The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles

by G. S. Denning

  “Well, that offer is just as terrible as your rescue was!”

  “Then you should decline it,” said Holmes. He gave a sad smile—the look of a man at the end of a long game, with only one card left to turn. A man who knows the final card will bring him victory, but also long regret. “But what will happen to Sir Henry if you do?”

  Beryl’s eyes turned to Sir Henry. He stared back at her. It was easy to see the yearning they shared. Despite my jealousy, I had to admit: those two belonged to one another. Yet, what did it matter? Whatever the strength of it, what is one human feeling against such a gulf of circumstance? This was to be either a world of demons, or a world of men. Not both.

  “Come on, Holmes!” Sir Henry roared, though he did not turn his eyes from Beryl. “That ain’t fair! You can’t ask her to make a choice like that!”

  “It is not fair,” Holmes agreed, “but it is fact. I am not giving her this choice, nor do I have any power to take it away. It has fallen to her. Beryl may choose to live as a demon in a world of torment where you must certainly die, Sir Henry. Or she may give you life and restore hope to the race of men, knowing she will never join them. Whether or not she’s a demon, she’s got the devil’s choice to make.”

  Beryl tore her eyes from Sir Henry and stared at Holmes with murderous rage. Yet, in only an instant, they drifted back to Sir Henry and softened.

  “Hank…” she said, “I’ve got to go.”

  I have never seen a man look so aghast. “No!” Sir Henry insisted. “There has to be another way!”

  “Can you think of one?”

  Sir Henry gazed about in helpless desperation. The demon Beryl wiped her eyes, thrust her chin forward and stepped onto the final line. The ghoulish form of Sir Hugo stirred in his tree and made a gruesome gurgle that ended in a fairly legible, “Beryl, don’t!”

  “Aagh! Oh no!” cried Holmes. “I don’t know how he’s doing that, but I don’t like it! All you spirits, beasts and people who are bound to the lines: find the flow! Do you feel it? Push it back! Push now!”

  From far below us came a deep basso creak. Foofy began to whine and yip in pain. The light dimmed from the lines.

  “It’s working!” Holmes crowed, then looked around at the still-lit lines and added, “Well… it’s working a bit. We haven’t got all of the magic, but… maybe enough? Watson, with Sir Hugo’s throat out, how long ’til he dies?”

  I think I got a bit smug. I brushed some of the dust from my sleeves and said, “Well, at the risk of self-congratulation in a moment of tragedy: I did recently have the foresight to inflict six fresh bullet wounds on the man.”

  I saw Sir Hugo’s eyes flip down towards his torso as he realized, with horror, that this was true.

  “Push it back!” Holmes urged the spirits. “Push!”

  Even as the ghosts’ faces lined with strain, they became less real—more changeable, like old ideas, half forgotten. Beryl gave a final grunt of effort and all the specters evaporated into wisps of white smoke. Hugo gave a last, retching gurgle, shook, and fell still. Foofy’s strength fled him; he sagged where he lay—no breath in that great, wide chest. Beryl swayed and fell flat on her face. Holmes did too.

  “Holmes! What has happened to you?”

  “You know how Sir Hugo was misappropriating the power of the lines, to keep himself alive?”

  I nodded.

  “I… er… might have been guilty of just a bit of that too, so…”

  His eyes rolled back. He fell still.

  17

  I SHALL ENDEAVOR NOT TO BURDEN THE READER WITH the full account of the aftermath of the Battle of Baskerville Hall. Suffice to say, that joyous moment where we all realized, “Yaaaaay, we won!” was rapidly supplanted by the moment where we all realized, “Oooooh… we seem to have several wounded, arrayed around the throatless, shot-up corpse of one of the area’s most prominent citizens, which is frozen in a magically crafted table/tree, right next to a dead hell-hound, a dying demon girl and a possibly dying London gentleman who is growing goat horns—all of which would be a lot easier to hide if this building still had a front wall.”

