AN: I LIED. Well, kind of. When I looked back at the prologue I'd written, it was already kind of finished, bar a few tweaks. So, you're getting the prologue now! Though I shan't be writing much more. I have maybe half a chapter I've already written, but I'm very busy to finish it. All VERY interesting to you, I bet :L
Thanks for your patience! NORMAL service shall be resumed in, say . . . June. O.o
Read and review! Recommend this series to your friends! [Shameless self-promotion]
DISCLAIMER: I do not own BBC Sherlock, and do not make any money from writing this series. While it runs parallel to the series, most of it is my own work.
Rated T for violence, language, dark themes, etc. PLEASE, read the series starting with 'A Study In Silver' before you read this or it might not make sense. Cheers! - B.
A window stained with year upon exhausting year of human beings staring into it to survey their multitude of reflections – it did the same with their faces as with hers: it shone her own visage back at her, until she was just another memory of the tinted-brown glass. Miss. Laura Lyons: just another girl.
She shut the door behind her, locking the cafe at precisely 23:00 on a Wednesday night. Laura was a very efficient woman, and she liked to always be prim and precise. She may not have been as astronomically intelligent as her contemporaries, nor was she the most beautiful. She didn't have the best occupation, nor the most favourable living quarters in the whole of London.
In fact, arguably, she had the worst accommodation in London.
While the cafe she had just shut up paid a considerable wage because she was the deputy manager – a fact that many customers couldn't fathom, as they saw how young she was, barely appearing to be twenty-one – it wasn't enough to sustain someone living alone in London. She was a proud girl: too proud to ask for her parents' help with the rent, or that of her friends. Not even her . . . Boyfriend.
He could hardly be called her boyfriend. An older gentleman, and a younger girl – the story has been trotted out and viewed like a horse for sale thousands of times before, and will be thousands of times in the future. But Laura didn't think about that.
Instead, she thought about how bloody cold it was. She pulled her leather jacket on, and picked at pieces of lint on her navy blue bobble hat. She couldn't wear it with bits of fluff on it, after all; she only donned it, despite being bitterly cold for a May evening, once it was spotless. Her dark hair tickled her forehead, itching it beneath the hat, rather inconveniently, as she stepped onto the Millennium Bridge and towards Battersea power station, and the old Baskerville cotton factory. It wasn't a factory anymore, of course – it was the house of some rich prick. A banker, she thought she recalled, although she could have just filled that in from her sparse memories on the subject.
She stared down at the tar-like rippling waves of the Thames as she hustled along. They glittered up at her, winking, and she wondered, why are they always so inviting? Never mind Sirens; the water enough was enough to lure her over the edge on a magical, hypnotic night like tonight.
No wind. No rain. Just chilling, pervasive cold.
The other thing about the old Baskerville place was that round the back of it was the best shortcut she had ever come across in London. One that lead practically right to her front door, if you knew the ins and outs of the labyrinthine alley system behind it well enough. Laura did: her family had moved to central London from the Philippines three generations ago, and had stayed here through thick and thin, and numerous marriages of plentiful amounts of grandchildren. She'd grown up in London, and she knew this area well.
She stepped off the Millennium Bridge with this thought making her stride confident and self-assured, as it always did, when she had this particular thought. It was possible, at least for her, to have a kinship with a city; something that was nothing more than bricks and tarmac and glass and grass; something that was home, but that wasn't a person. It was possible, for her, as she had a hard time relating to people sometimes: she was cold and often distant, though she put up a good front of being friendly to customers and colleagues alike.
Her talents lay in painting and drawing. When she was creating something, Laura Lyons was a totally different person. Transformed, in a second, from a belligerent cafe waitress to a passionate professional who could stun; could wow; could impress any viewer. But, thus far, her only exhibitions had been in the cafe. She had a way to go, and this was ever present in her mind, as she turned the corner into the alleyway next to the old Baskerville factory.
She glanced up through the inky darkness at the faded painted words that adorned the wall: BASKERVILLE COTTON MILL, Founded 1837. She quickly looked away. People said it was haunted, and that if you listened carefully, you could hear all the children that died working in the mill, crushed beneath the machines or dead from exhaustion, screaming in the wind.
