Tony Richards - The Astonishing Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the Twenty-First Century

“He’ll come after us,” Holmes heard her murmur. “He has powers you couldn’t believe, and he will kill us with them.”

Holmes rubbed at her shoulder gently. It was all he could do, for the moment.

He was not even officially in on this whole business. It was a police matter now. Moore dropped him off at his motel.

“What are you going to do with her?” Holmes enquired, climbing out.

“Have a doctor check her over, and then keep her in protective custody. I reckon we can take care of her till evening before Krane’s lawyers show up.”

“And then?”

“A bus ticket to Idaho ain’t beyond the department’s budget. She’ll be out of here, and she’ll be safe.”

“I certainly hope so.”

He was just turning away when a shout from Harlan halted him.

“Mr Holmes?”

He swivelled around to face the blue-and-white car again.

“You didn’t come here to protect this woman. You came here to solve those three deaths. And so far as I can see …” and Moore was peering at him quizzically, “… you’re no further along at all with that.”

“We’ll see,” Sherlock Holmes replied enigmatically. “I get the strangest feeling – in regard to those particular matters – that something or another might still show up.”

He was back to the waiting game. It was part of a detective’s lot. There was little with which to occupy himself out on the edge of town – a mall about a half a mile away, but he had scant interest in that.

Holmes went back to his room. He was no longer in the mood to read. He flung himself out on his bed, trying to relax. But a strange sense of apprehension had gripped him. It was all very well proclaiming ‘wait and see’, but wait for what precisely? See what?

From what he had observed the night before, he had little doubt that Amy’s pronouncements had been accurate. A man who could survive a triple-bolt of lightning? He’d already had experience of supernatural beings in Las Vegas, and could only try to guess what kind of powers Krane was possessed of.

To take his mind from that, he picked up the remote from his nightstand and switched on the TV again. There was only the same lacklustre rubbish as the last time, and he didn’t want to watch the same movie again. He flipped through all the channels and then switched it off. It made small popping, sizzling noises as it cooled.

And – suddenly tired from his excursion the previous night and the scant sleep he’d got after it was over – Holmes fell into a doze, during which he had the most peculiar dreams.

He hoped he was still dreaming when he finally awoke.

Because a rattlesnake was coiled up on his chest.

This was real. He could feel its weight on him, its subtle pressure. And the quality of the light from his window had distinctly changed, which only happened when you were awake.

Holmes became completely still, holding down the violent panic that was trying to surge up through him. He controlled his breathing, making it very quiet and gentle, and tried not to blink. But the snake seemed to have noticed he had woken up. Its head lifted a few inches, its tongue flickered out. Its rattle sounded briefly, and then stilled again.

Something began sliding over his outstretched left arm. Holmes slowly moved his gaze in that direction, to see another serpent, maybe four feet long, making its way across the mattress.

A third one was down by his feet. A fourth was wrapped around the headboard. And he thought that he could make out more shapes moving on the floor around the bed. The door to his room, he could see, was slightly open.

If he tried to cut and run then he was surely done for. These things, he knew, struck at much greater than human speed. And their venom, at the very least, would paralyse him. He’d be at the mercy of these filthy beasts for heaven knew how long.

His heart had begun hammering again. He made a conscious effort to slow it, using techniques that he had acquired in the East. And tried to think this matter through. Even for a man of his intellect, it was difficult.

What did he know about rattlesnakes?

Ah yes, he thought he saw it.

The TV remote still had to be lying to his right-hand side, where he’d let it go when he had fallen asleep. As carefully as he could, he began feeling around for it.

The head of the creature on his chest began to rise again. Holmes stopped moving altogether. He only resumed his tenuous search when he was certain the thing had calmed fully down. Rattlesnakes only struck in what they thought was self-defence, he understood. And would not harm him unless they thought that he was moving to attack them.

His fingertips closed around cool plastic. He worked them gradually up the remote casing till they reached the ‘power’ button, which he pressed.

Immediately, all of the snakes’ rattles started buzzing. A voice was coming from the TV speakers, far too loudly. Holmes felt himself begin to perspire, and wondered if his guests could smell that. He worked with his fingertips again and found the volume switch, and turned it down.

Then he waited, still as stone.

When he’d stood next to the set yesterday evening – having had it on for a couple of hours – he had noticed that, old as it was, the innards of the television were producing a great deal of heat. And he already knew that rattlesnakes were possessed of some form of natural infra-red detector. It was how they found their prey at night. They were attracted to heat.

So all he had to do was lie there while the set warmed up. It was a simple course of action, and a very passive one. And yet it was practically unbearable.

How many minutes were ticking by? There was no way to really tell. He could not see the room’s sole clock. But gradually, the shape on top of him began uncoiling.

Its face moved over to his own and studied it. Holmes stopped breathing altogether.

Then it turned away. The thing slid off him. And the other ones were doing the same.

The great detective waited till they were all off the mattress before making his next move.

He flipped the channels quickly till he found a noisy shoot-out scene from some police show. And, satisfied that it would do the trick, he turned the volume up to full.

The crashing of gunfire filled the room with a wild vibration. The rattlesnakes immediately went berserk, striking furiously at the set and screen.

And distracted that way, they paid him no attention when he jumped across to the door and was out.

Holmes slammed it behind him and practically collapsed. He might well have done, if a new thought hadn’t kept him upright.

If this was happening here, then what exactly was happening elsewhere?

He fumbled for his cell, which he had remembered to charge the night before.

“Goddamn it!” he heard Harlan Moore yell when the call was answered at the other end.

Holmes thought he could hear the stamp of a boot, and something like a crunch.

“Sheriff?”

“Mr Holmes? Where are you?”

Since they’d first become acquainted, Holmes had never heard the man so flustered.

“More to the point, where are you?”

He could now hear other men yelling furiously in the background.

“The station house! And we’ve been overrun! We’ve got scorpions and tarantulas up the wazoo! Hundreds of ’em!”

The detective tried to keep a cool head but, given the circumstances, it was a great effort

“An unnatural occurrence, surely?”

“Well of course it is! We’re in the middle of the goddamn city!”

Holmes kept trying to bring a sense of calm to the occasion.

“Sheriff, where is Amy Hamilton right now?”

“She’s in a holding cell.”

“With a solid door or bars?”