Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 2) (7 page)

“Yes, I’ve developed quite an interest in the old thing with its accounts of flying machines and city destroying explosives, not to mention its concept of the
just
war,” Brigadier Knight said. “But the
original
Sanskrit? I think not, as a much earlier version written in Proto-Iranian which is even more amazing in that it…” He paused. “But I do not suppose you gentlemen have come at this later hour to discuss ancient epics. How may I help you?”

“I am investigating a series of unusual events in the East End,” Sherlock Holmes replied. “I believe you may be able to help me.”

The Brigadier frowned and shook his head. “Bunny Benton, I’ll wager! I manage to prevail upon Archie to keep all this under his hat, but I did not count on Bunny’s big ears. Well-named chap, that one! Perhaps we should adjourn to a setting more conducive to conversation.”

In the sitting room, Ah Ling served sherry, then left the men to their deliberations.

“Music?” the Brigadier mused after Sherrington related what he had heard from their mutual acquaintance. “No, I would not call it music exactly, nor did Archie Wallace, who was with me when I heard it, but it was indeed coming from underground, beneath the alleys and byways north of the docks at the edge of Whitechapel.”

“How, exactly, would you describe the sounds heard by you and Wallace?” Holmes asked.

“Not music, as I said,” the Brigadier replied, sipping slowly and contemplatively at his sherry. “Definitely musical, though, but in a very organic way, much as the cry of a bird is musical, or the rhythmical howl of a wolf.” He leaned forward in his chair and regarded his two visitors with intense eyes that flashed like fire and ice. “Archie just called it weird, but I’ll tell you what it brought most to my mind. Out upon the lone immensity of the sea, far from even the smallest speck of land, where you feel like the trumps of doom have sounded and you’ve been left behind, sometimes you hear the great leviathans of the deep call to each other across the watery leagues, ancient wails and cries that have meaning only for the whales and dolphins—aye, that’s what I thought when I heard the sounds in the night.”

“Were the sounds stationary or moving?” Holmes asked.

Sherrington looked at the consulting detective, amazed, not hiding his surprise. The young man possessed a great capacity for belief and subscribed to a tremendous variety of obscure and arcane notions—Atlantis, ley lines, the Lost Masters of Tibet, mesmerism, the existence of a prehistoric race of monster-gods, pyramidology,  spiritualism, life on other worlds, and thaumaturgy—but he felt he had to draw the line at bally whales cavorting beneath the most populous metropolis on Earth.

“Moving,” Brigadier Knight replied.

“Do you think you could project what you heard upon a survey map of the area?” Holmes asked.

Sherrington gulped his drink and poured another.

“I already have,” Brigadier Knight replied. “I did so because I thought there might be some connection between the sound and the recent rash of disappearances.” He sent a sudden bluster of a laugh in Holmes’ direction. “With other men, their reactive expressions reveal to me their fears, joys, hopes and secrets, but, with you, I must read you, so to speak, from your lack of expression. I would not want to face you across the gaming table, Mr Holmes, for I would soon be a pauper.”

“I leave card playing to Watson, and I hold his checkbook,” Holmes explained. “The clubs all welcome Watson, but they do not extend the same invitation to me.” He paused. “You are aware of the disappearances in Whitechapel?”

“As is my friend Archie Wallace,” the Brigadier said. “Whom, I might add, has been barely constrained from emblazoning our fears across the front page of his tabloid.”

“I’m sure Scotland Yard appreciates his discretion,” Holmes remarked coolly.

“Discretion is not really in Archie’s nature,” Brigadier Knight pointed out. “But I was able to convince him that waiting until we had more facts would result in much more notoriety—now, that
did
appeal to his nature. But I should caution you, Mr Holmes, that Archie will not hold back should he sense others are closing in on the story.”

“You have a map, you say?”

“Let me get it,” the Brigadier said, leaving. In a few moments he returned and unrolled a large-scale survey map of a portion of the East End across a low table. He pointed to a series of points, some connected, some not. “This is where we first heard the sounds, and these are other places we thought we heard them as well. I’ve tried to connect them, but they do not seem to follow the order of the streets.”

