Fic: Whispers

[chocolateteacup]

This is my first time posting here, so I hope I'm doing it right!

Title: Whispers 
Author: chocolateteacup
Wordcount: 4500
Characters/pairings: Watson, Holmes, mention of Mrs Hudson
Rating: PG
Warnings: The paranormal, discussion of ghosts, etc
Summary: Just as there are ghosts from the past, there can also be ghosts from the future, or from an alternative universe, similar to our own, but with some vital difference. John becomes the victim of a haunting while he is alone in Baker Street.
Author's notes: This is a companion piece to a story called Echoes, which you can find here:  caffienekitty.livejournal.com/308997.html#cutid1
This story struck a particular chord with me, so I sort of had to write a response fic, and caffienekitty very kindly gave me permission to do so. Caffeinekitty, please note that I reused one line from 'Echoes'. If you want me to change it I will do.

I also think the actual ghost of Dr. John Watson possessed me while I was writing this. I used words in this story that I don't think I have ever written before, and probably never will again.

I started off writing this as pure ACD, but when Holmes finally turned up, he was Jeremy Brett. Just imagine him and Benedict Cumberbatch in the same room. Good Lord...


*

I had been living with Mr Sherlock Holmes for many years when it began, and I had been sure I knew all the secrets of our home at Baker Street.

It started with footsteps, as these things invariably seem to. I once had an uncle who lived with a restless spectre for twenty years. The same footsteps marched up and down stairs for an hour every night between 10 and 11 O'clock. The phantom never seemed to grow tired of its walk, until, after twenty years the footsteps ceased. A week later my uncle was dead.

You may think that story might have given me cause to fear the supernatural. Quite the contrary, I am well aware that phantoms can provide comfort in some cases, the lonely widow receiving a final visit from her late husband, the small boy who sees a shape by the window and knows that his beloved grandmother is still watching over him.

Of my own encounter with the supernatural, however, I am less certain.

The first time it happened, I had retired to my room at the usual time, intent on reading myself to sleep with a copy of Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas. Holmes was away, a case in Carlisle. His absence made the house eerily quiet, and my candle threw strange shapes upon the wall. The words and the soft light from my candle lulled me to sleep, despite my unease, and the book finally slipped from my fingers, the candlelight still flittering against the wall. It was a mild night and I had left the window open.

I awoke with a start, to blackness outside my window, and the stump of my candle still burning merrily. It was freezing, so I climbed out of bed and shut the window, shivering, before I reached down to scrabble for Harry's fob watch. I meant to check what time it was, and have a glass of water, for my mouth was dry, cracked, like the banks of a river in summer. I grasped the watch, the chill of the silver case seeping into my fingers, and I dropped it, trying not to cry out at the sensation, cold as the ice on a frozen lake.

Now, I like to think of myself as a level headed man, an antidote, if you will, for Holmes's fits of madness. Prior to this incident I thought nothing of ghost stories, aside from their worth as harmless entertainment, especially for cold, dark nights such as this. But, as I sat in that chill room, I swear my blood turned icy and the hairs on my neck prickled. I believe I was expecting something to happen before it did.

Thus, I was in that frame of mind when the footsteps began. I listened to the careful thud of tired feet with little surprise until it registered to me what I was hearing. Of course my mind, ever as steady and sedate as those footsteps, jumped to the most logical conclusion:

"Holmes?" I paused, but there was no reply, only the thud of footsteps. "Holmes, is that you?"

The footsteps stopped, sounding as if they were right outside my door. I froze, but heard nothing more. I sat in this way for a long time, and I was drifting back to sleep when the footsteps started again, this time returning downstairs. No longer afraid, for if whatever this being was meant me harm it would have come into my room, I swung my feet out of bed and into warm slippers. As I crossed the room, I noticed the temperature was as it should be on a October night, cold, but not bitterly so.

Downstairs, all was as it should have been, no sign of anything being moved or tampered with, and no sign of anyone having been there. I glanced into Holmes's room on my way back up the stairs. Empty, of course.

*

The next morning, I imagined I had dreamed the whole thing, and spent the day catching up on correspondance and reading, taking a long walk in the afternoon as if nothing out the ordinary had occurred the night before. It was peaceful, and I found myself relishing the quiet, so unlike the usual insanity of Holmes's day to day existance.

