Anketil Cardwell was born in 1588 in Lancaster, England, to a young mother who married for the social prestige and a father who was too dim-witted to realize the only thing he had going for him was his last name. He had four siblings, of which only one lived past childhood- an older brother who aspired to great things and only pretended to play along with social niceties in order to achieve his ambitions. All seemed to agree that Anketil was not a pleasant child. He cared nothing for politeness or etiquette and in fact found it difficult to tolerate the company of people whom he considered to be intensely dull and unintelligent. He was abrasive and standoffish, and had a tendency to say just the thing to make himself hated by anyone who braved conversation with him. By the time he was considered a young man, Anketil was isolated, unanimously disliked and far too intelligent for the world that he found himself in.
As a child, he had been small, pale and sickly and his mother had assumed he wouldn't see more than four winters. When he got older, she'd wished he hadn't.
As a young man, Anketil was tall and lean, with striking if not unusual features though still as pale as death itself. His parents had hoped that a lady of social standing might be taken in by his appearance, but all who felt a fancy towards him were quickly disenchanted by his ability to all at once know their every flaw, even ones that they themselves didn't know they possessed.
Despite being forced to attend many a social outing, the keen-sensed, perceptive young man spent much of his time off to the side, observing from a distance people as if they were a race alien to him. For all his observations, he understood them in every way but how to relate to them. It was no big loss to his mind, for he rather felt that were he able to relate to these boring creatures that lived their boring lives, he might find himself as insufferable as the rest of them.
By the time young Anketil was able to form an opinion of his own, he was of the thought that he had not the time for God or religion or silly folktales or bedtime stories. Rather, his thoughts consisted invariably of logic and data, the gathering of information and understanding of the world in an irrefutable manner. It was to no small irony that religion and folklore would be the death of him.
When he was fourteen years of age, the Cardwell family moved to an area in Lancaster called Pendle Hill, where the land sloped and slipped and Anketil found it just as dull as every other place he'd been. He went to school, not because they had anything of value to teach him, but because neither his mother nor his various nannies knew what to do with him. He went to church, not because he believed but because his brother would dispose of his experiments if he did not. Anketil found himself going through the motions of human existence without feeling any honest inclination to do so. He did not care for his mother and father, just as they did not care for him. He tolerated his brother if only for the fact that he was slightly more intelligent than the average man, but could not understand the need to carry out social interaction as his brother did, so in that they were at odds. In truth, he did not love nor was he loved by anyone and in his mind he was better for it. He was disconnected from the world, felt no attachment to it, nor to himself. One of his nannies had once claimed that he was possessed, that he had the Devil in him and that they should call for a preacher man to lay waste to the demon which had taken hold of his soul and pushed God from his heart. Though his mother was inclined to agree, she would not hear of the scandal such a thing might cause and the nanny was dismissed.
As it was, the youngest Cardwell was content with a solitary life. He kept to his room and his experiments and his brother continued the running of the household and allowed him his curious ways. He kept an opium habit when the monotony of human life became too much, and snuff for all the times in between.
Just before Anketil reached twenty four years, a witch hunt fever ran rampant through the town. The poison of fear spread like a disease and neighbours murdered and condemned each other, pointing fingers in the name of the Lord.
There was one particular man, a Lord Ingleby, who had taken a strong dislike toward the young Cardwell after he has easily remarked how, judging by the mud on Ingleby's boots and the stain on his coat his mistress was keeping him as busy as his fiancée, thus thoroughly defaming him and robbing him of a beneficial marriage. It was Ingleby who, on a rainy night came with him a wooden rod in hand and found Anketil wandering the streets in the rain as he was known to do, gathering information that was vital to no one but him. Ingleby came upon him crouched in an alley, heedless of the rain and keenly watching the water flow into the cobbled street. Absorbed as he was, Anketil did not hear the man approach him from behind. The wooden rod collided solidly with the back of the young man's head, the force of the blow sending him to the ground, face cracking into the mud and stone.
"Witch!" the man spat out as he reared his arm back and swung again, crushing the young man's face into the ground. "Using Satan's magic," another hit, "You ruined me!" then another. Ingleby kicked him in the side pushing him onto his back. Anketil's face was crushed and bloody, he could no longer breathe through his nose and his eyes- oh, always so necessary to use his eyes- could see only white spots and a haziness of the rain. His head lolled on the ground, blood pooling from his head. Ingleby leaned over him, raising the rod up again. "You brought this upon yourself," he hissed out and he brought down the final, heaving blow. Anketil's skull shattered against the ground and all he could see was a blinding white. He tried to make himself breathe, blink, move, but blood clogged his throat and seeped from his head. In his mind's eye he could see his blood mix with the rain water, knew where it would flow to, where it would wash away.
The papers will call him a witch, a man who used dark magic to torment his fellow man, for surely the things that he knew could have only come from the Devil whispering in his ear.
As his body fought against death, Anketil felt as though his mind were separating itself from the rest of him, this frail vessel that housed him. He felt that he were lifting, rising up, and then all at once sucked down into depths unknown.
He died alone in a muddy alleyway, loved and mourned by no one.
When the young Cardwell became aware of himself again, he felt as though he were being pulled every way possible, that he was being ripped apart. He hung, suspended by hooks that cinched into bone and burned red hot. Slowly, he was torn into pieces. Once he had experienced the agony of feeling himself split from his core, he was put together as if by magic and pulled apart all over again. The process repeated itself for decades, sometimes the method changed, but the end result was always the same.
Then, when Anketil had become so muted in the experience he no longer screamed, simply waited for the final pull, a dark figure with yellow eyes came to him and gave him a choice: he can come down from the hooks and inflict the agony upon other souls, or they can expose him to a new level of torture.
Anketil had never much cared for others when he was alive. He cared for them even less now that he was dead.
When he was let down from the hooks, Anketil had been in Hell for forty years. When he picked up his first blade, it was the beginning of a career that would span centuries.
A/N: This is the first time I've done even a small amount of research for a story. In 1612 a witch hunt did occur in the Pendle Hill area, but Anketil Cardwell (and Lord Ingleby) are completely made up though I tried to find names in usage at the time.
I have in my mind my own imaginings of how Sherlock came to be a demon- or a demon came to be Sherlock.
I intend for this to be three, maybe four parts (my first multi-chapter!) so I hope you enjoy!