Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 2) (13 page)

“Didn’t kill no one,” Dean said after a long silence. “Not Quint. Not no one.”

“Yes, I know,” Holmes replied. “Just as I know you were not present when he was killed.”

Dean looked at him sharply, then sat on his cot. Despite his ungainly form, he moved with animalistic grace.

“How ye know that?” he demanded. “Everyone say I killed Quint. Dead certain, they are. Blood on me clothes, so I must’ve seed it, must’ve been there, must’ve did him red. All bundled up and waiting for the pleasure of Her Majesty’s rope, I am. But it weren’t me. I say it, but they don’t believe me, don’t want to believe me. I tell them what I know…but…” He sighed heavily, as if in that one breath he outpoured his soul.

“It’s rather hard to believe, you know,” I said. “That Quint was killed by the forest. Or did the police misquote you?”

“Nay, ‘tis what I said…then.”

“You recant your statement, Mr Dean?” Holmes asked.

“I was hot with them accusations,” Dean muttered. “When the blood boils, there ain’t no reining back the tongue.”

“So, now you claim the ‘forest’ did
not
kill Quint?” I ventured.

“Bleedin’ ignorant man-spawn,” he growled.

I was taken aback by his bizarre outburst, but not Holmes. In fact, Dean’s outré  dialect seemed to amuse him somehow.

“Is that how your father referred to people?” he asked, his gaze never wavering from Dean’s eyes. “Or was it…your mother?”

Dean’s reaction was instantaneous and violent. He leaped from the cot with so much force he slammed it against the cell wall, both cracking its wood frame and gouging the stone wall. His eyes were wide, mouth agape, and his arms were extended, hands like claws ready to rend.

“Ye shut your mouth, ye!” Dean bellowed. “No one…”

I moved forward to assist Holmes, but my intervention was not necessary. Holmes grabbed Dean’s wrists. The force exerted was evidenced in Dean’s sudden silence and the look of pain upon his face. The pain was mixed with wonder. Holmes slowly forced him to his knees. It appeared Holmes was whispering to Dean, but I could make out nothing of what was said. I heard a key clatter in the lock and turned to prevent any interference. By the time I convinced Lestrade and the jailer no help was needed and turned back Dean was once more on his cot. He rubbed his sore wrists and regarded Holmes with a sullen but respectful expression.

“Strong for a little one, I’ll give ye that,” Dean said.  “Aye, and ye got some learning ye shouldn’t have.”

“It is always a mistake to judge anything by what you can see,” Holmes remarked. “Truth usually resides in what cannot be seen, in what is kept hidden.”

“Aye, ‘tis true enough that, sir,” Dean replied.

I was nothing short of astounded by the change in the man’s demeanor. Gone was the brutish fellow who had initially regarded us as prey. There was still a bestial quality to the man, but now it was not so much as that of a cornered animal, but one brought to bay, who knew the chase was over and acknowledged he was before the master of the hunt.

“But  what’s hid must be kept hid,” Dean continued. “And what is secret must not be spoken.” He hung his head. “Fearing walls and locks, I spoke what must be kept silent, and I nay can stuff words back behind me teeth.”

“No, you cannot take back what you said,” Holmes agreed. “It would not help you if you did, for the police think they know what happened between you and Quint in the woods.”

Dean snorted derisively. “Ignorant of their ignorance they be, a passel of sheep who feel not the knife, nor hear the footfalls of They Who Walk…aye, the Lonely Ones who come.”

“The Old Ones who walk serene and primal, who trod the Earth in times past and shall…” Holmes started to say.

“Nay!” Dean shrieked. “Say not the words, sir! Ye know not what things dark and hidden ye invoke without mind.”

“You know the words…their sources?” Holmes asked.

Dean nodded.

“You were taught from them, were you not?”

Again Dean nodded, his face caught between apprehension and fear. His black eyes darted as if he expected someone to intrude upon us, though he never once glanced at the cell door.