  Dr. Mortimer was sent for with all dispatch. The wounded were shuttled into private rooms. Sir Henry insisted that Beryl be moved next door to his own chamber. Perkins and Gunther were moved to the room on the other side. Holmes had to go in the stable. Though he was unconscious, his twisted right hand continued to grope about with an unsettling level of autonomy and the bloody black horns began to once again curl forth from his scalp. When the bones of his legs began to shift and elongate into a suspiciously goatish formation, that was the final straw. Was the stable an ideal infirmary? No, but it was vastly preferable to leaving Holmes atop the confluence of five ley-lines. I set a blanket on three bales of hay, to form a makeshift bed for him. No sooner had I left than all the horses kicked down their stall doors and ran away.

  The problem of the tree-table, Sir Hugo’s body and Foofy’s were all solved by the application of Sir Henry’s biggest saw, a laborious drag outside, two jugs of paraffin and one judiciously placed match. We’d have to wait for the ashes to cool, to hide the bones.

  When Mortimer arrived, he was too horrified at Beryl’s demonic form to touch her, but wasted no time attending to the others. Everyone with so much as a scratch found themselves well-stupefied by morphine, then the work began in earnest. Sir Henry was re-patched and sent to bed. Perkins kept his leg—a fact I attribute entirely to Mortimer’s skill as a trauma physician. Gunther’s wounds proved to be superficial, so as soon as he was bandaged he came downstairs to be helpful. Well… as helpful as a man can be, with his brain pickled by opiates.

  With Mortimer overseeing our impromptu infirmary, I was free to check on Holmes. There was blood everywhere. I hadn’t quite realized the extent of the damage Beryl’s claws had done to him. I’m sure he couldn’t have survived it, if he hadn’t enjoyed the patronage of quite so many blood-gods. As I cut away his clothing to access his wounds, he awoke and grasped my arm.

  “Watson? Is that you?”

  “Holmes, you must rest. Yes, it is me.”

  “Is Bhehr-Lylegnag alive?”

  I sighed and shook my head. “She was when I left her. But it cannot last, Holmes. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “But try, won’t you? You have to try! She’s the worst mistake I ever made, Watson. If you can save her… if you can give her back that life I took from her, all those years ago… wouldn’t it be great?”

  I leaned back in to see to his wounds, but he pushed me feebly aside and insisted, “I’ll be fine! Go help Bhehr-Lylegnag.”

  “Holmes… I can’t.”

  “Go try. Here, we’ll both go.”

  “What? No! You’re not going anywhere, Holmes!”

  “Sure, I am. I’ll see you later.”

  He gave me a little smile. Then he fainted. I shook my head. Foolish Holmes… I had so much work to do on him, I hardly knew where to start. His shoulder was either broken or out of joint and he had sustained massive damage to both arms and legs.

  Yet…

  I kept looking at his face. I had seen him live through worse, hadn’t I? I knew I could not trust my own medical knowledge when it came to Holmes. Then again, could I trust his? A half-delirious promise to be all right was hardly sound medical advice. So… damn it…

  Hoping it was not a mistake—praying that it would not be a choice I’d regret the rest of my life—I stood up and trudged back to Baskerville Hall.

  Beryl was alive, but her condition was… weird. With Sir Hugo gone and his spell broken, her demon tissues were withering. Her wings drooped; her tail was lifeless leather. Unfortunately, the rest of her was becoming more real—the 240-year-old mummified pistol wound was returning to a lifelike state. It was beginning to bleed. I could hear the wheeze of lost air. But there was little I could do except (and oh, how I hope the British Medical Association never reads this) stick a brandy cork in the wound and bandage it up. I had no idea if this would be
beneficial. The only certainty was infection. Her abdominal wound took me some hours to patch up, but at least it was within my skill.

  As I emerged from her room, bleary and exhausted, Sir Henry called out through his open door, “Hey! Watson, how is she?”

