Sherlock Holmes 01: The Breath of God (10 page)

“I have my thoughts to sustain me,” he said, gazing out of the window at the silhouettes of trees as they flashed by. “I’m sure they will be more nourishing than whatever the hard-pressed chefs of the North-Eastern Railway can provide.”

When Silence and I entered the dining carriage I was momentarily worried by the sight of the troublesome old lady from earlier. However, she appeared to have latched on to some other unfortunate, a rather pale-faced man who had the waistcoat and creased brow of a clerk.

“He would insist on following me,” she was telling him while noisily consuming her consommé by inhalation. “In the end I had to tell the fellow to leave me be.”

I resisted a brief, ungentlemanly urge to tip her soup into her wool-enshrouded lap, but instead led Silence to the other end of the carriage where we might just be able to eat without hearing her do so.

I sat with my back to her, briefly catching the eye of the immaculate young man who had been stood behind me in the ticket queue. He gave me a desultory glance before returning to his lamb. I had always considered myself a convivial man but it would seem I had managed to make a pair of enemies without any effort whatsoever. Perhaps it was that thought that made me decide to relax in Silence’s company.

It wasn’t difficult, while not a man overly blessed with a sense of humour, he was nonetheless pleasant and capable of charm. He could hardly have been a successful physician otherwise, any successful doctor will tell you a practice is built on charm as much as medical knowledge.

As doctors cannot fail to do when placed in each other’s company, we shared stories of our training days. We had not been at St Bartholomew’s at the same time, but nonetheless knew a good number of the same people and conversation was easy and pleasant.

However much shared history we possessed, it wasn’t long before discussion of Silence’s more recent work was broached.

“How did you end up specialising in such an...”

“Unbelievable?”

I smiled. “I was going to say unconventional.”

Silence shrugged. “Once you are convinced of the existence of – for the sake of a term – ‘the supernatural’ it is difficult to ignore it. It feels as if you have peeled away an entirely new layer of existence, everything you took for granted, every physical law or spiritual belief, is turned on its head. Once you believe, and I mean truly believe, it’s impossible to dedicate your life to anything else. I’m hardly the first.”

“Really?”

“Not at all, Dr Martin Hesselius pursued a dual career in both medicine and the occult long before me. You’re familiar with his work?”

I had to admit that I was not.

“Very few have heard of him, which speaks volumes for how little he was respected by conventional science.” He sighed. “Though perhaps that is hardly surprising – pioneers are always thought of as mad. A great deal of his work was research only; he studied myths and legends, trying to sift truth from fiction. He also fought the unearthly face to face, as of course did his successor Lawrence Van Helsing.”

“Now that is a name I am familiar with,” I said, “though some of the details elude me. Wasn’t he involved in some trouble in Eastern Europe?”

“Lawrence has been involved in trouble the world over,” Silence admitted. “For such a mild-mannered fellow, he is the most tenacious man I think I have ever met. Of course he has specialised rather, whereas I prefer to keep my scope of interests wide. A good man though, I spent a number of months in Chungking recently working alongside Van Helsing and his protegé Charles Kent.”

“You have travelled extensively then?”

“Oh yes, the world has much to teach us, but to learn you have to walk its roads.”

“An enlightened philosophy.”

“And one I am lucky that I can afford to subscribe to. Life has treated me well.”

As someone who often struggled to pay the rent on his practice – indeed had been forced to return to sharing rooms in order to meet the bills – I was forced to agree. I didn’t allow such thoughts of penury to dissuade my attentions from the dessert trolley, however – a man has to live you know.

“There is something...” Dr Silence’s words petered out mid-sentence and I gazed up from my slice of gateau to look at him. His face had become peculiarly inanimate. His lower lip sagged and a wisp of what I first took to be smoke but then, discerning its slick, glutinous texture as it dripped on the table linen, realised was something else entirely.

“Dr Silence?” I asked. “John?”

There was no answer, what sat before me was an empty vessel.

