London After Midnight

by Ralph E. Vaughan

About the Author: Ralph E. Vaughan is the author of several books combining the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and HP Lovecraft, such as "The Adventure of the Ancient Gods" (first story to combine Holmes & Lovecraft), "The Dreaming Detective." and "Sherlock Holmes and the Terror Out of Time."

Excerpt

Contrary to popular thought, Dr John H Watson was not Sherlock Holmes’s only friend in London, nor his sole narrator. There were times when Watson, whose outlook was as pragmatic as Holmes’s, would have been baffled by events, as in the incident at the Natural History Museum. There, Holmes turned to Roger Sherrington, a clubman of some note, a gentleman of independent means, and a scholar of ancient books, arcane mythologies, and vanished civilizations. He was the polar opposite of Holmes, a whimsical arch-romantic and a believer in many odd, occult and bizarre notions. He had an intuitive understanding of the world that ran counter to Holmes’s analytical mind, and while we might at times consider him a flippant and ‘unreliable narrator,’ he provided, for some of the events that night, a point of view of which Sherlock Holmes himself was quite incapable of achieving.

Sherlock Holmes believes me a fool. Once, he actually voiced that opinion, though not in an entirely unkind tone, and at the time I could hardly contest the charge. Be that as it may, I felt he at least understood my sincerity even if he did not give any credence to my admittedly odd beliefs. I knew he would never budge from his Gibraltar of Logic, that unassailable redoubt of rationality from which he surveys and judges the world, just as I would never abandon my belief in a cadre of banished monster-gods awaiting the proper alignment of stars to reestablish their rule over Earth for the purpose of enslaving and devouring humanity.

Ah, yes, admittedly odd.

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