“Kill ’em that killed me father,” he rasped. “Get ’em all, Mr. ’olmes.”
Holmes opened his mouth to answer. No words came out for a long time. Finally: “Watson.” The word was soft. “Watson.” Yet softer.
“Yes.” My voice trembled. “He’s gone.”
The wind had died, and so had the day.
Night sank, as did our hearts.
We would both miss Willie Jacobs. He had suffered a short and terrible life.
To this day, I can say with absolute certainty that Willie Jacobs was one of the finest men I’ve ever had the honor of knowing.
47
PROFESSOR MORIARTY
Whitechapel
“Cthulhu! Cthulhu! Lord Dagon!”
I raised a fist and joined the chant.
My nemesis, the arrogant Holmes, and his puppy, Watson, had dragged themselves off the Puritani and left for the warm comforts of home. Little did they know how people truly suffered. I employed men who would otherwise be rotting in prison. I employed boys who would otherwise starve on the streets. Holmes had taken Timmy from me, and where was the boy now? On the streets, whereas working for me, the boy had eaten well, slept on a soft sofa in the shelter of my den. They had snatched him as a wild animal snatches a suckling from its mother’s den. Where was the civility in that?
With the crowd thinning, I had to be on my way. These onlookers were deformed and crippled in ways that shocked me. In front of me, a woman had lost both arms but had five legs, all jellylike and propped on huge, webbed feet. Beside her, a man inflated and deflated like an accordion. And the head… I shuddered to see it—spherical with ears in the back, mouth on the top, and dozens of eyes littering the front.
The top mouth opened and a chant rose, and the deformed around him joined in.
“Yog’fuhrsothothothoth ’a’a’a’memerutupao’omii!”
I edged away and scurried through the night streets, intent on one thing. I had to find Amelia Scarcliffe and Maria Fitzgerald. They’d escaped, and with them went my chance to produce and claim the tram machine gold as my own. With them went my chance to control these deformed lunatics, the Dagon gang, with their secret knowledge of opening the gates to gold and power.
My den profits were plummeting. Addicts were no longer addicted. All the fault of Sherlock Holmes, the arrogant meddler.
In the distance, I heard the faint chanting of the Dagonites.
“Aauhaoaoa DEMONI aauhaoaoa DEMONI aauhaoaoa DEMONI!
“Ch’thgalhn fhtagn Innsmouth Innsmouth INNSMOUTH!” The last word was a long howl, and stayed in my head as I dipped into an alley, racing to my sanctuary.
Innsmouth.
I would have to discover what Innsmouth meant.
48
DR. JOHN WATSON
London
Holmes fidgeted with his beakers, his test tubes, and then the hypodermic needle in his desk drawer. He twisted it between his fingers, then set it back in its case. Plucking up his violin and bow, he straightened, shut his eyes, and began playing. It was an eerie, low tune, and spellbinding. The newspaper dropped to my lap, and I also shut my eyes, letting myself drift into the music.
A rap at the apartment door jolted us both, and Holmes’s bow screeched to a halt. I jumped from my chair, but he waved me aside, and opened the door himself. His face brightened.
“Inspector Lestrade! Do come in.” He waved the policeman into the room.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Lestrade said. “Are you busy at present?”
“Busy? No.” I knew what Holmes would say next, and he didn’t disappoint me. “Why? Do you have a case that requires my services?”
Sitting down in the chair next to mine, Lestrade set his hat on his lap. His fingers played with the hat rim, and his foot jittered. Holmes threw himself into his chair by the Gothic revival table and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His eyes focused keenly on our visitor.
“No,” he said, “I see it is not a new case, but unfinished business that brings you here. What, then,” he asked, “may I do for you?”
“The creatures are mostly gone from the Thames now, Holmes.”
“That is a relief, is it not?”
“Certainly,” Lestrade agreed. “But I am concerned about a few things. For one, will these creatures return from wherever they come? How do we know that they are gone permanently?”
“They are gone, for now,” Holmes declared, leaning back in his chair, “just as the tram machine is simmering, the otherworldly rifts of the Thames are simmering. All is under control. For now.”
“How do you know this?” Lestrade persisted.
Holmes had explained all to me days earlier, for I, too, had been baffled by the disappearance of the monsters that had plagued not only the river but also my own mind.
“I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to come here and ask me,” Holmes said with a hint of a smile.