“I believe I can help you, Mr Dean,” Holmes finally said. “You did not murder Quint, and were not present when he was killed. I think I can prove that to the satisfaction of the police, but I must have more information from you about what happened that night. You may not have been present, but you know what…”

“Nay, I cannot!” Dean protested. “They put their marks upon the places and folk that be theirs…”

“The wardings,” Holmes said.

“Aye, the wardings,” Dean agreed. “That which be theirs from the before times be theirs still…be theirs for all time.”

“
Syha'h k'yarnak ep ph'ah fhys'uhn abu hafh'drn gnaiih, Shub-Niggurath kadishtu nagotha,
” Holmes said. “In the woods are the wardings, and then there is the watcher…and the watched.”

Holmes’ unearthly words made Dean cringe, half in wonder, half in fear, but now his fright was not directed toward an outside source, but at Holmes himself. Had I felt free to speak at that moment—I did not because Holmes was clearly playing upon the superstitions that constituted Dean’s perception of reality—I would have admitted total bewilderment. I thought back to the tomes with which Holmes had returned at the neap of the night, and wished I had examined them myself.

“Ye know too much for a man-spawn, but I will talk with ye,” Dean whispered. He looked at me. “But not with he.”

“Watson, would you mind stepping out for a moment?” he asked. “Please assure Lestrade all is well. I shall join you shortly.”

I
did
mind, but I also trusted Holmes’ judgment implicitly, so I had no choice but to do as he asked. There never was a time in my life when I wished so fervently I were a fly upon the wall, in that cell listening to the quick words that flew between the accused man and his lone defender. But, try as I might, I could not make out what was said, though it did seem at times they lapsed into that odd and unearthly language which had cadences and sounds never uttered by any human tongue. I was surprised when Holmes called for release just five minutes later.

“What did you learn, Holmes?” I asked.

“Many things,” he replied. “And nothing.”

Lestrade, too, pressed Holmes for information, but my friend made the Sphinx seem talkative by comparison. While Lestrade was not as well acquainted with Holmes’ nature as was I, he knew when to stop beating his head against a stone wall.

“What now, Holmes?” Lestrade asked.

“I will examine Dean’s cottage and its surroundings.”

“Very well,” Lestrade replied. “I’ll have that oaf Barnes take the two of you out there.”

“No need, Lestrade,” Holmes said. “It should be even easier to find by the light of day.”

We left Lestrade scratching his head in confusion.

When we reached Dean’s cottage I could no more understand how anyone could live in it than how Holmes was able to find his way to it with naught but starlight to guide him. I had come upon it by daylight, or at least by as much sunshine as ever filtered down through the leafy canopy, guided by Holmes, yet, as I stood there, surrounded by wooded quietude, I doubted I could find it again on my own. We had left a barely discernable path, Holmes showing me signs of where Quint’s body had been found, then dodged among thick tree trunks and thicker bracken until Dean’s home appeared in a cup of a hollow, ancient trees clustering around it.

The cottage was fallen down in places, propped up in others. It had seen better days, but how many centuries had passed since then, there was no telling. A lean-to nearby sheltered firewood, but the odd thing was that none of the wood had been chopped, which I pointed out to Holmes.

“All found wood,” I said. “None taken by blade.”

“A surprisingly astute observation on your part, Watson,” he remarked. “What do you deduce from it?”

“Obviously Dean enjoys solitary rambles through the woods,” I said. “Picking up fuel from the forest floor no doubt gave him more than enough for his needs.”

Holmes’ expression was of faint disappointment.

“The cottage has been here for generations, and so have these trees,” Holmes said. “Foresters have taken trees from the edges of the woods, but look at these trees, Watson.  What do you see?”

I looked closely at trees nearest Dean’s cottage, then widened my view. Seeking to redeem myself, so to speak, to regain Holmes’ favor, I paid particular attention to the surrounding area.

“They are evidently of old growth,” I ventured. “That is clear, not simply from the girth of their trunks or the reach of the branches but from their clustering. As you say, foresters have long harvested timber from the periphery of the forest, but many of these trees are marked with forester signs, indicating that they were considered for harvesting. That they were not might indicate an avoidance of Dean or the difficulty of transportation from such a lonely spot. The avoidance would promote an aura of fear, prompting others to leave the area untouched. As to why Dean did not, well, gathering fallen wood is easier than actually doing work to get the same result.”

