Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) (22 page)

The dog’s trail stagger-stepped out of the trash, around the corner of the now-closed restaurant, and back onto the walkway, and Levi diligently followed, stopping only when he reached the edge of Broadway. The trail continued across the wide four-lane street; traffic at this hour was practically non-existent, so there was no real danger in crossing, but Broadway marked the furthest western boundary of the area monitored by the Three Dog Detective Agency. The region lost in the darkness beyond was very much a No Dog’s Land, sparsely inhabited and though not controlled by any gang it was roamed by often-vicious ferals who were unlikely to live by either the Precepts of Anubis or the Code of First Dog.

What would Sherlock Holmes do?
Levi asked himself, but he already knew the answer:
He would do whatever he had to do to follow the evidence!

Levi leaped from the curb, running after the scent, which was now just marsh-land and oil and dog, keeping a peripheral eye out for traffic. On the other side, he followed the trail away from the comparative light and life of Broadway. As he ventured deeper into the unlighted wilderness, where lonely land was interrupted only by occasional apartments rising sad and dilapidated alongside battered by-the-hour motels, the faint scent wafting up from the ground battled with the much stronger odors of marsh-land, salty air, and abandoned city work yards. He heard the ominous rumble of the Interstate, busy even at this neap hour with traffic to and from the Mexican border, but even more distinct to him was the noxious fumes that roiled up from the channel through which the Interstate ran.

Levi crossed the tracks upon which the San Diego Trolley ran, and even though no trains operated at this hour the wires overhead still sparked and sputtered, raining down the rich scent of ozone. The trail left by the injured dog continued into the absolute darkness, where streetlamps were not just broken and neglected, but totally absent.

Just before the Estrela’s trail veered into the thick reeds  beyond the freeway off ramp Levi came across a concentration of rubber, compressed air, and oil hanging heavy above the road; at the same place he smelled the sharp and brittle odors of broken glass and plastic.

Hesitating only the barest of moments, Levi plunged into the reeds, head low, nose almost touching the moist earth, ignoring the brackish water that rose to his pasterns and at times threatened to reach his hocks. He smelled the juices of the plants that oozed from breaks caused by the earlier passage of something large.

Then he saw it, partially submerged into the muck, only one tail-light barely visible through the running water. Levi felt the gentle but persistent tug of a current and realized the tide was coming in.

Splashing through the shimmering water, he clambered up onto the bumper of the truck, then leaped over the gate into the bed. Several blankets were clumped together, and though now sodden they were  heavily redolent with the scent of the big dog who had found his way to them. Peering through the back-window, Levi saw the dog’s companion, unconscious, bleeding and threatened by the rising water.

And he also saw there was nothing he could do. It would have been an arduous and nearly impossible task for a massive breed  like a Wolfhound or a Bullmastiff to wrench the companion free and drag him back to the safety of the roadway; and Levi was just under twenty pounds.

Levi raised his head sharply and his eared pricked.

A vehicle was speeding up the lonely road from the marina built along the mudflats of the west.

Levi instantly bounded from the truck, leaping and splashing through the marshy water, propelled equally by desperation and urgency – the dog’s companion did not have much time left to him, and the happenstance of a vehicle barreling down that bleak road at that hour of the morning was a miracle that would not soon repeat.

As Levi neared the edge of the marsh, he saw the rising glare of the vehicle’s headlights.

Summoning his last ounce of will and energy, he lowered his head and shot forward like a bullet.

The water started to fall away; the ground beneath his paws grew firmer.

The headlights flared beyond the last of the reeds.

Levi practically flew from the wall of vegetation, landing in the center of the road.

The headlights burst like twin suns going supernova.

Levi faced the onrushing car.

Tires screamed against the blacktop.

The cold night air was filled with stinging smoke and the smell of burning rubber.

Levi held his ground.

As the chrome grill hurtled toward him, Levi felt no fear, just a feeling that he was not alone. As the car ground to a halt, the bumper punched into him, throwing him back, but he felt no pain, just a feeling of satisfaction.

Good boy, Levi
, a voice seemed to whisper.
That’s a brave little chap. You’ve a heart of oak!

A deep feeling of satisfaction.

A door opened; there was the sound of pounding feet.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Where did you come from?”

Levi struggled up and stood before the stopped car, barking desperately, barking as if to burst his lungs. He darted back and forth between the reeds and the car, barking unceasingly, barking imploringly.

And finally he was followed.

They went to the truck.

“Oh my God! Someone is in there!”

Levi barked urgently.

“My God, he’s alive!”

A cell-phone was produced, a call was made.

