Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu

by Lois H. Gresh

  “You will come with us.” Holmes’s tone indicated that the boy had no choice. “I don’t want Moriarty knowing where you are. I will put you in touch with Wiggins.”

  “Holmes, that’s a splendid idea,” I said, and then to Timmy, explained, “Wiggins is our main man in the Baker Street irregulars and helps with many of our cases. You will be paid handsomely for your services.”

  The boy’s eyes fell. He blinked. A few tears fell to his lap. The poor lad. Up close, his face looked older than his years. Coarse skin hardened with lines and knife scars, with bruises fading beneath the dirt. And yet, the eyes bore an intelligence that I rarely encountered among street urchins, a possible exception being Wiggins himself, when he was a child.

  “The Professor pays me well,” Timmy said, “more than if I be ’omeless where you live. And I’ve got an ’ome ’ere.”

  “Indeed, you do,” Holmes proclaimed, “with a comfortable bed, I see, and shelter. But it is dangerous, very dangerous, for you here, Timmy. On a whim, the Professor might kill you. He is not a good man. Your father, much as you loved him, did not succeed in his latest mission on behalf of your employer.”

  Timmy’s eyes grew wide with alarm. His tears ceased. He jerked his hand from mine and leapt from the stool.

  “Mr. ’olmes, you’re right about that! The Professor said ’e’d kill Dad, and me, too, if we didn’t get that tram gold!”

  “Well, that settles it, surely,” Holmes said. “You’ll come with us?”

  Downcast, but eventually agreeing with our assessment, Timmy, Jr. followed us from the only home he’d ever known.

  “Wiggins will find you accommodation. He sleeps somewhere. I’ll ask him to keep you hidden from Moriarty. Tomorrow morning, for a fine fee, you will go to the cattle market on the Caledonian Road, and you will bring back my shipment from Mr. Gerald Waltham of Avebury. When you bring them to me, the animals must be alive, Timmy, do you understand?”

  “Alive,” the boy repeated, nodding.

  “Come now, let us all return to Baker Street,” Holmes said, “where you will wash and eat at my residence, and then I will supply you with ample funds for your adventure in the morning. Wiggins will help with the animals, and of course, being the man that you are, you will pay Wiggins and any other help he provides.”

  “I can do this, Mr. ’olmes. I know me way upon the streets, sir.”

  “Indeed, you do, Timmy,” Holmes said, clapping the boy’s back.

  I had hoped that Holmes would stay at Baker Street, but after ensuring Timmy had everything he needed, he flagged down a cab and returned to his temporary home at the Diogenes Club.

  As for me, Mrs. Hudson’s heavy meal of shepherd’s pie and bread, along with two glasses of red wine, quickly put me to sleep.

  *

  In the middle of the night, I was awakened by heavy pounding on the door to my rooms.

  “Dr. Watson!” Mrs. Hudson cried from the landing. “Dr. Watson, there is a man here to see you! Police!”

  “It’s urgent, Doctor!” a man bellowed. “Open up, and quickly!”

  I stumbled from bed, and in my nightshirt, opened the door. A constable burst into the sitting room, Mrs. Hudson wearily trundling in behind him. She fell, exhausted, into Holmes’s chair by the fire. She wore her sleeping attire, with her hair tucked beneath a frilly cap.

  Timmy staggered out from Holmes’s bedroom to join us. He wore one of my nightshirts. It was huge on him, and he had to lift it to walk. He plopped into my chair across from Mrs. Hudson.

  “Why, who’s this?” she asked in surprise.

  “Mrs. Hudson, this is Timmy. A lad Holmes needed to put up for the night.”

  “You know I have rules about overnight visitors, Dr. Watson,” she admonished me, but I could tell she was too tired to argue the point.

  “Doctor,” the policeman interrupted, “I have been sent to ask you to travel to Wapping right away. The creatures have risen up again and attacked a number of ships, and while our boys are battling hard, we have casualties you cannot imagine, sir. Inspector Lestrade sent for you personally.”

  The Thames! If only the businesses that lined the river had heeded police advice and sent their ships to offload their wares on the coast.

