But we couldn’t, and we both knew it. Koenraad’s abilities exceeded mine in some ways. To escape from Moriarty’s den and from his clutches, Maria and I had to escape in physical form in the human world—right here on Thrawl Street. I hated to give her any power over me. I was the one carrying Koenraad’s spawn, not Maria. And yet, Maria had powers beyond my own. She’d been sired by the Blois Dagonite leader, just as my spawn had been sired by Koenraad Thwaite.
Potent legacies.
Inheritance, a science humans understood in the most rudimentary way.
“Together,” I told Maria, “we possess enough power to escape.”
“Agreed,” the child answered, “and I will work with you, Miss Scarcliffe, if you promise me one thing.”
Did she want me to return her to Professor Henry Fitzgerald, the only father she’d known since birth? Did she want me to break him out of prison?
“And what is this one promise?” I asked.
“You must work with me, Miss Scarcliffe—”
“Yes, yes?” I prompted her.
Her little fingers stroked my neck flaps. Her eyes were sharp. Then the tiny mouth opened, and flatly, she said, “We will escape, and then we will unleash such horror upon London that they will wish themselves dead.”
36
DR. REGINALD SINCLAIR
Whitechapel Lunatic Asylum
As I fidgeted with the right Eshocker, contemplating how long and how large a dose to supply, the door was kicked open, making me jump. Miss Klune dragged Bligh Braithwaite into the treatment room. She’d tied his wrists behind his back. As for his legs and ankles, I suppose she’d hoped that he would walk on his own, but his legs were limp, his heels dragging behind him, and he was offering no help whatsoever. Thankfully, she’d gagged him. Even so, he was letting out a steady stream of muffled shrieks.
I clenched my hands to keep them from shaking. How much more stress could I endure without suffering physical collapse? Ordinary folk had no idea how much their doctors endured for their sakes. It took everything in me to help my patients. I dreamed about their problems and treatments. I worried, and I also suffered with them.
Bligh Braithwaite glared at me. Disgusting, how he lacked control over his emotions. Today, they were on full display. His bleary eyes watered and his face creased with anxiety.
“Strap him in,” I told Miss Klune. It was always wise to make sure the patients knew I was in control.
This is the difference, Bligh, I thought, between you and me. I can control myself, whereas you cannot, and a man who controls nothing, not even himself, has no worth.
“M-mmmrrrrrr!” came his muffled howl.
Miss Klune untied his wrists and shoved him into the Eshocker chair. His legs and arms thrashed, and one fist landed on her chin. Her face grew even whiter—and colder—than usual.
“Behave, Mr. Braithwaite,” she growled. Slamming him back into the Eshocker, she strapped him in. Both of us ignored his howling.
“Wind another strip of cloth tightly around his gag,” I told the nurse, “then I’ll get started.” As she fetched the cloth from the cabinet behind the Eshocker and wrapped it around Braithwaite’s head, I addressed him. “You need to accept that you’ve lost the battle, Braithwaite. Accept it, and your life will be better. Stop fighting me.”
Tears flowed down his cheeks and saturated the cloth ties, which dug into his flesh.
“Mmmmmmph… nnnnnnnnn… nnnnooooo…”
His head slumped forward. The tears dripped to his lap.
“Do you need my help with the treatment?” Miss Klune’s blue eyes, oddly soft beneath the white-blonde hair that had slipped from her cap, were on my shaking hands.
“I am perfectly capable of using my own machine,” I snapped.
Her face tightened and her eyes grew cold again—quickly.
Bligh Braithwaite’s body went limp. His groans grew softer. He’d given up. He’d take whatever treatment I gave to him, and he’d be better off for it—he’d see.
“Leave,” I ordered Miss Klune. “Go and take care of Willie Jacobs or Mrs. van der Kolk or Mr. Robertson. Keep the patients calm.” I pointed at the door and glared at her.
“Doctor,” she whispered.
“What is it, nurse?”
“It’s just… I’ve never seen you this agitated. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Aghast, I waved my finger at the door, my arm shaking.
“I will forgive your impertinence this once,” I told her. “Now go about your duties.”
Miss Klune losing her coolness and asking personal questions? It was shocking, and I wouldn’t stand for it, not in my lunatic asylum.
