Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes

by Jeff Campbell

“Nothing we wish cannot be … Dream … dream, now, and see… All impossible, can exist … all impossible, is…”

  In my mind’s eye I saw myself looking down into Holmes’ open grave in a field of most intense lavender. The grave was vast and deep, infinitely deep, but there was no coffin in it. I felt buffeted by wind, as though I were standing at the edge of a cliff.

  The chill mantle of a winter’s night surrounded me, as if I stood in a deserted wilderness. The temperature had dropped drastically. I remembered Harry Price had recorded such phenomena. I felt Mrs. Sharman shiver and almost lost her grip.

  I detected a tingling in my hands; a glow of warmth grew in my palms, then I felt small shooting pains in my forearms as if a strange kind of electricity were being transmitted from one human being to another, through the conduit of our nervous system — in a loop, through the bizarre circuit we had formed between us. Were the others feeling what I could feel? I had no way of knowing.

  I opened my eyes but instantly wished I had not. To this day, if I could wind the clock back to that moment and do otherwise, I dearly would. My life thenceforth would have taken a very different path. But the scene before me was no vision, no lavender-scented daydream.

  Smoke rose from the bowl of the Meershcaum pipe. A wisping curl at first, like a fabulous djinn of the Arabian Nights escaping from its lamp.

  My eyes smarted, prickling.

  The pleasant aroma of familiar tobacco turned ever more acrid as the substance accrued into a mist — Nitrogen? Ammonia? —exhibiting a greenish-yellow glow, wreathing and undulating on the tabletop.

  The medium, with a dimly luminous substance trailing from her lips, connected like an umbilicus to this thickening cloud before us, did not move. She seemed blissfully, beatifically, unaware of what she was disgorging in such a vile and astonishing spectacle. Every time her mouth jerked open in a guttural yawn, another bulge of sinewy material like egg albumin mixed with plaster of Paris slewed out like a lengthening white python regurgitated from her stomach.

  The awful dough piled up in front of her like a ghastly wedding cake. If this was what it purported to be, communion with the dead, then I knew now with every fibre of my intellect and heart it was an act against every sacrament of humanity and I wanted no part of it: it was wrong and terrible, and yet I could not draw myself away.

  It congealed into a hideous outline, hardening into a shining core, obliterating the medium from view, smothering the last vestiges of light.

  Something squatted on the table … something that smelt of spent matches and burning at the stake. As one senses a body of water even with eyes blindfolded, I sensed the thick heaviness in the air of something foetid and abhorrent. Something that meant to do harm for no reason than it could, and would do harm of the most devastating kind.

  As soon as what I took for a small, crouching person turned its head my presumption was immediately disabused. For this was no human form. Its shoulders were sloped, its arms thin and preternaturally long, without fingers, indeed without hands. How can something have a tegument as black as ebony, and yet be glowing? The foul smell of the butcher’s shop below returned to my nostrils. The phantasm’s pouchy dewlaps hung like saddlebags either side of its jutting snout, cracked lips pulled back from incandescent fangs — pulled back not in hunger, nor aggression, as the mortal breed might, but in sheer mockery. By all the laws of the impossible, I was looking upon the sickening conjuration of The Hound.

  “Dear God!” The voice belonged to Mr. Bythesea, as did the gasping breath. Mrs. Sharman, lost in the darkness, giggled hysterically. I could not see her. I could not see any of them.

  Only The Hound, its hot eyes burning into me. I felt all at once drowned, chaotic, pummelled, manacled, helpless.

  I heard the sound of Mrs. Coventry weeping.

  But still The Hound fastened upon me its dull gaze. I had no shred of doubt we were in some appalling consanguinity I could neither explain nor escape. With that realization my ribs tightened round my lungs and I found it impossible to breathe.

  “Ah…” from Mr. Hebron, quite unruffled in tone. “Ah, there. Welcome, sweet spirit. Welcome…”

  Whereupon I heard a distant voice in the air, or ether, high, sweet and angelic:

  “I’m here Daddy… Whose little boy am I?”

