“Who indeed? At least your people buried you in a pleasant spot, an exalted position for the grave of an exalted ruler.”
“This? This was done at Lobon’s bidding, the final insult. From here, one looks out over the region of the country I refused to conquer, the last corner of Britain which, in my aversion to further bloodshed, I left untouched. This is not an honour. This is punishment.”
“You are sure, though, that it was Lobon himself you fought? Might it not have been some usurper, a young upstart with pretensions to your throne?” Holmes was keen to propound a rational interpretation of the chieftain’s death. He was a detective seeking a murder rather than an act of divine retribution.
“Even if it was merely that, it makes no difference. He was an aspect of Lobon regardless. A killer who appears in the guise of a god is a god by any other name, doing that god’s work.”
“I see.”
“I fear you do not see,” said the chieftain. “I fear your field of vision is still far too narrow.”
“Well, how would you go about widening its scope?”
The next instant, Holmes regretted posing the question. For, in answer, the chieftain hoisted his axe and brought it whirling round. Before Holmes could duck, before he could even move, one of those chipped blades was scything towards him and…
* * *
…failing to make contact. But not missing either. The axe passed through him. He felt it, a silvery swish, an intangible thread of ice entering and exiting. Yet he knew he was unhurt, intact. It was a kind of severance, but not of head from neck or trunk from legs. Instead, a severance of soul from body. All at once his intellect was free from its corporeal shell. He was thought, pure essence of being. He was everything that was Sherlock Holmes save the fleshly frame that carried him around.
He flew. Up from Box Hill, up from Surrey, up from England. Out over the Channel, over Europe, Arabia, India, Asia. He flew across the face of the planet like a streak of light. And, from a birdlike vantage, he saw sights. Such sights.
He flew to an island in the heart of the Pacific, a speck of volcanic rock littered with rotting fish carcasses and topped by a white monolith. Nearby, in a seabed crevasse, a bulbous, scaly creature – part fish, part Cyclops – was stirring, rising to the surface.
He flew to another, larger Pacific island where stood a lost city with buildings whose contours and angles were irregular and seemed to fold away when looked at, as though their makers were privy to a branch of geometry unknown to other mathematicians. Here, in slimy-walled vaults, lay human-sized monsters, all of them fast asleep and clustered around a much larger bat-winged behemoth, also slumbering, whose visage Holmes only glimpsed and was glad not to view more closely.
He flew on, out across the snowy wastes of Antarctica, down to another abandoned city, this one a place of massive walls and deep-dug catacombs. He saw animals that resembled nothing so much as albino penguins six feet tall, waddling along the streets, their eyes vestigial slits, quite blind. He saw, too, a black protoplasmic mass somewhat like a jellyfish, its gelatinous surface writhing with tendrils and sensory organs that had no direct analogy to any that he knew of from his studies in biology.
Onward he flew to the southern states of America, to witness a hellish voodoo rite in the swamps of Louisiana, and thence to Greenland, where an all too similar rite was in progress. Whether in the humid heat of the bayou or the frigid cold of the Arctic Circle, whether the participants were half-naked seamen of West Indian origin or fur-clad Eskimos, the chants and dances were more or less identical, and the object of frenzied reverence in each case was an effigy of that vast bat-winged beast he had spied earlier asleep amid its minions, the one whose tentacle-adorned face he had shrunk from scrutinising.
He flew next to New England, where in that most civil portion of the United States there proved to be more sites of lurking horror than there were stars in the sky. He perceived them as warts on skin or cancerous growths on an otherwise healthy organ, a disease blighting the deep green valleys and cosy small towns and bustling cities and endless forests and rolling farmland, clusters and speckles of corruption arising in the unlikeliest, most apparently innocuous of places.
Whereas his audience with the swarthy chieftain had seemed to occur within a single unending moment, Holmes was conscious of time passing at extraordinary speed during his back-and-forth grand tour of the globe’s darkest corners. Night and day alternated, flickering like a guttering candle flame, and the interchange between the two grew faster and faster still. He felt himself accelerating, whirling through the air with such velocity that in the end gravity lost its grip on him and he was projected outward, flung headlong from Earth’s atmosphere into space. Like a living rocket he shot across the universe, past stars, past galaxies, through the vast emptinesses between. Somewhere at the very edge of creation, so far from our solar system that our sun was comparable to a mote of dust, he arrived at a place where dozens of planets stood joined together by bridges of incalculable size. These worlds pivoted around one another in carefully preordained orbits, like some cosmic orrery, and as a whole revolved in a continuous, steady circuit around the periphery of space.
