Darker Worlds

by Jeffrey Thomas

  DARKER WORLDS

  A Trio of Nightmarish Stories

  JEFFREY THOMAS

  The Jeffrey Thomas Chapbook Series

  #5

  Copyright © 2019 Jeffrey Thomas

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Slava Gerj/Shutterstock.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  PUBLICATION HISTORY

  The Vanishing Snake first appeared in the anthology Associates of Sherlock Holmes, Titan Books, 2016.

  Dirty Desk first appeared in the anthology Chopping Block Party, Necro Publications, 2017.

  The Mayor of Ephemera first appeared in the anthology The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Fedogan and Bremer, 2016.

  CONTENTS

  1. THE VANISHING SNAKE

  2. DIRTY DESK

  3. THE MAYOR OF EPHEMERA

  4. About the Author

  THE VANISHING SNAKE

  “I am sorry to say there is no such snake in existence as a swamp adder, Mr Holmes,” our visitor said shortly after she had been admitted into the sitting-room of the Baker Street lodgings I shared with my dear friend Sherlock Holmes, and taken a seat by the window.

  The unexpected visitor Mrs Hudson had shown in was Helen Stoner, who only a few weeks prior Sherlock Holmes had saved from sharing the tragic fate of her twin sister, Julia. Helen’s own stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott, had connived to murder both his stepdaughters shortly before they could marry, for fear of losing the inheritance he had been given to control upon the accidental death of his wife, so long as her daughters lived under his care. Roylott had been successful in doing away with poor Julia, by introducing a venomous snake into her room, but when he had made an attempt to do the same with Helen only two years later she had wisely called upon my friend, who had not only uncovered Roylott’s plot but in repelling the serpent had inadvertently caused it to bite and therefore kill its own master.

  Having finished a late breakfast and now enjoying a pipe while slumped back comfortably in his chair, Holmes arched an eyebrow at the woman, clearly intrigued that his identification of the reptile that had killed her sister had been challenged these several weeks after the investigation’s conclusion. I was certain that, like me, Holmes had also taken note of the woman’s haunted expression, not so much different from her greatly troubled demeanour when she had first come to us, much oppressed by strange nocturnal occurrences. If anything, her hair appeared even more shot through with white than before, though she was only thirty-two years of age. Yet with her brutal stepfather deceased, and the snake itself having been captured by Holmes using a noose, and locked away inside an iron safe in her stepfather’s room, what was there to cause her such anxiety?

  Holmes said to her, “You speak with much conviction, Miss Stoner. Might I ask how you arrived at this certainty?”

  “I should like to recount all the events that led to this conclusion, Mr Holmes. Owing to your recent involvement in my situation, I thought you would want to know of the even stranger happenings that have followed in the wake of the former. I am beyond curious to know what you will think of certain elements of these occurrences, which are so uncanny that I fear you will ultimately scoff at them.”

  Holmes sat up straighter in his chair and said, “It is a rare thing indeed for one of the cases I have undertaken and thought to be thoroughly resolved to apparently not be quite concluded after all. You have my keenest interest, Miss Stoner. I will withhold my judgment until I have heard all. Please proceed, and leave out no detail of your account.”

  “Thank you; to the best of my ability I shan’t.” Here our visitor drew in a long breath, as if to bolster herself. “As you will no doubt recall, Mr Holmes, you and your good friend Dr Watson here kindly saw me into the care of my maiden aunt, Miss Honoria Westphail, directly after the dreadful events that culminated in my stepfather’s death. However, in the absence of any other heir, and though I was not his blood relation, it fell upon me to address matters pertaining to his estate of Stoke Moran, and so I was obliged to return there.

  “The coroner had removed my stepfather’s body quickly enough, of course, but there remained the business of the snake trapped in the heavy safe. The animal would presumably not suffocate, as my stepfather had kept it in the safe all along, so apparently it was getting sufficient air somehow. The hope was that the snake would starve to death, but then how long would that take? When would it be prudent to open the safe, using the key that stood in the lock, to ascertain whether the snake still posed a threat? These concerns were expressed to me by the police who followed up the business after your involvement.

