by Bill Crider
With a cry, Jepson plunged the syringe down and slammed it into the flesh of one of the arms groping through the bars, fingers wide to seek his throat. He felt the needle bite and brought his free hand down on the plunger, jamming it home with a grunt and stepping back, leaving the needle deeply imbedded in its target, watching in horror as the arm was jerked inward, catching the syringe on the bar and snapping it off near the center of the too-long needle. Green liquid glittered in the air, splashing the walls and floor in droplets that glowed and hissed. Jepson stepped back further with a gasp. His heart slammed too quickly—too violently—in his chest, and he feared it would stop. He couldn’t get breath to slip past the knot in his throat, and only the intervention of the wall at his back prevented his toppling to the stone floor.
The screams tore through the air at inhuman volume. Jepson slapped his palms to his ears and closed his eyes. Nothing could have blocked that sound, but he muted it, and, blessedly, within moments the sounds began to fade. The screams receded slowly to wails, the wails to moans. Jepson’s eyes snapped open wide, and he pushed off the wall, moving toward the bars of the cell. His voice rose instantly, returning to his chant, bringing the ancient Hebrew to life through his voice, and trying to imagine that he was in control of the situation.
He stepped closer. The light was very dim, and the bony wrists and yellowed, skinny arms no longer groped between the bars. In fact, the cell’s occupant had retreated to the far wall and slid down to a sitting position on the floor, knees drawn up and head back.
Jepson spoke more clearly, enunciating carefully. There was no reaction within the darkened cell. No motion, no sound. Jepson grew calmer, gaining confidence, and he stepped to within an inch of the bars, staring down fixedly at the man cowering against the back wall. The final words of the chant tumbled from his lips, resonant and strong. For just an instant, as the hall fell silent, Michael Adcott raised his head, staring into the eyes of his captor. The captive man’s eyes blazed with something beyond insanity, beyond rage or pain.
But only for a second. Then those eyes were dead. Blank. Nothing more reflected in their dull black depths but the dim light of the torches in the hall. Jepson watched a moment longer, letting his breathing catch a normal rhythm and straightening his jacket, running one hand back through sweat-soaked hair.
Reaching into one pocket, Jepson retrieved a ring of keys and inserted a large iron skeleton key into the cell’s huge old lock.
“Come along then,” he said, his voice cracking once, then steadying again. “Come along Michael. We have work to do, and I’ve had enough nonsense for one day.”
Adcott didn’t move. Not until Jepson’s fingers gripped his upper arm and tugged. Then, with slow, mechanical movements, he levered himself from the floor, leaned against the wall for support, and found his feet. The man did not turn to Jepson, nor did he answer. When Jepson turned toward the door of the cell, Adcott followed as if drawn in the other man’s wake.
It was nearly three o’clock by the time Holmes made his way to the door of my flat. He stood outside the door, and when I invited him in, he shook his head impatiently.
“Your coat, Watson, and hurry. Timing is crucial, and we have several places to be before evening.”
I didn’t hesitate. Long years as Holmes’s companion have removed several layers of my natural hesitation. There were only two choices: follow as best I could, or be left behind and miss whatever was to come. My coat over one arm, my hat in the other hand, I slipped out the door, and Holmes pulled it tight behind me.
Just as I was turning to go, I saw him bend at the waist, reaching down to run a finger along one of the cracks in the sidewalk. Straightening, he removed a bit of paper from his pocket and carefully folded whatever he’d scraped from the ground inside. I thought to ask what he was doing, then thought better of it. All in its time, he’d say. Why force the words?
There was a carriage waiting at the curb, and Holmes slipped inside. I followed, and without a word from Holmes, the driver was off. I should have liked to have asked where we were bound, but experience told me the words would be wasted. Holmes had the predatory, hunter’s gleam in his eye I’d seen so many times before, and I knew he’d speak to me only when he was ready. I contented myself with slipping into my coat and leaning back to watch the streets as we passed.
The carriage headed into the center of the city, and it was only a short time before we pulled to the curb. A quick glance out the window confirmed my suspicions. We had pulled up in front of the morgue.
