Shadows over Baker Street

Nightmare in Wax (1915) SIMON CLARK

Thunder tears the air asunder. Half of Europe, it seems, is afire. Nations shrink back before a Pentecostal wind. Today, the London Times brings news of the sinking of the Lusitania by the Hun. Over a thousand innocent lives lost. While yet more newsprint carries the dreadful litany of tens of thousands of our soldiers consumed by the war—this war to end all wars. In the midst of global conflict, the cases of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes might appear of little importance now. Last night, however, I was roused from bed by three visitors. I will not identify them for obvious reasons; although two of them would be widely known from king to barrow boy. Suffice to say: one gentleman holds a very senior post in His Majesty’s government, the second a high rank in the army, while the third is a leading light in the clandestine and anonymous world of our secret service.

Clad in dressing gown and slippers, I invited them into my sitting room.

The military gentleman said: “Dr. Watson. We apologize for calling on you at this time of night, but you will appreciate the fact that we are here on business of a most important nature that concerns not only the security of the Empire but the preservation of all nations.”

“I understand, gentlemen,” I replied. “How may I help you?”

The military man said, “We have two matters to put to you. Firstly, do you know the whereabouts of Sherlock Holmes?”

I shook my head. “I understand he is traveling.”

“Do you know where?”

Again I shook my head. “I’m afraid not.”

“Has Mr. Holmes contacted you?”

“I received a telegram from him perhaps three weeks ago.”

“Are you able to divulge the contents of the message?”

“Normally not. But as it’s you, gentlemen . . .” I cleared my throat. “Holmes simply wrote, ‘Watson, the game is afoot.’ ”

“I see . . .”

The third gentlemen then spoke. “Thank you, Dr. Watson. That brings us to our second matter. We have brought with us a phonograph recording made several years ago, which my agents retrieved, from a Home Office vault. We should be grateful if you would listen to this recording and identify the voices you recognize.”

Assembling the phonographic equipment with its horn speaker and wax cylinders took but a few minutes. Then the intelligence officer wound the clockwork motor before pushing a brass lever that set the audio mechanism in motion.

The chimes of midnight from the church across the square died on the air as the wax cylinder yielded the sound of a man’s voice to the hushed room. This, then, is what I heard.

Now, pray . . . are you in the mood for a little sport? Perhaps you might care to guess my name? What’s that you say? Is it a name of some importance? Will history have even recorded that name? Or, as with countless billions of men and woman who have swarmed upon the surface of this planet like so many maggots, will it be forever lost to the four winds?

You require a clue?

A certain amateur detective who can perform tricks with clues with all the cack-handed dexterity of a Barbary ape juggling apples, described me as “the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in London.” Evil? The man’s interpretation of the word is unutterably blunt. I admit I have the ability to acquire that grubby medium called money and to exert my will on men without the handicap of conscience. Moreover, the term evil is merely a rather clichéd insult directed by the weak against the strong. And you will be patently aware that the strong are not forgotten by history. Some might accuse Rome’s Julius Caesar of evil, but he will never slip from memory. The seventh month of the year is named after him. His successor, Augustus, a powerful man of scant conscience, made posthumous claim to the following month, August. Perhaps one day my name will be similarly honored in the calendar.

Ah . . . Do you have my name yet? That same aforementioned detective also bestowed upon me the title “the Napoleon of Crime.” A laughably inaccurate one, I should add. Napoleon ultimately lost, whereas I shall be the victor. Still, you may have guessed by now. No?

Dear, oh dear. Then I’ll delay no longer because I only have precisely one hour to preserve this account of my singular endeavor for posterity. My name is Professor James Moriarty. Never one to fail to exploit the cream of new technology, I am recording my voice on a phonograph. These wax cylinders will preserve this verbal testament for all mankind. After all, I don’t wish anyone hearing this to believe that I merely somehow stumbled upon the greatest discovery made by man through sheer luck. Believe me, luck is for fools. Effort mated with intelligence brings success, not mere chance. What I have uncovered is the result of twenty-five years of painstaking labor and applied thought. Indeed the purpose of my criminal career, as the ignorant might term it, has merely been to fund important research work; although I have to admit that devising all those nefarious strategies did reward me with a modicum of entertainment. I daresay I could have netted the required capital via legitimate commerce, but how deadly dull those long years would have been. Indeed, I would never have had the opportunity to engage in those cerebral duels with that aforementioned detective, one Sherlock Holmes (a name, I daresay, soundly forgotten by history).

