Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets (10 page)

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Sherlock picked up the hand to examine it more closely, he just couldn’t help himself—he never could—but dropped it when all the fingers contracted around the watch, giving him, and me, the fright of our lives. The witch just cackled even more at our expense. The hand scuttled into the shadows like Thing from
The Addams Family
. A hysterical shriek escaped from Lestrade; he clapped his hand over his mouth to prevent further outbursts.

I stood next to Holmes, still unable to understand what I’d seen. It defied all logic; not even Sherlock would be able to find a rational explanation for it. Severed hands did not simply run across floors of their own volition. He would try to come up with a rationalisation, he always did on the strange cases, but on this occasion he would fail. Differing expressions drifted across his face as his mind sifted through the plausible explanations. I’d seen him go through it before on other cases, but this was the first time I’d seen his face lose all colour. It was the first time I’d seen him shocked or surprised. I didn’t know what scared me more, the witch and the severed hand, or Holmes without a plausible explanation. His constant logical explanations for whatever we found had always given me a sense of safety. He was my rock, even when he was on one of his binges, but I would never tell him that. There’d be no living with him if I did.

Holmes visibly shook himself out of his confusion and went looking for the hand. He never did know when to tuck tail and run. His damn curiosity would always get the better of him, and one day it would get him killed.

“Sherlock,” I shouted. “Step away from the dark corners. You don’t know what’s hidden in there.”

He looked back over his shoulder at me and opened his mouth—in all likelihood, to tell me I was being ridiculous—but the words never passed his lips. The hand flew out of the shadows and grabbed his throat. A manic, excited look enraptured the evil old bitch’s face. Lestrade shrieked again and ran at the door, but only succeeded in knocking himself unconscious. I ran to Sherlock. The world slowed down, and panic gripped my bowels as I tried to pry those cold, dead fingers from his neck. The fingers squeezed tighter. His throat turned red. Sherlock gasped for breath. Bones cracked as I pulled at the fingers and its grip loosened. I flung the hand at the witch. It landed on her face, and its fingertips dug into her eyes and the palm covered her mouth, suffocating her, thankfully putting an end to her laughter.

My vision blurred as I watched the old woman turn into a large, muscular man, who could easily have broken Holmes and I like small twigs without breaking into a sweat. For some unfathomable reason, even in this form, he could not save himself from his own creation. Flies came from every corner of the room and buzzed around him like a black shroud. Through the ever-growing cloud of flies I noticed that the heel of his left shoe was cracked, and there was a hole where his right big toe would be. The killer we’d tracked and the old witch were one and the same.

“A genuine case of transmogrification.” Sherlock was breathless with excitement. “I’ve never actually seen a case like this. It’s fascinating, don’t you think, Watson? There’s never been an actual case recorded before. I should have brought my camera to record this for posterity.”

I, on the other hand, was less enthused by our situation. While Sherlock was excited, he did not look surprised by this turn of events. The flies buzzed and the shaman fought for his last breath. He changed form and was once again the old woman. Her struggle with the hand became feebler and her body shuddered as she lost her struggle for life.

“Fascinating,” Holmes said as the hand released its death grip and scuttled back into the shadows.

“I have no words,” I said, shaking my head at Holmes. I knelt next to the witch and checked for a pulse.

“What is it, Watson? I can hear that tone you get in your voice when you’re displeased with me.”

“A man was brutally murdered, Lestrade is unconscious, you were almost killed, the witch is dead, we’re trapped inside this hell hole, and all you can think of is that you should have brought your camera to record a case of transmogrification. And then there’s that small fact that you didn’t even seem surprised when she changed form. You knew this whole time, didn’t you?” My voice rose a few octaves.

“I had my suspicions, but I didn’t have any definitive proof. But I do believe we should depart. The smell from that pot is rather vile.”

He stepped over Lestrade’s unconscious body and pulled the door open with a smirk.

“Alright, so I was pushing the door instead of pulling it. No need to rub my panic in my face.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“What about him?” I asked tilting my head at Lestrade.