The evening began in a peaceful enough fashion. Mrs Hudson insisted on joining me for afternoon tea. I believe she thought I was lonely, when in fact I felt quite the opposite. When she had retired for the night I read for a while, and worked on my journal, an adventure I may call 'The Adventure of the Copper Beeches'. I found myself reading my own words aloud, echoing the things I had said at the time.

"'Are they not fresh and beautiful?' I cried with all the enthusiams of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street."

I stared at the page in horror. I was becoming my own ghost. I ran my hands over my face, yawning through the fingers. Lack of interaction with members of my fellow species had made me tired, I thought. I would retire, and go out in the morning, go to my club, find someone to visit. Anyone. It was unhealthy to sit at home all day long with imagined phantoms, much worse than real ones.

I slept without the aid of a book, but woke in the middle of the night. I heard myself cry, and threw my arm over my face. What was this!? Light dancing outside my window, like lightning, like the aurora borialis.

"What in the name of God...?"

The world outside the window had changed. And not, I thought, for the better. A sign flashed green at me from across the street, the very building that housed the coffee house I frequented to escape from Holmes's smoke when he was in the middle of a particularly difficult case. It was lit up like a flame, but green, and twinkled on and off. Some kind of gas lamp behind green glass? No. It was far too clear for that.

There was a great noise in the street, from the black shapes that moved below, roaring like beasts. I dared not look at them too closely, not that I could, for they were bathed in the same unearthly light as the strange sign. They made a noise like whispering thunder. I gazed further down the street, to see more strange lights, pink this time, and I heard shouts, screams, a young lady's voice raised, shouting curse words that I had rarely heard outside of the army.

I looked the other way, and was suddenly confronted by a huge vehicle, far bigger than any cab, as big as a boat, shooting along the street, rattling. It was bedecked with bright lights, as was everything else in this hellish rendering of Baker Street. I ducked, out of instinct, as it passed, but even as I did so, I saw that it was full of people, sitting in hunched positions, in clothes I had never seen before.

"Oh, dear Lord..." I breathed from my crouching position, forehead resting against the windowsill. I waited for the sound of the monster to fade into the night, and then, acting on a sudden impulse, I threw on my dressing gown and ran down the stairs. If I had been supplanted into hell, I was going to face it in the flesh, and not through a window. I ran through the house in pitch blackness, from memory, but it seemed that the furniture had moved while I had been sleeping, for I bumped into a chair that I do not recall owning, a flimsy thing which I knocked to the side and left there.

I flung open the front door as soon as I reached it, afraid to hesitate. I stood in the doorway, horrified at the sight that awaited me. No lights, no green sign, no lurid shining boxes racing through the night.

Nothing, but the brown streets of London, and a single unoccupied hansom cab at the end of the street. And the cold wind, which blew keenly through my nightgown as I stood shivering on the doorstep. Somewhere, a woman's voice was raised in a shout but I couldn't make out the words. I shut the door after a moment, and opened it again, but everything was as before.

I shut the door again and made my way back up the stairs. Still in darkness, I reached out for the chair I had knocked over. It was not by the bookcase where I remembered hearing it fall. I lit a candle, and scanned the room. As I thought, there was no sign of any flimsy wooden chair. We did not own such an object, and nothing in the room was misplaced or damaged. Why, then, could I still feel the hardness of the chair on my shins, throbbing there like a brand? I must have stood for a long time, just looking at the room, for the next thing I remember was hot wax leaking onto my fingers and I shook the candle out with a curse.

My room was dark when I returned, and as it should have been. I looked out the window to make sure, but only saw the same quiet street as I had through the front door. I spent the remainder of the night turning restlessly, finally sleeping as the dawn began to break and I could hear the birds singing. No ghost would strike while the birds were singing.

It was past ten when I awoke, head stuffy, my neck aching. I stretched, and immediately began to feel better as the light spilled in over my face and the bones in my neck cracked, relieving the pressure. I began to smile, before I remembered that Holmes would not return until the following day, the first of November. I had one more night in the house alone. The thought should not have filled me with the amount of horror that it did.

