Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu

by Lois H. Gresh

  I’d been in asylums before and witnessed the lack of regard for patients. Asylums were nothing more than jails for lunatics. But this situation was appalling. Here was a man clearly in need of help, who had apparently found his way to the asylum on his own, and what were they doing? They were ignoring him.

  “This is preposterous,” I said, standing and gesturing at the bleeding man. White foam bubbled on his lips. “I insist, sir, that you help this man or find someone who can. I am not authorized to do so, nor do I have my bag with me.”

  “You deemed yourself authorized enough to slip past me earlier, didn’t you?” demanded the other.

  At this, Holmes intervened, still standing by the door that led into the asylum.

  “This man has been here before, yes?” When the attendant nodded, bewildered, Holmes continued, “And you’ve asked Dr. Sinclair to help him. Dr. Sinclair refused. You badgered the good doctor to no avail. Indeed, your employer threatened to end your employment here if you persisted in trying to help this poor, suffering individual.” Holmes pointed at the sick man on the floor.

  “How do you know that?” I asked, as bewildered as the attendant.

  “Yes, how?” the man repeated.

  “It is obvious, sir. I see the blood droplets upon your collar. I see the encrusted white foam, dried now upon your cheeks. I saw how you overlooked our presence, enabling us to pass undisturbed into the asylum, how fraught with anxiety you were about this man’s condition. And yet, upon Dr. Watson’s request that you call Dr. Sinclair to help this man now, you steadfastly refuse. Thus, I conclude that you’ve tried to get help for this man in the past, but failed.”

  In response, the attendant blurted out his story:

  “You’re right—about all of it, Mr. Holmes! This man is my sister’s husband, Mr. Malcolm Demane. They have five children, Mr. Holmes. Malcolm was just like you and me, but in the past few months, he’s been like this—drooling, chewing his own skin, foaming at the mouth. He’s sick, Mr. Holmes, and I can’t get Dr. Sinclair to see him. The family doesn’t have the money for hospital. I’m the only one with any job at all. My sister begs me, night and day she begs, ‘Help him, help my Malcolm,’ but always, I fail. The last man on the door left last week, and I got this position only recently, having spent many a year in the kitchen washing dishes. I prefer not to return to the kitchen. I prefer not to lose my job, and I prefer that my sister stop pestering me.”

  Holmes did not move from his position by the door. Normally, he would have tried to comfort the man. I inched toward the door myself, thinking Holmes would again dash into the asylum at any moment. And, while I wasn’t wrong in my conclusion, how it happened did take me by surprise.

  “Will you talk to Dr. Sinclair for me, or at least to Miss Klune?” the man asked. “She’s the head nurse and has a lot of power. The Doctor often listens to her advice. Will you help my brother-in-law get into the asylum?”

  Holmes straightened himself.

  “I’ll do all that I can,” he said. “I give you my word, sir.”

  “And I, as well,” I added.

  The man turned his back to us.

  “Do as you will, then,” he said. “As before, I’m busy with Malcolm, and let us say that I see nothing else. I dare not lose this job. But please, help him.”

  Holmes cast me a determined glance, then twisted the door knob and dashed back into the asylum. Together, we darted down the hall and around a corner.

  We had entered a day room, of sorts. There were no picture windows, no teapots, and no maids adjusting flowered curtains. Instead, I saw one tiny iron-barred window, set high up in the wall, and where in a hospital I might expect to see at least one dead plant, this miserable cell lacked even that. Several heavily drugged inmates sat propped on chairs. A few more had curled into fetal positions for naps. The room reeked of urine, excrement, and rotting flesh. One man waved at imaginary things in the air and talked to them, another threatened murder when he spied us. A woman eagerly let out a stream of obscenities about her undergarments. Most of these inmates were past their prime, though here and there were a few younger patients, drooling and babbling along with their elders. Certainly, Malcolm Demane would fit in without a problem.

  “Willie Jacobs isn’t here,” Holmes whispered. “Come, let’s check farther down the next hall, but beware, Watson, of that nurse or any other staff member.”

