A/N: Well, here goes a long one! I've classified it as Mystery/Drama, but I think I've covered just about every genre category they've got here… well… maybe not poetry. Or parody. It's not really parody. And you'd be more writing between the lines than reading between them if you found any romance. And supernatural/ sci-fi/ fantasy… nope. None of that. And whatever 'spiritual' means, its prolly not that either.

But I can promise you the rest of 'em

(I'm afraid the above statement came out a lot more noteworthy in my head, when I wasn't looking at the list.)

So anyway.

I've put the rating at PG-13, and if I'm wrong about that, let me know and I'll up it.

So anyway, enjoy! (And talk to me! Whacha think?)

The Skeleton

Chapter 1

It was a listless Friday morning at the close of a very dull week. I had eyed a certain Morocco case for signs of use enough times over the past few days that my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes had taken to snorting derisively whenever my eyes wandered in that direction, even when I was looking at something else entirely. Happily, it had so far remained undisturbed, and I was in the process of quietly vowing not to look at it any more, lest I bring it to his mind more than it was already there.

Today, however, Holmes’ restless pacing had taken on a more actively annoyed quality than the restiveness he had shown of late, and I did not need his deductive powers to see that something had irritated him not a little. While he paced, he ground his pipe between his teeth and exclaimed inarticulately at odd intervals. Once or twice his hand gestures actively threatened our long-suffering mantelpiece debris, already much hassled by our untidy habits and his occasional bouts of target practice. I had asked him earlier what he meant by stalking about in this fashion, but he had taken no notice of my question. He had a newspaper in his hand, so I assumed there was some story behind it all, but such was his mood that it seemed counterproductive to press the matter. I tried to content myself with a book until he decided to enlighten me, and only glanced up at him to frown disapprovingly about half as often as I had mind to.

After a while, he stopped somewhere behind my chair and I could sense him watching me. I concentrated on my reading, still waiting, but after five minutes of ignoring the gap of silence at my back, my patience ran out and I turned to look at him. His eyes were still on me. I held out my hand. He handed me the newspaper, with the article in question uppermost. “Boarding School Disappearance, New Clues Surface,” read the headline.

“It’s a case, Holmes,” I said, puzzled by his behavior.

“Excellent, Watson,” he said dryly. “And no doubt the police will be here before too long, asking me for advice.”

“It’s been in the papers for three days, but I have been unable to draw your attention to it—not for lack of trying on my part, I may add. They say they’ve found a revolver and the remains of clothing that appear to have been drenched in blood hidden under a rock on the grounds of a boys’ boarding school in Surrey. It’s not a new murder—in fact, they think that the tags and make of the clothing imply they may date from thirty years ago, when a master disappeared from there. It may not be an exactly pressing matter, Holmes, but you have no cases now and this one looks like it would be of interest.”

“That is your opinion, is it?” He had a gruff, quarrelsome air about him at the moment, as if I were trying to force him to take a case against his will. The utter nonsensicalness of that concept ignited a sudden spark of worry in my stomach.

“Yes it is. And if there is some painfully obvious explanation of this mystery that makes it too trifling for you to take, I would be very glad to hear it.”

Holmes walked around my chair to the front so that I was no longer craning my neck to see him and began to pick splinters from the edge of the knife-scored mantelpiece with his fingernail. After a few moments, he seemed to recollect himself, and picked up a pipe, which he contemplated as he rubbed the soot off the bowl with his thumb and leaned with studied nonchalance against the wall. It was the first time in our long association that I had seen him look abjectly nervous.

“What would you say, Watson, if Lestrade or some other detective came here not to ask me the solution of a puzzle, but to arrest me as the criminal?”

“That he would have to get through me first, I should think.”

“What if he were right?”

“Dash it all, Holmes, if the police are coming because they are puzzled over the case, it stands to reason that they are certainly not coming to arrest you. What is going on?”

Holmes put the pipe down. “You want the explanation, Watson? The simple solution to this disappearance case, to yet another problem that puzzles the police?”

“Yes, very much, Holmes,” I answered carefully. I did not understand his manner.

“All right, then. The missing man was murdered by a half dozen young schoolboys in the dead of night, who then proceeded to dump his body in a ditch where it was not found for thirty years. The boys dispersed and spoke to no one, and no one else ever knew, so that even their closest friends remain ignorant.”

