My Fallen Angel
Book 1
'Sherlock'
Some people say that everything happens for a reason; that everyone who comes into your life was meant to, meant to meet you and leave footprints upon your heart. Other people believe it was chance that brought them together. For others it's a combination of both.
If you would ask Sherlock Holmes what he believed, he would not answer you. He would glare and then walk away, or if he was in a particularly bad mood he would tear down your world with a few well placed verbal blows.
But if you could read his mind, or maybe his invisible facial features and the almost nonexistent flicker in his quicksilver eyes, you would see that he thought that he met his angel for a specific reason. That reason was to save his miserable, unworthy life from the dark hold of drugs and danger, of impassionate hate and the lack of any sort of welcome love.
But he would never tell you, of course. He would only tell his angel, when he lay asleep on the couch or in his bed, not able to hear him, but able to see it in his eyes when the morning came.
His angel came to him for a reason. And that reason came with a story.
And this is that story.
This story could start at the moment Sherlock looked upon the body of his angel, in a dark moonlit night; possibly when Sherlock made Lestrade join him on a stakeout in a forest in the English countryside; maybe even years before, when Sherlock tried his first dose of cocaine and became an addict.
But we will start on a rainy, miserable morning in early May. Sherlock knew the day well. May 6th, 2011. He got the fateful text at 12:26 pm, but didn't act on it until when he woke up from a drug induced sleep at 2:21.
Why does he remember the times, you ask?
He never deleted those texts from Lestrade.
Why did he memorize them?
Because he lost his angel, and those texts were linked to him. A way to keep his angel close, even though he was gone.
But enough looking into the future; it is May 6th at 2:15 and Sherlock found and grasped consciousness. He took until 2:19 to remember where he was (the couch, 221b Baker Street), how he got there (after stumbling in from a late night chase), what drugs he had taken (cocaine and heroin), what day it was (that one took a little longer; he figured it out when he glanced at the bullet tore calendar; May 6th), and what time it was (2:20).
By this time, he hoisted himself up and searched around the mess of the flat for his discarded phone, and at 2:21, he read this text from Lestrade.
New case. Murder. Text me whenever you wake up. Drink some coffee; no drugs, Sherlock. –Lestrade
Sherlock let a smile tug at the corner of his lip. It felt almost wrong on his face for a moment before he wrapped his blue scarf around his neck, threw on his coat without bothering to change his clothes, and ran outside to catch a cab. He texted Lestrade once telling his cabbie the place (Lestrade had texted him a few minutes later with the address of the murder). His text was this:
On my way. No promises, Lestrade, never promises. Do you want it solved or not? –SH
He resigned himself to gaze out of the window as London crawled by, not yet aware that his life was about to change for much of the better.
Much, much better.
-Fallen Angel-
He met Lestrade at the scene and, without fault, met Sergeant Donovan outside of the shabby house. She, as usual, was filled with spite and hate when he stepped out of his cab.
"What drugs are you on today, Freak?" she threw at him, a wicked smile on her face.
"What men are you on today, Donovan?" He threw back, after catching her insult with one hand. The look of outrage on her face was enough for him to know he caught her unawares.
He swept past her and up the set of rickety stairs to meet Lestrade in a tight, claustrophobic inducing room. A body lay crumpled on the floor, at the foot of the bed, almost like he had fallen and curled in on himself as if to protect himself from blows.
Sherlock instantly got this from his distance from seven feet away:
Male. Early thirties. Cause of death most likely blunt trauma to the head, left side, repeatedly hit with an object the size of a candlestick. Dead for about eight hours. He also got a few other snippets, but he could not be sure until a closer examination.
As he approached, he pulled on his blue latex gloves and looked attentively at the corpse. He walked around it, looking at the wounds, neck, face, fingers, arm, clothes, shoes and fingernails. After he had examined said items, he smiled slightly and stood.
If you could have followed his train of thought threw those precious twenty seconds, you would be staring open mouthed at him, stunned at the rate his thoughts ran and how gorgeously intelligent they were. Your brain might possibly even explode.
So, to save your innocent minds, I shall omit that from this story. In truth, it is not vital to the narrative, not as much as the conclusion he reached.
Which was this: "Do you really not observe who this is?"
A long suffering sigh was Lestrade's first answer, then "If I did, Sherlock, then would I have called you in?"
Sherlock didn't look at him when he responded. He was still looking at the corpse. "You know how much it irks me when someone answers a question with a question, Lestrade." He waved away the annoyed look in the DI's face. "He is obviously a seasoned camper. Maybe in a group of three or four friends who go out on a regular basis to camp, most likely in the nearby countryside. Killed by one of the friends. If you remember, Lestrade, there was a suicide victim who killed himself about two weeks ago, and he was also a camper. Obviously connected, I knew he was murdered the moment I looked at him. Now we must find the friend."
He swept out of the room, but Lestrade caught his arm.
Now I must pause at this point to mention this: if Geoff Lestrade had not grabbed Sherlock's arm, he never would have met his angel, and his life would have ended about three months later, on a purposeful overdose on cocaine.
