As he neared, the glow from the ley-lines increased. From across the room, I heard a man’s voice. It was distorted, as if from deep under water. The accent was rural and strange. “Morag? Morag? Where are ye? Run! The horses! They bite! Me legs! Oh, me legs… Run, Morag!”
Warlock tried to stand, but crumpled with a cry. Having just felt what I presumed to be his pain, I understood that the fight was not going our way. Until a moment before I had kept up hope but now it seemed to have been only a fool’s dream.
Was there nothing I could do?
One solution presented: there, in the rubble to my right, I could just see the gleam of my trusty Webley.
When in doubt…
I dove upon it, yanked back the hammer, aimed and shot Sir Hugo, square in the chest.
He turned to me and muttered, “Watson, don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s not!” I protested, and shot him again. “It has two beneficial effects…” I shot him again. “First: it makes me feel better!” And again. “Second: victory may be yours; you may end the race of man…” My fifth shot landed low, just above the hip. “But you won’t be keeping that jacket!”
My last bullet tore through his shoulder. The Webley’s hammer clicked against an empty casing. I was done. Sir Hugo did not appear best pleased by my behavior. He snarled and flicked one hand at me, shouting, “Vres Jech!”
I felt all my bones begin pulling out through my skin. I can hardly describe my agony as my skeleton began to bend and shift. I’m not sure I even managed to scream, but I promise you I tried. To my lasting joy, Holmes saved me. He shouted in protest and flung both his arms upwards. As he did, the torturous feeling in my bones rocketed up out of me. The chandelier creaked, squealed and tore itself into a hundred pieces. I rolled on the floor coughing, trying to regain my breath. Candles rained down around me, into the wood-water. I expected they would extinguish, but the few that landed on their sides set pools of the strange wood alight.
From below me came a cracking noise. I could feel the ley-lines heave and shift. Holmes had used magic to save me, but to use much more might doom us all. From outside, I heard a terrible baying—otherworldly, distorted by wind and pain. The Hound of the Baskervilles must be coming, I realized. To whose benefit, I could not say.
As I drew myself to my knees, Sir Hugo again turned his rage on me. He summoned a dark ray of unlight, which streaked from his finger towards my heart. Holmes reached out his hand as if to grab it and the ray suddenly bent, striking one of the stones of the fireplace. The unlucky stone burst into two dozen live bats, which flew about for a few seconds, before expiring and plummeting to the floor, their fuzzy corpses splashing into the liquid wood.
Holmes made it to his feet—quite the achievement, considering the state of his legs. He turned to face Sir Hugo. A wiser man might have looked behind, first. Beryl took him utterly by surprise, slamming into his back. Though she looked to be in poor shape—pale from blood loss—she nevertheless spread her wings and dragged Holmes up into the air. I think she meant to haul him up into the high rafters and drop him, but I will never know for sure. Holmes interrupted her plan with one of the least gentlemanly things I have ever seen: he elbowed her, right in the abdominal wound. Beryl cried out and the two of them tumbled out of the air. Holmes took the brunt of the crash landing and Sir Hugo laughed with delight as he watched them struggle on the floor. Even in the midst of battle, I found his mistreatment of his sister abhorrent.
Or, rather, his mistreatment of the enslaved temptation demon he’d been passing off as his sister.
But still…
A stirring in the rubble beside me indicated that Sir Henry was awake. I scuttled over to him and whispered, “Are you injured?”
“I ain’t at my best, but I guess I’ve been worse. What’s going on, Watson?”
“You should have stayed unconscious, Sir Henry. You seem to have woken up just in time for the end of this fight and I’m afraid you won’t like it.”
“We’re fightin’ Sir Hugo?”
“Yes. Well spotted.”
“And losin’?”
“I’m afraid we are,” I said. “We must turn the tide quickly or all is lost. Holmes is faltering.”
“Damn. Can we help? Have you spotted any weakness?”
“There is one thing,” I reflected. “Unlike Holmes, Sir Hugo speaks whenever he casts a spell. If we could stop his voice, we may gain a great advantage.”
“Well, he’s had his throat torn out, ain’t he?” Sir Henry asked.
“What are you proposing? That we should bum-rush the hovering hell-wizard?”
