Chapter Text
That I had been in the Afghan War was painfully obvious to anyone with eyes to see and a brain to think. There was not a soul in London who had not heard the stories of soldiers returning from abroad with strange battle scars unsound minds. It was implied by looks and unsaid words that the lucky ones did not return at all. My medical schooling had not prepared me for the half of it, not for the raw brutality of war, nor for the injuries that could not have been inflicted by any earthly thing. Nor for the keening madness that followed men off the battlefield and sunk its claws dream-deep in their brains. I was not prepared for it to happen to me.
This affliction I carried back with me, it hung over me like a miasma. Some ineffable animal sense alerted people around me that I was not like them. Never in my life had I experienced this sort of tacit rejection. Upon my return to New Albion I wanted nothing so much as to be surrounded by people and to feel the safety of a crowd. But even in London, surrounded by millions, I was bitterly alone. It was almost as bad as being at the bottom of a cave.
There was nothing to be done for my particular madness – if, indeed, I was mad. In those days “dream madness” was very in vogue. It was an aesthetic ailment for romantic heroines. Only those of particularly poetical disposition were so psychically oversensitive to be thus affected. Thus it became common for society ladies to feign the illness in order to seem more interesting. I admit it made me doubt my own mind.
I tried to keep my experiences to myself, when I could. It became difficult when I was awoken by horrors in the night, or when I saw things that lurked in darkened alleys or shadowy corners.
There was no cure, so, as a doctor, I prescribed myself medicine: a very great deal of whisky.
Thank the Gods for whisky.
Alcohol is the greatest invention in the scientific history of mankind. Trains, telegraphs, moveable type: all of that can go hang. They may help get things done, but can a train soothe the soul? I think not (unless you walk in front of it, maybe.) I took my 11s 6p per diem— that lordly sum I was allotted in exchange for, having had the very great honour of serving Her Majesty's Army, passing the rest of my days like a ghost, like a leper, like a lame dog— and literally pissed it away, quite happily.
The Queen’s Arms was my favoured haunt. No one cared if I played billiards badly, or that I laughed too loudly when the pianist played that silly song about the wounded soldier and I looked around to see if anyone noticed it was about me. Sometimes, in a confused drunken way, I liked to imagine I and all my fellow drinkers were suspended in a lovely peaceful afterlife.
Being, as it was, not the afterlife, but a London pub, women occasionally pestered me. If I were the man I once was I would be amenable to their advances. Women tend to dote upon me. I have been told I have a certain boyish charm – maybe it’s the size of my ears— that makes women find me approachable. As soon as they get a good look at me, the alcohol haze falls away and they cannot mask the look of alarm at what they see in my eyes.
In The Queen’s Arms there was a small stage at the end of the long room, past the billiards tables and the small round tables for seating. A piano abutted one side. On weekends it became a hotbed of mediocre singers and musicians.
Very late one night in early winter, I was sitting at the bar nursing a drink. The pianist was plinking away at something, and what with the low murmur of the sparse crowd, the thrice blessed whisky, and my own dismal thoughts, I took no notice when he stopped and an unfamiliar man took the stage.
Now, I do not pretend to know anything about music. I can only speak of my subjective experience. The first note struck me as discordant and tentative, like an inhale before breaking silence. And then as the music softly slipped over me, I paused, entranced.
I turned around and saw a tall, thin, pale, raven haired man dressed in a dark suit, who seemed to float in the haze of smoke and gaslight. I do not know exactly what he played on his violin, but I’ll never forget it. It sounded quite old, and deceptively simple. So bittersweet and wistful to begin, tentative, circumspect, then rising to ebullience, and then drifting off into softness and peace.
Long after he left – to a feeble smattering of applause that made me wonder if anyone else had heard the same music as myself – the notes still echoed in my mind. That night I dreamed of his violin. For the first night in so many I was not awoken by nightmares – or kept asleep by vile chemicals. I dreamed I was wandering through London, trying to find…something. It was dark and foggy, but I knew all would be well if only I could follow the sound of that music.
I returned to The Queen’s Arms almost nightly, only to hear him play. I never tried to speak to him – what would I say? – but the more I watched him the more enraptured I became by his strange, severe features, the graceful movement of his body, and his eyes. When he played, he adopted a dreamy half-lidded expression. But when I did see his eyes, they were startling. They were very light, almost like a blind man’s. They haunted my dreams, also.
The last time I saw him, I was the focus of those terrible eyes. He finished his set and as he took a bow he glanced out into the audience. His eyes lit upon me. They lingered. I was taken aback. It felt like a challenge. Then, as if nothing had happened at all, he looked away, and sauntered off the stage.
I never saw him there again.
The winter ground on. The year turned. I learned the best way not to think about death was not to think at all.
I enquired after the violinist incessantly, but the mystery remained unclear. I learned that his name was Vernet, and that he occasionally played theatres around town. Horror crept back into my dreams. I dreamed of the war every night.
