I could see no knives, no mess on his hands other than his own smeared blood. No mess on his chin from the masticated flesh of the folks he had killed.
But that proved nothing.
"Have you ever looked into a mirror and really concentrated on the person you see there? Try it, Watson, it is an interesting exercise. After an hour of looking you see someone else. You see, eventually, what a stranger sees, not the composite picture of facial components with which you are so familiar, but individual parts of the face-the big nose, the close-together-eyes. You see yourself as a person. Not as you."
"So what are you trying to say?"
"I am saying that perception is not definite, nor is it faultless." Holmes puffed at his pipe, then drew it slowly away from his mouth. His eyes went wide and his brow furrowed. He had had some thought, and habit made me silent for a minute or two.
He glanced back up at me then, but said nothing. He looked more troubled than ever.
"I saw you killing a man, Holmes," I said. "You killed him and you laughed at me, and then you tore him open and stole his heart."
"The heart, yes," he said, looking away and disregarding me again. "The heart, the brain… parts, all part of the one… constituents of the same place… " He muttered on until his voice had all but vanished, though his lips still moved.
"Holmes!"
"It has gone quiet outside. They are coming." He said it very quietly, looked up at me from sad, terrified eyes, and I felt a cool finger run down my spine. They're coming. He did not mean Jones or the police, he did not mean anyone. No man scared Holmes as much as he was then.
"Who?" I asked. But he darted from his seat and ran at me, shoving me aside so that we stood on either side of the window.
"Listen to me, Watson. If you are my friend, if you have faith and loyalty and if you love me, you have to believe two things in the next few seconds if we are to survive: the first is that I am not a murderer; the second is that you must not trust your eyes, not for however long this may take. Instinct and faith, that is what you can believe in, because they cannot change that. It is too inbuilt, perhaps, too ingrained, I don't know… "
He was mumbling again, drifting in and out of coherence. And I knew that he could have killed me. He had come at me so quickly, my surprise was so complete, that I had plain forgotten the gun in my hand.
And now, the denial.
Doubt sprouted in my mind and grew rapidly as I saw the look on Holmes's face. I had seen it before, many times. It was the thrill of the chase, the excitement of discovery, the passion of experience, the knowledge that his reasoning had won out again. But underlying it all was a fear so profound that it sent me weak at the knees.
"Holmes, what are they?"
"You ask What, Watson, not Who. Already you're half way to believing. Quiet! Look! There, in the street!"
I looked. Running along the road, heading straight for the front door of Holmes's building, came Sherlock Holmes himself.
"I think they will come straight for me," Holmes whispered. "I am a threat."
"Holmes… " I could say little. The recent shocks had numbed me, and seemed now to be pulling me apart, hauling reality down a long, dark tunnel. I felt distanced from my surroundings even though, at that moment, I knew that I needed to be as alert and conscious of events as possible.
"Don't trust your eyes!" he hissed at me.
That man, he had been running like Holmes, the same loping stride, the same flick of the hair with each impact of foot upon pavement. The same look of determination on his face.
"Faith, Watson," Holmes said. "Faith in God if you must, but you must have faith in me, us, our friendship and history together. For there, I feel, will lie the answer."
There came the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs.
"I will get them, it, the thing on the floor," Holmes said, "and you shoot it in the head. Empty your revolver, one shot may not be enough. Do not baulk, my friend. This thing here, tonight, is far bigger than just the two of us. It is London we're fighting for. Maybe more."
I could not speak. I wished Jones were there with us, someone else to make decisions and take blame. Faith, I told myself, faith in Holmes.
I had seen him kill a man.
Don't trust your eyes.
He was bloodied and dirtied from the chase, hiding from the crimes he had committed.
I am not a murderer.
And then the door burst open and Sherlock Holmes stood in the doorway lit by the lamp-tall, imposing, his clothes tattered and muddied, his face scratched, hands cut and bloodied-and I had no more time.
The room suddenly smelled of sweet honey, and turning my head slightly to look at the Holmes standing with me at the window, I caught sight of something from the corner of my eye. The Holmes in the doorway seemed to have some things buzzing about his head.
I looked straight at him and they were no more. Then he gave me the same smile I had seen as he murdered that man.
"Watson!" Holmes said, reaching across the window to grasp my arms. "Faith!"
And then the new visitor smashed the lamp with a kick, and leapt at us.
I backed away. The room was dark now, lit only by pale moonlight and the paler starlight filtering through London 's constant atmosphere. I heard a grunt, a growl, the smashing of furniture and something cracking as the two Holmes tumbled into the centre of the room. I quickly became confused as to which was which.
"Away!" I heard one of them shout. "Get away! Get away!" He sounded utterly terrified. "Oh God, oh sanity, why us!"
I aimed my revolver but the shapes rolled and twisted, hands at each other's necks, eyes bulging as first one and then the other Holmes presented his face for me to shoot. I stepped forward nonetheless, still smelling that peculiar honey stench, and something stung my ankle, a tickling shape struggling inside my trousers. I slapped at it and felt the offender crushed against my leg.
Bees.
"Watson!" Holmes shouted. I pulled down the curtains to let in as much moonlight as I could. One Holmes had the other pinned to the floor, hands about his neck. "Watson, shoot it!" the uppermost Holmes commanded. His face was twisted with fear, the scratches on his cheek opened again and leaking blood. The Holmes on the floor thrashed and gurgled, choking, and as I looked down he caught my eye. Something there commanded me to watch, held my attention even as the Holmes on top exhorted me to shoot, shoot, shoot it in the face!
The vanquished Holmes calmed suddenly and brought up a hand holding a handkerchief. He wiped at the scratches on his face. They disappeared. The blood smudged a little, but with a second wipe it too had gone. The scratches were false, the blood fake.
The Holmes on top stared for a couple of seconds, and then looked back at me. A bee crawled out of his ear and up over his forehead. And then the scratches on his own cheek faded and disappeared before my eyes.
He shimmered. I saw something beneath the flesh-toned veneer, something crawling and writhing and separate, yet combined in a whole to present an image of solidness…
Bees left this whole and buzzed around the impostor's head. Holmes was still struggling on the floor, trying to prise away hands that were surely not hands.
The image pulsed and flickered in my vision, and I remembered Holmes's words: you cannot trust your eyes… instinct and faith, that is what you can believe in…
I stepped forward, pressed the revolver against the uppermost Holmes's head and pulled the trigger. Something splashed out across the floor and walls, but it was not blood.
Blood does not try to crawl away, take flight, buzz at the light.
My pulling the trigger-that act bridging doubt and faith-changed everything.
The thing that had been trying to kill Holmes shimmered in the moonlight. It was as if I was seeing two images being quickly flickered back and forth, so fast that my eyes almost merged them into one, surreal picture. Holmes… the thing… Holmes… the thing. And the thing, whatever it is, was monstrous.