John woke as soon as the early summer dawn found its fullness and crept through the gap in his curtains. Dawn was always a relief here. The sun brought a golden light to the House that seemed to still its chaos. John rubbed his eyes. He was still exhausted, but sleep was no longer a refuge. He felt it must be avoided where possible. Even after the exhausting events of last night, when he finally fell into bed and his eyes began to drift helplessly closed, he started awake several times in fear. He didn't want to dream.
He swung his legs out of bed and rubbed his face roughly. Tea. Tea would be wonderful. He dressed quickly, yawning.
Molly was closing her bedroom door behind her when John left his room.
"Morning," he said. Normally it was just a chipper smile that passed between them, but today they hugged warmly. Human contact was a refuge that now outweighed sleep. Company.
They reached Sherlock's half open door, and John knocked cautiously.
"Come in, John."
Sherlock looked up when they entered.
"Oh, and Molly. Hello."
"Have you been awake all-" John paused, shocked. "Jesus, Sherlock! Are you shooting up?"
Sherlock was sitting fully clothed at his makeshift lab table with his sleeves rolled up, a syringe in one hand, tightening a belt around his arm. He glared at John.
"Blood sample." he explained.
Molly scanned the detective's pale forearm, taking in the faded track marks.
"Taken a lot of blood samples in the past have you?" she asked conversationally. Sherlock scowled at her and she shut up.
John sat on Sherlock's bed and finished his earlier question.
"Been awake all night?"
Sherlock glanced at him.
"Is it morning?"
"Yes."
"Then yes, I have been awake all night. Hold this."
John took the end of the belt as Sherlock clenched his fist, trying to find a vein.
"Tighter."
John complied, wincing.
"I'm not entirely comfortable with this. I feel as though I may be enabling something."
"Quiet," Sherlock frowned. "So bloody hard to find a good one - there we go."
He sank the tip of the needle into a raised vein and slowly began to draw blood into the syringe.
"I could have done that for you, you know,"said Molly. "It's easier when someone else does it."
"Alright, thanks." Sherlock withdrew the syringe and loosened the belt in one worryingly well practiced motion. He turned his attention to John.
"You're next."
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John flexed his arm against the wad of cotton covering the site of Sherlock's surprisingly professionally drawn blood sample. There was almost a skip to his step as he took the stairs down to the entrance hall on his way to the kitchen. It truly was beautiful, the House. As menacing as it was in darkness it was majestic in light. Dark shadows flooded out to reveal vast, intricate tapestries; the figures lurking in corners dropped their night-masks to reveal the blank eyes of solemn, perfect statues. John felt almost high on the utter relief of morning. As he crossed the hall however, he couldn't help but let a shiver take him for a moment.
The door to the cellar was open.
It was dark as ever in the cellar. Not even a tiny, forgiving window set high to let the daylight pour in slow as treacle. It was always night down there.
Still, so easy to dismiss it all as a dream in the kindness of day...
John shook off the creeping feeling and continued his march towards the kitchen. The entrance hall relapsed to stillness as his footsteps faded.
Then, with a distant "Oh, damn it!" they returned.
Flustered, John strode towards the cellar door.
I have to do this, he thought. I have to know.
A box of matches lay beside a candlestick on a chiffonier in one corner. John lit the candle with hands already beginning to shake. Even standing in the doorway and stretching his arm out as far as it would go, the tall flame of the candle only illuminated the first five steps. The darkness seemed thicker down there.
Steeling himself, John took a deep breath and set foot on the first step.
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"This was one of the first things we had to do at med school. With people, I mean. Live people."
Molly was chattering nervously. She hated that. There was always a sensible, more restrained voice inside her head saying Stop it, Molly, that's enough now, but it was always the shrill, loquacious voice that won out. She could tell it was getting to Sherlock.
Molly was sitting on the edge of the bed while Sherlock pulled the belt tight around her arm. He held the empty syringe between his teeth.
"If you want, I could hold the sharp while you do that. If you want. I mean, if you'd prefer..."
Sherlock wordlessly shook his head. Being in close proximity to Molly was becoming more... Difficult. He should have asked John to take her sample, but that would have seemed odd. He was hyper aware of the fact that his knee was pressed into the bed between her legs. That her sweet, bright face was raised to him as she trustingly offered her arm for him to take.. How slim her arm was. How she smelled of crushed Jasmine, with an animalic note that made him-
"Sherlock... I think that's quite tight enough now!"
