Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu E-Book

Lois H. Gresh

• Herausgeber: Hard Case Crime
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The third novel in six-time New York Times best-selling author Lois H. Gresh's Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu series.Both Fitzgerald and Moriarty travel to Innsmouth, the stronghold of the cult of the Old Ones. Holmes and Watson follow them across the ocean and discover a structure designed to enable the Old Ones to flood into our world and  unleash horrors that--unless stopped--will annihilate all of humanity. Yet when it is destroyed people continue to mutate and go mad. Cthulhu rises over Devil Reef, ready to unleash his minions. In an epic battle--logic vs. brawn--Holmes must defeat Cthulhu and permanently seal the deadly dimensions. 

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also available from Titan Books and Lois H. Gresh

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: Innsmouth

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Part Two: The Arkham Sanitarium

12

13

14

15

Part Three: Explosive death

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Also available from Titan Books and Lois H. Gresh

The Adventure of the Deadly DimensionsThe Adventure of the Neural PsychosesThe Adventure of the Innsmouth Mutations

TITAN BOOKS

THE ADVENTURE OF THE INNSMOUTH MUTATIONSPrint edition ISBN: 9781785652127Electronic edition ISBN: 9781785652134

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: July 20192 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 by Lois H. Gresh. All Rights Reserved.

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DEDICATED TO MY READERS

WITH LOVE TO ARIE, RENA, AND GABBY

WITH GRATITUDE TO ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE AND H.P. LOVECRAFT

PART ONE

Innsmouth

PROLOGUE

cthulhu

January 1891

Filaments brushed his flanks and spun circles before his eyes, before sinking into the crevasse—a hole so deep that no human had ever ventured into it. The water swirled with microscopic creatures and vegetation, some of this world and some from the other dimensions. Fish etched in glowing color swept past him. Some darted into the hole, others swam too close to him, and he sucked them into his feeding tubes.

Cthulhu ruled here, and soon, he would rule all of the oceans, the lands, and the air. His hunger hurt. It was a hunger born from loss, an ache that flared to fiery pain and never burned out. A hunger for what was, for what had come before, for what must come again.

Like a giant star, I spread my tentacles across the hole, I latch my suckers onto all, I writhe, I feel the trembling of the earth, I hear the stirring of those who have awaited me for eons. Rising from R’lyeh beneath the Pacific Ocean, I swam long and hard and claimed my home here, deepbeneath the crevasse beyond Devil Reef, Dagon, and Innsmouth. I call to Yog-Sothoth, to the Elders, to the Deep Ones, to the believers.

Cthulhu rumbled, his vast body quivering over the ocean floor, his tentacles stretched taut, their tips probing for food. Sorrow, pain, unbearable, and with no end.

Green phosphorescence rippled up from the crevasse, slashed the black water, split it. He felt the invisible creatures tumble from the dimensions beyond human knowledge. Following them were creatures of great and varied scope. Nyarlathotep, the crawling chaos, changing shape, slipped into and out of view. Azathoth, he of tentacles and eyes and mouths, shrilled his cosmic flutes and drummed his hide with muscular appendages, his sound killing sea beasts hundreds of miles away. Yog-Sothoth, ever-faithful keeper of the door to the dimensions, he of the glowing spheres, showed them the way.

The weak race on shore—the humans—recoil in fear from us. They’ve seen those unleashed upon the River Thames, those of Dagon and the Deep Ones at Half Moon Bay in far-distant England, and nearby, at Devil Reef off Innsmouth. The weak race rages, it loves, it hates. Jealousy, greed, ego. The weak race kills to satisfy its emotions. Those of us from beyond: we feel only the need to exist.

Ah, to reclaim the Earth, where eons ago we ruled.

Anticipation sparked, and Cthulhu’s spirit lifted. He felt energized, ready to take what had been his all along.

Miles above on the ocean surface, a huge boat fought the waves. Cthulhu sensed the human fear onboard, felt the movement of tides and sea. The fish fled, dove deeper. Many slammed up and down on the waves along with the boat. Cthulhu smelled excitement. He knew that Dagon and his worshipers upon Devil Reef felt the human fear, as well.

Cthulhu had waited long enough. It was time to show himself to his followers. It was time to take the Earth back from the humans, who had been destroying it for centuries.

Calling to those who had broken through the dimensional void, he released his suckers from the ocean floor. He unfurled his tentacles and surged upward. The crawling chaos followed him, as did Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and the others. Hundreds of creatures rose from the depths.

