A tale for Halloween by JD’L

Lights Out

by

Joseph D’Lacey

Outside the Benedict house on Birch Avenue, the daylight died so quick it was as though its throat were cut. Night was the one who did it. The lights inside were dim behind closed curtains, a weak yellow glow struggling to keep out the darkness.

            In a small upstairs room a father sat on the edge of his son’s bed with a story book open in his hands. The boy interrupted the tale.

            “Daddy?”

            “What is it, Joseph?” sighed the weary man, putting his finger to the last sentence he’d read and looking at his boy. Joseph, so bold when he’d cut in, now lost his confidence. His words came out a croak.

            “I…I get scared sometimes,” he said.

A Most Illustrious Client (a bit of whimsy) by Bill Hussey

Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearthrug and picked up the article our visitor had left behind him the night before. Embossed in crimson upon the calling card was a gothic letter ‘D’.

“Well, Watson, what do you make of it?”

Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.

“I believe you have eyes in the back of your head,” I remarked.

“I have at least a well-polished, silver-plated coffee pot in front of me,” said he.

As my eyes shifted to the pot, Holmes reacted with lightning speed and threw his napkin over it. Still, I had a fancy that I had glimpsed something curious before the napkin descended. I had the strange idea that, although the chair in which he sat had been reflected, the face of Sherlock Holmes was missing.