23. From Book girl fan: A Baker Street Christmas Carol

The winter of 1893 saw me in the blackest depression I had ever experienced. Holmes had tumbled over the falls two years prior, and my wife had followed in the summer of 1893. My wife and I had tried to begin a family of our own, but none of her pregnancies had come to the fifth, we began to hope, as she progressed normally into the second trimester. Then one morning she awoke to blood, and we knew we had lost the child, who we had been tentatively calling Little John. Mary grew quiet, sad, and pale, and little could cheer her. She slipped away in spirit first and then in so I found myself utterly alone, drinking more than was healthy, on Christmas Eve, having sent the maid home in the day, I had been visited by Lestrade, who had tried to persuade me to join him and his family for Christmas dinner, but I am ashamed to say I sent him away quite rudely, and ignored carolers where I would have once joined in, and even denied alms to gentlemen collecting. Never I had felt Christmas less in my soul.

I must've fallen asleep, and awoke with startle as my clock struck midnight. I felt a chill like I never felt go through me as I realized there was a ghostly smoke drifting from the chair across from me.

"Hello?" I whispered.

"Hello, old boy," my friend's voice answered, and my blood ran cold.

"H-Holmes?"

He leaned froward, and there was my friend, and yet, it was not. He shimmered and disappeared in turn, seeming solid one moment and nearly invisible in another.

"Yes, my friend, and no."

"Why are you here? How are you here?"

"I am your subconscience, I believe. But perhaps I am more than that, if you prefer to think that. And I am here, my friend, because you need me to be."

"I've missed you," I said, my voice thick with tears.

Holmes smiled, sadly. "I know. I can see your grief, and it saddens me to see the loss of the spirit you once carried for the season. But there is something you must know. I am the first apparition you will see tonight. Three more will follow. There is still life to be lived, old friend."

"Apparitions?"

"You'll see. I must go now, Watson. The next will be along shortly."

"Holmes, wait-" I stretched out a hand to him, but he was gone, smoke and all.I sat in shock, for how long I couldn't determine. My eyes fluttered at last, and I awoke again to the crackle of the fire, restored by someone other than myself.

"There you are, brother," said my brother Hamish, glowing faintly like the fire, smiling, and looking healthier than I recalled him looking even for years before his death.

"Hamish!" I exclaimed. "Is it you, truly?"

"Aye, it is. Brother, I am sorry," He said, gently touching my arm, though I couldn't feel the touch itself. "I treated you badly at end of life, and I regret it."

"I forgive you, brother," I said, tears welling. "I have missed you all these years."

"I am here to remind you of the Christmas pasts we shared as children," he said. My sitting room melted away, and I found myself standing in the snow outside my childhood home. I saw myself and Hamish, children, playing in the snow, taking turns on the sled. Our laughter carried on the wind. The bull dogs were cavorting around us, barking. I looked to the house, and saw my parents, watching us through the window with smiles.

"We had good Christmases, didn't we?" Hamish said with a smile.

"Indeed, that's where I began to love it."

The scenery changed—I saw every Christmas over winter holidays in flashes of love and warmth—and then the Christmases in Afghanistan, in unbearable heat, and color. I saw myself, singing carols with my men.

"You found Christmas even here," Hamish said.

"Yes, I did," I said slowly, thinking about how it had been easier then than now.

And then I was at 221B, sliding Holmes a disguise kit for a gift, and his face was nearly smiling. My first Christmas at 221B. The tree was small but bright. Holmes had protested.

And then I was back in my sitting room, but it was a different time—Mary was straightening stockings, in a lovely red dress, so beautiful, so lovely with life. I saw myself, alight with love, come to her with a ball and mistletoe, and we kissed.

"Merry Christmas, darling," she said.

"Please, Hamish," I whispered. "Let's go."

We returned to my own sitting room, now dark and cold. My tears felt cold on my face.

"Brother," Hamish said. "My time draws near, but remember- life ebbs and flows. Once you were as alone as you are now, and it changed for the better. You are the same man. You will find joy again."

"Please, don't go," I begged, but he faded as quick as Holmes did.I staggered to my chair, closed my eyes, opened them again, and Mycroft Holmes was standing at the hearth, serious as ever.

"Dr. Watson," he said. "I trust you understand that I am here, but I am also in my rooms in Whitehall. More likely, I am a hallucination, but hopefully a productive one."

"Indeed," I said, perplexed.

"Anyway, let us continue. Oh, and yes- Merry Christmas."

"I- yes, Merry Christmas," I said, and then we were standing in Lestrade's home. Gregson, MacPherson, Hopkins, and the like, and their wives, and Lestrade and his wife, and all their children, were crowded around a table heaped with pudding, goose, and potatoes. The buzz was genial and cheery, and the tree shone with candles. Twine packages were wrapped beneath.

"I do wish Dr. Watson would've come," Mrs. Lestrade said.

Lestrade sighed, heavily. "I know, my dear. I worry he's spending the night alone. The loss of Mary was a blow more than any man should have to endure, especially one as decent as him."

She lay a hand on his shoulder. "We will pray for him."

And then I was in a warm little kitchen, where Mrs. Hudson and her sister were gabbing and preparing food. She looked out the window, and a shadow passed over her face, and then she was gone, and I was in the dark rooms of Mycroft's club, where he wrote a letter and sighed, alone. I looked at the spirit beside me, just as solid as the man at his desk, and he smiled cryptically.

Then we were back in my sitting room, and Mycroft was shrugging into a coat and holding his umbrella.

"Make what you will of these visions," he said. "The final apparition is nigh, Dr. Watson."

"Who will visit me next?" I tried to ask, but he was gone, just as quick as Hamish and Holmes.

The last embers of the fire flickered, and suddenly it was colder than ever. Upon me was a cloaked man, and as I drew closer to him, despite my fear, I saw it was the same Moriarty who Holmes had grappled over the falls.

"You!" I shouted, smiled grimly.

"You are my third apparition?"

He nodded.

"Will you not speak to me? You who have taken so much?"

He pointed to his mouth, and as I looked upon him, he started to decay. His skin fell away, and his eyes, so cruel, shriveled, and his hands became claws, until all I saw before me was a skeleton, and around his feet, chains that dragged.

"This is your fate, then," I said. He nodded. "Show me what you must," I said.

We dissolved into a morgue, and I feared I knew the body beneath. The mortician spoke to a young assistant, "Ach, a good man, he was. Too young. He never was right after his grief. He never recovered."

"How sad," the man said. "And who found him?"

"An Inspector Lestrade. He never stopped trying."

"I heard tell," the assistant dropped his voice. "That he gambled away all his savings and his house is being taken by the debtors."

"True, sad to say. A Mycroft Holmes is paying for the service."

And then we were at the graveyard, and I saw it, my tombstone, year of death obscured, Mary's grave next to mine, flowers at them both…still, though I had been distant and cruel, my friends remembered me…

The ghost of Moriarty pointed to the grave, and stared at me through empty eye sockets. His bones began to collapse and then he was a pile of clothes and bones, but his chains sank into the earth, downward.

I stumbled in fear, and found myself back in my chair. It was midnight, Christmas Eve. I hadn't missed it! I resolved to send a note round to Lestrade I'd join for dinner. I would write Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft,and wish them well. I'd buy gifts for the Irregulars. I would recover. I would not be the sad, lonely man in a grave, blind to the joys of life. I had suffered, but the tides would turn.

Merry belated Christmas!