A Step Upon the Stair (Prologue)
Title: A Step Upon the Stair
Author: ladyblahblah
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes/Buffy
Rating: G for now; probably NC-17 eventually
Summary: A woman requests the assistance of the great Sherlock Holmes when a face from her past returns to haunt her, and the secrets of Holmes's family are revealed. Supernatural forces are at work here, Watson, and the game is afoot.
If anyone knows how to change the font on LJ, tell me please! The letter is so much more enjoyable when it's in fancy Edwardian script.
"Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill."
--Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles
Prologue
Upon his death, there was found among Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s possessions a tattered envelope containing an unpublished manuscript. Though there was high excitement at the thought of another yarn from that master storyteller, left like a final gift before he departed this world, not long after the last rites had been performed the envelope and its contents went missing. For years his readers bewailed this last, lost tale, rumored to be a final novel of The Great Detective.
Though theories abounded, no one could ever discover enough evidence to reveal whether the manuscript was misplaced, stolen, or destroyed. Eventually, the passage of time obscured the facts, rendering that final story a mere legend. Still more time destroyed even that; there are few today who have even heard rumors of a lost, unpublished tale, and fewer still who believe it.
The mystery remained until the year 2004, when a building in downtown London exploded; the result, the government claimed, of terrorist activity. Workers clearing the rubble found, amid the crushed and charred remains, a single battered envelope that had remained, for the most part, mysteriously untouched.
The envelope passed from hand to hand until, finally, it fell into my possession. Contained within was the manuscript of legend, carefully and precisely typed on paper that had barely yellowed with age. Affixed to the first page was a letter, handwritten and just as untouched by time as the story that it fronted.
I have kept this find to myself for many years, but I believe the time has come at last to share it. I do so in much the same hope as its original author held: that we may learn from the past and prevent old mistakes from returning to plague us. The new generation must be taught not only our better traditions, but our missteps as well. Read and consider what is to follow.
And yes, you will be tested on this.
--excerpt from Andrew Wells’s text, On Guiding and Instructing a Vampyre Slayer; Chapter Two, “Past Idiocies; or, Why There Are No Longer Desk Jobs At the Watcher’s Council”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My dear friend,
I hardly need remind you of the shared benefits that our friendship has brought. That your pocketbook has been supplemented by the sale of those of my adventures that you are so thoughtful as to publish under the banner of fiction, and that my life, too, has been much improved by their publication, are not facts of which I need remind you (though I seem unable to resist doing so, in any case). Though I have never said as much, I live each day extremely grateful for the measures you have taken to preserve our relative anonymity-you have a gift for pseudonyms that continually eludes me, necessary as such a talent may be for someone in our line of work.
You have been a true friend over these long years, and I trust that I have been the same to you. Therefore I hope that you will take into account our long history when I tell you that the package you now hold in your hands comes to you with a rather unusual request attached. That request is simply this: that you make no attempt to publish it or, indeed, even read it unless you should be fortunate enough to outlive me.
Such an entreaty has surely come as something of a shock, which I shall do my best to dispel with the paltry explanation that is in my power to give.
It may well surprise you to hear that it is with some small amount of regret that I look back on my years with the man your readers have come to know by the name of Sherlock Holmes. My time with him has been the richest, most rewarding of my life, yet so many of my experiences must be held back from public view, experiences with such potential to enrich, to enlighten. The story contained herein is such a tale, written at the request of my illustrious friend.
Unfortunately, its publication is, despite his fervent wishes, utterly unthinkable. There are men possessed of more power than sense who should very much object to its contents becoming public, and they would have few scruples about doing anything necessary to prevent that occurrence. As I could not dissuade Holmes from seeing it in print, I have therefore recorded not only the adventure itself, but also certain salient details that made its arrival into the public forum as distasteful to him as they are to those who observe us.
While he was, as I am sure you will anticipate, most seriously displeased with my duplicity, I have mollified him with the assurance that after our passing I shall leave it to you to decide whether or not to print what I have sent you. Until then, this is one adventure that I must keep to myself, recorded but unpublished, until such time as society no longer turns an eye either condemning or blind toward the facts contained within.
For the story that follows is fact, indeed, difficult though it may be for you to believe. And so, dear friend, I offer this warning: like all of my tales, the following is one of danger, adventure, and the inestimable genius of the man I am proud to call my best and truest friend. However, should you venture within its pages, you must also brace yourself for revelations of a supernatural nature, of another world that exists within and beneath our own. Worse still, you must endure displays of human emotion in that very man I have so often described as cold, remote, a veritable automaton, displays that might very well prove too shocking for you to stomach.
What follows is the unvarnished, unaltered truth. Dates and names-with the exception of my own and that of my friend, whom I have convinced to seek the better part of valor-have been kept in their original form, as those changes have always been in your domain; also, with no hope of publication I have no editor to please, and so no need to alter or omit aspects of my story that may be deemed unfit for public consumption. It is my hope that if this is ever read by other eyes, it is done so in a more understanding and tolerant time.
As I write this primarily for my own benefit, that I may remember always the lessons I have learned, I may dwell on details that will shock, perhaps even disgust you and our faithful readers. I do so not in the hope of producing such reactions, but that those details will never fade into obscurity as so many of our memories do. And so, my friend, if your sensibilities are delicate, or your world view as comfortably narrow as mine once was, set down this tattered volume. Walk away, and turn your thoughts to more pleasant tasks; I will not begrudge you the choice. If, however, you find that your mind is inquisitive and open, read on, that the lessons I learned as such cost may be of some further use.