“Why have we come here?” I asked in surprise. “I’ve told you the man was in my flat, alive and standing as you, or I.”
“If, indeed, the man you saw was the same Michael Adcott you pronounced dead,” Holmes replied, exiting the coach and motioning the driver to wait, “then I would expect without doubt to find that body here. The fact you met a man you believe might be Adcott does not mean the Adcott for whom you signed the death warrant is not dead.”
He fell silent then, leaving me to follow the trail of his thoughts to their obvious conclusions. A brother? A close cousin? Why hadn’t it occurred to me? My ears were burning with the sudden realization I’d acted the fool, but I followed Holmes into the morgue entrance nevertheless. What had I been thinking? That dead men walk?
It was late in the day, and it was unlikely that many would be walking the halls of that dark place, but Holmes entered with familiarity and confidence. There was nothing to do but to follow.
It took a good bit of cajoling on Holmes’s part, but the clerk behind the desk, a dour little man with too-thick glasses and a perpetual frown that creased his brow with deep wrinkles, finally agreed to escort us to where the body of Michael Adcott had been stored. The body was, he assured us, right where it had been left, tagged and recorded.
“I sent you a report earlier this very day, Mr. Holmes, did you not get my message? Do you think he’s up and walked away then?” the man asked. His voice was grave, but now there was a twinkle in his eye that had not been present as he argued with Holmes at the front desk. “They do that, you know. One day here, the next up and gone, and days later wives and mothers, daughters and friend are here, telling how they’ve met the corpse on the road and asking after the remains. Sometimes, they’re just not there.”
I didn’t much appreciate the clerk’s levity, but Holmes paid the man no mind at all.
“You saw the man, then,” Holmes asked, watching the man’s face with keen interest. “You verified the information you sent personally?”
The old man cackled. “If he’s in my book, Mr. Holmes, he’s in my morgue. There are papers that must be filled out to remove a corpse, and permissions to be granted. No such papers have passed my desk for the late Mr. Adcott, and if there are no papers, there is no reason to look. He is here.”
“Then let us wish him Godspeed on the road to the next world,” Holmes replied. “Let us see Mr. Adcott for ourselves, and then we shall see what we can make of the rest of this business.”
Unfortunately for my own sanity, the remains of the late Mr. Michael Adcott were indeed missing from their slab. No note, no papers of explanation or permission. The numbers and documentation lay neatly in place, but no body accompanied them. The small man was less talkative now, and a sight less sure of himself.
“Perhaps he’s been moved?” I suggested.
The man shook his head, not turning to meet my gaze, only staring at the empty spot where a dead man should be. “There were no papers. No one moves without paperwork. No one.”
“And yet,” Holmes observed mildly, “Mr. Adcott seems to have been in the mood for an afternoon stroll.”
“Shall we search for him?” I asked, ready to button up my sleeves and get to the task at hand.
“There’s no time,” Holmes said, his expression shifting in an instant to the old, familiar intensity of the hunt. “I didn’t really expect he would be here, but without knowing …” He trailed off, and I followed him out the door. Without a word he was bac
k in the cab and holding the door impatiently, as I made to enter.
At just that moment, there was a cry from down the street, and I turned, startled. A young man darted from around the corner of the morgue, tousled hair waving about a roguish face and a scrap of paper clutched tightly in grubby fingers. I recognized him at once, as did Holmes, who rose and exited the carriage, calling to the driver to hold.
“Mr. Holmes,” Wiggins cried, coming to a halt and holding out the paper. “We’ve found him, sir, as you asked.”
Holmes didn’t say a word, but took the paper from the boy’s hand, eyes blazing. He read quickly, then folded the paper and slipped it into one of the pockets of his coat. “The others are posted?” Holmes asked quickly.
Wiggins nodded. “He’ll not slip past, sir. Count on it.”
“I do,” Holmes replied, almost smiling. Shillings changed hands and Holmes had turned away and re-entered the carriage before I could ask what was written on the paper, or who the “irregulars” were watching.
