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A strong jolt woke up Doctor Watson.
The man straightened up on his seat, rubbing his eyes: the rocking of the train always made him sleepy.
The carriage was silent and almost empty; besides him, there were only a couple of elders and three men minding their business, and no one had exchanged a word with him since the beginning of the journey.
The window was wet with the typical british rain, which painted everything in gray. It was late in the afternoon and darkness had fell, so the view was rather depressing: there was nothing to see out there, except for the occasional lights of a remote village or the headlights of a car on the road next to the railway.
The train made a stop and his carriage emptied completely, making the journey even more depressing.
John glanced at his wristwatch: only half an hour to his station, better not to fall asleep, or God knows where he would have awaken.
He checked his phone, but didn’t find any message.
That morning, before leaving, John had told Sherlock that he would have been away for a couple of days for a medical conference, but he wasn’t sure that his boyfriend had heard him: he was lying on the couch and hadn’t acknowledge him in any way, lost in his Mind Palace, distracted by some deep thoughts.
What he was thinking about, John had no idea, since they hadn’t any case: Sherlock was probably rearranging some experiments in his mind, or cataloging the different types of London mud, as he had already done in the past.
Once out from his Mind Palace, he would have searched for John, surprised not to find him at home.
John could almost hear his petulant voice in his head, "Why didn’t you tell me you'd be away, John?"
"I did Sherlock, but you didn’t listen to me."
The thought made him smile with fondness, but since he didn’t want Sherlock to worry too much for his absence, he decided to send him a message:
"I'm at a medical conference, as I told you this morning, but I'm not sure you heard me. I'll be back tomorrow night. Eat something and don’t spend all night on the couch."
He put his phone back in his jacket pocket and got ready to get off, pulling his scarf around his neck and tightening his coat: in London, autumn weather was already harsh and cold, in the countryside it was even worse.
He picked up the small traveling bag from the luggage rack, and a whiff of cold air on his neck made him shudder; he turned, believing that he had heard the door of the wagon opening and shutting, but no one came in.
After a moment he shrugged, thinking that it had been just a blast of air coming from the old, shabby windows of the carriage, and waited for his stop in front of the door.
Only he and another person got off the train, but the latter was quickly lost in the dense fog; the station was empty and looked gloomy, somehow: one might have thought it was abandoned, if it was not for a dim light that illuminated the window of an office on the second floor.
"Nice place," John muttered to himself with sarcasm, then walked quickly to the square facing the station, searching for a transport to the hotel where the conference would take place: given the late hour, they weren’t any buses, but thankfully there was a taxi.
The doctor got on, gave the address to the driver, and rubbed vigorously his hands, trying to warm them up.
"What a horrible weather," he commented, trying to start a conversation.
"Here it’s like that almost all year round."
The driver shrugged and drove in silence along the main road of the town; the buildings became more and more scarce, until they disappeared altogether, leaving place to the countryside.
John frowned: was the hotel really so far from the town? A subtle sense of anxiety took over him: he hadn’t forgotten the case of Jeff Hope, and the idea of being on a car apparently traveling toward nothingness, made him alert. Was the man a real taxi driver or a lunatic with bad intentions? Living with Sherlock, John had learned never to underestimate anything.
He peered discreetly toward the front seat: the driver didn’t seem to have a gun, and the car doors weren’t blocked. If needed, John was quite sure he could surprise the driver and escape.
However, despite his ominous speculations, the journey ended without problems twenty minutes later, in front of a massive Georgian building that had known better days. The gravel driveway was full of holes filled with muddy water, the garden was suffocated by weeds, a sad, leaveless ivy was clasping the façade of the building, and the entrance was lit by a dim light that barely sliced through the darkness of the night. Taken as a whole, the palace conveyed a feeling of disquietude: it seemed more like the dwelling of some ghosts than the house of living people.
"Are you sure this is the place?" The doctor asked at the taxi driver.
“There are no other hotels here," the man replied, counting the notes, then touched his hat in a gesture of greeting, and got on his car, murmuring a cryptic "good luck."
