Shadowblood by Tracy Revels

Author:Tracy Revels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sherlock Holmes, mystery, crime, british crime, sherlock holmes short fiction, fantasy fiction
ISBN: 9781780920481
Publisher: MX Publishing
Published: 2012-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

I halted, choking on a cry of surprise and horror. Before me stood the vile man of my previous encounter. He was no longer dressed as a peasant, or clad in a uniform, but was wrapped in a heavy pea coat, with a greasy cap on his misshapen head. Still, his wart-covered chin was visible to me, and he slowly lifted his face, obviously enjoying my astonishment and mortification. Malevolence glittered in his sickly, mismatched eyes. His mouth opened, revealing broken, slime-coated teeth.

Then I saw the box. It was in a different shape, longer and narrower, as if containing whaling harpoons. Yet the ornate cross was still in place, glimmering as the air around it became thicker and more oppressive.

“You!” I sputtered, jabbing a finger at him. “What is your name?”

The wretch laughed at me.

And then he was gone.

“Watson!”

I nearly screamed when Holmes’s hand slapped hard upon my shoulder. My friend spun me around. His face was pale and agitated.

“You had best go below. It is not safe here.”

“Holmes, what is happening? I saw the dwarf and the box!”

His brows met. He was poised to ask a question, but at that moment a great noise enveloped us. It sounded like a massive groan, as if Poseidon himself was in agony. There were shouts and the men began to run, many of them dropping their devices. Bells clanged, horns bleated.

“Battle stations! Battle stations!” the men shrieked. I looked around and saw nothing.

“Who are we fighting?” I shouted, over the din.

“Not who,” Holmes corrected, “but what. Look there!”

I turned. The image I beheld was something from a nightmare. Great tentacles were shooting from the churning sea, slashing out at the sky. Bolts of lightning flashed down around them, illuminating the spectacle as slowly, majestically, a fantastic head arose from the foam. Larger than even a cathedral dome it loomed over us, its scaly flesh a sickly colour of green. Its entire form was encrusted with barnacles and twisted with seaweed, as if it had been eons slumbering on the ocean floor. And then, drawn closer to the bow by morbid fascination, I noted that protruding from its corpulent body were the bones of men, arms and legs and even grinning skulls, all melted into the beast, half-absorbed.

It opened eyes the size of wagon wheels. Multiple eyes, in thick rows, all red and glowing, seemed to fix to every man on deck. A mouth, circular and flabby, crested the dark waters and emitted a shriek, exhaling a stench that caused two sailors to faint. Holmes yanked me back, pulling me behind a set of crates as the spiky appendages began to flail and beat at the waves.

“My God, what is it?”

“Many things,” Holmes shouted. “It is the Kraken, the Leviathan, the great Iuk-Turso and the Hydra! It is every evil that dwells in the ocean!”

Before I could speak, one of the tentacles descended and snatched a sailor from the deck. His fellows fired guns at the monster, and one flung a harpoon. No weapon was effective.

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