Gaslight Grimoire_ Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Barbara Hambly [79]
“Thank God,” said I, never meaning it more literally.
We were, I saw now, within a few steps of the church. Its great oaken door was wide open, flung back upon its hinges.
“Carnacki!” Holmes shouted, but his cry went unanswered and rang hollowly about the church. All manner of dire thoughts passed through my mind as the silence lengthened. Cautiously we made our way through the church to the chapter house, which contained the famed chained library of Grantchester. Carnacki was sitting on the floor in the shadow of a great octagonal table upon which lay ancient books bound by links of chain. He was surrounded by what looked like a hastily chalked five-pointed star, and as we approached he began an extraordinary and complicated gesticulation with both hands.
“Good Lord!” said I.
Holmes chuckled. “The First Sign of the Saaamaaa Ritual, Watson. A supposed defence against occult forces.”
Carnacki visibly relaxed. “Jove! You’re real. I had to make sure you were who you seemed,” he said, standing up. “So, Holmes, you understand?”
“I understand, which is not the same as belief, which in turn is not the same as fact, as Watson was remarking earlier.”
“Is Professor Westen all right?”
“As well as can be expected for a man in a deep and protracted trance,” said I.
“Trance? Ah … yes. A psychic attack would explain both the astral projection that brought me here and what has happened just now. I was making a search of the library in the hope Professor Westen may have shoved The Sigsand Manuscript—” here Carnacki indicted the secret niche, now open and empty, within the octagonal table, “—into a cupboard or shelf … when something came unbidden into the room.”
“Something?” said Holmes.
Carnacki frowned, as though he were trying to recall a dream. “The bell-ringers had just left — I heard the door close — and there was a time of silence while I looked about the shelves and cupboards. Then a dog barked briefly somewhere outside and it was after this that I heard the church door open again, but very stealthily it seemed. I remember thinking how queer this was, and then I remember turning around and seeing … a small figure, I think, at the library door.” Carnacki spread out his hands at his inability to describe it further. “It approached me slowly. I don’t know what it was, nor exactly what shape it took, but I know that something else crawled or slithered along the floor beside it. And as it crept nearer I seemed to be trying to fight off a terrible need for sleep as someone was whispering ‘Sigsand … Sigsand’ over and over. I recollect snatching a piece of chalk from my pocket … and then had no more sense of time passing until you entered.”
“Extraordinary,” said Holmes in a neutral voice while his gaze roved around the library: now on the octagonal table with its burden of chained books, now on the surrounding shelves and cupboards, now on the radiators, with their grey heating pipes, spaced at intervals along the wall. Finally he looked again at the drawn five-pointed star within which Carnacki remained, as if still unsure of our corporeality. “I wish I had thought to invest in a piece of chalk. It might have saved me untold trouble throughout the years.”
“Make mock if you wish, Mr. Holmes,” said Carnacki, though without rancor. “Even a rough pentacle is a fair defence against most Aeiirii developments, though I might not have survived even a minor Saiitii manifestation. It is the wisdom that is behind such as this pentacle that is the soul of the book we seek. Deduction and knowledge of all things worldly is your school. Mine is the lore of magic as written by Sigsand and others — that and arcane wisdom combined with modern science. We both seek the truth, but our adversaries are of different stuff: the criminal and the Abnatural.”
Carnacki’s words, though in places incomprehensible, impressed me with their heartfelt sincerity, and I could see that Holmes too