Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes

by Jeff Campbell

  He put his hands on the stone column and intoned.

  “Come forth once more spirit, of the Firmament, of the Ether, of the Earth, of under the Earth; of dry land, of the Water, of Whirling Air, of Rushing Fire; be thou present here once and forever.”

  The shadows in the corners of the room grew deeper. Once more I felt cold seep up from the floor. A dark mist rose and congealed in front of the altar. I smelled the grave. The mist took on the cowled human form Watson and I had seen under the gaslight.

  “Jeannie?”

  I stepped forward. Watson put a hand on my shoulder and held me back.

  “It’s not her Jock,” he said softly. “It can’t be her. You know that.”

  The misty figure clarified into solidity to show the long cape and a hood that fell over its face. It raised a hand towards me.

  “Jeannie?”

  Tears came, hot and stinging at the corners of my eyes. I tried to pull away from Watson but he had me in a tight grip. Holmes stepped in front of the figure.

  “Enough is enough,” he said. He grabbed the outstretched arm. A second later he screamed, a pained sound, the like of which I’d only ever heard afore on the battlefield.

  “No!” Leckie shouted. “Do not disturb her. She has come to be with McKay. We will have no rest until she has come through.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Holmes said through gritted teeth. “Let us throw back the curtain and reveal the puppeteer.” He stepped forward once more and threw his arms around the figure. The hood fell back.

  Months in the grave had ravaged her beautiful skin, but there was no mistaking her eyes, or the longing in them.

  “Jeannie!” I shouted, but my voice was lost beneath Holmes’ new screams of pain. The misty arm started to lose cohesion. I was losing her again.

  I tore away from Watson and lunged forward.

  She looked straight at me. Her mouth opened as she struggled to speak.

  “Darling,” she whispered, and reached for me.

  And now I no longer saw the creeping corruption, nor noticed the odour of graveyard. Now it was once again summer, and my dearest called me out for a warm evening stroll.

  “Jeannie, I am coming.”

  I stepped towards her. But I was too late. Even as my hand closed on her arm, Holmes wrenched her from me, leaving me clutching at cold air.

  “No!” I called. I threw a punch at Holmes, but Watson dragged me backwards. I believe I may have used some words that were considered strong even back in our service together, but he held firm while Holmes wrestled the robed figure to the ground.

  “Now I have you,” Holmes shouted in triumph. He threw back the robe and grabbed at the body inside. His screams this time were longer but thankfully brief in duration. He rolled aside, curled up and hugging himself tightly, like a child hiding from a beating.

  Jeannie looked up at me. A single silver tear slid down the ruin of her cheek.

  “Darling,” she whispered. “Please. Do not go.”

  The last word fell, lost in the dark as she faded once more to mist. Holmes whimpered like a whipped dog.

  Leckie looked at me with pity in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry Mr. McKay. We tried. But we can do no more. She has gone back to her rest.”

  He walked away, leaving me standing over Holmes’ shivering frame.

  “Wait,” I called, but Leckie did not turn back.

  Watson somehow got both Holmes and I back to my lodgings. None of us were in much of a mood for talk. I left them by the fire and took the whisky bottle to my cold bed. I drank more than enough to ensure there were no dreams.

  In the morning Holmes would not look me in the eye. Watson gave me his lecture about the perils of the demon drink but I was not in the mood to listen.

  “We did what we thought was for the best,” Watson said.

  I knew it would hurt him, but I had to speak the truth.

  “It would have been for the best if I had never contacted you at all.”

  Holmes waited until Watson left to call a carriage before speaking.

  “I am heartily sorry for what I have done Captain McKay. And for what it is worth, I do now believe that there may be an answer, or at least some comfort, in oblivion. I intend to test my theory at the first possible opportunity.”

  I waited until the carriage rattled off out of earshot before dressing in my wedding suit and leaving for the Grassmarket.

  My love waits for me, and I hope to see her again.

  Emily’s Kiss

  James A. Moore

  The night was bitterly cold and the docks were sheathed in a heavy wrapping of fog, the sort that had given London a bit of a reputation over the years. Holmes looked around the area with his usual calm expression, his eyes flicking from spot to spot, seeing every detail.

  I looked as well, and resisted the urge to be jealous of his amazing abilities. His skills as a detective were only one aspect of the whole man and I don’t think I would have traded my own perceptions for his if I had to go through quite as much to get there.

  Winter in London can be uncomfortable. The night was a perfect reminder of that fact. Holmes moved past a scattering of rubbish that had wrapped itself around a lamp post and into the narrow alley that led to one of the fisheries. There are parts of the city that good men often avoid when they can and this was most certainly one of them. The sounds of raucous debauchery were clear from two separate taverns that offered dubious company and questionable gin to the sailors and fishermen who had come in from the water.

  “Good Lord, Holmes, what are you doing?” I only asked because he’d crouched in the corner of the alleyway and was sniffing audibly. I half expected to see a hound snuffling around the area the sounds were so prominent.

  “What else, Watson? I’m seeking the necessary clues to settle this affair.”