Without further comment, she stalked away, clicked the door shut behind her.
I circled Braithwaite’s Eshocker and slid open a drawer near the bottom of my supplies cupboard. I pulled out a bottle. OLD ONES SERUM. HEALTH AND HAPPINESS. The cork twisted off easily enough, and I drank a heady amount of serum, feeling the heat pour through me. The instant sharp pain in my stomach was soothed by the euphoria of the serum. For a moment, I slouched against the cupboard, my hands grasping the back of the Eshocker box.
I lifted the serum bottle from the counter and drank again.
In his chair, Bligh Braithwaite twitched.
Am I really any different from Bligh Braithwaite? A jolt of terror ran through me. Am I?
“Mmmrumpphh, nnnnnnoooo…” he seemed to answer.
I drained the serum bottle. It slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor.
My head swam. There were rims of color around the Eshockers. I shook my head, but my vision remained cloudy, the colors widening, then shrinking, then widening again. I was lost in the pulse of colors. Lost.
“Do as I say. I am the King of England, King of…” My father’s last words before he died.
“Reggie, leave the lunatics to someone else. Go deliver babies.” My mother’s constant mantra, delivered shrilly whenever I visited her.
Leave the lunatics.
Lunatics. Lost. Babies. Lunatics. Lost. Babies.
“Shut up!” I screamed, clenching my fists, whirling, and pounding the counter.
Behind his gag, Bligh Braithwaite burst out laughing.
Enraged, I raced around the Eshocker and confronted him. But he just laughed in my face, so I ripped the cloth tie from his face and…
Did I enjoy watching him cringe when I ripped away the fabric? Did I?
I yanked out the gag ball.
“You dare,” he shrieked, “to take what is mine! Those Eshockers are mine, Reggie! I built them, not you! Me!” His head snapped back and forth, his eyes flared with anger, his limbs struggled wildly against their restraints.
Ramming the gag back into his mouth, I sneered at him. The shaving scars on one side of his face bulged with reds and blues and greens. On the other side of his face, the coarse black hairs wore halos of yellow. His legs spasmed, his face screwed into a mask of pain. Bligh Braithwaite was no threat. He was insane, and nobody would ever believe him, not about anything.
I twisted off the screws holding the lid of the Eshocker box in place. I set the screws aside. Fumbling—for the serum made me groggy and giddy—I attached the blue wire to the metal plates on the front of the box, hence bypassing the flow of current through the fixed resistor. Braithwaite would get the full dose of current today. Extreme treatment. My favorite mode of operation.
I moistened the electrodes and put them on his forehead. Grasping the wooden handle that connected to the sliding contact switch of the variable resistor, I jerked the resistance to zero and the current to maximum strength.
Current equals volts divided by resistance.
The formula danced in my mind.
I = V ÷ R.
I = sixteen volts divided by zero (variable resistor slid all the way to the right) plus one kiloohm (head resistance) = sixteen milliamperes of alternating current to the head.
Buzzzzzzz!
Braithwaite’s bod
y jerked violently, and the chair banged against the Eshocker frame.
Zzzzzzzzap!
His fingers splayed, his body arched.
“Oh, isn’t this fun,” I chortled, “and aren’t we having the grandest time?”
His color-rimmed eyes focused on me from beneath half-shut lids, then bulged as the electricity hit him in wave after wave.
And I remembered: Bligh Braithwaite in the old days, Braithwaite nimbly wiring the machines while I scribbled the equations, Braithwaite comforting me in the shadows of alleys when my father threw me out, Braithwaite…
And me, Dr. Reginald Sinclair, helping him, the insane, giving him shelter and food, helping him cope with life.
“Let me help you,” I said, and this time, I addressed him kindly. “Please, old friend, you’ve waited so long for a cure. Succumb. Let me release these straps.”
I stumbled forward, pushed the handle all the way to the left for maximum resistance and minimum current. Then I pulled up the handle to the left of the Eshocker, turning all the power off. The current fizzled to a halt.
Braithwaite whimpered.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re getting in the way, that’s all. You need to leave things alone and stop causing trouble. Let me help you, that’s all I ask.”