  “Before my return to Stoke Moran I gave my consent to have the safe removed from the house and for the police to deal with it as they would. Upon my arrival back at the old manor-house I was visited by one of the constables who had been present when the safe was opened, and informed of the result.

  “It seems the men who unlocked the safe had improvised weapons at hand, meaning to thrust a sod cutter’s spade into the aperture as soon as the door came open and crush the beast immediately, but they were prepared in case it should slip past this blade. Another man had a long makeshift torch ready, to thrust in the same if need be. A third constable turned the key and at a signal cracked the door open, but before the man with the spade could attack, the man with the torch – who had glimpsed the interior by the light of his fire – begged the other to hold off. A moment later, though the three constables remained tense with caution, the door was hauled fully open.

  “The snake that had killed both my sister and stepfather was gone. Or at least, what remained was less than a carcass. The constable described to me a coil of colourless, dry matter, that when stirred with the spade proved to be comprised of a fluffy white material that broke up like ash. So unsubstantial was this matter that even the merest probing caused it to disintegrate, the ashy remnants so fine that there was ultimately left not even a residue within the safe.”

  Holmes interrupted, “Were they certain the snake did not slip out through the bottom of the aperture once the door was cracked open, while the men were distracted and confounded by the sight of this pale coil? The glare of the torch itself may have shielded this action. My suspicion is that the dry matter the man with the spade broke up was nothing more than the serpent’s molted skin.”

  “That was my own initial reaction to this account, Mr Holmes, and I suggested the same to this constable, who was in fact he who had wielded the spade. He assured me that with three sets of eyes on the safe the snake could not possibly have slipped past them. And there was no other means of escape from the safe, for had there been, surely the snake would have made use of it before. Also, he swore he could tell this was not merely a shed skin, for he had found and handled such before in his youth. He and the other two could only conclude that the snake had died and become strangely desiccated or mummified due to some property of the sealed safe.”

  “Unless, of course, another had entered the mansion in your absence and removed the snake, the key as you say still slotted in its hole.”

  “One might readily wonder that, but further events I am to relate will shed a different light on that consideration.”

  Holmes said. “Forgive my interruption, then. Please continue.”

  “Well, mysterious though this situation was, I soon turned my attention to the matter that had brought me back to Stoke Moran. My fiancé, Percy Armitage, was dear enough to already be investigating for me a means by which I might sell the estate, as I have no sentimental attachment to it. The mansion itself, being in such ill
repair as you will recall, with the roof of the east wing even having partly collapsed, we thought might best be demolished, but we proposed to leave that decision to whomever proved interested in acquiring the property. Meanwhile, with the aid of my stepfather’s former housekeeper, Mrs Littledale, I intended to set about packing up the remainder of my belongings to transport back to my aunt’s home, along with whatever had belonged to my sister that I might care to retain. As for my stepfather’s possessions, I had no desire to own any of it, so poisonous had his memory become to me.

  “Mr Armitage had come to meet me upon my return to Stoke Moran, to ensure that I was capable of reentering the scene of so much horror, but once I had thoroughly reassured him he returned to his home, near Reading, where his occupation made demands on him. I planned to stay only a matter of days at the manor-house, but I would be sleeping in my old room, despite the minor repairs that had been begun on it as a ruse to force me to stay in my sister’s old room and thereby make me vulnerable to my stepfather’s dangerous pet. Mrs Littledale consented to sleep in Julia’s room during my stay so that I would not be in the house alone. Though the place filled me with repugnance now, rationally I knew the threat to me had passed. The police had even at my request warned off from the property those gypsies whom my stepfather had strangely, given his violent temperament and reclusive nature, permitted and even encouraged to set up their tents on our grounds.

