We reached the library and all was as we had left it.
By the light of our lantern and with Holmes looking on bemused from beside the octagonal table, Carnacki first swept a part of the floor with a broom of hyssop (as he called it), then took careful measurements before drawing a pentacle around both himself and me with a stick of blue chalk.
“I’ve recently learnt that some colors are just as effective as particular substances and shapes in providing a defense,” Carnacki explained. “Doctor Watson, before I complete the pentacle please empty your pockets of all smoking paraphernalia. Light can act as a path for certain of the forces we may encounter, and I don’t want you forgetting yourself.”
I tossed my matchbox and cigarette case over to Holmes whose part was to stay outside this magical protection, no matter what occurred.
“It appears you’re traveling in a non-smoking carriage tonight,” said my friend cheerfully.
“And your role, Holmes,” said I a little testily as I eased myself down to sit upon the cold floor, “might be better suited if you were tethered by a rope and making the noise of a goat.”
“Bravo, Watson!” He began to laugh, then sniffed and asked, “Is that garlic?”
“It is, and it’s a smell I hate,” Carnacki said, wrinkling his nose and producing from his bag several cloves of garlic strung on a sturdy cord, followed by a gold chain from which depended a glittering pentacle. He stepped through the gap in the yet unfinished chalked star. “Humor my eccentricities, please, Mr. Holmes, and put these on.” He draped the strange necklaces around Holmes’ neck. “Garlic is a wonderful protection against the more usual Aeiirii forms of semi-materialization that I am supposing this to be.”
“And what if it proves to be a Saiitii manifestation, as you call it?” Holmes asked. There was, I noticed, a lack of banter in his tone now, and I wondered if his prejudices were beginning to weaken a little, as were my own.
“I consider it unlikely,” said Carnacki, returning to the pentacle to smudge a clove of garlic in lines parallel to the blue chalk. “The hollow-eyed ghost Mrs. Westen and the housekeeper witnessed, and the similar images you told me Doctor Watson and yourself saw in the window, lead me to suspect there is a human will behind this, but uncertain and amateur. Those ghosts were mistakes, I believe. Tentative experiments. Anyone so inexperienced meddling with Saiitii matters would be dead by now … or worse than dead.”
“Experiments in what?” said I.
“Avatars.”
“Avatars?”
“Hindu mythology, Watson,” said Holmes. “Manifestations of their gods on Earth, or in this case a projected persona.”
“You put the idea very neatly,” said Carnacki. “Doctor, do you have your gun?”
In answer I produced my service revolver from my coat pocket.
“Good. There’s no telling what level of materialization may take place. It may prove useful.” Carnacki finished both the garlic and chalk stars, enclosing us both.
Holmes sat down upon the floor, back against the wall and closed the shutter over the lantern, plunging us into darkness. So we began our night watch.
How shall I ever forget that dreadful vigil? I could not hear a sound, not even the drawing of a breath, and yet my companions sat open-eyed and close by, Holmes within a few feet and Carnacki beside me with our shoulders touching. From outside came the occasional cry of an owl and once I fancied hearing something scratch at one of the high windows. There in the dark and the quiet, without connection to the world, save for the now fading smell of bruised garlic, I felt adrift in the night. My old wound began to remind me of its presence with a dull but persistent ache. It did not like this long and enforced inactivity where the minutes dragged like hours, and neither did I.
Suddenly I felt Carnacki stir beside me.
“Something is about to happen,” he whispered.
Wondering how he could know this, I was overcome with an odd feeling of nervousness. Then Holmes shifted uneasily where he sat, the first sound he had made since closing the dark-lantern. He was, I supposed, experiencing the same weird sensation.
Outside, somewhere in the dark, a dog barked, giving two or three brief yaps and nothing more. It brought to mind the little dog presumably owned by the maid Susan that had caused such a commotion at our arrival. For some unaccountable reason, however, identifying the sound did not make me feel any better.
