Darkling, I Listen - Sherlock/John (Part 4b)
“Well then, look who’s decided to join us,” Moran drawls, taking a drag off his cigarette, when John comes to the fire, holding Harry in his arms. He’s wrapped her up in a few stray sheets he had found lying around and closed her eyes. He made sure to clean her wounds. She looks beautiful, even in death, wrapped in soft blue and white covers, as if she’s only asleep.
Jim perks up and pats the seat next to him, a friendly smile on his face. The light of the fire and the orbs hovering around them makes his expression brighter. “John! Are you feeling... better now?”
“Right, because that’s what you ask when a bloke sees his sister kill himself,” Sally glares at them. “Give him some space.”
Anthea doesn’t even acknowledge him. Her brow is furrowed in deep concentration as she types out on the keypad of her blackberry. John knows that technology doesn’t work in the fog and judging from the frustrated frown on Anthea’s face, her handheld device still isn’t giving a signal. He wonders if she does this every day in the fog, hoping that something has changed.
John ignores the pleasantries and goes straight to the point. “I need someone to lead me out of the tunnels. I’m not staying here with you people. I’m going to find Sherlock and I’m going to break the curse, then I’m going to go bury my sister.”
Once more he finds himself the target of bewildered (and one hysterical) stares.
“Are you daft?!” Sally yells at him just as Moran bursts out in laughter, muttering about the insane ones and what delicious emotions they have.
“You can’t go back out there. It’s almost witching hour, only a few more minutes before it begins,” Anthea points out without looking up from her phone. She tilts her head and tries another combination of buttons.
“I don’t care,” John says simply, holding his sister’s body tighter. “I’m going to find Sherlock, whether you help me or not. I don’t care about the fog and I don’t care about the demons. I’ll find a way to avoid being killed, it’s just a matter of returning to the street where you kidnapped me so that I can retrace my steps.”
“No,” Jim stands up, “You can’t leave. It’s too dangerous.”
“Why would you even want to seek out the freak anyways?” Sally shivers. “He’ll just,” she opens her mouth and no sound emerges.
Everyone around the fire, save for John, freezes.
“The little soldier doesn’t know yet,” Moran chuckles, “what his detective is hiding...”
“Detective?” John frowns, “Do you mean Sherlock?”
“We can’t tell you,” Sally tightens her jaw. “If you don’t know yet, even from being in the fog for this long, than we can’t tell you anything. The curse doesn’t let us.”
John glances at her quickly, “Alright. Well then, I guess I’ll be off...”
“Are you stupid?” Jim’s voice deepens and takes on a dark tone. He glares at John, the soft light making his flared nostrils and wide eyes more manic and threatening. “You’re safer with your own kind. To venture out during the witching hour is to go looking for your own death! And for what? This Sherlock character? What does he mean to you? This madman you met only a few days ago? Do you think he cares about you at all? If anything he sees you as a tool to use to break the curse, he does not care, he is not capable. He has-” Jim’s lips move, but he stops when he sees that the words do not sound.
John glares up at him, “I will not abandon Sherlock.”
“Well he’ll certainly abandon you, once he gets bored,” Jim tells him, and though his expression is not livid, John thinks that his eyes want to burn him.
“He’s a freak, John, he’s not worth it,” Sally tells him. “You’re better off trying to survive.”
“Look, he’s not a freak and I’m not leaving him alone in this godforsaken fog!” John shouts. “Now if none of you will help me, then I’m leaving and I’m not coming back.”
“Are you even listening?” Jim’s voice resonates loudly in the tunnel walls. “The beast has tried to come here for the past two nights. It’s looking for you. It’ll find you tonight and it will devour you. I suppose that’s how you want to die? With the beast in your arms?”
“Just what are you talking about?” John turns aback around. “I haven’t seen a beast in the dead zone at all. There’s no such thing. There’s only demons and crazy outsiders like you running around causing trouble! Leave me alone, I’ll find my own way.”
John turns his back on them all, while Jim is yelling, “You’ll regret this! You can’t survive without us. You’ll perish within seconds!”
Moran is still laughing (does that man do anything else?) when John hobbles past him. His laughter reminds John of the dissonant chords of an organ in an abandoned church, sharp and powerful. He still doesn’t know why but he can’t stand to be near Moran, the way that man stares at John... it’s disturbing.
“You’re an interesting soul, Watson,” Moran blows a puff of smoke down at his face. “Maybe you’ll ripen instead of going rotten like all the others...”
Fighting back an urge to shiver, John glowers at him, “Piss off, Moran.”
He is about to limp away, feeling the weight of his gun against his trouser pockets when Anthea stands next to him, offering to carry Harry’s body.
