Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu

by Lois H. Gresh

  Another of the men—this one having a flattened face with a nose crushed into it, and two protruding eyes that goggled at me—slopped off his stool. Brown slime dripped from the vacated seat and pooled by his feet.

  Holmes regained his composure before I regained mine.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “please do not be alarmed. We are mere wanderers in need of a room for the night. My companion and I have stayed here before, and not so long ago. Mrs. Hinds, who runs this place, knows us. Would you kindly tell us where she might be, so that we may obtain our room and get a much-needed night’s rest? Our journey has been long.”

  Something crackled in the fireplace, and the light dimmed. The other two men slid from their stools to stand beside the one who confronted us. The one with the bloated head and green-oozing scab cracked open a smile that slit the lower part of his face in two. I slicked the sleet from my face, trying to appear nonchalant while fear swept through me. The man with goggle eyes lifted a much-too-long arm and pointed at the door we had entered by.

  “You best be on your way,” he said. “There’s no place for you here. You’re not one of us.”

  “And what might you be, sir?” Holmes asked, hastily adding, “No offense meant, I assure you.”

  “Offense taken, sir,” the other snarled. “Your rules don’t apply here. We have no need for human pleasantries. No need for humans at all.” At this, all three burst out laughing and muttered guttural gibberish at each other. Then abruptly, one reached to the fireplace implements and lifted the iron shovel.

  “I suggest you move along,” he said. “The Loggerheads is for our kind now, and only our kind. It’s the Loggerheads den.” He paused, eyes whirling, then added, “Unless, of course, you’re here for Eshocking. Then perhaps we can accommodate you.”

  This was one of Moriarty’s Eshocker dens? I could barely stifle my surprise.

  “Yes,” Holmes said quickly, his eyes on the shovel, “you have divined correctly. That is what we came for.”

  With a few grunts, the man rapped the shovel on the fireplace grille three times. Everything always seemed to be in increments of three with the Order of Dagon. Our erstwhile client Kristoffer Beiler had three loggerheads on his braces—an ancestral device, he’d told us. His murdered father, Amos Beiler, had constructed three items of furniture described on ancient hide. Lord Wiltshram had shown us in his Avebury home a painting of the Crest of Dagon—three green octopuses within a yellow nonagon—as well as a cherry divan made by Beiler, which balanced improbably upon three ornate posts.

  Mrs. Hinds hobbled into the room, leaning on a cane.

  “You know these men?” the bloated-head creature asked her.

  “I do. They came when the Beiler demons drove out all the normals.” She smacked her gums and eyed us. She looked more hunched over than before, if such a thing were possible. She said to us, “These gentlemen are my kin. They’ve been here for generations in these rooms. This is a den for contemplation and serenity and devotion.”

  If only there’d been another inn nearby, Holmes and I would have raced from this place into the storm. But we did not know where to find another room in this locale, and just weeks ago Mrs. Hinds had fed us good breakfasts and kept out of our way. We’d heard the strange noises at night, but we’d encountered nothing dangerous at the Loggerheads.

  “Have you a room, madam, just for one night?” I asked.

  Gesturing with her cane at the three men to return to their stools, she told us that our former room was free but the cost had doubled.

  “Demand,” she explained, “what with the den, which is in the kitchen now, and—” she added, “there’s no breakfast anymore.”

  Holmes assured her the arrangement would suffice. We followed her hunched figure to our old room. The door had not been fixed and still appeared broken as if by an axe. The floor remained warped, the two beds ratty and lumpy, the wallpaper shredded and stripped off where Holmes had used it to sketch diagrams.

  After depositing our bags and paying Mrs. Hinds, Holmes and I made our way to the kitchen, which was indeed now one of Moriarty’s dens. A bar fully stocked with Old Ones Serum stood against the far wall, and to its left stood an Eshocker, its wooden box wedged between the bar and an ancient stove. Strapped into the Eshocker chair was a creature more hideous than the three who had met us upon our arrival. A crevice dented the top of his bald scalp, and it was like a crater, possibly soft like sand from the looks of it. Veins throbbed along the edges of the crater, which pulsed—not like a heartbeat of a man, but rapidly like some strange foreign beast, I knew not what.

