Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 2) (24 page)

“Well, I am glad to see that University has nae left ye though ye have left University,” I quipped, feeling a bit more smug than I should have allowed myself, as it turned out.

“The same might be said of you, Professor MacCullaich,” he murmured. “You have been on sabbatical from the University of Edinburgh for some three months. You are at odds with the current administration about certain controversial theories and are unsure you wish to return, yet your desire for research, no matter the cost to your reputation, or pocketbook, continues…some might claim with a degree of fanaticism. You daily engage in long treks locally, collecting geologic samples, ignoring the pain of your arthritis, which has increased recently. Lately you have become fascinated in a group of standing stones, a megalithic henge erected by a long-vanished people. The ancient structure is located in a clearing in a wide clearing near a very large river, surrounded by a thick and long-neglected stand of forest.”

I bristled and sputtered at his impudence. It was one thing to see his trickery (or so I still thought at the time) used to confuddle a loutish oaf like the porter, but quite another to have it turned upon meself. As I decided whether to thrash me new acquaintance with me walking stick—though I rather doubted it considering how easily he had stayed me hand earlier—I gazed into his face looking for some trace of mockery, for I had endured more than me share of it from inferiors, but I saw nothing but placidity, and maybe a very faint hint of amusement, which I could nae rightly deny him under the circumstances. In seconds, me ire subsided.

“Aye,” I agreed, grudgingly.

“That you are on sabbatical from the University is evidenced by your protracted presence in the village, and away three months by the wear upon your walking stick, which was presented you just four months previously,” Holmes explained. “Absenting yourself at a time of year not associated with the start of sabbaticals indicates your conflict with the administration. You ignored instructions to cease your investigations into the hollow nature of our terrestrial sphere, for such are the claims of Professor Lidenbrock, whose samples reached you today, resulting in a mutually agreed absence. Your eagerness to receive the samples speaks to your desire to pursue the matter, and your zeal by the fact that you bore the cost of freighting the samples, despite a frugal nature,”

“All quite true, Mr Holmes,” I admitted. “The fools refused to consider the validity of Lidenbrock’s theories, they have put me into the cold, ignoring me own reputation. However, I am surprised ye ken anything of Lidenbrock and the hollow Earth. The results of his expedition to
Snaefellsjokull
in Iceland were suppressed, for the most part, except for a sensational pamphlet in French.”

“I make it my business to know many odd things about remote reaches of the world and the people inhabiting them,” Holmes said. “I knew of the professor’s expedition from an acquaintance in the Royal Geographic Society, but the pamphlet you mention was forwarded to me by an aunt on my mother’s side who knew of my penchant for collecting odd facts.” The corners of his mouth tugged upward slightly. “I have not yet decided whether to consign the information to the box room of my brain or to disregard it.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but decided nae to press the matter since there were other questions in need of answers.

“How could ye possibly ken me activities or the state of me health?” I demanded.

“Your journeys are written in the scuffs upon your shoes and walking stick, in the dust upon your clothing, in splashes of mud and in the streaks caused by various rocks and minerals, by leaves of trees in your cuffs and traces of moss upon your knees,” Holmes said. “There are many small scars upon your hands from a lifetime of collecting specimens, as well as tiny cuts attesting to more recent activities. You prominently carry a journal in your jacket pocket, with writing instruments, and your place is held by a paper marker upon which you have sketched, and over-sketched, the layout of an ancient henge, as well as views of various standing stones.”

“Hmph,” I grumbled. “And me pains?”

“A prescription for the local chemist half protruding from your lower right pocket,” he replied, pointing. “It is a strong dosage,” he added as I pushed the slip out of sight. “But, strong as it is, it does not halt the pain, which is an indication of the passion you feel for your chosen field of study.”

