A/N: I hope you all enjoy this story! I rewrote it especially for Halloween, and I'm much prouder of this version than the last one! 😊
Happy Halloween!
...
I gape incredulously at my friend's solemn expression. His steely grey eyes are illuminated only by the miniscule, dancing light from the match he cradles between his fingertips.
"What- surely you don't mean-" I stammer, feeling uncertainty and even a cold mist of feat creep into my heart on hearing of our situation. I stiffen my shoulders in determination- to rile up the same courage which took me to Afghanistan, got me through its hellish war, and remained at my friend's side for nearly three years since.
"I do, Watson. It appears that we have a killer within the walls of this very castle." Holmes answers, lighting his pipe with such casual indifference that seemed as though we were in our rooms at Baker Street- not in an abandoned castle in the English countryside with a deranged serial killer determined to maim us and claim our noses for trophies.
Behind us, our young charge, Juliet, lets out a terrified wail. "There, there." I try to comfort her, but in vain, for she clings to my arm in fright and refuses to let go.
"I don't like it here, Doc! I wanna leave now!" She protests. "Please, Mr. Holmes?"
"Now, Miss Hawkfair- I promised Lestrade I would investigate this case and catch the murderer, seeing as his own force are intellectually incapable of solving this case themselves. But I need your help to do so." Holmes assures her, before inspecting a mournful and dusty old dresser. I note the wide, gaping, tell-tale slashes of a woodcutter's axe in use, and I swallow a lump in my throat.
Being in the same building as a serial killer, no matter how many times I have had been in the same scenario, was never going to be any easier than the last.
"Miss Hawkfair-what do you remember from the night of October 29th?" Holmes asks Juliet solemnly, and I subconsciously lay a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"I... I was passing by the castle on my way to meet a friend o' mine-he's a farmer's lad, you see, at Stratford farm three odd miles from here. Someone just started screaming for...for someone to come in and help. I ran into the castle alone, and I saw a short staunch man by a man's body before a flash of black and green. Next thing I knew, my eye was swollen shut. I could him screamin' curses at me, and he was goin'...goin' tae t'row the axe at me, gov, bit I escaped before he did any 'ore 'arm, I did!"
As she spoke, her accent became more pronounced, and slender fingers gingerly touched the bags under her left eye, now swollen and bruised. She was only a poor lass, with brown hair tumbling down from under her brown newsboy cap. She tugs on her dress- which is patched up, brown in colour and collecting dirt and dust. Her blue eyes stared into me begging to be fed answers into what was going on. "Oh sir! What are you gonna do to catch him?" She exclaimed.
I beckon for my friend to discuss something in private, and with a nod of acknowledgement, I lead him to a corner- away from our young client. "Holmes, are you raving mad? You have a thirteen -year old girl in the house with a serial killer? What in the world are you planning, old man?"
"Relax old chap." Holmes replies firmly, putting his hand on my shoulder, whilst cradling his pipe bowl gingerly with the other. "I know what I'm doing. Besides, she is fifteen."
I knew whenever he said that, something would go wrong. And it did, too. For half an hour after our discussion, young Juliet and I lose Holmes.
"Where are we?" She whispers in awe as we enter a room with an overturned chaise lounge and two chairs, along with a small table.
I stride to the shuttered windows and peer through a wormhole. But I see nothing, save for dim moonlight and a faint but alarmingly rapid increase in fog levels. "Nothing out of the ordinary so far, Miss Hawkfair- just a thick silver shawl tonight." I report, turning around to look at the room we are now located. "We must be in a drawing room, I think." I add.
"Well, what do we do now?" She asks me.
Before I can answer her question, the floorboards creak under me. The next thing I know, I am halfway through the floor and the ceiling of the room below. Feeling a trifle embarrassed for my mishap, I take my mind off the situation by listening in the corridor for my friend.
I was rewarded when, in the distance, I hear footsteps creaking on the stairs outside the room. It sounds like Holmes. "Doctor!" A familiar voice calls out.
"I'm in the first room on your left, Holmes- up those stairs!" I call back. Juliet gives me a perturbed look as though I should not have spoken. But I smile at her reassuringly, and she shakes her head.
"Hang on- I'll try and pull ye out, Doc." She says instead. I offer my arm with the good shoulder gratefully. Grabbing it, she hauls at my -admittedly stout- frame like I am a heavy sack of potatoes made of molten iron "No luck, Doc. I ain't got no strength- but I'll find Mr Holmes- he'll have better luck than I." But as she is about to leave, she freezes.
"Doc, ain't Mr. Holmes...taller than that?" She whispers, pointing to out the door.
I note with silent fear that her observation had led me to see that a shadow on the wall of the corridor outside is not tall, lean or aquiline- nosed, like my dear friend. Instead, it creeps along the wall- short, staunch, and squat-shouldered.
I realise with a sinking stomach that I had been fooled. I had been fooled into thinking that a dangerous, deranged, cold blooded maniac was my dearest and most cherished friend. My seemingly minute error in not recognising the difference in the voice or the footsteps I had falsely believed to be Sherlock Holmes has cost Juliet and I both our lives.
Then, I feel a touch upon my shoulder. "Holmes?" I twist my neck round to see what was happening. I jump in surprise as a shape of a small translucent mouse jumps out at me!
"I say!" I breath quietly.
The mouse runs to a dusty mirror- where a small girl dressed in bruised, white finery stands. Her blonde curls shine with unnatural light, and her boots- blacker than coal- appear to emit tiny flames from the souls. On her left hip, secured by a green sash, is a shining gold trumpet.
"Doctor Watson, Juliet Hawkfair?" She asks us, quietly, but childlike, and Juliet and I find ourselves nodding.
"Your lives in danger." She told me. "Mr Willoughby saw my great great niece's killing. His next victim is his most important."
"What- who is he after?" I demand, suddenly impatient. The killer was right outside the door, and she wouldn't even tell us whom we were meant to protect!
"He is after him, Doctor Watson. The cat is prowling. Warn the heir. Warn the heir!" With a scream and a blinding blue light, she fades into the soulless air of the room.
Suddenly, looming in the doorframe, with a sinister smile on his flaxen, wart ridden face, stands... Henry Forest, or 'Hatchet Harry'.
Above his head, he holds our death sentence aloft- shining a brilliant silver, like a halo above his ratty, knotted grey-black hair.