Their inhabitants were many and bizarre. Some were dark and formless, others incandescent balls of energy. Some were humanoid, others animalistic. Some walked proudly, wreathed in mist or flame, whilst others crawled or slithered or oozed. They were beings of such omnipotence that they had almost forgotten what it meant to have needs or desires. They wafted through their endless existences, occasionally encountering one another for a desultory exchange of conversation, otherwise dwelling in splendid, stately solitude. Somehow Holmes knew them to be the Elder Gods, the forerunners of the Great Old Ones, creatures who had ignited into life shortly after the universe itself was birthed. After a billion epochs they no longer cared about anything, not even themselves. They simply were, and that was enough for them.
From the limits of space Holmes was abruptly drawn back, reversing his trajectory as though attached to an India-rubber band that had suddenly been released. He was whisked from the frontier of all-that-is to the very centre, the core around which the cosmos spun.
Here lay chaos, a churning maelstrom of light and dark, in the midst of which floated a number of strange citadels that spiralled and twirled, utterly at the whim of the titanic currents around them. One resembled a snowflake, another was composed of polyhedrons, while a third had walls that rippled and flowed like water. No two were alike.
They were the abodes of yet another pantheon of gods, but these, the Outer Gods, were uniformly avaricious and malign. They were things of fog and stone and jewel and flesh, and they waited. They waited to be summoned. They waited to be called upon with all due obeisance. They waited for the invitation to traverse the void and commit hideous, heinous acts. They could span immeasurable distances with but a thought, and would go anywhere as long as they deemed the journey worth their while. They emanated nothing except loathing, depravity and contempt. Even those that were creatures of light shone only so as to cast shadows and, in the shadows they cast, to slake their foul lusts.
Proximity to the Outer Gods instilled in Sherlock Holmes such terror that he thought he might go instantly, irredeemably mad. Nothing any human villain could do could compare to the evil of these deities. They were horror incarnate.
Holmes wished only to escape their presence, and particularly their notice, for he sensed that if any of these monsters were to turn its gaze on him, he would be lost forever, dragged into some howling pit of pain for all eternity, without hope of surcease. He had no idea how to engineer a retreat from that dire place other than to persuade himself that it was all some awful hallucination. Its reality, he said, was beyond question, yet if he could only convince himself otherwise, if he could be certain that he was perched atop Box Hill in Surrey and merely imagining everything he saw…
* * *
“My intellect saved me, Watson,” he said. “The science of analytical
reasoning in which I have trained myself rigorously since adolescence was what brought me back to myself. Without the power of my brain, my soul might even now be the plaything of some Outer God while my body would be discovered on that hilltop, bereft of sense and wit – something to be locked up and studied in vain by alienists, a drooling, incontinent wreck.”
* * *
Through sheer force of will, Holmes denied the evidence of his eyes and insisted that he was on Earth, in his body, in a trance, nothing more. He was aware that several of the Outer Gods were becoming curious. They had detected an interloper. A creature made of quicksilver was extending an amoeba-like pseudopod in his direction. A blind, pustule-covered spider flung out an exploratory strand of silk from its web home, as though casting a line. On a balcony, a thing that might be mistaken for a beautiful woman began to sniff, raising her nose like a cat catching an odour on the breeze. If he did not leave immediately, he never would.
He thought of the chill North Downs air. He thought of the damp ground he was sitting on. He thought of the murky layer of cloud not far above. He thought of all these impressions, the sights and sounds and smells of the Surrey countryside in December, the mundanity of them, the hallowed ordinariness. They were facts. Data. All else – Great Old Ones, Elder Gods, Outer Gods – was mere conjecture and fancy. He did not deal in conjecture and fancy. Only that which could be proved by observation and logic was acceptable. He refused to countenance any other truth.
