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

The dogs were restless, tails twitching, ears twisting with every new sound. Sacks of golden treasure, jewels, ornaments, trinkets and artifacts weighed down the sled: everything needed for the trip back had been available on the ship. The girl, whose name might have been Anerkernerk, although Watson couldn’t be certain, sat atop a mound of treasure, bundled in caribou skins twice too large for her. She looked in the direction Holmes and Watson looked, and all three faces glowed with firelight.

The ship crackled and blazed, bathing the onlookers in brazen orange hues, and seething warmth. Lights arced into the sky from the burning hold — green and violet and pink — like an Aurora Borealis as the shattered altar within gave up its accursed energies. Watson felt the heat upon his face, smelled the smoke, thought of burning villages and endless campfires while on march with the 66th foot Regiment. I was a pawn then, and am still, he reflected. What on Earth happened here? And what of Holmes? Does he still wield the dagger, or does the dagger wield him?

“I don’t envy you this one,” Holmes chuckled, his voice straining for a jaunty tone, but failing under the weight of extreme fatigue. Watson winced at the sight of his friend: the eyes bloodshot and receding into their sockets; the cheeks sunken — that thin face turned gaunt by the exercise of the Zulu knife. If wielding the blade brought to mind the surging pleasures of cocaine, the aftermath recalled the physical cost of heroin. Whatever game you’re playing at, Holmes , Watson thought, the price is too bloody high.

“Envy?” Watson said. “The devil do you mean?”

“The story. You’ve got your work cut out, I’d say.”

“The story? You mean retelling this as one of your observational fantasies? Insanity! Cannot be done! Where on Earth would I start?”

“I would have thought that was obvious,” Holmes managed a wan, secretive smile. “Start with the Russians.”

* * * * *

KEVIN COCKLE lives in Calgary, Alberta and often incorporates Calgary-style boom-town themes in his work. A frequent contributor to On Spec magazine, Kevin has dabbled in screen writing, sports journalism and technical writing to fill out what would otherwise be a purely finance-centric resume.

Sherlock Holmes and the Diving Bell

by Simon Clark

WATSON. COME AT ONCE. THAT WHICH CANNOT BE. IS.

That astonishing summons brought me to the Cornish harbour town of Fowey. There, as directed by further information within the telegram, I joined my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, on a tugboat, which immediately steamed toward the open sea. The rapid pounding of the engine made for an urgent drumbeat. One that reinforced the notion that once more we’d embarked upon a headlong dash to adventure.

By the time I’d regained my breath, after a somewhat hurried embarkation, I saw that Holmes had taken up a position in the tugboat’s bow. There he stood, straight-backed, thin as a pikestaff, hatless, and dressed severely in black. Every inch the eager seeker of truth. His deep-set eyes raked the turquoise ocean, hunting for what he knew must lie out here.

But what, exactly, was the nature of our case? He’d given no elaboration, other than that mystifying statement in the telegram. That which cannot be. Is.

I picked my way across the deck, over coils of rope, rusty chain and assorted winding gear that adorned this grubby little workhorse of the sea. The vessel moved at the limits of its speed. Steam hissed from pipes, smoke tumbled out of the funnel to stain an otherwise perfectly blue June sky. Gulls wheeled about our craft, for the moment mistaking us for a fishing boat. Either they finally understood that we didn’t carry so much as a mackerel or, perhaps, they sensed danger ahead, for the birds suddenly departed on powerful wings, uttering such piercing shrieks that they could be plainly heard above the whoosh! and shorr! of the engine.

Likewise, I made it my business to be overheard above the machine, too. “Holmes. What’s happened?”

That distinctive profile remained. He didn’t even glance in my direction.

“Holmes, good God, man! The telegram! What does it mean?”

Still he did not turn. Instead, he rested his fingertip against his lips.

Hush.

My friend is not given to personal melodrama, or prone to questioning my loyalties by virtue of frivolous tests. Clearly, this was a matter of great importance. Just what that matter was I’d have to wait and see. However, a certain rigidity of his posture and grimness of expression sent a chill foreboding through my blood. Terrible events loomed — or so I divined. Therefore, I stood beside that black clad figure, said nothing, and waited for the tugboat to bear us to our destination.

Presently, I saw where we were headed. Sitting there, as a blot of darkness on the glittering sea, was a large vessel of iron. What I’d first surmised to be a stunted mast between the aft deck and the funnel was, in fact, a crane. A cable ran from the pulley at the tip of that formidable lifting arm to a grey object on the aft deck.

In the next half hour Holmes would speak but tersely. “Steel yourself, Watson.” That was his sole item of conversation on the tugboat.

The dourness of countenance revealed that some immense problem weighed heavy on the man. His long fingers curled around the rail at the prow. Muscle tension produced a distinct whitening of the knuckles. His piercing eyes regarded the iron ship, which grew ever nearer. And he looked at that ship as a man might who’d seen a gravestone on which his own name is etched with the days of his mortal arrival and, more disconcertingly, his departure.

The tugboat captain fired off two short blasts of the steam whistle. The leviathan at anchor gave an answering call on its horn. A mournful sound to be sure.

Soon the tugboat drew alongside. A grim-faced Holmes took my elbow in order to help me safely pass from the heaving tugboat to the rope ladder that had been cast down for us.

My heart, and I readily confess the fact, pounded nearly as hard as the pistons of the tugboat. For, as I climbed up toward the guardrail fifteen feet above me, I saw an assembly of faces. They regarded me with such melancholy that I fully expected to be marched to a gallows where my noose awaited.

Panting, I clambered over the rail onto the aft deck. There, something resembling the boiler of a locomotive, lying horizontally, dominated the area. A pair of hawsers ran from this giant cylinder to a linking ring; from that stout ring a single hawser of great thickness rose to the crane’s tip.

Holmes followed me on deck.

Immediately, a man of around sixty, or so, strode forward. His face had been reddened by ocean gales and the sun. A tracery of purple veins emerged from a pair of mutton-chop side-whiskers that were as large as they were perfectly white. Those dark veins appeared as distinct as contour lines on a map. Such a weather-beaten visage could have been on loan from the Ancient Mariner himself. His wide, grey eyes examined my face, as if attempting to discern whether I was a fellow who’d stand firm in the face of danger, or take flight. That assessment appeared to be of great importance to him.

Holmes introduced me to this venerable seaman. “Captain Smeaton. Doctor Watson.” We shook hands. His grasp was steel. Holmes closed with the terse request: “Captain Smeaton, please explain.”

The captain shared the same funereal expression as the rest of his crew. Not smiling once. Nevertheless, he did speak.

“Doctor Watson,” he began in a voice long since made permanently hoarse from having to make himself heard above ocean storms, “I don’t know what Mr. Holmes has revealed to you about our plight.”