The Case of the Spellbound Child

The fourteenth novel in the magical alternate history Elemental Masters series continues the reimagined adventures of Sherlock Holmes in a richly-detailed alternate 20th-century England.

While Sherlock is still officially dead, John and Mary Watson and Nan Killian and Sarah Lyon-White are taking up some of his case-load--and some for Lord Alderscroft, the Wizard of London.

Lord Alderscroft asks them to go to Dartmoor to track down a rumor of evil magic brewing there. Not more than four hours later, a poor cottager, also from Dartmoor, arrives seeking their help. His wife, in a fit of rage over the children spilling and spoiling their only food for dinner that night, sent them out on the moors to forage for something to eat. This is not the first time she has done this, and the children are moor-wise and unlikely to get into difficulties. But this time they did not come back, and in fact, their tracks abruptly stopped "as if them Pharisees took'd 'em." The man begs them to come help.

They would have said no, but there's the assignment for Alderscroft. Why not kill two birds with one stone?

But the deadly bogs are not the only mires on Dartmoor.

1

Alf grinned as he pushed open the whorehouse door into the damp London night. Good pay for an easy job had brought him and Reg enough to splash out on a night of it, and he was feeling fine.

Then a blinding flash whited everything out, at the same time that Alf’s head erupted in excruciating pain.

Then flailing, then falling, falling.

Then for a moment, nothing.

And a moment later, he found himself standing in a gray fog, though there’d been no fog when he stepped out of the whorehouse. He stared straight into the eyes of his mate, good old Reg, who’d been a few steps behind him.

When had he turned? What had hit him?

Reg held a lead cosh in his right hand, and stared down at the street at his feet.

Wut? Was ­we. . . .

Reflexively, he stared down ­too—?­and saw his own body lying face down in the dirt in front of the whorehouse door, with Reg between the body and the temporarily empty street. Two and two added up toReg just bashed me ’ead ­in. . . .

Bloody ’Ell!

And at just that moment, when he was torn between blind rage and shock, he felt something he’d never felt before: a cold chill, agraveyard chill, and a strong, almost irresistible pull at his back, as if something had just gaped open behind him and was about to suck him in.

Instinct did the rest. So instead of flying at Reg in a fury, he leapt forward, into the street, into the path of a ­slow-?­moving, transparent cart, which did not so much as pause for him as it passed right through him. Or he passed through ­it. . . .

That wasn’t what had his attention, as he whirled to see what had been behind him. It was a gaping, swirling hole where the whorehouse door had been, behind where he had been standing, a bottomless hole that drank in what little light there was and let none escape.

That was when he realized, somewhere in his head too deep for thoughts, that he wasn’t just hurt, he wasdead, that his “mate” Reg had just murdered him, and that the hole would have sucked him down to Hell if he hadn’t jumped out of its reach. Why it couldn’t do sonow, he had no idea, but he didn’t intend to stick around long enough to find out. As Reg stuffed the cosh in his back pocket and bent down to start rifling through Alf’s clothes for valuables, Alf turned and ran.

Through the pub on the other side of the street. Without opening the door.

The moving shadows, the transparent figures bellied up to the bar paid him no heed as he sprinted straight across the pub floor and out into the “area” in the back. And straight through the privy. He stopped just short of the next building, not because he was ­winded—?­he wasn’­t—?­but because shock stopped him.

Everything past the pub wall was lost in the shadows and fog, but he still felt that hole to Hell out there. Waiting. Waiting for him to accept his fate and let it take him.

“Ye keep on waitin’!” he shouted, his voice curiously thin and reedy, scarcely more than a whistle. He looked down at himself. He looked exactly as he remembered himself when he’d left the whore’s room and come down to wait for Reg. Moleskin trousers, bracers, threadbare shirt, battered tweed jacket, boots badly in need of resoling. ­But . . . faded, what little color there had been all drained away, leaving everything in shades of gray. Just like everything around him. And other than ­emotion . . . he didn’t feel anything. Not tired. Not in pain. Not hungry, though he’d been famished a moment before, and about to suggest to Reg that they get a meal at the pub. He wasn’t cold or hot, and he couldn’t smell a thing, and he knew the “area” back here reeked of shit and urine. And he could see through everything except himself.

Instinct, which had served him well until Reg betrayed him, told him that his smartest move was to stay still and quiet until he had a better lay of the land. So wait he did, as pub patrons came and used the privy or just pissed against the nearest wall. And he never felt a moment of fatigue, for what might have been minutes, or might have been hours, until that cold, dark tugging at his ­insides . . . stopped.

Cautiously, he stepped through the pub wall, feeling something like resistance this time as he forced his way through it. It ­was—?­well, he wasn’t sure what it was like, only that he didn’t much like the feeling, but it was better than waiting for another drunk to come out here to piss and open the door. Through the passage he went, then passed with a shiver right through all the blokes crowded up against the bar, then caught a bit of luck and got through the front door along with a staggering drunk.

The hole in the air was gone. It felt like a victory, and he whooped and shot his fist straight up, then shook it at where the hole had been. “Yew ain’t got me, yer barsterd! Yew ain’t gonna get me neither! Oi’m too tough fer ’Eaven an’ too smart fer ’Ell!”

He stood there, rejoicing in his achievement, for quite some time, as wraiths of people and carts and the occasional cab passed through him. But eventually, as the elation wore off the thought came slowly creeping up upon him.

Now what?

After fruitlessly looking for ­Reg—?­though what he was supposed to do if he found Reg, he had no ­idea—?­he went to stand by his unmoving body and brooded down at it.

He was a ghost now, he supposed. It was clear given the way that the living passed right through him that revenge on Reg was flat out of the question. So what was he to do with himself now?

Ghosts apparently didn’t eat, drink, or need shelter; and he didn’t feel anything at all except emotion. For a very long time he stood there, staring at his body, which lay conveniently out of the way of traffic. A few other people stared at it too, and moved on, as he himself would have done had he ­encountered—?­say, good old ­Reg—?­in a similar state. Dead bodies on the pavement were not an uncommon sight at night in this part of London, and once they’d been looted were regarded more as an inconvenience than a curiosity, much less a horror.

Just as he began to wonder if anyone was going to do anything about him before dawn, the police “body wagon” showed up to collect it, the loaders picking him up by the shoulders and heels like a bit of old rubbish and unceremoniously heaving him up into the ­wagon-?­bed with three others like him, another man, a child, and an old woman.

And the wagon rolled off. He knew what came next: the morgue, someone going through his pockets in a vain attempt to find something to identify him, finding nothing because of course Reg had taken everything, maybe a day before he was either dumped in a common grave with the other unidentified stiffs or (more likely) sold off to medical students. So there was no reason whatsoever to follow that wagon.

In fact, the only thing that really mattered, the thing that made him red hot with anger, was that bloody Reg was going to get away with it all.

And even then, he couldn’t sustain the anger. It bled out of him like water in a sieve, leaving him, once again, feeling nothing, and wondering what to do with himself.

One by one he ticked off all the things that used to give him pleasure, and realized they were all things he couldn’t do now. Eat, drink, natter with the lads, gamble, whore, sleep in a good soft...