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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
- 15
- 16
- 17
Chapter 16

A strange smell lingered in the air as Sherlock and John approached the source of the chimney smoke, and both men quickly recognized it, chills travelling down John's spine. Even as a doctor and a soldier, he had never quite gotten used to the smell of dead bodies, especially now that the fate of his girlfriend was in question.

"You would think this might attract bears, coyotes... whatever animals are indigenous to the area," John remarked quietly.

Sherlock shook his head. "I get the feeling that any large predators that did live in these woods have long gone. Hunters such as these would need to bide their time between human victims so as not to get caught. They'd either exhaust the food supply of meat around here or drive the species away."

The entire scenario was ridiculous bordering on surreal; a clan of cannibalistic hunters preying on actual people… And having managed to evade detection for several decades. Just what exactly did the police force in small backwoods West Virginia towns do to cash in their paychecks? Gorge on donuts while on duty, as the stereotype of American police officers often suggested? Any actual crime investigation was out of the question, as they had evidently managed to miss something of this magnitude for an extended period of time.

The detective and his assistant made their way up the hill behind which Sherlock had claimed they would find the cabin. John momentarily lost his balance, sending a small current of rocks tumbling down the slope. Sherlock's hand shot out like the head of a striking cobra, grasping the doctor's arm, while his other hand wordlessly gesticulated the need for absolute silence.

Sweaty, parched, terrified, and now also irritated, John wanted to ask his partner if he thought John had done it on purpose, but that would mean more unnecessary noises, so he repressed his frustration and instead tried to watch where he put his feet.

As almost always, Sherlock had been right. The cabin soon came into view; a primitive, squat, and altogether ominous piece of construction that looked completely out of place in a contemporary setting. Built for sure without modern commodities such as electricity, running water, or even a toilet, John wondered if the cabin had been erected sometime during the American civil war. Possibly when the clan first arrived here. The mere thought made him shudder.

The yard was littered with junk the clan members had likely gathered from multiple victims over the years, as well as skeletons of various cars, rusty and faded.

Sherlock did not need to advise his partner to take care as they entered the property. By all rights, their mere arrival could have inspired the residents to open fire on them, but as far as both John and Sherlock could see, no one was in sight. Not yet anyway. So at present, they needed to be as surreptitious as physically possible.

Think like a cat, John's sister had once said when they were children trying to sneak a pastry from their mother's kitchen counter. Except this time he and Sherlock would not alert a stern mother but homicidal lunatics.

The sun was beginning its lazy descent past the mountains, and the place was getting dark, helped all the more by the trees surrounding the cabin. John really wished he had thought to bring a torch. Or a penlight. Or even a cigarette lighter would have been better than nothing.

The stench of decomposing flesh got worse as they snuck under the windows and to the side of the cabin where a small shed had been slapped together some time ago. The door was fastened shut, but not locked, likely to keep out small scavengers as predators were, as deduced, infrequent in this clan's territory. Sherlock walked right past it, taking a significant look at the path toward the backyard.

"The worst of the smell is back here," he noted. He turned back and saw John reaching toward the latch, hesitating. "Careful."

John nodded, moved out of the path of the door, and allowed Sherlock to lift the latch. The door slowly swung open with a slight creak. John, now standing at an angle where he could not yet see the contents, watched as Sherlock cautiously peered inside... and a look of recognition altered his expression.

"Sherlock?" John said, his voice wavering as he stepped forward. A hand shot out and held him back.

"Stay there," the detective hissed.

John fought against the hold, not caring about the ruckus he was making or that his display was most certainly going to attract the attention of the cabin's unsavory inhabitants. He had to see what Sherlock had discovered, he had to know, had to be sure, even if in his heart he already knew what he would find behind that door.

"Let me in, Sherlock! I have to see it!" he yelled, now practically frenzied in his attempts to dislodge the taller man. John was the heavier of the two, but Sherlock, despite his willowy frame, possessed a wiry strength that was difficult for John to counter.

"John, I said stay there! I do not want you to see this!" Sherlock shouted back, giving an undignified grunt when John, using the force utilized by his stout, compact physique, suddenly shoved him back-first into the doorframe. Sherlock knew the battle was lost as soon as John's hand made contact with the doorknob, but he made one last valiant attempt to spare his friend the gruesome sight which waited within.

"John, please…"

The doctor, naturally, paid him no regard. John yanked the door open, and the first sensory impression made aware by his brain was the sickeningly sweet, tangy odor of blood and rotting flesh combined. It struck him in the face like a physical wall, and he instinctively reared back from its pungency, not even helped by his medical training which he believed to have desensitized him to the smells associated with death and decomposition.