  The grimacing Hound cocked its head and lurched forward on all fours from its sitting position, gliding its rancid muzzle, alive with maggots and flies, to within an inch of my nose.

  I shot to my feet, letting go of the females either side of me. My gorge rose with the stench of carnage and I felt I might vomit or pass out before I got there, but I stumbled like a blind man to the light switch I knew to be next to the door — and without hesitation hit it.

  As light flooded the room, the sitters winced and shut their eyes. Mr. Bythesea shielded his own with a forearm. Mrs. Sharman let out a shriek. But all I could see was the table top. And the fact that The Hound — was gone.

  Mrs. Coventry buried her face against her husband’s chest. He held her tight as she sobbed.

  Mrs. Hebron, the medium, lolled in her chair, chin to the ceiling, neck extended, with her arms shaking uncontrollably in the manner of an epileptic. Before I could reach her and administer aid she had collapsed to the floor, unconscious, with everyone gathering round her in a scrummage.

  “I shall get the smelling salts.” Mr. Hebron’s hand pushed against my chest and the expression he gave me was firm and grave. “I would be grateful if you would leave, sir.”

  Flustered, and with no inclination to argue, I retired to the ante-chamber where I stood alone for some minutes in the vicinity of the ticking clock. I saw a water jug and basin. I poured a quantity from the receptacle and bent over, splashing it on my face. To some measure, but not nearly enough, the hothouse atmosphere was dispelled.

  I could hear Mr. Hebron in the séance room asking his guests if they would like cake or coffee, presumably in an attempt to relax them. No such condition was, I think, likely if they had seen what I had seen. I strained my ears but heard no reply. After some minutes he emerged, closing the door after him.

  “Perhaps I did not explain adequately, doctor.” His hands were shaking and his paleness told me he was in a state of shock. “The ectoplasm which is drawn from the medium to enable the spirit to be seen is a highly volatile substance. It reacts to bright light by recoiling with the kick of a dray horse. I have seen mediums bruised by it and it’s not impossible that they can die.” I sat and held my head in my hands. He took it for guilt, which was only partly true, and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Forgive me. I’m sure your action was not intentional, and I know on these occasions even the most sturdy and resolute soul can be … unnerved.” He took his hand away.

  I stood and retrieved my hat and coat from the stand.

  “I … I apologise for your disappointment,” he said. I looked at him. “You came hoping for a message, perhaps an appearance, from beyond the veil…” He unsuccessfully attempted a smile. “Perhaps … next time…”

  “I have seen enough,” I replied.

  Walking home, I had the irrational sensation that someone or something was following me. A dog barked far away — a small dog, granted — but I quickened my step. I took out my fob watch but was walking too fast to read it and could not find the pocket of my waistcoat to put it back.

  I arrived home fumbling to get my key in the lock and fearful to look over my shoulder. I bolted the door after me, as my housekeeper had long taken to her bed. It was past midnight.

  I searched out a sedative from the medicine cabinet in the kitchen and took it, but it was not efficacious at settling my jangling nerves. I often wondered at the subjective effect of a dose of morphine or cocaine, but I was never that ‘type’, as Holmes repeatedly reminded me. I had no greater fear than loss of control and there is no greater loss of control than to enslave oneself to the power of narcotics. I had seen the toll addiction demands too often. Such drugs serve to wither the intel
lect, not expand it, and the salve it provided to the troubled soul proved time and again only, at best, a transient and unreliable friend.

  I poured myself a brandy. Doctor’s orders. As I drank it the sonorous workings of the grandfather clock in the hall created an unwelcome reminder of the horrid events of the evening. To obliterate it I opened the Decca and put on a shellac disc of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 3 in D Minor ‘Ballade’. The plaintive voice of the solo violin soon filled the room. I sat in my study armchair surrounded by my books. I always thought it my place of refuge. Tonight it was most surely not.

  I was plagued afresh by thoughts of The Hound and what Holmes and I had done; the conspiracy in which I had played an unwilling — but not unwilling enough — part.

  Now, after years had passed, it still sickened me, as much as it gave Holmes’ vast army of aficionados, even a new generation of readers, sheer delight. Because, though perceived as one of Holmes’ greatest triumphs, the case recorded in the pages of The Hound of the Baskervilles was a lie. No more than a string of fabrications concocted by me to cover up the truth.

