J. Campbell - Gaslight Arcanum - Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

It was Swann; or at least, it had been Swann.

The man’s face, caught in the beam of light, leered in black and swollen misery at Brabbins, the flesh darkened and gross. His head was massive, like a scarecrow’s made out of some misshapen, rotten vegetable; his eyes were bulged shut, the lids erupting and pressing together, and his mouth was open, but compressed to a dark, tiny O by lips that had blistered towards each other. The skin looked taught, ready to split, and it was covered in beads of blood, some of which had trickled and collected and slathered down the man’s cheeks like aged, dank tears. The swelling made his chin a shapeless ridge above a neck that bulged and strained against his uniform collar, where his police number glittered, silver and pitiless. It was Swann made into a caricature of himself, drawn by a hand that was both mocking and humourless. The smoker was lying by him in the centre of a scorched circle of grass.

All of this Brabbins saw even as his scream was newborn, still rising into the air in a great, whooping arc. Under it, the sound of the bees leapt in pitch, climbing with the scream to a sharp, inhuman shiver. Brabbins clambered to his feet, rolling against Swann as he did so and feeling the man’s flesh shift like water in a balloon. He grabbed, almost by instinct, the sheaf of partly charred papers that were still clutched in the dead man’s hand (also bloated and black, he saw) and then he was running. As he did so, he had the impression of the hives boiling, of a ragged cloud gathering in the air above them and starting towards him and then he was concentrating on the house, on Holmes’ house, on the faint yellow square of the doorway.

The bees were closer; he could hear them even over the pant of his own breathing. Their noise was constant, furious, mounting, itching in his ears and prickling his skin. He ran, moving swiftly from the meadow and onto the lawn, with its neat grass and sentinel plants, and as he went the bees were a cloud about him, almost invisible in the darkness, it was as though the night itself had come alive and had stretched out writhing arms to take hold of him. He ran, and the bees closed in.

Brabbins dashed through the doorway as the first bees started to land on him; one banged into his shoulder and span away, another flashed into his face and then was gone, more landed on his arms and dashed against his legs. Their buzz was a pitiless shriek that reminded him of drills and saws and factories full of sweat and dirt and poverty, and then he was into the house, slamming the door behind him. The swarm, for he could think of no other word for it, banged hard against the door behind him, a thousand or more tiny impacts making a noise like cloth being torn asunder, louder and louder as the tiny creatures battered themselves against the door. More struck the glass of the windows in a staccato beat, and then Brabbins’ hand flamed with pain.

It was like nothing he had ever felt, a burning, roaring sensation that swept rapidly across the back of his hand and clutched at his knuckles and wrist. Looking down, Brabbins saw a fat bee crawling across his hand. He shook his hand, trying to dislodge it, but it clung on and stung him again, causing another wave of pain to coruscate in his palm and fingers. He used his other hand to knock the creature off, sending it to the floor, and then stepped on it before it could right itself and lift into the air. More crawled over his arms and legs, and he knocked them off with the papers, swatting at them and stepping on them until they were all dead. The bees outside seemed to redouble their efforts to gain entry, as though they knew of their fallen comrades.

Brabbins thrust his hand under the tap, letting the cold water play across his flaming skin. It was already swelling, he saw, rising around twin punctures. He scratched at them, half-remembering advice about getting out beestings, but all that emerged was his own blood, somehow paler and with a yellow tinge. Is that poison? Is that what killed Swann? And Holmes? he thought, and suspected that it was.

When his hand felt marginally better, although it remained reddened and swollen and painful to move, Brabbins picked up the papers from where he had dropped them, and then went through the house. The lounge and parlour had open fireplaces, piled with logs and kindling, so he shut the doors to both rooms, thankful that they fitted snug in their frames. He also shut the kitchen door, closing off the noise of the bees to a lesser degree. Already, tiny dark shapes were gathering on the outside of the small glass pane in the front door, their indistinct forms filling the available space. From behind both of the doors he had closed came the faint sound of something striking the wood, not hard but repeatedly. Brabbins went upstairs, checking all the windows as he went. None were open; the house was sealed.

Finally, Brabbins took the papers into the study, righting the chair and sitting down, noticing as he did so that he was shaking, nauseous. The poison? he wondered. The fear?

The Bees.

For a moment, he tried to put the bees out of his mind; they had him penned in the house, and he had no idea why they were acting so aggressively, but his policeman’s instincts, honed by years of sifting through humanity’s mud and detritus, of making sense from the senseless, told him the answers lay in the sheets of paper that Swann had been holding.

They were bound, he saw, neatly written and tied at the top and bottom left corners with loops of thick twine. He recognized the writing as Holmes’ from the repeated ‘No’ on the letters, the words firm and decisive. The paper was thick and heavy, expensive, and the writing was interrupted here and there with illustrations and tables. Is this what Swann died for? Brabbins thought as he looked at them. Holmes? Two men, dead because of this?

Yes , he thought, and began to read.

It is my belief that British bees can be improved , Brabbins read on the first page, by the introduction of new queens from other breeds which possess the correct, desired, and beneficial traits. Having achieved some success in the breeding, and becoming familiar with the habits, strengths, and weaknesses of the more usual Western Honey Bee, in this paper I shall describe the initial attempts to improve upon this breed and outline any results that are obtained.

Whilst the Western Honey Bee is currently the universal breed hived in Britain, and is ideally suited to both the climate and the geography of this land, increasing industrialization and the spread of towns and concurrent population growth may require, in future, a bee that can travel further in search of pollen, or which has a longer breeding and production season and from which increased amounts of honey and wax can be harvested. Accordingly, looking overseas for hardier breeds to increase the value and usefulness of our stock is the only logical thing to do.

Initially, of course, a suitable breed must be identified and procured. Clearly, not all breeds will be suitable for husbandry because of differences in temperament or physiology. However, many come from the same root stock and so may prove to be viable partners. I shall endeavour to explain here why various breeds were dismissed and to show how the ultimate decision was made.

Brabbins stopped reading and leafed through the next few pages, seeing little of interest other than detailed descriptions of breeds and their failings. Names such as Buckfast Bee, Midnite Bee, European Dark Bee , and Carnolian Bee jostled alongside phrases like movable comb hives, Langstroth spaces and Dadant design . English, but still another language.

Eventually, Brabbins came to a new paragraph that read, After exhaustive study, it is clear that we must look further afield for the required breeding partner. Records of the earliest beekeepers, although scant, identify several species cultivated in more isolated regions, often by monks or other closed communities. These are the rarest of breeds and ones about whom little but the briefest of facts are known, except those which were written down by their original keepers. Of these, most can be dismissed immediately as variants on the breeds already discussed. However, one would seem to be an ideal candidate: the Northern Wild Bee, occasionally called the Volk’s or Wolf Bee. Almost unknown outside of a tiny area of Russia, this animal may be the perfect partner in this experiment.