  “On,” he hissed, “turn it on, I say!”

  When neither Holmes nor I complied, he kicked a lever near his foot. His wrists and ankles remained unbound to the Eshocker, unlike what we’d seen on Thrawl Street. The lever slammed against wood, metal hit metal, and zzzzzzzzap, the room vibrated with electricity. The man’s head snapped back, his mouth gaped, and he screamed in some combination of agony and glee. The smell of urine saturated the air. His body banged up and down against the chair with his hands gripping the armrests as if letting go might kill him.

  “More, I want more! Fire, give me more fire!”

  “Holmes, we must do something!” I cried, racing to the Eshocker and flipping the lever off.

  The machine grunted and ground to a halt, quivering and then going still.

  The man leapt from the chair, staggered from the impact of the electricity, and fell at my feet.

  “Y-you,” he cried, “y-you turned it off. I wants my money back. I wants my Eshockin’!”

  I helped him to his feet, if one could call them feet. Triangular, lumpy, much too long. As I stared, I also noticed that several bizarre appendages protruded from each side of his trousers. All slim, hinged with bones—like the snake things in the Thames warehouse, I thought with horror—all writhing around one another, twisting themselves into braids and untwisting only to flop beneath his weight. He steadied himself upon his huge feet, and the wobbling ceased.

  In this windowless room, the only light was from fat candles set in a black iron candelabra far from the Eshocker. It flickered across his face, exposing dozens of skin flaps and fishlike scales, which shimmered under the licks of light.

  Holmes grasped one of the man’s arms, and I grasped the other. He looked from me to Holmes and then back again. Finally, he addressed me.

  “I needs my Eshockin’,” he said, “for I be not well. The pain be fierce.” His eyes brimmed with tears, as he staggered and almost fell limp in our arms.

  “Holmes,” I said, “give the man a bottle of serum. It will ease his suffering.”

  Holmes released the poor fellow, snatched up a bottle of Old Ones, and opened it. Lifting the bottle to the man’s lips, he poured half the contents into his open maw.

  Licking his lips, the man sagged backward, and I had to throw an arm around him to keep him upright. I settled him back into the Eshocker chair, where he slouched with a dizzy grin and fluttering eyelids.

  From the room by the front door, shrill incantations rang out.

  “Ufatu maehha faeatai tuatta iu iu rahi roa cthulhu rahi atu daghon da’agon f’hthul’rahi roa. Ebb’yuh dissoth’nknpflknghreet.”

  Holmes’s eyes grew brighter. Like me, he must have remembered these strange sayings from our earlier dealings with the Order of Dagon.

  “Do you think they’ve been meeting here?” I asked Holmes. The Eshocked man answered me instead.

  “Ah,” he said, “we been meeting here for generations. We call forth the Old Ones to come upon the Earth, reclaim what’s theirs. We—” a webbed hand jabbed at his chest—“we of the Order give our lives in service. The Loggerheads is our home.”

  “Your home, sir?” I said, as Holmes dripped more serum between the man’s lips. “Is this not an inn for travelers?”

  He smacked his lips and said something sounding vaguely like “Hahuhoaoao yuhmoni’khu’eenee’eet… Fhtagn.”

  “Yes,
sir.” I stumbled over my words. “And this is your home, you say?”

  He nodded.

  “There’s a room or two, at times, for those like you. But for generations, we’ve lived here, met here, mated here. Now we have serums and Eshockin’s, we need nothing more.”

  “Addicts,” I murmured to Holmes, who shrugged as if to say, Of course, what else?

  Holmes asked the man about additional dens in the Avebury area.

  “Yes,” came the answer, “out at Swallowhead Spring.” Taking the serum bottle from Holmes with both of his webbed hands, he added, “That’s where many of us died durin’ Norma. I lost my wife an’ ten children that night.” He took a long swig from the bottle, draining it, and sank farther into the chair.

  “It’s now the Swallowhead den,” he added, “run by the most powerful—”

  “Lord Ashberton?” I asked.