But he did, and Sherlock Holmes would not die because of an overdose, and he would live. He would live in happiness. Or as close as Sherlock Holmes can get to happiness.
Sherlock looked at Lestrade with a raised eyebrow, then pulled his arm out of his grasp, but did not continue walking.
"Yes?"
"Where are you off to? How can you know where the friend is?"
Sherlock smiled, very slightly, and then a thought clicked into place. His smiled widened slightly.
"Lestrade, care for a camping trip tonight?"
-Fallen Angel-
The two men met at the outskirts of a camping ground at about nine o' three. Sherlock in his ever present sweeping black coat, with nothing of provisions but a small bag slung over his shoulder that hung at his waist. Lestrade had a backpack slung over his shoulder as he stepped out of a cab.
"Sherlock," he said, very much disgruntled, "You insist on a camping trip at this exact place, yet there are many other camping places around. It's a Friday night and there is almost no chance the murderer will be camping here after a recent murder!"
"Ah, that's where your wrong, Inspector," Sherlock said with a smirk. He was quite enjoying himself. "He would go regularly on the weekends, or at least on good weathered ones, and tonight is one such night. He would have to act normally, even though one of his friends had just died—he shouldn't even know, since it hasn't been released yet. There is a high probability he is here tonight, and we must track him down. Come along!"
With that, he turned around on his heel and walked briskly into the forest, Lestrade hurrying after him.
It was later in the night, maybe 9:49, that they reached an acceptable campsite and set up two sleeping bags (Lestrade forget a tent, Sherlock didn't bother) and Sherlock watched in amusement as Lestrade tried to light a fire. He gave up and with guns, flashlights, map, compass and bottled water they set out into the dark forest, searching for a murderer.
But what they found was definitely not a murderer.
It was around 10:42 when it happened. It was a whistling sound at first, low and like someone was blowing a high pitched whistle from some ways away. Sherlock paused, aware of the sound growing louder. Lestrade stopped as well.
"What's that?"
Sherlock silenced him with a glare and slowly turned on the spot, trying to isolate the sound. No, not from land. Above, in the sky, most likely. Before he could get another thought formed, there was an unholy sound the resonated through the air, hitting the two men like a bullet, shaking their very bones.
If you asked Lestrade to describe what he heard, he would describe it as a screech, like an animal in pain, but much, much worse. Like a combination of nails on chalkboard, cats screeching, demons tearing the Earth and sending up their howls to warm them. Then intensified by ten thousand.
If you asked Sherlock, he would say a howl of some sort of bird, a screeching from a hurt animal possibly. But inside, he knew it was not; it was worse than that. It sent panic through his heart for a moment, and it takes a lot to do that.
If you asked Lestrade how he felt at that moment, he would say he wanted to hide, run, scream and pull out his hair. The panic in his chest was constricting his breathing, and his instincts had screamed at him to run, just to hide. But he hadn't moved. He had stayed completely still, back stiff and eyes widened impossibly big.
If you asked Sherlock the same, he would tell you to get out of his way and let him do his work. But he really felt the same as Lestrade, to a somewhat lesser degree.
After a mere three seconds of this sound, another one joined it.
It was the horrible, gruesome sound wave of rusty metal being scratched against each other, unholy and making the hairs on their arms stand up high and panic rise in their throats and fog their minds.
To Lestrade and Sherlock both, it sounded like some sort of laughter. Cackling.
After three more seconds of both sounds combined, above their heads there was a streak of gold-red hurtling towards them, at an astonishing, impossible speed. It flashed above their heads, and then they heard branches snapping and a resounding boom echoed through the forest.
Sherlock was the first to recover, as usual. He blinked, shook his head slightly, and then ran forward. Lestrade followed after a belated time and wondered what could have made those unearthly sounds.
He never would know the answer to that question.
But Sherlock would.
Oh, would he know.
Sherlock estimated the distance where the crater would be, judging by the angle the object streaked above them. He was off by fifteen meters, but that was okay, because no one could have missed the crater that lay in front of him.
Sherlock stopped before the crater, stifling the illogical urge to run that had suddenly overtaken him. Whatever is in that crater is dead, he told himself. Or very, very interesting.
He was right in only one of those assumptions.
Sherlock approached the crater, and when Lestrade saw him standing at the lip of it, he did not come closer. He simply gasped, "What is it?"
He didn't get a response. Because Sherlock, for the first time in a long, long time, was speechless.
There was no fallen satellite, nor a meteorite or space junk. Not a part of a plane or other mechanical flying machinery.
No, it was none of those things.
For, in that crater, lying motionless beneath the small, settling layer of dust was a man.
Now, this is something new I'm trying out. A different style of both writing and story-telling. Do you like it? Truthful answers here; criticism is my friend.
I'm splitting this one a bit differently. I'm not going to alternate between Sherlock and Man-In-Crater point of view. I'm going to a certain point in Sherlock's view, and then switching to Man-In-Crater's. Shh.
Man-In-Crater is sleeping.
Tell me what you think.
Stay Happy,
Spirit