Now here I am, Professor Moriarty, sitting alone in a most elegantly appointed carriage that is drawn by a privately chartered locomotive. It is the first day of November, 1903. On the throne of England and commanding the British Empire is that idiot wastrel King Edward VII.

No doubt during the pauses between my words you can hear that clickety-click of iron wheels against track. Isn’t it an evocative sound? A symphony for the traveler! The time is ten minutes before midnight. We are passing through a forbidding moor that is ill lit by a gibbous moon. In a short while . . . there . . . did you hear it? The train’s whistle? The driver has signaled that we are but a few miles from a most singular destination. Even now I see ocean away to my right.

Yet what unfurls beyond the windows on this fiercely cold winter’s night is of far less importance than what lies on the desk in front of me. In this snugly warm carriage is the product of twenty-five years of the most demanding labor imaginable. If through the medium of these wax cylinders you could see what this singular object is, you might not immediately be moved to excitement. “It is merely a book,” you might say. Ah, but what a book. Not just any book. Hear that? That whispery sound? Like the voices of a million ghosts revealing secrets from beyond the grave? Ah . . . That sound you hear, my friends, is the pages of this great and glorious tome. And if you could see the title—that strange and darkly powerful title that has filled many a man with dread—you still might not understand its importance. But I proclaim here and now that this, indeed, is the Book of books. It is the bridge between worlds . . . it is the Necronomicon.

My diaries reveal in intricate detail the background to my research. However, to toss you a little information in easily digestible morsels will help you to understand what I am about to accomplish tonight. Twenty-five years ago a large body of antique volumes came into my possession from some ruffian who wanted little more in exchange for them than the price of a few quarts of gin to souse his bloated liver. From the blood-spattered trunk they arrived in, one can deduce without difficulty how the ruffian came by them. No matter. I examined the volumes, intending to sell them on to collectors. However, these were no ordinary books. For the main part they related to occult matters in a number of disparate cultures.

Now, these volumes did tickle my curiosity delightfully. Moreover, there were several journals in the excitable hand of a certain Father Solomon Buchanan. A man of God who was clearly far more interested in what lay in pagan tracts than can ever be found in the Gospels. I quickly grasped the core of the man’s fascination with these apparently disparate cultures. From the Americas to Europe to Africa to the Orient, he’d studied pagan mythology and arcane writings in search of a common element universal to all cultures across the globe, yet a common element that was a deeply held secret, and known only to an inner sanctum of priests, witchdoctors, and shamans. Now, this was something of immense interest, because if the most powerful individuals guard certain information with the utmost rigor, it means just one thing: that information confers power on its keeper. And isn’t power the most sublime asset of all?

On the table before me in my study all those long years ago, I carefully laid out drawings that Father Buchanan had made of statues from Mesopotamia, tomb paintings from Egypt, ritual masks from the Tehucan people of Central America, cremation jars from Ban Na Di in India, and a bronze cauldron that belonged to a priest of China’s Shang Dynasty. To an uneducated eye the drawings would merely be of museum pieces; however, even though these depictions of archaeological artifacts came from each corner of the globe and were many thousands of years old, they all contained a representation of the same being: one that is squat, bulbous, some might say toadlike. Yet it has little in the way of facial features save for a vertical slitlike mouth above which sit toadlike eyes. In each representation hooded priests worship before it. While scattered before this object of veneration are severed human limbs and heads.

This is one example of multitudinous deities that are common to disparate cultures. Ergo, at some point in man’s history fabulous creatures occupied our world. There are suggestions in Buchanan’s journals that there was a mingling of human and inhuman blood. Moreover, these creatures were worshiped as gods, the masters of humanity.

