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The Prey	By : amandalee Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 3756 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: The authors do not claim ownership to Sherlock or any of its characters, and we make no money from writing this.

Chapter List
- 13
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Chapter 14

John's anxiety grew with each passing hour that Mary remained absent. He paced the lodge restlessly, wringing his hands and picking up on the slightest sound from outside that might indicate Mary's return. Sadly, every time he rushed to the windows, hoping to see his irate but unharmed girlfriend stomping toward the lodge, he was left disappointed.

Sherlock, meanwhile, had taken up a seat on the couch and not moved since. He had unceremoniously shoved John's improvised bedding aside and sat with his long legs crossed, balancing his laptop precariously on one knee. John hated the fact that a lousy internet connection was their only means of communicating with the outside world, short of asking to use the landline for the resort itself.

"She's been gone five hours now," John said when 4 p.m. rolled around and there had still been no word from Mary. "Something's wrong, Sherlock! You agree, right? Sherlock!"

The detective held up a hand to silence John while his other hand stayed busy typing on the keyboard.

"You don't even care, do you?" John spat out, furious at his partner's impassive and callous behaviour. "'A brain without a heart', that's what someone said to describe you, and they're bloody right!"

"Save it, John," Sherlock snapped back. "Care alone won't bring Mary back to you. I've been doing some research that will hopefully bring our case forward."

"How can you possibly think about the case now?!"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "You can either shout at me and call me a heartless wretch, or you can come look at my findings. Which is it?"

John opened his mouth to yell further insults at the detective, and though it would have been momentarily gratifying, he came to realize how unproductive it was, and Sherlock, despite his emotional shortcomings, did not deserve to be used as John's outlet for frustrations. He sat next to his friend on the couch and redirected his attention to the laptop screen.

"When Bobbi Ferguson first wrote to me, she mentioned "disappearances". In plural. When she described the case to me in closer detail, I paid no attention to her initial words, dismissing them as a simple typo, but today I began to wonder about their significance."

"Disappearances? You mean there's more?"

Sherlock nodded, clearly deep in thought. He opened a Firefox window displaying a newspaper article dating back to September 7th, 2007, and the headline made John's breath hitch in his throat. "Couple Missing" in bold print, followed by a grainy, black-and-white photograph of a middle-aged pair of people, the woman blond and overweight and the man slightly slimmer, but with a receding hairline.

"Disappeared without a trace, never seen since," Sherlock said. "They were guests here at Avalon. And there's more." Sherlock opened up another news article, this one dating back to 2003 and describing in intimate detail the disappearance of college students Richard Stoker and Hayley Smith, who had, according to friends and family, "failed to return from a weekend of rock-climbing".

"Where was that?" John asked, getting a closer look at the article. Sherlock opened a separate window for a map of West Virginia and its surrounding locales. The college students had vanished in a different location... but still within driving distance of the area.

"Too much of a coincidence?" he asked. Sherlock joined hands together as if in prayer, leaning back. A ghost of a smile moved his lips and was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. "I have a question or two to ask our client." Closing the laptop, he stood and began to remove his clothes.

"Dare I ask...?" John said, watching as his partner and friend stripped down to practically nothing.

"Gesture of good will, remember?" the detective replied. "Blending in with the natives as before and keeping their trust."

"Right," the older man muttered. "We may be dealing with savage abductors in the middle of practically nowhere, but this isn't some seventies' cannibal film."

"You never know," Sherlock said as he shrugged off his shirt.

The man was relatively nude save for his shoes, and a mental image occurred to John of his friend in nothing but his ratty blue scarf. He considered suggesting the notion one day to Sherlock, and immediately wanted to punch himself in the face. Sherlock, Mary... perhaps John was better off courting no one at all.

"Don't forget sun block," he said, both as a gesture to prevent a repeat of yesterday and an attempt to distract himself from his daydreams. Sherlock grabbed the nearby tube without hesitation and quickly slathered the lotion on, only to be interrupted by his friend's own hands, smoothing the rather sloppy application.

"I won't be very long," Sherlock announced, opening the door. He turned to look at John. "Stay here in case Mary comes back."