“Holmes, that is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard.” I had come to accept that Holmes’ sense of humor could run at times to the perverse, but I could not detect any sign in his face or voice that he was laughing. Quite the contrary. “And,” I added, glimmerings of something awful flickering at the edges of my awareness, “I may be quite thick about this sort of thing, but I see no possible way for you to have deduced that.”

“Very good, Watson,” he said, surprisingly darkly. He was very nearly glaring at me, and his hands had gone completely still.

“Did you deduce it?”

“I did not.”

“Then how could you know?”

“You do not believe me, Watson?” He had a queer look, a sort of half-smile that was not at all amused, and his normally high, clear voice was a little rough. I had the sudden odd sense that I was wading up to my neck through water that was very dark, and bottomless not far away, and that Holmes was out in it far ahead of me. I had the sudden odd sense that Sherlock Holmes was afraid.

The dim form of this imagined mire was only vaguely apparent to me then, but it seemed to me that if Holmes were drowning in it, it did not much matter at the moment what it was made of. I shivered, but I was used to following him through the dark. I plunged in.

“I do not believe it happened in quite that manner.” I kept my voice neutral. “I think there was an explanation which would make the boys’ actions make sense.”

“What leads you to that conclusion?”

I felt my way slowly and cautiously. “It does not make sense as you describe it. There must have been circumstances which prompted it.” Holmes’ flinch of disappointment and the way the black mood seemed to settle on him with sudden seeming-permanence was enough for my suspicions. “…And I know you, Holmes.” His head jerked up and a question flickered across his face. The concept was twisting knots in my belly, and my hands were slick, but that was immaterial: there was really nothing to decide. “At any rate, I know you are not a murderer, regardless of what you have done.”

The tension of his manner dispersed a little, and he seemed actually to expand an inch or two as he unclenched himself and leaned against the mantelpiece more comfortably. He smiled musingly. “Sometimes, Watson, you are not so thick as I have been led to believe.” With that dubious complement he threw himself in the chair across from me. He rubbed his hand over his forehead and face several times, apparently with relief, but soon his hand dropped and he stared into the fire. “Do you really know me, Watson?”

We were at least on solid ground now, even if utterly unfamiliar. “I am afraid I did not know you went to boarding school.”

“It was not for very long. I had a tutor for a while before, and—what time is it?”

“A quarter to eleven.”

“Would you take a trip with me?”

“Anywhere.”

“To a boarding school in Surrey?”

“Is that wise?”

“Certainly not. I am curious to see it, however, after all this time.”

“And the police?”

“We must be gone before they arrive here-- I am sure it is only a matter of time before they come. I cannot make such a mockery of my profession as to take the case, and I cannot possibly meet them in the vicinity of it if I refuse it. If we are simply on holiday and should happen to meet any of our official friends there—well, we shall see what comes of it. There is nothing to connect the crime with me; certainly not for any of the Scotland Yarders or their ilk.” I frowned: the callousness of the statement made me begin to realize exactly what it was I was abetting. Holmes saw it, and looked down.

“Should I bring my revolver?” I asked.

“Are you afraid of the murderer?”

“Certainly not.”

He looked at me curiously, then gave me another, this time a puzzled smile, though the melancholy was not gone. “I sometimes think, Watson, that you are only blind to the signs and minutiae that are of no real importance. That should it ever happen to matter enough, your understanding will put mine to shame.”

I smiled. “My dear fellow, if your understanding even conceives of the idea that I would not accept and believe you better than anything you can possibly ever have done, it should be put to shame. If ever I can—”

Holmes nodded once, accepting but curtailing my effusion. I knew his dislike of such things too well to be bothered by it, and at the moment I was rather longing for the return of the familiar, which was not long coming. In an instant, the fit of boundless energy was on him, as bright as his previous mood had been dark. “Pack, Watson!” he cried. “We must hurry if we are to beat the inspector!” He dashed off.

I grinned to myself, in spite of the dull sense of fear and shock of what I was learning. The utter bizarreness of dissembling to the police over a thirty year old crime of murder which my closest friend had apparently committed when he was thirteen years old, which they did not suspect and which I did not understand was somehow sublimely normal, as long as Holmes was barking his enthusiastic orders. He caught me still standing in the hall as he barreled by, gathering together necessaries.

“Run, man! Upstairs and pack!”

Caught in the whirl of the moment, I fairly flew.

Before long, we were on our way.