Neil Gaiman: Shadows over Baker Street

My diaries reveal in intricate detail the background to my research. However, to toss you a little information in easily digestible morsels will help you to understand what I am about to accomplish tonight. Twenty-five years ago a large body of antique volumes came into my possession from some ruffian who wanted little more in exchange for them than the price of a few quarts of gin to souse his bloated liver. From the blood-spattered trunk they arrived in, one can deduce without difficulty how the ruffian came by them. No matter. I examined the volumes, intending to sell them on to collectors. However, these were no ordinary books. For the main part they related to occult matters in a number of disparate cultures.

Now, these volumes did tickle my curiosity delightfully. Moreover, there were several journals in the excitable hand of a certain Father Solomon Buchanan. A man of God who was clearly far more interested in what lay in pagan tracts than can ever be found in the Gospels. I quickly grasped the core of the man’s fascination with these apparently disparate cultures. From the Americas to Europe to Africa to the Orient, he’d studied pagan mythology and arcane writings in search of a common element universal to all cultures across the globe, yet a common element that was a deeply held secret, and known only to an inner sanctum of priests, witchdoctors, and shamans. Now, this was something of immense interest, because if the most powerful individuals guard certain information with the utmost rigor, it means just one thing: that information confers power on its keeper. And isn’t power the most sublime asset of all?

On the table before me in my study all those long years ago, I carefully laid out drawings that Father Buchanan had made of statues from Mesopotamia, tomb paintings from Egypt, ritual masks from the Tehucan people of Central America, cremation jars from Ban Na Di in India, and a bronze cauldron that belonged to a priest of China’s Shang Dynasty. To an uneducated eye the drawings would merely be of museum pieces; however, even though these depictions of archaeological artifacts came from each corner of the globe and were many thousands of years old, they all contained a representation of the same being: one that is squat, bulbous, some might say toadlike. Yet it has little in the way of facial features save for a vertical slitlike mouth above which sit toadlike eyes. In each representation hooded priests worship before it. While scattered before this object of veneration are severed human limbs and heads.

This is one example of multitudinous deities that are common to disparate cultures. Ergo, at some point in man’s history fabulous creatures occupied our world. There are suggestions in Buchanan’s journals that there was a mingling of human and inhuman blood. Moreover, these creatures were worshiped as gods, the masters of humanity.

Night after night I pored over Father Buchanan’s writings. He enthused about a secret book, the Necronomicon . He recounted ancient testimonies of men driven mad after encountering abominable unhuman races that dwelled in the sea or in subterranean lairs. Strange words leaped out at me from the text—Cthulhu, Dagon, Y’golonac, Shub-Niggurath, Daoloth. Soon I realized that the priest had discovered not only a hitherto unknown race of beings that had long ago penetrated our world, but that these Old Ones possessed a source of enormous occult power. A power capable of being accessed—and exploited—by a man of knowledge and courage. Now, twenty-five years later, I, Moriarty, am within barely fifty minutes of achieving just that. The power of steam and electricity barely—

Now, this isn’t right . . . the train is slowing . . . it’s not scheduled to stop here. Through the windows all I see is moorland. The train is still ten minutes from its destination . . . now . . . now . . .

Forgive me for that pause. The train has indeed come to halt. Ah, here is my trusted assistant, Dr. Cowley.

“What’s the delay, Cowley? We must be at Burnston by twelve-fifteen.”

“We’re continuing immediately, Professor. We’ve paused to allow one of the engineers to be brought on board.”

“What on earth is an engineer doing here? He should be at the drainage site.”

“I’m sorry, Professor, but there appears to have been a problem.”

“Problem, what problem, Cowley? I was telegrammed that the area had been successfully drained.”

“I—I’m not sure of the details, Professor. But the engineer’s waiting in the next—”

“Bring him in, then. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

Ah, this is most irritating. Nevertheless, I will keep the clockwork running on the phonograph in order to record my conversation with the man that Dr. Cowley is in the process of collecting from the next carriage. Ha, the sound of the locomotive . . . we are in motion once more. I should be dreadfully annoyed if we weren’t in Burnston on time.

And now here is the engineer, a bespectacled man of fifty-five, I should say, in his Norfolk jacket and muddy boots.

“Sit down, there’s a good fellow. And don’t be distracted by this apparatus. You’ll have seen phonograph recording equipment before?”

“Indeed I have, sir.”

“I am keeping an aural record of a scientific experiment. Every sound you utter will be preserved on the wax cylinder here as it turns. Don’t worry, it won’t bite.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Now, I need to know the nature of the problem that has taken you away from your work in order to stop this train.”

“Well, sir, I thought you should—”

“Ah, first of all, your name? For the benefit of record.”

“Of course, sir. My name is Victor Hatherley.”

“You’re the hydraulic engineer?”

“I am.”

“Then, for our audience perhaps you will briefly explain the nature of the contract of works I awarded to your company earlier this year?”

“If you wish, sir.”

“I do wish, Hatherley. Now lean forward. Speak clearly.”

“The firm of engineers with which I am employed has been contracted to drain a parcel of low-lying hinterland that lies on the Yorkshire coast. Five years ago a storm in the North Sea flooded the village of Burnston. Since that time the village has lain at the bottom of a lagoon of saltwater that averages some twelve feet in depth. My colleagues and I erected sea defenses in order to isolate the lagoon, which we then proceeded to drain with the aid of steam pumps.”

“And now the village of Burnston has been reclaimed from the ocean?”

“Indeed it has, sir.”

“So what problem has brought you all the way out here to stop my train?”

“The men wish to discontinue work at the site.”

“Then fire them.”

“We require a number of men to serve the pumps, otherwise seepage through the subjacent soil results in fresh flooding.”

“And why, pray, do the men refuse to earn the wages I am paying them?”

“The navvies aren’t happy, they say—”

“Speak up. The phonograph can’t record murmurs.”

“The professional men continue their duties, but the navvies are afraid to enter the village.”

“I daresay there are a few human bones, Hatherley, moldering in the silt; after all, I gather that a hundred and fifty villagers were lost when the place was flooded.”

“The men aren’t afraid of skeletons, sir.”

“Then what, pray, is the problem?”

“They discovered bodies in the buildings when the water levels dropped far enough for them to enter.”

“Well, then?”

“The people they found in the houses . . . they were still alive.”

Our friend Hatherley is now drinking tea in another carriage. The absurdity of these artisans. They fear their own shadows. I, Professor Moriarty—please: take a fix on that name—will not be afraid to enter the drowned village, for I know that is where the greatest treasure of all lies. It was in Burnston that Father Solomon Buchanan discovered an ancient pagan temple beneath the parish church . . . a temple dedicated to the worship of the Old Ones described in the Necronomicon .