Oh, that was an instruction John did not require at present. He was prepared to stay put for days on end if it meant being there for Mary's return. However, Sherlock's most recent research had left him with a sinking sense of dread, and in a corner of his heart he had begun to doubt he would ever see Mary again.

Sherlock walked briskly toward Ferguson's trailer, trying to make haste without making it too obvious that he was in a hurry. He received several curious, inquisitive glances from the people he passed on his way, some of them openly appreciative and admiring, others slightly more reserved.

Rumors travelled fast in a place like this, and no doubt many of them had heard gossip of the English detective with the keen, piercing blue eyes and deep, sultry voice that had arrived in their little community. A pair of teenage girls lounging about by the outdoor pool went into a giggling fit when he walked by, their heads together as they whispered and guffawed in a way that was downright rude, not to mention unladylike.

Sherlock, though tempted, held back any acerbic comments he could have thrown at them. If his suspicions were true, there was no time to lose.

The curtains were drawn in Bobbi Ferguson's trailer, and there was no certain way of telling if she was home. If his first destination failed, he could think of a few more probable places to look for her.

Even so, he still knocked. The trailer door rattled and he heard movement from within, followed by his client's voice telling him to wait "just a second". Looking around the location, Sherlock suddenly felt a chill, despite the summer temperature.

Thinking himself an unwavering stone of a man, he hardly wanted to admit that he was beginning to find the place - in fact the entire area of Avalon and that surrounding it - incredibly unnerving. A location which could have been comforting and beautiful in its unending nature and lack of the stressful 'real world' was now alien and foreboding in its disconnect from the help which civilization might provide. Even now, the trees were feeling more like prison bars and hovels where any threat could be hiding. Sherlock found himself trying to remember how many venomous animals lived in this particular tri-state area.

When the door opened, Ferguson was wearing only a t-shirt, and somehow it made her seem even more naked than to wear nothing whatsoever. Upon seeing the detective, her eyes widened with anticipation.

"Anything?" she asked, practically holding her breath for an answer.

"We've discovered an area where Mrs. Cavanaugh was wandering," Sherlock replied nonchalantly. "It had a certain amount of tracks made by others that has us... concerned."

"Us?" She gave the word a moment of thought, and then it occurred to her. "Oh, yeah, your partner."

Sherlock noticed the emphasis on the word partner, but said nothing in regards to it.

"Tell me," he said, "would there be any other people inhabiting these woods?"

"No, there wouldn't," the woman answered, but she looked aside. "Except..."

Sherlock lifted an eyebrow, patience wearing thin. "Yes?"

"This is gonna sound dumb," Ferguson said, and already Sherlock wanted to snap at her to get to her point. "But there's sort of a rumor that's gone around for the past few years. It's been around since before I got here and that was ten years now... Anyway, people have talked about something being in the woods, maybe even before the seventies. The resort doesn't really like to talk about it. I dunno if you have mountain men in your country...?"

Sherlock gave a short, dry bark of laughter. "Not much in the way of mountains in England," he said. "But I think I know the kind you're referring to."

Bobbi suddenly looked visibly troubled. "It's really just a bullshit story, Mr. Holmes. An urban legend, a campfire tale, something the kids tell their younger siblings to scare them. I didn't think to mention it, because knew you wanted hard facts, not silly rumours."

"My methods are built on the observation of trifles, details, no matter how small or insignificant they may appear. By telling me, you could have been of great help, instead of leaving me to figure things out for myself."

Ferguson stared at him incredulously. "You can't seriously believe a group of mountain men have taken Sarah, can you? That's just..."

"Ridiculous?" Sherlock coolly returned the woman's stare. "Outrageous? There's something else, Miss Ferguson," he continued, taking a step towards her. "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

"Oh! Yes, of course." The woman stepped aside to let the detective pass, and Sherlock stepped inside the trailer, noting that nothing had really been changed since his first visit the previous day, aside from the pile of dishes in the sink, which had been added to. He also glimpsed two empty wine bottles in Ferguson's trash bin, and wondered if the woman had taken her comfort in drink.