  I went in and told him, “Unaccountably, she is still alive.”

  “Good. I’m glad she’s doing better.”

  “Sir Henry… she isn’t.”

  “Nah. She’ll be fine.”

  I think I let my fatigue and frustration guide my tongue more than I ought. “Fine? She can never be fine, Sir Henry! Even if she lives, do you think she will be unchanged by this? You think she’s still going to be delightful Miss Stapleton, from down the moor? That person never existed! She is the survivor of hundreds of years of torture and imprisonment, she’s barely clinging to life and who can answer for the state of her sanity? You need to give up on Beryl Stapleton!”

  I have no excuse for snapping at him like I did. He fixed me with a cool glare and stated, in only two words, the position that no extremity of fortune—fair or foul—could ever shake him from.

  “Ain’t gonna.”

  So I didn’t either.

  I ate some bacon and eggs, drank three quick cups of tea and went in to perform my first demonectomy. It went unaccountably well—the first thing that did. When I touched my scalpel to her left wing, the dried tissue broke away, fell to the floor and crumbled to so much ash. Her right went just as easily and so did her tail. At first I had no idea how I might salvage her hands, but simply rubbing them was enough to flake away the scaly talons, to reveal pink fingers underneath. Since her appearance was once again human, I went and found Mortimer (who had been dutifully attending to Holmes) and bullied him into helping me with Beryl’s chest wound. We worked for hours, binding and rejoining the damaged tissues of her chest as best we could. It was one of the steepest medical challenges of my life. Mortimer and I staggered out of that room exhausted, but wiser.

  Three hours later, Beryl woke up and asked for water.

  And I got a nap.

  Yet, as I had predicted, Beryl’s wounds were not the full extent of her problems. Over the next few days, as the others improved and began their return to normalcy, Beryl’s mental state worsened. She spoke of herself as Sir Henry’s prisoner—a monster surrounded by the humans she’d betrayed—waiting for the constables to come and hang her or burn her alive for her misdeeds. She even mourned Sir Hugo. Yes, he’d been her captor and tormentor, but he’d also been her confidant and her only comrade during the four human lifetimes she’d spent trapped in a land of constant torture. The twisted emotional bond it formed, once broken, left her adrift and uncertain. I had no idea how to help her.

  Sir Henry did. He summoned us all to his bedside and held a meeting. He spoke of financial help for the survivors and what might be done to repair the gaping hole in his ancestral home. Yet the real business of the day was a toast. He called for champagne and bid us all raise our glasses in salute to “the true hero of the Battle of Baskerville Hall: Beryl Stapleton.”

  This was met with some coolness. Barrymore was still terrified of her. Molly was deeply religious and fairly sure her priest wouldn’t like her saluting anyone with wings and a tail.

  Sir Henry launched into a vigorous campaign of convincing, cajoling and insisting that he was a lord and lords were always right. Had Beryl spent some time as a temptation demon? Sure. Had she played a part in Sir Charles’s death? What of it? The important thing was this: that her first act, once freed from Sir Hugo’s tyranny, was to save all humanity. This boon overshadowed and assuaged all her sins. It engendered a debt so profound, it could not be repaid by any living man—not by all living men. She’d given us back our world. Sir Henry did not stop his tirade until all present had loudly and publicly admitted the truth of his claim.

  Due to a pre-arranged accident, which Sir Henry had asked me to see to, his door had been left open. So had Beryl’s. She heard every word. I think it helped her. Of course, she still refused to admit that she should not be hung, drawn and quartered in the public square. This was not a total cure, merely the opening salvo in a battle of wills betwixt the headstrong Canadian baronet and the 262-year-old twenty-two-year-old who refused to forgive herself and embrace happiness. The war spanned a hundred dinner parties and garden gatherings and tested the wit, the fortitude and the patience of everyone involved.

  By all accounts, the wedding was lovely.