So it was that bit by bit, slowly but surely, Holmes came to. No longer did he hover at the centre of the universe, at the rim of an Olympus that was also a Hades. He had returned to his body, and he was cold all over, stiff of limb, aching, famished. He prised apart his eyelids, which felt so heavy it was like opening a set of rusted doors, and saw that twilight had come and night was all but fallen. He fumbled for his hunter, which was working once more and showed the hour to be past five.
When he attempted to stand, his legs failed him. He had spent the entire day in that cross-legged posture, exposed to the elements, and lack of circulation had left his lower half numb and inflexible. He had to resort to crouching on hands and knees until feeling had returned sufficiently to his extremities. Then he staggered out of the bone-powder circle and down the hill.
Gong-Fen was long gone. So was the clarence. Holmes was quite alone; and without even a dark-lantern to light his way, and the moon and stars occluded by cloud, he had to proceed with the utmost care. The road was little better than a rutted lane, and he stumbled often. Low-hanging branches slapped his face. Rocks tripped him. He was effectively blind.
To compound his woes, it started to rain. He considered finding a dry spot under a tree and sheltering there for the night, or at least until the downpour passed, but he suspected that if he halted, he might never set off again. So he forged on, until at last the lights of a cottage hove into view. Holmes knocked on the door, only to be greeted by a double-barrelled shotgun wielded by a less than friendly provincial. There followed a brisk exchange in which the householder encouraged the visitor to depart while the visitor begged succour from the householder. They were at an impasse, and then the man’s wife came to the rescue, who scolded her husband for not recognising a gentleman when he saw one – a gentleman in distress, what was more – and invited Holmes inside and furnished him with a serving of hot, invigorating rabbit pie. Thereafter the woman prevailed upon her spouse to hook up the horse to the dog-cart and drive their guest into Dorking, which the man grudgingly did, and in short order Holmes was deposited at the railway station in time to catch the last train to Waterloo. Thanks to his dishevelled, besmirched condition, none of the other passengers wanted to ride next to him. They took one look and moved on to another compartment. It was a small blessing.
* * *
“And here we are,” Holmes concluded. “I am keen to think that all that I underwent was a drug-induced mirage. There was no chieftain. There are no gods; old, elder or outer. All fantasy. Myriad are the ways Gong-Fen might have manufactured it. Perhaps, while I was under the influence of his ‘cocktail’, he remained with me, crouching by my side, whispering suggestions into my ear. My subconscious mind took these verbal cues and transformed them into heady visions. And perhaps the chieftain was, as I initially surmised, merely a man dressed up in costume, some penurious actor paid to play the part. That would certainly account for my being able to understand his tongue and he mine. The whole thing, then, was a rigorously stage-managed charade, a mystery play put on for my benefit alone, and I in my narcotised stupor was incapable of distinguishing make-believe from reality.”
“To what end?” said I. “Why would the man go to such trouble?”
“To disorientate me. To bewilder me. Punishment for the disruption I caused at the Golden Lotus Hotel. And yet, Watson…”
“Yes?”
“Would that I could dismiss it so readily. Something inside me, deep in my marrow, is telling me that it all happened just as I have related. You must reckon me mad for saying so, and possibly you would be right. Yet, try as I might to rationalise the experience, I cannot. Gong-Fen’s rite was not intended to drive me to the brink of insanity, although it very nearly succeeded in doing so. It was intended to open my eyes to the way things truly are. It has brought about a dreadful epiphany!”
I was tempted to offer him some form of consolation. I could have reassured him that, no, he was mistaken; it had been a delusion. I could have said that after a good night’s rest, he would be able to put it all in perspective. By tomorrow he would be his old self again, and he would remember the events of today only as a kind of vague delirium. By the time the scratches on his face and hands had healed, he might not even remember anything whatsoever.
This, though, would have been a lie, and I could not have convincingly delivered it. Instead, I found myself saying this: “Holmes, I realise you are exhausted and no doubt looking forward to a bath and bed and nothing else. I would beg your indulgence, however, for I have something to tell you. It is something I have long wished to get off my chest, and I can think of no more apposite moment than this.”