  “There was one unresolved and perplexing matter, however, that still caused me a good deal of nervousness, so that I slept at night locked in my room and never ventured from the house after dark. You will remember that in addition to his snake, my stepfather was also in possession of a baboon and a cheetah, which rather than being penned or chained up he allowed to roam freely within the broken-down stone wall surrounding the property, doubtlessly to intimidate and ward off any curious village folk.”

  I replied, “Yes; you told us that a correspondent of Dr Roylott’s had sent these animals and the snake over from India. Holmes and I, much to our unpleasant surprise, crossed paths with the baboon the night we came to investigate your situation, and once we had hidden ourselves in your room we heard the cheetah sniffing around at the shuttered window.”

  Helen Stoner said, “The constable I spoke with told me no one in the area had seen either the baboon or cheetah since that night, nor had Mrs Littledale. Only my stepfather had ever cared for them, though I myself had never actually seen him feed them, nor even seen the substantial amounts of food they should require, particularly the cheetah. My fear was that now, starving, they might harm someone, even venture toward the nearby village in the search for food. That no one had seen them suggested three possibilities to me. For one, they may have indeed left the area to seek sustenance. Or else, the gypsies when they had been shooed off had taken the beasts with them, for as my stepfather’s only friends they may have been more familiar with the animals than I had known. This would explain why the creatures had never attacked the gypsies. The only remaining possibility was that, weakened with hunger, the big monkey and great cat had taken shelter in the dilapidated east wing of the manor-house, having entered it through a broken window or even the caved-in roof, and now lay helpless within.

  “That first night back in the decaying ancient mansion I slept poorly, as one might imagine, having suffered wretched dreams about my stepfather’s pets trying to claw their way into the house. In the morning, as I was taking my breakfast, a letter came that was addressed to Dr Roylott. I accepted it, and recognised at once it was from my stepfather’s longtime correspondent from India, Mr Edward Thurn. It did not surprise me that Mr Thurn should not yet know of Dr Roylott’s passing, but I was surprised to see that the letter bore a postmark from Gravesend and a return address from Upper Swandam Lane, indicating that my stepfather’s old friend was now staying in London. You see, the two had become acquainted during that period in which my stepfather lived in Calcutta, where he had first met my widowed mother and where Julia and I lived until only eight years ago. It was my understanding that Dr Roylott and Mr Thurn had become friends when the latter was a patient of my stepfather, they having met shortly before the time Dr Roylott was convicted of murdering his Indian butler in a fit of rage over some thievery, thus incurring his lengthy prison sentence. It was Mr Thurn who had shipped to Dr Roylott the baboon, cheetah, and the snake you identified as a swamp adder, Mr Holmes.

  “I felt it would be a violation against Mr Thurn to read his correspondence, though my stepfather was beyond such consideration and undeserving of it, so I refrained from opening the letter, though I bade its deliverer to remain until I could pen a quick reply. In my message I informed Mr Thurn, without going into all the complex and unsavoury particulars, of his friend’s passing. I thought it was the decent thing to do, given that I could hardly imagine he was aware of the use his friend had planned for that venomous serpent. As I was unwilling to preserve any of my stepfather’s belongings and wanted to be rid of them, I invited Mr Thurn to come have a look at them and freely take away whatever might strike his fancy. I knew little of Mr Thurn, never having met him in person myself, but my stepfather had said he was a world traveller with an inquisitive mind and hence an avid reader, so I alluded to Dr Roylott’s library, which though it consists of many medical texts also contains numerous books on very esoteric and outré subjects. I sent my message along, but later in the day regretted somewhat my haste in offering Mr Thurn a look at my stepfather’s things before I could consult with my fiancé about their potential value. Chiefly, though, my regret was due to the fact that I did not intend to remain at Stoke Moran for many days and might not still be there should Mr Thurn come visiting from London.

