“Now sleep, Herbert. I’m on tonight’s ghost watch.”
“Holmes, does nothing tire you?” I asked, dazzled by his vigor.
Holmes got up and moved for the door, answering, “Not while such devilry may be afoot.” Extinguishing the room’s single candle, he left me to my troubled slumber.
Owing perhaps in equal parts to my natural wanderings, the horrific tale I’d offered the princess, the eldritch atmosphere surrounding the palace, and the profane sickness contained within the pages of that evil book, I fell prey to the most elaborate nightmare.
It began with a lone meteorite that came streaking earthward from the outer cosmos—crash-landing in some barren, uninhabited place, displacing tons of sand and gravel for miles about. It was nowhere on earth that I could readily identify; though I shuddered to think what would happen were such a rock to fall upon an inhabited city like our London. As I moved closer, I saw bits of debris crumbling away to reveal the thing’s true nature—not a meteor at all, but a cylindrical canister of sorts, some thirty yards in length, composed of a metal I could not distinguish and a color that defied comparison.
I was both rapt and unnerved when the circular top of the cylinder began to rotate and I realized there was life aboard the thing that had fallen from the stars! I floated there, transfixed, dreading what damaged thing might emerge—then willed myself awake to no avail as the first grisly tentacle came slithering from the wreckage. Then, to my horror, it was succeeded by several more flailing appendages—their number difficult to gauge because of their lashing, billowing movements—each terminating in something roughly akin to eyes. Then came a grayish rounded bulk of enormous size, rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. The Dark Thing was gruesome and certainly not of this earth.
I was repeatedly startled as dozens more of these cylinders rocketed down in like manner, and soon there was assembled no less than a battalion of the loathsome creatures. As I observed them in their makeshift settlement, I became aware that their alien intelligence and ability far exceeded that of mankind. These Dark Things had language I could not decipher, composed of high-pitched wailing, each utterance giving rise to primal fear within me.
Time flashed by me in terrible increments and I came to realize, quite thankfully, that this vision was not of earth’s future, but of its distant past, as I observed the creatures colonizing and taming the primordial wilderness that surrounded them.
Life on Earth had not yet developed past rudimentary multicelled organisms and early vegetations, but the Dark Things utilized techniques I could not fathom to induce and persuade this indigenous life to evolve as they required. From the oceans they raised and fused together great protoplasmic globules, and from the newly risen tree life they incubated pulpy, bulbous bipedal creatures, experimenting upon each by molding their tissues into all sorts of temporary organs.
Bred as slaves, these mindless elementals worked tirelessly by night and were penned like cattle during daylight, wholly mistreated and controlled by some sort of telepathic bond to their masters. The Dark Things used these slaves, engineered with limbs more suitable than their own, capable of hauling and manipulating tremendous weights, to build their city and perform all manner of tasks. It brought to mind the impossible pyramids of the Egyptians, though their scale was paltry when compared to the mammoth spires of the emerging city of Dark Things.
Millennia passed and the slave things began to develop periodic rebellious tendencies, most prominent during specific phases of the stars. The trouble apparently stemmed from the fact that these slaves were now hunting and feeding off several new species of earth life that had begun to evolve unchecked by their masters. They’d acquired a taste for blood and it began to alter them in subtle ways. The bothersome ones were disciplined by the use of an alien alloy, closely resembling silver, that when brought to bear would somehow numb the things back to submission. The dangerous ones were exterminated by various means; those from the sea by sonic dismemberment, and those from the land by curious handheld incendiary devices.
Then some unseen grand disaster rocked and hammered our prehistoric world, so great that it burned away the atmosphere and ripped the very moon into existence. The Dark Things survived, though their great city was plunged many leagues beneath the sea. They were forced to observe helplessly as their entire colonization process came undone beneath the advance of great sheets of ice that spread and shackled the earth.
The sunken, star-born Dark Things sealed themselves into cocoons and fell into deathlike slumber in the lower depths.
Eons passed and slowly the world began to thaw, eventually giving rise to all manner of races and civilizations, while the Dark Things remained trapped beneath the sea. Epochs passed again before mankind finally walked erect upon dry land, and then somewhere—a Dark Thing stirred. For some reason, those primitive Cro-Magnon brains were susceptible to the telepathic communications of the entombed Dark Things, who called to them in their dreams, manifesting most unnatural behaviors that stunted their evolution. Secret rites were transmitted to these early men, of methods lost in ages past; and mankind was divided between those tribes that heeded the call of the Dark Things and those which remained deaf to their influence. I watched, horrified, as this very division introduced the concept of murder to our predecessors.
The Dark Things whispered to their faithful that someday, when the earth had sufficiently warmed, their great city would rise again from the depths, rejoining the coastline from which it broke free, and I was . . .
Thankfully startled awake from the dreadful slumber by Holmes’s insistence that we take our breakfast before embarking on the workday he’d mapped out.
I dressed hastily as the nightmare waned, offering little by way of conversation during our meal together; perplexed by my own heightened level of grotesque imagination.
By the time I’d finally shed the dream, I found myself being jostled about in a coach, with Captain Gent seated across from me and Holmes to my left. “Where are we off to exactly?” I demanded.
“The public sanatorium in Leiden,” Gent said.
“Which one of us is that far gone? It must be me.”
“Quite comedic, Wells,” Holmes said. “This morning, when I explained to Captain Gent that His Majesty had confided the name Elisabeth Cookson to us as a possible suspect, I found, much to my surprise, that he was already acquainted with her.”
“Aye,” Gent replied. “I brought her from the palace to the sanatorium myself not six months back. The very route you both are taking now.”
“What exactly do you know about this woman?” I asked, playing along with Holmes’s ruse.
“Under strict confidence, I tell you that she was a prostitute, involved for a time with young Prince Alexander. After his death she came demanding recompense from His Majesty, spouting all sorts of theatrical nonsense, the last time with a concealed dagger on her person. I assure you, she’s quite mad.”
“Odd that the king allowed an audience to a prostitute,” I remarked.
“Our good king makes himself available to his subjects,” Gent responded, defending his sovereign.
“Of course,” Holmes said.
The sanatorium gates swung wide on rusted hinges and we entered hurriedly. An attendant accompanied us to Miss Cookson, heaping accolades upon the captain all the while. To describe the barbarism glimpsed from cell to filth-strewn cell in our passing would be an exercise in the repulsive with which I will not burden the reader of this tale.
Elisabeth Cookson was a disheveled woman whose age was indeterminate because of a lack of proper hygiene. Hard to imagine her once capable of eliciting the desire of a nobleman. Her dark hair was cut short, doubtless to minimize lice and other infestations. Barefoot she trod, dressed in a simple gown of burlap, wringing her hands and whispering incessantly. One look at the captain and she began shrieking, the corridors echoing with her cries.