Then came another sound that did nothing for my nerves — the slow and stealthy opening of the church door, just as Carnacki had described before the attack on him that afternoon. Footsteps echoed faintly through the church, and presently there came a fumbling at the library door.
From nearby came the sound of squeaking metal and I knew Holmes had picked up the lantern by its handle in readiness to fling open its shutter. I drew my revolver from out my coat and aimed into that part of the darkness where I knew the door to be. I heard it too open in a slow and stealthy manner. Something was entering the library.
It came on in the dark, bearing no light, but with a quick, uncanny step amidst the furniture. I was certain it could see us plainly, and I dreaded a sudden attack out of the blackness. The footsteps stopped quite near to me and I heard something scuff against the radiator in what was surely an attempt to surmount it. It had evidently not seen us at all, and it occurred to me in a queer fashion that if there was anything to this magic of chalked stars and garlic it might not only protect but also obscure.
Just above me and to the left someone gave a grunt of exertion, a sound patently human. Light flashed across the room as Holmes unshipped the cover to his lantern, disclosing Professor Westen, still in his bed-clothes, holding onto the radiator’s piping as he attempted to unscrew a large connecting joint.
“Is this what you seek, Professor?” said Holmes, and swung the light away from Westen, playing it instead on the ancient scroll of The Sigsand Manuscript that he retrieved from his coat pocket.
The light veered again onto the Professor, shining into his unblinking eyes as he stiffly climbed down from the pipe and lumbered towards my friend with arms outstretched like a soulless automaton. Westen was all but upon him when the Professor flinched back, and I saw the pentacle around Holmes’ neck flash in the lantern light. Taking advantage of the confusion, Holmes threw the scroll deftly over the Professor’s head to where Carnacki, already rising, caught it between both hands. But in catching the precious grimoire he had reached too far forward and began to over-balance. The scroll fell from his hands, hit the floor and began to roll out of the pentacle. Dropping my revolver I grabbed the scroll with one hand while with the other clutched at Carnacki’s coat-sleeve as he began to pitch forward over the barriers — gripping him with all the fright and desperation I might feel rescuing a man teetering on the brink of a mighty chasm.
We seemed to swing in a moment of vertigo along the lines of garlic and blue chalk as though they were the very edge of the world. Then I pulled back with all the weight that Holmes had been so unkind about earlier, and we tumbled backwards together. I heard Carnacki gasp with relief, and it was only then I had a queer realization as to the danger we had been in.
But there was no time for reflection. “He’s coming your way!” I heard Holmes shout somewhere behind the glare of the lantern which now silhouetted something like a drunken string puppet stumbling blindly on toward us.
Carnacki and I were on our feet now. Professor Westen reeled closer, and attempted to cross the protective lines. As his foot hit the outer garlic barrier we made to grab him and haul him into the pentacle, but he staggered back as if struck and our fingers slid from him.
Westen stood quite still a few feet away, looking in at us with an odd, bewildered expression, his eyes unfocused in a way that made me think he could not really see us, despite the light. Then he tilted his head as if listening to something, a sound, or a voice that only he could hear.
“Yes,” he said. A moment later he began to choke, his face turning purple, spittle flec
king his lips, his tongue beginning to protrude.
“He’s choking!” I cried and tried to move forward to help, but Carnacki thrust out a muscular arm, barring my way.
“No, Doctor! You mustn’t cross the lines!”
Before I could even begin to struggle or protest, Holmes was upon Westen and with a mighty shove propelled him across the pentacle. We had him in our grasp in an instant, but it was as though we were pulling the man out of the Grimpen Mire. The resistance was simply incredible. After some seconds struggle, utilizing my weight and Carnacki’s strength, we wrenched Westen forward and the power holding him outside gave way so suddenly that we stumbled back. Much to my relief the Professor immediately lapsed into a bout of coughing, which cleared after a few seconds, and I knew he was breathing normally again.