I knew better than to ask. I’d seen that expression on Holmes’s face too many times. He was on the trail of something, and until that thing was in his grasp, he’d not share it with anyone. Best to keep to his side, watch his back, and wait until he was ready to speak. The carriage took off without a word from Holmes, and I realized suddenly that he’d already anticipated our next stop. Either the note Wiggins had brought him had confirmed his suspicions, or it was related to another matter.
I watched out the curtained window as we passed deeper into the city, trying not to think of the scrap of paper in Holmes’s pocket, or the pallid face of Michael Adcott, staring at me from heavily lidded eyes.
Jepson walked briskly down the street, hands pressed deeply into the pockets of his coat. At his heel, Michael Adcott followed more slowly, his gait forced and clumsy. Jepson paid his companion no mind. They had to meet Jeffries at the court before the last of the judges left chambers, and that left little time indeed. Time was slipping through his fingers too quickly, and things he’d expected to have accomplished had evaded him.
The Doctor—Watson was his name—was a problem. The man should have seen what was obvious, feared what was less so, and signed off on the paperwork by now. Without that signature, they would be forced to let a court decide Michael’s state, and at the very least, he’d be found unfit to speak on his own behalf. That wouldn’t do. Michael Adcott would not be speaking to anyone, and that was another problem.
For the moment, things were under control. The serum—alone—was not enough. That much had been clear in the sketchy notes that had been included with the case that lay waiting in the laboratory at St. Elian’s. Only fate—a bottle of wine—and a loose tongue had given Aaron Jepson the information he needed.
“There was a time,” his father had said, head drooping toward the table and fingers loosely gripping his wine glass, “when we had ways to deal with our problems. There are things we know,” the old man had glanced up to see that his son knew the “we” in question. “We have always harbored our secrets, Aaron. There was a time when we kept them less guarded—when a Rabbi could walk the streets with the respect of those around him. They knew. I know.”
Several glasses of wine later, and a lot of cajoling and flattery on Aaron’s part, and those secrets had begun to surface. Men from clay. The Kabbalah. Patterns of words and form, rhythm and breath that emulated the formation of the first man. A mad Arab poet who spoke as if he were in another place and time and stared into distances that were not there. Those words, copied onto the canvas corner of a tent and guarded, studied—shifted over the years and re-combined. Alhazred, the man had been called, and though he’d been mad, he’d been a prophet, as well—a prophet of power. At first the notion had seemed ludicrous. A clay monster controlled by he who gave them life, born of the proper words, the proper earth—the prayers—the faith of the Rabbi, and the vision of a madman.
Sworn to secrecy, Aaron had left his father’s home and set out to find a use for his new secret. Money wasn’t everything, he reminded himself often, but no money was certainly something to be avoided. Money was power, and if you were not the one with the power, you were under that man’s thumb. Aaron Jepson would feel the pad of no man’s thumb.
A chance encounter had landed the wooden case in his hands, won from a drunken, reeling fool at poker. The man had wagered it against a five pound note, holding it close to his chest and announcing drunkenly that the secrets to life itself were contained within, and that this being the case, it certainly qualified as collateral against a five pound note. The case had been found floating, he claimed, off the shore of the island of Eucrasia after the explosion that destroyed its culture and its ruler. It had been handed from man to man since, and nothing was known of its contents save that they came from the laboratory of one Dr. Caresco Surhomme. Jepson, who knew of Caresco’s work, had agreed impatiently, the four threes in his hand itching to be slapped to the tabletop, and he’d walked away with all the other man’s money, and the wooden box. He could still hear the fellow’s words, echoing in his mind.
“You’ll find more than you bargain for in there. I’m glad to be rid of it. God bears a very heavy burden my friend—don’t be too quick to shoulder it.”
It had taken years of poring over correspondence and articles, diatribes about and against Caresco and fictions written about the man and his work, to realize what it was that he possessed. It had taken another five years to analyze the serum and attribute it to one small corner of Caresco’s work. The reversal of aging. The shaving away of the ravages of time. Taken to the extreme, and with certain additions of Jepson’s own device, reversing the process of death.
