Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes (21 page)

“Frank was her husband,” said Mrs. Westen who was looking almost as agitated as the housekeeper. I looked up and saw her properly for the first time: she had a heart-shaped face with a determined set to her jaw, and dancing dark eyes that would be very attractive when not red from her own grief. “It … it stood at the window. It stood at the window and stared in at us with big empty eyes,” she said in an oddly strained voice. Then, seeming to collect herself, she went on more calmly, “You must be Dr. Watson.”

I straightened and held out my hand to her. Susan, having stowed the dog somewhere, helped Mrs. Allison to her feet. “At your service, Mrs. Westen.” I turned as my friend hurried up to our little group. “And here is Sherlock Holmes,” I said.

“
Was
her husband?” Holmes asked.

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Westen. “He died two years ago. Good Lord, Mr. Holmes, he died two years ago and yet something that looked very much like him stood at the kitchen window not a minute before.”

By the expression on my friend’s face I could see he was already dismissing all this as female hysteria. But Carnacki was wide-eyed with interest and looked first to the two women, then at the window and back again.

“Has this ever happened before?” he asked Mrs. Weston.

“No!” she said and shook her head vigorously. “No, never!”

“Sudden ghosts,” he muttered.

The housekeeper showed no sign of becoming more coherent, and was in such evident distress that I judged it best to administer a sedative before yielding Mrs. Allison’s care to Susan.

“Pray tell us what happened, Mrs. Westen?” Holmes asked with ill-concealed impatience.

“Yes, of course,” the lady replied. “I was discussing menus with Mrs. Allison in the kitchen when someone rapped on the window. We looked up and both of us saw … something that was the image of Frank Allison but with great, deep, dark hollows where his eyes should have been. When I went outside there wasn’t a soul to be seen.”

“I meant with
your
husband, Mrs. Westen,” said Holmes.

I saw Carnacki hide a smile. “Mrs. Westen,” he said, “with your permission, I think my time would be put to better use if I could now see the library.”

She nodded, and ran a hand over her hair. “Yes, of course. Ask Susan if you need anything. She is still rather new here, but a bright girl.”

Our Occult Detective took his leave.

“What is Mr. Carnacki’s interest in this matter?” asked Holmes.

“Oh, he helped my husband with the library a few years ago. I’m not entirely sure what he did, but I’m convinced it had something to do with the missing book.”

“Ah yes, the putative missing book.” Holmes smiled. “I am still not entirely clear as to why you think a volume is missing.”

She shot him a sharp look. “I
deduced
it, Mr. Holmes. Henry was lying unconscious in a locked room. A secret compartment whose existence I previously knew nothing of stood open and empty. Something must have been in it, and the room is a library after all. What else was I to think?”

Holmes is often not at his best when confronted by the more intelligent members of the fair sex — and for just a moment his expression resembled that of a man who had unexpectedly bitten into a hot pickle, though he quickly recovered himself.

“I think we should see Professor Westen now,” said Holmes. “Come, Watson, your expertise will be needed.”

Mrs. Westen bustled ahead of us, ushering us into the cottage and up a flight of stairs. We reached a landing and passed through an open door. There, in a bed, Professor Henry Westen lay still beneath a coverlet. He had a full head of hair, dark like his drooping and untrimmed moustache, without any trace of grey, which gave the impression of a man young for his academic distinction. His face was thin, pale and immobile, but as I stooped for a closer look he began to move his head in an erratic, agitated way upon the pillow and made incoherent grunts and growls deep in his throat. Here indeed was “a man sleeping through nightmares” as Mrs. Westen had described him in her letter.

“Has he been able to drink anything?” I asked, opening my bag for thermometer and stethoscope.

Mrs. Westen nodded. “When he is calm and quiet I can press him to take a little water or tea. He will swallow, but he simply will not wake.” This last she spoke in a distinct tone of frustration.

“A good indication, Watson, that our hypnosis supposition may be close to the mark,” said Holmes, examining the professor’s hands, particularly some slight skinning of the right knuckles, before turning his attention to the clothes draped over a bedside chair.

“Indeed,” said I. “His temperature is normal, his pulse is slow and even and his breathing is that which I would expect of a man in deep sleep. The question now is, who was the hypnotist?”

“Why not ask him? If this is a case of hypnotism it naturally follows that the professor is in a highly suggestive state.”

I bent closer and said, “Professor Weston, who has put you into this trance?”

The man in the bed began to toss and turn again, and I became aware that his harsh grunts and growls concealed words, or rather
a
word, though it made little sense: it sounded like “Sigsand,” repeated over and over.

Holmes, with a pair of the professor’s shoes in his hand, turned to Mrs. Westen with a frown. “Who or what is Sigsand?” he asked.

“It is an ancient book — or rather manuscript in the form of a scroll — of forbidden lore,” replied Mrs. Westen, “on which Henry and Mr. Carnacki worked some time ago. They were very secretive about it, but I believe they were engaged in translating it.”

“Could it be the missing book?”

Mrs. Westen went deathly pale and gasped, “Heaven help us! Might someone think they could use it for wicked purposes, Mr. Holmes?”

The man in the bed gave a horrible moan, exclaimed, “I will not!” in a terrible voice and dropped back into growled incoherencies.

“Professor?” said I. “Can you hear me?”

His eyes snapped open. I jumped.

Mrs. Westen gasped. “Henry?” and someone else said, “John.”

It was a woman’s voice, but so muffled and distant that I could not tell from whence it came, nor for the moment recognize it, though I should have.

A tap at the bedroom window turned my attention there — and my heart flew to my throat. There at the glass, staring in at me with black hollows where her eyes should have been, was the face of my late wife.

“Mary!”