Sherlock widened his eyes slightly as he came back to himself and took the syringe from between his teeth. Almost bit through the damn thing, he realised. Mustn't give anything away. He glanced down at Molly's arm, the belt pulled a fraction too tight, one particularly perfect vein pulsing at the surface.
"Fine. Hold this."
Molly took the end of the belt, keeping it taut. Sherlock bent closer, focusing on the vein. He slid the tip of the needle under the skin. Molly's tiny intake of breath almost undid him.
The needle. Focus on the needle and the vein.
The first gush of blood rolled into the barrel as Sherlock gently pulled back the plunger. In the almost complete silence he could hear her quiet breathing. Images from his dream began to flood his brain.
No. His mind does not wander. That is not something that his mind does.
(her arms thrown back behind her head as she- her ribcage as delicate as a birds as she- her eyes closing in ecstasy as she-)
A real gasp from Molly brought him back to reality. He had pulled the syringe out too roughly and hurt her.
What was wrong with him? Molly wondered, crooking her elbow to quell the beads of blood already beginning to form. He was brusque with her again now, undoing the belt with deft, graceful fingers. He turned his back to her as he rearranged something at the lab table and tossed a wad of cotton over his shoulder in a seeming afterthought. She pressed it to the smeared patch of blood.
"Well... I hope you find something." Molly turned to leave.
"Hope," Sherlock sneered. "Obviously I'll-"
The sound of the door closing cut him off. She was gone. Sherlock breathed out slowly and leaned forward on the lab table. After a moment he shook his head and set about gathering materials for the second phase of tests. He hoped that he would find something too. Behind the confident veneer of his ego lay a quaking fear that if the tests revealed nothing, he would have to admit to himself that he was losing control.
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Down in the cellar the muzzy darkness closed around John in a vast suffocating cloak. He took a moment at the bottom of the stairs to take stock, calm himself, but already his hands were shaking violently enough to make the candle flame gutter and choke on it's melting wax. Last night, still dizzy with sleep and in company (or so he'd thought) the cellar had seemed different, a little less foreboding. Alone, it was disconcertingly quiet, and huge. The light from his candle glinted off rows and rows of dusty wine bottles as John made his way deeper into the immense space beneath the House. He couldn't shake the feeling that wherever he looked, just beyond the glow of the candle, something was watching him.
He reached the corner he had turned the night before and stopped. The watchfulness of the walls seemed to intensify.
Come on, he chided himself inwardly. You're a grown man. What are you frightened of?
The answer rose in his mind ominously. He gritted his teeth and lunged around the corner.
The same, big room. The only light now from his sputtering candle. Stone walls and ceiling tactile with soft dust and swathed in cobwebs. Endless racks of wine lining every wall.
Every wall.
The doorway was gone.
"What the..." John spoke aloud, bewildered. He raised the candle higher and squinted. Yes, it was here that Sherlock had brought him. The doorway to the small room had been over there, spilling its sickly light into the cellar.
John moved closer and set the candle down, running his hands over the dusty rows of wine where the door had been. He looked at the bottles. Thick dust coating every one, undisturbed for decades.
Sherlock's insistence that he had been sleepwalking began to make sense. John sighed. Mostly, he felt relieved. He picked up the candle and turned to leave.
A sudden noise almost made him drop it. Shuddering violently, John's first impulse was not to run, but to shut his eyes tightly.
No. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real.
Familiar, grotesque, a sound from his nightmare came from behind him. The heavy creak of a cradle rocking on the stone floor. John started to run as another noise rose to fill the cellar at a sickening pitch. The thin, catlike wail of a newborn child.
The bottles of wine began to vibrate with the frequency as John dashed blindly past. The walls shook.
Breathless, the room spinning around him, John emerged into the welcome, blessed, perfect light of the entrance hall. He slammed the door to the cellar shut behind him, pulled the bolt across and fell against it, panting.
The unreality of it, he thought wildly. The uncanny horror of it. John head ached with the effort to make logical sense of what he had seen, coming up again and again with nothing. Like fistfuls of sand underwater, every explanation dissolved in the current, leaving one, ridiculous certainty.
This House is haunted.
But there was something else that scared John as he straightened up, brushing the dust from his sweater. Something that made his desperate way back up the steps to safety more of a struggle than it should have been. He tried to ignore it as he went to place the candlestick on the chiffonier.
His limp was back.
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