“I’ve been busy,” Lestrade said, “with other matters, such as helping the military. We’ve been moving men on and off the Puritani twenty-four hours a day to kill the beasts. You know we had to fix the harpoons and cables several times, and without your Willie Jacobs, we had some difficulties with the transformer.”
“Ah, yes,” I piped up, happy at any time to praise Willie Jacobs. “He was a true hero, Inspector. He risked his life and went to the limits to do what he promised and to do what’s best.”
“Well, yes, and so—” Lestrade returned his attention to Holmes—“explain this Killer Eshocker method to me. My men have been using it in the river for a week, yet we don’t know how it’s killing these things. Tell me.”
“Gladly.” Holmes’s smile widened, as he educated the Inspector. “At first, I wanted to test the Eshocker treatment—and yes, it’s interesting, is it not, that Dr. Sinclair’s Eshocker actually is an electrotherapy tool?—on an animal infected with the microscopic creatures. Our test demonstrated sufficiently that, administered in pulses of voltage, the Eshocker did indeed eradicate the infestation from an animal’s brain. We supplied an electrotherapy dose of a duration required to kill whatever was in the brain without killing its host, a lamb. Yet we had to pulse the dose to kill additional creatures that seeped into the lamb’s brain from what I loosely term the otherworld. I believe the voltage seeped into this otherworld and somehow sealed the rifts that enabled the creatures to enter the brain.”
“You have evidence of this?” Lestrade asked.
“My evidence is that the method cured Dr. Watson and has now cured many hundreds of Londoners who were similarly infested, or infected, by these creatures. It’s not the proof I prefer, Inspector, but in this case it must suffice. I deduced that I could use a similar method on the creatures in the Thames. They were larger, and hence, the rifts into the otherworld must have been larger, as well. Much higher voltage was required.”
“But why didn’t our dynamite, bombs, bullets, and even cannonballs destroy these creatures? Why only the Killer Eshocker?”
“Because,” Holmes answered, “the Killer Eshocker harpoon is attached to the source of enormous electricity—an electricity that flows into the creature and across the rift. Dynamite, bombs, bullets, and cannonballs just knocked the creatures back or maybe put holes in them, which apparently healed as they flitted in and out of our world and the otherworld. An explosion—from, say, dynamite—means that chemical energy converts quickly into high-temperature gas, which expands and creates pressure waves. These pressure waves can knock the creatures back, but they cannot close the rift between our world and the otherworld. The creatures can simply duck across the rift and avoid the explosions. The only way to seal the rift is by high voltage that travels across the rift with the creatures. In the otherworld, the voltage reacts in ways we cannot imagine here, and the rift closes. It’s the same concept as with the tram machine, which only produces gold due to a mysterious catalyst in the otherworld. It is not magic, Inspector. It is science.”
“This is why we didn’t have to
pulse the Killer Eshocker voltage,” I added, and when Lestrade’s eyebrows rose, I explained, “because once the harpoons and the high AC hit the creature, it crossed to the otherworld, taking the voltage with it, and the rift sealed. No other creatures could come into our world through that rift.”
Unfortunately, Holmes had filled me in with more than he was willing to share with Lestrade. Particularly disturbing were Holmes’s answers as they related to Mary and Samuel’s return.
“They are safer in hiding, Watson,” he’d said. “Earlier, when Professor Fitzgerald uttered those incantations from the Dagonite Auctoritatem and constructed mechanisms that opened the rifts, the creatures entered London. Eventually, the creatures swarmed into the Thames. The river holds no special attribute for opening rifts and bringing these creatures into London. The tram machine did possess such attributes. I am sorry, Watson, but much as I dislike concluding it, the fact remains that these gates might be opened again—anywhere, at any time, and for reasons we cannot fathom.”
“Then how are Mary and Samuel safer in hiding?” I asked, then sadly answered my own question. “Because the danger is ever close to me.”
In our sitting room, the curtains were closed for the night. The fireplace warmed the room, where minutes earlier, I’d read the newspaper and dozed a bit, listening to Holmes mutter and fidget and play his violin.
But outside, the unknown cosmic horrors remained. Somewhere, they seethed. The world was not safe, and my family was better off staying away from me—a thought that filled me with despair. The battle was not over against Dagon, the Old Ones, the Deep Ones, Cthulhu—whatever form these creatures took.
Our homes, the walls surrounding us, gave us a sense of security, but we were fooling ourselves.
With a pinched expression, Holmes returned to his chair and gazed at our visitor and then at me.
