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John woke up to the sound of voices downstairs. He rolled over, pulling the covers more firmly around him—but after today’s case, returning to the embrace of sleep was no simple matter.
The crime had been the grisly murder of a teenage girl, in the middle of a scene that she and her two silly teenage friends had mocked up to look like a demonic summoning. There’d been a large pentagram chalked on the floor with runes carefully drawn all the way around the outer edge, enclosing a small inner circle in the middle of the star. A tall black candle had been stationed on each point, surrounded by a glittering mountain of salt and a couple of bunches of bedraggled herbs that looked like they’d been appropriated from someone’s garden.
And of course, spread across one of the arms of the star, the limp, bloodstained body and scattered internal organs of Brenda Hartley, teenage witch. Her two friends who had witnessed the murder and called the thing in to the police had been near-hysterical, claiming that the crime was done—not by them—but by the demon they’d summoned while seeking guidance from the spirit world on their love lives.
It hadn’t been the first time they’d knocked on the door of the beyond, although it was apparently the first time the other side had knocked back. They had spell books and Ouija boards and all sorts of hand-rolled scented candles; makeup drawers filled with black nail-polish and black lipstick and excessive amounts of black eyeliner, their fingers and necks weighted down with crystals and mystic sigils in ancient languages.
Georgina and Olwyn seemed genuinely traumatised by what they'd seen. Their stories matched; there was no forensic evidence that contradicted what they said…
Apart from the fact that what they said was completely impossible.
Scotland Yard baffled; call in Sherlock Holmes, etcetera, etcetera. Of course, Sherlock had been able to make a number of connections well ahead of the police inquiries—including digging up a fourth member of the little coven whom the girls had neglected to mention as he’d been absent from the previous night’s proceedings.
Mort, which John had assumed was a pseudonym until Lestrade had cross-checked it against his student id, was also rather well endowed with black eyeliner and masses of unwashed, unkempt hair. That said, John wasn’t quite sure where else a young man could really go with a name like ‘Mort’—at some stage you had to take what fate, and your parents, had given you and run with it. He'd been the boyfriend of one of the surviving girls, although John hadn’t quite managed to work out which one. He had no particularly solid alibi for the crime that he could report in the interview, but both girls swore blind that he’d dropped off the paraphernalia and left before they’d even started setting up the ritual.
Then again, given both girls swore that they had seen an actual demon disembowel their friend in front of their eyes, they were considered at best, not reliable witnesses, and at worst, the chief suspects.
Sherlock had stormed off home to think about things, leaving John to putter around making dinner—which of course Sherlock wouldn’t eat—offering tea—which of course he wouldn't drink—and trying to write up an old blog entry—which got him banished upstairs for being an unendurable distraction.
All had seemed quiet and settled for the night when John had finally decided to go to sleep—but he hadn’t been able to sleep well, nonetheless.
There was something about a grisly murder with a touch of the supernatural to it that didn’t sit well on the subconscious. And now that he’d awoken to the sounds of conversation downstairs, there was no possibility at all of him relaxing back into sleep with an unknown person in the house.
He stared at the ceiling, wondering who Sherlock could possibly be talking to, at midnight. One of his homeless network? A dealer perhaps? But he’d been doing so well, recently. Or so John had thought. The smell of hot wax and some kind of herb wafted through the room—smoke always rose up the stairs to befoul John’s bedroom whenever Sherlock was conducting experiments downstairs. It seemed he’d lit some candles, perhaps in an attempt to recreate the crime scene.
The chill running down the back of John’s neck developed a more distinct focus.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock scoffed, his disgust carrying the words clearly up the stairwell. “You can’t possibly be a demon.”
The response came in a low, husky growl, which John could make out now that he was straining every fibre of his body towards listening in.
“And yet, here I am, human.”
John was out of bed and halfway down the stairs before he’d even realised what he was doing. He silently padded the rest of the way down, carefully skipping the squeaky stair. He slid noiselessly through the kitchen and crept as close as he could before leaning forward to get a glimpse of the living room.
There was.
Well.
Sherlock certainly had recreated the crime scene, complete with chalk sigils, black candles, piles of salt, and bunches of herbs. John couldn’t imagine where he’d got everything he’d needed at this time of night. Oh, he would have had chalk, of course; John had seen him using it occasionally to mark out distances and compare proportions before. And it was just possible Mrs Hudson had been equipped with appropriate herbs and salt. But black candles! That would have required a speciality shop, surely.
At this point, John had to admit that he was just trying to find an excuse not to think about what had been standing in the very middle of the circle.
As Sherlock said, it couldn’t possibly be a demon.
Except.
Well.
John couldn’t think how else one could describe the… the thing… standing in the middle of 221B. For starters, it was red. And it had horns. And black fur. And hooves.
It was a…
Well.
John had to admit that he really wasn’t coming up with a better description than ‘demon’.
Conversation had apparently continued while John had been having his momentary crisis, but had hardly moved on.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Sherlock was insisting, looking the thing over disdainfully. “You can’t be.”
“Puny human,” snarled the creature, which seemed intent on convincing Sherlock of its bona fides. “I care not what you think! I shall rend your flesh from your bones!”
Recalling something rather crucial which seemed to have slipped the detective’s mind, John edged into the room and around the wall, squeezed back as flat against it as he could. He was somewhat hindered by the fact that Sherlock had obviously pushed all the furniture in the living room back, to give himself a larger canvas to draw on the floor.
God, John hoped the chalk would all clean up easily. Hopefully, they could sneak Mrs Hudson’s hoover upstairs to take care of the salt without her noticing, or she was going to have Sherlock’s head.
