“I imagine Hope has found that refusal hard to brook.”
“Which is why I am here,” said Jekyll. “Hope has delivered an ultimatum. He has given me twenty-four hours to come up with more of the drug, or…” He succumbed to a shudder. “I shall not be so indelicate as to say what he has promised to do to me.”
“Well, this is a pretty mess you have created, Jekyll,” I said, “and no mistake. I am glad, all the same, that you have come to me and sought my aid. It is still not too late. Together, I feel we should be able to—”
My words were interrupted by a tremendous crash, the sound of the front door being kicked so hard that it broke free of its hinges and tumbled to the hallway floor. The next instant, Sherlock Holmes barged into the drawing-room – or I should say Sherrinford Hope, for those blazing mad eyes left no doubt that the man’s wicked side was once again to the fore.
“Jekyll!” he thundered. “Did you think you could evade me? Did you think that you could run to Watson and bleatingly beg him for assistance, and I would not know? You fool! Your time is almost up. Where is my compound?”
I sprang to my feet. Holmes loomed monstrously huge, as though inflated by rage. His clothing was filthy and tattered. I could only speculate where he had been hiding out all this time. From the foetid odour he gave off and the soiled state of his boots and trouser cuffs, it may well have been the sewers, or perhaps the muddy foreshore of the Thames.
“Holmes,” I declared, “you must step back. Take a moment to think. This is not you. There is still a voice of reason within you, I am sure. Listen to it. Heed it.”
“Do not call me that!” Holmes cried. “Hope. I told you. It is Sherrinford Hope.” He beat his breast. “That is who I am. Sherlock Holmes is a petulant weakling. Hope is the one who does what is necessary. Only Hope has the guts to deal with crooks as they should be dealt with. Only me!”
He rounded on Jekyll again.
“So?” he demanded. “Have you made it?”
The cowed, terrified Jekyll nodded. “I have. It is here.” He drew from his pocket a phial containing a greenish liquid. It looked an oddly innocuous substance, yet its potent effects were plain for all to see in Holmes.
“You did not say that you had some ready, Jekyll,” I muttered.
“I did not say that I did not, either,” replied he. “I concocted it in case of just this eventuality. Much though I cherish the moral high ground, I cherish my life more.”
“Give!” said Holmes, and he snatched the phial from Jekyll. Then, with an almost thoughtless gesture, he delivered a backhanded swipe that lifted Jekyll clean off his feet and sent him flying across the room. Jekyll struck the far wall and I heard a distinct snap of vertebrae breaking. He collapsed to the floor, his head lolling at such an angle that I knew in an instant that he was dead.
“There,” I said to Holmes bitterly. “Congratulations. You have killed the one man who could have kept you supplied with the drug.”
“No,” he said. “I mean to analyse the compound. I have a sample now, and I will retrieve Jekyll’s notes from his house, and between the two things I shall be able, at my chemistry bench, to reproduce it in any quantity I wish.”
I did not doubt that he could do as he claimed. “Then let me appeal to your better nature,” I said. “Holmes – Hope – please quit this path you are on. I can see it leading only to misery and disaster.”
At that moment, before Holmes could respond, a timorous voice called down from upstairs.
“John? What is happening? What is all that dreadful commotion?”
My wife had been getting ready for bed when Dr Jekyll arrived.
“Mary, dearest,” I called back, with all the gentleness I could muster. “Stay in our room. Don’t come down. I have everything under control.”
“‘Oh John,’” said Holmes, mimicking Mary’s voice in sardonic, piping tones. “‘Do you really have everything under control? Are you sure?’”
“Listen to me,” I said coolly. “You can still save yourself. This homicidal ogre you have become is not you. He is not the Sherlock Holmes I have come to respect and admire. He is a travesty. You need not be him. There is still time to redeem yourself.”
