Nevermore
John was bored; not shoot-holes-in-the-wall bored, but bored nonetheless.
Sherlock was out somewhere doing something "top secret" for Mycroft (and John did not want to know the blackmail involved to get Sherlock to actually do something for the government man), Mrs. Hudson was visiting her niece and John was home alone. And bored.
He was at odds-and-ends and didn't know what to do with himself. There were no cases at the moment, he'd updated his blog three days ago, there was nothing on the telly and the paperback he'd purchased the previous week had died a slow and agonizing death earlier that afternoon due to Sherlock and one of his 'experiments'.
Wandering around the sitting room, eyes drifting from laptop to skull sitting on the mantel to weird skull painting hanging on the wall, John finally came to a halt in front of one of the built-in bookcases, its shelves haphazardly filled with various tomes.
John was not a nosy man. Unlike his flatmate, the doctor did not consider anything and everything in the flat as 'his' regardless of to whom it actually belonged. But books … books were different. Books were meant to be read and borrowed and discussed. John firmly believed that the state and content of one's bookcase said a great deal about the person who owned both case and books.
The collection housed on the shelves, John was unsurprised to discover, was very much like his friend: an eclectic compilation of novels, texts, biographies, history and whatnot, all jumbled together in no discernable order. Probably filed based on paper quality, or ink acidity or something equally obscure, thought John, because they sure aren't in alphabetical or subject order!
For example, on the middle shelf a book about bee-keeping was nestled cheek by jowl with a book on medieval poisons, a book of maps from the 18th century, a cookbook and "The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe."
"Oh, my Lord," said John aloud as his eyes lit on Poe. Reaching out, he gently pulled the book from the shelf and turned it over in his hands. It appeared quite old, as its spine was cracked and the faux-leather covering was dry and crumbling at the corners. Turning round to sit at the table, John pushed his laptop to the side, placed the book down in front of him and carefully opened the cover. Despite the dilapidated state of the outside of the book, the pages inside were clean and seemed firmly attached to the spine.
Leafing through the pages, John came across some of Poe's most famous stories and poems: here was "The Tell-Tale Heart", followed by "Annabel Lee" and "The Pit and the Pendulum". While in school, one of John's Literature professors had exhibited quite an addiction to the works of Poe and they had spent at least two months reading and analyzing the works of the mad writer.
Turning a page, John came face to face with his nemesis: "The Raven." He'd been forced by the same professor to memorize the poem and then recite it aloud during one of the classes. Seeing the first stanza on the page brought the memories flooding back. He recalled days of sitting at the kitchen table, reciting stanza after stanza, over and over, trying to get them to stick in his head. His sister kept yelling about how creepy the poem was and, worst of all, his mother, who was usually preparing dinner while he was trying to cram the words into his head, managed to memorize the damn thing before he did! That was humiliating, to say the least. But he prevailed, and in the end actually found himself quite enjoying the tone and the rhythm of the words, once he stopped worried about trying to memorize them.
Leaning back in his chair, John smiled and mused quietly, "I wonder if I remember any of it." Leaning forward over the yellowed pages, he began to read aloud, "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary …"
By the time he'd reached the third stanza, the doctor was no longer reading the words on the page in front of him. His mind had recovered the poem from wherever it had been stored immediately after his school performance and, like muscle memory, the words flowed out of him.
"Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer …" John continued reciting. Lost as he was in the rhythm of the words, John failed to notice that the longer he spoke, the heavier the atmosphere grew in the sitting room. The air grew dense and the light seemed to dim; an almost imperceptible echo now seemed to accompany his words.
"… And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you" – here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there and nothing more."
The sky turned dark, and had John taken a moment to glance out any of the large windows that graced the front wall of the sitting room, he would have seen that he had attracted an audience. An audience that was increasing in number as he spoke. An audience of ravens, large and black with glossy feathers and beady, piercing eyes. They were being called to 221B by the power of the words that John was reciting in all innocence.
There they sat, an unkindness of ravens, still and silent and ever watchful, staring in the windows at the golden-haired man sitting at a small table, his back to them and unaware of their presence.
They were perched on the wrought-iron railing; they were sitting on the eaves and the window ledges. A row sat on the awning of Speedy's. They were balanced on the fence, they were clustered on the ground, and they were silent. No caws, no clacking of beaks, no dry whisper of ruffling feathers accompanied them. The only noise that could be heard was the slight clicking of their claws as they shifted to create space for the newest arrivals.
Had anyone dared to walk down the street, they would have quickly turned away in fear, for by the time John had reached the second-to-last stanza of the poem there were easily one hundred ravens surrounding the house, all of them silent and still; all of them avidly watching.
Oblivious to the fact that he was being carefully observed, John continued his recitation. He was almost to the end of the poem; only two stanzas left.
"Be that word or sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting-
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul has spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
On the word "Nevermore", a hundred beaks opened and clacked shut and a hundred pairs of wings flapped once. A hundred heads bobbed and tilted to the left and the largest bird of the group hopped from railing to window ledge and stood, pressed up against the glass.
The last stanza, thought John. Didn't think I'd remember it all. Impressed with himself, he stood and walked over to the skull on the mantle. Looking into its empty eye sockets, John spread his feet apart and with arms slightly akimbo, spoke the final words of the poem with a flourish:
"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted – nevermore!"
"Hah," cried John, inordinately pleased with himself that he remembered the whole poem, memorized so long ago. "This deserves a beer," he told the skull as he turned towards the kitchen.
Had he looked up, John would have seen something that would likely have haunted his days. Ravens are clever birds and John would have been extremely disconcerted to see a huge gathering of birds amassed around the sitting room windows, the largest of which was studying the latch with every intention of opening the pane of glass to allow entry.
But John didn't look up, and he didn't see the danger, and he certainly did not see his flatmate come running down the street to plant himself firmly in front of the entrance to 221B, like an avenging angel.
He definitely did not see said flatmate glare up at the birds and say forcefully, "Not here; never here and never him. Go!" Nor did John witness the extraordinary sight of a hundred glossy black birds bow to the man and then fly off on silent wings. The largest raven flew down from the window ledge and landed on the ground in front of the tall, dark-haired human. He bowed deeply and spoke, mind to mind with the man, "Apologies, my lord. We did not know."
As he flew off to join his brothers, the bird called back, "You have my word that this will happen nevermore."
Excepts are from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (1895)