Sir Henry shrugged.
“I wish I had a better idea,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’re armed?”
“I am!” declared Sir Henry. From the rubble beside him, he produced the hound’s-head walking stick and brandished it.
“What?” I cried. “No! Why does everybody assume…? That is not a weapon! Have you ever gone to a museum and seen a painting of armored knights, laying about each other with walking sticks? Honestly!”
“It’s the best we got, Watson.”
“Oh, very well. I’ll try to get his legs and bring him down a bit. You get his throat.”
Our plan was delayed somewhat by a shift in the fight. John Barrymore pointed out through the shattered entryway and gave a scream of terror. In a moment, Eliza and Perkins joined him. The Hound of the Baskervilles had come to join the fray.
Or anyway, he attempted to.
Though I’m sure he was trying with all his might, Foofy’s charge was somewhat… leisurely. Like many older dogs with bad hips, his front half stayed focused on his target, but his back half kept drifting off to one side. He cleared the entry rubble with a feeble leap, then trundled into the great hall. Poor fellow—dry ground was enough of a challenge for him, but when he made it into the puddle of liquefied table, he was quite overmatched. His back legs slipped and gave out. He tumbled sidelong into the oaken slop, his haunches passing his head as he slid in a slow semi-circle and skidded to a halt. He made some show of trying to move again, dragging himself forward a few feet, but then gave a grand, tired snort and let his head collapse down on his forepaws, utterly bested.
I suppose I was less than charitable. “Oh well done, Mankind’s-Terror-Given-Shape. Thanks for all your help!”
“You think he was here to help us?” Sir Henry asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “The point seems somewhat academic now.”
Sir Hugo drifted closer to Holmes, his voice rising in a litany of demon-speak. Ghostly black chains materialized from the corners of the room and snaked about Holmes’s limbs, pulling each of his damaged appendages in a different direction. Holmes cried out and his green eyes blazed. One by one, the chains burst into smoke, but were replaced by Sir Hugo as quickly as Holmes could dispel them. Attempting to regain the offensive, Holmes levitated several chunks of rubble and flung them at Sir Hugo. Now it was Hugo’s turn to brush aside wayward chunks of Baskerville Hall. He dismissed each of them with a word and a wave, drawing ever closer to the writhing figure of Holmes.
In the entire year I’d spent in the company of Warlock Holmes, I do not think all the magical expenditures I’d ever seen him make could match the amount of power he used that one night in Baskerville Hall. Sir Hugo used even more. At that moment, it seemed, they crossed a threshold. Anyone who’s ever broken a bone knows: you can feel it bending for a moment—strained but not bested—until at last it moves beyond tolerance and gives with a snap. An audible crack emitted from all five ley-lines and the floor heaved. All the lights in the room—the blaze in the great hearth, the candles, the burning pools of liquid wood—winked out. The lines went dull. For the tiniest moment, all was dark. Moonlight through the broken wall and Foofy’s feeble smolder were the only illumination. In the darkness, the room filled with phantom voices. From the direction of the spindle I’d placed, I heard a woman’s muffled cry: “Samuel? Samuel? Where are you?”
> It was answered by a terrible wail from the other side of the line, near the moldy feedbag. It was a sound of utter terror and pain. Beneath the screaming, one could just make out hoof beats and the sound of teeth crunching bone.
It was counterpointed by the strident, non-ghostly voice of Eliza Barrymore shouting, “John Barrymore, don’t you run! You stay right where you are!”
“Husband, why?” said a woman’s voice. It was erudite and educated, and came from under the gold and pearl comb. “Why did you push me?”
From behind me, another ghost spoke. “Oh! I say! Is that my hat?”
Then, with redoubled force, the five lines of white marble relit with a bright, white glow. True, much of this was hidden by wood-juice, but enough of the lines showed through that the whole room was lit in phantom splendor. From the lines, thick, luminescent white smoke began to emerge, even filtering lazily up through the liquid table. It was hypnotizing to watch—and beautiful. Sometimes it drifted, as smoke might, but in different directions as if each thin tendril was blown by its own wind. Sometimes it darted towards a thing or a person, as if it wanted them, but would then pause a few inches away. Shapes began to swim and coalesce within the mist. I swear I saw a cart carrying a huge throne, pulled by two oxen, but it dissolved before I could be sure. There was a woman dancing; her spine was supple, her arms were snakes. Or perhaps it was only my imagination. It was like watching clouds: suggested shapes seemed suddenly vital, but then—in the next folding of the billows—preposterous.