For a moment I feared that I had, once again, fallen prey to a delusional state. Though if I had then it was one that the rest of the carriage shared. Silence wasn’t alone in having lost all semblance of life, I glanced from table to table seeing the same blank expressions dotted among the diners, their companions as confused as I. All exuded that same, thin mucous-like substance, strings of it reaching up from their mouths and nostrils and forming a web between their heads and the walls of the carriage.

Taking hold of my dessert knife I extended the blade towards the closest string, meaning to test its strength.

“Don’t touch it,” said the immaculate young man I had first met in the ticket queue. He turned to the carriage as a whole. “None of you touch it,” he shouted. “Do as I say and stay calm and we might yet get out of this.”

“And you are?” I asked, not a little set back by his arrogance.

“An expert,” he replied. “The name’s Thomas Carnacki.”

It’s morning and I open the windows to exchange the smell of stale cigar smoke for the crisp morning breeze and a hint of the Thames.

I sit amongst the detritus of the night before, the brandy glasses and empty decanter, the full ashtrays and the scent of a mutton stew prepared in the Moroccan style. The smell of spice and smoke is not the only ghost to still linger. Last night I told Dodgson and the others of the bizarre affair of Mocata Grange, of a world glimpsed beyond this one.

As always the story aided their digestion even as it complicated mine.

They love my stories of course, even those of them who suspect me of embellishment. For me the act of reliving my cases is not simply an after-dinner entertainment, that is what they will never quite understand. For me it’s about fixing the impossible, taking the unearthly and the horrific and pinning it down like a gassed butterfly. As I tell my story and Dodgson notes it down it becomes a thing shared, a thing diluted by the echo of nervous laughter, something crystallised in the ink of Dodgson’s pen. In short it is something taken out of my head and laid down where one must hope it can no more harm me. Or keep me from sleep.

I need air. Leaving the tidying up for later I put on my coat and scarf and leave my flat for the crisp winter air of Cheyne Walk.

I walk by the river. The early sun throws its light on the water but sheds none of its warmth. My breath clouds in front of my face as I look across the narrow mud flats at the feeding gulls. I am reminded of my current investigation. I am reminded of the Breath of God.

It is not something I have discussed with Dodgson and friends, they only get to hear of the adventures I have concluded. The works in progress are too dangerous to share, they are snakes as yet loose from their basket. I will capture them, close the lid and then take away their poison by speaking of them out loud. Until then...

After my walk I return to my flat and wash the dishes. I could employ someone to do this, my inheritance is such that money need never be a significant concern, but about the only thing I like more than privacy is self-sufficiency.

Once the flat is cleared, I turn my attentions to the future: I begin the preparations for my planned journey.

The first step is simple, I gather my notebooks, a map of the local area and a suitable change of clothes. Next comes the equipment, and that is a more careful business, the electric Pentacle is carefully checked and then replaced in its padded case. I also run through my Gladstone bag filled with a selection of useful tools, such basic equipment as holy water and communion wafers, a selection of silver charms and a handful of crystals. There is also my revolver, with a choice of cartridges: silver, rock salt or standard rounds (it is saddening how often the threats I face are only too earthly). Then there are the sections of the Sigsand Manuscript that I have gathered over the years, a scroll so potent that it is not only the words that hold power – words I have long since memorised – but the very fabric of the parchment itself.

Finally comes mental preparation and this is not something that can be achieved so quickly. First, purification: bathing then oiling, then shaving and finally bathing again. By the time I sit, cross-legged, in my meditation space I am pink skinned and icy cold. After a few moments of chanting, however, the flesh is left behind and the mental preparation begins. I compartmentalise, visualising my mind as a massive storeroom, all that I know is unpacked, regarded and then filed away again, perfectly neatly. By the time I open my eyes the morning has gone and I need to get moving.

I dress and quickly eat a little left over curried turkey (I do so love to cook, good food is like successful magic, it’s all in the ingredients and the willingness to be brave). Then I gather my bags and take the car to St Pancras. I am tempted to drive all the way – that need for selfsuffi ciency again, I do so hate to rely on others – but the train journey will give me time to catch up on my reading and leave me refreshed when I arrive in Scotland, rather than grimy from the road.

