Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  Holmes turned his attention to the area around the corpse. In the chaos, I had to wonder how he would discern any evidence of the killer. Although I suspected that, had Sanderson been alive, he would have been able to immediately lay his hands on any required material. I had to admit that at times, my study had been like that and Mary had frequently remonstrated with me, with that gentle stare of hers. I would have given anything right then to hear that disapproving sigh of hers even one more time.

  Holmes worked his way from one end of the room to the other, picking up one item here and another there, plucking at something with a pair of tweezers he took from a table and staring intently through his magnifying glass at other things.

  “It is not often that we have been the first on the scene at a crime, Watson. Were it not an old acquaintance now lying dead, I would say it was a most refreshing and enjoyable experience. I have seen all I need to and now know that the killer was a big man who moved with an economy of skill. He was acquainted with Sanderson and did not find what he was looking for.”

  “Should I bother to ask how you know all this?”

  “You know my methods, Watson. Given what I have said, what would you say I have seen?”

  I pursed my lips for a moment. “Given the man’s preference for solitude that you described, unless there is a back door, I would say that the Professor let the person in the door.”

  “Excellent, Watson. There is a side door to the room, but it is still locked, and from the inside. Go on,” said Holmes with a smile.

  I scanned the room again, trying to see the most minute detail, but everything seemed to be drowned in the overabundance of things in the area. I shrugged my shoulders and admitted defeat.

  “Worry not, old friend. The clues are there It is just a matter of knowing what you are observing. In some cases, however, it is not what is there, but what is not there. That spear is big and heavy; it would take a large man to have the strength to drive it through another man. That, along with a half-footprint in the blood, gives us his size. That there is not a large number of broken items in the area indicates that our killer could move with some dexterity.”

  “And the fact that he did not obtain what he was looking for?” I asked.

  At that point, Holmes dramatically picked up a leather portfolio that I had noticed him looking at earlier. “Because I have it,” he said, passing his prize over to me. “After dealing with Sir Charles the first time, I discovered that the Professor had apparently acquired a page of the manuscript. I spoke with him about it several times, but got no satisfactory answers.”

  There were several designs drawn on the page and line after line of cramped Arabic writing. I touched the paper and it felt odd to my finger, like something I did not want in close proximity to me. “This was worth killing over?”

  “There are those who would swear on their immortal souls that it is,” said Holmes.

  We left quickly, using the side door, and were away from the building in only a matter of minutes. Holmes knew the maze-like passages like the back of his hand, a fact that, given this was Sherlock Holmes, did not surprise me in the slightest.

  “But shouldn’t we notify the police?” I said.

  “Under normal circumstances I would not have hesitated in doing just that, but these are not normal circumstances. While much was smeared, I could make out several symbols that had been painted on the shaft of the spear, similar to ones I glimpsed in the Necronomicon.”

  “Necronomicon?” I said.

  “My apologies, Watson. That is the English title for the Al-Azif.”

  The two of us walked quickly along the street in front of the Museum warehouse, each one watching and listening for some sign that the murder had been discovered. I would have preferred to be in a cab racing away from the area, but the very act of walking helped dispel any nervousness that the last few minutes had caused.

  Yet, as we walked, I could not shake the feeling that we were being followed. It was more a feeling in the pit of my stomach, rather than anything else, but it was the same that I had had on more than one occasion during my days in Afghanistan. I tried to casually look over my shoulder, catch reflections in windows, but there was nothing, or else, it was that I did not recognize whoever it was that was following us.

  “Holmes ....”

  “Yes, we are being followed, Watson, by two small men in sailor’s jackets, with caps pulled down low on their faces. They have been dogging our trail since we left the warehouse.”

  “Police?”

  Holmes chuckled, “The Metropolitan Police may at times scrape the bottom of the barrel when it comes to recruiting, but these fellows are far below that level.”

  We were several blocks from the warehouse and the evening had spread quickly, especially since what gas lights there were in this area that were not broken had yet to feel the lamplighter’s touch. What businesses we passed had been locked up and shuttered, or had been long since abandoned by their owners.

  “We are just a few blocks from a pub called ‘The Long John’. I propose we stop in there and see if our companions are willing to come into the light,” Holmes said.

  “What is to prevent them from simply lingering outside until we leave?” I said.

  “Let them ,” Holmes said. “There is a smugglers’ tunnel in the back that we will make use of.”

  However, they say that even the best laid plans go astray, which applied on occasion to even the ones that were developed by Holmes. The two of us had turned into an alley that would lead to the pub on the next street, our earlier companions hanging back half a block, when three other figures appeared out of the shadows and came at us. One, a big man, had a crooked-looking knife in his hand, while the other two were unarmed. All of them were wrapped in ragged coats, with mufflers and hats masking their faces.

  Holmes charged toward one of them, grabbing his left arm and throwing the man to the ground in a single swift movement. He followed it with two swift kicks to the fellow’s torso. I had my revolver out and drove the butt hard against the second one’s skull, the sound being enough to know that I had done some damage. He tottered for a moment and went over onto the cobblestones of the street.