  “That night, shortly after Mrs Littledale had retired to my sister’s former room and I to mine, a most strange and horrible sound came to us from outside the house. In her terror, which was no doubt exacerbated by the housekeeper having to sleep in the room into which Dr Roylott had introduced his snake to murder poor Julia, Mrs Littledale came pounding on my door looking quite frantic. I felt certain the weird howling cries came from the throat of either the baboon or cheetah, though I could not tell which, and I even wondered if the starving cat was attacking the monkey in its desperation. We stood paralyzed listening at the shuttered window of my room until, despite my horror, my curiosity could bear it no longer. I removed the heavy bar that secured the shutters, and cracked them open enough to peek outside.

  “It was a clear night with the moon almost full, and the grounds beyond lay silvered with its glow. On the lawn not far beyond my window a strange figure lay writhing and contorting, while arching back its neck and emitting the uncanny cries we had heard. Indistinct as it was it could only be the baboon, though the monkey was almost the size of the cheetah. The baboon had always been of a darkish brown colour, and I considered that it might only be the light beaming down from the moon that made the animal’s body appear so pale that it almost gave the impression of being faintly luminous. It was also of a ghastly, cadaverous aspect, and I had no doubt the pitiful beast was in the final stage of starvation.

  “We watched until the creature gave a last violent convulsion, and its terrible howl tapered away to silence. It lay still, and almost in tears Mrs Littledale begged me to close and bar the window again. We could do no more than leave the creature where it had died until we should summon someone to bear away its body on the morrow.

  “Mrs Littledale could not bring herself to return to her room alone, and in my guilt at having insisted she keep me company at Stoke Moran I permitted her to doze in the chair in my room. However, neither of us actually got much sleep for the remainder of that night.

  “In the morning I was awakened by a shriek from outside, but this time the cry was human. I went racing from the house in my night gown to find Mrs Littledale had already dressed and ventured outside to timidly inspect the baboon’s corpse. As I came beside her I could readily understand her cry of shock and revulsion.

  “The
large monkey had decayed to an astonishing degree in a matter of hours, so that all that remained was a husk like a figure fashioned from the pale grey paper of a wasp’s nest. Even as we watched, a mere breeze across the lawn caused one of its upper limbs to break off and tumble away across the grass like a tube of ash, breaking up as it went. As we continued to gaze upon it in disbelief the animal’s dog-like head caved in, crumbled and disintegrated, until not even its long fangs remained. All was swept up and away like a cloud of fine powder in only the few minutes that we stood watching mesmerised and aghast.

  “I was of course reminded of what the constable had told me about the remains of the snake that had been revealed inside the safe. What ailment, affliction, or poison, I wondered, might cause two such different animals to decompose in so unnatural a way?

  “All we could do now was go about our day as we had planned, my most fervent desire being to see myself rid of Stoke Moran soon.

  “Later that day my Percy once more traveled to Surrey to discuss with me the progress made on divesting ourselves of Stoke Moran, and we also discussed our plans to move our wedding forward from May to June because of the strenuous occurrences of late. We thought to enjoy a quiet afternoon together at the estate now that my vile-tempered stepfather no longer dwelt there, but his shadow still lay heavily upon us, all the more so when I related to my fiancé the strange spectacle the housekeeper and I had witnessed the night before and our discovery that very morning. Mr Armitage was at a loss as to any explanation, his only half-heartened suggestion being that someone, perhaps one of the expelled gypsies, had placed a papier-mâché effigy upon the spot where the monkey had perished in the night. I do not think he held any more faith in this theory than I did. In any case, I also told him of my note to Mr Edward Thurn and my fiancé expressed no regret regarding the offer I had extended, though he was concerned as to whether Mr Thurn truly had been ignorant of Dr Roylott’s intentions in wanting that poisonous snake sent to him from India. I assured him I could not conceive of my stepfather confiding in an accomplice when there was no need to do so, and that surely Mr Thurn only believed he was supplementing my eccentric stepfather’s existing menagerie.