John didn’t have time to ask what he meant, because the taxi went off, so he looked at the old building, scratching his nape. Who the hell had the idea of holding a medical conference in a such isolated place? From now on he would have been more careful in choosing the events to attend, and when to stay at home with his boyfriend, instead.
He heard a sinister chuckle and some fast steps on the gravel and turned to the right, only in time to see the flap of a long white robe disappearing beyond the corner of the building. He frowned: who was the nutter walking in a chilling night while wearing just a gown?
Surely he wouldn’t do the same thing: he reached the entrance and opened the door, hoping to find in the hall some other doctors to chat and spend some time with, as there were no pubs or restaurants around there, but unfortunately it was empty. The interior of the building mirrored the gloomy façade, with its faded carpets, curtains and wallpaper that smelled of old.
The planks of the hardwood floor creaked beneath his feet as he approached the reception counter; he rang the desk bell and waits at least five minutes for someone to appear, but in vain. Suddenly annoyed, he ringed louder and looked toward a long, bad illumined hallway to his left, tapping his fingers on the wood.
"Unbelievable!" He mumbled to himself. He was about to ring the bell a third time when a cold hand lay on his shoulder, causing him to start.
John turned around, finding himself in front of a middle-aged woman with stern eyes, thick black eyebrows, long brown hair parted into two strands and picked up in a tight bun on the nape; her lips were surrounded by heavy wrinkles and bent in a perpetual grimace of disapproval, she wore a long black dress with starched collar and cuffs, and she seemed to have come out of a Dickens tale.
"I'm here," said the woman.
"F-forgive me," John stammered, not knowing what he was apologizing for, or why that woman was so intimidating.
"Are you Dr. Watson?" she asked, unmoving, then went behind the counter and opened an old, dusty register.
"Yes,” John handed her his identity card. “Is anyone else here, yet?"
"We don’t expect anybody else: you are the only guest of our hotel tonight," she replied, handing the card back to him
"No, no, there must be a mistake: tomorrow morning there is a medical conference here, there will be at least another thirty doctors."
"Dr. Watson," she said coldly, "I've been doing this job for more years than you can imagine, and I'm extremely precise in taking the bookings, I never did wrong once, so I say it again: there are no other guests, only you."
John gaped at her: he didn’t understand, could he have been wrong? He fished out from the inner pocket of his jacket the pamphlet with the days and the program of the conference: November 1st and 2nd. No, it was right.
He was tempted to ask her if it was a joke, but one quick glance at her stern face was enough to understand that that woman probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word "joke".
However, John knew a pranker that could have done that: Richard Floyd, a doctor from his clinic, who never missed the chance to pull a joke on his colleagues, from whoopee cushions to fake spiders hidden in the lockers.
John took his cellphone, ready to let Richard know what he thought about his shitty prank, but there was no signal.
"Yes," the woman said, "here cellphones had almost no signal, ever."
"Great... excuse me, can I use the landline to call a taxi to come back to the train station? There was a misunderstanding and I shouldn’t be here."
He would rather go home immediately, even if he would arrive to London in the middle of the night.
"I’m afraid it’s not possible: you have arrived with the last train, there are no others before tomorrow morning at seven."
"All right," he muttered. "I still wish to do a couple of phone calls."
The woman pointed to a small telephone booth on her right, where John found an anachronistic phone with rotary dial, and he sighed irritated: he had forgotten how to use it, in fact, he failed three times before he could dial Richard's number.
"Hello, who’s there?"
"Funny, Richard! Really, really entertaining," John said with a snarl.
At the other end of the line there was silence for a few moments, before Floyd ventured to ask, "John?"
"In person! Don’t pretend to be surprised, it makes no sense at this point."
"John, dude, are you drunk? What are you talking about?"
"I’m talking about your brilliant prank, sending me to a fake medical conference in the middle of nowhere! Who else is involved? Is it Sam? I bet it’s him."
