Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu

by Lois H. Gresh

  “Don’t be so melodramatic, Doctor.” Holmes touched his top hat and cast me a sardonic look. “We’re on our way to see Timmy now. We’ll have the animals in short order. We will find out what this infection is. We will find a cure. We will stop the creatures in the Thames. We will do all of this, I assure you.”

  “Do you know how?” I asked, astonished.

  At this, he grew silent.

  “Holmes, you must come back to Baker Street,” I insisted. “What good is it doing you to sleep on a hard bed?”

  We stepped over rubbish and slogged through the stagnant water clogging the gutters of Thrawl Street. Soon, we stood before the den, where the fire barrel still crackled, addicts huddled around it, some curled on the ground.

  “Nobody but you, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson knows that I am staying elsewhere. Moriarty has been more active and less afraid of showing his face in recent days. Should he send a man to murder me, he will not find me at Baker Street. And the Diogenes is well protected—better than you think.”

  “My dear fellow, say no more,” I said. “I didn’t realize—”

  “Enough,” he said crisply, lifting his walking stick and pointing at the crumbling building before us. “To the den and to Timmy.”

  Just then, the den door flew open, and a pack of about fifteen men thundered out. Holmes wrenched me back, and we dove into a nearby alley. If the men had seen us, either they didn’t recognize us or they didn’t care. My guess was the former, for we had acted quickly and the men’s focus was in the other direction—down the street towards the tram machine building.

  “Get her and bring her!” someone cried.

  “I am sorry we didn’t bring our guns,” Holmes whispered.

  Holmes and I peered around the alley corner. A tall man with thick muscles was at the head of the group now, and his right hand clutched a huge, bloodied meat cleaver. It was Timmy Dorsey, Sr. His fellows hooted and waved their weapons in the air—saws, knives, bats, and chains.

  Even the addicts who usually huddled by the fire barrel across the street had noticed the disturbance. Muttering and trembling, they tried to get away from the men. Some fell in the middle of the road, others stepped on them. A few reached the other side and stumbled toward an open door.

  Three of Dorsey’s brutes were stumbling after the others with a sack hoisted between them. Something struggled within it—a person. Muffled screams rang out, which only made the men laugh more loudly. Theirs were blood laughs, the type men make who go to war because they like to kill. I’d seen plenty of this sort on the battlefield, and I despised them.

  Killing, even in war, is a horrible thing, and a man should never find amusement in another’s misery. Only the weak find joy in the suffering of others. The strongest men I’d fought alongside had always been gripped by sadness after killing men in battle.

  I was ready to throw myself into the melee and fight, but Holmes stopped me.

  “Come, Watson,” he said. “We must get closer if we are to help her.”

  We ran down the street after the men. None of them looked back. Their attention was upon the tram machine building, and the dozen policemen awaiting them. Once we were within hailing distance, we kept our cover in a doorway, from which I could see the men standing ready, some wielding clubs, others drawing pistols.

  Twelve policemen versus fifteen or so killers—the odds were looking bad.

  “Careful with ’er. Treat ’er good,” Dorsey told the men carrying the sack. “No beatin’s.”

  Grumbling at the instruction, the men lowered the sack to the street and opened the top.

  “Gentle,” Dorsey commanded, waving his cleaver at them.

  The policemen raised their clubs and aimed their pistols. They stood in front of the spiked iron fence surrounding the building. The danger signs were still there, but the gate was ajar.

  “I don’t think the warning signs are working,” Holmes said drily.

  “An understatement, if ever there was one,” I said.

  We’d learned from Lestrade that a group of men had attacked the police at this building only days ago, that one man had choked the life from an officer. Cleavers, axes, knives—the weapons had been the same. The survivors had told Lestrade that their attackers called themselves the Butchers. Holmes and I knew that Dorsey had been behind that attack, and now, he was trying again. But for what purpose? Was he working with Moriarty?

  A long-haired woman stepped from the sack and kicked it away, snarling. She whirled, fingers splayed as if ready to claw anything near her, and the men backed away. A hushed respect ensued.