  Of all the survivors, the last to come around was Holmes. I took to sitting out in the stable, beside his hay bed. I always brought my medical kit, even when I knew I wouldn’t use it. Often I just sat and watched him. Sometimes I told him things I thought might interest him. One night I said, “Beryl’s doing much better.”

  Holmes drew in a sudden gasp, opened his eyes and sat halfway up. In a raspy voice, he muttered, “By the Gods, Watson… it took you long enough.”

  “Holmes! You’re awake!”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Wait… do you mean… you’ve just been waiting for me to…?”

  “Where do you think I’ve been all this time, Watson? I’ve been engaged in a somewhat spirited debate with my old friend Sepsis, trying to get him to leave us all alone.”

  I should have realized it. To have so many patients, with wounds so grievous, and none of them had developed an infection? None? It was nearly unaccountable. Holmes really had gone to help Beryl, that first night. I was overcome with gratitude. I might have wept, if it were not for what he said next.

  “Watson, can I have some toast?”

  “Toast? Certainly not! Are you mad?”

  “Please, Watson? I really need some.”

  “I’ll not be bringing you any toast. By Jingo, I’ll shoot the man who tries! Toast, indeed!”

  “Well… soup, though?”

  “Water! You may have a few sips of water!”

  “But, Waaaaaatsonnnnnn…”

  “Maybe broth. Only if the water doesn’t kill you. We shall see.”

  The news that Holmes was awake was met with celebration. Of course, it did make it that much harder to keep him in a stable. Though he might have liked to keep us as pets, Sir Henry arranged for transport for Holmes and me, back to London. Before we left he presented Holmes with the hound’s-head cane, mounted in a tasteful frame, to put above our mantel.

  So, I come to end this volume nearly where it began: with Holmes half-dead in his room and me overseeing his recovery, safe in our haven at 221B. There’s a symmetry to that, but it is not why I chose to end here. A reader who wishes to credit my wit more than it deserves might point out that this volume starts with beryls and ends with Beryl, but that is not the reason either. Indeed, if there is a reader who can spot what this period truly was, then that person might have been wise enough to do what I could not: stop the impending calamity.

  This was our respite.

  When I shot Warlock Holmes, Moriarty ruled his mind and body. When Holmes recovered, he was himself once more. So great was my joy that I never paused to wonder why that was.

  Did I suppose I’d killed Holmes’s great nemesis?

  Did I imagine Holmes had subsumed him, once more? I never heard Holmes speak in his voice during that time.

  I think I simply forgot to pay Moriarty any mind. Gods, it sounds so foolish now. When I think of how blithely I continued on, having my little adventures and thinking everything was well… These were my last days of innocence, in a way.

  The book you hold is nothing more or less than this: it is chronicle to the period of time between Moriarty’s departure…

  …and when he came back.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THANKS TO MY AGENT, SAM, WHOSE LIVER STILL—unaccountably—functions.

  Thanks to my editor, Miranda Jewess, who is so Super English, y’all wouldn’t believe it.

  Thanks to Sean who continues to doodle away, underpaid but most appreciated.

  Thanks to Benedict Cumberbatch
, who agreed to portray Warlock Holmes on film. (Er…well, he’s Dr. Strange and Sherlock, so if you turn them both on at once and sort of squint…)

  And, to Sir Arthur Whats is Still never heard of him: quit trying to hog my glory.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  GABRIEL DENNING LIVES IN LAS VEGAS WITH HIS WIFE and two daughters. Oh, and a dog. And millions of micro-organisms. He’s a twenty-year veteran of Orlando Theatersports, Seattle Theatersports, Jet City Improv and has finally figured out to write some of that stuff down. His first novel, Warlock Holmes: A Study in Brimstone, was published in 2016, and the Booklist review said “Mashup fans will be eagerly awaiting more,” which is why he wrote a sequel. Without any similar provocation, the third Warlock Holmes novel will be published by Titan Books in 2018.

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