Beside me, a portly man in his mid-fifties, made all of light and smoke, came striding up to the top hat I had dropped and said, “Glad to have that back. Always wanted to be buried in this one, you know, not the ridiculous thing they stuck on me. Good God, did they think me still a schoolboy?”
“Sir Charles?” Barrymore cried.
The phantom reached up, removed the spectral straw boater it wore and replaced it with the top hat, then looked about and cried, “By Jove! What have you done to my house?”
Directly across from him, a lady’s hand reached out from the floor to grasp the comb. An instant later, a matronly woman stood tucking it into her hair, saying, “Ah! Ah! Look! I had it from Hugo, the day we wed. Before things turned so sour. Before he killed me.”
“Lies! She lies!” cried Sir Hugo, pointing at the ghost of his murdered wife. “She fell!”
Beryl staggered to her feet, mumbling, “I remember you—both of you. You were both so kind.”
“Falling! Falling!” the phantom of Lady Olivia Baskerville called, then she fixed Hugo with suddenly vengeful eyes. “You killed me!”
“I say!” said Sir Charles’s shade. “The bastard killed me, as well. But I’m not so easy to frighten now, am I, Stapleton?”
A phantom farmer was pulling himself up now, taking up the moldering feedbag I had left for him. Across the room, his spectral wife was picking up her spindle.
Our battle was momentarily forgotten. All of us mortals, mages and the demon too, were staring at the ghosts. With a start, I realized this was just the chance I needed. I grasped Sir Henry’s sleeve and hissed, “Quick! Sir Hugo is distracted!”
Sir Henry gave a resolute nod and whispered, “One banana… two banana… three banana… go!”
We were up out of the rubble and at him in a flash. I suppose it’s lucky he was engaged in an argument with his dead wife, or he may well have zapped us to ash before we got near him. He was hovering five feet or so above the floor. Thus, with a fairly easy leap, I got my arms about his knees and pulled him down. I reached up to his jacket and yanked downwards, exposing a hideous patch of sewn-on skin, which covered his old throat wound. Brave Sir Henry came in right behind me. He planted both feet wide and gave…
Well, I suppose the best way to say it was that he gave us all a hideous parody of the Scottish sport of golf. With a grand, two-handed sweep, he swung the silver hound’s-head cane up into Sir Hugo’s neck. The sound was exactly that familiar whoosh-and-swack that can be heard on any of Edinburgh’s finer greens. The patch of skin tore free and took, majestically, to the sky. For about… three feet. It had no weight to it and a great deal of surface area so, in no time at all, the air caught it and it began to flutter and drift about. It finally flopped to the floor about ten feet from Sir Hugo, with a gentle splat.
Sir Hugo gurgled with rage and clutched at his throat. Well… where his throat wasn’t. He gave me a kick that sent me tumbling to the ground. I landed, staring at a pair of tasteful black evening slippers. Between them, a prehensile tail brushed gently at the floor. I looked ruefully upwards, sure I would see Beryl’s claws lancing towards my eyes. Luckily, the seventeenth-century farm-girl-turned-succubus had other things on her mind. She stepped away from me, towards the ghostly farmer’s wife, asking, “Mama? Is it you?”
The specter ignored her and screamed, “Samuel? Where are you? They’re so close! I can hear the hooves!”
As I found myself with a moment’s respite, I sought Holmes, looking for direction. He sat motionless upon the floor, frozen with horror, staring at Sir Henry’s walking stick. Or—as I suddenly realized—Moriarty’s walking stick. The one he used to beat Holmes, as a child. If it had been left here on that fateful Michaelmas, would it not have been passed from generation to generation with all the other Baskerville heirlooms?
“Holmes!” I shouted. “Focus!”
“Eh? Oh. Yes. Quite right, Watson. Quite right.”
