Chapter 2
Watson
That night Mary and I took shifts to watch over the strange youths whom we had brought into our home. Neither one had stirred, not even when we changed their bandages. All the while I couldn't help but wonder about them, their bodies alone told a tale of an active and violent life, one that had led to them being horribly battered in an alleyway. I could not make sense of any of it; the young woman's clothes were a mix of male yet were also very skimpy and provocative as well. Yet she was a very young and healthy girl, and it was too cold for anyone to wear such scant clothing, which ruled out that she was some kind of prostitute. And then there was her companion who obviously had led a violent life based on his scars and calluses I saw on his hands as well as hers. Could they be some kind of strange circus folk? That seemed the most obvious answer, but then what could have happened to them to cause such wounds? And that light that we saw before the coachman and I discovered them, was that connected in some way?
I then remembered that the young woman was carrying a bag and went to Mary. "Mary, did you bring that young woman's bag with you the night we found them?" I inquired. "Oh, yes I did, I believe I put it near our fireplace, I had forgotten about it in all the excitement. Do you think it has some clue to identify those two poor souls?" Mary responded. "Perhaps, my dear, perhaps," I said as I found the bag by the fireplace. It was black, like a knapsack with a long strap. It was made of a material I had never felt before and the cover was held on by some strange metal buttons. I put them together and they came together, like magnets! "Mary, have you ever heard of a bag with magnets in it?" I asked. "No, I've never heard of such a thing," Mary said as I showed the magnetic buttons to her. "How peculiar," Mary said as I opened the bag again and we saw what was inside.
Inside we found very strange metallic objects. The first I pulled out of the bad was a metal cylinder with a bright green stripe on it as well as a bright green button. I set the cylinder aside and then pulled out what seemed like a gun of some sort, made of a similar metal I soon found written on the barrel of the gun, 'Fenton Works'. "Fenton Works?" I said out loud. Then I went back to the cylinder and looked at it and found the words, 'Fenton Ghost Thermos' on it. "Ghost Thermos?" I scoffed then I saw Mary pull out a metal object that resembled a crescent with a bright green button on it. She ran her hands on the surface of the crescent; then accidentally pressed the green button! Almost immediately the metal crescent opened up and metal started to climb up Mary's arm. "JOHN!" she screamed and moved around as metal parts moved up her body until at last she was wrapped in a suit of armor!
"MARY, DON'T MOVE!" I yelled. Mary then stopped and stood still. I could see through a glass window in the helmet that she was struggling to stay calm despite the strange circumstances of her imprisonment. "Mary, can you hear me?" I asked. "I can hear you, but how do I get out of this…thing!?" Mary loudly asked. "Err…press that button again!" I suggested. I heard a small noise and suddenly the suit of armor unfolded itself back into the crescent. Mary dropped the strange device and ran behind me, her dress now torn to rags. I slowly approached the strange device and picked it up slowly and carefully and put it beside the 'Ghost Thermos' and gun. "The more we learn about them the stranger they become," I noted as I went back to the bag. I pulled out a pair of metal gauntlets and saw that they were labeled, 'Ghost Gauntlets'. "More ghostly objects," I said as I put them beside the other objects. That was all that was in the bag.
Mary and I looked at them and she said, "What on Earth is all this? Such strange weapons, and all this talk of ghosts. We have more questions than answers." "Maybe their clothes will reveal more, where did you put them?" I asked my wife. "They should be in the bedroom still, I near the window. You retrieve them dear, I need to put on another dress," she told me and I went to get them and took them out of the room in case they contained any more surprises. I dropped them on my living room floor and then picked up their shirts first. Both were damaged and bloodstained, though when I took a closer look at the shirt the young man wore I saw that his blood was slightly more brown than the young woman's, yet I could tell from their feel that they weren't older stains. I went up to my room and pulled out a magnifying glass that Mary had given me as a birthday gift. I went back to the living room for a closer look at the bloodstains and saw that the shade was slightly green!
This just made me even more curious as I went to take a closer look at the rags Mary and I had washed our young patients with and I saw that the blood on the young man's rags were also of similar shade of greenish-red-brown. I then took the rags and took them back to my living room along with the clothes, wondering what could be the cause of the strange blood stains. I then inspected the clothes further and found tags on them and managed to make out words and numbers on them that didn't make any sense to me at all, as well as similar tags on the inside tongues of their footwear. I could not understand any of it and told Mary as such when she came to the living room. "Perhaps we should call Mr. Holmes for this," she suggested. "Yes, I'll send him a telegram, I'll be back as soon as possible," I told her as I went to a nearby telegraph office and sent him a message about the strange youths and I raced back home as quickly as my old war wound allowed me to. Mary reported that there was no change with our patients and handed me a much needed cup of coffee while we sat and waited for Holmes.