“You did not leave your former body untenanted, though,” said Holmes. “This was no mere appropriation, but an exchange.”
“It was thanks to Nate that I had been left a cripple, so why not let him live for a while as I had had to for two years? Let him see how he liked it.”
“Was that not a risk? Whateley, alive, would pose a danger.”
“As weak, crippled Zachariah Conroy? Hardly. At best he might be a nuisance.”
“It would seem, then, that even rendered effectively brainless, Whateley’s body was still capable of performing the operation on you in turn. R’luhlloig was able to physically manipulate him.”
“R’luhlloig had full mastery of his nervous system,” said Conroy. “Like a hand in a glove.”
“I presume you anaesthetised yourself suitably before undergoing the procedure,” I said.
“I did not want to be fully unconscious, in case there were complications. I took a substantial draught of laudanum beforehand.”
“That would have dulled the pain but not numbed it altogether.”
“You are right. Even with the laudanum, what I went through was far from pleasant. It was, in point of fact, horrendous. But I endured it. I knew what this pain was going to buy me. The reward was worth the price.”
Conroy paused a moment, reflecting on the experience.
“To feel one’s inner self slowly being eroded,” he said, “one’s life and memories slipping away…” He shook his head. “I cannot truly put it into words. It was as though all that I was, the sum of my time on earth, was telescoping down, with a blackness encroaching upon me from all sides. I imagine actual death is not dissimilar. With each injection of Conroy’s Solution, I lessened. Then, with the withdrawal of my omnireticulum’s contents, I ceased to be anything recognisably ‘me’. I was formless. I had become chaos. I was a million moving parts, all whirling around and shooting off in different directions. I sensed that if I did not hold myself together somehow, I would dissipate entirely. I would lose coherence and never re-coalesce.”
“Why was Junior Brenneman not able to maintain integrity of mind when transferred into another body, and you were?” Holmes asked. “Does it have something to do with the desirability of the body in question? Junior found himself within a Negro. To one such as him, that must have been intolerable. You, on the other hand, have been installed into the physical frame of a figure whom you once admired and aspired to be like, and in some obscure way still do.”
“A nice analysis,” said Conroy, “psychologically valid, but wrong. The solution is both simpler and less mundane. R’luhlloig made the difference. R’luhlloig’s power was the glue that kept me from falling to pieces. What my own science lacked, he provided through divine might. He cupped me in his hands and sustained me while in serum form, so that I did not drift apart. Then, when I was inserted into Nate’s omnireticulum, I soon began to regain a sense of self.”
“Might I ask how the serum was injected into Whateley’s omnireticulum?” I said.
“Doctor, you are a fund of good, pragmatic questions.”
“Your former body was unoccupied. For Whateley to reach round to the back of his own head with the hypodermic needle containing your essence and use it accurately would have been nigh on impossible.”
“R’luhlloig had him thrust the needle up through the roof of his mouth.” Conroy mimed the action with a forefinger between his lips. “It penetrated the soft palate and up into the omnireticulum. The back of my throat is somewhat sore, even now. For the first day or so I could hardly speak. But again, as with the pain of the procedure, I felt this bearable and worthwhile. I was Nate Whateley! For ever after I would have the prestige of his family name. I would have his background, his finances, his allure to women, the lot. Zachariah Conroy was no more, and good riddance. He had only ever been a disappointment. From now on I could slip into the life of someone who had the world at his feet, rather than ploughing on as before –disfigured, missing a hand, a paltry loner.”
“There followed the final twist of the knife,” said Holmes. “Installing Whateley’s essence in your vacated body.”
“Another reason why I could not sedate myself. The job needed to be done quickly, while the serum was still potent and before the hole drilled in the back of Nate’s neck closed up. Thereafter all I had to do was sit back and wait for him to come round. I can assure you, his first whimpers of distress when he realised what I had done to him – it was music to my ears. Then he begged me to kill him, in that halting, clumsy baby-blather that was the closest he could now get to speech. His mind had withered during the transference, like Junior’s, for he had not had R’luhlloig to help him. Most of him had been lost. Yet he was self-aware enough to implore me to do away with him, and I? I refused. I would not show him that kindness. Not yet.”