He drew both hands together and thrust them upwards. As he did, the liquid wood of the great oak table drew itself together under Sir Hugo and splashed upwards. The instant it caught him, it re-solidified—frozen into a… well… a tree? A sort of barkless tree with an evil, throatless sorcerer trapped in it. You know the kind I mean.
“Help me to my feet, Watson!” cried Holmes.
He was in wretched shape. The doctor in me wanted to insist that he lie down. Yet, the person-who-does-not-wish-to-be-slain-by-magic in me agreed to help him up. I put my arm beneath his less-bloody shoulder and helped him stand. Even with his weight on me, he barely could.
“Well done, Watson. You too, Sir Henry,” Holmes said. “I think your little attack has bought us some precious time. We must hurry though. There are other ways to do magic apart from speech and I do not think Sir Hugo will take long in discovering one.”
“What must we do?” I asked.
“Beryl. I need Beryl.”
Sir Henry came to help and the two of us turned Holmes towards Beryl, who still stood, talking to the phantom woman.
“Mama? Why won’t you answer me?”
“She can’t,” Holmes said. “That’s not a whole person you’re talking to. Not even a whole ghost. After so long, there was very little left of your parents, just the horror of their final moments.”
“What happened to them?” Beryl demanded.
“You know, I’ve been dreading that question,” said Holmes, “because there is no delicate way to answer it. They were eaten by horses.”
Beryl turned around, spread her wings and claws and roared as if she meant to kill us all. I suppose I could hardly blame her.
“Please,” Holmes said. “Bhehr-Lylegnag, please, listen to me. It is all down to you. I have done what I can, but it is not enough. You will choose the victor tonight, not I or any other.”
Holmes clumsily turned to the room at large and shouted, “Hear me, spirits! Each of you met your end because of the wickedness of this man—Sir Hugo Baskerville! Do you feel the energy coming to this place? Do you feel it, flowing through the lines? That is all that sustains him—all that keeps your murderer alive! If we all push together, we can stop it! Stop the flow and bring justice to the wicked!”
“A sort of barkless tree with an evil, throatless sorcerer trapped in it. You know the kind I mean.”
“But, Holmes,” I said, “there are still two lines unblocked!”
“One, Watson,” said Holmes, pointing at Foofy. The tired old beast had collapsed across one of the
open lines. It must have been his goal all along.
“Only one line left to block,” Holmes said, “and Bhehr-Lylegnag, it is yours. You are the only one left who can.”
“I am not a fool!” she spat. “That would kill me!”
“I know,” said Holmes.
“Then why do you think I would help you?”
“Because if you do not block that line, Sir Hugo will win. He will live here, for a time. But, look at him; look at his wounds. Each day, it will take more and more energy to sustain him, until at last he breaks the bounds and demons overrun this world. They’ll kill everyone.”
“Not me,” Beryl laughed. “I’m not sure how it escaped your notice, Warlock Holmes, but I am a demon.”
“No, you’re not.”
She stared at Holmes, incredulous. She gave a little flick with her claws, indicating her body—her wings and tail.
“I know what happened to you, Bhehr-Lylegnag. I know what he made you, but that’s not who you are. This is your home. This world sustained you and everyone you loved. It still does. I know you fancy Sir Henry—”
“Wait! She does? Do you?” asked Sir Henry, so overcome by hope that he nearly dropped Holmes.
Beryl colored, averted her eyes to a nearby wall and insisted, “I am a demon.”
“You’re really not.”
“I lured Sir Charles to his death!”
This charge was answered not by Holmes, but the ghost of Sir Charles himself. He grunted out a laugh and scoffed, “Oh, never mind about all that. It was Sir Hugo’s fault, wasn’t it? I should have known you wouldn’t really want an old codger like me, but… well… I was flattered to be asked.”
Beryl blinked, wonderstruck at his readiness to forgive her. Unwilling to concede her goodness, she demanded, “What about Sir Henry? I lured him; I made him want me. Watson too! I turned them against one another. I have done—”
“I know,” Holmes interrupted. “I know; the demon Beryl has done wicked things. But Bhehr-Lylegnag? She never would have—not if she’d had any choice in the matter. And now you do. Walk away from Sir Hugo and what he has made you. Come back to the world you love and that loves you. Die as Bhehr-Lylegnag; it’s all I can offer.”
The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles Page 27