  Two hours earlier we’d been at home and relaxing. With Christmas almost upon us, I’d convinced Holmes to invite a few of his associates round to celebrate properly; when he received a new client. The knock upon the door was so impatient that I feared an emergency. Instead when I opened the door there stood a boy barely of an age to shave, looking at me with wide eyes and a lip swollen by a rather brutal blow. The lad nodded as politely as he could manage and asked to speak to Mr. Holmes at his earliest convenience.

  I have made it a point on several occasions to keep the less savory individuals who seek my associate’s help at an arm’s length. Depending entirely on his state of mind — often tainted by his less savory indulgences — I’ve seen Holmes allow more than a few unstable souls to lead him into dangerous territory. My first impulse upon seeing the boy was to send him on his way. I might have followed that notion, but he introduced himself as Hugh Corin and I allowed my sense of propriety to overrule my instincts.

  The Corin family was old and venerable, though there were more than a few questions regarding who exactly was in control of their fortunes since the head of the family, Rupert Corin, had vanished during the last of his many expeditions.

  Hugh Corin was not in control of his family’s fortune, but he was a well educated young man and had been groomed to take up his place in polite society. His clothes were disheveled and his face was as dirty as a street urchin’s, but his demeanor was that of a gentleman, albeit a very distraught one.

  The story he told was brief and to the point. Someone had taken his family in the night. He had struggled and was beaten harshly for his defiance. When he awoke he was lying near Battersea Wharf, in the very lane where Holmes was now snuffling and squatting, a substantial distance from the ancestral home.

  “Really, Holmes. The ground is covered with enough filth to hide anything that might provide a clue, don’t you think?”

  He looked over his shoulder at me, a slight smile playing around his lips. “Watson, have you not noticed that most of the area is layered in filth?”

  “Of course,” I sniffed to make my distaste known. “We’re near the docks. You’re not likely to
find a clean alleyway in the area.”

  “True enough, but the level of refuse in this particular spot is markedly different.”

  “How so?” Much as I often hated asking him questions, I had to know what he had found. One of the reasons we’ve always got on so famously is simply that my curiosity is almost is great as his, even if my desire to solve each puzzle isn’t quite as powerful.

  “The alley is peppered with numerous muddy tracks, Watson.” He pointed at several thick, dollops of mud that had half-dried to the cobblestones of the narrow stretch. And once he’d pointed them out to me it was as if they’d been lit by footlights from the Theatre Royal. The muddy tracks were very obviously out of place as the mud that formed them was entirely the wrong color for the banks of the Thames.

  “I don’t suppose you brought a lantern with you, Watson?” His voice already tinged with disappointment.

  Instead of answering him I opened my bag and searching in the nearly complete darkness within, I found the bull’s-eye lantern I’d long since learned to leave there for just such situations. What I hadn’t considered was that I might need to refill the oil reservoir, however, and I estimated no more than ten minutes of clean light before the blasted thing sputtered out.

  It would have to be enough. Holmes provided the match to light the lantern and took it from me, casting the light over the ground and up the walls of the alleyway. I studied the spots where he passed the light, taking in the details. The mud tracks were all through the area, deep enough to swallow a man’s shoe to the ankle in some places and more unsettlingly, the smears of mud were also scattered along the pitted, weathered walls of the buildings to either side.

  It looked for all the world as if a few men, who’d covered themselves in muck, had then decided to have a skirmish, or possibly to use their bodies as brushes and the walls of the alley as their canvas. The most striking feature being that the marks which might have indicated the placement of heads on the bodies had touched the walls some ten feet or more from the ground. I was unsettled. Holmes merely looked at the marks and once again got that look on his face that indicated how much he was enjoying himself. Much as I have made comment on his experimentation with certain opiates, the only true addiction the man ever endured was his nearly insatiable desire to unravel each mystery he encountered.

  “They’d have to be giants, Holmes….”

  He shook his head. “Nonsense, dear fellow. They’d merely need to be athletic.”

  “How so?”

  He stepped closer to me and with his hand indicated the marks. “See here, Watson? The shoulders of this figure are nearly at the same height as your own, but they are also repeated higher up. Either that which left these marks has two sets of shoulders, highly unlikely, or it jumped and struck the wall a second time, or it was thrown and struck a second time.”

  I looked at the image for a moment and shook my head. What I’d seen as a mere smear in the muck Holmes saw as an indication of not only what had occurred but how it could have taken place.

  “So which is it then?” I asked. “Did it jump or was it thrown?”

  He studied the marks for a moment longer and then looked my way. “Whatever it was, I believe it jumped.”

  “What could make a standing leap that would lift it that high into the air?”

  “I’ve happened across a few men in my time that might have been able to make that sort of leap, but not many. Still, as we keep learning, there are many things out in the world that we’ve not encountered yet.”

  I tried to imagine the sort of creature that could rise four or more feet in the air from a standing position and found I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  Holmes followed the muddy trail, walking the whole length of the long way and then backtracked along the main stretch of road leading to the wharf proper. We spoke little during that time, me because I was still lost in my imaginings of what had left the marks along the brick walls in the first place and Holmes because he was lost in his own examinations of the details that unfolded before him.