The ghazis were fierce fighters, and they had strange forces on their side that were unmatched by any weapon I knew of. Savage beasts lived in the mountains, things that were half man and half dog but more vicious than both. They attacked our camps in the twilight. I remember their eyes gleaming red in the light of the setting sun. They could rip a man apart with their bare hands with all the potency of a pulwar. To make matters worse, they carried a sort of rabid infection, and a bite was often a death sentence. I dreamed of the infected men, watching them transform. There was little I could ever do. In some dreams, I put them down. In others, I let them bite me.
The worst disaster of the campaign, the one that changed my life forever, occurred when we were sent on a mission to head off the enemy by cutting directly through the mountains. They had once used the ancient tunnels as hideouts. It was rumored that deep within there were ancient stone cities from before the age of man, and incomparable riches. This turned out to be, as they say in the military, “bad intelligence.” It took hardly any time for us to become hopelessly lost.
Often, in my dreams, I was in those tunnels again. Enormous sculptures of gruesome inhuman creatures lined the cave walls. Their terrible beaked faces seemed to grin in the wavering light of our lanterns. We marched in silence, but each man wondered to himself what could have inspired the ancient stone carvers to invent such creatures. At this point the dream is always the same and I can do nothing to prevent it.
Someone behind me calls for help. As I turn I see his face. It is horribly twisted, beyond the bounds of physical possibility, like I am looking at him through a glass of water. But still his mouth moves and he screams.
Emerging from the darkness were forms, but not of any men. They were those terrible creatures portrayed in the statues. One raised an appendage, like a hand with long clawed fingers, and as it gestured the soldier behind me fell to the ground, blood and organs spilling from him as if he had been turned inside out. Soldiers turned to fight but an invisible force immediately struck them down.
I heard the call for retreat. There were a series of explosions as all of our lanterns burst instantly and we were plunged into utter darkness. Everyone scattered. I became lost in the chaos, separated from my unit, blind in the darkness and running for my life like a rat. I had the presence of mind to light a vesta, but I could hardly tell where I had been or where I was going.
When I was lucky, this is when I'd wake up.
I got into the habit of keeping a light on when I slept. Too many times I had awakened in the dark hallucinating that one of those things stood at the foot of my bed staring down at me with its pin light eyes and needle teeth.
One day, for lack of anything to do, I was taking a round in the park near my new dreadful lodgings in Pimlico and was on some alley not far from St James Street. I remembered I was out of medicine and ducked into a chemist’s. Nothing could have prepared me for the series of events that would unwind from that this innocuous decision
I could tell instantly that the shop was no place for a respectable gentleman. (This was just as well, for I feared I had left that designation behind me forever.) The walls were covered with Eastern hangings, and prints with strange glyphs and human figures that I supposed represented different pseudo-medical systems. There were weird pagan idols in the display cases alongside the usual pills and rubbish patent medicines. The whole place smelled vaguely of hashish.
I momentarily doubted I had entered the right shop but I could clearly read the letters CHEMIST’S from the inside of the window. It seemed to be deserted. I considered leaving immediately, but my morbid curiosity got the better of me and I started looking at the displays.
There was the usual assortment of elixirs promising to cure dream madness, royal hysteria, psychic headaches – every variety of ailment that could be attributed to fraternization between a human and a noble. Madness was a fashion and medicine was like a hat ribbon or a feather – it was only for display. I picked up a bottle. The label read Dr Stamford’s PEACE OF MIND / Sedative - Soporific - Hypnostatic / Relieves Dream Madness. I huffed dismissively.
Suddenly I heard a step behind me. I turned, and behind the counter I was shocked to see a little round man wearing little round glasses with his pudgy little hands folded on the countertop. I do not have a particular phobia of little round men, but this one made my heart turn to ice for I was positive we knew each other. This may seem like an illogical reaction to seeing a former acquaintance, but I had been brought so low in my health and my fortunes that I couldn’t bear to be recognized. I was so ashamed of my condition and chemical dependencies that I was loath to even visit the same shop twice lest the proprietor see what a quantity of opiates I was getting through.
I stood there, petrified, in the middle of the dark, pungent shop holding Dr Stamford’s Peace of Mind in one hand with an expression like a cornered rabbit, staring at the eponymous doctor, and he said, “Good afternoon, sir. How may I help you?”
“Erm,” said I.
He smiled politely like one might when dealing with an idiot. “One of Dr Stamford’s patented dream cures for you, sir? May I recommend anything else?”
“Yes. Six ounces chloral, please.”
“Very good, sir.”
“It’s for a patient,” I added.
He spoke to me as he turned to his work preparing my order. “Oh, are you in practice, sir? Where are you situated? Don’t believe I’ve seen you in here before. As one medical man to another, I shall give you, for your patients, some samples gratis of my personal formulae. I have –ahaha- special knowledge of these bizarre illnesses and their cures.”