Part of me still wanted to thrash him soundly for  impertinence, but I could nae fight the grudging admiration I had for a young man with such an inquisitive and analytical mind. Had he been me student, he would never have been sent down, no matter the provocation, and I cursed the bawheids who had done him such a thing. In that instant, I understood that Sherlock Holmes and I were in nae so different straits. And, curse me, I felt an unwonted sense of pity for the lad, bordering on the mawkishness I had always detested in others. I suppressed me feelings beneath a grumble.

“Where are ye bound now?” I asked.

“I thought of taking a room for the night at the local tavern, then, on the morrow, setting on a walking tour,” he replied.

“Nay, ye don’t want the change house,” I warned him. “The reeky place is always crawn with the worst of the worst, and they will surely overcharge ye for a  ticky bed, watered down ale and broth with a wee hank of gristle.”

“What do you suggest, Professor MacCullaich?”

“I’ve plenty o’ room at Slate House, and ye’re welcome to stay as me guest as long as ye wish, or to use me house as a base for yer walking about,” I told him. “I’ve only the servants to keep me company and the louts are no company a’tall.” I quickly added: “Nae that I would interfere with yer activities.”

“Nor I yours,” Holmes said.

“But, I tell ye, I would welcome discourse over the evening meal from such a quick-minded lad as yerself,” I said. “And, aye, ye were quite correct when ye said I’d lately become interested in one of the henges left in the Highlands by the blood-drinking Picts of yore. Aspects of it trouble me sorely, and have for years. I am in need of some point of view other than me own to make sense of it.” I paused, then decided to throw it all on the line, if only so the lad had some gleaming of what he might be getting himself into. “I need to ken that I am nae stark barking mad.”

Holmes dinnae answer. His gaze unfocused, and I thought him ready to flee a gyte bodach who countenanced such flummery as hollow-earth saurians, but the hesitation was momentary.

“I should be delighted to spend time as your guest,” Holmes said. “I look forward to your account of the mystery of the standing stones…and your opinion about the unknown realms beneath.”

And so it was on that pale morning so many years ago that the young Sherlock Holmes decided to accompany me to Slate House, a decision that would almost cost us our lives and sanity. But before I turned the cart home, I did have to stop by the village chemist, for Holmes had been quite right about the pain, the elixir prescribed by me sawbones, and the dubious efficacy of the vile brew.

When I told Holmes I had plenty of room to put him up for as long as he pleased, it was nay exaggeration. Slate House could have quartered an army, but the days of lairds and lairge families, of a gathering of the clans, were long past, and seven hundred years of MacCullaich were all distilled into me. Located a fair distance from the village, the estate was comprised of the main house and various outbuildings; a half-dozen or so crofters had hereditary holdings on me land, for which I took only a peppercorn rent, but most of the landed estate was given over to pasturage, wooded tracts, bogs, and rivers and lakes. I allowed fishing rights to villagers at the farthest reaches of the streams, and limited hunting to the boundaries, which kept down the poaching. I dinnae allow access to the deeps, but, for the most part, I needed do nothing to discourage trespassers, as they had lived with dire stories of the region for generations, and knew that terror and danger lurked in the dark heart of the forest.

That day I was too preoccupied with the specimens freighted by Professor Lidenbrock to pay Holmes any heed. I learned later that after being shown his room by Mrs MacDonald, the housekeeper, he vanished on a trek with rucksack and walking stick, taking only some cheese, bread, and ale pressed upon him by Cook.

That evening, just as the land was daurknin and the brilliant swath of stars that mark the Scottish Highlands emerged, Holmes came from out the purple haze looking weary from his day, yet oddly excited. I noticed his boots were edged with wet sand and splashed with a yellowish mud, and though I knew the geology of me own land well enough to hoist him on his own petard I resisted the urge, barely.

“I hope ye had a pleasant trek, Mr Holmes,” I ventured.

“Very pleasant, and informative.”

“Oh?”

“I should like you to tell me about the henge.”

“Certainly,” I agreed, but put it off till after supper. Cook was very particular about meal times, and I had learned over the years to nae anger Cook, lest I doom myself to a week of cold porridge and half-boiled mutton.

