Molly typed feverishly, staring at her laptop screen. She found that she desperately missed the order of the morgue. The surgical spotlessness, everything ticking over as it should (and, added a small voice in her head, the dead staying dead). She shook off the thought. Working on another article for the BMJ journal was doing well in taking her mind off the illogical weirdness of the House and transported her back into the comfortable realms of medicine and science.
Lost in her writing, she barely registered the knock at her door.
"Come in," she said impatiently. The door creaked open and she looked up, expecting John or Sherlock. It was neither.
"Marion?"
The other girl came quietly into the room and shut the door.
"I wanted to talk with you," she said. Instead of the archaic maid uniform she wore a shredded rock band t-shirt and tight black jeans. She was barefoot, carrying an armful of books. She looked like a completely different person.
"Of course." Molly took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. "What is it?"
Marion padded across the room and sat on Molly's bed. She nibbled at her thumbnail.
"Dorothy and I are leaving," she said at last. "I would like for you to come with us."
Molly shut her laptop.
"I'm not going to ask why, obviously."
"It is not safe here. The House has been so active since you came."
"Then why not ask the others to leave too?"
Marion regarded her steadily for a while.
"I would like to tell you about this House," she said at last. "And why it is you who will suffer unlike the others."
Molly left her laptop to join Marion on the bed. She glanced at the books that Marion had brought with her.
"What are these?"
"For if you stay. You will need protection."
Molly noticed a pentagram on the cover of one of them.
"You mean... Marion, I'm a doctor. I'm not sure if I believe in-"
"Pour l'amour de dieux!" Marion interrupted exasperatedly. "Have you not seen enough? The House, it is inside all of you now. Your friend, the other doctor, he begins to limp. Mr. Holmes is losing his mind. I know you have seen something, dreamed something perhaps. When you have a problem with things that are physical, yes, you need science and medicine, but you know it is not that way here."
Molly bit her lip.
"How do you know all of this?"
"I am... Observant," Marion said cryptically. She reached out to grasp Molly's hand.
"The House. It will take you first."
"I don't understand," Molly searched Marion's face. "How are you safe here?"
"I come from a long line of women who know how to deal with things such as this." Marion shrugged. "Before I came here to work, Dorothy would barely leave her room. I gave her protection. Talismans. Spells. So that she, like I, could move freely without interference."
"What about Mortimus?"
"He was away very much on business. And he is the type, you know, to brush things away."
"How do you explain what happened to him then?"
Marion looked down at her books.
"He had done something to upset the House," she said quietly. "Two weeks before it happened, things began to get, how do you say, agité... Turbulent..."
Molly's blood ran cold. If the last time that this happened it culminated in death then...
"Exactly," said Marion, studying her face. "It will continue until the House has taken what it wishes to take."
She picked up one of the books.
"Powerful magic in here. Spells for protection."
She flicked through it and frowned.
"Your pretty detective has been tearing pages out of my books."
"Marion," Molly said quietly, "What happened here?"
Marion sighed and looked at her sadly.
"From what I could see in my dreams... And the way that the walls speak... And old stories passed down through the generations of Ravensdales... I could bring together the whole story. Terrible things happened in this House."
"Tell me."
Marion closed the book and muttered a short incantation in French.
"To guard the room as I speak," she said. They do not like me to tell it. Are you certain that you wish to know?"
Molly nodded, her eyes fearful, and Marion began to speak.
"Many years ago, during the 18th century, the Ravensdales were a proud family. Aristocrats. Lord Ravensdale was in great favour with the King. They were rich and wanted for nothing. The house has not changed so much since those grand times. The tapestries are the same."
Marion sighed and traced the spine of one of the books.
"They had three daughters, Lord and Lady Ravensdale. The eldest was especially beautiful, and good spirited, and sweet. They say such beauty has not been seen in the family since this girl. Her name was Emily. Many men wished to be her husband when she came of age.
"But when she turned sixteen, she became bad tempered and withdrawn. She no longer cared for her appearance. Her long dark hair turned from silk to straw. Her face lost its glow. She was no longer the sweet, happy girl she had been. Something had changed. Every day she got worse. Until one day... She disappeared."
Molly felt a chill begin to creep under her skin.
"Was she ever found?"
"No. Lord Ravensdale said that he heard rumours that she had eloped with the traveling blacksmith who was passing through at the time. She had been so sullen and rebellious that this seemed the most likely explanation. But only one month after Emily's disappearance, the second eldest girl, Esther, began to suffer the same symptoms as Emily had before. It was around this time that the first signs of a haunting began to shake the Ravensdale House. This House. The haunting seemed to be concentrated around Lord Ravensdale. It tormented him nightly, he could get no rest. In time, he was driven mad by it. Two months after the disappearance of his daughter, Lord Ravensdale was found dead, his body floating in the lake beside the jetty. He had drowned. When they turned the body over, they saw that his face had frozen in an expression of such horror that it made one see death just to look at it.
"After the death of the master of the House, Esther's strange illness improved. The family moved to London. The House lay empty for almost a century before it was occupied again."
Marion went quiet, then turned a stare of such intensity on Molly that she shifted away from her on the bed.
"But you know as much as I do that there was more to this story," Marion spoke fast, "Emily wrote in journals every day, like most who lived back then and were literate. I have found all but one. the last one. But the rest told me enough."
Her mouth twisted in sadness and revulsion.