*

The third night began with the rain. I stood at the window for a time, watching the glow through the gas lamp outside. I was about to turn to the parlour, with an idea of preparing myself a cup of tea, and toast perhaps, when I felt something pass through me. I froze at the window, and out of instinct, stared up at my reflection in the window, thinking for a moment that I might see another image there, someone else superimposed over my own face and shoulders.

There was nothing, but the space in which I stood was freezing, biting cold that seemed to caress my skin with a lover's touch. A cold, dead lover risen from the grave. I backed away from the window and found myself warmer as soon as I moved away. I rubbed my hands together to dispell the feeling that someone, a person without any substance whatsoever, had been caressing me.

I took the tea, in a room that seemed to become increasingly quiet as the minutes went by. If I was the kind of man who indulged in flights of fancy, I would have said that the very house was waiting for something, to impart some message that only I was supposed to hear. That was why it had waited until Sherlock Holmes was away. It wanted me. My left hand gave an involuntary shudder, slopping tea all over my wrist. I put the cup down in its saucer with a clatter. The noise made the house jump around me, waves of some force I didn't understand resonating, while I sat in my armchair and waited for it to settle.

I would sleep downstairs tonight, on Holmes's threadbare sofa. I wanted to observe any phenomena that might occur in the lower part of the house later on. Holmes would say I was afraid in that derisive voice of his, but it wasn't that. Not at all. I would remain downstairs in the interests of science and observation. The world of the supernatural needs a sensible voice to settle some of the ridiculous theories that abound in this modern world.

So, I settled myself on the sofa, blankets covering my legs. I was lucky it was a mild night, unless the temperature dropped later on. But that, I thought, may be due to factors other than the October cold and apparently imminent snow. I had no need of a book, for I slept immediately. My mind must have been exhausted by the events of the past few days. I had only one more night to get through, and then at least Holmes would be back and I wouldn't have to be on my own in a haunted house.

But of course Baker Street wasn't haunted. It was my unquiet mind casting shadows, that was all. I was overtired, and lonliness had triggered something in my mind.

That was all.

The sound of a gunshot woke me. I jerked upwards on the sofa, hands clawing at an unseen assailent, the sound of my terrified, panting breaths all I could hear. The echo of the shot rang in my head and I sat up, staring round the room, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

The blankets slithered to the floor, making me jump again. My heart hammered inside me, remembering the sound of the shot. My body knew it had not been part of a dream. It was then that the cold hit me, so I picked up the blankets and threw them around my shoulders, still looking around the room.

There was something wrong, and yet everything was perfectly right. There was the chairs, the table littered with Holmes's apparatus from his experiments, the paintings on the wall, Holmes's locked safe. And yet, in the corner of my vision, there were other things in the room. A spidery object stood in the middle of the room, beside one of the armchairs. It was the chair I had kicked over the night before in my rush to leave the room. I rose from the sofa, still holding the blankets close. The chair looked solid enough, even when I stood right in front of it, but as I reached out to take hold of the back of the chiar, my fingers kept slipping through. I felt something resisting me as I tried to touch it, but it was not wood. It felt more like air, packed so hard into a small space that it became solid. But not solid enough.

I left the chair alone, and saw other things in the room, that should not have been there. There was another sofa against one side of the room, superimposed over our sofa. This one was darker, and made of a strange material. I shuddered as I looked at it. I had been sleeping there, my head resting in the middle of that unreal object.

I threw myself to the floor as another gunshot rang out, followed by a voice. I couldn't understand the word, a one syllable word drawn out like a child's taunt, and somehow distorted, but the voice... I would have to hear it again to be sure of who it belonged to, but there was a tone that was familiar to me. It sounded like Holmes, when he was in a particularly lethargic mood, speaking in a dull, flat growl.

I looked up and saw there was something on the wall. A face, painted in yellow, with pockmarks all around it from bullet holes. I walked across to the face and touched it, feeling that icy coldness again as I crossed the room. I could not feel the bullet holes. It was as if they were painted on. I leaned my head closer to the wall, to sniff the paint. My stupid mind ever sensible to the last, I thought that it must smell, being so freshly painted, but there was nothing. Of course, who would have been able to creep into the house and paint a face upon the wall without my knowing?

