Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets by David Thomas Moore (ed)

eyes could just have been dust particles, but I suspected they were those stars you see when you’re not getting enough oxygen.
    As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I noticed the walls were lined with shelves, each shelf holding an assortment of bottles, jars, and rusty cans. Dry herbs stood like flower arrangements in the cans. The contents of the glass jars and bottles made my bile rise. Sherlock went from one bottle to the next, examining each with interest. A pair of floating brown eyeballs stared at me from a jar. Another held a small aborted foetus of about sixteen weeks. The dismembered hand of what I assumed was a gorilla lay discarded and collecting dust next to the bottle containing the foetus. A still beating heart thumped inside another jar. A pale Lestrade stood at the door, refusing to come any further. In the centre of the room was a cooking fire with a pot hanging above it; the smell wafting from the pot was unappetising to say the least. The old woman sat in a chair that was probably as old as she was and stoked the fire. Something wriggled under the dirty sheets of a single bed with a sagging mattress in the corner. My imagination ran riot and thoughts of snakes and rats and other nightmarish things cavorted under the blanket. With my heart in my throat I strode over to the bed and ripped the blanket off, half expecting the killer we’d tracked there to jump out at me. Instead, a child of about four blinked at me, yawned, stretched, cast a wary eye in the old woman’s direction and then jumped off the bed and scampered out the shack. It took a few seconds for my heart to realise that it could stop racing.
    Holmes turned from the shelves and faced the old woman, who in turn stared vacantly in his direction. His cigarette glowed in the dark as he puffed and considered her.
    “He seems to not be here,” Holmes said.
    “No shit, Sherlock,” Lestrade said from the safety of the doorway.
    “Who did you think you’d find here?” she asked.
    “A killer,” I answered.
    “You will find many things here, but not who you came looking for. What you find here will make you wish you hadn’t come looking,” she said, staring into the gloom. She tried to get out of the chair to stir the contents of the pot, but fell backwards with a grunt.
    “Let me help you,” I said lifting the lid off the pot and burning my hand in the process. The cast iron lid hit the floor and my stomach reacted violently to what I saw floating in the grimy pot.
    “What is it, Watson?” I heard Holmes say through the shocked fuzz that built up in my ears. I shook my head as I stepped away from the pot. He stood next to me and stared into the cooking utensil. The door behind us slammed shut and the bit of light that had filtered through the beaded curtain disappeared. Lestrade’s breathing was heavier from fright and sounded as though he was right at my ear instead of across the room. The only light now came from the smoky lanterns.
    “What’s in the pot, Watson?” Lestrade asked. His voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper.
    “It’s offal,” Holmes answered for me. “What’s wrong with you?”
    “Remember my comment about cannibals chopping the hand off to eat it?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous, Watson,” Holmes said sniffing the pot. “This isn’t human flesh, and the hand would be used in a wealth attraction spell, not eaten. It’s probably in the process of being cured right now.”
    “And what about his heart and lungs, and his testicles?” I asked. Like most men, the thought of having my own testicles removed made my hands instinctively cover my groin.
    “The testicles would be used in a fertility spell, and his other organs are probably being sold on the black market as we speak,” Sherlock said in a matter-of-fact tone.
    The old witch just smiled at us.
    “Can we go now?” Lestrade said as he took a step back towards the door.
    “In a minute,” Holmes said as he looked around the room, squinting to