“I’m not carrying him. You’re welcome to try, though.”

“He’ll break my back.”

“That’s an exaggeration. He’d merely strain it.”

“Why did the hand turn violent? I thought it was for a money spell?”

“The witch, while powerful, was an idiot. She, or he, used the wrong hand, which resulted in the spell going awry and ultimately caused it to turn on her or him.”

“How did you know that the old woman and the killer were one person?”

“Elementary, Watson! There were no tracks leading away from the shaman’s lair, ergo the killer was still inside, and the only option was that the old woman was the killer in disguise.”

“It could have been the child that ran off,” I said.

“No, the witch’s ego prevented her from running away. She enjoyed the game too much. Ultimately, it was her over-inflated sense of her own powers that destroyed her; if not for her gross miscalculation, we may have ended up being used as spare parts for another of her spells.”

My cell phone vibrating in my pocket prevented my mind from delving deeper into the unpleasantness of having my organs removed for
muti.
An heiress had gone missing, presumed to have been kidnapped.

“Holmes,” I shouted as Sherlock tried to revive Lestrade. “We’ve got another case.”

I’m a fan of Kaaron’s short stories, and she was one of the first people I approached to contribute. Kaaron’s a fellow countrywoman, and I fully expected her to set her story in Australia; but I was otherwise completely unprepared for ‘The Lantern Men.’ It’s a true ghost story, a hauntingly beautiful tale in which a mood of failure and regret hangs over everyone, including Sherlock and John themselves. And as with any ghost story—and certainly as you’d expect from one featuring the world’s most famous detective—the dominating question is: what’s real?

T
HE PEPPERTREE WAS
a puzzle to be solved, but that was his fame. As an architect, he liked to ensure nothing was left to chance, and nothing was lost of the genius loci, the spirit of the building.

Peppertree Lodge—
Affordable location in a waterside setting
—was his second job since returning to his home town. ‘Triumphantly,’ the local paper said, and Holmes didn’t mind that. Peppertree was a town he’d been desperate to escape, but what he found elsewhere was no better. Here, at least, they had the peppertrees to cover the stench of the river. Here, he could breathe again.

He walked the location, exploring the details, the cracks, what he called the
clues
. When the ute pulled up, he squinted to read the name on the side.
Bright Building Insurance
, and the logo of a glowing lantern.

“Sherlock Holmes! Good to see you home at last!” This was an older man Holmes did not recognise. All the older men of the town looked similar. It was something they were proud of.

“We all come home in the end,” another one said, and even standing side by side, Holmes could barely tell them apart. He understood that was his own failing, not theirs. He was being lazy, enjoying himself, letting his brain atrophy. One had a splodge of dried tomato sauce on his ugly tie. Unmarried. Alone, Holmes thought.

One had a web of pen drawings on his hand. A grandfather? The grandfather had more hair coming out of his overlarge ears and the bachelor far less hair on his head.

The third man wore a t-shirt too broad for his skinny shoulders (
Peppertree Footy Team Go Dingoes
).

“Hear you’re going to chuck up some living space,” the skinny one said. Holmes nodded. “We need it. Place is growing. Need to keep the kids around.”

The grandfather said, “Glorious colour, our peppertrees.” Holmes looked up at the tree. It was true; there was real beauty. It was one of the things that drew him back home. “My great grandfather planted the first, did you know that? Building goes back a long way in my family.” He looked at Holmes with some disdain. “Hope you’re not thinking of knocking it down. You wouldn’t want to do that.”

Holmes shook his head, feeling like a child in trouble.

“You let us know when the foundations are going in. we’ll sort you out some ‘insurance.’”

The bachelor lifted his fingers in quotation marks. Holmes nodded, far from understanding, but wanting to get back to work.

For Holmes, insurance was the spirit that inspired him. It was the nature of the building. The clue that helped him create the best possible structure.

“You call us. Ask for the Lantern Men.”

As they drove away, Holmes thought,
What sort of insurance men drive a ute?