  And the truth was what, you ask?

  This; that Holmes was faced, finally, disastrously, by something he could not explain.

  I write now what I could not write then; that what we encountered all those years ago was something undeniably supernatural — yet undeniably real.

  Yes, I made a true report of the events whilst my recall was sharp, as I always did, in meticulous though trembling long-hand. But this record was torn from my journal and committed to the coal-fire in Baker Street soon after our return. Holmes asked me to burn the manuscript. No, demanded I did so, and watched silently as it turned to ash.

  Instead, I was told to pen a story which is entirely a work of fiction. And that work, The Hound of the Baskervilles, was what was published in 1902 in the pages of The Strand Magazine. Not the truth.

  In reality, the location was not Dartmoor.

  There was no death of a nobleman, still less a rakish Lord.

  There was no Stapleton. No dark descendent, no dangerous incumbent with a facial resemblance gleaned from a convenient portrait.

  No Dr. Mortimer, with those preposterous deductions concerning his walking-cane.

  No escaped convict hiding on the moors.

  No moors.

  Yes, the case began when a man was found dead but I shall protect his identity, for though I wish to unburden myself of this business now, his family may not want the unwelcome associations of such publicity, and they have suffered enough.

  Holmes and I were contacted and travelled to the scene of his mysterious death, lured by the concerns of a coachman and a gamekeeper to Burnham Overy Staithe near the Powerstoke Estate in Norfolk, the town where Nelson’s father was once the landlord of the public house, still, as far as I know, its only claim to fame. The victim was a farm labourer, his corpse found mutilated beyond belief.

  But what is beyond belief?

  I know now to my eternal cost that the folklore of England is replete with legends of black dogs — padfoot, barguest, shrike, ‘Black Shuck’ or ‘Old Shuck’ of Norfolk (‘Scucca’ being Anglo-Saxon for ‘Demon’). Holmes listened to these tankard-tales with unconcealed disdain. He had no time for folklore or bugaboos, beyond what it revealed of the human mind and its motivations. Holmes’ interest was in finding a rational explanation for the killing.

  But Holmes failed.

  Not only failed, but was shaken to his roots. His all-consuming faith in rational thinking had been attacked. Savaged. This creature could not be — yet was. It hit him like a physical sickness. I treated him as best I could, but the awful idea possessed him and gnawed at his very being (though he dared not even voice it): Could the forces of base superstition, could anything, be beyond the understanding of science? Could the thing he valued above all else, the ideal by which he had led his life — reason — be worthless, now he knew the absolute reality of the unseen?

  We reeled in the aftermath, both knowing full well Sherlock Holmes’ reputation rested on the solution of cases by the application of logic. Yet this case had none. If the truth emerged, his integrity would be shattered. Worse, everything he held dear as a man of intellect was threatened with exposure as a falsehood.

  “Help me,” he implored when we were back in London, with grey eyes and the futile needle hanging from a vein. “If your association with me means anything, I ask this of you, as I have asked nothing before… Lie for me. Forget what we saw. Construct it anew with all your literary flair. Make me the hero of this tale. Make my methods win. If you are my friend, Watson. I beg you with all my heart… Make logic prevail.”

  He pressed the pen into my hand.

  The scene of our undoing was not a somnolent moor but an almost Biblical stretch of sands called Wells-next-the-Sea, uncannily flat and eerily landmark-free. Holmes stood up from our camp fire as he saw a hazy, preternatural aura in the sea mist that rolled in like a great white wall. I had known terror before in our affairs. I had come near death on more than one occasion. However nothing in our exploits filled me with a dire foreboding like the thing we saw forming within those clouds.

  The spectral Hound came bounding towards us breathing fire, its pelt coal black yet shimmering as if a hole had been breached in the very fabric of existence. The mist unfolded like the leaves of a book and a mountainous bloodhound drove at us, its hanging chops dripping with sulphurous bile. One second it most resembled a mastiff, then had the rippling muscles of a big cat or gigantic wolf, its haunches bristling with spikes upon which I imagined the souls of the dead in torment. Its eyes loomed, bulging like blisters. Its skin squirmed in cavalcade of rupturing wounds, the skeletal ribs like Jacob’s ladder hung with saints. The vision was an assault on our very biology.