The sight, he knew, would be stuck on his retina for a very long time, perhaps the rest of his life. Mary, or what had once been Mary, was hanging from the ceiling by her feet, naked and livid with a large pool of blood on the dirt floor beneath her, still seeping from her wounds in a slow trickle. The woman's throat had been cut with a blunt object, the jagged edges gaping lewdly as if spread open in a morbid invitation.

Mary - his Mary - had been butchered and hung from the ceiling like a slab of meat in a slaughterhouse.

A guttural, half-choked cry left John's throat, slowly turning into a wail as his legs gave way from underneath him, and he would have collapsed had Sherlock not caught him in his arms and held him firmly against his own chest, supporting nearly all of his weight.

"Don't look, John…" he whispered, manually turning the doctor's face away from the carnage. "I told you not to look, but you had to anyway."

John coughed and gagged, but he did not throw up. He would not; he refused to.

"This was my fault," he murmured. "She's dead because of me."

"Enough," Sherlock said, pulling the other man away from him so they could look one another in the eyes. Though tears poured freely down John's face, he stared into nothing, eyes wide and color drained from his face.

"We will stop these bastards from ever doing this to another person ever again," Sherlock said, his voice and resolve firm and steady. "They will be brought to justice... but only if we keep a clear head and push on."

John's eyes regained focus, as opposed to staring through his partner's head like Sherlock were made of glass. As he looked into Sherlock's eyes, he saw them soften.

"Yes?"

John wiped his tears away. "Yeah."

"We still have the camera," Sherlock stated. "We'll photograph more evidence. Grab something for a weapon while you're at it." He glanced aside as though to indicate those responsible for this mess.

"Wherever they are, they have to come back eventually."

John remained on his knees on the ground for a few seconds while Sherlock rose, and he stared at the dirt while the shed door was closed behind him. Clearly this was an attempt to lessen some of John's pain at the discovery, but Mary's mutilated corpse was still only a few paces away, visible or not.

He wanted to find these monsters. He wanted to kill them.

When Sherlock nudged him on the shoulder, he looked up to see a crowbar being offered to him. Clenching his fists for a moment, John stood up and took his weapon.

Glancing toward the now closed shed, hiding the macabre sight within, John was struck by a thought. He did not want to go back into the shed, never again. And yet…

"I can't leave Mary in there," he said hoarsely, shaking his head.

She might be dead and thus beyond rescue, but he did not want to treat her remains like trash to simply be dumped and left behind. At the very least her parents - whom he had sadly never gotten to meet - deserved to get back an actual body for a proper burial, and that would be far from certain if they left her to these animals.

"John…" The detective's tone was exasperated, but in his eyes were a silent plea. Sherlock might have outwardly kept his composure, but inside he was just as shaken up and terrified as his partner. "I know you're going to hate me for saying this, but now is not the time for sentiment. We can't lug around on a body. There will be a time to grieve for Mary later."

"Fuck you!" John hissed with such vehemence that the detective actually took a step back from him, visibly startled. "You're no better than they are, you fucking sociopath! You're probably even pleased she's dead!"

Not that he was angry with Sherlock, not really; rather this was a case of redirected aggression with Sherlock as the only available outlet for John's indescribable rage, and under normal circumstances John would have realized this and instantly apologized to his best friend for the harsh and unfair string of accuses. This was, however, as far from 'normal circumstances' as one could get, and at that moment it felt good to hurt Sherlock, to make him experience just a fraction of the pain Mary had been made to endure in her final moments before death.

"That is not true." Despite valiant attempts to keep his voice from shaking, Sherlock failed.

John's jaw quivered and he looked ready to argue otherwise, but then he shook his head and looked back at the shed. Sherlock watched, alternating between disbelief and a lack of surprise as John sat back down, back pressed against the shed's door.

"I can't leave her, not even now," he said, his voice flat and without emotion.

"John…" Sherlock took a step forward. To do what? Reason with him again? Pull him up and force him to come along? The younger man had not yet decided.

"I let her down too many times before," John said torpidly. "I'm staying. Don't worry, I'll keep a lookout. If anyone gets near her..." His grip on the crowbar tightened for emphasis.

Sherlock backed away hesitantly. He thought for a moment that perhaps John had snapped. He certainly hoped not, not only for the chance that John would become a liability or undependable (would he wander off for some unknown reason?), but because losing his partner and dearest, closest friend was unthinkable.

