Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu

by Lois H. Gresh

  Mr. Norris slammed his fists against both sides of his head. I grabbed his hands and pulled them away from his face. The poor man would beat his head to a pulp if I allowed it.

  His right eye popped open as he struggled weakly against me. I guided his hands gently down to the armrests again. He slouched in the chair.

  “What do you see, Mr. Norris, what do you see now?” I asked.

  He blinked. Across the day room, Miss Klune, my nurse, smoothed a vinegar-water lotion across the forehead of Mr. Jacobs, who prattled in a daze from his usual position upon the floor. Several other patients sat, propped so as not to fall from their chairs, and stared into oblivion. Mrs. van der Kolk traced the air with a finger, giggled, and babbled about her undergarments. Mr. Robertson’s head lolled to one side, drool coursing down his chin and saturating his night shirt.

  I had few women in the asylum and preferred to keep them in the same wing as the men. Had separate wings been a requirement, I would have been forced to toss all of my female patients back onto the streets.

  Mr. Norris’s body went limp. His head slumped forward.

  I lifted his chin and stared into his eyes: pupils dilated, large black circles displaying no intellect, just the emptiness of those whose minds had fizzled. He tilted his head and gazed upward. His lips muttered a short prayer, then:

  “My oppressors,” he whispered, looking at me again, “they are gone.”

  “Any floating heads?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “No, sir.”

  “Any floating hands, pointing incriminating fingers at you?” I asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “And the voices?”

  His head bowed, and a few tears trickled down his cheeks.

  “They never stop. Never.” He began to cry. “The voices are always there. They never leave me alone.”

  I called to my nurse. I was fortunate to have Clara Klune here at the Whitechapel Lunatic Asylum. Stout, with strong legs and arms, and steady nerves, she was perhaps thirty-five years old to my forty-five; and she believed firmly in my pursuit of electrotherapeutic remedies for neural psychoses. I’d rather have one Miss Klune than ten male nurses, I thought with satisfaction.

  She tried to comfort Mr. Norris with soothing words and by stroking his arms and hands.

  “Dr. Sinclair will help you,” she said in a monotone flattened from years of issuing the same promise over and over again, “I’m sure of it. He’s the best doctor in the world, Mr. Norris, and you know we only want to help you.”

  “Yes, yes,” my patient blubbered, “but can Dr. Sinclair fight the devil?”

  “I can,” I replied, straightening myself up and snapping off my gloves, “and I will. Miss Klune, we must give him relief. Is the Eshocker machine ready?”

  “I fear we must delay Mr. Norris’s treatment for some moments more. We have a new patient. And that pesky man is here again, the one who always upsets you so.”

  I stared into her ice-blue eyes. Strong and efficient, that was Miss Klune. Ice-blonde hair in a bun, hidden by her white nurse’s hat, ice-thin lips emitting soothing words in the same tone they emitted words about my schedule.

  “I will see the new patient shortly. In the meantime, restrain Mr. Norris and then send in my visitor, so I can dispose of him as quickly as possible.”

  She nodded, strapped Mr. Norris into his chair, and hurried away. Truly, she was irreplaceable. She handled various attendants’ tasks and never complained, and the money I saved on labor, I plowed into research. Issuing some bland words of comfort to Mr. Norris, I left the patients’ day room and returned to my small office.

  I rarely used the office, only when shuffling papers and talking business, never for treating patients. Although I was the director of the asylum, I despised administrative duties and much preferred research into the treatment of the insane.

  On the wall behind my battered desk were a dozen diplomas, awards, and testimonies. A stack of papers, held in place with a fossil from the Dorset coast, awaited my attention. I had barely settled into my cushioned chair before there was a knock and my office door swung open.

  I did not rise as Miss Klune showed the procurement agent into the room. I did not greet him.

  He gave me a jagged smile, displaying crooked teeth, and squeezed his massive body into one of the chairs on the other side of the desk.

  Miss Klune’s lips tightened, and she cast her eyes down and bustled back out of the office. She knew how much I despised this man. He was always squeezing me for more machines and higher profit margins.