  We passed a door marked Dr. Reginald Sinclair. I heard nothing from within: either the doctor was out of his office, or he was reading in utmost quiet. I supposed we would return to his office after visiting Willie Jacobs. We had promised to ask Dr. Sinclair to help Malcolm Demane. As a fellow doctor, I felt confident that I’d be able to persuade Dr. Sinclair to extend some form of minimal treatment to the poor fellow.

  “You’re the one is mad!” someone screamed.

  Holmes curled a finger and gestured at me, and together, we crept toward a door, from which we’d heard the scream emanate. I could tell from Holmes’s face that he also recognized the voice: it was Willie Jacobs. A terrible sadness fell upon me, for it was our fault—Holmes and mine—that Jacobs was in this predicament. We had checked him into this place. We’d had no choice.

  Holmes paused before the door. His face, typically bleached of color, was tinged pink. His eyes softened.

  Then he twisted the door knob, and we both entered Jacobs’s room. He looked even worse than on the day we had checked him in. Holmes and I were speechless. Shocked at his condition, we just stared at him.

  Shoved into a room the width of two coffins, and squirming on a ratty bed, Willie Jacobs appeared an inch from death. Although only in his mid-twenties, he was bald except for a few wisps of hair. Scabs littered his face and brown-splotched scalp. Yellow skin hung loosely from his face and neck. With his right knuckles, he jabbed rhythmically at his enlarged nostril. Although his clothes were filthy and torn, he smelled faintly of cheap soap. He had already lost a lot of weight, and he’d not had much meat on him when we brought him here. What was most striking was that he had lost his vigor. He did not rise when we entered the room. He did not seem to recognize us. Indeed, he did not seem to realize that anyone was in the room at all.

  His face and chin bore the red imprints of a strap, which, I assumed from the marks, must have held something that covered his mouth. On his forehead were two red circles, one on each side. Had they gagged him before treating him with an Eshocker? This was my first thought, for I knew that Dr. Reginald Sinclair used his Eshockers in the asylum, only a short distance from Thrawl Street and its insidious pleasure dens.

  Willie Jacobs’s eyes focused on the ceiling. He spewed constant gibberish about the tram machine—“It wants to kill me!”—about his father—“The beast killed me dad!”—and about Holmes—“You can’t stop the beast! You’ll fail, an’ you’ll always fail, Mr. ’olmes. The beast is smarter than you!”

  “Mr. Jacobs,” Holmes said gently, and the man’s mouth snapped shut. His eyes at last focused on us.

  “Mr. Jacobs, it is I, Sherlock Holmes, and here is Dr. Watson. We have come to see how you are.”

  Knuckles jabbed the blood-encrusted nostrils. I’d thought Willie Jacobs had phossy jaw, but now I wondered if something unknown had infected him. I had felt changes in myself that frightened me, and I didn’t have phossy jaw. In my case, my nightmares were filled with warbling and screeching, and while awake, I often saw wisps of color in odd places and tendrils of bubbles floating in the air and along cracks in buildings and walkways. My mind felt fuzzy, unclear. Looking at Willie Jacobs now, I wondered.

  Would I end up like him? Did I also suffer from neural psychosis?

  13

  “Mr. ’olmes,” Jacobs rasped, “it’s you, in the flesh.”

  Holmes wedged himself between the clammy wall and the bed and clasped Jacobs’s hand.

  “It is I,” he said, and then in a kind tone, “We will do all that we can to ensure your safety and well-being. Tell me, please, what treatment have
you received today? What has affected you thus?”

  At this, Willie Jacobs trembled, and his body convulsed. Holmes grasped his hand more tightly.

  “Please, sir—” he said.

  I pushed past a jumble of dirty bed linen and medical paraphernalia heaped on a side table, and I pressed a firm hand upon Jacobs’s upper arm.

  “What have they done to you?” I asked.

  “Th-the… it… it’s the Eshockers!” Jacobs cried, wrenching his hand from Holmes and clutching at me. “P-please, Dr. Watson, p-please, ’elp me escape from this place! It ain’t safe ’ere! More deadly than—” he broke off, and his body convulsed again—“than the… the beast’s buildin’!”

  The Eshockers, I thought. They’re much more dangerous than Holmes realizes. Look what electrotherapy has done to Willie Jacobs.

  “Of what do you speak?” Holmes asked.

