Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 2) (14 page)

“The world has not always been as it is,” Holmes pointed out. “In a man’s lifetime, the world becomes unrecognizable. How much more so in a hundred lifetimes, a thousand lifetimes, or a hundred-thousand? Every creature and race lives in its own moment, but you yourself noted how the past endures in Hammershire.”

“But such a creature is an impossibility,” I cried.

“So were saurian giants of the primordial world and prior races of mankind, till fossils and stone axes gave certain proof that ancient legends were true—dragons and giants in the Earth,” Holmes said. “Mythology is the shorthand of history, a way of preserving facts which would otherwise fade from our minds…or be shut out because they were too terrible to recall except as fairy stories and campfire tales. We ourselves might one day become the stuff of legend, for behind every myth, no matter how fabulous or blasé, there exists some nugget of reality from which it derives. The mythos of Cthulhu, Shub-Niggurath and the other ‘gods’ echoes in the tales of many cultures worldwide, and perseveres both as a memory of what was and a warning of what might still be.”

I shook my head. It was inexplicable that a man who could not be bothered to know the Earth revolved about the sun would admit to filling his mind with myths, legends and esoteric history.

“As you mentioned, Watson, men kill each other over beliefs all the time,” Holmes remarked. “But I know not a single case in which a man was murdered over astronomy.”

I looked up sharply, wondering how he knew.

“Come, Watson, let us explore the abode of Ignatius Dean.”

He picked his way forward, not even acknowledging he had perpetrated on me yet another music hall trick. Holmes is ever my best friend, but there are times when I might gladly strangle him.

The interior of the cottage was worse than the exterior, at least as far as the structural soundness of the place. It was free of dust and clutter. Dean obviously made an effort to maintain a home for himself. It flitted through my mind that it was perhaps an influence from his unknown mother; quick upon that innocuous thought came a dread one—when it came time to perpetuate his lineage, an urge common to all men regardless of birth or breed, what woman would agree to such a life?

Holmes searched quickly and methodically, as I expected he would, but he moved with a surety and confidence that could only have come with familiarity. His vagueness that morning about his actions had made me doubt his excursion had been limited to the confines of the sleeping village. And I thought about the nature of the wounds to which I had attended.

“Your search of the cottage earlier was unproductive?” I asked. “I imagine the inadvisability of showing any light was very much a handicap to you.”

He paused momentarily, half-turned his head and allowed me the thinnest of smiles. “Well done, Watson.”

He returned to his examination of drawers and boxes, nooks and niches, knocking also on the decaying walls as if searching for hidden spaces within. I had no idea what Holmes hoped to find, though the curious weapon used to kill Quint was foremost in my mind, but I pitched in and looked for anything out of the ordinary.

“It was indeed inadvisable to show a light in or around the cottage,” Holmes continued after a moment. “These deep woods are never doused in sunlight, as you can tell from the half-twilight of our surroundings, but at night they are positively stygian.” After a moment, he added: “And quite dangerous.”

“It’s a wonder you did not fall and break a leg or crack open your skull,” I grumbled. “You were lucky to escape with abrasions and lacerations as mementoes of your foolhardy expedition.”

He paused, touched his face, and said: “Perhaps so.”

During our long association, Sherlock Holmes often withheld information from me. Sometimes he would reveal key facts much later, sometimes after reading my notes, often after a case had been fictionalized in some publication, making me feel quite the fool. I am sure there were times when he held back information entirely. Before I could question him further, he uttered a cry of discovery.

“What have you found, Holmes?”

“The birthright of Ignatius Dean,” Holmes replied, lifting from concealment a number of books, all seemingly of great antiquity. “These have been passed from father to son for generations.” He glanced through them slowly. “The
Livro de Cidades Perdidas
, the
Mae Ocwlt Arglwyddi y Tywyllwch Allano
l, and, of course, the
Necronomicon
. And several others, hitherto unknown.”

