Lovegrove Cthulhu Casebooks - Sherlock Holmes and the Highgate Horrors

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80336-157-4
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 512 Seiten

A brand-new thrilling tale of madness, murder and reanimated corpses in the Cthulhu Casebooks series, where Sherlock and Watson fight the fiendish plots of the terrifying and alien Mi-Go, from the New York Times bestselling author. It's 1929 and an ageing Dr John Watson, conscious of his imminent demise, finally sits down to write a fresh chronicle disclosing the true events behind his published accounts of Sherlock Holmes's exploits. In these pages, Sherlock Holmes and his stalwart companion encounter reanimated corpses in Highgate Cemetery; a very different, though ever elusive, Irene Adler; tales of madness and murder in the frozen wastes of the north; grotesque organic machines; and much more. Each case brings the illustrious pair ever closer to the dramatic and terrifying truth about the mysterious aliens, the Mi-Go, and their plans for Earth...

James Lovegrove is the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Odin. He has been short-listed for many awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Scribe Award. He won the Seiun Award for Best Foreign Language Short Story in 2011, and the Dragon Award in 2020 for Firefly: The Ghost Machine. He has written many acclaimed Sherlock Holmes novels, including Sherlock Holmes & the Christmas Demon. As well as writing books, he also reviews fiction for the Financial Times. He lives in Eastbourne in the UK.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lovegrove, James