On the surface, the waves rose sixty feet and thundered down. Cthulhu tightened his tentacles and rode a wave up, and at its crest, he looked down at the boat, saw the humans scream in horror and point at him before toppling over from the impact of the crashing wave. Cthulhu was bigger than the boat. His eyes swiveled, magnified the human faces, saw the blood, the broken bones and bodies. Hunger gnawed, but he had no taste for human flesh. Bugs, all of them. Disgusting.

The glowing spheres of Yog-Sothoth billowed into the sky. Azathoth’s tentacles flailed, his mouths opened to reveal teeth longer than the tallest humans. His flutes shrilled, bursting their eardrums.

Come, let us swim to Innsmouth, where Dagon and his followers await. Finally, we will live as we did beforehumans swarmed over the Earth, defacing everything with their filth, their trash, their very presence.

A wave lifted both Cthulhu and the boat. He would swim toward shore, get as close as he could without injuring himself in the shallow waters.

As the wave crashed, Cthulhu tensed his muscles and fell full-force upon the boat, flattening it. The wood broke. The metal broke. The humans broke. Splinters and flesh and blood and all the debris of humanity surged up with the next powerful wave. Cthulhu broke free of it all, dove beneath the heavy waves. The others came with him. Together, they swam toward Devil Reef, Innsmouth, humanity.

1

Professor Moriarty

Innsmouth, Massachusetts, January 1891

The fog settled like scum on my shoulders. My gloves were slick with it. The dirt road had turned to mud, and my shoes stuck with every step.

Pulling my hat low, I shivered as the fog leaked a freezing drizzle that pooled in the mud, and farther out, fell like nails into the black water. A screech shattered the night, and I almost jumped but kept my nerves under tight control.

Devil Reef lay a half-mile off shore. I couldn’t see it in the darkness, but I knew it was there. Craggy, the holes and the tunnels beneath the reef filled with bizarre beasts, its pointed rocks jutting—daggers—and dripping with the flesh of those who had been stupid enough to swim out there. The locals had warned me: Do not go into the water. You are not of the right kind. Your race is ill equipped.

But someone lurked by the water tonight. From the shadows of an alley, I watched him: a tall figure, slender, with a long face beneath a gentleman’s high hat. Professor Henry Fitzgerald, my prey. He slipped from a lopsided structure with a roof that sloped toward the sea. Another screech shrilled through the fog, and Fitzgerald halted. His head jerked toward Devil Reef, then over his shoulder at the misshapen building, which twitched, shaking rain as a bird shakes its feathers to remove dander.

Innsmouth. Devil Reef. Not much frightened me. Not much surprised me. I’d thrown off the tales about this place as the nattering of idiots. But now, confronted with the eeriness, the sick air, the foul smells—a cross between rotting fish and garbage—I realized that I’d underestimated my sources. If anything, my men had toned down what they’d told me, most likely out of fear that I would think them fools.

A light shot up from the reef and illuminated the dense fog. Odd shapes fluttered, merged, splintered back apart, and formed even stranger shapes in colors I’d never seen. Glowing colors, greens and oranges, mixtures that made my stomach knot. The shapes had ridges, teeth, wide-open mouths, leering eyes, and millions of tendrils.

I forced my eyes from the scene, and again, controlled my nerves. I’d seen plenty of hellish and bizarre formations, creatures that killed, things that seemed from another time and place—all back in England before I’d made the journey to Innsmouth.

When I looked up again, I focused on Fitzgerald, and shocked, saw two females with him. My heart raced. How would I infect Fitzgerald in the presence of these two? It would be so much easier to attack him if he was alone. And I wanted their powers to help me, not my nemesis.

One was small, young, and ran across the long sheet of rock that edged the water. Maria Fitzgerald. Henry Fitzgerald believed that she was his own daughter, although he cared nothing about her well-being. Actually, she was the child of the dead soprano Lucy Anne Nolande and the French leader of a Dagonite gang.

And the other female? I would never forget her. Amelia Scarcliffe. Even at this distance, I could swear that I saw her webbed fingers. Her hair was matted and thick like tangled netting. She was near-bursting from pregnancy, yet she gripped the slate with her toe suckers, racing after little Maria and Henry Fitzgerald. Her gills glowed with the nauseating colors of the creatures over Devil Reef. Her neck flaps were no doubt pulsing—I knew this because I had seen them up close—and they emitted high-pitched treble notes that skittered over my nerves. As she had done in London in one of my Eshocker dens, Amelia shrieked words that made no sense.