Conroy exhaled a sigh that I can only call ecstatic. “And that is my story,” he concluded. “The tale of a man who plumbed the depths but crawled back out to scale the heights.”
“It is undoubtedly a useful coda to the text of your journal,” Holmes averred, “but it is not the full story, is it? There is more.”
Conroy arched an eyebrow. “Pray tell what I have omitted.”
“R’luhlloig will have demanded something of you in exchange for his bountifulness. I wondered whether it might be your services as a spy, but I am unconvinced by that idea. I think he would want something more intrinsically valuable, something he could obtain from you that he could from no other.”
“Why don’t you elucidate, Mr Holmes? Since you seem to believe you have all the answers.”
“Not all the answers,” said Holmes. “I am conscious that R’luhlloig has a specific disliking for me. He, through your auspices, has arranged it so that Dr Watson and I are your prisoners and that I am to have a cruel and unusual death visited upon me. Was it R’luhlloig who proposed you release Whateley, the occupant of your former body, and allow him to run free?”
“What if it was?” said Conroy coyly.
“By convincing you to turn Whateley loose, R’luhlloig was laying a trail. He would have known that Whateley would be found. It does seem surprising that this wretched figure, so addle-witted he was barely able to string a sentence together, could have contrived to escape from under your nose. A more credible explanation is that he did not. You let him go. He then became the first in a chain of clues leading me inexorably to your door. A naked man, seemingly insane, gabbling away in R’lyehian? Of course he would come to the notice of Sherlock Holmes. That was your intention, or rather R’luhlloig’s, and I am ashamed that I did not realise it sooner.”
“You are not infallible. Who is?”
“Yes, but I hold myself to a higher standard than most. You dangled a hook into the water, with Whateley as the bait, knowing that I would swim by and bite.”
“What tantalises Sherlock Holmes? What can he not resist? A mystery.”
“Then, feeling a tug on the line and needing to reel me in, you despatched your nightgaunt to retrieve Whateley from Bethlem and bring him back to you for disposal. I continued to follow the clues, and here I am. Here we are.” Holmes turned to me, head bent in remorse. “I am sorry, Watson, old friend. It is all too embarrassingly apparent that I have blundered. I simply did not intuit the deeper machinations at work.”
“It is not your fault,” I said. “I daresay the upshot would have been much the same.”
“The trap was well concealed,” Holmes continued, still overcome with chagrin. “But I should have spotted it. Am I forgiven?”
“You are.”
I should perhaps have been more reproachful than I was. Largely, however, I was focused on our imminent escape. I was waiting for Holmes to give the prearranged signal, so that I could put my part of the plan into action. All other considerations were secondary.
“Thank you.” Holmes turned back to Conroy. “So, you have obligingly shown your cards, and I am now under no illusion that I have been outplayed. I should lik
e, though, to have a word with your partner in crime. I have dealt with the monkey; now I wish to speak to the organ grinder.”
Conroy gave a little start, then nodded. “R’luhlloig told me you might make such a request.”
“It is not too much to ask. I believe R’luhlloig is as keen to renew acquaintance as I am.”
Renew acquaintance? I wondered if I had misheard. Had Holmes had some previous interaction with the Hidden Mind? If so, I was ignorant of it. Until this adventure began, this particular Outer God had been unknown to us.
Conroy laughed. “Very well then. I will overlook being referred to as a ‘monkey’ and permit you an audience with R’luhlloig. He will speak through me. Fair warning, though. The gun will remain trained upon you, and my finger will not leave the trigger. No sudden movements, please, and no tricks.”
“I would not dream of it,” said my companion.
Conroy steeled himself. Then, all at once, he stiffened. His face took on a different cast, becoming paler and weirdly attenuated. His eye sockets seemed to deepen, his brow to enlarge. His head hunched forward upon his neck, while his shoulders sagged somewhat.