He was so limp, his arms and legs quivering, that I removed the restraints holding him to the chair. He did not even stretch his legs. Nothing. I removed the ties and the gag. Drool slid from his lips in a fluorescent waterfall, or so it seemed, and the sweat on his face glistened like colored beads.
The Old Ones Serum—it had done this to me, made my eyes see things, my lips say things, my brain unhinge, just enough to—
“The Eshockers are mine,” Braithwaite whispered. “I built them.”
He struggled to lift his body from the chair but lacked the strength. It was best for him to rest, I decided. Extreme treatment could drain the energy out of the most robust of men, and when it came to my patients, they tended toward weakness rather than strength.
I crouched beside him and placed a calming—yet oddly trembling—hand on his forearm.
“Patents,” he whispered, “you…”
“Yes,” I reassured him, “I’ll file the patents soon. I’ve been busy with my patients and with Moriarty’s demands for den Eshockers.” My mind drifted to the problems of building all those den units for Moriarty.
Braithwaite almost fell from the chair, but my hand steadied him.
“You sell to the dens, many,” he choked out. “Money, lots.”
“Yes,” I said, “money, lots, and it all goes into the asylum so I can help you and the others. I already own the den patent, and as soon as I own the hospital and extreme treatment patents, I should have enough funds to provide all of you with the best care anywhere in the world. I give you my word, Braithwaite, that this will happen.”
Strands of color drifted around the room, picking up light, twisting into shapes, then untwisting. The air was thick and humid, and I struggled to breathe. My heart ached. My shoulders hurt. My stomach felt sliced by knives.
Before I could tell Braithwaite that, like him, I was not well, he lurched to his feet and reached for me.
My knees could no longer hold me up. Oh, how they hurt! I fell, curled on my side next to my beloved Eshocker, and clutched my belly. The room whirled.
Braithwaite loomed over me.
I turned slightly, reached one arm toward him.
“Doctor,” he said softly, “for… for all you’ve done…”
37
DR. JOHN WATSON
Whitechapel Lunatic Asylum
Holmes struck a match on the counter by the day room and lit his cigarette. His eyes roamed the floor, where patients lay in heaps, writhing and moaning, as he smoked—rapidly as if in time with his thoughts. Huddled by Willie Jacobs, a man with foam on his lips sank his teeth into his own arm and then rolled his eyes upward in an ecstatic swoon.
“Malcolm Demane,” I said to Holmes, “the receptionist’s relative, the fellow we asked Dr. Sinclair to admit to the asylum.”
Smoke billowed from Holmes’s lips, and his eyes swung toward the wretch who was now chewing the bits of flesh he’d gnawed from his arm.
“Yes,” Holmes said thoughtfully, “a man in dire need of medical attention admitted here only because we pried into the nature of Sinclair’s Eshockers. It does not appear that he’s received much help.”
Inspector Lestrade had sent an urgent note to Baker Street, requesting my immediate presence with Holmes at the asylum. I’d collected Holmes from the Diogenes, where he’d been waiting—smoking furiously and pacing the small corridor by the outer door.
Upon seeing us, Willie Jacobs shoved himself up and then trembled by the wall. Malcolm Demane’s bloody arm inched toward Jacobs, one mangled hand grabbing Jacobs’s ankle.
“Dr. Watson! Mr. ’olmes! You’ve come to save me again!” Jacobs cried, just as Demane yanked his ankle and sent him tumbling to the floor. Jacobs cursed and shoved Demane off, rising again to his feet, and this time he lurched toward us.
“Damn insane,” he muttered, “why I ’ave to be ’ere, I dunno. I’m sick but not like this ’ere man, eatin’ ’imself.”
Gazing around for an ash tray yet finding none, Holmes tossed down his cigarette and ground it out, making me grimace. I enjoyed the occasional smoke myself, but it had its time and place.
We helped Willie Jacobs from the day room and gently held him against a wall, where he sagged and moaned. He’d lost more weight and hadn’t much strength to walk on his own. His hand quivered as it slowly reached for his nose, and one finger uncurled and dabbed at each nostril. Then his hand fell back to his side.