  “Timmy, you had better go back to bed,” I said, immediately alert. “Mrs. Hudson, please treat him as you would treat my own son, Samuel, would you?”

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  “Of course, Doctor,” she said.

  Quickly, I dressed and grabbed my medical bag, and in short order I found a carriage that would take me to the river.

  Along the waterfront, the tragedy was still unfolding. I could see the wreckage of at least three large ships in the river. Near them, two battleships fired their guns at the creatures. Men dragged dying victims ashore, arraying them rapidly on the ground before diving back into the murk to rescue others. The Thames itself roiled downstream, its thick waves rising into a black sky blotched with charcoal and etched with swirls and odd patterns painted in green. A quiver of terror struck me, for I’d seen those patterns on the spherical bones and the bizarre furniture adorning the homes of Lords Ashberton and Wiltshram, and Professor Henry Fitzgerald, leaders of the Order of Dagon.

  A man tugged at my coat and screamed something at me, but I couldn’t hear the words over the roar of guns and the thunder of cannons from the ships rocking up and down upon the waves.

  Fire flashed and illuminated the green further, drenching the sky in a sickly pallor. The heavy night clouds hung like the sagging cheeks of the diseased dead. Creatures shimmered into view, then faded into the green-bleached sky. Some were immense with long tentacles, wings, and eyes the size of elephants, and some were much smaller, mere blips of glistening flesh coated in phosphorescent fur.

  A cannon blasted, and my eyes followed the trajectory of the shot. Another jolt of terror hit me, as the cannonball ripped into the hide of a gigantic beast with several snouts and at least a dozen mouths. Sharp teeth reflected the green, which hit my eyes and momentarily blinded me.

  Police officers fought alongside naval seamen, battling the creatures and dragging the wounded ashore.

  Thundering waves, more appropriate on the high seas than the Thames, hurled yet more bodies onto the riverbank, and in some cases, as far as the promenade and the buildings beyond. Still, despite the killer waves, the brave men of the British military dived back in, seeking more survivors.

  An army battalion lined the bank and shot at the creatures, hitting few. Elusive targets, these creatures, as they flitted into sight, only to disappear again into that other place from which they came.

  Tentacles curled around men and squeezed them until they exploded into flesh and blood that rained down into the water. Giant heads dipped and teeth grabbed men from the decks of cruisers and battleships, grinding the bodies to pulp and swallowing them. Bullets and cannonballs blasted into creatures, with seemingly no effect.

  Clutching my bag and steeling myself against the hell before me—telling myself that I’d served in wartime and could handle anything—I slogged through the mud to the nearest victims. Bullets whizzed past me—misfired shots, I assumed, from the cruisers closest to shore. I ducked my head and examined a twitching body. It was headless. I moved on.

  The next man had a head but was missing both of his legs. Suffering from massive blood loss, he wouldn’t last long. For a few moments, I cradled his head in my arms and whispered words of hope in his ear. Over the cannons and guns, the screams and waves, he probably didn’t hear a word I said.

  “I’m with you, and so is God. You’re going to a better place and time,” I tried to tell him.

  A better place and time…

  Didn’t this imply the existence of another place and time? Despite Holmes’s theory about Fitzgerald releasing them by non-supernatural means, I was sure that the creatures had broken into existence from another place and time. With horror, I wondered if the human afterlife had any parallels with the p
lace these creatures inhabited. If there is a God, then we don’t belong with these creatures anywhere at any time, not even after death. Unless, I thought darkly, there is indeed a hell.

  The man gasped his final breath. His head lolled. Gently, I lifted him off me and moved to the next patient.

  Eventually, carriages arrived to take the injured to the hospital. Eventually, dawn bled into the green sky, and the green blinked out. Eventually, the skin of the sky stopped ripping and the beasts remained on the other side of the seams. Eventually, the waves calmed.

  Hundreds of corpses littered the shore and floated on the river. My hands and arms were stained with blood, my clothes soaked with it. I tended to the sick and dying until other doctors pulled me away and took my place.

  When I returned to Baker Street, Timmy and Mrs. Hudson were hunched over a game of dominoes by the fire, which infused the room with a warmth that seeped into my aching limbs. I fell into my chair with a sigh.