“I’ll lead you to the surface,” she say, her hands tender as they hold his sister’s hands. “There is something I need to discuss with you anyways-”
Anthea never finishes her sentence.
Because then they hear the scattered stampede of footprints, claws and screeches and among them, the howls of a wolf.
-
The fog has changed voices again. It’s taunting him, are you enjoying the game, Johnny boy? Because the endgame begins now!
-
It’s not witching hour yet, John thinks at first. And then another thought, what happened to the bells? But they’re underground, perhaps the clock tower’s chimes don’t reach so far below the city. It hardly matters now, not with the vicious growls growing closer.
“Run!” Sally yells, rushing into the tent to get Soo Lin. Her warning is drowned out by the snarls that rumble and shake the ground. The fog around them blackens so darkly that the fire is extinguished and Jim’s floating orbs of light are like dull fireflies trying to navigate through thick clouds of mist. There is barely enough illumination to help them see where they are running, but it is enough to see the features on the demon’s faces.
For the first time in his life, John thinks that it would have been better to be left in the dark, because the creatures are the most grotesque things he has seen in his life. He doesn’t think he will ever be able to describe how they look, a combination of red flesh and bone for skin, constructed together into menacing and towering monsters with sharp teeth and glowing eyes. Even as he glances up and sees hints of skeletal limbs peeking out of the demons, like they are personifications of human corpses.
Then John blinks and they no longer look that way, they are serpentine-like things, with black and rigid scales that resemble human thumbs, their eyes ooze out crimson. When he blinks a second time, they are humanoid figures with skull faces and human heads making up the rest of their bodies. He feels like he’s going to be sick from the flashing and contradicting images.
“Don’t look!” Anthea yanks on his arm and forces his head away. “Jim can’t turn off the lights once they’re made but if you stare for too long, you’ll go insane!”
He still feels as if he is going mad, but his mind is clearer without the distraction of demon images flashing through it.
“Right, we need to run, John. Do you understand? Don’t confront them in the light. Just run. And remember,” she pulls him close to hiss in his ear, “the only way to kill a demon or a witch, is to use a weapon that’s been touched by their blood or tears. Don’t try to fight them. Just run.”
She pushes John away and he wants to ask her how she knows this and why she didn’t mention it sooner in front of the others, for surely they could use the live saving advice? But then he sees Moran in the distance, his own gaze also oozing crimson... and he knows.
“Find Sherlock!” Anthea’s voice echoes in the flickering of shadows and light. “Find him and break the curse!”
“Anthea-”
John catches sight of her rushing to the weapons pile, pulling out the two pistols with both hands, her phone safe in her bra. Several of the creatures (don’t look, John, don’t look) swarm around her, but she just shoots at them consecutively and for a minute, John thinks that it won’t work. The demons grab at her, tearing at her skin but then they go rigid and they... and they...
And they fall.
It’s the first time John has seen a demon fall without specially regulated government weapons (weapons that the soldiers so rarely get access to, that the notion that demons are immortal and unable to be killed became accepted as fact.)
A weapon that’s been touched by demon/witch blood or tears.
They advance on John while he’s distracted and he shuts his eyes to avoid becoming caught in their appearances. He rushes away from the thundering stampede, the litany of screams (and laughter, there is so much manic laughter), growls and ripping of what he hopes is not flesh and skin. Harry’s body is heavy in his arms but he refuses to let go.
The demons are faster than he is. John hates his limp more than ever when he hears them all around him, surrounding him for the third time in the fog. His fingers itch for his gun and he resists the urge to lift his eyelids, to peek at the world in red and black.
If he has to charge through the line of creatures-of things-standing in his way, then so be it, John decides, but he’s not leaving without Harry.
His hands grab the edges of one of the sheets curled around his sister’s legs and he throws it up at them, hears the cloth fluttering for just one frail heartbeat in the air before it is torn to pieces and he is running again (always running.)
But his sister isn’t there anymore. He feels the weight of her body lessening and when he glances down, he is horrified to see that it is shrinking away, bits of her face and lips already faded like dunes of sand. Her corpse slips away into bits of dust-the day is over, of course, and the dead don’t really stay dead in Old London, they’ll be back again...
He thinks he can hear them now, the bells, sounding out from all angles and surfaces around him, pointlessly trying to give tempo to the unharmonious sounds of the monsters chasing him, the monsters that tear at his back as he ducks past them, squinting only barely so that he can see where he is going.
Hello again, Johnny boy, the fog cackles.
Piss off, he replies furiously, piss off and give me my sister back!