  “M-mercy killin’s, done in the name of s-science.” Jacobs’s voice was barely a whisper. His body went slack. He released his grip upon my arms. “I-I saw ’em kill an inmate. Saw it with me own eyes. I saw it.”

  Holmes glanced at me, his eyebrows raised. I didn’t know what to make of Jacobs’s latest outburst. Was it the product of a delusional mind? Was he hallucinating?

  “Who killed the patient?” Holmes asked.

  “D-don’t know. Couldn’t see that.”

  “Do you know the name of the patient, then?”

  “N-no, Mr. ’olmes.”

  “Where did you see this crime take place, sir?”

  “Out there, in the ’all.”

  “Not in a treatment room?”

  “No, in the ’all!”

  “I see,” Holmes said, as he straightened himself and headed for the door. “We’ll consider your allegation, Mr. Jacobs. In the meantime, please know that we will continue to follow your case and that you are not alone.”

  Willie Jacobs begged us not to leave. Tilting his head up and rapidly jabbing his nostrils with his right thumb, he began to weep.

  “You’re me only ’ope, as I tol’ you before. You were to save me,” he wailed, “and now I’m ’ere. This place, it’s ’ell, if indeed there is one, and Mr. ’olmes, it was you what put me ’ere.”

  All that he said was true. We had promised to help him, and we had brought him to the Whitechapel Lunatic Asylum. The guilt of it all marked Holmes’s face as clearly as it must have marked my own.

  We remained with Willie Jacobs, trying to comfort him, but eventually the sense of his words was lost again in delirium and he seemed not to see us anymore.

  “It is a sad thing to see Willie Jacobs so reduced,” I said as we left the room.

  Holmes already had other matters on his mind. “Watson, we must find Dr. Sinclair, the creator of these Eshockers,” he said. “We do not have much time if we are to dine with Mycroft this evening. There is much to discuss in the matter of the creatures that attacked the boat.”

  Within moments, we stood outside Dr. Sinclair’s office again. Holmes knocked several times, then tried the handle. It was unlocked, and we stepped into the office.

  Dr. Sinclair was not inside. The desk was tidy: a bundle of medical and supply bills was piled neatly beneath a large fossil to one side, a pen with ink and an unmarked blotter stood ready. The leather chair looked comfortable and well worn. Judging from the indentation on the seat, Dr. Sinclair was of medium build. Judging from the honors and degrees posted on the wall behind his desk, Dr. Sinclair knew what he was doing.

  Suddenly, a door on the inner wall swung open, and a medium-sized man with a neat black mustache and a beard burst into the room. He wore a doctor’s white coat with pocket embroidery proclaiming him to be Dr. Reginald Sinclair, Director. His immaculate hair was clipped to precision, framing a visage of heavy brows, thick lips, large nose, and bulging eyes. When he saw us his face blazed with fury.

  “With what authority do you enter my private office?” He drew himself up and smoothed his white coat.

  “I am Dr. John Watson,” I said, stepping past Holmes and extending my hand. “Mr. Sherlock Holmes and I are investigating incidents in this area, which may be related to the Whitechapel Lunatic Asylum, on behalf—”

  “Mr. Sherlock Holmes, eh?” The other man visibly calmed at the mention of Holmes’s name. “Do sit down, gentlemen.” He gestured at two guest chairs, an uncomfortable wooden set that didn’t invite visitors to stay long. “I understand it was you who committed one of my newest patients, Mr. Willie Jacobs.”

  “That is correct,” I said, sitting down. “We have just been visiting, as a matter of fact. You put up your patients in very small rooms, Doctor.”

  My words hit a nerve. “We have had quite an intake in the past few weeks, gentlemen, quite an intake,” said Sinclair, his face reddening again. “We are having trouble finding the space, I must admit. Why, just this morning I had to take in another fellow, Bligh Braithwaite, who was actually trying to break in to the asylum. The madhouse he escaped from doesn’t seem to want him back.”

  I saw from Holmes’s distant expression that I had wandered from the point of our visit. “You are providing Eshockers for the local dens?” I asked. When the doctor nodded with a puzzled expression, I continued, “I don’t mean to be offensive, I assure you, but I wonder if you know the use your electrotherapy machines are being put to. Are you aware that your machines are being used to drug people into addictive behavior?”