“Seems I’ve heard of that one, I think,” I said, grasping at an elusive memory. “Figured into some sort of occult hoax, did it not? A fraud named Bronislav?”

“Laslo Bronislav,” Holmes confirmed. “But not a hoax, quite unfortunately. Likely you saw the final newspaper accounts, prior to the affair slipping from the public eye entirely. You were in France with your new wife when it blazed through the English papers; I doubt it made much of a splash on the Continent, where the outré is not only commonplace but yawned at.”

“Were you involved in that matter, Holmes?”

“To a very small degree.”

I do my best to document Holmes’ cases, even when they are not publishable for one reason or another, but I am at his mercy when it comes to cases prior to our introduction by Stamford. The same applies to those cases with which I am not involved; at times I am not available because of medical or personal responsibilities, or there might be regimental duties to which I must attend, but more often than not it is because he rushes into the wilderness of London without notifying me, either alone or in the company of someone else. Of course, I bear Holmes no ill will, for he always has been and always will be a free agent. But his note-taking is sporadic and his handwriting even worse than mine.

“The books bear a marked resemblance to those freighted to you from London,” I observed.

“They are all products of times when books were individually written and bound, so they bear a superficial resemblance to the eye accustomed to books spewed by modern steam-powered presses,” Holmes replied. “However, they differ in language and content, even binding.” He paused and gazed closely at one of the tomes. “Judging from the pore-pattern, this book, written in proto-Welsh is bound in human skin.”

“Good Lord!” I cried.

“Despite all their differences,” he continued coolly, “what they have in common is that they explore various aspects of the so-called Cthulhu Mythos, some in the form of chronicles or collections of stories, others as personal explorations of the unknown.”

“Incantations, conjurations and other mumbo jumbo.”

“Some are indeed spell books, grimoires as they are known by seekers after occult knowledge,” Holmes said.

“Occult,” I spat. “Charlatans. I once saw a lad climb a rope and vanish into thin air. A trick, nothing more. Nothing occult about it.”

“Occult means nothing more than hidden,” Holmes explained. “The occult history represented by the Cthulhu Mythos is nothing more than hidden history, separated from our own enlightened age by the veil of time and a case of racial amnesia, a voluntary one at that—humanity has no desire to recall a time when terrors strode the Earth and mankind was little more than cattle or sheep.”

In my life, I had traveled to some dark places where fear and ignorance gripped heart and mind, had seen men huddle shivering against the terrors they knew to be abroad in the night. Few of them could tell me what they feared, the vast formless shapes looming from out their own forgotten past. I had always counted them as primitive savages. It was quite a shock to hear from a man whom I held in such high esteem that my own countrymen were perhaps no better than the natives I had always derided.

“I must study these books,” Holmes said.

“Between the two of us, we should be able to get them back to the village with no problem,” I observed.

He paused, staring first at the books, then looking around the tumbled-down cottage. “No, it would be best to study them here.”

“As you wish.” I shrugged. “I fail to see how anything in these books could have a bearing upon Quint’s murder.”

Holmes, however, did not answer. Instead, he pulled a rickety chair over to the deal table and began perusing through the tomes. I tried to engage him about the case, with various conjectures and theories that had come to mind after our encounter with the bestial Dean, but it quickly became clear I was speaking to myself. I spent time further searching the cottage, hoping to find another secret space where might be hidden the unique weapon Lestrade believed was the source of Quint’s wounds, but it seemed we had already found all the cottage’s secrets. Despairing any further illumination from Holmes, I eventually wandered outside.

I looked again at the sign-carven trees. There was a pattern to them not previously perceived, a demarcation of sorts, as a squire might post his lands to give notice to poachers and other trespassers. There were a few Elder Sigh sigils, and one for Cthulhu, as if giving a nod to that ancient god’s status as overlord, but it was clear from preponderance and alignment that the deep woods, and perhaps those who dwelt therein, were claimed by the hideous entity called Shub-Niggurath, the mere mention of whose name had had such a startling effect on Ignatius Dean. With a shudder, I wondered if Dean also carried a mark, but hidden to the human eye.