Of course, it was all just superstitious bullshit. People didn't like to go near Baskerville; they couldn't sell it when the owner died a few months back, all the usual crap that came with the 'haunted house' notion.
Besides: all that rubbish about the house was totally eclipsed by the myth of the Hound of Baskerville, anyway.
Nearby, something in a skip shuffled and snarled. Well, that's what it sounded like – with a quick and furtive glance at the skip, she noted that the shuffling was nothing more than a black bin bag; the snarling a motorbike out on the road, coinciding with the bag's enthusiastic attempt to frighten her.
She may have been young, but she was strong willed – strong in general, actually. She could handle herself, and she didn't fear being attacked in this particular shortcut. Not many people used it, nor had purpose to: it lead to her street, after all, and who would want to live there?
Again, the sound of snarling . . . Though this time, it sounded . . . No. No, it was gone. Anyway, why would she be hearing that? Right here, right now, in the centre of London? Just because the stories about the Hound were circulating more and more often lately didn't mean that a single one of them was true. There was no reason why she should believe what she had just heard – a snarling growl, and weighty, ragged footsteps behind her.
Perhaps . . .
She quietly thrust her hand into her trouser pocket, and retrieved her mobile, eyes glancing around and brow line hard and lowered. She would call him. Even though they'd grown apart; even though he was visibly growing less and less fond of her by the day . . . She thought she'd heard heavy footsteps, and those snarled were retrospectively sounding like laughter. She was being followed.
A whimpering noise came from a open window somewhere in the old factory, but she ignored it; it barely even registered.
She called him, holding the mobile to her ear and looking about with wide eyes, her pupils dilated, drinking in the small amount of light available. Even the full moon shunned this alley, only gracing the building tops, forsaking everything below them as if it too were afraid.
We're sorry. JACK STAPLETON isn't able to take your call right now. You have been forwarded to the voicemail service-
She lost count of how many times she tried to call him – it didn't matter in the end, though: she'd reached her doorway, and briskly unlocked it, stepped inside, and locked it behind her.
The next hour or so passed normally as ever. Laura had some toast, cleaned her face, brushed her teeth, changed into her pyjamas and crawled into her bed, ready to pass out from exhaustion.
. . . Just as she was drifting off into the hinterland between wakefulness and fully-fledged dreams, she thought she heard a noise . . . A scratch . . . Scratch, scratch . . . Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch-
She sat up, and looked out of her window, as the scratching became feverish, and the insane moonlight drowned the rooftops outside. She'd shut her curtains, but looked at the small amount of silver light they let leak through into the cold room – she couldn't afford heating, not even at this time of year.
Her breath visible in front of her face, her brow muscles seemed permanently stuck in a perplexed, tight knot: for the light that was let through wavered and changed.
Someone was moving behind them . . . Someone was scratching at her window.
Without looking away, her eyebrows raising themselves and her eyes widening, she pushed herself backwards on the bed, flailing without looking away from that flickering light for her phone. She quickly selected Jack's number, without even looking: she was practised.
One ring. Two rings.
The snarling from earlier was back, but louder than ever. The scratching giving way gradually to the sound of splintering glass, slowly crackling as someone – something hurled itself forcefully against the glass, determined to get inside.
Three rings. Four rings.
The window shattered loudly, and she couldn't help the yelp that escaped from her mouth, betraying her presence in the room, if the intruder hadn't already known she'd be there to start with.
Silence, as two more rings sounded from her too-loud phone.
We're sorry.
The curtains blew back, and she gasped. What a terrifying, fantastical sight to behold-
JACK STAPLETON isn't able to take your call right now
-what a fucking horrifying confirmation of all the stories,-
have been forwarded to the voicemail service
-what a petrifying, lumbering, bristling, demon-like, bloodthirsty-
. . . Please leave a message after the tone.
AN: So, yes. This may have more nods to the canon than the actual BBC show did, mainly because I thought, this being a supernatural story, I could get more of the hellhound stuff in. Let me know if you like it so far . . .