It's my pleasure to host Harding McFadden for a guest post today about The Great Detective. His story is part of the new anthology An Improbable Truth: The Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited by A.C. Thompson.
The Great Detective
Harding McFadden
I suppose for everyone who has read of the Great
Detective, there will always be that one actor, that one giant among the
legions, who is Holmes. For me, it was always Jeremy Brett. The voice, the
mannerisms. It was like the first time that I saw Michael Gambon play Maigret:
there could simply be no other. Brett owned the part, and after the first time
seeing him perform it, I could not read Doyle’s stories without hearing the
dialogue spoken in that voice.
When I was hardly a child, maybe eight or ten
years old, my uncle gave me a copy of a Holmes collection full of great
stories, and accompanied by wonderful illustrations. I fell in, and like so
many others, never fully climbed out. There was passion, intrigue, mystery, and
a sense of family between these two men that went beyond the words used. Like
so much of what I read and watch and write, it is the family that stays with
me.
At the heart of my little attempt at a Holmes
tribute is this theme of family. (In honesty, if you have had the misfortune to
read any of my other, few published stories, this theme is always present. You
can blame my wife and children for this: upon their arrival, all of my
priorities shifted. I have never been so happy.) The narrator of the piece is
Watson’s daughter, and through her words, I have tried to express her love of
her parents, as well as the grumpy old genius that she shares her life with.
This is my second time working inside Doyle’s
world. About a year ago, if that long, I placed a story in a collection of
Professor Challenger tales. When outlining that one (I needn’t have bothered,
as the finished product came out very different than the outline, regardless of
the wasted hours and days of research), I came to the early conclusion that I
simply was not talented enough to emulate the narrative style that Doyle had
created. To get past this limit to my ounce of talent, I opted to create
another narrator, to tell the story in my own way, without having to step on
the fingers of a giant. Likewise, with this Holmes story, I have opted to do
the same.
For as long as Holmes and his adventures have
been in my life, I have likewise read horror. Initially, the cheap, easy to
copy splatter of 80’s cinema, then as my taste became more refined (see:
stuck-up), I began to dwell on horror that actually affected me. Any fool with
paper and pen can write something grizzly and disgusting and call it horror. It
isn’t. It’s just disgusting. Not to say that there is no place for disgusting
stories, but I can hardly call them horror. For me, horror is something that
creeps in and takes a nap in your subconscious, waiting until just the right
time to wake you from a sound sleep, bursting out in cold sweat, with no chance
of sleep returning that night. This is hard. I suppose that’s why when I come
across one, I hold onto it for dear life. F. Paul Wilson’s epically creeps
“Foet” leaps immediately to mind.
When I was writing this story, I didn’t want it
to be just Holmes and Watson stumbling onto something horrific on any other
afternoon. I wanted the world that the Detective and my version of his
chronicler to be as much a piece of the terror as the happenings within the
story. It isn’t just England, come last Thursday. It’s a mess of a place,
kicked around by the heavens, until the only thing that separates it from Hell
is a few degrees. I wanted it to be a horror story through and through, where
no matter how well things work out, they’re still kind of screwed. Don't think,
however, that this means the story is an epic downer, where you are tempted to
open an artery as soon as you put it down. You see, I am cursed with a
sickening optimism. No matter how bad the day, I still feel that things will
work out for the best. I’ve said, more often than even I probably realize, that
if you can’t find the positive in a thing, then you’re just not looking hard
enough. Lastly, I have tried to instill this belief in the story.
So, let’s see: Brett, horror, optimism… Have I
missed anything? Honestly, I don’t know. I can only hope that this doesn’t read
as the ramblings of some poor fool, more full of himself than anyone has a right to be. In truth, I can
only hope that once you’ve read my little “thank you” to the late Mr. Doyle,
that you like it, and don’t feel that you’ve wasted your time. I suppose that
in the end, that’s all that any writer can hope for…
Have a fine day.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR:
Harding McFadden is a Pennsylvania-based writer who lives a blessed life
with his Wonderful Wife and Perfect Children. When he isn’t trolling the
internet for open anthologies, he is constantly working on that novel that he’s
been working on. He has been fortunate enough to have been published some
half-dozen times: twice on everydayfiction.com, in the August issue of Mystic
Signals, and in the anthologies Challenger Unbound, Dragon’s Hoard,
and The Idolaters of Cthulhu. He has no regular social media
outlets, though he will be starting somedamnthing-or-other soon, at the
insistence (and threatening mannerisms) of friends and well-wishers. He
hopes that you like his story.
From “The Adventure of the Slow Death: From the Scourge
Diaries of Emily Watson” by Harding McFadden
It was some time after the Case of the Crestfallen Corsair that
the great detective allowed me to fill my late father’s shoes as his
biographer. This would have been after the Great Scourge left half the globe a
charred mass, the other half a sweltering, desiccated nightmare. Those of us in
what was left of Great Britain looked fearfully to the dawn, constantly on
alert for our own time. Nine months with no Heavenly fire, and still we shook
in our shoes.
“It was hardly a Divine fire from Heaven,” he told me over tea one
melancholy evening. I had made the error of reporting to him the judgment of
many papers of the time, that the sky of fire had been the Judgment of God.
“Nothing more than a particularly large ejection from our sun. One with
devastating effect, but a natural occurrence, nevertheless.”
In my minds-eye I could hear him saying these words around the stem of
his pipe. Now, however, there were no ‘Three Pipe Problems.’ Inquiring as to
why one particular day, I was informed that the smoke did nothing to focus his
mind of late. I couldn’t help but assume that it was the constant barrage of
ash flowing over the world that put him off of his pipe. How does a man
willingly spark a match when the charred reminders of half of mankind float by
his window on every breeze?
A small charcoal of my late parents adorned a place of honor upon the
stone fireplace around which we sat. We both looked upon it through the silence
that evening, and many others. No fire burned, nor embers glowed. Even through
the deepest winter past, the heat of day was nearly intolerable. It was through
habit and emotional necessity that we persisted there. The past may be lost to
us, but should never be forgotten.
With a tip of his cup, he said to me, “I find that I miss them more often
of late. Never let you think that those friends around you are but passing
fancies. They are the spice of life. Without them, our outlooks are simply…
Bland.”
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