  The marks ended at the edge of the long pier, leading to one simple conclusion.

  “So, several very muddy men dragged the Corins to a boat and took them away?”

  Holmes didn’t answer me immediately. He stared down at the water, at his own reflected, shadowy face, and frowned in thought.

  “Perhaps, Watson. Perhaps.”

  Hugh Corin was the only member of the family who could reasonably offer us entrance into the house of his family. He did so without hesitation and while I looked around the building, Holmes immediately went on to the library and began his investigations there.

  The Corins’ library was a substantial one, littered with numerous law books and volumes of bound medical journals. The family clearly had the good sense to understand the value of printed words and knowledge to be gained from them. The Corins had a history of exploring the esoteric. Though there was almost always one member or another of the family about in London, dealing with social obligations, there were also members of the clan who were abroad, seeking out and finding mysteries of their own. Small wonder Sherlock Holmes was glad to take on a search for the missing members of the family: they were kindred spirits, after all.

  Scattered about in small islands around the room were artifacts and heirlooms, treasures found and kept by the Corins over the years, items that most museums would have gladly paid a king’s ransom to have on display or available for proper study. Though few of the pieces seemed particularly valuable for their materials, all were apparently quite ancient, and most of them marked by a similar theme. The images they bore were almost universally crude and dealt with creatures that had too many eyes and tendrils in place of proper limbs. In some specimens there was but one abomination visible on a piece, while in others there were many. One of the largest sculptures was severely worn and scathed by the centuries, almost to the point where the finer details of the carving had been eradicated, but with a little careful examination I could clearly see humanoid shapes that had been crushed under the heavy tread of a repugnant central mass.

  “I’ve noticed the central theme, Master Corin,” I looked at the lad as I turned away from the unsettling depiction. “What sort of beast is this supposed to be? A water dragon, perhaps?”

  Corin looked back at me and then quickly down at the ground. I understood in that moment that his parents had not always confided in their son about what they were studying, and more importantly that he had done his best to glean an understanding without their permission.

  “There have been several different places in the world where members of the Corin family acquired these images, sir.” He moved closer and pointed to a smaller piece in the corner. “That idol was found in India, I believe, in a town to the north of Calcutta.” He paused for a moment and then walked over to a carved bone image that had wings sprouting from a body that seemed covered in snakes. “This one came from a site in Central America, Mexico, I think.” He moved around the room and touched several of the pieces before finally resting his hand on the largest of the idols. “I can’t even pronounce the name of the place Father said this came from. I only know it was not far from Australia, though not a part of the continent.”

  I nodded. Aside from his tale earlier in the evening it was the most young Corin had spoken.

  “How long has your family been studying these statues?” That was Holmes who asked. Before the boy could answer he pressed on with more questions. “Do you know the name of the recurring central figure? Or is it even the same from location to location?”

  Hugh Corin stared at Holmes for several seconds before he finally spoke. “It’s only in the last decade or so, really. Father didn’t discover the connections between the pieces until he inherited the Indian sculpture from his Uncle Horatio.” He looked away, down toward the thick carpet at his feet. “Father really only took up an interest after Emily was born.”

  “Emily?”

  “My sister, sir. Emily is my siste
r.” His mouth twitched nervously and his eyes refused to look up from the floor. Was it guilt on his face? Was it sorrow? I could not tell, and neither could Holmes as I later discovered. How unusual that simple fact. In most cases Holmes’ ability to read a person’s expression bordered on the mystical. Without warning the youngster turned on his heel and left the room.

  “Watson, I should like you to see what you can discover about Emily Corin.”

  Despite his often overwhelming mental faculties, there were often bits of research and obscure facts that he needed to look up. Given the time to handle all of the research himself he no doubt would have done so, but these were unusual circumstances. The Corin family would likely be in grave personal danger if he couldn’t solve this puzzle quickly. Most of the background he was looking for could likely be found in the study of Hugh Corin’s father, but there was a possibility that some of the information wouldn’t be so easily gleaned. There was also a distinct possibility that the knowledge he wanted would be more easily uncovered by me. Doctors are often a close-mouthed lot, but not so often among their fellows. Whatever it was about Emily that had her brother acting oddly, it might well be a medical condition that was awkward, something that the family doctors would be hesitant to discuss with an outsider, but not a colleague.

  Holmes began the task of reading through the most recent entries in Roderick Corin’s papers. I went to find out what I could about a young girl who seemed wrapped in mystery.

  The Corin’s maid served us breakfast in the morning, though neither of us had slept nor developed much of an appetite. There was good strong coffee and scones to consume with it. While we ate, we caught each other up on what we had learned.

  Most of the Corin family fortune was held in the hands of Rupert Corin, the uncle of young Hugh. The elder Corin was not to be found. He’d last been seen only a few months after Emily had been born and not long after that he’d resumed his expeditions around the world, seeking the knowledge that cast an unpleasant shadow over so many of the family.

  Roderick Corin, on the other hand, was seldom away from London society. A well-trained surgeon and a chemist, Hugh’s father still found the time to keep up proper appearances and manage the family interests in his brother’s stead.