"In your first email to me, you hinted at something. I dismissed it then, didn't figure it had any relevance. Now I believe it might have."

"Whatever are you talking about?" Bobbi asked, her eyes and mouth wide open with confusion.

"Sarah's not the first person to have disappeared from Avalon. There was that couple in '07. You've been going here for ten years, and you seem to be a pretty tightly knit community. Surely you knew them, or at least knew *of* them?"

Bobbi Ferguson nodded solemnly. "Phyllis and Chris..." she said in quiet, hushed tones. "I knew them."

"Terribly well?"

She shrugged. "Yes and no. They were sorta weird. The joke going around was that we liked their dogs better than them. Two little dogs: a mini pinscher and a pug."

Sherlock did not recall a mention of pets in the news article. "Did the dogs go missing as well?"

"No, they were still in the cabin. That's what clued people in. They heard the dogs whining and barking inside. Neither Phyllis or Chris would've have just left their dogs unattended like that."

"And their clothing and essentials were still in the cabin as well?"

"Yes," the woman replied forlornly. She gave a joyless chuckle as she reminisced. "They were celebrating their wedding anniversary and decided to go exploring the woods. We all joked that because they were drunk they were trying to be kinky out there, having sex with the wildlife watching them."

"Perhaps they were being watched," Sherlock muttered. "And by more than just the hedgehogs."

"The what?" Ferguson said interrupting his train of thought.

Sherlock sneered. "It's a small mammal that--"

"I know what a hedgehog is," she said, annoyed. "We don't have them. We have porcupines."

"Wonderful," Sherlock remarked under his breath. "My point is that we have suspicions of an unknown party hiding in the woods, making abductions."

"I knew it!" Ferguson stood up, hands clenched into fists in determination. "We need to call the police about this!"

"They would not believe us," Sherlock stated without hesitation and gestured for his client to sit back down. "All we have are rumours and some circumstantial evidence at best. To make them take us seriously, we're going to need more solid proofs of these individuals' existence."

"And how do you propose we get that?" Bobbi asked.

"I intend to find their nest and search it through. Look for anything that could be used to incriminate them." Like a body, or remains of one, he thought, but did not say it out loud, as he suspected Ferguson did not want to think of her friend in such terms.

"Do you think…" She swallowed, and her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. "Do you think there's any chance Sarah might still be alive?"

"I think, Miss Ferguson… that you may have to prepare for the worst."

Unlike many seemed to think, Sherlock took no joy in giving people, especially his own clients, bad news. These people came to him for answers, not sympathy, callous though it sounded. A pat on the shoulder and meaningless words of comfort which held no truth offered no help whatsoever to someone in Bobbi Ferguson's situation, and Sherlock kept reminding himself of that as he explained his standpoint to his client.

"The best we can hope to recover is a body, and even there I have my doubts," he said.

*

Sherlock heard a dramatic shuffling of movement as he ascended the stairs towards his own cabin, knowing immediately that Mary had not returned. Sure enough, the door flew open, and for that fleeting moment, he saw the look of hope on John's face, much like Bobbi Ferguson. John's face dropped however when he saw Sherlock, and his body sagged against the door frame.

"Our suspicions were correct," the younger man said gently. "Rumors have been going around for decades of something being in the woods.

John barely looked at him, lost in his own thoughts, and Sherlock knew what his assistant was thinking. The thought had crossed his mind as well that whomever was living out in the forest had now added Mary to their collection of victims.

"We should go back out," he said. John faintly nodded, but he did not seem to leave his reverie until a long pale hand touched his shoulder. He winced, but finally looked Sherlock straight in the eye.

"You'll have to get dressed again," he said.

Sherlock smiled. "A shame I didn't try to smuggle a gun."

John looked sad for a moment. "If you had, you would have been held back in Heathrow. We would have found out later about our motel room, but at least we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be in this mess."

Sherlock's face was an icy mask, devoid of emotion as he let the words sink in.

"Stay here," he said plainly. "I'll get dressed and then we'll go back to the woods."

TBC...
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The Prey