As if in response to my thoughts, a voice cut through the still air of the room.

"Just so I know, do you care about that at all?"

"Would caring about them help save them?"

"No..." I said into the silence that followed.

There was a low chuckle in response, unmistakenly that of my friend Sherlock Holmes. I sat down, without looking, on the threadbare little chair that wasn't really there, the one that had left a bruise on my left shin the night before. To my surprise it took my weight, and I sat there for a moment, and passed a hand over my face, praying that when I moved it away from my eyes, the world would have returned to normality.

No. Not on this night.

There was a new lamp on the table. I suspected that the lamp, like a lot of things in the too full room, did not exist in the real world, but was a projection like the face on the wall and the chair I was now sitting in. Beside the lamp stood a human form. I could not make out the features, aside that it had pale hair and skin, and appeared to be clothed in a white or grey garment. Here then, was the ghost of Baker Street.

I realised it was looking at me. I could not see its eyes, but I knew it was watching me. I also knew that it was afraid. Perhaps, if it was a ghost from my past, I was a ghost from its future. Or the other way around.

I remembered then that I was sitting in the ghost's chair. "Sorry!" I cried, and stood up. When I looked again, the ghost was gone, and so was the chair. The living room at 221b Baker Street was entirely back to normal. I staggered across the room sank back onto the sofa.

I remained there for a long time, watching the room in case it changed again. But all seemed normal now, and the house was still.

I must have dozed, for the next thing I knew, I could hear the sound of footsteps making their way, ponderously, tiredly, up the stairs. I glanced out of the window. Still dark. I had not a watch nor a clock to hand, not one that worked. The clock on the mantle was broken, and had been for weeks. I pulled the blankets around my shoulders once more, and awaited the owner of the footsteps, if indeed, the apparition chose to put in an appearance at all.

Despite myself, I jumped up as the door opened.

"Good God, Watson. Are you alright, man? You look like you've seen a ghost."

I sat, no - fell - back onto the sofa. I began to laugh, hysterically, covering my face with my hands. I sensed Holmes staring at me, and I knew that even by his standards I must have looked completely mad. That was nothing compared to what Mrs Hudson would be thinking, for I must have awoken her with my outburst.

*

Holmes, damn him, actually laughed when I had completed my tale, pipe clamped in his mouth, chuckling round the stem. The dark look I gave him only served to make him worse, and he howled with his forehead pressed to the wall, slapping the wallpaper above the mantlepiece in his mirth. I returned quietly to my writing until he had calmed down. Finally, wiping the tears from his eyes, he said,

"Well, we'll see what occurs tonight, Watson. That will settle it once and for all."

I showed him the bruise on my leg, to no avail. "You collided with the coffee table in the darkness, that is all. It is heavy and you would not have been able to knock it over, so that when you returned to the room you saw nothing out of the ordinary." I saw little point in arguing. If the haunting was real, he would soon find the truth out for himself. If the ghosts were simply a symptom of my unease at being alone in the house, then it would be over now Holmes had returned, and with no damage to anything but my pride.

So it was an insufferably smug Holmes that settled on the sofa the following night with his violin. I perched on the armchair.

"Is there tea?" Holmes asked, drawing the bow slowly along the strings so the instrument made a long, discordant sound, a warning. I glared at him, our eyes locking, until he flicked one eyebrow upwards and glanced tenderly back to his violin. With a final smirk at me, he started to play, an odd tune he had composed himself, that I had not heard before, but had some similarities to Vivaldi.

He played for an hour or so, while I read, and worked on my journals. Holmes then pottered about the room, looking through the correspondance he had received whilst he was away, all the while casting sneaking glances at me, uttering disparaging comments about the new case Lestrade wanted his help with. At length, as the clock in Mrs Hudson's room struck midnight, he slammed the letter back on the mantlepiece, causing a thud that would have hurt any other man's hand.

"I don't believe your phantoms are going to be putting in an appearance tonight, Doctor Watson." He turned his sharp eyes to me, glittering black and amused in the lamplight. "I should go to bed if I were you. You look tired out."