My brain felt like a lump of ice within my skull and the room rocked about me in a giddying dance as the spectre of my dead wife and I gazed at each other across an unknowable abyss. And all the while I was vaguely aware of Westen repeating, “Sigsand … Sigsand,” in a voice that spoke of effort and pain.

As if from a great distance, I heard Holmes gasp, followed by the double thump of the shoes he had been examining hitting the floor. The sounds seemed to break the spell for we rushed across the room together, and as Holmes flung open the window the ghastly visage of she whom I had once loved seemed to sweep away from the glass and fall beneath the level of the sill. We craned our heads out, but there was nothing to see — no face, no ladder, no strings or wires, nothing but a curious mist thickening about the lower portion of the cottage many feet below.

“Did you see her, Holmes?” I gasped.

“
The
woman,” he said with a queer, intense expression.

“
The
woman?” I repeated dully, puzzling at his words until I recalled that this was how he habitually referred to Irene Adler, the American adventuress who had bested him in the Bohemian scandal affair. “Holmes,” I said as levelly as my shaky voice allowed, “It was the image of my wife Mary.”

“No,” he said. “It was…” We looked at each other in silence for a moment, then Holmes said very quietly, “Mrs. Westen, was there anything at this window just now?”

“Nothing, Mr. Holmes,” she answered, as much mystified by our actions and exclamations as by the question. “We are twenty feet from the ground. What could possibly be at the window?”

“What indeed?” said Holmes. “I think, Watson, we should repair to the library.”

“I’ll ring for Susan to show you the way,” said Mrs. Westen, but my friend demurred and said we would find our own way to the church and its chained library.

Once out of the door, however, I began to wonder if that might be easier said than done, for we were shrouded within the thickest fog I had ever encountered. It was like being encased by masses of grey wool, and almost as palpable. Not at all like the wet yellow London particulars. Yet, for all that, it was still a fog. We could barely see a yard in front of us, and the moment we left the door of the cottage we were groping like blind men along the wall. Presently we rounded a corner and found ourselves in that open space of coarse grass upon which stood the abbey ruins.

“Quite an
outré
case this missing book affair has turned into, eh, Watson?” I heard Holmes say somewhere immediately ahead of me as we picked our way along. I voiced some vague agreement, and he continued, “Which may yet prove to be less than it seems.”

“What I saw was utterly convincing … as I believe it was for you, at least momentarily.”

“Remember, Watson, there is hypnotism at work in this case. For the present I shall give human trickery equal consideration with spectral manifestation. You observed how friend Carnacki absented himself immediately upon arrival?”

“The library was of immediate interest to him,” said I, defending the Occult Detective. “Do you suspect him?”

“I make no accusations. I merely note the fact. In any event, Watson, you will agree with me that I have not led you on a fool’s errand … that was the phrase you used, I believe?”

I gave a non-committal grunt as we shuffled on through the fog. Its dullness deepened, it grew thicker and closer, claustrophobic and suffocating, our footsteps as queerly distorted as were now our voices.

“I think there’s something distinctly unnatural about this fog,” said I, as much to break the deadening silence as to state the disturbingly apparent.

“Yes,” said my friend, but refrained from further comment. I knew he detested any suggestion of the supernatural, and yet I was certain he would welcome a ghost over stagnation any time. Indeed, I was beginning to think that the supernatural was what we had run up against. It was not a wholesome thought there with the close greyness about us, creeping among the ruins of an ancient abbey, edging past broken arches and columns. It became a simple matter to imagine ghostly monks with nothing but darkness beneath their cowls walking silently close behind or looming up before me out of the fog.

Then, as if my wandering imagination had overtaken reality, there was a loud crash, followed by a piercing cry, such that I had never heard issue from either man or beast. I stared uselessly into the fog, unable to tell from whence the sounds came. Then a hand clutched at my arm and I almost yelled with fright.

“Watson!” said Holmes, invisible at my elbow. “Listen. Something approaches.”

Something was indeed approaching. I did not hear it, I could not see it, but I
knew
something was coming all the same, as I’m certain did Holmes at that instant. And I knew that its motion through the fog was swift and unerring, exuding a sense of its utter wrongness as it rushed silently and invisibly upon us. Within seconds this grew in me to an unreasoning fear, to horror, to animal terror, to a sure knowledge of this thing’s hatred of my very humanity. The sensation overwhelmed me like an ocean wave of pure malignity. I cried out as it all but crushed me down into the rank grass. Then as swiftly as it had come, it was gone, passed unseen and the horror of the moment faded like the dwindling memory of a fevered dream.

“Did you … did you feel that, Holmes?” I gasped.

“Yes … an experience I should not wish to repeat,” he replied in a voice that struggled to regain its composure, part amazement, part disgust, as his figure grew more distinct before me. The fog was rapidly lifting.

“Thank God,” said I, never meaning it more literally.

We were, I saw now, within a few steps of the church. Its great oaken door was wide open, flung back upon its hinges.

“Carnacki!” Holmes shouted, but his cry went unanswered and rang hollowly about the church. All manner of dire thoughts passed through my mind as the silence lengthened. Cautiously we made our way through the church to the chapter house, which contained the famed chained library of Grantchester. Carnacki was sitting on the floor in the shadow of a great octagonal table upon which lay ancient books bound by links of chain. He was surrounded by what looked like a hastily chalked five-pointed star, and as we approached he began an extraordinary and complicated gesticulation with both hands.

“Good Lord!” said I.

Holmes chuckled. “The First Sign of the Saaamaaa Ritual, Watson. A supposed defence against occult forces.”

Carnacki visibly relaxed. “Jove! You’re real. I had to make sure you were who you seemed,” he said, standing up. “So, Holmes, you understand?”

“I understand, which is not the same as belief, which in turn is not the same as fact, as Watson was remarking earlier.”