Weary and battered, tired to his very bones, feeling every bit his age, Levi finally approached the house on Fifth Avenue. He had stayed at the accident site long enough to see the arrival of the police cars and fire engine, to see the dog’s companion lifted into an ambulance, to know all was well.

He climbed back onto the patio, squeezed through the side door, and closed it behind him. Little Kitty and Sunny told him the  big dog – his name was Bonifacio according to his medallion – was doing well and they would see him home on the morrow, just a few blocks away, where he could eventually be reunited with his companion. They were concerned about Levi, but he finally convinced them he was okay, even though they did not believe him.

Levi returned to the book he had abandoned seemingly so long ago. It was still on the floor where he had left it, but no longer open to the same spot. Night breezes from the door had ruffled the pages, and the book was now open to
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
, to an unusual illustration by Sidney Paget showing Holmes stretched prone, his nose very close to the ground as he sought the trail of Charles McCarthy’s murderer.

Levi smiled, for he felt he understood the thought that must have gone through the mind of Sherlock Holmes:

What would Levi do?

Once upon a time, more years ago than I really care to recall, there was a small press magazine entitled
Holmesian Federation
, a enthusiastic fannish enterprise based on an elementary idea – publish fiction melding the worlds of
Star Trek
and Sherlock Holmes. In doing so, they anticipated, by decades, some of the more interesting storylines of
Star Trek: The Next Generation
, in which the ever-aspiring android Mr Data played out his Sherlock Holmes fantasies on the holodeck of the
USS Enterprise
.

Certainly it was a premise that appealed to me as a fan and a reader, for I had watched all the first-run and syndicated episodes of
Star Trek
(in those days, the prospect of another theatrical film was just a rumor and the idea of a revived television series a pipe dream) and had read all the stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon many times over. As a writer, however, the crossover held far less appeal; on the other hand, the idea of mixing the worlds of HP Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes was very appealing. I pitched the idea to editor Signe Landon of a Holmes/Lovecraft crossover (something, I discovered later, had never been done before) and got a green light.

So, I came to write
The Adventure of the Ancient Gods
, in which fantasy writer HP Lovecraft met an elderly Sherlock Holmes, anticipating by a few years Peter Cannon’s match-up of the duo in his excellent
Pulptime
. My story, in which I recast Cthulhu and his minions as powerful otherworldly creatures misinterpreted as gods, appeared in the fourth issue (1983) of
Holmesian Federation
, and there it rested…or so I thought.

By the time
Adventure of the Ancient Gods
was printed, I found myself settled on the left coast of the United States, working on the dark fringe of publishing, still yearning for “overnight” fame as a writer, an elusive goal to say the least.

I was then active in the world of the small press, which meant writing stories and poems for magazines that might never be published, and subscribing to magazines that would probably not have a second issue, certainly not a third – that’s the real reason why the small press is rife with anthologies and one-shot chapbooks, even in this world of webzines and e-books.

A welcome exception to the transitory nature of the small press universe was found in Gryphon Books of Brooklyn, N.Y., the creation of Gary Lovisi, an ardent advocate of the collectibility of pocketbooks and the author of several price and collection guides. In addition to the well-regarded trade journal
Paperback Parade
, Gryphon regularly publishes science fiction and mystery magazines (in chapbook format) as well as original and reprint fiction. And Gary Lovisi loves Sherlock Holmes.

I would never have  been anything but a customer of Gryphon Books had it not been for a comment by my epistalatory friend James P Roberts, himself a Lovecraft scholar and prolific writer: “I mentioned to Gary Lovisi that I know you, and I hope it’s okay I gave him your address. He read
The Adventure of the Ancient Gods
in
Holmesian Federation
, and is something of a fan.”

Gary wrote to me, I wrote to him and we became postal pals. It was not long before he floated the idea of reprinting the Holmes story as a standalone book. I thought it was a great idea and immediately consented.

An interesting aspect of that first edition is that all the lettering on the cover was hand-done by the artist. In drawing out my surname, letter by letter, he omitted the final “a,” changing me from Welsh to English, accidentally creating a collectible in the process.

When the booklet was reprinted a few years later, the misspelling of my surname was corrected, so the second and third printings have it correct. So there it was, printed for fans of Lovecraft and Holmes to enjoy, and there it lay…or so I thought.

No matter what people thought of the writing itself,
Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Ancient Gods
was an important book in both fan fields and as a collectible tome. But it seemed that people really did like it; Gary asked me for a sequel.

