urge.

  With police and Butchers scrapping on both sides of the tram machine building, now was the time to crash through the iron gates and take control. It took all of my self-control not to race across the street and kill that lone officer with his lantern.

  Come on, Dorsey, do it! I thought wildly, balling my hands into fists.

  The attackers had their boots on the backs of policemen squirming on the street. Knives thrust into bone, cracking it, and into meat, eliciting shrieks of pain.

  Dorsey’s hands wrapped around the neck of an officer. The man clutched at his throat, and dropped to the ground.

  Six policemen ran… or rather, limped back to the tram machine building.

  I huddled in the shadows, anger swelling in me. No, I thought, you must kill them all. There must not be any police guarding that gold! I raced back into the building and growled—low and deep in my throat—as I punched a wall over and over again.

  Then I stopped.

  Did I hear something, perhaps someone—a policeman?—enter the building?

  I swung around, fists lifted, ready to pound the intruder into a pulp.

  It was Timmy Dorsey, Jr.

  “We’ll try again, Professor,” he said. “Me dad will get into that buildin’ for you, I swear it upon me mother’s grave, I do.” His voice was calm and steady.

  I grabbed the boy and shook him.

  “You failed me! Your father failed me! I must have that building!”

  Timmy’s eyes grew hard.

  “There ain’t nothin’ me dad can’t do. I’ll see to it. ’E’ll get what you want.”

  At that, my anger ebbed away, and I released the boy.

  “Timmy, you’ll have one more chance,” I said sternly, “only one.”

  Placing my hand on the boy’s head, I ruffled his hair. His body went rigid. He expected a blow, I could tell. There would be no blow, but neither was my affection remotely sincere. I felt nothing other than the determination to succeed.

  “I don’t give second chances very often,” I said.

  The boy nodded.

  “It will be done.” He pulled away from me, shook his shoulders, and then dashed into the shadows, and from there, the street.

  18

  DR. REGINALD SINCLAIR

  Whitechapel Lunatic Asylum

  Miss Klune burst into my office, her face flushed, eyes flashing.

  “Doctor, come quickly!”

  I half-rose from my chair, lifted my eyebrows, wanting further explanation.

  “I’m in the middle of critical paperwork,” I said.

  “No time for that!” she cried. “Doctor, this is serious. There’s trouble in the day room. Bligh Braithwaite and Willie Jacobs!”

  Dropping my pen, I shoved back my chair, and rushed after the nurse. She wasn’t the type to interrupt me with such insistence unless it was a serious matter. It took a lot to fluster her.

  That damn Bligh Braithwaite, I thought, as I hurried toward the sounds of shrieking in my day room, he’s always been trouble. He shows up, unannounced and unwanted, expecting… what? Gratitude, money, favors? That flaming idiot. He should have known… and now, this. Causing me trouble when I have trouble enough!

  “Stop now and sit down! I command you! The doctor’s coming, and you’re in for a load of trouble, I tell you!” Miss Klune was already in the day room, screaming at the patients.

  The image of my mother flashed in my mind. Stout, short, always cooking fatty meals and breads, always berating my father and her easier prey, me.

  “Why do you want to treat lunatics?” she’d exclaimed when I told her my career plans. “Isn’t it bad enough you want to be a doctor, dealing with death and pain and blood and disease seven days a week? What kind of life is this? Little money, no rest, that’s what kind of life it is. But if you have to do it, Reggie, for God’s sake, leave the lunatics to someone else, why don’t you? Just deliver babies.”

  My father would grunt in the corner, head buried in a newspaper, eyes not comprehending what he saw. My father had been the first deranged person I’d known. He’d left our squalid flat every night to roam the streets, coming home drunk, stewing in his own sweat and alcohol all day on brown-stained sheets. When he had spoken, it might just as well have been Mr. Norris or any of my other inmates speaking, all nonsense and self-delusions. On his death bed, my father still thought he was the king of England. For all her faults, and there were many, at least my mother was sane.

  “Don’t let him Eshock you! He’ll kill you, Willie! We must resist, not allow Sinclair to Eshock us! We must revolt!”

  Oh God, it was Bligh Braithwaite, and as I flew into the day room, I saw the fool in all his glory. His emaciated frame was bent at the waist, legs and arms trembling within his tattered shirt and ripped trousers. The dull-wax eyes registered my presence, widened, and went wild.

  The day room reeked of feces and urine. Miss Switzer hauled Jeremy MacMyers, one of our longest-standing inmates, down the hall toward the inmates’ rooms. Hopefully, we had enough gowns to fit all the soiled patients.

  Bligh Braithwaite’s arm rose, shaking, and his index finger pointed at me. He backed away.

  “Nooooooooo!” he screamed. “Get away! Evil!”

  He fell against the chair propping up Mrs. van der Kolk, and losing his balance, fell into her lap.

  Mrs. van der Kolk gurgled.

  “Oooo, me man, me man meat!” she warbled, her shriveled hands clutching at him. She’d clawed her eyes to bloody smithereens, and I wondered if she’d lost her vision as a result. “Lookit what me ’usband done to me. I be ready for you, sweet thing. You want to see me pantaloons an’ firm, roun’ buttocks, do you, eh, do you?”

