holmes_minor | Fic: Necronomicon for Children: PG-13 (Reply)

Title: Necronomicon for Children
Rating: Teen (for suggested dark themes)
Length: 400
Warning: Reference to off-screen (cold case) child abuse/kidnapping; anachronistic references (Lovecraft, Marx, GMD); library renewal trope
Summary: Holmes’s request for library book renewal is denied.
Author’s Note: References to American comedian Groucho Marx, H.P. Lovecraft (necronomicon is a Lovecraftian book of magic), The Great Mouse Detective, my own story The Reigate Skeleton. Also, Necronomicon for Children is real. For the monthly prompt: renewal.

“Where are you going, Holmes?”

“Library.”

“In disguise?”

“So shall you be, if you wish to accompany me. Please do if you’re available, a witness may prove useful.”

I studied the bundle of rubber, hair, and raiment thrust at my chest.

“I don’t need a false moustache, Holmes. I have a real one, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“That one is moustachier.”

I harrumphed.

---

I harrumphed for the hundredth time.

“You look perfect,” said Holmes.

“Perfectly foolish: fat cigar, wire spectacles, bushy eyebrows, even bushier moustache.”

We approached the desk.

“I’d like to renew this book,” said Holmes.

“But, sir, you just checked it out yesterday, it’s hardly in need of renewal just yet, but, oh, wait…”

The clerk retrieved a heavy ledger, dropped it upon the desk, and flipped to the final entry.

“…I regret to inform you that this book is no longer part of our lending collection and your membership in our establishment, Mister Sherrinford Holmes, had been terminated, effective immediately.”

“Oh, dear,” said Holmes.

“Good heavens, Holmes, what—Necronomicon for Children!” I cried in horror. “What kind of library is this?”

The clerk turned pink. “We receive a good number of donations, especially this time of year, there are quite a few bequests when members….” He waved a hand. “This book appears to be among a set accepted very recently without our usual careful examination and cataloguing. Such a subject matter is not appropriate for this establishment.”

“It was part of the estate of Major Palgrave, Colonel Hayter’s old warmate. Very well. See here, Watson. I’ve solved a very old, but very sinister case. The disappearance of no fewer than four children in Surrey countryside from 1851 to 1853 was blamed on supernatural forces, a fantastical cousin of the Dartmoor hound, but the notes in the margins of this book indicate a perhaps diabolically-inspired, but decidedly human-executed answer to the mystery. Thank goodness for the Crimean War and the head injury the Major suffered there or a larger number of innocents might have suffered under his macabre instruction.”

The clerk and I gasped. Then the clerk stammered.

“I cannot accept that book, sir. Or your membership.” He snatched a card from Holmes’s hand and tore it to pieces.

I chewed on my cigar and produced my library card with a flourish. “Splendid! I don’t want to belong to a club that would accept him as a member!”