  I could barely keep my eyes open, but through the tears of exhaustion I saw Mrs. Hudson’s worried face inches from mine, and beside her, Timmy was crying.

  “You must save ’im, Mrs. ’udson!”

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Timmy,” Mrs. Hudson said, but her voice sounded shaky. “Dr. Watson’s come home bloody and beaten many a time. Let’s wash him up and get him to bed. Help me, would you? There’s a good lad…”

  34

  KOENRAAD THWAITE

  Half Moon Bay

  With Amelia Scarcliffe under Moriarty’s control in London and my brethren blown to bits on our sacred beach, my captors kept a close watch on me. If I groaned, they barked at me to remain quiet. If I fluttered my gills or stretched my webbing, they recoiled, fumbled with their weapons, and yelled at me to remain still. Clearly, they feared me more than they feared their employer, this human, Moriarty.

  Humans lacking harmony and depth, out of tune with the universe—which accounted for the vast majority of them—always feared what they did not understand. More than anything, they feared the unknown.

  What these captors did not grasp was that, to one such as myself, humans were irrelevant.

  Simpletons, all of them, with no comprehension of the dimensions between their world and all the worlds I had at my disposal. I could flit from the Dorset coast to another time and place whenever I chose. Humans lacked knowledge of the other dimensions, of space and time. They thought themselves so advanced, yet they understood nothing.

  Six humans, each armed with multiple guns and knives, guarded me. Two remained outside at all times, while two slept and two watched over me. They rotated positions. As for me, I did not need sleep, nor did I need sustenance. Nothing mattered to me other than the birth of the brood I’d sired upon Amelia Scarcliffe.

  How absurd that these idiots thought they had captured me.

  Let them think what they want.

  I reclined on the floor of the sacred cave, where I’d spent many a moon with my acolytes. I clenched and unclenched my toe suckers, watching with amusement as the humans paled and trembled and waved their pistols at me.

  “Don’t move,” they said sternly although their voices quivered, “and say nothin’, or we’ll shoot you as sure as you breathe.”

  But did I breathe, did I?

  Would a bullet kill me, would it?

  As soon as the hatchlings squirmed from the womb, Yog-Sothoth would come and unleash all of us upon this world. We would return to claim what was rightfully ours from the dawn of time, for we’d owned this world and all within it, upon it, and in the air since the primordial sludge crept from the oceans.

  These humans thought that, by threatening me, they’d obtain a copy of the Dagonite Auctoritatem. I knew all the chants in that book, and long ago, I’d tucked my sacred copy somewhere very safe and far away.

  The man closest to me stuck a gun in my face.

  “I can’t wait to kill you meself,” he snarled. “As soon as the boss gives the order, you’ll be dead, an’ then we’ll dice your flesh into bits an’ fling ’em into the sea. You’ll be gone forever, an’ we’ll be drinkin’ an’ laughin’ for years to come.”

  He chuckled, no doubt thinking me afraid of the death he threatened.

  The two candles by the rear wall where I reclined had burned down to nubs. Strands of light shifted across my would-be assassin—cheeks scarred from knife wounds, one eye permanently closed beneath a browless bone, mean mouth twisted and gray like a dead reef, the stubble on his unshaven face coarse like a rat’s fur. Even by human standards, he was ugly and unworthy of life.

  Amelia’s smell clung to his flesh and hung in the mustiness of the cave. This had been our Dorset coast den, where the acolytes drank Old Ones Serum and jacked themselves to the Eshockers. They had loved the thrills, doled out by Koos, who I hoped had disappeared by now into safer zones.

  The other man directly guarding me squatted. He was young, this one, with features less warped by age and a more agile body than the ugly one.

  “Thwaite, you smell like you ain’t washed in a ’undred years,” he said.

  I laughed inwardly. I’d never bathed—although I’d spent most of my life in Half Moon Bay and the deep ocean, of course.

  What the young human did not realize was that the Old Ones drifted thickly through the air of the Dorset coast den, the sacred cave. He couldn’t see them, couldn’t feel them, but I knew they were all around us, and in fact, seeping into the pores of these idiot humans, infiltrating their minds… taking over.