  Mr. Robertson curled into a fetal position on the floor behind Mrs. van der Kolk’s chair. He wept like an unfed baby with a soiled nappy, interspersing his tears with howls of fury at the voices he heard in his head.

  “Avoid the Eshockers!” he cried. “They’re of the devil, they’re of death, they’ll kill us all! Dr. Sinclair must die! We must revolt!”

  It was sickening, really. Mr. Robertson was parroting Bligh Braithwaite, imagining that what he actually did hear amounted to the devil screaming in his brain.

  As I reached for Bligh Braithwaite, Willie Jacobs staggered over and grasped my shoulders. He had no strength, but I let him hold onto me, for now. I had nothing against Willie Jacobs. He was a poor sou
l with little time left on Earth. My heart warmed to him, for what had he done, really, other than tend to his father’s business, which had done him in?

  I wanted to help Willie Jacobs, give him relief from his anxieties as he slipped into the netherworld of death. I also wanted him to help me build more Eshockers for Professor Moriarty so I could treat those who suffered like Jacobs. Symbiosis? Yes, certainly.

  Jacobs released my shoulders and stood, shaking, before me. His right hand rose to his nose, and a finger jabbed rhythmically into the left nostril, which was inflamed now with infection. Scabs encrusted the entire underside of his nose. I noticed that his face and scalp bore additional scabs from the last time I’d seen him in my treatment room. Jacobs had been picking at the scabs, making them deeper and bigger over time. He couldn’t stop himself. I didn’t think he had even tried to do so. It was a nervous tic, of sorts, a brain illness.

  “You’re worse than the murderous creatures from beyon’,” he rasped. “You’re worse than the Old Ones. You ’urt us for no reason.”

  I bobbed my head toward Bligh Braithwaite.

  “Sedate Braithwaite, nurse, this time with a heavier dose,” I said, “and then bring him into the treatment room.”

  Miss Klune’s strong arms pried Bligh Braithwaite off Mrs. van der Kolk’s lap.

  “I’m in no mood for this, Bligh. Be a good boy and behave. I don’t want any problems with you this time.”

  “Noooooo!” He struggled in her grasp, the legs kicking, the head snapping from side to side.

  “Ouch!” Miss Klune let one arm drop and rubbed her chin, where he’d kicked her. As he squirmed loose, her steely hands grabbed his shoulders and shook. “You stop this right now.” Her words were cold, calm, and measured.

  But Willie Jacobs intervened. He encircled her waist with both arms, trying to pull her off Bligh Braithwaite.

  “Leave ’im alone. ’E don’t want more of your Eshocks.”

  She shrugged Jacobs off. He stumbled back, tried to regain his footing, his arms clumsily groping for her.

  Miss Klune hoisted Braithwaite up from behind, lifting his struggling body with her hands clenched over his chest. His kicks hit mid-air this time, and in this fashion, she carried him from the day room toward the treatment room.

  Around me, half a dozen patients moaned and cried. They wailed about my Eshockers and about evil, about the need for revenge and release and revolt. Miss Switzer would return from handling Mr. MacMyers and take care of them, sedating them all and tucking them beneath their sheets.

  I needed both Bligh Braithwaite and Willie Jacobs to build my machines. I couldn’t afford to sedate them into constant oblivion, nor could I allow them to be together again. Braithwaite was dangerous. He knew too much. He could poison Jacobs against me. Braithwaite was hopeless. I’d never been able to reach him. So I would try to make my peace with Willie Jacobs, and through him, perhaps I could persuade Braithwaite to behave himself and build those machines.

  Revolt? Not when I had medicines and machines at my disposal, not to mention barred windows and locked doors. I had all the power.

  “Come, Mr. Jacobs, let us sit quietly and talk.” Gently, I helped him from the hysteria of the day room and back to his tiny closet-sized room. I eased him down on the bed and then sat beside him.

  “Mr. Jacobs, my only intention, I assure you, I promise you, is to ease your suffering.”

  “Bligh says your Eshockers kill. We patients, we want out of ’ere. You’re mad, Dr. Sinclair. You’re evil.”

  I did nothing but devote my life to these patients and their well-being. How could they think me evil?

  Again, I remembered my father.

  Insanity.

  “Mr. Jacobs,” I tried again, using my softest and most gentle tone, “there are medical issues beyond our control, things we are not responsible for, such as what is wrong with you and with our friend—yes, my friend, too—Bligh Braithwaite.”

  “I ain’t insane. I’m infected by Old Ones, an’ says Dr. Watson, also by phossy jaw.”

  “Dr. Watson is a good medical man, indeed, but he does not specialize in the brain, as I do. The Eshockers use electricity to cleanse your brain of disease and ill thoughts. Doctors use electrotherapy to cleanse illnesses from all parts of the body.”

  “Machines are bad, evil.”

  There was that word again: evil.

  “Sometimes, we have to suffer to get well,” I said. “Amputations hurt, but they save lives. Removing a bad tooth hurts, but you wouldn’t want to keep it and be in constant pain, would you? We pop blisters, we use leeches to suck out poisons. How is electrotherapy any different?”