Courage, I told myself, be strong, Moriarty. You are their equal, if not their superior. You conquered these females in England, and you will conquer them again. This time, it will be permanent.

Fitzgerald swiveled to face his two companions. His hand waved them off. He barked something in his baritone voice, but I couldn’t make out the words.

Maria stopped short with Amelia behind her. They huddled together, then raced past Fitzgerald toward a broken pier that my sources had explained creaked halfway to Devil Reef in one direction and to an abandoned fish-processing plant in the other. I supposed that Amelia and Maria, gleeful and giddy that they were in Innsmouth, where their kind thrived, were heading to the fish plant, and from there, possibly to the village.

I didn’t care where they went, not for now. I wanted Professor Henry Fitzgerald to myself.

You will die, I thought, but first, you will unwittingly kill Olengran, the worldwide leader of the Order of Dagon, he who is so revered by those in Innsmouth, he who dwells in that lopsided building you just visited. How perfect. You will do my bidding, Fitzgerald, without knowing it.

I smeared the fog scum from my glove onto the lining of my coat pocket. Cautious. I didn’t want the knife to slice my fingers.

Fitzgerald paused in the rain and gazed at the dwelling again. I wondered what had transpired when Fitzgerald had attempted to gain access to the building and to Olengran. Had he succeeded in seeing the great leader? A loyal servant of Dagon and the head of a major Dagonite gang in London, Fitzgerald stood a good chance of accessing Olengran, certainly a far better chance than my own.

My fingers curled around the knife handle in my pocket. I stepped from the shadows.

You are my toy, Fitzgerald. I will smile, and you will yield, dropping your guard for a few seconds, which is all I need to infect you. I could almost feel the thrill I’d get when my knife, slathered in a new and particularly virulent strain of smallpox, ripped into him. My mouth went dry from excitement. My nerves tingled. I’ll infect you, I thought, and through you, I’ll infect Olengran and kill him.

Sloshing through the mud, I displayed a smile, hoping Fitzgerald would view it as sincere. But he must have sensed the menace, the coldness behind my façade. Seeing me, he gasped and shrank back, and his arms rose to shield him from me.

The drizzle slashed. Above the reef, colors sizzled down like lightning. Beasts screamed, flared into view, shimmering and then fading back into the fog.

With my free hand, I reached for Fitzgerald and grabbed his elbow.

“Come, old friend,” I said. “It’s cold and wet out here, and the rock is dangerous. It’s time for us to talk. Let’s go somewhere and sit together, shall we?”

He wrenched his arm from my grasp, slid on the rock, then steadied himself.

“W-what are you doing here? How did you find me? How did you know?”

I laughed. “It was my men who broke you out of jail, Professor. Surely, you didn’t think that I would lose sight of you, did you?”

“Your men? It was you who freed me? I don’t believe it!” He staggered back from me, and as he lurched and fell sideways, I grabbed his arm again and pulled him up so hard he winced.

I released him, and he rubbed his injured arm.

“Leave me alone,” he hissed. “Leave me to my business. The Order of Dagon is not your affair. Go back to London, Moriarty.”

“Come, be reasonable,” I answered. “The weather couldn’t be worse, old fellow. Let me buy you a drink and some dinner. Surely, there’s a pub in this town…?”

“Ha!” he spat. “There is no place in this town for an ordinary man to find ordinary food. You are a ludicrous fool, Moriarty. I tell you—for your own sake—leave this place at once and return to London.” Beneath his hat, the brim dripping with rain, his huge, black eyes glittered with hatred.

“Did you see Olengran?” I asked.

“No,” came the fast response, “and if I had, it would be none of your business.”

“And why do you consider it none of my business, Fitzgerald? I control the Dagon gang in England. You went to jail, and I took over.”

“I went to jail because of Sherlock Holmes. My motives with Dagon have always been pure. Yours are based solely on greed. You understand nothing of what you tamper with. You ‘took over’—as you put it—something that will destroy you.”

“Did you see Olengran?” I asked again. “He is my business. I own the Eshockers, which control entry of Olengran’s followers into our world.” It was a stretch, I knew, but there was some truth to my statement. The Eshockers, as reported throughout London, had cured Dr. Watson and many Londoners of the microscopic creatures that had infiltrated their brains. Holmes and Watson had used a modified version of the Eshockers to destroy the creatures in the Thames. I still owned hundreds of the machines, though I had yet to get my hands on Dr. Sinclair’s hospital and extreme treatment versions, much less the killer version built by Willie Jacobs, Holmes, and Watson.