If I had been my own self I would have made some cutting remark about his lack of ordinary knowledge, never mind special knowledge. Instead, I was shocked that he really didn’t recognise me. The realisation crushed me. I looked at my reflection in the glass display case. Thin, hollow cheeked, with dark circles around my eyes. It was no wonder he didn’t recognize his onetime fellow student. The war had aged me ten years. I looked more like a cadaver than a doctor.
“Here you are. That’ll be 9s even,” he said, placing a paper parcel before me.
I put my money down and stared at my hand. I felt a sudden, overwhelming need to be recognized, if only to have someone confirm that I was alive. “Thank you, Michael,” I said.
He leaned forward and peered into my face. Then he struck his fist upon the counter and exclaimed, “John Watson! Well, I’ll be damned.” He bustled out from behind the counter. He shook my hand vigorously and patted my shoulder as he said, “It’s been ages. What have you been doing with yourself?” Then with an odd smile, “What the devil have you been doing with yourself? You look absolutely godawful.”
I gritted my teeth. He wasn’t wrong. “I was in the war.”
“Oh. Ah.” He made a queer grimace as if I had said something embarrassing. Of course I had. I felt my face flush.
“Thank you. Good day.” I turned to leave.
“Wait-“
There was a hand on my sleeve. I shook it off, but did not move away.
“I haven’t seen you in ages, Watson. Come in the back and have some tea. I'll turn the sign around.”
The back room of Stamford’s shop was different from the front in every way. It was charming, cozy, with a vase of flowers on the sideboard and pleasantly bland pictures on the walls. A woman had obviously decorated it, though I could not imagine Stamford with a wife. There was a fresh pot of tea and a plate of crumpets.
“I would have expected you to be a doctor by now,” I said as he poured.
“I never actually finished my degree. There was a big misunderstanding and I sort of got sent down. But my uncle passed away at about the same time. This shop belonged to him, so I took over. But I have no regrets. It has been very profitable. Very profitable, indeed.”
He pronounced "profitable" as if he were trying to imply something lurid.
“You see, my services are highly sought after in…certain circles. I have what you might call an exclusive clientele, with very…particular needs.”
I recalled why I was never close with Stamford at school. He was one of those people who was very eager to seem interesting. He tried to cultivate an air of mystery and worldliness but always managed to ruin the effect by his over enthusiasm. As he plucked a crumpet from the stack, I noticed he flourished a ring on his fat little finger that had the curious image of a green eye. He also had a gold pin on his cravat with a similar motif. Surely he was implying membership in some club or secret society.
I decided not to play his game. I nodded and sipped my tea.
“So, the army. That must have been a corker.”
I choked a bit. He had his chin in his hand and was leaning forward as if he were a child waiting to hear a story.
“Well, it was…it was…”
“I’d be pleased to hear all about it, Watson.”
I put down my cup.
My survival was an anomaly. I was found wandering alone in the desert weeks after the battle. I was delirious with thirst and badly bruised, but I was alive, and no one could understand how. I overheard the orderlies talking about it. Three other men had escaped the battle. One was a gibbering lunatic and could not be questioned. Another took his own life after a nervous breakdown in which he moaned about things that could not be unseen. The third, after he physically recovered, wandered out into the desert and was never seen again. My sanity, if not my life, was despaired of and I got the impression my caretakers believed it was only a matter of time.
I had a wound in my shoulder. It was officially recorded as a bullet wound, but that was only because no one could explain what it actually was. It was a hideous, suppurating thing. I developed a fever and imagined that monstrous tendrils were growing out of me. I shouted in my delirium about how what I found deep in that cave had touched me. It had infected me, I knew it, and everyone around me was ignoring this grotesque transformation.
Eventually I recovered enough that I appeared to no longer suffer delusions. At least, so much that I was not a disgrace to the army. I was sworn to secrecy about the effects of my injury. I swore to myself that I would continue to dissemble and cling to the facade of sanity with my last ounce of strength.
I told Stamford that I had been shot.
I hoped that by my careful omissions he might not suspect the truth, but I was only fooling myself and should have realized that he would know instantly, by what I had purchased from him not an hour before, the nature of my ailment.
He looked at me with an odd focus. I crossed my arms over my chest and looked away. Then he banged his fist on the table, making the tea service jump. “You can’t fool me, Watson, old man! I’ve seen these symptoms before and I know exactly what you need.”
I looked at him sidelong, dreading what was about to come, knowing I had given away too much.
“Come with me to the theater tonight!”
“Beg pardon?” He scurried out of the room and came back in an instant and thrust a slip of paper under my nose. I read:
THEATRE DES CATACOMBES
The Strand Players’ LONDON SPECTACULAR
Friday, Jan 6th 11pm
“I have a spare ticket. The fellow I was supposed to go with had a change of plans at the last minute. It’ll do you a world of good to get out, and you can meet some of my friends.”