"John, you have to believe me, I didn’t do anything! I'm sorry that somebody pulled a prank on you, but it wasn’t me!"
Richard seemed sincere. Besides, if it was him, now he would be bragging about the joke: in fact, it didn’t make sense to continue denying it.
John put a hand on his forehead and sighed: "Geez Richard, I'm sorry I’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion..."
"Nah, in the end I think I deserve it. But whoever played this prank on you, had a brilliant idea: when you find out who it was, let me know."
"So you can plot new jokes together? I don’t think so," John said with a laugh. "Good night Richard, and, again, I’m sorry for having accused you."
"No harm done. See you at the clinic."
John's second phone call was for Sherlock: he wanted to tell him what had happened, and perhaps his boyfriend would deduce on the spot who could have sent him to a hotel in the middle of nowhere, because at that point John hadn’t the foggiest idea who the culprit was.
Unfortunately, Sherlock didn’t answer the phone, even though John called three times in a row. So he was still in his Mind Palace, the doctor thought. Too bad, he would solve that little mystery the next day, when he came home.
He left the booth, now resigned to spend the night there, and saw that the hostess had wandered away again.
"Surely they’ll not have my positive review on TripAdvisor," John muttered.
"Sir," said a deadpan voice behind him, and once again John started nervously: Christ, was the staff of the hotel specialized in ambushes?
This time, he was in front of a man in his sixties, with white, slick hair, stern and stiff as his female counterpart, holding his baggage in a hand.
"Um..." John stammered, hoping that the man hadn’t heard his sarcastic comment.
"If you want to follow me, I'll show your room. Dinner time has already passed, but if you want, I can bring something warm in half an hour," he said, checking a pocket watch.
"Yes, thank you very much..."
"Edwin, sir."
The man climbed the stairs, walked through a long hallway, dimly illuminated by some wall lamps, whose light was continuously flickering, indicating that the building had some problems with the electrical power: in that place time seemed to have stopped at least a hundred years before.
From the paintings hanging on the walls, men and women in Victorian dress seemed to scrutinize and judge him, and John could no longer ignore a strange feeling of anxiety that had accompanied him since he had got off the train.
Edwin opened the last door in the hallway, and then walked away silently.
The room was small, with only a single bed, a desk and a closet; the window faced the garden, and John looked intently at the bare branches of a tree that cast their shadows on the glass, like skeletal fingers, then shook his head vigorously: he was just tired from the trip and needed a shower.
The bathroom was even smaller, with a sink, a toilet, and a shower in the corner with a plastic curtain: shaggy, but better than nothing. He turned on the faucet, fearing the water would be lukewarm at best, but instead it became hot in no time: at least the plumbing worked properly.
He had already undressed, when he seemed to hear his name being called; he walked in the bedroom, that was empty, and frowned: he was more tired than he thought.
He left the bathroom ten minutes later, definitely refreshed; he was vigorously rubbing his hair with a towel when he heard a loud ring: in the room was the same old disc phone of the hall.
"What now?" he thought, and lifted the handset.
"Hello?"
He heard nothing but a rustle.
"Hello?" He said louder.
This time he heard a faint sigh and then someone, he couldn’t tell if a man or a woman, whispered "I'm coming..."
"Who's talking?"
Whoever they were, they hung up immediately.
"What the hell...?"
The sound of footsteps in the hallway stirred John’s attention: it couldn’t be room service yet, it was too early for that.
The steps stopped right in front of his room, John could see the shadow of two legs projected beneath the door, and the same, enigmatic voice of before, murmured: "For you."
It sounded like a snake's voice, if snakes had a voice.
Determined to shed light on that bizarre situation, John stepped forward to the door and opened it: no one was there.
"What...?"
It was unlikely that someone had run through the hallway, or had hidden in a room in the few seconds it took to him to open the door. Besides, John hadn’t heard anyone running away.
Anyway, he knocked on all the other doors, lowering the handles (all closed) and straining his ears to catch some noise.
Nothing.
