Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu

by Lois H. Gresh

  “Not this dosage level!” I cried, stepping forward and wrenching him away from the Eshocker and from the lamb.

  Across the room, still tied to the other machine, the second lamb and the calf pulled against their ropes and shrieked.

  “This is unbearable!” I cried.

  He shook free of me and pushed me away.

  “I repeat,” he said sternly, “I am not torturing these animals. They are already infected with something that will kill them. They have no hope of survival. They are suffering as it is. In the wild, they were running—indeed, tumbling—down hills, slamming into fences, piling into heaps. They were headed for slaughter. Watson, these animals are sick. Do you understand?”

  “I understand that you’re hurting them,” I said.

  “I am hurting them no more than Dr. Sinclair hurt his patients when he tried to cure them of neural psychoses. I am hurting them no more than you hurt your own patients, Doctor, when you apply treatments.”

  “But you intend to kill them.”

  “Twelve milliamperes of alternating current,” he said, then pulled the lever on the side of the box, and the Eshocker switched on again.

  One minute passed.

  The lamb struggled, as before, eyes whirling, head sagging, all four legs pushing against the restraints.

  Two minutes.

  Still, the lamb bleated and struggled.

  Three minutes, now four, and now five.

  Holmes turned the machine off and on, applying the current in pulses of five minutes each, repeating the process four times, peering at the lamb, eyes narrowed, seeking a response to the treatment.

  Finally, Holmes switched off the machine.

  “Holmes?” I whispered.

  “The lamb felt a mild sensation,” he told me in a clipped tone, “and only mild pain. The current did not destroy its brain, and it certainly did not kill the lamb.”

  From Dr. Sinclair’s office, Timmy was weeping in loud, heaving breaths. I stepped away from Holmes and joined Timmy, holding his hand and kneeling beside him.

  Holmes appeared in the doorway, his shoulders hunched, his face drawn.

  “It’s time for the hospital,” he said. “There’s a cart waiting outside. The lamb we Eshocked may have been cured of the infection. We won’t know until we get to the Royal London Hospital.”

  “You killed it!” I cried.

  “Of course not, Doctor,” Holmes said. “I do believe I cured it.”

  42

  “We examined tissue from an infected lamb and calf, as well as from the Eshocked lamb. We also examined the brain sludge from that poor gentleman we encountered on the street.”

  “Yes, Sherlock, and what were the results?” Mycroft wriggled to cross his legs in the one reasonably comfortable chair in the Stranger’s Room. Unable to cross his legs due to their enormous size, he sagged back against the cushions and made do.

  Once again—and I hoped, for the last time—I squirmed on the stool, and I answered Mycroft before Holmes had time to pluck the pipe from his lips.

  “The brain cells of the Eshocked lamb,” I answered, “looked like healthy cells, whereas the brain cells of the infected but not-Eshocked lamb and calf both appeared bizarre.”

  “Bizarre in what way?” Mycroft asked, and then added, “Please do tell me the results of your efforts, Doctor, without requiring that I constantly prod you along. My time is valuable and I bore very easily.”

  Holmes blew a smoke ring at his brother, and this time, it was Holmes who spoke before I could gather my wits and respond.

  “Boredom does run in the family,” Holmes said. “In short, Eshocker extreme treatment killed the infection in the lamb. Mycroft, extreme treatment cured the animal.”

  “Extraordinary,” Mycroft muttered.

  “That animal’s infection would have killed it,” Holmes added, “as it was killing the other poor animals in Avebury.”

  “But what is the nature of this infection?” Mycroft pressed.

  “It appears that the infection is caused by or is simply due to the—” he chose his words carefully—“permeation of the brain tissue by microscopic creatures hitherto unknown to medical science. They enter our world from… what I think of as an otherworld. By the by, it is the same infection as we have seen in humans. I took a sample from a fellow in Whitechapel the other day that showed exactly the same organisms.”

  When Mycroft looked at me quizzically, I nodded in agreement. Indeed, this is what Holmes and I had seen beneath the microscope lens: dead creatures with filaments around their edges. Yet the Eshocked lamb’s brain cells showed no signs of playing host to such organisms. Holmes had been correct. The voltage had sealed the rift between our world and the otherworld. Perhaps the creatures had brought the Eshocker voltage from our world into theirs. We had no way of knowing, not for sure. The experiment was far from precise.