  He nodded. Ashberton was one of the Dagonites we had tangled with on our last expedition to Avebury. The last time I’d seen him, he had been running away with Henry Fitzgerald—abandoning Fitzgerald’s young daughter Maria— after the performance of Norma had been attacked by the monsters he worshiped. Holmes had theorized that Ashberton and Fitzgerald had brought the animals to the area to release for the performance—just as he thought Fitzgerald had done with the monsters now in the Thames. I was not so sure.

  “Swallowhead den is more powerful than Loggerheads. The powers are strong there and have been for thousands of years. I can’t go there again, not me, not after my family died there. I must make do with Loggerheads.” He tossed the empty bottle at Holmes, who caught it deftly and put it on the bar.

  “Do you know Mr. Gerald Waltham, the farmer? We hear that his pastures are by Swallowhead,” Holmes said nonchalantly.

  “Aye…” the man breathed the word.

  “Then we shall go to Swallowhead in the morning, Watson,” Holmes said.

  I expected the poor fellow before us to scream that we dare not go there, just as Kristoffer Beiler had urged us not to stay at the Loggerheads. When he was silent, I lifted his chin and stared at his face. His eyes had shut, the lids trembled but slightly. His breathing was even. The crater on his head still beat rapidly, the crater-edge veins throbbing.

  *

  All night, I lay awake in my bed while Holmes peacefully slumbered. All night, my head buzzed with the words of Kristoffer Beiler: “Should you hear the shrieking in the elder language, whatever you do, don’t leave your room to investigate. You could die!”

  Pulling the scratchy blanket up around my neck, I squirmed while I stared at the motifs sketched along the moldering wallpaper, or what was left of it. Colors and symbols danced before my eyes—they could not be real. I shook my head, but no amount of shaking cleared my vision. All night, I prayed for the hallucinations to cease. Outside, hail clanked against the wood siding and the roof. Throughout it all, Holmes slumbered.

  At the first peek of morning through the holes in the curtain rags, a cacophony of noise brought us rapidly out of our room—screaming and howling and splintering wood.

  Holmes reached the Eshocker kitchen first. Mrs. Hinds was wringing her hands in the doorway. The three men who had greeted us the night before were punching the Eshocked, serum-addled crater-skull fellow, kicking him with their large triangular feet.

  He curled on the floor in front of the Eshocker, trying to shield himself from the blows.

  “Stop, stop!” Mrs. Hinds wailed.

  The man with the flattened crushed-nose face slammed his arm down hard on the crater head. Holmes yanked him off his victim. Too late. The fellow on the floor was silent.

  He lay in an expanding pool of blood and excrement. Green ooze flowed from the crater down all sides of his head, coating his mangled face. I’d never known of any disease to produce pus or blood of such vivid green. But then, I’d never seen a man who looked anything like this one.

  The man with the bloated head kicked the victim’s stomach, then his groin, his thighs, and his shins. The victim did not move. Still, the green flowed from the crater.

  “Watson!” Holmes cried, shoving the crushed-nose attacker against the wall.

  “This is a decent establishment,” Mrs. Hinds wailed. “None of this here, boys, not here. Oh, Dr. Watson, help him.”

  A decent establishment, I thought, indeed, where members of the Order of Dagon turn into mutated creatures from hell, chanting all night and beating each other up.

  I stooped, ignoring the pain shooting down my leg, and put my ear to the man’s chest. Nothing. I stared closely in the feeble light of dying candles at the crater head. Were the veins still throbbing? No. I felt for a heartbeat on the green wrist. Nothing. I felt six of the spindle-like appendages—his legs—and they were as pliant as unbaked dough.

  “This man is dead,” I announced. “You’ve killed him.”

  Mrs. Hinds shrieked in dismay, but the three killers registered no reaction to my news. They simply didn’t care.

  “What’s the death of one creature, Doctor?” the one with the bloated head said. “Death is irrelevant. We ain’t the true inheritors of this place where we dwell. It be They from Beyond, and only They who matter. And They never die. They’re of all time and of all infinity.”

  “But you killed him,” I insisted, “and we are obliged to report your crime.”

  The others chortled.

  “Try it,” one of them threatened, “and you’ll wish you never left London.”

  “Don’t be foolish, you,” said Mrs. Hinds, seeming to wake up at this. “Gentlemen, you’d best be on your way. I’ll see this is reported, of course. The poor soul will be in the cemetery before long, where all his kin lie.”