Carefully, he edged forward past the couch, and back along the wall towards the mantelpiece.
“If you are,” said Sherlock, “what you say you are—a point I still refuse to concede, by the way—then you can’t do anything of the kind. You are inside the circle, and I haven’t invited you out. I’m not a complete idiot.”
The creature’s horrifying red face split in a wide grin as it pointed to the symbols on the floor at its feet, and read around in a clockwise circle: “’Hollow’, ‘Basket’, ‘Nineteen’, ‘Hotel’, ‘Sun’.” He tilted his head to the side and squinted at that last symbol a moment longer before declaring, “Or possibly ‘Tree’. The slant on that line at the bottom makes it a little ambiguous.”
“I reproduced that drawing exactly, in every detail!” protested Sherlock.
“Mmm, you’ve done fairly well for a beginner,” it admitted. “I couldn’t quite work that one out yesterday, either.”
“But it’s complete nonsense!” scoffed Sherlock. “How is that supposed to summon a demon, if you’re still trying to convince me of you are one?”
“Aaaah,” said the creature, opening its cavernous mouth guarded by enormous yellow fangs. “It can’t. I come, not because I must, but because I can. And because I can…”
It grinned, the teeth still shockingly visible as it placed one enormous cloven off onto the edge of the circle.
Sherlock drew back in his chair, apparently involuntarily, as it took another step forward, this time completely out of the circle. It stepped forward again and reached out towards him with hands surmounted by claws that would have looked at home in any museum as part of the dinosaur exhibit.
By now directly behind the creature, and at the fireplace, John wrapped one hand around the poker, took two steps forward and struck the thing smartly on the temple, just below the left horn. Hopefully, its brain anatomy was at least partially similar to that of a human.
It crumpled to the ground, still mostly in the middle of the circle.
“Ah, John,” said Sherlock, sounding a little shocked. He was still seated in his chair, gripping the arms with white hands and blinking up at him. It seemed that he hadn't been as unmoved as he pretended by the creature's appearance. “Right on time, as always.”
“Well, now what?” demanded John half-hysterically. “Do you have any idea how to send it back? Banish it, whatever it is we need to do? What were you thinking going through that blasted ritual those girls used, anyway, all by yourself! It clearly didn’t work to contain it!”
“I didn’t for a moment imagine that it would work at all!” protested Sherlock, frowning at the thing, and then directing a sulky look at John. “I still don't. The steel poker seemed to do the trick, anyway; that implies that handcuffs ought to work as a binding, at least temporarily. If it’s true! Which it can’t be!” He scowled at the thing on the floor and shook his head. “I need to do some research.”
He pulled his legs up into the armchair with him, folding himself into an offended, besuited ball as he glared at the search results on his phone.
The thing was starting to stir, so John darted into the kitchen for the handcuffs and quickly back again.
He cuffed it before it had entirely come around, and then stood over it with the poker, ready to cosh it again if necessary, while Sherlock frowned at his phone and made little sceptical noises in the back of his throat, muttering about contradictory metaphysical rubbish without the least scientific rigour to it.
“You will regret this, huuuuuman!” growled the thing on the floor once it had come around, struggling against the cuffs. “Release meeee!”
There was the sound of the beginning of screeching metal.
“Sherlock…” said John warningly. “I think it might be starting to get—”
“No! I’m not putting up with one more moment of this nonsense!” Sherlock snapped at last. He pressed a few buttons and clapped his phone to his ear. “Lestrade? Come and pick up your murderer, he’s just tried to come after John and I, too.”
The demon laughed, hoarse and throaty. “You think a jail cell can hold me, human?” it demanded.
“That is enough out of you!” snarled Sherlock, pressing the phone against his chest as he brandished a finger at the creature on the floor. “You are absolutely not a demon, and I intend to prove it, in a court of law if necessary! I’m a scientist! I know when I can’t trust what’s in front of my eyes! I’ve been through this before!”
He put his phone to his ear, his eyes darting around the setup on the floor.
“You’d better make it fast, Lestrade. John and I are obviously drugged because I’m certain the murderer has to be Mort, that fourth member of the coven—he concocted this whole scheme to kill Brenda because she found out he was sleeping with both the other two and planned to push the glass around the Ouija board that night to let them know. He must have put something in those candles I swiped from the scene—and glimpsed them in my pocket when we did his interview. At this point, everyone in London knows my address and so he came here to break in and steal them back—but when he saw I had the candles lit, he decided to have some fun in his ridiculous costume.”
The demon howled—with laughter or despair, it was hard to tell—almost drowning out the sound of Lestrade’s shouting from the other end of the phone. Sherlock tossed it into the armchair, ignoring the tinny tirade that echoed from the earpiece. Then he snatched up the still-burning candles, carried them over to the window and threw it open, and dropped them outside.
He left it open and leaned out, gulping in deep breaths of fresh air.
“Feeling better already!” he threw back over his shoulder, although John noticed he still wasn’t looking directly at the demon collapsed half over the edge of the circle.
John dodged the flailing hook on the end of its tail and moved around to the side to make sure he’d be ready to hit it again if necessary. He looked—Mort? The demon? Whatever it was, it was certainly well supplied with eyeliner too—looked it over dubiously, wondering what Lestrade was going to see when he turned up. Perhaps this was a hallucination—John wasn’t ruling anything out at this point, although it still seemed pretty real—but he felt much better with a poker in his hands.
He wondered how he was going to write this one up on the blog.
At least life with Sherlock Holmes would never be boring.