HONK, HONK!
Ah, that familiar bane to nocturnal regularity: Holmes’s accordion. The reader will forgive me, I hope, that I have not chronicled each and every instance when it stirred me from slumber. Neither have I seen fit to write of each barking dog, arguing cabman or overzealous sparrow that did the same. Yet all those secondary annoyances put together had not racked up nearly the score of Watson-wakenings as Holmes’s damned accordion could boast.
To be fair, he had warned me. On the day we met he’d listed his flaws as a living companion and had dutifully included this predilection. He had certainly forgotten to mention a couple of other key traits (for example, the fact he was riddled with demons) but he’d been as good as his word on the accordion. He would often launch into honking, squealing song at whatever hour he felt he must. I’d learned not to mind it much, for I loved Holmes and he was always sorry to be a disturbance; he seemed as much a victim to this habit as I was. Yet that morning, he gave me a selection from my least favorite section of his repertoire: his incomplete tunes.
You see, it wasn’t so bad when I could hear the whole song. True, “Davey, Get You Up and Kiss Me” was far from my favorite ditty, but at least I had the consolation of hearing its entirety whenever Holmes played it. Yet sometimes he played only tiny snatches of song, disembodied honks and chords that formed no cohesive melody. I’m sure anybody who has ever roomed with the second bassoonist for the Vienna Philharmonic could tell you what it’s like—to have their living companion constantly playing tiny parts of the world’s finest compositions. The man who can enjoy Wagner, having only heard the second bassoon part, has an infinitely superior musical ear to my own.
Until that fateful morning, Holmes’s orphan honks had been much more vexing than his complete tunes. Yet, that morning I had failed to truly wake from my Xantharaxespowered dream. The veil was yet over my eyes when I emerged from my room, sometime between four and five in the morning, bidden by Holmes’s intermittent honking. Conscious choice had not yet displaced the strange felicity of imagination unfettered by waking reason. And so, with the secrets of magic burning in my blood, I heard Holmes’s song for the first time.
The whole song.
Honk, honk! went the accordion. And from a thousand other realities, a multitude of demons screamed out, in perfect unison, “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!” (Oh, friends, not these sounds!)
Though the words were the same, the meaning was different for every creature. Some sang because they felt hate. Some because they were trapped in a realm of constant pain. Some boasted of their powers. Some only wanted to express that they were hungry and wished they could get to where Holmes was so they could eat. How was it that these thousands of different creatures—who could not possibly have known each other—had chosen to sing of their troubles in exactly the same syllables, at different pitches but in perfect harmony?
“Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen und freudenvollere.” (Let us make more pleasant and more joyful noises.)
Honk, honk!
Beneath us, I could hear the worms of the earth—the barely cohesive strings of thought and hope native to our world. They told of their fear of Holmes and the voices that sang in him. They pleaded for him to keep them out, for they were helpless to nurture the beings who lived on the planet they embodied, should the outsiders break in. They spoke in a rumble deeper than the shaking tones of whale song.
Brrrmmmm-hmmmmm-hrummmmmm—
Honk, honk!
“Freude! Freude!” (Joy! Joy!)
—hrmmmm-bmmmmmmmm-bmmmmmmm!
Honk, honk!
“Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium!” (Joy, beautiful, divine spark, Daughter of Elysium!)
And above it all, the all-but-inaudible trilling of the stars, as the celestial bodies above us spun in infinity. I could hear the changing tones of the invisible bonds of gravity that pulled them together as momentum swung them apart. How great the force that flung them through the void!
Yet the thing that struck the most awe into me—and the most terror—was the fact that I knew that song. I had heard it at a concert not a year before.
Brmmmmm-hmmmmmm.
Honk!
“Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!” (Divine being, we enter your sanctuary, drunk with fire!)
Beethoven’s Ninth, the “Ode to Joy”.
It was not the power of the thing that brought me to my knees, but the familiarity. Even the intoxicating grip of my dream could not shield me from the horror of it—could not stop me from understanding the ramifications of thousands of demons singing Beethoven. My eyes filled with tears. I knelt behind Holmes and held my hands up towards him. I don’t know if I was pleading with him to stop or simply overcome by the power of the song, but I trembled uncontrollably. My arms—pocked with innumerable needle-marks—had hardly the strength to raise themselves.