“No, they do not,” Holmes agreed. It was easy to see that any lines connecting the points would take them beneath buildings and beyond the boundaries of streets. “But there might yet be a pattern that follows something older than the streets.”

“But beneath the streets we see are even older streets, down to Roman times and beyond,” Sherrington protested. “Even our nethermost sewers more or less follow the same track.”

“I think Holmes is referring to a pattern older than London itself,” the Brigadier explained. He looked at Holmes. “The rivers?”

“Precisely,” Holmes agreed. “The lost rivers of London.”

“They run beneath the metropolis hidden and all but forgotten,” the Brigadier said. “I suppose it is possible they could be used for transport, but…such animals!”

“Hold on a moment, chaps,” Sherrington said, setting aside his now-empty glass and wishing the Brigadier would offer something a little stronger. “Are you suggesting that whales have found their way up the Thames and are gamboling about under these chartered streets like playful carp?”

Holmes and the Brigadier looked from Sherrington to each other, then back to the map, contemplatively.

“Well, I suppose it does sound a bit daft when I say it like that, but…” The young clubman set his glass down with a resounding
plonk!
“Confound it! The notion would sound daft no matter who said it.” His brow furrowed. “
Is
that what you chaps are saying?”

“No definitely not whales, or even dolphins, no matter the sounds we heard,” Knight admitted. “But certainly some kind of creature, one agile enough to traverse the narrow winding tunnels the ‘lost rivers’ have become over the years.”

“With the ability to extrude an appendage of some sort when near the surface, very swiftly snatching away its victims,” Holmes added. “A deliberate attack, not blindly groping.”

“Which would eliminate both squid and octopus,” Knight said. “They attack prey directly, what they can see.”

“They are also eliminated by the means of propulsion used by both creatures,” Holmes agreed. “The creature must be powerful enough to swim against strong currents, agile enough to navigate twisting passages, possess some sort of appendage capable of sensing its prey, and be well adapted to a lightless environment.”

“Sounds like Dhumin or Shudde M’ell,” Sherrington remarked as he listlessly contemplated his empty glass.

“Myths!” Brigadier Knight scoffed.

“No, not at all, Brigadier,” Sherrington countered calmly. “It is true the creatures are mentioned in ancient writings, but there have been many sightings of them in modern times, made by several very reliable witnesses.”

The Brigadier snorted derisively.

“You gentlemen have me at a disadvantage,” Holmes said.

“Mr Holmes, did you ever study world religions or comparative mythology?” Sherrington asked.

“No more than what the first-year student would encounter in university,” the detective answered. “And I did my best to put it out of mind, along with other unimportant studies, such as philosophy and astronomy, all of which are irrelevant to my work.”

“Well, I doubt you would have come across Dhumin or Shudde M’ell at any rate,” Sherrington admitted. “They are rather outside the Greco-Roman piffle that is used to pad undergraduate noggins, if you know what I mean. Both creatures are as obscure as they are ancient, part of the Cthulhu Mythos.”

“Now, that is a term I have encountered,” Holmes said.

“Oh?”

“Probably in the pages of a penny dreadful,” Brigadier Knight suggested, though he felt a twinge of guilt as he did so, being an avid reader of such dubious literature himself.

“What about the two creatures you named?’ Holmes asked.

“Since you have some familiarity with the Cthulhu Mythos,” Sherrington said, “may I also assume you are familiar with the concept behind it?”

Holmes answered: “An interconnected network of myths about prehistoric creatures no longer extant.”

“It
is
a worldwide mythos,” Sherrington admitted, “but the Great Old Ones are active in the world today, though, thankfully, not as much as they were in primal times.”

“Preposterous!” Brigadier Knight muttered.

“From what I have heard of your adventures, Brigadier, I am a bit surprised at you,” Sherrington chided gently. “I seem to recall a rumor about something encountered in a chamber deep beneath the Great Pyramid in ’85. And then there was something about a…what was it…a loathsome horror rising from the sea near the ruins of Ponape a few…”

“Archie does tend to exaggerate,” the Brigadier muttered, but he did seem suddenly ill at ease.

