The Call of Distant Shores

by David Niall Wilson

  At just that moment, there was a cry from down the street, and I turned, startled. A young man darted from around the corner of the morgue, tousled hair waving about a roguish face and a scrap of paper clutched tightly in grubby fingers. I recognized him at once, as did Holmes, who rose and exited the carriage, calling to the driver to hold.

  "Mr. Holmes," Wiggins cried, coming to a halt and holding out the paper. "We've found him, sir, as you asked."

  Holmes didn't say a word, but took the paper from the boy's hand, eyes blazing. He read quickly, then folded the paper and slipped it into one of the pockets of his coat. "The others are posted?" Holmes asked quickly.

  Wiggins nodded. "He'll not slip past, sir. Count on it."

  "I do," Holmes replied, almost smiling. Shillings changed hands and Holmes had turned away and re-entered the carriage before I could ask what was written on the paper, or who the "irregulars" were watching.

  I knew better than to ask. I'd seen that expression on Holmes' face too many times. He was on the trail of something, and until that thing was in his grasp, he'd not share it with anyone. Best to keep to his side, watch his back, and wait until he was ready to speak. The carriage took off without a word from Holmes, and I realized suddenly that he'd already anticipated our next stop. Either the note Wiggins had brought him had confirmed his suspicions, or it was related to another matter.

  I watched out the curtained window as we passed deeper into the city, trying not to think of the scrap of paper in Holmes' pocket, or the pallid face of Michael Adcott, staring at me from heavily lidded eyes.

  Jepson walked briskly down the street, hands pressed deeply into the pockets of his coat. At his heel, Michael Adcott followed more slowly, his gait forced and clumsy. Jepson paid his companion no mind. They had to meet Jeffries at the court before the last of the judges left chambers, and that left little time indeed. Time was slipping through his fingers too quickly, and things he'd expected to have accomplished had evaded him.

  The Doctor – Watson was his name – was a problem. The man should have seen what was obvious, feared what was less so, and signed off on the paperwork by now. Without that signature, they would be forced to let a court decide Michael's state, and at the very least, he'd be found unfit to speak on his own behalf. That wouldn't do. Michael Adcott would not be speaking to anyone, and that was another problem.

  For the moment, things were under control. The serum – alone – was not enough. That much had been clear in the sketchy notes that had been included with the case that lay waiting in the laboratory at St. Elian's. Only fate – a bottle of wine – and a loose tongue had given Aaron Jepson the information he needed.

  "There was a time," his father had said, head drooping toward the table and fingers loosely gripping his wine glass, "when we had ways to deal with our problems. There are things we know," the old man had glanced up to see that his son knew the "we" in question. "We have always harbored our secrets, Aaron. There was a time when we kept them less guarded – when a Rabbi could walk the streets with the respect of those around him. They knew. I know."

  Several glasses of wine later, and a lot of cajoling and flattery on Aaron's part, and those secrets had begun to surface. Men from clay. The Kabbalah. Patterns of words and form, rhythm and breath that emulated the formation of the first man. A mad Arab poet who spoke as if he were in another place and time and stared into distances that were not there. Those words, copied onto the canvas corner of a tent and guarded, studied – shifted over the years and recombined. Alhazred, the man had been called, and though he'd been mad, he'd been a prophet, as well – a prophet of power. At first the notion had seemed ludicrous. A clay monster controlled by he who gave them life, born of the proper words, the proper earth – the prayers – the faith of the Rabbi, and the vision of a madman.

  Sworn to secrecy, Aaron had left his father's home and set out to find a use for his new secret. Money wasn't everything, he reminded himself often, but no money was certainly something to be avoided. Money was power, and if you were not the one with the power, you were under that man's thumb. Aaron Jepson would feel the pad of no man's thumb.

