FROM THE DREAM JOURNAL OF DR. JOHN WATSON
THE AIR SMELLS STRANGE. CITY AIR, TO BE SURE, BUT NOT London’s. It’s cleaner. Drier. Almost dusty. It gives the impression of summer, though I cannot feel the heat. In the center of this basement room stands a circle of nine lawmen.
Black Stetsons rest on their heads, probably seven feet from the soles of their black leather boots. The overcoats they wear are black, too. Or, they were. They are aged and weathered; one can hardly imagine the years and miles they’ve traveled. The eyes of the lawmen are dim and haggard above their black moustaches.
They stand in a circle, looking down at a man who stands in the middle of the ring. Their hate for him is palpable. They’d kill him if they could. Which—I realize—means they can’t. All they can do is stare at him with impotent rage.
“Well now, here we all are, eh, boys?” says the man. He’s American, though there’s just the hint of a Scottish brogue to his speech. He’s balding, with a dark beard in a severe cut. He must be in his forties, and yet there is a boyish quality to him, not unlike Warlock Holmes. His tone is jovial. “I’ll bet you fellers didn’t think anyone’d wake you up from that sleep of yours and put you to use. But that’s what we’re going to do, yes indeed! They’re havin’ a hell of a war, back east. And half of them is fighting for a cause you boys’d know a good bit about: they’re trying to keep men enslaved. And I guess that’s what you fellers’re for, eh? But here’s a bit of a catch: you’re meant to be slaves, too. Yep, you were supposed to help some dead Frenchie rule us all. Now, it’s too late for that, but I reckon I’ve got a use for you. You see, slavery needs new ground to flourish, or the Civil War’s gonna wipe it out. So the ten of us, we’re gonna make the West poison to the slaver. We’re gonna hold it over there, where it can’t live long. Yep! How ’bout that? Damned if Abraham Lincoln don’t bless the day he met me! All right boys, let’s get you presentable. Show me your ‘badges’.”
The nine lawmen’s left arms move stiffly, as if against their will. Their pale hands reach forward into the circle and present black leather wallets. Each opens to reveal a gleaming badge in the shape of a triangle. Inside the triangle is an all-seeing eye, above the words We Never Sleep.
The dream is pushing me forward now, into the circle. I have no idea why, until I break into the center and all the lies that have been woven around these creatures fall away. I see them as they truly are. Those nine things aren’t men. Had I thought them pale-skinned? That isn’t skin! It’s… more like… have you seen a wasp’s nest? Their gray spittle dried to papery solidity? They have no eyes, no mouths. Just gaping holes into their empty, papery heads. They are not men, but made to fool men. Tall, slender, crooked lies with dried, crackling skin in black robes.
I know these creatures! One of them nearly killed me, just three days ago.
I’m so shocked to learn their true identities, it takes me a moment to notice that their badges are not exactly as they appeared, either. They hold no wallets; each of the nine fiends have been branded with marks of ownership. Their left palms have been scorched with the eye in the triangle.
I’ve seen that before!
I’ve done that before!
I once cut the hand from Alexander Holder, guardian of the Beryl Coronet, and burnt that symbol into his disembodied palm to try to save him from Moriarty. I drew that triangle and those words: the slogan of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
My eyes fly to the man beside me in the center of the circle. That’s Allan Pinkerton! By God… What has he done?
Holder’s words come back to me. I remember how he scoffed at the thousands of men in Pinkerton’s employ. He’d invited me to disregard them. Allan Pinkerton—he had said—had only nine true agents. Nine riders, clad in black. And woe to him that sees one.
What has Allan Pinkerton done? And how? And why? To end slavery? Of course it’s a noble goal, but doesn’t he understand what he’s set loose? I am standing in a circle of mankind’s worst nightmares. Pinkerton seems to have control over them for now, but what if he slips? What if he dies? He’s only a man, as far as I can tell.
But what an audacious man. It seems he’s Holmes’s equal for that, as well. Anybody who can behold the true visage of the nine can see the extent of Pinkerton’s daring—can see just what steps he’s taken to make his new agents “presentable”. They aren’t men and they aren’t marshals and they certainly don’t have facial hair—how could they; they don’t have faces. What they do have is playful little curlicues of black paint just above where they ought to have lips.
Allan Pinkerton has painted goddamned moustaches on the greatest and most terrible magical beings this planet has ever known. I bet if I could see the tops of their heads, I’d find little doodles of cowboy hats.
To borrow a phrase from the locals, the man’s got balls!
I feel the dream beginning to slip from me. No! Not yet! I need time to look on the nine: time to know them.
There is the least of them: Force, symbolized by the Sword. He is hardly more than an aspect of the other nine—a supporter and a catch-all.
Next comes Unity, the Fasces. He is duty. Propriety. If we know what is expected of us, and obey that expectation, it is his touch we are feeling. As a soldier and an Englishman, I know this fellow all too well.
There is Secular Command, the Crown, standing beside Religious Command, the Hieroform. The two are often at odds, yet how often have they come together to change the destiny of this world?
Pain, symbolized by the Cruciator, stands beside Fear, the Gauntlet—that’s the one who nearly ended me, just a few days ago.
Wealth, the Coin, needs no companion. Because, really, what else do you need but wealth?
And here is the strange thing about the hearts of men, and what drives them to commit terrors upon each other: the softest forces are the strongest. Here stands the prince: second of the nine. He is the Heart. He is Love. He stands at the left hand of their king, the greatest of them. It’s hard for me to know what his symbol is—it’s stranger than the others. A little black tableau. A family? I think it must be.
He is taller than the others, and much, much stronger. He’s the biggest, blackest liar of them all.
Hope.
And with that glimpse of Hope, humanity’s strongest and most pernicious predator, the dream is over.
