The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls

by King, John R.

  Moriarty nodded again blankly, his eyes shifting to Anna. Even so, his gun remained trained on Holmes.

  Anna rose from the chair, set the generator beside me, and approached her father. She stepped in front of the blunderbuss, putting her body between the gun and Holmes.

  “It’s me, Father. It’s me. Your Anna. Put down the gun. We’ll get this demon out of you.”

  Moriarty snarled, lifting the blunderbuss to point at his daughter’s face.

  “You won’t shoot me,” she said to him, though her voice trembled. “The part of you that’s really you, the part of you that’s alive and true, won’t shoot me. Father, you’re stronger than the demon. It can’t kill Sherlock Holmes if you won’t kill me.”

  “Move aside, Anna,” Moriarty said, his hand shaking.

  “You have only one shot, and I’m not going to step aside.”

  “The ball will go through you both.”

  Holmes said quietly. “He’s right, Anna. You’ll only be sacrificing yourself without saving me. Step aside now.”

  Anna shook her head and smiled. “He won’t do it. He won’t harm me.”

  Dread tied my stomach in knots. “Step aside, Anna,” I said. “He’s not your father.”

  Moriarty’s eyes shifted from his daughter to me. He looked disgusted. “You thought she could love you—you vagrant!”

  “I do love him!” Anna shouted, shoving her father toward the pentacle. Moriarty staggered, foot coming down on the quinine gel. He slipped and tried to catch himself. His free hand snagged Anna’s shoulder and dragged her down on top of him.

  The blunderbuss discharged. The lead ball hit the ceiling and smashed through lathe and plaster. Anna fell atop her father within the pentacle. He struck his head on the floor and lay there stunned as Anna rolled away to one side.

  The moment she was beyond the pentacle, she groaned, “Now, Thomas! Crank the crank!”

  But I did not. I could not. I could only gape at the wide red hole blown in her side.

  Anna clutched the wound and cried out again, “Now, Thomas!”

  I cranked the exorcism machine. The cylinder hummed, and sparks crackled down the wires into the quinine gel. All around Professor Moriarty, the pentacle lit up, and as I cranked faster, fields of energy projected up to the ceiling.

  Within those walls of light, the professor convulsed. He shuddered and staggered to his feet and tried to shove his way out of the pentacle, but the mystic fields were too powerful. He hissed and recoiled. Sheets of energy folded down around him and clove to his skin. Moriarty thrashed as electricity swarmed across him. He twitched and spun and whirled and staggered. An inhuman roar erupted from his mouth. He fell to the ground and trembled in a seizure.

  Then his eyes turned crimson. I feared for a moment that the man was cooking within his skin, but this crimson color poured out of his eyes and nose and mouth and ears, poured out or was leached out by the energy that surrounded him. The liquid then boiled away into a red cloud in the air.

  It was a soul—a demonic soul—and it seeped through the electric field. Rising beyond the pentacle, the demon roiled above us.

  “Look out!” I panted, out of breath from cranking. “Look out, Holmes!”

  The cloud descended on the great detective and whirled in a cyclone around him. Holmes crouched and swatted at the spirit. It was no good. Whenever his hand struck the crimson vapor, evil sank into his skin. Slap by slap, stroke by stroke, the demon was possessing him. The cloud condensed around Holmes and permeated his every pore.

  In mere moments, the last of the wicked spirit had poured out of James Moriarty and into Sherlock Holmes.

  I couldn’t crank any longer; my lungs were bursting with each breath. I released the handle. A final few sparks zapped out through the quinine gel, but then the pentacle went dark. The electric fields that mantled Moriarty’s body fizzled away. Smoke rose from his crumpled, panting form.

  “He’s all right,” I said breathlessly to Anna. “He’s alive.”

  She lay beside her father and wept. “But look at Holmes.”

  Across the room, Holmes, who had been crouching away from the demon attack, now slowly rose to stand upright. His eyes were wide and red, though in a moment, the crimson color drained away into his pupils. Then he smiled a smile like a set of knives. “How clever you are, Thomas Carnacki—dabbling in the black arts, playing with the ancient pentacle of life.” Even his voice had changed, deep and malevolent. “You built your exorcism machine well enough, but all you’ve done is drive me from one body to the next. I like this one better.” The demon in Holmes’s body stalked across the room toward Moriarty. “The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls has moved on.”