  Holmes dumped the contents of his pipe into a tray set on the floor by his feet. He refilled the pipe, and then folded his tobacco pouch and tucked it in his coat.

  “Test the Eshocker and make sure it kills these microscopic creatures.” Mycroft turned his large head and trained his eyes on Holmes and then on me. He grasped the armrest, ready to push himself from his chair and leave us again. “Once you are certain, Sherlock,” he said, “you will apply this treatment to those suffering from this neural psychosis malady.” As Holmes began to protest, Mycroft waved his finger and said, “No, you don’t have to Eshock everyone yourself, Sherlock. Prepare detailed instructions on how to rig these den Eshockers up for extreme treatment. It doesn’t sound particularly complex. There’s no need to replace the fixed resistor in the dens with the type used by Dr. Sinclair.”

  “Correct,” Holmes agreed, “one need only attach the blue wire that shorts out the fixed resistor entirely. Voilà, extreme treatment.”

  “When you are certain, Sherlock,” his brother stressed, “let me know, and I’ll contact the appropriate authorities, who will send agents to the rest of England to cure anyone else who has the infection.”

  Rising from my stool, I stretched my aching legs and back and made a final decision.

  “Eshock me first,” I said over Holmes’s objections. “Cure me, and then I will be sufficiently convinced to help you Eshock the others.”

  Mycroft lumbered to the door leading to the Diogenes Club, where quiet awaited him.

  “One final task,” he said, as his hand turned the knob.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Holmes said. “After I Eshock Dr. Watson, you want me to find a way to use the Eshockers to kill those damnable creatures in the Thames.”

  “As always, you are correct,” Mycroft murmured. “Test the deadly device before you use it on the river creatures. Get some ordinary cows from the slaughter house for your experiments.”

  Holmes cast me a glance.

  “These cows are meant for slaughter, Doctor,” he said. “Yet have no fear. We’ll make sure they don’t suffer.”

  “But you said the Eshockers don’t kill,” I stammered, “yet you intend to use the Eshockers on me. How will the Eshockers kill those creatures? I don’t understand—” I broke off.

  “One problem at a time,” Holmes said. “First we’ll Eshock you and then we’ll attend to the rest.”

  43

  “I insist, Mr. Jacobs, that I be the first test subject.”

  “No, Dr. Watson. Step aside. Me death is near anyways. You ’ave a baby an’ a wife, an’ they need you.”

  I could easily have shoved the frail man aside and forced him to let me go first. But I thought about what he said, about Samuel and Mary and how they needed me alive and well. With my mind reeling with visions and colors, it had taken all of my strength to help Sherlock Holmes to this point. Weakened, I dreamed only of my family, of seeing them again and perhaps living far away from the horrors, the crime, and the demands of life in London.

  Had we not been happy together before I’d visited Holmes and been lured back into his inves
tigations? Yes, I remembered it well: days with my patients, nights with Mary, both of us astonished by the miracle of our tiny Samuel. He’d been born prematurely and barely survived. I wanted him back. But in the end…

  “Mr. Jacobs is too weak and might die during treatment,” I told Holmes. “Other than the mild infection of these creatures, my health is intact. If one of us has a better chance of surviving the treatment, it is I, so strap me in and give me the treatment first.”

  Did I see a flash of concern on Holmes’s face? Did he fear that I might die from the treatment? If so, he erased the thought from his mind, and without looking at me further, gestured at me to sit in the Eshocker chair.

  Willie Jacobs protested, but Holmes refused to listen to him.

  “You’re a decent man, Mr. Jacobs, one of the finest I’ve met, but Dr. Watson’s point is a good one.”

  The seat cushion was comfortable enough, though ripped by the lamb that had occupied the Eshocker yesterday. Letting my arms and legs go limp, I watched colors form complex patterns around the room. Whirls within whirls, ten-sided objects within those with fifteen sides, breaking apart and re-forming in seemingly endless arrays.