I traveled back to the ancient track where the body of Quint had been discovered. Had Dean left his cottage, he could certainly have spied upon whatever transpired without being seen. The body was long removed, but it seemed almost as if an aura of dread lingered, though I sought to suppress the idea, as it recalled to mind Holmes’ comments about how often I allowed facts to become subservient to my imagination.

In attempting to dispel all psychic impressions of the place, I concentrated minutely upon its physicality. The branches of a few bushes were bent, but I failed to see the level of disturbance that should have accompanied a life-and-death struggle. A bit further on I noticed another bent branch, then a couple more beyond. The signs of disturbance led me farther from both the ancient track and Dean’s cottage, deeper into the darkening woods.

Eventually I reached a small space clear of trees though the air above was choked with thickly intertwined branches. As I glanced upward, I was troubled to see the firmament deepening toward purple. It was late when we found our way to Dean’s cottage, and in my zeal to follow what I took to be signs that Quint’s body had been moved I had lost all sense of time. Looking around, I also noticed, with no small measure of dismay, that I had no idea where I was in relation to either Dean’s cottage or the overgrown track.

The underbrush at the edge of the clearing was beaten down and broken, as I would expect from a struggle that had ended the life of a man as vital and large as Henry Quint. Confirming the idea that this was the actual murder scene, at least in my mind, were several dark splashes of blood, black and copper-scented upon the leaves in the encroaching twilight. As I saw it, Quint had been killed here, then carried to where he had been found by the unlucky hiker. The purpose, however, escaped me, for if the body had not been moved its discovery would have been unlikely.

I was startled by the sudden sound of something rushing among the shadow-infested trees on the opposite side of the clearing. The noises vanished. Some moments later I realized I was still holding my breath. I breathed, but softly, careful not to make a sound. More noises came to me, as if a herd of small animals were rushing unseen among the trees; I jumped to the center of the clearing when the same rustling, rushing sounds appeared behind me.

Foxes came to mind as I stood in the center of that space armed with no more than a walking stick. Wolves and dogs also appeared in my thoughts, as did bugaboos less easily envisioned.

I also told myself it might be nothing more than a night wind whipping and snapping its way through the underbrush, tearing at leaves and shaking branches in its passage. In convincing myself that it was naught but the wind I was no more successful than had been Poe’s raven-haunted narrator. I, however, did not possess the solace, real or imaginary, of a hearth-cheered chamber.

My heart seemed on the verge of bursting when the sounds suddenly ceased. There was no tapering of the noises, merely an abrupt cessation. I strained my ears, but all that came to me though the leaden silence was something that sounded like a faraway sigh, before it faded away altogether. I wanted to call out to Holmes in the gloom, but I held silent, not because I feared he would not hear me but because I feared someone other than Holmes might.

As I stood in the dusk, I noted glowing marks upon some trees opposite. Intrigued, yet wary, I approached and saw the illumination was phosphorescent moss that had grown in deeply carved symbols. Again I saw the sign of Shub-Niggurath, a warning against trespassers, a proclamation of ancient ownership. These symbols, however, had been defaced, slashed. At the base of one tree, I stepped on a hardness. I reach down and picked up a hunter’s knife, a sturdy instrument accustomed to rough use, but the hardwood hilt was cracked and the blade nicked and bent. I smelled the bitter scent of dried sap upon the metal, but there was also an alien smell, as sharp as blood, but tainted by a foulness that stirred primal memories in the deepest part of my brain.

Henry Quint had offended the forest
—Dean’s brash words when panicked by the prospect of confinement. I recalled Holmes’ comments about the Roman concept of
genius loci
, before it was corrupted by a rational world. What ancient force had marked these woods as its own, had taken offense at Quint’s defacement?