I join the queue at the ticket office, almost giving up entirely when stuck behind a lady so ancient I can recall battling spirits more youthful. Her companion is scant help, though I feel sure I recognise him. Glancing at my watch – a truly lovely piece that I’ve had engraved with the mark of the Kronos Lineage so that it is not only a fine example of Swiss timekeeping but also a formidable weapon against Succubi – I realise I am now in a very real danger of missing my train. Given the hours of preparation I’ve put into planning my trip I can’t say I’m favourable to the idea of it being scuppered by a lunatic octogenarian and her companion. I hurry them along and finally manage to buy my ticket and reach the platform with only minutes to spare.

I spot a couple of familiar faces as I board and am momentarily undecided whether their presence will present a complication or a benefit. First there is John Silence, a man who works roughly in the same field as myself (though in a considerably less active manner; from what I gather he is a man who likes to listen rather than act). The second could also be classed as competition, though I believe he restricts his detective work to the earthly, Sherlock Holmes, the renowned consulting detective. Of course, I now realise where I recognised the elderly lady’s companion, he was John Watson, Holmes’ biographer. What he was doing escorting those on the cusp of death cannot be imagined.

Can it be possible that their presence is coincidence? Or are they perhaps following the same trail as I?

Settling into my carriage with a small pile of research material beside me, I decide that time alone will tell.

Once my eyes are too tired to decipher further dusty apocrypha, I pack the books away and see about food. There is a dining carriage onboard and, while experience has taught me not to set one’s hopes too high when eating on the move, I am glad enough of the opportunity to stretch my legs.

I take a table and a gamble on the menu. The food is actually better than I had expected, a goose paté in particular being almost worthy of the wine I choose to wash it down with.

The doctors, Silence and Watson, enter and I consider making conversation in order to determine the reason for their visit. Then I decide I really can’t tear myself away from the wine and dessert course. Small talk has never been something that I relish.

It is as I am finally resolving to return to my carriage, with a plan to meditate for a couple of hours before we arrive, that the incursion occurs. First the temperature drops, I seem to be one of the few that notice, the rest no doubt caught up in their oh-so-fascinating conversations. A small patch of ice forms in the corner of my window, like a spider’s web. I hold out my finger to touch it: it’s on the outside, so whatever is affecting us is sizeable and likely enveloping this entire carriage. The degree of psionic energy needed to achieve such a manifestation is daunting. Of course, I have left all of my equipment in my carriage, only a paranoid dines with his weaponry.

I am considering a sprint to retrieve my Gladstone bag when roughly half of the passengers are struck by a spiritual attack. They fall silent, heads lolling back while an ectoplasmic bridge begins to form, its gooey threads providing a conduit between the life force of the affected passengers and whatever creature this is that wishes to manifest. That solves the question of power, I realise, we are victims and power source both.

I notice Watson making to break one of the ectoplasm strings with his cake knife. Save me from amateurs.

“Don’t touch it,” I tell him, getting to my feet and hoping I can alert the whole carriage to the same need for caution. “None of you touch it,” I shout. “Do as I say and stay calm and we might yet get out of this.”

“And you are?” Watson asks, clearly irritated.

“An expert,” I reply, truthfully and succinctly. “The name’s Thomas Carnacki.”

Out of the corner of my eye I spot the same irritating old lady I was stuck behind in the ticket queue, the woman I assumed to be Watson’s companion. She is reaching out to touch one of the ectoplasmic strands hanging from the corner of her dinner companion’s mouth. “I said don’t touch it!” I cry, but it’s too late, her fingers are already breaking the fragile connection.

The man in front of her begins to shake as the force outside the carriage seeks to regain its lost connection. The ectoplasm pulses and whips back around his face, obscuring his startled moment of wakefulness and choking a brief scream as it yanks him upwards. The man collides with the roof of the carriage, spinning as the ectoplasm curls around him. There is a faint cracking noise as his soul is yanked from the flesh that houses it. The body falls, utterly empty, back to the dining table where it overturns a pot of coffee. The soul is swallowed by the ectoplasm, which bulges as the vaguely luminescent morsel passes along it, like a rabbit in the throat of a python.