“What’s happening here, Mr. Jacobs?” Holmes asked. “Did you witness the murder of Dr. Sinclair? Who’s running the asylum now that he is dead?”
Tears dribbled down his sunken cheeks to the rotting skin around his exposed teeth and jawbone, which were set in a permanent ghoulish grin. He winced as each drop hit the jagged flesh, etched like a ragged sea-cliff around his mouth.
“Inspector Lestrade is ’ere,” he rasped so softly that I had to lean in close to the rotting face to hear the words. The decay smelled of imminent death. “’E’s with the evil doctor in the evil room.”
“Mr. Jacobs, did you witness the murder?” Holmes pressed.
“I see nothin’ but evil,” Jacobs muttered.
“Come along, then,” Holmes said, hoisting the man up and gesturing at me to do the same from the other side of Jacobs’s body. “Let’s go to Dr. Sinclair’s office, shall we?”
“N-n-n-no,” Jacobs cried, “I ain’t goin’ there!” His struggles amounted to the fluttering of a moth beneath one’s shoe.
“Holmes,” I said, “is this necessary?”
“I need Mr. Jacobs’s help,” Holmes said curtly, eyeing me as if I were an idiot.
“Yes,” I said, knowing when not to pressure my friend, “of course.” Silently, I helped Holmes drag Willie Jacobs to the door marked Dr. Reginald Sinclair.
Holmes pushed the door with his shoulder, and it swung open. The stench of burned meat roiled out, reminding me of the corpses by the Thames and of the bloody murders on Thrawl Street.
“What…?” Holmes whispered.
“It’s the machine,” Jacobs blubbered.
Dr. Sinclair’s desk was as I remembered it: tidy with papers piled on one side, a fresh blotter, leather chair pushed neatly beneath the desk.
The door leading to the examination room was ajar.
“At last, Holmes!” Inspector Lestrade called from the inner room. “I’ve been waiting for you. Bligh Braithwaite is here. I think he’s our man.”
As Holmes released Willie Jacobs and strode into Dr. Sinclair’s examination room, I stood by the inner door, aghast at the clouded image I saw through the black smoke that reeked of burned flesh. Jacobs mumbled incoherently, and his body shook.
“M-more death!” he spat out. “M-more k
illin’s by more machines from ’ell! Where’s the eyes, the bones, the gold?”
While I wanted to comfort Jacobs, I remained transfixed by the scene before me, unable to take my eyes off the horror, unable to speak… and choking for air.
Finally, I looked at Holmes, who was pacing, his eyes darting to the horror then to the cabinets and the examination table, and then back to the horror. One hand was upon his hip, the other cupped his chin. His eyebrows were furrowed, his eyes sharp with concentration. He was in the place where he goes when deep in thought.
My eyes swept to Lestrade, who stood with Bligh Braithwaite and two nurses—one I recognized as Miss Clara Klune, and the other whose badge identified her as Miss Amy Switzer—near the right Eshocker, all as far away as possible from the pools of blood and lumps of fried tissue and organs littering the floor. The Inspector’s mouth twisted with nervous energy, his body stiffly upright as if looking taller would help him control the situation. Miss Klune also stood stiffly, her powerful physique and icy stare making Lestrade appear small and weak.
As for Miss Switzer, she was a fidgety woman lacking any hint of feminine appeal: middle-aged, short, raggedly cut graying hair. Muscular and plump with no waistline yet no roundness where her breasts should swell, she wore heavy black shoes that might have fit my feet, and for a man, my feet are not on the small side. Whereas the faces of Lestrade, Miss Klune, and even Bligh Braithwaite were all wrinkled with concern, Miss Amy Switzer’s face looked heartbroken. Her lips twisted down at the corners.
Noticing my attention, her eyes met mine, and quickly, I looked away. Had she assumed my attention was that of a man enticed by a woman? The thought turned my stomach.
“Watson!” Holmes snapped, and his voice brought me back to the horror in the room.
“Yes?”
“Would you care to examine the victim?” Holmes erupted into a coughing fit, whipped out a handkerchief from his coat pocket, and slapped it across his mouth and nose.
I steeled myself, put my mind into that place where it goes whenever I have to examine the worst nightmares of life, or in this case, death.
Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu Page 23