Taphephobia
Disclaimer- Sherlock Holmes belongs to Arthur Conan Doyle; Holmes and Watson's personalities and traits in this particular story are based on Guy Richie's 2009 version in partnership with Warner Bros.
Chapter 3- Fall of the House of…
Taphephobia: Fear of being buried alive.
…
Holmes opened his eyes,
He was back in his room! He was dry, clean and warm, waking up on the floor in front of a fire!
Had it all been some sadistic nightmare?
He looked at his hands. Perfectly fine, no cuts, no torn skin, no broken swollen fingers…But it still hurt to move them.
He flexed both hands, feeling the sticky, cracking, dry blood… What was this?
His eyes cast over the room he had come to know so well. Scattered papers, mismatched furniture, odd tools and devices of his own design… No Gladstone, but that damn mutt could be anywhere.
He took in a sharp breath has his side pulsated with an indescribable pain. His hand instantly grasped the area, but found nothing but smooth skin.
This…couldn't be right.
"Gladstone!" A familiar voice called from outside the walls and whistled. "Come here, boy. Good boy. Come here."
"Watson?"
Putting aside the strangeness of it all, Holmes got up from the floor and threw open the bedroom door, running out into the hall and looking around.
"Holmes, is that you?" Watson said cheerily. The detective didn't answer, but followed the voice to John Watson's old room. It was as if the doctor had moved back in. The room was filled with his possessions. In fact, is looked exactly like it did before he moved out.
"You're a mess." Watson smirked, and turned to face a burning fireplace. Homes looked down at himself. His hands were, again, bloody and torn, his clothes dirty and rumpled.
Shaking his head, Holmes looked away from his hands and suddenly realized that the dog Watson had been calling for was not in the room.
"Watson, where's Gladst-"
"I told you." Watson interrupted.
"Come again?"
"I suppose no promises were broken, you didn't answer me when I asked you." Confusion was slowly starting to turn into nervous fear as the detective uneasily stepped closer.
"Sorry?"
"Forget it. Do you mind leaving? I'm trying to read." The doctor snapped and took two books from his shelf and threw them into the crackling fire. He followed this procedure five times before Holmes snatched one of the books from his hand and flipped through it.
The detective's eyes widened.
These were stories about him! The cases Watson had followed him on. The "adventures" as Watson had so often called them, were now being burned by the very man who had written them!
"Watson!" Holmes's friend turned back to the book shelf and grabbed another two books and threw them into the fire. "Watson, what are you doing?"
"If the fire goes out, the room will get cold." He answered simply in a casual tone. Baffled, Holmes grabbed his friend by the arms, surprisingly not feeling the pain of his bloody raw hands.
"You've spent years writing in those silly notebooks and now you're just going to burn them?"
The next thing to happen was what completely threw the detective off; Watson stepping forward and wrapping his arms around him, pulling him into a tight embrace. The fear building in the back of his mind was hitting him full force right now, quickening his heart and clouding his vision.
"It's good to see you, old boy." His friend's voice was hushed and full of remorse. The action itself being so unexpected, Holmes could not even return the gesture, but stand awkward and confused until Watson pulled back and walked by him without uttering another word.
"Watson," Holmes forced himself to walk after him, following the doctor out into the hall and to Holmes's now closed door.
Getting out a set of keys, Watson started trying each one into the lock. Every time it wasn't the correct key, he cursed and angrily tried the next one.
"It's not locked-" Holmes tried the door handle; it stopped mid turn, locked. "Well…I was only gone for a moment. That's peculiar. Who locked this? Watson?"
The man didn't answer, but finally found the right key, and with a satisfied smile, opened the door.
What lied behind the door was enough to make a grown man fall to his knees in absolute horror.
His bedroom was now empty. No blazing fire, no mismatched furniture, no… no nothing… Nothing except a large tan wooden box with a golden trim. Surrounding the box was what looked like a whole garden of flowers with hundreds of little cards and letters randomly stuffed in between. His violin was carefully set leaning up against the head of the coffin; its bow resting on the floor in front of it.
He was horrified.
Body trembling and head swimming, Sherlock Holmes stumbled backwards into the wall across from the door only to be dragged forward by his friend, who had an iron grasp on his wrist.
"Watson, What is this! Whose… Where are- ...Stop-"
His friend roughly pushed him forward, forcing him to trip and fall to his knees in the mound of flowers and letters.
He had to be dreaming… This was a dream… Everything was a dream!
"It's a nightmare… Just…" He slowly lifted his bleeding hand to the coffin's entrance and lifted up on it while climbing to his feet.
There inside… was absolutely nothing.
It was empty.
His eyebrows knit together as he tried to make sense of it.
"I don't understand." He whispered, tracing over the casket's silk lining. "It's empty, what does that mean?" Holmes turned around, the question vanishing from his mind as he came face to face with Professor James Moriarty.
…
Holmes jerked awake, his eyes snapping open.
Something was wrong…
Something wasn't… Why couldn't he breathe!
His lungs stung him as he gasped reaching up and hitting the top of his wooden prison.
"NO!" He screamed, but it died away with the lack of air and did nothing but make it harder to breathe.
He was underground…HE WAS UNDERNEATH THE GROUND!
All he saw was white as he slammed his fists into the beautifully crafted wood, feeling his bones crack and break under the force of flesh smashing something so solid in comparison. He'd forgotten about the nail and was now squirming wherever his blind fear took him, kicking and slamming anything, animal instincts taking over his mind and body.
Slowly, dirt started spilling in through the cracks like sand through a child's fingers. The coffin collapsed…Holmes felt nothing.
…
...
Everything was quiet and still. The trapped man tapped his index finger against the ground beneath him, feeling the silk covered wood.
He wasn't dead.
He couldn't be… He was in too much pain to be dead.
He took a single breath and blew it out in a quick but undeniable sob.
He was alive.
Still trapped, hungry, bleeding, and covered in his own piss, but alive nonetheless.
He had been dreaming.
Tears staining his face, hot, annoyed, frightened, and angry at himself for stirring up such a self-destroying nightmare, Holmes breathed in large deep breaths until his head started to feel light and dizzy.
"Stop. Stop. Calm down. Don't do this." His voice was shaky and almost inaudible to him. He wasn't even sure any sound had escaped his mouth at all.
This was sick.
Dreaming of death… two dreams in a row; the second having been his worst fear made real. He couldn't stop his body from shaking. He was not crying, but for some reason his eyes kept watering. His stomach growled and pained him, making him feel sick while he did his best to ignore the nail in his side that had all become numb except for a sharp pulsating pain that wouldn't go away.
It was still dark out. But at least he knew he was above the ground.
A/N: "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." - Edgar Allan Poe