  My mind was on the new, unknown patient. Who was he? What was wrong with him? Could I help him? Most important, could my Eshocker cure him?

  My visitor didn’t waste time with niceties.

  “The Professor requires a massive shipment of den devices. A fortune’s to be made, but only if we can equip our dens with more of your machines. How much longer do you intend to make us wait? When will we receive the new shipment?” His voice was soft and low. It always surprised me how calmly this man addressed me. His appearance conveyed an immediate impression of force and violence, of raw brutality. The procurement agent, whose name I didn’t know, even after all this time, was well over six feet tall and packed with at least 220 pounds of rock-hard muscle. His hands were thick, the skin tough: a working man’s hands. He dressed like a dock worker: cap, jacket, heavy shirt, dirty trousers.

  Always, he wanted the same thing: more and yet more electrotherapy devices for Professor Moriarty’s Eshocker dens. I was all for the use of electrotherapy. The list of treatments was seemingly endless. However, I wasn’t particularly interested in administering jolts of electricity to ordinary fellows seeking thrills.

  “You know,” my visitor continued, repositioning his bulk in the small chair, “you aren’t the only supplier. We can get these devices elsewhere. We can even build them, if we want. There’s nothing magical about what you supply, Dr. Sinclair.”

  “You’re threatening me?” I bristled. “I don’t like your tone, Mr.—?”

  “My name is not important. I’ve told you that before. What is important is giving my employer what he asks of you. Refusals are discouraged. Strongly discouraged. We will have these devices, with or without your cooperation.”

  How dare this man address me in such an insolent manner?

  “They’re much too dangerous to fool with!” I snapped, jumping up and pounding my fist on the desk. “I own the patent on these devices! You wouldn’t dare—”

  My visitor also stood, flinging his chair aside. It clattered across the floor and hit the wall by the door to my treatment room.

  He advanced two steps toward me. Then he paused, cast me a nasty grin, and reached into his pocket.

  My heart lurched. What was he going to do? Shoot me right here in my office? I was a medical doctor, not a criminal. Who would kill a man who had devoted his life to helping others?

  He slid brass knuckles over the fingers of his right hand.

  I pushed back my chair and stepped back, as if this would do any good. Taking several deep breaths and waiting for my heart to stop racing, I reminded myself that Professor Moriarty and his procurement agent were not ordinary businessmen. They were criminals. They had no respect for decency. When I spoke again, my words were calm and measured—the same way I addressed my patients.

  “I’ll build the devices for you. Very soon, I promise. Tell your employer that I appreciate his business.”

  “When will they be ready, and how many?” the other demanded, his right hand balled into a fist, the brass knuckles gleaming dully. They looked worn and scratched as if from overuse.

  “Give me a week,” I said, “and I’ll have my men make five machines. Will that suffice?”

  Now it was his fist—the one with brass knuckles—that pounded my desk, making me jump. His jagged smile widened, and yet his voice remained soft and low.

  “Ten a week, every week, until I say, no more,” he said.


  That was a high rate of production for me. I employed the services of two lunatics to build each device. I didn’t want any one man to build an entire machine. I didn’t want to give away all of my secrets, not even to lunatics. I would have to train more of my patients and set them to work at night. I didn’t like the idea. The two who worked for me now were well suited to the task; they’d been machinists and builders before being committed to the asylum.

  The money I earned from selling these devices to Professor Moriarty’s Eshocker dens enabled me to pay Miss Klune and my other nurse, Miss Switzer. It enabled me to pay for the necessary medicines and foods, whose bills lay upon my desk as we spoke. Without the income, the Whitechapel Lunatic Asylum would be a filthy, cramped, horror house filled with patients I wouldn’t be able to help. No bedding. No clothing. No treatment. Just shrieking lunatics in strait-waistcoats.

  No. I would not live with that option. My asylum was modern, if small. It was humane. It was a research institution, where I was making major breakthroughs with my Eshockers and on the cusp of filing patents for both hospital mode and extreme treatment mode. The devices I supplied to this man were incapable of giving more than mild shocks. They couldn’t hurt anyone; they were used only for pleasure and simple treatments. Certainly, people were addicted, but this was no different from other addictions such as morphine, cocaine, alcohol, and so forth.

