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John rushed to the shock room as fast as he could. They had just brought in a young man with multiple fractures, a pneumothorax, and a brain injury that was likely compressing his brain which made his current chances of life very slim, but John was never someone to give up easily.
While he and several other doctors and nurses where already working on getting him stable, one of the medics was going through what had happened.
“Name is Charlie Herms, 27 years old. Call came from one of his friends. They broke into an abandoned house and they apparently all went into different directions, heard loud noises and then found him on the second floor in an empty room. No signs that he fell or anything else. We have no idea how he got those injuries.”
“He didn’t fall from an upstairs room, or maybe an attic?” John heard one of the nurses ask.
“The house only has two stories, nowhere he could have fallen from.”
For some reason, a chill was creeping down John’s spine, but he ignored it and started the ultrasound to check his organs.
A few hours and numerous emergencies later, John got the confirmation that he pulled through. They’d have to see if he suffered any long term brain damage, but the brain compression was relieved quickly and he showed good responses after waking up.
This would be the best news possibly, but even after hours, his case was not giving John any rest. He’d had to be in a car crash or fall from at least a floor in a very unfortunate way to obtain those kind of severe injuries and after mulling this over and over, thinking of dozens scenarios, he decided to check on him personally at the end of his shift. It was the only thing he could think of to get this out of his head.
When he entered the room there was a man sitting in a chair on the side of the bed.
“Hi, I’m Dr. John Watson,” John said. “I was one of the doctors who saw him first in the ER. Are you a friend?”
The man was wiping a tear away from his eye and stood to shake John’s offered hand. “Boyfriend, actually. My name is Jason Walls,” he said, trying to give a tiny smile.
John suddenly felt like he was having an intense Déjà-vu and a warmth spread though his chest that momentarily took his breath away. He had no idea what it was and he was quiet sure he never experienced a situation like this, but there was a sense of understanding exactly how the man in front of him felt.
Trying to shake the feeling off, John busied himself with looking at the patients chart and trying to conceal what he was feeling.
“They gave him something to help with sleep an hour ago, so he’s pretty out of it, but I can’t bring myself to leave. I think the only thing keeping me from going mad right now is being here and seeing Charlie’s heart beating and knowing that he is in good hands.”
John put the chart down and stood at the other side of the bed. “Where you at the abandoned house too?” he asked while absently checking Charlie’s vital signs.
“I was, yes. But on the ground floor. I don’t even know why we all split up, it was so stupid. And then there was loud banding and thumping and we all rushed upstairs and that’s when we found Charlie. I’ve never—“ Jason stopped and buried his head in his hands.
John plucked a tissue from the bedside table and handed it to Jason.
“I’ve never seen something like it. The way his arms and legs where at all the wrong angles, it was so horrifying.”
“And you have no idea how he got those injuries?” John asked.
Jason shook his head. “There is no way he could have hurt himself that way. The house is old, but not falling apart. Honestly I’ve never believed in anything you see in the movies, but…I just have no other way of explaining to myself how this happened.”
The same kind of chill from earlier ran through John’s body, but he ignored it and asked, “What do you mean?”
“I’ve googled a bit while Charlie was in surgery and this house is apparently haunted for over a century. There are two other known incidents of people getting hurt badly when entering and tell me— “ Jason turned to John and looked him straight in the eyes, “—tell me this isn’t a damn coincidence.”
John didn’t now what to say, usually he would wave anything to do with the undead, supernatural kind away. As a doctor and veteran he long stopped believing in anything that couldn’t be explained logically, too many innocent lives lost to still believe in a higher power.
But this time, he couldn’t. Something told him that there was an explanation behind all of this, despite it sounding utterly ridiculous right now.
“Where was the house?” John asked.
Jason’s eyes went wide and he shook his head vigorously. “You can’t go there.”
“I just want to check it out.”
“No! Don’t do that. What if the same thing happens to you?”
“It wont. I’m just going to look at it from the outside. No chance of anything happening that way, right?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t go near that place every again and neither should you. But if you insist,” he pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down an address, “but please, don’t go alone, okay?”
John nodded and took the paper. “I’m going to come back tomorrow, maybe I know how Charlie was hurt by then. Take care.”
Jason still didn’t look anxious, but he sighed and said, “Be careful, alright?”
“I will,” John assured and left the room.
Half an hours later, showered and dressed in his civilian clothes, he was sitting in his car on the way to the address. It really was a terrible idea, if he were honest, because of course he was going alone, there was no-one he could ask, maybe Mike, but he once told John that he hated horror movies, Sarah…well no and what would he say anyway? That he wanted to look at an abandoned house in the middle of the night because he had a bad feeling?