The noises are everywhere; they surround him so that he cannot tell where the next creature will be. It’s the damn tunnels and ricocheting noises. He can’t tell which snarls are real and which are mere ghosts of something already said. The gunshots are faint, but it tells John that Anthea is still alive. As he shuts his eyes again, to avoid going insane from staring at the demon’s true forms, he’s reminded insanely of Sherlock and his blindfold.
The random thought makes him almost laugh aloud. What he wouldn’t give to have Sherlock’s uncanny ability to move without his eyes right now-
“It’s the beast!” John hears Sally screaming from far behind him, while Soo Lin has shouting the most profane insults in Chinese at the monsters. “Don’t let it touch you! Run as fast as you can-”
The beast? He nearly turns back, morbid curiosity burning in his mind, but the soldier in him orders John to keep moving.
“John, look out!”
His eyes blinks open in surprise, blinded by the dancing shadows and light, the haze of demonic forms at in front of his sight. But he doesn’t focus on that. They are unimportant, blurred away because-
The wolf howls when it lunges at him, and the next thing John remembers is staring into Siraj’s jaws, the teeth clamping down on him.
-
“I keep hearing these rumours,” John tells Mrs. Turner, the third day that he has moved in, “about the dead zone.”
His landlady tenses. It’s the first time that he has brought up anything to do with the sphere of black fog that has swallowed the center of the city. John remembers that she is still half-convinced that he’ll change his mind and move out.
“I’m just curious,” he adds quickly. “Didn’t hear too much about Old London back in the army.” He’d only heard about the hoards of demons, increasing reports of soldiers picked off in the desert.
Mrs. Turner fiddles with the next two rows of her knitted jumper that she is making. “Well I suppose there’s no harm in it. What would you like to know?”
“The beast,” John says. “People whisper about it... and I’ve never heard reports of a beast in other dead zones. Why in London? And how do we know it’s there?”
Mrs. Turner turns around, checking conspicuously around the corners, as if there might be eavesdroppers listening in. Witches are tricky and with what little information the world has of them, the old superstitions are never frowned upon.
“That’s because the beast came first,” she whispers to him, the hollows in her cheek more pronounced.
His eyes widen. “I’m sorry, what?”
She starts to knit furiously, her head shaking as she replies, “I won’t say anything more, but that’s what they all say. The beast appeared before the fog and they say it still roams there to this day. The folks that used to live in this area would talk of howls in the night... demons don’t howl, not like the beast does. It’s an eerie sound that inspires nothing but dark things. That’s all I know.”
He nods slowly and thanks her for telling him.
“Why did you want to know about the beast, anyways, darling?” She pauses in her knitting.
“No reason,” John says, “just heard some things when I was out walking.”
What he doesn’t tell her is that sometimes the fog will keep whispering until he begins to scream. Sometimes the fog whispers so much that the only noise that seems to make it stop is the blood chilling howl that sometimes echoes in his dreams.
-
The wolf holds him in its mouth, throws him up in the air and catches the back of his coat with its jaws so that John is hanging out from its teeth like a cub. John gasps, feeling uncomfortable that his collar is pressing up against his neck while his legs dangle a few inches from the ground.
“Siraj,” he gasps out, “Siraj!”
But the wolf does not respond to John’s name for it (not that it knows that it’s been labelled as Siraj yet) and instead growls at the line of demons blocking both ways of the tunnel. John can still hear Moran laughing, remembers that man’s eyes flashing like a cat’s-
Then suddenly the wolf plunges forward, knocking over the creatures as Siraj rushes into the calling darkness, Jim’s lonely spheres of light left far behind. They are back in the dark again but Siraj seems to know where they are, because within a few moments, John is breathing fresh air again. The stagnant taste of the sewers is gone from his mouth and he can feel the fog more strongly here, pressing against his skin.
It is still cackling at him, cackling like the mad hatter.
And John cannot see through it. Everything is pitch-black save for the wolf’s grey/blue/green eyes.
They are still moving. Siraj turns swiftly, left, right, right again, left. John can hear the demons still pursuing, can still picture the way they had looked (no, don’t, don’t think of that again, Watson, or you’ll claw your eyes out-) He wonders if Soo Lin, Jim and Sally managed to survive. He wonders how far Anthea can run before her bullets run out. And Harry (no, don’t think of her, just find Sherlock, find Sherlock, he had promised-)
John chokes again, feeling his coat collar being pulled on as Siraj leaps down another winding road to the left (the sinister path) and he yells, “Stop! Stop, Siraj, stop!”
The wolf doesn’t listen, or maybe it hasn’t heard him and so he reaches up to pull on the wolf’s fur and it growls at him.