“You have no idea.” Holmes advanced upon me hulkingly. Glee was writ large upon his face. “No idea how wonderful it is to be this way. I am liberated, Watson. My chains have fallen from me. I am no longer bothered by conscience. I no longer need bend the knee to the system that sees criminals punished only after a long and tortuous legal process. I am pure, unfettered justice! I stalk and catch and kill swiftly, like a tiger, and only the deserving suffer. Singlehandedly I am purging the city of its worst elements. I am snuffing out crime left, right and centre. Soon nobody in London will dare commit any misdemeanour, for fear of retribution from Sherrinford Hope. Is that not a good thing? Can you not see the desirability of such an outcome?”
I was backing away, moving in the direction of the chiffonier, inside a drawer of which my revolver was stowed. “What I see,” I said, “is that you believe wholeheartedly in this vision of yours. Some, though, might call it tyranny. The law exists for a reason, to protect us all, and it is not yours to circumvent. We are all equally beholden to it.”
“Balderdash! The law is a blunt, ineffective tool. I am sharper and cleaner. The law is a blunderbuss. I am a rapier.”
“Holmes…”
“I can make you understand, Watson. I can make you view things from my perspective. It is simple.”
So saying, he lunged for me, fast, so fast that I barely saw him move. I could not prevent him seizing hold of me. I was close enough to the chiffonier to have made a bid for the drawer handle, but Holmes thrust me to one side and shoved me up against the wall. One arm pinned me in place, with such might that my strenuous efforts to resist came to naught. Using his free hand he unstoppered the phial, thumb popping out the cork.
“Open wide,” he said, bringing the phial to my lips. “Just a little. It won’t hurt. Well, not much. A few drops, and I shall keep the rest for my own use. Part those lips, Watson. Part them!”
He shook me violently, and my jaw sagged open, and next thing I knew, some of the liquid was upon my tongue. It tasted vile – salty and acrid – and I choked, but Holmes merely pressed a hand over my mouth and nose.
“It has already begun to permeate into you,” he said. “You cannot fight it. The effects will start to make themselves felt shortly. Just swallow. Swallow and submit. It is not so bad. And when it is over, you will be like me. You will understand. You will see things more clearly than you ever have.”
* * *
They came to me in swift succession: memories. Memories of all the slights I had had inflicted upon me over the years. All the insults I had endured in my life. All the misfortunes I had known, such as my wastrel older brother and his miserable demise. All the horrors I had witnessed in Afghanistan, the screaming soldiers, the glistening fresh wounds. All the pain I had experienced, not least the jezail bullet that had come within a hair’s breadth of killing me. All the cruel and vindictive deeds that I myself had committed, such as the beatings I had been party to meting out upon poor Percy “Tadpole” Phelps at school. They came in a foul torrent, like a cesspool overflowing, spilling its contents across the greensward of my thoughts.
I knew hatred, then, like never before, and anger, and sorrow. I knew jealousy and despair. I knew the very blackest shades of emotion.
I welcomed them. They imbued me with a strength that was not only invigorating but giddyingly delightful. Nothing frightened me any more; nothing intimidated me. I had been introduced to the very worst parts of myself, all at once, and embraced them, and now I felt a sudden, strange peace.
I heard someone calling out a name, faintly, as though from some distant hill.
Ormond Sacker.
That was me. That was this version of myself, this primal, blissfully unrestrained John Watson. That was his name.
Ormond Sacker.
�
��Ormond Sacker,” I said, blinking and looking up into the eyes of my companion, who was bent over me with a paternal, almost solicitous air.
“Dr Sacker,” said he, extending a hand. “Pleased to meet you. Sherrinford Hope.”
“Of course.”
“How are you faring?”
My body seemed to vibrate with power, an eagerness to get out into the world and do exactly as I desired.
“I feel galvanised,” I said. “I feel indomitable.”
“Good man. Just as it should be.”
“I feel that I have no constraints. I loathe what I used to be. That feckless, shilly-shallying Watson. How did you ever put up with him? How did I?”
“It is a marvel,” Hope agreed.
“How shall we begin this new life of ours? I have the urge to celebrate, to mark this fresh chapter in my existence somehow.”