John huffed a laugh at the utter ridiculous thing he was about to do.
About a kilometer away from the address, John had to get out of the car and walk the rest of the way, because there were no usable roads for him to get any further. He took a torch from the trunk of the car and pulled his jacket closed all the way up to his chin.
The walk to the house lead John through mud, tall grass and almost complete darkness, only the moon and his torch making him able to see a little bit, which was badly needed as the whole property was littered in old wood panels and all kinds of scarp metal.
The house was indeed in a semi good condition with a flat roof, which was unusual for how old the house was, but didn’t give John any clue as to what was going on. All windows were nailed shut and everything was more or less overgrown with plants John couldn’t even identify.
Before he knew it, John stood in front of the door, wondering what he was doing here, but his curiosity was getting the better of him, so with a strong push, the door gave way and he was standing in what seemed to be a sitting room, the darkness making it hard to see anything of detail beyond his torchlight.
He started shivering, seemingly out of nowhere and he could have sworn it had gotten at least a few degrees colder in the last minute and although he knew it really was a bad idea, he kept moving along, looking for a staircase which would bring him to the upper floor where Charlie had been injured.
After going through a former kitchen and dining room, he was able to get upstairs and was standing in a long hallway with two doors on each side. It was almost frighteningly silent, the silent that doesn’t happen, because there’s always some noise like cars going by in the distance or at least the occasional bird, but apart from the wind and John’s own breathing there was nothing.
The first room to his right was a bathroom, only still recognizable by the pipes sticking out of the walls. John had actually no idea which room Charlie was found in, but wasn’t even sure that he would find any evidence of what had happened even if he knew.
He left the door open and stepped into the second room on the right, which didn’t even have a door to begin with and the rest didn’t look any more revealing. It was stripped off everything that was once there, just a black and white victorian wallpaper remaining, which John found odd, given that it was not looking as old as the rest of the house, it looked almost like it had been done recently, but even after touching it and turning out to be just an every day wallpaper, John shrugged and headed for the third room.
As he was reaching for the doorknob, the bathroom door behind him slammed shut with such forced that it not only scared John half to death, the whole building seemed to shake for a brief second. He automatically reached for the back of his jeans, but then remembered that he didn’t even go home after work and thus didn’t have his Sig on him, which would now at least help him feel a bit more protected.
Up until now, he didn’t even consider the possibility that this could very well be some kind of drug den and he was about to be confronted with some very unkind people. But all that did was let the familiar calm wash over him and in the end, it probably was only the draught anyway.
With steady hands, John opened the third door, closed it behind him so the same thing wouldn’t happen again and shone his light around the room. This time there was a chair and a table left and the room was littered with old newspaper in every corner. He crouched down to read some of what was still intact, something about the London School of Economics holding it’s first class, another article about the general election and a Lord Salisbury and the rest was too torn or dirty to understand anything further.
John was about to turn around again when a hand on his shoulder grabbed him and flung him across the room until he skidded and hit the wall on the other side.
Momentarily disorientated, he shook his head and got back on his feet, left shoulder smarting a bit, but nothing he couldn't deal with.
The torch was back where he had looked at the newspaper, but there was enough light to see who had just attacked him. A very tall and heavy muscled man was looking at him from a few feet away.
“Who are you,” John asked, hands balling into fists and ready to defend himself anytime.
He wasn’t given an answer and the man just grunted and outright growled at him and started moving closer, caging John slowly into a corner, but he wasn’t someone to back out of a fight, so he waited for the right moment and flung his fist squarely into his attackers jaw.
Which turned out to do absolutely nothing and before John could do anything else, he was grabbed by the throat and slowly lifted into the air, taking his ability to breathe and do not anything other than flail around uselessly.
Thinking he would pass out any minute, he almost didn't notice when the door flung open, the pressure on his throat was gone and he fell to the ground, coughing and desperately trying to get oxygen back into his body.
“Are you alright?” a deep baritone asked him.
It took a few minutes for John to be fully conscious again, so when he looked up miles of legs and his gaze met pale skin, piercing grey eyes, high cheekbones and a beautiful mouth, it quiet thoroughly took his breath away again for a few seconds.
When John didn’t say anything, the stranger went on, “You are such an idiot for coming here, alone on top of that. You could have been easily killed. You have no idea what you are up against, you can be glad that I happened to come here earlier than planned. Why are you imbeciles still coming here, are you lot never listening when it says that this house is haunted and people already died here?”