  “What is this?” Holmes whispered. “Look at that creature’s cheekbones, neck, feet. Whatever this is, it is clearly female and pregnant.”

  “She looks like those deformed worshipers we saw in the warehouse and at Swallowhead Spring,” I said. “Why have they brought a cult member here?” And then the chilling thought hit me—because they wanted her to chant those horrifying incantations that opened the deadly dimensions, released the creatures, and spread death and mental disease.

  No sooner had the thought occurred to me than the female began to chant the screeching nonsense syllables we’d heard many times from the Dagonites.

  The tram machine building jittered, the boards and plaster rumbling and clanking. From inside, the beast—as Willie Jacobs called it—groaned. Steel clattered. The overhead door bulged outward, then shrank back, concave, popping back into its usual place.

  The pregnant creature raised her arms, spread her webbed fingers, and shrieked more of the strange incantations.

  The officers swiveled to look at the shuddering building. In that instant, Dorsey’s gang attacked.

  Dorsey’s cleaver cracked into the skull of a stout officer, who tried to duck but couldn’t maneuver quickly enough to avoid the blade. His head split wide open. Blood spurted upward. As the officer dropped to his knees, the butcher slammed the cleaver into the man’s head again, breaking it clean down to the neck. I have seen such things in battle before, but I could not mask a groan. Holmes tensed and allowed himself a small gasp of horror.

  Despite the carnage before us, I dared not enter the fray; it would mean certain death. Holmes and I could not take on so many heavily armed assassins.

  Dorsey’s cleaver met the midriff of another officer—it cut clean across the man’s stomach. After another blow, the man screamed, then moaned, and then whimpered to a halt, as his body broke in two, bent backwards at the waist, the open-mouthed head and torso hanging there, the arms twitching… before the whole corpse collapsed. Dorsey squashed his boots into the bloody pulp of the corpse, slid through the pool of blood surrounding it, and froze as he looked up and saw another policeman aiming his gun at Dorsey’s head.

  “Yes,” Holmes hissed, clenching his fist, “shoot him!”

  I saw the rest in a crystallized haze, in which color sharpened into crisp delineations of Dorsey, the policeman with the gun, the strange pregnant female.

  The female screeched words in a staccato rhythm that seemed designed to jangle my nerves and rattle my thoughts—a fury of sound in a whirlpool reel. I clutched the wall to steady myself as the swirling shrieks hammered my mind.

  “Ch’thgalhn fhtagn Yog-Sothoth urre’h nyogthluh’eeh ngh syh’kyuhyuh. Ch’thgalhn fhtagn Yog-Sothoth urre’h nyogthluh’eeh ngh syh’kyuhyuh.”

  “Steady, Watson. Keep your wits about you.” Holmes lowered me to a sitting position.

  “We must save them, Holmes,” I said, my voice shaking.

  “We must wait for the right moment,” he said, his voice steady and unwavering. It sobered me.

  “Why the deuce doesn’t the poor man shoot Dorsey?” I muttered. “What’s he waiting for?”

  Indeed, the officer seemed unable to move or squeeze his trigger. Even his eyes remained open, unblinking.

  The woman’s chant droned on.

  “Ebb’yuh dissoth’nknpflknghreet.

  “Hahuhoaoao yuhmoni’khu’eenee’eet.”<
br />
  The words were high and guttural, issued from vocal cords that had a range unlike any I’d ever heard. Not fully human. Not in any known language. Nothing imaginable—except in my nightmares.

  I clamped my hands to my ears.

  Dorsey grinned. His boots sprung into and over corpses and bloody gore—human organs, exposed muscle and tissue, detached arms and legs—and in several huge strides, he was in front of the frozen officer.

  “Ebb’yuh dissoth’nknpflknghreet.

  “Hahuhoaoao yuhmoni’khu’eenee’eet.”

  Dorsey swung his bloody cleaver, and in a clean chop, claimed the head of the frozen officer. It flew back, fell to the street, and rolled to a stop. Another quick swing, and the cleaver hit the meat of the man’s midriff. The sound of the cleaver thwacking into the meat nearly made me vomit, and I had to swallow hard several times.

  “How much longer must we wait?” I whispered harshly.