  A chance encounter had landed the wooden case in his hands, won from a drunken, reeling fool at poker. The man had wagered it against a five pound note, holding it close to his chest and announcing drunkenly that the secrets to life itself were contained within, and that this being the case, it certainly qualified as collateral against a five pound note. The case had been found floating, he claimed, off the shore of the island of Eucrasia after the explosion that destroyed it's culture and its ruler. It had been handed from man to man since, and nothing was known of its contents save that they came from the laboratory of one Dr. Caresco Surhomme. Jepson, who knew of Caresco's work, had agreed impatiently, the four threes in his hand itching to be slapped to the tabletop, and he'd walked away with all the other man's money, and the wooden box. He could still hear the fellow's words, echoing in his mind.

  "You'll find more than you bargain for in there. I'm glad to be rid of it. God bears a very heavy burden my friend – don't be too quick to shoulder it."

  It had taken years of poring over correspondence and articles, diatribes about and against Caresco and fictions written about the man and his work, to realize what it was that he possessed. It had taken another five years to analyze the serum and attribute it to one small corner of Caresco's work. The reversal of aging. The shaving away of the ravages of time. Taken to the extreme, and with certain additions of Jepson's own device, reversing the process of death.

  Jepson shook his head to dislodge the memories of what had come before. More important to see to the needs of the moment. He led Michael around a corner and disappeared into the fog. Jeffries would know what to do, and they would have to set about whatever it was with haste. Both the serum, and the incantations and amulets his father had reluctantly provided him, were proving less stable than he'd anticipated. The row in the cell earlier had been a near miss that Jepson didn't want repeated.

  The asylum brooded over the street beneath, giving off a sensation of density, immovable and old as time. When the carriage stopped in front of that place, and Holmes stepped out, tipping the driver, I was sure he must have lost his mind. The Asylum of St. Elian had been deserted since I was a young man, still pursuing the degrees and education that would lead me to a career in medicine. The stories I'd heard had seemed laughable enough at the time, but faced with the reality of the place, they came back to me full force, flickering across the years of my memory with chilling speed.

  Holmes didn't hesitate. He moved from carriage to door with purposeful steps, reached up and rapped his knuckles against the door sharply. I stared at him, then at the building before us. I would have bet my last pound that no one had passed through that door in ten years. Holmes knocked again, then turned to me with a purpose.

  "No one seems to be about, Watson. We must hurry."

  "Hurry where?" I inquired.

  Holmes was already trying the door. It was, of course, locked, but I noted with amazement and some alarm that Holmes had pulled a small tool from his pocket and inserted one end into the lock. A few deft movements of wrist and finger, and I heard the sound of tumblers sliding into place. The latch gave way, and Holmes pulled the door open, slipping inside. There was nothing to do but to follow him into the shadows, and to pray that most of what I'd heard back at university was the hogwash it had seemed. The heavy door closed behind us with a loud CLICK. Holmes fiddled with it for a moment, then turned away.

  "Locked," he whispered.

  There was no light, but Holmes moved quickly and easily, making his way to the first set of doors to his left. He pulled out a box of matches, lighting one and holding it up as we entered the room. It was a crude, antiquated sort of laboratory. On one of the benches, a few crates lay open, packing material and other items strewn about as if opened and gone through quickly and without much care.

  I moved up beside Holmes, glancing over his sho
ulder as the light from the first match flickered, then died. The quick glimpse had been enough.

  "Medical equipment," I said softly.

  "As I suspected," Holmes replied, turning to the other bench. He lit another match, and this time he slipped along the wall and found the light switch, flicking the power to on.

  "Someone will see," I hissed.

  My friend ignored me, and, with a quick turn about the room, I realized my error. There were no windows. We were encircled in stone as surely as if entombed. The light was dim, but Holmes made use of it quickly, making his way to a wooden case flung open on one of the bench tops.

  The case held two vials, and I saw that Holmes had looked past the greenish, glowing liquid and the other – full of something that looked like sand. He plucked it from the case and held it to the dim light. Then he removed the folded paper he'd brought away from the doorstep of my flat and opened it. He held the two objects together, and I saw that what was on the paper was a bit of clay. Red clay, unlike anything near the city. The dust, or sand in the vial had the same reddish hue.

  "Watson, have you heard of a man named Caresco?"

  I started violently, nearly toppling into the nearest of the benches. "Caresco Surhomme? ""Caresco is dead." I replied, a bit more calmly. "His island was buried in volcanic ash. That Caresco?"