  We could see there was little hope in staying longer, and did as Mrs. Hinds suggested.

  “I suggest we hasten to Mr. Waltham,” I told Holmes, “and then leave Avebury before we’re forced to spend another night here.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “Luckily, we can be about our business quickly, as the morning is clear.”

  Indeed, while ice slicked the walkways and fields, it no longer battered us from above, where instead, the sun cast a trembling light.

  Mr. Waltham had rounded up several sheep and two cows for us to examine. He begged Holmes to help his other animals, as well, and pointed to the hill behind the field, where cows tumbled down the ice to the bottom and spilled on top of one another in heaps. Sheep raced in circles, bleating and falling.

  “I don’t know what to do with them. It’s like they’re all insane. There’s nothing to save ’em,” the farmer told us. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

  Neither Holmes nor I wanted to go near the scene of the opera, where we had seen creatures fall from the wooden scenery and kill members of the audience. We were content to stand on the edge of the field by Waltham’s farmhouse, content to be near a solid human home, where the humans still had red blood, craterless heads, and unwebbed hands and feet, where they spoke our language rather than that of the Order of Dagon.

  As twenty or more sheep raced over a hill and slid down the ice, rolling and tumbling into the helpless cows below, I could look at the strange scene no longer. Instead, I stared at an icy patch at my feet. I was glad my feet were not webbed. I was glad that I had but two legs with the usual number of bones—and although my leg hurt, I didn’t mind.

  “Watson,” said Holmes, his eyes still on the animals. “It is certainly true that their nervous systems seem to be affected. They are acting, as we suspected, as if they’ve been in the Eshockers, as if they’ve drunk the Old Ones Serum, as if they’re infected with something, like—” He stared at me, long and hard. “Like others we know.”

  He meant me.

  Yes, I was infected with something that made my mind whirl with colors and symbols and images that did not exist outside the confines of my skull. Yet I had neither drunk serum nor strapped myself into an Eshocker. Nor had Holmes been infected with whatever ailed me.

  Clearly, the in
fection was not jumping from person to person. But the source must be environmental—it was too much of a coincidence that the disease affected those who had been in the vicinity of an Order of Dagon cell. Were we experiencing a new form of plague, one that entered us from… where? the air itself? Briefly I wondered if the old discredited theories were right. No, it could not be…

  “What are we to do, Holmes?” I asked softly. “I’m a medical man. Your brother has enlisted my aid, and yet, I’m failing to understand this—”

  I gestured at the animals, bleating and lowing in death throes, at the ones still alive but racing in circles or staggering and falling.

  “With this kind man’s help,” Holmes gestured at Mr. Waltham, who somberly lowered his head, “we’ll get a few of the sick animals back to London, Watson. There are no facilities here that would enable me to study fresh brain samples. Mr. Waltham will ship the animals by train to London, and we’ll send Timmy to bring them to us.

  “He’s young,” Holmes continued, “and as such, can be salvaged. I believe Timmy is a good lad, for he’s already helped us. As for his father, that’s another matter. He’s a career criminal. But Timmy reminds me of—”

  “Yes,” I said. “He reminds me of them, too. I assume you mean the Baker Street irregulars. Good lads, all.”

  Holmes nodded, and our eyes met.

  For the first time in days, a glimmer of hope rose in us, a bit of sunshine.

  29

  AMELIA SCARCLIFFE

  Whitechapel Eshocker Den

  The Dorset coast and my sacred forest buzzed with life, even in the dead of winter. Brown leaves decorated the snow and skipped across the ice. Animals scavenged for food or curled beneath the frozen earth for warmth. The mistletoe hung still, awaiting my command. We connected in our vast web, their silence palpable as much as my heart pattered out to them. We pitched through winter together.

  But I was no longer in my beloved home.

  I was here…

  Here, in the dead of London, where everything truly was dead. It would be dead come summer, for the streets lacked the vibrancy that comes with knowledge and awareness. A dead leaf in my woods held more potency and knowledge of the universe than the entire population of London. They, who believed themselves masters of this planet, of all that stretched beyond it—they knew nothing.