“Hallo, it’s Thomas Carnacki,” the Professor said, smiling bemusedly at his old acquaintance. “What are you doing here?” He glanced about. “What has happened? What is The Sigsand Manuscript doing on the floor? Why am I in my night-shirt?” He then swung around to find me standing at his elbow and with a look of frank astonishment said, “And who the deuce are you, sir?”
“He is my colleague Dr. Watson and I am Sherlock Holmes,” said my friend, stepping forward with the lantern.
“The detective? What crime has been committed?”
“Only the strangest case of attempted theft I have ever come across. What do you last remember, Professor?”
“It is important we know,” Carnacki said, soothing Westen’s obvious indignation at this questioning.
“Well … I was working here in the library,” he said. “That was a few minutes ago.”
“It was in fact some days ago,” said I.
He glanced at me doubtfully, then continued. “I turned and saw someone at the library door, which I thought odd as I’d not heard any of the church doors open, and I was locked in at any rate, and then … and then you three were suddenly here.”
“You were induced by hypnosis to steal The Sigsand Manuscript,” said Holmes. “But you resisted to a degree, so that you were able to hide it, although the trance still held you fast as you struggled to resist so that you lay in your room in a kind of mental limbo for some days. I was sure another attempt to steal the book would be made when we feigned defeat.”
“And we were not a moment too soon,” said Carnacki. “It seems you finally succumbed to the will commanding you, and having failed you would have destroyed yourself in obedience to the controlling mind. Indeed it may still be active. You should stay within the pentacle until morning. You will still be in peril until then.” Carnacki paused, glanced to the side and added, “And so are we all.”
“From what, pray?” said Holmes.
“From that.” He pointed to the library doorway where stood a small shifting, rippling column of translucent white mist, vaguely human-shaped and watching us with two dark pits where the eyes should have been. It shimmered as if seen through a heat haze, though I felt the room go distinctly chill. As I looked, part of it sloughed off to drop silently to the floor as a horizontal bar of mist, which, as I continued staring, began to shape itself into some indistinct crouching beast.
It growled, a sound part tiger, part wolf, and most horribly … part human.
“Get ready, Watson,” said Holmes. The unaccustomed quiver in his voice made me glance around, and I saw he had his revolver at the ready. I knelt and picked up my own weapon. At my first movement the crouching thing sprang, coming at us in a curious lope while still congealing its substance from the mist it had been, a nightmare beast of fangs, fur and shining scales. It hissed, it screamed, it roared and flung out clawed arms as it came.
“Now!” cried Holmes, and together we fired shot after shot into the unholy thing, the reports echoing and re-echoing from the ancient stone walls. The beast was visibly hindered by our efforts, shuddering back momentarily before plunging forward again. Impeded but far from stopped.
It rushed past Holmes, ignoring him as he emptied his last chamber into it. My final shot was at point-blank range, fired just as it flung itself across the barriers of the pentacle, straight for Professor Westen. The three of us fell back. The thing hung in mid-air, checked an instant in its leap, and fell back, giving a single scream far more human than its cries hitherto. It clawed the air with its terrible arms. Carnacki, Westen and I rushed forward, grappling with those flailing limbs, thin and incredibly strong, touching something rough and hot and strangely soft while Holmes on the other side hammered at it with his revolver.
The thing surged forward a little more, scything wicked claws this way and that. I heard Carnacki yell and felt warm blood splatter across my hands.
It edged closer, its claws slashing, its fangs and slavering jaws alive with hunger.
It was crossing into the pentacle!
An arc of glittering gold caught my eye and I saw Holmes, having wrenched off his gold pentacle, swing it like a medieval knight’s mace and land it smartly down upon the creature’s head. Though it had resisted his hammering and was overcoming our three-fold fight against it, the gold pentacle smote with a sharp crack and in an instant it lost all vitality, slid to the floor and melted away to nothing.
It took me a moment to realize we had won, but a glimpse of the blood upon my clothes and hands reminded me victory had not been won without cost. I turned to Carnacki standing beside me, his face a mask of dazed horror, his right coat sleeve in ribbons and soaked in blood.