  Holmes held up a hand, and I fell silent. The greenish contents of those vials had taken on a new reality for me. I had heard of Caresco and his hellish experiments, and I knew the end he'd reached. Playing God with the human anatomy, enslaving the mind. Seeking a cure for death and time.

  "I know of Caresco, as well," Holmes assured me. "I was fairly certain his work was tied up in this, but there is more – something vital that we are missing."

  He returned the card to the case and began pacing the room, rooting through the remaining cases and tossing paperwork and equipment aside without a thought. Clearly, he had no intention of trying to keep our illegal entry a secret. Holmes turned and lifted the vial in his hand so that I could see it more closely.

  "Clay?" he asked. I didn't believe that he expected an answer, so I remained silent as he replaced the vial and continued to stare into the case.

  Then, just as I was certain he would turn in disgust and leave that accursed place, Holmes laid hand on a small leather-bound volume. Pulling it nearer to the light, he flipped open the covers, which had nothing upon them but a few characters rendered in Hebrew. Holmes' brow furrowed, and he flipped the pages rapidly, grunting under his breath.

  I glanced over his shoulder as he flipped through the pages. The script was coarse, and though I'm no linguist, I saw what seemed to be alternating lines of Hebrew and some antiquated form of Arabic. There were notes scribbled in the margins. I could make out none of it, but Holmes seemed to be devouring it all.

  "There's no time to waste, Watson," he said at last, replacing the book where he'd found it and tidying up the room just enough so that a cursory glance would show no evidence of our presence. "We must hide ourselves."

  We moved none too soon. Holmes had just switched off the lights, and dragged me down the hall and through another door when we heard the grate of an iron key turning slowly in the lock. We could just make out the cursing voice of Aaron Jepson through the solid wood, growing louder as he pushed the door inward and stepped inside.

  "I curse the day I first laid eyes on you," he was saying.

  There were two sets of footsteps, and I guessed that the second set must belong to Michael Adcott. There was no answer to Jepson's ranting diatribe, but the echo of shuffling feet followed his hard, sharp strides into the hall. The door closed once more, and Jepson moved into the laboratory, shoving things about roughly. I held my breath, but he seemed to notice nothing amiss.

  "I suppose there's nothing to do but to put you back in your cell and go in search of Watson," he said at last. "There is more than one way to get a paper signed, and if Jeffries can't straighten this out without the good doctor's input, then input he shall have."

  Only silence was his answer, and the two sets of footsteps moved closer to us once again, passing into the hall and by our door, moving into the gloomy interior of the old asylum. Holmes hesitated only for a moment, then followed. I trailed behind, moving a bit more slowly, dragging the tips of the fingers of my right hand along the wall beside us as we went. I didn't want a chance misstep to alert Jepson to our presence. Indeed, I had no idea what Holmes planned to do, and I wanted to be as ready as possible for any circumstance.

  We followed the pair down into the bowels of that wretched structure, and at last I felt Holmes' hand on my arm, and came to a stop. Just ahead, around a final corner, there was a stationary glow, as if a torch or a lantern were being held. I could still hear Jepson's muttering voice, and I heard, as well, the clatter of keys on a ring. Holmes was moving ahead again, very slowly now, and I followed, keeping well back, not wanting to cause my companion to stumble.

  Jepson's words came into clearer focus. He was agitated to a state that his voice quavered. If I'd been seeing him in my office, I'd have prescribed a stiff brandy, and a few hours rest, but Jepson was as far from being prepared to rest as a man could be.

  "I'll find him, don't you worry," he was saying. "I'll make him sign those papers, show him the error of his ways. He saw you, plain as the nose on his face, walking about. Alive. No reason he shouldn't sign, and by the Gods he will."

  There was more. His lips never ceased their motion, the words flowing in an endless stream. There was the solid CLICK of a key turning in a lock, and the creaking of rusted hinge, followed by the shuffling of feet. I started to inch forward, not wanting to miss a word of what was being said, but I felt Holmes' hand gripping my shoulder tightly, and I grew still.

