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

The room was even more sumptuously furnished than the lobby below, animal skins on the floor, huge erotic oil paintings on several of the walls, and satin and silk drapery in every direction that he looked. Over in the corner was a huge four-poster bed. The red light barely reached it, and it was sunken in shadow. But Holmes could make out a woman’s silhouette on it, reclining on one elbow.

“Did you really think that you could fool me, Mr Holmes?” she asked.

She sat up a little higher, with a motion that was just as casual as her voice. Holmes could see she had longer hair by far than all the girls beneath them. She was taller too, and her eyes, they glittered strangely in the long and oval outline of her darkened face

“I knew that you were here as soon as you had entered,” she informed him

“By means of hidden cameras? No, I think not. You simply sensed it by some ancient instinct. None of you are human beings … is that not the case?”

Her lips parted, her teeth flashing whitely, and she let out a shrill laugh.

“What are we then, you great detective? Sirens, you suppose?”

“The women below us are succubae,” Holmes said, “every last one of them. Demons who assume human form, who lie with men and partially devour their soul. The client that I saw out on the street was partly drained, but not completely so.”

“Very good,” his hostess murmured, the tone of her voice becoming even gentler and lighter. “But if that is what they are, then what am I?”

“I believe you are the creature called the Lamia,” was Holmes’ response, “an even more rapacious brute. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew you, and their stories linger to this day. Some claim that you drink living blood. But others tell us that you gorge yourself on human souls, which is precisely what you have been doing. You have been less than two months in Amsterdam—”

“I like to get around,” she shrugged, breaking across him.

“But you have already claimed numerous victims. You will claim no more.”

There was that flash of white again, that rather chilling laugh.

“And how do you hope to stop me, Mr Sherlock Holmes? By whipping out your trusty revolver and shooting me in the head? It’s been tried before.”

She sat up fully, and it was like watching a great coil of blackened smoke adopt a different shape.

“No, you sad fool,” she said. “It’s yourself who is doomed.”

And before his very eyes, she began transforming into her true shape. Her body began elongating hugely, her legs fusing together and her arms melting away. Her hair shrank back into her skull, which was broadening into a triangular shape.

Holmes already knew the fullest details of the legends, knew the Lamia was half a witch and half a giant snake. There was not a second to lose. He flung himself across the room, grasping at the nearest satin drape and wrenching loose its fittings.

The serpent had lifted itself higher when he looked around again, and was preparing to strike at him. Holmes swivelled on his heel and went towards the fireplace. The corners of the drape were blazing in another instant.

Holmes twirled like a matador. The burning fabric straightened out ahead of him. He let go of its corners and the flames struck the four-poster bed.

Which had its own drapes, made of lace. And a canopy of the same fabric. All of which became a ball of fire before he could even blink, the massive serpent writhing at the bright, intense heart of the conflagration.

The blaze was spreading to the other drapes and then the curtains before too much longer. Smoke began to billow out. It was already so hot in here that he could barely breathe. Holmes left the room, and headed down.

The smell of smoke, the crackling sounds of fire, had quite a remarkable effect on the lazy, carnal atmosphere within this strange bordello. Doors came clattering open, men came rushing out, and most of them with garments missing.

In the lobby down below, the clientele were standing up and glancing round alarmedly. It wasn’t long before they realised that they had to go.

As for the succubae, the effect on them was even more astounding. The smiles left their faces and they looked around with startled expressions. Then they simply vanished, leaving this plane of existence with the swift finality of bubbles that had burst.

There was a wild cacophony on the street outside within another minute, partially clad fellows milling everywhere and people in the neighbouring buildings craning out from their windows to get a better look. Holmes stepped away just as slates began to tumble from the burning roof.

A fire engine siren was approaching, but was still a good way off. Beyond the pall of rising smoke, Sherlock Holmes could see the moon again.

It had mostly returned to its natural colour, but had still retained a very slightly reddish tinge. And that disturbed him a little, making the great detective frown.

“I can understand why such a creature would leave its victims in a state of catatonia,” van Heuten was asking him an hour later. “But why do they, a few days later, become violent and unmanageable?”

“It is as I first suspected,” Holmes replied. “It is a withdrawal from addiction.”

When van Heuten peered at him blankly, he explained as carefully as he was able.

“The Lamia could not have drained those men entirely. No, cruel as she was, she must have placed a single lingering image in their minds.”

“Of …?”

“Why, of herself of course, man. Of her own alluring beauty, her incomparable carnality, and perhaps even her soft, beguiling voice. It was the only thing those sorry men were left with. Yes, the only thing they knew. And so, deprived of her presence for a few days, they reacted the same way all addicts do.”

The Dutchman looked so troubled and dismayed when he heard that, that Holmes felt prepared to alter his opinion of him.

“My boss is lost, then? We will never find a cure?”

“Poor Pieter Hoek is gone,” Holmes nodded, his expression sympathetic. “All the others too.”

“And now,” he added, once that awful truth had sunk in, “I have one more duty to perform, a very sad one too.”

And he asked the man for an address, which was immediately given to him.

Holmes left it until the next morning, believing that the news he had would sound a little better in the fresh light of a newly dawning day. By seven thirty, he was walking down a pleasant, leafy street not too far from the Van Gogh Museum, heading for a grand-looking apartment block that his practised eye told him had been constructed in the Thirties.

A smiling doorman let him in. He went up to the second floor. But when he reached apartment 12, its door was hanging slightly open.

Holmes rapped gently with his knuckles before venturing inside, but there was no response. The flat was silent and seemed empty, so he made his way into the living room. Lying on a big glass coffee table, there was a plain white envelope with only two words written on it: ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

Carefully, he picked it up. It was unsealed, and he pulled out the sheet of vellum within. The handwriting was copperplate, and had been executed with a fountain pen, and he’d expect no less from someone as refined as Gertrude.

‘Dear Sherlock Holmes ,’ her message began.

‘News has reached me, through my network of old friends in the police, that you have solved the case and, indeed, put paid to the culprit. That is good news, and I must congratulate you.

But I have come to realise now that justice and even vengeance, they are not enough. They will not bring my Pieter back, and I miss him so appallingly that it is more unbearable than the worst imaginable physical pain. As I told you when we met, we did most things together, so I feel that I must do this with him too. I have decided I am going join him in the realms of mad oblivion.