“Pardon me, I thought you just said ancient sigils?”
“Hmm. One of the many artifacts under my curation.”
“All right. I would very much like to see those.”
“I don’t see why not,” said Grub, with a shrug. “We’re nearly there, after all.”
And so we were, though that is not to say the way was clear. Mr. Grub seemed to have misplaced his keys—whether at my house, or whether he had simply forgotten to pick them up before he left his own, he could not say. We had to wake up the old lady who ran the place to let us in. Though it was only rarely that Mr. Grub went out, this seemed to correspond exactly to the number of times he forgot his keys. The frizzy-haired matron spared no lack of colorful language expressing just how pleased she was with the phenomenon. Garrideb Grub countered that the modern, self-latching door handle was a burdensome monstrosity. I tried to placate the two of them, stating that the keys could well have been left at my home during the confusion. But the landlady told me she knew perfectly well where they’d be—a little pedestal she’d placed beside Mr. Grub’s door to keep his keys on, so he’d never forget. That’s where they were. Every time.
As the harangue continued, Garrideb Grub became visibly distressed. Yet not by her words—I could tell he was not listening to her. He clenched and unclenched his hands and shifted his weight back and forth on his feet, desperate to return to his rooms. The instant his landlady had the door open, he barged past her, past his keys (which, yes, were just on the pedestal by the door), ran to the center of the room, and heaved a deep sigh of relief.
Well, I say the center of the room. What I mean is: the center of the sigils. Mr. Grub lived in the cellar room. It was unusually tall, or should I say deep, as the room was cut down into London’s bedrock. Two small, rectangular windows looked out at street level and during the day must have let some light in. By night, this was accomplished by four spluttering gas lamps that looked as if they weren’t overly pleased by the career path they had selected and were putting in the absolute minimum effort. By their flickering light, I could make out the innumerable cabinets and shelves that held Mr. Grub’s precious collection. Carved into the floor were a number of lines and symbols. There were three bowl-like depressions, linked by shallow channels through the stone. These, in turn, were linked to words, in some language of utterly foreign provenance. The area emerged in an arch shape out of the rough-hewn wall.
Carved into that wall was the image of a door. Though it was depicted in crude, somewhat vague lines, one could just make out a rocky landscape beyond, lit by a large and ominous pair of suns.
Garrideb Grub ran to the central depression in this strange arrangement and sat down in it. With visible relief, he drew several deep breaths as his fingers traced the lines on either side of him and all the strange words within his reach. By the practiced, yet unconscious expertise of his movements, I could tell this was a ritual long rehearsed.
“Okay. Right,” I noted to myself. “Not normal.”
I walked up in front of my host, knelt down, placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Mr. Grub, your case has captured my interest.”
“Hmmm?” he asked, barely willing to look up from his beloved sigils. “What case?”
“Oh… I mean… your rather unique circumstances. I want to know the next time Mr. Winter contacts you. Will you do that for me? Will you tell me?”
He made no answer.
“May I call on you, to inquire?”
But he was beyond my words. He was at that strange tipping point in the human psyche where relief turns into exhaustion. His voice became heavy and slow. “Eh? Inquire? I’m sorry, Mr. Watson, but… such an hour, you know? I think I shall sleep here tonight. Yes. Just here.”
He patted his beloved runes, then got clumsily up. In one corner of the room, partly obscured behind a few racks of curios, stood an old bed with a cheaply made metal frame. It bore a thin mattress, a single threadbare blanket and a pillow that looked as if any benefit to human comfort it had ever possessed must have been exhausted at least a decade before. Garrideb Grub began feebly tugging at the bed in an attempt to move it towards the center of the room. It budged only a few inches. Grudgingly—wondering if it was wise—I went and helped him pull it over his beloved sigils. This accomplished, he fell down into it with a satisfied sigh.
As I tucked his blanket down around him, a strange feeling began to overtake me. Jealousy. Here I was, getting Garrideb Grub into his right place, but that meant I was away from mine. A horrible, gnawing emptiness began to grow in me. I needed to be with Mary. I needed to rush home and tell her to kick all of her friends out and just come upstairs and hold me. I knew she would do it, too, for the curse seemed always to affect us equally. Oh, I was sure she would properly castigate me for intruding on the evening’s festivities, but what did I care for that? I would endure it. I would endure anything. I had to.
The spell pulled so heavily that night I was staggering when I left Grub’s room. My hand shook as I raised it. My voice cracked as I shouted for a cab.
* * *
I worried about Garrideb Grub all the next day. I had a very busy caseload, but my mind kept returning to him. Most reasonable men, I realized, would simply dismiss him as an old quack. Anyone who did investigate would assume some kind of confidence