  My service revolver fired. I have no recollection of pulling the trigger — but the first bullet passed straight through the beast. So did the second, third and fourth.

  The coachman, who was with us, was pinned down by the great elephantine head as he was mauled. The claws rent his body like sabre-slashes, tearing him limb from limb within moments. His cries were mercifully cut short and Holmes and I watched frozen as it dragged him back into the mist and out to sea, the fellow’s head hanging off what little remained of his neck, dangling by a thread of flesh, tongue waggling, leaving a little zig-zagging rut as its trail down the beach.

  Two weeks later his body was found dismembered and rotten courtesy of the incoming tide. The Coroner in King’s Lynn pronounced the cause of death as drowning, the ravages of his flesh due to the natural act of decomposition and depredations of sea life.

  As we left the inquest, Holmes whispered to me, “As you value your life and your reason, we must go.” The next train to Paddington left within the hour.

  And so The Hound of the Baskervilles was published and Holmes’ reputation was intact. Rather, on the contrary, it continued to grow.

  He basked in glory. But in glances between us we were reminded of the secret we shared. The lie we had told that logic conquered all. The lie that through science we were safe in our beds.

  To my sorrow it created a distance between us. Guilt ate at my dearest friend. It formed around him a carapace. On my part I could no longer help the unease I continually felt in his presence. The billowing smoke of his pipe could not but conjure in my mind the sea-mist of that desolate landscape. And the shame in both of us.

  He hid himself from me. I lost him in the fog.

  We agreed never to speak of it again.

  My standard instruction to my housekeeper, Mrs. Race, was not to bother me with unexpected guests (invariably either the press or autograph hunters, mainly North Americans) and generally she obeyed my orders punctiliously. A week after the séance, however, I was surprised to see her enter the drawing room with a man I thought a stranger. My first reaction was: who was this old man with the deeply lined face and snowy white hair? Then I saw it was Lestrade, and he was an old man. Yet I knew him
to be not much different than my own age. The truth was we were all old.

  Remembering our last conversation as we parted after Holmes’ funeral, I asked him how his grandchildren were. He answered that they were a joy in trying times. He had lost two sons in the Great War. He kept his raincoat on in spite of Mrs. Race’s polite request to hang it up for him. I noted his hands were pink from the cold.

  I offered him a cigarette. He took one and coughed at the first gasp. I used to be able to tell a lot from a cough, but I didn’t play that game any more. Those days were gone.

  Without preamble Lestrade produced from his coat pocket a rolled up edition of the Daily Gazette. I took it but placed it face-down on the side table next to me.

  Glowering, he gave me the gist nevertheless. A respectable man of fifty-five had been walking on Hampstead Heath three nights before. When he failed to return home at the appointed hour, his wife alerted the police. A search found him murdered. Before I could interject Lestrade continued with the nature of the crime — that is, its thorough description, which made it stand out from the norm. The constables had found several trails of blood, some a hundred yards long, in all direction. The victim had been entirely eviscerated, his belly hollowed out and his organs scattered over a huge area, his intestines hung on lamp-posts and the branches of trees, parts of his skin draped upon traffic bollards, a section of jaw and piece of nose found on the doorstep of a nearby house. This was an act of prolonged and undiminished savagery.

  “I know what a knife can do, and this was not a knife,” intoned Lestrade with gravitas. “I’ve seen all sorts of rape and all sorts of rage in my time and I’m damned if it’s either. Doctor, we both know the violence of which men are capable … but tell me I’m right when I say — this was not a man.”

  My blood ran cold.

  “I’m sorry, but matters of criminal investigation do not interest me any more,” I said. “The police can solve this mystery quite adequately without…”

  “You know they cannot.”

  “Nevertheless it is not my concern. Excuse me.” I walked to the door and opened it for him to take the hint to leave.