He’d left town to avoid citizens such as these. They were guilt on legs. They judged you on a mere thought and they were strict with it, on all you’d ever done or considered. And yet he understood he was like them, passing judgement based on appearance. The difference being that he didn’t bring prejudice or pre-conceived ideas to the analysis.

Still, they had brought him inspiration, and that could not be denied.

This pink peppertree was over a hundred years old and should be kept. It wasn’t so much the size of it that caused a problem, nor the shade it cast, but the many thousands of peppercorns it dropped. He knew these trees well, had climbed them as a child, been snagged by their branches, lost in their leaves. He knew the scratch of the bark.

The smell was peppery and sweetish and their colour, as they rested on the ground, was a gentle pink that lifted the grey surrounds.

And there. There it was. He would make a feature of those peppercorns. Rather than shipping in tonnes of ornamental pebbles, these peppercorns would act as same. He would design a low holding wall; place an outdoor lounge or two, and the space would be perfect.

He walked back to his car to scribble notes and was struck by the smell of the river that ran through most of the city. On high pollution days, the reek of it was pervading. Yet by the peppertree, the smell was lessened.

Deep in his scribbles, he didn’t notice his phone vibrating for quite some time. He hated the jangle of it if he had the ring tone on, and was willing to face the ire of all in order to keep the thing silent.

It was Watson, the city’s most trustworthy builder and the man Holmes most relied on.

“I’ve sorted the peppertree problem,” Holmes said.

“That’s good, Sherlock, but not why I’m calling. I’m here at the museum site and we’ve found something... interesting.”

“In the architectural sense?”

“Not quite.”

Holmes had tendered for the upgrade of the museum, a two hundred-year-old dilapidated house once dwelled in by the town’s founder and left relatively untouched for a hundred and fifty years. The founder’s fall from grace (taking with him much of the town’s money) was the stuff of legend now, but at the time, the residents had half-destroyed the mansion in their fury. It was a house of many, many rooms. The founder’s delusions of grandeur had him hiring teams of builders, over decades. Perhaps he thought this registered his worth? Many did the same. It was how Holmes stayed in business.

A
S CHILDREN
, H
OLMES
and Watson had tested their nerves here, as did many others.

“You remember our nights there, Holmes? We
did
hear ghosts, we were certain.”

“You were certain. I thought it was rats, if anything.”

“Can you pop over? Incognito, as it were. Wearing your other hat, if you know what I mean.”

Holmes felt a flutter of excitement. It was a long while since he’d solved anything outside the realms of bricks and mortar, so this sounded tempting indeed. He still bore the scars, physical and emotional, of his last encounter, but also carried the satisfaction of knowing that evil had been stopped in its tracks.

Given that he had sorted the peppertree problem, he felt he deserved an afternoon off.

When Holmes arrived at the museum site, he saw the police car already parked.

Disappointed he could not investigate alone, he pulled on a hard hat and carried his clipboard. It didn’t hurt to be seen as one thing when you were in fact another.

The mansion was solid and square, with a minimum of windows. The river had always been prone to foetidness, and Holmes admired the architect of the time who clearly designed the home to allow little of the stench in.

His brief had been to ‘allow in the light and the air while still protecting the historical artefacts,’ and given modern methods, he could easily replace the windows with EFTE or the like. In the bigger cities, no house or office block was built without windows such as these.

He struggled beyond that, to find the spirit of the place. He found it difficult to be in. He did not believe a building could have an actual personality, nor did he believe it could be haunted, but there was something off-kilter about the old mansion that made him feel queasy. It offended his need for symmetry. Some of the rooms were too small, giving not only Holmes but others a sense of claustrophobia. He had hoped to make some drastic changes, but the town council (some of them the men of Bright Building Insurance) were determined in their desire to leave the historical building almost untouched.

The front door had been boarded up for decades and now stood askew, though undamaged, testament to Watson’s careful work.

As teenagers, they’d been careful to enter through the back window. It was boarded up, but they kept a hammer hidden in the bushes. The key, they called it, and with it would lever out the nails, replacing them when they left. Even drunk teenagers could manage that.