  “The duration of the treatment,” Holmes repeated his words from yesterday, “is equal to the dose. Remember, I gave the lamb twelve milliamperes in five-minute pulses, and that is what killed the brain infection or, as I’m coming to think of it, the infestation of the brain by microscopic creatures.”

  “W-why didn’t extreme treatment kill me, then?” Willie Jacobs asked from his slumped position in the left Eshocker. His voice was so weak that I could barely hear him.

  Holmes answered: “Because Dr. Sinclair didn’t pulse the dose. He applied the treatment for only a short while, never as long as five minutes at a time, and never for a full twenty minutes in total, applied in blasts or pulses.”

  Holmes restrained my ankles and wrists with the straps, put the two moist electrodes on my head. My hands grew clammy, and sweat dripped down my face and neck. It curled down my back. I began to shiver.

  Perhaps this was a bad idea.

  “Sorry, old friend, but the gag…” He popped a clean ball into my mouth and wound cloth around my head. “It’s for your own good,” he added. “The gag will keep you from biting your tongue.”

  I’d changed my mind and didn’t want to be Eshocked. I didn’t like the feeling of entrapment, of not being able to move or speak. I struggled with the restraints, and my voice came out in muffled gurgles.

  Holmes’s eyes watered but quickly cleared. He removed the top from the Eshocker box, checked that the blue wire was attached to both fixed and variable resistors, adjusted the variable one, and glancing at me, switched on the machine.

  A mild tremble swept through me, then a sizzle as if my blood ran a bit faster than usual, my heart raced a bit more. My flesh tingled: my fingertips, my legs, my torso, even my tongue and eyelids. Then there was my mind—it more than tingled. It soared, and as it peaked with ecstasy, pleasure streamed through me. I ached with pleasure.

  Was this the feeling Sherlock Holmes had when he injected himself with cocaine? If so, I could understand the addiction. The Eshocker made me feel as if I never wanted to get out of the chair and face reality again. If I could float forever, happy, why not?

  But the dose was low, and Holmes did to me what he had done to the lamb. He started with a low current, then turned off the Eshocker, applied greater current for more minutes and then more; and as the current pulsed through me in stronger doses and in longer durations, my mind and body reacted—violently.

  My body was no longer under my control, nor was my mind. My leg and arm muscles struggled against the restraints, which bit into my skin. Searing pain fanned out from my wrists and ankles. Still, my muscles strained, so hard, in fact, that cramps seized both of my calves, which popped out of joint at the knees. I screamed, but the gag muffled me.

  Gripped by terror, shrieking and crying, pain slicing through me—the room was a whirl of colors, and my stomach knotted with nausea—I tried to scream, “Holmes!” but all of my screams came out as “Hhhhhhh.” In the background, Willie Jacobs wept and came into view, clawed at Holmes and begged him to release me from the Eshocker.

  “Let ’im go, ’olmes! Stop, you’re ’urtin’ ’im,” he whimpered. “This beast is evil, just like the one I built with me father.”

  “Nonsense, Mr. Jacobs. A pulsed Eshocking will cure Dr. Watson’s illness. It will kill the infestation.” Using one arm, Holmes easily kept Jacobs away from the Eshocker, and finally, Jacobs disappeared from view, staggering back toward the other side of the room.

  Zap. Sizzle.

  When I thought my head was going to explode, Holmes finally turned off the machine—this time, for good. The pain subsided, the tingling resumed. Unable to open my eyes, I felt Holmes’s fingers unstrapping my ankles and wrists, felt his hands knead the strength back into my calves.

  I fell forward, and Holmes caught me. With his arms around my waist, he gently eased me to the floor, where I lay on my side, sobbing. My left eye cracked open, and through its window, I saw the stain of Dr. Sinclair’s blood. Filaments encircled the dark blotch, making it look like one of the bizarre creatures under Holmes’s microscope.

  44

  Several days passed. Worried more about my recovery from the neural infestation than about Moriarty’s men finding and killing him, Holmes returned to 221B Baker Street.

