Dreams Read Online Free Page A

bright sun shone down from a sky of the most brilliant blue upon fields and hillsides covered with a spotless layer of purest white. Hardly could one doubt the benevolence of the universe; I felt almost like a schoolboy setting off on holiday, but Lady Fairclough's fears and Holmes's serious demeanor brought my soaring spirits back to earth.
    "It is as I feared, Lady Fairclough," Holmes explained. "Both your brother and your husband have been ensnared in a wicked cult that threatens civilization itself if it is not stopped."
    "A cult?" Lady Fairclough echoed.
    "Indeed. You told me that Bishop Romanova was a representative of the Wisdom Temple of the Dark Heavens, did you not?"
    "She so identified herself, Mr. Holmes."
    "Yes. Nor would she have reason to lie, not that any denizen of this foul nest would hesitate to do so, should it aid their schemes. The Wisdom Temple is a little known organization—I would hesitate to dignify them with the title religion—of ancient origins. They have maintained a secretive stance while awaiting some cosmic cataclysm which I fear is nearly upon us."
    "Cosmic—cosmic cataclysm? I say, Holmes, isn't that a trifle melodramatic?" I asked.
    "Indeed it is, Watson. But it is nonetheless so. They refer to a coming time 'when the stars are right.' Once that moment arrives, they intend to perform an unholy rite that will 'open the portal,' whatever that means, to admit their masters to the earth. The members of the Wisdom Temple will then become overseers and oppressors of all humankind, in the service of the dread masters whom they will have admitted to our world."
    I shook my head in disbelief. Outside the windows of our compartment I could see that our train was approaching the trestle that would carry us across the River Severn. It would not be much longer before we should detrain at Merthyr Tydfil.
    "Holmes," I said, "I would never doubt your word."
    "I know that, old man," he replied. "But something is bothering you. Out with it!"
    "Holmes, this is madness. Dread masters, opening portals, unholy rites—this is something out of the pages of a penny dreadful. Surely you don't expect Lady Fairclough and myself to believe all this."
    "But I do, Watson. You must believe it, for it is all true, and deadly serious. Lady Fairclough—you have set out to save your brother and if possible your husband, but in fact you have set us in play in a game whose stakes are not one or two mere individuals, but the fate of our planet."
    Lady Fairclough pulled a handkerchief from her wrist and dabbed at her eyes. "Mr. Holmes, I have seen that strange room at Llewellyn Hall at Pontefract, and I can believe your every word, for all that I agree with Dr. Watson as to the fantastic nature of what you say. Might I ask how you know of this?"
    "Very well," Holmes assented, "You are entitled to that information. I told you before we left Claridge's that I had spent the night in research. There are many books in my library, most of which are open to my associate, Dr. Watson, and to other men of goodwill, as surely he is. But there are others which I keep under lock and key."
    "I am aware of that, Holmes," I interjected, "and I will admit that I have been hurt by your unwillingness to share those volumes with me. Often have I wondered what they contain."
    "Good Watson, it was for your own protection, I assure you. Watson, Lady Fairclough, those books include De los Mundos Amenazantes y Sombriosos of Carlos Alfredo de Torrijos, Emmorragia Sante of Luigi Humberto Rosso, and Das Bestrafen von der Tugendhaft of Heinrich Ludvig Georg von Feldenstein, as well as the works of the brilliant Mr. Arthur Machen, of whom you may have heard. These tomes, some of them well over a thousand years old and citing still more remote sources whose origins are lost in the mists of antiquity, are frighteningly consistent in their predic¬tions. Further, several of them, Lady Fairclough, refer to a certain powerful and fearsome mystical