Tall and gorgeous was now pacing the room, sometimes stopping to look at the newspaper, sometimes lifting a piece up and putting them on the table and muttering unintelligible things to himself.
“And you are?” John asked, voice only a bit scratchy, getting himself off the floor with as little pain as possible.
“The one who saved your life, now go and use it for something useful other than wasting my time.”
“Yeah, no. I want to know who attacked me.”
The stranger threw him a glance. “Not who, what.”
Now John was completely off the rails to understand any of this. “What?”
That gave him a dramatic sigh and an eye roll. “It wasn’t human, it was a ghost. A non-corporeal entity that is stuck here. And I would very much like to finish this case so we can all move on. So why don’t you just leave.”
“Hell no, you’re not getting rid of me without some answers. Ghost are not real, so what are you talking about?”
“As you just witnessed, they are real. Or how do you think I made someone who weighs way over 250 pounds disappear?”
“Ghosts are real,” was all John’s brain unhelpfully supplied after a few silent minutes.
“Yes, do try to keep up.”
“And you are…what? Some kind of ghostbuster?”
“A what?” the stranger asked with utter confusion on his face.
“Never mind,” John said, waving the whole topic away with his hand. “So you do this as a hobby?”
“No, it’s my job. I’m Sherlock Holmes, hunter, consulting hunter to be precise, only one in the world. I invented the job.”
“Which means?”
“Which means, when other hunters are out of their depths, which is often, they call me and ask for advice.”
“On ghost-hunting?”
That got him another eye roll. “Not just ghosts.”
“So what? Your not going to tell me that vampires, werewolves and witches are real too?”
“And so are over thousands of other known species. Djinns for example. If they touch you, they trap you in your ideal dreamworld and then drink your blood until you die. Or Rugarus, they live a normal human life until they turn after about 25-30 years and then crave human flesh, once they eat it, they fully turn. Or, one of my favorites, shape shifters. They look just like you and me. They can turn by shedding skin, hair, nails and the like and look like a completely new human being. They are very clever and very hard to track down, which makes those cases extremely interesting.”
John was completely entranced by this strange man talking (in that voice) and how he just relayed this information as if he was describing the solar system, so it was completely unintentional for John to breath an awed, “Amazing,” before he could think about it.
Sherlock stopped dead in his tracks and eyed John warily. “Amazing?”
John felt heat rising in his cheeks. “Uh, yes. That was amazing. I mean everything, saving me and now just..that!. Why?”
“Because that’s not what they normally do?”
“What do they normally do?”
“Well, they either run away, 34 percent of the time, tell me I’m crazy 59 percent, or punch me.”
“No…yeah. I believe you. There was a man in A&E today who came here and ended up with life threatening injuries and no one knows the cause of them.”
“Vengeful spirits are very strong. Especially this one.”
“So who was he before he died?” John asked and followed Sherlock to the table where he was arranging the articles he’d picked up.
“His Name was Harold Winston, died in 1895 when a group broke into his home, robbed and then murdered him. He was a mechanic and boxer, no wife, no kids, quite isolated in his private life.”
“And why is he here now?”
“Some can’t let go when they die. They can’t interact with the outside world, they get frustrated and then vengeful. This one against anyone who enters his home, he gets especially brutal if there are in a group, understandably.”
“And what do we do?”
“We?”
“Uhm. Yeah, I would like to help.”
Sherlock stared at him for a few seconds, making John’s heart pick up it’s pace. There was something in those eyes that looked familiar, as if John had known him for a very long time, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Alright,” Sherlock finally said. “Spirits can be put to rest if their remains are burned. In this case, Harold Winston was cremated, which means there is something here that holds him on earth, something that has his DNA.”
“And how are we supposed to find that?” John asked exasperated. ”That’s the needle in a haystack.”
“Quite right. So we better get going.”
“Sherlock, where the hell is Winston?”
“Oh!” Sherlock exclaimed, striding to the door and opening it. “Line of rock salt, spirits can’t cross it.”
“Salt?”
“Yes, salt is a folkloric repeller of evil because of its purity. Here,” Sherlock said and pulled a metal rod from his coat, “iron works as well.”
John stared at the iron rod in his hand, it appeared to have been a fire poker at one point and was now a weapon against ghosts, which made John almost start to giggle at the ridiculousness of it all, but he kept it down and followed Sherlock over the salt line.
After some time and the house being suspiciously too quiet, John found a hatch that was hidden under an old and dusty red rug in the living room, which lead them into a basement.
And that’s where the action started.
First the hatch fell shut and wouldn’t open again, which Sherlock explained was the doing of Mr. Winston and then the man himself appeared, looking even more angry than before.
