The doctor—Watson was his name—was a problem. The man should have seen what was obvious, feared what was less so, and signed off on the paperwork by now. Without that signature, they would be forced to let a court decide Michael’s state, and at the very least, he’d be found unfit to speak on his own behalf. That wouldn’t do. Michael Adcott would not be speaking to anyone, and that was another problem.
For the moment, things were under control. The serum—alone—was not enough. That much had been clear in the sketchy notes that had been included with the case that lay waiting in the laboratory at St. Elian’s. Only fate—a bottle of wine—and a loose tongue had given Aaron Silverman the information he needed.
“There was a time,” his father had said, head drooping toward the table and fingers loosely gripping his wineglass, “when we had ways to deal with our problems. There are things we know.” The old man had glanced up to see that his son knew the we in question. “We have always harbored our secrets, Aaron. There was a time when we kept them less guarded—when a rabbi could walk the streets with the respect of those around him. They knew. I know.”
Several glasses of wine later, and a lot of cajoling and flattery on Aaron’s part, and those secrets had begun to surface. Men from clay. The Cabala. Patterns of words and form, rhythm and breath, that emulated the formation of the first man. A mad Arab poet who spoke as if he were in another place and time and stared into distances that were not there. Those words, copied onto the canvas corner of a tent and guarded, studied—shifted over the years and recombined. Al-Hazred, the man had been called, and though he’d been mad, he’d been a prophet as well—a prophet of power. At first the notion had seemed ludicrous. A clay monster controlled by he who gave it life, born of the proper words, the proper earth—the prayers—the faith of the rabbi, and the vision of a madman.
Sworn to secrecy, Aaron had left his father’s home and set out to find a use for his new secret. Money wasn’t everything, he reminded himself often, but no money was certainly something to be avoided. Money was power, and if you were not the one with the power, you were under that man’s thumb. Aaron Silverman would feel the pad of no man’s thumb.
A chance encounter had landed the wooden case in his hands, won from a drunken, reeling fool at poker. The man had wagered it against a five-pound note, holding it close to his chest and announcing drunkenly that the secrets to life itself were contained within, and that this being the case, it certainly qualified as collateral against a five-pound note. The case had been found floating, he claimed, off the shore of the island of Eucrasia after the explosion that destroyed its culture and its ruler. It had been handed from man to man since, and nothing was known of its contents save that they came from the laboratory of one Dr. Caresco Surhomme. Silverman, who knew of Caresco’s work, had agreed impatiently, the four threes in his hand itching to be slapped to the tabletop, and he’d walked away with all the other man’s money, and the wooden box. He could still hear the fellow’s words, echoing in his mind.
“You’ll find more than you bargain for in there. I’m glad to be rid of it. God bears a very heavy burden my friend—don’t be too quick to shoulder it.”
It had taken years of poring over corresondence and articles, diatribes about and against Caresco and fictions written about the man and his work, to realize what it was that he possessed. It had taken another five years to analyze the serum and attribute it to one small corner of Caresco’s work. The reversal of aging. The shaving away of the ravages of time. Taken to the extreme, and with certain additions of Silverman’s own devising, reversing the process of death.
Silverman shook his head to dislodge the memories of what had come before. More important to see to the needs of the moment. He led Michael around a corner and disappeared into the fog. Jeffries would know what to do, and they would have to set about whatever it was with haste. Both the serum, and the incantations and amulets his father had reluctantly provided him, were proving less stable than he’d anticipated. The row in the cell earlier had been a near miss that Silverman didn’t want repeated.
The asylum brooded over the street beneath, giving off a sensation of density, immovable and old as time. When the carriage stopped in front of that place and Holmes stepped out, tipping the driver, I was sure he had lost his mind. The Asylum of St. Elian had been deserted since I was a young man, still pursuing the degrees and education that would lead me to a career in medicine. The stories I’d heard had seemed laughable enough at the time, but when I was faced with the reality of the place, they came back to me full force, flickering across the years of my memory with chilling speed.
Holmes didn’t hesitate. He moved from carriage to door with forceful steps, reached up, and rapped his knuckles against the door sharply. I stared at him, then at the building before us. I would have bet my last pound that no one had passed through that door in ten years. Holmes knocked again, then turned to me with a purpose.
“No one seems to be about, Watson. We must hurry.”
“Hurry where?” I inquired.
Holmes was already trying the door. It was, of course, locked, but I noted with amazement and some alarm that Holmes had pulled a small tool from his pocket and inserted one end into the lock. A few deft movements of wrist and finger, and I heard the sound of tumblers sliding into place. The latch gave way, and Holmes pulled the door open, slipping inside. There was nothing to do but to follow him into the shadows, and to pray that most of what I’d heard back at university was the hogwash it had seemed. The heavy door closed behind us with a loud click. Holmes fiddled with it for a moment, then turned away.
“Locked,” he whispered.
There was no light, but Holmes moved quickly and easily, making his way to the first set of doors to his left. He pulled out a box of matches, lighting one and holding it up as we entered the room. It was a crude, antiquated sort of laboratory. On one of the benches, a few crates lay open, packing material and other items strewn about as if opened and gone through quickly and without much care.
I moved up beside Holmes, glancing over his shoulder as the light from the first match flickered, then died. The quick glimpse had been enough.
“Medical equipment,” I said softly.
“As I suspected,” Holmes replied, turning to the other bench. He lit another match, and this time he slipped along the wall and found the light switch, flicking the power to on.
“Someone will see,” I hissed.
My friend ignored me, and with a quick turn about the room, I realized my error. There were no windows. We were encircled in stone as surely as if entombed. The light was dim, but Holmes made use of it quickly, making his way to a wooden case flung open on one of the bench tops.
The case held two vials, and I saw that Holmes had looked past the greenish, glowing liquid and the other—full of something that looked like sand. He plucked it from the case and held it to the dim light. Then he removed the folded paper he’d brought away from the doorstep of my flat and opened it. He held the two objects together, and I saw that what was on the paper was a bit of clay. Red clay, unlike anything near the city. The dust, or sand, in the vial had the same reddish hue.
“Watson, have you heard of a man named Caresco?”
I started violently, nearly toppling into the nearest of the benches. “Caresco is dead.” I replied, a bit more calmly. “His island was buried in volcanic ash. That Caresco?”