“Yes, no axe has ever assaulted these trees, Dean’s or those of foresters,” Holmes agreed, though the look of disappointment was still clear. “Dean was not lazy but followed an old tradition of not giving offense to the forest. The difference is, he knows the reason for the tradition.”

“The reason Quint was killed” I breathed. “You give credence to that, Holmes? Why? Even Dean recanted his words to Lestrade.”

“Not recanted, but regretted,” Holmes looked about. “It was a truth, as far as he was concerned, but not one admitted to outsiders, probably not beyond the confines of his own family. Had he not been so frightened by the prospect of confinement, he would have kept the reason to himself.”

“Really, Holmes!” I cried in exasperation. “What does it even mean? Giving offense to the woods? Utter nonsense!”

“The markings on the trees are not the work of foresters, as you surmised,” Holmes said, pointing from tree to tree. “They are far older than you suppose. They were there when the Romans set up their towns and posts in Hammershire, and when the Kelts migrated to this isle from the Continent.”

“Surely not of such antiquity,” I protested. “I see some of them are…” My words died as I looked more closely at signs I had taken as recent handiwork. While some were of modern vintage, many more were old; further, the oldest ones had been re-carven many times…as the bark regrew over millennia. “My God.”

“Certainly someone’s idea of god,” Holmes murmured, smiling slyly. “These signs are symbols representing a pantheon of beings called the Old Ones. That bloated, twisted star there is called an Elder Sign, signifying them all. The wide one there symbolizes a being named Yog-Sothoth, also known as The Gateway, while that lone sign is a symbol of Great Cthulhu, master of them all.”

“What about these?” I asked, pointing out a symbol that vastly outnumbered the others. It was composed of intricately angled lines linking a number of suggestive spheres. “Which of the so-called Old Ones does it symbolize?”

“Ah, that is Shub-Niggurath,” Holmes replied. “Black Goat of the Woods, Mother of the Dark Hoard.”

It was one thing, I discovered, to hear such a grotesque name uttered aboard a train, in a building, or in any other bastion of human civilization; it was quite another to hear it in the dark depths of the woods, where the only manifestation of man’s suzerainty over nature was a cottage on the verge of collapse, home to a man who seemed to have little in common with ourselves. Until then, I had not noticed the absolute silence of the woods, the lack of movement by any living thing.

“These signs, then, are…” I could not finish, for an old memory had surfaced from my boyhood in Scotland, mixing with something Dean had said. “Warding…wearding…”

“Indeed,” Holmes agreed. “Derived from Old English by way of the Picts. To guard, to ward off, to put out of bounds, so that the sign delineating the forbidden area becomes the wearding itself, the wardings of which Dean spoke.”

“To disregard the warding?” I asked, glancing about.

“Is to give offense, not to the area but to that which the symbol represents,” Holmes explained. “We return to the
genius loci
, but to Dean it is not an abstract concept, but a manifestation of an actual personage, Shub-Niggurath. Quint violated the wardings, came to kill someone with a generational relationship to Shub-Niggurath. In doing so…”

“This is preposterous!” I exclaimed, though my tone remained a whisper. “Your logical nature barely admits the existence of an amorphous deity, only enough to allow you a refined sense of justice. Do you also give equal credence to an outlandish pantheon of monster-gods such as these Old Ones?”

“Belief is immaterial, Watson,” Holmes said. “Belief in one’s ability to fly will not negate gravity. Disbelief is equally irrelevant.”

“But monster-gods, Holmes?” I sighed. “I can see Dean and Quint as opposite sides of the same coin, but the coin is counterfeit. Dean believes in the reality of the shadows amongst which he dwells, and Quint believes in the power of evil and in the power of his own hatred, but neither man’s beliefs, no matter how strong, can bring a monstrosity like Shub-Niggurath into existence.”