The transformation took no more than a few seconds, and by the end we were looking at the same man, yet superimposed upon him there was another, one who was not as erect-spined and handsome as Nathaniel Whateley and who gazed upon us with a glittering-eyed intensity that was thoroughly disconcerting. This was neither Conroy nor Whateley, but a third party, an eldritch god incarnated in human form.
And then he spoke.
And then everything that was hitherto murky became crystal clear.
Appallingly so.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
A Well-Woven Web
“MR HOLMES,” SAID R’LUHLLOIG. THE VOICE issuing from the mouth of Nathaniel Whateley had changed somewhat. The accent was markedly more anglicised, with a certain wheedling, spidery cadence that I thought I recognised but could not immediately place. “The years have not been kind. What are you, forty? Forty-one? Yet one might easily take you for a decade older.”
“I am not alone in having changed,” replied Holmes. “You have undergone far greater alterations than I.”
“But you have deteriorated, sir, while I have improved. I am enhanced beyond measure. He who stands before you today is to his former self as the sun is to the moon. No longer am I a pallid reflection of other light; I am a mighty blaze!”
“What has not changed is your egotism.”
“Is it egotistical to extol oneself when one is a god?” Holmes’s interlocutor smirked. “I think not. Gods are, by definition, superior beings. We have no call for modesty. And a god is all the greater when he is one who has ascended to that empyrean acme from the lowly status of a man. I made myself divine. You cannot denigrate that achievement.”
“I have no intention to,” said Holmes. “I can only marvel at it.”
“Holmes?” I said. “I do not understand. You and R’luhlloig are talking familiarly, as though on close terms.”
“Ah, the ally,” said R’luhlloig. “The faithful Watson.” He studied me intently, his head oscillating from side to side with slow, pendulum-like precision. “You, too, have succumbed to the ravages of time, sir, if not as markedly as your colleague. Somewhat thicker around the midriff, somewhat thinner of hair.”
I found his scrutiny discomfiting, the more so since his words implied that this was not our first meeting. Yet how could it not be?
“You have known loss,” R’luhlloig continued, his gaze seeming to penetrate deeper into me. “There is a seam of grief within you, a black fissure that will not close. A loved one. A wife. She was torn from you, and a piece of your heart will forever be missing. How sad.”
“I… I…”
“No. No need to reply, Doctor. Whatever you are fumbling to utter, be it pithy comeback or mulish lament, it is meaningless to me. A god, remember? I have risen so far above human concerns, they are like motes of dust to a star.”
“You are fond of the astronomical simile,” Holmes said. “That is not surprising. Perhaps you have not sloughed off your old skin as completely as you would have us believe. More than a trace remains.”
“There are many things I have not forgotten, Mr Holmes,” said R’luhlloig. “Many aspects of my mortal life are lodged indelibly in my memory – not least its termination. How can I not recall that? And how can I disregard him who was the instigator of it?”
“You brought your death on yourself.”
“Not so. Had you not interfered, had you and I not fought hand-to-hand like two brawling hooligans, all would have been well. Instead, I became the victim of the very fate I had planned for you. In the event, it has proved to be for the best.”
“Then perhaps you should be offering thanks,” said Holmes, “instead of planning a horrible death for me.”
R’luhlloig chuckled throatily. “Still a quip ever at the ready. That much has not changed. As it happens, I am not grateful to you, Mr Holmes. Of course I am not. Nor, though this may come as a surprise, am I angry with you. I am resolved that you must perish, but I desire your demise not out of spite or peevishness or any other petty motive like that. It is tidiness, that is all. It sets things right and clears away a potential impediment. In hindsight, you see, you did me a favour in that cavern beneath Shadwell. You killed me, but at the same time you set me free.”
Now, at last, I knew who R’luhlloig was. The realisation was like a blow to the gut.
“Moriarty,” I breathed.
Once more those beady eyes fixed upon me. “Doctor, you have caught up with the rest of the class. Finally! I was debating whether to put you in the corner with a dunce’s hat on.”