Why couldn’t they sing something else? If I didn’t recognize the song, I could maintain ignorance of my true situation: that thousands of beings of immense power were fascinated with my world. My home. Why were they not fixated on their own weird little worlds? Why were they singing bloody Beethoven?
Holmes.
That’s why: Holmes.
At last, I understood. And that is why I wept.
All these sounds I had never heard, Holmes always had. These were the constant truths and unwanted secrets that intruded into his mind at every hour of every day, usually as a cacophonous wall of noise. And, of course, he had no power to silence them. Silence reality? All the realities? No. He couldn’t.
Or at least he had the grace not to.
What he could do is pick up that damned old accordion and bully them. If they would not be silent, they would at least be harmonic. Why not put a happy smile on his face? And—with just a few accordion honks—why not throw his will out across all existences and force the discord of the multiple cosmoses to yield to him.
Ode to Joy.
Why not?
I let loose a wracking sob. Holmes stopped with a jerk and spun around. “Oh! Watson! I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
I made no answer. How could I? I just knelt there, my palms stretched pleadingly up towards him as I wept the tears of the helpless and the damned.
“Well, you needn’t be so dramatic about it, John!” he grumbled. “I’m finished now and you’re welcome to go back to bed. Or here, look: I’ve put the kettle on. Tea always helps you forgive me. You do forgive me, don’t you?”
He reached down and gently pulled me to my feet. “What’s wrong, John? You look terrible. By the twelve gods, you seem even more doomed than when you went to bed! Has something happened?”
I had no power left to lie to him. In the face of the things I’d just learned, I had no wit to hide my deeds. All my worries and sins burst from my mouth in a flood.
“I stole it, Holmes! I stole your amphigory and I stole your Xantharaxes! I’ve been using it for dreams. Oh, Warlock, I’ve learned so much! I can tell you about Moriarty! And Irene! I’ve seen my Irene. But she’s off kissing some Pinkerton bastard, I think. Oh! And, Holmes, I saw Allan Pinkerton! You won’t believe what he’s done! We’re all in danger, Holmes! We’re in such terrible danger!”
Holmes recoiled from me. “Wait, you’ve… you’ve what? You’ve been putting shredded mummy into the amphigory and injecting it? Why?”
“To know what you do, Holmes! To know enough about Moriarty that I’m not so helpless next time! To see her! I want to see her!”
“And that’s why you’ve been looking so wretched lately, John? Egad, I thought it was the flu!”
“The flu? The flu?” I cried, and waved my needle-scarred arms at him. “How could this be the flu?”
“Well, I don’t know. Chickenpox, then,” he said, furrowing his brow. “It seems I have been somewhat remiss. I should have paid more attention, I suppose. Yes… I’m sorry. Please excuse me.”
He walked past me with the saddest expression on his face and went into my room. The muted brassy clangs that emanated from therein gave me to know he was reclaiming his property—that bizarre instrument of self-torture that had become so precious to me. I heard him deposit the runcible amphigory on his alchemical desk. Soon he emerged again and walked past me to the mantelpiece. He looked down into the Persian slipper and recoiled when he saw how much Xantharaxes was missing. He pulled the slipper free from the nail that held it in place and walked back to his room.
I had no idea what I should do. Then again, my doctor’s training should have told me what I would do.
Sleep.
When you pull a bullet out of somebody, they sleep. As soon as that foreign irritant—the source of all their discomfort—has been removed, they cannot help it. The relief they feel is so profound, nature takes over.
In a sense, I was in exactly such a state. My lie was gone. The object of my addiction was stripped from me. I was still in pain, yet there was just enough relief to tinge the feeling, and there was nothing else I could do. I let myself sag to the sitting-room floor.
I woke some time later to find Holmes had pulled one of the overstuffed chairs next to me. There he sat, with his hands clasped in front of him. He knew I was awake, for his eyes locked on mine, but he made no move and offered no word. Nor did I. I just stared up at him, for as long as he stared down. Some minutes passed. Finally, he drew a melancholic breath.
“It has to end, Watson. Our partnership has run its course. It is time for you to find new lodgings.”
“No!” I cried, my voice hoarse and cracking. “I don’t want new lodgings. I don’t want a new life. I want to stay with you and have adventures.”