  Anything good could be used for bad, but the fact remained that my machines existed to do good.

  “We know how your machines work,” Moriarty’s man pressed, “and we won’t hesitate to build them elsewhere, if you make us. We prefer, of course, that you supply the equipment. It’s much easier for us that way. The Professor is not interested in factories or labor problems, only in profit.”

  The profits must be immense, I thought. I had been told that customers paid a shilling a pop for an electric buzz. But they paid the dens all day every day, selling their bodies, if necessary, to get those shillings. Professor Moriarty’s Eshocker dens were more addictive than opium dens.

  “If you build my machines without me…” I wanted to say, I’ll sue you, but I knew all that would get me was a crack of brass knuckles to my face.

  The man laughed at me. He was already halfway to the door. Apparently, he’d guessed what I was about to say, for he answered my unspoken words:

  “What will you do, Dr. Sinclair, sue us? Just try, and here’s what you’ll get: the services of another professional. He’s called the gravedigger.”

  I shrank back, afraid to say another word.

  What was I thinking, to threaten this man, even in the most weak manner? If I wanted Moriarty to finance the asylum, I had to round up more lunatics to build more machines. It was simple mathematics.

  “Make those machines. Ten a week.” A fat finger pointed at my face.

  I bobbed my head up and down, and Moriarty’s emissary left, scowling but without further comment.

  I waited a good five or ten minutes, then bellowed:

  “Miss Klune! Bring the new patient!”

  Let me return to my research, let me study a new malady, let me examine a new patient: anything but worrying about funding, finances, administrative matters, and how on earth I’m going to build ten den mode Eshockers every week.

  The nurse, attuned to my behavior after a decade of service, heard my call and rushed into the office. Accompanying her was the surprise of a lifetime. My new patient.

  He was someone I knew… very, very well.

  6

  “Y-you’re the madman, n-not me!” the new patient shrieked. “Y-you know what you are!” Then his words oozed into one long nonsense syllable. He fought to carve the babbling into words, shaking his head, grimacing, stuttering, but to no avail.

  Miss Klune waved at someone in the hall, and my other private nurse, Amy Switzer, rushed in behind her. The two of them, as strong as nurses come, pinned Bligh Braithwaite’s arms behind his back while avoiding his kicking legs. He struggled valiantly, I had to give him that, but he’d always been a weakling and was no match for even one of the asylum’s nurses.

  My lips curled into a professional fake smile, the one I put on when trying to calm irrational creatures such as Bligh Braithwaite.

  “Let’s bring him into the treatment room, shall we?” I said.

  The two nurses dragged the patient across the office. He continued to struggle, his body twitching, his arms trying to break free. Slobber dripped from his mouth along with a stream of gibberish. His eyes had that foggy look I knew so well: behind them, a dull brain sloshed through dim-witted thoughts. His legs dragged behind him. Miss Klune twisted the knob to the treatment room and kicked open the door.

  “Y-y-yooooooo…” Braithwaite slobbered.

  “Yes, and what about me, sir?” I said.

  “Shall we strap him in, Doctor?” Miss Klune interjected.

  Nodding, I followed the nurses and the new patient into my treatment room and gestured at the left Eshocker.

  “Use that one,” I said.

  “Y-y-yooooooo! N-n-n-n-n-no!” Braithwaite shrieked.

  He looked worse than I remembered. His hair was unkempt and wild. His clothes were tattered and hung from his emaciated frame. His beard was perhaps an inch long, like a growth of weeds poking from dirt.

  But his behavior certainly hadn’t changed. When Miss Klune released him to unlatch the wrist and ankle straps on the Eshocker, Braithwaite doubled over at the waist and twisted his arms and legs in bizarre contortions. His entire body shuddered as if he were experiencing an epileptic seizure, but I knew better. Braithwaite didn’t have epilepsy. Braithwaite was insane.

