Oh what little hope do those wretched souls of London, those unfortunate enough to be of a certain variety, have that I should not find them and put an end to their damnable way of life?
My name is Sherlock Holmes, and I was born on the sixth day of January, eighteen hundred and fifty four. I find myself gifted with certain talents that result in me being a most feared and respected consulting detective. Then again, does that label properly define me any longer? I feel that it did, at least for a time, but in recent years perhaps not. For you see I spent some time assisting Scotland Yard with robberies and murders and all manner of incidents that resulted from the aberrant tendencies present in the human psyche.
Five years ago, however, on the day before Christmas no less, something occurred that would forever change the very nature of my interest in criminal goings-on. What had begun as a routine homicide investigation, if homicide could ever be called such a thing as routine, turned itself into a stark revelation. I shall spare you the long-winded account, suffice it to say that, much to my surprise, my deductions had been terribly wrong and I shall try to be as succinct as possible in my relation of the events.
The murder weapon, surely the mummified paw I had spied in the glass case in the sitting room; an old hunting trophy no doubt. Despite the fact that it bore no traces of blood it did match the wounds upon the victim’s throat almost perfectly. Though the Yard’s man had not detected so, it was obvious to me that she had been killed indoors but that the body had then been dragged into the garden; a clear attempt to make the death appear to be an animal attack. Of course any investigator worth his salt would have noted the darting eyes of the husband, Mr. Brody. There was a faint yet lingering scent of perfume, and not of the kind that sat in a bottle on his wife’s vanity, upon his person. Lastly, there was the overturned photograph on the narrow table in the hallway.
Jealousy, surely. Adeline Brody had confronted her husband about an affair and the scene had turned violent. Even the often dim-witted Inspector Lestrade could see it, but someone in his precinct wished the matter over and done with. So it was much to my surprise when he came to me in the evening and asked for my help. He wished to further examine the residence whilst Mr. Brody was away at a business dinner.
In retrospect, these five years later, I now know that Lestrade had suspected corruption within the Yard itself and had, that night, the ulterior motive of finding a link to whomever had been manipulating case files and tampering with evidence. Regardless, as it often had done in the past, my curiosity would not allow me to let the matter rest. So to the man’s house we went, under cover of darkness. There I expected to find some small, almost unnoticeable, detail that would validate my theory and once again set mine apart from the slower mind of the inspector.
What we discovered, however, was anything but subtle and I thank the heavens to this day that I was fortunate enough to have had the company of any armed Scotland Yard officer with me when I did find it.
Entering the home we found it to be dark, but I immediately got the impression that it was not empty. From somewhere nearby I could detect breathing. Not that of a man, mind you, but something deeper and more sinister. My hand went to steady him but as Lestrade lit his match we both caught sight of the beast. Showing unrestrained ferocity it came at the inspector. With a scream from him the match fell to the floor and its light extinguished. Reaching for the curtains I pulled them open, letting in dim light from a partial moon, and there I saw it. Its attention turned fully to me. I braced myself against the writing desk nearest the window and fumbled for anything I could find to defend myself. My hand found something round, cold, and very heavy; a marble paperweight in the design of the globe. As the creature approached, breathing heavily and with eyes glaring at me through the darkness, I swung with all of the might I could force from my body and struck it aside the head. It reeled, but only momentarily, letting out a roar so deafening that surely those in neighboring houses had heard it. Again, it came for me, and for the first time in my life I found myself at a loss, no course of action I could conjure would save me from my fate.
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Then I heard the shots. One, then another, and then yet another, all issued from a police service revolver. The beast fell at my feet and shortly thereafter the darkness illuminated, Lestrade’s match finding a gas lamp. The inspector’s face was bloodied; a series of deep lacerations across his face and neck. I hurried to his aid and found that despite his aim having been true he was terribly shaken, even more so than I. The two of us, Lestrade and I, had unwittingly stepped across a boundary between two worlds. One that we had not even known existed until that moment. For you see I had been wrong about the murder weapon. Indeed I had been wrong about Mr. Brody entirely. For, much to our surprise, the beast which was injured but not dead, the one that we brought back to Lestrade’s basement and chained to a brick column, began to change before our very eyes.
The old woman, naked, hurt and cold, was terrified for her life. She began to speak. All of my assumptions had been incorrect. The perfume I had detected upon Seamus Brody at the scene of the crime had not been from a lover, but from this very woman, his mother. She told us that she had been enraged when her son had refused an arranged marriage and had instead wed Adeline. She had let the matter rest for some years but eventually had allowed her to anger boil over and had traveled from their ancestral home near Cork to confront her son. Seamus had tried to evict her from his home but in the midst of a vicious argument in the hallway both mother and son revealed themselves for what they truly were. Terrified, and in shock for having seen for the first time her husband’s true nature, Adeline panicked. During the scuffle, believing that he was trying to defend his wife from his mother, Brody accidentally struck her with his claws, whereupon she fell into the old woman’s arms and died.
Fearing a witch hunt the two then conspired to make her death look like the attack of a wild animal. The overturned photograph on the table? Simply a result of the commotion in the hallway. The mummified paw in the case? Not a hunting trophy, rather a family heirloom. It would seem that Mr. Brody and his mother were Bugbear, though I did not know that name at the time nor what it meant.
Knowing that she could not be loosed upon an unsuspecting population once again, and aware that no court of law would convict her, the inspector and I were left with the decision of what to do with the old lady. In the end there was truly only one choice, an exchange. Our morals for the knowledge that she would no longer be out there, posing a danger to others. Lestrade’s revolver still had three shots. More than enough to end her, or so we thought. As the gun was brought to bear on her she transformed into her hideous bestial form once again, howled at us furiously. The shots silenced her, but only for a few moments. As we sat in the drawing room above, pouring tea and deciding as to where her body should be hidden, we heard a stirring again in the bowels of the inspector’s home.
Another six shots from the revolver. Nothing. A knife into her heart. Nothing. Finally there was poison, and again, nothing. She would expire only to gasp for breath again some minutes later as we watched her wounds heal with astonishing speed. It was then, in desperation, that I discovered one of the reasons that I had always been so clever at apprehending sociopaths. It was that a part of me, some small part, only barely present, held those same tendencies. Lestrade attempted to hold back his sick, failed, as I seized the knife from the workbench and took to sawing the creature’s head from its shoulders. As I worked, screaming at the beast in anger as I did so, the knife grew difficult to budge and eventually I could cut no more. The wound healed around the blade which, moments later as I backed away in horror, spat it out whereupon it fell to the floor with a clatter. I could not kill her.
Near the point of madness Lestrade insisted that we do something, anything, with her so that the nightmare could end. In a haste I took a cab to the home of Seamus Brody, confronted him, explained that I knew what he was but that I had a compatriot waiting for me and that if he dare attack me he would surely be outed. Much to my delight he seemed to wish his mother dead as much as I, and he revealed to me the secret to killing one of his kind. A sharpened stake of willow, plunged into a gland in the left side of the torso, just below the ribs, was the only way to end them permanently.
I could tell from the man’s demeanor that he thought himself a good judge of character. He thought himself capable of reading other men. Of course I was not just any other man. Before the sun had set that very day the world was rid of not one, but two Bugbear, and mother and son went to rest together. The good inspector, no longer wishing any part in the madness, of course did not accompany me to Cork whereupon I paid a visit to the rest of the Brody clan.