Jepson shook his head to dislodge the memories of what had come before. More important to see to the needs of the moment. He led Michael around a corner and disappeared into the fog. Jeffries would know what to do, and they would have to set about whatever it was with haste. Both the serum, and the incantations and amulets his father had reluctantly provided him, were proving less stable than he’d anticipated. The row in the cell earlier had been a near miss that Jepson didn’t want repeated.
The Asylum brooded over the street beneath, giving off a sensation of density, immovable and old as time. When the carriage stopped in front of that place, and Holmes stepped out, tipping the driver, I was sure he must have lost his mind. The Asylum of St. Elian had been deserted since I was a young man, still pursuing the degrees and education that would lead me to a career in medicine. The stories I’d heard had seemed laughable enough at the time, but faced with the reality of the place, they came back to me full force, flickering across the years of my memory with chilling speed.
Holmes didn’t hesitate. He moved from carriage to door with purposeful steps, reached up and rapped his knuckles against the door sharply. I stared at him, then at the building before us. I would have bet my last pound that no one had passed through that door in ten years. Holmes knocked again, then turned to me with a purpose.
“No one seems to be about, Watson. We must hurry.”
“Hurry where?” I inquired.
Holmes was already trying the door. It was, of course, locked, but I noted with amazement and some alarm that Holmes had pulled a small tool from his pocket and inserted one end into the lock. A few deft movements of wrist and finger, and I heard the sound of tumblers sliding into place. The latch gave way, and Holmes pulled the door open, slipping inside. There was nothing to do but to follow him into the shadows, and to pray that most of what I’d heard back at university was the hogwash it had seemed. The heavy door closed behind us with a loud CLICK. Holmes fiddled with it for a moment, then turned away.
“Locked,” he whispered.
There was no light, but Holmes moved quickly and easily, making his way to the first set of doors to his left. He pulled out a box of matches, lighting one and holding it up as we entered the room. It was a crude, antiquated sort of laboratory. On one of the benches, a few crates lay open, pac
king material and other items strewn about as if opened and gone through quickly and without much care.
I moved up beside Holmes, glancing over his shoulder as the light from the first match flickered, then died. The quick glimpse had been enough.
“Medical equipment,” I said softly.
“As I suspected,” Holmes replied, turning to the other bench. He lit another match, and this time he slipped along the wall and found the light switch, flicking the power to on.
“Someone will see,” I hissed.
My friend ignored me, and, with a quick turn about the room, I realized my error. There were no windows. We were encircled in stone as surely as if entombed. The light was dim, but Holmes made use of it quickly, making his way to a wooden case flung open on one of the bench tops.
The case held two vials, and I saw that Holmes had looked past the greenish, glowing liquid and the other—full of something that looked like sand. He plucked it from the case and held it to the dim light. Then he removed the folded paper he’d brought away from the doorstep of my flat and opened it. He held the two objects together, and I saw that what was on the paper was a bit of clay. Red clay, unlike anything near the city. The dust, or sand in the vial had the same reddish hue.
“Watson, have you heard of a man named Caresco?”
I started violently, nearly toppling into the nearest of the benches. “Caresco Surhomme? Caresco is dead,” I replied, a bit more calmly. “His island was buried in volcanic ash. That Caresco?”
Holmes held up a hand, and I fell silent. The greenish contents of those vials had taken on a new reality for me. I had heard of Caresco and his hellish experiments, and I knew the end he’d reached. Playing God with the human anatomy, enslaving the mind. Seeking a cure for death and time.
“I know of Caresco, as well,” Holmes assured me. “I was fairly certain his work was tied up in this, but there is more—something vital that we are missing.”
He returned the card to the case and began pacing the room, rooting through the remaining cases and tossing paperwork and equipment aside without a thought. Clearly, he had no intention of trying to keep our illegal entry a secret. Holmes turned and lifted the vial in his hand so that I could see it more closely.