Night after night I pored over Father Buchanan’s writings. He enthused about a secret book, the Necronomicon. He recounted ancient testimonies of men driven mad after encountering abominable unhuman races that dwelled in the sea or in subterranean lairs. Strange words leaped out at me from the text—Cthulhu, Dagon, Y’golonac, Shub-Niggurath, Daoloth. Soon I realized that the priest had discovered not only a hitherto unknown race of beings that had long ago penetrated our world, but that these Old Ones possessed a source of enormous occult power. A power capable of being accessed—and exploited—by a man of knowledge and courage. Now, twenty-five years later, I, Moriarty, am within barely fifty minutes of achieving just that. The power of steam and electricity barely—

Now, this isn’t right . . . the train is slowing . . . it’s not scheduled to stop here. Through the windows all I see is moorland. The train is still ten minutes from its destination . . . now . . . now . . .

Forgive me for that pause. The train has indeed come to halt. Ah, here is my trusted assistant, Dr. Cowley.

“What’s the delay, Cowley? We must be at Burnston by twelve-fifteen.”

“We’re continuing immediately, Professor. We’ve paused to allow one of the engineers to be brought on board.”

“What on earth is an engineer doing here? He should be at the drainage site.”

“I’m sorry, Professor, but there appears to have been a problem.”

“Problem, what problem, Cowley? I was telegrammed that the area had been successfully drained.”

“I—I’m not sure of the details, Professor. But the engineer’s waiting in the next—”

“Bring him in, then. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

Ah, this is most irritating. Nevertheless, I will keep the clockwork running on the phonograph in order to record my conversation with the man that Dr. Cowley is in the process of collecting from the next carriage. Ha, the sound of the locomotive . . . we are in motion once more. I should be dreadfully annoyed if we weren’t in Burnston on time.

And now here is the engineer, a bespectacled man of fifty-five, I should say, in his Norfolk jacket and muddy boots.

“Sit down, there’s a good fellow. And don’t be distracted by this apparatus. You’ll have seen phonograph recording equipment before?”

“Indeed I have, sir.”

“I am keeping an aural record of a scientific experiment. Every sound you utter will be preserved on the wax cylinder here as it turns. Don’t worry, it won’t bite.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Now, I need to know the nature of the problem that has taken you away from your work in order to stop this train.”

“Well, sir, I thought you should—”

“Ah, first of all, your name? For the benefit of record.”

“Of course, sir. My name is Victor Hatherley.”

“You’re the hydraulic engineer?”

“I am.”

“Then, for our audience perhaps you will briefly explain the nature of the contract of works I awarded to your company earlier this year?”

“If you wish, sir.”

“I do wish, Hatherley. Now lean forward. Speak clearly.”

“The firm of engineers with which I am employed has been contracted to drain a parcel of low-lying hinterland that lies on the Yorkshire coast. Five years ago a storm in the North Sea flooded the village of Burnston. Since that time the village has lain at the bottom of a lagoon of saltwater that averages some twelve feet in depth. My colleagues and I erected sea defenses in order to isolate the lagoon, which we then proceeded to drain with the aid of steam pumps.”

“And now the village of Burnston has been reclaimed from the ocean?”

“Indeed it has, sir.”

“So what problem has brought you all the way out here to stop my train?”

“The men wish to discontinue work at the site.”

“Then fire them.”

“We require a number of men to serve the pumps, otherwise seepage through the subjacent soil results in fresh flooding.”

“And why, pray, do the men refuse to earn the wages I am paying them?”

“The navvies aren’t happy, they say—”

“Speak up. The phonograph can’t record murmurs.”

“The professional men continue their duties, but the navvies are afraid to enter the village.”

“I daresay there are a few human bones, Hatherley, moldering in the silt; after all, I gather that a hundred and fifty villagers were lost when the place was flooded.”

“The men aren’t afraid of skeletons, sir.”

“Then what, pray, is the problem?”

“They discovered bodies in the buildings when the water levels dropped far enough for them to enter.”

“Well, then?”

“The people they found in the houses . . . they were still alive.”

