Notes

Many thanks to my beta readers: Laura001, Silvermouse and supersherlockedgalifreyan

This story contains mention of torture and injury.

Sherlock woke up and didn't know where he was. It was dark. He remembered being beaten. He was captured. He remembered the glee with which his tortures had worked, especially Jamal, the boss of the gang. They had taken his left hand, put it on a table and then they'd taken a big hammer. He could still hear the snap when his thumb broke.

He shifted. He was lying on his back in a bed. There hadn't been a bed in the basement room where they kept him. That could only mean that they had moved him. He could now distinguish shapes; he was in a large room and on his left hand side, there was a machine with green lights. He slowly lifted his left arm to inspect the damage. To his surprise, it didn't hurt. It looked and felt like a big lump. Carefully, he touched it with his other hand and felt a rough surface; the hand was cast in plaster, or probably some kind of polymer variety on it. He felt the inside of his elbow and found what he expected: a tube. He had an IV. He was in a hospital. Was he safe or were they just patching him up to torture him some more? He took a deep breath.

Suddenly, he stiffened and his heart raced. Out of his bed, to his right, came a hand. It touched him and stroked his hair. He could feel the ring on its ring finger.

'Would you please write a line in the diary?' John looked at Sherlock with mild irritation. 'It'll take no more than three seconds.'

Sherlock shrugged. They were in a small hotel room on the ground floor. It was relatively basic but comfortable, with a double bed, a wardrobe, bathroom and a table with two chairs. On the table were John's laptop and a chessboard. Bright light came in from the window.

'Why?'

'Let's say I'm conducting an experiment.'

'I've got nothing to write about, I just woke up.'

'Then you write that.' John gave him the diary, open on a blank page, and a pen. He took them both with his right hand because his left hand was cast. He sat up and put the diary on his lap. There were three pre-printed rows on the page: day, time and comment. Sherlock let his pen hoover over the first row. 'What was the day again?'

'Wednesday.'

He wrote it down, then looked around for a clock.

John watched him closely. 'Do you know what time it is?'

Sherlock looked out of the window. The brightness of the light indicated that it must have been late in the morning. 'Nine thirty?'

'Ten thirty,' John corrected him.

'Ok, Wednesday, ten thirty…' Sherlock wrote it down and in the comment section he wrote 'just woke up'. 'Happy now?' he asked John when he gave back the diary.

'Perfectly happy,' said John with a fake smile as he laid the booklet next to the chessboard. He sat down at the table and returned his attention to his laptop.

Sherlock closed his eyes. His whole body felt sore. They had called themselves 'The Red Triangle', an important cell of an international crime network. He'd known about them for a while and he'd known that he had occasionally been a nuisance for them. Sometimes he'd track down a member for a client but mostly he'd left them alone, staying carefully on the surface all the while collecting information. He'd talk about them in long meetings with Greg Lestrade, but that was about it. An individual detective was no match for them and he knew how to stay away from danger. Then there had been the client. Her son had been beaten up and she had asked Sherlock to find the offender. The clues had been obvious. A little too obvious in retrospect. As he had foolishly entered an empty house in one of the suburbs he'd fallen right into their trap. Whether the beatings were supposed to have been a warning for him or that his slow agonising death was supposed to have been a warning for others, he still didn't know.

'Hey.' John's voice sounded soft. Sherlock looked up and saw that John was looking at him. 'Are you all right?'

Sherlock shifted which made him aware of all the bruising he had. 'Yeah, I was just thinking about the Triangle.'

'Not a flashback?'

'No, I'm just wondering what to do about them.'

'They can wait, you know,' John said. 'We're safe now. Why don't you tell me about why we're here?'

Sherlock looked around in the hotel room and for one moment he couldn't work out why they were there. 'Why we're here, right.'

John smiled and rolled his eyes. 'That brain of yours… The ghost story, Sherlock.'

'Right, the ghost story.' Sherlock smiled back. 'So basically, we're looking for a legend.'

He woke up and didn't know where he was. He was in a bed and it was broad daylight. His whole body was sore. Looking to his left, he saw that he was connected to a machine. His left hand was cast and he had an IV. He also had something on his right index finger, like a clothes peg. He looked at it and followed the wire to the machine, though the numbers didn't mean much to him. It wasn't a heartrate. There was something on his face, when he felt with his hand; he felt tubes around his face running into his nose. That must be for oxygen, so maybe the finger clip was an oxygen monitor. This was a hospital.

Why was he here? He remembered that he was captured and being tortured. It was the Red Triangle. Where were they now? Did they let him recover so that they could torture him again?

Wherever he was, he was in no position to stay. If there were doctors and nurses treating him, either they were in on it or powerless to stop what was happening. He needed to escape and quick, preferably without anyone noticing it. He looked at the IV, and saw it was possible to disconnect the bag. He didn't know why he had the IV, but he knew it could be dangerous to take out. With his right hand, he clumsily worked on the bag. Every second, he looked around but there was no one coming. Finally, the bag fell. He picked it up and wedged it between his left arm and his body. His ribs hurt. The next move needed to be fast. If he removed the finger clip and the oxygen tubes, the machine would start beeping, cueing a nurse to take a look. He sat up, the IV bag on his left arm and slid his feet out of the bed, onto the cold ground. Now! With his right hand, he grabbed the tubes and pulled them off his face. With his teeth, he removed the finger clip.