From her portrait, Queen Ann looked at him, judgmental.
John returned to his room, now openly disturbed, and regretted not having carried his gun with him.
A gust of wind knocked the tree branch against the window of his window, like the hand of Death knocking.
For him.
"It's ridiculous," he rebuked, but within himself he couldn’t wait to leave that place.
Twenty minutes later, Edwin took the dinner: under the metal cloche there was a chicken soup and two slices of roast beef with potatoes.
"Thank you very much, it’s very appetizing."
"Miss Leighton is a good cook. Now I’ll let you dine. Remember that breakfast is served from 7 a.m. to 9.30 a.m., and the room must be left by 11 a.m.."
"I'll be out of here long before," John thought, but didn’t want to be offensive or paranoid, so he kept it for himself. However, before Edwin left, John asked if he had called him on the phone.
"No sir, I was in the garage to do some repairs."
"Your colleague, maybe?"
"No, Miss Leighton was in the kitchen cooking for dinner. We didn’t call you, we wouldn’t had any reason to do that."
"So maybe the phone is broken... you know, it’s a old thing..."
"If you say so, sir," the man replied in the more polite voice that he could gather, but from his face it was clear that he thought John's phone didn’t ring at all, and that the man was suffering from hallucinations.
John swallowed the silent accusation.
"Did one of you two come upstairs just before?"
"No sir."
"Did anyone else come up?"
"As Miss Leighton has already told you, you’re the only guest this evening. Now, if you want to excuse me, I have to finish those repairs."
"Sure, of course, and thank you again for dinner."
"Good night sir."
Left alone, John discovered that he had completely lost his appetite: he hadn’t dreamed it, damn it! The phone had rung and somebody had stood in front of his room.
Perhaps the owners were two psychopaths that attracted naive victims in the hotel and then chopped them with an axe, or poisoned their dinner, as in those old horror movies.
He closed the cloche without touching anything, and checked his cellphone again: no signal.
By now he had realized that there was something strange in those two people, and even in the hotel, but walking back to town with that fog was ill-judged: he didn’t know the area and he would be lost in no time.
So he decided to barricade himself in the bedroom, sticking a chair under the door handle to block it, and unscrewing a towel rail from the bathroom wall, a metal bar that would calm down any attacker.
He approached the window, looking at the spooky garden: the outside lamps of the hotel were lit, but their light was so dull that it was almost useless; he was about to pull the heavy damask curtains, when something caught his attention: a figure wrapped in a white gown, the same he had seen as soon as he had arrived, moved fast and ethereal through the trees. Immediately after, a bright light flickered in the distance, and John narrowed his eyes to see what it was.
It was a blue flame, floating placidly mid-air; after the first one, a second and then a third one appeared.
The vision caused a shiver of fear to run along his back, before the rational part of his brain reminded him that he was a doctor.
"Just will-o'-the-wisp," he exclaimed in the empty room, mortified by the tremor in his voice, “It’s decomposing organic substance that catch fire in contact with oxygen of the air, a perfectly normal phenomenon near swamps and ponds."
"Not really," a voice in his head said, a voice that, without much surprise, was similar to Sherlock's one. “First of all, ignis fatuus is a phenomenon that’s common only during summer, but we are now in the middle of autumn, secondly, they are on the ground, not in mid-air, and, above all, they don’t move."
"What the fuck...?" John swallowed hard at the sight of the flames that formed a neat line and moved away slowly, like in a grim procession.
Something scratched inside the wall near the bed, and John jerked back, slamming against the desk.
"Rats. In old houses the air spaces of the walls are full of rats," he murmured, but his voice sounded less and less convinced to his own ears, and the idea to leave that place and walk back to town didn’t seem so bad now.
A heavy thud made the old planks of the hallway floor creak: perhaps one of the owners was coming to pick up the dishes. Very well, they had to talk, obviously like polite and rational people, and they had to explain to John what the sodding hell was going on in that goddamned place.