"I will be investigating the cabin," he said. "Stay safe, alright?"

John glanced at him, his eyes vulnerable for a second. "You too."

Entering the backyard, Sherlock first saw several wrought iron racks, one of which had a skin stretched out on it and left to dry in the sun hours ago. Sherlock wished the skin had belonged to an animal. Though the criminals had been lucky in choosing to collect purses and identification, their actions on their own property were sloppier, not that this was a surprise.

Access to proper cleaning supplies or at least water would have helped greatly. A bucket covered in grime sat nearby, flies buzzing over the intestines which lay in a pile within. He first thought they were Mary's, but her corpse had no slit along the belly, and these had clearly been rotting for much longer, if the coloration and presence of maggots had anything to indicate.

Sarah Cavanaugh? It was certainly a possibility, unless the clan had killed more people in the past week except poor Mary.

Despite what John said, he had not wanted her to die. There were times when he'd wished she would disappear out of John's life, when he'd purposely tried to drive her away and alienate her by his rude and uncouth behaviour, and when he had, admittedly, done his very best to sabotage her budding relationship with John using methods his friend referred to as 'morally depraved'. But he had never, ever wished the life out of her.

The door to the cabin was predictably unlocked. The stench inside was even worse than in the shed, a multitude of foul odors mixing together to create an almost tangible atmosphere. Sherlock felt bile rising in his throat and had to bury his face in the crook of his arm until he managed to procure a napkin through which he could breathe in order to filter out the worst of the stink.

The cabin was, frankly put, unfit for human habitation, but after seeing what these individuals were capable of, Sherlock doubted they could even be classified as people. He made a mental note to remind himself of this the next time someone complained about his untidiness at Baker Street.

On the wooden table, which took up most of the cabin's single room, were several plates, jars and cups which seemed to have never been washed throughout existence. Remains of a past meal - or more likely several - were on a stove that looked positively archaic, and the detective couldn't help but wonder if the poor unfortunate person whose entrails he had found outside in the bucket was the main course.

Wary that someone might still be lying in wait for him, he carefully navigated the interior. Anyone nearby had to have been deaf to not hear the brief shouting match between him and John, but he still took care not to bump into or knock over anything. In addition, a chance, however small, still remained that the hunters were out in the woods somewhere, and in their return home, they might notice something moved or broken.

He could hear the rumbling drone of some kind of machine, which immediately suggested the presence of some kind of appliance, likely a freezing unit. Otherwise, he doubted they would be able to hold onto meat as long as they wanted, given the waiting period for taking victims.

The generator growled on in a room connected to the main space of the cabin, and already Sherlock was thinking about dismantling the thing to somehow gain an iota of control over these filthy, primitive bastards.

Something in a corner of the cabin caught his eye, and he took a closer look. A collection of photographs, some of their frames cracked, sat on a small shelf, and one of which hung on the wall. Though faded from time and exposure to light, the contents were still very much visible. Black and white images, perhaps taken a hundred years ago, told a tale of just how long this family had been living in the mountains. Though some - likely much earlier generations than the others - had plain features, others already possessed the telltale disfigurements of inbreeding.

Sherlock was frankly surprised any members of the clan were left, based on the damages done by mating within the blood, especially at this length of time. Either they had developed a habit of adding to the bloodline through abducted victims, or - and he hoped this was the case - not many of the family were left.

A mosquito whined in his ear, causing him to reflexively swat, and he moved on, this time to the beds. Only two were present, and they further strengthened his suspicion of the group being relatively few in number, unless they shared sleeping space.

He fished Sarah Cavanaugh's digital camera out of his jacket pocket with deft fingers and snapped a few pictures, flash off so as not to alert anyone outside of the activities. He was fairly sure that if the family were home, he would have heard from them by now.

Were they out preying on a new victim? Mary had only been dead a few hours; they would not be needing more meat for at least a week, unless they had a habit of 'stocking up' during the summer months to last through the harsh Appalachian winter.

The other, even more disturbing possibility was that they sometimes hunted for fun without harvesting the meat. Was that what they had done to Mary? Apart from bleeding her out, her killers had left the body intact, and hot, humid temperatures such as these caused dead flesh to decompose at an alarming rate. Sherlock was intimately familiar with the chemical processes of decomposition; he had conducted many thorough studies on the topic, sometimes using subjects from St. Bart's morgue for his experiments.

