Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

‘What is the meaning of this, Professor?’ Moran said.

My mind worked rapidly. I had expected a technologically advanced species, yet my mistake had been to assume that their technology followed our path – the path of factories, parts, machines .

Theirs, I realised instantly, was a technology of the mind : who knew what dark practices and terrible experiments these Marsians performed on their native world?

I was a fool to expect tripods and death rays! These were parasites , creatures of pure mind!

I almost laughed, in giddy exhalation. It was as though creatures such as Holmes and myself had transcended even the limitations of the flesh, had become beings of pure reason. At last, I thought, I had a worthy adversary!

I had sent men back to Woking, but all remnants of the asteroid were gone, and nothing remained on the clear, clean surface of the common to suggest any foul play. Inspector Lestrade, I learned, was back at work, as though nothing had happened. My gunmen of the previous night had disappeared as though the ground itself swallowed them; which, I suspected, may have been the literal truth.

There was nothing for me to do but bide my time, and organise, and wait.

In the next few weeks, the newspapers began reporting increasingly strange, troubling events. Key members of trade and parliament mysteriously disappeared, only to return as though nothing had happened, with strange new policies in place. ‘It was like I went to sleep with my husband,’ said one tearful woman to the London Illustrated News , ‘and woke up with a stranger wearing my husband’s face. I don’t know him any more, he is someone else, someone completely alien.’

The same affliction spread elsewhere, even to the lower classes. It may have affected the aristocracy from the very beginning, but no one was able to tell: they had always been strange and aloof in their ways.

More troubling still were the stories, soon circulating, of the man they called Jack . A ruthless killer, he – if it were a he, if there were only one of them, and not an army – moved swiftly and silently through the night, brutally slashing his victims to death. He operated mostly in the East End of London, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake, so that the newspapers began to refer to a ‘Spree of Frenzied Killings’ and ‘The Ongoing East End Massacre’ before, finally and abruptly, they ceased from making any mention of any unusual events, and began instead to promote the new government line of Obey, Produce, Conform .

They – whoever they now were – had also began to hunt me down earnestly.

My organisation was being infiltrated from without. My banker, Scrooge, had set up an elaborate scheme to capture me on a visit to the vaults. I escaped with Moran’s help, capturing the mean old man in the process, though not without having to kill about a dozen jerkily moving, Marsian-animated corpses. We locked Scrooge in a safe house and tortured him. The malevolent spirit housed in his body laughed in my face even as Moran got busy with the pliers.

“Step away from my banker’s body, you Marsian bodysnatcher!’ I screamed in frustration. Tendrils of red mist rose out of Scrooge’s nose as though mocking me, and the man’s eyes opened and stared straight at me. His mouth moved, but the words that came were spoken by another, alien intelligence.

‘Join us … Moriar … ty. Obey … Con … form!’

‘Never!’ I said, and brought down my knife, hard, stabbing the reanimated corpse in the heart. The body shuddered and was still – yet the red mist continued to rise out of the body, and now it was making its way to me!

How we escaped that room – those clutching red, ethereal tentacles! – is not a story to be lightly told. When at last we departed, running down the wharf side of Limehouse with Scrooge’s hobbling dead corpse in pursuit, I had sworn that I would take the war directly to the enemy.

I, Moriarty, would not be defeated so easily!

The story of the Resistance is a long and glorious one, yet, ultimately, futile. In six months, the world had changed for ever. My men were dead or subverted, the Resistance broken, and I was on the run. Our dear Queen, it was said, was safe – had departed the palace in the midst of night, to regions unknown. French ships stood watch in the Channel, to stop anyone from escaping to the shores of Europe and bringing the plague with them. The French were only waiting for a chance to step in and invade us in the guise of saviours.

And then Jack ran wild.

We watched from the shadows. Somewhere nearby a clock struck midnight. But now, it was always midnight in London.

A dark shape materialised on the steps of the old church.

Resolved into the features of a blank-eyed man, and then another, and another. Slowly, they came down the steps, and I almost laughed.

For they knew I was there. They had sent my own men down those steps: Roylott, the poisoner; the German spy, Oberstein; Gruner, the notorious sadist; Beppo, the Italian snatcher; even that red-headed confidence man, John Clay!

Good men, ruthless men, dedicated men, who once feared and obeyed me – now lifeless shells, animated by the malignant force of these Marsians.

They fell on the bleating, hapless Fagin. His screams tore the night. The shadows gathered behind us. Hands reached and grabbed Moran and me. We struggled against them in vain.

‘Was this part of your plan, Professor?’ Moran hissed, in pain. They pushed us along, towards the church steps. My feet stepped in poor Fagin’s remains, leaving a trail of bloodied footsteps, pulling along trailing entrails.

‘We have not lost yet, Sebastian,’ I said.

He shook his head. His shoulders slumped and he let them push him forward. The fight was no longer in him. Colonel Moran had given up. It was a pitiful sight to see.

I followed along. I had no choice.

Up the stairs and into the church.

Ethereal red lights and fog, drifting … the air was humid, with an unearthly stench. Was this what the air of Mars smelled like? I pictured a world inhabited by spores, by leeches floating in the fetid air, carried on the winds. The mists parted and merged. We were pushed along, deeper into the church. Down the ancient steps to the cellars, no sound but the beat of my heart in my chest, the thrum of blood in my ears, air flowing in and out of my lungs, in and out through nose and mouth, and I was aware, more than ever, of my own weak flesh and blood, my mortality.

Down to ancient catacombs, the carved space of sewers underneath the city. They must have preferred it down there, I realised: slowly the under-city was being converted into a Marsian landscape. I saw with horror the glowing green moss spreading along the walls, smelled the fetid corruption of slowly rotting bodies.

Our descent ended. Down there, in the dark, it was impossible to tell where we were. Somewhere deep under London.

This was Jack’s point.

I waited. Moran stood beside me. My men – what remained of my men – stood around us in a guard. I wondered if we were to be welcomed or executed. Perhaps both, I thought. I heard the tread of soft, unhurried footsteps. A small, tan figure, with only the hint of a limp, emerged from the thick foliage of creepers and vines.

It wore a familiar face, but it took me a moment to place it, until he smiled: I had last seen him at Horsell Common, running.

‘Hello, Moriarty,’ Dr Watson said.

I said, ‘Hello, Jack.’

He smiled. He had nothing of the softness of the old Watson about him. A greater intelligence animated this being, a pernicious, alien mind, bent on destruction.