Hello Detective

The Hounds of Baskerville Part 8

John, Sherlock, and I loaded back into the car and drove to the Hollow.
    We got out of the car and John ran ahead of us two.
    "Are you sure you're okay? You know what happened last time." Sherlock said, I rolled my eyes.
    "I'm fine, let's go!" I ran after John, Sherlock trailing behind me.
    I made it to the Hollow and saw Henry kneeling, with a gun in his mouth. My breath hitched in my throat.
    "No, Henry, no, no!" Sherlock yelled.
    "Get back! Get away from me!" Henry yelled, now standing and waving his gun frantically in the air. I was worried he might accidentally fire it.
    "Easy, Henry, easy. Just relax." I tried to calm him down.
    "I know what I am, I know what I tried to do." Henry rambled.
    "Just put the gun down, it's okay." I tried again.
    "No!" Henry yelled again. "I know what I am."
    "Yes, I'm sure you do Henry. It's all been explained to you hasn't it. Explained very carefully." Sherlock said calmly.
    "What?" Henry asked confused.
    "Someone needed to keep you quiet, needed to keep you as a child, to reassert the dream you both clung on to because you had started to remember. Remember now, Henry, you've got to remember what happened here when you were a little boy." Sherlock instructed.
    "I thought it had got my dad. The hound. I thought... Oh, Jesus! I don't... I don't know anymore!" Henry yelled, waving the gun again, before placing it in his mouth.
    "No Henry! For God sake!" John yelled.
    "Henry, remember. "Liberty In." Two words. Two words a scared little boy saw here 20 years ago. You'd started to piece things together. Remember what really happened here that night." I said.
    "It wasn't an animal, was it, Henry?" Sherlock asked. "Not a monster, a man."
    Henry looked up as if he were beginning to remember again.
    "You couldn't cope. You were just a child. So you rationalized it into something very different. Then you started to remember so you had to be stopped." Sherlock said.
    "Driven out of your mind so that no-one would believe a word that you said." Sherlock continued.
    "Gregson!" You heard Lestrade yell, as he entered the Hollow.
    John slowly grabbed the gun from Henry as he mumbled incoherently.
    "We saw it... a hound... last night." He muttered.
    "No, but there was a dog, Henry. Leaving footprints, scaring witnesses, but nothing more than an ordinary dog. We both saw it, saw it as our drugged minds wanted us to see it. Fear and stimulus, that's how it works. But there never was any monster." Sherlock smiled as Henry began to calm down.
It had seemed like things had calmed down, but then the sound of growls filled the hollow. John pointed his flashlight up and it landed on a large dog.
"Sherlock?" I said, my hand grabbing his coat out of instinct.
He looked up in disbelief.
"No! No, no, no, no!" Henry began to mumble.
"Henry!" Sherlock reached an arm out to him, but there was no calming him now. It was here, and I began to feel weak again.
"Are you seeing this?" I turned around to Lestrade, whose mouth was hanging open. 
"Right, he is not drugged, Sherlock, so what's that?" John asked.
"It's just a dog Henry, it's nothing more than an ordinary dog." Sherlock yelled. But it seemed like so much more, it had the same glowing eyes.
The hound jumped down, slowly entering the hollow and baring its teeth. Sherlock turned to see a man walking into the other side of the hollow.
I began to cough and fall to my knees, as the man in the gas mask got closer. Sherlock pulled off the mask but it wasn't who I had expect to see. It didn't make sense, there was no way my uncle Ryan could have really been here.
"No! No, no!" Sherlock said, as surprised to see him as I was, unless he was seeing someone entirely different.
"It's not you, not you!" Sherlock yelled. He pulled the man by his shirt  and I realized it wasn't my uncle at all... it was Bob Franklin.
"The fog." Sherlock said, in realization.
"What?" Lestrade asked.
"It's in the fog! The drug is in the fog. Aerosol dispersant, that's what is said in the records. Project HOUND, it's the fog!" Sherlock said, solving it.
But the dog was real, and it kept getting closer. My legs were too weak to stand, and the dog had its sights on me.
"For God's sake, kill it!" I croaked through a cough.
Lestrade raised his gun and shot the dog multiple times, missing a few. It fell to the ground, dead.
"Look Henry." Sherlock said, making Henry look at the dog to show that it was just that.
"You bastard." He turned around and said to Bob Franklin. He repeated himself before lunging at him.
"Twenty years! Twenty years of my life, making no sense!" He yelled, frantically, trying to hit Bob. Lestrade quickly pulled him off.
    Sherlock helped me to my feet, and mentally asked me if I was okay. I nodded in response, not knowing if it was the truth.