  The third one, the big man who had the knife, had held back, but now he moved toward us, brandishing the weapon and jabbing it into the air. Holmes stared at him, matching his movements to the other man. The dance between them went on for several seconds before Holmes acted. He feinted in one direction then whirled around and launched a drop-kick that impacted hard in the center of the man’s chest; a quick two-handed smash put his attacker unmoving on the ground.

  “Was that last an example of Baritsu?” I asked. That Japanese style of wrestling had, according to Holmes, saved his life at the Reichenbach Falls.

  “Hardly. Merely something I picked up,” said Holmes.

  I looked back along the street, but our other pursuers were nowhere to be seen. If they were allied with these men, then they had presumably retreated when they saw their comrades go down, no doubt now en route to report on the outcome of the battle.

  My opponent had not moved from where he had gone down and I could not at first be certain that he was even breathing. When I touched his wrist to check for a pulse, the skin under my fingers felt slimy, almost like that of a fish. I pulled the scarf and hat away from his face and found myself staring at something I was hard-pressed to be sure was not an hallucination. The face of this, I hesitate to even call him a ‘man’, looked like some cruel cross between a human and a fish. On the side of the neck were what might even be gills. I have seen strange things in my life, in places that ranged from the battlefields to the darker places that my career with Holmes had taken me, but this ranked as the strangest.

  “Holmes, this is not right,” I said, in a voice that sounded strained to my ear.

  “How so, Doctor?” he said coming to my side. His face was impassive, even in the darkness, as he studied the being.

  “Given what I found,
this does not bode well,” he said, and gestured toward the other man. Holmes had stripped him of his facial coverings and I knew at whom I was looking. It was Davis St. John, Sir Charles’ companion of this morning.

  “It all makes sense,” was all that Holmes would say, en route back to Baker Street. I had long ago learned that asking for details from him, until that moment when he was ready, was a waste of time. The most I could expect would be vague words and half-muttered statements, which were exactly what I seemed to be getting. So, as we drove, I satisfied myself with lighting my pipe and watching the city roll by.

  The cab had barely pulled to a halt in front of our quarters before Wiggins’ lanky figure had appeared out of the shadows and leaped up onto the cab, clinging to the edge by his long thin fingers.”We have him, Mr. Holmes!” said the young Irregular. “It’s a house, eight blocks from Condign Square,” he said, spouting out the address so quickly it sounded like a single word.

  “Good man, Wiggins. Get in!” The youth clamored inside, without bothering to open the door, squeezing in between the two of us. Since our cab was a smaller one, the fit was tight, but that did not matter at the moment.

  “I know the area: private homes, a few shops. Not the best part of town, but certainly not the worst. Hardly the area in which I would have expected to find Sir Charles residing,” I said.

  “I imagine that, officially, he doesn’t,” said Holmes.

  Again, he would say no more until we had arrived at our goal, having walked the last few blocks, since it would not do to announce our presence. We found the other Irregular in an alley a half-block from the house; the view was an excellent one of the front and side of our goal.

  “Well, Alexander, what have you to report?” said Holmes.

  “Sir Charles went inside two hours ago and hasn’t left,” the second Irregular replied.

  “Excellent job, boys,” said Holmes. “It’s time for you to be elsewhere. Things might get a little dangerous in the next few hours.” He extracted two coins and tossed them over to Wiggins and Alexander; both were gone with a nod.

  “So I take it it’s time for a bit of burglary?” I said. This wouldn’t be the first time that Holmes and I had violated the law in pursuit of a case.

  “I think not; I feel an urge to go in the front door.”

  So, that was exactly what we did: walked right up to the front door and pounded on it. It occurred to me, as we were standing there, that the night seemed darker and even here, in the center of London, there was a silence that until now had only been in the background. I felt a strange chill; if I were a superstitious man, I would have said that someone had just walked on my grave.

  “Sometimes, the direct approach is the best, but you do have to be prepared to keep demanding attention,” said Holmes. He was about to knock again when the door opened and we found ourselves facing, not Sir Charles but a woman in her thirties, dressed in dark colors that seemed to shift with the light around her.

  “Please come in, gentlemen,” she said.

  “I presume we are expected,” said my companion.

  “Indeed you are, Mr. Holmes. My uncle will be with you in just a few minutes. There is brandy on the sideboard and you will find cigars in the humidor near the fireplace.”

  This was not what, fifteen minutes before, I would have predicted happening. We were escorted into a room filled from floor to ceiling with bookshelves that were overflowing with books, scrolls, and portfolios. In the center of the room was a huge carved wooden desk, one of the most ornate that I had ever seen. Lying dead-center on it was a pile of parchment pages covered with drawings and words in what I was certain was Arabic.

  “Holmes! The Al-Azif!” I stepped over to the desk and reached out toward the manuscript, but could not bring myself to touch the papers.

  The woman reappeared without a sound, lit the lamps and stoked the fire in the fireplace at one end of the room, and then was gone, all without a word.