I didn’t want to write one, didn’t feel I had one in me struggling to get out. I’m not, and never have been, much of a commercial writer, and the fact that any of my books and stories have been popular is likely an accident of nature. But Gary must have planted a seed in me, for a few years later I sent him
The Quest for the Dreaming Detective
, which was published by Gryphon  as a chapbook entitled
Sherlock Holmes: The Dreaming Detective.

Since I was still not comfortable writing something as commercial as a sequel, it carried a listing inside that it was “a sort of sequel” to the previous volume. In the story, Nikola Tesla enters Lovecraft’s Dreamlands in the early years of World War II at the behest of the War Department in search of Sherlock Holmes, who had been residing in the Dreamlands while his body was cryogenically preserved here, but who had become lost or captured. As it turned out, Tesla became the protagonist, with Holmes appearing only very late in the story; my sense of guilt led me to write an accompanying story,
The Adventure of the Laughing Moon-Beast
, in which Holmes was front and center.

That volume went on to become very popular with readers and was well-reviewed in fanzines of the time. There were many, of course, who rebelled at the very idea of inserting Sherlock Holmes into the Dreamlands, usually citing Holmes’ disregard for all things supernatural, but it’s really  a minor point. As in the first book, I took pains to present Lovecraft’s ideas in scientific terms, as did Lovecraft himself.

A few years after the publication of the Dreamlands story, I re-read Conan Doyle’s other tales, particularly those involving the iconoclastic scientist Professor Challenger, and I wondered what would happen if the scientist and the detective happened to meet and encounter a case which challenged both their skills and their views. However, I did not want them mixing it up with Lovecraft’s minions again, so I took one of Watson’s many toss-off comments about unchronicled cases (this one about a horror found in an ancient barrow), threw in some legends from ancient Britain and the Maldives, and brought in an evil occultist from one of my other stories, Laslo Bronislav. The result was
Sherlock Holmes and the Terror Out of Time.

This book received very good reviews. The irony of it is that although I took great care to
not
reference Lovecraft or the Cthulhu Mythos in any way, most people still viewed it as having that connection. In fact, one reviewer went as far to state, “A great Cthulhu Mythos themed book, although Cthulhu is not mentioned once during the story.” Such is the influence, I suppose, that Lovecraft continues to have on literature.

Which brings us to the last of the Holmes books – there were other crossovers, but they did not involve Holmes – a story published as
Sherlock Holmes & the Coils of Time
.

I wanted to write another book and Gary wanted me to write another, but I had no story idea trying to force its way out of my mind and onto paper. However, I had lately read Conan Doyle’s
The Adventure of the Empty House
, the tale that ended the Great Hiatus and returned Holmes to the land of the living.

It’s a good story, no doubt about that, but as I re-read it, I was again troubled by certain plot elements. Why did a murder bring Holmes back from exile when, no doubt, there had been other, just as perplexing murders in the ensuing three years? Colonel Sebastian Moran had been a scoundrel all his life, and his crimes were legion, so why now? And since Moran knew Holmes was back in London, and would have surely posted a guard to watch his old lodgings on Baker Street, how could a wax bust fool him?  There is always the temptation to blame Watson when elements of a Holmes story don’t make sense (after all, he could not keep his dates, his wives or the location of his bullet-wound straight), but I wondered if there was not something else going on, something behind the scenes. What if, I thought, the story is nothing more than a façade for other events, a theme used in Philip Jose Farmer’s
The Other Log of Phileas Fogg
. It seemed to me that for Conan Doyle’s story to work out Holmes would have to be in two places at once. And then I had my story…

Sherlock Holmes had to be involved with the Time Traveller from H.G. Wells’ famous novel. In an instant, as so often happens with me, I had my story; and, as so often also happens to me, it took more than half a year to set that flash of inspiration on paper, much of that time spent researching the times, places and peoples.

In this book, as with the previous two, much of my time was devoted to research. I’ve always felt that though no one should go to fiction for facts, no one should expect errors either. The streets, the buildings, the addresses…all are depicted as they were in 1893. But, thankfully, there were no Morlocks then…as far as we know.

So, why reprint this new edition? The blame rests on Hurricane Sandy. When it struck New England in 2012, one of the places flooded was Gary Lovisi’s basement in Brooklyn, where he stored all Gryphon publications. With everything destroyed and no money for reprints (the government was quick to pay off unions and dole out money to cronies, but nothing for a great American institution), Gary was hard pressed just to pick up things and carry on with future books, and all my work was suddenly out of print.

Silver lining time: revise it, reformat it, add some new work, and bring it back into print, safe from everything short of an EMP.

Once again, the game is afoot!