    "Why didn't you just kill me!" Henry yelled.
    I leaned into Sherlock's side as he provided an answer. "Because dead men get listened to, he needed to do more than kill you. He had to discredit every word you ever said about your father. And he had the means right at his feet."
    "A chemical minefield. Pressure pads in the ground, dosing you up every time that you came back here." I said.
    "Murder weapon and scene of the crime all at once! Oh, this case, Henry. Thank you!" Sherlock laughed, and I elbowed him in the side.
    "What?" He asked, genuinely unaware.
    "Timing..." I said.
    "Not good?" He asked.
    "No, no. It's okay. Because this means that my dad was right. He'd found something out, hadn't he?" Henry asked, looking down to Bob Franklin.
    "And that's why you killed him because he was right, and he'd found you right in the middle of an experiment!" Henry yelled again.
    Bob Franklin suddenly stood and began to run from the Hollow. Everyone began to run after him, but I wasn't  sure what his plan was. Surely he knew he was outnumbered, and by people with guns, younger people who could outrun him.
He continued to run as we yelled after him. Then I saw the direction he was going... He jumped the barbed wire fence and I froze.
"No, stop! Everyone stop!" I yelled, and they obeyed.
"We can catch him, what are you on about Adelaide!" Sherlock yelled.
"He just ran into the damn minefield!" I yelled back, everyone turn just as the explosion ripped through the air. The force pushed us all back, nearly forcing me to the ground.
John and Lestrade brought Henry home and made sure to take away his gun. Sherlock brought me back to the room so I could get a few hours of sleep before we left in the morning.
"The aerosol... that must have been why you passed out. One of the chemicals in the fog must have reacted with the medication John gave you and caused you to lose consciousness." Sherlock said, as he unlocked the door and lead me in.
"That makes sense." I nodded.
"You are feeling better though, right?" Sherlock asked.
"I guess. I still feel kind of nauseous. Maybe I just need sleep though." I said, changing and slipping into bed.
Sherlock kissed me on the head and I soon fell asleep.
The next morning I was sitting outside of the Inn with John eating breakfast.
Sherlock approached the two of us and handed me a cup of coffee.
"Thanks." I smiled, Sherlock smiled back.
"So they didn't have it put down then, the dog?" John asked.
"Obviously." Sherlock said.
"Probably couldn't bring themselves to do it." I said.
"I see." Sherlock lied.
"No you don't." John said.
"No, I don't. Sentiment?" Sherlock asked.
"Bingo." I smiled.
"Listen, what happened to me in the lab?" John asked. Sherlock was now sitting down next to me. Sherlock and I shared a look, not wanting to tell John about the little experiment.
"Do you want some sauce with that?" Sherlock asked, trying to change the subject and holding up the condiment tray.
"I hadn't been to the Hollow. How came I heard those things there? Fear and stimulus, you said." John kept talking.
"You must have been dosed with it elsewhere. When you went to the lab, maybe. You saw those pipes, pretty ancient, leaky as a sieve. And they were carrying the gas, so..." Sherlock lied.
"Hang on. You thought it was in the sugar. You were convinced it was in the sugar." John pointed it.
"We'd better get going, there's a train leaving in half an hour, so if you want..." Sherlock began, looking at his watch before being cut off by John.
"Oh, God! It was you. You locked me in the bloody lab." John rolled his eyes.
"I had to, it was an experiment. But for the record, she helped." Sherlock said.
"Thanks for throwing me under the bus." I smiled sarcastically.
"An experiment!" John yelled, and Sherlock shushed him.
"I was terrified Sherlock, I was scared to death!" John said, his voice booming.
"I thought the drug was in the sugar, so I put the sugar in your coffee. Then arranged everything with Major Barrymore. Totally scientific, laboratory conditions, literally." Sherlock began. "I knew what effect it had on two superior minds, so I needed to try it on an average one... You know what I mean." Sherlock said, catching himself, I was actually quite proud.
"But it wasn't in the sugar." John pointed out again.
"No, well... I wasn't to know you'd already been exposed to the gas." Sherlock said, sipping his coffee.
"So you got it wrong." John said.
"A bit." Sherlock said, annoyed.
"It won't happen again." I smiled.
Sherlock now stood and looked off back towards the Inn.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"Come with me, Sergeant. John we'll just be a minute. Got to see a man about a dog." Sherlock said, and you stood to follow him.
After the two of us informed Gary and Bill that the dog was dead, we took a train back into London.
John returned to Baker Street, but Sherlock accompanied me back to my flat. I was looking forward to a little rest, before returning to work. I would have never guessed that within the coming weeks I would be tested in ways I never have before.