He suddenly realized that he should have secured photographic evidence of Mary Morstan's remains the moment he discovered them. John probably had no desire to re-enter the shed, but Sherlock knew that emotional distress could make people do the most foolish of things without any thought of the consequences. In this case, he suspected John might very well mess with the crime scene, perhaps by attempting to cut Mary down from the beam.

Ready to dash out of the cabin, he fought to restrain himself, to repress the sudden feeling of dread. As determined to stay put as John had seemed, ready to bash someone's brains out for so much as looking in his direction, something - anything - could have happened. Call it instinct, call it the practical concern of tampered evidence, but Sherlock felt an immediate sense of alarm at being separated from John.

Heart racing, he headed back the way he came, pausing at the door to listen for sounds that suggested he had been caught, hearing none, and finally yanking the door open. He slunk along the exterior of the cabin, again stopped, and carefully peeked around the corner. John remained where he sat minutes before, though the events of the day had tensed his body into defense mode, ready to spring up and use the crowbar. He was looking right in the other direction, as though he had heard something in the woods, but he was still holding a stubborn, loyal vigil over Mary.

A tiny twinge of guilt struck Sherlock's core, but he swallowed it down, focusing instead on the matter at hand. Taking a deep breath to prepare facing his friend, he was met with the ever-present stench of the yard and cabin, and he was not quite sure if he could ever be desensitized to the foul odor of blood, entrails, rotting flesh, sweat and...

Backing himself away from the corner, he sniffed the air again, realizing that never before in their investigation of the property had there been a smell of sweat and unwashed, vile bodies. He looked around at the backyard and then finally toward the cabin roof, where something seemed to move. Before he had time to consider what the thing was, it stepped forward, and the first clear thought Sherlock had was that it was holding a knife. By then, the figure was leaping off of the roof and towards him.

He had just enough time to take a step to the side when the creature pounced, or he would have been caught underneath it and probably killed on the spot. With nearly catlike grace, the attacker landed and then righted itself, holding the knife Sherlock had glimpsed seconds before. The fading light revealed a man, Sherlock's height or shorter, and slight in build, but nonetheless sporting a well-developed musculature. Those, however, were the extent of his humanlike qualities.

The man - though loath to admit it, Sherlock found himself doubting his attacker's sex - was probably the result of generations of inbreeding, disfigured to the point that it was doubtful if he could still be classified as a Homo sapiens. Bald except for a few strings of filthy blond, shoulder-length hair, the man was scarred and lumpy, some of his disfigurements probably congenital while others seemed acquired; perhaps caused by prey, human or otherwise, that had fought back.

A high-pitched cackling sound, akin to laughter, erupted from deranged mountain man's grinning mouth, and the very next moment he took a swing at Sherlock with his bowie knife.
The detective managed to dodge but was not fast enough. The knife's edge grazed his left cheek, slitting up a wound dangerously close to his eye. He could feel the warm trickle of blood on his face, even though a surge of adrenalin momentarily blocked out the sensation of pain.

Shocked at not only the ferocity but also the surprising strength and agility shown by the deformed mountain man, Sherlock realized with a sinking feel of dread that for all his mental prowess, this was a fight where he was very likely to be outmatched.

Not a complete stranger to hand-to-hand combat, he countered with a strike of his own: a side-kick aimed at the attacker's shin. The attempt at disabling his attacker would have sent anyone else to their knees, he was certain of it. What surprised Sherlock was that the wiry beast continued to move as though the kick had not even been delivered, save for the sheer force moving his foe's entire leg back. Otherwise, the inhuman thing showed no sign of pain whatsoever, and Sherlock hardly had time to marvel over the strange lack of a reaction.

The blade shot toward him, and by sheer luck, he just managed to avoid the knife entering his eye. In his dodge, he caught sight of a bucket on the ground just a foot away, filled with gravel. It would be heavy enough to heave at the hunter, but it would also be heavy enough to possibly hurt his wrist, and badly. But in that moment less than a second in length, an injured wrist was the least of his worries. He ducked the next thrust of the blade and grabbed the bucket in both hands, hurling it upwards and connecting with his attacker's ugly face.

Using both hands had kept him from hurting himself, but not the same could be said for the mountain man. Whether or not the move had hurt it the detective did not know, but it was at least thrown off balance, and Sherlock took this opportunity, no matter how brief, to turn and retreat.

And ran into a solid wall of flesh.

Huge, hairy hands closed vice-like around his shoulders and he found himself crying out. The brute lifted him off the ground, foul breath beating against his face as the monstrous thing scrutinized him with misaligned eyes. His heart lurched as he made the connection: this had to be the owner of those giant footprints.

TBC...
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The Prey