“Sherlock Holmes shut down all of your Eshocker dens,” Fitzgerald said. “You know that, and I know that. You destroyed my London operation. You and that dreadful Holmes with his chemistry—he stopped the Jacobs tram machine from pumping out my gold, he stopped me from bringing forth Yog-Sothoth, the Old Ones, and Great Cthulhu. And you—what was your role in all this, but to step in, kidnap Amelia Scarcliffe and Maria, and try to take over the Dagonite gang? Yes, sir, that’s what you did, and I have forgotten nothing.”

My hand tightened on the knife handle. I’d hoped to ease the man into a more agreeable position before infecting him. I’d hoped it would be less painful for him to do what I required. I ached from the cold and wet. I wanted to find shelter. I’d arrived in Innsmouth, by boat, mere hours ago. I needed a meal and a warm bed. My patience was wearing thin. I would try once more to reason with him.

“If you’re willing to help me with just a little information,” I said, “I’ll go easy on you, and I won’t hurt your daughter.”

“You are a liar, sir.”

“And you, Fitzgerald, are the biggest fool I’ve met in a very long time.”

I whipped out the glistening knife. I dare not delay. The rain, the smallpox on the knife. I must act quickly.

“What—!” he cried, but too late. I lunged, not to kill him, not to injure him unduly, but rather, to infect him. The knife slashed his right cheek. He fell backward, this time landing on the rock, and he screamed in pain.

“Idiot,” I said.

He rose, his face mottled with fury. Blood flowed from the gash on his cheek. He threw himself at me, and for a moment, we grappled. Then I shoved him off and held up the knife, still dripping with his blood.

The fog had grown thicker, the night darker, the rain heavier.

“I’ll kill you!” he screamed, balling his hand into a fist. He lunged, and I stepped to one side and blocked the blow to my face with the knife. I felt the blade plunge into soft flesh, then I yanked it out. He winced and clasped his fist with his other hand.

“Damn you, Moriarty!”

“It is not I who am damned,” I whispered.

Before me stood a dying man. He was simply unaware of the fact.

I turned and walked away, glancing over my shoulder a few times to make sure he didn’t follow and attack me again. But he remained standing on the rock, glaring at me. Eventually, as I moved farther off, his figure disappeared into the fog.

He would lick his wounds, I felt sure, and return to wherever he dwelled in Innsmouth. And I would wait. The smallpox would do the work for me. Fitzgerald would get past Olengran’s guards. Infected with the deadly disease, Olengran would die, and I would assume control of the worldwide headquarters of the Dagon gang with all its powers from the great beyond. The murderous creatures, the gold-cranking machines, the addiction dens: all would be mine. Not only would I control the criminal underworld of London, I would control crime, money, and power everywhere.

2

Dr. John Watson

January 1891, Innsmouth, Massachusetts

Sherlock Holmes leaned on the ship’s rail and gazed at the choppy waves. Hugging Mary closer, I shuddered when I remembered my last journey with Holmes on a boat this size. My wife, in turn, clasped our infant Samuel more tightly as if guessing my thoughts.

“We’re almost at port, John. We’ll arrive safely,” she said, and then added, “I’m sure.”

“Of course, we will,” I replied, but my voice trembled. The Belle Crown incident on the Thames haunted my dreams. Incident, I thought, is a sterile term for what we’d endured. Thankfully, whatever had infected my brain was gone. Holmes had cleansed London of the near-invisible creatures that had penetrated our brains, driven many insane, and left a lot of Londoners broken in spirit. “We will consider this a holiday by the sea for you and Samuel,” I told Mary. “We will make the best of it. Together. I’m so happy that you have returned to me. I was desperately lonely without you.”

Samuel gurgled, and I stroked a wisp of hair from his tiny gray eyes. His mouth sucked the air, reaching for my fingertip, making me laugh. He was always hungry, this one, born prematurely but growing sturdier by the day.

The sky hung low, a darker gray than Samuel’s eyes. Clouds threatened to burst, and the wind whipped, picking up speed. In the distance, where our ship, the Elysium, was headed, the sky formed a thick black mat from which a curtain of rain fell.

The ship pitched, and Holmes’s fists tightened on the rail. Tall, leaner than usual due to our battles against the Order of Dagon these past months, he appeared gaunt, and I worried about his health. But his penetrating gaze told me that his mind was as sharp as ever.