  “It changes me brain,” Jacobs whined.

  “It changes your brain, yes, but for the better,” I said in a soothing voice. “It destroys pain, Mr. Jacobs. It helps those who suffer the most. It cleanses hostile thoughts.”

  “You ain’t got hostile thoughts?” he asked sharply.

  Frustrated, I leapt up from the bed and fidgeted by the door, ready to leave.

  “Mr. Jacobs, you’re not a well man. You know that. I’m here to help you. I feed you, and I tend to your every need. I am a doctor, sir.”

  But he was curled on his side, and snoring. He was ungrateful, like all of them.

  Carefully avoiding any hostile thoughts, I left him to his nightmares.

  19

  DR. JOHN WATSON

  London

  After a quick but delicious meal in the dining hall of the Diogenes Club, Holmes and I were anxious to be on our way, but Mycroft signaled us to follow him back into the Stranger’s Room. He stood by the window and stared into the night for a while before he spoke.

  “In the quiet of the club,” Mycroft said, “I thought of your safety, Sherlock. Our Dr. Watson admits to mental confusion, which we all know is not his usual mode of functioning. You, dear brother, admit to no such mental confusion, and yet…”

  “And yet, you fear that I will suffer the same fate, since I have been where Dr. Watson goes just as he has been wherever I go.”

  “Correct,” Mycroft said. “I suggest that you remain in a safer environment.” Before Holmes or I could object, he quickly added, “Not in my rooms, no, for neither of us could bear such a thing, but rather, I’ve arranged for a room above the Diogenes for you. I arranged for this… yesterday, just in case I felt the need to house you safely upon seeing you today. And now, I’ve heard from you and the good doctor, and I’ve had time to consider.”

  A room above the Diogenes Club, where Sherlock Holmes would be alone, away from me, as if I were diseased, infectious, and about to contaminate him in some deadly manner—

  “This is most offensive!” I blurted out.

  “Not at all.” It was Holmes who replied. “Consider. I need time alone to reflect upon what ails you, what ails London. The Diogenes Club has vast resources, men who might provide insight and help, medical and government documents of all sorts. Novel creatures are bursting upon the city, unleashed by scoundrels, I suspect, though seemingly through rifts in ceilings, a barn roof, a chair, a table, a steam-powered machine, and indeed, from the waters of the Thames. The creatures flicker in and out of our view—” he snapped his fingers—“yet they attack and kill. Perhaps my brother is correct in suggesting I move to the Diogenes Club.”

  “But—”

  “My dear fellow,” Holmes interrupted, “it is for the best. I will gather my things in the morning. You will visit me, as needed, and we’ll take our excursions from here. In the meantime, you will dwell at Baker Street and make your excuses, on my behalf, to Mrs. Hudson.”

  “And what excuse shall I make, Holmes?”

  “I am on holiday.”

  “She won’t believe me. You never take holidays.”

  His eyes twinkled.

  “I am away on a case.”

  “She will believe that,” I snorted. “But where am I to say you have gone?”

  “My dear man,” Mycroft interjected, “your Mrs
. Hudson is not the issue here. The issue is this neural psychosis and how to stop it. Now, I must retire for the evening. I have much to ponder.” He turned to Holmes. “I suggest you visit the dissecting rooms at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel post haste—first thing tomorrow would be best, and I’ve already signaled your arrival via one of our ever-faithful and loyal Diogenes servants.” He lowered his voice. “I signaled him over the roast beef.”

  “Do tell, how did you accomplish this over the roast beef, when talking is strictly prohibited in the Diogenes?” I asked.

  “By writing on club cards,” Holmes murmured. “Did you not see us?”

  “I was not attending. You forget I am not feeling myself.”

  I had grown weary, as if my mind had sucked the strength from my physical being, as if it required all the strength I possessed just to keep my brain working. I wanted to return to Baker Street and to the warmth of my bed. I wanted Holmes to return with me to his own bed. I was not at all comfortable thinking of him here while I was there.

  “My dear fellow,” he said, as if reading my thoughts, “it is you who shall fare better than I, for you will have Mrs. Hudson to feed and tend to you.”

  “Off, then,” Mycroft said, swinging his bulk toward the front door of the club. “Sleep awaits, and puzzles to solve. Royal London Hospital dissecting rooms, tomorrow morning, for you, and then, I expect you here tomorrow night and every night until we rid London of this scourge.”

  “And what are we expected to dissect at the dissecting rooms?” I asked, fearful that my question would be perceived as naïve.

  The three of us shifted from the stale cigar smoke of the Diogenes Club into the brisk London night. As he hailed a carriage, Holmes answered me.

  “Brains, Watson. If we’re lucky, we’ll study tissues from those who died from the current infection, perhaps brains dragged in from the Thames.”

  *

  As grand as the idea was, it revealed nothing of value. Holmes and I arrived at the Royal London Hospital, where, rather than sending us to the dissecting rooms, a technician supplied us with a small private laboratory for a few hours.