Our friend Hatherley is now drinking tea in another carriage. The absurdity of these artisans. They fear their own shadows. I, Professor Moriarty—please: take a fix on that name—will not be afraid to enter the drowned village, for I know that is where the greatest treasure of all lies. It was in Burnston that Father Solomon Buchanan discovered an ancient pagan temple beneath the parish church . . . a temple dedicated to the worship of the Old Ones described in the Necronomicon.

In a little while I will enter the temple. I will conduct the solemn rites that I have painstakingly reconstructed from a thousand fragmentary ancient texts. Then we shall see what we shall see . . .

I am continuing to record my account of events on the phonographic device. I have raised the blind of the carriage as the train pulls into a rather ad hoc station built by the hydraulic engineers to serve the drainage site. The time is fourteen minutes past midnight. Now, what do I see before me? Some quarter of a mile away I spy in the moonlight the rolling silver of the North Sea. Between ocean and land is a rampart of earth and rocks that has been raised by the navvies to sever the lagoon from the tides. The lagoon, you will recall, was formed quite recently when the village of Burnston was engulfed during a storm. I see men toiling by the light of hurricane lamps. Horses drawing carts mounded with yellow gravel to renew the roadway. Sparks rising from the chimneys of steam engines that drive pumps to expel seawater from the inundated village.

Of the village itself, I see houses without roofs. Loathsome mud still oozes across streets to the height of the windows. There’s the village inn, the Mermaid, with its sign still festooned with seaweed. And here is the church of St. Lawrence, covered with a white leprous rash of barnacles. It is in this location that Father Buchanan uncovered a pagan temple beneath the nave. Carved there on the walls are symbols that evoke the Nameless One. In a few moments I shall leave the carriage to conduct a momentous ritual within the ancient temple. With that I shall access power of unimaginable—ah, it is Cowley again; here to interrupt my soliloquy. His face is as purple as a beet.

“Cowley, can you not see I am making a phonograph recording?”

“I beg your pardon, Professor.”

“Go on.”

“Those individuals that the navvies found in the houses . . .”

“Oh yes, pixies for the pixilated, no wonder.”

“No, Professor. These individuals are attacking the navvies.”

“Ridiculous.”

“They are devouring the men!”

“Away with you, man.”

“No, Professor, sir. Can’t you hear the screams? The men are being eaten alive. I’ve seen it myself. Their attackers are grotesque . . . monstrously deformed.”

“Shhh. There, perhaps the phonograph can record those sounds. Yes, Cowley, you’re not wrong. I can hear screams. Fascinating. You say that people who are deformed in some way inhabit the houses?”

“Worse than deformed, Professor. I’m a medical man and yet I’ve seen nothing like this. These individuals suffer from some condition that endows them with skin much like that of a fish. They have no eyelids, and possess vast eyes that are perfectly round. They make one nauseated if one looks upon them.”

“How intriguing.”

“Professor, we must leave at once.”

“No. We will not retreat. You have your revolver?”

“Yes.”

“Then guard the door, man. I will observe events as they unfold from the carriage.”

“But—”

“Do as I order, man.”

“Yes, sir.”

Now I will continue my observations. Indeed, I see any number of figures emerging from the houses . . . more accurately they slither like seals from the windows; squirming on their bellies across the silt before standing upright. My workmen appear no match for the creatures. The men are being killed and devoured as I watch. And how unusual the gait of these creatures: they move in a queer, swaying way, as if unfamiliar with moving on dry land. The battle is almost over. Now perhaps fifty of the creatures approach the carriage. They make gestures with their limbs—to call them arms would be misleading—there is something tentacular about them. The creatures’ heads are rounded, domelike; their eyes resemble those of a cod. Large and round and black. They do not blink. Yes, this moonlight is bright enough to appreciate more detail than perhaps one would wish. Initially, I thought they would attack, but now they have paused some thirty paces from the carriage. They look at me. Perhaps, by some clairvoyant process, they recognize my identity. Perhaps they know I am a friend and ally?

Now they move their limbs again. I see it is a priestly gesture . . . and what’s that? I hear voices . . . hissing voices: reminiscent of the exhalation of air from a dolphin’s blowhole. There, perhaps this instrument is sensitive enough to pick up the chorus of voices . . .

