Sherlock: Carpe Diem

The Red Death

Author's Note: I apologize for how short this chapter is. I am going to England tonight and I really had to finish packing and I need to sleep so I only have time to write this part. I do not own Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Lord of the Rings, or The Masque of the Red Death. They belong to Lewis Carroll, J.R.R Tolkien and Edgar Allen Poe.

Christ College was dead. Not a soul around to even make a sound. John and Lestrade seemed tense and extremely wary, where as Sherlock, Tessa, and Dynah were calm. They knew what to expect out of this, knew what Moriarty was planning. There wouldn't be a catastrophic amount of bodies. Moriarty doesn't do that, unless he has a reason to. He promised to kill 80 people. He wouldn't do it now so quickly.There was still too much time left in his game. Sherlock knew this, was waiting for it. As soon as the 80 people were killed, Sherlock knew he had to be ready for whatever Moriarty had planned for him. What he had planned for all of them.

"Sherlock, what exactly are we looking for?" Lestrade asked.

"A clue. Obviously." Sherlock stated.

"I know that, but how do we even know where to look? It's not like this place is small."

"Chesire wasn't small either." Sherlock stated.

"No, but we had a bloody rabbit to lead us to where we needed to go." Lestrade huffed.

"Everything is layed right out in front of us. We're just too blind to see it." Dynah mumbled, so that only Tessa could hear her.

"Sherlock, where are we going to possibly find this clue? If you haven't noticed this isn't a small place, just like Greg said before. You can't expect the clue to just appear out of nowhere." John said.

As soon as the words left John's lips, the sound of an old wooden door slowly creaking open, and the sound of small heels clicking on a cement floor. Sherlock turned around to see a girl standing on the steps in front of one of the buildings. She had long straight blonde hair, and a small blue head band in her hair. She was wearing a blue dress, hand made out silk, clearly expensive to make. Dress had frills at the bottom, but the dress was only a little bit past her knees. She was wearing all black shoes, with a tiny heel at the bottom, and white stockings. She looked extremely nervous, but she looked up to them and walked down the steps towards them. Sherlock was about to move closer to her, but Dynah and Tessa pushed him back and moved closer.

"Are you alright?" Tessa asked.

The girl shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Is everybody safe?" Dynah asked.

The girl nodded her head.

"Just not you?" Tessa asked.

Again, the girl nodded her head.

"Did he leave a message for us? The man who did this?" Dynah asked.

The girl nodded her head.

"What is it?"

The girl made a hand gesture that told us to follow her. They began to walk up the streets of Oxford, until they reached Exeter College. They walked inside, following the little girl who was shaking with fear, and trying to force her tears away. Sherlock and the rest of them followed 'Alice' throughout the college until she stopped and pointed ahead. Inside a glass case was a bust. The bust of J.R.R Tolkien. They all looked at each other in mild confusion. All of the events leading up to now had been related to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but yet here they were, standing in front of something completely irrelevant. Dynah walked over to the girl once again.

"What was the message he left you with?" Dynah asked, lowering herself bending her knees in order to make the little girl more comfortable.

The girl pulled out a piece of paper that had been in a pocket inside of her dress. It looked as though it had been ripped out of a book and she slowly unfolded the paper, her small hands shaking as she tried to read the paper without crying.