Several seconds passed before the thud was heard again, and John immediately realized that that wasn’t the pace of a person's footsteps. It was... he had no idea what it was, but squeezed the towel rail stronger, wiping away the sweat around his lips with the shirt sleeve.
A third thud came, closer to his door, followed again by a heavy sigh and a macabre whisper: "I'm coming... I'm coming..."
"Well, I'm ready," John thought, and lifted the rail over his head, assuming the pose of a baseball batter. He strained his ears and held his breath to hear the slightest noise, but the thuds seemed seemed to be stopped.
He was about to relax when the phone rang again and the light went off; scared, John screamed and let the the improvised weapon fall on the floor. In the dark, he searched for the telephone and lifted the handset to his ear with a trembling hand.
"Hello? Hello? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" The doctor shouted hysterically. There was silence for long minutes on the other end of the line, until the usual voice whispered "For you."
I'm coming for you.
"Fuck... fuck..." John kneeled down on the floor, trying to retrieve the metal rail, ignoring the voice of reason in his mind suggesting that there should be a rational explanation: he was too terrified to listen to it.
There was a fucking presence in that place (his mind still refused to call it a ghost), a presence that was coming for him, and John had no intention of waiting for it.
The lights went on again, and John found the rail, grabbed it, jumped to his feet, moved the chair from under the handle and opened the door, ready to hit anyone (or anything) that stood in the hallway.
But there was no one.
He walked quickly toward the stairs, when something sticky touched his face and he took it off, waving his hands hysterically and shouting in disgust: it was a huge cobweb.
He looked at the floor and the stairs in front of him: they were covered with a thick layer of white dust, as if that place had been abandoned for decades. And yet he was sure that when he went up earlier, there were no cobwebs or dust, he would have noticed it for sure.
Or maybe he had been the victim of a spell and had only believed to see that place clean and tidy. Someone (something) had made him believe it was like that.
His fears were confirmed when he arrived in front of the reception counter: it was wrapped in a thick layer of cobwebs that nobody had touched for years.
"Edwin! Miss Leighton!" He cried with a choked voice. The echo of his words rebounded in the hall, but no one came, no one answered.
Even the two owners didn’t exist. Not in flesh and bones at least.
John ran to the front door, when he saw a huge painting on the wall to his right: it wasn’t there when he came in. It was portrait of the two owners, the woman was sitting in an empire-style chair, the man was standing with his arms behind his back. On a brass plate on the frame was carved the date of the painting: 1895.
At that point, John lost his head, leaping out of the door.
In the garden, the eerie flames of the will-o'-the-wisp fluttered and moved threateningly to meet him, as soon as John was out of the door.
He sprinted in the only direction where there weren’t any flames, not caring about the darkness and the dense and cold fog that slapped his face, and if he didn’t cry hysterically, it was just because he hadn’t enough breath to do that.
He stumbled into a protruding root and fell on the hard ground, fumbling and kicking in an attempt to get to his feet; his hands touched a smooth and square stone and John used it as a support to stand. He moved a few steps and stumbled into another big stone slab.
He used the flashlight on the phone to see where he was: the narrow ray of light illuminated the tombstones of an old country cemetery.
"Great... really great..." he panted: he couldn’t have been in a worse place in a dreadful night like that. He looked around frantically, fearing to see the ghost emerging from the fog.
"No no, ghosts don’t exist, they don’t exist, they don’t exist..." he stammered, and he didn’t know if he was trembling more for the cold or for the fear.
He heard a frightening sizzle right in front of him and, out of nowhere, a circle of blue fire lit up, illuminating a rectangular hole in the ground and a white tombstone, engraved with some words in blood red:
"John Watson
1971 - 2017"
"You will never have me!" John yelled. He sprinted away again, but his run lasted very little and this time he ended up in a low pond of muddy water.
A more intense light, like the one of a torch, hit him, and fast steps approached him.
"I said you will not have me!" John growled, grabbing two big stones and throwing them one after the other toward the beam of light.
"Go away! Leave me alone!" His hands found a branch and another rock and threw them against the supposed ghost.