  Dr. Sinclair’s cheeks quivered, and he settled back into his chair, hiding his hands beneath the desk. His fingers steadily rapped the underside of the wood.

  “What is your point, sir? Are you suggesting that I am party to a criminal act? If so…” Sinclair shrugged, clearly trying to appear nonchalant, but his hands shook and his face was still red with anxiety. We had rattled him, of this I was certain.

  Holmes looped an arm over the back of his chair.

  “We are not accusing you of any crime, sir. We seek to understand the phenomenon behind your Eshockers and their effect on the populace. Frankly, there is concern about the growing addiction to your machines.”

  Dr. Sinclair pondered his options, then replied, “I sell the machines, yes, but only for a meager profit that enables me to buy supplies, medicines, and food for my patients. If not for the sale of these machines, gentlemen, I fear the doors of this hospital would be forced to close. Certainly, I could not afford to treat as many patients. We would have to turn away many who are dangerous, not only to themselves but also to others. These patients are very ill and suffer greatly, gentlemen.” His face glistened with sweat, which he mopped off with a trembling hand.

  Again, Holmes tried to soothe him.

  “Our objective is to help doctors—like yourself, Dr. Sinclair—make patients well again. There is a man in your waiting room—right now, as a matter of fact—who desperately needs your help, yet he says you cannot admit him.”

  “As I said, we’re overcrowded and underfunded.”

  Holmes darted a look at me, and this time, I addressed the doctor. “And aren’t we all underfunded and understaffed, with our asylums most ill-equipped to help patients as best as we’d like due to regulations and lack of resources?” I said. “I thoroughly understand your points, Dr. Sinclair, for I am also struggling to help patients with mental afflictions. I’m sure you have your patients’ best interests at heart.”

  “I do!” the other cried. “I want only to help them, gentlemen! Surely you do understand this, yes? We know so little about the human condition, particularly the brain, which is my specialty. I have poor fellows in here who can’t remember their own names, who think they’re Jesus Christ, who see visions and hear voices. I have women who think they’re Joan of Arc or Catherine the Great. I have women who think they have ten children when, in actuality, they have none.”

  “Rather than sell Eshockers to these dens to fund your institution, might you instead obtain monies from private benefactors?” I asked.

  “Clearly,” he replied, frowning a
t me, “I have attempted to do just that, Dr. Watson, but with little success. Charity goes only so far.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I understand your point. As fellow scientists, we hope you can demonstrate for us how your Eshockers work.”

  “That’s impossible. I’m very busy, as you might guess. Please, if there is no other matter…?” Dr. Sinclair rose and clasped his hands behind him. He walked toward the office door, gesturing at us to get out of our chairs, and obviously, to get out of his office.

  “One moment. There is the matter of Mr. Malcolm Demane,” I said, doing as Dr. Sinclair wanted, walking to the door with Holmes. “As a professional courtesy to me, would you kindly admit the poor man and help him, at least with some minimal treatment?”

  Dr. Sinclair put a hand on my back and shoved me, gently, through the doorway. He nodded.

  “As a professional courtesy, yes, I will do as you ask. In return, sir, as a professional courtesy, I insist that you stay out of my private business affairs. The Whitechapel Asylum has nothing to do with you. The government can shut down the dens, if it so wishes. That is the government’s choice.”

  “But without den equipment—” I started to say.

  “If I don’t give these men their equipment,” the doctor said sharply, “they’ll get it somewhere else. At least, gentlemen, you are assured in knowing that the Eshockers supplied by me are safe, when used correctly. Other electrotherapy devices, well, who knows what you’re getting?”

  “We can’t stop your sales to the dens,” Holmes told him. “We seek only to further our understanding of how the machines work and how they affect the human mind.”

  “The details are beyond your understanding,” came the curt answer. “Now if you don’t mind—” With both hands, Dr. Sinclair waved us away.

  We left Dr. Sinclair to his affairs. I knew we would see him again. The matter of the Eshockers was far from over. I knew that something used for good could also be used for evil. Dr. Sinclair’s motives might be pure regarding his machines, but those who bought and used his Eshockers might not be so pure of heart.