“Fhe’pnglai, Fhe’glinguli, thabaite yibtsill, Iä Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu . . .”

An incantation. I recognize it from my translation of the Necronomicon. This indeed is a fabulous sight. Unique. An epoch-making event. This should—tut-tut . . . another interruption.

“You’re the engineer. Hatherley?”

“Yes, sir, I came to warn that—”

“Sit down there, man, and silence please. Can’t you see what I am doing?”

Ah, to continue . . . now, a brilliant flash of light. The creatures are evoking that alien power. My God, my good God . . . this will be at my disposal, too. Am I, also, to become the destroyer of worlds?

Ah, but I am quite dazzled by the light. And strange . . . Strange. I don’t hear the sound of the locomotive, but we seem to be in motion . . . there . . . I’ve managed to draw shut the carriage’s window blind, but I am still quite dazzled by that burst of incandescence . . . most peculiar; the train is moving, yet impossibly it feels as if we’re descending. At an incredible rate of speed, too. Those denizens of Burnston must have cast some ineffably exotic and occult influence upon the vehicle.

“Dr. Cowley.”

“Yes, Professor?”

“Don’t sound so frightened, man. With my presence here, you cannot be harmed.”

“But . . . we’re falling. What have they—”

“Hush now. Compose yourself.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Now go to the window. Look out without disturbing the blind more than you can help it. Describe what you see outside.”

“Outside, sir?”

“Yes, man, and quickly. I’d do it myself, but the flash of light has left me dazzled. There . . . are you at the window yet, Dr. Cowley?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Peep through the gap in the blind as you would spy through a keyhole. On no account open it.”

“I understand.”

“Mr. Hatherley, remain in that seat. Do not attempt to look out of the window. On no account touch the blinds.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Excellent. Now, Dr. Cowley, describe exactly what you see.”

“Professor . . . oh, my dear God, we’re falling . . . We’re falling!”

“Describe exactly what you witness. The phonograph must record every single word.”

“We’re falling into what appears to be a pit, yet I can see stars embedded in its walls. Entire constellations of fabulous complexity. Beneath us are strange lights and patterns; geometric shapes. Weird shapes. I find it disturbing to gaze upon them . . . wait . . . I see now. It’s as if the train has drawn up to the very edge of a cliff of enormous height. I’m looking down upon lakes and canals and cities and oceans. We are plunging toward a city that contains a huge purple mountain in its center. The crash will smash us all to pieces.”

“It won’t, Cowley. We are slowing. We will gently alight in the citadel. Now, describe.”

“I see fabulous things . . . fabulous . . . but frightening . . . as if these are visions induced by an opiate.”

“Describe what you see. Delineate. Give me details. Colors. Shapes. Metaphor and simile, if you must.”

“It is an exotic city, like something from a dream. It is how I imagined the appearance of Byzantium. We pass through rose-colored mist. I see houses stacked terrace on terrace, one above the other, as they march up toward the mountain of purple. Myriads of chimneys expel fragrant smoke that drifts on star winds. I see ships with golden sails on oceans of emerald. I see towers of ivory reaching to the sky, I see dome on dome on dome stretching into infinity. I see bronze bells the size of battleships set into arches. The bells swing back and forth, ringing out fabulous notes that shimmer with an alien resonance across the city. Bell peals that will never change and never decay so long as the cosmos shall retain its cohesion. Through chinks in the window frame I smell the most beautifully exotic traces of incense. Spices, too, from kitchens that were old when the pyramids were new. I hear unearthly music. Magic fluting. Drums beating. I hear singing in the streets. Songs of ineffable beauty. Melodies of numinous power.”

“That is our reception party, Cowley. We will be honored guests.”

“We are flying low over the city now. I can see people—millions of people thronging the streets. I sense their jubilation, their adoration of us. This is akin to a family reunion. We are not venturing here, Professor. We are returning!”

“Indeed we are, Dr. Cowley.”