  “Any moment,” Holmes whispered back, “be patient.”

  Dorsey stood over his latest victim, raised his cleaver high in the air, and howled with victory. Blood drenched his face and hair, his jacket and trousers. Blood drenched his hands and the cleaver.

  Five policemen remained alive, and all were wrestling and otherwise grappling with the surviving gang members, who numbered ten strong.

  “At this rate,” I whispered, “all the police will be dead within minutes. They stand no chance, Holmes.”

  “It is the female,” he said, “her incantations. They stop the police in their tracks, freeze the men so the gang can slaughter them as easily as they slaughter lambs.”

  But the female was not happy. Her body trembling, she shrieked the insane words while scanning the street for something unknown.

  My eyes followed hers, and I thought I saw a man duck from a window across the street. However, with my vision cloudy yet pricked with sharp outlines, I wouldn’t swear to anything I saw.

  Suddenly, much to my surprise, Dorsey put a bloody hand over his mouth and spoke to her. She did not fight him. Instead, she nodded, and her forehead furrowed with desperation or frustration, I knew not which.

  Had he threatened her?

  An axe hacked an officer into bloody shreds, like the strips of meat Mary used to fry for me in a pan. The smell of blood and dead meat clogged the air, and I wondered if I would ever be able to bathe sufficiently to rid myself of the stink.

  Gunshots rang out but missed their marks. How much longer would Holmes make us wait before we ran from this doorway, where we hid like cowards?

  Three police. Ten attackers.

  “Holmes,” I hissed. “We must go now. We cannot wait.”

  He nodded and sprang to his feet, hauling me up with him.

  For a moment, I studied the determined profile and glinting eyes of the man who was more a brother to me than an associate in arms. This might be the last time I saw Sherlock Holmes, and should I die, which was highly probable, I wanted to burn his image into my brain.

  Dorsey issued orders to two of his men, who raced back to the den, and moments later, returned with another female hoisted above them.

  “Another…?” Holmes whispered. “And she’s but a child, Watson.”

  The pregnant female stopped shrieking. My ears rang with her chants, as if hit by echoes.

  “Not her!” she cried, pointing at the girl.

  “We tol’ you it would come to this if you couldn’t do it on your own,” Dorsey said, as he helped the other two men with the child, who was perhaps six years old. “This one is younger an’ more powerful.”

  “But not her!” the pregnant female insisted, clutching her giant belly.

  “It’s Maria Fitzgerald,” Holmes said, just as the realization hit me, as well. “Henry Fitzgerald’s daughter with Lucy Anne Nolande, the soprano who was killed at Swallowhead Spring.”

  Yes, it was Maria with her mop of black hair, she who had sat on the rock with Lord Ashberton in front of us during the performance of Bellini’s Norma.

  “Now both of you, sing together, crack open that buildin’ for us an’ kill them coppers!” Dorsey screamed.

  Maria’s voice opened into a cascade of music that represented the sounds of hundreds rather than one. Her voice was sweet and high, lyrical, bouncing almost joyfully in rich tones that swirled in my head.

  I glanced at Holmes, whose face flushed, his eyes half-lidded, as the music swept through him, too.

  “Yog’fuhrsothothothoth ’a’a’a’memerutupao’omii! Aauhaoaoa demoni aauhaoaoa demoni aauhaoaoa demoni.”

  Her neck grew wider, and from this distance, I couldn’t tell what I was seeing, but it looked as if dozens of bubbles wobbled on her neck, rocking in harmony with her words. Her face grew rounder until it was spherical, and the glittering green eyes shone more brightly through the miasmic air.

  The pregnant female joined in the harmony, her voice gritty and grating compared to the beauty of Maria’s tone.

  As the intertwined voices rose—“aauhaoaoa demoni aauhaoaoa demoni aauhaoaoa demoni”—several Butchers dropped their weapons and tumbled to the ground. They lay still, though I knew not whether they had died.

  Dorsey screamed at the little girl.

  “What’re you doin’ to me Butchers, you monster?”

  Her voice rose yet higher, and the soothing tones turned strident.

  “Now!” Holmes screamed, and we both leapt from the doorway and raced to the scene.