This concern for my well being was not exactly normal, and I gave my friend a long look before I finally eased myself off the sofa and headed upstairs to my room, stretching my arm in an attempt to relieve the dull ache there. Holmes was right. The last few days had taken their toll.

I need not have worried at the strangeness of Holmes's words, for as I was leaving the room, he drew his pipe out of his mouth and said. "I'll let you know if we have any little visitors in the middle of the night..." The end of this sentence was punctuated with a short, raucous cackle followed by the click of teeth against wood as he replaced his pipe. I did not gratify him with a response.

That night, I slept easily. I could hear Holmes in the room below, going about his business, humming to himself, and occasionally picking up his violin to play out a short burst of music. The thought of having someone else, someone living, close by, must have comforted me more than I realised.

When I awoke, it was still dark, as black as if I was buried underground, and the violin was still playing. My own particular brand of normality had returned to the fold and was playing its violin through all hours of the night. I turned my head slightly on the pillow, to better listen to the music, strains of Chopin mingled with something of Holmes's own devising. It was beautiful, and as it went on, the music seemed to transcend itself, flowing like smoke around my soul. I hoped Holmes hadn't been at the cocaine again. His playing was good, naturally, but he became immeasurably better with his favourite chemical stimulants inside him.

That was when I realised that there were two violins playing.

I sat up straight in bed, and listened, not daring to breathe, trying even to still my heart to better hear the sounds from below. Definitely two. Even Holmes, in the midst of a drug addled high, could not play more than one violin at once, and he was not the kind of man to invite a friend to play the violin with him. I don't believe he knew anyone else who played the violin, certainly not at this time of night. I grabbed my dressing gown and bolted down the stairs.

It was a distinctly pale Sherlock Holmes who sat in the dim light of a single candle, playing something by Mendelssohn. Song without Words, I think. He was completely still apart from the movement of his arms. And there, unseen, a second pair of arms played beside him, a fraction of a second behind Holmes, in the exact same pitch and tone. Not a single note out of place.

'It's the same violin,' I thought absurdly, and in that moment I swear my heart almost stopped. I said nothing, but watched, and listened. I was not even sure if Holmes was aware of my presence, or indeed, if he was aware of anything but the violin and the notes, both real and unreal, that swirled around the room, ostentatiously there. I stood in the doorway, listening quietly until Holmes came to a stop, and set the violin in his lap. A second later, the other violin ceased its playing. The house seemed to draw breath, easing itself back into the here and now.

"Holmes... that was-"

"Absolute nonsense, my dear Watson. You're dreaming. Go back to bed." He didn't look at me as he spoke.

I stepped into the room, closing the door behind me. "Holmes..." I began again, but was interrupted by the sound of the invisible violin, beginning to play a new song. The music swelled, a piece that I had never heard before, fast and then slow and sad, turning into a tuneless cacophony of notes. Holmes glanced at me as the violin played on, his hands perfectly still in his lap, the left holding the neck of the violin and the right resting on the bow. He did not speak, but I fancied it was out of respect for the unseen musician, rather than fear.

The music finally ended, the unseen Stradivarious softly sinking into silence. Holmes pursed his lips, waiting for the last note to resonate around the room. Then he looked to me. I folded my arms, trying not to smile.

"Well, Holmes? I would be delighted to hear your explanation of this one."

Sherlock Holmes was silent for a moment longer, looking like I had never seen him before, smaller, and not as brilliant. The phantom had humbled him. Then he jumped up off the sofa, and snatched up his greatcoat. He shrugged it on, smirking at me manically.

"Elementals, my dear Watson, which I intend to leave you with. I'm going for a walk, and I don't expect to return until the morning. Good night." He slammed the door behind him, and I heard him run down the stairs. I sat on the edge of the sofa, where my friend had lately been, and waited.

A few minutes passed before I heard the sound of a violin bow being slowly drawn across the strings of an invisible instrument. It continued for some minutes, slow and soothing. When it became obvious it wasn't going to stop, I sighed and stretched myself across the length of the sofa and pulled the blankets around me. Placing the cushion underneath my head for a pillow, I slept, the strains of impossible music still whispering in my ears.

Fin.