  Miss Switzer kept her grip on one of his arms and tried to jerk his body into an upright position. Her face stormed with anger.

  “This patient is out of control!” she snapped.

  “Aren’t they all?” I said.

  “Shouldn’t you talk to him before rushing into treatment?” she demanded.

  When I’d first seen Braithwaite in my office, all I could think was: he’s here, and I don’t know why or how he’s here, but I must take care of him immediately. The shock of seeing him in my asylum had made me act before sufficiently considering the situation.

  I fingered the watch tucked beneath my vest. I thrust my other hand into a trouser pocket.

  Miss Klune trained her ice-blue eyes on Miss Switzer.

  “Don’t question the Doctor,” she said. “He knows what he’s doing. This patient requires immediate Eshocker treatment.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Miss Switzer shoved Bligh Braithwaite onto the cushion of the Eshocker machine.

  Sometimes, I wondered if she was up to the job. She was an excellent nurse, very good with tormented patients, and her calming effect on them was undeniable. Yet there was an underlying anger in her that never seemed to go away. Her eyes were always sharp and glaring. Her forehead bore permanent creases, including a vertical one descending from her hairline to her eyebrows. The sides of her mouth drooped downward. Taller than Miss Klune, Amy Switzer’s physique was masculine: broad shoulders, muscular arms, large hands, powerful legs, and as for breasts, I wasn’t sure she had anything there.

  Miss Klune thrust a ball into Braithwaite’s mouth and wrapped gauze around his head to secure the gag. She snapped his wrists and ankles securely into the straps.

  Tears streamed down his face. His eyes beseeched me.

  I looked away.

  “Tell me about this man,” I said, but only to appease Miss Switzer.

  Miss Klune answered.

  “The patient is Bligh Braithwaite. He escaped from the Kandinsky Asylum for the Poor not long ago. Apparently, he was trying to break into our asylum when the police came across him. Imagine! He was gnawing at the chains of the main gate.”

  I circled the gurney, the cabinet that held my surgical equipment, and the metal examination table. Making my way to the other side of the room, where the second Eshocker stood, I admired the machine. How
amazing that a chair with a large wooden box next to it could bring such relief to those afflicted with neural psychoses. The engineering was pure genius. Why use direct current when you could use an alternating current, which could be increased to higher voltages using a transformer? Why use expensive batteries when you could recharge them? Why use steady milliamperes when you could apply varying amounts of electricity based on the patient’s needs? Why give a patient toxic medications when you could give him restorative, clean, healthy electrotherapy, all calibrated to his unique requirements?

  “Dr. Sinclair?” Miss Klune prompted.

  Returning my attention to Bligh Braithwaite, I pictured him gnawing on the chains of the asylum gates.

  “How did the police know that this man came from the Kandinsky Asylum?” I asked.

  “He told an officer his name—he can speak, though as you have just heard he has a dreadful stammer. It was a simple matter to trace him to the Kandinsky Asylum, which had reported him missing.” She considered. “Perhaps he escaped from Kandinsky, went on the run, found he couldn’t take care of himself—no food, no place to sleep but the alleys—and he decided to seek asylum, as it were, at another asylum.”

  Braithwaite had stopped struggling and was limp in the chair. Drool dripped from his open mouth. What a mess he was.

  I would help him. In the process, I would also help myself—his fixation with me had obviously reasserted itself. It would probably be best to keep him here rather than ship him back to Kandinsky. It was just as well that I had him in my control.

  “Just like a lunatic,” I said. “He breaks out of one asylum, only to break into another. Well, he’s here now, isn’t he? And he knows full well what happens in places like this, doesn’t he?”

  “I doubt he expected a Dr. Sinclair Eshocker,” said Miss Switzer.

  “Well, he is in for the shock of his life,” I said drily. “Nurses, you know the drill. Out with you! Go!” I waved them from the room. This was the type of treatment I always handled alone. Just me and the patient. It was critical to the patient’s mental well-being. Nobody else would understand what was happening in this room, nor did I want anybody questioning me. The Eshockers were mine, and mine alone.