"He started the night before her sixteenth birthday. He took her to the stables to do it. Where she could not be heard. When she fell pregnant he killed her. I do not know how, but I am certain her remains are still inside this House. But Emily returned to stop the same fate from befalling her younger sister."
Marion took both of Molly's hands in hers, palm up, and held them tightly.
"There are two forces inside this house, Molly. One is sweet and good but sad... So sad, and confused. Sometimes she forgets that she is dead and runs about the halls as she did when she was alive. The other... Is pure evil. She will try to send a warning before he can cause harm. I saw your susceptibility the moment you arrived. You are like me, but you do not have my knowledge. You are too open for this. Please leave with us."
Molly's head spun as she tried to process this new information. She did want to leave, to run from this place of such sadness and pain and never look back. But there was something deeper inside her, something new, a voice that was at once familiar and ancient-
Don't leave me, it said. Help. Me.
"I can't. I can't leave."
She could see that Marion knew she was resolved.
"But I will keep the books." She squeezed Marion's hands back.
"Thank you."
777
John sat on the edge of his bed as dusk began to fall. With it came the dread of night. He rubbed his leg. The limp had came and went all day. It always came on strong when he passed the cellar. John cleared his throat and continued to sit, staring straight ahead of him. He seemed still, but to look closely one would notice the hunched set of his shoulders, the movement as he swallowed hard, repeatedly. The shaking hands he tried to steady in his lap.
He was terrified.
777
Sherlock woke abruptly, breathing hard. Where was he? He blinked twice as his eyesight focused. Blood. Three vials of blood.
The lab table. He had been lining up a slide under the microscope when sleep came on swiftly, unstoppable as a tidal wave. His head had drooped to rest on one arm and even as he drifted off he tried to fight it. Because he knew what he would dream of. Who he would dream of. And he did.
Sherlock sat up, his head spinning. His cheeks felt hot, his lips bruised as though he'd been biting them in his sleep. He couldn't remember the dream. Good, his mind must have deleted it before waking in some attempt at self preservation. The dream was gone, but the sensation it left behind was-
"Oh.." Sherlock closed his eyes as a trembling surge of lust wracked his body. This was unusual.
"Fine, alright, make it stop," he muttered to himself, gripping the edge of the table so hard that his knuckles turned white. He concentrated, furrowing his brow. Mind over body. Easy. Like pain, like anything, it was easy to think his way-
Sherlock gasped and kicked his chair back, staggering to his feet. Body was winning. This was more than unusual, this was unheard of.
The room seemed to distort around him, ceiling growing higher, corners slinking backwards into shadow. Everything looked warm and tactual, shining a little at the edges. The velvet curtains on the window and the brocade bedclothes looked unbearably soft. Sherlock felt a craving for sensation. Splaying his fingers out in front of him he felt a compulsion to run his hands over everything, recording textures with his fingertips.
This wasn't right. Something was doing this to him.
Sherlock leaned on the table, head down, struggling to steady his breathing.
Find her, a voice was screaming in his ears. Find her and...
He groaned deeply. No. That would be worse than bad. He had to end this strange, chaotic arousal before it carried him straight to Molly's door.
Sherlock winced. The depressingly weak, humiliating act. He never did this. One hand on the table, he roughly reached down with the other to find the hardness he was all too aware of. He unzipped and grasped it, the heat and thrust in his hand, the sensitivity made him draw a shaky, hoarse breath. This wouldn't take long.
The walls seemed to wail as he began to move his hand.
Not this, not this. Find her.
I'm cheating them, Sherlock thought vaguely, then swore as another wave of almost sickening pleasure took him.
Not long. Just... Get it over with, he thought desperately. Where the walls had loomed before they began to close in now. A resonant roar moved through the room that Sherlock was sure wasn't just the blood quickening in his own body. The apparatus on the table vibrated, test tubes tinkling against each other, dancing frantically in their stands.
Sherlock was gone. Almost oblivious to the disorder in the room, his only thought was of release. As his breathing quickened to short gasps and a shuddering warmth started in his groin, Sherlock opened his eyes and moaned. His disordered mind spun surreally as he registered one vial of blood jerk out of its holder and rise to hover in front of his face. His dilated pupils took in the label on the vial – M – and that the blood inside was bubbling and crawling up the sides of the glass, boiling frantically behind the glass. Imperceptibly, Sherlock saw the sides of the vial bulge only a fraction and-
Sherlock closed his eyes and turned his face away as the first spasm of pleasure rocked through him, and the vial of blood shattered in mid air.
He felt hot blood hit the side of his face and a shard of glass graze his cheekbone. The rest of the glassware on the table rattled louder and louder as Sherlock succumbed entirely to sensation, riding out four more helpless convulsions before collapsing forward to rest on one forearm, breathless.
The room stilled.
Sherlock raised his head, catching his breath. He could think now. Footsteps were approaching, and Sherlock darted to grab a length of surgical cotton to clean the evidence of his weakness off his hand. He had just composed himself when John burst into the room.
"Sherlock! Are you alright? I heard this roaring noise and something sma-"
John stopped and carefully looked Sherlock up and down. Standing as straight as usual, Sherlock shot him a questioning look. Half of his face and chest were splattered with blood, the curls wild on his forehead soaked with sweat. The makeshift lab was a mess.
"Erm... I'll... come back later, shall I?"
Sherlock managed a curt smile. John backed slowly out of the room.
Once the door clicked behind him, Sherlock collapsed into his chair. He passed a hand over his bloodied face and stared at his red-stained fingers.
"What the hell is happening to me?" he murmured to himself.