Your humble servant,
John Watson
Chapter 1
Author: ladyblahblah
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes/Buffy
Rating: G for now; probably NC-17 eventually
Summary: A woman requests the assistance of the great Sherlock Holmes when a face from her past returns to haunt her, and the secrets of Holmes's family are revealed. Supernatural forces are at work here, Watson, and the game is afoot.
If anyone knows how to change the font on LJ, tell me please! The letter is so much more enjoyable when it's in fancy Edwardian script.
"Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill."
--Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles
Prologue
Upon his death, there was found among Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s possessions a tattered envelope containing an unpublished manuscript. Though there was high excitement at the thought of another yarn from that master storyteller, left like a final gift before he departed this world, not long after the last rites had been performed the envelope and its contents went missing. For years his readers bewailed this last, lost tale, rumored to be a final novel of The Great Detective.
Though theories abounded, no one could ever discover enough evidence to reveal whether the manuscript was misplaced, stolen, or destroyed. Eventually, the passage of time obscured the facts, rendering that final story a mere legend. Still more time destroyed even that; there are few today who have even heard rumors of a lost, unpublished tale, and fewer still who believe it.
The mystery remained until the year 2004, when a building in downtown London exploded; the result, the government claimed, of terrorist activity. Workers clearing the rubble found, amid the crushed and charred remains, a single battered envelope that had remained, for the most part, mysteriously untouched.
The envelope passed from hand to hand until, finally, it fell into my possession. Contained within was the manuscript of legend, carefully and precisely typed on paper that had barely yellowed with age. Affixed to the first page was a letter, handwritten and just as untouched by time as the story that it fronted.
I have kept this find to myself for many years, but I believe the time has come at last to share it. I do so in much the same hope as its original author held: that we may learn from the past and prevent old mistakes from returning to plague us. The new generation must be taught not only our better traditions, but our missteps as well. Read and consider what is to follow.
And yes, you will be tested on this.
--excerpt from Andrew Wells’s text, On Guiding and Instructing a Vampyre Slayer; Chapter Two, “Past Idiocies; or, Why There Are No Longer Desk Jobs At the Watcher’s Council”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My dear friend,
I hardly need remind you of the shared benefits that our friendship has brought. That your pocketbook has been supplemented by the sale of those of my adventures that you are so thoughtful as to publish under the banner of fiction, and that my life, too, has been much improved by their publication, are not facts of which I need remind you (though I seem unable to resist doing so, in any case). Though I have never said as much, I live each day extremely grateful for the measures you have taken to preserve our relative anonymity-you have a gift for pseudonyms that continually eludes me, necessary as such a talent may be for someone in our line of work.
You have been a true friend over these long years, and I trust that I have been the same to you. Therefore I hope that you will take into account our long history when I tell you that the package you now hold in your hands comes to you with a rather unusual request attached. That request is simply this: that you make no attempt to publish it or, indeed, even read it unless you should be fortunate enough to outlive me.
Such an entreaty has surely come as something of a shock, which I shall do my best to dispel with the paltry explanation that is in my power to give.
It may well surprise you to hear that it is with some small amount of regret that I look back on my years with the man your readers have come to know by the name of Sherlock Holmes. My time with him has been the richest, most rewarding of my life, yet so many of my experiences must be held back from public view, experiences with such potential to enrich, to enlighten. The story contained herein is such a tale, written at the request of my illustrious friend.
Unfortunately, its publication is, despite his fervent wishes, utterly unthinkable. There are men possessed of more power than sense who should very much object to its contents becoming public, and they would have few scruples about doing anything necessary to prevent that occurrence. As I could not dissuade Holmes from seeing it in print, I have therefore recorded not only the adventure itself, but also certain salient details that made its arrival into the public forum as distasteful to him as they are to those who observe us.
While he was, as I am sure you will anticipate, most seriously displeased with my duplicity, I have mollified him with the assurance that after our passing I shall leave it to you to decide whether or not to print what I have sent you. Until then, this is one adventure that I must keep to myself, recorded but unpublished, until such time as society no longer turns an eye either condemning or blind toward the facts contained within.
For the story that follows is fact, indeed, difficult though it may be for you to believe. And so, dear friend, I offer this warning: like all of my tales, the following is one of danger, adventure, and the inestimable genius of the man I am proud to call my best and truest friend. However, should you venture within its pages, you must also brace yourself for revelations of a supernatural nature, of another world that exists within and beneath our own. Worse still, you must endure displays of human emotion in that very man I have so often described as cold, remote, a veritable automaton, displays that might very well prove too shocking for you to stomach.
What follows is the unvarnished, unaltered truth. Dates and names-with the exception of my own and that of my friend, whom I have convinced to seek the better part of valor-have been kept in their original form, as those changes have always been in your domain; also, with no hope of publication I have no editor to please, and so no need to alter or omit aspects of my story that may be deemed unfit for public consumption. It is my hope that if this is ever read by other eyes, it is done so in a more understanding and tolerant time.
As I write this primarily for my own benefit, that I may remember always the lessons I have learned, I may dwell on details that will shock, perhaps even disgust you and our faithful readers. I do so not in the hope of producing such reactions, but that those details will never fade into obscurity as so many of our memories do. And so, my friend, if your sensibilities are delicate, or your world view as comfortably narrow as mine once was, set down this tattered volume. Walk away, and turn your thoughts to more pleasant tasks; I will not begrudge you the choice. If, however, you find that your mind is inquisitive and open, read on, that the lessons I learned as such cost may be of some further use.
Your humble servant,
John Watson
Chapter 1