Neil Gaiman - Shadows over Baker Street

Holmes didn’t hesitate. He moved from carriage to door with forceful steps, reached up, and rapped his knuckles against the door sharply. I stared at him, then at the building before us. I would have bet my last pound that no one had passed through that door in ten years. Holmes knocked again, then turned to me with a purpose.

“No one seems to be about, Watson. We must hurry.”

“Hurry where?” I inquired.

Holmes was already trying the door. It was, of course, locked, but I noted with amazement and some alarm that Holmes had pulled a small tool from his pocket and inserted one end into the lock. A few deft movements of wrist and finger, and I heard the sound of tumblers sliding into place. The latch gave way, and Holmes pulled the door open, slipping inside. There was nothing to do but to follow him into the shadows, and to pray that most of what I’d heard back at university was the hogwash it had seemed. The heavy door closed behind us with a loud click . Holmes fiddled with it for a moment, then turned away.

“Locked,” he whispered.

There was no light, but Holmes moved quickly and easily, making his way to the first set of doors to his left. He pulled out a box of matches, lighting one and holding it up as we entered the room. It was a crude, antiquated sort of laboratory. On one of the benches, a few crates lay open, packing material and other items strewn about as if opened and gone through quickly and without much care.

I moved up beside Holmes, glancing over his shoulder as the light from the first match flickered, then died. The quick glimpse had been enough.

“Medical equipment,” I said softly.

“As I suspected,” Holmes replied, turning to the other bench. He lit another match, and this time he slipped along the wall and found the light switch, flicking the power to on.

“Someone will see,” I hissed.

My friend ignored me, and with a quick turn about the room, I realized my error. There were no windows. We were encircled in stone as surely as if entombed. The light was dim, but Holmes made use of it quickly, making his way to a wooden case flung open on one of the bench tops.

The case held two vials, and I saw that Holmes had looked past the greenish, glowing liquid and the other—full of something that looked like sand. He plucked it from the case and held it to the dim light. Then he removed the folded paper he’d brought away from the doorstep of my flat and opened it. He held the two objects together, and I saw that what was on the paper was a bit of clay. Red clay, unlike anything near the city. The dust, or sand, in the vial had the same reddish hue.

“Watson, have you heard of a man named Caresco?”

I started violently, nearly toppling into the nearest of the benches. “Caresco is dead.” I replied, a bit more calmly. “His island was buried in volcanic ash. That Caresco?”

Holmes held up a hand, and I fell silent. The greenish contents of those vials had taken on a new reality for me. I had heard of Caresco and his hellish experiments, and I knew the end he’d reached. Playing God with the human anatomy, enslaving the mind. Seeking a cure for death and time.

“I know of Caresco as well,” Holmes assured me. “I was fairly certain his work was tied up in this, but there is more—something vital that we are missing.”

He returned the card to the case and began pacing the room, rooting through the remaining cases and tossing paperwork and equipment aside without a thought. Clearly, he had no intention of trying to keep our illegal entry a secret. Holmes turned and lifted the vial in his hand so that I could see it more closely.

“Clay?” he asked. I didn’t believe that he expected an answer, so I remained silent as he replaced the vial and continued to stare into the case.

Then, just as I was certain he would turn in disgust and leave that accursed place, Holmes laid hand on a small leather-bound volume. Pulling it nearer to the light, he flipped open the covers, which had nothing upon them but a few characters rendered in Hebrew. Holmes’s brow furrowed, and he flipped the pages rapidly, grunting under his breath.

I glanced over his shoulder as he flipped through the pages. The script was coarse, and though I’m no linguist, I saw what seemed to be alternating lines of Hebrew and some antiquated form of Arabic. There were notes scribbled in the margins. I could make out none of it, but Holmes seemed to be devouring it all.

“There’s no time to waste, Watson,” he said at last, replacing the book where he’d found it and tidying up the room just enough so that a cursory glance would show no evidence of our presence. “We must hide ourselves.”

We moved none too soon. Holmes had just switched off the lights, and dragged me down the hall and through another door, when we heard the grate of an iron key turning slowly in the lock. We could just make out the cursing voice of Aaron Silverman through the solid wood, growing louder as he pushed the door inward and stepped inside.

“I curse the day I first laid eyes on you,” he was saying.

There were two sets of footsteps, and I guessed that the second set must belong to Michael Adcott. There was no answer to Silverman’s ranting diatribe, but the echo of shuffling feet followed his hard, sharp strides into the hall. The door closed once more, and Silverman moved into the laboratory, shoving things about roughly. I held my breath, but he seemed to notice nothing amiss.

“I suppose there’s nothing to do but to put you back in your cell and go in search of Watson,” he said at last. “There is more than one way to get a paper signed, and if Jeffries can’t straighten this out without the good doctor’s authorization, then authorization he shall have.”

Only silence was his answer, and the two sets of footsteps moved closer to us once again, passing into the hall and by our door, moving into the gloomy interior of the old asylum. Holmes hesitated only for a moment, then followed. I trailed behind, moving a bit more slowly, dragging the fingertips of my right hand along the wall beside us as we went. I didn’t want a chance misstep to alert Silverman to our presence. Indeed, I had no idea what Holmes planned to do, and I wanted to be as ready as possible for any circumstance.

We followed the pair down into the bowels of that wretched structure, and at last I felt Holmes’s hand on my arm and came to a stop. Just ahead, around a final corner, there was a stationary glow, as if a torch, or a lantern, was being held. I could still hear Silverman’s muttering voice, and I heard as well the clatter of keys on a ring. Holmes was moving ahead again, very slowly now, and I followed, keeping well back, not wanting to cause my companion to stumble.

Silverman’s words came into clearer focus. He was so agitated that his voice quavered. If I’d been seeing him in my office, I’d have prescribed a stiff brandy, and a few hours’ rest, but Silverman was as far from being prepared to rest as a man could be.

“I’ll find him, don’t you worry,” he was saying. “I’ll make him sign those papers, show him the error of his ways. He saw you, plain as the nose on his face, walking about. Alive. No reason he shouldn’t sign, and by the Gods he will.”

There was more. His lips never ceased their motion, the words flowing in an endless stream. There was the solid click of a key turning in a lock, and the creaking of rusted hinges, followed by the shuffling of feet. I started to inch forward, not wanting to miss a word of what was being said, but I felt Holmes’s hand gripping my shoulder tightly, and I grew still.

He leaned in close and whispered into my ear: “Something is afoot, Watson. Listen!”

I did—and there were two voices. The second, far from coherent, began as a low moan, shivering up from some deep darkness I could not equate with human consciousness. I heard the scrape of shoes on the stone floor, but they weren’t measured steps. The sound was random and wild, quickly drowned out by the wailing voice. It rose from a moan to a banshee screech so rapidly that I was physically stunned by the blast of sound. There was a crash, and a loud cry, followed by a volley of crazed curses.