He shook his head. “It’s killing you. I’ve been selfish. I let it go too far. You are not a sorcerer, John. Not a warrior. Not a monster. You’re a doctor. From now on, that is what you must be.”
How can I describe the panic and fury that arose in me? Had I expected my life to take its current course? No. Yet hadn’t I done well? Hadn’t I solved a few cases, triumphed over a few monsters, perhaps even saved Holmes? And now I was to be dismissed like some underperforming clerk? I would not accept it. My mind reeled through possible defenses and settled on a feeble technicality.
“No,” I said. “On the day we met you said if I gave you a sovereign, I might stay here however long I please. Well, I gave you that sovereign and I still want to stay!”
Holmes recoiled in horror. “Oh no! Oh, no, no, no! I did say that, didn’t I? Well, but… This is no good! This cannot be allowed to stand! We have to find a way to change what you want. We must modify your desires, because otherwise…”
As he rose to pace, I stared up at him with defiant exhaustion. That’s right, Holmes: you are bested. How dare you try to get rid of me? Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with? John-Bloody-Heimdal-Bloody-Watson, that’s who! This is my right place and my right life and I will not let you take it from me! Ha! In a paroxysm of triumph, I slumped forward onto my face and slept once more.
The next time I awoke, it had nothing to do with Holmes, but with my preeminent domestic antagonist, Mrs. Hudson. An ear-pounding door-pounding shook me from slumber. Luckily, the assault was quick. Our door latch—which had been a bit derelict in its duties of late—chose to give way. My eyes popped open to reveal the blurry form of Mrs. Hudson standing in the now-open doorway with a female visitor.
Perfect! Just what was needed: a case to prove my worthiness to Holmes and distract him from this preposterous John-you’re-in-danger-and-we-must-stop-adventuring-together thing he’d concocted. I rose to greet our guest.
Well… I tried to. As I’d slept I seemed to have worked myself into an awkward head-down, bottom-up position, which was practically optimized to highlight… well… not my finest aspects. My right cheek was pressed against the floorboards in a manner that held my mouth slightly open, resulting in a fairly impressive puddle of drool. As I tried to rise, using my face as leverage, I slipped in this self-manufactured water hazard and tumbled sideways. I tried to stand again, but my legs were weak and I crashed down upon my rump.
“That is Warlock Holmes?” our guest asked.
“Nah,” said Mrs. Hudson, reassuringly. “That’s the other one, Watson. He’s a medical doctor, would you believe? Usually, he ain’t the scary one, but… Cor, blimey, Dr. Watson, what have you done to yourself?”
“You’ll have to forgive Watson; he’s a bit indisposed at the moment,” said a voice from behind me. Warlock Holmes strode past, straightening his sleeves and fiddling with those cufflinks I’d stolen for him. Damn him, he looked impeccable. In a tone of languorous detachment, he asked, “Now, who is this you’ve brought to see us, Mrs. Hudson?”
“Mary Somefin-or-other. She’s got a problem.”
“Well, why don’t you step inside and tell us all about it, Miss Mary. Perhaps I might be of service.”
“Me too!” I insisted, from my spot on the floor. “Imma help!”
“I very much doubt that, John,” said Holmes, then—in a tone of condescending charity—added, “I mean: I’m sure there will be no need for you to trouble yourself.”
Damn him! He was helpless at this sort of thing without me, and it galled me that he didn’t know it. I shook my head a few times to clear it, and focused all my observational powers on our guest.
It was as if she were being average on purpose. Her height was normal. Her build, perhaps just on the slim side of utterly nondescript. She had a face that could only be described as face-ish and hair exactly the color of… you know… hair. Her dress was of an unremarkable cut and—I swear this is true—of a grayish beige material. Someone must once have walked into a fabric shop and declared, “I am going to make a dress. My goal is to never have anybody remark that it is attractive, that it is ugly, or that it is anything except just a dress. Now, what sort of material can you show me?” Indeed, the only thing that stood out about her was her expression. It was disapproving, bordering on contemptuous. Which—now that I put it to paper, I realize—is precisely what I deserved.
Nevertheless, she presented me with a chance to prove my worth—a chance I had no intention of wasting. With Herculean effort, I drew myself to my knees and crawled towards our kettle. It was time to get this pinch-faced shrew onto the couch and find out what her problem might be.