Neil Gaiman - Shadows over Baker Street

“That is our reception party, Cowley. We will be honored guests.”

“We are flying low over the city now. I can see people—millions of people thronging the streets. I sense their jubilation, their adoration of us. This is akin to a family reunion. We are not venturing here, Professor. We are returning! ”

“Indeed we are, Dr. Cowley.”

“Now the train glides through the air; I see our line of carriages headed by the locomotive still issuing steam; the train has all the supple grace of a snake gliding through water. Beneath us are bazaars, Oriental marketplaces, Casbahs shaded by silken awnings. Turquoise banners ripple in the perfumed breeze of evening. I see geese white as snow in gardens. Leaping fish in fountains. I see millions of people in the exotic robes of Arabia. Fabrics of gold, crimson, scarlet, jade.

“Now we approach the purple mountain that rises above everything like a god of old. It gleams as if illuminated from within. Oh, I see a transfiguration. No . . . No!”

“Cowley, continue to relate what you see below us.”

“But . . . no . . . it’s changing, transforming . . . degrading: the entire city is melting into the most obscene—”

“Describe. Describe. ”

“Monsters. Those aren’t men down there. They’re creatures with webbed hands, barbel-necked . . . eyes like toads, bulging from the ugliest faces. I know I can have no knowledge of this, but somehow I divine that these beasts are profane. They are man and monster mated into a terrible form . . . please, permit me to close my eyes.”

“Dr. Cowley. Tell me what lies below.”

“I see the city as a malignant sore on a body. From it ooze rivers of corruption through which its inhabitants swim up to mock us. I see the mountain grow larger, swelling. Transforming. Features form upon it . . . mouth . . . eyes, hideous eyes . . . that—oh! I cannot look into those eyes. And it speaks . . . the mountain speaks to me . . . I know the meaning, if I don’t understand the words. It tells me to cease to hope. It describes what I shall become . . . please!”

Ah, that pitiful sobbing is my assistant, Dr. Cowley. He is quite unmanned. “Stay huddled in the corner if you will, sir. You’ve served your purpose . . .” So that leaves the engineer and me with our wits still intact. For obvious reasons I shall not trouble to look out of the window yet. For I must sheathe myself in protective incantations from the Necronomicon . . . Wait, the book? Where is it?

“Hatherley. What are you doing with my book? Hand it to me at once.”

“No, Professor Moriarty. I’ll not hand it back.”

“My name is not Professor Moriarty. What on earth—”

“Indeed you are, Moriarty. Professor James Moriarty.”

“Hatherley. I insist—”

“Come, come, Moriarty. If I know your true identity, surely you can guess mine? Especially if I remove my spectacles and this irritating India-rubber compound from my cheeks.”

“Holmes . . . Sherlock Holmes?”

“One and the same, Professor.”

“Holmes. Give me the book. If you do not, we will be—”

“Killed? Surely we await a fate far worse than that. Ask your assistant.”

“Holmes. You must let me have the book before it is too late.”

“This book, the Necronomicon ? With all its fearsome and blasphemous content? No, this belongs with its true owner.”

“Holmes? No!”

“Moriarty, I trust your phonograph etched those sounds upon its cylinder. There’s no mistaking the melody of breaking of glass. Although I daresay it can not record the sound of the book falling down onto a landscape as alien as that one.”

“You’re a fool, Holmes. Now . . . do you hear that? Hear those screams?”

“I hear screams of frustration and disappointment. Somehow, Moriarty, I have contrived to upset your plans . . . and the plans of whatever monstrosity slithers across that profane world beneath us . . .”

“You don’t know what you have done.”

“No, not exactly. I believe what we have so nearly encountered is beyond human ken. But that, if I’m not mistaken, is the sound of the train’s whistle . . . and now that? That you hear is quite clearly the sound of our carriage wheels running on a more earthly track. Unless, I’m very much mistaken, the train is back on that rather chilly Yorkshire moor.”

“Holmes. Damn you . . .”

“And you will gather that the train is running backward—away from Burnston. Ah . . . and don’t trouble yourself about your assistant’s pistol. I shall retrieve that. There . . . I know it’s rude to point at people, especially with firearms, but I think it safer for every one of us if you are prevented from meddling with matters that lie beyond the bounds of human understanding.”

“You really think you’ve won, Holmes? Is that pure arrogance or unalloyed conceit?”

“Perhaps you could define the word victory , Professor Moriarty? Then compare that definition to the desired outcome of the players of this singular game of—Moriarty, don’t be a fool !”

My name is Sherlock Holmes. Today is the third day of November, 1903. The sun is shining over freshly plowed fields as the train steams toward the station at York. With a few moments of my journey remaining before I disembark to make my report to a senior representative of His Majesty’s government, I have decided to speak my own postcript into this ingenious mechanical device, which will then be consigned to a secret Home Office vault. You will have listened to these phonograph cylinders and heard a record of Moriarty’s folly. Ah, and what of Moriarty himself? He chose to exit the train through the broken carriage window; the very same break that resulted when I tossed that damnable book from the train to whatever monstrosity lay below. One could have assumed that the scoundrel would have broken his neck in the fall, but units of the King’s Own Yorkshire Rifles have searched that section of track without success. I can only deduce that Moriarty has managed to slip away once more into that nefarious underworld that conceals him so well. Other units of the regiment are engaged, even as I speak, in eradicating every trace of those part-human horrors that dwelled in the submerged village. Thereafter, the soldiers are instructed to dynamite the seawall and return cursed Burnston to the ocean. And what of Dr. Cowley? All self-hope and peace of mind were forever extinguished in his soul upon looking on those nameless creatures. He took his own life with chloroform. You will appreciate the fact that I did nothing to obstruct his final act.

My friend Watson, who so admirably records my cases, has not been privy to this one for what are, to your ears, obvious reasons. Therefore, I have not been able to employ his delightfully teasing methods of introducing evidence, or his entertaining manner of recording my discussion of pertinent clues, their meaning, and subsequent deduction. Hence, at best, here is a rather more prosaic bundle of sentences in lieu of a full and frank explanation of the case’s origins. In all truth, this case has been long and arduous and my methods have been somewhat darker than the norm. Moreover, they are not for popular consumption. In short, my former dabbling with cocaine in combination with exotic fungi from the Americas opened the doors of perception far wider than I could have believed possible. These narcotic visions of nameless ones encountered beyond tideless, otherworldly seas set me on the trail of arcane writings. Suffice to say: Moriarty isn’t the only obsessive personality to possess a copy of the Necronomicon . . . moreover, he wasn’t the only one to draw upon its occult power. It was necessary for me to access its recondite properties to return the locomotive from its nightmare destination, and to bring this disturbing case to a satisfactory conclusion.