  The dark wood of the walls, which seemed almost black in places, was covered in a strange, inlaid design that seemed to make it hard to focus on any specific part for more than a few seconds.

  “What is it about this place?” I muttered. For a few moments, I had the same sensations in the pit of my stomach that I had had on those few times when I had been intoxicated to the point of almost passing out.

  “I see it now, Watson. This whole room has been prepared for this moment,” Holmes said.

  That was when the voice started. I wasn’t even sure if I heard it at first; there was just a slight churning sound, an echo in the distance that might or might not have been there. Only gradually, over a space of a few minutes, did the sound become words and a voice that we could hear. The words made no sense, yet they grew louder and clearer.

  “It’s Sir Charles. He obviously has some kind of tube system to carry his voice here from another part of the house,” said Holmes.

  The door that we had entered was locked. I banged my shoulder twice against it, but it did not move and I doubted that even the two of us combined could batter it down. The gaslights flared as the chanting continued, wrapping the room in twisted shadows. As I looked around, the very angles of the room, the bookcases, the furniture, everything seemed wrong, as if they were just slightly out of focus.

  “Sir Charles!” yelled Holmes. “You are destroying a tradition that goes back centuries. You are one of the protectors of this realm.”

  The chanting continued. If Sir Charles heard Holmes, he was ignoring him. I had my revolver out, but I realized that I had no target at which to fire.

  From inside his jacket, Holmes pulled out the loose parchment page then threw it straight into the fire. The heat caused the paper to dance in the air for a moment before being engulfed in flames. Holmes threw himself against me and dragged the two of us down behind the desk.

  I’m a little unclear about what happened next. I do remember the flames roaring through the whole room then fading away. The next thing I knew, we were running through billowing smoke; this time, the study door gave way and we were free. In the distance, I could hear the sound of warnings of fire and people rushing around us.

  “I don’t know about you, Watson, but I, for one, could use a stiff drink,” said Holmes.

  “Several,” I said.

  “I was a fool, Watson. I let my own hubris at my treatment by this organization blind me to some obvious facts,” said Holmes.

  It was two days after the fire and the reports of it had only been a minor event in the London papers, quickly fading for the far-more-sensational tales of a killer who seemed to be using a strange-looking black sword. The papers had reported finding the body of Sir Charles and the woman who owned the house. There was, of course, speculation that she was his mistress.

  “How so? You are not a mind-reader; there was no reason you should have suspected Sir Charles as the thief,” I said. “After all, he was the one who came to recruit you to find the criminal – i.e., himself.”

  “Yes, obviously, he realized that I had not returned all of the manuscript to them those ten years ago and felt this was the only way flush it out.”

  “But why? Was it simply the value of such a historical curiosity?”

  “I think that Sir Charles felt that it was real and could summon these creatures. He realized that I had retained some part of the manuscript and he needed it. The burglaries were designed to flush the remaining page out into the open. I cannot explain everything we saw that night. I suspect that there was a hallucinogenic of some sort pumped into the room via the gas outlets.”

  Before I could say anything, Mrs. Hudson came in the door, an envelope in her hand.

  “I found this in the kitchen,” she said. “I just turned around and this was lying in the center of my cutting board. No one but myself was there.”

  Holmes arched an eyebrow and accepted the envelope. “Expensive paper, goes for at least a shilling a box. The handwriting shows a sure, steady hand,” he said. On the front were t
he words: “To be delivered to the hand of Sherlock Holmes.” He opened it, stared at the page, then passed it over to me.

  It was two words, written in the same hand that had addressed the envelope. “Thank you.”

  Bradley H. Sinor has seen his short stories published in numerous science fiction, fantasy and horror anthologies such as The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; Tales of the Shadowmen, Vol. 6: Grand Guignol; Ring of Fire 2; and The Grantville Gazette. Three collections of his short fiction have been released by Yard Dog Press: Dark and Stormy Nights, In the Shadows, and Playing with Secrets (along with stories by his wife Sue Sinor). His newest collection of stories, Echoes from the Darkness, is from Arctic Wolf Press. His non-fiction work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies.

  The author speaks: “The Second Theft of Alhazred’s Manuscript” is set in 1894, some months after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Empty House”, which featured Sherlock Holmes’ return from his apparent death. Since Holmes was known to frequent the British Museum when he first came to London, I had always wondered if he knew about the manuscripts in parts of the building that were not open to the public.

  NGIRI’S CATCH

  Aaron Polson

  Old men say the River breathes and throbs and eats just like a man, but the River is no man. The River is older and infinitely larger. Being so, its hunger aches more than that of a man; its experience of the world stretches from a highland jungle dawn to the fat delta at the rim of an Atlantic sunset. The River knows. The River suffers barges and smaller dugout boats on its skin, mere gnats to the Baobab, because it knows a time before man and its patience reaches beyond mankind’s twilight. It has seen black skies burning with ice and waits for the fire-capped end. The River is home to myth, and legends play in its current.