  He reached down suddenly to Moriarty’s belt, drew a knife, and plunged it into the professor’s heart.

  “No!” Anna shrieked. “No!”

  Her cry was answered by another shout. Dr. Maison stood at the door and gawked at the bloody spectacle and cried, “Gardes! Gardes! Au meurtre!”

  The demon pulled the bright-red dagger from Moriarty’s chest and smiled at me with Holmes’s teeth. “I wish I had time to use this on you, but you would try to hold me down until the guards came. Ah, well, ainsi va la guerre! Thank you, Thomas, for setting me free. Everyone in Europe is hunting Moriarty, but everyone will be thrilled to see me again—to see Sherlock Holmes!” With that, the demon turned and dashed away. He disappeared through the far door.

  “Father?” Anna said. She dragged herself to his side. “Father?” She grabbed his blood-soaked shirt and shook him. “Daddy!”

  The professor’s eyelids fluttered, and he rolled his head to one side. “Oh, Anna … it’s you.”

  “Yes,” she gasped. “It’s me. And it’s you, too.”

  “Where are we, Anna?”

  “A hospital.”

  “Oh, good. I don’t feel very well.”

  Anna gave a weak laugh, though her eyes were burgeoning with tears.

  The professor’s hand fumbled along the floor and finally found Anna’s and squeezed it. “I’m glad you’re safe. I hope you didn’t—didn’t see what happened.”

  Anna’s breath caught. “Father, I was here. It was—”

  “Jack the Ripper …” Moriarty said.

  “Yes, Father. Jack the Ripper.”

  “He was hiding in our apartment. I knew he would be. That’s why I left you with Mrs. Mulroney.” He shook his head in chagrin. “I was sure I could defeat him. Typical arrogance.”

  “But you did defeat him, Father,” Anna replied, letting the tears stream now. “You killed him. Jack the Ripper is dead and gone.”

  “Good. Good. Your mother’s avenged, then,” Moriarty said. He took a long breath. “Anna, I’m afraid he’s killed me, too. I don’t think I’ll make it.”

  “Oh, Father.”

  “And I want you to know, before I go … I love you.”

  She nodded. “I know, Father. I know.”

  Professor James Moriarty gave his daughter’s hand one final squeeze, and then his grip went slack, and he was gone.

  I slid down out of the bed and onto the floor. “Anna.” My chest wound burned furiously, and my lungs were ripped to rags, but I had to reach her. “Anna.”

  “Oh, Thomas.” She took my hand, and her bloodstained fingers were icy. “This is it, then.”

  “No! Dr. Maison saved me. He’ll save you, too.”

  “No, Thomas. I’m dying. Dr. Maison can’t stop it. Neither can you … .”

  “You can’t die. I love you.”

  “I know. And I love you. But love … can’t stop death … . This wound of mine … oh, Thomas!”

  She trembled, and before I could kiss her one last time, her soul had fled away. It was as quick as that. One moment, she lay there beside me. Next moment, it was only a body.

  “Anna!” I kissed her all the same. “Anna!” I caressed her cheek, wrung her hand. “Anna!” I clung to her as the door to the ward barked open and two guards and Dr. Maison rushed in
to the room.

  “Where’s the killer?” Dr. Maison shouted.

  “There.” I waved my arm toward the far door. “Out there somewhere.”

  While the guards rushed off, Dr. Maison knelt to check for pulse and breathing from Professor Moriarty. “Mort.” Then he shifted to Anna and checked her the same way. “Morte.”

  “She can’t be dead!” I said. “She can’t be!”

  The doctor glared. “She is. And look at you. Your lung is a wet paper bag. I’ve stitched it together, but all of this—this lunacy—may have ripped it open again. These two are dead, yes, young man, but unless you remain in bed, you could die, too!”

  “Yes,” I said bleakly. “I could die, too.”

  WHAT A desolation I felt, lying in my bed beside the bodies. They were covered now, of course. There were plenty of sheets in that empty ward.