“Now the train glides through the air; I see our line of carriages headed by the locomotive still issuing steam; the train has all the supple grace of a snake gliding through water. Beneath us are bazaars, Oriental marketplaces, Casbahs shaded by silken awnings. Turquoise banners ripple in the perfumed breeze of evening. I see geese white as snow in gardens. Leaping fish in fountains. I see millions of people in the exotic robes of Arabia. Fabrics of gold, crimson, scarlet, jade.

“Now we approach the purple mountain that rises above everything like a god of old. It gleams as if illuminated from within. Oh, I see a transfiguration. No . . . No!”

“Cowley, continue to relate what you see below us.”

“But . . . no . . . it’s changing, transforming . . . degrading: the entire city is melting into the most obscene—”

“Describe. Describe.”

“Monsters. Those aren’t men down there. They’re creatures with webbed hands, barbel-necked . . . eyes like toads, bulging from the ugliest faces. I know I can have no knowledge of this, but somehow I divine that these beasts are profane. They are man and monster mated into a terrible form . . . please, permit me to close my eyes.”

“Dr. Cowley. Tell me what lies below.”

“I see the city as a malignant sore on a body. From it ooze rivers of corruption through which its inhabitants swim up to mock us. I see the mountain grow larger, swelling. Transforming. Features form upon it . . . mouth . . . eyes, hideous eyes . . . that—oh! I cannot look into those eyes. And it speaks . . . the mountain speaks to me . . . I know the meaning, if I don’t understand the words. It tells me to cease to hope. It describes what I shall become . . . please!”

Ah, that pitiful sobbing is my assistant, Dr. Cowley. He is quite unmanned. “Stay huddled in the corner if you will, sir. You’ve served your purpose . . .” So that leaves the engineer and me with our wits still intact. For obvious reasons I shall not trouble to look out of the window yet. For I must sheathe myself in protective incantations from the Necronomicon . . . Wait, the book? Where is it?

“Hatherley. What are you doing with my book? Hand it to me at once.”

“No, Professor Moriarty. I’ll not hand it back.”

“My name is not Professor Moriarty. What on earth—”

“Indeed you are, Moriarty. Professor James Moriarty.”

“Hatherley. I insist—”

“Come, come, Moriarty. If I know your true identity, surely you can guess mine? Especially if I remove my spectacles and this irritating India-rubber compound from my cheeks.”

“Holmes . . . Sherlock Holmes?”

“One and the same, Professor.”

“Holmes. Give me the book. If you do not, we will be—”

“Killed? Surely we await a fate far worse than that. Ask your assistant.”

“Holmes. You must let me have the book before it is too late.”

“This book, the Necronomicon? With all its fearsome and blasphemous content? No, this belongs with its true owner.”

“Holmes? No!”

“Moriarty, I trust your phonograph etched those sounds upon its cylinder. There’s no mistaking the melody of breaking of glass. Although I daresay it can not record the sound of the book falling down onto a landscape as alien as that one.”

“You’re a fool, Holmes. Now . . . do you hear that? Hear those screams?”

“I hear screams of frustration and disappointment. Somehow, Moriarty, I have contrived to upset your plans . . . and the plans of whatever monstrosity slithers across that profane world beneath us . . .”

“You don’t know what you have done.”

“No, not exactly. I believe what we have so nearly encountered is beyond human ken. But that, if I’m not mistaken, is the sound of the train’s whistle . . . and now that? That you hear is quite clearly the sound of our carriage wheels running on a more earthly track. Unless, I’m very much mistaken, the train is back on that rather chilly Yorkshire moor.”

“Holmes. Damn you . . .”

“And you will gather that the train is running backward—away from Burnston. Ah . . . and don’t trouble yourself about your assistant’s pistol. I shall retrieve that. There . . . I know it’s rude to point at people, especially with firearms, but I think it safer for every one of us if you are prevented from meddling with matters that lie beyond the bounds of human understanding.”

“You really think you’ve won, Holmes? Is that pure arrogance or unalloyed conceit?”

“Perhaps you could define the word victory, Professor Moriarty? Then compare that definition to the desired outcome of the players of this singular game of—Moriarty, don’t be a fool!”