Supper was a pleasant affair, a time of sparkling conversation and Holmes’ dry and sometimes caustic wit. It had been a long time since I had enjoyed intercourse with such a quick and lively mind, one filled with so much varied information, able nae only to detect the flaws in me own arguments but to also erect theories and theses constructed entirely of unassailable logic. The staff was rather taken with Sherlock Holmes, especially Cook, who doted on the lad, but I could nae say whether that was due to any aspect of his personality, which was affable, or simply because it was a welcome respite from the cantankerous old curmudgeon who was their usual charge. After the meal, Holmes and I retired to the library. He had acquired the habit of a late-night smoke in university, but had no pipe so I gave him an old clay one that had belonged to an uncle o’ mine, an old salt, which I told him was his to keep, The only tobacco I had was a strong shag that every creature on Earth seemed to detest, but Holmes seemed to like it well enough. As we sat afore the fire and sent blue clouds roiling upward, I told him of the ancient ring of standing stones that exerted such a strong pull upon me attention, and me imagination…again.

“Me forefathers have lived here for several thousand years, but officially, under the Crown, ye understand, we trace from the early Twelfth Century, when this estate was claimed and the first house constructed,” I told him. “It was once more modest than what ye see now, but it was reconstructed and enlarged several times o’er the years. The Highlands, as ye ken, is home to many dark myths and legends. Though the fashion now, in this age of steam and steel, is to set aside beliefs of our forebears, there be many people in such a village as Kilglarig, who have nae forgotten the old ways, still light candles against the darkness, and propitiate the devils that the Church claim were dispelled by the coming of Our Savior.

“Despite this new dominion established by the hand of Man, where telegraph lines are strung to primitive outposts, railway tracks are laid in the wasteland, and trips around the world may be accomplished in eighty days or less, there still exist dark places in the world,” I continued. “The forests, bogs and lakes here are also in the heart of darkness, to coin a phrase, long shunned by people.”

“Myths and legends can be persistent, especially when certain elements of a landscape reinforce those beliefs,” Holmes observed. “When there are unexplained disappearances over a period of time and occasional mysterious experiences by travelers, which are of course exaggerated in the retelling, those aspects of the landscape become enhanced and the feelings of fear and dread are magnified.”

The expression on me face brought a thin chuckle to Holmes. I again wondered if I was somehow an object of ridicule.

“I spent my day tramping about your estate, guided by my earlier observations,” he told me. “I also enjoyed several cups of tea and a ‘wee dram of whiskey’ from a few of your crofters who were quite willing to relate local yarns. I also had a very interesting talk with an elderly poacher who swore he would never venture into your deep woods, not for ‘the fattest deers of the laird,’ but he could not explain his reticence. Many elderly villagers had conflicting tales to tell. Reverend O’Cain, the vicar, was unusually helpful, showing me several old documents, including one written in Latin five centuries ago, that told how the ‘minions of Satan were quelled in a blasphemous place long known as the Devil’s Ring’.”

“Ye have had quite a busy day, Mr Holmes,” I muttered, and I fear I let a hint of annoyance creep into me words. “I apologize, Mr Holmes. Ye are me guest, and I have asked ye to help me.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “It is my nature to gather all the information I can about a subject, winnowing the unnecessary only when my hypothesis has been firmly established. I did not seek information from other sources to diminish the need for information from you, but to enhance it. I can no more get to the heart of a matter, to the empirical truth, without information than could the children of Israel make bricks for a solid foundation without straw. When it comes to information, I am a sponge, and I can no more ignore my nature than can a leopard when face to face with prey. Now, Professor, please tell me all that troubles you, and, please, I pray, leave out nothing, even information that may seem redundant to me. Even a story twice told has value in the retelling, if only because different eyes have different weaknesses.”

“As I said,” I continued, mollified by his words and taken aback by the strength of his argument, “there have always been dark stories about the region, about the land around this estate. Even in the days of the Picts there were stories of fearsome creatures in the lakes, the woods and beneath the earth.