  Mrs. Hudson catered for both of us as if we were her long-lost sons. She seemed especially worried about me, which warmed my heart. Rather than languishing in my bed while Holmes played his violin for hours on end, I had Mrs. Hudson to keep me company. She kept cool cloths on my forehead, read the newspapers to me, and when I insisted that I was well enough to get back to battle, she urged me to rest. Mycroft sent notes by messenger to Holmes, asking for updates about my condition.

  Holmes broke the seal on the latest note and read it to me.

  “While I hope that Dr. Watson soon feels better and his brain resumes normal functioning—” at this, Holmes chuckled—“I hope, too, that you are not neglecting your work on the Eshocker that might rid us of the Thames infestation. Watson’s recovery from the illness suggests that our plan to eliminate the accursed creatures en masse will also meet with success.”

  A tall order from Mycroft, I thought, but Holmes didn’t appear fazed at all. He just laughed.

  “We will do what we can,” he said, and he set aside his brother’s note and picked up his violin again.

  While I listened to Holmes’s endless renditions of his repertoire, Mycroft sent agents across England to modify the den Eshockers. Holmes instructed Timmy how to modify the Eshockers in the Thrawl Street den to pulse twelve milliamperes in the manner Holmes had done with me. The newspapers began printing stories that relief had come to London’s Eshocked addicts.

  Holmes visited the asylum once without me and returned with a report about Willie Jacobs.

  “He’s not well, Watson, and Miss Klune doesn’t expect him to live much longer. He says that, when he dies, he will be thinking of his father but also of you and me, whom he considers his closest friends.”

  I rose from my clammy sheets, but Holmes eased me back down.

  “I’ve failed Mr. Jacobs,” I moaned. “I could not cure him.”

  “There is no cure,” Holmes said gently, “not for phossy jaw at this late stage.”

  “I know, but—”

  Holmes held up his palm.

  “Enough, my dear fellow. Gather your strength. We must confront Bligh Braithwaite and persuade him, along with poor Mr. Jacobs, to create this special Eshocker for us. We must do this quickly, for Jacobs is essential and might not last long enough to help. Braithwaite is unpredictable. He’s a murderer.”

  As the snow fell like giant tears on the gray streets, the season crept toward Christmas and the New Year. A fog penetrated the nights and drifted through the days. It was almost 1891, and still, I’d heard nothi
ng from Mary. With my mind clear of the bizarre infection, it filled instead with images of Mary and Samuel.

  One morning, I shoved aside Mrs. Hudson’s breakfast tray, hauled myself from bed, and confronted Holmes.

  “It’s time,” I said, even as my legs wobbled, barely able to hold my weight. “We can delay no longer, Holmes. We must act, and we must do it now.”

  Surprised, he set his violin on his chair, peered intently at me, and then straightened himself, having reached a decision.

  “To the Whitechapel Asylum, Dr. Watson,” he said, “and not a moment to lose.”

  At this, I struggled into my clothes and grabbed my cane, and together, we hailed a carriage and set off for Thrawl Street. The cold air and snow stimulated my senses, cleared my head further. Drops of ice brushed my face. Numerous folk passed us on the street, lost in their own worlds and oblivious to one another. Boys snatched bread from bakeries and dashed off, women toted food baskets and babies—this was my London, and I would protect it.

  I could never really leave, not permanently. As soon as Mary returned, I would limit myself to being a good husband and as decent a doctor as I could manage. I would stop fooling myself into thinking I needed the thrill of these adventures with Holmes. I would settle down and be content with the simple things in life.

  Lost in my thoughts, no different from all the other men and women passing on the street, I was suddenly jerked back to reality by Sherlock Holmes.

  “Bligh Braithwaite will show you how he murdered Dr. Reginald Sinclair,” Holmes said. “You will see it for yourself. Then, under threat of painful execution unless he cooperates, he and Willie Jacobs will give us an Eshocker to kill those Thames creatures. Brace yourself, Watson, for the true battle is just beginning.”

  45

  Miss Klune sat in Dr. Sinclair’s chair as if perched on a throne. She clasped her hands and set them on the desk, then motioned for us to sit in the visitor chairs.

  “No need,” I said, though I had to place my palm on the edge of the desk to remain steady.