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

The air this evening was warm and sweet, but the potential in that burgeoning storm could already be felt in the fingers of wind tousling my hair. Gradually, I succumbed, my eyelids becoming heavier. I saw him then, on the cusp of a dream, so that I could not be sure that he was real, or some shade conjured by somnolence. There was no question who this man was, though I was mired in torpor. He moved rapidly, a thin, tall man, his shoulders hunched by years of academic study. He resembled Holmes, to a point. But there was something predatory in his gait. There was something hungry about it.

I watched him keenly, anxiety flooding my mind. When would Mr Holmes send his emissary to query me? Why was he so keen to know the whereabouts of this man, unless he signified a very grave threat? I could believe it. I saw the beast in him. I saw—

The figure had stopped abruptly, as if someone had called his name. Or – the paranoid whisperer at my shoulder insisted – as if he had read your mind . His face, at this distance, seemed like a pale, inverted teardrop; I could see that the frontal lobes of his head were massive, could almost see within, the diabolical machinations of his brain, churning like some confounded engine. His eyes were a furious, black area of shadow, like the cross-hatchings in a sketch by Hogarth. Did I feel the first frisson, then, of … well … what? Fear? Is this what fear felt like? A spike in the gut, in the vitals, the incipient juice of me? Some feeling that was no slave to the destroyed nerves in my body. Something primal and basic, born of the will to stay alive.

I thought then that the will in me to die might very well be countered by this ancient instinct in the flesh to survive.

He was coming towards me. I considered bluffing, pretending I was asleep, but I just knew he would be the type of person to see instantly through such a charade. When he reached the wheelchair, he did not ask my name. Instead, he took hold of the handles, disengaged the brake, and began wheeling me down the path in the direction of the meadow.

Uncle Tobias, the previous summer, had grafted the thick tyres from a wheelbarrow on to the chair, so that he was able to push me across the unforgiving terrain, broaden my horizons, and give me a different view of the world. Moriarty – for it must be he – took advantage of that customisation now, putting distance between us and the hotel. Again, I felt the unwinding of what must be fear in the pit of my stomach, like a nest of adders coiling against and around each other. Night was coming on; already the sun had descended beyond the mountains, limning their edges with golden fire. The blue of the sky was thickening. In the east, stars were beginning to make themselves known. He pushed me hard and fast, and I bounced in my seat like a bag of sticks, threatening to spill to the floor at every bump or swerve. We travelled for what seemed like hours. At one point, I lost my blanket, and the cold leapt at me like a wildcat, turning my hands blue. The water from my eyes began to freeze on my cheeks, stiffening them. For once, I was grateful that I could not feel pain.

Did I fall asleep at one point? Or was I plunged into senselessness by the cold? Whatever it was, I emerged into calm. The sky was fully dark now, and the stars in all their countless billions seemed to be howling against their icy backdrop. I could make out the shape of the mountains where they blocked those pinpoints of light, but nothing else. He had taken me to the tongue of the glacier and left me here to perish. He had—

“I spoke with your mother,” he said. He was somewhere behind me. “As he did. Oh, she was most forthcoming. It is amazing, sometimes, the wag of the tongue when confronted with the spectre of appalling consequence.”

I have never felt so trapped within my own body. I wanted to scream and snarl and rage at him. I wanted to tear his face from his skull and send it to the hungry winds like a scrap from a standard born by a defeated army. IF YOU HAVE DONE SOMETHING TO MY MOTHER – I signed, impotently.

“I know where Mr Holmes resides, and that lapdog of his, Watson. He is not much longer for this world, and, by God, I am ready to depart it too, should it come to that.

“Your mother spoke eloquently about you, young man,” he said. “She told me you spent a lot of time together, talking of life and death and all points in between. She said you were hell-bent upon ending your life, and would have done so by now if you were able to lift a finger against yourself. She told me that you didn’t even know what life was about. You had no frame of reference. You could not feel, yet you believed life was about nothing but feeling.’

I thought I heard the compress of snow underfoot. The ruffle of clothing in wind. I caught a glimpse of him, a shadow, wraithlike, at my shoulder. And for a moment I thought I could smell him too. He smelled of books and leather and, as in me, I smelled in him the sickly sweet redolence of death. Whereas I was inviting it, he was admitting it, he was cosying up to it within the folds of his heavy coat.

“Your mother talked of you as a child. They would bring you here, to the glacier, determined that the cold, fresh air would be beneficial. Of course, it wasn’t, but she kept bringing you. In blind hope. In stubborn belief. You became agitated, and she saw that as a good thing; she thought you were stirring from this pitiful state, this curse of being locked within yourself. She thought you might suddenly stand up, rejuvenated by the magic of frigidity, and be miraculously cured. But I suspect it was because you were distressed. You were brought to a place that seemed only to mirror your condition. The cold, cruel, still mass of ice. The suffocation of life beneath it. The smothering. The glacier mocked you. It, after all, enjoyed some minute advance. The incremental creep through the mountains. More movement than you could ever dream of.

“I could leave you here,” he said. “Nobody would think to check this location. You would be dead within the hour, of exposure. But I am no monster, despite what he says.”

I felt the charge of his gloved fists upon the handles once more. We turned away from the great mound of the glacier, pale under the night as if it were blessed with its own light source. “I ask you … no, sir, I warn you not to involve yourself in this affair. My issue with Mr Holmes is a private one. He has put you in jeopardy to serve himself, which goes to show you, I think, that the true nature of monsters is not such a subject given to black and white hues.”

I think the cold was getting to me, though I could not feel it. I was no longer shivering, and I was drowsy, as if injected with sedatives. I had read somewhere that once you stop shivering then the body is not far away from serious hypothermia, and that tiredness is a sign. But again it looked as if I would be cheated of death; Professor Moriarty was playing with me. When we got back within view of the hotel, I could see frantic movement in the grounds. Staff and guests were roving around with lanterns. I heard my name being called above the clamour of the wind.

“You can be a glacier,” he told me. “Or you can be a waterfall. It is your choice, though you might not think it so.”

I heard the snap of something behind me, and a rustling. He didn’t say anything else. I smelled smoke, and a golden glow built, casting my shadow before me. I heard a cry: “There! Over there! Look. Fire!” And then many figures were dashing across the meadow towards me. Moriarty was long gone by the time they reached me. I was swaddled in blankets and my mother’s scent was here, though I could not yet see her. She was crying. I heard her crying all the way back, and it followed me down into sleep.

When I awakened, a man was sitting opposite me, peering at me as if I were an arresting specimen in a museum. He said: “I was sent by Mr Holmes. He said you might have a message for me.”