  Only three gang members stood, among them Timmy Dorsey, Sr. Of them all, he was the one I wanted.

  Maria and the other female turned, saw me, and directed a blast of chanting at me. Stunned momentarily, I froze, as did Holmes, his usually sharp eyes growing fogged and distant. My thoughts jangled in my head, skittering in all directions, as a boat without bearings in a storm. I fell to my knees, only too aware of the lolling figure of a dead policeman before me, his gun still in his lifeless fingers.

  I’d been infected by the cursed Dagonite illness for so long that the tones of Maria and the other female moved me, inspired me, filled me with strength.

  From nowhere, a Butcher came at us and tackled Holmes. The two were on the ground, wrestling. Holmes clutched the other’s neck. His opponent was a flurry of movement, pounding Holmes with his fists, kicking him in the groin.

  I couldn’t move.

  I had to force myself out of the trance that imprisoned me as securely as any rope.

  I tried…

  One of the frozen policemen jerked briefly to life, whipped his arm up, and squeezed the trigger of his gun.

  The bullet missed its mark and instead hit the structure across the street from the tram machine building.

  Dorsey threw himself at me, cleaver dripping blood and aimed at my skull.

  No! I will not allow it!

  From the ground, Holmes screamed, “Watson!”

  With that one word from Holmes, my brain unhooked from its trance. I lunged forward and snatched the gun from the dead policeman’s fingers.

  I blasted the gun at Dorsey’s frame. I squeezed, bang and bang, a tremor of thrilled delight racing through me as the bullets ripped into Dorsey and sent him flying. He landed on his back, clutching his chest, with his knees bent. He rolled onto his side, facing me. Blood streamed from his chest and merged with all the blood of the many he’d just killed.

  Timmy Dorsey, Sr. was dead.

  The caterwauling of the two females ceased. They were escaping together—Maria ran and the other seemed to bounce up the street toward the den. A cry from the battleground called my attention to Holmes, who was still in the midst of combat, but even as I ran to help, he got the upper hand. Holmes punched his attacker’s jaw, pounding it on both sides, until finally, the man stopped moving. Dusting himself off, Holmes stood, and together, we surveyed the scene.

  The remaining attackers, those who were alive, limped and ran after the two females. The surviving police officers staggered back against the fence surrounding the tram machine building
, too exhausted to give chase.

  The light had returned to my friend’s eyes. The fog had lifted from my brain. The colors around me returned to the usual grays of London.

  “Should we follow the pregnant creature and Maria?” I asked Holmes.

  But he shook his head.

  “No, I suspect they are well hidden by now. We’re better off contacting Lestrade and getting more officers here to relieve these men, who require medical attention. There will be another attack on this building in due course, I fear, and in the meantime,” he said, “we have to find Timmy and obtain the livestock shipped from Avebury.”

  I tended to the men’s injuries as best I could. Word must have spread in Whitechapel that there’d been a battle on Thrawl Street, and before long, additional police arrived with stretchers for their wounded colleagues.

  Holmes and I hurried to the butcher’s shop and pounded on the door until Timmy answered. His face was covered with tears.

  “Is it true?” he asked. “Is he dead?”

  Timmy had lost his father. He was now an orphan. If it was the last thing I did, I would save him from turning into a lifetime criminal and killer like his father. I would save him from Professor Moriarty.

  33

  “Me father were all I ’ad,” the boy sobbed, hugging his body and rocking back and forth on a stool in the blood-sopped butchering room. “’E weren’t much, ’e weren’t a good man, but ’e were me father.”

  While I consoled Timmy and promised to help him, Holmes poked around the room, which apparently, was the only one in the building. His walking stick jabbed a worn pillow and faded gray-blue afghan. He studied the rows of knives by the butcher’s table along the rear wall, gazed at the meat hooks and at the dried blood that permeated every inch of the place. The smell was beyond imagining. I had to put a cloth over my nose to keep from gagging. Holmes did the same.

  Eventually, he returned to me—and to the boy—and he rapped his stick twice on the floor. The boy’s face snapped up, his eyes aglow with tears.