Sherlock Holmes by Guy Adams

Author:Guy Adams [Adams, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857689344
Publisher: Titan
Published: 2012-07-11T22:19:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“I call him my father but in that he was one of many. That is why he grew to hate me. Fathers, like gods, are quick to grow angry at others who claim their title. The special creatures he has sired, the pure-bloods, who find their life through scalpel and needle, are perfect in his eyes. He loves them dearly. But those like me, his mongrels, built from a butcher’s shop of ingredients, to him we are nothing, we are empty and worthless creatures.

“But I am far from empty, I am filled with lives lived. I remember the warmth of the litter and the taste of sweet milk. I remember the feel of thick grass parting before me as I run, the sound of a rabbit’s heartbeat in my ears and the taste of its fear once it’s in my mouth. I remember the sun on my back and salt wind in my face—a face that now rots, torn away and left to decay; the feel of tarred rope in my hands and the solid decking shifting beneath my feet as the waves throw me towards the sky. I remember the pull of rope around my throat and the glint of a belt buckle in the gaslight; the feel of leather cracking against my back.

“I remember that last best of all and I tell you, Gentlemen, no man will strike me again without knowing consequences, not now I have the strength to strike back.

“How I fell into the hands of that final, terrible father of mine is simple enough. Some of me was sold to him by the man with the eager belt and strong swinging arm. The rest was acquired by criminal means. I have a memory of the taste of beer in my mouth, shore leave and the need to spend the few pennies in your pocket. I was abroad in the backstreets, unsteady due to drink and hopeful of finding someone to keep me warm for a few hours. Then there was the most terrible pain on the back of my head and the next thing I know, I’m waking up on a bed of straw, the stink of animal scat and rotten food in my nostrils. If I had owned the nose you see now, this fine organ that would know what your landlady was cooking for supper as soon as twitch, then I think that smell would have driven me mad. But maybe I’m wrong, maybe what the sailor found distasteful would have been like fresh fruit to me now—so many things have changed, my tastes more than anything else.

“As he screamed and shouted, yanking at the irons that had been placed around his hands and legs—irons like these, Gentlemen, and do not think that I will tolerate them long, for I won’t—the hound that had cowered in fear at the sound of its master’s tread cowered still, its simple mind not knowing what lay ahead. But then, how could it have predicted it? No beast, walking on two legs or four, could have had the first idea what was in store.

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