“Soon, we’ll be in Innsmouth, at the headquarters of that nefarious Order of Dagon,” he said. “The fools who follow Dagon claim that he is some form of god. A ludicrous notion, Watson. I’m anxious to find Dagon himself or the man who leads his organization. We must destroy them once and for all.”

I nodded, my attention on Fortuna, Samuel’s nurse, as she eased him from Mary’s arms. Next to Mary’s delicate features, blue eyes, and blonde hair, Fortuna appeared dark and dangerous, but I knew her well—she was loving, kind, and incapable of disloyalty. She had been a patient of mine for years. Widowed in her teens and without children of her own, Fortuna devoted herself to Mary and Samuel. Her hair, black and curly and hanging to her waist, flew in all directions as the wind grew stronger and howled. Casting me a worried look, she carried Samuel down the stairs to the lower cabin. Mary followed, grasping the rails as the ship heaved. We careened down the side of a steep wave, and icy water splashed over me, soaking my coat, trousers, and shirt. With the waves getting higher, blasts of air pounded the Elysium. I could barely remain upright. Holmes merely laughed and flipped his wet hair off his face.

“When the British government requested that we travel to America, specifically to Innsmouth,” he yelled over the wind, “they said that the weather would remind us of London. From what I see ahead, Innsmouth will be damper, colder, and even more bleak. Finally, a place with weather worse than our own.”

Shrugging and giving Holmes a brief smile, I neglected to share his amusement about heavy rain and winds. As the ship clanked and soared up the side of another steep wave, I grabbed the rail next to him. We must have shot fifteen feet into the air. My stomach churned, and I groaned as the ship smashed down the other side of the wave.

“Apparently, there’s not much demand for holidays in Innsmouth,” Holmes yelled, “as we are the only passengers onboard.”

It’s no wonder, I thought. Who would willingly go to Innsmouth? The Pinkertons, American detectives who would be meeting us on the dock, had forewarned Holmes that the shanty town offered nothing but filth, foul odors, and weird people.

“What do they mean by weird people?” Holmes had asked the British official who escorted us to the Elysium.

“If I tell you, Mr. Holmes, you might refuse our assignment,” the man had responded. “When you arrive in Innsmouth, you will see for yourself what the Pinkertons mean. Just go there, and get rid of this plague that has infested our good lands. Get rid of Dagon, and get rid of this Cthulhu monster… whatever they are and wherever they come from.”

The Dagonite gang in London worshiped Cthulhu, a gigantic creature that had been spotted lurking in the waters near Innsmouth. I prayed we reached shore before it rose from the depths and killed us. I didn’t want to see Cthulhu, didn’t want to confront Cthulhu, yet Holmes and I had no choice. Nobody else would handle this case but Holmes. As for me, I had no clue how we would outwit Dagon, much less Cthulhu.

The waves pounded us a few more times, then subsided into ten-foot rolls that hit us with less frequency. The wind eased.

“The only good thing about the waves and the wind,” I commented drily, “is that they carry off the stench of our cargo.”

Holmes chuckled.

“Fish and fish bait,” he said. “If we don’t eat or smell fish again for another year, Watson, I won’t miss it.”

Thankfully, the ship’s cargo also included Killer Eshockers built in London. We might need them, along with the electrified torpedoes that killed the monsters and sealed the dimensional rifts.

“I do wish we had Willie Jacobs with us,” I said. “His expertise would come in handy. After all, he helped us build the first Killer Eshockers.”

“Indeed. It was a sorry day when Jacobs died in the equipment room while we took down those Thames creatures. A true loss to the world. He was a good man.”

“The best,” I said.

Jacobs had been our first client in this case against creatures from an unknown place and time. With his father, Theodore, and funded by Professor Henry Fitzgerald, Willie Jacobs had built a tram machine that used Dagonite arithmetic and design to produce gold—but the machine had brought forth terrible creatures from another dimension, and so had cost Theodore his life. Willie Jacobs had first come to Holmes after the police accused him of the murder. And even after we had cleared his name, and Holmes’s chemical knowledge had reduced the machine to what he termed “a simmer,” poor Willie had seen the nightmarish creatures everywhere he went. Committed to an asylum, he had been forced to build Eshockers by the dreadful Dr. Sinclair—but his knowledge had proved invaluable in building the Killer Eshocker and freeing London of the creatures. He had given his life to end the suffering of others.