“There is a poisoner at large,” said Hope. “The eminent young naturalist, Robert Keller. He steeps antimacassars in the venom of the African marsh viper, which can be absorbed through the skin and is invariably lethal. He is killing, one by one, all those relatives who stand in the way of him inheriting a sizeable legacy. Let us teach him the error of his ways, why not?”
“Why not, indeed.”
Then the woman upstairs called out again. “John? It has been quiet down there for some while. Is it safe for me to show my face?”
How gratingly her words fell upon my ears. Mary, with her rosy, simpering features, her rust-coloured hair, her ever-compliant bearing. She repelled me. She was a dumb, bovine thing. She was John Watson’s soulmate and helpmeet but she would, I foresaw, be nothing but an impediment to Ormond Sacker.
“Give me a moment,” I said to Hope, “and then I shall be all yours.”
He smiled and nodded in approval. “Off you go then, old man. Don’t take too long.”
“I shan’t.”
I headed out into the hallway and began ascending the staircase, flexing my fingers and making fists of my hands. Mary Watson waited for me on the landing, all trusting innocence.
“Darling…?” she said, puzzled, and thereafter said no more.
* * *
I write this account in what I reckon are the last few moments of lucidity remaining to me. Ormond Sacker is scratching at the door of my mind yet again, impatient to be let out. I have done things so shameful, so terrible, it is agony to recall them. Sacker, by contrast, finds them untroubling. He positively revels in the memory of them, and the performance of them. It will be a relief, almost, to give myself back over to him. This time, I feel it will be permanent. I shall never have to worry again. There is, and only ever will be, Sacker.
We have plenty of the compound, Hope and I. Should supplies run low, Hope simply conjures up a fresh batch. We ingest it on a nightly basis, and then we sally forth into the streets of London, seeking out wrongdoers and doling out our own brand of justice. Thus far, we have remained ever one step ahead of the Met. How long we continue to do so, I cannot say. It is not my concern. It is Sacker’s.
He comes. I have no choice but to make the way clear for him. He crawls free.
The game is afoot. And we are the hunters.
THE AFFAIR OF THE YITHIAN STONE
Written exclusively for this collection
In my Cthulhu Casebooks trilogy, Sherlock Holmes encounters the cosmic horrors of H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction. The three novels purport to be a true account of Holmes’s life and career. Whereas Watson’s familiar, published oeuvre presents a bowdlerised version of events, stripping them of their supernatural content in order to make them palatable to the wider public, the Cthulhu Casebooks pull back the curtain to reveal what lies behind – a host of nightmarish creatures, alien gods, weird cults and eldritch doings. For thirty years, Holmes the arch-rationalist tackled mysteries and enemies that defy rationality. His sanity, and Watson’s, suffered as a consequence.
Relevant trivia: “The Affair of the Yithian Stone” slots in the trilogy’s chronology halfway between the first volume, The Shadwell Shadows, and the second, The Miskatonic Monstrosities.
The Affair of the Yithian Stone
From: [email protected]
To: James Lovegrove
Subject: Estate of Henry Prothero Lovecraft
Date: 21 May 2019
Dear James,
I feel I may use such an informal mode of address, given our reasonably extensive email exchange previously.
I’m delighted to see that publication of the trio of manuscripts I sent you a while back has been so advantageous to your career. I purchased and read all three volumes of your Cthulhu Casebooks – given my involvement, perhaps complimentary copies might have been in order, but it’s not for me to say – and found them intriguing and, even in a certain dark way, enjoyable. I note with sorrow that the work of editing them seems to have triggered mental health problems for you, as mentioned in the closing pages of Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils. I hope all is well and you are on the road to recovery.
You will recall that the bulk of Henry Prothero Lovecraft’s estate, of which the manuscripts formed part, devolved to Ms Rhonda Lachaise of Kennebunkport, Maine. Since probate was granted, that lady has been methodically going through the many documents and artefacts she inherited and has recently turned up an item of correspondence which she thinks may be of particular interest to you: a letter from Dr John Watson to Mr Lovecraft’s forebear, the celebrated Providence author Howard Phillips Lovecraft, your very distant relative. She has sent it to me and I have taken the liberty of attaching scans of it here. It is, as you will see, several pages long, and the handwriting is not good – very much that of an elderly man with incipient arthritis, as Watson was in his later years – but still decipherable.