  “I’ve ’ad enough of the smell,” the young one said. “Let’s switch.”

  Nodding, the ugly one grabbed him and shoved him from the cave into the outside air and then followed him. I heard them both sucking air into their lungs, glad to be free of the cave and of me, if only for a while.

  The two men sleeping near the cave entrance rolled on their sides, snoring, uninterrupted by the others. The Old Ones of the cave had infiltrated them sufficiently to keep them out of my way.

  Strutting into the cave, the two men who had guarded the outside stared down at me, and one was brave enough to kick me with his boot. I groaned and pretended to feel pain, but I felt nothing—not even pity for these humans, for I do not feel pity, not ever.

  “Your mate thinks you’re in an ’idden cottage somewheres near ’ere,” the kicker laughed, a smile spreading across his rat-hair face. He wasn’t as ugly as the other rat-hair human. This one was eighteen or so, stocky with firm flesh and bright blue eyes.

  Interesting how all the humans differed from each other in appearance, intellect, and mannerisms. Each considered himself unique. But in reality, they were all the same—puffs of flesh filled with blood and bone, easily extinguished, with lives so short they did not exist in the span of time.

  “Your mate is givin’ our boss all the gold about now,” the other man said, and this one had yellow hair that clung like vines to his yellow face.

  “You’re boring me,” I said.

  The two guards pointed guns at me.

  I popped into another dimension, then flitted back into view.

  I’d had enough of these humans. I began to chant.

  “Ufatu maehha faeatai tuatta iu iu rahi roa cthulhu.”

  The yellow-haired man dropped his gun and lurched to the cave entrance. The one with bright blue eyes gaped at me.

  I vibrated my gills, hopped to the wall, popped to the ceiling, and hung there.

  “Rahi atu daghon da’agon f’hthul’rahi roa,” I hissed.

  “What’re you doin’? Get down ’ere an’ shut up!”

  Bullets whistled, and they ruptured the Old Ones’ air, creating a narrow rift that no human could see. The microscopic creatures condensed upon the humans’ heads, and I laughed—aloud this time—and vibrated into the other dimensional place. I didn’t want to stay here for long. I needed to find Amelia and return her to Half Moon Bay, where we would greet Dagon and raise our spawn.

  In the other dimensional plane, colors swirle
d, intense and rich, and filaments curled and spiraled, unwound and wired themselves into elaborate structures unknown to the human world. This was another time and place, where science twisted just like these beautiful filaments, where lead and phosphorus combined to produce gold.

  In the human world, everything worked in different ways. A famous human, Sherlock Holmes, had cleverly deduced that replacing phosphorus with silicon would slow the tram machine to a near halt. No longer could the machine open the rift into the other space-times. Without the rift, nuclear reactions involving lead and phosphorus could not create gold, and neither could nuclear reactions involving lead and silicon.

  I preferred to stay away from the humans, but back I popped into their world, wanting it to be our world already, to populate it with our own. We will not share it with these pathetic worms, these humans. Why should we?

  My “captors” were screaming, all six of them now—yes, even those whose brains were infected with Old Ones—and firing their guns at me. Blam, blam! Bullets hit my flanks and bounced off, some piercing my flesh, some ripping my organs. I oozed green slime from the wounds, which tingled uncomfortably—

  BUT.

  I popped back to the place of colors and filaments, and there, I healed rapidly, the equations of the place differing from those in human space-time.

  Do not think you can outwit us, Professor Moriarty or Mr. Sherlock Holmes. It is not possible to conquer us, diminish us, or eliminate us. We are forever. You, on the other hand, are disposable worms.

  35

  AMELIA SCARCLIFFE

  Whitechapel Eshocker Den

  “Koenraad Thwaite has escaped,” I whispered to Maria, child of the powerful Blois Dagonite leader and Lucy Anne Nolande. “I sense it. I feel it.”

  “I also sense and feel it,” she said serenely, squatting as I did behind the sofa in the Thrawl Street den.

  “He’s in the other place and time,” I said. “He’s no longer here. He’s in the texture of the Other.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Oh, that we could do as he has done and slip to that other space-time, as well.”