“But…”
R’luhlloig held up a forestalling hand. “No. Let’s not hear any of it. ‘But I saw Professor Moriarty drown. I saw him hauled down into that pool by Nyarlathotep. He is dead. He has to be.’ The evidence of your own senses tells you the contrary. I am not dead. Rather, I have transcended. I have attained godhood.”
“How?”
“Once I realised I was doomed – I was being drawn deeper and deeper into the black depths of the pool and there was no escaping the grip of Nyarlathotep’s tentacle – I resigned myself to the inevitable. I let go of the chain I was holding onto, the other end of which was attached to Mr Holmes and by which I was dragging him down with me. In that moment, I made a decision. Nyarlathotep could have me, but he could not have my adversary as well. My soul, and mine alone, would be surrendered to the Crawling Chaos. I would not share that destiny with another, certainly not with the man who had upset my scheme to have godhood conferred upon me. For I still, even as the air in my lungs gave out and the need to breathe grew overwhelming, harboured the ambition of becoming deified. I merely had to accept that I had forgone the opportunity of doing it one way; therefore I must do it another. In that aim, Nyarlathotep was key.”
“You offered yourself to him voluntarily,” said Holmes.
“The ultimate sacrifice. Whereas I had tried to give him you, your brother, the good doctor here and that policeman in exchange for divine power, now I was giving him a single prize greater than the sum of the four of you: me.”
“If only you had elected to take that tack to begin with. It would have saved us all a lot of bother.”
“Snipe away, Mr Holmes, if it makes you feel better,” said R’luhlloig. Now that I knew he was Professor Moriarty, I could not mistake the snide, condescending tone. Deified or not, he spoke as Moriarty had. “To Nyarlathotep I submitted wholeheartedly. He took my all. He thought of me as sustenance, a feast, but I had other plans. What he had not reckoned with was my indomitable will. I determined that my soul was not mere god food. It was not to be digested. I became, rather, a force within him, insulated, a discrete entity. I resisted being absorbed and instead became the one who did the absorbing. Little by little I fed off Nyarlathotep from the inside.”
“Like a tapeworm.”
“Not an
inaccurate analogy, if reductive. I grew fat on his power. I was a parasite within, and him all unknowing. He began to weaken and I strengthened. Soon the Crawling Chaos ceased to be an inchoate mass. I used Nyarlathotep’s amorphousness against him, reshaping him, fashioning him in a new image from the inside out. I was the hidden mind within him, gradually coming to the fore. How long did it take? I cannot say. Time passes differently for the gods. Minutes to them can be hours; hours, eons. Each second is an eternity, and eternity a second. There is no temporal linear flow to it, either, as far as they are concerned: no past, present or future. The gods stand outside time, able to observe it much as we might observe a cube in space, a three-dimensional object that we may turn over, look under, revolve, stand on its end… I apologise. Some concepts cannot readily be conveyed in words. At any rate, whether it took a year or forever or the blink of an eye, Nyarlathotep ceased to exist as he had hitherto been known, and in his place was R’luhlloig.”
“A new Outer God.”
“One born, phoenix-like, from the ashes of a man. Who else but James Moriarty could have made that leap?”
“Congratulations would be in order,” said Holmes, “were you not already congratulating yourself so fulsomely.”
R’luhlloig regarded my companion with lofty contempt. “These efforts to irk me smack of desperation. What result are you hoping for? To goad me into some drastic error of judgement? To provoke me until I shoot you dead out of sheer irritation? Believe me when I say that your barbs find no purchase. I am a god, and you are not even a nuisance.”
“It is clear, nevertheless, that you still hold a grudge against me, Moriarty.”
“‘R’luhlloig’, if you would.”
Holmes puffed out a breath of air dismissively. “Since you insist. R’luhlloig. It is clear, too, that in spite of my being so apparently insignificant, you have gone to a great deal of trouble to effect my capture. You convinced Nathaniel Whateley to relocate to England.”
The Cthulhu Casebooks--Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities Page 28