Leseproben

PREFACE
BY JAMES LOVE GROVE IF YOU’VE READ THE CTHULHU CASEBOOKS TRILOGY, particularly the last volume of the three, then you’ll know that, for me, preparing those books for publication turned out to be a terrible ordeal. The strain of toiling over Dr Watson’s typescripts for months on end wore me down, and I ended up having some sort of psychotic break. Consequently, for my own wellbeing and that of those around me, I was detained under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act and sent to an NHS facility for treatment. The place was situated deep in the heart of the East Sussex countryside, not far from the town of Crowborough, and was called Providence House. The associations between “Providence” and H.P. Lovecraft are not lost on me, although in this instance the name was surely chosen to evoke a sense of destiny and supernal protective care rather than the capital city of the state of Rhode Island, that author’s birthplace and hometown. Nor does it escape me that the celebrated Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who among his many accomplishments served as Dr Watson’s literary agent, spent the last couple of dozen years of his life in Crowborough at his house, Windlesham Manor, where he lies buried. There’s even a statue of the man in the town, at the central crossroads (it’s not life-size and makes him look very short when in fact he was tall). In all, then, Providence House would seem an ironically appropriate location for someone whose condition had been brought on by exposure to a confluence of Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes. I’d love to tell you that the building was a rambling Gothic mansion with elaborate wrought-iron gates and ivy crawling up its sides like a host of demonic dark green claws, and that the skies above it were perpetually overcast and threatening rain. In fact, Providence House was a linked set of modern low-rise blocks nestling among neatly cultivated grounds – more Premier Inn than Arkham Asylum – and during my time there, which lasted six months, the weather was largely pleasant, England in all its temperate glory. The care I received within the walls of that establishment was second to none. Through a mix of counselling, group therapy sessions and pharmaceuticals, I was able to come to terms with the things I’d seen, or thought I’d seen, and the unusual behaviour patterns I’d exhibited, in particular crouching on a beach as though in prayer and incanting the phrase “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” over and over. It was made apparent to me that, doubtless through stress and working too hard, my imagination had overridden the logical part of my brain and I’d lost the ability to distinguish delusion from reality. This is a commoner occurrence with authors than you might think (or perhaps you might not). We live in our heads so much that sometimes we get stuck inside them and can’t find our way out. Towards the end of my spell of treatment the staff took some of us inmates on a day trip to nearby Groombridge Place, to give us a bit of an airing. As is the case with many a stately home these days, the grounds of the house have been turned into a tourist attraction, with various fun activities on offer and the inevitable gift shop and tearoom. But Groombridge Place also has special resonance for Sherlock Holmes fans, since it appears, thinly disguised, in The Valley of Fear, Dr Watson’s account of the events surrounding the seeming murder of John Douglas. While roaming the gardens I got talking to someone who worked at the property, an archivist, and when he learned that I had a Holmes connection and had edited the three Cthulhu Casebooks, he got quite enthused. “I have something I think you’d like to see,” he said, and once I’d obtained permission from one of the nurses, I went off with the man to the manor house itself, which is a private residence and not open to the public. We crossed the moat via a conventional stone bridge – not a drawbridge as Watson has it – and soon we were in a large library and the archivist was opening a locked cupboard, from which he took out an old, very scuffed and battered box file. The artefact exuded age and neglect, right down to the layer of dust that seemed ingrained in its cardboard and the splotches of mildew along the edges. He placed the box file reverentially on a table and raised the lid. Inside lay a sheaf of brittle foolscap, bound with a ribbon. The paper may have once been white but it was now a pallid mushroom grey. Handwritten across the top page, in faded blue ink, were these words: The   Highgate   Horrors Being   an   accoun   by   Dr   John   H   Watson   MD   of   a   series   of   ghastly   eldritch   adventures   that   befell   myself   and   Mr   Sherlock   Holmes NOT   FOR   PUBLICATION I felt a little shivery thrill. “Is that what I think it is?” “What do you think it is?” the archivist said. “Well, ‘eldritch’ suggests it isn’t a conventional Holmes chronicle.” “Quite.” “It’s another Cthulhu Casebook.” “That’s my own conclusion.” I was both excited and apprehensive. “How come it’s here?” “Conan Doyle used to visit Groombridge a fair amount,” said the archivist. “The story goes that one day, late in his life, he brought this manuscript along and asked for it to be looked after. He was Dr Watson’s agent, as you know. He said Watson had sent it to him recently and he wanted the thing out of his house and kept away from prying eyes. He especially didn’t want his executors to find it among his effects. This was a year or so before he died, and clearly notions of posterity were weighing on his mind. He spoke of the manuscript as though it was diseased, something rotten and dangerous.” “‘Cursed’, perhaps?” “If you’re being fanciful, then yes, maybe. Doyle expressed a wish that nobody should ever read it. There was some curiosity about this at the time within the family. Understandable, given how popular Watson’s works were.” “And still are.” “But when a gentleman of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stature makes a request, it’s respected,” said the archivist, “and so the manuscript has sat in this library ever since, locked away and more or less ignored, becoming just a scrap of odd family folklore. That’s how it stayed for nearly a century, until I came along. The current owners of Groombridge hired me to sort through their papers and their book collection, and when I chanced upon this thing, stashed in a cupboard, I couldn’t help but take a look and find out what I could about it. And now – lucky me – I’ve run into you, Mr Lovegrove. Someone who knows a fair bit about Dr Watson’s more esoteric output.” “Too much for my own good,” I said, mostly to myself. “Having read it myself, it seems of a piece with the other Cthulhu Casebooks, the same mix of straightforward sleuthing and outlandish supernatural shenanigans. Parts of it, in fact, made me somewhat uneasy even as I was leafing through. That ‘glancing over your shoulder’ feeling. You must know what I’m talking about.” “I do.” “And it occurs to me – just a thought – but now that I’ve met you, I’m wondering whether you might be willing to read it yourself and authenticate it for me.” I shook my head, not so much a “no” as an “I’m not sure”. “There’d be a fee involved,” the archivist said. “I can arrange that. And perhaps, if you do decide the manuscript is the genuine article, we could look into getting it published. I mean, the Cthulhu Casebooks have sold well, haven’t they? If this is another of them, it makes commercial sense to get it into readers’ hands. There’s always a market for newly discovered Dr Watson works, isn’t there?” None of this I could argue with. I was hesitant only because the existing three Cthulhu Casebooks, although they’d benefited me financially, had cost me in other ways. “You’ll consider it at least?” the archivist said, handing me his card. I gave a noncommittal nod and slipped the card into my pocket. A couple of weeks later I was discharged from Providence House with a clean bill of mental health. I went home, and I tried not to think about the archivist and that greyed, brittle manuscript. But the title had stuck in my brain – The Highgate Horrors – and I couldn’t help wondering what was contained within those pages. What story did Dr Watson have to tell that was so alarming, so unsettling, that he had designated it “NOT FOR PUBLICATION”? What was it about the manuscript that had compelled Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to ditch it at...