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

He could hear the noise of just one engine. When he looked out of his window, it was to gaze upon the silvery light of dawn, the sun a bright flare on the east horizon. The airplane was still listing slightly to one side, and had dropped low. And there were green fields and the little roofs of houses going by. But then Holmes remembered everything he’d seen before. His gaze shot urgently to the plane’s wing.

The turbine was still switched off, which explained the plane’s slight tilt. But there was no dragon, nor any other type of creature, holding onto it.

They were back in the normal world. Or rather, they had never left it, since his experiences in ‘Nevergone’ all had to be a dream. There was no other sensible explanation, and he chided himself for accepting that peculiar fantasy so gullibly.

Only that then he took in something else. The seat opposite him, it was empty. Where had Lizzie gone? He stood carefully up and peered about, and got another gentle shock.

Every single passenger in Club Class was fast asleep, with no exception. There were two flight attendants in this compartment, and even they were dead to the world, slumped upon their stools as if they’d partway fallen down.

Not a single murmur was emerging, either, from behind the curtain where the cheaper seats were situated. He went to the screen and drew it back. Passengers and cabin crew, young and old and in between, were slumbering as soundly as a group of tiny infants. Not a single head rose, not a single eyelid flickered. He could think of no sensible explanation for it.

Lizzie Bradman? She was nowhere to be seen in there either. So Holmes turned on his heel and marched up the aisle towards the front of the plane, imagining that she might have moved to some other compartment. Only it turned out that Club Class was the final one, and his footsteps carried him only to the door of the cockpit, which was hanging open.

Holmes peered inside. The pilot and the co-pilot were both slumped on the floor, both fast asleep as well. And Lizzie was at the controls, guiding the airplane towards a runway up ahead. Holmes could see the blocky grey shape of an airport terminal beyond it, almost certainly Frankfurt.

Was he still dreaming? He went quietly inside and sat down in the empty chair. Lizzie was concentrating sternly on completing this final stage of the journey, and she did not turn her head, but by the glint that came into her eyes, the wary moue that appeared on her lips, she was fully aware of his presence.

“The dragons …?” Holmes asked, painfully aware how strained and hushed his own voice had become. “They bore us away from the storm?”

“They kept on carrying us until they reached the edge of dawn,” Lizzie confirmed. “And then, knowing I could do the rest, they let us go and sent us sailing back into our own world.”

This was insane. It was not so much as remotely possible. Holmes recalled the champagne he’d been offered just before the scene around them had suddenly changed. And could that be the explanation? Might this whole affair turn out to be some inexplicable yet devious trick?

“Did you drug my drink?” he asked, believing that he was starting to see the genuine truth of this entire matter and becoming angry. “There are no dragons and there are no sprites!”

All that Lizzie did was shrug.

“I thought that you might have trouble accepting it. So, believe what you want.”

A second later, there was the unmistakable thumping sensation and the frenzied squeal of the plane’s undercarriage hitting ground. Holmes had been so caught up in confusion and accompanying fury that he had lost track of where they were. The flight was at an end – the jetliner was safely down. And, whatever emotions had been surging though him, they were drowned out by a surge of gratitude and of profound relief.

He noticed that his hands were shaking. When he raised one to his cheek, his palm was damp. A bead of sweat rolled down his brow, hit an eyelash and was batted off. Logic, reason, powers of deduction – none of those had been able to help him while he’d been aloft. He’d been as vulnerable as a babe in arms, and it had not been a sensation he’d enjoyed at all.

Through the window of the cockpit he could see two sets of boarding steps being wheeled swiftly up. Vehicles with flashing beacons had closed in around the fuselage, so Lizzie must have radioed ahead.

But then a different sound came drifting to his ears … the murmuring of human voices, from the compartments behind him. All the passengers and crew were waking up.

The murmuring rose swiftly to a startled buzz, the tones of the people back there feverishly excited. It was quite obvious, to Holmes’ mind, what was going on. They were astonished to find themselves securely on the ground. And they were trying to recall precisely what had happened during the course of that catastrophic storm. Had every single one of them dreamt the exact same mad dream?

The pilot and co-pilot both got up, shaking their heads groggily and stumbling away. Holmes could hear the aircraft’s doors being yanked open, and passengers and crew alike began to stream down to ground level.

In a few more minutes, the jetliner was empty save for Lizzie and himself.

He rose up to his feet again, unsure what to think. He headed for the nearest exit, anxious to feel the sun upon his face and breathe fresh air again.

Sherlock Holmes stepped out onto the boarding steps and faltered to a halt, feeling so utterly faint and unbalanced that he had to grasp hold of a rail to keep himself from falling. He was staring at the portside wing.

And it had six deep and straight abrasions on it – claw marks.

When, finally, he turned back to regard Lizzie, she was not there at his side. And he could not find her anywhere, however hard he searched.

Paris was not merely a city of lights, this particular evening. It was a city of reflected light as well. There’d been a heavy downpour earlier, and the pavements of the boulevards, the bodywork of the cars parked against the kerbs, the tiles of all the sloping roofs … every surface was still damp, and gleamed like a mirror.

It would have been quite beautiful and atmospheric, had not death been on the air.

Sherlock Holmes was on the towpath of the Seine, beneath one of the river’s numerous bridges. There were blue lights flashing on the street above him, numerous gendarmes in evidence. And he was inspecting the general area around a recently discovered corpse.

He did that slowly, with great diligence. And then his attention returned to the grisly cadaver and – as he had done when he’d first seen it – the great detective grimaced.

“An appalling sight, is it not, M’sieu Holmes?” remarked Inspector Fontaine, the police detective who’d had him summoned here. “Should I have it covered up?”

“Not yet,” Holmes muttered.

Then, feeling a slight tugging at his innards, he stepped forwards.

The good inspector had not been exaggerating. Holmes had rarely seen a corpse in such an awful state. There was scarcely a bone in its body that had not been smashed. Its skull was caved in at the top, and its face pounded to a bloody mush. It looked almost as though the man had walked out into the unforgiving pathway of some large, oncoming truck. But Holmes could make out, from the nature of the injuries, that was not so.

“A human being did this,” he informed the inspector, then proceeded to point out several spots where there were bruises in the shape of fingers, perfectly clear evidence the victim had been gripped.

“But what nature of human?” Fontaine gasped. “To display this kind of tremendous strength? Perhaps a giant, or a lunatic?”