“It is over,” he said, “but only for now.”
I thought of Timmy Dorsey, Jr., huddled somewhere tonight. I thought of Professor Moriarty, secluded where we could not find him, most likely devising plans to kidnap Amelia Scarcliffe and Maria Fitzgerald again, hold them prisoner until they agreed to open these monstrous gates for him and unleash hell upon earth. My breathing quickened, as did my heart.
Holmes’s eyes narrowed.
“Yes,” he said, apparently guessing my fears, “there is more to come, Dr. Watson. The fight against evil has but begun, and we are far from finished.”
At this, Inspector Lestrade rose, popped his hat back on his head and tapped the brim. When he spoke, his voice was more forceful and firm than I’d ever heard it.
“You have no idea, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “A creature—the Dagonites call it, Cthulhu—has been seen off the coast of Innsmouth, Massachusetts. Multiple reports, including police bulletins and newspapers, claim this Cthulhu is the size of many whales and possesses giant tentacles, each of which can crush a ship with one blow. Classified documents report that Cthulhu looks like an immense mutated octopus with wings, and also that it possesses great intellect that rivals yours.”
At this Holmes bristled and drew himself up. His eyes narrowed with concentration.
“Inspector,” I muttered, “surely you exaggerate.”
But Lestrade shook his head.
“I’m afraid not, my dear fellow,” he said. “Imagine the gate that had to open to let Cthulhu through… although the people—if you can say that they are people—of Innsmouth claim that Cthulhu has been here all along. He rose from the depths of the sea, they say, and—” he added—“they worship him.”
“Innsmouth. Cthulhu,” Holmes said, as if half-believing the story. “A monster beneath the sea.” No hint of mischief played in his eyes.
As for me, I was too stunned to comment.
Lestrade ambled to the door, then turned.
“I wanted the two of you to rest for a few days before I filled you in on the crisis of Innsmouth and this Cthulhu. But we can’t wait much longer. Holmes, we will be in touch shortly with instructions for you and the Doctor about making the journey to Innsmouth—”
“And… what? Destroy this Cthulhu monster?” Holmes exclaimed. “That would require an army.”
“Possibly, but as you said earlier, dynamite, bombs, cannonballs, guns—nothing kills these things nor closes the gates. Our government wants your intervention, Mr. Holmes.”
Picturing a gigantic octopus with wings and the intellect of Professor Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes terrified me. Even my experience in the war hadn’t prepared me for a battle against otherworldly creatures, let alone one such as Cthulhu.
“I should also tell you,” Lestrade said as he opened the door to leave the flat, “that Innsmouth is the center of the world’s Dagon cult and its depravity. The residents have devolved. They are bizarrely deformed.”
“There were cultists on the shores of the Thames with such deformities,” I said, “when we boarded the Puritani.”
“No, Dr. Watson.” He frowned. “The Innsmouthians are much further gone, and there’s nothing the government or military can do for them, so say the American police. The people of Innsmouth are no longer human.”
Cthulhu and Innsmouth…
Holmes and I were about to embark on an adventure unlike any we’d ever known.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my husband, Arie Bodek. As a professor of physics, he helped me finetune and proof the actual wiring schematics for the den, hospital, and extreme treatment mode Eshockers. Yes, I possess the schematics from which these machines could have been built in 1890. While there were electrotherapies in Holmes’s time, nothing came close to Dr. Sinclair’s Eshockers.
A parting goodbye is in order to Willie Jacobs. I’ve written a lot of books and stories, and like most authors, I have some favorite characters. Willie Jacobs ranks right up there in the number one spot, which he shares with only a few others. Willie, you rocked me for months!
My thanks to Steve Saffel at Titan Books NYC, and also to Sam Matthews and Laura Coulman at Titan London.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LOIS H. GRESH is the six-time New York Times-bestselling author of twenty-eight books and more than sixty-five short stories, as well as the editor of the anthologies Innsmouth Nightmares and Dark Fusions. She is a well-known Lovecraftian writer whose works have appeared in Black Wings of Cthulhu, The Madness of Cthulhu, and many other anthologies. Her work has been published in twenty-two languages. Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu: The Adventure of the Neural Psychoses is the second in her new trilogy of Holmes thrillers. Lois is a frequent guest of honor author at large fan conventions and has appeared on television series such as the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens and Batman Tech. You can follow her adventures with Sherlock Holmes at www.facebook.com/lois.gresh and www.loisgresh.com.
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