They both had a hard time even getting to actually searching, because once chased away by either iron or salt, it didn’t take long for Winston to come back and attack them again.
While Sherlock was on the watch, John dug though old wooden boxes, most of them filled with stuff he had no idea what they actually were, until in one of those boxes under some rotten and foul smelling cloth, John found a pair of old boxing gloves.
“Sherlock,” John said, getting them out and showing them to Sherlock, which turned out to be a very bad idea, because in that one unguarded moment, Winston managed to grab a hold of Sherlock and fling him against the nearest wall as if he were a doll.
John heard Sherlock say his name, his heart dropped into his stomach and at the same time, a blood red fury rose in that same place.
Iron rod in hand, John stomped across the room, diving around Winston in the last moment and whacking the rod through his body, making Winston disappear again into nothingness. He immediately went to Sherlock, who had in the meantime regained some clarity again and was rubbing at his scull with a pain stricken face.
“Sherlock,” John said urgently, “the boxing gloves, what do I do?”
Sherlock pulled a bag of salt, some lighter fluid and a pack of matches from his coat and said, “Salt, wet, burn.”
John understood and went back to the boxing gloves, doing as he was told as fast as he could.
But not fast enough before Winston came back and was now approaching him.
“Hey, arsehole,” Sherlock called from where he was still sitting against the wall. “Come and get me.”
“Sherlock!,” was all John could get out at that moment, heart racing and, not knowing exactly why, but terrified to death in that moment.
In the end, it was a close call, the gloves started burning fiercely just as Winston was on Sherlock again and then he quite literally, went up in flames himself and if John had any doubts left about this, they were now definitely gone.
Sherlock was slowly getting up, trying to feign that he was alright, but not really able to keep the pain from showing on his face. John went over and began prodding at Sherlock’s arms, throat, cervical spine and then stopped and drew his hands back when he noticed what he was doing. It was again a feeling as is he had done this countless of times, checking Sherlock for any serious injuries.
He was about to flee the room from the pure mortification he felt, but when his eyes briefly met Sherlock’s he saw the same feeling of familiarity there, in his eyes, in his posture and the sudden pull seemed to capture them both, slowly drawing them closer and closer.
John jerked upright.
He was completely disorientated and a bit dizzy. Suddenly not standing in a cold and dark house, but sitting in a soft, warm bed, rays of sunlight barely making their way through the curtains.
“John?” came a deep, sleep laden voice behind him.
And then, like someone had put the rug back under his feet, everything made sense again.
“John? Everything alright?” Sherlock asked again.
“Yeah, I’m…oh my god. I just had the craziest, most vivid dream of my entire life.”
Sherlock sat up as well, cuddled close to John’s side and intertwined his right hand with John’s left…which of course had the beautiful weeding band on it’s ring finger, the one Sherlock had picked five and a half years ago.
“What was it about?” Sherlock murmured into John’s neck.
“Uhm. It’s slipping away fast. We didn’t know each other and you were a hunter, er, hunting ghosts and I think other supernatural beings and we met in an abandoned house…and I think you saved my life and…yeah, that’s about it.”
Sherlock snuggled impossibly closer, which made goosebumps raise all over John’s arms. “So not a good dream then.”
John turned his head so he could capture Sherlock’s lips in a slow, still sleepy kiss. “No, not really,” he said when they broke apart. “But you were just as you are in real life.”
“Hmm, see, even your subconscious thinks I’m amazing.”
John could feel Sherlock grinning where he was nuzzling his neck. “Git,” he said, smiling himself.
The nuzzling turned into kisses and a bit of nibbling and Sherlock slowly climbed over John and gently pressed him back, so John was lying flat on his back again. He kissed up John’s belly, dipping his tongue into his navel, up his rips until he stopped at John’s right nipple.
He had John already panting when he gave it a few licks and kisses, did the same to the other one and then came up to face John with a big smile on his face.
“I think we should replace that bad memory with a very good one,” Sherlock murmured and John still marveled at how low that voice could actually get, even after so many years.
“How so?” John tried to ask in his best nonchalant tone and trying to keep his face playfully neutral.
Sherlock grinned again. “Like this,” he said and moved back down and John knew exactly what was about to happen.
He stopped Sherlock halfway down and pulled him gently back up so their faces where just centimeters apart.
“I love you, Sherlock,” he breathed, chest filled with so much warmth, the love of his life above him and no place he’s rather be.
Sherlock was still smiling, the smile that only John got to see, the one that was behind the mask, the honest and raw one that said everything to John that Sherlock’s couldn’t put into words.
“I love you, too, John Watson-Holmes.”