How many more would die? I wondered.

“Holmes, we must close this case. We must get justice for Willie and his father,” I said.

“And don’t forget Moriarty, Dr. Watson. We must stop him. Once he found out the tram machine produced gold beyond his wildest dreams, he became a man obsessed—we saw how that turned out. Now he lives only to control the immense powers of these monsters. If ever a man wanted to control the world, it is Professor James Moriarty.”

Riches and power, greed and egomania. What drove a man like Moriarty, with his vast intelligence, to go down the evil path? Holmes’s path had been the opposite. He’d turned his intelligence to solving mysteries and crimes; in all the years I’d known him, Holmes had displayed no interest in riches and power. Certainly, he knew he was smarter than the rest of us, but egomaniacal? No.

A ridge of craggy rocks jutted half a mile offshore, and as it came into view, the waves eased into choppiness; and relief washed over me. The ship would not split down the center as the Belle Crown had done; Mary and Samuel would not drown in the ocean. My stomach still churned, and dizzy, I leaned over the rail.

“Steady, old man,” Holmes said, then pointed at our destination. “We’ll board the ship’s smaller boat to take us past Devil Reef and into port. The ship will drop anchor here.”

Down below, the crew ground the ship to a halt, and we lurched a final time. I squinted at Devil Reef. Swirling around the rocks was an oddly hued fog—or was it foam?—that sizzled, bubbled, and disappeared, only to form spheres and boxes and complex shapes of many sides and angles. The shapes whirled and coalesced into tendrils, and what I swore looked like eyes, mouths, teeth, claws, suckers, and tubules.

“What is this?” I whispered harshly.

“John?” A soft voice.

I turned from the rail. It was Mary. She clutched her skirts with one hand, Samuel with the other. Climbing the stairs from the lower bunk behind Mary, Fortuna carried a Moses basket and a bag.

“Don’t let anything frighten you,” I told them.

Mary laughed. “Whatever do you mean?”

From below, two crewmen emerged with our luggage. We’d brought little with us to Innsmouth. Hopefully, our stay would be brief.

Suddenly, Mary cringed and shielded Samuel’s eyes with his blanket. She pointed at Devil Reef, as a large translucent orb bubbled up from the rocks, burst, and sprayed hundreds of creatures into the wind.

“They’re like the ones over the Thames!” she cried.

Fortuna dropped her things, and crossed herself, murmuring a horrified prayer. She’d grown up in a traveling caravan of gypsies, and while she believed in more superstitions than I thought possible, she also swore by a deep faith.

As the crewmen lowered the smaller boat into the water, our little group huddled together. I tried comforting Mary as best as I could, while Fortuna muttered, “The devil, the devil.”

“It’s not the devil,” I said. “These creatures are from another place and time. We’ll make it past the reef and safely to Innsmouth. You will all be safe, tucked away and guarded.”

Holmes picked up Fortuna’s basket and bag in one hand and put his other arm around her shoulder. He squeezed, then released her. Both stared at Devil Reef and the equally jagged outline of Innsmouth beyond. Dreary, dark shapes—the buildings, I presumed—looked as ill-formed and bizarrely clustered as the rocks of Devil Reef. As they did on Devil Reef, strange hues sparked in the black clouds, fog, and rain of Innsmouth. I stared, mesmerized, as the colors illuminated the coastline—a flash of dilapidated ruins.

Holmes addressed Fortuna.

“Madame, you must be strong. You’re here to protect Mrs. Watson and little Samuel. Let nothing distract you from your purpose.”

“Yes, yes, Mr. Holmes. I saw these horrors in London, but this—this is of the devil himself.”

Indeed, as she spoke, a green gas rose from the rock spikes of the reef and formed a flute at its top. From that flute soared a monster with a spiked tail, wings, and at least a dozen mouths drilled into its body.

“Whatever it is,” Mary said, “it is not of this Earth. Fortuna, it is not the work of the devil.” She broke off and eased slightly from my embrace. “John, I want life to be simple and firm, as it was before… I want to know that what I see is real. Please, let’s get off this ship and let’s get this done.”

Holmes handed Fortuna’s belongings back to her, then climbed down the rope ladder onto the small boat. He gestured at me to follow. I helped Mary and Samuel onto the ladder. Holmes grasped Mary’s waist and helped her down, and she settled on a wooden bench. Her face clouded, she glanced nervously at me. I managed a faint smile. I had begged her to stay in London with Samuel.