  I wasn’t sure if Dr. Maison had spread the sheets to preserve the dignity of the dead or to preserve the sanity of the living. He’d failed on both counts. There was no dignity in lying crumpled on the floor while fresh linens soaked up your blood. There was no sanity in sitting in a bed and breathing slowly while the woman you loved and the man you hated lay breathless not ten feet away.

  I wept.

  Tears are strange. Distilled grief. They bite like liquor and they get you drunk and they leave you hungover and headachy … and they help you survive what is unsurvivable.

  She was gone. She was gone like a footprint under a tide. She was gone like a familiar name spoken in a crowd of strangers. She was gone like a butterfly in the gullet of a crow.

  I told myself that I had known her for only two weeks, that my life had been happy before these two weeks and would be happy again. That’s what I told myself, but it did no good. It was as if that lead ball had ripped a hole in me.

  The shadows of afternoon were lengthening when the police arrived—four officers, ranging from a black-haired rookie to a white-haired veteran. They entered the ward grimly, and when they laid eyes on the blood-soaked sheets draped over the bodies, their faces clenched with dread.

  Dr. Maison entered the ward, and the gendarmes surrounded him and quietly badgered him with questions. I understood a few words here and there, but the French was too quick and too quiet for me to catch most of it. Finally, Dr. Maison had had enough and excused himself. Then the officers turned to me.

  “Savez-vous qui sont ces deux personnes?” asked the silver-haired one.

  “Do you know English?” I replied.

  The youngest officer stepped forward: “Do you know the victims?”

  I nodded and was on the verge of telling them all—of James and Anna, of the demon that had been within Moriarty and now dwelt in Sherlock Holmes—but the whole story seemed ludicrous … or outright dangerous. “I knew the girl. I loved her. She was Anna Moriarty, daughter of the crime lord James Moriarty, who died at Reichenbach Falls. As to the man—no, I did not know him. He was part of Moriarty’s gang, but I never knew him.”

  The young gendarme turned to his fellows and translated. Their eyes slowly widened with shock and consternation. One of them wrote down every word on a small tablet. After trading comments with the others, the young gendarme said, “Did you witness the murders?”

  I nodded numbly. “The thug, here, killed my Anna.”

  “Killed her … ?”

  “Yes, with a blunderbuss. A big pistol—there, on the ground, half beneath my bed. You’ll find the ball of the pistol in the ceiling.” I pointed up.

  While the older three rolled their eyes to the ceiling, the youngest man stooped to drag the blunderbuss from the floor. He studied the device, checked to make sure the gun was not loaded, and sniffed the barrel. When he had been satisfied, the gendarme asked, “Why? Why would someone from Moriarty’s gang kill his own daughter?”

  I shook my head. “Loose ends.”

  The gendarme pointed to the bloody bandage on my heart. “And what happened to you?”

  “Stabbed. By that man there, two days ago, at Gare Saint-Lazare.”

  “It was the two of you, then. Lovers. But the henchman loved her, too.”

  “Yes. I think he did.”

  “And so, a confrontation,” the young officer elaborated, his eyes filling with romantic dreams. “He fought you at Gare Saint-Lazare, but the girl—Anna—saved you. And the henchman was driven mad with jealousy and came here to kill you, but she saved you again … at the cost of her own life!”

  I nodded miserably. “I think you have the shape of it.”

  “But who killed the henchman? You?”

  “No. I’m in no shape for fighting. Another henchman, a man named Harold Silence, was battling this fellow here for control of Moriarty’s criminal empire. Silence killed this man.”

  “And what did this—Harold Silence—look like?”

  “Tall, thin—a hawklike nose, silvery eyes.”

  “Where can we find this man?”

  I released a long sigh. “I don’t know. Watch the papers. Watch for outlandish crimes, things that will draw the public eye. That’s what he wants.”

  The young man retreated to the other gendarmes and told them what I had said. They nodded with the solemn silence of strangers staring into an open grave. The gendarmes stood there a while longer, murmuring decorously and glancing down at the linen-covered figures. At length, they started to shift, crouching, lifting sheets, studying faces, letting sheets fall back into place.