“Let me go,” John chokes out, “I’m not a wolf like you. At this rate, I’ll be accidentally strangled by my own coat!”
Siraj moves left once more, his growls more pronounced in what John thinks may be a narrower alley. It’s difficult to say with all of this running in the dark. John thinks he might have to try to communicate with his companion again when the wolf drops him against a pile of soft trash bags.
The noises and demons are getting louder, closer.
As John is coughing, the wolf nudges him with its nose towards its back. When he gapes at it, Siraj glares at him and barks sharply, pushing him as much as it can with its head. The hoard is coming.
John looks up and meets its eyes, transfixed by their odd colouring before he climbs on.
-
Riding the wolf is different from anything he has ever experienced. Siraj moves with such speed that John feels like he is hugging onto the wolf’s back for his own sanity, his cheek pressed against surprisingly soft fur. He can feel Siraj’s pulse matching up with his own, beating faster and faster the longer that Siraj runs. John can barely catch his breath; there is nothing but black and noises.
The only thing that is real to him is the wolf and so John holds on.
-
He hears familiar creaking and groaning of wood boards and metal pipes when Siraj takes one final right turn. John would recognize those intense and deliberate creaks from anywhere. Its 221B and the flat sounds like she is humming a horrible medley of one of Bach’s fugues combined with Beethoven’s fifth symphony. Somehow the strange mixture of creaks and bangs is fitting and, John finds, oddly comforting.
There is also the startling conclusion that the wolf has deliberately led him here of all places...
“Siraj,” He begins, voice muffled against the wolf’s fur.
But the wolf is growling menacingly at something in front of them. John can’t see it (and it kills him, not being able to help, being so blind) but he pulls out his pistol anyways, aims it straight ahead despite how useless it will be.
There is nothing but silence, silence and breathing and Siraj’s protective snarls before-
It attacks from the side, hitting Siraj and consequently knocking both wolf and man to the ground. John hisses, his fists scrunched tightly against his companion before Siraj jumps up, running again, the thing, whatever it is, rushing behind him.
Siraj gives out a loud howl, this one on a different tone than the others and then John hears a door slamming open, Mrs. Hudson shouting, “Sherlock, John, in here!” while 221B makes the loudest crashes and bangs John has ever heard-
They crash into the floor, against the rugs, knocking over little tables holding various vases. There is the sound of wood snapping, probably the railings of the stair case and somehow John has ended up sprawled underneath the wolf, hidden from sight as the wolf lashes out at the thing/demon/creature/god-what-is-that that is tearing into the front lobby, ripping out bits of wallpaper.
“Mrs. Hudson!” John sees her unconscious, probably knocked out when Siraj charged into the hallway, by one of the candles (why is there light in the flat?) trying to crawl away from the thing that has grabbed her leg. He tries to get up, fumbling for his gun but the wolf snaps at him, pressing him down on the floor with its paws.
The entire flat seems to revolt, that is the only word to describe it, because suddenly all of the ceiling crumbles down on top of the demon. The tiles on the floor lift up and tie the demon down on the ground, wrapping around it’s (Skin? Scales? Fur? Flesh?) body and squeezing tightly. John hears 221B’s clatters and shouts as the tiles move the contained demon against the wall.
He sees knives floating in the air, glinting in the candlelight and then-
There are screams and there is blood, but none of it human.
-
The door closes shut as the flat calms down; its favourite residents and only humans safe inside. 221B seems to sigh as the blades float back into their proper drawers and a calming hum seems to echo in the flat. Only the thing that is dripping and nailed to the wall with kitchen knives serves as proof that they had nearly been eaten by a demon.
John only listens to his harsh gasps, staring up at the wolf who regards him neutrally.
In the candlelight, he can finally see what his wolf really looks like.
Siraj is huge, just as he thought it would be, with black fur that is not ragged per say, but wild and untamed with familiar curls. He can see how its face would be menacing, with the sharp creases of its forehead, the enormous ears and the way it is quick to bite down one of the demons, tearing it apart with its claws. Drool slips down from its mouth as it bares those gleaming white rows of incredibly sharp teeth.
The wolf continues to stare at him, waiting for something but John isn’t sure what. He raises his hand; it isn’t trembling anymore, and brushes the wolf’s cheek, feeling the familiar curls. He hasn’t looked away from those eyes yet. They are so bright and familiar that no matter how hard John tries to dig up the memory of where he’s seen them before, he can’t.
He remembers Sherlock, those blindfolded eyes and hair the same shade as this wolf’s fur. He remembers how Sherlock appeared in 221B that morning, covered in blood but mostly unharmed (not my blood, John), recalls how Sherlock had to be outside during witching hour...