“Gentlemen,” Holmes interrupted. “I must have information, if it is pertinent to this investigation. I will decide its pertinence
after
I have heard it. As you may have surmised from my comments about your journalist acquaintance, Brigadier, this is something of an urgent matter. Now, Sherrington, pray continue.”

“Both Shudde M’ell and Dhumin are subterranean creatures, able to burrow swiftly through the earth, and which our very earliest ancestors took for gods, as they did others,” Sherrington explained. “Despite being associated with the chthonian realm, they are also able to maintain an aquatic existence, though Dhumin has never been sighted anywhere but in the forests and lakes around the city of Memphis in the United States. Of course, the thing is, according to witnesses…”

“Witnesses!” Brigadier Knight snorted.

“According to
reliable
witnesses,” Sherrington continued, “the entity known as Dhumin is really nothing much more than a great bloody snake, perhaps just a pet to Cthulhu. Now, Shudde M’ell…”

The Brigadier sighed heavily.

Sherlock Holmes made no comment.

“Shudde M’ell is a whole different kettle of gods, if you know what I mean,” Sherrington said. “Fast, agile, strong, possessed of a malevolent intelligence, mostly considered a burrower but able to maintain an indefinite aquatic existence, and, most importantly, the damned thing has at least a score tentacles, all very long, all prehensile, and all possessing organs of sight and smell—each one perfectly adapted for hunting in the method you explained, Mr Holmes. There is, however, one problem.”

“That Shudde M’ell does not exist?” the Brigadier suggested.

“No, not at all,” Sherrington replied, trying to appear as if he were not irked by the older man’s comment, and not succeeding. “It is that Shudde M’ell is, well, rather large, at least the size of a house which, I think, would put it out of the running.”

“Humph!” the Brigadier humphed.

“You are forgetting something, Sherrington,” Holmes said.

The young man raised his thin eyebrows enquiringly.

“It is an axiom of biology that only a microscopic organism starts out full sized,” Holmes said, almost hiding a slight smirk. “A Shudde M’ell, as you call it, must begin life in, shall we say, a much more modest fashion, perhaps smaller than a house.”

Sherrington slapped his forehead and exclaimed: “By Jove, Mr Holmes. It seems painfully obvious when you put it that way, but it escaped me altogether. Though many these beings of the Mythos are preternaturally long lived, they are, of course, not gods but living creatures, though perhaps not of this Earth or of any dimension of which we are aware. The ancients always described full grown creatures as if they were solitary beings, but they must have issue from time to time.”

“The plesiosaurus is a massive beast,” the Brigadier said, “but a pod of newly spawned plesiosauri can be easily held in one’s cupped hands.”

It was now Sherrington’s turn to regard the retired military man with a doubtful gaze.

“Some years ago, up in Scotland,” the Brigadier said. “It all…”

“Perhaps another time, Brigadier,” Holmes suggested. “If a young issue of this Shudde M’ell has found its way somehow into one of the underground rivers, it will continue hunting prey until it either finds its way into the sea or can be no longer contained by the subterranean watercourse. So far, it has contained itself to an area roughly comprising Whitechapel, but it…”

“Mr Holmes, do you really believe Shudde M’ell is more than a myth spun by the ancients to explain natural events,” Brigadier Knight asked.

“I rarely believe in anything in the sense of possessing faith in an unseen world, but I do believe in my powers of deduction,” Holmes replied. “I need never to have seen an ocean to deduce its existence from a single drop, or the expanse of the Sahara Desert from the smallest grain of sand. Similarly, I need not to have seen, or necessarily believe in, a particular animal (if someone chooses to call it a ‘god,’ what is that to me?) to accept the possibility of its existence contrary to the knowledge of naturalists—both the gorilla and the platypus managed to thrive unsuspected in their respective habitats quite well without the permission of the Fellows of the Royal Academy of Science.”