  What were they looking at? Anna was dead. Her father, too. Three of the gendarmes drifted in a knot toward the door, but the young one approached me and leaned down as if to speak to me. Instead, he drew the exorcism machine from the floor and lifted it.

  “What’s this?”

  Embarrassment lit my face from ear to ear, but I managed to say, “Therapy machine. Swiss therapy.” I reached for the device.

  The gendarme set the machine on the side of my bed and smiled tightly. “Thérapie suisse.”

  Those were the last words any of them spoke to me. The young gendarme tipped his hat and went to tell Dr. Maison that he could have the bodies removed. Then he joined his comrades at the door. They lingered there a moment more before passing through, leaving me with the dead Moriartys.

  45

  DIVINE HORSEMEN

  This is how a spirit of the dead finds a new host among the living: The divine horseman cries, “Whoa,” and steps down from one mount and steps up to straddle another. Then he cries, “Yah!”

  New horseflesh always feels good to ride. One wants to take it for a gallop, to see what it can do.

  This horseflesh—Sherlock Holmes—can do quite a lot.

  46

  LE TEMPS

  Night was falling beyond the ward windows when Dr. Maison returned with the orderlies. They carried Anna and James away and mopped up the blood and the pentacle. A splash of pine oil, a few more swipes, and nothing remained of the Moriartys. The hospital staff withdrew, leaving only me and a flickering gas lamp and that damned hole in the ceiling.

  Sleep came slowly, and when it came, it was haunted …

  by Anna …

  by her father …

  by Jack the Ripper …

  by the exorcism machine … .

  I DREAMED that the machine had its clamps on me. I dreamed that electricity pulsed into my head and hands and feet and reached toward my heart. It jolted my spirit free. Protoplasm seeped out of my mouth and nose and ears and eyes and every pore and coalesced in the air.

  I hung above my body. The last of my spirit peeled away from my electrocuted flesh, and I rose.

  A tunnel of light formed ahead of me, stretching up and away. I entered the tunnel.

  “Anna!” I called. She was the light ahead of me. “Anna!”

  I wanted to follow the cave of light toward her, but something laid hold of my legs and drew me down. I sank through the floor of the tunnel, out of the brilliant, loving light and into the shadows.

  The shadows cleaved to me. They held m
e as if I were their own. Possession.

  I reeled. I pitched. I bucked until I threw the shadows off and galloped out of the darkness and back into my world, back into my flesh.

  I JOLTED awake as the morning edition of Le Temps flopped down on my chest.

  Above me stood Dr. Maison, scowling. “Here’s your handiwork.” The doctor pointed to the headline on the front page: “Bataille des Associés du Seigneur de Crime Chez Les Invalides .”

  I sat up, struggling to read the article.

  Dr. Maison snatched the paper away and translated:

  The daughter of Professor James Moriarty, the London crime boss slain in Switzerland last week, died in a double murder at Les Invalides yesterday. An unidentified henchman of Moriarty killed the professor’s daughter, Anna, while she tended another member of the crime syndicate recuperating at Les Invalides. Afterward, the henchman was himself slain by another Moriarty underling, Harold Silence, in a bid for the throne of the London crime syndicate. Harold Silence apparently remains at large in Paris. One witness referred to Silence as “the Ripper of Paris.”

  “You sensationalist!” Dr. Maison spat.

  “I didn’t even speak to reporters!”

  “But you spoke to the police. You misled them!”

  “I told them the truth!”

  “The truth? Just look at you—a young Romeo with a weeping wound over his heart and a dead Juliet by his side. They saw a romantic tragedy and gave it to the press.”

  “I—I—I … How is this my fault?”

  Dr. Maison sputtered. “Crime lords! Murderers! Reporters! You brought them here—you, who aren’t even a veteran!” He was on a rant, and there was no reasoning with him.

  Instead I tried to distract him with the article: “What else does it say?”

  “A few other things.”

  “What other things?”

  He sighed heavily and read:

  According to Dr. Maison, chief surgeon of Les Invalides, the young witness was another criminal from the London gang. “Mr. Carnacki tried to kill this henchman before but was stabbed,” Maison testified. “He would have died from his wound if I had not saved him. I am an expert in bayonet-style wounds.”