Interest brought a glint to his dulled eye. His curiosity was piqued. “Yes?”
“I too have experienced a ‘dreadful epiphany’, as you so aptly put it. I have for months been hoping for an opportunity to unburden myself of it to someone – anyone who might be able to understand. I believe you are that person and now is the time. After what you have been through, what you have witnessed, we have more in common than before. You are of course acquainted with the line in Hamlet, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”
I leaned a fraction closer to him.
“I,” I said, “have seen that for myself. In the earth. Under the earth. More things. Terrible things. I am the living proof.”
IN HINDSIGHT, PERHAPS I SHOULD NOT HAVE inflicted an account of my adventures in the Arghandab Valley upon Holmes, not that night, not while he was still recovering from the trauma of his own rude awakening. It was self-indulgent of me. In my defence, I was wrung out with tiredness and tension. It had been a more than trying day. My natural reticence had been eroded, my inhibitions lowered. Holmes had just become a fellow wayfarer on a road down which I had thought I walked alone. No wonder I was eager to confide in him.
* * *
It began on the retreat from Maiwand. The forces of Ayub Khan, Emir of Afghanistan, had routed ours. Although the Afghans had taken the greater casualties, we had been trounced nonetheless. After a three-hour artillery duel, the Ghazis rolled over the ranks of Indian infantry on our left flank and swung right to do the same to the 66th Berkshires, the regiment to which mine, the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, was attached. The Royal Horse and the Bombay Sappers and Miners stood firm, fighting a rearguard action to cover the retreat of the rest of the company, and paid the ultimate price for their bravery, almost to a man. It was an unmitigated disaster, the credit for which must lie with Brig
adier-General George Burrows and his inexperience and lack of tactical acumen, but also with the air of overconfidence with which we approached the battle. Following a string of resounding victories at Peiwar, Kabul, Ahmed Khel and elsewhere, we in the British Army had begun to assume we were invincible and the Afghans would continue to fall before us like wheat before the scythe. Ayub Khan comprehensively disabused us of that notion.
We tramped away from the Maiwand Pass in a demoralised, straggling column. Bad though it was, it could have been much worse. For some reason the Afghans did not pursue us to finish us off. Once they had triumphed on the battlefield, they seemed to lose interest, and so we were able to depart unmolested. I, not amongst the wounded myself, did my duty as physician towards those who had sustained injuries. As we limped back to Kandahar, I applied salves, reapplied bandages, extracted bullets, and even carried out a couple of emergency amputations by the roadside. A relief force met us the next morning at Kokeran, and it was during the course of that same day that Captain Harrowby proposed a small side excursion.
Roderick Harrowby was an amateur field archaeologist, an ardent aficionado of the work of Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans. He had taken a military commission at the insistence of his father, a veteran of the Crimea, but longed to pursue his passion for digs and ancient relics. During the campaign he had often spoken about the many sites of great archaeological interest to be found in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Hindoo Kush, and lamented how he should be exploring them while he was here, rather than spending the time skirmishing with the natives, all for the sake of controlling a country which was of little strategic importance to Britain and of which our government sought control only because they were unwilling to cede it to Russia, just another square on the board of the Great Game to tussle over and occupy.
Despite the occasional seditionary turn of phrase of that kind, Harrowby was an engaging raconteur, and his talk of long-lost cities secreted in deserts, on uncharted islands and in hidden valleys, the legacy of dead civilisations, struck a romantic chord in me. Time and again around the campfire he would conjure visions of a pre-Sumerian age when densely packed stone metropolises housed people of surprising sophistication whose knowledge of sciences such as astronomy and medicine was at least the rival of ours. He mentioned Atlantis and Lemuria as though, far from being mythical places beloved of philosophers and theosophists, these were genuine sunken continents beneath the waves, awaiting rediscovery. He spoke of other civilisations from that time – Commoriom, Uzuldaroum, Olathoë, Valusia – whose names, though I had never heard them before, elicited a prickle of wonder and unease. He talked of a global cataclysm, perhaps a great flood, that had wiped away almost all traces of this era, leaving only rare pockets of it still extant.
The Cthulhu Casebooks Page 12