A dull sound followed by a cry of pain said him that at least one of his blows had hit the target.
Wait a moment... weren’t ghosts supposed to be incorporeal? Well, it didn’t matter. Actually it was good news if he could hit it. He sought further ammunition in the water.
"Don’t get closer," John threatened, "or I’ll beat the shit out of you, do you understand me?"
"John! Calm down, John, there is no ghost, it’s me," said a well known voice behind the dazzling light of the torch.
John shielded his eyes with the left hand and stepped out from the pond on trembling legs. "S-Sherlock? What are you doing here? What... what…?"
Sherlock's face opened in a bright smile.
"Happy Halloween, John! Did you like my show?"
John felt weak and fell on his knees in the smelly water again, while the fear quickly left the place to a touch of disbelief, followed by a blinding tsunami of rage.
"Are you... are you the one behind all this?" John asked, incredulous.
"Yes, I've been planning it for a whole week studying every detail: I sent you the mail of a fake medical conference, and hired two actors from the local theater company to pretend to be the hotel owners: I find that the woman was particularly brilliant in pretending to be a ghost, don’t you think? To give a spooky look to the building, we used some old paintings, fake cobwebs, flour, and a few chemicals put on drones to simulate ignis fatuus. The palace is often used as a set in movies and tv shows, and I feared you would recognize it immediately, but I was hoping that, with the dark-"
"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? WHY DID YOU DO THAT?” John yelled so loud that two owls flew away from a nearby tree, scared by the racket. “I was about to have a stroke from the fright, you idiot! Is it another of your fucking experiments?"
Sherlock frowned, puzzled by John's reaction, which obviously was not what he expected.
"No... of course it isn’t. I just wanted to be considerate and make you a surprise for Halloween."
Flabbergasted, John put his hands in the hair.
"Considerate? How could you think that it was considerate of you to give me a scare?"
"They say it here," Sherlock said, increasingly uncertain, and handed John a rolled up magazine from his coat pocket.
It was a copy of Cosmopolitan. An article talked about five infallible way to prove to be a caring and thoughtful partner: the first one suggested to never forget anniversaries and festivities, and celebrate them using fantasy and a touch of craziness.
Craziness... Sherlock had had too much of it, and because of that, John had a colossal fright and ended up in a cold and smelly puddle of water. He crumpled the magazine and threw it in the pond with an animalistic growl, lifting a powerful spray of water all around.
Sherlock started and stepped back.
"You’re angry."
"What a brilliant deduction!"
"Why are you angry? I have offered you a peculiar Halloween experience, complete and realistic, instead of the ordinary ‘trick or treat’ stuff. The magazine says this method is infallible," Sherlock mumbled, pouting.
John approached Sherlock with a threatening look and stabbed his index finger against his chest.
"Number one: the ultimate realism of your brilliant staging is infallible only to give someone a heart attack, certainly not to play a innocuous Halloween trick! And number two, Sherlock..."
"Yes?"
"Halloween is on October 31st, and that was yesterday!"
Sherlock opened his mouth and blinked quickly.
"October 31st, are you sure? Not November 1st?"
"No, today it’s Hallowmas."
Sherlock cleared his throat, embarrassed, and put his hands behind his back.
"Ah."
"Ah? Is all that you have to say after this?" John growled, pointing to himself, soaked and chilled to the bone.
"Well, my deep indifference for festivities in general and this festivity in particular has led me to mistake them. And yet-"
Sherlock never finished the sentence, because John grabbed him by the lapels of the coat and pushed him into the frozen water of the puddle, holding his head underwater a few seconds, to rinse away other quaint ideas like that.
After that, without much surprise, they both spent the following week confined to bed with fever, cough and cold.
As he tossed the umpteenth dirty handkerchief in the bin and took the temperature to his reluctant boyfriend, John warned, "From now on you are forbidden to organize anything for any festivity, forever."
"I absolutely agree," Sherlock said, sniffing and and burying himself under the blankets.