It is, of course, up to you what you do with the material. Doubtlessly you will wish to publish it, perhaps as an adjunct to your Cthulhu Casebooks, since the content of this letter shares much in common with the content of that trilogy.
I hereby reiterate my offer of representation, tendered in my very first email to you. Since you have seen fit to monetise any specimen of another author’s prose that comes your way, it would seem only prudent for you to have a legal practitioner in your corner, should any copyright infringements or other actionable issues arise.
I look forward to hearing from you in due course.
Regards,
Mason K. Jacobs III
* * *
From the desk of: John H. Watson, M.D.
Paddington, London
October 1926
Mr H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.
10 Barnes Street
Providence, Rhode Island
My dear Lovecraft,
Thank you for your last. I am truly sorry to hear about your financial difficulties and the collapse of your marriage to Sonia. Now that you have left New York and returned to your hometown, I trust that things will improve and that your native Providence lives up to its name and is providential for you. You are a young man yet, not to say an accomplished author, and I am sure the best still lies ahead.
You ask if the ill-fated Cadogan West, whom I mentioned in my previous letter, is any relation to the equally ill-fated Herbert West about whom you have written. Bearing in mind that West is a not uncommon surname, I would have been surprised if the two men – separated by the wide Atlantic – were close kin. In the absence of supporting evidence, my late friend Sherlock Holmes would have dismissed the fact that both Wests suffered gruesome demises at the hands of anthropophagous monsters as nothing more than tragic coincidence.
However, I am retired and have time on my hands, and hence, after some digging around in the registry of births, marriages and deaths at Somerset House, I have discovered that there is indeed consanguinity between the two. The family tree for your acquaintance Herbert, which you enclosed with your letter, names his grandfather as a certain Cornelius West. Cadogan West had a great-uncle called Cornelius, and the two Corneliuses (Cornelii
?) would appear to be one and the same man, since the records state that said great-uncle emigrated to the United States in 1852 and took up residence in Arkham, home of Miskatonic University where Herbert studied medicine. This makes Herbert and Cadogan second cousins.
Your suggestion that there is an hereditary predisposition toward misfortune would, then, seem to be borne out by this example.
I should point out, however, that Herbert West was the agent of his own downfall. His pursuit of outlandish experimentation, to wit the reanimation of cadavers by scientific means, was unwise and redounded upon him negatively. Cadogan West, by contrast, was the innocent victim of the schemes of his love rival, Captain Valentine Walter. Each met his end in a manner that was violent and appalling, but only one of them can be held directly to blame for it. Perhaps a greater number of samples should be tested – every single member of the extended West family, say – before any conclusions are drawn.
At any rate, in the light of your account of Herbert West’s hubris, I feel moved to share with you a not dissimilar instance of scientific adventurism having unfortunate consequences. This dates back to the spring of 1887 and relates, somewhat inevitably, to my association with Sherlock Holmes and to our investigations into various esoteric matters about which you are as well-informed as anyone I know (and about which the public at large, with a few notable exceptions, are blessedly unaware or believe to be fiction). Please indulge an old man in his reminiscences. These days, they are just about all I have.
The affair began, as the vast majority of Holmes’s cases did, with a visitor to our rooms on Baker Street. On this occasion, though, the client came at my instigation. His name was Timothy Voysden, and I knew him from my card club. He was around thirty years of age and a terrible card player. Our fellow club members were forever taking advantage of him, regularly cleaning him out; yet always he would return for more. Voysden was in the grip of a gambling addiction, a vice to which I myself was no stranger back then. But whereas I could more or less afford it, in his case it was proving the ruin of him. He was accumulating debts he did not have the wherewithal to pay off. Even the club’s annual subscription was beyond his means. His father kept having to bail him out but did so, according to Voysden, with ever increasing grudgingness and anger. This did little for Voysden’s self-esteem, and his misery and self-reproach would in turn drive him back to the card table. It was the most vicious of circles.
The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes Page 9