Sherlock in Cheyenne - The Adventure of the Babel Plants - Part One

(A diary by me, usually much later after the facts)

Part One

I could see myself in the mirror. It was the only one I had in my basement bedroom. It was full-length, not wide, fake wood around it, and it was propped up against a wall. All the walls were concrete. The floor was concrete. Electrical wiring and plumbing pipes were overhead.

But the I in the mirror wasn't me as I am. It is me as I was. I guess about junior high age in Cheyenne, Wyoming in the late 50s, early 60s. So around 14 years old is what I am seeing. But I know I am decades older. I turn to my left to see if the beds are there. One bed. My chest of drawers is there, two drawers. In one drawer there are books, paperback, of course. A card table, a schoolbook and a spiral notebook, and the metal desk lamp with the bending neck. The bulb of the lamp gives off good heat in winter, but it stinks after long use.

I see something else not there before - a space heater, thank god. But also something else - an armchair. Big, plush, old, wide arms, and in a wine color with a faint pattern on it. I never had such a chair. But I am staring at what is in the chair. A person. Familiar looking. Legs crossed. Each of his arms on one of the armrests. Pipe in the mouth, no smoke. He is faintly smiling. He is carefully watching me. Boots, stylish but not polished and not modern.

That's it. Not modern. An old-fashioned cape. Tweed overcoat, jacket, and trousers. The trousers are narrow and come down to a few inches above the heel. All the fabric is faintly brown. The clothes are on someone who looks like a mix of old illustrations and a movie actor. Paget and Basil Rathbone. Sherlock Holmes!

I try a smile. Hello says he. Hello I reply.

I was at the mirror too when I first arrived, said he. I hope you don't mind me here in your chair?

Actually it isn't my chair. I mean it wasn't here before.

Before?

And there was another bed.

Before?

I was here as a boy, as I look now, but I am much older really. There - wherever it is and now I am here which for there where I should be is a "was".

Perhaps you could speak more clearly?

This is a place something like in my past. Physically I am as I was then, decades ago, but I am not a boy. I only have a boy's appearance. Though all of this seems real enough.

I am "Sherlock Holmes?"

Well, you appear to be him. He didn't and doesn't exist, really. He was a character, a great one, very famous, and created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I have a book of Sherlock Holmes stories somewhere around here. Sherlock Holmes was a consulting detective. He solved puzzling crimes. He helped Scotland Yard, though he wasn't fond of them until much later in the stories. And...But you don't seem to understand much of this.

There is, I confess, a faint remembrance of some of what you say.

Do you know Dr. Watson? London? Queen Victoria?

Ah, London and the Queen. Yes, of course. Who is Dr. Watson?

He supposedly wrote about your adventures as a detective and your life together. He lived with you for a time. You shared a very famous address - 221B Baker Street in London.

Can't say I recall such an address.

You, pardon me for saying so, are a work of fiction. But, here you are. May I shake your hand? (Was he a phantom? Was this all witchcraft? A dream? A game? A trick? A sick joke? So the test. A handshake. His grip was firm and confident.)

I am not a ghost, eh?

No you're not. Not less so than I am. But I had a brother, here was another bed, same as mine, metal frame, Army green, a twin-size. Squeaky spring mattress. Upstairs are Mom, two sisters, another brother, I suppose. (We could hear voices and movement above.)

Maybe the other brother is upstairs too. (No, one brother, much younger than me, my two sisters, and Mom. As usual, Dad was at work. He was usually gone in the morning by the time I got up for school and he rarely had supper with us. Always at work.)

May I call you Mr. Holmes?

Apparently I am he, at least to you.

Yeah, I'll go with it. By the way, I am Michael, called Mike, though that is not the name I had then, I mean now.

Well, my dear boy (always referring to me as a boy) shall we get on with it?

What? What it we should be doing?

He had pulled out of a jacket pocket a slipper filled with that dark ghastly pipe tobacco he so favored.

I said - You can't smoke here. I pointed upstairs. Besides they must know me, but I can't imagine they know you. How can we account for your being here? One minute, let me go upstairs and see what's what.

Surely.

Upstairs, all was OK. Brother, sisters, and Mom. Mom was preparing supper, singing as she often did then. Brother playing. Sisters doing homework. A Saturday it was, early Fall.

Back downstairs, Mr. Holmes was examining a typewriter that was shelved on a board resting on two concrete blocks. Above the typewriter was another board on blocks. The typewriter had not been there before. I had not had a typewriter until high school. I couldn't type until then. Also, we didn't live here until I was in high school. This was the last residence we rented before we left town. We were elsewhere, other rentals, while I was in junior high. (Conversation upstairs later was about a mortgage payment. So maybe we don't rent now.)

Mr. Holmes, that is a typewriter. You can type out words on paper with it.

I see the mechanism. They had these in my later days.

So you have a history?

Indeed.

The Sherlock Holmes stories started in the late 1880s and continued into the 1920s, so you would know of typewriters, I suppose.

Yes, but I never employed one.

Nor did your creator, Conan Doyle. Others typed what he wrote.

As I said, you are famous. There are stories, books, and movies about you. There are clubs and societies that think you and Dr. Watson as alive and these groups write and talk about you as if you were real- which you are, I guess, now, here. I... What is this? This!

My dear boy, calm yourself. If there were some brandy about, it would aid you greatly.

I was panting. I felt dizzy. I leaned on Mr. Holmes as he helped me to the bed.

Rest awhile, he said. I'll sit here at the bed's edge. This is all rather a bit disconcerting to you I would say.

A few moments pass. No way to figure it out (not yet anyway though I was going to try and try) and no way out. Anyway I liked my junior high years. But why Sherlock Holmes or almost he, and almost a re-creation of what it had been for me?

I think we are here for a use said Mr. Holmes quietly, calmly.

What? What could it be?

Time will tell. It is getting time for your supper.

Are you joining us?

I have no need of food nor drink. (His supply of tobacco never gave out after he started smoking outdoors. He had money too, a big wad of money, American. If he spent any, it was replenished. I had no such powers. Also, he needed no sleep. He walked a lot at night, without arousing suspicion, or he sat and smoked and thought a great deal. Why here? Why the two of us?)

I told him that I would tell them that he was a tutor - all subjects. And for free, of course. He would be Mr. Holmes to them too. He would have to leave at night.