As I thought of suture and needles, disinfectant and morphine, the rents in his clothing sealed up and the blood faded, as did his expression of pain. He rolled up his sleeve and found no marks at all.
“If it had cut at your throat,” said Sherlock Holmes, shining the light full on Carnacki’s unbroken skin, “I fancy your mind would have killed you instantly.”
“Yes,” said Carnacki, nodding grimly.
“The ghost!” Westen suddenly exclaimed.
We looked to the library doorway but the watching apparition had gone.
We found the body of Susan the maid among the ruins of Grantchester Abbey early the next morning. In her right hand were hawthorn and rowan berries and what later proved to be cuttings of St. John’s Wort. In her left was a rag doll shaped into the form of some uncertain species of beast.
“I am shocked,” said Sherlock Holmes quietly as we looked upon the girl lying dead in the grass. “Shocked, but not surprised that such simple beauty should hide such diabolical evil.”
Later that day we apologized to Mrs. Westen for the fiction we had told her with such straight faces; apologies which were readily and gracefully accepted. The nightmare had been ended, and her husband returned to her, alive and healthy.
In the maid’s room, under the roof, we found further evidence that she had been meddling in the Mysteries, amongst her possessions were found two grimoires — The Book of the Cypress Tree and The Book of the Forty Words. Their contents, Carnacki assured us, were not for the uncertain and the amateur. As he leafed through her secret notebooks he shook his head sadly, declaring her a poor student.
“Who knows what disasters she might have wrought had she tried to put Sigsand’s text into practice,” he said, and shuddered a little. “We all strive to better ourselves, but she clearly had little idea of where her particular path would ultimately lead.”
Strangely enough there was no sign she had ever kept a dog. In fact the dog that had been seen with her many times since she had taken service in the Professor’s household was never seen again.
Two days after our adventure, as we rattled down to Grantchester station in the dog-cart, Holmes leaned across and said to me in confidential tones, “You know, Watson, my faith in all that is rational and real is as unshaken as always. You see that?”
“Of course, Holmes,” said I, although I was still inclined to speculate. He did think to strike with the gold pentacle even after our revolvers had failed to stop it.
“But for all that, I do believe that
our Mr. Thomas Carnacki has a fascinating career before him.”
The Steamship Friesland
The Steamship Friesland
by Peter Calamai
For reasons that will presently become obvious I have instructed my solicitors to withhold this tale from publication until 75 years after my death. It could be argued that I should have specified that span after the death of my companion and friend of many years, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, since he is the central character of the tale. Holmes, who so often came close to death during our adventures, bids fair to outlive me by many years, removed as he is from the unhealthy miasma of London to the pure air of the Sussex Downs and rejuvenated by the Royal Jelly, of whose regular use he believes me ignorant.
As I write, the nightmares of the Great War have eclipsed much of the previous public fascination with spectral happenings. Only a few years ago it was not thought frivolous to believe in an afterlife and in shadowy beings who could inhabit both the world of the living and that of the dead. Perhaps when this tale appears there will be still some who can remember the world of 1894 when ghosts moved among us.
My tale begins in the early summer of that year, just a few months after Holmes had effected the capture of Colonel Sebastian Moran, an event which I recorded in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’. Although that is now more than two decades ago, I am able to draw upon the customary accurate and complete notes that I kept of many of my friend’s unusual and important cases.
My wife had once again abandoned me for some ailing relations, so I was spending time in our old rooms at 221B Baker Street. I had retired early, but the deep ache from the Jezail bullet that had long ago pierced my flesh kept me from sleep. I was reading one of Kipling’s fine stories about Mowgli when my attention was diverted by unusual sounds from the sitting room. Long association with Holmes had inured me to the acoustical disturbances of violin playing, explosive chemical experiments and even indoor revolver practice. That night, however, it was the great detective himself who was the source of the troubling sounds.
Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes Page 19