Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

Holmes pre-emptively. Had they swooped down out of the sky as he took a last turn around his garden before bed? The night had been warm, Brabbins remembered; maybe he was in the house with the back door open and the bees had come in, a last, awful visitor for the man who had helped so many others in his life. He would never know, of course, but it nagged at him, leaving a hole in the picture he had painted for himself of what had happened.

“Solved,” he said quietly to himself, not liking the way his voice trembled. “The dead man was killed by bees of his own breeding because he trusted to the logic of the situation rather than the reality of it. It is impossible for bees to plan, and so they cannot have plans to act upon. They cannot predict or assume or pre-empt, for they are bees. Only, these bees can, and they did, and the impossible became possible.” He stopped; his voice sounded like it came from someone else’s throat, distant and scared. And Swann? Had he understood? No, he thought not. He had known the bees were a part of it, but not how. How could he? Wandering out there, blithely approaching his own death. Brabbins swore, his fear giving way to anger. They were bees.

Bees.

Brabbins hand throbbed, the fingers aching as he flexed them into a tight fist. Standing, he drew back the curtain from the window. Even if it had been daylight outside, he would not have been able to see; the glass was covered, filling the small space with ever-moving brown shapes. They crawled over one another, lifting away and then battering back into the pane in waves, as though seeking some synchronisation in their attacks. The glass was smeared with pale fluid, he saw, dribbles of it coming from the stings that banged against the window with sharp little clicks. It gathered in little puddles against the bottom of the wooden frame. The window shook as the creatures banged into it. How long before they manage to break through? he thought. How long before they find another way in, something that I’ve missed?

Brabbins went down the stairs. He wondered briefly about trying to distract the bees somehow, getting them to gather against one part of the house whilst he ran from some other exit but dismissed the idea immediately. Holmes’ house was miles from anywhere, and the bees would catch him before he got far. Fire? No. He would never stop the bees getting to him, and he could hardly burn them off the windows without burning the house down. He was trapped.

No, he suddenly realized, he was not. A search of the downstairs of the house turned up Holmes’ beekeeping clothing in a cloakroom. Hurriedly, he shrugged it on; trousers and a white smock. Holmes had been taller and the legs and sleeves gathered in bunches around his ankles and wrists, but he tied the cuffs as tight as he could round his wrists and ankles. Before pulling on the gauntlets and net helmet, he put Holmes’ papers on the kitchen table, weighting them with the mug that Swann had used for the same purpose earlier in the day, and next to them he scrawled a note that said simply: These are genuine and their contents should be treated with the utmost seriousness. Look for my body and tell my wife I love her. Insp. W. M. Brabbins. At least that way, if something did happen to him, there was some record of what had happened. His body, and Swann’s in the garden, would add weight to the evidence. They’d have to believe it.

Brabbins pulled on the helmet and gloves, tying them as tightly as he could, trying to ensure that he left no gaps between them and the other garments. Had he put them on correctly? He had no idea. Only time would tell. Finally, he went to the front door. The bees against the other side of the small porthole window in the centre of the door, as if they sensed his intention, began to beat themselves against the glass even more furiously. Perhaps they do know what I’m planning. I don’t suppose it would surprise me if they did; nothing would at this point, he thought. He readied himself but, before he could open the door, there was a crack from behind him.

Undecided, Brabbins paused, and there was another crack. It came from the kitchen, he realized, was audible even through the closed door. In spite of himself, he went down the hallway and opened the door slightly, peering cautiously inside the room. At first, he thought that what he saw was a shadow, or the way the netting draped across his face moved in front of his eyes, but then he realized that it was bees. One of the panes of glass had cracked and a piece of glass fallen away, and bees were crawling in through the tiny hole, tumbling over themselves in their desperation to get in. Once in, they rose into the air like burned paper drifting above a fire, circling in odd, elliptical patterns. Instead of coming towards the door, however, towards him, they flew to the centre of the room and clustered around the manuscript on the table, burying it in an undulating, shifting blanket. The mug weighing the paper down toppled over and rolled until it stopped, prevented by its handle from turning further. Its inside contained bees, he saw, so many of them that they filled it like viscid liquid. Under their hum, the bees were making another sound, a moist, mulching noise that made him think of tiny jaws chewing and tearing. Pieces of paper began to flutter out of the mass and then he realized what they were doing to the manuscript and he turned and ran.

As though his movement had caught their attention, the bees coming in through the window shifted, arrowing out of the kitchen and gathered around him as he ran, the first of them landing on him, crawling across his visor and interrupting his vision with dark shapes the color of fury. He crashed into the front door, his gloved fingers pulling clumsily at the latch as more bees swarmed in the air around his head and shoulders and their companions on the other side of the glass became even more agitated. He had no choice now. Yanking open the door, he started to run.

With a hum that was more like a shriek, the bees were about him in seconds.

* * * * *

SIMON KURT UNSWORTH’s story ‘The Church on the Island’ was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. His short story collection Lost Places was recently released by Ash Tree Press. Simon’s work has also appeared in the anthologies Shades of Darkness, Lovecraft Unbound, Exotic Gothic 3, At Ease with the Dead and Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes.

“Sherlock Holmes and the Great Game” by Kevin Cockle

Illustration by Luke Eidenschink

Sherlock Holmes and the Great Game

by Kevin Cockle

Where dogs had got at them, blood was caked into snow — frozen like stained glass in grisly ruby pools.

“Ice picks,” Holmes muttered, indicating trace evidence in the shattered dome of the nearest igloo. “Here. And here, you see.” Watson did not see, though he had no doubt.

“People-killing arrows,” Holmes continued, stooping to examine one of the shafts used against the slain. “Not hunting arrows. Deliberate and pre-meditated Watson, all of this. Very much so.”

Watson shuddered, repressing memories of similar atrocities seen years ago and a world away. Afghan mountains meshed with Canadian ice in his imagination: slaughter was slaughter whenever, wherever; the vividness could not be unseen. He shifted the weight of the Lee Enfield .303 on his shoulder and cast his gaze out into the bleak blue-white horizon. Here and there, a body dotted the landscape. Dark piles of fur stark against the white.

Holmes stood, his tall frame given impressive bulk by the Caribou-skin parka and breeches supplied by the North West Mounted Police. His aquiline nose protruded just past the edges of the hood, betraying his lean lines. If not for that angular, fine-boned face, Sherlock Holmes would have seemed a bear of a man with the weight of kit upon him.

“Not for food, nor materials,” Holmes said, boots grinding on snow as he made his way through the hunting settlement. Stopping at a smaller imploded igloo, he regarded the huddled occupants. “Raiding is a poor strategy in the north, Watson, one rarely sees it. Not slavers…” he paused in mid thought. “Hold on.” He circled the igloo,