Voodoo Holmes Stories

while holding Bridget in my arms. The dancer", I added, as Baker looked over.
    "I had a distinctive notion of Death approaching, a sense of perilous proximity. If I had continued walking then the pattern would have continued and I would have plunged into the shears of Death."
    "There is no need", he said.
    "Excuse me?"
    "There is no need making pretty words about it. Death wants you. He has invited you before, kindly. Now he wants you to work for him on the other side. You are of more use to him when you belong."
    He had spoken in a dreamy voice and his eyes were drifting.
    "I suspected as much. Who is Bridget? Am I at peril knowing her? Is she simply a medium or the messenger?"
    "The dancer is voicing him. She is his mouthpiece. She was suffering while he pulled her limbs. He had picked her because you knew her. You must not return. Leave her be. When Death enters the body twice, then it withers."
    "Oh it does, does it. Does that mean that you are just a little bit jealous, Baker? Maybe a tiny bit excited seeing us go about it nights looking through the glass knowing this is something reserved for the living? We call it making love, you know."
    "Well, you do a good job about it, Mr. Holmes, but it is not out of the extraordinary", Baker said. There was her kind of smile in the corner of the milk boy's mouth before it flickered and I knew she had gone back to the shadows.
    I left the train at the next station waiting for a return to the city. I was thinking about seeing Bridget immediately if only to thank her, but felt that I should leave her be before Baker's predictions came true. Before we continued our relationship, I had to break the spell Death had over me. I knew it had given me a warning before by using patterns I knew. Would there be no warnings next time?
     
    The afternoon saw me at the Royal Hospital, the cancer ward, where the terminally ill of the city's upper class were kept. Most of them were unconscious. Only a few of them had their loved ones with them – for the simple reason that the rich are seldom loved. This proved an advantage for me because I was keen on studying in a private setting what reactions the dying ones might have to what the uninitiated observer might have considered antics. I had had brought my notes with me. Dr. Watson had been so kind as to furnish me with a doctor's lab coat and there was a nurse pointing out patients she thought were in a bad way and may be taking their last breath that night. She had marked five of them, all of them elderly ladies who appeared to be having a hard time leaving what had been their home for eighty-some years. According to the nurse, they had all been here for months, but something odd had happened last night when suddenly, their defences appeared to have deteriorated around the time when I had had my experience leaving the Shay Club.
    „ What made you think that there was a deterioration?“
    The nurse, a stocky woman in her fifties, short, black hair like a helmet, blinked. „How do you mean, Sir?“
    „ Well, they have been ill for a long time, prostrate as it were. How could the state of their health even have taken a further tumble?“
    „ They were keening, Sir.“
    „ Keening.“
    „ Yes. Dreadfully ailing. And jerking all over.“
    „ They were convulsing?“
    „ Yes, Sir.“
    „ How?“
    „ I don't get your meaning, Sir.“
    „ I mean to say: Their convulsions ... have you noticed any kind of pattern? Which limbs were involved? Were there any particular movements you observed?“
    „ They were convulsing, Sir. That's all I can say.“
    „ Convulsing – with their entire bodies involved?“
    „ I couldn't really say, Sir.“
    „ Were they conscious, looking about? Were their hands moving, or their feet?“
    She stared, but did not answer. I looked over at the women. They were lying next to each other.
    „ Will that be all? I will have to see to my duty, Sir.“
    „ One final question, nurse. I am noticing that the ladies are all in the same part of the room. Is that because of the lamentable state of their health or had they been put there before?“
    „ I don't get your meaning, Sir.“
    „ No meaning. I am simply asking were these ladies assembled in the back of the room because they are dying or have they been there from the very beginning, when each of them was admitted.“
    „ I couldn't really say, Sir. They've been here before I even came here.“
    „ Ah, good. That answers my question. Thank you.“
    I was