He stood and immediately, the world started to turn. He grabbed the bed for balance. It was as if he were drunk. He focused: about five steps to the door; use the doorpost as balance aid. He almost ran to the door, navigating the impossible shaking world. He managed to stay upright and grabbed the door post. He carefully looked into the corridor. It was empty. Good, very good. Did he have to go left or right? Luckily, hospitals tend to be well signposted, and the sign 'exit' was to the left. Using the wall as a walking aid, he turned left.

'That really was a flashback.'

Sherlock looked at John in surprise. 'How did you know?'

'It's not exactly difficult. Even you must be aware that facial expressions convey emotion.'

Sherlock rolled his eyes and looked at the chessboard. Its pieces were in a King's Gambit. 'Were we playing?'

'We never play chess. You were playing Mycroft.'

'Oh, I see.' Sometimes he'd recreate a chess game to see where it would lead. 'What was I talking about again?'

'The case, the ghost story.' John rolled his eyes. 'The legend.'

'Right, so it is a story about this hotel. It started out with guests complaining that they were missing personal items. The manager first thought that someone was stealing them but it was strange because they were so random. Things like socks, nightgowns, the battery from a phone, shoe laces-'

'Very random items then?' John said with his eyes on his laptop.

'Oh, come on, don't look so bored, I'm telling you a ghost story.'

John looked up. 'You're right, sorry.'

'To answer your question, yes, they were not things of value. Still, the manager though that someone might be stealing things for the thrill, or that someone was bored and playing pranks. He told all his staff about this problem and if it didn't stop soon, people would get in trouble. The chambermaids were obvious first suspects.'

'Did he install cameras?'

'In a hotel?'

John grinned. 'Right, that's not the most brilliant business idea.'

'My brother would be terrible at running a hotel. But regardless of what the manager said to his staff, the strange disappearances continued. He wouldn't have thought anything more of it until once he talked to an old lady who was checking out.

'Did you enjoy your stay?' he asked out of routine.

'Oh, yes,' she said. 'And it was so lovely of you people that you put that nice vase of tulips on the table at night. It was such a lovely surprise.' '

Sherlock smiled at John, who had turned to his laptop again. 'It was indeed a surprise: a surprise for the manager. The staff never entered the rooms at night when guests were asleep.'

'Yeah, that sounds fundamentally wrong.'

'That's how he knew something else was going on. The stories kept coming, but now, people were also talking about a 'presence' in the room. One room in particular.'

'Let me guess…' John looked around their room.

'Indeed.'

'One night, he heard a scream. Worried, he went to the room where the sound had come from. In the hallway, he found a young woman in pyjamas. He recognised her, she'd checked in the day before. When she saw him, she ran towards him. She was crying.'

'She was staying in this room?'

'Of course. He brought her to his office and got her a cup of tea. When she had calmed down a bit, she told him her story. She was here for only one night because she was travelling to her parents in the country and didn't feel like driving the whole day so she had cut it in two. She was alone, but she liked the place, even walked a small track. That changed when she was back and the sun had gone down. The whole evening she felt uneasy, as if someone was standing behind her but she shrugged it off. Sometimes, strange places do that with people. '

'Especially places with ghost stories.'

'She didn't know about the story, or so I've been told at least. That type of information often tends to become embellished a bit over time.' Sherlock shrugged. 'Anyway, when she went to bed, the uneasy feeling hadn't gone away. She was very aware of her own breathing. There was something strange about it. It seemed as if the breathing was in stereo, almost as if someone else was there too.'

'And there wasn't.'

'No, there was no one there. Just as she went back to sleep she felt it.' Sherlock lowered his voice. 'A hand from the bed, stroking her hair.'

'Ok, that's quite creepy.'

'She screamed and turned around but the bed was empty. She was alone. She looked around in her room and saw that her shoes had disappeared. There was no one in the room. Just as she was calming down, she felt air flowing down her neck, as if someone was standing right behind her. She screamed and ran out of the door.'

'And then she ran into the manager. Did they look around?'

'They turned the whole room upside down but they couldn't find anything unusual.' Sherlock grinned. 'Nothing other than her shoes, which they found on top of the wardrobe. At this point, the woman started to believe that she might have imagined it. The manager wasn't convinced but he didn't tell her that. She went back to bed. Just as she was drifting off, she heard it very distinctly. The sound of breathing. She felt her hair moving with it. Her heart raced and she stayed completely still. The hand softly stroked her hair and then rested on her shoulder.

'What do you want?' she asked. There was no answer. She looked around but there was no one there. She closed her eyes again and a moment later, the hand was there again. She was expecting it this time.

'Are you a ghost?' she asked. 'Do you need something?'

It was silent for a while but then she heard something. Like the breathing of the wind, there was a voice.

'I… don't…. need… anything,' she discerned.

She concentrated. The next line was easier to hear. 'Being with you is its own reward.''