Neil Gaiman - Shadows over Baker Street

Ah, the needle has all but reached the end of the cylinder. Now all that remains is for the owner of the voice you hear now, one Sherlock Holmes, to bid you, dear listener, across whatever gulf of time separates us, a most sincere adieu.

The three gentlemen have left my house with their gramophone and cylinders of wax that document those most singular events. I did as I was asked and identified the voices of Holmes and Moriarty. My three visitors were apparently satisfied, and yet they did not elaborate further on the nature of their mission, or how they will use the information I have given them. Such is the secrecy of wartime. I am alone again with my thoughts and a transcript of the recording. Clearly, if Moriarty had succeeded in harnessing the power that can be accessed via that profane volume, the Necronomicon , then this would elevate him above the title of “Napoleon of Crime”; Moriarty would have become a veritable Satan. He would be capable of destroying any individual or any nation that opposed him. However, my old friend Sherlock Holmes outwitted the man. Moreover, Holmes rid the world of a book that was so potently evil.

If I cast my mind back more than a dozen years to that time when Moriarty was poised to literally raise hell, I recall a Sherlock Holmes at his most preoccupied and his darkest. Far be it from me to make deductions, but I dare guess that it was this case that troubled him so.

Now, I confess, those troubles are visited upon me. Perhaps I should have been more candid with my visitors, considering their elevated stations, but some instinct caused me to hold my tongue. It is true that Holmes did telegram me with that single sentence that made my heart leap with excitement: “Watson, the game is afoot!” But only the day after the message arrived he made a telephone call to this very house. The connection was a bad one. The earpiece hissed and stuttered. I couldn’t make my old friend Holmes hear me. And all he could do was to try to fight against the storm of noise by repeating over and over:

“Watson . . . I have found Moriarty . . . he has the book again . . . he has the Necronomicon !”

John Pelan is the author of An Antique Vintage and numerous short stories. He is the editor of several anthologies, including Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium , The Last Continent: New Tales of Zothique , The Darker Side , Dark Arts , and with Benjamin Adams, The Children of Cthulhu . With Edward Lee, he is coauthor of Goon , Shifters , Splatterspunk , Family Tradition , and numerous short stories. His novella The Colour out of Darkness is forthcoming. John’s solo stories have appeared in The Urbanite , Gothic.net , Enigmatic Tales , and numerous anthologies; a collection, Darkness, My Old Friend , is in the works, as are at least two novels. As a researcher and historian of the horror genre, John has edited over a dozen single-author collections and novels of classic genre fiction and is currently working on assembling the selected supernatural fiction of Manly Wade Wellman for Night Shade Books. For his own imprints, Midnight House and Darkside Press, he is editing volumes by Fritz Leiber, John Wyndham, Harvey Jacobs, Cleve Cartmill, and several other authors. At various times he’s been a pool hustler, professional darts player, sales trainer, steelworker, bartender, and several other things that you’ll be better off not knowing about. Visit his site at www.darksidepress.com .

Michael Reaves is an Emmy Award–winning television writer, screenwriter, and novelist. He’s written for Star Trek: The Next Generation , The Twilight Zone , and Sliders , among others. He was a story editor and writer on Batman: The Animated Series , and on the Disney animated series Gargoyles . His screenwriting credits include Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and the HBO movie Full Eclipse . Reaves’s latest books, Hell on Earth and a Star Wars novel (Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter) , have been published by Del Rey. Reaves has had short stories published in magazines and anthologies such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , Heavy Metal , Horrors , and Twilight Zone Magazine , and has written comic books for DC Comics. In addition to winning an Emmy, he has been nominated for a second Emmy, an ASIFA Award, and a Writers Guild Award. His prose fiction has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award and the Prometheus Award. In 1999, he was named Alumnus of the Year by his alma mater, California State University at San Bernardino.

Steven-Elliot Altman refers to himself as a “storyteller” and finds himself equally at home writing novels, short stories, screenplays, or advertising campaigns. He recently created an anthology called The Touch , which was a Write Aid project to benefit both AIDS and Cancer charities, and it received rave reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Asimov’s Science Fiction . His latest novel, Deprivers, due out from Putnam, regards a recently uncovered medical epidemic called Sensory Deprivation Syndrome, whose victims are able to render other people blind or deaf by making simple skin-on-skin contact. His Web site is www.deprivers.com and he thought it fit to mention that Lovecraft’s work scared the living hell out of him.

Elizabeth Bear has lived in her native New England for most of her life, with the exception of three very hot years spent in the Mojave. The fact that she shares a birthday with Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, coupled with a tendency to read the dictionary as a child, doomed her to early penury, friendlessness, intransigence, and the writing of speculative fiction. She drinks tea in quantity, participates in giant-breed dog rescue, cooks decent ethnic food, and has so far sold to a few publications—most recently, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction .

Poppy Z. Brite is the author of six novels, two short story collections, and a great deal of miscellanea. Her novel The Value of X has recently been published by Subterranean Press, and her novel Liquor will be published in Spring 2004 by Crown. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, Chris, a chef. Find out more about her at www.poppyzbrite.com .

Simon Clark is the author of several acclaimed novels of horror fiction, including Nailed by the Heart , Darkness Demands , and Blood Crazy . Recent releases include the collection Salt Snake and Other Bloody Cuts and an authorized sequel to John Wyndham’s classic The Day of the Triffids .

David Ferguson is a writer and musician who lives in Athens, Georgia. He and Poppy Z. Brite have been friends and confidants since 1990. He has fronted numerous bands over the years and has published one previous collaboration with Brite.

Paul Finch is a former cop and journalist, but now a full-time writer, living in the north of England with his wife, Cathy, and two children, Eleanor and Harry. He’s been the writer for the popular British TV crime series The Bill for the last two years. Dark fantasy and horror remain his main interests, with massive collections from Ash-Tree Press and Silver Salamander Press both released this year. Mr. Finch’s acclaimed novella Long Meg and Her Daughters appeared in the Del Rey anthology The Children of Cthulhu .

Neil Gaiman read the Sherlock Holmes books in big bound collections in his school library in Sussex between the ages of ten and twelve, mostly by pretending to have a headache and being sent to the library for a quiet sit-down. He found H. P. Lovecraft in paperback a couple of years later and bought the books with his own money. He has an unpublished chunk of a Sherlock Holmes novel he started when he was about twenty that may be burned when he dies, but that he feels explains the whole beekeeping thing rather well.