Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

and he had asked me to do the very deed! The thought of it boggles the mind.

Nevertheless, at the appointed time, I found myself once more travelling back to that cemetery as another thick fog descended upon London. The sky was darkening and the overall effect chilled me to the bone. As I walked through that graveyard, knowing full well that the people contained therein could not harm me, I still found myself shivering. When Holmes stepped out from the depths of a bank of fog and tapped me on the shoulder, it was very nearly I who found my heart stopping that night.

“You gave me an awful fright, Holmes,” I told him.

“My dear Watson, please forgive me…” In spite of the circumstances, and by the light of the lamp he was holding, I detected the hint of a smile playing on his lips. “Did you bring the required items?”

I nodded, showing him my medical bag.

“Splendid, then we shall begin.” Holmes took me over to a flat slab of stone, a place for him to rest as I carried out his request. He placed the lamp beside him so that I could see.

“Holmes, are you quite sure about this…? I still do not understand why—”

He silenced me with a raised finger. “Please proceed. I know that I am in the most capable hands.”

Sighing, I took out a hypodermic and a vial, siphoning off a massive dose of my concoction. Holmes, for his part, rolled up his sleeve. I saw the cost of his experimentations; red welts on his arm, dotting the lines of his veins. I frowned, but said nothing, instead taking up his arm to give him the injection: quite possibly the last I might ever administer to him.

As the needle sank into his flesh, Holmes reached over and patted my hand gently. Neither of us said a thing as he shut his eyes and waited for the drug to take effect. I sat there and noted the look of complete peace on Holmes’ face; it was the first and only time I have seen him look so content.

I took his wrist and felt for a pulse. It was still there, but faint.

“I never got the chance to tell you this before, Holmes…” I whispered, still keeping hold of his wrist as the beats slowed. “But thank you. Thank you for everything…”

And, suddenly, the beating ended.

I bowed my head, choking back the wave of emotion I felt at seeing my companion as dead as those corpses I had examined after the murders. Then I felt it, a sudden jolt — so fierce I almost let go of Holmes’ wrist. I wonder now if I would have seen what followed had I done so, for I firmly believe it was the physical connection to Holmes, at the moment his spirit departed his body, that allowed me to bear witness to what transpired. Yes, that is correct — you did not read wrongly. I can finally unburden myself of the knowledge of what happened in those ensuing seconds. It is an unspoken memory I have carried with me now for so very long…

A shape began to coalesce beside the slab, indistinct at first and shimmering — but as I blinked, refocusing on it, a familiarity began to reveal itself. A head, then shoulders, arms, legs … it was a body, transparent but glowing white. Eventually it took its true form. It turned to look at me, and it was then that I saw the unmistakable visage of none other than Holmes himself. He mouthed something upon seeing me, but I could not hear him at that point and was too much in shock to reply anyway. I wondered whether Holmes had somehow infected me with his madness, for this must surely be what it felt like to experience insanity.

The fog parted, close by, and began swirling round, taking on a form itself. It was difficult to separate the darkness beyond our lamp and the glow of Holmes’ spirit from that which was bending the mist to its will. I soon realized my mistake, however, because again this was not a thing of our world. It was nebulous in appearance, mist-like though not of the mist enveloping us. The only reason I could see it at all was because of my physical connection to Holmes.

It too settled on a form eventually: tall and black, wearing what looked like robes but not from any material known to man; rather fashioned from the same miasma as the rest of it. Its hands, when it reached out, were in contrast white and thin, almost bone-like but lacking substance. A finger shot out from the robe, pointing at my companion’s shade.

And its voice, when it spoke, sounded like thousands of voices speaking at once in my mind. “Sherlock Holmes,” it stated simply. “I have come for you.”

All the times he had cheated Death, in particular that celebrated occasion at the Reichenbach Falls, and now I feared that it had sought Holmes out — all because I had ended his life. And Holmes was right, there was a distinctive smell; it was one I recognized all too readily from my time serving abroad, and my career as a doctor on these shores.

“No,” I heard my friend say then, in a voice that was his, but not his. “I have come for you.”

There was silence then, as if the creature in front of Holmes did not quite know how to reply. That silence was filled eventually by an explanation of sorts.

“It wasn’t quite enough for you, was it?” Holmes continued abruptly. “Taking lives like this. It wasn’t … satisfying.” He uttered the last word with all the contempt it deserved. “You have watched for so long as we have found new ways to kill one another. Watched and come for us when needed. All the while wondering what it might be like to actually kill, to tighten a cord until the last gasp of air emerged from a mouth, to plunge a knife through someone’s heart until it beat no longer, to hack a child to…” Holmes paused. “I saw your pattern, you see. This isn’t the first time you have slipped inside; you’ve worked your way through battlefields, have you not, choosing those who would not readily be missed. The poor, the destitute. I have seen them all… They told me what you have done. Yet that was not enough for you. The sweetest sensation, the longest and strongest high of all, comes from the murder of a loved one. To feel the connection severed at your hands. Your very hands!”

Listening to Holmes’ explanation, something I have done on many occasions at the conclusion of a case, everything fell into place. The reason why Miss Cartwright’s cousin, Simon, had done what he did — the reason those others did the same. It was a disturbing revelation to say the least.

“You dare to pass judgment on me?” came the voice that was a thousand voices, almost screeching the reply. It was filled with indignation that Holmes was even talking to it.

“When your actions result in…” Holmes’ spirit looked over again at where the family from the train had their plot. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

There was a snarl from the black mist-like shape, and it flung itself forward, just as Holmes had done back in Baker Street after wallowing in depression and indulging too much in his seven percent solution. The intent was different here, however, and we could both see it.

The shape raised both hands, in an effort to grab Holmes, to take him back with it, to drag him away and undo his very existence. I wished there was something I could do… But there was! I could bring Holmes back as he had instructed. We knew the identity of the killer, we just could not do anything about it — and never would be able to, I suspected.

It was time to administer the antidote and restart Holmes’ heart.

He looked sideways and could see what I was about to do. “Not yet, Watson,” he cried, then those hands grabbed him and Holmes was grappling with Death.

“You… have been … with me … every step of the way…” Holmes grunted as he struggled with his fearsome foe. “But even … you should know … there are consequences … to one’s actions…”

Something was happening behind me. I took my eyes off the spectral pair, to glance around. More shapes in the mist, breaking through in fact: one after the other. It did not take them as long as Holmes or Death to form; they had been waiting for this moment and they were eager to strike. Here were there the victims of Death’s atrocious crimes, Judith Hatten, Mr. Thorndyke, the husband and child murdered on the Waterloo Train, but also there were those who had been so tormented by their involuntary actions that they had taken their own lives — and, I had to wonder, given a helpful push by Death? So there followed Simon, Mrs. Thorndyke, the mother who’d turned that fire axe on her beloved husband and child, and more besides. I watched as those Holmes had spoken about, the earlier victims, both the murderers and the suicides gone unnoticed, unreported — the ones who had told Holmes their tales — all came marching through the mist. These were also joined by those who’d been lost during the last few weeks, while Holmes had been attempting to get to the bottom of the mystery: the ones Lestrade had not been able to keep from the morning editions. They marched through that graveyard as one, a spectral army converging on Death, all craving revenge.

The black figure — whose face was still unclear to me, and I would imagine to Holmes — turned towards