His mouth dries and all John can do is wet his lips.
“...Sherlock...?”
The wolf flinches and tenses, a growl already forming from his throat. But his eyes, oh, his eyes, are so intense like John has been laid bare in front of him.
“It’s you,” He whispers, lifting his other hand up. “It’s really you, isn’t it?”
They stare, some kind of tension that John can’t name building up between them until-
The wolf nods, his legs bent as if to crash through the door if need be. But John presses his forehead against Siraj’s nose, wrapping his arms around his neck. He thinks of everyone reliving the same day, of Harry, of Soo Lin’s prayers against evil, of Anthea and of Sally’s warnings. He thinks of 221B, Mrs. Hudson and Molly and the witch that is watching all of this for his own amusement.
“Its fine, Sherlock, it’s all fine,” he whispers. “Everything is fine.”
He feels the wolf stiffen at such gentle contact and then he hears the soft whines as Siraj (no, Sherlock) wraps himself around John protectively, and that’s how they stay until they drift off to sleep.
-
Interlude: Soo Lin
-
“Now don’t run now, I have a job for you two... a very special job,” that bastard laughs as he walks towards them. The demons run after them, they always chase.
Soo Lin and Sally do not stop to look back. Anything is better than becoming a piece in Moriarty’s sick game.
Sally drags her into an empty corridor, where the sewers lead to the London Underground. They’ve memorized the routes months ago (though it feels like several centuries) in case of a demon ambush. But they’ve never had to use it, not with Sebastian Moran’s gift to ward away the demons.
Soo Lin berates herself again. She should have known. There is no such thing as a gift that can make the demons go away. It was too good to be true. She was a fool to trust any other outsiders. But as Sally guards her back, Soo Lin retracts that thought. Not all of the outsiders here are like them.
Their breaths intermingle. It’s strange how fear is heightened when all you can see is black. Soo Lin had thought that she could grow used to it, the witching hour, but she never does. She is as blind and terrified as she was the first night she spent in Dead London.
Her large shovel and pocket knife stay clenched in both hands. There is nothing else that they can do now. Only stand in the dark and listen.
Listen and pray.
There are demons that walk around in human skin, her old boss Shan used to tell them. You must never trust anyone you meet. You never know if they are monsters in disguise, excellent mimics of human emotions. There are very few ways to distinguish between a demon and a human client. Memorize them well.
How do you know? Her brother (oh how she loves and hates him) had demanded.
Shan had smiled eerily. A witch has no heart, no heartbeat at all. A demon... well, demons have no human desires. They only want enjoy the thrill and pain.
“How did you fake it?” She asks foolishly, “How did you fake a pulse?”
The witch clicks his tongue at her.
“There is so much you can do with a demon at your side, my dear, including... borrowing his heart. Such a simple spell, really, all witches use it. Shame you humans have never picked up on that...”
“You bastard...,” Sally says from behind her.
“What was the point of this?” Soo Lin demands. “Pretending to be an outsider? Helping us survive for the past few months? I don’t understand what you have to gain. Your messenger told us that we were disqualified from the game! We didn’t beat you-”
But they’d lost, apparently, though Soo Lin isn’t sure what they lost at. And as the losers, they run from the demons until they are eventually killed by them. But last that Soo Lin checked, the witch has never gotten involved in the chase.
He is laughing, high pitched and gleeful. It reminds her of General Shan, the way that woman’s eyes lit up with pleasure when Soo Lin screamed.
“What other reason is there?” He drawls before he suddenly shouts, “I was bored!”
Soo Lin points her knife in that direction, startled by the ferocity in the witch’s voice.
Something slithers past her leg and Soo Lin slashes down her knife. She only meets air. Sally, likewise, is attacking at nothing but empty space.
“What do you want, you fucker?!” Sally screams into the black.
“Oh nothing,” the witch sings in a falsetto tone, “just to use you to destroy the latest player, to kill John Watson.”
“But why?” Soo Lin breathes, remembering her conversation with the ex-army doctor, his far-off eyes. “You invited him to play. I thought you were having fun with him, another one of your demon friends.”
A flash of light blinds her and Soo Lin gasps as the witch grabs her throat, a cruel glint in his manic eyes, “I didn’t invite him!” He roars, while Soo Lin can barely register her own surprise (What? But the fog... then who...?) just as he throws her to the floor.
Sally is shouting, trying to stab the witch herself and the only thought that runs through Soo Lin’s head before she feels something hit her across the face, is-
The witch is afraid of Watson.
Then darkness.
Part 5