  He leaned in close and whispered into my ear. "Something is afoot, Watson. Listen!"

  I did – and there were two voices. The second, far from coherent, began as a low moan, shivering up from some deep darkness I could not equate with human consciousness. I heard the scrape of shoes on the stone floor, but they weren't measured steps. The sound was random and wild, quickly drowned out by the wailing voice. It rose from a moan to a banshee screech so rapidly that I was physically stunned by the blast of sound. There was a crash, and a loud cry, followed by a volley of crazed curses.

  "Now, Watson," Holmes hissed. "We must hurry."

  Without looking back, Holmes rounded the corner and stopped. I came up short behind him and stared over his shoulder.

  Aaron Jepson was shoving Michael Adcott toward the door of the cell frantically, cursing with each breath, fighting to avoid the other's flailing arms. Adcott's hands were clasped to his head, fingers twined in his thin, wispy hair, ripping, then gripping again, and ripping more, tufts drifting about the two in a slow-motion counterpoint to their struggle.

  "Get in that cell, damn you," Jepson screeched.

  Adcott either didn't hear the words, or ignored them. Backpedaling, he rammed Jepson into the stone wall, spun to the side and began slamming his own head into the stone with such force it made me sick to watch. Jepson, momentarily stunned, took a step toward Adcott, then seemed to think better of it. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper. With trembling voice, he began to read, or, at least I believe he was reading. The words were unfamiliar to me, and his entire frame was shaking with such frustrated rage that he couldn't hold the paper still enough to read.

  Adcott stilled, just for a moment. The man turned toward Jepson, who stood between Holmes, myself, and Adcott, providing a face-on view. To the day of my own death – may it be more lasting and complete than poor Michael's – I will never shake the image of those eyes from my mind. They flared with inner light so intense that I could imagine worlds within, arms flailing and voices crying out for salvation. Those eyes were windows straight to hell, and in that second, they burned full force into the soul of Aaron Jepson.

  Jepson began to back away. He tried to continue the chant, but th
e words failed him, and his voice faltered, then fell silent. Adcott was moving with quick, purposeful strides that slipped from a walk to a full sprint in seconds, propelling his slight frame with alarming speed toward his tormentor. The madness of moments before had blossomed into an intense concentration of anger.

  "My god," I whispered.

  Adcott hit Jepson at a full run. One of Michael's hands gripped the other man by the throat and drove him backward into the stone with a sickening crunch. Jepson tried to speak, but no words or air made it past the iron grip at his throat. His legs buckled, and as Adcott continued to drive forward, squeezing ever harder, Aaron Jepson fell to his knees, eyes bulging.

  In a voice so clear and pure that it washed over the scene like the water of a mountain stream on a flame, Adcott spoke. He spoke three short words, and as he spoke them, Jepson struggled a final time, eyes widening further, if that was possible, and then went absolutely limp, the life crushed from his body.

  Adcott staggered back. The effort of concentration had drained him, and the otherworldly rage and strength with which he'd propelled himself vanished. He turned, noticing us for the first time, and raised a hand toward Holmes, as if asking for something. Seconds later, I saw Michael Adcott die for the second time in a single week, and I nearly fainted away on the spot.

  Holmes had me by the arm and headed toward the door before I had my wits fully about me, and we were out and into the waiting carriage without a word, closing and locking the doors of St. Elian's behind us firmly. Holmes stared out into the night, and I collapsed into the seat and my own thoughts as the carriage hurried into the fog.

  We were seated in Holmes' study, sipping brandy and watching the fire that very night. Holmes was staring into the flames, not offering any explanations, and at last I'd had all I could stand of it.

  "Holmes," I said, "back in that laboratory, you said there was something we were missing. I'm familiar with Caresco's work, and the abominations he is purported to have created. I have heard that he managed to reverse aging in some subjects, though at the cost of the mind – this is beyond me. I never heard that he had cheated death, and in any case, Adcott showed none of the madness reported of the earlier experiments. A great number of very learned men have pored over the bits and pieces that remain of his notes – they found the research to be an abomination, and the process beyond repair. Was Jepson a mad genius?"