My name is Sherlock Holmes. Today is the third day of November, 1903. The sun is shining over freshly plowed fields as the train steams toward the station at York. With a few moments of my journey remaining before I disembark to make my report to a senior representative of His Majesty’s government, I have decided to speak my own postcript into this ingenious mechanical device, which will then be consigned to a secret Home Office vault. You will have listened to these phonograph cylinders and heard a record of Moriarty’s folly. Ah, and what of Moriarty himself? He chose to exit the train through the broken carriage window; the very same break that resulted when I tossed that damnable book from the train to whatever monstrosity lay below. One could have assumed that the scoundrel would have broken his neck in the fall, but units of the King’s Own Yorkshire Rifles have searched that section of track without success. I can only deduce that Moriarty has managed to slip away once more into that nefarious underworld that conceals him so well. Other units of the regiment are engaged, even as I speak, in eradicating every trace of those part-human horrors that dwelled in the submerged village. Thereafter, the soldiers are instructed to dynamite the seawall and return cursed Burnston to the ocean. And what of Dr. Cowley? All self-hope and peace of mind were forever extinguished in his soul upon looking on those nameless creatures. He took his own life with chloroform. You will appreciate the fact that I did nothing to obstruct his final act.

My friend Watson, who so admirably records my cases, has not been privy to this one for what are, to your ears, obvious reasons. Therefore, I have not been able to employ his delightfully teasing methods of introducing evidence, or his entertaining manner of recording my discussion of pertinent clues, their meaning, and subsequent deduction. Hence, at best, here is a rather more prosaic bundle of sentences in lieu of a full and frank explanation of the case’s origins. In all truth, this case has been long and arduous and my methods have been somewhat darker than the norm. Moreover, they are not for popular consumption. In short, my former dabbling with cocaine in combination with exotic fungi from the Americas opened the doors of perception far wider than I could have believed possible. These narcotic visions of nameless ones encountered beyond tideless, otherworldly seas set me on the trail of arcane writings. Suffice to say: Moriarty isn’t the only obsessive personality to possess a copy of the Necronomicon . . . moreover, he wasn’t the only one to draw upon its occult power. It was necessary for me to access its recondite properties to return the locomotive from its nightmare destination, and to bring this disturbing case to a satisfactory conclusion.

Ah, the needle has all but reached the end of the cylinder. Now all that remains is for the owner of the voice you hear now, one Sherlock Holmes, to bid you, dear listener, across whatever gulf of time separates us, a most sincere adieu.

The three gentlemen have left my house with their gramophone and cylinders of wax that document those most singular events. I did as I was asked and identified the voices of Holmes and Moriarty. My three visitors were apparently satisfied, and yet they did not elaborate further on the nature of their mission, or how they will use the information I have given them. Such is the secrecy of wartime. I am alone again with my thoughts and a transcript of the recording. Clearly, if Moriarty had succeeded in harnessing the power that can be accessed via that profane volume, the Necronomicon, then this would elevate him above the title of “Napoleon of Crime”; Moriarty would have become a veritable Satan. He would be capable of destroying any individual or any nation that opposed him. However, my old friend Sherlock Holmes outwitted the man. Moreover, Holmes rid the world of a book that was so potently evil.

If I cast my mind back more than a dozen years to that time when Moriarty was poised to literally raise hell, I recall a Sherlock Holmes at his most preoccupied and his darkest. Far be it from me to make deductions, but I dare guess that it was this case that troubled him so.

Now, I confess, those troubles are visited upon me. Perhaps I should have been more candid with my visitors, considering their elevated stations, but some instinct caused me to hold my tongue. It is true that Holmes did telegram me with that single sentence that made my heart leap with excitement: “Watson, the game is afoot!” But only the day after the message arrived he made a telephone call to this very house. The connection was a bad one. The earpiece hissed and stuttered. I couldn’t make my old friend Holmes hear me. And all he could do was to try to fight against the storm of noise by repeating over and over:

“Watson . . . I have found Moriarty . . . he has the book again . . . he has the Necronomicon!”